Search results for: Arabic velar/ uvular articulation dependency

Authors: Rafeqah Raslan, Mastura AbdManaf, Junaidah Jai, Istikamah Subuki, Ana Najwa Mustapa

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The volatile citronella essential oil was encapsulated by simple coacervation and complex coacervation using gum Arabic and gelatin as wall material. Glutaraldehyde was used in the methodology as crosslinking agent. The citronella standard calibration graph was developed with R2 equal to 0.9523 for the accurate determination of encapsulation efficiency and release study. The release kinetic was analyzed based on Fick’s law of diffusion for polymeric system and linear graph of log fraction release over log time was constructed to determine the release rate constant, k and diffusion coefficient, n. Both coacervation methods in the present study produce encapsulation efficiency around 94%. The capsules morphology analysis supported the release kinetic mechanisms of produced capsules for both coacervation process.

Keywords: simple coacervation, complex coacervation, encapsulation efficiency, release kinetic study

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Authors: Sabri Serkan Güllüoğlu

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Analysis can be defined as the process of gathering, recording and researching data related to products and services, in order to learn something. But for marketers, analyses are not only used for learning but also an essential and critical part of the business, because this allows companies to offer products or services which are focused and well targeted. Market analysis also identify market trends, demographics, customer’s buying habits and important information on the competition. Data mining is used instead of traditional research, because it extracts predictive information about customer and sales from large databases. In contrast to traditional research, data mining relies on information that is already available. Simply the goal is to improve the efficiency of supermarkets. In this study, the purpose is to find dependency on products. For instance, which items are bought together, using association rules in data mining. Moreover, this information will be used for improving the profitability of customers such as increasing shopping time and sales of fewer sold items.

Keywords: data mining, association rule mining, market basket analysis, purchasing

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Authors: Luisa Kynast

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It is obvious that buildings and infrastructure are highly impacted by climate change (CC). Both, design and material of buildings need to be resilient to weather events in order to shelter humans, animals, or goods. As well as buildings and infrastructure are exposed to weather events, the construction process itself is generally carried out outdoors without being protected from extreme temperatures, heavy rain, or storms. The production process is restricted by technical limitations for processing materials with machines and physical limitations due to human beings (“outdoor-worker”). In future due to CC, average weather patterns are expected to change as well as extreme weather events are expected to occur more frequently and more intense and therefore have a greater impact on production processes and on the construction businesses itself. This research aims to examine this impact by analyzing an association between responses to CC and financial performance of businesses within the construction industry. After having embedded the above depicted field of research into the resource dependency theory, a literature review was conducted to expound the state of research concerning a contingent relation between climate change adaptation measures (CCAM) and corporate financial performance for construction businesses. The examined studies prove that this field is rarely investigated, especially for construction businesses. Therefore, reports of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) were analyzed by applying content analysis using the software tool MAXQDA. 58 construction companies – located worldwide – could be examined. To proceed even more systematically a coding scheme analogous to findings in literature was adopted. Out of qualitative analysis, data was quantified and a regression analysis containing corporate financial data was conducted. The results gained stress adaptation measures as a response to CC as a crucial proxy to handle climate change impacts (CCI) by mitigating risks and exploiting opportunities. In CDP reports the majority of answers stated increasing costs/expenses as a result of implemented measures. A link to sales/revenue was rarely drawn. Though, CCAM were connected to increasing sales/revenues. Nevertheless, this presumption is supported by the results of the regression analysis where a positive effect of implemented CCAM on construction businesses´ financial performance in the short-run was ascertained. These findings do refer to appropriate responses in terms of the implemented number of CCAM. Anyhow, still businesses show a reluctant attitude for implementing CCAM, which was confirmed by findings in literature as well as by findings in CDP reports. Businesses mainly associate CCAM with costs and expenses rather than with an effect on their corporate financial performance. Mostly companies underrate the effect of CCI and overrate the costs and expenditures for the implementation of CCAM and completely neglect the pay-off. Therefore, this research shall create a basis for bringing CC to the (financial) attention of corporate decision-makers, especially within the construction industry.

Keywords: climate change adaptation measures, construction businesses, financial implication, resource dependency theory

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Authors: Martin Plener

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Developmental and democratization research has a long tradition of focusing on the relationship between democratization and economic development. However, recent studies have shown that economic development is not adequate to measure the actual living conditions of civilian people. In consequence, it is unclear if a democratization process helps to improve people’s quality of life. This work addresses this issue by investigating the influence of democratization on the Human Development Index (HDI) created by the United Nations. The main objective is to study the relationship between democracy and human development and whether democratization positively impacts the living conditions of the population over time. The main mechanism which supports a positive impact is that democratic structures promote participation and political involvement of people from all social classes resulting in a better articulation of interests and thus accountability to the government. To study this issue, a panel regression with Fixed-Effects is conducted. By that, it is examined if democracy has a positive impact on the HDI (Hypothesis 1) and secondly if the same effect weakens in more developed democracies compared to less developed democracies (Hypothesis 2). The results do not reveal a direct positive relationship between the democratization of a country and its development of the HDI, not supporting H1 which denies the first hypothesis. In contrast to the assumption of H2, the effect of democratization on human development seems to be negatively correlated in countries in which democracy is barely developed. Therefore, both hypotheses must be discarded. The results indicate rather a positive correlation between economic development on human development. Therefore, the impact of democracy on the well-being of countries’ citizens needs to be reinvestigated in order to create a better understanding of how improved human development can be achieved.

