Reduction of fluoride and sulfate ions in Syrian phosphoric acid by extraction with tertiary amins

General Fertilizer Company GFC Homs produces a lot of wet phosphoric acid, but it is unsuitable for food or pharmaceutical uses. Reduction of fluoride and sulfate ions contents in wet phosphoric acid by liquid - liquid extraction with tertiary aliphatic amins was studied. The effect of solvent concentration and temperature on the extraction was studied. The effect of diluent on the extraction yield and raffinate acid specifications was also studied

‘And now I’m free’:Women’s empowerment and emancipation through entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia and Sweden

Critical perspectives have called for the study of women’s entrepreneurship as a route to social change. This ‘social turn’ claims women are empowered and/or emancipated through entrepreneurship with limited problematisation of how these interchangeably used concepts operate. Using an institutional perspective in combination with a narrative approach, we investigate women entrepreneurs’ life stories on their ‘road to freedom’ where entrepreneurial activity enables them to ‘break free’ from particular gendered constraints. Through juxtaposing women’s narratives in the contexts of Saudi Arabia and Sweden, the relationship between empowerment and emancipation is disentangled and (re)conceptualised. The findings distinguish between empowerment narrated as individual practices to achieve freedom for the self within institutional structures and emancipation as narrated as a wish to challenge and change structures of power and reach collative freedom. The yearning for collective emancipation propels women’s stories of entrepreneurship by raising expectations for entrepreneurship as a vehicle for institutional change. Such stories may fascinate and inspire others to engage in entrepreneurial endeavours to become empowered, but whether they reach emancipation remains an empirical question to be answered. The performative dimension of entrepreneurial narratives is, however, their ability to turn emancipation into an (un)reachable object of desire, with a quest for even more individual empowerment and entrepreneurial activity, at the same time excluding other forms of human conduct as conducive for chang

The numerical solution of ordinary differential equation by iteration

This work mainly deals with iterative methods and their rates of convergence, for the solution of non-linear ordinary differential equations

Impact of cigarette smoking on DNA methylation levels and its influence on human sperm parameters

