Islamic Influence on Spain: Discussion of Women’s Rights and Islamic Influence

Current sentiment in the West surrounding Islam stems from a variety of factors: terror attacks, lack of understanding the Islamic faith and cultures that practice the religion, and stereotypical depictions in the media of Muslims as terrorist or as oppressed women. Arab societies oppress women via laws, such as the law that prevents women from driving or the law that prevents women from being outside of the house without being accompanied by a man, both in Saudi Arabia. These depictions, especially of Saudi Arabian practices or similar practices from other nations, are generally available to the West, via media, web, literature or radio, rather than of the societies that have had women as Prime Ministers and leading forces in the government, in Indonesia and many others. Islam itself is not oppressive to women, but rather particular practices of Islam are. Spanish history of the Muslims in Spain provides evidence on the how laws were practiced versus what was written down. This continued divide was evident in both Christian and Muslim laws, which allows for the understanding of women’s status within the religion differs than that of which was practiced judiciously in Spain. Spain is a case study for how a Western nation has become more accepting in the presence of Islamic influence that has persisted throughout the centuries. Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism provides support to explain why Islamic culture has been vilified in the West. While Said provides an explanation to the vilification, Fazal Rahim writes of ways to combat the media system that marginalizes Muslims. Rahim writes of a normalized vision of Muslims for the Western media to circulate rather than the banal version of Muslims as terrorists or oppressed. Rahim’s work provides evidence for the needed change that must occur in media outlets of all kinds to see an acceptance of Muslims rather than treating them as the “other.” The lasting effects of Islamic rule and culture on Spanish society, specifically the linguistic influence, as created a society of acceptance rather than denial. Ralph Penny explains the mix of the Arabic and Spanish was a byproduct of the need to communicate with one another, thus creating words that are still used today enforcing the idea of syncretism rather than divide. I conclude with advocating for practical initiatives within communities that can further alleviate tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims, specifically looking at the Butler University’s initiative “Ask A Muslim.

Transferable knowledge for Low-cost Decision Making in Cloud Environments

Users of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) are increasingly overwhelmed with the wide range of providers and services offered by each provider. As such, many users select services based on description alone. An emerging alternative is to use a decision support system (DSS), which typically relies on gaining insights from observational data in order to assist a customer in making decisions regarding optimal deployment of cloud applications. The primary activity of such systems is the generation of a prediction model (e.g. using machine learning), which requires a significantly large amount of training data. However, considering the varying architectures of applications, cloud providers, and cloud offerings, this activity is not sustainable as it incurs additional time and cost to collect data to train the models. We overcome this through developing a Transfer Learning (TL) approach where knowledge (in the form of a prediction model and associated data set) gained from running an application on a particular IaaS is transferred in order to substantially reduce the overhead of building new models for the performance of new applications and/or cloud infrastructures. In this paper, we present our approach and evaluate it through extensive experimentation involving three real world applications over two major public cloud providers, namely Amazon and Google. Our evaluation shows that our novel two-mode TL scheme increases overall efficiency with a factor of 60% reduction in the time and cost of generating a new prediction model. We test this under a number of cross-application and cross-cloud scenario

Anorexia nervosa: a literature review

Anorexia nervosa, more common in females, is characterized by low body weight due to restricted intake of food, and fear to gain weight as well as distorted body image of oneself. It has a number of medical complications, such as low heart rate, hypotension, etc. These complications need consideration before starting medication for anorexia nervosa. Although, antidepressants have shown no more effectiveness as compared to placebo according to a research

High Speed Data Exchange Algorithm in Telemedicine with Wavelet based on 4D Medical Image Compression

Existing Medical imaging techniques such as fMRI, positron emission tomography (PET), dynamic 3D ultrasound and dynamic computerized tomography yield large amounts of four-dimensional sets. 4D medical data sets are the series of volumetric images netted in time, large in size and demand a great of assets for storage and transmission. Here, in this paper, we present a method wherein 3D image is taken and Discrete Wavelet Transform(DWT) and Dual-Tree Complex Wavelet Transform(DTCWT) techniques are applied separately on it and the image is split into sub-bands. The encoding and decoding are done using 3D-SPIHT, at different bit per pixels(bpp). The reconstructed image is synthesized using Inverse DWT technique. The quality of the compressed image has been evaluated using some factors such as Mean Square Error(MSE) and Peak-Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR)

Frontotemporal dementia treatment: a review

Frontotemporal Dementia is characterized by social and behavioural symptoms, in addition to aphasia. FTD, being the fourth most common cause of dementia, is mostly prevalent in younger population. FTD is diagnosed clinically. The various pharmacological treatment options are antidepressants, cholinesterase inhibitors, and mood stabilizers. Sometimes, nursing, and psychotherapy can also be implemented

Proximity of Clothing to Self Concept: Understanding Differences across the Demographics in Pakistan

