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Recent advances in non-volatile main memory (NVM) technology have spurred research on algorithms that are resilient to intermittent failures that cause processes to crash and subsequently restart. In this paper we present a Recoverable Mutual Exclusion (RME) algorithm that supports abortability. Our algorithm guarantees FCFS and a strong liveness property: processes do not starve even in runs consisting of infinitely many crashes, provided that a process crashes at most a finite number of times in each of its attempts. On DSM and Relaxed-CC multiprocessors, a process incurs O (min (k , log n)) RMRs in a passage and O (f + min (k , log n)) RMRs in an attempt, where n is the number of processes that the algorithm is designed for, k is the point contention of the passage or the attempt, and f is the number of times that p crashes during the attempt. On a Strict CC multiprocessor, the passage and attempt complexities are O(n) and O (f + n) , respectively. Our algorithm uses only the read, write, and CAS operations, which are commonly supported by multiprocessors. Attiya, Hendler, and Woelfel proved that, with any mutual exclusion algorithm, a process incurs at least Ω (log n) RMRs in a passage, if the algorithm uses only the read, write, and CAS operations (in: Proc. of the Fortieth ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, New York, NY, USA, 2008). This lower bound implies that the worst-case RMR complexity of our algorithm is optimal for the DSM and Relaxed CC multiprocessors. This paper is an expanded version of our conference paper as reported by Jayanti and Joshi (in: Atig and Schwarzmann (eds) Networked Systems. Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2019), which presented the first Recoverable Mutual Exclusion (RME) algorithm that supports abortability. This algorithm from our conference paper (in: Atig and Schwarzmann (eds) Networked Systems. Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2019) admits starvation when there are infinitely many aborts in a run. In this paper, we fix this shortcoming and prove the algorithm's properties by identifying an inductive invariant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science, Museums and Collecting the Indigenous Dead in Colonial Australia: By Paul Turnbull. The book's structure is chronological but has a focus on what Turnbull calls "the long nineteenth century" (14) when the collection of Indigenous remains was guided by often changing theoretical and intellectual interests. According to Turnbull, these activities resulted in the remains of approximately 6,000 Indigenous Australians being collected and sent to scientific institutions, first overseas and then to domestic museums. [Extracted from the article]

More than a decade of multi-actor conflict in Syria has resulted in a complex patchwork of legal identity documentation issued by state and non-state actors. This paper considers the legal identity practices pursued by the Kurdish-led Self Administration governing large swathes of territory in the north of the country. Specifically, the paper studies the forms of identity documentation the Self Administration does and does not provide to people present under its control. Beyond this, the paper focuses on how this system coexists with that of the central state, reflective of the Self Administration's broader approach of compromise combined with competition, to operate as a de facto authority respecting the overall sovereignty, yet challenging specific policies, of the central state. Against the backdrop of somewhat contradictory accusations of collaborating with the Syrian government and simultaneously seeking independence from it, the Self Administration has refrained from mimicking the state while expanding its own de facto 'jurisdictional subjecthood'. Practices of legal identity consequently help to elucidate necessary nuance in understanding the relations between the Self Administration and the government in Damascus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we obtain the exact controllability for a refined stochastic wave equation with three controls by establishing a novel Carleman estimate for a backward hyperbolic-like operator. Compared with the known result [Q. L\"u and X Zhang, Mathematical Control Theory for Stochastic Partial Differential Equations, Springer, Cham, Switzerland, 2021], the novelty of this paper is twofold: (1) Our model contains the effects in the drift terms when we put controls directly in the diffusion terms, which is more sensible for practical applications; (2) We provide an explicit description of the waiting time which is sharp in the case of dimension one and is independent of the coefficents of lower terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The clinical learning environment (CLE) plays a crucial role in shaping the learning experiences and professional development of medical professionals. Understanding and optimising this environment is essential for improving doctors' knowledge acquisition, clinical skills, and overall well-being. The development of the Postgraduate Hospital Educational Environment Measure (PHEEM) and its translation to numerous languages has been a milestone in clinical education. Even though PHEEM was recently translated into Arabic, its psychometric properties in this form remain unevaluated. Therefore, this study aims to conduct a comprehensive psychometric analysis of the Arabic version of the PHEEM questionnaire. Methods: This is a cross-sectional questionnaire survey validation study. The defined population were medical residents in Damascus, Syria. A paper-based survey as well as an online-based one were conducted using several non-probability sampling methods namely, convenience, river and, snowball sampling between June 15, 2023, and June 21, 2023. Both exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory (CFA) factor analyses were conducted. Several psychometric criteria were applied including scree plot, eigenvalue > 1.5 and the 'proportion of variance accounted for' criterion. Results: A total of 543 participants completed the questionnaire (56.9% female). Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure for sample adequacy was high (0.937) and the P-value for Bartlett's test was < 0.001. EFA revealed five meaningful factors which were labelled: perception of teachers, learner's engagement and social participation, external regulation, work culture, and living conditions. These factors had the following eigenvalues: 12.6, 2.18, 2.03, 1.86, and 1.41 respectively, with a total explained variance of 43.45%. Cronbach's Alpha was 0.938. CFA confirmed the model structure of EFA (SRMR = 0.067 and RMSEA = 0.066). The Average Variance Explained (AVE) value of any given factor was > 0.7. Discussion: The Arabic PHEEM inventory demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties. The extracted domains are of theoretical relevance to the psychosocial-material conceptual framework for learning environment. Nonetheless, this validation was performed in the Syrian context; therefore, future studies in other Arabic countries are recommended to support the applicability of Arabic PHEEM in the wide Arab World. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, computing on encrypted data seems to be more practical than a few years ago, thanks to the emergence of new Homomorphic Encryption schemes. In this paper, an algorithm based on Homomorphic Encryption for Arithmetic of Approximate Numbers (Cheon et al., in: Takagi, Peyrin (eds) Advances in cryptology—ASIACRYPT 2017, Springer, Cham, pp 409–437, 2017) (HEAAN, or also CKKS) scheme, that is able to perform a secure k-means algorithm which processes encrypted data, has been studied and presented. The performance of the classifier running on encrypted data has been evaluated using a standard k-means algorithm that works on plain data as a supervised structure, since the results are obtained by approximated computations. The main point of this paper is to take existent theoretical techniques (for example approximations of sgn (x) ), to use them and to observe if they are valid in practical applications. The output of the algorithm is a set of k encrypted masks that can be applied to the original dataset in order to obtain different clusters. The setting is a standard client–server one. The workload is heavily server-centric, as the client only has to execute a light masking algorithm at the end of each iteration, which, excluding the decryption, is faster than a plain k-means iteration; the main disadvantage concerns the accuracy of the results. Experiments show that the algorithm can be executed fairly quickly: the execution time of the training phase is on the order of seconds, while classification is on the order of tenths of a second. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a variationist analysis of patterns of speech accommodation by 40 Arabic-speaking children and adolescents (aged 3–17) experiencing dialect contact in a Bedouin speech community near Damascus, Syria. It examines participants' use of the phonological variables (θ), (ð), and (q), and the morphophonological feminine suffix (-a) in recorded sociolinguistic interviews and play sessions with two female fieldworkers, a local and an urban speaker, in order to investigate accommodation patterns across different interlocutors. Accommodation patterns were influenced by age, gender, and the linguistic variable under examination. Convergence to the urban interviewer was most evident in the realization of (q), whereas little convergence, and indeed variation, occurred in the realization of (-a), and more convergence occurred in the speech of girls and speakers younger than 15. Divergence and maintenance emerged in the speech of 15–17-year-old male speakers. These patterns are analysed in light of Accommodation Communication Theory and issues of identity and linguistic prestige in Arabic. Accommodative behaviour in the speech of participants exhibits their awareness of the social value of the phonological variables under investigation and demonstrates a high level of sociolinguistic awareness and competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The excavations carried out in the South domed hall of the Friday Mosque of Isfahan brought to light several features of this structure's building stage. Three pits were retrieved in the centre of the hall, which once was occupied by the pillars of the grid of the 'Abbasid mosque's hypostyle in 9th century. These were identified as probable foundation pits for the building of a domed space arranged as that of the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus during the Saljuq period. This possible connection was analysed from different perspectives using different data (archaeological, epigraphical, art, and historical data) and provide different conclusions. A comparison between the archaeological data and the epigraphical record may highlight the possible liaison between the two buildings. This paper discusses some results of the 1970s excavations to prove how unlikely a layout such as Damascus could ever be adopted in Isfahan. Nevertheless, proven by the epigraphical record, the presence of the pits discovered by the IsMEO mission and the interest shown by Malik Shah for Syria plead for a connection between the two mosques. Such connection could highlight the role the Damascene prototype could play in conceiving the pavilion the vizir Nizam al-Mulk in Isfahan demanded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a new lattice-based password-authenticated key exchange protocol (PAKE) is proposed for the post-quantum era. The constructed Saber.PAKE is designed as a PAKE version of Saber (D'Anvers, in: International conference on cryptology in Africa, Springer, Cham, 2018), one of the finalist key encapsulation mechanisms of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's post-quantum secure standardization process. It is designed as a three-pass protocol and follows an explicit authentication approach. The hardness assumption is based on the module learning with rounding (MLWR) problem. To obtain post-quantum secure lattice-based PAKE, the password-authenticated key exchange (PAK) (MacKenzie, in: a P1363. submission to the IEEE P1363 Working Group, 2002) design idea is adapted to MLWR. To the best of our knowledge, Saber.PAKE is the first PAKE protocol based on (ring/module) learning with rounding ((R/M)LWR) problems. By considering the reconciliation bounds, the correctness analysis of Saber.PAKE is presented. The robustness against dictionary and common attacks are examined in the random oracle model. The proposed PAKE also provides perfect forward secrecy and mutual authentication. The experimental results show that it has the relatively smallest CPU cycles, message size, and runtime than the other lattice-based PAKE protocols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most scholars believe that Hadrian's city of Aelia Capitolina was unwalled, with free-standing gates marking the main entrances on the north, west, east, and south sides: on the north at the site of the modern Damascus Gate; on the east near the modern Lion's