Muslim Female Students and Their Experiences of Higher Education in Canada

Through conducting qualitative case studies on 10 Muslim female students in Canadian universities and drawing on theories of third-wave feminism, post-colonial feminism, and anti-racist feminism, this research explores the experiences of Canadian Muslim female university students. It explores how gender, race, ethnicity, and religion, and their intersection, impact Muslim female students’ identity construction and their overall experiences of higher education in Canada. This research investigates Muslim female students’ perceptions of, and reactions towards, the prevailing stereotypes about Muslim women in Canadian universities. It also explores how Muslim female university students perceive the hijab and wearing it in Canadian universities. The findings of this research indicate the significance of the hijab in the lives of Diasporic Muslim women, and the different meanings that those women identify for the hijab. The findings highlight race, racism, and Othering as prominent issues in Canadian universities. They further reveal the prevalence of a number of negative stereotypes about Muslim women in Canadian universities. These stereotypes homogenize Muslim women and (mis)represent them as oppressed by Islamic patriarchy. The study findings show the heterogeneity of Muslim women’s lives and identities, and emphasize the need for a nuanced analysis of the cultural, political, historical, and geographical contexts in which the practice of veiling is exercised. In addition, Muslim women are identified by the research as active agents who challenge the stereotypes through reifying the best representation of Muslim women and by educating non-Muslims about Islam and Islamic beliefs. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate the challenges associated with negotiating multiple identities amongst Muslim women and the supportive role that Muslim students associations play for Muslim women in maintaining their Islamic identities. The results of this research can have significant implications for policy makers at the higher education level. By informing university authorities and policy makers about the challenges that Muslim women face in Canadian universities, there is potential for improvements in the future

Turbulence Intensity Distribution in Flow Field under High Head Slid Gates in Conditions of Operating Two Gates

Source: ICHE Conference Archive - https://mdi-de.baw.de/icheArchiv

Evaluation of Numerical Method by Fluent for Flow around High Head Slid Gates in Conditions of Operating Two Gates

Source: ICHE Conference Archive - https://mdi-de.baw.de/icheArchiv

RESILIENT AND STRUCTURALLY CONTROLLABLE DESIGN OF MULTI-LEVEL INFRASTRUCTURE NETWORKS UNDER DISRUPTIONS

An infrastructure network comprises of different entities that are connected by the flow of materials, products, information or electricity. Disruptions could occur at any section of the network for a wide variety of reasons. Some examples include: company mergers (e.g., Halliburton’s impending purchase of Baker Hughes), labor union strikes (e.g., labor strike on the west coast of the United States in 2002), sanctions imposed or lifted (e.g., economic sanctions against Iran being lifted by the UN in July 2015), plantations being destroyed (banana plantations were destroyed by Hurricane Mitch in 1998), air traffic being suspended due to weather or terrorism, main suppliers put out of commission by natural disasters (e.g., the 1999 earthquake in Taiwan disrupted semiconductor fabrication facilities), etc. A resilient infrastructure network is one that has the ability to recover quickly from disruptions and ensure customers are minimally affected, while the simultaneous design of operational and strategic decisions in all levels of the network structure are considered. It becomes very important to design a resilient multi-level infrastructure network in order to manage disruptions using appropriate pre-disruption and post-disruption restoration strategies. The capability of structural controllability can help in recovering a disrupted infrastructure network and increasing its resilience before, during and after the occurrence of disruptions. In this dissertation, the problem of applying structural controllability in order to design a resilient multi-level infrastructure network under disruptions with the selection of appropriate restoration strategies and consideration of the trade-off between effectiveness and redundancy in the resilience analysis is considered. The aforementioned problem has four aspects worth of consideration: a) multi-level network structures, b) restorations strategies, c) resilience analysis, and d) structural controllability. In this regard, the primary research question is defined as: What methods are required for designing a resilient infrastructure network under disruptions through selecting appropriate restoration strategies in a manner of applying structural controllability? The primary research question is broken into four secondary questions in respect to each four aspects of the considered problem as follows. - What is a method to design a multi-level infrastructure network (e.g., node-level and network-level structures) considering both operational and strategic decisions? - What is a method to design a resilient infrastructure network through selecting appropriate pre-disruption (e.g., facility fortification, backup inventory) and post-disruption (e.g., reconfiguration, flexible production and inventory capacity) restoration strategies? - What is a method to evaluate network resilience as a function of time considering effectiveness and redundancy measures (e.g., service level and transportation time as effectiveness measures and control cost as redundancy measure)? - What is a method to determine the minimum number of driver nodes (i.e., driver nodes or controllers are required for controlling networks) to get structurally controllable infrastructure networks? In response to the primary research question, two methods are proposed in this dissertation. The first method is the multi-level infrastructure network (MLIN) method which refers to the first aspect of the problem. The second method is the resilient and structurally controllable infrastructure network (RCIN) method which refers to the second, third and last aspects of the problem. Based on these two proposed methods, the main created new knowledge in this dissertation is in tailoring and incorporating the structural controllability theory in the resilience analysis of disrupted infrastructure networks. The proposed MLIN and RCIN methods are verified and validated using two examples from the energy industry in the context of the validation square. An example of a network of electric charging stations for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles using renewable energy and power grid as sources of energy is used to demonstrate and validate the MLIN method. An example of a network of a multi-product European petroleum industry is used to demonstrate and validate the RCIN method. Although the proposed methods are solved for the two examples, both of them are generalizable to be applicable to any network-based complex engineered systems under disruptions

