Conspiracy of Near Silence: Violence against Iraqi Women

The article discusses the various forms of and increase in gender-based violence in Iraq. It also discusses state's policies and attitudes towards violence against women

Women in Iraq: beyond the rhetoric

At a press conference two weeks before the US-led invasion of Iraq, flanked by four “Women for a Free Iraq,”1 Paula Dobriansky, then undersecretary of state for global affairs, declared: “We are at a critical point in dealing with Saddam Hussein. However this turns out, it is clear that the women of Iraq have a critical role to play in the future revival of their society.” For the Bush administration, Iraqi women would not only be “helping give birth to freedom” in the post-Saddam order.2 US officials spoke publicly about rape, torture and executions of women under Ba‘th Party rule, implicitly linking these atrocities to the necessity for US military action.

Complex networks reveal early MRI markers of Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the most common neurological disorder, after Alzheimer's disease, and is characterized by a long prodromal stage lasting up to 20 years. As age is a prominent factor risk for the disease, next years will see a continuous increment of PD patients, making urgent the development of efficient strategies for early diagnosis and treatments. We propose here a novel approach based on complex networks for accurate early diagnoses using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data; our approach also allows us to investigate which are the brain regions mostly affected by the disease. First of all, we define a network model of brain regions and associate to each region proper connectivity measures. Thus, each brain is represented through a feature vector encoding the local relationships brain regions interweave. Then, Random Forests are used for feature selection and learning a compact representation. Finally, we use a Support Vector Machine to combine complex network features with clinical scores typical of PD prodromal phase and provide a diagnostic index. We evaluated the classification performance on the Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) database, including a mixed cohort of 169 normal controls (NC) and 374 PD patients. Our model compares favorably with existing state-of-the-art MRI approaches. Besides, as a difference with previous approaches, our methodology ranks the brain regions according to disease effects without any a priori assumption

Carrier Aggregation in Multi-Beam High Throughput Satellite Systems

Carrier Aggregation (CA) is an integral part of current terrestrial networks. Its ability to enhance the peak data rate, to efficiently utilize the limited available spectrum resources and to satisfy the demand for data-hungry applications has drawn large attention from different wireless network communities. Given the benefits of CA in the terrestrial wireless environment, it is of great interest to analyze and evaluate the potential impact of CA in the satellite domain. In this paper, we study CA in multibeam high throughput satellite systems. We consider both inter-transponder and intra-transponder CA at the satellite payload level of the communication stack, and we address the problem of carrier-user assignment assuming that multiple users can be multiplexed in each carrier. The transmission parameters of different carriers are generated considering the transmission characteristics of carriers in different transponders. In particular, we propose a flexible carrier allocation approach for a CA-enabled multibeam satellite system targeting a proportionally fair user demand satisfaction. Simulation results and analysis shed some light on this rather unexplored scenario and demonstrate the feasibility of the CA in satellite communication systems

Power constrained test scheduling using power profile manipulation

This paper presents a novel power profile manipulation technique which reduces the testing time of the recently proposed power constrained test scheduling algorithms. The power profile manipulation technique consists of reordering and rotating test sequences and a new power approximation model. It is shown when the proposed power profile manipulation is integrated in power conscious test scheduling, savings up to 25% in testing time are achieved using benchmark circuits synthesized in AMS 0.35µm technology

Chemical Safety Board and Qatar Proposed Chapter

The Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is a board responsible for carrying out investigations on chemical hazards and accidents that take place in the chemical industry in the United States of America. The Board consists of five appointed members by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and its members reached 35 professional staff in 2008. The mission of CSB is given to it by the Congress and no other agencies can influence or affect the Board’s activities as stated in the law. Its main purpose is to maintain the safety of the people and work environment in chemical plants. Once an accident has been selected for investigation, the CSB members follow a set of procedures to find out the causes of the accident and give recommendations to the industry and also to the regulatory agencies about what should be done to avoid such accidents. The completed investigations, as well as the current ones, are made available to the public in order to limit the number of accidents that take place in the chemical industry in the U.S. In this paper, a Qatar chapter of CSB, Qatar Safety Board (QSB), is proposed. Unlike CSB in the U.S., QSB will cover not only the accidents in the chemical industry, but also accidents that take place in the medical, industrial, sea and transportation sectors in Qatar. QSB will give recommendations to the industries on how to avoid the accidents. It will also try to raise awareness among everyone in the work environment in Qatar by making its reports on the accidents available, free-of-charge to the public. QSB will ensure a safer and healthier work environment in Qatar

Chemical Safety Board and Qatar Proposed Chapter

The Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is a board responsible for carrying out investigations on chemical hazards and accidents that take place in the chemical industry in the United States of America. The Board consists of five appointed members by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and its members reached 35 professional staff in 2008. The mission of CSB is given to it by the Congress and no other agencies can influence or affect the Board’s activities as stated in the law. Its main purpose is to maintain the safety of the people and work environment in chemical plants. Once an accident has been selected for investigation, the CSB members follow a set of procedures to find out the causes of the accident and give recommendations to the industry and also to the regulatory agencies about what should be done to avoid such accidents. The completed investigations, as well as the current ones, are made available to the public in order to limit the number of accidents that take place in the chemical industry in the U.S. In this paper, a Qatar chapter of CSB, Qatar Safety Board (QSB), is proposed. Unlike CSB in the U.S., QSB will cover not only the accidents in the chemical industry, but also accidents that take place in the medical, industrial, sea and transportation sectors in Qatar. QSB will give recommendations to the industries on how to avoid the accidents. It will also try to raise awareness among everyone in the work environment in Qatar by making its reports on the accidents available, free-of-charge to the public. QSB will ensure a safer and healthier work environment in Qatar

BIST hardware synthesis for RTL data paths based on test compatibility classes

New BIST methodology for RTL data paths is presented. The proposed BIST methodology takes advantage of the structural information of RTL data path and reduces the test application time by grouping same-type modules into test compatibility classes (TCCs). During testing, compatible modules share a small number of test pattern generators at the same test time leading to significant reductions in BIST area overhead, performance degradation and test application time. Module output responses from each TCC are checked by comparators leading to substantial reduction in fault-escape probability. Only a single signature analysis register is required to compress the responses of each TCC which leads to high reductions in volume of output data and overall test application time (the sum of test application time and shifting time required to shift out test responses). This paper shows how the proposed TCC grouping methodology is a general case of the traditional BIST embedding methodology for RTL data paths with both uniform and variable bit width. A new BIST hardware synthesis algorithm employs efficient tabu search-based testable design space exploration which combines the accuracy of incremental test scheduling algorithms and the exploration speed of test scheduling algorithms based on fixed test resource allocation. To illustrate TCC grouping methodology efficiency, various benchmark and complex hypothetical data paths have been evaluated and significant improvements over BIST embedding methodology are achieved