Search results for: hueston woods state nature preserve

Authors: Oğuzhan Hasançebi, Saeid Kazemzadeh Azad

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Keywords: structural design optimization, optimal sizing, metaheuristics, self-adaptive step-size search, steel trusses, steel frames

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Authors: S. Louhibi-Fasla, H. Achour, B. Amrani

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The purpose of this work is to provide some additional information to the existing data on the physical properties of AlBi with state-of-the-art first-principles method of the full potential linear augmented plane wave (FPLAPW). Additionally to the structural properties, the electronic properties have also been investigated. The dependence of the volume, the bulk modulus, the variation of the thermal expansion α, as well as the Debye temperature are successfully obtained in the whole range from 0 to 30 GPa and temperature range from 0 to 1200 K. The latter are the basis of solid-state science and industrial applications and their study is of importance to extend our knowledge on their specific behaviour when undergoing severe constraints of high pressure and high temperature environments.

Keywords: AlBi, FP-LAPW, structural properties, electronic properties

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Authors: Mariola Głowacka

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The aim of the study was to determine the level of adaptation to the current health situation and its impact on the adherence state of people in the pre- and senior age. The work covers the results of the first of the fourteen parts of the study conducted in a group of 2,000 people aged 55 plus. This part of the project was carried out with the use of two standardized tools: the HLC adaptation scale (the health locus of control scale and The Adherence in Chronic DiseasesScale (ACDS). The obtained results showed the range of influence of particular areas of self-acceptance of the health state (health and disease) on their adherence, taking into account specific clinical conditions.

Keywords: adaptation to the current health situation, adherence, senior, badania

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Authors: Dieudonne Mevono Mvogo

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The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) co-sponsored workshop report suggests that climate change and biodiversity loss are two of the most pressing issues of the Anthropocene. Research establishes the interconnection between climate change and biodiversity. On the one hand, the impact of climate change on biodiversity loss – 14 % over the past century – is projected to surpass other threats – land and sea use 34 % and direct exploitation of species 23 % – during the 21st century. Response measures to climate change also affect biodiversity negatively or positively. On the other hand, actions to halt or reverse biodiversity loss can enhance land and ocean capacity for carbon sequestration. These actions can also promote adaptation by ensuring adaptive capacity. This systemic interaction between climate change and biodiversity affects the human quality of life. The United Nations Secretariat's report entitled 'Gaps in international environmental law and environment-related instruments: towards a global pact for the environment,' released in 2018, states that cooperation and mutual support among agreements dealing with climate change, the protection of the marine environment, freshwater resources and hazardous waste are indispensable for the effective implementation of the Convention on the Biological Diversity (CBD). Since biodiversity is being lost at an alarming rate, this study aims to evaluate the cooperative framework for the coherence and coordination between climate change and biodiversity regimes to provide co-benefits for climate and biodiversity crises. It questions the potential improvement regarding integrating ecosystem-based approaches and nature-based solutions – promoted by the CBD – into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Keywords: rio conventions, climate change, biodiversity, cooperative framework, ecosystem-based approaches, nature-based solutions

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Authors: Saroj Kumar Rath

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India's Muslims represent 15 percent of the nation's population, the world's third largest group in any nation after Indonesia and Pakistan. Extremist groups like the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Haqqani network increasingly view India as a target. Several trends explain the rise: Terrorism threats in South Asia are linked and mobile - if one source is batted down, jihadists relocate to find another Islamic cause. As NATO withdraws from Afghanistan, some jihadists will eye India. Pakistan regards India as a top enemy and some officials even encourage terrorists to target areas like Kashmir or Mumbai. Meanwhile, a stream of Wahhabi preachers have visited India, offering hard-line messages; extremist groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State compete for influence, and militants even pay jihadists. Muslims as a minority population in India could offer fertile ground for the extremist recruiters. This paper argues that there is an urgent need for the Indian government to profile militants and examine social media sites to attack Wahhabi indoctrination while supporting education and entrepreneurship for all of India's citizens.

