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This thesis investigates the layered representations of women, their agency, and their class awareness in four leftist experimental novels from 1930s America: Langston Hughes' Not Without Laughter, Jack Conroy's The Disinherited, John Dos Passos' The Big Money, and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. It argues that the histories these novels engage, the forms they integrate, and the societal norms they explore enable their writers to offer a complex, distinct, sense of female representation and agency. All four novels present stereotyped or sentimentalised portrayals of women from the traces of early twentieth-century popular culture, a presentation which the novels' stories explore through nuanced, mobilised, or literally as well as figuratively politicised images of women. In order to investigate these representations, I read each novel within its associated cultural context. I also employ feminist and cultural historians' ideas about women's complex roles in 1930s America and earlier decades; cultural historians' arguments about the decade's documentary culture and its popular modes of expression; and literary historians' arguments about the blending of modernist form and leftist content in the decade's proletarian writings. The study contends that in their various and always changing representations of women these novels explore a spectrum of female agency within the sphere of proletarian politics and challenge the gendered conventions predominant in early twentieth century America.

Mobile banking, M-banking or MB is one of the latest mobile technological booms that allow people to have access to their bank accounts and perform transactions anytime and anywhere. Mobile banking allows bank customers to perform banking services via their portable devices or smart phones, such as: general inquiries, account management, payment of bills, find ATM locations, transferring money and other financial banking transactions. Therefore, such technology enhanced the customer satisfaction and banking services as well; banks have now developed from the traditional branch banking services to e-services, which gives banks’ customers more flexibility and convenience to perform transactions. Nevertheless, the adoption rate of mobile banking technology is not ideal. Despite the large amounts of effort and money being invested, the adoption of electronic banking services in Jordan is not in line with what was expected, and Jordanian banking customers are still slow to adopt these technologies. As it is in the early stages of development and implementation, mobile banking-related concerns and matters have yet to be examined empirically in the Jordanian context. In addition, there is a scarcity of literature addressing customer intention and usage of mobile banking apps by Jordanian banking customers.

The belief that the Quran is the literal word of God (Allah) in Arabic is fundamental to every Muslim. It is also a frightening notion that haunts many Quran translators. It often drives them to translate the Quran literally, in a way, thinking that this is the best way to maintain faithfulness to the sacred text, despite the fact that they are aware that the translation itself is not sacred. As a result, many of the Quran translations are stained by this excessive literalness to a degree that they are quoted and effectively used against Islam and Muslims. Consequently, this research project is concerned with developing a new methodology for undertaking Quran translation that brings together a variety of techniques to represent the Quran in a way that may be considered more communicative and favourably received by the target readers. First, two factors are introduced to guide the process of translation: the need to set a target - skopos - that shapes the output of the overall process, and the need to consult existing Quran exegesis for interpretation so as to limit, as far as possible, individual translator influence. The methodology used to translate the Quran is presented in a hybrid model whose ultimate aim is to convey the meaning of the source text (ST) as it is generated within its context - that is, not in terms of its surface semantics - and to provide a target text (TT) that serves native speakers of English, regardless of their faith backgrounds. 1 chose one chapter of the Quran - “Mary” - as a sample translation. A reception study that supplied positive feedback from the intended audience of this research confirmed the validity and reliability of the model. The research has also confirmed that the translation is more informative than the original text to its proposed target readership. The research is indeed prescriptive in that it seeks to propose a translation through a systematic and organised treatment of the very special text that is the original. The ultimate concern is that the language of the translated text be domesticated according to target language norms, at the same time leaving intact the distinct foreign elements located in the ST because their distinctiveness is crucial to its identity.

This thesis investigates the effect of monetary policy on financial stability and part of the real side of the Jordanian economy over the time period 1976-2009. It uses a number of empirical methodologies including: a Vector Autoregressive (VAR) to investigate the relationship between monetary policy and financial stability in Jordan; A Logit model and Markov switching model to study the currency crisis in Jordan; and an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) to estimate an investment function for the Jordanian economy. Findings of the VAR models confirmed the relationship between monetary policy and financial stability in Jordan. However, a number of indictors were found to have a significant effect on the currency crisis in Jordan. These indictors included the real exchange rate, money supply-reserves ratio, and growth rate of domestic credit. On the other hand, a stable long-run investment function exists. Real income and real credit were found to have a positive impact on real investment. However, the user cost of capital has had a negative impact on real investment.

