bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Theatrical Movement in the Hebrew Theater
Authors: Rokem Freddie 
Published: March 2016

This article continues “The Bibliography of the Theatrical Movement of Western Asia and North Africa,”Peter V. Chelkowski, editor, started in the MESA Bulletin XVI. 1 (July 1982), pp. 9–23.Today’s Hebrew theater is almost as multifaceted and varied as the number of individuals and institutions which comprise it. It is quite a complicated matter to trace its origin, since the cultural roots of modern Israeli society are a multiplicity of ethnic cultures from all over the world. And it is only natural that this ethnic and cultural diversity should be expressed in the theater in general, and in all of its linguistic, pictorial, and gestural components in particular.
Do-It-Yourself Arabic Word Processing
Authors: Parkinson Dilworth B. 
Published: March 2016

This article is a personal account of how I, a professor of Arabic with no computer background, managed to get Arabic word-processing capabilities out of the computing facilities already intact in my college, with relatively little capital outlay. Although many of the details would be different at other institutions, it is clear that the same basic strategies could be followed to get word-processing capabilities anywhere the basic computing facilities already exist.Before I begin my story, I should explain that there are Arabic word processors “out there” of varying qualities. CPT, Wang, Apple, Merganthaler, Xerox, and others have products either out or almost out which range in cost from a few thousand to almost a hundred thousand dollars. Except for the Xerox product, the Arabic on the screen is rather ugly, but when connected to a letter quality Arabic printer the hard copy of most is acceptable.
Presidential Address 1988: The Superpowers and Middle East Crises
Authors: Quandt William B. 
Published: March 2016

Is The Cold War finally coming to an end, as some would have us believe? And if so, what does this mean for the Middle East? These are questions that will be with us for some time. They do not lend themselves to clear answers, but they nonetheless demand our attention.For students of the contemporary Middle East, these questions pose special analytical problems—how can one best assess the relationship between the area that we study and the broader currents of international politics? Middle East specialists are rightly skeptical of efforts to analyze their region of study from a “globalist” perspective. Most of us have little patience with theorizing that fails to take into account that which is distinctive in the cultures, politics, and societies of the Middle East. We have even less use for crude empiricism which tries to reduce the complexities of the Middle East to quantifiable events or entries in simplistic classification schemes.
Arabic on the Macintosh: Overview and Review
Authors: Reinhart A. Kevin 
Published: March 2016

The Golden age of printing for Islamicists surely was the 19th century, when skilled European and occasionally Middle Eastern and Indian typesetters, could compose in as many fonts as an author could write. One reads Goldziher’s Die Zāhiriten with envy, not only for the meticulous transliterated Arabic and generous footnotes at the bottom of the page, but for the extensive Arabic quotations inserted into the text and notes. Since few of the Arabic texts he cited had been published, Goldziher provided his readers with his evidence in the original. Those were the days; and a new golden age for Islamicists may be upon us. With computers, not only footnotes on the page but transliteration and multiscript publishing are suddenly feasible and even simple.The items discussed below take advantage of the flexibility of the Macintosh system to let even casual computer users produce Arabic. These programs make it possible for anyone easily to produce text in Islamic script (Arabic, Persian, Ottoman, Urdu, etc.) in camera-ready form.
Introduction to Sufi Music and Ritual in Turkey
Authors: Markoff Irene 
Published: March 2016

It is difficult to appreciate and understand Sufism fully without an informed exposure to the expressive cultural forms that help define and enhance it. It is this dimension of Islamic mysticism that transports the seeker on the path of spiritual attainment into higher states of consciousness that promise spiritual intoxication (Wajd) and a unique and intimate union, even annihilation (fanā), in the supreme being. This emotional expression of faith is intensified and externalized in elaborate forms of meditation and esoteric techniques that are part of ritual ceremonies.Through ritual, many Sufi orders and Sufi-related sects throughout the world of Islam have been able to articulate doctrines and beliefs through artistic traditions such as sung poetry, instrumental music and dance-like movements (samā’ or spiritual concerts) and have utilized meditation patterns that combine corporeal techniques and controlled breathing (dhikr, Turkish, zikr) to induce or conduct trance and ecstatic states.
Imagined Cyber Communities, Iranians and the Internet
Authors: Nazeri Haleh 
Published: March 2016