Keywords: Al Qaeda, terrorism, Islamic state, India, haqqani network, Pakistan, Taliban

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Authors: Maria Ashitko

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The Constitution of the Republic of Belarus is based on the principle of the unity of rights and obligations, including those of the child. The constitutional status of the child is aspecific system of constitutional elements established and guaranteed by the state through the current legislation and regulatory acts that ensure the special legal status of the child, his or her constitutional legal capacity, implementation of the principles of the constitutional and legal status of the child, constitutional rights of the child and their safeguards. Under the principles of the constitutional status of the child, we consider the general, normative, social-volitional rules of behavior established by the Constitution of the Republic of Belarus, laws and other regulatory acts that determine the content and social purpose of the legal status of the child. The constitutional and legal status of the child is characterized by the following special principles, which form a feature of the state legal system:1) Ensuring the interests of the child means providing for the child in accordance with his or her age, state of health, characteristics of development, life experience, family life, cultural traditions, ethnicity. 2) The principle of equal responsibility of both parents or their substitutes characterized by caring for the next generation as one of the priority tasks of the state and society, and all issues related to the implementation of children’s rights should be addressed at the constitutional level. 3) We would like to highlight such a special principle as the subprinciple of safeguards, which is the principle of ensuring the safety of the child. It is also worth noting that in legal studies, there is no relationship between safety and constitutional rights as general safeguards of individual rights and freedoms, and as special safeguards for the right to life. 4) The principle of justice is expressed by the fact that in modern conditions, the quality of life is determined not only by material wealth but also by the ability of the state to ensure the harmonization of social relations and social harmony on the basis of humanism and justice. Thus, the specificity of the constitutional status of the child is the age boundary between adulthood and minority; therefore, we propose to highlight the age characteristics of the child as an additional element. It is advisable to highlight such a special principle as the subprinciple of safeguards, which is the principle of ensuring the safety of the child.

Keywords: children’s rights, constitutional status, constitutional principles, constitutional rights

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Authors: Edwin Mwasakidzeni Mutyenyoka

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Without ignoring migration-related challenges in transit zones and places of origin, this inquiry focuses on arrived international immigrants’ exacerbated vulnerability during crises. The aim is to underline longstanding inequalities and demonstrate that crises merely amplify and exacerbate challenges that low-income migrants already face during ‘non-crises’ periods. Social protection, as an agenda for reducing vulnerability, poverty, and risk for low-income households, with regard to basic consumption and services, has been foregrounded in the post-apartheid development discourse in South Africa. Evidently, however, the state, through the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA), systemically excludes the majority of non-citizens from state-sponsored social assistance programs - often leaving them heavily dependent on sporadic non-state options and erosive coping mechanisms. In this paper, migration itself should not only be understood as a social protection strategy against poverty and risk but also as a source of vulnerability that often requires social protection. For quasi-ethnographic, it use one migrant destination, Alex Park Township, as a “contact zone” and space of negotiation during the pandemic.

Keywords: south-south migration, crises, social protection, Covid-19 pandemic

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Authors: R. S. Sheu, H. Usman, M. S. Lawal

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Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy model based control of a load frequency deviation in a single machine with limit nonlinearity on power coefficient is presented in the paper. Two T-S fuzzy rules with only rotor angle variable as input in the premise part, and linear state space models in the consequent part involving characteristic matrices determined from limits set on the power coefficient constant are formulated, state feedback control gains for closed loop control was determined from the formulated Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) with eigenvalue optimization scheme for asymptotic and exponential stability (speed of esponse). Numerical evaluation of the closed loop object was carried out in Matlab. Simulation results generated of both the open and closed loop system showed the effectiveness of the control scheme in maintaining load frequency stability.

Keywords: T-S fuzzy model, state feedback control, linear matrix inequality (LMI), frequency deviation control

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Authors: Clifford Irikefe Gbeyonron

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The Nigerian educational system, which has English language as a major medium of instruction, has been designed in such a way that the cognitive, psychomotor and affective endowments of the Nigerian learner could be explored. However, the human resources that would impart the desired knowledge, skills and values in the learners seem to be in short supply. This paucity is more manifest in the area of teachers of English. As a result, this research was conducted on the demand and supply of teachers of English at the junior secondary schools in Gashua, Yobe State. The results indicate that there was dearth of teachers of English the domain under review. This thus presents a challenge that should propel English language teacher education industries to produce more teachers of English. As a result, this paper recommends that the teacher production process should make use of qualified and enthusiastic teacher trainers that would be able to inculcate in-depth linguistic and communicative competence of English language and English language teaching skills in the potential teachers of English. In addition, English language education service providers should attract and retain the trained teachers of English in the business of English language teaching in such a way that all the states of Nigeria could experience educational development.

