Women’s empowerment and resilience building in Egypt:hybrid cultural engagement in the context of crisis

The chapter draws on the findings from the case study of craft-making with young women, residents of care shelters in Egypt, and discusses ways in which hybrid formats of cultural engagement can help in developing their personal resilience and emerge stronger from a crisis.  The insights from the interviews and questionnaires with 18-25 years old women living in sheltered accommodation in Alexandria, integrated into pedagogic interventions designed around green crafts making, shed light on the ways in which hybrid forms of crafts-based engagement can support processes of empowering women through their own resilience building. Findings highlight innovative access to culture that can inform policy development in the region and beyond.  The case study adopts a comprehensive approach to theorise resilience, including its procedural aspects and its characterization as an acquired trait, and focuses on resilience building as a process with three adaptive outcomes - recovery, sustainability, and growth - as described by Zautra and Reich (2012), and subsequently, accessing it as an acquired trait (Connor &amp; Davidson, 2003).</div

A Learnt Accent as “Received†Model in an English-as-a-Second-Language Context

The task of codification and elaboration of the educated varieties of Nigerian English are the ones in current contention among scholars of Nigerian English. Pronunciation issues have however been the bane of Standard English all over the world. While most non-native speakers of English have been able to cross the hurdle of learning the syntax and semantics of Standard English, a recurrent issue in academic discussions has been their inability to approximate the native-like accentual competence. In this paper we have presented submissions of scholars on Nigerian English in comparison with other regional varieties of English belonging to the inner circle. The quality of phonemes in terms of closeness or distance from the prestige, Standard British English, RP has been examined. Considering the close approximation of the phonemic inventory of the Educated Nigerian English model to that of the standard British English, we have found that very few Educated Nigerians use English language effectively. This assessment is made from the perception of how these few Nigerians (i.e. broadcasters) articulate fricatives, affricates, stops or plosives, continuants and central vowels, correctly.&nbsp;&nbsp; The Nigerian RP spoken by these very few ‘educated’ people should qualify to be referred to as a regional RP

A CAUSALITY ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN GROSS FIXED CAPITAL FORMATION, ECONOMIC GROWTH AND EMPLOYMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA

In terms of macro-economic policy, gross fixed capital formation, which is the major component of domestic investment, is seen as an important process that could accelerate economic growth. This study re-examines the controversial issue of causality between domestic investment, employment and economic growth using South African data. The traditional assumption of causality running from investment to economic growth has remained inconclusive while empirical findings on the investment and employment growth nexus are also largely unsettled. The study makes use of quarterly data from 1995Q1 to 2016Q4 within the framework of the Johansen cointegration and Vector Error Correction Models (VECM). The empirical findings suggest that a long run relationship exists between domestic investment, employment and economic growth, with causality running from economic growth to investment and not vice versa. The results also demonstrate that investment has a positive long-run impact on employment. The empirical evidence further suggests bi-directional causality between employment and economic growth, while evidence of uni-directional causality, from investment to employment, is also found. The major implication of the study is that although there is bi-directional causality between economic growth and employment, economic growth does not translate to increased employment in the long run confirming “jobless growth”. Investment is found to be a positive driver of employment in the South African economy in the long-run. The study concludes that, in order to stimulate employment, investment enhancing policies, such as low interest rates and a favourable economic environment should be put in place to accelerate growth. Measures to promote economic growth, such as improved infrastructural facilities and diversification of the economy, should be further engineered so as to encourage increased investment. JEL Classification: E22; E24

Application of optimal control to the epidemiology of malaria

Malaria is a deadly disease transmitted to humans through the bite of infected female mosquitoes. In this paper a deterministic system of differential equations is presented and studied for the transmission of malaria. Then optimal control theory is applied to investigate optimal strategies for controlling the spread of malaria disease using treatment, insecticide treated bed nets and spray of mosquito insecticide as the system control variables. The possible impact of using combinations of the three controls either one at a time or two at a time on the spread of the disease is also examined

Comparative Cost Analysis Between Hydraform Interlocking Brick and Sandcrete Block as Walling Materials for Low-Cost Housing Development in Nigeria

