Confabulation: damage to a specific inferior medial prefrontal system

Confabulation, the pathological production of false memories, occurs following a variety of aetiologies involving the frontal lobes, and is frequently held to be underpinned by combined memory and executive deficits. However, the critical frontal regions and specific cognitive deficits involved are unclear. Studies in amnesic patients have associated confabulation with damage to the orbital and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. However neuroimaging studies have associated memory control processes which are assumed to underlie confabulation with the right lateral prefrontal cortex. We used a confabulation battery to investigate the occurrence and localisation of confabulation in an unselected series of 38 patients with focal frontal lesions. 12 patients with posterior lesions and 50 healthy controls were included for comparison. Significantly higher levels of confabulation were found in the Frontal group, confirming previous reports. More detailed grouping according to lesion location within the frontal lobe revealed that patients with orbital, medial and left lateral damage confabulated in response to questions probing personal episodic memory. Patients with orbital, medial and right lateral damage confabulated in response to questions probing orientation to time. Performance-led analysis revealed that all patients who produced a total number of confabulations outside the normal range had a lesion affecting either the orbital region or inferior portion of the anterior cingulate. These data provide striking evidence that the critical deficit for confabulation has its anatomical location in the inferior medial frontal lobe. Performance on tests of memory and executive functioning showed considerable variability. Although a degree of memory impairment does seem necessary, performance on traditional executive tests is less helpful in explaining confabulation

The Islamisation of Human Rights: Implications for Gender and Politics in the Middle East

This article argues that dynamics of localising human rights, while internationalising Islam are being played out in the realm of gender politics in the Middle East. Donor interest in supporting reform initiatives directed at ‘the Muslim world’, with a focus on their ‘religious identity’, has greatly influenced the kind of signals being mediated to local organisations. Against this global trend, local human rights organisations are responding by incorporating religious clergymen in their initiatives as partners and stakeholders. This alliance between human rights actors and clergymen is leading to a re?invention of the mode of engagement with cultural issues, as the clergy play the role of mediators between the realm of the human rights and the religious. This article suggests that an Islamisation of human rights discourse and forms of engagement is occurring, but only in relation to women's rights issues, an arena conventionally mediated through religious law

Normative Sources and Manuscript Evidence

It is incumbent on scholars of Arabic studies and Islamic studies who deal with manuscripts to understand pre-modern Arabic scribal practices. This thesis aims to improve our understanding of two aspects of Arabic scribal practices from the third/ninth-fourth/tenth centuries: the paratexts of manuscripts and the elements that help establish clarity and correctness. The study of the paratexts includes the title page, the introductory section, and the colophon. Regarding elements that help establish clarity and correctness, this thesis pays attention to the use of diacritical points and vowels, the cancellation of dittographies, the insertion of omissions, and the methods of preventing and correcting text mistakes. This thesis also analyzes the collation process and how it is marked in the manuscripts. The methodology of this study is to synthesize the normative sources that discuss these elements of scribal practice and then use the findings of this analysis on a selection of manuscripts

Policy Evaluation of the role of Extracurricular activities on students\u27 Character building and Academic Excellence: A Case Study of Cairo\u27s Schools

The Education policies have usually been given the highest priority globally. This research reflects that the Egyptian educational system currently faces a bottleneck in applying its policies due to significant budgetary constraints. This is seen in public schools, unlike international ones. The research compares and contrasts three educational systems (public, community and international) with the purpose of examining the impact of policy processes on education. This thesis aims to explore how far the existence of extracurricular activities, as a component that complements academic education, is capable of supporting students to acquire the 21st century life skills and fulfill some of the gaps. The study analyzes the role of ECAs through the lens of three different types of schools operating in Egypt: public, community and international schools. The thesis included qualitative field research of a total of 13 semi structured interviews and 4 focus groups in three different types of schools. The interviews and focus groups were conducted with school administrators, teachers, students and parents across Egyptian schools to understand perspectives, success stories and the barriers to the implementation of ECAs. The findings of this study highlight the positive relationship between ECAs and students’ character building and academic excellence. However, the findings also show the crucial impact of an enabling environment to support the successful implementation of ECAs, which can be the determining factor of its success or failure

Fault tolerance in WBAN applications

One of the most promising applications of IoT is Wireless Body Area Net-works (WBANs) in medical applications. They allow physiological signals monitoring of patients without the presence of nearby medical personnel. Furthermore, WBANs enable feedback action to be taken either periodically or event-based following the Networked Control Systems (NCSs) techniques. This thesis first presents the architecture of a fault tolerant WBAN. Sensors data are sent over two redundant paths to be processed, analyzed and monitored. The two main communication protocols utilized in this system are Low power Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n) and Long Term Evolution (LTE). Riverbed Modeler is used to study the system’s behavior. Simulation results are collected with 95% confidence analysis on 33 runs on different initial seeds. It is proven that the system is fully operational. It is then shown that the system can withstand interference and system’s performance is quantified. Results indicate that the system succeeds in meeting all required control criteria in the presence of two different interference models. The second contribution of this thesis is the design of an FPGA-based smart band for health monitoring applications in WBANs. This FPGA-based smart band has a softcore processor and its allocated SRAM block as well as auxiliary modules. A novel scheme for full initial configuration and Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration through the WLAN network is integrated into this design. Fault tolerance techniques are used to mitigate transient faults such as Single Event Upsets (SEUs) and Multiple Event Upsets (MEUs). The system is studied in a normal environment as well as in a harsh environment. System availability is then obtained using Markov Models and a case study is presented