Keywords: demand, supply, teachers of English, Yobe State

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Authors: Shahin A. Abdel-Naby, Asad T. Hassan

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Astrophysical plasma environments can be classified into collisionally ionized (CP) and photoionizedplasmas (PP). In the PP, ionization is caused by an external radiation field, while it is caused by electron collision in the CP. Accurate and reliable laboratory astrophysical data for electron-ion recombination is needed for plasma modeling for low and high-temperatures. Dielectronic recombination (DR) is the dominant recombination process for the CP for most of the ions. When a free electron is captured by an ion with simultaneous excitation of its core, a doubly-exited intermediate state may be formed. The doubly excited state relaxes either by electron emission (autoionization) or by radiative decay (photon emission). DR process takes place when the relaxation occurs to a bound state by a photon emission. DR calculations at low-temperatures are problematic and challenging since small uncertaintiesin the low-energy DR resonance positions can produce huge uncertainties in DR rate coefficients.DR rate coefficients for N²⁺ and O³⁺ ions are calculated using state-of-the-art multi-configurationBreit-Pauli atomic structure AUTOSTRUCTURE collisional package within the generalized collisional-radiative framework. Level-resolved calculations for RR and DR rate coefficients from the ground and metastable initial states are produced in an intermediate coupling scheme associated withn = 0 and n = 1 core-excitations. DR cross sections for these ions are convoluted with the experimental electron-cooler temperatures to produce DR rate coefficients. Good agreements are foundbetween these rate coefficients and theexperimental measurements performed at CRYRING heavy-ionstorage ring for both ions.

Keywords: atomic data, atomic process, electron-ion collision, plasmas

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Authors: Parisi L., Hamili D., Azlan N.

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The aim of this study was to design and simulate a particular type of Asynchronous State Machine (ASM), namely a ‘traffic light controller’ (TLC), operated at a frequency of 0.5 Hz. The design task involved two main stages: firstly, designing a 4-bit binary counter using J-K flip flops as the timing signal and subsequently, attaining the digital logic by deploying ASM design process. The TLC was designed such that it showed a sequence of three different colours, i.e. red, yellow and green, corresponding to set thresholds by deploying the least number of AND, OR and NOT gates possible. The software Multisim was deployed to design such circuit and simulate it for circuit troubleshooting in order for it to display the output sequence of the three different colours on the traffic light in the correct order. A clock signal, an asynchronous 4-bit binary counter that was designed through the use of J-K flip flops along with an ASM were used to complete this sequence, which was programmed to be repeated indefinitely. Eventually, the circuit was debugged and optimized, thus displaying the correct waveforms of the three outputs through the logic analyzer. However, hazards occurred when the frequency was increased to 10 MHz. This was attributed to delays in the feedback being too high.

Keywords: asynchronous state machine, traffic light controller, circuit design, digital electronics

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Authors: Mina Beheshti, Vida Shams, Mojtaba Esfandiari, Farzaneh Abdollahi, Abdolreza Ohadi

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Most of the people who survive a stroke need rehabilitation tools to regain their mobility. The core function of these devices is a brake actuator. The goal of this study is to design and control a magnetorheological brake which can be used as a rehabilitation tool. In fact, the fluid used in this brake is called magnetorheological fluid or MR that properties can change by variation of the magnetic field. The braking properties can be set as control by using this feature of the fluid. In this research, different MR brake designs are first introduced in each design, and the dimensions of the brake have been determined based on the required torque for foot movement. To calculate the brake dimensions, it is assumed that the shear stress distribution in the fluid is uniform and the fluid is in its saturated state. After designing the rehabilitation brake, the mathematical model of the healthy movement of a healthy person is extracted. Due to the nonlinear nature of the system and its variability, various adaptive controllers, neural networks, and robust have been implemented to estimate the parameters and control the system. After calculating torque and control current, the best type of controller in terms of error and control current has been selected. Finally, this controller is implemented on the experimental data of the patient's movements, and the control current is calculated to achieve the desired torque and motion.

Keywords: rehabilitation, magnetorheological fluid, knee, brake, adaptive control, robust control, neural network control, torque control

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Authors: Samuel Onyekachi Chidi

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Nigeria today faces more internal threats stemming from ethnic and religious conflicts than external sources. This article seeks to examine the ethno-religious conflicts in Nigeria from 2015 to 2021 and their impact on national security. The research was guided by six objectives. The theoretical framework adopted for this study is Structural Conflict Theory, which provides an adequate explanation, a predictive rationale for the frequent occurrence of ethno-religious conflicts and a tendency to provide the necessary insight for their resolution. The results of the study revealed that there is a strong relationship between ethnicity, religion, conflict and national security and that the ethno-religious conflicts experienced in Nigeria have gross implications for national security. The study recommends that the secularity of the Nigerian state be restored and preserved and that the state of origin be removed and replaced by the state of residence in all our national documents, as this will reduce ethnic identity, which is in opposition to nationalism. Religious leaders, traditional rulers, the media and other stakeholders should support the government in its fight to reduce ethno-religious conflict by sensitizing its youth, preaching unity and peaceful coexistence, and discouraging the use of violence as a means of settling disputes between groups and individuals.

