Age Estimation in Living Egyptians Using Signal Joint T‐cell Receptor Excision Circle Rearrangement

Age estimation is one of the challenges in forensic sciences. There are many techniques to estimate the age. Molecular biology approach is one of these techniques. Signal joint T‐cell receptor excision circles gene (sjTRECs), is one of this approach. We aimed to use sjTRECs as a suitable marker for age estimation among Egyptian population. TaqMan qPCR approach was used to quantify sjTREC levels in blood samples obtained from 153 healthy Egyptian individuals ranging from a few weeks to 70 years. Our results showed a significant negative correlation between sjTREC levels and age with p ≤ 0.05. Moreover, the individual's age can be determined through this formula Age = ?30.671+ (?5.998Y) (Y is dCtTBP ? sjTREC) with standard error ±7.35 years. Within the forensic context, sjTREC' levels can be used to estimate the Egyptian individual's age accurately.     

Value-For-Money Audit for Accountability and Performance Management in Local Government in Ghana

Public sector organizations, including local government (LG) entities, continue to resort to value for money (VFM) audit to enhance performance and accountability. Based on the analysis of the consolidated reports on the annual performance-based Functional Organizational Assessment Tool (FOAT)—VFM audit—in Ghana to determine the efficacy of VFM on performance, this article argues that VFM audits constitute a significant public management tool that could enhance LG performance. However, the FOAT reports, like most VFM audits, only provide quantitative evidence, which fails to capture the qualitative or other relevant explanatory factors behind the recorded performance improvement.     

The political and theological boundaries of Islamist moderation after the Arab Spring

This paper explores the repercussions of the apparent failure of Islamist experimentations with democracy during the Arab Spring in terms of the moderation hypotheses with a specific focus on the Egyptian case. I build on the existing arguments that repression may paradoxically moderate mainstream Islamist movements with certain caveats: when Islamists eventually come to power, their ideological vision also matters within the nexus of their strategic commitments and the on-going power struggles with other Islamist contenders. The prospects of democratisation, then, may also depend on the theoretical and political success of an Islamist political theology that accords better with rights and freedoms than a simplistic procedural democracy. Repression may indeed lead to moderation of the well-entrenched mainstream Islamist groups. However, such analyses focus only on those who remain within the fold of the mother organisation, rather than the splinter groups that break away with their more radicalised views. Under the post-Arab Spring conditions and given the Salafi factor, current views on the repression–moderation cycle must also account for the defection among certain Islamist constituencies towards jihadi or vigilante Salafism.     

Factors Affecting Some Failure Arab States Uprising and Obstacles for Development

Some Arab states witnessed a number of uprising, which ranged from violent reactions toward their people, such as in Syria, Libya, Egypt, and Yemen, while some countries were trying to prevent these revolutions by using different measures, in which can be described as ＂cosmetic surgeries＂, such as Morocco and Tunisia. There are a number of factors, which leads Arab states to what is known ＂the failed state＂. These states for more than three decades had failed to achieve a minimum of political stability, well-being, economic, and social development for their people, to keep up with global changes in political, economic, and social reforms. Some political factors affecting Arab uprising, including lack of political reform, democracy, human rights violations, illegitimate governments, and absence of anti-corruption policy. Arab states governments had failed to achieve the minimum requirement of economic development, to solve economic chronic difficulties in transitional economies, in fields, such as food and water security, human resources development, and economic development at local and regional levels. In addition, there are social factors ignite the Arab uprising. Including high rate of unemployment, deterioration of industrial and agricultural sectors, uncontrolled migration to cities consequently increase pressure on social services and economic development of cities.     

A Tale of Two Egypts: contrasting state-reported macro-trends with micro-voices of the poor

Poverty, inequality, unemployment, torture and corruption were among the main reasons why millions of Egyptians protested to end 30 years of Mubarak's rule in January 2011. The speed with which the regime has fallen and its fragility surprised the world. This is mainly because of the false image of a stable, prosperous and progressive Egypt propagated by the state, ignoring another Egypt, a poor, suffering and repressed one. The failure to see the latter Egypt led to the fall of the former. The aim of this article is to tell a ‘tale of two Egypts’ by contrasting the experiences and voices of poor Egyptians with the misleading figures reported by the state. The analysis shows how the state was able to provide Egyptians with growth without equity, education without inspiration, employment without security, health services without care and voting without any real impact on political processes.     

Explaining Canada–US differences in attitudes toward the role of government: a test of S.M. Lipset’s ‘Continental Divide’

For decades scholars have engaged in a lively debate about the distinctiveness of Canadian and American value systems. Lipset (1990) argues that divergent responses to the American Revolution led Canada to embrace Tory values of ‘peace, order, and good government’ while Americans pursued classical liberal values of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’. Other scholars question the extent, or even the existence, of the differences Lipset describes. Using surveys of students from Canadian and American universities close to the Canada–US border, we identify compelling support for Lipset’s hypothesised differences on the role of government in the least likely setting imaginable.     

Sudden death due to congenital pericardial defect: an autopsy case

Pericardial defects are rare in childhood and outcome is usually benign. Patients may be asymptomatic, but chest pain, emboli, arrhythmia, and sudden death have been described in the literature. We report the case of a 12-year-old boy who suddenly died after mild exercise. A left-sided pericardial defect with a diameter of 8 cm was detected on medico-legal autopsy.