Empowering the Subaltern in \u3cem\u3eWoman at Point Zero\u3c/em\u3e

In the context of Western feminist theory, this paper critically explores Nawal El Saadawi\u27s celebrated novel, Woman at Point Zero. The aim of this analysis is to establish a dialogue and outline the benefits of comparative feminist discourse with regard to patriarchal policies in the Middle East. The paper argues that El Saadawi challenges the hegemony of a traditionally phallocentric society empowered by religion and masculinity. In Woman at Point Zero, the author has effectively reinterpreted culturally dominated canons and deconstructed regressive traditions affiliated with patriarchal hegemony. Relying on her experience as a prison psychiatrist, El Saadawi interrogates a chauvinist culture that dehumanizes women. She primarily aims to centralize the marginalized and give a voice as well as an agency to the voiceless

Enhancing Online Faculty Development Programs During COVID-19 and Beyond: A Multiple Case Study of Faculty Members Teaching Online

This study explored how the development needs of faculty members teaching online can inform professional development (PD) programs in higher education (HE), especially after a year and a half of transition to fully online courses due to the pandemic. The research was conducted in a midsize university in Ontario and utilized a multiple case study approach that examined the cases of four faculty members through an emergent process of in-depth interviews. The main criterion used to select participants was an experience with online teaching of at least 1 year. Data were collected from interview responses as well as from documents representing research studies the faculty members wrote about their teaching experience. Multiple cases were constructed using an inductive coding analysis process, and a cross-case analysis was conducted to identify themes common across the cases. Inductive coding was used to analyze the data. Findings revealed that faculty PD programs should be diversified when it comes to program format, duration, regularity, and topics. Programs differentiated in these ways are essential to accommodate diverse PD needs as well as the different stages of online faculty members’ development of expertise. One-time PD events may not offer the best opportunity to develop faculty members. Informal learning opportunities such as learning communities, research publishing, and mentoring are the most preferred and should be prioritized. HE institutions play an important role in enhancing PD programs either directly through improving program design or indirectly through modifying institutional policies and budgets

Engaging Ancient Islamic Traditions in the Poetry of Saleha Ghabesh

This paper explores the integration of ancient Islamic heritage in Emirati literature, particularly the history of the rise and fall of the Muslim Empire in Andalusia, in an attempt to confront regional challenges and international transformations in the current era. Navigating the intersection between heritage and identity, the Emirati poet, Saleha Ghabesh, attempts to incorporate the ancient Islamic heritage in Andalusia as a dynamics of liberation in order to articulate domestic issues integral to the geopolitics of the United Arab Emirates and the Arab region in the age of globalization. Transforming the mythic history of Andalusia into a narrative of disclosure, the poet encounters a web of traditions and policies responsible for significant ramifications in the UAE and the Arab world. In a related context, the paper points out that the technique of adaptation, used by Ghabesh, which includes recollection rephrasing and re-writing of ancient heritage and Andalusian legacies to fulfill contemporary purposes, is part of the issue of hybridity and interculturation, characterizing the contemporary experience of political and cultural globalization. By assimilating heritage and historical traditions into contemporary Emirati literature, Ghabesh aims to link the past with the present reconstructing ancient narratives which shaped the cultural mythology of the Arab people

The Poetics of Disclosure Narrating the Six-Day War in the Poetry of Nizar Qabbani

Within defined political and aesthetic contexts, the 1967 war poetry was an attempt to re-describe and re-constitute projections of the war in Arab media and popular culture. Repudiating war and its diabolical motives, several Arab poets question and subvert a complex pattern of nationalist myths that gave rise to the 1967 war and sustained it. In this context, the paper explores the provocative war poetry of the great Arab poet, Nizar Qabbani , written in the aftermath of the 1967 war between Israel and three Arab armies. In his denial of the process that aims to obscure the war and bury its atrocities beneath cultural amnesia, Qabbanireveals narratives of trauma and pain demystifying a phenomenon that centuries of history have glorified. Within the parameters of contemporary critical theory, the central argument, in the paper, aims to interrogate the war narratives purveyed by Arab politicians and official state media and their destructive impact on collective Arab memory. The poems, investigated in the paper, aim to engage the politics and the language of war questioning the myths and the monolithic political discourse that triggered the war and paved the way for the defeat

Effects of Low Intensity Focused Ultrasound on Liposomes Containing Channel proteins.

The ability to reversibly and non-invasively modulate region-specific brain activity in vivo suggests Low Intensity Focused Ultrasound (LIFU) as potential therapeutics for neurological dysfunctions such as epilepsy and Parkinson's disease. While in vivo studies provide evidence of the bioeffects of LIFU on neuronal activity, they merely hint at potential mechanisms but do not fully explain how this technology achieves these effects. One potential hypothesis is that LIFU produces local membrane depolarization by mechanically perturbing the neuronal cell membrane, or activating channels or other proteins embedded in the membrane. Proteins that sense mechanical perturbations of the membrane, such as those gated by membrane tension, are prime candidates for activating in response to LIFU and thus leading to the neurological responses that have been measured. Here we use the bacterial mechanosensitive channel MscL, which has been purified and reconstituted in liposomes, to determine how LIFU may affect the activation of this membrane-tension gated channel. Two bacterial voltage-gated channels, KvAP and NaK2K F92A channels were also studied. Surprisingly, the results suggest that ultrasound modulation and membrane perturbation does not induce channel gating, but rather induces pore formation at the membrane protein-lipid interface. However, in vesicles with high MscL mechanosensitive channel concentrations, apparent decreases in pore formation are observed, suggesting that this membrane-tension-sensitive protein may serve to increase the elasticity of the membrane, presumably because of expansion of the channel in the plane of the membrane independent of channel gating