Keywords: democracy, human development, modernization theory, HDI, TSCS

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Authors: Saleem Abuleil, Khalid S. Alsamara

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Events represent a significant source of information on the web; they deliver information about events that occurred around the world in all kind of subjects and areas. These events can be collected and organized to provide valuable and useful information for decision makers, researchers, as well as any person seeking knowledge. In this paper, we discuss an ongoing research to target stock markets domain to observe and record changes (events) when they happen, collect them, understand the meaning of each one of them, and organize the information along with meaning in a well-structured format. By using Semantic Role Labeling (SRL) technique, we identified four factors for each event in this paper: verb of action and three roles associated with it, entity name, attribute, and attribute value. We have generated a set of rules and techniques to support our approach to analyze and understand the meaning of the events taking place in stock markets.

Keywords: natuaral language processing, Arabic language, event extraction and understanding, sematic role labeling, stock market

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Authors: Renée Fregosi

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The contribution presently proposed will report on the beginnings of a Franco-Chilean study to be launched in 2015 by a multidisciplinary team of Renée Fregosi Political Science University Paris 3 / CECIEC, Norma Muñoz Public Policies University of Santiago of Chile, Jean-Daniel Lelievre, Medicine Paris 11 University, Marcelo WOLFF Medicine University of Chile, Cecilia Blatrix Political Science University Paris-Tech, Ernesto OTTONE, Political Science University of Chile, Paul DENY Medicine Paris 13 University, Rafael Bugueno Medicine Hospital Urgencia Pública of Santiago, Eduardo CARRASCO Political Science Paris 3 University. The problem of hidden populations challenges some criteria and concepts to re-examine: in particular the concept of target population, sampling methods to "snowball" and the cost-effectiveness criterion that shows the connection of political and scientific fields. Furthermore, if the pattern of homosexual transmission still makes up the highest percentage of the modes of infection with HIV, there is a continuous increase in the number of people infected through heterosexual sex, including women and persons aged 50 years and older. This group can be described as " unknown risk people." Access to these populations is a major challenge and raises methodological, ethical and political issues of prevention, particularly on the issue of screening. This paper proposes an inventory of these types of problems and their articulation, to define a new phase in the prevention against HIV refocused on women.

Keywords: HIV testing, hidden populations, difficult to reach PLWHA, women, unknown risk people

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Authors: Hasan Kaya

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Effect of lead content on the microstructure, mechanical (microhardness, ultimate tensile strength) and electrical resistivity properties of Al–Si eutectic alloys has been investigated. Al–12.6 Si–xSn (x=1, 2, 4, 6 and 8 wt. %) were prepared using metals of 99.99% high purity in the vacuum atmosphere. These alloys were directionally solidified under constant temperature gradient (5.50 K/mm) and growth rate (8.25 μm/s) by using a Bridgman–type directional solidification furnace. Eutectic spacing, microhardness, ultimate tensile strength and electrical resistivity were expressed as functions of the composition by using a linear regression analysis. The dependency of the eutectic spacing, microhardness, tensile strength and electrical resistivity on the composition (Sn content) were determined. According to experimental results, the microhardness, ultimate tensile strength and electrical resistivity of the solidified samples increase with increasing the Sn content, but decrease eutectic spacing. Variation of electrical resistivity with the temperature in the range of 300-500 K for studied alloys was also measured by using a standard d.c. four-point probe technique.

Keywords: content elements, solidification, microhardness, strength

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Authors: Zikiou Nadia, Lahdir Mourad, Ameur Soltane

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In this paper, we propose an effective method for image compression based on SVM Regression (SVR), with three different kernels, and biorthogonal 2D Discrete Wavelet Transform. SVM regression could learn dependency from training data and compressed using fewer training points (support vectors) to represent the original data and eliminate the redundancy. Biorthogonal wavelet has been used to transform the image and the coefficients acquired are then trained with different kernels SVM (Gaussian, Polynomial, and Linear). Run-length and Arithmetic coders are used to encode the support vectors and its corresponding weights, obtained from the SVM regression. The peak signal noise ratio (PSNR) and their compression ratios of several test images, compressed with our algorithm, with different kernels are presented. Compared with other kernels, Gaussian kernel achieves better image quality. Experimental results show that the compression performance of our method gains much improvement.

