scholarly journals COVID-19 Data Based on Wavelet Coherence Estimates for Selected Countries in the Eastern Mediterranean

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-51
Author(s):  
Asaad Ma. Babker ◽  
◽  
Vyacheslav Lyashenko ◽  

Background and Objective: The development of the COVID-19 pandemic makes it necessary to conduct various studies on this topic. One of the key questions is the study of the dynamics of the development of this disease. It is important to know for each country. At the same time, the study of the dynamics of the development of COVID-19 for countries in a particular region is relevant. The main objective of this study is to analyze the main indicators of the development of the COVID-19 epidemic for individual countries in the eastern Mediterranean.abbreviations if possible. Materials and Methods: We review statistics that characterize the total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19, total number of recovered, total number of deaths. This is cumulative data. These data are considered for each individual country from the selected region. Also summarized data for the selected region are considered. To analyze the data, we use estimates of the wavelet coherence values. Results: We obtained estimates of wavelet coherence values for countries such as: Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey and Cyprus. These estimates reflect the depth of the relationship between total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 and total number of recovered, between total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 and total number of deaths. This makes it possible to assess the degree of influence between the series of data that are being investigated. This allows us to draw conclusions about the development of the COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusions: The results are obtained that explain some aspects of the dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic in individual countries of the selected region

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 172-205
Author(s):  
Davide Tanasi

AbstractThe relationship between Sicily and the eastern Mediterranean – namely Aegean, Cyprus and the Levant – represents one of the most intriguing facets of the prehistory of the island. The frequent and periodical contact with foreign cultures were a trigger for a gradual process of socio-political evolution of the indigenous community. Such relationship, already in inception during the Neolithic and the Copper Age, grew into a cultural phenomenon ruled by complex dynamics and multiple variables that ranged from the Mid-3rd to the end of the 2nd millennium BCE. In over 1,500 years, a very large quantity of Aegean and Levantine type materials have been identified in Sicily alongside with example of unusual local material culture traditionally interpreted as resulting from external influence. To summarize all the evidence during such long period and critically address it in order to attempt historical reconstructions is a Herculean labor.Twenty years after Sebastiano Tusa embraced this challenge for the first time, this paper takes stock on two decades of new discoveries and research reassessing a vast amount of literature, mostly published in Italian and in regional journals, while also address the outcomes of new archaeometric studies. The in-depth survey offers a new perspective of general trends in this East-West relationship which conditioned the subsequent events of the Greek and Phoenician colonization of Sicily.


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 230-240
Author(s):  
Sara Salem

AbstractThis article is a review of Ilham Khuri-Makdisi’s bookThe Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Capitalism, 1860–1914. I argue that this book is a valuable contribution to historiographies of the Left in the Middle East, a field that remains under-represented given the importance of labour to the nationalist movements as well as broader worker-activism in the region throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I review the main debates of the book, and raise critical questions about aspects that could have been probed further, among them the questions of imperialism and race in contexts such as Egypt and Lebanon, and the relationship(s) between workers and the radical intellectuals discussed throughout the book.


2015 ◽  
Vol 117 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Maria Araceli Ruiz-Primo ◽  
Min Li

Background A long-standing premise in test design is that contextualizing test items makes them concrete, less demanding, and more conducive to determining whether students can apply or transfer their knowledge. Purpose We assert that despite decades of study and experience, much remains to be learned about how to construct effective and fair test items with contexts. Too little is known about how item contexts can be appropriately constructed and used, and even less about the relationship between context characteristics and student performance. The exploratory study presented in this paper seeks to contribute to knowledge about test design and construction by focusing on this gap. Research Design We address two key questions: (a) What are the characteristics of contexts used in the PISA science items? and (b) What are the relationships between different context characteristics and student performance? We propose a profiling approach to capture information about six context dimensions: type of context, context role, complexity, resources, level of abstraction, and connectivity. To test the approach empirically we sampled a total of 52 science items from PISA 2006 and 2009. We describe the context characteristics of the items at two levels (named layers): general (testlet context) and specific (item context). Conclusion We provide empirical evidence about the relationships of these characteristics with student performance as measured by the international percentage of correct responses. We found that the dimension of context resources (e.g., pictures, drawings, photographs) for general contexts and level of abstractness for specific contexts are associated with student performance.


2022 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Samera Esmeir

Modern state law is an expansive force that permeates life and politics. Law's histories—colonial, revolutionary, and postcolonial—tell of its constitutive centrality to the making of colonies and modern states. Its powers intertwine with life itself; they attempt to direct it, shape its most intimate spheres, decide on the constitutive line dividing public from private, and take over the space and time in which life unfolds. These powers settle in the present, eliminate past authorities, and dictate futures. Gendering and constitutive of sexual difference, law's powers endeavor to mold subjects and alter how they orient themselves to others and to the world. But these powers are neither coherent nor finite. They are ripe with contradictions and conflicting desires. They are also incapable of eliminating other authorities, paths, and horizons of living; these do not vanish but remain not only thinkable and articulable but also a resource for the living. Such are some of the overlapping and accumulative interventions of the two books under review: Sara Pursley's Familiar Futures and Judith Surkis's Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria. What follows is an attempt to further develop these interventions by thinking with some of the books’ underlying arguments. Familiar Futures is a history of Iraq, beginning with the British colonial-mandate period and concluding with the 1958 Revolution and its immediate aftermath. Sex, Law, and Sovereignty is a history of “French Algeria” that covers a century of French colonization from 1830 to 1930. The books converge on key questions concerning how modern law and the modern state—colonial and postcolonial—articulated sexual difference and governed social and intimate life, including through the rise of personal-status law as a separate domain of law constitutive of the conjugal family. Both books are consequently also preoccupied with the relationship between sex, gender, and sovereignty. And both contain resources for living along paths not charted by the modern state and its juridical apparatus.