A Critical Review of Algerian Universities in the Time Higher Education Ranking

This study examines Algerian universities’ current standing in international university rankings, with a particular focus on the Times Higher Education Rankings. The evaluation of the Top 10 universities in Algeria based on sub-indicators revealed that Algerian universities’ performance has not yet reached the standards observed in universities in the region and industrialized nations. Despite the state’s significant financial and human resources allocated to the higher education industry, as well as efforts made at all levels, the majority of universities included in the ranking were classified as 1501+ from 2018 to 2024. This study investigates the primary challenges faced by Algerian universities, the reasons for their failure to realize their full potential, and the necessary changes required to improve their standing in international ranking systems. Several significant findings have emerged from the investigation: Algerian universities have made significant advances in recent years in terms of teaching quality and scientific research; however, they continue to lag behind prominent colleges in other global regions. Algerian universities with superior academic performance are located in prominent urban areas; however, they must improve their global competitiveness by improving and developing research productivity, industrial income, and international perspective. The Algerian government should prioritize supporting universities that have achieved significant results in the sub-indicators, as these universities have the potential to contribute to improving Algeria’s overall higher education quality

Learning to Estimate 3D Human Pose from Point Cloud

3D pose estimation is a challenging problem in computer vision. Most of the existing neural-network-based approaches address color or depth images through convolution networks (CNNs). In this paper, we study the task of 3D human pose estimation from depth images. Different from the existing CNN-based human pose estimation method, we propose a deep human pose network for 3D pose estimation by taking the point cloud data as input data to model the surface of complex human structures. We first cast the 3D human pose estimation from 2D depth images to 3D point clouds and directly predict the 3D joint position. Our experiments on two public datasets show that our approach achieves higher accuracy than previous state-of-art methods. The reported results on both ITOP and EVAL datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our method on the targeted tasks

Towards a QoE Model to Evaluate Holographic Augmented Reality Devices

Augmented reality (AR) technology is developing fast and provides users with new ways to interact with the real-world surrounding environment. Although the performance of holographic AR multimedia devices can be measured with traditional quality-of-service parameters, a quality-of-experience (QoE) model can better evaluate the device from the perspective of users. As there are currently no well-recognized models for measuring the QoE of a holographic AR multimedia device, we present a QoE framework and model it with a fuzzy inference system to quantitatively evaluate the device

Interacting with New York City Data by HoloLens through Remote Rendering

In the digital era, Extended Reality (XR) is considered the next frontier. However, XR systems are computationally intensive, and they must be implemented within strict latency constraints. Thus, XR devices with finite computing resources are limited in terms of quality of experience (QoE) they can offer, particularly in cases of big 3D data. This problem can be effectively addressed by offloading the highly intensive rendering tasks to a remote server. Therefore, we proposed a remote rendering enabled XR system that presents the 3D city model of New York City on the Microsoft HoloLens. Experimental results indicate that remote rendering outperforms local rendering for the New York City model with significant improvement in average QoE by at least 21%. Additionally, we clarified the network traffic pattern in the proposed XR system developed under the OpenXR standard

Quantitative characterization of viscoelastic behavior in tissue-mimicking phantoms and ex vivo animal tissues.

Viscoelasticity of soft tissue is often related to pathology, and therefore, has become an important diagnostic indicator in the clinical assessment of suspect tissue. Surgeons, particularly within head and neck subsites, typically use palpation techniques for intra-operative tumor detection. This detection method, however, is highly subjective and often fails to detect small or deep abnormalities. Vibroacoustography (VA) and similar methods have previously been used to distinguish tissue with high-contrast, but a firm understanding of the main contrast mechanism has yet to be verified. The contributions of tissue mechanical properties in VA images have been difficult to verify given the limited literature on viscoelastic properties of various normal and diseased tissue. This paper aims to investigate viscoelasticity theory and present a detailed description of viscoelastic experimental results obtained in tissue-mimicking phantoms (TMPs) and ex vivo tissues to verify the main contrast mechanism in VA and similar imaging modalities. A spherical-tip micro-indentation technique was employed with the Hertzian model to acquire absolute, quantitative, point measurements of the elastic modulus (E), long term shear modulus (η), and time constant (τ) in homogeneous TMPs and ex vivo tissue in rat liver and porcine liver and gallbladder. Viscoelastic differences observed between porcine liver and gallbladder tissue suggest that imaging modalities which utilize the mechanical properties of tissue as a primary contrast mechanism can potentially be used to quantitatively differentiate between proximate organs in a clinical setting. These results may facilitate more accurate tissue modeling and add information not currently available to the field of systems characterization and biomedical research