Keywords: ethnicity, religion, conflict, national security

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Authors: G. L. Devnani, Shishir Sinha

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Natural fiber reinforced polymer composite is a very attractive area among the scientific community because of their low cost, eco-friendly and sustainable in nature. Among all advantages there are few issues which need to be addressed, those issues are the poor adhesion and compatibility between two opposite nature materials that is fiber and matrix and their relatively high water absorption. Therefore, natural fiber modifications are necessary to improve their adhesion with different matrices. Excellent properties could be achieved with the surface treatment of these natural fibers ultimately leads to property up-gradation of their reinforced composites with different polymer matrices. Lot of work is going on to improve the adhesion between reinforced fiber phase and polymer matrix phase to improve the properties of composites. Researchers have suggested various methods for natural fiber treatment like silane treatment, treatment with alkali, acetylation, acrylation, maleate coupling, etc. In this study a review is done on the different methods used for the surface treatment of natural fibers and what are the advance treatment methodologies for natural fiber surface treatment for property improvement of natural fiber reinforced polymer composites.

Keywords: composites, acetylation, natural fiber, surface treatment

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Authors: Faguna Barmahalia

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Politics of ethnic identity in the north-east India is well-known phenomenon. The ethnic assertion in this region is mostly linguistic and cultural in nature. Most of the ethnic groups in the north-east region have been demanding either autonomous or separate state to maintain their socio-cultural identity. After the Indian Independence, the ethnic groups of people think that they have not developed till. Despite having many natural resources, North East India remained backward in terms of economic, education as well as politics. In this scenario, many educated and middle-class elite people have involved in working for the all-round development of their community. The Bodos are one of the major tribes in North Eeast India. In Assam, the Bodos are assumed by themselves to be exploited and suppressed by the Assamese Hindu society. Consequently, the socio-cultural identity movement has emerged among the Bodos.The main aims of my study are: i. to focus on how the Bodos of Assam are using the folk media in their political movement and iii. To analyse the role of folklore towards serving the ethnic unity and nationalism among the Bodos. Methodology: The study is based on the primary and secondary sources. Interview and observation method was conducted for collecting the primary data. For secondary source, some printed books, magazines and others materials published by the distinguished publishers and websites have been used.

Keywords: media, culture, nationalism, politics

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Authors: Muhammad A. Alsubaie, Mubarak K. H. Alhajri, Tarek S. Altowaim

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A repetitive controller designed to accommodate periodic disturbances via state feedback is discussed. Periodic disturbances can be represented by a time delay model in a positive feedback loop acting on system output. A direct use of the small gain theorem solves the periodic disturbances problem via 1) isolating the delay model, 2) finding the overall system representation around the delay model and 3) designing a feedback controller that assures overall system stability and tracking error convergence. This paper addresses uncertainty conditions for the repetitive controller designed in state feedback in either past error feedforward or current error feedback using singular values. The uncertainty investigation is based on the overall system found and the stability condition associated with it; depending on the scheme used, to set an upper/lower limit weighting parameter. This creates a region that should not be exceeded in selecting the weighting parameter which in turns assures performance improvement against system uncertainty. Repetitive control problem can be described in lifted form. This allows the usage of singular values principle in setting the range for the weighting parameter selection. The Simulation results obtained show a tracking error convergence against dynamic system perturbation if the weighting parameter chosen is within the range obtained. Simulation results also show the advantage of weighting parameter usage compared to the case where it is omitted.

Keywords: model mismatch, repetitive control, singular values, state feedback

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Authors: Syukri Himran, Erwin Eka Putra, Nanang Roni

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This study explains the natural convection of viscous fluid flowing on semi-infinite vertical plate. A set of the governing equations describing the continuity, momentum and energy, have been reduced to dimensionless forms by introducing the references variables. To solve the problems, the equations are formulated by explicit finite-difference in time dependent form and computations are performed by Fortran program. The results describe velocity, temperature profiles both in transient and steady state conditions. An approximate value of heat transfer coefficient and the effects of Pr on convection flow are also presented.

