Search results for: politics of belonging

Authors: Mohammad Arifur Rahman

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The research study aims to bring to light the contribution of sir Sayeed Ahmed in the realm of education and literature. Sir Sayeed Ahmed Khan (1817 –1898), commonly known as Sir Sayeed, was an Indian Muslim leader, Islamic modernist, philosopher and social reformer of the nineteenth century. He earned a reputation as a distinguished scholar while working as a jurist for British India. During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, he remained loyal to the British Empire and was noted for his actions in saving European lives. Believing that the future of Muslims was threatened by the rigidity of their orthodox outlook, Sir Sayeed began promoting Western–style scientific education by founding modern schools and journals and organizing Muslim entrepreneurs. He was one of the founders of the Aligarh Movement and Aligarh Muslim University. He began focusing on writing, from his early life, on various subjects, mainly educational issues. He launched his attempts to revive the spirit of progress within the Muslim community of India. Therefore, modern education became the pivot of his movement for the regeneration of the Indian Muslims. Sayeed Ahmed Khan found time for literary and scholarly pursuits. The range of his literary and scholarly interests was very wide, comprising all the major areas: education, law, philosophy, history, politics, archeology, journalism, Muslim modernism, literature, science and culture, mainly based on his comprehensive religious ideas should be well measured in view to making out him and his contribution to the context. The books written by himself and the books composed by him by some of the great writers like Altaf Hussein Hali, Hafee z Malick, Nasim Rashid, and Christian W. Troll were studied to understand him and his contribution. The readers of this paper would benefit from dispelling the hazy ideas about this great man of India who made an immense contribution. Further research should be undertaken to know more about the different sides of his thought and personality. The qualitative and the historical methods are adopted for the accomplishment of the work.

Keywords: thinker, reformer, educator and Philosopher, modernist

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Authors: Rosa Figueroa, Christopher Flores

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Text categorization is the problem of assigning a new document to a set of predetermined categories, on the basis of a training set of free-text data that contains documents whose category membership is known. To train a classification model, it is necessary to extract characteristics in the form of tokens that facilitate the learning and classification process. In text categorization, the feature extraction process involves the use of word sequences also known as N-grams. In general, it is expected that documents belonging to the same category share similar features. The Smith-Waterman (SW) algorithm is a dynamic programming algorithm that performs a local sequence alignment in order to determine similar regions between two strings or protein sequences. This work explores the use of SW algorithm as an alternative to feature extraction in text categorization. The dataset used for this purpose, contains 2,610 annotated documents with the classes Obese/Non-Obese. This dataset was represented in a matrix form using the Bag of Word approach. The score selected to represent the occurrence of the tokens in each document was the term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF). In order to extract features for classification, four experiments were conducted: the first experiment used SW to extract features, the second one used unigrams (single word), the third one used bigrams (two word sequence) and the last experiment used a combination of unigrams and bigrams to extract features for classification. To test the effectiveness of the extracted feature set for the four experiments, a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier was tuned using 20% of the dataset. The remaining 80% of the dataset together with 5-Fold Cross Validation were used to evaluate and compare the performance of the four experiments of feature extraction. Results from the tuning process suggest that SW performs better than the N-gram based feature extraction. These results were confirmed by using the remaining 80% of the dataset, where SW performed the best (accuracy = 97.10%, weighted average F-measure = 97.07%). The second best was obtained by the combination of unigrams-bigrams (accuracy = 96.04, weighted average F-measure = 95.97) closely followed by the bigrams (accuracy = 94.56%, weighted average F-measure = 94.46%) and finally unigrams (accuracy = 92.96%, weighted average F-measure = 92.90%).

Keywords: comorbidities, machine learning, obesity, Smith-Waterman algorithm

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Authors: Giorgi Katamadze

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Open public service and accountability towards citizens is an important feature of democratic state based on rule of law. Effective use of electronic resources simplifies bureaucratic procedures, makes direct communications, helps exchange information, ensures government’s openness and in general helps develop electronic/digital democracy. Development of electronic democracy should be a strategic dimension of Georgian governance. Formation of electronic democracy, its functional improvement should become an important dimension of the state’s information policy. Electronic democracy is based on electronic governance and implies modern information and communication systems, their adaptation to universal standards. E-democracy needs involvement of governments, voters, political parties and social groups in an electronic form. In the last years the process of interaction between the citizen and the state becomes simpler. This process is achieved by the use of modern technological systems which gives to a citizen a possibility to use different public services online. For example, the website my.gov.ge makes interaction between the citizen, business and the state more simple, comfortable and secure. A higher standard of accountability and interaction is being established. Electronic democracy brings new forms of interactions between the state and the citizen: e-engagement – participation of society in state politics via electronic systems; e-consultation – electronic interaction among public officials, citizens and interested groups; e-controllership – electronic rule and control of public expenses and service. Public transparency is one of the milestones of electronic democracy as well as representative democracy as only on mutual trust and accountability can democracy be established. In Georgia, institutional changes concerning establishment and development of electronic democracy are not enough. Effective planning and implementation of a comprehensive and multi component e-democracy program (central, regional, local levels) requires telecommunication systems, institutional (public service, competencies, logical system) and informational (relevant conditions for public involvement) support. Therefore, a systematic project of formation of electronic governance should be developed which will include central, regional, municipal levels and certain aspects of development of instrumental basis for electronic governance.

Keywords: e-democracy, e-governance, e-services, information technology, public administration

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Authors: Enrique González Pendás, Vidal Pérez Hernández, Jorge Ferro Díaz, Nelson Careaga Pendás

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The investigation is carried out on the Protected Area of San Ubaldo, toward the interior of an open pinegrove with palm trees in a dry plainness of quar zitic sands, belonging to the Floristic Managed Reservation San Ubaldo-Sabanalamar, Guane, Pinar del Río, Cuba. This area is characterized by drastic seasonal variations, high temperatures and water evaporation, strong solar radiation, with sandy soils of almost pure quartz, which are very acid and poor in nutrients. The objective of the present work is to determine evidence of facilitation and its relationship with the structure and composition of plant communities in these peculiar ecosystems. For this study six lineal parallel transepts of 100 m are traced, in those, a general recording of the flora is carried out. To establish which plants act as nurses, is taken into account a height over 1 meter, canopy over 1.5 meter and the occurrence of several species under it. Covering was recorded using the line intercept method; the medium values of species richness for the taxa under nurses is compared with those that are located in open spaces among them. Then, it is determined which plants are better recruiter of other species (better nurses). An experiment is made to measure and compare some parameters in pine seedlings under the canopy of the Byrsonima crassifolia (L.) Kunth. and in open spaces, also the number of individuals is counted by species to calculate the frequency and total abundance in the study area. As a result, it is offered an up-to-date floristic list, a phylogenetic tree of the plant community showing a high phylodiversity, it is proven that the medium values of species richness and abundance of species under the nurses, is significantly superior to those occurring in open spaces. Furthermore, by means of phylogenetic trees it is shown that the species which cohabit under the nurses are not phylogenetically related. The former results are cited evidences of facilitation among plants, as well as it is one more time shown the importance of the nurse effect in preserving plant diversity on extreme environments.

