Narrative as Memory: A Reading of Nuruddin Farah’s Trilogy Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship

The hallmark of the three novels forming Nuruddin Farah’s trilogy Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship is the fact that they share several tales of recurrent symbolic departure and return. This cyclical nature of Farah’s narrative foregrounds the collective traumatic past that Farah’s narrative embodies. In three chapters, the trilogy is analysed in the light of the writings of some Trauma Studies theorists such as Anne Whitehead, Cathy Caruth, Marianne Hirsch, and Dominick LaCapra. The first chapter examines the theoretical foundation of reading trauma in Farah’s narrative. Even though the chapter relies on trauma theory that is exclusively influenced by Western traumas, it seeks to adapt this theory to the understanding of a non-Western collective trauma experience. Moreover, an emphasis is placed on deploying psychoanalytical and historical writings on trauma to achieve an understanding of its literary aspect rather than using fiction to develop the pre-existing psychoanalytical and historical readings of trauma. Chapter Two, on the other hand, provides an application of the theoretical views presented in the preceding chapter. The second chapter explores the deployment of two particular literary devices – intertextuality and repetition – in the context of trauma narrative and how they re-create trauma in their own distinct way. Chapter Three focuses primarily on Farah’s characters and their problematic relationship with both the perception of time and memory-keeping. The chapter emphasizes that there is a complete identification between the teller of the memory and the memory told. This reading of Sweet and Sour Milk, Sardines and Close Sesame detangles the tension arising from the narrativisation of trauma from one end and the elements which engage in narrating it (language and characters) from the other

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The outcome of staple-line oversewing using V-Loc Suture during laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy

Background: Laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (LSG) is a simple procedure; however, postprocedural hemorrhage and/or leak remain the most troublesome outcomes. To prevent these serious complications, some surgeons have recommended the necessity to support the staple-line (SL). The target of the existing work was to estimate the occurrence rate of SL leak or hemorrhage after LSG with using and without using V-Loc running sutures to support the SL.Patients and methods: This work was carried out in the General Surgery Department, Al-Hussein Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, Al-Azhar University between January 2017 and January 2020. A sum of forty cases suffering from morbid obesity prepared for LSG. Patients were separated randomly into 2 groups; Group-I; 20 cases; prepared for LSG without suturing of SL, and Group-II; 20 cases; prepared for LSG with suturing of the SL by v-lock suture.Results: The average procedure duration in Group-I was 75 min and in Group-II was 92 min. The duration of hospital admission was around 3 days in group-I and 2 in group-II. Postoperative hemorrhage was more in Group-I; 4 patients (20%) versus one patient (5%) in Group-II. The postoperative leak was more in Group-I; 2 patients (10%) while in Group-II; no patients (0%) had it.Conclusion: Strengthening the SL is a simple technique to prevent postoperative hemorrhage and/or leak. Although sewing the complete SL is time-consuming together with additional cost, but it decreases the procedure complications rate

Bug Fix Time Optimization Using Matrix Factorization and Iterative Gale-Shaply Algorithms

Bug triage is an essential task in software maintenance phase. It assigns developers (fixers) to bug reports to fix them. This process is performed manually by a triager, who analyzes developers profiles and submitted bug reports to make suitable assignments. Bug triaging process is time consuming thus automating this process is essential to improve the quality of software. Previous work addressed triaging problem either as an information retrieval or classification problem. This paper tackles this problem as a resource allocation problem, that aims at the best assignments of developers to bug reports, that reduces the total fixing time of the newly submitted bug reports, in addition to the even distribution of bug reports over developers. In this paper, a combination of matrix factorization and Gale Shapely algorithm, supported by the differential evolution is firstly introduced to optimize the total fix time and normalize developers work load. Matrix factorization is used to establish a recommendation system for Gale-Shapley to make assignment decisions. Differential evolution provides the best set of weights to build developers score profiles. The proposed approach is assessed over three repositories, Linux, Apache and Eclipse. Experimental results show that the proposed approach reduces the bug fixing time, in comparison to the manual triage, by 80.67%, 23.61% and 60.22% over Linux, Eclipse and Apache respectively. Moreover, the workload for the developers is uniform.Comment: 14 page, 7 figures, 8 tables, 10 equation

Analyzing the Relationship between Market Orientation and Corporate Entrepreneurship

This study aims to analyze the relationship between market orientation (MO) and corporate entrepreneurship (CE). A total of 450 questionnaires were distributed among the three main mobile organizations in the telecommunication sector in Egypt within Cairo governorate geographic zone. The research findings show that market orientation dimensions have a strong significant and positive relationship with corporate entrepreneurship dimensions. And that the corporate entrepreneurship activities practiced by mobile companies in Egypt, has been significantly affected by the market orientation of these organizations. It indicates that market orientation creates an environment that can foster corporate entrepreneurship among middle and top management to satisfy the changing needs and wants of customers. The research findings suggest that organizations need to increase the responsiveness to the changes that occur in the customers ‘needs and wants. The managers of organizations should believe in the importance of the corporate entrepreneurship and communicate this belief to their employees. They need to offer support to entrepreneurial activities within the organization by building a reward/reinforcement system that will encourage employees to innovate. This research contributes to the existing corporate entrepreneurship literature through in-depth analysis of the corporate entrepreneurship and the market orientation sub-dimensions. It also provides an insight on the telecom market in Egypt which is one of the promising sectors of the Egyptian economy. Keywords: corporate entrepreneurship, market orientation, intrapreneurship, telecommunication secto