Islamic Learning in Arabic-Afrikaans Between Malay Model and Ottoman Reform

Through the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century the Muslim community of Cape Town produced a large number of texts in various fields of Islamic learning, written in Afrikaans, a creolized variety of the language the Dutch traders had brought to South Africa. The Cape Muslim community had its origin in South Asia and Southeast Asia; most of its founding members had been transported by force by the Dutch colonial authorities. Malay was the language in which they had been educated, and for some time it remained in use as the written language. For oral instruction, the Cape Muslim community soon shifted to Afrikaans. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman scholar Abu Bakr Effendi introduced the use of Afrikaans in Arabic script, replacing Malay as written language. In this paper I deal with the shift from Malay to Afrikaans and the relationship between Malay heritage and Ottoman reform in the Cape community

Social Work handbook

2002 handbook for the Board of Studies in Social Wor

Free-text keystroke dynamics authentication for Arabic language

This study introduces an approach for user authentication using free-text keystroke dynamics which incorporates text in Arabic language. The Arabic language has completely different characteristics to those of English. The approach followed in this study involves the use of the keyboard's key-layout. The method extracts timing features from specific key-pairs in the typed text. Decision trees were exploited to classify each of the users' data. In parallel for comparison, support vector machines were also used for classification in association with an ant colony optimisation feature selection technique. The results obtained from this study are encouraging as low false accept rates and false reject rates were achieved in the experimentation phase. This signifies that satisfactory overall system performance was achieved by using the typing attributes in the proposed approach, while typing Arabic text

Gut microbiota of homing pigeons shows summer-winter variation under constant diet indicating a substantial effect of temperature

BACKGROUND: Gut microbiotas play a pivotal role in host physiology and behaviour, and may affect host life-history traits such as seasonal variation in host phenotypic state. Generally, seasonal gut microbiota variation is attributed to seasonal diet variation. However, seasonal temperature and day length variation may also drive gut microbiota variation. We investigated summer–winter differences in the gut bacterial community (GBC) in 14 homing pigeons living outdoors under a constant diet by collecting cloacal swabs in both seasons during two years. Because temperature effects may be mediated by host metabolism, we determined basal metabolic rate (BMR) and body mass. Immune competence is influenced by day length and has a close relationship with the GBC, and it may thus be a link between day length and gut microbiota. Therefore, we measured seven innate immune indices. We expected the GBC to show summer–winter differences and to correlate with metabolism and immune indices. RESULTS: BMR, body mass, and two immune indices varied seasonally, other host factors did not. The GBC showed differences between seasons and sexes, and correlated with metabolism and immune indices. The most abundant genus (Lachnoclostridium 12, 12%) and associated higher taxa, were more abundant in winter, though not significantly at the phylum level, Firmicutes. Bacteroidetes were more abundant in summer. The Firmicutes:Bacteroidetes ratio tended to be higher in winter. The KEGG ortholog functions for fatty acid biosynthesis and linoleic acid metabolism (PICRUSt2) had increased abundances in winter. CONCLUSIONS: The GBC of homing pigeons varied seasonally, even under a constant diet. The correlations between immune indices and the GBC did not involve consistently specific immune indices and included only one of the two immune indices that showed seasonal differences, suggesting that immune competence may be an unlikely link between day length and the GBC. The correlations between the GBC and metabolism indices, the higher Firmicutes:Bacteroidetes ratio in winter, and the resemblance of the summer–winter differences in the GBC with the general temperature effects on the GBC in the literature, suggest that temperature partly drove the summer–winter differences in the GBC in homing pigeons. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s42523-022-00216-6

Forces between clustered stereocilia minimize friction in the ear on a subnanometre scale

The detection of sound begins when energy derived from acoustic stimuli deflects the hair bundles atop hair cells. As hair bundles move, the viscous friction between stereocilia and the surrounding liquid poses a fundamental challenge to the ear's high sensitivity and sharp frequency selectivity. Part of the solution to this problem lies in the active process that uses energy for frequency-selective sound amplification. Here we demonstrate that a complementary part involves the fluid-structure interaction between the liquid within the hair bundle and the stereocilia. Using force measurement on a dynamically scaled model, finite-element analysis, analytical estimation of hydrodynamic forces, stochastic simulation and high-resolution interferometric measurement of hair bundles, we characterize the origin and magnitude of the forces between individual stereocilia during small hair-bundle deflections. We find that the close apposition of stereocilia effectively immobilizes the liquid between them, which reduces the drag and suppresses the relative squeezing but not the sliding mode of stereociliary motion. The obliquely oriented tip links couple the mechanotransduction channels to this least dissipative coherent mode, whereas the elastic horizontal top connectors stabilize the structure, further reducing the drag. As measured from the distortion products associated with channel gating at physiological stimulation amplitudes of tens of nanometres, the balance of forces in a hair bundle permits a relative mode of motion between adjacent stereocilia that encompasses only a fraction of a nanometre. A combination of high-resolution experiments and detailed numerical modelling of fluid-structure interactions reveals the physical principles behind the basic structural features of hair bundles and shows quantitatively how these organelles are adapted to the needs of sensitive mechanotransduction.Comment: 21 pages, including 3 figures. For supplementary information, please see the online version of the article at http://www.nature.com/natur

Netherton syndrome; neuropsychological and psychosocial functioning of child and adult patients and their parents