Keywords: facilitation, nurse plants, positive interactions, quarzitic sands

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Authors: Lorraine Joyce Chua, Sheena Fatima Ragas, Flora Mae Tantay, Carolyn Marie Sunio

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The Philippines is one of the countries most affected by weather-related disasters. The occurrence of natural disasters in this country increases due to environmental degradation making environment preservation a growing trend in the society including the corporate world. Most organizations implemented green practices in order to lower expenses unaware that some of these practices were already a part of a new trend in human resource management known as Green Human Resource Management (GHRM). GHRM is when business organizations implement HR policies programs processes and techniques that bring environmental impact and sustainability practices on the organization. In relation to this, the study hypothesizes that implementing GHRM practices in the workplace will spillover to an employees lifestyle and such lifestyle may moderate the impact of GHRM practices to his job performance. Private industries located in the Philippines National Capital Region (NCR) were purposively selected for the purpose of this study. They must be ISO14001 certified or are currently aiming for such certification. The employee respondents were randomly selected and were asked to answer a reliable and valid researcher-made questionnaire. Structural equation modeling (SEM) supported the hypothesis that GHRM practices may spillover to employees lifestyle stimulating such individual to start a green lifestyle which moderates the impact of GHRM to his job performance. It can also be implied that GHRM practices help shape employees to become environmentally aware and responsible which may help them in preserving the environment. The findings of this study may encourage Human Resource practitioners to implement GHRM practices in the workplace in order to take part in sustaining the environment while maintaining or improving employees job performance and keeping them motivated. This study can serve as a basis for future research regarding the importance of strengthening the GHRM implementation here in the Philippines. Future studies may focus more on the impact of GHRM to other factors, such as job loyalty and job satisfaction of the employees belonging to specific industries which would greatly contribute to the GHRM community in the Philippines.

Keywords: GHRM practices, Green Human Resource Management, Green Lifestyle, ISO14001, job performance, Philippines

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Authors: Karol Rodriguez-Peña, Martha L. Macias-Rubalcava, Leticia Rocha-Zavaleta, Sergio Sanchez

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A bioassay-guided study for anti-cancer compounds from endophytes of the Mexican medicinal plant Amphipteryygium adstringens resulted in the isolation of a streptomycete capable of producing a group of compounds with high cytotoxic activity. Microorganisms from surface sterilized samples of various sections of the plant were isolated and all the actinomycetes found were evaluated for their potential to produce compounds with cytotoxic activity against cancer cell lines MCF7 (breast cancer) and HeLa (cervical cancer) as well as the non-tumoural cell line HaCaT (keratinocyte). The most active microorganism was picked for further evaluation. The identification of the microorganism was carried out by 16S rDNA gene sequencing, finding the closest proximity to Streptomyces scabrisporus, but with the additional characteristic that the strain isolated in this study was capable of producing colorful compounds never described for this species. Crude extracts of dichloromethane and ethyl acetate showed IC50 values of 0.29 and 0.96 μg/mL for MCF7, 0.51 and 1.98 μg/mL for HeLa and 0.96 and 2.7 μg/mL for HaCaT. Scaling the fermentation to 10 L in a bioreactor generated 1 g of total crude extract, which was fractionated by silica gel open column to yield 14 fractions. Nine of the fractions showed cytotoxic activity. Fraction 4 was chosen for subsequent purification because of its high activity against cancerous cell lines, lower activity against keratinocytes. HPLC-UV-MS/ESI was used for the evaluation of this fraction, finding at least 10 different compounds with high values of m/z (≈588). Purification of the compounds was carried out by preparative thin-layer chromatography. The prevalent compound was Steffimycin B, a molecule known for its antibiotic and cytotoxic activities and also for its low solubility in aqueous solutions. Along with steffimycin B, another five compounds belonging to the steffimycin family were isolated and at this moment their structures are being elucidated, some of which display better solubility in water: an attractive property for the pharmaceutical industry. As a conclusion to this study, the isolation of endophytes resulted in the discovery of a strain capable of producing compounds with high cytotoxic activity that need to be studied for their possible utilization.

Keywords: amphipterygium adstringens, cytotoxicity, streptomyces scabrisporus, steffimycin

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Authors: Gauri Sreekumar, Sabuj Kumar Mandal

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Contributing about 18% to India’s Gross Domestic Product, the agricultural sector plays a significant role in the Indian rural economy. Despite being the primary source of livelihood for more than half of India’s population, most of them are marginal and small farmers facing several challenges due to agro-climatic shocks. Climate change is expected to increase the risk in the regions that are highly agriculture dependent. With systematic and scientific evidence of changes in rainfall, temperature and other extreme climate events, migration started to emerge as a survival strategy for the farm households. In this backdrop, our present study aims to combine the two strands of literature and attempts to explore whether migration is the only adaptation strategy for the farmers once they experience crop failures due adverse climatic condition. Combining the temperature and rainfall information from the weather data provided by the Indian Meteorological Department with the household level panel data on Indian states belonging to the Eastern and Semi-Arid Tropics regions from the Village Dynamics in South Asia (VDSA) collected by the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-arid Tropics, we form a rich panel data for the years 2010-2014. A Recursive Econometric Model is used to establish the three-way nexus between climate change-yield-migration while addressing the role of irrigation and local non-farm income diversification. Using Three Stage Least Squares Estimation method, we find that climate change induced yield loss is a major driver of farmers’ migration. However, irrigation and local level non-farm income diversification are found to mitigate the adverse impact of climate change on migration. Based on our empirical results, we suggest for enhancing irrigation facilities and making local non-farm income diversification opportunities available to increase farm productivity and thereby reduce farmers’ migration.

Keywords: climate change, migration, adaptation, mitigation

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Authors: Abdul Kader

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This paper attempts to investigate several contributory factors to recent volatility in the Islamic Banking sector of Bangladesh. In particular, the study explores corporate governance, credit management, credit regulations, inept board of directors, using religious sentiment as a means to deceive general people, and the degree of political interference as potential contributory factors. To find the correlation among different variables, semi-structured questionnaires were distributed among the clients, bank managers, some Banking scholars and ex-members of the board of directors of three Islamic Banks in Bangladesh. Later, ten interviews were collected from key informants to gain in-depth information about the present mismanagement of Islamic Banks in Bangladesh. After then, data were analyzed using statistical software and substantiated by secondary sources like newspapers, reports and investigative reports aired in screen media. The paper found a correlation between almost all contributory factors and recent unstable conditions in the Islamic banking sector. After performing regression analysis, this paper found a more significant relationship between some of the contributory factors with Banking volatility than others. For instance, credit management, inept board of directors, depriving customers of proving no profit in the name of business—no interest-- and political interference have a strong significant positive correlation with the present poor condition of Islamic Banking. This paper concludes that while internal management is important in recovering the losses, the government needs to ensure framing better policy for the Islamic Banking system, Central Bank needs to supervise and monitor all Islamic banks meticulously and loan receivers must go through the impartial evaluation and approved by the representatives of the Central Shariah Board. This paper also recommends that there is a need to strengthen the auditing system and improve regulatory oversight of the Islamic Banks in Bangladesh. Policy recommendations that this paper put forward could provide an outline for dealing with the existing challenging condition of Islamic Banks and these could be applied to similar problems in other countries where the Islamic Banking model exists.