Keywords: image compression, 2D discrete wavelet transform (DWT-2D), support vector regression (SVR), SVM Kernels, run-length, arithmetic coding

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Authors: I. Szer, J. Szer, M. Pieńko, A. Robak, P. Jamińska-Gadomska

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Work at height, such as construction works on scaffoldings, is associated with a considerable risk. Scaffolding workers are usually exposed to changing weather conditions what can additionally increase the risk of dangerous situations. Therefore, it is very important to foresee the risk of adverse conditions to which the worker may be exposed. The data from meteorological stations may be used to asses this risk. However, the dependency between weather conditions on a scaffolding and in the vicinity of meteorological station, should be determined. The paper presents an analysis of two selected environmental parameters which have influence on the behavior of workers – air temperature and wind speed. Measurements of these parameters were made between April and November of 2016 on ten scaffoldings located in different parts of Poland. They were compared with the results taken from the meteorological stations located closest to the studied scaffolding. The results gathered from the construction sites and meteorological stations were not the same, but statistical analyses have shown that they were correlated.

Keywords: scaffolding, health and safety at work, temperature, wind velocity

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Authors: Camille Paldi

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The tense dichotomy between Shari’ah compliance and the economic goals of an Islamic Bank produces a proliferation of reverse engineered products, which are barely in compliance with Islamic law. The result is basically a hybrid conventional banking system with conventional products in Islamic disguise using Arabic and Islamic terminology. Many Islamic financial professionals and academics advocate for the use of conventional products and devices despite their non-Shari’ah compliance based on commercial necessity and the need to compete. However, this dangerous trend will lead to the demise of the Islamic finance industry. Rather than thoughtlessly following conventional products and practice, Islamic finance professionals should delve into the Shari’ah to find the answers to the current Islamic banking conundrum and lead the industry on the right path of developing Shari’ah based products and using Shari’ah devices to hedge risk.

Keywords: Islamic banking, Shari'ah, finance, investment

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Authors: Eugene Mashapa

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The age of information has witnessed countless unprecedented technological developments, which signal the articulation of succinct technological capabilities that can match these cutting-edge technological trends. These changes have impacted patterns in the production, distribution, and consumption of media content, a space that the Film and Publication Board (FPB) is concerned with. Consequently, the FPB is keen to understand the nature and impact of these technological changes on media content regulation. This exploratory study sought to investigate how content regulators in high and middle-income economies have adapted to the changes in this space, seeking insights into innovations, technological and operational, that facilitate continued relevance during this fast-changing environment. The study is aimed at developing recommendations that could assist and inform the organisation in regulating media content as it evolves. Thus, the overall research strategy in this analysis is applied research, and the analytical model adopted is a mixed research design guided by both qualitative and quantitative research instruments. It was revealed in the study that the FPB was significantly impacted by the unprecedented technological advancements in the media regulation space. Additionally, there exists a need for the FPB to understand the current and future penetrations of 4IR technology in the industry and its impact on media governance and policy implementation. This will range from reskilling officials to align with the technological skills to developing technological innovations as well as adopting co-regulatory or self-regulatory arrangements together with content distributors, where more content is distributed in higher volumes and with increased frequency. Importantly, initiating an interactive learning process for both FPB employees and the general public can assist the regulator and improve FPB’s operational efficiency and effectiveness.

Keywords: media, regulation, technology, film and publications board

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Authors: Francky Fouedjio

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Multivariate geostatistical data have become omnipresent in the geosciences and pose substantial analysis challenges. One of them is the grouping of data locations into spatially contiguous clusters so that data locations within the same cluster are more similar while clusters are different from each other, in some sense. Spatially contiguous clusters can significantly improve the interpretation that turns the resulting clusters into meaningful geographical subregions. In this paper, we develop an agglomerative hierarchical clustering approach that takes into account the spatial dependency between observations. It relies on a dissimilarity matrix built from a non-parametric kernel estimator of the spatial dependence structure of data. It integrates existing methods to find the optimal cluster number and to evaluate the contribution of variables to the clustering. The capability of the proposed approach to provide spatially compact, connected and meaningful clusters is assessed using bivariate synthetic dataset and multivariate geochemical dataset. The proposed clustering method gives satisfactory results compared to other similar geostatistical clustering methods.