The post information age will remove the limitations of geography.—Nicholas Negroponte, Being DigitalThe internet has been a continually changing forum for communicating that has been taken up by diaspora communities to maintain connections with their countrymates all over the world. In that capacity, the technology has been an easy and innovative avenue for cultural expression. Iranians, for instance, have established on-line magazines, newsgroups, media and business directories, human rights organizations, student groups, academic organizations and book publishers for a transnational community. Who goes to these sites and why?
Western Orientalism and Liberal Islam: Mutual Distrust?
Authors: Laroui Abdallah 
Published: March 2016

I Begin this talk by telling you a story, that of a Spaniard who was living in the Moroccan city of Tangiers. One day he came to see the president of the local Council of Ulemas and said to him: “I feel attracted to your religion. I would have embraced it already but for one thing which disturbs me.”“What is it?” asked the ‘Alim.“I am a musician by profession,” answered the Spaniard, “and Islam forbids music.”“Who told you that?” retorted the ‘Alim angrily. The would-be convert didn’t reply, which he would have done nowadays, as I hear it in the news; he simply pulled out of his pocket a sheet of paper and gave it to the man of religion who read it and understood everything. It was an ad for a book recently published by a local professor. The ‘Alim began to explain patiently that the book was five centuries old and that it was about a theological controversy known as the Sama’ Dispute over the way the Koran should be read in public. What was forbidden, at least in the eyes of some clerics, was to sing the words of the Holy message because the listener would be more interested in the music than in the meaning. But it was soon clear for the ‘Alim that he was speaking for nothing. His visitor had read in the article exactly what he was hoping to find, an Islam more rigorous, stern, severe than his own religion. Otherwise his conversion would be pointless. The kind of Islam the ‘Alim was offering him, simple, moderate, conciliatory, Jesuitical in a word, wasn’t the real thing.
The IsmailiGinanTradition from the Indian Subcontinent
Authors: Gillani Karim 
Published: March 2016

Ginan bolore nit nure bharea;Evo haide tamare harakh na maeji.Recite continually theginanswhich are filled with light;Boundless will be the joy in your heart.Ginansare devotional songs rooted in the musical and poetic matrix of Indian culture. The term “ginan” carries a double significance: on the one hand, it means “religious knowledge” or “wisdom,” analogous to the Sanskrit wordjnana(knowledge). On the other hand, it means “song” or “recitation,” suggesting a link to the Arabicghannaand the Urdu/Hindighana, both verbs meaning “to sing.” For the past seven hundred years, Ismailis from the Indian subcontinent (Satpanth Khoja Ismailis) have been recitingginansas a part of their daily religious devotions at the congregational hall (Jamat Khana).
Conducting Research in Lebanon: An Overview of Historical Sources Outside of Beirut (Part II)
Authors: Sbaiti Nadya , Scalenghe Sara 
Published: March 2016

Recent years have witnessed a concerted effort by researchers, archivists and others to preserve, catalog, and inform researchers about the many types of sources located in Lebanon. The publication of Part I of this guide to conducting historical research [see MESA Bulletin 37:1 (Summer 2003): 68-79] addressed archives, libraries, and institutes located in Beirut. This article is dedicated to those found in the rest of the country.As with Part I, the archives and sources surveyed below comprise those that are open to the public and deemed to have the most potential for researchers. Although likely to be of most relevance to historians, these sources are such that they should also prove useful to scholars from other fields. Furthermore, access is constantly improving, thanks in no small part to the efforts underway at multiple institutions to organize and digitize manuscripts, court records, and a host of other documents.
“Enough, Enough, Oh Ocean”: Music of the Pearl Divers in the Arabian Gulf
Authors: Al-Taee Nasser 
Published: March 2016

