"Tonight My Gun Is Loaded": Poetic Dueling In Arabia

Although folk traditions are rapidly disappearing in Arabia as it is suddenly transformed from an illiterate society to a modern state, poetic dueling remains one of the most popular and spectacular folk performances. Oral poets are paid handsomely at weddings, festivals, and similar public occasions to entertain spectators with their verbal jousts. Encouraged by eager audiences and by an accompanying chorus that repeats their improvised verses, the competing poets can stay up singing and playing until the call to the morning prayer.--Introduction

A plea for an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Arab oral tradition

In reviewing the history of scholarship in the field of oral literature, we find that the theory of oral-formulaic composition and performance is one of its most outstanding landmarks. The application of this theory in its traditional conception as proposed by Milman Parry and enunciated by Albert Lord is rather sterile and restricted, however, in that it applies only to the poetic genre looked at strictly from a formal literary perspective. It is a surface-structure-oriented theory with very meager intellectual yield, not to mention being prone to gross misapplication. Examples of such limited approaches and misapplications are the works of James Monroe (1972) and Michael Zwettler (1978) on the tribal poetry of Pre-Islamic Arabia./

Data pattern dependence of VCSEL far-field distributions

Includes bibliographical references.The far field divergence angle distribution of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers is found to exhibit dependence on the data pattern driving the lasers. Two 50% duty cycle 1.25-Gb/s data patterns chosen to cause the same thermal conditions but with frequency content differing by a factor of 16 resulted in changes in the beam profile distributions with up to a 30% power variation in the central on-axis portion of the beam. Examination of the temporal waveforms as a function of far field angle revealed overshoot in the on-axis power and undershoot in the off-axis portion of the beam

Centella asiatica (L.) Urb: A comprehensive bibliometric analysis of published studies between 1857 and 2022

Centella asiatica (L.) Urban (C. asiatica) is a medicinal plant that generates terpenes, phenols, vitamins, minerals, polyacetylene and fatty acids among other phyto-constituents. This review focuses on the bibliometric analysis of 1164 documents on C. asiatica that were retrieved from the Scopus database. Harzing Publish or Perish and VOSviewer were used for citation and network analyses. According to the bibliometric analysis, publications are on the rise, particularly in the fields of pharmacology, toxicology and pharmaceutics, medicine, biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology, agricultural and biological sciences, and chemistry. "Phytoremediation", "secondary metabolites", "Andrographis paniculata", and "cognitive impairment" are emerging areas for C. asiatica research. However, currently there is a lack of international collaboration in C. asiatica research among contributing countries. Researchers can utilise the findings cited in this reiew to locate potential collaborators, top authors, countries and documents

Transurethral Resection for the Treatment of an Inflammatory Myofibroblastic Tumor of the Urinary Bladder: A Case Report

Inflammatory myofibroblastic tumors (IMT) of the urinary bladder is a remarkably rare bladder tumor. To this day, no standardized treatment protocol has been recognized. Here we report a case of bladder IMT in a 14-year-old girl presenting with urgency, frequency, and gross painless hematuria for a week. Complete excision of the bladder IMT was amenable with transurethral resection of bladder tumor (TURBT). Follow-up cystoscopy did not detect any recurrence. Minimally invasive bladder-sparing treatments are a valid option for treating IMT of the bladder

Chaotic assessment of the heave and pitch dynamics motions of air cushion vehicles

In this study, a three degrees of freedom nonlinear air cushion vehicle (ACV) model is introduced to examine the dynamic behavior of the heave and pitch responses in addition to the cushion pressure of the ACV in both time and frequency domains. The model is based on the compressible flow Bernoulli’s equation and the thermodynamics nonlinear isentropic relations along with the Newton second law of translation and rotation. In this study, the dynamical investigation was based on a numerical simulation using the stiff ODE solvers of the Matlab software. The chaotic investigations of the proposed model are provided using the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), the Poincaré maps, and the regression analysis. Three control design parameters are investigated for the chaotic studies. These parameters are: ACV mass (M), the mass flow rate entering the cushion volume (in), and the ACV base radius (r). Chaos behavior was observed for heave, and pitch responses as well as the cushion pressure

Characterization of primary and transfected placental mesenchymal stem cell migration

© 2014 Dr. Batla Al-SowayanMesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have enormous potential for their use in regenerative medicine. Bone marrow MSCs have been successfully used in clinical applications for decades. However, the large numbers of MSCs needed for prospective cellular therapies requires a plentiful, non-invasive and non-controversial source. One such source of MSCs is the human term placenta. Placental MSCs can be isolated in large numbers from different parts of the human term placenta and are being tested for their potential clinical benefit in the repair of damaged tissue. However, animal models show that MSCs do not migrate and engraft efficiently into the microenvironment of the injury site. This reflects our lack of knowledge of the important factors that promote MSC migration and engraftment. The general aim of this work was to investigate placental MSC migration. The specific aim was to identify the factor(s) that promote placental MSC migration, particularly those that stimulate placental MSC migration across the endothelial barrier, using in vitro and ex vivo models. The long-term goal was to increase the therapeutic potential of placental MSCs. This investigation was conducted on chorionic MSCs (CMSCs), which were isolated from the chorionic plate of the placenta. The CMSC29 cell line, created from CMSCs by transformation, was also used during this investigation for optimization and screening purposes. Both CMSCs and CMSC29 cells were characterised and met the accepted criteria for MSCs. Various quantitative methods were employed to investigate how the migration of CMSCs and CMSC29 cells was altered in response to different cues. A series of biological (SDF-1α, IL-6, HGF and endothelial activation), pharmacological (valproic acid) and environmental (oxygen concentration) factors were tested to examine their effect on CMSC migration. Of these factors, only valproic acid was shown to stimulate CMSC migration. Trans-endothelial migration assay was used to show that CMSCs migrate across the vascular endothelial barrier. However, none of the factors tested, which have been shown to stimulate bone marrow MSC migration in published studies, were able to induce CMSC migration. Finally, a pilot study described a novel placental vessel ex vivo perfusion model to study MSC migration. In summary, placental MSCs are able to migrate, but did not respond to stimuli of MSC migration in the same manner as has been reported for bone marrow MSCs. They did however respond to valproic acid as a stimulus. These data suggest that placental MSCs respond to different physiological cues, and employ different migration mechanisms to those of the widely studied bone marrow MSCs

A plea for an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Arab oral tradition (Chinese)

In reviewing the history of scholarship in the field of oral literature, we find that the theory of oral-formulaic composition and performance is one of its most outstanding landmarks. The application of this theory in its traditional conception as proposed by Milman Parry and enunciated by Albert Lord is rather sterile and restricted, however, in that it applies only to the poetic genre looked at strictly from a formal literary perspective. It is a surface-structure-oriented theory with very meager intellectual yield, not to mention being prone to gross misapplication. Examples of such limited approaches and misapplications are the works of James Monroe (1972) and Michael Zwettler (1978) on the tribal poetry of Pre-Islamic Arabia./