Gate; on the south at the end of the eastern cardo; and on the west near the modern Jaffa Gate. The legionary camp probably occupied all or part of the southwestern hill, while the civilian settlement was located to its north and east. In this paper, we argue that archaeological and epigraphic evidence as well as topographic considerations support an earlier suggestion that Hadrian's city of Aelia Capitolina was walled; specifically, the line of the Third Wall was rebuilt to serve as the north wall of Aelia Capitolina, and incorporated a monumental, Hadrianic arched gateway that preceded the erection of the circuit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Mobile Communication and Internet Systems (MCIS) have rapidly developed, security issues related to MCIS have become increasingly important. Therefore, the development and research of security technologies for mobile communication and internet systems are actively being conducted. Hash-Based Signature (HBS) uses a hash function to construct a digital signature scheme, where its security is guaranteed by the collision resistance of the hash function used. To provide sufficient security in the post-quantum environment, the length of hash should be satisfied for the security requirement. Modern HBS can be classified into stateful and stateless schemes. Two representative stateful and stateless HBS are eXtended Merkle Signature Scheme(XMSS) and SPHINCS + , respectively. In this paper, we propose two HBS schemes: K-XMSS and K-SPHINCS + , which replace internal hash functions of XMSS and SPHINCS + with Korean cryptography algorithms. K-XMSS is a stateful signature, while K-SPHINCS + is its stateless counterpart. We showcase the reference implementation of K-XMSS and K-SPHINCS + employing Lightweight Secure Hash (LSH) and two hash functions based on block ciphers (i.e., CHAM and LEA) as the internal hash function. In addition, K-XMSS and K-SPHINCS + using Advanced Vector Extensions 2 (AVX2) have been provided, demonstrating that they can be optimized for better performance using advanced implementation techniques than previous approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to QBism, quantum states, unitary evolutions, and measurement operators are all understood as personal judgments of the agent using the formalism. Meanwhile, quantum measurement outcomes are understood as the personal experiences of the same agent. Wigner's conundrum of the friend, in which two agents ostensibly have different accounts of whether or not there is a measurement outcome, thus poses no paradox for QBism. Indeed the resolution of Wigner's original thought experiment was central to the development of QBist thinking. The focus of this paper concerns two very instructive modifications to Wigner's puzzle: One, a recent no-go theorem by Frauchiger and Renner (Nat Commun 9:3711, 2018), and the other a thought experiment by Baumann and Brukner (Quantum, Probability, Logic: The Work and Influence of Itamar Pitowsky, Springer, Cham, 2020). We show that the paradoxical features emphasized in these works disappear once both friend and Wigner are understood as agents on an equal footing with regard to their individual uses of quantum theory. Wigner's action on his friend then becomes, from the friend's perspective, an action the friend takes on Wigner. Our analysis rests on a kind of quantum Copernican principle: When two agents take actions on each other, each agent has a dual role as a physical system for the other agent. No user of quantum theory is more privileged than any other. In contrast to the sentiment of Wigner's original paper, neither agent should be considered as in "suspended animation." In this light, QBism brings an entirely new perspective to understanding Wigner's friend thought experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about the Cham migration to Malaysia. The Cham people are descendants of Champa, which existed along the central coast of Vietnam between the second and nineteenth centuries. The Muslim Cham came to Malaysia as refugees from mainland Southeast Asia after the establishment of the communist regimes in Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970s. This paper is one of the outcomes of a nine‐month study among the Cham that initially looked for stories of a hypothetical community called the 'Zomia of the sea'. However, the research findings instead indicated that the Cham were especially selected by the Malaysian authorities and brought into that country for some political purpose. The paper discusses the political reasons behind the acceptance of the Cham people by the Malaysian nation as Melayu‐Champa and examines the process of the Cham refugees' integration into the Malay community. It concludes that the Cham refugees were able to rearticulate who they were by reinterpreting their lost polity of Champa as forming part of an ancient Malay civilization. This was made possible by their being included in the state discourse of the greater Malay world and Malay superiority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Polyak–Łojasiewicz inequality (PŁI) in R d is a natural condition for proving convergence of gradient descent algorithms (Karimi et al. in: Frasconi et al. (eds) Machine learning and knowledge discovery in databases, Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 795–811, 2016). In the present paper, we study an analogue of PŁI on the space of probability measures P (R d) and show that it is a natural condition for showing exponential convergence of a class of birth-death processes related to certain mean-field optimization problems. We verify PŁI for a broad class of such problems for energy functions regularised by the KL-divergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A quantum computer capable of running the Grover search algorithm, which reduces the complexity of brute-force attacks by a square root, has the potential to undermine the security strength of symmetric-key cryptography and hash functions. Recently, studies on quantum approaches have proposed analyzing potential quantum attacks using the Grover search algorithm in conjunction with optimized quantum circuit implementations for symmetric-key cryptography and hash functions. Analyzing quantum attacks on a cipher (i.e., quantum cryptanalysis) and estimating the necessary quantum resources are related to evaluating post-quantum security for the target cryptography algorithms. In this paper, we revisit quantum implementations of CHAM block cipher, an ultra lightweight cipher, with a focus on optimizing the linear operations in its key schedule. We