Violent Urbanization and Homogenization of Space and Place

This paper aims at understanding the dynamics of sectarian violence in the city of Beirut, by looking at the early phase of violence in the Lebanese civil war (1975–90), and the process of dividing Beirut into various sectarian enclaves controlled by the warring militias. The paper aims to show the way in which political actors used sectarian violence as a mechanism of social, political, and territorial control. As a point of departure, the paper views the city not only as a backdrop for conflict and violence, but also as an actual target. The objectives of the paper are threefold. First, it shows how sectarian violence was not random but was, rather, a product of a lengthy process that involved calculation and some levels of planning. It includes defining one’s …/urbanization, cities, urban conflict, Lebanon

Clover - A B-mode polarization experiment

Clover is a new instrument being built to detect the B-mode polarization of the CMB. It consists of three telescopes operating at 97, 150, and 220 GHz and will be sited in Chile at the Llano de Chajnantor. Each telescope assembly is scaled to give a constant beam size of 8 arcmin and feeds an array of between 320 and 512 finline-coupled TES bolometers. Here we describe the design, current status and scientific prospects of the instrument.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures. Proceedings of the Fundamental Physics With CMB workshop, UC Irvine, March 23-25, 2006, to be published in New Astronomy Review

The informal adaptive mechanisms among Syrian Refugees and marginalised host communities in Lebanon

This paper was presented at a workshop on ‘The Long-term Challenges of Forced Migration: Local and Regional Perspectives from Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq’ organised by the LSE Middle East Centre in June 2016. It was published as part of a collected papers volume available in English and Arabic

Age Sensitivity of Face Recognition Algorithms

This paper investigates the performance degradation of facial recognition systems due to the influence of age. A comparative analysis of verification performance is conducted for four subspace projection techniques combined with four different distance metrics. The experimental results based on a subset of the MORPH-II database show that the choice of subspace projection technique and associated distance metric can have a significant impact on the performance of the face recognition system for particular age groups

Particle Yields and Ratios within Equilibrium and Non-Equilibrium Statistics

In characterizing the yields and ratios various of well identified particles in the ALICE experiment, we utilize extensive {\it additive} thermal approaches, to which various missing states of the hadron resonances are taken into consideration, as well. Despite some non-equilibrium conditions that are slightly driving this statistical approach away from equilibrium, the approaches are and remain additive and extensive. Besides van der Waals repulsive interactions (assuming that the gas constituents are no longer point-like, i.e. finite-volume corrections taken into consideration), finite pion chemical potentials as well as perturbations to the light and strange quark occupation factors are taken into account. When confronting our calculations to the ALICE measurements, we conclude that the proposed conditions for various aspects deriving the system out of equilibrium notably improve the reproduction of the experimental results, i.e. improving the statistical fits, especially the finite pion chemical potential. This points out to the great role that the non-equilibrium pion production would play, and the contributions that the hadron resonance missing states come up with, even when the principles of statistical extensivity and additivity aren't violated. These results seem to propose revising the conclusions propagated by most of the field, that the produced particles quickly reach a state of local equilibrium leading to a collective expansion often described by fluid dynamics. This situation seems not remaining restrictively valid, at very large collision energies.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, submitted to EP

Organizational team building culture among teachers in Gombak Selangor

This study examined the organizational team building culture among teachers in Gombak, Selangor. Aspects that were being studied were the teachers’ perception on the elements of team building, the relation between team building factors and motivational factors and differences between gender and the eight factors of team building which were goals, priorities, roles and responsibilities, self-awareness, leadership, group dynamics, communications and environment. The study employed a survey method for collecting data from 100 purposively selected teachers from 10 government aided secondary schools