Requests and letters of recommendation: the case of Amyntas in the Zenon archive

Requests and letters of recommendation in Ptolemaic Egypt in the third century B.C. were some effective ways used by Greek immigrants to improve their conditions, to obtain a good job or to solve the problems facing them in their new country. Amyntas, the director of Apollonios Palace in Alexandria, was one of the most influential officials who wrote such requests and letters on behalf of some fellow Greek immigrants

The Dynamics of Information and Communication Technology in Oromia: The Case of Goro Woreda

Information and Communication Technology is making the entire world as closer as human scale and nowadays it is becoming a hot government agenda. Thus, the Ethiopian government placed ICT policy to develop, deploy and use information and communication technology to improve the livelihood of every Ethiopian, and optimize its contribution to the development of the country. The objective of this study was therefore, to determine the challenges of ICT implementation in Oromia with specific reference to Goro Woreda. The study applied both qualitative and quantitative approach through concurrent mixed method. Primary and secondary data sources were used to collect relevant data. The quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed, described and explained by using descriptive statistics such as cross tabs, mode and chi-square test. Hence, the finding revealed that, though, some positive changes can be cited, the main challenges of ICT implementation in the study Woreda arre lack of managerial oversight, poor organizational integration, inoperative ICT equipment, poor  network, insufficient ICT professionals, lack of sufficient computer, and poor communication structure. Above all, the poor attention given to the ICT program was the root cause for majority of the challenges. Finally, the study concluded the services given through ICT were not adequate and the implementation of the program was not successful. From this, adequate managerial oversight and support and grass root level administrative support federal and regional concerned bodies is recommended. Keywords: ICT, Video Conferencing, Server Mail Service and Rural Connectivit

Egyptian media policies to protect minors from harmful content and promote positive media use

Children are by far the most important asset for the future of any nation. Hence, any investment in them will not only reflect positively or negatively on their homeland and society, but maybe even the whole world. With the understanding that early childhood is an extremely important and critical stage for mental, physical and psychological development, it is highly important to constantly provide a healthy environment for young children in order to nourish those seeds that will harvest the future. Media is on the forefront means influencing peoples lives nowadays, some even consider it a source of information. Children, being easily influenced by their surrounding environment, are at greater risk mainly due to the ability of Television and media content to affect their development, behavior and entire life, which can either build or break them. Several developed countries have figured out the enormous influence media can have on audience both positively and negatively, especially on the most vulnerable audience like “children”. With that in consideration, many countries have taken sufficient measures to ensure the protection of minors from being subjected to any harmful media content, or content that might not be generally suitable for their age. In addition, promote more developmental media content as an alternative for children. Unfortunately, that is not the case in most developing countries such as Egypt. Children represent around 40% of the total Egyptian population. Basic research results suggest that many Egyptian children engage in around 3 to 4 hours of media content daily. This is around 21 hours weekly, 90 hours monthly, and 1095 hours yearly (which is almost one month and half of each year of their lives continuously). That’s only the minimum basic figures, since many parents highlight that their children’s television viewership increases dramatically on weekends, holidays, and vacations! Noting that this is not just some fun entertainment time, but rather it’s thoughts, ideas, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors being absorbed by the child, becoming a huge influence on their mental, physical and psychological development, and affecting their entire life! Furthermore, research results also indicate the high need and demand for media regulations to protect children from harmful media and encourage high standard production of more positive alternatives, specially designed for Egyptian Children serving their needs and interests at different age groups. This research consists of: I) Literature review, providing the following: • General understanding of the mental, physical and psychological developments of a child • Positive and negative impacts of media on children’s development and behavior • Overview on international policies in different countries in regard to children and media • Understanding the situation in Egypt: • A brief overview on the History of Child programming and policies II) In-depth interviews with: A. 10 Parents from different age groups, social classes and educational background: This provided a better understanding of what Egyptian children watch, reasons behind their preference, how it affects them, parent’s concerns, what is needed, etc. B. A panel of 3 Child expert’s including: 1. DR. MAHA EMAD EL DIN TEENAGE PSYCHIATRY CONSULTANT ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AND HEAD OF PSYCHIATRY DEPARTMENT BANI SWEIF UNIVERSITY 2. Dr. SAHAR DAWOOD CHILD PSYCHIATRIST PHD IN CHILD MENTAL HEALTH 3. MARIAM MEDHAT FOUNDER OF PARENTING FORMULA PARENTING COUCH Child experts provided their opinion on current media content available for children to watch and its possible impact on their physical, psychological, and metal health, positively or negatively. In addition to validating and confirming information provided in the literature review. C. MEDIA EXPERTS: 1. NAELA FAROUK Head of National Egyptian Broadcast, Maspiro 2. NADIA MABROUK Head of Radio Networks, Maspiro 3. MAGDY LASHEEN Advisor of the President of the National Information Authority 4. HISHAM SILIMAN Head of DMC Network Owner of Hama Film Production 5. ABDELLATIF EL MENAWY CEO and Editor in Chief, Al Masry Al Youm 6. ALBERT SHAFIK Extra News Channel Director 7. MARIAM NAOUM Egyptian Drama Author/Writer 8. SANAA MANSOUR Egyptian TV Presenter 9. GALAL AWARA Deputy of Culture and Information Committee The House of Representatives Former TV Presenter D. MEDIA ACADEMICS: 1. DR. RASHA ALLAM Assistant Professor and Associate Chair Journalism and Mass Communication Department, AUC 2 DR. HOWAIDA MOUSTAFA Head of Radio and Television Department Mass Communication Department, Cairo University 3. DR. MONA EL HADIDI Mass Communication Professor Mass Communication Department, Cairo University 4. DR. HANAA MAREAY Assistant Professor Mass Communication Department, MSA E. NGO: 1. OLFA G. TANTAWI Communication for Development Officer, UNICEF Egypt These interviews discuss various issues regarding current media content, highlighting the need for Egyptian media regulation to protect minors and provide more positive media content alternatives. III) Brief Research findings: There is a common dissatisfaction with current media content provided. Main concerns include: Violence both verbal and physical, use of bad language, inappropriate scenes, and other matters in local and foreign content that are culturally not expectable in Egypt. In addition, there is high need and demand for media regulation. In order for such regulation to be precise and efficient, it is recommended to include a panel of advisory experts representing media professionals as well as child experts in the policy setting process. V) Suggested Policies to: A. Protect children from harmful media content. B. Promote positive media use and encourage the production of high quality local Egyptian child programming targeting different age groups