Background: Netherton syndrome is a rare severe skin disease. Clinical experience showed considerable psychosocial burdens among Netherton syndrome patients/families. Their (neuro)psychological functioning has never been investigated. Objective: To investigate neuropsychological/psychosocial functioning of Netherton syndrome patients and parents. Methods: A total of 12 Netherton syndrome patients and/or parents completed neuropsychological tests, semi-structured-interviews, and psychological-questionnaires. Results: Intelligence results showed disharmonic profiles, with below-average scores on processing speed. Neuropsychological problems and unfavorable outcomes on health-related quality of life, illness-appearance-related problems, and negative social consequences among patients/parents were found. Psychopathological (emotional) problems were reported; stigmatization, bullying was common among Netherton syndrome patients. Conclusion: Compared with normative data, Netherton syndrome patients showed neuropsychological and psychosocial problems. Standard follow-up is necessary to identify problems at early stage

Shifts in bacterial communities of eggshells and antimicrobial activities in eggs during incubation in a ground-nesting passerine

Microbial invasion of egg contents is a cause of embryonic death. To counter infection risks, the embryo is protected physically by the eggshell and chemically by antimicrobial proteins. If microbial pressure drives embryo mortality, then females may have evolved, through natural selection, to adapt their immune investment into eggs. Although frequently hypothesized, this match between immune allocation and microorganisms has not been explored yet. To examine if correlations between microbes on eggs and immunity in eggs exist, we collected eggs from red-capped larks (Calandrella cinerea) and simultaneously examined their bacterial communities and antimicrobial components--pH, lysozyme and ovotransferrin--during natural incubation. Using molecular techniques, we find that bacterial communities are highly dynamic: bacterial abundance increases from the onset to late incubation, Shannon's α-diversity index increases during early incubation stages, and β-diversity analysis shows that communities from 1 day-old clutches are phylogenetically more similar to each other than the older ones. Regarding the antimicrobials, we notice a decrease of pH and lysozyme concentration, while ovotransferrin concentration increases during incubation. Interestingly, we show that two eggs of the same clutch share equivalent immune protection, independent of clutch age. Lastly, our results provide limited evidence of significant correlation between antimicrobial compounds and bacterial communities. Our study examined simultaneously, for the first time in a wild bird, the dynamics of bacterial communities present on eggshells and of albumen-associated antimicrobial components during incubation and investigated their relationship. However, the link between microorganisms and immunity of eggs remains to be elucidated further. Identifying invading microbes and their roles in embryo mortality, as well as understanding the role of the eggshell microbiome, might be key to better understand avian strategies of immune maternal investment

Selective preservation of organic matter in marine environments; processes and impact on the sedimentary record

© The Authors, 2010. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. The definitive version was published in Biogeosciences 7 (2010): 483-511, doi: 10.5194/bg-7-483-2010The present paper is the result of a workshop sponsored by the DFG Research Center/Cluster of Excellence MARUM "The Ocean in the Earth System", the International Graduate College EUROPROX, and the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research. The workshop brought together specialists on organic matter degradation and on proxy-based environmental reconstruction. The paper deals with the main theme of the workshop, understanding the impact of selective degradation/preservation of organic matter (OM) in marine sediments on the interpretation of the fossil record. Special attention is paid to (A) the influence of the molecular composition of OM in relation to the biological and physical depositional environment, including new methods for determining complex organic biomolecules, (B) the impact of selective OM preservation on the interpretation of proxies for marine palaeoceanographic and palaeoclimatic reconstruction, and (C) past marine productivity and selective preservation in sediments. It appears that most of the factors influencing OM preservation have been identified, but many of the mechanisms by which they operate are partly, or even fragmentarily, understood. Some factors have not even been taken carefully into consideration. This incomplete understanding of OM breakdown hampers proper assessment of the present and past carbon cycle as well as the interpretation of OM based proxies and proxies affected by OM breakdown. To arrive at better proxy-based reconstructions "deformation functions" are needed, taking into account the transport and diagenesis-related molecular and atomic modifications following proxy formation. Some emerging proxies for OM degradation may shed light on such deformation functions. The use of palynomorph concentrations and selective changes in assemblage composition as models for production and preservation of OM may correct for bias due to selective degradation. Such quantitative assessment of OM degradation may lead to more accurate reconstruction of past productivity and bottom water oxygenation. Given the cost and effort associated with programs to recover sediment cores for paleoclimatological studies, as well as with generating proxy records, it would seem wise to develop a detailed sedimentological and diagenetic context for interpretation of these records. With respect to the latter, parallel acquisition of data that inform on the fidelity of the proxy signatures and reveal potential diagenetic biases would be of clear value.We acknowledge generous financial support by the DFG Research Center/Cluster of Excellence MARUM “The Ocean in the Earth System”, the International Graduate College EUROPROX and the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research enabling the realisation of the “Workshop on Selective Preservation of Organic Matter: Processes and Impact on the Fossil Record” which formed the basis of this paper. GJMV acknowledges support by the German Science Foundation (DFG grant VE486/2)

Comparing the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of self-management interventions in four high-priority chronic conditions in Europe (COMPAR-EU): a research protocol

Introduction Population ageing and increasing chronic illness burden have sparked interest in innovative care models. While self-management interventions (SMIs) are drawing increasing attention, evidence of their efficacy is mostly based on pairwise meta-analysis, generally derived from randomised controlled trials comparing interventions versus a control or no intervention. As such, relevant efficacy data for comparisons among dif