optimized the linear equations of CHAM as matrices by applying novel optimized decomposition techniques. Using the improved CHAM quantum circuits, we estimate the cost of Grover's key search and evaluate the post-quantum security strength with further reduced costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beamforming results depend on the spatial resolution of the microphone array used, which may lead to sources close to each other being considered as one. Deconvolution methods that consider all directions simultaneously, such as DAMAS, produce better results in these situations. However, they have a high computational cost, often lack sufficient speed to be used in real-time applications, and have limited accuracy at lower frequencies. This paper introduces a hybrid method to perform deconvolution using a neural network that can improve the speed of deconvolution on high-resolution grids by more than 2 orders of magnitude, while also generating sparser maps without sacrificing accuracy compared to the compressed DAMAS method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the editors of I Urban Informatics and Future Cities i , "smart cities" is an outdated discussion given that most cities are now "smart" to an extent. Overall, the chapters explore new planning support systems, analysis techniques, and games, with many of the papers involving the use of big data and, of course, "smartness" evident here and there. [Extracted from the article]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to gauge the health-care services from a patient's perspective in five private hospitals in the Syrian capital Damascus. Design/methodology/approach: The five dimensions-SERVQUAL model (tangibility, empathy, assurance, reliability and responsiveness) was implemented to measure the gap between patient's perception and expectation in health-care service quality. Findings: The SERVQUAL tool proved to be reliable and valid in assessing service quality in Syrian health-care setting. The assessment of the service quality from a patient's perspective shows that all SERVQUAL dimensions were negative except for tangible element that scored (+0.57) gap. Based on patient's expectation, empathy scored the highest score with (4.37), followed by responsiveness (4.17), reliability (3.90), tangibility (3.82) and assurance (3.45). The widest negative gaps among the 22 SERVQUAL items were related to listening skills of hospital staffs (−1.52) and for spending enough time with patient (−1.81). This study indicated that tangible dimension plays a significant role in balancing the deficiency in other service quality dimensions. In addition, communication skills of medical and paramedical staff should be improved to ameliorate patient's perception about health-care services. Research limitations/implications: This study provides valuable insights into the patient's perception, but the feedback from hospital staffs (doctor, nurses) and hospital's senior managers also considered potential rich information sources. This survey is conducted in the capital, and future research should include replication of this study in the other 13 Syrian governorates before generalizing the findings of this research. Practical implications: Hospital administrator could use SERVQUAL model to improve their operational performance as well as to benchmark their behavior against other competitors in the health-care market in Damascus. This paper provides valuable information to policymakers and top hospital management to understand patient-centered care and to improve health-care system in Syria. Besides, this research provides a marketing insight to realize what patient expects and how she/he assesses the care service. Originality/value: To the author's knowledge, this is one of very few studies conducted to assess service quality in private health-care sector in Damascus. The main contribution of this study is providing the empirical evidence that the five dimensions-SERVQUAL scale proved to be reliable and valid instrument for measuring and analyzing health-care service quality in Syria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an extension to our work presented in Ben Slimane and Tagina (in: Nguyen, Pimenidis, Khan and Trawiński (eds) Computational collective intelligence, Springer, Cham, 2018). It deals with the the problem of partitioning the space in an even way between a number of autonomous mobile robots. In our previous work we proposed a distributed one-phased partitioning method where each robot constructs its corresponding Voronoi cell from the information received from its neighbors. We propose in what follows a two-phased partitioning approach, starting with a dispersion task, followed by the distributed Voronoi partitioning as for the one-phased method. For the dispersion phase, we propose a novel parametrized algorithm from which we seek to control the dispersion behavior of the robots. The individual actions of the agents are controlled by the belief–desire–intention model which endows them with the required know-how needed to operate deliberately and readjust the plans dynamically on the go. We show in this paper, through a series of experiments, the results of the dispersion method and the impact of its parameters on the generated maps. We also compare the results of the two partitioning methods to show the impact of the dispersion on the partitioning in terms of the actual performed steps towards convergence and the generated maps for both methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Mu’tah Lil-Buḥūth wad-Dirāsāt: Humanities & Social Sciences Series is the property of Mutah University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Background: A considerable number of medical students experience musculoskeletal pain (MSP) during their academic years. In this study, we seek to determine the prevalence of MSP, as well as its associated risk factors, among a sample of medical students at two major universities in Damascus, Syria. Methods: A cross‐sectional study was conducted in two universities, with a total of 2009 medical students participating in filling‐in the paper‐based questionnaire. A modified version of the Standardized Nordic Questionnaire was utilized in this study. Results: The questionnaire was completed by 2009 medical students. The majority were between the ages of 21 and 25 years old, female (53%), and in their clinical years (55%). 