Understanding and controlling lipid membrane dynamics with external agents

Synthetic cells, just like living cells, require a dynamic boundary that can separate what is inside and outside. Lipid membranes remain the most deserving candidates for both living and synthetic cells owing to their elegant chemistry and their dynamic emergent properties. Lipid membranes continue to fascinate and employ chemists and physicists to truly develop a holistic understanding of their behavior. In living cells, lipid membranes are involved in a lot of crucial processes that the cell requires for sustenance and proliferation. However, when these lipid membranes are isolated for use in compartmentalization, in hopes of creating synthetic life, they retain their dynamic potential but lose active agents that manipulate the membranes. Biologists and biophysicists then employ various cell machinery to attempt manipulation of the membranes as desired. Reconstitution of protein machinery in lipid membranes is a vast topic, and a major advantage that bring the lipid systems into the synthetic world is to truly utilize the technological advancements of synthetic chemistry. In this thesis, I have focused on using and developing strategies of manipulating model membranes with the tools accessible to synthetic chemists. These external agents can be passive like macromolecules which spontaneously embed into lipid membranes and exhibit complex interactions with the bilayer. Contrarily, they can be active agents that transfer energy to the lipid bilayers without the need of biological arsenal. I aimed to employ these chemical tools to develop a fundamental understanding of how they act on lipid membranes and the consequences of these interactions from the perspective of the bilayer. It not only accentuates our knowledge on lipid bilayers, but also lays groundwork for future researchers to design better tools for desired outcomes. The projects in this thesis explore both passive and active external agents to induce morphological transitions in model membranes. This work utilizes both supported and free-standing lipid bilayers to systematically characterize the effects of external agents on the mechanical properties of the membrane. Fluorescence microscopy and spectroscopy, including fluorescence lifetime spectroscopy and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy prove to be essential methodologies for studying model membranes. I also focused on advancing available techniques like electrodeformation of vesicles to more complex systems for optimizing their use in synthetic cell studies. This work systematically introduced the world of rotary motors to lipid bilayers, and photoactive compounds hold great promise for being crucial game-changers in synthetic cells. Furthermore, with better surface-engineering and coating strategies, synthetic cells would also become more viable for being used in drug delivery and pharmaceutical industries. This work also highlights the limitations in current technology, posing important open questions and potential future endeavors. Rapid advances in synthetic chemistry, fluorescence techniques and computational power promise to lead researchers to the development of true synthetic cells

Arabic oration in early Islam: religion, ritual, and rhetoric

Across the mosques, homes, battlefields, and open town spaces of the Middle East in the seventh and eighth centuries ad, religion, politics, and aesthetics coalesced in the richly artistic public performance of spontaneous Arabic oration (khuṭba). Exquisite in rhetorical craftsmanship, these interactive speeches and sermons by the Prophet Muhammad (d. 632), Imam Ali (d. 661), and other political and military leaders were also the major vehicle of policymaking and persuasion, and the primary conduit for dissemination of ethical, religious, and legal teachings. The Friday sermon that is an intrinsic part of Muslim ritual across the globe in our present time has a long history rooted in the first Friday sermon delivered by Muhammad in Medina, and more broadly in these multifunctional orations of the early Islamic world. In this chapter, I consider Arabic-Islamic oration across different social domains in its foundational age and situate religious speech within them. Drawing on a decade of research for my book published in 2019, Arabic Oration: Art and Function, I discuss the major features of classical Arabic oration, with a focus on religion, ritual, and the rhetoric of orality; further details for each of the points discussed below may be found in my book. I begin with a section on rhetoric, discussing the oral milieu of early Islamic oration and its aesthetic memory-based techniques. In a second section focusing on religion, I then discuss the pious themes of the early oration, and their diffusion across political and military speechmaking, which shows how boundaries between religion and other spheres of life were fluid in the early Islamic period. In the third section, on ritual, I say a few words about ceremonial aspects of the oration that served, among other things, as a mode of authority assertion. Altogether, I present the religious face of Arabic oration in early Islam, and some of its interconnections with art and society...