Keywords: natural convection, vertical plate, velocity and temperature profiles, steady and unsteady

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Authors: Binay Pattanayak

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Multilingual state, Jharkhand is home to more than 19 tribal and regional languages. These are used by more than 33 communities in the state. The state has declared 12 of these languages as official languages of the state. However, schools in the state do not recognize any of these community languages even in early grades! Children, who speak in their mother tongues at home, local market and playground, find it very difficult to understand their teacher and textbooks in school. They fail to acquire basic literacy and numeracy skills in early grades. Out of frustration due to lack of comprehension, the majority of children leave school. Jharkhand sees the highest dropout in early grades in India. To address this, the state under the guidance of the author designed a mother tongue based pre-school education programme named Bhasha Puliya and bilingual picture dictionaries in 9 tribal and regional mother tongues of children. This contributed significantly to children’s school readiness in the school. Followed by this, the state designed a mother-tongue based multilingual education programme (MTB-MLE) for multilingual context. The author guided textbook development in 5 tribal (Santhali, Mundari, Ho, Kurukh and Kharia) and two regional (Odia and Bangla) languages. Teachers and community members were trained for MTB-MLE in around 1,000 schools of the concerned language pockets. Community resource groups were constituted along with their academic calendars in each school to promote story-telling, singing, painting, dancing, riddles, etc. with community support. This, on the one hand, created rich learning environments for children. On the other hand, the communities have discovered a great potential in the process of developing a wide variety of learning materials for children in own mother-tongue using their local stories, songs, riddles, paintings, idioms, skits, etc. as a process of their literary, cultural and technical enrichment. The majority of children are acquiring strong early grade reading skills (basic literacy and numeracy) in grades I-II thereby getting well prepared for higher studies. In a phased manner they are learning Hindi and English after 4-5 years of MTB-MLE using the foundational language learning skills. Community members have started designing new books, audio-visual learning materials in their mother-tongues seeing a great potential for their cultural and technological rejuvenation.

Keywords: community resource groups, MTB-MLE, multilingual, socio-linguistic survey, learning

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Authors: Aleksandar Savanović

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In this paper we will analyze the relationship between the neo-liberal concept of property rights and redistribution policy. This issue is back in the focus of interest due to the crisis 2008. The crisis has reaffirmed the influence of the state on the free-market processes. The interference of the state with property relations re-opened a classical question: is it legitimate to redistribute resources of a man in favor of another man with taxes? The dominant view is that the neoliberal philosophy of natural rights is incompatible with redistributive measures. In principle, this view can be accepted. However, when we look into the details of the theory of natural rights proposed by some coryphaei of neoliberal philosophy, such as Hayek, Nozick, Buchanan and Rothbard, we can see that it is not such an unequivocal view.

Keywords: economic neoliberalism, natural law, property, redistribution

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Authors: K. N. Umesh

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Wood Polymer Composites (WPC) were synthesized artificially by combining polypropylene, wood and resin. It is difficult to obtain a good surface finish by conventional machining on WPC because of material degradation due to excessive heat generated during the process. In order to preserve the material property and deliver a better surface finish and accuracy, a proper solution is devised for the machining of wood composites at low temperature. This research focuses on studying the effects of parameters of cryogenic machining on sawdust incorporated polypropylene composite material, in view of evolving the most suitable composition and an appropriate combination of process parameters. The machining characteristics of the six different compositions of WPC were evaluated by analyzing the trend. An attempt is made to determine proper combinations material composition and process control parameters, through process capability studies. A WPC of 80%-wood (saw dust particles), 20%-polypropylene and 0%-resin was found to be the best alternative for obtaining the best surface finish under cryogenic machining conditions.

Keywords: Cryogenic Machining, Process Capability, Surface Finish, Wood Polymer Composites

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Authors: Assad Maalouf, Lunjin Lu, James Lynott

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We present a taint analysis that can automatically detect when string operations result in a string that is free of taints, where all the tainted patterns have been removed. This is an improvement on the conservative behavior of previous taint analyzers, where a string operation on a tainted string always leads to a tainted string unless the operation is manually marked as a sanitizer. The taint analysis is built on top of a string analysis that uses finite state automata to approximate the sets of values that string variables can take during the execution of a program. The proposed approach has been implemented as an extension of FlowDroid and experimental results show that the resulting taint analyzer is much more precise than the original FlowDroid.

Keywords: android, static analysis, string analysis, taint analysis

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Authors: Khaliun Nyambayar, Nomindari Azzaya, Batkhuyag Purevjav

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Pharmacovigilance was officially introduced in Mongolia in 2003, in accordance with the Health Minister Order 183 for the registry of adverse drug reactions (ADR), approved in 2006 and was reviewed in 2010. This study was designed to evaluate the incidence and common types of adverse drug reactions among hospitalized children, the frequency of adverse drug reaction reported by health care providers, and the follow-up processes resulting from adverse drug reactions. A retrospective study of paediatric patients who experienced an adverse drug reaction from 2015 to 2019, extracted from the “yellow” card at the State Research Center for Maternal and Child Health, (city). A total of 417 adverse drug reactions were reported with an overall incidence was 80 (21.5%). Adverse reactions resulting from the use of antibiotics (particularly gentamycin, cephalosporins, and vancomycin) were usually mild. ADR’s were reported by physicians and nurses (93.8%), pharmacists (6.25%). Although documentation of physician notification occurred for 93% of adverse drug reactions, only 29% of cases were documented in the patient's medical chart, 13% included follow-up education for individuals involved, and 10% were updated in the allergy profile of the hospital computer system. Measures to improve the detection and reporting of adverse drug reactions by all health care professionals should be improved, to enhance our understanding of the nature and impact of these reactions in children.