Author(s):  
Paul Earlie

This book offers a detailed account of the importance of psychoanalysis in Derrida’s thought. Based on close readings of texts from the whole of his career, including less well-known and previously unpublished material, it sheds new light on the crucial role of psychoanalysis in shaping Derrida’s response to a number of key questions. These questions range from the psyche’s relationship to technology to the role of fiction and metaphor in scientific discourse, from the relationship between memory and the archive to the status of the political in deconstruction. Focusing on Freud but proposing new readings of texts by Lacan, Torok, and Abraham, Laplanche and Pontalis, amongst other seminal figures in contemporary French thought, the book argues that Derrida’s writings on psychoanalysis can also provide an important bridge between deconstruction and the recent materialist turn in the humanities. Challenging a still prevalent ‘textualist’ reading of Derrida’s work, it explores the ongoing contribution of deconstruction and psychoanalysis to pressing issues in critical thought today, from the localizing models of the neurosciences and the omnipresence of digital technology to the politics of affect in an age of terror.


Author(s):  
Devrim Şahin ◽  
Ahmet Sözen

The discovery of energy sources in the Eastern Mediterranean region, while providing opportunities, further complicates Turkey-Israeli relationship. If Israel and Turkey can cooperate on energy, they can revitalize their relationship to the extent when the military elites were strong in Turkey and the relationship between two countries was established with the hands of generals. The 2016 Israel-Turkey agreement, which ended years of tension, provides Israel and Turkey with the opportunity to cooperate in energy areas. This collaboration, in turn, could generate the eventual emergence of the new ruling elites that would fill the vacuum created by the decline of the military's role in Turkey. It was the crisis management experience of the US that made the agreement between two countries possible in June 2016. Yet, any normalization process between Israel and Turkey will not be easy. US policy in the Mideast influences Turkey-Israel relations, and Turkey-Israel relations, in turn, affect the future of the Middle East. This obliges the US to bear a tremendous responsibility.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Stephen Mileson ◽  
Stuart Brookes

The introduction sets out the purpose and scope of the book, identifying key questions to be addressed in terms of the relationship between landscape and perceptions. It also examines the existing literature of landscape and social history, and lays bare the gaps and limitations within it. The present study is framed as a highly original kind of post-processual analysis rigorously based on empirical data. The twin questions at the heart of the study are set out, namely ‘how were perceptions and local identities formed in relation to particular settings?’, and, secondly, ‘how did those perceptions and identities change as a result of social and landscape reorganization?’ It is argued that ordinary inhabitants played a strong role in shaping landscape change and creating their own social arenas within settlements. A long-lasting distinction between the area’s vale and Chiltern settlements is introduced. Terms such as ‘perception’ and ‘peasant’ are defined.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volker M Heins ◽  
Christine Unrau

Against competing political theories of the integration of immigrants, we propose to reframe the relationship between the populations of host countries and arriving refugees in terms of a neo-Maussian theory of gift exchange. Using the example of the European refugee crisis of 2015 and the welcoming attitude of significant parts of German civil society, we argue that this particular situation should be understood as epitomizing the trend toward internal transnationalism. Increasingly, the “international” is becoming part and parcel of the “domestic” sphere. Since Marcel Mauss was concerned with the question of how separate, culturally different communities can establish ties of solidarity and cooperation between each other, we use his work to answer key questions about the relations between international refugees and native citizens in their home countries: What are the expectations underlying gift-giving in the context of welcoming refugees? Should refugees feel obliged to repay the arrival gifts? How should we deal with the normative ambivalence of gift-giving and its potentially humiliating effects on those who receive gifts but are unable to reciprocate? Most importantly, how does gift theory help us to clarify the very concept of integration which is at the heart of recent debates on the ethics of immigration?


Author(s):  
M. Alfaro Cano ◽  
A. Hernandez-Guerrero ◽  
C. Rubio Arana ◽  
Aristotel Popescu

One of the requirements for existing personal computers, PCs, is that the hardware inside must maintain an operating temperature as low as possible. One way to achieve that is to place the hardware components at locations with enough airflow around it. However, the relationship between the airflow and temperature of the components is unknown before they are placed at specific locations inside a PC. In this work a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis is coupled to a Design of Experiment (DOE) methodology to answer typical minitower key questions: a) how do the possible positions of hardware components affect their temperature?, and b) is it possible to get an optimal placement for these hardware components using the data collected by the CFD simulation results? The DOE methodology is used to optimize the analysis for a very large number of possible configurations. The results help in identifying where the efforts need to be placed in order to optimize the positioning of the hardware components for similar configurations at the designing stage. Somehow the results show that general conclusions could be drawn, but that there are not specific rules that could be applied to every configuration.


1970 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 785-801 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay R. Mandle

Considered analytically population growth may either have positive or negative influences on economic growth. Population expansion may, by facilitating a widening of markets, allow for economies of scale to be realized and permit the introduction of new industries, or by relieving labor scarcities, facilitate economic expansion. Possible negative implications for economic growth may result however, as Malthus argued, through the mechanism of diminishing returns or by changing the age structure of the population so as to increase the proportion of dependents relative to economically active producers and thus reduce the volume of goods and services available to each individual. The point is that economic analysis prima facia is agnostic with respect to the net effect of population change on economic change. One or all of the above relationships may be operative in any individual country experience and without careful empirical observations, it is impossible to identify accurately whether the negative or positive effects are dominant. Clearly what is needed before general statements about the relationship between population and economic change can be supported is a series of country studies whose purpose will be not only to determine the frequency with which the optimistic or pessimistic influences predominate, but in addition to identify the intervening economic and social institutions which account for the predominance of one or the other effect.


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