Keywords: Islamic bank, volatility in banking sector, shariah law, credit management, political interference

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Authors: Elachouri Mostafa, Fakchich Jamila, Lazaar Jamila, Elmadmad Mohammed, Marhom Mostafa

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Of course, there has been a great growth in scientific information about medicinal plants in recent decades, but in many ways this has proved poor compensation, because such information is accessible, in practice, only to a very few people and anyway, rather little of it is relevant to problems of management and utilization, as encountered in the field. Active compounds are used in most traditional medicines and play an important role in advancing sustainable rural livelihoods through their conservation, cultivation, propagation, marketing and commercialization. Medicinal herbs are great resources for various pharmaceutical compounds and urgent measures are required to protect these plant species from their natural destruction and disappearance. Indeed, there is a real danger of indigenous Arab medicinal practices and knowledge disappearing altogether, further weakening traditional Arab culture and creating more insecurity, as well as forsaking a resource of inestimable economic and health care importance. As scientific approach, the ethnopharmacological investigation remains the principal way to improve, evaluate, and increase the odds of finding of biologically active compounds derived from medicinal plants. As developing country, belonging to the Mediterranean basin, Morocco country is endowed with resources of medicinal and aromatic plants. These plants have been used over the millennia for human welfare, even today. Besides, Morocco has a large plant biodiversity, in fact, its medicinal flora account more than 4200 species growing on various bioclimatic zones from subhumide to arid and Saharan. Nevertheless, the human and animal pressure resulting from the increase of rural population needs has led to degradation of this patrimony. In this paper, we focus our attention on ethnopharmacological studies carried out in Morocco. The goal of this work is to clarify the importance of herbs as platform for drugs discovery and further development, to highlight the importance of ethnopharmacological study as approach on discovery of natural products in the health care field, and to discuss the limit of ethnopharmacological investigation of drug discovery in Morocco.

Keywords: Morocco, medicinal plants, ethnopharmacology, natural products, drug-discovery

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Authors: Chandrakant Gurav, Md. Babar

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In the present study, an attempt is made to delineate the comparative morphometric analysis of Ambardi and Mangari watersheds of Kadvi and Kasari rivers sub-basins, Kolhapur District, Maharashtra India, using Geographical Information System (GIS) techniques. GIS is a computer assisted information method to store, analyze and display spatial data. Both the watersheds originate from Masai plateau of Jotiba- Panhala Hill range in Panhala Taluka of Kolhapur district. Ambardi watersheds cover 42.31 Sq. km. area and occur in northern hill slope, whereas Mangari watershed covers 54.63 Sq. km. area and occur on southern hill slope. Geologically, the entire study area is covered by Deccan Basaltic Province (DBP) of late Cretaceous to early Eocene age. Laterites belonging to late Pleistocene age also occur in the top of the hills. The objective of the present study is to carry out the morphometric parameters of watersheds, which occurs in differing slopes of the hill. Morphometric analysis of Ambardi watershed indicates it is of 4th order stream and Mangari watershed is of 5th order stream. Average bifurcation ratio of both watersheds is 5.4 and 4.0 showing that in both the watersheds streams flow from homogeneous nature of lithology and there is no structural controlled in development of the watersheds. Drainage density of Ambardi and Mangari watersheds is 3.45 km/km2 and 3.81 km/km2 respectively, and Stream Frequency is 4.51 streams/ km2 and 5.97 streams/ km2, it indicates that high drainage density and high stream frequency is governed by steep slope and low infiltration rate of the area for groundwater recharge. Textural ratio of both the watersheds is 6.6 km-1 and 9.6 km-1, which indicates that the drainage texture is fine to very fine. Form factor, circularity ratio and elongation ratios of the Ambardi and Mangari watersheds shows that both the watersheds are elongated in shape. The basin relief of Ambardi watershed is 447 m, while Mangari is 456 m. Relief ratio of Ambardi is 0.0428 and Mangari is 0.040. The ruggedness number of Ambardi is 1.542 and Mangari watershed is 1.737. The ruggedness number of both the watersheds is high which indicates the relief and drainage density is high.

Keywords: Ambardi, Deccan basalt, GIS, morphometry, Mangari, watershed

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Authors: Eric Bonetto, Anthony Piermatteo, Fabien Girandola, Gregory Lo Monaco

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The present contribution focuses on the effect of the structure of social representations on group identification. A social representation (SR) is defined as an organized and structured set of cognitions, produced and shared by members of a same group about a same social object. Within this framework, the central core theory establishes a structural distinction between central cognitions – or 'core' – and peripheral ones: the former are theoretically considered as more connected than the later to group members’ social identity and may play a greater role in SRs’ ability to allow group identification by means of a common vision of the object of representation. Indeed, the central core provides a reference point for the in-group as it constitutes a consensual vision that gives meaning to a social object particularly important to individuals and to the group. However, while numerous contributions clearly refer to the underlying role of SRs in group identification, there are only few empirical evidences of this aspect. Thus, we hypothesize an effect of the structure of SRs on group identification. More precisely, central cognitions (vs. peripheral ones) will lead to a stronger group identification. In addition, we hypothesize that the refutation of a cognition will lead to a stronger group identification than its activation. The SR mobilized here is that of 'studying' among a population of first-year undergraduate psychology students. Thus, a pretest (N = 82), using an Attribute-Challenge Technique, was designed in order to identify the central and the peripheral cognitions to use in the primings of our main study. The results of this pretest are in line with previous studies. Then, the main study (online; N = 184), using a social priming methodology, was based on a 2 (Structural status of the cognitions belonging to the prime: central vs. peripheral) x 2 (Type of prime: activation vs. refutation) experimental design in order to test our hypotheses. Results revealed, as expected, the main effect of the structure of the SR on group identification. Indeed, central cognitions trigger a higher level of identification than the peripheral ones. However, we observe neither effect of the type of prime, nor interaction effect. These results experimentally demonstrate for the first time the effect of the structure of SRs on group identification and indicate that central cognitions are more connected than peripheral ones to group members’ social identity. These results will be discussed considering the importance of understanding identity as a function of SRs and on their ability to potentially solve the lack of consideration of the definition of the group in Social Representations Theory.

Keywords: group identification, social identity, social representations, structural approach

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Authors: Hiripurage Mallika Sandamali Dissanayaka

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Butterflies are found everywhere on Earth, helping flowering plants reproduce through pollination. Wetlands perform many valuable functions such as providing wildlife habitat. Diyasaru Wetland Park was chosen as the study site. It is located in a highly urbanized area of Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, Sri Lanka. A distribution map was prepared to increase butterfly habitat in the urbanized area, and research was conducted to determine the most suitable sections for using it. As this wetland has footpaths for walking, line transect surveys were used to mark species within the sampling area, and directly observed species were recorded. All data collection was done from 0900 to 1200 hours and 1300 to 1600 hours and fieldwork was done from 11 February 2020 to 20 January 2021. ED binoculars (10.5x45), DSLR cameras (Canon EOS/EFS5 mm 3.5-5.6), and Garmin GPS (Etrex 10) were used to observe butterfly species, identify locations, and take photographs as evidence. Analyzing their habitats using GIS (ArcGIS Pro) to identify their distribution within the park premises, the distribution density of the known size of the population was calculated for each point by kernel density, and local similarity values were calculated for each pair of corresponding features through hotspot analysis, and cell values were determined by inverse distance weighting (IDW) using a linearly weighted combination of a set of sample points. According to the maps prepared to predict the distribution of butterflies in this park, the high level of distribution or favorable areas were near flower gardens and meadows, but some individual species prefer habitats that are more suitable for their life activities, so they live in other areas. Sixty-six (66) species belonging to six (6) families have been recorded in the premises. Sixty (60) species of least concern (LC), two (2) near threatened (NT), and four (4) vulnerable (VU) species have been recorded, and several new species, such as Plum Judy (Abisara echerius), were reported. The outcome of the study will form the basis for decision-making by the Sri Lanka Land Development (SLLD) Corporation for the future development and maintenance of the park.