Keywords: adverse drug reaction, pediatric, yellow card, Mongolia

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Authors: Khaled Karim

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Although a large number of studies have examined the effectiveness of written corrective feedback (WCF) in L2 writing, very few studies have investigated students’ attitudes towards the feedback and their perspectives regarding the usefulness of different types of feedback. Using prompted stimulated recall interviews, this study investigated ESL students’ perceptions and attitudes towards the CF they received as well as their preferences and reactions to the corrections. 24 ESL students first received direct (e.g., providing target forms after crossing out erroneous forms) and indirect (e.g., underlining and underline+metalinguistic) CF on four written tasks and then participated in an interview with the researcher. The analysis revealed that both direct and indirect CF were judged to be useful strategies for correction but in different ways. Underline only CF helped them think about the nature and type of the errors they made while metalinguistic CF was useful as it provided clues about the nature and type of the errors. Most participants indicated that indirect correction needed sufficient prior knowledge of the form to be effective. The majority of the students found the combination of underlining with metalinguistic information as the most effective method of providing feedback. Detailed findings will be presented, and pedagogical implications of the study will be discussed.

Keywords: ESL writing, error correction, feedback, written corrective feedback

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Authors: C. T. Cheung, R. K. P. Ng, T. Y. Lo, Zhou Jinyun

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This paper aims at manipulating loop alignment in knitting a three-dimensional (3D) shape by its geometry. Two loop alignment methods are introduced to handle a surface with positive Gaussian curvature. As weft knitting is a two-dimensional (2D) knitting mechanism that the knitting cam carrying the feeders moves in two directions only, left and right, the knitted fabric generated grows in width and length but not in depth. Therefore, a 3D shape is required to be flattened to a 2D plane with surface area preserved for knitting. On this flattened plane, dimensional measurements are taken for loop alignment. The way these measurements being taken derived two different loop alignment methods. In this paper, only plain knitted structure was considered. Each knitted loop was taken as a basic unit for loop alignment in order to achieve the required geometric dimensions, without the inclusion of other stitches which give textural dimensions to the fabric. Two loop alignment methods were experimented and compared. Only one of these two can successfully preserve the dimensions of the shape.

Keywords: 3D knitting, 3D shape, loop alignment, positive Gaussian curvature

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Authors: Valliyil Govindankutty

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Human civilizations across the globe stand testimony to water being one of the major interaction points with nature. The interactions with nature especially in drier areas revolve around water, be it harnessing, transporting, usage and management. Many ingenious ideas were born, nurtured and developed for harnessing, transporting, storing and distributing water through the areas in the drier parts of the world. Many methods of water extraction, collection and management could be found throughout the world, some of which are associated with efficient, sustained use of surface water, ground water and rain water. Karez is one such ingenious method of collection, transportation, storage and distribution of ground water. Most of the Karez systems in India were developed during reign of Muslim dynasties with ruling class descending from Persia or having influential connections and inviting expert engineers from there. Karez have strongly influenced the village socio-economic organisations due to multitude of uses they were brought into. These are masterpiece engineering structures to collect groundwater and direct it, through a subsurface gallery with a gradual slope, to surface canals that provide water to settlements and agricultural fields. This ingenious technology, karez was result of need for harnessing groundwater in arid areas like that of Bidar. The study views this traditional technology in historical perspective linked to sustainable utilization and management of groundwater and above all the immediate environment. The karez system is one of the best available demonstration of human ingenuity and adaptability to situations and locations of water scarcity. Bidar, capital of erstwhile Bahmani sultanate with a history of more than 700 years or more is one of the heritage cities of present Karnataka State. The unique water systems of Bidar along with other historic entities have been listed under World Heritage Watch List by World Monument Fund. The Historical or cultural landscape in Bidar is very closely associated to the natural resources of the region, Karez systems being one of the best examples. The Karez systems were the lifeline of Bidar’s historical period providing potable water, fulfilling domestic and irrigation needs, both within and outside the fort enclosures. These systems are still functional, but under great pressure and threat of rapid and unplanned urbanisation. The change in land use and fragmentation of land are already paving way for irreversible modification of the karez cultural and geographic landscape. The Paper discusses the significance of character defining elements of Naubad Karez Landscape, highlights the importance of conserving cultural heritage and presents a geographical approach to its revival.

