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‘Abd al-Rahman b. ‘Amr al-Awza‘i (c.707–774) was Umayyad Syria’s most influential jurist, part of a generation of scholars who began establishing the first formal structures for the preservation and dissemination of religious knowledge. Following the Abbasid revolution, they provided a point of stability in otherwise unstable times. Despite his close ties to the old regime, al-Awza‘i continued to participate in legal and theological matters in the Abbasid era. Although his immediate impact would prove short-lived, his influence on aspects of Islamic law, particularly the laws of war, endures to this day.

Spoken word performance addressing gentrification and eviction encodes and embodies increasingly abstract and bureaucratically obfuscated processes of racialized dispossession in U.S. cities. Developing tropes across three works about housing precarity are read as poets’ attempts to identify the antagonists behind the digital wall of finance capital. Whereas the interactions of housing-insecure people with and within the housing market generate socially devalued identities, spoken word’s emphasis on “authenticity” requires poets to stand up as and for themselves as they wish to be (seen). In so doing, poets attempt to connect with audiences in real time to locate or reconstitute a stance as agents, however provisionally.

These twelve chapters show how war functions as a subject, theme, impetus--willing and not--and backdrop in travel writing. Literature about travel and war in tandem enables readers to rethink both categories. The forms of travel writing about war addressed in this collection, including cookbooks and military magazines along with nonfiction narrative and memoir, reveal how heterogenous travel writing can be. To study travel in connection with war expands readers' understanding of the multiple motivations instigating travellers' journeys. War is about more than fighting on a battlefield; its reach is extensive, encompassing the spheres surrounding its battlefields and fronts. The many actors involved in any conflict attests to the ways war is absorbed into their worlds, permeates their thoughts and spurs their actions. Readers interested in travel literature from the beginning of the nineteenth century through the present day will find this volume to be of especial interest.

Free trade agreements (FTAs) have mushroomed in the Asia-Pacific region over the past fifteen years. The Philippines is trying to forge several of these agreements in order to stay competitive. This paper examines the emergence of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) as well as the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement. This paper will discuss the advantages for the country by joining both the AFTA and the Japan Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement. It will also discuss several free trade agreements that are in effect in the region as well as efforts by the country to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). For the country to be a member of the TPP certain institutional reforms are needed to be put in place. The studies examined in this paper show that these FTAs in general have a positive effect on the Philippine economy.

The propaganda efforts of the authoritarian Aliyev regime in Baku and the general Western ignorance of the history of the South Caucasus have contributed to the lack of meaningful response to the genocidal aggression that Azerbaijan has inflicted on the indigenous Armenians of Artsakh, known to many as Nagorno-Karabakh. The humanitarian crisis created by the Azeri blockade of the Lachin Corridor is only the most recent step in a process of cleansing the region of its Armenian population, a process that began in the early years of the twentieth century. The Ottoman Turkish genocide of Armenians in 1915–1923 is not a distinct event of the past but a process whose ideology is central to the Azeri-Turkish genocidal violence perpetrated against Armenians in the present. An integral component of the processes of genocide is cultural heritage destruction as noted by Raphael Lemkin. The erasure of most signs of the indigenous Armenian presence on its historic homeland was particularly pronounced in the decades following the Armenian Genocide and continues today. Cultural erasure went hand in hand with Turkish state genocide denial and the rewriting and mythologizing of its national narrative. Azerbaijan has been following a similar playbook since the collapse of the Soviet Union. These genocidal processes of denial, heritage destruction, and the rewriting of history are what I describe as “genocide by other means.”

More than half a billion people worldwide are affected by diabetes, which is a prevalent non-communicable disease that can lead to critical health conditions, including vision loss. Diabetic Macular Edema (DME) is a primary cause of vision impairment and can eventually lead to blindness in diabetic patients. Early detection of DME and proper health management are crucial to controlling the disease. Retinal image-based AI-enabled diabetes diagnosis has gained significant attention as a non-invasive, fast, and reasonably accurate method for diagnosing DME. To make this technology accessible to underserved communities or areas lacking proper clinical facilities, a mobile application-based solution could have a significant impact. In this article, we describe how we transformed our previously published AI-enabled model into an Android-based mobile application, which is part of a two-phase research study. In the first phase, we developed a deep learning-based model that predicts DME grading using retinal images. In the second phase, we built a mobile application DMEgrader to make our model accessible via a mobile device. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first article to demonstrate necessary steps and code snippets to support developers in transforming deep learning models into Android based mobile applications for DME grading prediction. © 2023 IEEE.