They fight death and all its elementsWhile smilingO how I suffer from the long nightsWitnessing those motherless diversEvery time a month passes by, another followsUntil the eyes grow old.Murshid bin Sa’d al-Bithali.Oh, how lucky are the richWho no longer cross the ocean as me.And again:If I was rich and a merchantI would never have endeavoredBut I'm weak and all I haveIs my cane.Fahad Rashid Boorsely
Authoritarianism, Civil Society and Democracy in the Middle East: Mass Media in the Persian Gulf
Authors: Kazemi Farhad , Norton Augustus Richard 
Published: March 2016

The published literature on the topic of “Authoritarianism, Civil Society, and Democracy in the Middle East” is extensive and unwieldy. Partly due to space constraints, we propose to review the topic under six framing questions and then provide a selected and representative bibliography at the end.The ideas of political reform and democracy are often the mainstay of debates within Middle Eastern polities. In general, there is ample awareness of democracy deficit and poor governance in the region. Democracy refers most basically to the ability of citizens to hold their governments accountable, and to change their political leaders at regular intervals. Instead, accountability to the public is generally weak in the region, and rulers are more likely to change as a result of actuarial realities than a withdrawal of public confidence.
Integrating Western Modernism in Postcolonial Arabic Literature: A Study of Abdul-Wahhab Al-Bayati’s Poetics
Authors: Gohar Saddik 
Published: March 2016

Discussing the banning of Salman Rushdie’sSatanic Versesin some Islamic countries, Vijay Mishra and Bob Hodge argue:For the Islamic postcolonial world, the moral is clear and succinct: to write in the language of the colonizer is to write from within death itself. Postcolonial writers who write in the language of the Empire are marked off as traitors to the cause of a reconstructive post-colonialism. Postcolonial writers compose under the shadow of death (Williams & Chrisman 1993:277).Apparently, the consequences triggered by the publication of Rushdie’s novel, in the preceding century, raised many significant questions about the relationship between East and West, colonized and colonizer. Nevertheless, the hostility toward the book in some Middle Eastern and Islamic countries is not related to the issue of language, identified by Mishra and Hodge as “the language of the empire.” The use of colonial languages rarely represents a threat to Islamic culture because unlike the literature of ex-colonies in Asia, Africa, South America, the West Indies and the Caribbean, dominantly written in the language of the western colonizers, literature in a large part of the Arab-Islamic world is composed in indigenous languages. It is important to point out therefore that the issue of language, raised above, is irrelevant because the campaign againstSatanic Versesis rooted in the radical constructs of religious hegemony integral to contemporary political Islamic doctrines.
History of the Modern Middle East
Authors: Jankowski James 
Published: March 2016

The syllabi on modern Middle Eastern history courses submitted by members of MESA were, not unnaturally, varied in general approach, in time span and in area covered. There were certain common elements, however, within the framework of which this syllabus has largely remained. Four such congruences were most important:1)the use of a chronological rather than a topical or problems approach in teaching the history of the modern Middle East (while particular topics or problems were often isolated within a particular time period, all of the syllabi submitted used a chronological framework);2)a general tendency to begin with a brief survey of the medieval history of the Middle East before beginning intensive treatment at the beginning of the nineteenth century;3)an emphasis on internal development and modernization rather than on political-diplomatic history;4)the frequent use of reading assignments (a chapter from one work, a number of pages from another) from a variety of semi-specialized or monographic works rather than reliance on one or more texts or readers.
Wnt activation protects against neomycin-induced hair cell damage in the mouse cochlea
Authors: Liu L , Chen Y , Qi J , Zhang Y , He Y , Ni W , Li W , Zhang S , Sun S , Taketo M M , Wang L , Chai R , Li H 
Published: March 2016