Numerical Modelling of Hydraulic Flow in Dam Stepped Spillway and Study of Cavitation Phenomenon

Cavitation is a phenomenon leading to damaging surfaces and usually occurs at steep and fast overflows. This can be prevented via decreasing pressure upon the floor of overflows or controlling the flow rate. Furthermore, controlling this phenomenon comes about through increasing air concentrations in the overflow. One of the methods of increasing air concentrations and decreasing the flow rate of the spill is to construct overflows in stepped forms. Dam spillway releases are from among shoot overflows which would confront cavitation phenomenon. This research tries to control this phenomenon via constructing stepped spillways instead of installing aeration systems. Because laboratory models and field researches are costly and time-consuming, using numerical modelling via CFD method for designing and simulating hydraulic flows are suggested. In this research, stepped fast flowing dam releases were designed instead of spillway fast flows, and then simulating flows on spillways, the cavitation phenomenon was studied and evaluated. Results from these simulations show that constructing stepped forms upon dam spillway releases are effective in controlling cavitation phenomenon, so that via reducing flow rate and increasing cavitation index, prevention of this phenomenon becomes possible

Numerical Modelling of Hydraulic Flow in Dam Stepped Spillway and Study of Cavitation Phenomenon

Cavitation is a phenomenon leading to damaging surfaces and usually occurs at steep and fast overflows. This can be prevented via decreasing pressure upon the floor of overflows or controlling the flow rate. Furthermore, controlling this phenomenon comes about through increasing air concentrations in the overflow. One of the methods of increasing air concentrations and decreasing the flow rate of the spill is to construct overflows in stepped forms. Dam spillway releases are from among shoot overflows which would confront cavitation phenomenon. This research tries to control this phenomenon via constructing stepped spillways instead of installing aeration systems. Because laboratory models and field researches are costly and time-consuming, using numerical modelling via CFD method for designing and simulating hydraulic flows are suggested. In this research, stepped fast flowing dam releases were designed instead of spillway fast flows, and then simulating flows on spillways, the cavitation phenomenon was studied and evaluated. Results from these simulations show that constructing stepped forms upon dam spillway releases are effective in controlling cavitation phenomenon, so that via reducing flow rate and increasing cavitation index, prevention of this phenomenon becomes possible

Numerical Modelling of Hydraulic Flow in Dam Stepped Spillway and Study of Cavitation Phenomenon

Cavitation is a phenomenon leading to damaging surfaces and usually occurs at steep and fast overflows. This can be prevented via decreasing pressure upon the floor of overflows or controlling the flow rate. Furthermore, controlling this phenomenon comes about through increasing air concentrations in the overflow. One of the methods of increasing air concentrations and decreasing the flow rate of the spill is to construct overflows in stepped forms. Dam spillway releases are from among shoot overflows which would confront cavitation phenomenon. This research tries to control this phenomenon via constructing stepped spillways instead of installing aeration systems. Because laboratory models and field researches are costly and time-consuming, using numerical modelling via CFD method for designing and simulating hydraulic flows are suggested. In this research, stepped fast flowing dam releases were designed instead of spillway fast flows, and then simulating flows on spillways, the cavitation phenomenon was studied and evaluated. Results from these simulations show that constructing stepped forms upon dam spillway releases are effective in controlling cavitation phenomenon, so that via reducing flow rate and increasing cavitation index, prevention of this phenomenon becomes possible

Methanol Poisoning as a Trigger for the Presentation of Diabetes Mellitus: A Case Report

Background: The clinical and laboratory manifestations of methanol poisoning and Diabetic Ketoacidosis (DKA) might be very similar.Case Presentation: A 15-year-old male, who lived in Mashhad, Iran, was referred to a medical toxicology center because of the loss of consciousness following the consumption of home-made alcohol. Laboratory tests revealed metabolic acidosis, the high blood levels of methanol, and ketonuria and glucosuria in urine analysis. The treatment of DKA and methanol poisoning was started simultaneously.Conclusion: Methanol poisoning, as physical stress or because of pancreatitis as a complication, could be a trigger for diabetes in susceptible individuals, and physicians should be aware of the similarity of presentation of these situations.

Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Smart Grids: Present and Future Research Domains

—In the last decade, Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been applied overwhelmingly in various research domains in the context of smart grid. It has been one of the main streams of advanced technological approaches that the research community offered for developing smart grids. However, the broad scope of the subject matter launch complexity for scholars to identify effective research approaches. In this paper, we present a literature review about utilizing AI in the key elements of smart grids including grid-connected vehicles, data-driven components, and the power system network. This will result in highlighting technical challenges of the integration of electric vehicles to the grid and the power network operation as well. Moreover, we discuss the four key research areas in the context of AI and its applications in intelligent power grids. The proposed research fields aid PhD candidates to consider these areas as the promising domains for investigation