Keywords: clustering, geostatistics, multivariate data, non-parametric

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Authors: Zunaidah Ab Hasan, Azhana Othman, Abd Halim Mohd Noor, Nor Shahrina Mohd Rafien

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This study highlights some of the factors of the poor in Malaysia by household and individual level. The discussion covers the demographic, economic and social aspects. The data is derived from the National Databank of Poverty Malaysia (eKasih) for the year of 2013. The explanatory analysis is used to analyse factor of poverty in Malaysia specifically in Malacca. The evidence confirms that male are prone to be poor. For the ethnic, majority of the poor are Malays. The number of dependency and unskilled head of household also contributes to the factors to be poor. Despite that health and physical condition condition does not affect the household head is likely to be poor. Outcome of this study hope to provide guideline that would beneficial to various stakeholders such as zakat institutions, policy makers, welfare department and other agencies related. This will lead to better standard of living as envisioned in the fourth National Key Result Areas (NKRAs).

Keywords: factors of poverty, eKasih, explanatory analysis, welfare department

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Authors: Kausik Halder, Nabendu Chaki, Ranjan Dasgupta

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We present a modelling framework that supports the engineering of early requirements specifications for design of learner centric dynamic Learning Management System. The framework is based on i* modelling tool and Means End Analysis, that adopts primitive concepts for modelling early requirements (such as actor, goal, and strategic dependency). We show how pedagogical and computational requirements for designing a learner centric Learning Management system can be adapted for the automatic early requirement engineering specifications. Finally, we presented a model on a Learner Quanta based adaptive Courseware. Our early requirement analysis shows that how means end analysis reveals gaps and inconsistencies in early requirements specifications that are by no means trivial to discover without the help of formal analysis tool.

Keywords: adaptive courseware, early requirement engineering, means end analysis, organizational modelling, requirement modelling

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Authors: Riadh Habash, Kristina Djukic, Gandhi Habash

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Sustainable design is one of the emerging milestones in building construction. This concept is defined as buildings that on a yearly average consume as much energy as they generate using renewable energy sources. Realization of sustainable buildings requires a wide range of technologies, systems and solutions with varying degrees of complexity and sophistication, depending upon the location and surrounding environmental conditions. This paper will address not only the role of the above technologies and solutions but will provide solutions to reduce the electromagnetic fields (EMFs) in the building as much as possible so that the occupiers can recover from electro-hyper-sensitivity, if any. The objective is to maximize energy efficiency, optimize occupant comfort, reduce dependency on the grid and provide safer and healthier EMF environment especially for hypersensitive people. Creative architectural and engineering solutions that capitalize on the design of energy efficient technologies; combined cooling, heating and power (CCHP) microgrid (MG); and EMF mitigation will be presented.

Keywords: sustainable buildings, energy efficiency, thermal simulation, electromagnetic environment

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Authors: W. Rashmi, M. Khalid, O. Seiksan, R. Saidur, A. F. Ismail

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Nanofluids have received much more attention since its discovery. They are believed to be promising coolants in heat transfer applications due to their enhanced thermal conductivity and heat transfer characteristics. In this study, the enhancement in heat transfer of CNT-nanofluids under turbulent flow conditions is investigated experimentally. Carbon nanotube (CNTs) concentration was varied between 0.051-0.085 wt%. The nanofluid suspension was stabilized by gum arabic (GA) through a process of homogenisation and sonication. The flow rates of cold fluid (water) is varied from 1.7-3 L/min and flow rates of the hot fluid is varied between 2-3.5 L/min. Thermal conductivity, density and viscosity of the nanofluids were also measured as a function of temperature and CNT concentration. The experimental results are validated with theoretical correlations for turbulent flow available in the literature. Results showed an enhancement in heat transfer range between 9-67% as a function of temperature and CNT concentration.

Keywords: nanofluids, carbon nanotubes (CNT), heat transfer enhancement, heat transfer

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Authors: Shefeen Maliyakkal, Pranav Satheesh, Steve Simon, Sharath Kuruppath

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This paper researches the impact of battery voltage sag on the performance and efficiency of E-motor in electric cars. Terminal voltage of battery reduces with the S.o.C. This results in the downward shift of torque-speed curve of E-motor and increased copper losses in E-motor. By introducing a buck-boost inverter between the battery and E-motor, an additional degree of freedom was achieved. By boosting the AC voltage, the dependency of voltage sag on the performance of E-motor was eliminated. A strategy was also proposed for the operation of the buck-boost inverter to minimize copper and iron losses in E-motor to maximize efficiency. MATLAB-SIMULINK model of E-drive was used to obtain simulation results. The temperature rise in the E-motor was reduced by 14% for a 10% increase in AC voltage. From the results, it was observed that a 20% increase in AC voltage can result in improvement of running torque and maximum torque of E-motor by 44%. Hence it was concluded that using a buck-boost inverter for E-drive significantly improves both performance and efficiency of E-motor.