Cigarette-smoking is still one of the most common habits worldwide. According to WHO, almost one-third of global populations above 15-years-old are smokers. Several of the previous studies have found a negative association between cigarette-smoking and standard semen parameters, sperm penetration, and fertilization capacity. Moreover, cigarette-smoking also produces changes in the epigenome, such as DNA methylation. DNA methylation plays a vital role in genome stability, imprinting genes, X-chromosome inactivation, and the regulation of gene transcription. The main aims of this present thesis can be summarized as the following: (I) to assess the variation in sperm DNA methylation levels between smokers as cases and non-smoker males as controls, as well as to study the association between the change in sperm DNA methylation patterns and sperm parameters in male smokers (II) to assess whether there is an alteration in the sperm DNA methylation levels between subfertile and proven fertile males; and furthermore, (III) to evaluate the correlation between changes in sperm DNA methylation levels and sperm parameters in subfertile males. Infinium 450K BeadChip arrays were used to recognize the alteration in the sperm DNA methylation levels between the various study groups (cases and controls). Deep bisulfite sequencing was therefore used to validate the results obtained from Infinium 450K BeadChip arrays. Following CpGs, cg00648582, cg0932376, cg19169023, cg23841288, cg27391564, cg19455396, and cg07869343) were subjected to bisulfite sequencing. The cg00648582, cg19169023, cg23841288, cg19455396, cg07869343 are located in the gene body and are related to PGAM5, TYRO3, PTPRN2, TAP2 and MAPK8IP3 genes respectively whereas the cg0932376, and cg2739156 are located in the intergenic regions. Only six CpGs showed a significant difference between the case and control groups. Moreover, when local deep bisulfite sequencing was applied, different CpG sites were obtained besides the target CpG* that resulted from the Infinium 450k beadchip array. The following CpG sites showed significant differences in the case group compared to control one. These sites are related to specific genes and were shown to be as follows: fifteen out of twenty-five CpG sites in a PGAM5 gene-related amplicon, three out of four CpG sites in a gene TYRO3-related amplicon, nine out of twelve CpG sites in a gene PTPRN2-related amplicon and six out of twenty-two CpG sites in gene MAPK8IP3-related amplicons. A significant difference was also observed in four out of five CpG sites adjacent to cg09432376, and seven out of fifteen CpG sites bordering the cg27391564-related amplicon. Moreover, a significant correlation was found between the variation in sperm DNA methylation levels and standard sperm parameters in the fertile male smokers, namely the case group. On the other hand, the variations between sperm DNA methylation levels among the proven fertile and subfertile were assessed as follows: the CpG sites (cg19779893, cg19406113, cg23081194, cg04807108, cg25750688, cg07227024, cg16338278, cg05799088, and cg08408433) were validated by deep sequencing where cg19779893, cg23081194, cg07227024, cg16338278, cg05799088, and cg0840843 were found to be located in the gene body of ADAMTS14, UBE2G2, ALS2CR12, ALDH3B2, PRICKLE2, and PTGIR genes respectively, and the three remaining cg19406113, cg04807108, and cg25750688 were located in the intergenic regions. When a local deep bisulfite sequencing was applied, different CpGs were detected close to the target CpGs* that resulted from the screening study. The following CpG sites showed significant differences in the case group compared to the control one. These sites are related to specific genes and were demonstrated as follows: three CpGs related to the ADAMTS14 gene, six out of eleven CpG sites related to cg19406113, three CpGs in the UBE2G2 gene, two CpG sites related to the cg25750688, and eight out of fifteen related to the cg04807108. In addition, two CpGs related to the PRICKLE2 gene, two CpGs related to the ALS2CR12 gene, seven CpGs related to the ALDH3B2 gene, and nine CpGs related to the PTGIR gene also demonstrated significant differences in the case groups compared to the control ones. Moreover, significant differences were also observed between the alterations in sperm DNA methylation levels in some CpGs adjacent to those afore-mentioned CpG sites and standard sperm parameters. In conclusion, this present study revealed biological differences in the DNA methylation levels of CpGs located in the gene body (cg00648582, cg19169023, cg23841288, cg19455396, cg07869343) and those located in the intergenic regions (cg0932376, and cg27391564). These alterations could potentially be related to the effects caused by smoking on the developmental stages of spermatozoa. In addition, a variation in sperm DNA methylation patterns between proven fertile and subfertile males was detected. Furthermore, an association between the changes in sperm DNA methylation and semen parameters was found in the case groups.Zigarettenrauchen ist immer noch eines der häufigsten Gewohnheiten weltweit. Laut WHO sind fast ein Drittel der über 15-jährigen