AbstractRecent studies have reported the role of Wnt/β-catenin signaling in hair cell (HC) development, regeneration, and differentiation in the mouse cochlea; however, the role of Wnt/β-catenin signaling in HC protection remains unknown. In this study, we took advantage of transgenic mice to specifically knockout or overactivate the canonical Wnt signaling mediator β-catenin in HCs, which allowed us to investigate the role of Wnt/β-catenin signaling in protecting HCs against neomycin-induced damage. We first showed that loss of β-catenin in HCs made them more vulnerable to neomycin-induced injury, while constitutive activation of β-catenin in HCs reduced HC loss both in vivo and in vitro. We then showed that loss of β-catenin in HCs increased caspase-mediated apoptosis induced by neomycin injury, while β-catenin overexpression inhibited caspase-mediated apoptosis. Finally, we demonstrated that loss of β-catenin in HCs led to increased expression of forkhead box O3 transcription factor (Foxo3) and Bim along with decreased expression of antioxidant enzymes; thus, there were increased levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) after neomycin treatment that might be responsible for the increased aminoglycoside sensitivity of HCs. In contrast, β-catenin overexpression reduced Foxo3 and Bim expression and ROS levels, suggesting that β-catenin is protective against neomycin-induced HC loss. Our findings demonstrate that Wnt/β-catenin signaling has an important role in protecting HCs against neomycin-induced HC loss and thus might be a new therapeutic target for the prevention of HC death.
Macroscopic self-reorientation of interacting two-dimensional crystals
Authors: Woods C. R. , Withers F. , Zhu M. J. , Cao Y. , Yu G. , Kozikov A. , Ben Shalom M. , Morozov S. V. , van Wijk M. M. , Fasolino A. , Katsnelson M. I. , Watanabe K. , Taniguchi T. , Geim A. K. , Mishchenko A. , Novoselov K. S. 
Published: March 2016

AbstractMicroelectromechanical systems, which can be moved or rotated with nanometre precision, already find applications in such fields as radio-frequency electronics, micro-attenuators, sensors and many others. Especially interesting are those which allow fine control over the motion on the atomic scale because of self-alignment mechanisms and forces acting on the atomic level. Such machines can produce well-controlled movements as a reaction to small changes of the external parameters. Here we demonstrate that, for the system of graphene on hexagonal boron nitride, the interplay between the van der Waals and elastic energies results in graphene mechanically self-rotating towards the hexagonal boron nitride crystallographic directions. Such rotation is macroscopic (for graphene flakes of tens of micrometres the tangential movement can be on hundreds of nanometres) and can be used for reproducible manufacturing of aligned van der Waals heterostructures.
In vivo cross-sectional imaging of the phonating larynx using long-range Doppler optical coherence tomography
Authors: Coughlan Carolyn A. , Chou Li-dek , Jing Joseph C. , Chen Jason J. , Rangarajan Swathi , Chang Theodore H. , Sharma Giriraj K. , Cho Kyoungrai , Lee Donghoon , Goddard Julie A. , Chen Zhongping , Wong Brian J. F. 
Published: March 2016

AbstractDiagnosis and treatment of vocal fold lesions has been a long-evolving science for the otolaryngologist. Contemporary practice requires biopsy of a glottal lesion in the operating room under general anesthesia for diagnosis. Current in-office technology is limited to visualizing the surface of the vocal folds with fiber-optic or rigid endoscopy and using stroboscopic or high-speed video to infer information about submucosal processes. Previous efforts using optical coherence tomography (OCT) have been limited by small working distances and imaging ranges. Here we report the first full field, high-speed, and long-range OCT images of awake patients’ vocal folds as well as cross-sectional video and Doppler analysis of their vocal fold motions during phonation. These vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser source (VCSEL) OCT images offer depth resolved, high-resolution, high-speed, and panoramic images of both the true and false vocal folds. This technology has the potential to revolutionize in-office imaging of the larynx.
Structure of ThiM from Vitamin B1 biosynthetic pathway of Staphylococcus aureus – Insights into a novel pro-drug approach addressing MRSA infections
Authors: Drebes Julia , Künz Madeleine , Windshügel Björn , Kikhney Alexey G. , Müller Ingrid B. , Eberle Raphael J. , Oberthür Dominik , Cang Huaixing , Svergun Dmitri I. , Perbandt Markus , Betzel Christian , Wrenger Carsten 
Published: March 2016