Keywords: Karez, groundwater, traditional water harvesting, cultural heritage landscape, urban planning

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Authors: Cynthia E. Nwobodo, A. E. Agwu

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The study was carried out in Benue State, Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 120 respondents from two agricultural zones in the State. Data was collected using interview schedule. Descriptive statistics was used in data analysis. Findings showed that youth farmers in the area had positive attitude to climate change adaptation and mitigation as shown by their response to a set of positive and negative statement including: the youth are very important stakeholders in climate change issues (M= 2.91), youths should be encouraged to be climate change conscious (2.90), everybody should be involved in planting trees not just the government (M= 2.89), I will be glad to participate in climate change seminars (M= 2.89) among others. Findings on information seeking behavior indicate that majority (80.8 %) of the respondents sought climate change information from radio at an average of 19.78 times per month, 53.3 % sought from friends and neighbours at an average of 12.55 times per month and 42.5 % sought from family members at an average of 12.55 times per month among others. It was recommended that Youth farmers should be made important stakeholders in climate change policies and programmes since they have a very positive attitude to climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Keywords: adaptation, mitigation, attitude, climate change, youth farmers

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Authors: Leili Nekounazar

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Since 2009, when the Green movement, Iran’s most significant political uprising in post-Islamic revolution materialized, the term 'soft war' has become an integral part of the Iranian regime’s lexicon when addressing the media propaganda waged by the west and the regime’s so-called 'enemies'. Iran’s authorities describe soft war as a western campaign aiming at undermining the revolutionary values by covert activities, deploying cultural tools and purposeful dissemination of information. With this respect, Internet and in particular, the social media networks, and oppositional radio-television broadcasts have been considered as the west’s soft war conduits. With the rising of the underground fashion industry in the past couple of years that does not conform to the compulsory dress codes prescribed by the state, the Islamic regime expands the soft war narrative to include any undesired fashion-related activities and frames the rising fashion industry as a cultural war intoxicating the Iranian-Islamic identity. Accordingly, fashion products created by the Iranian fashion intermediators have been attributed to the westerners and outsiders and are regarded as the matter of national security. This study examines the reactive and proactive measures deployed by the Iranian regime to control the rise of fashion industry. It further puts under the scrutiny how the state as a part of its proactive measure shapes the narrative of 'soft war' in relation to fashion in Iran and explores how the notion of soft war has been articulated in relation to the modeling and fashion in the state’s political rhetoric. Through conducting a content analysis of the authorities’ statements, it describes how the narrative of soft war assists the state policing the fashion industry.

Keywords: censorship, fashion, Iran, soft war

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Authors: Orly Redlich

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Since the establishment of the state of Israel, and as a result of various events that led to it, Jewish citizens and Arab citizens of the state have been in constant conflict, which finds its expression in most levels of life. Therefore, the attitude of one group member to the other group members is mostly tense, loaded, and saturated with mutual suspicion. Within this reality, in many higher education institutions in Israel, Jews and Arabs meet with each other intensively and for several years. For some students, this is their first opportunity for a meaningful cross-cultural encounter. These intercultural encounters, which allow positive interactions between members of different cultural groups, may contribute to the formation of "intercultural competence" which means long-term change in knowledge, attitudes, and behavior towards 'the other culture'. The current study examined the concept of the ‘other’ among Jewish and Arab students studying together and their "intercultural competence". The study also examined whether there is a difference in the perception of the ‘other’ between students studying in different academic programs, and between students taking academic courses on multiculturalism. This quantitative study was conducted among 274 Arab and Jewish students studying together, for bachelors or master's degree, in various academic programs at the Israel Academic College of Ramat-Gan. The background data of the participants are varied, in terms of religion, origin, religiosity, employment status, living area, and marital status. The main hypothesis is that academic, social, and intercultural encounters between Jewish and Arab students, who attend college together, will be a significant factor in building "intercultural competence". Additionally, the existence of "intercultural competence" has been linked to demographic characteristics of the students, as well as the nature of intercultural encounters between Jews and Arabs in a higher education institution. The dependent variables were measured by a self-report questionnaire, using the components of '"intercultural competence"' among students, which are: 1. Cognitive knowledge of the ‘others’, 2. Feelings towards the ‘others’, 3. Change in attitudes towards the 'others', and 4. Change in behavior towards the ‘others’. The findings indicate a higher "intercultural competence" among Arab students than Jews; it was also found higher level of "intercultural competence" among Educational Counseling students than the other respondents. The importance of this research lies in finding the means to develop "intercultural competence" among Jewish and Arab students, which may reduce prejudice and stereotypes towards the other culture and may even prevent occurrences of alienation and violence in cross-cultural encounters in Israel.

