Intifada 3.0? Cyber colonialism and Palestinian resistance

Palestine “exists” on Google and increasingly in various other “virtual” ways. But are “Palestine” on Google or the acquisition of the google.ps domain name in 2009 examples of political resistance on the internet? For Palestinian politicians, virtual presence has historical significance. Consider, for example, the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology’s (MTIT) suggestion that “ICTs information and communications technology] contribute directly to the national goal of establishing and building an independent state.”3 Within that context, Sabri Saydam, adviser to Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas and a former MTIT minister himself, posited Google’s 2013 move as “a step towards...liberation.” 4 For Israeli politicians, as quoted above, the emergence of (a virtual) “Palestine” poses ideological and practical dangers. Both camps ascribe power to the internet. Their only disagreement is over the ends to which the internet is a means: The internet is a threat to the existence of the state of Israel or a step toward a future state. At heart, however, both views are a form of technological determinism. They remove the internet from human, historical, and geopolitical contexts, and posit it as agent of political, social, or economic change. We contend that neither position is valid

Experiences of obesity among Saudi Arabian women contemplating bariatric surgery: An interpretative phenomenological analysis

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2013 The Authors.This study explored experiences of obesity, its perceived causes and motives for surgery, as described by seven Saudi women contemplating bariatric surgery. The women experienced cultural restrictions on their physical and social activities. Obesity embodied these restrictions, attracting stigma and moral failure. Traditional clothing, foods, hospitality norms and limited outdoor female activities were regarded as barriers to weight loss. Bariatric surgery was chosen to protect health and to access normative female roles. Some were encouraged by relatives who had undergone surgery. Opting for surgery reflected both participants’ sense of powerlessness to self-manage weight and the social acceptability, within their family context, of this biomedical approach

Solving random diffusion models with nonlinear perturbations by the Wiener-Hermite expansion method

[EN] This paper deals with the construction of approximate series solutions of random nonlinear diffusion equations where nonlinearity is considered by means of a frank small parameter and uncertainty is introduced through white noise in the forcing term. For the simpler but important case in which the diffusion coefficient is time independent, we provide a Gaussian approximation of the solution stochastic process by taking advantage of the Wiener¿Hermite expansion together with the perturbation method. In addition, approximations of the main statistical functions associated with a solution, such as the mean and variance, are computed. Numerical values of these functions are compared with respect to those obtained by applying the Runge¿Kutta second-order stochastic scheme as an illustrative example.This work was partially supported by the Spanish M.C.Y.T. and FEDER grants MTM2009-08587, TRA2007-68006-C02-02, DPI2010-20891-C02-01 as well as the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia grant PAID-06-09 (ref. 2588).Cortés López, JC.; Romero Bauset, JV.; Roselló Ferragud, MD.; Santamaría Navarro, C. (2011). Solving random diffusion models with nonlinear perturbations by the Wiener-Hermite expansion method. Computers and Mathematics with Applications. 61(8):1946-1950. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.camwa.2010.07.057S1946195061

From the industrial revolution to globalisation and integrative labour markets

Copyright © 2019 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. This paper aims to assess and analyse the legal regime, the importance, and the legal and regulatory effect that trade unions, and subsequently collective bargaining, have in a legal system and in the hierarchy of norms therein, both at the national and international level. After a systemic principal overview, the construction of the paper departs from the fact that under the foundational principles of international law, employees\u27 rights protection is guaranteed by both custom and codified norms. However, the form of enforcement of this social guarantee is highly dependent on the consensual nature of the international arena and on the states\u27 compliance with the internationally accepted standards and their immersion into the national systems of law. Moreover, the paper analyses, in an interdisciplinary manner, both the legal regimes of collective bargaining and trade unions and comparative cases, with particular stress on the UAE and the situation at the regulatory and enforcement levels therein. Finally, the findings of the paper militate towards a more prolific enforcement regime and the development of adjacent resources, regulatory or policy related, for a higher protection of employees\u27 rights thereto

Metal Organic Frameworks as Promising High Surface Area Material for Work Function Gas Sensors

AbstractFloating gate FET (FGFET) gas sensors based on work function readout allows usage of a wide range of materials to be included as sensing materials. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are a new group of porous materials with extreme high inner surface area that have already shown high potential for applications in gas storage and separation, catalysis and sensing. In this work, MOFs are investigated for the first time with work function readout for gas sensing applications. The results demonstrate the high potential of MOFs for use as gas receptor materials in field- effect based gas sensors

Industrial building system : does it good for sustainable building? / S. Roshanfekr, N. M Tawil and N. A. Goh

Housing and building construction is an important principle in sustainable development. The industrialization of building systems has been found to be necessary due to several factors: the fast and continuing progress of today’s world, the industrialization of many aspects of modern living, significant population growth, and the inadequacy and incompetence of conventional construction methods particularly in dense housing situations. This paper investigates the relevance of these factors as the drivers for changing people’s habits and perspectives toward building construction and to justify the introduction of industrialized construction approaches to replace the outdated conventional methods as well as the necessity to provide training in order to achieve product quality