Keywords: wetland, Lepidoptera, habitat, urban, west

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Authors: Lei Ping

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The Western discourse of ‘modernity’ along with its objects, ideologies, and culture are brought to Imperial China by force of arms which confronted Chinese traditions. The struggle and conflicts between ‘Zhong’ (Chinese) and ‘Wai' (foreign), ‘Jiu’(Old) and ‘Xin’(New) are continuous during the turbulent times of 19th Century China. Since the foundation of the People’s Republic in 1949, China has gone through radical social, economic and cultural reform under the Communist Party’s highly centralised and autocratic political regime. The regime and Chairman Mao’s eagerness to identify the new China and establish a revolutionary mono-culture have increased political influence on the modernisation process. The ten years of Cultural Revolution (1966-76) have commonly been neglected and separated from China’s modern history due to its political, emotional and various other associations. Its cultural productions which dictated the Chinese stages during this period, namely the yangbanxi (Model Works), are largely viewed as political propaganda material with little or no artistic value in the nation’s cultural development. This paper argues that far from being anti modernisation of culture, the yangbanxi carry continuities that originate from before the cultural revolution and influence later cultural productions up till today. The focus of the paper is on Hongse Niangzijun (The Red Detachment of Women), a ballet yangbanxi (Model Works) which was performed to President Nixon during his visit to China in 1972. It depicts the female soldier Wu Qionghua’s life story: a transformation from a peasant girl to a mature communist soldier. The first part of the paper begins with an introduction to the cultural, social and political contexts under which the ballet was created and made a yangbanxi (Model work). The second part examines the application of musical devices (e.g. instrumentation, leitmotif), ranging from typical Western techniques to Chinese musical and theatrical traditions. By analysing, connecting and comparing these musical devices of various origins, the paper illustrates that the yangbanxi (Model Works) largely contributes to the ever-present, continuing and evolving modernisation of contemporary Chinese culture.

Keywords: cultural revolution, Hongse Niangzijun (Red Detachment of Women), modern China, music, Yangbanxi (model works)

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Authors: N. Chougui, R. Larbat

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The first economic importance of Opuntia ficus-indica relies on the production of edible fruits. This food transformation generates a large amount of by-products (seeds and peels) in addition to cladodes produced by the plant. Several studies showed the richness of these products with bioactive substances like phenolics that have potential applications. Indeed, phenolics have been associated with protection against oxidation and several biological activities responsible of different pathologies. Consequently, there has been a growing interest in identifying natural antioxidants from plants. This study falls within the framework of the industrial exploitation of by-products of the plant. The study aims to investigate the metabolic profile of three by-products (cladodes, peel seeds) regarding total phenolic content by liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry approach (LC-MSn). The byproducts were first washed, crushed and stored at negative temperature. The total phenolic compounds were then extracted by aqueous-ethanolic solvent in order to be quantified and characterized by LC-MS. According to the results obtained, the peel extract was the richest in phenolic compounds (1512.58 mg GAE/100 g DM) followed by the cladode extract (629.23 GAE/100 g DM) and finally by the seed extract (88.82 GAE/100 g DM) which is mainly used for its oil. The LC-MS analysis revealed diversity in phenolics in the three extracts and allowed the identification of hydroxybenzoic acids, hydroxycinnamic acids and flavonoids. The highest complexity was observed in the seed phenolic composition; more than twenty compounds were detected that belong to acids esters among which three feruloyl sucrose isomers. Sixteen compounds belonging to hydroxybenzoic acids, hydroxycinnamic acids and flavonoids were identified in the peel extract, whereas, only nine compounds were found in the cladode extract. It is interesting to highlight that the phenolic composition of the cladode extract was closer to that of the peel exact. However, from a quantitative viewpoint, the peel extract presented the highest amounts. Piscidic and eucomic acids were the two most concentrated molecules, corresponding to 271.3 and 121.6 mg GAE/ 100g DM respectively. The identified compounds were known to have high antioxidant and antiradical potential with the ability to inhibit lipid peroxidation and to exhibit a wide range of biological and therapeutic properties. The findings highlight the importance of using the Opuntia ficus-indica by-products.

Keywords: characterization, LC-MSn analysis, Opuntia ficus-indica, phenolics

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Authors: Rossella Marzullo

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Family plays a central role in the Calabrian criminal organization, which draws its strength from blood ties and gender stereotypes that still impose a strong verticalization of intra-family relationships for the benefit of men. However, female figures are of great importance in the organizational structure of the 'Ndrangheta families, despite the fact that they appear to be formally suffocated by the culture of gender subordination still strongly present in the archaic world of criminal organizations. And this is so much true that over time, the women of the 'Ndrangheta have added to the function of ‘internal containment’, the increasingly explicit function of intermediaries in the ‘external’ activities of the clan. But what happens in the 'Ndrangheta if women break the bond and decide to speak? The results are shocking. When a woman starts talking to ask the institutions for help, the system ‘goes crazy’, because the woman is considered the means of consolidating and transmitting family codes: she educates, forges, holds the structure together. If a woman from the 'Ndrangheta decides to speak out and get out of the family bottlenecks of the clan, she does not exclusively destroy the family; she destroys the system. This happens because, while not playing the same roles as men within organizations, women carry out support activities as intermediaries for the circulation of communications, thus ensuring the operability of the gang in practice and on a daily basis. Crossing the border means breaking the bonds of belonging, thus questioning one's own identity and reconstructing it according to other points of reference. How much these disruptive choices are feared by the men of the 'Ndrangheta has been seen in the dramatic stories of Lea Garofalo and Maria Concetta Cacciola: the fear of the breaking of the family pact, of the earthquake that arises from within, has marked their fate of death, useful both to stop the judicial action and to recompose the organization's estate under the aegis of terror. With physical, psychological violence, underhanded torture, and moral blackmail, the men of the mafia family tried to heal the shock caused by the voices of women, relying on violence and yet another attempt to subordinate them. This proves that the 'Ndrangheta is really afraid of them. The female voices of the 'Ndrangheta, who have shaken a consolidated and considered intangible system, represent the anti-'ndrangheta par excellence; in their choices, there is an even stronger desire to break with the mafia world.

