Malik Bennabi's Ideas on Civilization and the Development of the Society : Perspectives on Education

The study is concerned with Malik Bennabi's ideas on civilization and the development of society in the Muslim world, with the focus on education. The purpose is to reveal the nature of his ideas and views on education in order to conceptualize them in the form of an integrated approach to the educational problem in the Muslim world. Due to the nature of the research problem, qualitative methodology was employed in this study. This study involved an investigation into Malik Bemabi's thoughts from three sources of evidence; Malik Bennabi's works, the different studies carried out on his thoughts and interviews. The content analysis and interviews were employed to examine the data in addressing the research questions. Content analysis; as a technique, dealt with documentary evidence. The interviews provided additional information gathered fiom personalities acquainted with Malik Bennabi's thoughts. The findings of this study show that Malik Bennabi made a considerable contribution to the enrichment of the Islamic educational thought by suggesting a range of rich and enduring ideas that may contribute to the solution of the Muslim dilemma. Four parameters are crucial to grasp the nature of Malik Bennabi's approach to the educational problem in the Muslim world; religion as a cosmic phenomenon, Islam as the principal fkame of reference, the Islamic problem as civilizational in nature and the human factor as the major factor of the Muslim world's civilizational problems. The methodological approach to study the problems of civilization adopted by Malik Bennabi had an explicit impact on defining the concept of education. Man, the Muslim, is the central factor in the study of the problems of civilization in the Muslim world. Education is the process of civilizing the human being and imparting to his existence a historical significance in order to enable him to resume his historical mission. Many concepts have been treated in Malik Bennabi's works. However, due to their educational nature, the concepts form together the essential elements upon which the process of education is established. Malik Bennabi treated four philosophical foundations of education; the nature of man, society, knowledge and the aims of education. Malik Bennabi provided Islamic education with a new approach to conceptualize the educational problem and education as a project to promote a new culture and build up a civilization. This approach considers the Islamic problem as civiIizationa1 in nature but an educational matter. Malik Bennabi did not present his ideas and views on education in a systematic manner. However, these ideas may form together an integrated approach to conceptualize the educational problem in the Muslim world as a problem of civilization. So, it is recommended that future studies should attempt to formulate this approach integrally based on the findigs of this study

School Finance and Reform in Delaware: A Summary

Delaware, although a small state with less than 20 school districts, is no different from other states in the dynamics and complexities of the political structure that has the most profound impact on educational policies in general and on public school finance in particular

Studies on the Reduction of Radon Plate-Out

The decay of common radioactive gases, such as radon, produces stable isotopes by a sequence of daughter particles with varied half-lives. These daughter particles are a significant source of gamma, neutron, and alpha particle backgrounds that can mimic desired signals in dark matter and neutrinoless double beta decay experiments. In the LUMINA Laboratory at Southern Methodist University (SMU), studies of radon plate-out onto copper samples are conducted using one of XIA's first five UltraLo 1800 alpha counters. We present results from investigations into various mitigation approaches. A custom-built copper holder (in either plastic or metal) has been designed and produced to maximize the copper's exposure to 220Rn. The 220Rn source is a collection of camping lantern mantles. We present the current status of control and experimental methods for addressing radon exposure levels.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, Conference Proceedings for Low Radioactivity Techniques 201

Investigating the Impact of Supply Chain Practices on the Financial Performance of Active Firms in Egyptian stock Market

Managing supply chain is one of the big tasksfor enterprises with sustaining the competitive advantages that reflected intheir bottom-line financial figures. Therefore, this research aims at exploringthe impact of supply chain practices i.e. supply chain integration, complexitymanagement, aligning strategy and supply chain, IT with process improvement,and operational innovation on the financial performance i.e. Return onAssets (ROA) and Return of Equity (ROE) of different manufacturing companies inthe Egyptian market. Qualitative and quantitative approaches have been followedto use theories and literature to cover the supply chain concepts and practicesin order to test it empirically. In addition, research data was collected from98 managers who are representing 14 manufacturing companies, which areregistered in the market of Egypt Stock Exchange from the year 2005 to 2010. Inaddition, secondary data on financial performance of the participated companieswere obtained from their websites and/or other publications. Research findingsindicate a strong relationship between supply chain practices and bottom-lineprofits of an organization. In addition, the supply chain managers decrease theuse of large fixed assets such as plants, warehouses and transportationvehicles in the supply chain. Results yield useful insights to both academics,and corporate practitioners about the importance of synthesizing supply chainwith financial performance

Study of the Fractal decomposition based metaheuristic on low-dimensional Black-Box optimization problems

This paper analyzes the performance of the Fractal Decomposition Algorithm (FDA) metaheuristic applied to low-dimensional continuous optimization problems. This algorithm was originally developed specifically to deal efficiently with high-dimensional continuous optimization problems by building a fractal-based search tree with a branching factor linearly proportional to the number of dimensions. Here, we aim to answer the question of whether FDA could be equally effective for low-dimensional problems. For this purpose, we evaluate the performance of FDA on the Black Box Optimization Benchmark (BBOB) for dimensions 2, 3, 5, 10, 20, and 40. The experimental results show that overall the FDA in its current form does not perform well enough. Among different function groups, FDA shows its best performance on Misc. moderate and Weak structure functions

Echoviruses are a major cause of aseptic meningitis in infants and young children in Kuwait

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The etiologic agents of aseptic meningitis (AM) often include human enteroviruses. The role of enteroviruses causing AM in young children was investigated during a 3-year period in Kuwait.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Enteroviral RNA was detected in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) by reverse transcription-PCR and specific genotypes of enteroviruses were identified by direct DNA sequencing of VP4-VP2 region. Enteroviral RNA was detected in 92 of 387 (24%) suspected AM cases and the results were confirmed by hybridization of amplicons with an internal, enterovirus-specific probe. The CSF samples from 75 of 281 (27%) children < 2 years old but only from 3 of 38 (8%) 4-12 year-old children were positive for enteroviral RNA (<it>p </it>= 0.011). Majority of infections in children < 2 years old (49 of 75, 65%) were due to three echoviruses; echovirus type 9 (E9), E11 and E30. Only three other enteroviruses, namely coxsackievirus type B4, coxsackievirus type B5 and enterovirus 71 were detected among AM cases in Kuwait.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our data show that three types of echoviruses (E9, E11 and E30) are associated with the majority of AM cases in Kuwait. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report to characterize different enterovirus genotypes associated with AM in the Arabian Gulf region.</p