Advances in semiconductor technology have been driven by the continuous demands of market forces for IC products with higher performance and greater functionality per unit area. To date industry has addressed these demands, principally, by scaling down device dimensions. However, several unintended consequences have undermined the benefits obtained from the advances in technology, firstly, the growing impact of process variations on interconnectivity delay, aggravated by the increase in the amount of interconnectivity as circuit complexity increases. Overall, the difficulty of establishing delay parameters in a circuit is adversely impacting on the attainment of the timing closure for a design. Secondly, the increase in the susceptibility of the circuits , even at ground level, to the effects of soft errors due to the reduction in supply voltages and nodal capacitances, together with the increase in the number of nodes in a circuit as the functionality per unit area increases. The aim of this research has been to model and analyse the reliability of logic circuits with regard to the impact of process variations and soft errors, and to finds ways to minimise these effects using different process technologies such as fully depleted silicon on insulator (FDSOI) and partially depleted silicon on insulator (PDSOI) technologies, together with the implementation of different circuit architectures. In view of the increased susceptibility of logic elements to the effects of process variations and soft errors as device geometries are reduced, a logic element which is not only widely used but also typical to asynchronous design is the Muller C-element, which can be realised in a number of different circuit configurations. The robustness of various C-element configurations implemented in different technologies with regard to the effects of process variations and soft errors was examined using the design of the experiment (DoE) and response surface (RSM) techniques. It was found that the circuits based on SOI technology were more robust compared with bulk silicon technology. On the other hand, from the circuit architecture perspective, the differential logic implementations of C-element were found to be more resilient to the effects of process variation and soft errors in comparison with the other C-element implementations investigated.

This study is concerned with explaining the reality underlying the dominance of a western accounting approach in Islamic states, and in particular, the case of Jordan. This study has been motivated by the fact that Muslim society has its own cultural and socio-economic values, which renders the economic and financial information needed to be different from the information needed by, for example, capitalist and secular societies. Considering the relevant literature, including that concerned with Islamic accounting and economy, the researcher found that: 1 A Muslim society does need its own accounting system that suits the ideology and values of Muslims and assists them to meet their religious obligations (Hameed, 2001). 2 Western accounting has been criticised by different scholars as being unsuitable and irrelevant for developing nations (Briston, 1978 and 1984; Hove, 1982 and 1986; Samuels and Oliga, 1982, Wallace, 1990) as it reflects the objectives and socio-economic environmental values of developed nations. Accordingly, the current researcher has attempted to gain a deeper understanding of and explanation for those factors or mechanisms that determined accounting policy in Jordan, through examining the current situation from a critical point of view, employing dependency theory and the neocolonialism concept as the research theoretical framework. This framework has been used to achieve two goals. Firstly, to examine its suitability and applicability to explain the research phenomenon, which in tum might contribute to clarifying this phenomenon by exposing the structures and mechanisms underlying the accounting policy in Jordan, and this is the second objective. Also, this study tried to explore the prospects for/barriers to changing the situation to inform future action research. This research employs a qualitative case study approach based on a critical realist methodology. The selected case studies consist of all institutions that influence accounting practices and regulations in Jordan either directly (JSC, CBJ, etc), or indirectly, such as the governmental institutions that influence the economic and financial policy of Jordan which in tum influences its accounting policy. After finishing the qualitative analysis process, using Nvivo 7 software, this study has concluded that: 1. Dependency/ neocolonialism (critical research) has offered much richer insights into, and a much better understanding of the phenomenon (the dominance of capitalist accounting in a developing Islamic country, and in particular the case of Jordan) rather than other possible explanations such as normative isomorphism and rational choice theory. 2. Accounting policy in Jordan has been determined in conformity with dependency and neocolonialist structures and mechanisms. In almost all cases, the external pressures, such as international aid, Jordan's relationship with imperialist countries, Jordan's integration into the global economy, etc, have been too great, and western influences have dominated accounting regulation and practice and in academia. 3. There was an enthusiasm among the greater part of the interviewees to modify the current accounting policy. On the other hand, this result has provided an initial contribution to the dependency theory/neocolonialism concept, which might contribute to the enhancement of the theoretical framework employed. This thesis concludes with some practical implications of this study, as well as recommendations for future research.