Keywords: cross-cultural learning, intercultural competence, Jewish and Arab students, multiculturalism

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Authors: A. Olusegun Egunjobi, Samson Sunday Adekunte

Abstract:

This study investigated the teachers’ and learners’ ICT-readiness assessment for agricultural science instruction in secondary schools in Ogun State, Nigeria. However, the sample population of 6 and 120 agricultural science teachers and learners were randomly selected respectively from 3 public and 3 private senior secondary schools in Ado-Odo/Ota Local Government Area of Ogun State, Nigeria. Descriptive survey design of ex post-facto type was adopted for the study. Two structured questionnaires tagged Teachers’ and Learners’ Questionnaires on ICT-Readiness for Agricultural Science Instruction TQICTRASI and LQICTRASI respectively were used for data collection. The two questionnaires were subjected to Cronbach alpha coefficient with the results 0.86 and 0.82 respectively. Five research hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Findings revealed that teachers in private senior secondary school (SSS) were more ready and prepared than their counterparts in public SSS with the result t-value = 4.25 greater than t-critical = 2.77, df = 4 at p<0.05. Also, learners in private SSS were more prepared and ready for the utilisation of ICT-facilities for agricultural science instruction with the result t-value = 3.51 greater than t-critical = 1.98, df = 118 at p<0.05. However, male and female learners in both private and public SSS were equally prepared and ready for the ICT-facilities utilisation for agricultural science instruction, thus, there were no significant differences in their ICT-readiness. Therefore, the study proffered that, both male and female teachers and learners should be more ICT-compliant and always ready to upgrade their skills and knowledge in ICT-facilities, utilisation for agricultural science instruction and even for other school subjects particularly in Ogun State and in generally in Nigeria.

Keywords: ICT-readiness, teachers’ and learners’ assessment, private and public senior secondary schools, agricultural science instruction

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Authors: Yasmeen Cheema, Parvinder Singh

Abstract:

The evolution of Islamic State (acronym IS) has an ultimate goal of restoring the caliphate. IS threat to the global security is main concern of international community but has also raised a factual concern for India about the regular radicalization of IS ideology among Indian youth. The incident of joining Arif Ejaz Majeed, an Indian as ‘jihadist’ in IS has set strident alarm in law & enforcement agencies. On 07.03.2017, many people were injured in an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blast on-board of Bhopal Ujjain Express. One perpetrator of this incident was killed in encounter with police. But, the biggest shock is that the conspiracy was pre-planned and the assailants who carried out the blast were influenced by the ideology perpetrated by the Islamic State. This is the first time name of IS has cropped up in a terror attack in India. It is a red indicator of violent presence of IS in India, which is spreading through social media. The IS have the capacity to influence the younger Muslim generation in India through its brutal and aggressive propaganda videos, social media apps and hatred speeches. It is a well known fact that India is on the radar of IS, as well on its ‘Caliphate Map’. IS uses Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms constantly. Islamic State has used enticing videos, graphics, and articles on social media and try to influence persons from India & globally that their jihad is worthy. According to arrested perpetrator of IS in different cases in India, the most of Indian youths are victims to the daydreams which are fondly shown by IS. The dreams that the Muslim empire as it was before 1920 can come back with all its power and also that the Caliph and its caliphate can be re-established are shown by the IS. Indian Muslim Youth gets attracted towards these euphemistic ideologies. Islamic State has used social media for disseminating its poisonous ideology, recruitment, operational activities and for future direction of attacks. IS through social media inspired its recruits & lone wolfs to continue to rely on local networks to identify targets and access weaponry and explosives. Recently, a pro-IS media group on its Telegram platform shows Taj Mahal as the target and suggested mode of attack as a Vehicle Born Improvised Explosive Attack (VBIED). Islamic State definitely has the potential to destroy the Indian national security & peace, if timely steps are not taken. No doubt, IS has used social media as a critical mechanism for recruitment, planning and executing of terror attacks. This paper will therefore examine the specific characteristics of social media that have made it such a successful weapon for Islamic State. The rise of IS in India should be viewed as a national crisis and handled at the central level with efficient use of modern technology.

Keywords: ideology, India, Islamic State, national security, recruitment, social media, terror attack

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