This study analyzed the cost of production and construction of 225mm hollow sandcrete blocks and hydraform interlocking bricks and walls to compare the findings of the results. The study was conducted in Auchi, Estako West Local Government Area of Edo State, Nigeria. The study compared the construction of two models of 225mm hollow sandcrete blocks and hydraform interlocking bricks, materials employed for wall construction for the study are; clay, cement, sand, water and mould. The result of the study indicates that unit cost of 225mm hollow sandcrete block and hydraform interlocking bricks are ₦168.57 and ₦57.85 respectively. While the cost per square metre of 225mm hollow sandcrete block wall and hydraform interlocking brick wall are ₦3,199.40 and ₦3,079.52 respectively. The study also revealed that it is more costly to apply finishes to sandcrete block wall when compared with hydraform interlocking brick wall. Sandcrete block wall requires rendering or plastering to both faces of the walls, while hyraform interlocking wall requires rendering of not more than 300mm girth to vertical external corners of the brick wall. The study, therefore, recommends the use of hydraform interlocking bricks for low-cost housing to reduce the housing deficit in Nigeria. Keywords: Sandcrete block; hydraform interlocking brick; walling; cost analysis; Auchi; DOI: 10.7176/JNSR/11-22-07 Publication date: November 30th 202

Smart Flow Steering Agent for End-to-End Delay Improvement in Software-Defined Networks

لضمان الإستجابة للخطأ والإدارة الموزعة، يتم استخدام البروتوكولات الموزعة كأحد المفاهيم المعمارية الرئيسية التي تتضمنها شبكة الإنترنت. ومع ذلك، يمكن التغلب على عدم الكفاءة وعدم الاستقرار والقصور بمساعدة بنية الشبكات الجديدة التي تسمى الشبكات المعرفة بالبرمجيات SDN. الخاصية الرئيسية لهذه المعمارية هي فصل مستوى التحكم عن مستوى البيانات. إن تقليل التصادم سيؤدي إلى تحسين سرعة الإستجابة وزيادة البيانات المرسلة بصورة صحيحة، لهذا السبب يجب أن يكون هناك توزيع متجانس للحمل المروري عبر مسارات الشبكة المختلفة. تقدم هذه الورقة البحثية أداة توجيه ذكية SFSA لتوجيه تدفق البيانات بناءاً على ظروف الشبكة الحالية. لتحسين الإنتاجية وتقليل زمن الوصول، فإن الخوارزمية المقترحة SFSA تقوم بتوزيع حركة مرور البيانات داخل الشبكة على مسارات مناسبة ، بالإضافة إلى الإشراف على الإرتباطات التشعبية وحمل مسارات نقل البيانات. تم استخدام سيناريو خوارزمية توجيه شجرة الامتداد الدنياMST وأخرى مع خوارزمية التوجيه المعروفة بفتح أقصر مسار أولاً OSPF لتقييم جودة الخوارمية المقترحة SFSA . على سبيل المقارنة ، بالنسبة لخوارزميات التوجيه المذكروة آنفاً ، فقد حققت استراتيجيةSFSA المقترحة انخفاضاً بنسبة 2٪ في معدل ضياع حزم البيانات PDR ، وبنسبة تتراوح بين 15-45٪ في سرعة إستلام البيانات من المصدر إلى الالوجهة النهائية لحزمة البيانات وكذلك انخفاض بنسبة 23 ٪ في زمن رحلة ذهاب وعودة RTT . تم استخدام محاكي Mininet ووحدة التحكم POX لإجراء المحاكاة. ميزة أخرى من SFSA على MST و OSPF هي أن وقت التنفيذ والاسترداد لا يحمل تقلبات. يتقوم أداة التوجيه الذكية المقترحة في هذه الورقة البحثية من فتح أفقاً جديداً لنشر أدوات ذكية جديدة في شبكة SDN تعزز قابلية برمجة الشبكات وإدارتها .To ensure fault tolerance and distributed management, distributed protocols are employed as one of the major architectural concepts underlying the Internet. However, inefficiency, instability and fragility could be potentially overcome with the help of the novel networking architecture called software-defined networking (SDN). The main property of this architecture is the separation of the control and data planes. To reduce congestion and thus improve latency and throughput, there must be homogeneous distribution of the traffic load over the different network paths. This paper presents a smart flow steering agent (SFSA) for data flow routing based on current network conditions. To enhance throughput and minimize latency, the SFSA distributes network traffic to suitable paths, in addition to supervising link and path loads. A scenario with a minimum spanning tree (MST) routing algorithm and another with open shortest path first (OSPF) routing algorithms were employed to assess the SFSA. By comparison, to these two routing algorithms, the suggested SFSA strategy determined a reduction of 2% in packets dropped ratio (PDR), a reduction of 15-45% in end-to-end delay according to the traffic produced, as well as a reduction of 23% in round trip time (RTT). The Mininet emulator and POX controller were employed to conduct the simulation. Another advantage of the SFSA over the MST and OSPF is that its implementation and recovery time do not exhibit fluctuations. The smart flow steering agent will open a new horizon for deploying new smart agents in SDN that enhance network programmability and management