This study is about the legality of the doctrine of humanitarian intervention under both the United Nations Charter and contemporary international law. The main idea behind this doctrine is the protection of human rights and the prevention of human rights violations. This doctrine was mainly developed in the nineteenth century. It was invoked during the nineteenth century by the European states to justify their intervention in the Ottoman Empire in order to protect its Christian minorities. This doctrine as we will see was not clearly mentioned in the United Nations Charter nor in any other regional charters. In other words, the United Nations Charter itself refers to the protection and promotion of human rights in many articles such as articles 55 and 56. Therefore, the United Nations Charter neither prohibits nor justifies this sort of intervention as an exception to the general ban on the use of force. According to the United Nations Charter the use of force is acceptable only in two cases: enforcement measures of the Security Council according to articles 39, 41 and 42 and implementation of the right to individual or collective self-defence according to article 51. In addition to the principle of non-use of force which is included in article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter, the Charter itself contains other principles such as the principle of non-intervention, sovereignty and the recognition of human rights. There is always endless conflict among these principles. The principles of non-use of force, non-intervention and state sovereignty could be classified as one pole and the promotion and protection of human rights as another pole. The tension between these concepts should be resolved. To this end the main question which is to be discussed throughout this study would be whether one should recognise the doctrine of humanitarian intervention as another exception to the general ban on the use of force in order to put an end to serious human rights violation? Or should states respect the prohibition on the use of force and thus refrain from intervening in the affairs of other states? In other words, should the principles of non-use of force, non-intervention and state sovereignty prevail over the protection of human rights? Or should these principles be set aside for the purpose of protecting human rights? In order to answer these questions and others this study will be divided into seven chapters. Chapter 1, Introduction , the present chapter identifies the problem to be discussed throughout this study. Chapter 2, covers the development of human rights through since early times up to 1945 and the early international measures adopted in this regard. Chapter 3, deals with the general, special and regional human rights conventions. Chapter 4, highlights the impact of sovereignty, non-intervention and human rights considerations on the debate concerning humanitarian intervention Chapter 5, traces the historical development of humanitarian intervention. Chapter 6, examines collective humanitarian intervention after the Gulf War. Chapter 7, is summary and conclusion.

The objectives of this research were to reduce the risk of structural failure of short-span culverts and to initiate a comprehensive study that focuses on culvert inspection, durability, and risk assessment. Sixty (60) culverts (25 metal, 25 concrete, and 10 thermoplastic) in Ohio were inspected based on ODOT and the ORITE proposed rating systems. A multivariable regression analysis of the inspection data found that for the concrete culverts age and water pH were significant factors in both rating systems, while drainage flow abrasiveness was a significant factor in the ODOT system. For the concrete culverts, the ODOT system had a higher R 2value. The analysis of the metal culvert data found that the significant factors were age, rise, and culvert type. Drainage flow abrasiveness, pH, and flow velocity were also significant factors in the proposed rating system. The proposed rating system had a higher R 2value. Two artificial intelligence techniques, genetic algorithms and neural networks, were used to further improve the regression analysis results. Genetic algorithm didn't provide any improvement to the analysis. Neural networks significantly improved the regression analysis models by increasing the R 2value for all models. Finite element simulations, using CANDE-89, were conducted for thermoplastic pipe culverts. Poor installation conditions were simulated to encounter actual field cases. Results of the simulations showed that introducing live loads during the early stage of embankment construction affect the performance of the pipe. As the live load increases the soil pressures and pipe deflections increase. Using good backfill material with relatively high compaction improved the performance of the pipe. A simple yet comprehensive methodology was proposed for evaluating culvert risk assessment. This methodology was developed based on calculating the adjusted overall rating of each culvert for both the ODOT and ORITE proposed rating systems. Maintenance immediacy and inspection course of action proposed by NCHRP 251 (1982) was used for each adjusted overall rating.

Comparison between field and analytical results on the structural performance of deeply buried 42&60-inch diameter high density polyethylene pipes