Claiming Their Space: Muslim Women-led Networks and the Women’s Movement in India

The Shah Bano case of the 1980s was a landmark in the discourse on ‘Muslim women’s rights’ in India. At this time, however, few Muslim women actually participated in the debates, which were dominated by male religious leaders and politicians or by ‘secular’ women’s groups, which had scant Muslim representation. Since the 1980s several Muslim-women led organisations have emerged in urban areas across the country, some of which have formed networks to advocate for Muslim women’s rights. This article looks at the emergence of two networks in particular, the Muslim Women’s Rights Network (MWRN) and the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA), both of which were established during the last ten years. These networks have different but overlapping ideological bases, priorities and strategies. They both aim to challenge the authority of the Muslim religious leadership, represented by institutions such as the All India Muslim Personal Law Board. They also offer a critique of the mainstream women’s movement, either from within the movement or from outside, as not having given sufficient space to the perspectives of women from marginalized communities. Both networks are engaged in struggles to reformulate power relations at the local and national levels, thus challenging the dominant conception of Muslim women as a passive, homogenous group with a common set of interests. Rather, the MWRN and the BMMA demonstrate new forms of political agency and are creating a space for a conceptualisation of identities that complicates the dichotomy between religious and gender-based interests and aims to reconcile the two in a manner that protects and promotes women’s rights without denying the importance of religious identity

A New Theory On The Quraanic Term Hadd(pl.Hudood)

Although this concept already existed that for the notion of punishments the term Hadd (pl.Hudood) is very feebly defined in Islamic Law. But to point out a deficiency in anything is much easier than to tell why this deficiency occurs and how should it be overcome? According to the beliefs of Abrahamic religions, God is the King of this world and it is agreed principle of English as well as Arabic language that words of King always considered correct and pure and always prevail over the words of a layman. In this research on the basis of opinions of Islamic scholars and in the light of the verses of Quraan i.e words of God, it has been proved that existing concept of the term Hadd (pl.Hudood) is not based on the words of King of this world i.e God but on the words of human being and the term Hadd (pl.Hudood) should not be used as any connection with punishments in Islamic Criminal Law because the King of this world didn't reveal the term Hadd (pl.Hudood) in any sense of punishments like whipping, stoning to death and amputation. The next question arises that if this idea is correct then in which sense the King of this world revealed the term Hadd (pl.Hudood) in Quraan? That's why in the next step an attempt has been made as to what could be possible definition of the term Hadd (pl.Hudood) if this term is to be used in Islamic Law and it was found that in the words of King of this world the term Hadd (pl.Hudood) should not be used in Criminal Law but in Civil Law. The derived definition has been termed as Quraanic definition of Hadd (pl.Hudood)

Photon-Efficient Computational 3D and Reflectivity Imaging with Single-Photon Detectors

Capturing depth and reflectivity images at low light levels from active illumination of a scene has wide-ranging applications. Conventionally, even with single-photon detectors, hundreds of photon detections are needed at each pixel to mitigate Poisson noise. We develop a robust method for estimating depth and reflectivity using on the order of 1 detected photon per pixel averaged over the scene. Our computational imager combines physically accurate single-photon counting statistics with exploitation of the spatial correlations present in real-world reflectivity and 3D structure. Experiments conducted in the presence of strong background light demonstrate that our computational imager is able to accurately recover scene depth and reflectivity, while traditional maximum-likelihood based imaging methods lead to estimates that are highly noisy. Our framework increases photon efficiency 100-fold over traditional processing and also improves, somewhat, upon first-photon imaging under a total acquisition time constraint in raster-scanned operation. Thus our new imager will be useful for rapid, low-power, and noise-tolerant active optical imaging, and its fixed dwell time will facilitate parallelization through use of a detector array.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure

The effects of hydrogen peroxide and the involvement of the cysteine proteases in the life cycle of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum, and the acid-activatable proteases of Acanthamoeba castellanii.

It has been demonstrated previously that actin in the dormant spores of Dictyostelium discoideum can be dephosphorylated when incubated in glucose solutions. The work reported here supports and extends previous work demonstrating that actin as well as a 66 kilodalton (kDa) protein were dephosphorylated when dormant spores of Dictyostelium were incubated in a glucose of 100 mM for 1 hour. The dephosphorylation of both of these proteins was inhibited by hydrogen peroxide. Furthermore, the addition of the reducing agent, dithiothreitol (DTT), along with glucose and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), allowed for the dephosphorylation of actin but not the 66 kDa protein. It also was observed in vitro that the cysteine proteases of Dictyostelium could be inhibited by hydrogen peroxide and that enzyme activity could be restored by the addition of the reducing agent DTT. It was demonstrated here that the previously characterized nonacid activatable cysteine protease CP18 found in the spore matrix was acid activatable when sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) was absent from the polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis system (PAGE). However, the cysteine proteases of Dictyostelium were found to have no direct involvement anywhere in the life cycle. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)Dept. of Biological Sciences. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2004 .K57. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 43-05, page: 1655. Adviser: Dave Cotter. Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2004

One Lincoln Street Arched Slurry Wall

One Lincoln Street is one of the most recent buildings constructed in downtown Boston. Its structure consists of a 36-story high-rise building directly connected to a 7-story low-rise building. Its substructure has five levels of underground parking garage to accommodate 900 cars in a city where prime real estate is becoming scarce. The excavation for the underground parking garage was supported by reinforced concrete slurry walls, which also serve as the substructure’s permanent walls. The stiffness of the slurry walls, together with the strut and tieback bracing system, minimized movement during excavation, which occurred in close proximity to existing buildings. Of particular interest is the northwest corner of the excavation, which was supported by an arched slurry wall, possessing a shape in plan of a quadrant of a circle with a radius of 50 feet. This paper presents key aspects of the analysis, design, construction and performance of the arched slurry wall. While the other slurry walls in the project were designed to support the 59 foot deep excavation with two levels of bracing, a remarkable feat by itself, the 3 foot thick arched slurry wall was analyzed, designed and constructed to support the excavation with no bracing. The analysis consisted of two-dimensional finite element models, modified to include the effects of three-dimensional arch action. Predicted lateral movement of the wall was minimal, having minor impact to adjacent structures, and measured inclinometer readings favorably support the predicted movements