Keywords: families, gender, ‘Ndrangheta, stereotypes

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Authors: Medina Adulyarat

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Like many other countries, Thailand is experiencing an increase in its proportion of older adults. However, the political, social, and religious climates of the various regions of Thailand are very diverse and the life experiences of older Thai citizens can vary greatly by region. For more than a decade, the southernmost provinces, namely Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, have experienced social and political unrest, often characterized by violence in the form of bombings and shootings, which has impacted the older adults residing in these regions. While, Muslims are considered a minority in Thailand, the majority of individuals in southernmost regions are Muslims, causing these regions to be different in terms of culture and beliefs. Using a phenomenological approach, this study examines older adults’ perceptions of successful aging within the context of violent social and political unrest. This research aims to 1) understand how older adults living in these areas perceive successful aging in relation to Rowe and Kahn’s successful ageing model, and 2) describe the experiences of older adults living in areas of violent social and political unrest. Data were collected using in-depth interviews with eight older adults living in the unrest area, composing of four males and four females aged between 55-75. Content analysis was used to investigate older adults’ perception of successful aging. Older adults living their life amidst the violence did not view the situation as a threat to their life for they viewed that they are not the targets of the unrest situation. Additionally, participants identified their religious beliefs and a strong sense of community belonging as coping strategies employed to deal with social and political unrest. Thus, according to them, the violence did not affect their perception of successful aging. While the participants’ perceptions of successful aging were generally consistent with aspects identified in the successful aging model proposed by Rowe and Kahn, a theme of “financial stability” emerged. The results can be divided into four interrelated themes, which are; 1) engaging with others; 2) religiosity; 3) financial stability; and 4) health. Understanding the older persons’ view of successful aging in vulnerable situations should add more depth and enhance the conceptualization of the successful aging concept.

Keywords: cultural gerontology, minority population, successful aging, unrest situation

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Authors: Hasan Taştan, Ayşen Ciravoğlu

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The rapid growth of the human population and the environmental degradation associated with increased consumption of resources raises concerns on sustainability. Social sustainability constitutes one of the three dimensions of sustainability together with environmental and economic dimensions. Even though there is not an agreement on what social sustainability consists of, it is a well known fact that it necessitates user participation. The fore, this study aims to observe and analyze the role of user participation on social sustainability. In this paper, the links between user participation and indicators of social sustainability have been searched. In order to achieve this, first of all a literature review on social sustainability has been done; accordingly, the information obtained from researches has been used in the evaluation of the projects conducted in the developing countries considering user participation. These examples are taken as role models with pros and cons for the development of the checklist for the evaluation of the case studies. Furthermore, a case study over the post earthquake residential settlements in Turkey have been conducted. The case study projects are selected considering different building scales (differing number of residential units), scale of the problem (post-earthquake settlements, rehabilitation of shanty dwellings) and the variety of users (differing socio-economic dimensions). Decisionmaking, design, building and usage processes of the selected projects and actors of these processes have been investigated in the context of social sustainability. The cases include: New Gourna Village by Hassan Fathy, Quinta Monroy dwelling units conducted in Chile by Alejandro Aravena and Beyköy and Beriköy projects in Turkey aiming to solve the problem of housing which have appeared after the earthquake happened in 1999 have been investigated. Results of the study possible links between social sustainability indicators and user participation and links between user participation and the peculiarities of place. Results are compared and discussed in order to find possible solutions to form social sustainability through user participation. Results show that social sustainability issues depend on communities' characteristics, socio-economic conditions and user profile but user participation has positive effects on some social sustainability indicators like user satisfaction, a sense of belonging and social stability.

Keywords: housing projects, residential areas, social sustainability, user participation

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Authors: Ahmet Karagoz, Irfan Karagoz

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Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is a radar mechanism that can be integrated into manned and unmanned aerial vehicles to create high-resolution images in all weather conditions, regardless of day and night. In this study, SAR images of military vehicles with different azimuth and descent angles are pre-processed at the first stage. The main purpose here is to reduce the high speckle noise found in SAR images. For this, the Wiener adaptive filter, the mean filter, and the median filters are used to reduce the amount of speckle noise in the images without causing loss of data. During the image segmentation phase, pixel values are ordered so that the target vehicle region is separated from other regions containing unnecessary information. The target image is parsed with the brightest 20% pixel value of 255 and the other pixel values of 0. In addition, by using appropriate parameters of statistical region merging algorithm, segmentation comparison is performed. In the step of feature extraction, the feature vectors belonging to the vehicles are obtained by using Gabor filters with different orientation, frequency and angle values. A number of Gabor filters are created by changing the orientation, frequency and angle parameters of the Gabor filters to extract important features of the images that form the distinctive parts. Finally, images are classified by sparse representation method. In the study, l₁ norm analysis of sparse representation is used. A joint database of the feature vectors generated by the target images of military vehicle types is obtained side by side and this database is transformed into the matrix form. In order to classify the vehicles in a similar way, the test images of each vehicle is converted to the vector form and l₁ norm analysis of the sparse representation method is applied through the existing database matrix form. As a result, correct recognition has been performed by matching the target images of military vehicles with the test images by means of the sparse representation method. 97% classification success of SAR images of different military vehicle types is obtained.

Keywords: automatic target recognition, sparse representation, image classification, SAR images

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Authors: Ikram Elsiddig, Yacouba Djamila, Amna Hamad

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Abstract—The worldwide increasing of using herbs in form of medicine with or without prescription medications potentiates the interactions between herbal products and conventional medicines; due to more research for herb-drug interactions are needed. for a long time hyperglycemia had been treated with several medicinal plants. A. sativum, belonging to the Liliaceae family is well known for its medicinal uses in African traditional medicine, it used for treating of many human diseases mainly diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure. The purpose of this study is to determine the interaction effect between A. sativum bulb extracts and metformin drug used in diabetes treatment. The in vitro and in vivo evaluation were conducted by glucose reuptake using isolated rats hemidiaphgrams tissue and by estimate glucose tolerance in glucose-loaded wistar albino rats. The results showed that, petroleum ether, chloroform and ethyl acetate extracts were found to have activity of glucose uptake in isolated rats hemidiaphgrams of 24.11 mg/g, 19.07 mg/g and 15.66 mg/g compared to metformin drug of 17 mg/g. These activity were reducded to 17.8 mg/g, 13.59 mg/g and 14.46 mg/g after combination with metformin, metformin itself reduced to 13.59 mg/g, 14.46 mg/g and 12.71 mg/g in comination with chloroform and ethyl acetate. These decrease in activity could be due to herbal–drug interaction between the extracts of A. sativum bulb and metformin drug. The interaction between A. sativum extract and metformin was also shown by in vivo study on the induced hyperglycemic rats. The glucose level after administered of 200 mg/kg was found to be increase with 47.2 % and 17.7% at first and second hour compared to the increase of blood glucose in the control group of 82.6% and76.7%.. At fourth hour the glucose level was became less than normal with 3.4% compared to control which continue to increase with 68.2%. Dose of 400 mg/kg at first hour showed increase in blood glucose of 31.5 %, at second and fourth hours the glucose level was became less than normal with decrease of 3.2 % and 30.4%. After combination the activity was found to be less than that of extract at both high and low dose, whereas, at first and second hour, the glucose level was found to be increase with 50.4% and 21.2%, at fourth hour the glucose level was became less than normal with 14%. Therefore A. sativum could be a potential source for anti-diabetic when it used alone, and it is significant important to use the garlic extract alone instead of combined with Metformin drug in diabetes- treatment.