This paper presents methods and results of a multi-dimensional research program whose objective is to investigate the impact of multi-dimensional attribute proximity of clothing to self (PCS) on selected women population of Pakistan across demographic factors like age, income and region. This study also validates the results from 39-item PCS scale over people’s experience of clothing and investigates its impact on academic or job performance. Analysis of Variances (ANOVA) is applied to measure the significant relations between variables. Linear regression is done for manipulating the relation between two variables. Exploratory factor analysis is used to reduce dimensions and for the calculation of variances. LISREL is used to develop structural relationships between dimensions of PCS and assess the internal consistency of the scales. Recommendations for future research investigating, relation of proximity of clothing to self and other attributes are made. The exploratory correlation analyses will be able to lead the development of more advanced directional analyses among these variables in future research. Keywords:  Pakistan, Clothing, Fashion, job performance, women, demographic

African American Students\u27 Perceptions of Influential Factors for Attendance in Doctoral Psychology

This study explores African American undergraduate students’ perceptions of factors influencing their decision to attend doctoral programs in psychology. There is a scarcity of literature examining perceptions held by specific minority groups in regard to influential factors used to make a significant step toward their career development. Eight undergraduate students interested in pursuing a doctoral degree in psychology were interviewed. A semi-structured interview and two paper-pencil measures were used. Interviews were analyzed utilizing the consensual qualitative research (CQR) method. The following themes emerged: reasons for pursuing a doctoral degree, navigating the application process, factors influencing interest in psychology, perception of a program’s commitment to diversity, importance of ethnic minority representation in a program, financial concerns, family view of psychology, most important factor for attendance, and prior school experiences outside of psychology. The study found that issues related to African American representation and research, as well as the presence of financial aid, are highly relevant in students’ evaluation of which doctoral programs they prefer to attend. This information will pave the way for further studies focusing on how to increase the number of African American students in doctoral programs around the country

Production and use of monoclonal antibodies against a conserved epitope of hepatitis B surface antigen

The hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) displays the major neutralising epitope of the hepatitis B virus (HBV) termed the a determinant. As well as its use as an immunogen in vaccines, HBsAg is the primary diagnostic marker for HBV, with its detection in serum being used for routine screening in diagnostic laboratories. Recently, mutations within the a determinant have been described, some of which have been linked to false- negative HBsAg reactions in the serum of HBV infected individuals. The inability of some assays to detect HBsAg mutants will result in the failure to monitor immune responses as well as the transmission of infection through blood or organs as a result of inaccurate diagnosis. This thesis describes the use of monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) to define epitopes present on the wild-type (WT) HBsAg, that are preserved on HBsAg carrying mutations in the a determinant. The MAbs were raised against mutant HBsAg purified from two renal transplant patients. Following the screening process, those hybridomas which recognised the wild type and mutant HBsAg were selected. Characterisation studies using recombinant HBsAg further demonstrated that the MAbs were able to detect mutants ranging from codon 133 to 145. Once formatted into a solid phase radioimmunoassay, the MAbs were used to detect naturally-occurring in vivo mutant-virus infections. The identification of the conserved epitope in the first loop of the a determinant, using oligopeptides, highlighted possible limitations of the monoclonal antibody which were later demonstrated in a study assessing the prevalence of HBsAg mutants in orthotopic liver transplant patients. Changes associated with natural genetic variation in the first loop resulted in the monoclonal antibody failing to recognise HBsAg in specimens from patients infected with viruses of subtype ayw3 carrying changes in the putative binding site at residues 125 and 127. An important, although maybe not pan-reactive, epitope has been identified which can be used to improve HBsAg detection assays as well as providing a strategy for studying the prevalence of HBsAg mutants in different populations

SOAS Students Forum on Faiz Ahmed Faiz

This collection of thoughts from current students at SOAS attempts to go beyond academic debates surrounding Faiz through a subjective view of the impact he has had on their own views on the world. By exploring and presenting their own relationship with Faiz, these diverse authors raise questions about the multitude of meaning Faiz carries for young scholars of today

Serum Cobalamin Levels and Red Blood Cell Morphology Among Celiac Disease Patients

Objective: To evaluate serum cobalamin level and red blood cell morphology among Celiac disease patients. Methodology: This Case control study was conducted at Department of Physiology, Medicine and Gastroenterology Unit, Isra University Hospital Hyderabad from March 2017 to October 2017. All the participants were divided equally in two groups. Group I. Controls- normal healthy subjects (n=45).  Group II. Cases diagnosed cases of Celiac disease (n=45). Red blood cell morphology was assessed under light microscopy at postgraduate Laboratory. Serum cobalamin was determined by competitive EIA technique. All the data was recorded in the proforma. Results: Total 90 cases were studied out of them 45 were patients of celiac disease and 45 were normal. Mean age of controls cases was 47.53±8.13 years and celiac disease patient’s was 46.84±7.69 years. Male were found in majority of both group’s cases and controls as 82.2% and 73.3% respectively. Mean of serum cobalamin level was significantly lower among patients as 201.36±74.77 pg/mL in contrast to controls as 247.06±60.34 pg/mL p= 0.002. Hemoglobin and hematocrit levels were also low in cases compared to controls. RBC indices showed macrocytic, microcytic, hyperchromic and megaloblastic changes. Conclusion: Serum cobalamin was decreased among celiac disease patients and disturbed RBC indices as macrocytic, microcytic, hyperchromic and megaloblastic were common in the Celiac disease patients