AbstractInfections caused by the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are today known to be a substantial threat for global health. Emerging multi-drug resistant bacteria have created a substantial need to identify and discover new drug targets and to develop novel strategies to treat bacterial infections. A promising and so far untapped antibiotic target is the biosynthesis of vitamin B1 (thiamin). Thiamin in its activated form, thiamin pyrophosphate, is an essential co-factor for all organisms. Therefore, thiamin analogous compounds, when introduced into the vitamin B1 biosynthetic pathway and further converted into non-functional co-factors by the bacterium can function as pro-drugs which thus block various co-factor dependent pathways. We characterized one of the key enzymes within the S. aureus vitamin B1 biosynthetic pathway, 5-(hydroxyethyl)-4-methylthiazole kinase (SaThiM; EC 2.7.1.50), a potential target for pro-drug compounds and analyzed the native structure of SaThiM and complexes with the natural substrate 5-(hydroxyethyl)-4-methylthiazole (THZ) and two selected substrate analogues.
Complement factor H binding of monomeric C-reactive protein downregulates proinflammatory activity and is impaired with at risk polymorphic CFH variants
Authors: Molins Blanca , Fuentes-Prior Pablo , Adán Alfredo , Antón Rosa , Arostegui Juan I. , Yagüe Jordi , Dick Andrew D. 
Published: March 2016

AbstractInflammation and immune-mediated processes are pivotal to the pathogenic progression of age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Although plasma levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) have been shown to be associated with an increased risk for AMD, the pathophysiological importance of the prototypical acute-phase reactant in the etiology of the disease is unknown and data regarding the exact role of CRP in ocular inflammation are limited. In this study, we provide mechanistic insight into how CRP contributes to the development of AMD. In particular, we show that monomeric CRP (mCRP) but not the pentameric form (pCRP) upregulates IL-8 and CCL2 levels in retinal pigment epithelial cells. Further, we show that complement factor H (FH) binds mCRP to dampen its proinflammatory activity. FH from AMD patients carrying the “risk” His402 polymorphism displays impaired binding to mCRP and therefore proinflammatory effects of mCRP remain unrestrained.
Twin Boundaries merely as Intrinsically Kinematic Barriers for Screw Dislocation Motion in FCC Metals
Authors: Zhang Jiayong , Zhang Hongwu , Ye Hongfei , Zheng Yonggang 
Published: March 2016

AbstractMetals with nanoscale twins have shown ultrahigh strength and excellent ductility, attributed to the role of twin boundaries (TBs) as strong barriers for the motion of lattice dislocations. Though observed in both experiments and simulations, the barrier effect of TBs is rarely studied quantitatively. Here, with atomistic simulations and continuum based anisotropic bicrystal models, we find that the long-range interaction force between coherent TBs and screw dislocations is negligible. Further simulations of the pileup behavior of screw dislocations in front of TBs suggest that screw dislocations can be blocked kinematically by TBs due to the change of slip plane, leading to the pileup of subsequent dislocations with the elastic repulsion actually from the pinned dislocation in front of the TB. Our results well explain the experimental observations that the variation of yield strength with twin thickness for ultrafine-grained copper follows the Hall-Petch relationship.
Novel GRN Mutations in Patients with Corticobasal Syndrome
Authors: Taghdiri Foad , Sato Christine , Ghani Mahdi , Moreno Danielle , Rogaeva Ekaterina , Tartaglia Maria Carmela 
Published: March 2016

AbstractLoss-of-function GRN mutations lead to GRN haploinsufficiency and consequently neurodegeneration with significant heterogeneity in clinical presentation of various syndromes. The aim of this study was to investigate the genetics and clinical features of patients with GRN-related frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) syndromes. We performed mutation analysis of GRN in 45 unrelated Canadian patients with a broad spectrum of FTLD-like syndromes (mean age at onset of 64.0 ± 11.2 years). In our cohort, two patients were carriers of two novel heterozygous alterations in GRN: 2 bp insertion (c.769–770insCC:p.Q257fs) and 12 bp deletion (c.1009–1020del:p.337–340del). Both patients presented with corticobasal syndrome supported by clinical and radiological findings. The absence of the mutant allele in the RT–PCR product was only observed for the sample with 2 bp insertion in GRN. In contrast, the allele with 12 bp deletion in GRN was not down-regulated at the RNA level and did not segregate with FTLD in the family. Our report extends the evidence for genetic and phenotypic variability in FTLD disorders and detects a novel pathogenic GRN mutation, carriers of which could eventually help to evaluate the efficacy of different treatments at early stages of dementia.