Keywords: buck-boost, E-motor, battery, voltage sag

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Authors: Wenqing Fan, Yixuan Cheng, Wei Huang

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The diversity and complexity of modern IT systems make it almost impossible for internal teams to find vulnerabilities in all software before the software is officially released. The emergence of threat intelligence and vulnerability reporting policy has greatly reduced the burden on software vendors and organizations to find vulnerabilities. However, to prove the existence of the reported vulnerability, it is necessary but difficult for security incident response team to build a deliberated vulnerable environment from the vulnerability report with limited and incomplete information. This paper presents a structured, standardized, machine-oriented vulnerability intelligence format, that can be used to automate the orchestration of Deliberated Vulnerable Environment (DVE). This paper highlights the important role of software configuration and proof of vulnerable specifications in vulnerability intelligence, and proposes a triad model, which is called DIR (Dependency Configuration, Installation Configuration, Runtime Configuration), to define software configuration. Finally, this paper has also implemented a prototype system to demonstrate that the orchestration of DVE can be automated with the intelligence.

Keywords: DIR triad model, DVE, vulnerability intelligence, vulnerability recurrence

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Authors: Muhammad Feroz-Ud-Din Shah Khagga

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The holy Qur’ān, due to its exceptional and unique rhythmic style of expression, seems to have a deep connection with music and elegance of melodiousness of voice, on the other hand, Islam has various authentic transmissions and expound teachings regarding the prevention of music and songs. In this context, there has been a remarkable debate among Islamic scholars, jurists and Qur’ānic scientist to whether it is permissible to use the principles of Arabic musical symphonies, Maqāmāt and melodies in the recitation of the Qur’ān? Some Muslim scholars are convinced of the Sharīʻah legitimacy of the use of music, Maqāmāt and melodies in the recitation of the Qur’ān but some scholars do not consider it permissible. This study is an attempt to discover the factual Muslim jurisprudential experts’ stance on the subject by analyzing the arguments of both groups of scholars. It supports the viewpoint of the opponents, but also tries to reconcile the two positions. It maintains that there is nothing wrong with reciting the Qur’ān in a beautiful voice but it must be free from those forms of music which are not adored in Islamic Sharīʻah.

Keywords: Quranic recitation. maqāmāt, music, lahn, Uloom al-Qur’ān, Quranic sciences

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Authors: Belalia Douma Mohammed

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The translator must have a wide knowledge of all fields, especially cultural and literary, so that he can enjoy smoothly translating scientific, literary, political, or any oral or written translation without distorting the meaning. so to be a transfer of the entire content, a correct and identical translation that expresses the culture and literature of the mother country. But this has always been an obstacle for any translator, as, for example, a person who translates from Spanish to another language may face the problem of different in speech speed, a difference that appears clearly considering the pronunciation of the Spanish language is more rapid than other languages, and this certrainly will effect the translator’s performance, as also the word “ snowed my heart” in the Arabic language is common and known to the Arabs as it means to make me happy and delight me, but translating it without transferring its culture, for example, to a country like Russia, may mean the cold that causes freezing of the heart, so in this research paper, we aim to research such difficulties and its impacts on translation and interpretation and on translator's performance.

Keywords: interpretation, translation, performance, difficulties, differences

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Authors: Sanam Preet Singh

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Music in comparison to any other art form is more reactive and alive. It has the capacity to directly interact with the listener's mind and generate an emotional response. All the major research conducted in the area majorly relied on the listener’s perspective to draw an understanding of music and its effects. There is a very small number of studies which focused on the source from which music originates, the music composers. This study aims to understand the process of how music composers understand and perceive emotions and how they translate them into music, in simpler terms how music composers encode their compositions to express determining emotions. One-to-one in-depth semi structured interviews were conducted, with 8 individuals both male and female, who were professional to intermediate-level music composers and Thematic analysis was conducted to derive the themes. The analysis showed that there is no single process on which music composers rely, rather there are combinations of multiple micro processes, which constitute the understanding and translation of emotions into music. In terms of perception of emotions, the role of processes such as Rumination, mood influence and escapism was discovered in the analysis. Unique themes about the understanding of their top down and bottom up perceptions were also discovered. Further analysis also revealed the role of imagination and emotional trigger explaining how music composers make sense of emotions. The translation process of emotions revealed the role of articulation and instrumentalization, in encoding or translating emotions to a composition. Further, applications of the trial and error method, nature influences and flow in the translation process are also discussed. In the end themes such as parallels between musical patterns and emotions, comfort zones and relatability also emerged during the analysis.