Raucher. Mehrere Studien fanden bereits eine negative Assoziation zwischen Zigarettenrauchen und Standard-Spermienparametern, Spermienpenetration und Befruchtungskapazität. Darüber hinaus führt Zigarettenrauchen auch zu Veränderungen im Epigenom und beeinträchtigt auch die DNA-Methylierung. Die DNA-Methylierung spielt eine entscheidende Rolle bei der Genomstabilität, der Prägung von Genen, der Inaktivierung von X-Chromosomen und der Regulation der Gentranskription. Das Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit war (I), die Variation der Spermien-DNA-Methylierungslevels zwischen Rauchern und Nichtrauchern (als Kontrollgruppe) zu untersuchen. Außerdem sollte der Zusammenhang zwischen Veränderungen der Spermien-DNA-Methylierungslevel und Spermienparameter bei männlichen Rauchern untersucht werden (II). Es sollte beurteilt werden, ob es eine Veränderung der Spermien-DNA-Methylierungslevel bei subfertilen und fertilen Männern gibt. Weiterhin sollte die Korrelation zwischen Veränderungen der Spermien-DNA-Methylierung und Spermienparametern bei subfertilen Männern untersucht werden. Infinium 450K BeadChip-Arrays wurden verwendet, um die Veränderung der Spermien- DNA-Methylierungslevel zwischen den verschiedenen Studiengruppen (Rauchern als Fallgruppe und Nichtrauchern als Kontrollgruppe) zu erkennen. Folglich wurde eine tiefe Bisulfitsequenzierung verwendet, um die Ergebnisse zu bestätigen, die von Infinium 450K BeadChip-Arrays erhalten wurden. Folgende CpGs wurden der Bisulfitsequenzierung unterzogen: cg00648582, cg0932376, cg19169023, cg23841288, cg27391564, cg19455396 und cg07869343). cg00648582, cg19169023, cg23841288, cg19455396, cg07869343, sind im Genkörper lokalisiert und mit PGAM5-, TYRO3-, PTPRN2-, TAP2- und MAPK8IP3-Genen assoziiert, während die cg0932376- und cg2739156-CpG stellen in den Bereichen zwischen den Genen lokalisiert sind. Nur sechs CpGs zeigten einen signifikanten Unterschied zwischen Fall- und Kontrollgruppe. Wenn lokale tiefe Bisulfit-Sequenzierung angewendet wurden, wurden außerdem verschiedene CpG-Stellen neben dem Ziel-CpG * erhalten, welches aus dem Infinium-450k-Beadchip-Array resultierte. Die folgenden CpG-Sites zeigten signifikante Unterschiede im Vergleich zu den Kontrollfällen. Sie sind mit spezifischen Genen verwandt und wurden wie folgt nachgewiesen: Fünfzehn von fünfundzwanzig CpG-Stellen in einem PGAM5-Gen-, drei von vier CpG-Stellen im TYRO3-, waren mit neun von zwölf CpG-Stellen in Gen-PTPRN2 und sechs von zweiundzwanzig CpG-Stellen in Gen-MAPK8IP3. Darüber hinaus wurde ein signifikanter Unterschied in vier von fünf CpG-Stellen von benachbart zu cg09432376 und sieben von fünfzehn CpG-Stellen, die dem cg27391564-verwandten Amplikon benachbart sind, beobachtet. Es wurde eine signifikante Korrelation zwischen der Variation des Spermien-DNA-Methylierungslevels und den Standard-Spermienparametern bei männlichen Rauchern (Fallgruppe) gefunden. Zusätzlich wurde die Variation der Spermien-DNA-Methylierungslevel zwischen den nachgewiesenen fertilen und subfertilen Proben beurteilt. Folgende CpG-Stellen (cg19779893, cg19406113, cg23081194, cg04807108, cg25750688, cg07227024, cg16338278, cg05799088 und cg08408433) wurden durch Tiefensequenzierung validiert. Es zeigte sich, dass cg19779893, cg23081194, cg07227024, cg16338278, cg05799088 und cg0840843 im Genkörper von ADAMTS14-, UBE2G2-, ALS2CR12-, ALDH3B2-, PRICKLE2- und PTGIR-Genen lokalisiert waren, und die drei verbleibenden cg19406113, cg04807108 und cg25750688 waren in Bereichen zwischen den Genen lokalisiert. Wenn eine lokale Tiefenbisulfitsequenzierung angewendet wurde, wurden verschiedene CpGs in der Nähe der Ziel-CpGs * nachgewiesen. Die folgenden CpG-Sites zeigten signifikante Unterschiede im Vergleich zur Kontrollgruppe. Diese Stellen sind mit spezifischen Genen verwandt und wurden wie folgt nachgewiesen: drei mit ADAMTS14-Gen verwandte CpGs, sechs von elf mit cg19406113 in Beziehung stehender CpG-Stelle, drei CpGs im UBE2G2-Gen, zwei mit cg25750688 verwandte CpG-Stellen und acht von fünfzehn verwandten cg04807108. Darüber hinaus zeigten zwei mit dem PRICKLE2-Gen verwandte CpGs, zwei mit ALS2CR12 verwandte CpGs, sieben mit dem ALDH3B2-Gen verwandte CpGs und neun mit dem PTGIR-Gen verwandte CpGs signifikante Unterschiede im Vergleich zur Kontrollgruppe. Darüber hinaus wurden signifikante Unterschiede zwischen Veränderungen der Spermien-DNA-Methylierungslevels in einigen CpG-Adjacents und den zuvor erwähnten CpG-Stellen, sowie den Standard-Spermienparametern beobachtet. Zusammenfassend wurden in der vorliegenden Arbeit biologische Unterschiede im DNA-Methylierungsgrad von CpGs im Genkörper (cg00648582, cg19169023, cg23841288, cg19455396, cg07869343) und in Bereichen zwischen den Genen (cg0932376 und cg27391564) gefunden. Diese Veränderungen könnten möglicherweise mit Auswirkungen des Rauchens auf die Entwicklungsstadien der Spermatozoen zusammenhängen. Zusätzlich wurde eine Variation in den Spermien-DNA-Methylierungsmustern zwischen fertilen und subfertilen Männern festgestellt. Darüber hinaus wurde in den Fallgruppen ein Zusammenhang zwischen den Veränderungen der Spermien-DNA-Methylierung und den Spermienparametern gefunden

