The scope of naturalism in British working-class drama, with particular reference to Joe Corrie, D.H. Lawrence and Sean O'Casey

The purpose of this dissertation is to define the scope of naturalism in British working-class drama with special reference to the plays of D.H. Lawrence, Sean O'Casey and Joe Corrie. To fulfill such a project, I undertook a personal assessment of the theory of naturalism and its practice in the theatre. For the purpose of being more comprehensive, I carried out a comparative study between working-class naturalism and that of the New Drama since the latter preceded the former. Having assessed and evaluated the theory of naturalism, in general, and its manifestation in the works of the new drama exponents and of the working-class dramatists, I defined and discussed the comparative aspects, as concepts, in the plays of three British playwrights. I have also tried to familiarize the reader with the features of the conversational analysis in the light of which I approached the issue of how similar to natural discourse dramatic dialogue may be. The study of the manifestation of naturalism in the plays of Lawrence, Corrie and O'Casey, which covers the last three chapters, is undertaken in the light of the scope of naturalism as I have previously defined it. In other words, an attempt is being made to question the validity of the naturalist theory as advocated by its exponents, and to prove the practicality of the angle from which I approached naturalism by examining certain plays. The study of the plays, therefore, allows me to define the extent to which one can refer to Lawrence, Corrie and O'Casey as naturalist dramatists and to question, if not to correct, some unfounded criticisms of naturalism in general and working-class naturalism in particular

Asymptotically Optimal Threshold Bias for the (a:b)(a : b) Maker-Breaker Minimum Degree, Connectivity and Hamiltonicity Games

We study the $(a:b)$ Maker-Breaker subgraph game played on the edges of the complete graph $K_n$ on $n$ vertices, $n,a,b \in \mathbb{N}$ where the goal of Maker is to build a copy of a specific fixed subgraph $H$. In our work this is a spanning graph with minimum degree $k=k(n)$, a connected spanning subgraph or a Hamiltonian subgraph. In the $(a:b)$ game in each round Maker chooses $a$ unclaimed edges of $K_n$ and Breaker chooses $b$ unclaimed edges. Maker wins, if he succeeds to build a copy of the subgraph under consideration, otherwise Breaker wins. For the $k$-minimum-degree, we present a winning strategy for Maker leading to a bound that generalizes a bound of Gebauer and Szab{\'o} for the $(1:b)$ case. Moreover, we give an explicit strategy for Breaker for $b >(1+o(1)) \frac{an}{a+\ln(n)}$ in case of $a=o\left(\sqrt{\frac{n}{\ln(n)}}\right)$ and $k=o(\ln(n))$. Note that this bound is the same as the Maker bound presented by Hefetz et al. (2012) for the $(a:b)$ connectivity game, which implies that the asymptotic optimal bias for this game is $\frac{an}{a+\ln(n)}$. This resolves the open problem stated by these authors. We also study the $(a:b)$ Hamiltonicity game in which Maker's goal is to create a Hamiltonian subgraph. For the $(1:b)$ variant Krivelevich proved that $\left(1+o(1) \right)\frac{n}{\ln n}$ is the exact threshold bias. Controlling Breaker's vertex degree in the $(a:b)$ Maker-Breaker minimum degree game enables us to the asymptotic optimal generalized threshold bias for the $(a:b)$-game, both for $a=o\left(\sqrt{\frac{n}{\ln n}} \right)$ and $a=\Omega\left(\sqrt{\frac{n}{\ln n}} \right)$

Exploring the Phenomenon of Timelessness in Morocco: Insights from Paul Bowles and Other Travel Writers

This article aims to explore the phenomenon of timelessness in Morocco through the insights of renowned travel writers such as Paul Bowles. It will analyze the representations of Morocco in Western discourse, particularly in the context of Western Orientalism. Thanks to decolonization, deconstructionism, and Edward Said’s Orientalism, hitherto neglected travel writing has elicited academic responses from scholars who have recognized that travel writing is not simply an innocent and objective description of a traveler’s encounters in a foreign land. Instead, it is a genre that is inherently political, intertwined with projects of orientalism, colonialism, imperialism, and post-colonialism, and characterized by a hegemonic gaze directed towards the other, often marginalizing the voices of peripheral people. This research references books, notable authors, and Western explorers who commonly mention the unchanging quality of time in the Orient, particularly in Morocco. Additionally, the study will draw on the insights of Edward Said to explain why this timelessness was prevalent during that period