Keywords: comfort zones, escapism, flow, rumination

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Authors: Yeimis Milton, Palomino Pichihua

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The city, like living organisms, originates from codes, structured information in the form of rules that condition the physical form and performance of urban space. Usually, the so-called urban codes clash with the spontaneous nature of the city, with the urban Kháos that contextualizes the free creation (poiesis) of human collectives. This contradiction is especially evident in Latin America, which, like other developing regions, lacks adequate instruments to guide urban growth. Thus constructing a hybrid between the formal and informal city, categories that are difficult to separate one from the other. This is a comparative study focusing on the urban codes created to address the pandemic. The objective is to build an overview of these innovations in the region. The sample is made up of official norms published in pandemic, directly linked to urban planning and building control (urban form). The countries analyzed are Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, and Chile. The study uncovers a shared interest in facing future urban problems, in contrast to the inconsistency of proposed legal instruments. Factors such as the lack of articulation, validity time, and ambiguity, among others, accentuate this problem. Likewise, it evidences that the political situation of each country has a significant influence on the development of these norms and the possibility of their long-term impact. In summary, the global emergency has produced opportunities to transform urban systems from their internal rules; however, there are very few successful examples in this field. Therefore, Latin American cities have the task of learning from this defeat in order to lay the foundations for a more resilient and sustainable urban future.

Keywords: pandemic, regulation, urban planning, latin America

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Authors: Hussein El-Zohary

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This research aims at studying the late Alexandrian school of philosophy in the 6th century AD, the adaptation of its methodologies by the Islamic world, and its impact on Muslim philosophical thought. The Alexandrian school has been underestimated by many scholars who regard its production at the end of the classical age as mere interpretations of previous writings and delimit its achievement to the preservation of ancient philosophical heritage. The research reviews the leading figures of the Alexandrian school and its production of philosophical commentaries studying ancient Greek philosophy in its entirety. It also traces the transmission of its heritage to the Islamic world through direct translations into Syriac first and then into Arabic. The research highlights the impact of the Alexandrian commentaries on Muslim recognition of Plato and Aristotle as well as its philosophical teaching methodology starting with the study of Aristotle’s Categories as introductory to understand Plato’s philosophy.

Keywords: Alexandrian school of philosophy, categories, commentaries, Syriac

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Authors: Saleem Abu Jaber

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Born into a Sufi family, in which his father and other relatives, as well as additional community members, were particularly rooted in scholarly and cultural inquiry, Muḥammad ʾAbū al-Surūr al-Bikriyy al-Ṣidīqiyy (1562–1598 CE) was a prominent scholar of his time. Despite his relative youth, he became influential in his writings, which included Quranic exegeses and works on Hadith, Arabic grammar, jurisprudence, and Sufism. He was also a practicing physician and was the first person to be named Mufti of the Sultanate in Egypt. He was active in the political arena, having been close to the Ottoman sultans, providing them his support and counsel. He strived for their empowerment and victory and often influenced their political convictions and actions. Al-Ṣidīqiyy enjoyed the patronage of his contemporary Ottoman Caliphate sultans. In general, these sultans always promoted studies in the Islamic sciences and were keen to support scholars and gain their trust. This paper addresses al-Ṣidīqiyy’s legacy as a Quranic commentator, focusing on his exegesis (tafsīr) of Sūrat al-Fatḥ (48), written in 1589. It appears in a manuscript found at the Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul, consisting of one volume of 144 pages. It is believed that no other manuscript containing the text of this exegesis is to be found in any other library or institute for Arabic manuscripts. According to al-Ṣabbāġ (1995), al-Ṣidīqiyy had written a complete commentary of the Quran, but efforts to recover it have only unearthed the current commentary, as well as that of Sūrat al-Kahf (18), Sūrat al-ʾAnʿām (6), and ʾĀyat al-Kursī (2:255). The only critical edition published to date is that of Sūrat al-Kahf. The other two are currently being prepared for publication as well. The paucity of scholarly studies on the works of al-Ṣidīqiyy renders the current study particularly significant, as it provides introduction to al-Ṣidīqiyy’s exegesis, a synopsis of the biographical and cultural background of its author and his family, and a critical evaluation of his scholarly contribution. It will introduce the manuscript on which this study is based and elaborate on the structure and rationale of the exegesis, on its very attribution to al-Ṣidīqiyy, and subsequently evaluate its overall significance to the understanding of Sufi approaches to Quranic interpretation in 16th century Ottoman Egypt. An analysis of al-Ṣidīqiyy’s approach to interpreting the Quran leads to the definitive conclusion that it indeed reflects Sufi principles. For instance, when citing other Sufi commentators, including his own ancestors, he uses the epithets mawlāna ‘our elder, our patron,’ al-ʾustāḏ ‘the master,’ unique to Sufi parlance. Crucially, his interpretation, is written in a realistic, uncomplicated, fetching style, as was customary among Sufi scholars of his time, whose leaning was one of clarity, based on their perception of themselves as being closest to Muḥammad and his family, and by extension to the sunna, as reflected in the traditional narrative of the Prophet’s biography and teachings.