1081 (54%) of all students had at least one MSP site in the previous week, while 1654 (82%) had at least one MSP site in the last year. MSP in the previous week was strongly linked with a history of trauma (odds ratio [OR] 2.26, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.79–2.86, p = 0.001), as well as a family history of MSP (OR 1.40, 95% CI 1.12–1.76, p = 0.0029). MSP in the previous year was significantly associated with gender (OR 0.637, 95% CI 0.50–0.80, p = 0.0001), history of trauma (OR 4.59, 95% CI 2.93–7.17, p ≤ 0.001), and family history of MSP (OR 4.59, 95% CI 1.36–2.68, p = 0.0002). On multivariate analysis, factors associated with MSP in the previous week and last year were familial history of MSP (p = 0.0457) (p = 0.0024), respectively, and a history of trauma (p ≤ 0.001). Conclusion: MSP had a high prevalence among Syrian medical students, especially female students, those with history of trauma, and those with a family history of musculoskeletal disorders (MSD). This major health problem should be known to medical institutions, and awareness programs are required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The resurrection is the cornerstone of the Christian faith. The entire Christian edifice represented and erected by the Church rests on the resurrection, while the church head is the resurrected Jesus Christ. This detail makes all the difference between Christianity and the other world religions. Jesus' resurrection is presented throughout the New Testament, however in this paper we propose a particular look upon it, namely through the images used by the apostle Paul to describe the resurrection of Jesus Christ that changed his life. The apostle's way of thinking is clearly influenced by his encounter with the resurrected and glorified Jesus on the road to Damascus. For Paul, the resurrection is a transformation, a form of integrity that leads to the immortality of the redeemed and their glorification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rotational-XOR cryptanalysis is a very recent technique for ARX ciphers. In this paper, the probability propagation formula of RX-cryptanalysis in modular addition is extended, and the calculation of RX-difference probability for any rotation parameter (⁠|$0

Malicious users using quantum computers can employ quantum attacks on modern cryptography algorithms. Grover's search algorithm, a well-known quantum algorithm, can reduce the search complexity of O (2 n) to 2 n for symmetric key cryptography with an n-bit key. To apply the Grover search algorithm, the target encryption process must be implemented in a quantum circuit. In this paper, we present optimized quantum circuits for Korean block ciphers based on ARX architectures. We adopt the optimal quantum adder and design it in parallel way. Compared to previous implementations, we provide performance improvements of 78%, 85%, and 70% in terms of circuit depth for LEA, HIGHT, and CHAM, respectively, while keeping the number of qubits and quantum gates minimum. The depth of a circuit is an important factor related to its execution time. Finally, we estimate the cost of the Grover key search for Korean block ciphers and evaluate the post-quantum security based on the criteria presented by NIST. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of SDU Journal of Social Sciences is the property of SDU Journal of Social Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In dimension n = 3 , there is a complete theory of weak solutions of Ricci flow—the singular Ricci flows introduced by Kleiner and Lott (Acta Math 219(1):65–134, 2017, in: Chen, Lu, Lu, Zhang (eds) Geometric analysis. Progress in mathematics, vol 333. Birkhäuser, Cham, 2018)—which Bamler and Kleiner (Uniqueness and stability of Ricci flow through singularities, arXiv:1709.04122v1, 2017) proved are unique across singularities. In this paper, we show that uniqueness should not be expected to hold for Ricci flow weak solutions in dimensions n ≥ 5 . Specifically, for any integers p 1 , p 2 ≥ 2 with p 1 + p 2 ≤ 8 , and any K ∈ N , we construct a complete shrinking soliton metric g K on S p 1 × R p 2 + 1 whose forward evolution g K (t) by Ricci flow starting at t = - 1 forms a singularity at time t = 0 . As t ↗ 0 , the metric g K (t) converges to a conical metric on S p 1 × S p 2 × (0 , ∞) . Moreover there exist at least K distinct, non-isometric, forward continuations by Ricci flow expanding solitons on S p 1 × R p 2 + 1 , and also at least K non-isometric, forward continuations expanding solitons on R p 1 + 1 × S p 2 . In short, there exist smooth complete initial metrics for Ricci flow whose forward evolutions after a first singularity forms are not unique, and whose topology may change at the singularity for some solutions but not for others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ibn al-Shāṭir's (1306–1375/1376 AD) star table in his Jadīd zīj, comprising of the equatorial coordinates and magnitudes of 89 stars, is edited and analyzed in this paper on the basis of the extant manuscripts going back to the late 14th and early 15th centuries. It established a new tradition of arranging the celestial coordinates in the star tables in Egypt and Syria after him. The right ascensions (mean absolute error MAE = 20.0′, mean error μ = –2.8′, standard deviation σ = 29.1′) and the declinations (MAE = 21.1′, μ = –3.2′, σ = 29.3′) are nearly of the same degree of precision. The stars in the region RA ~ 120°–180° generally have the least errors in both declination and right ascension. The declinations of the southern stars were measured more precisely than those of the northern ones. The values for the declinations of the stars in the region δ ~ –30°–0° (the middle of the sky towards the south of the horizon of Damascus) are significantly the most accurate. A systematic northward shift can be seen in the declinations of the southern stars. The declinations of 15 of 18 stars spreading out in RA ~ 67°–121° show a southerly, downward shift. More than 65% of the stars have the errors in both the declination and right ascension less than 32′. No outlier in the tabular coordinates exceeds ±98′. Also, Ibn al-Shāṭir measured the magnitudes of, at least, a few stars: he assigned a correct magnitude of +4 to λ Ori, a component of the star cluster in the Orion that was considered a nebulous object in the Almagest star catalogue, and presented more precise values for the magnitudes of α Sco, α Oph, β Cas, κ Ori, γ Gem, and β CMi than Ptolemy and al-Ṣūfi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While milk is the most consumed human drink, industrial food processes exist everywhere. It consumes a massive amount of hot water at moderate temperature levels, essential to generating the final product. The integration