Exploring the Phenomenon of Timelessness in Morocco: Insights from Paul Bowles and Other Travel Writers

This article aims to explore the phenomenon of timelessness in Morocco through the insights of renowned travel writers such as Paul Bowles. The semi-systematic method was used primarily due to the limited amount of research done on the topic of timelessness. It will analyze the representations of Morocco in Western discourse, particularly in the context of Western Orientalism. Thanks to decolonization, deconstructionism, and Edward Said’s Orientalism, hitherto neglected travel writing has elicited academic responses from scholars who have recognized that travel writing is not simply an innocent and objective description of a traveler’s encounters in a foreign land. Instead, it is a genre that is inherently political, intertwined with projects of orientalism, colonialism, imperialism, and post-colonialism, and characterized by a hegemonic gaze directed towards the other, often marginalizing the voices of peripheral people. This research references books, notable authors, and Western explorers who commonly mention the unchanging quality of time in the Orient, particularly in Morocco. Additionally, the study will draw on the insights of Edward Said to explain why this timelessness was prevalent in the 20th century

Improving Arabic handwritten text recognition through transfer learning with convolutional neural network-based models

Arabic handwritten text recognition is a complex and challenging research domain. This study proposes an offline Arabic handwritten word recognition system based on transfer learning. The system exploits four pre-trained convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures, namely VGG16, ResNet50, AlexNet, and InceptionV3. In addition, a specialized image recognition model derived from the ImageNet dataset is incorporated. A combination strategy is designed to combine transfer learning with specific fine-tuning techniques, aiming to improve recognition accuracy. The study is conducted on the IFN/ENIT dataset, which includes images of Tunisian City and village names. The results show that the proposed system achieves a recognition accuracy of 94.73%, which is significantly higher than the accuracy rates achieved by previous approaches. These results suggest that the proposed system is a promising approach for Arabic handwritten text recognition

Exploring the Phenomenon of Timelessness in Morocco: Insights from Paul Bowles and Other Travel Writers

This article aims to explore the phenomenon of timelessness in Morocco through the insights of renowned travel writers such as Paul Bowles. It will analyze the representations of Morocco in Western discourse, particularly in the context of Western Orientalism. Thanks to decolonization, deconstructionism, and Edward Said’s Orientalism, hitherto neglected travel writing has elicited academic responses from scholars who have recognized that travel writing is not simply an innocent and objective description of a traveler’s encounters in a foreign land. Instead, it is a genre that is inherently political, intertwined with projects of orientalism, colonialism, imperialism, and post-colonialism, and characterized by a hegemonic gaze directed towards the other, often marginalizing the voices of peripheral people. This research references books, notable authors, and Western explorers who commonly mention the unchanging quality of time in the Orient, particularly in Morocco. Additionally, the study will draw on the insights of Edward Said to explain why this timelessness was prevalent during that period

BERT-based models for classifying multi-dialect Arabic texts

The area of natural language processing (NLP) is presently a rapidly developing field characterized by innovation and research. Despite this progress, several dialects of Arabic (DA) are classified as low-resource languages, making it challenging for NLP systems to process DA data. One approach to address this issue is to train NLP models on social media data sets containing DA texts. Therefore, these open-access social media datasets, as outlined in our paper, can serve as a valuable resource for developers and researchers involved in the processing of DA.To create our multilingual corpus, we gathered data from various datasets containing different versions of DA. These datasets will be used to classify texts in terms of sentiment classification, topic classification, and dialect identification. Our study contributes to the automated analysis of the classification of Arabic dialects. We aim to investigate and assess various machine learning and deep learning techniques, with a specific focus on utilizing the BERT model. The results of our experiments on our datasets show that DarijaBERT and DziriBERT trained on a similar DA outperform traditional machine learning methods and previous more general pre-trained models that were trained on multiple dialects or languages

Enhancement of Early Osseointgration by Coating TiO2 Nanotubes with Annealed Fishbone(In Vivo Study)