Automatic detection of coronaries ostia in computed tomography angiography volume data

Background: Heart coronaries emerge from the ascending aorta lateral sides from two points called the coronaries ostia. To automatically segment the heart coronaries; there must be a starting point (seed) for the segmentation. In this paper we present a fully automatic approach to segment the coronaries ostia towards automatic seeding for heart coronaries segmentation.Methods: Our algorithm takes as an input a CTA volume of segmented aorta cross sections that represents our region of interest. Then the ostia detection algorithm traverses that volume looking for the ostia points in an automatic fashion. The proposed algorithm depends on the anatomical features of the ostia. The main anatomic feature of the ostia is that it appears like a curvature or corner on the segmented ascending aorta cross section. Therefore we adopted in our methodology a modified version of Harris Corner Detection; besides inducing some anatomical features of the ostia location with respect to the aortic valve.Results: The proposed algorithm is tested and validated on the computed tomography angiography database provided by the Rotterdam coronary artery algorithm evaluation framework. The proposed automatic ostia detection algorithm succeeded to detect both ostia points in all the test cases. Also, the detected ostia points’ coordinates are validated versus a ground truth provided by the same framework with deviation between the results of the detection process and the ground truth having a min of 0 pixels and a max of 10 pixels for all test cases.Conclusions: Thus the proposed algorithm gives accurate results in comparison with the ground truth, which proves the efficiency of the proposed algorithm and its applicability to be extended as a seed for heart coronaries segmentation

THE IMPACT OF ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY POSTHARVEST TREATMENTS ON THE ANTIOXIDANT ACTIVITY OF STRAWBERRY FRUITS DURING STORAGE

