A Nineteenth-Century Blueprint for Recasting the Muslim Mindset in British India

The reformist endeavour famously known as the Aligarh Movement, initiated by the prominent Muslim intellectual Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Ḫān in the wake of the fateful happenings of 1857, indisputably represents a significant modernist movement among Indian Muslims in nineteenth-century British India. Despite having a limited base among the community, given its elitist character, the role that this movement played in shaping the Muslims’ destiny during the twentieth century cannot be overstated. As a reformist project, this movement set as its main objective the remodelling of the Muslim mindset as well as the resuscitation of the hitherto moribund community to bring it back to the mainstream. In line with this intention, the reform-minded Sayyid Aḥmad put forward an elaborate three-pronged scheme. This article, therefore, seeks to shed light on the Aligarh’s ambitious programme which targeted every aspect of Muslim life, political, religious and socio-cultural.

RNA Secondary Structures with Limited Base Pair Span: Exact Backtracking and an Application

The accuracy of RNA secondary structure prediction decreases with the span of a base pair, i.e., the number of nucleotides that it encloses. The dynamic programming algorithms for RNA folding can be easily specialized in order to consider only base pairs with a limited span L, reducing the memory requirements to O(nL), and further to O(n) by interleaving backtracking. However, the latter is an approximation that precludes the retrieval of the globally optimal structure. So far, the ViennaRNA package therefore does not provide a tool for computing optimal, span-restricted minimum energy structure. Here, we report on an efficient backtracking algorithm that reconstructs the globally optimal structure from the locally optimal fragments that are produced by the interleaved backtracking implemented in RNALfold. An implementation is integrated into the ViennaRNA package. The forward and the backtracking recursions of RNALfold are both easily constrained to structural components with a sufficiently negative z-scores. This provides a convenient method in order to identify hyper-stable structural elements. A screen of the C. elegans genome shows that such features are more abundant in real genomic sequences when compared to a di-nucleotide shuffled background model.

Unaligned connections or enlarging engagements? Tertiary education in developing countries and the implementation of the SDGs

Given that tertiary education (TE) is a sector often associated with exclusion, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where only a small proportion of the population gain access, how well placed is this sector to support the implementation of the SDGs? This article extends our reflections from a recent rigorous review of literature, published from 2010, which looked at the role of tertiary education in low- and lower-middle-income countries. The review noted the sparse literature on a range of development outcomes, with limited attention to some of the key themes of inclusion and sustainability associated with the SDGs. Many studies report on some form of limited connection between TE and development outcomes, also drawing attention to contextual conditions beyond TE that contribute to this. The article considers the reasons for these findings, and some of the difficulties of forming conclusions on a still limited base of research evidence. A second theme in the literature reviewed highlights that where TE establishes partnerships, engagements or cross-institutional alliances, joint and valuable learning in support of the SDGs ensues, enhancing practice and building institutions. Some of the implications of these findings for the positioning of TE in developing countries in the wake of COVID-19 are considered.

Credibility-limited Base Revision: New Classes and Their Characterizations

In this paper we study a kind of operator —known as credibility-limited base revisions— which addresses two of the main issues that have been pointed out to the AGM model of belief change. Indeed, on the one hand, these operators are defined on belief bases (rather than belief sets) and, on the other hand, they are constructed with the underlying idea that not all new information is accepted. We propose twenty different classes of credibility-limited base revision operators and obtain axiomatic characterizations for each of them. Additionally we thoroughly investigate the interrelations (in the sense of inclusion) among all those classes. More precisely, we analyse whether each one of those classes is or is not (strictly) contained in each of the remaining ones.

Cotranslational microRNA mediated messenger RNA destabilization

MicroRNAs are small (22 nucleotide) regulatory molecules that play important roles in a wide variety of biological processes. These RNAs, which bind to targeted mRNAs via limited base pairing interactions, act to reduce protein production from those mRNAs. Considerable evidence indicates that miRNAs destabilize targeted mRNAs by recruiting enzymes that function in normal mRNA decay and mRNA degradation is widely thought to occur when mRNAs are in a ribosome free state. Nevertheless, when examined, miRNA targeted mRNAs are invariably found to be polysome associated; observations that appear to be at face value incompatible with a simple decay model. Here, we provide evidence that turnover of miRNA-targeted mRNAs occurs while they are being translated. Cotranslational mRNA degradation is initiated by decapping and proceeds 5’ to 3’ behind the last translating ribosome. These results provide an explanation for a long standing mystery in the miRNA field.