New method was used to accelerate bone osseointegration, milled and annealed fishbone was used as coating layer on Ti-6Al-4V alloy after creating TiO2nanotube(TNTs) on it. Mechanical and thermal treatments were used to extract natural Hydroxyapatite (HAp) from fishbone.After milling, fish bones were heated at different temperatures. Annealed fish bones at 9000C had correspondence structure to that of standard one as X-ray diffraction (XRD) confirmed.  After creation TNTs on screws which were made from Ti-6Al-4V alloy, EPD was used to coat them with milled fishbone, annealed fishbone and commercial HAp. All screws were implanted inside the tibia of white New Zealand rabbits to evaluate the biocompatibility of modified alloys and to assess the clinical success of implants. Radiographic and histologic evaluations showed that implants with double surface modifications illustrate new bone formation around them. These results refer to the success of all surface modifications in this work , however the comparison between them illustrate superiority of coating by annealed fishbone over the other coating. During implantation interval from 4 to 12 weeks, screws with double surface modifications (creating TNTs and then coating with annealed fishbone) had highest removal torque (RTQ) values i.e. highest osseointegration acceleration rate. After 12 weeks of implantation, torque values for screws coated with commercial HAp are approximately equal to those values associated with screws coated with annealed fishbone. Keywords:Ossseointegration,Titaniumimplants,Hydroxyapatite, TiO2Nanotube,Fishbone

New Investigations in the Environment, History and Archaeology of the Iraqi Hilly Flanks: Shahrizor Survey Project 2009-2011

Recent palaeoenvironmental, historical, and archaeological investigations, primarily consisting of site reconnaissance, in the Shahrizor region within the province of Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan are bringing to light new information on the region’s social and socio-ecological development. This paper summarises two seasons of work by researchers from German, British, Dutch, and Iraqi-Kurdish institutions working in the survey region. Palaeoenvironmental data have determined that during the Pleistocene many terraces developed which came to be occupied by a number of the larger tell sites in the Holocene. In the sedimentary record, climatic and anthropogenic patterns are noticeable, and alluviation has affected the recovery of archaeological remains through site burial in places. Historical data show the Shahrizor shifting between periods of independence, either occupied by one regional state or several smaller entities, and periods that saw the plain’s incorporation within large empires, often in a border position. New archaeological investigations have provided insight into the importance of the region as a transit centre between Western Iran and northern and southern Mesopotamia, with clear material culture links recovered. Variations between periods’ settlement patterns and occupations are also beginning to emerge

Cellular and molecular features of asthma mucus plugs provide clues about their formation and persistence

BACKGROUNDMucus plugs form in acute asthma and persist in chronic disease. Although eosinophils are implicated in mechanisms of mucus pathology, many mechanistic details about mucus plug formation and persistence in asthma are unknown.METHODSUsing histology and spatial, single-cell proteomics, we characterized mucus-plugged airways from nontransplantable donor lungs of 14 patients with asthma (9 with fatal asthma and 5 with nonfatal asthma) and individuals acting as controls (10 with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and 14 free of lung disease). Additionally, we used an airway epithelial cell-eosinophil (AEC-eosinophil) coculture model to explore how AEC mucus affects eosinophil degranulation.RESULTSAsthma mucus plugs were tethered to airways showing infiltration with innate lymphoid type 2 cells and hyperplasia of smooth muscle cells and MUC5AC-expressing goblet cells. Asthma mucus plugs were infiltrated with immune cells that were mostly dual positive for eosinophil peroxidase (EPX) and neutrophil elastase, suggesting that neutrophils internalize EPX from degranulating eosinophils. Indeed, eosinophils exposed to mucus from IL-13-activated AECs underwent CD11b- and glycan-dependent cytolytic degranulation. Dual-positive granulocytes varied in frequency in mucus plugs. Whereas paucigranulocytic plugs were MUC5AC rich, granulocytic plugs had a mix of MUC5AC, MUC5B, and extracellular DNA traps. Paucigranulocytic plugs occurred more frequently in (acute) fatal asthma and granulocytic plugs predominated in (chronic) nonfatal asthma.CONCLUSIONTogether, our data suggest that mucin-rich mucus plugs in fatal asthma form because of acute goblet cell degranulation in remodeled airways and that granulocytic mucus plugs in chronic asthma persist because of a sustaining niche characterized by epithelial cell-mucin-granulocyte cross-talk.FUNDINGNIH grants HL080414, HL107202, and AI077439