Classical Islamic oration’s art, function, and life-altering power of persuasion: the ultimate response by Hammam to Ali’s sermon on piety, and by Hurr to Husayn’s battle oration in Karbala

This article discusses classical Islamic oration’s power of persuasion through two lenses, one wide-angled, one focused. First, it introduces topographies of Arabic oration in its foundational oral period in early Islam, addressing notable aspects of its art, function, and provenance. Then, it pivots to speak of major life changes induced by particular orations, or sermon-induced ‘conversion’. Two early Islamic orations that induced such transformations are transcribed and briefly discussed: (1) the ‘sermon describing the truly pious’ by the successor of the Prophet according to the Shia and the fourth caliph according to the Sunnis, Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 661) in Kufa, Iraq, which is said to have caused his associate Hammam to give up his life spirit, and (2) the battlefield speech addressed to the surrounding Umayyad army by Ali’s son, the Shia Imam Husayn (d. 680), in Karbala, also in Iraq, which is reported to have won over the enemy sub-commander Hurr to Husayn’s side and prompted him to fight for Husayn unto death. Both are striking examples of the life-altering effects of intense and eloquent sermons, manifest here in the ultimate passage — an end to life in this world and entry into the hereafter

Los sermones de ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib en la confluencia entre las enseñanzas islámicas del Corán y la ética cultural basada en las tradiciones orales sobre la naturaleza de la Arabia del siglo VII

Sermons attributed to ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib (c. 600-661, first Shi‘a imam and fourth Sunni caliph) promoted core Qur’anic doctrine and ethics through an aesthetic steeped in the oral, nature-based, poetic culture of seventh-century Arabia. Using traditional Arabian metaphors of camels, watering holes, and pithy, rhythmic, orality-grounded cadences, ‘Ali urged his audience to worship the One God, follow the guidance of His prophet Muhammad, shun worldliness, perform good deeds, and prepare for the imminent hereafter. Through a close reading of his most celebrated discourses, this paper explores these teachings and their religious and cultural underpinnings.Los sermones atribuidos a ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib (c. 600-661, primer imam chií y cuarto califa suní) fomentaron las doctrinas y la ética coránicas fundacionales mediante una estética oratoria, imbuida de la cultura poética oral basada en metáforas de la naturaleza, característica de la Arabia del siglo VII. ‘Ali utilizaba metáforas tradicionales de camellos y abrevaderos, junto con expresiones rítmicas y lacónicas llenas de cadencias de la oralidad, para instar a los oyentes a adorar al Dios único, seguir la dirección de su profeta Muhammad, rehuir las cosas mundanas, practicar las buenas obras y prepararse para la inminente vida en el más allá. A través de un análisis pormenorizado de sus discursos más célebres, este artículo explora dichas enseñanzas y sus bases religiosas y culturales

Is oration literature? Establishing the khuṭbah of the pre- and early Islamic oral period as the foundational genre of classical Arabic prose

Is oration literature? More specifically, can we read the multi-functional Arabic oration (khuṭbah) of the 1st/7th and 2nd/8th centuries as part of the classical prose canon? In this article, I argue that if our definition of literature includes beautiful language, admiration expressed by literary theorists, and masterful articulation of themes to evoke audience response, early Arabic oration is most certainly literature. I demonstrate this claim by analyzing the rhythmic and graphic oral aesthetics of early Arabic oration, the views of medieval theorists regarding its distinguished place and literary nature, and its crucial influence on the development of the chancery epistle (risālah), the first written genre of Arabic literary prose. I contend that khuṭbah is the foundational prose genre of Arabic and it has materially influenced the major genres of risālah and maqāmāt that followed. The history of Arabic literature cannot be written without oration

Karbala mourning among the Fāṭimid-Ṭayyibī Shīʿa of India: doctrinal and performative aspects of Sayyidnā Ṭāhir Sayf al-Dīn’s Arabic Marthiya, “O King of Martyrs” (Yā Sayyida l-Shuhadāʾī)

The Sayyid al-Shuhadāʾ lament—a poignant fifty-one-stanza Arabic marthiya composed by the Ṭayyibī Dāʿī l-Muṭlaq Sayyidnā Ṭāhir Sayf al-Dīn (d. 1385/1965)—holds an iconic status in the Karbala tradition of the Fāṭimid-Ṭayyibī Shīʿa of India. This article transcribes, translates, and analyses the lament to showcase a distinct religious tradition within a hybrid cultural milieu. The lament’s forms intersect with Arabic poetic conventions set in pre-Islamic times; its themes overlap with Twelver-Shīʿī Karbala laments in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu from the Middle East and South Asia; and its performance stems from melodic Persianate-Urdu recital. Simultaneously, it reflects the Fāṭimid-Ṭayyibī heritage, particularly the teachings of al-Muʾayyad al-Shīrāzī (d. 470/1078), including the fundamentals of their Imāmate doctrine and the salvific importance of weeping for Ḥusayn

Finding Our Way Back into the Body Through Somatic Movement: A Journey Through the Meanings and Challenges of Mindfulness