SUB-CAMERA CALIBRATION OF A PENTA-CAMERA

Penta cameras consisting of a nadir and four inclined cameras are becoming more and more popular, having the advantage of imaging also facades in built up areas from four directions. Such system cameras require a boresight calibration of the geometric relation of the cameras to each other, but also a calibration of the sub-cameras. <br><br> Based on data sets of the ISPRS/EuroSDR benchmark for multi platform photogrammetry the inner orientation of the used IGI Penta DigiCAM has been analyzed. The required image coordinates of the blocks Dortmund and Zeche Zollern have been determined by Pix4Dmapper and have been independently adjusted and analyzed by program system BLUH. With 4.1 million image points in 314 images respectively 3.9 million image points in 248 images a dense matching was provided by Pix4Dmapper. With up to 19 respectively 29 images per object point the images are well connected, nevertheless the high number of images per object point are concentrated to the block centres while the inclined images outside the block centre are satisfying but not very strongly connected. This leads to very high values for the Student test (T-test) of the finally used additional parameters or in other words, additional parameters are highly significant. <br><br> The estimated radial symmetric distortion of the nadir sub-camera corresponds to the laboratory calibration of IGI, but there are still radial symmetric distortions also for the inclined cameras with a size exceeding 5μm even if mentioned as negligible based on the laboratory calibration. Radial and tangential effects of the image corners are limited but still available. Remarkable angular affine systematic image errors can be seen especially in the block Zeche Zollern. Such deformations are unusual for digital matrix cameras, but it can be caused by the correlation between inner and exterior orientation if only parallel flight lines are used. With exception of the angular affinity the systematic image errors for corresponding cameras of both blocks have the same trend, but as usual for block adjustments with self calibration, they still show significant differences. <br><br> Based on the very high number of image points the remaining image residuals can be safely determined by overlaying and averaging the image residuals corresponding to their image coordinates. The size of the systematic image errors, not covered by the used additional parameters, is in the range of a square mean of 0.1 pixels corresponding to 0.6μm. They are not the same for both blocks, but show some similarities for corresponding cameras. <br><br> In general the bundle block adjustment with a satisfying set of additional parameters, checked by remaining systematic errors, is required for use of the whole geometric potential of the penta camera. Especially for object points on facades, often only in two images and taken with a limited base length, the correct handling of systematic image errors is important. At least in the analyzed data sets the self calibration of sub-cameras by bundle block adjustment suffers from the correlation of the inner to the exterior calibration due to missing crossing flight directions. As usual, the systematic image errors differ from block to block even without the influence of the correlation to the exterior orientation.

SUB-CAMERA CALIBRATION OF A PENTA-CAMERA

Penta cameras consisting of a nadir and four inclined cameras are becoming more and more popular, having the advantage of imaging also facades in built up areas from four directions. Such system cameras require a boresight calibration of the geometric relation of the cameras to each other, but also a calibration of the sub-cameras. <br><br> Based on data sets of the ISPRS/EuroSDR benchmark for multi platform photogrammetry the inner orientation of the used IGI Penta DigiCAM has been analyzed. The required image coordinates of the blocks Dortmund and Zeche Zollern have been determined by Pix4Dmapper and have been independently adjusted and analyzed by program system BLUH. With 4.1 million image points in 314 images respectively 3.9 million image points in 248 images a dense matching was provided by Pix4Dmapper. With up to 19 respectively 29 images per object point the images are well connected, nevertheless the high number of images per object point are concentrated to the block centres while the inclined images outside the block centre are satisfying but not very strongly connected. This leads to very high values for the Student test (T-test) of the finally used additional parameters or in other words, additional parameters are highly significant. <br><br> The estimated radial symmetric distortion of the nadir sub-camera corresponds to the laboratory calibration of IGI, but there are still radial symmetric distortions also for the inclined cameras with a size exceeding 5μm even if mentioned as negligible based on the laboratory calibration. Radial and tangential effects of the image corners are limited but still available. Remarkable angular affine systematic image errors can be seen especially in the block Zeche Zollern. Such deformations are unusual for digital matrix cameras, but it can be caused by the correlation between inner and exterior orientation if only parallel flight lines are used. With exception of the angular affinity the systematic image errors for corresponding cameras of both blocks have the same trend, but as usual for block adjustments with self calibration, they still show significant differences. <br><br> Based on the very high number of image points the remaining image residuals can be safely determined by overlaying and averaging the image residuals corresponding to their image coordinates. The size of the systematic image errors, not covered by the used additional parameters, is in the range of a square mean of 0.1 pixels corresponding to 0.6μm. They are not the same for both blocks, but show some similarities for corresponding cameras. <br><br> In general the bundle block adjustment with a satisfying set of additional parameters, checked by remaining systematic errors, is required for use of the whole geometric potential of the penta camera. Especially for object points on facades, often only in two images and taken with a limited base length, the correct handling of systematic image errors is important. At least in the analyzed data sets the self calibration of sub-cameras by bundle block adjustment suffers from the correlation of the inner to the exterior calibration due to missing crossing flight directions. As usual, the systematic image errors differ from block to block even without the influence of the correlation to the exterior orientation.

Bang-Bang Trajectory Plans With Dynamic Balance Constraints: Fast Rotational Reconfigurations for RoboSimian

This paper investigates the problem of rapidly transitioning the pose of a limbed robot while remaining balanced. In particular, we consider motions where rotational accelerations may significantly affect the center of pressure location within a limited base of support. We consider solutions for high-impedance robots with stiff, high-torque actuators that essentially provide accurate, position-control outputs at the joints. We present and compare three methods for generating joint trajectories to achieve fast yet feasible dynamic motions for such systems while maintaining a safety margin for the center of pressure location, toward robust balance. We focus on development of theory and intuition for each method and quantify performance in terms of achievable speed of transition and required joint velocity limits.