Brojna istraživanja pokazala su da su plodovi jagoda bogati fenolnim spojevima te imaju antioksidativno i antiproliferativno djelovanje. Cilj ovog istraživanja bio je utvrditi kako ekološki prihvatljivi tretmani otopinom salicilne kiseline, otopinom koloidnog srebra i ozonom utječu na antioksidativnu aktivnost plodova jagoda (Fragaria x ananassa Duch.) sorte Albion tijekom 7 dana skladištenja na 4C. Koncentracija askorbinske kiseline, fenolnih spojeva te ukupna antioksidativna aktivnost u plodovima jagoda određeni su spektrofotometrijski. U plodovima jagoda tretiranim otopinom salicilne kiseline, otopinom koloidnog srebra i ozonom, ukupna koncentracija askorbinske kiseline i antioksidativna aktivnost bili su veći nego u kontrolnim plodovima, što pokazuje da ovi tretmani povoljno djeluju na očuvanje kvalitete i nutritivne vrijednosti plodova jagoda tijekom skladištenja. Tretman otopinom salicilne kiseline ima najbolji učinak, jer je rezultirao značajnim porastom koncentracije askorbinske kiseline, fenola i ukupne antioksidativne aktivnosti u plodovima jagoda.Numerous studies have shown that strawberries are rich in phenolic compounds, and have antioxidant and antiproliferative activities. The aim of this study was to determine how environmentally friendly postharvest treatments with salicylic acid solution, colloidal silver solution and ozone, affect the antioxidant activity of strawberry fruits (Fragaria x ananassa Duch. cv. Albion) during 7 days of storage at 4 C. The content of ascorbic acid, total phenols and antioxidant activity of strawberry fruits were determined spectrophotometrically. In strawberry fruits treated with salicylic acid solution, colloidal silver solution and ozone, the total content of ascorbic acid and antioxidant activity value were higher than in control fruits, which indicates that these treatments are useful for preserving fruit quality and nutritional value during storage. The treatment with salicylic acid solution has the best effect, because during storage, there was a significant increase in the content of ascorbic acid, phenols and antioxidant activity

Human Security and Migration:Human Right Violations and Challenges of Ethiopian Migrants in the Middle East

Migration is currently considered as one of the foremost issues that the world is dealing with. According to UNDESA 2017 report there exist 258 million international migrants globally in the year 2017 (United Nations, 2017). When it comes to being a migrant destination, the Middle East region is one of the major spots especially for migrant workers. The region is also a popular destination for Ethiopian migrants. It is estimated that 44% of Ethiopian migrants globally is found in the Middle East region (Kuschminder , et al., 2013). Ethiopians migrate to this region because of breach and omission of their social, economic and political rights in their home country. Moreover, they face various types and degree of human right abuses and violations in their way and destination to the Middle East. This article looks deep and analyzes the concept of human security and its implication in migration studies. Moreover, it emphasizes on challenges and human right violations that Ethiopian migrants face in their home country, in their way and destination in the Middle East that jeopardizes their human security. The article is written by reviewing and analyzing various academic works on the area and surveys and reports of governmental and nongovernmental organizations

Molecular and biochemical studies of some yeast strains

This work focuses on detecting the level of polymorphisms among eleven KSA and Egyptian yeast strains, as efficient tools to assess the genetic relationships and development of yeast strain-specific molecular fingerprints. Moreover, estimation of the amino acid concentration was efficient in selecting the protein rich strains for animal feeding source. To detect the polymorphism among the yeast strains at the molecular level, 8 random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), 5 inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR), and 8 specific simple sequence repeat (SSR) pair of primers were used. The total number of fragments produced by RAPD primers was 46 fragments and represented 52% of polymorphism. Also, number of fragments produced by ISSR and SSR primers was 45 fragments and recorded 63 and 77% of polymorphism among the strains, respectively. The amino acid analysis showed that yeast strains, Rhodotorula glutinis (Y.1); Schwanniomyces occidentalis (Y.2); Debaryomyces hansenii (Y.8); Kluyveromyces lactis (Y.9) and Pichia jadinii (Y.10) contained almost double the amount of total amino acids compared to the rest of the eleven strains used. The different molecular markers have confirmed each other and supported the biochemical analysis data, because the clustering  analysis has shown that the previous five strains, (Y.1); (Y.2); (Y.8); (Y.9) and (Y.10), were falling together in the same sub cluster.Key words: Yeast, molecular markers, biochemical analysis