Mindful-movement practices such as walking meditation, yoga, tai chi, and qi gong can support the cultivation and deepening of a sustained and embodied mindfulness practice. Because of their intrinsic gentleness, these practices are inherently trauma-sensitive, and can facilitate a gradual healing and re-integration of the body-mind through developing body-awareness. Mindfulness of the body is the first foundation of mindfulness practice. However, because of widespread misunderstandings around the meaning and definition of mindfulness, the bodyfullness in mindfulness practice is not always recognized and/or practiced. Furthermore, since bodily experience is seldom within one’s control, and because the body often times carries unresolved trauma, sustaining a focused and open attention within the body can evoke distress, which, even though it is a normal part and process of the practice, can be challenging to allow mindfully. This creative project, through the sharing of the science and benefits of body-awareness and embodied mindfulness, via my lived-transformational-experience of mindful-movement practices, invites the viewer to consider the value of embodied living through cultivation of body-awareness and embodied mindfulness; it encourages them to recognize the simplicity and profundity of mindful movement practices as a pathway to support healing, deep well-being, and transformation. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4J2HtUlG-9RL-t8s-0WlqtvvuITUaYd

“Let’s work: Involving nursing students in the care of elderly people at nursing home”

Working in nursing homes is the most challenging task for a nursing staff, but at the same time it can be a spirit jarring experience for young nursing students. From the perspective of nursing students, often students find it difficult to deal with elderly people living in the nursing home. They feel stressed, depressed, and insecure when asked to communicate with elderly people. At the Aga Khan University School of Nursing and Midwifery (AKU-SONAM), baccalaureate nursing students chose an elective course on care of elderly clients, where theory is offered in a blended form and clinical experience is provided by visiting senior old aged home. In this article, the students have two weeks to work with elderly clients, where they plan some interventions based on their assessment, to improve communication with the elderly, to increase their involvement and to advance their health behaviors

Multiple Resource Network Voronoi Diagram

Given a spatial network and a set of service center nodes from k different resource types, a Multiple Resource-Network Voronoi Diagram (MRNVD) partitions the spatial network into a set of Service Areas that can minimize the total cycle distances of graph-nodes to allotted k service center nodes with different resource types. The MRNVD problem is important for critical societal applications such as assigning essential survival supplies (e.g., food, water, gas, and medical assistance) to residents impacted by man-made or natural disasters. The MRNVD problem is NP-hard; it is computationally challenging due to the large size of the transportation network. Previous work is limited to a single or two different types of service centers, but cannot be generalized to deal with k different resource types. We propose a novel approach for MRNVD that can efficiently identify the best routes to obtain the k different resources. Experiments and a case study using real-world datasets demonstrate that the proposed approach creates MRNVD and significantly reduces the computational cost

Tahmid: A literary genre? A study of the Arabic laudatory preamble with a focus on the Fatimid-Tayyibi tradition.

This thesis follows the emergence and development of Tahmid, the Arabic laudatory preamble, as a literary genre in the Arabic tradition: a genre that imaginatively presents the distinct worldview (weltanschauung) that its author embraces and a genre that not only features as a standard introduction for an infinite number of texts, but is also, in and of itself, a rich source of meaning. The dissertation proposes a literary approach for unearthing its depths of knowledge, termed the 'relational approach'. This approach identifies and focuses on the various relations and associations, highlighted and evoked by a Tahmid despite its usual conciseness, which are the source of its vitality. Drawing upon a broad range of samples, the study also delineates the common characteristics and trends of the Tahmid tradition as a whole, and focuses on its distinctiveness and significance in Fatimid-Tayyibi literature ('Fatimid-Tayyibi' refers to Ismili Musta'lian Tayyibi Shiites in Fatimid Egypt as well as their spiritual successors in Yemen and India, commonly known as the Da'udi Bohras). Following the introduction, the thesis is structured on a chronological basis in three parts. Section-I (chapters 1-3) traces the development of Tahmid from its origins to maturity as a distinct genre in Arabic prose. Section-II (chapter-4), building on the literary-history presented in the previous section, presents a methodology for the analysis of Tahmid and applies it to a selection of examples. Section-III (chapters 5-7) focuses on the unique characteristics of Fatimid-Tayyibi Tahmids and presents an analysis of a number of examples. The section ends with a case-study of a Tahmid in one of the Fatimid-Tayyibi Da'i Syedna Taher Saifuddin's (d. 1385/1965) risalahs. The question posited in the title of this thesis, 'is the Tahmid a literary genre?' is answered in the Conclusion. An appendix of Tahmids referred to in the thesis and illustrative samples, especially from the Fatimid-Tayyibi manuscripts, accompanies the dissertation in a separate volume