Keywords: Antagonistic, Garlic, Metformin, Synergistic

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Authors: Maria Tsouroufli, Andrea Mondokova, Subashini Suresh

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Background: The under-representation of women and consequent failure to fulfil their potential contribution to Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths, and Medicine (STEMM) subjects in the UK is an issue that the Higher Education sector is being encouraged to address. Focus: The aim of this research is to investigate the barriers, facilitators, and incentives that influence diverse groups of women who have embarked upon a related career in STEMM subjects. The project will address a number of interconnected research questions: 1. How do participants perceive the barriers, facilitators and incentives for women in terms of research, teaching and management/leadership at each stage of their development towards forging a career in STEMM? 2. How might gender intersect with ethnicity, pregnancy/maternity and academic grade in the career experiences of women in STEMM? 3. How do participants perceive the example of female role models in emulating them as a career model? 4. How do successful females in STEMM see themselves as role models and what strategies do they employ to promote their careers? 5. How does institutional culture manifest itself as a barrier or facilitator for women in STEMM subjects in the institution? Methodology and Theoretical framework: A mixed-methodology will be employed in a case study of one university. The study will draw on extant quantitative data for context and involve conducting a qualitative inquiry to discover the perceptions of staff and students around the key concepts under study (career progression, sense of belonging and tenure, role-models, personal satisfaction, perceived gender in/equality, institutional culture). The analysis will be informed by an intersectionality framework, feminist and gender theory, and organisational psychology and human resource management perspectives. Implications: Preliminary findings will be collected in 2017. Conclusions will be drawn and used to inform recruitment and retention, and the development and implementation of initiatives to enhance the experiences and outcomes of women working and studying in STEMM subjects in Higher Education.

Keywords: under-representation, women, STEMM subjects, intersectionality

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Authors: C. Busuioc, I. Stancu, A. Nicoara, A. Zamfirescu, A. Evanghelidis

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The field of tissue engineering has expanded its potential due to the use of composite biomaterials belonging to increasingly complex systems, leading to bone substitutes with properties that are continuously improving to meet the patient's specific needs. Furthermore, the development of biomaterials based on ceramic and polymeric phases is an unlimited resource for future scientific research, with the final aim of restoring the original tissue functionality. Thus, in the first stage, composite scaffolds based on polycaprolactone (PCL) or polylactic acid (PLA) and inorganic powders were prepared by employing the electrospinning technique. The targeted powders were: commercial and laboratory synthesized hydroxyapatite (HAp), as well as barium titanate (BT). By controlling the concentration of the powder within the precursor solution, together with the processing parameters, different types of three-dimensional architectures were achieved. In the second stage, both the mineral powders and hybrid composites were investigated in terms of composition, crystalline structure, and microstructure so that to demonstrate their suitability for tissue engineering applications. Regarding the scaffolds, these were proven to be homogeneous on large areas and loaded with mineral particles in different proportions. The biological assays demonstrated that the addition of inorganic powders leads to modified responses in the presence of simulated body fluid (SBF) or cell cultures. Through SBF immersion, the biodegradability coupled with bioactivity were highlighted, with fiber fragmentation and surface degradation, as well as apatite layer formation within the testing period. Moreover, the final composites represent supports accepted by the cells, favoring implant integration. Concluding, the purposed fibrous materials based on bioresorbable polymers and mineral powders, produced by the electrospinning technique, represent candidates with considerable potential in the field of tissue engineering. Future improvements can be attained by optimizing the synthesis process or by simultaneous incorporation of multiple inorganic phases with well-defined biological action in order to fabricate multifunctional composites.

Keywords: barium titanate, electrospinning, fibre networks, hydroxyapatite, smart scaffolds

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Authors: Payton Small

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In response to increasing demographic diversity, many U.S. organizations have implemented diversity initiatives to increase the representation of women and ethnic minorities. While these initiatives aim to promote more fair and positive outcomes for underrepresented minorities (URMs) widespread backlash against these policies can negatively impact the groups of individuals that are supposed to be supported by them. A recent theory-based analysis of best practices for instituting diversity policies proposes an "inclusion for all" approach that negotiates the oft-divergent goals and motivations of both marginalized and dominant group members in these contexts. Empirical work finds that "inclusion for all" strategies decrease White's tendency to implicitly associate diversity with exclusion and increased their personal endorsement of diversity initiatives. Similarly, Whites report higher belongingness when considering an inclusion for all approach to diversity versus a colorblind approach. While inclusion-for-all approaches may effectively increase Whites' responsiveness to diversity efforts, the downstream consequences of implementing these policies on URM's have yet to be explored. The current research investigated how inclusion-for-all diversity framing influences Whites' sensitivity to detecting discrimination against URM's as well as perceptions of reverse discrimination against Whites. Lastly, the current research looked at how URM's respond to inclusion-for-all diversity approaches. Three studies investigated the impact of inclusion-for-all diversity framing on perceptions of discrimination against Whites and URM's in a company setting. Two separate mechanisms by which exposure to an inclusion-for-all diversity statement might differentially influence perceptions of discrimination for URMs and Whites were also tested. In Studies 1 and 2, exposure to an inclusion-for-all diversity approach reduced Whites' concerns about reverse discrimination and heightened sensitivity to detecting discrimination against URM's. These effects were mediated by decreased concerns about zero-sum outcomes at the company. Study 3 found that racial minorities are concerned about increased discrimination at a company with an inclusion-for-all diversity statement and that this effect is mediated by decreased feelings of belonging at the company. In sum, companies that adopt an inclusion-for-all approach to diversity implementation reduce Whites' backlash and the negative downstream consequences associated with such backlash; however, racial minorities feel excluded and expect heightened experiences of discrimination at these same companies.

Keywords: diversity, intergroup relations, organizational social psychology, zero-sum

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Authors: Wai Ha Leung

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Mother tongue language (MTL) curriculum is core to school education in most countries/regions' school curriculum. Through mother tongue language learning, students are expected to enhance their understanding of the nation's culture and foster the sense of cultural and ethnic identity. However, MTL education in Hong Kong is complicated by the colonial history. This study examines Hong Kong Chinese language teachers' perceptions of MTL education, and the implication on MTL curriculum development. The questionnaire was administrated to 97 teachers, and interviews were carried out on 17 teachers. Usually, MTL is both the tool with which knowledge and skills are taught and learned and the vehicle for students to learn about the traditions of the countries' literature and culture. In Hong Kong, 95% of the population is of Chinese descent. Traditionally, education in China was a mixture of philosophy, history, politics and literacy. Chinese as an MTL subject in pre-colonial Hong Kong has always been assigned the mission of developing students' cultural identity in addition to the development of linguistic proficiency. During the colonial period, the Chinese Language curriculum shifted to be more language skills based with less emphasis on Chinese culture and moral education. After the sovereignty of Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, although a new curriculum was implemented in 2002, teaching and learning in school as well as public examinations seem to be remaining language skills oriented instead of culturally based. This deviation from the trend of both Chinese traditional education and global mother tongue language education makes some Chinese language teachers feel confused. In addition, there is comment that in general Hong Kong students' Chinese language proficiency is becoming weaker and weaker in recent years. Thus, effectiveness of the skills oriented language curriculum has come under question. How a language teacher views the aims and objectives of the language subject he or she is teaching has a direct effect on the curriculum delivery and pedagogies used. It is, therefore, important to investigate what is the language teachers' perception of MTL education, and whether the current school curriculum can meet the teachers' expectation as well as achieve the aims of MTL education. Given this context, this study explored the views of Hong Kong Chinese language teachers on MTL education. The data indicate that teachers showed a strong resentment towards the current curriculum. Results may have implications on mother tongue language curriculum development.