Determining the grounded ice dynamics of deep-time glaciations is limited by the scarcity of well-preserved subglacial erosional features and their irregular distribution. In particular, small-scale erosional features known as s-forms that are subglacially sculpted in bedrock by water and/or ice are rarely preserved from the pre-Cenozoic record. A detailed re-examination of two late Paleozoic (late Carboniferous–early Permian) glacially-polished, surfaces at the base of the Dwyka Gp. within paleofjords located in the Kaokoveld region of northwest Namibia reveals a range of erosional features including: complex, multi-directional striae that crosscut each other, crescentic markings, chattermark trails, sinuous furrows, linear furrows, transverse troughs, comma forms, sichelwannen, muschelbrüche, cavettos, a pothole, and rock drumlins. The first study location in the Sanitatis paleovalley is previously undescribed and consists of striae and fractures on a polished granite bedrock surface located on the paleovalley floor. Striae, crescentic markings, and chattermark trails indicate ice movement to the west/northwest (striae mean azimuth of 276°). The second location in the Hoarusib paleovalley was previously described and is located on a multi-level, resistant, quartzite bedrock ridge close to or on the valley wall. This location contains numerous s-forms, striae, and fractures, as well as onlapping glaciogenic sediments, including diamictite plastered within a pothole. Some of these features are superimposed on rock drumlins. These erosional features were likely formed by a combination of pressurized subglacial meltwater and glacial abrasion underneath a glacier as it flowed over and around a resistant bedrock outcrop. Orientations of striae and chattermark trails at the second location indicate a primary direction of ice movement toward the west/northwest (striae modal azimuth of 275°), a minor secondary movement to the southwest (255°), and abundant third-order striae indicating ice flow around bedrock obstacles. However, cross-cutting relations suggest the primary and secondary striae orientations are not related to two distinct glacial advances as previously thought. The complex relationships between striae, fractures, and s-forms suggest that a combination of pressure melting, abundant subglacial meltwater, debris-rich basal ice, and variable ice flow paths around resistant obstacles was required to form these features. We conclude that the study locations were overridden by relatively thick (>210 m) warm-based or polythermal glaciers that were confined to a network of fjords as ice receded and stagnated. The glaciers flowed west into present-day Brazil during the late Paleozoic and likely overtopped the paleovalley walls during times of ice maxima.

Density fluctuations near the QCD critical point can be probed via an intermittency analysis in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. We report the first measurement of intermittency in Au+Au collisions at sNN = 7.7-200 GeV measured by the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The scaled factorial moments of identified charged hadrons are analyzed at mid-rapidity and within the transverse momentum phase space. We observe a power-law behavior of scaled factorial moments in Au+Au collisions and a decrease in the extracted scaling exponent (ν) from peripheral to central collisions. The ν is consistent with a constant for different collisions energies in the mid-central (10-40%) collisions. Moreover, the ν in the 0-5% most central Au+Au collisions exhibits a non-monotonic energy dependence that reaches a minimum around sNN = 27 GeV. The physics implications on the QCD phase structure are discussed.

In this powerful debut, Rebecca Dimyan details her experience with endometriosis, a chronic disease which effects one in ten women worldwide. This painful condition takes an average of seven years to be diagnosed and has no proven cure. Most women will undergo multiple surgeries, take countless painkillers and other drugs, and will still endure regular pain and other complications. With honesty, vulnerability, and sometimes humor, Dimyan explores the ways the condition has impacted her experiences, her body, her pain, and her joy. She takes her audience on an emotional journey through her teenage years, early twenties, and into her thirties as she becomes a professional woman, wife, and mother. Dimyan blends research, anecdotes, and advice as she shares the relief she’s found through alternative treatments and holistic medicine. Chronic isn’t just a story about one woman’s illness—it is a memoir about all the pain, pleasure, heartbreak, friendship, love, and hope she experiences on her path to healing.

Schools of social work must prepare social workers to meet the demands of the rapidly emerging field of police social work. This article reports on the experiences of a social work program’s partnership with a police department. The authors identify an integrative practice model of police social work, specifying social work roles at the baccalaureate and graduate levels, as well as ethical issues. The model is based on the social work competencies and law enforcement best practices. The authors analyze the experiences of placing students directly into law enforcement settings and make recommendations to create successful experiences for students, social workers, and police. The importance of strategic partnerships, communication, trust, and support in building strong relationships is also highlighted.