Assessing Cybersecurity Awareness: A survey study at the College of Administration and Economics – University of Mosul

???? ????? ?????? ????????? ????? ?????? ?? ????? ??????? ????????? ?? ??????? ??????????. ???? ????? ??? ????? ????? ????? ?????? ????????? ???? ??????? ????? ??????? ?? ???? ??????? ?????????/ ????? ?????? ?????? ????????? ???? ?? ????? ??? ?? ???? ?? ??????? ??????????? ???????? ??????????. ?????? ??????? ??????? ?????? ????????? ?? ??????? ??????? ??????? ???? ???????? ?????????? ?????? ????????? ???? ??? ?????? 100 ?????? ?????? ??? ??????? ??????? ????? ???? ?????? ???? ??????. ???????? ??? ?????? ??????? ?????? ????????? ???????? ???????? ??????????? ????????? ?????? ????? ????? ?????? ????????? ??? ?????? ?????? ????????? ?????? ???????? ????? ??????? ??????? One Way ANOVA ??? ??????? ??????? ?????? ????? ???????? ?????? ????? ?????? ????????? ??? ??????? ??????? ??????. ???? ??????? ??? ??? ???? ??? ?????? ??? ?????? ????????? ???????? ??????? ??????????? ??? ?????? ???? ??????? ????????? ?? ????? ??????? ???? ???? ????? ????? ??????? ??????? ???? ?? ???? ?????? ?????? ?? ????? ??????? ?????? ????? ?????? ????????? ??? ?????? ?????? ???? ??? ??????? ????? ?????? ??????? ?????? ?????? ??????. Cybersecurity awareness plays a vital role in protecting individuals and organizations from cyber-attacks. The research aims to evaluate the level of awareness of cybersecurity and the readiness of the study-community at the College of Administration and Economics/ University of Mosul to take actions that would prevent or reduce electronic risks and cyber-attacks. The study adopted the descriptive analytical method. A questionnaire survey was used to collect data for this study. The sample size was 100 respondents distributed between teachers and employees with different academic qualifications and years of service. Several statistical methods were used to analyze the data, such as arithmetic means and standard deviations to determine the level of awareness of cybersecurity among the answers of the sample studied, and to conduct One-Way ANOVA tests between the variables of the study and determine the differences in the level of awareness of cybersecurity between groups of one variable. The study concluded that there is a good level of awareness of cybersecurity and electronic safety among the members of the College of Administration and Economics at the University of Mosul. The results of the variance analysis showed that there are no statistically significant differences in the level of awareness of cybersecurity among the college’s members due to the variables of gender, class, academic qualification and years of service

Doing’ gender to ‘undo’ culture: Entrepreneurs’ cultural marginalisation and legitimacy work in (neo)patriarchal societies : In the Shadows: Tales of Cultural Marginalization in Modern Society

Organisational research has investigated the systemic and structural marginalisation of communities living in the periphery of the dominant culture. However, there remains a lack of theoretical understanding of ‘cultural marginalisation’ and the strategies used by different marginalised groups to cope with their marginalisation in work and society. In this longitudinal study, I take a postcolonial feminist approach to understand how Saudi women entrepreneurs experience cultural marginalisation and engage in legitimacy work in a neopatriarchal society that is grappling with maintaining tradition during rapid modernisation. Findings illustrate how women entrepreneurs’ legitimacy work involves repositioning their gender role in society through a process of ‘doing gender to undo culture’. This includes reinforcing, maintaining and deconstructing the ideology of the ‘ideal Islamic woman’, and reconstructing it to align with the country’s evolving socio-economic and political vision, which has shifted to describe women as ‘nation builders’. Thus, the women engage in a constant reconstruction of a culturally legitimate ‘moral space’ in society within which the identities of the ‘ideal Islamic woman’ and the ‘Saudi woman entrepreneur’ are not an oxymoron or mutually exclusive. Instead, they are co-dependent and legitimise one another under the arch of nation building, in an ever-changing neopatriarchal society