of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with solar thermal systems creates noticeable savings in fuel and electricity. Identifying the integration system employed can be solved using innovative engineering simulation tools like T*sol. And the maximum points and configuration can be adjusted to achieve the maximum solar yield. This paper compares the middle east and central Europe for a medium-size pasteurising plant with an average daily consumption of 20 kWh and an annual energy requirement of 7.3 MWh. The processed heating system is supported parallelly with a 25 kW boiler for two main cities, Damascus and Budapest, with different standard collector types, FPC, ETC, and CPC. It shows that for a small-medium-sized pasteurising plant with 20 kWh daily consumption, a solar system consists of 30 m2 and 20 m2 for Budapest and Damascus. With the performance of annual solar fraction 64% and 82%, and total system efficiency 14.9% and 17.2%, respectively. It shows the importance of having solar thermal technologies in the abovementioned regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider the nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLS) with a repulsive inverse power potential. First, we show some global well-posedness results and "blow-up or grow-up" results below the ground state without the potential. Then, we prove equivalence of the conditions on the initial data below the ground state without potential. Recently, we established the existence of a radial ground state and characterized it by the virial functional for NLS with a general potential in two or higher space dimensions obtained by Hamano and Ikeda ["Characterization of the ground state to the intercritical NLS with a linear potential by the virial functional," in Advances in Harmonic Analysis and Partial Differential Equations, Trends in Mathematics (Birkhäuser/Springer, Cham, 2020), pp. 279–307]. Then, we also prove a global well-posedness result and a "blow-up or grow-up" result below the radial ground state with a repulsive inverse power potential obtained by Hamano and Ikeda ["Characterization of the ground state to the intercritical NLS with a linear potential by the virial functional," in Advances in Harmonic Analysis and Partial Differential Equations, Trends in Mathematics (Birkhäuser/Springer, Cham, 2020), pp. 279–307]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Generalized Additive Game (GAG) (Cesari et al. in Int J Game Theory 46(4):919–939, 2017) is a Transferable Utility (TU) game (N, v), where each player in N is provided with an individual value, and the worth v(S) of a coalition S ⊆ N is obtained as the sum of the individual values of players in another subset M (S) ⊆ N . Based on conditions on the map M (which associates to each coalition S a set of beneficial players M (S) not necessarily included in S), in this paper we characterize classes of GAGs that satisfy properties like monotonicity, superadditivity, (total) balancedness, PMAS-admissibility and supermodularity, for all nonnegative vectors of individual values. We also illustrate the application of such conditions on M over particular GAGs studied in the literature (e.g., glove games (Shapley and Shubik in Int Econ Rev 10:337–362, 1969), generalized airport games (Norde et al. in Eur J Oper Res 136(3):635–654, 2002), fixed tree games (Bjørndal et al. in Math Methods Oper Res 59(2):249–270, 2004), link-connection games (Moretti in Multi-agent systems and agreement technologies, vol 10767. Springer, Cham, 2008; Nagamochi et al. in Math Oper Res 22(1):146–164, 1997), simple minimum cost spanning tree games (Norde et al. in Eur J Oper Res 154(1):84–97, 2004; Tijs et al. in Eur J Oper Res 175(1):121–134, 2006) and graph coloring games (Deng et al. in Math Program 87(3):441–452, 2000; Hamers et al. in Math Program 145(1–2):509–529, 2014)). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Functions defined by evaluation programs involving smooth elementals and absolute values as well as the max and min operators are piecewise smooth. They can be approximated by piecewise linear functions in abs-linear form. Using this second-order approximation, in [Optim. Methods Softw., 31 (2016), pp. 904–930] we derived local first- and second-order minimality conditions for the underlying piecewise smooth functions. They are necessary and sufficient, respectively. These generalizations of the classical KKT and sufficient second-order theory assumed that the given abslinear approximation satisfies the linear independence kink qualification (LIKQ). In this paper we relax LIKQ to the Mangasarian–Fromovitz kink qualification (MFKQ) and develop constructive conditions for several local convexity concepts. These are the existence of a supporting hyperplane at a given point for the function itself (SUP), the same for its local piecewise linearization (FOS), and the convexity of its local piecewise linearization on a neighborhood (FOC). As a consequence we show that first-order convexity in the sense of (FOC) is always required by subdifferential regularity (REG) as defined in Rockafellar and Wets [Variational Analysis, Springer, Cham, 1998], and is even equivalent to it under MFKQ. Whereas it was observed by Griewank and Walther that testing for local minimality (MIN) is polynomial under LIKQ, in this paper we show that, even under this strong linear independence kink qualification, testing for FOC and thus REG is co-NP-complete. We conjecture that this is also true for testing MFKQ itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During five centuries (6th to 11th C.E.), the advancement of science in the Muslim world displayed Muslim civilization as the scientific Mecca. This era saw many other civilizations learning science from Muslims seen as exemplary in modernizing life and sharing guidance for moral conduct. This was accomplished by embedding norms and inventions and as a result of factors such as royal patronage and personal sacrifice. This paper seeks to reclaim historical data through reflection and contextualization. Analysis of relevant past contexts paves a path leading from romanticism and antiquanism into the contemporary world. Secondary resources, such as historical books and journals, reveal how science in Islam was developed and nurtured through patronage, institutional establishment, networking, and other factors, leading to valuable inventions. The Islamic Golden Era of science flourished because Muslims scientists had an ethos motivating them toward discoveries. Key innovating scientists made cities such as Nishapur, Alexandria, Jundishapur, and Damascus become preeminent in scientific