Knowledge Resources Informing Lighting Design Practice in Egyptian TV and Film Industry

This study investigated the knowledge resources informing television and film lighting design practice in Egypt and the value of suggesting scientific recommendations to be followed. A questionnaire was circulated among a considerable number of professional lighting designers, lighting directors, directors of photography and cameramen working in the Egyptian media industry. Most of those addressed by the survey indicated that their main knowledge resource during their work is likely to be their own past experience. Very few of them depend on the recommendations of scientific research. Moreover, critical analysis of the collected data showed that there is limited academic research in the discipline of lighting design available for Egyptian television and film practitioners to benefit from. It was concluded that the discipline of lighting design needs more scientific research to establish a database of findings, theories and paradigms just as any other design discipline

Improvement of postharvest keeping quality of white pepper fruits (Capsicum annuum, L.) by hydrogen peroxide treatment under storage conditions

Sweet pepper is one of the most important vegetable crops in the world, it has excellent nutritive value but it is susceptible to relatively fast quality changes after harvest time. The objective of the present research was to evaluate the effect of dipping pepper fruits in hydrogen peroxide solutions on postharvest keeping quality during storage time. Whole pepper fruits were soaked for 30 min in a solutions of hydrogen peroxide (0, 1, 5 and 15 mM) then, air dried and stored at room temperature (20ºC) for 2 weeks and in fridge (10ºC) for 4 weeks. Hydrogen peroxide treatments significantly reduced weight loss, rot rate index and nitrate content of fruits specially with 15 mM hydrogen peroxide as compared with control treatement (0 mM hydrogen peroxide). Moreover, hydrogen peroxide treatments significantly increased general appearance, ascorbic acid content and the activity of the antioxidant enzymes such as ascorbate peroxidase and dehydroascorbate reductase. For dry matter and TSS%, there are no significant differences among treatments. Therefore, the use of hydrogen peroxide in postharvest treatments have a good potential strategy to improve the postharvest quality, extend shelf life period and maintained some nutritional quality as well as inhibited decay development of white peppers which natural infected under storage conditions

An Adaptive Algorithm to Identify Ambiguous Prostate Capsule Boundary Lines for Three-Dimensional Reconstruction and Quantitation

Currently there are few parameters that are used to compare the efficiency of different methods of cancerous prostate surgical removal. An accurate assessment of the percentage and depth of extra-capsular soft tissue removed with the prostate by the various surgical techniques can help surgeons determine the appropriateness of surgical approaches. Additionally, an objective assessment can allow a particular surgeon to compare individual performance against a standard. In order to facilitate 3D reconstruction and objective analysis and thus provide more accurate quantitation results when analyzing specimens, it is essential to automatically identify the capsule line that separates the prostate gland tissue from its extra-capsular tissue. However the prostate capsule is sometimes unrecognizable due to the naturally occurring intrusion of muscle and connective tissue into the prostate gland. At these regions where the capsule disappears, its contour can be arbitrarily reconstructed by drawing a continuing contour line based on the natural shape of the prostate gland. Presented here is a mathematical model that can be used in deciding the missing part of the capsule. This model approximates the missing parts of the capsule where it disappears to a standard shape by using a Generalized Hough Transform (GHT) approach to detect the prostate capsule. We also present an algorithm based on a least squares curve fitting technique that uses a prostate shape equation to merge previously detected capsule parts with the curve equation to produce an approximated curve that represents the prostate capsule. We have tested our algorithms using three shapes on 13 prostate slices that are cut at different locations from the apex and the results are promisin

Donors' Responses to Arab Uprisings: Old Medicine in New Bottles?

This article examines Western donors' reactions to the Arab uprisings and whether there has been a radical departure, since January 2011, from previous modes of engagement. It takes the EU and USA as case studies of the failure of aid policies to promote democracy prior to the uprisings, and questions whether a new approach has been adopted after the demise of Mubarak in Egypt. It argues that for the EU, positive conditionality is seen as a central element in reforming funding policies while for the USA, there seems to be no significant change in the funding policy. The highly restrictive political and cultural context affecting international agency has not changed after the ousting of the former regime, nor have the underlying factors influencing the direction of foreign funding in the region changed. In short, what this article concludes is that we are far from witnessing a paradigm shift