Keywords: Chinese language education, curriculum development, mother tongue language education, teachers' perception

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Authors: Sunghee Nam

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Entomopathogenic fungi is a Cordyceps species that is isolated from dead silkworm and cicada. Fungi on cicadas were described in old Chinese medicinal books and from ancient times, vegetable wasps and plant worms were widely known to have active substance and have been studied for pharmacological use. Among many fungi belonging to the genus Cordyceps, Cordyceps sinensis have been demonstrated to yield natural products possessing various biological activities and many bioactive components. Generally, It is commonly used to replenish the kidney and soothe the lung, and for the treatment of fatigue. Due to their commercial and economic importance, the demand for Cordyceps has been rapidly increased. However, a supply of Cordyceps specimen could not meet the increasing demand because of their sole dependence on field collection and habitat destruction. Because it is difficult to obtain many insect hosts in nature and the edibility of host insect needs to be verified in a pharmacological aspect. Recently, this setback was overcome that P. tenuipes was able to be cultivated in a large scale using silkworm as host. Pharmacological effects of P. tenuipes cultured on silkworm such as strengthening immune function, anti-fatigue, anti-tumor activity and controlling liver etc. have been proved. They are widely commercialized. In this study, we attempted to establish a method for stable growth inhibition of P. tenuipes on silkworm hosts and an optimal condition for synnemata formation. To determine optimum culturing conditions, temperature and light conditions were varied. The length and number of synnemata was highest at 25℃ temperature and 100~300 lux illumination. On an average, the synnemata of wild P. tenuipes measures 70 ㎜ in length and 20 in number; those of the cultured strain were relatively shorter and more in number. The number of synnemata may have increased as a result of inoculating the host with highly concentrated conidia, while the length may have decreased due to limited nutrition per individual. It is not able that changes in light illumination cause morphological variations in the synnemata. However, regulation of only light and temperature could not produce stromata like perithecia, asci, and ascospores.

Keywords: optimization of culture conditions of paecilomyces tenuipes, entomopathogenic fungi optimization of culture conditions of paecilomyces tenuipes, entomopathogenic fungi silkworm larva, bombyx mori

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Authors: D. Eranda N. Mandawala, P. A. D. Mokshi V. Perera

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The RajagalaArchaeological site (RAS) is located 26 km from Ampara town (7º29'25.22" N, 81º36'59.05" E) accessible through the Ampara-Uhana-MahaOya highway of the Eastern province of Sri Lanka. This site has recently been added to the tentative list of UNESCO world heritage site and is also a forest reserve. This dry zone forest consists of tropical mixed evergreen vegetation and scrublands on a rocky outcrop of elevation of about 350 meters above mean sea level. It is also scattered with several ponds of differing sizes on rocky outcrops, rocky cliffs, and about 50 cave dwellings. No comprehensive biodiversity survey of any sorts has been conducted at the RAS so far. Therefore, a preliminary survey was conducted to determine its butterfly fauna diversity. An opportunistic Visual Encounter Survey method was used to observe various butterfly species during the morning between 8:00am-12:00noon and in the evening between 2:00-6:00pm on 3 site visits in October 2017, February 2018, and November 2019. All encountered species were photographed using a Nikon D750 camera with Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX DG OS HSM macro lens, and field guide books were used to identify them. Sri Lanka is home to 248 species of butterflies, of which are 26 are endemic. At RAS, we observed a total of 39 species (15%) of butterflies belonging to 5 Lepidoptera families. Out of these, one endemic species(4%) and 9 endemic subspecieswere also identified. The former was Troidesdarsius, also known as the Sri Lanka birdwing which is the national butterfly and the largest butterfly in Sri Lanka, and the latter were Plains cupid (Chiladespandavalanka), Yamfly (Loxuraatymnus arcuate), Common Cerulean (Jamidescelenotissama), Tawny Rajah(Charaxespsaphonpsaphon), Tamil Yeoman(Cirrochroathaislanka), Angled Castor(Ariadne ariadneminorata), GladeyeBushbrown(Mycalesispatnia patina), Common Crow (Euploea core asela)and Blue Mormon (Papiliopolymnestorparinda). The endemic subspecies belonged to 3 Lepidoptera families (3from Lycaenidae, 5 from Nymphalidae, and 1 from Papilionidae family). Anthropogenic activities such as unauthorized cattle farming, forest clearance, and man-made forest fires currently threaten this site. If such trends continue, it may lead to the reduction of butterfly fauna diversity within this area in the future.

Keywords: lepidoptera, rajagala, Sri Lanka birdwing, endemic

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Authors: Maryam Nzari

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Today, with the advancement of Internet technology, one of the tools used by humans is a tool that allows them to do what they need easily. Online platforms in different forms and by providing different services make it possible for users to communicate with each other and users with platforms. Audience communication with mass media is not the same as in the past. Today the conditions are different; With online platforms that provide the latest news minute by minute, he has access to all the content and can choose more quickly and easily. According to professionals Galloway, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google companies create a wide range. They are among the products and services that are connected with the daily life of billions of people all over the planet. Over time, platforms gain high economic value and in this way gain power that will influence the social, cultural, economic and political aspects of people’s lives. As a result of the effects of the process of platformization on all areas of individual and collective life, we now live in a platform society, which communicates It is close to “platform politics”. Nowadays, with social media platforms, users can interact with many people and people can share their data on various topics with others in this space. In this research, what will be investigated is the role of these online platforms in economic growth and the introduction of local culture areas in tourist areas. Tourism in a region is linked with various factors; One of the important factors that attract tourists to a region is its culture, and on the other hand, this culture can also affect economic growth. Without a proper understanding of the culture of these tourist areas, it is not possible to plan properly for the growth of the tourism industry and the subsequent increase in economic growth. The interaction of local people and tourists will have social and cultural effects on each other and will give them the opportunity to get to know each other. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to examine issues such as the role that online platforms play in cultural interaction in tourist areas and to understand that online platforms are only seeking to show the good aspects of a region and then generate enough extra income or that platforms can They play a role beyond what we imagine and introduce the culture of a region in a proper way so that we don’t see disagreements in the tourism planning of that region. in this article It has been tried by using library and field methods Answer the questions.

Keywords: online platforms, economic growth, culture Indigenous, tourism

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Authors: Xianghong Lu, Yuejun Wang, Chengshi Gan, Xin Qian