Keywords: Quran’ sufiism, manuscript, exegesis, surah, Al-fath, sultanate, sunna

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Authors: Lawan Muhammad Adam, Abduljabar Hilal Alsayoud

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One of the most promising techniques to produce pure hydrogen is through a palladium-based membrane (Pd-membrane). Density functional theory (DFT) is employed in this work to examine how the physical and chemical adsorption properties of hydrogen on the surface of Pd-Pt can be mutated in the presence of contaminating gases, CH₄, CO, and CO₂. The main target is to survey the energy topology related to hydrogen adsorption while adjusting the stages of freedom in both the structure and composition. The adsorption sites, crystal plane of the slab, and relative orientation of the adsorbed molecules on its surface, as well as various arrangements of adsorbed species, have been considered in this study. The dependency of hydrogen adsorption on surface coverage is studied. The study demonstrated the physical adsorption energies of the molecules on the surface concerning the different coverages of hydrogen atoms. The most stable combinations of the adsorption sites (Top, Hollow, and Bridge) with various orientations of gaseous molecules on the Pd-Pt surface were identified according to their calculated energies. When the binding of contaminating gaseous species to the Pd-Pt surface and their impact on the physical adsorption energies of the H₂ are examined, it is observed that the most poisonous gas relative to all other gases modifies the energetics of the adsorption process of hydrogen on the surface.

Keywords: DFT, Pd-Pt-membrane, H₂, CO, CO₂

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Authors: Mona Kamel Hassan

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Teaching a class of diverse learners poses a great challenge not only for foreign and second language teachers, but also for teachers in different disciplines as well as for curriculum designers. Thus, to contribute to previous research tackling language diversity, the current paper shares the experience of teaching a reading, writing and vocabulary building course to diverse Arabic as a Foreign Language learners in their advanced language proficiency level. Diversity is represented in students’ motivation, their prior knowledge, their various needs and interests, their level of anxiety, and their different learning styles and skills. While teaching this course the researcher adopted the universal design for learning (UDL) framework, which is a means to meet the various needs of diverse learners. UDL stresses the importance of enabling the entire diverse students to gain skills, knowledge, and enthusiasm to learn through the employment of teaching methods that respond to students' individual differences. Accordingly, the educational curriculum developed for this course and the teaching methods employed is modified. First, the researcher made the language curriculum vivid and attractive to inspire students' learning and to keep them engaged in their learning process. The researcher encouraged the entire students, from the first day, to suggest topics of their interest; political, social, cultural, etc. The authentic Arabic texts chosen are those that best meet students’ needs, interests, lives, and sociolinguistic issues, together with the linguistic and cultural components. In class and under the researcher’s guidance, students dig into these topics to find solutions for the tackled issues while working with their peers. Second, to gain equal opportunities to demonstrate learning, role-playing was encouraged to give students the opportunity to perform different linguistic tasks, to reflect and share their diverse interests and cultural backgrounds with their peers. Third, to bring the UDL into the classroom, students were encouraged to work on interactive, collaborative activities through technology to improve their reading and writing skills and reinforce their mastery of the accumulated vocabulary, idiomatic expressions, and collocations. These interactive, collaborative activities help to facilitate student-student communication and student-teacher communication and to increase comfort in this class of diverse learners. Detailed samples of the educational curriculum and interactive, collaborative activities developed, accompanied by methods of teaching employed to teach these diverse learners, are presented for illustration. Results revealed that students are responsive to the educational materials which are developed for this course. Therefore, they engaged in the learning process and classroom activities and discussions effectively. They also appreciated their instructor’s willingness to differentiate the teaching methods to suit students of diverse background knowledge, learning styles, level of anxiety, etc. Finally, the researcher believes that sharing this experience in teaching diverse learners will help both language teachers and teachers in other disciplines to develop a better understanding to meet their students' diverse needs. Results will also pave the way for curriculum designers to develop educational material that meets the needs of diverse learners.

Keywords: teaching, language, diverse, learners

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Authors: Faith Samkange, Juliet Chipumuro, Henry Wanyama

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Business development and entrepreneurship constitute a major part of economic and human development for many countries within the Southern Africa Development Communities (SADC). While a marked increase in entrepreneurship activity has been registered, more than 70% of these business enterprises are still failing particularly in their conceptual years. One of the major reasons for this failure is that project process trends have tended to be fragmented and linear in approach while focusing primarily on isolated articulation of development aspects such as marketing, operations, accounting and human resources management with limited integration. Given the complexity of environmental, economic and human development issues in the SADC region, a multi-disciplinary, transformative, systematic and coordinated approach towards entrepreneurship development may be a more useful approach. This paper develops a proposed conceptual framework for an innovative and sustainable food production and food consumption Agritech entrepreneurship project in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa based on a systematic review of existing literature. A thematic analysis of the literature reviewed is applied to develop this theoretical contribution to knowledge. The conceptual framework will be tested in a research driven intervention project designed to improve the quality of life for marginalized indigenous African communities by addressing poverty alleviation, unemployment and gender inequality as stipulated in the global sustainable development goals by the United Nations in 2018.