Bipol: A Novel Multi-Axes Bias Evaluation Metric with Explainability for NLP

We introduce bipol, a new metric with explainability, for estimating social bias in text data. Harmful bias is prevalent in many online sources of data that are used for training machine learning (ML) models. In a step to address this challenge we create a novel metric that involves a two-step process: corpus-level evaluation based on model classification and sentence-level evaluation based on (sensitive) term frequency (TF). After creating new models to detect bias along multiple axes using SotA architectures, we evaluate two popular NLP datasets (COPA and SQUAD). As additional contribution, we created a large dataset (with almost 2 million labelled samples) for training models in bias detection and make it publicly available. We also make public our codes.Comment: 12 pages, 4 image

Navigating the care between two distinct cultures: a qualitative study of the experiences of Arabic-speaking immigrants in Norwegian hospitals

Background During the past decades, there has been an increase in the number of immigrants to European and Scandinavian countries. This has challenged the health-care systems, which cater to the needs of patients despite their cultural and linguistic barriers, in these countries. Most studies on this topic have focused on the perspectives of health-care providers in delivering their service. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how hospitalized Arabic-speaking patients experienced their interaction with the Norwegian health-care system. Methods In-depth interviews with 20 participants and researcher’s participant observation were conducted to explore the idiosyncratic details and ascribed meanings that foreign-born patients attach to their everyday experience of the Norwegian health-care system. Thematic analysis was performed on the transcribed and translated versions of the in-depth interviews. Results The findings of this study indicated three interrelated core themes. Firstly, there exist challenges in understanding and being understood because of linguistic and cultural differences of newly migrated patients. Secondly, some patients missed the holistic and direct care available in their home countries. Finally, patients were satisfied with the Norwegian health-care system because of its compassion, care, and respect toward them as well as advanced health-care equipment. Conclusion Arabic-speaking patients in Norwegian hospitals experienced long waiting times and linguistic problems. Hence, a better and specialized interpreter service may resolve problems emanating from communication within the system and the subsequent delays in treatment. Compassionate care and the feeling of respect and love is the core strength of the Norwegian system as perceived by the patients.publishedVersio

Late infection of Fusarium graminearum in winter wheat grown under different nitrogen regimes

Fusarium spp. infection is a serious risk in wheat cultivation worldwide. In addition of reduce grain yield and quality, it also leads to grain and chaff contamination by toxic metabolites (mycotoxins). The mycotoxin deoxynivalenol (DON) is among the most important mycotoxins in Swedish wheat production and is mainly produced by F. graminearum. F. graminearum infects wheat crops causing Fusarium head blight (FHB) disease. Nitrogen (N) fertilizers are very important in wheat production. In order to reach high yields and protein level goals, additional N fertilizers are commonly applied. But negative effects of extra N fertilization on F. graminearum and other FHB-causing species have been reported. The objective of this project was to study the impact of different N contents of winter wheat spikes, realized by different N application rates, on F. graminearum late infection close to the harvest time. To achieve this, winter wheat spikes around harvesting time were collected from a field experiment near Uppsala fertilized with different amounts of N treatments. The N treatments comprised 0, 160 and 324 kg N/ha application rates. The spikes were inoculated with F. graminearum and incubated in a greenhouse chamber with climate conditions similar to those of Uppsala in August; the month of normal commercial harvest time for winter wheat in Uppsala region. For quantification of DNA of F. graminearum and quantification of DON, spikes tissues (grain and chaff) were analyzed by real-time PCR technique and ELISA assay, respectively. The results showed that grain samples contained very little or undetectable amounts of F. graminearum DNA in both control and F. graminearum treated spikes for the three N application rates. However, chaff samples of the F. graminearum treated spikes yielded considerable amount of DNA of F. graminearum, but without significant differences between the N application rates. DON was only detectable in the chaff. Although chaff samples of control spikes were not infected by F. graminearum, but they were contaminated by DON as shown by ELISA results. Inoculation of spikes by F. graminearum significantly increased DON contents in F. graminearum treated spikes compared with control spikes, but without significant difference between the N application rates in the former. Based on these results, and since grain were not infected by F. graminearum in both control and fungal treated spikes, a direct calculation of the correlation between N grain content and fungal biomass was not possible

Beyond challenges and enrichment: a qualitative account of cross-cultural experiences of nursing patients with an ethnic minority background in Norway

publishedVersio