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The North Sulawesi Arc, located on the east of Indonesia and to the south of the Celebes Sea, is the north part of the K-shape of Sulawesi Island and has a complex tectonic history since the Cenozoic due to the convergence of three plates (Eurasia, India-Australia and Pacific plates). Published rock records contain less precise chronology, mostly using K-Ar dating, and rare geochemistry data, which limit the understanding of the regional tectonic setting. This study presents detailed zircon U-Pb geochronological and Hf-O isotope and whole-rock geochemical analyses for the Na-rich granites from the North Sulawesi Arc. Zircon U-Pb geochronological analyses of three representative samples yield weighted mean ages of 30.4 ± 0.4 Ma, 29.5 ± 0.2 Ma, and 27.3 ± 0.4 Ma, respectively, revealing the Oligocene magmatism in the North Sulawesi Arc. The samples have high Na₂O and low K₂O contents with high Na₂O/K₂O ratios, belonging to Low-K tholeiitic Na-rich granites. The Na-rich granites are characterized by high SiO₂ contents (75.05-79.38 wt.%) and low MgO contents (0.07-0.91 wt.%) and show arc-like trace elemental signatures. They have low (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr)i ratios (0.7044-0.7046), high εNd(t) values (from +5.1 to +6.6), high zircon εHf(t) values (from +10.1 to +18.8) and low zircon δ18O values (3.65-5.02). They show an Indian-Ocean affinity of Pb isotopic compositions with ²⁰⁶Pb/²⁰⁴Pb ratio of 18.16-18.37, ²⁰⁷Pb/²⁰⁴Pb ratio of 15.56-15.62, and ²⁰⁸Pb/²⁰⁴Pb ratio of 38.20-38.66. These geochemical signatures suggest that the Oligocene Na-rich granites from the North Sulawesi Arc formed by partial melting of the juvenile oceanic crust with sediment-derived fluid-related metasomatism in a subducting setting and support an intra-oceanic arc origin. Combined with the published study, the emergence of extensive calc-alkaline felsic arc magmatism can be traced back to the Early Oligocene period, subsequent to the Eocene back-arc basalts (BAB) that share similarity with the Celebes Sea basement. Since the opening of the Celebes Sea started from the Eocene (42~47 Ma) and stopped by the Early Oligocene (~32 Ma), the geodynamical mechanism of the formation of the Na-rich granites from the North Sulawesi Arc during the Oligocene might relate to the subduction of the Indian Ocean.

Keywords: North Sulawesi Arc, oligocene, Na-rich granites, in-situ zircon Hf–O analysis, intra-oceanic origin

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Authors: Shu-Yen Wang, Shyh-Huei Hwang

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Designated as an important architectural complex of settlement by the Ministry of Culture, Hua-Zhai Settlement located in Wang-An Township, Peng-Hu County, of Taiwan has been progressively restored year by year and is now at the revitalization and reutilization stage. Over the last 5 years, YunTech has participated in the restoration project while being in compliance with the Bureau of Cultural Heritage’s spirit of 'Living Heritage Conservation'. In this study, reflections have been made to evaluate the contemporariness of traditional settlement development from the aspects of revitalization and reutilization. On the one hand, the connection between settlers’ experiences and emotions have been clarified through the living nodes, collective memory, and social-cultural connotation. On the other hand, activity design has promoted the reconstruction of living nodes and facilitated the reconnection of collective memory, enabling us to explore the contemporariness of living nodes after the reconstruction. With the adoption of literature review, participant observation, and interview analysis methods, this study concludes the following results: 1) The node reconstruction brings back the memories and makes emotional connections: the spatial collective memory is composed of different components. During the reconstruction of node space, villagers participated not only in the narration of the history but also in the restoration of the space. This process enables villagers to bring back their memories and make emotional connections thereto. 2) Villagers’ understanding towards revitalization has been facilitated through node reconstruction: as a medium of this project, activity design has facilitated node reconstruction by offering villagers a natural environment to build up emotional connections to the settlement. This also enables us to better understand the meaning of settlement activation for the local community. 3) New connections are established in life between villagers and the university through the construction of living nodes: through the local implementation of node reconstruction, new connections have been established in life between villagers who participated in the project and the university. In the meantime, the university’s entrance to the community has also been revalued.

Keywords: collective memory, local sense of belonging, reconstruction of living nodes, the important architectural complex of Wang-An Hua-Zhai settlement

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Authors: M. R. Babaei, S. M. Hosseini, S. Rahmani, L. Moradi

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Today, the quality of education and training systems and the effectiveness of the education systems of most concern to stakeholders and decision-makers of our country's development in each country. In Iran this is a double issue of concern to numerous reasons; So that governments, over the past decade have hardly even paid the running costs of education. ICT is claiming it has the power to change the structure of a program for training, reduce costs and increase quality, and do education systems and products consistent with the needs of the community and take steps to practice education. Own of the areas that the introduction of information technology has fundamentally changed is the field of education. The aim of this research is process reengineering management in schools simultaneously has been using field studies to collect data in the form of interviews and a questionnaire survey. The statistical community of this research has been the country of Iran and smart schools under the education. Sampling was targeted. The data collection tool was a questionnaire composed of two parts. The questionnaire consists of 36 questions that each question designates one of effective factors on the management of smart schools. Also each question consists of two parts. The first part designates the operating position in the management process, which represents the domain's belonging to the management agent (planning, organizing, leading, controlling). According to the classification of Dabryn and in second part the factors affect the process of managing the smart schools were examined, that Likert scale is used to classify. Questions the validity of the group of experts and prominent university professors in the fields of information technology, management and reengineering of approved and Cronbach's alpha reliability and also with the use of the formula is evaluated and approved. To analyse the data, descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the factors contributing to the rating of (Linkert scale) descriptive statistics (frequency table data, mean, median, mode) was used. To analyse the data using analysis of variance and nonparametric tests and Friedman test, the assumption was evaluated. The research conclusions show that the factors influencing the management process re-engineering smart schools in school performance is affected.

Keywords: re-engineering, management process, smart school, Iran's school

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Authors: Alvaro L. Ronco

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Background and purpose: Although our country is a developing one, it has a typical Western meat-rich dietary style. Based on estimates of heme and nonheme iron contents in representative foods, we carried out the present epidemiologic study, with the aim of accurately analyzing dietary iron and its role on CRC risk. Subjects/methods: Patients (611 CRC incident cases and 2394 controls, all belonging to public hospitals of our capital city) were interviewed through a questionnaire including socio-demographic, reproductive and lifestyle variables, and a food frequency questionnaire of 64 items, which asked about food intake 5 years before the interview. The sample included 1937 men and 1068 women. Controls were matched by sex and age (± 5 years) to cases. Food-derived nutrients were calculated from available databases. Total dietary iron was calculated and classified by heme or nonheme source, following data of specific Dutch and Canadian studies, and additionally adjusted by energy. Odds Ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals were calculated through unconditional logistic regression, adjusting for relevant potential confounders (education, body mass index, family history of cancer, energy, infusions, and others). A heme/nonheme (H/NH) ratio was created and the interest variables were categorized into tertiles, for analysis purposes. Results: The following risk estimations correspond to the highest tertiles. Total iron intake showed no association with CRC risk neither among men (OR=0.83, ptrend =.18) nor among women (OR=1.48, ptrend =.09). Heme iron was positively associated among men (OR=1.88, ptrend < .001) and for the overall sample (OR=1.44, ptrend =.002), however, it was not associated among women (OR=0.91, ptrend =.83). Nonheme iron showed an inverse association among men (OR=0.53, ptrend < .001) and the overall sample (OR=0.78, ptrend =.04), but was not associated among women (OR=1.46, ptrend =.14). Regarding H/NH ratio, risks increased only among men (OR=2.12, ptrend < .001) but lacked of association among women (OR=0.81, ptrend =.29). Conclusions. We have observed different types of associations between CRC risk and high dietary heme, nonheme and H/NH iron ratio. Therefore, the source of the available iron might be of importance as a link to colorectal carcinogenesis, perhaps pointing to reconsider the animal/plant proportions of this vital mineral within diet. Nevertheless, the different associations observed for each sex, demand further studies in order to clarify these points.

Keywords: chelation, colorectal cancer, heme, iron, nonheme

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