Keywords: innovative entrepreneurship, sustainability, food production and consumption, marginalised communities, poverty alleviation

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Authors: Abdelrahman Abdelazim

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Most industries are looking for technologies that are easy to use, efficient and fast to accomplish. To implement these, factories tend to use advanced systems that could alter complicity to simplicity and rudimentary to advancement. Cloud Manufacturing is a new movement that aims to mirror and integrate cloud computing into manufacturing. Amongst cloud manufacturing various advantages are decreasing the human involvements and increasing the dependency on automated machines, which in turns decreases human errors and increases efficiency. A reliable and extraordinary performance processes with minimum errors are highly desired factors of today’s manufacturers. At the glance it seems to be the best alternative, however, the implementation of a cloud system can be very challenging. This work investigates cloud manufacturing in details, it outlines its advantages and disadvantages by converting a local factory in Kuwait to a cloud-ready system. Initially the flow of the factory’s manufacturing process has been analyzed identifying the bottlenecks and illustrating how cloud manufacturing can eliminate them. Following this an automation process has been analyzed and implemented. A comparison between the process before and after the adaptation has been carried out showing the effects on the cost, the output and the efficiency of the process.

Keywords: cloud manufacturing, automation, Kuwait industrial sector, advanced digital manufacturing

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Authors: Khenfer-Koummich Fatima, Mesbahi Larbi, Hendel Fatiha

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This paper presents a recognition system for isolated words like robot commands. It’s carried out by Time Delay Neural Networks; TDNN. To teleoperate a robot for specific tasks as turn, close, etc… In industrial environment and taking into account the noise coming from the machine. The choice of TDNN is based on its generalization in terms of accuracy, in more it acts as a filter that allows the passage of certain desirable frequency characteristics of speech; the goal is to determine the parameters of this filter for making an adaptable system to the variability of speech signal and to noise especially, for this the back propagation technique was used in learning phase. The approach was applied on commands pronounced in two languages separately: The French and Arabic. The results for two test bases of 300 spoken words for each one are 87%, 97.6% in neutral environment and 77.67%, 92.67% when the white Gaussian noisy was added with a SNR of 35 dB.

Keywords: TDNN, neural networks, noise, speech recognition

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Authors: Qianxi Lv, Junying Liang

Abstract:

Among the various modes of interpreting, simultaneous interpreting (SI) is regarded as a ‘complex’ and ‘extreme condition’ of cognitive tasks while consecutive interpreters (CI) do not have to share processing capacity between tasks. Given that SI exerts great cognitive demand, it makes sense to posit that the output of SI may be more compromised than that of CI in the linguistic features. The bulk of the research has stressed the varying cognitive demand and processes involved in different modes of interpreting; however, related empirical research is sparse. In keeping with our interest in investigating the quantitative linguistic factors discriminating between SI and CI, the current study seeks to examine the potential lexical simplification, syntactic complexity and sequential organization mechanism with a self-made inter-model corpus of transcribed simultaneous and consecutive interpretation, translated speech and original speech texts with a total running word of 321960. The lexical features are extracted in terms of the lexical density, list head coverage, hapax legomena, and type-token ratio, as well as core vocabulary percentage. Dependency distance, an index for syntactic complexity and reflective of processing demand is employed. Frequency motif is a non-grammatically-bound sequential unit and is also used to visualize the local function distribution of interpreting the output. While SI is generally regarded as multitasking with high cognitive load, our findings evidently show that CI may impose heavier or taxing cognitive resource differently and hence yields more lexically and syntactically simplified output. In addition, the sequential features manifest that SI and CI organize the sequences from the source text in different ways into the output, to minimize the cognitive load respectively. We reasoned the results in the framework that cognitive demand is exerted both on maintaining and coordinating component of Working Memory. On the one hand, the information maintained in CI is inherently larger in volume compared to SI. On the other hand, time constraints directly influence the sentence reformulation process. The temporal pressure from the input in SI makes the interpreters only keep a small chunk of information in the focus of attention. Thus, SI interpreters usually produce the output by largely retaining the source structure so as to relieve the information from the working memory immediately after formulated in the target language. Conversely, CI interpreters receive at least a few sentences before reformulation, when they are more self-paced. CI interpreters may thus tend to retain and generate the information in a way to lessen the demand. In other words, interpreters cope with the high demand in the reformulation phase of CI by generating output with densely distributed function words, more content words of higher frequency values and fewer variations, simpler structures and more frequently used language sequences. We consequently propose a revised effort model based on the result for a better illustration of cognitive demand during both interpreting types.

Keywords: cognitive demand, corpus-based, dependency distance, frequency motif, interpreting types, lexical simplification, sequential units distribution, syntactic complexity

Procedia PDF Downloads 177