Model of fire safety management for the assessment of an office building in FCT Abuja Nigeria

Fire safety management is essential in the aspects of achieving absolute fire safety standards in a building. Various Fire safety assessment methodologies and fire risk evaluation process has been developed over time, in spites of this, the fire risk keeps increasing, which implied that, there is a poor fire safety management. This study proposes a model of fire safety management for the fire risk assessment of an office building in Nigeria. The ten components of fire safety management were selected from the literature review, which was later structured to form criteria. The relative importance index was used to rank the level of compliance of fire safety management base on their influence. The questionnaires were the distribution to 30 fire safety practitioners and experts with substantial experience and knowledge in fire safety management. The data were analyzed using the relative importance index analytical approach. The evaluation model was suggested base on fire safety practitioners and experts’ perceptions. The inspection/observation of an office building was conducted in Nigeria in order to validate the model. The findings revealed that there is higher fire risk due to non- compliance with the standard fire safety management

SD–NFV as an Energy Efficient Approach for M2M Networks Using Cloud–Based 6LoWPAN Testbed

Machine–to–Machine (M2M) communication is the leading technology for realising the Internet–of–Things (IoT). The M2M sensor nodes are characterised by low–power and low–data rates devices which have increased exponentially over the years. IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Network (6LoWPAN) is the first protocol that provides IPv6 connectivity to the wireless M2M sensor nodes. Having a tremendous number of M2M sensor nodes execute independent control decision leads to difficulty in network control and management. In addition, these ever–growing devices generate massive traffic and cause energy scarcity which affects the M2M sensor node lifetime. Recently, Software–Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functioning Virtualisation (NFV) are being used in M2M sensor networks to add programmability and flexibility features in order to adopt the exponential increment in wireless M2M traffic and enable network configuration even after deployment. This paper presents a proof–of–concept implementation which aims to analyse how SDN, NFV, and cloud computing can interact together in the 6LoWPAN gateway to provide simplicity and flexibility in network management. The proposed approach is called customised Software Defined–Network Functioning Virtualisation (SD–NFV), and has been tested and verified by implementing a real–time 6LoWPAN testbed. The experimental results indicated that the SD–NFV approach reduced the network discovery time by 60% and extended the node’s lifetime by 65% in comparison to the traditional 6LoWPAN network. The implemented testbed has one sink which is the M2M 6LoWPAN gateway where the network coordinator and the SDN controller are executed. There are many possible ways to implement 6LoWPAN testbed but limited are based on open standards development boards (e.g., Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and Beagle Bones). In the current testbed, the Arduino board is chosen and the SDN controller is customised and written using C++ language to fit the 6LoWPAN network requirements. Finally, SDN and NFV have been envisioned as the most promising techniques to improve network programmability, simplicity, and management in cloud–based 6LoWPAN gateway

Optimized Artificial Intelligence Model for DDoS Detection in SDN Environment

© Copyright 2023 The Authors. Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks continue to be a major security concern, threatening the availability and reliability of network services. Software-defined networking (SDN) has emerged as a promising solution to address this issue, enabling centralized network control and management. However, conventional SDN-based DDoS mitigation techniques often struggle to detect and mitigate sophisticated attacks due to their limited ability to analyze complex traffic patterns. This paper proposes an innovative and optimized approach that effectively combines mininet, Ryu controller, and one dimensional-convolutional neural network (1D-CNN) to detect and mitigate DDoS attacks in SDN environments. The proposed approach involves training the 1D-CNN model with labeled network traffic data to effectively identify abnormal patterns associated with DDoS attacks. Furthermore, seven hyperparameters of the trained 1D-CNN model were tuned using non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) to achieve the best accuracy with minimum training time. Once the optimized 1D-CNN model detects an attack, the Ryu controller dynamically adapts the network policies and employs appropriate mitigation techniques to protect the network infrastructure. To evaluate the effectiveness of the optimized 1D-CNN model, extensive experiments were conducted using a simulated SDN environment with a realistic DDoS attack dataset. The experimental results demonstrate that the developed approach achieves significantly improved detection accuracy of 99.99% compared to other machine learning (ML) models. The NSGA-II enhances the optimized model accuracy with an improvement rate of 9.5%, 8%, 5.4%, and 2.6% when it is compared to logistic regression (LR), random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), and k-nearest neighbor (KNN) optimized models respectively. This research paves the way for future developments in leveraging deep learning (DL) driven techniques and SDN architectures to address evolving cybersecurity challenges