invention. This brought rapid development to Muslim life, as well as to the surrounding nations, extending to Greece and India and China. This paper argues that Muslim scientists of today's world can benefit from the perspective that the Qur'an and hadiths are essential sources of general principles for conducting scientific and technological research. Both are key spirits for encouraging Muslim scientists to conduct rigorous studies. [ Selama 5 abad pertama, 6-11 Masehi, kemajuan ilmu pengetahuan di dunia muslim terwujud pada peradaban muslim di Mekkah. Era ini menunjukkan pelbagai peradaban lain belajar kepada muslim sebagai model kehidupan modern dan petunjuk kehidupan moral. Hal ini teruji oleh norma-norma dan penemuan-penemuan serta hasil akibat dari loyalitas dan keikhlasan. Artikel ini mencoba mengklaim ulang bukti historis melalui refleksi dan kontekstualisasi. Analisa konteks masa lalu yang tepat menghindari dari kecenderungan romantisme dan kekunoan dari pada dunia kontemporer. Sumber sekunder seperti buku dan jurnal, membuktikan bagaimana pengetahuan dalam Islam berkembang dan tumbuh melalui patronase, institusionalisasi, jejaring dan faktor lainnya yang mendukung penemuan baru. Keemasan ilmu masa Islam menjamur karena ilmuwan muslim mempunyai etos yang tinggi pada penjelajahan pengetahuan. Kunci inovasi para ilmuwan telah membuat kota-kota seperti Nishapur, Alexandria, Jundishapur dan Damaskus berkembang menjadi pusat pengetahuan. Perkembangan pesat kehidupan muslim ini akhirnya menyebar ke Yunani, India dan China. Artikel ini menunjukkan bahwa ilmuwan muslim saat ini dapat mengambil manfaat dari perspektif Qur'an dan hadits sebagai sumber utama dalam prinsip-prinsip penelitian ilmiah dan teknologi. Keduanya juga, Qur'an dan hadits, menjadi kunci semangat bagi ilmuwan muslim dalam kajian yang lebih maju.]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traceability of the supply chain with strict compliance with the specification to demonstrate in "transparency" the production processes in compliance with legislation and from a corporate social responsibility perspective, represents a fundamental requirement at the basis of competitive advantage in the food industries (Patelli and Mandrioli, J Food Sci 85: 3670–3678, 2020). The purpose of this work is to illustrate the innovative method for the certification and protection of the production phases of the DOP food chain and specifically the Mozzarella DOP of Gioia del Colle produced by the company Capurso Azienda Casearia Srl. This innovative approach consists of several phases that will be described in detail in the following paper. Besides, the idea of the introduction of Blockchain technology in an industry like this is an important step. This technology, associated with more accurate and intelligent management of the data acquisition process (Big data approach), optimizes the productivity of small businesses such as the dairy company. Blockchain technology guarantees security in the management of large amounts of data as never before possible, an innovative and experimental approach that makes the entire path of the production chain more controlled and optimized (Giacalone et al. International workshop on fuzzy logic and applications. Springer, Cham, pp. 218–225, 2016). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annual Review of the Faculty of Philosophy / Godisnjak Filozofskog Fakulteta is the property of Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Islamic material culture is often either discussed in terms of its typology or its technological characteristics, as defined by scientific analysis, sometimes leading to its provenance. Here these aspects will be discussed in terms of their contrasting social, political and ritual contexts along the Eurasian Silk Roads. The concept of the terrestrial and maritime "Silk Roads" as routes of interaction is considered in terms of its definitions and indeed whether it is a useful term to use. The political context in which production occurred is considered, especially during the Abbasid caliphate, when the political centre shifted from Damascus to Baghdad. This shift in the centre of power is discussed in terms of the way it affected the growth and mass production of ceramics and glass during the golden age of Islam. The use of scientific analysis to investigate glass feeds into this discussion by providing evidence for increasingly more precise provenances and for trade, recycling and for production of different decorative vessel types in specific cosmopolitan hubs and therefore specialization. Moreover, evidence for a decentralized production model for glass and ceramics is discussed. Although the emphasis here is on glass in western Asia, the paper considers Islamic ceramics and glass in eastern Asia, especially during the Tang Dynasty. The social provenance of "exotic" material culture is tied to trade, exchange and gift giving and, in turn, to the acculturation of foreign populations in China, including Arabs and Sogdians. All these activities and factors, and the use of scientific analysis feed into the social, ritual, and economic values of material culture that occurs along the Silk Roads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Al-Frahids Arts is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

While we can identify patterns from large pools of data, made possible by big data and digital technologies, using quantitative methods in this way only tells us the outcome (i.e. the most common routes people take) but not the I why i . Urban informatics and future cities: edited by S. C. M. Geertman, Christopher Pettit, Robert Goodspeed and Aija Staffans, Cham, Springer, 2021, 632 pp., GBP 159.50 (e-book). Overall, the chapters explore new planning support systems, analysis techniques, and games, with many of the papers involving the use of big data and, of course, "smartness" evident here and there. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos. Sección Árabe-Islam is the property of Miscelanea de Estudios Arabes y Hebraicos-Seccion Arabe e Islam and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Anderson and Csima (Notre Dame J Form Log 55:245–264, 2014) defined a bounded jump operator for bounded-Turing reduction, and studied its basic properties. Anderson et al. (Arch Math Logic 56:507–521, 2017) constructed a low bounded-high set and conjectured that such sets cannot be computably enumerable (c.e. for short). Ng and Yu (Notre Dame J Form Log, to appear) proved that bounded-high c.e. sets are Turing complete, thus answered the conjecture positively. Wu and Wu (Lecture notes in computer science, vol 11436, 647–658. Springer, Cham, 2019) showed that bounded-low sets can be superhigh by constructing a Turing complete bounded-low c.e. set. In this paper, we continue the study of the comparison between the bounded-jump and Turing jump. We show that low c.e. sets are not all bounded-low and that incomplete superhigh c.e. sets can be bounded-low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Syria has been facing a dreadful crisis for the past 11 years, which has had a significant toll on the healthcare system of the country, and its ability to adequately manage acute injuries. In this research, we study the epidemiology and outcomes of burn patients admitted to the burn center of Al-Mouwasat Hospital in Damascus, Syria. A retrospective cohort research was conducted from January 2017 to December 2021. All accessible paper-based medical records of burn injury patients admitted to the hospital were evaluated. ABSI score was used to classify injury degrees. Chi-square test and logistic regression model were used to study the association between demographic variables and outcomes. Of the 641 patients, 367 (57.3%) were males and 274 (42.7%) were females. Children represented more than half of our sample 377 (58.8%). The most common cause of burns was flame 393 (61.3%), followed by scalding 199 (31.0%). Most of the patients had a more than 10% TBSA of burns 511 (79.7%). 209 (32.6%) patients had a moderate ABSI score, followed by moderately severe in 149 (23.2%) patients. Children, patients who had high ABSI scores, and those who needed respiratory support were more likely to die than others 2.545 (1.079-6.004), 9.208 (4.061-20.879), respectively. Death was the outcome of third of the hospitalized patients. Furthermore, Children made up more than half of the sample, and had the highest rates of leaving the hospital against medical advice. These results underline the importance of an updated nationally uniformed protocol for the management of burn patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acute poisoning is a significant international public health issue and one of the leading causes of death in the emergency department (ED). In the absence of any previous reports describing the poisoning profile in Syria, we present this study to assess the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of poisoning over 21 years. We collected the data retrospectively from the Syrian Poisons Information Centre (SPIC) from January 1999 until December 2020. The data included patients who had accidental or non-accidental exposure to poisons, either by drugs, medicaments, and biological substances or substances chiefly nonmedicinal sources such as soaps and detergents, corrosive substances, pesticides, and other miscellaneous products. We collected the data of 120,972 poisoned patients, of whom 52.6% were females, and 47.4% were males. Aleppo governorate reported the highest number of poisoned cases (28.6%), followed by Damascus governorate (19.9%). The highest poisoning rates were recorded in 2020, 2014, and 2010. Pharmaceutical (37.0%) and animal (33.8%) sources were the most common causative agents. The oral route was the route of poisoning in 58.3% of patients, and 33.4% through the skin. The most common poison was scorpion stings 19.5% while the most common cause of death was organophosphates 15.7%. The differences in socioeconomic status, cultural habits, and agricultural and industrial activities between countries have led to a state of fluctuation regarding the most common poisoning agents. Damascus and Aleppo, the two major governorates in Syria, had the highest poisoning cases. Oral administration of pharmaceutical agents was responsible for most of the poisoning cases. The most common individual poison was the scorpion poison, while the top killer was organophosphates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Grover search algorithm reduces the security level of symmetric key cryptography with n-bit security level to O (2 n / 2) . In order to evaluate the Grover search algorithm, the target block cipher should be efficiently implemented in quantum circuits. Recently, many research works evaluated required quantum resources of AES block ciphers by optimizing the expensive substitute layer. However, few works were devoted to the lightweight block ciphers, even though it is an active research area, nowadays. In this paper, we present optimized implementations of every Korean made lightweight block ciphers for quantum computers, which include HIGHT, CHAM, and LEA, and NSA made lightweight block ciphers, namely SPECK. Primitive operations for block ciphers, including addition, rotation, and exclusive-or, are finely optimized to achieve the optimal quantum circuit, in terms of qubits, Toffoli gate, CNOT gate, and X gate. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first implementation of ARX-based Korean lightweight block ciphers in quantum circuits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the process of transformation of a cultural quarter developed at al-Amin district inside the Old City of Damascus. In 2006, approximately 25–30 artists, moved to this historical neighbourhood and settled in its traditional houses, changing their function into studios/ateliers. One year later, the district was called "The Artists' Quarter" with the acknowledgment of local and international institutions. The presence of artists' studios and many cultural events in the area has contributed to the discovery of the rich architectural and cultural heritage of the neighbourhood and the development of a new sphere of public encounters. This quarter became a destination for tourists as well as for locals. Unfortunately, during the war in Syria, started in 2011, different negative changes have happened at al-Amin district. The study aims to (1) Highlight the origin and development of the quarter from the point of view of the artists and the dwellers; (2) Study the spatial and socio-economic effects caused by the "Artists' Quarter"; (3) Evaluate the changes in the traditional houses due to change of their function; (4) Investigate the actual situation due to the war. Information was collected mainly from interviews with several artists, with hotels' managers and shopkeepers in the quarter, in addition to literature review, consultation of maps and plans and on-site observation. Results of the study will help in understanding this model of urban development and try to set up recommendations for integrated development and heritage management of this neighbourhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]