At the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first century, the field of Arabic and Islamic studies became enriched by a number of multi-facetted scholarly theories challenging the traditional account on the early centuries of Islam. An author of one of them was the Israeli scholar Yehuda D. Nevo (1932–1992), working in archaeology, epigraphy and historiography. He devoted much of his career to the studying of Arabic rock inscriptions in the Negev desert, as well as to investigating literary and numismatic evidence of nascent Islam. In his theory, the gradual development of the Islamic faith, inspired by Abrahamism with an admixture of Judeo-Christianity, went through a stage of “indeterminate monotheism”. Not earlier than since the end of the second century A.H. one can speak of the formation of the dogmatic pillars of Islam, similar to those we know today. This paper is an attempt to sum up Nevo’s insightful input into the field of modern Islamic & Quranic studies today. Although controversial and unorthodox, many later researchers repeatedly refered to Nevo’s plenty of inspiring theses in their quest for facts on Islamic genesis lost in the maze of time and shifting memory of generations.

Is the fact that the majority of the population in the Middle East belongs to Islam actually the reason why human rights in Muslim-majority countries appear to be so difficult to work out and enforce? Are Islam and human rights not basically compatible? Historically it cannot be disputed that the thought of human rights first took shape in the European and Western context. Over the course of several centuries, it became widely accepted, and finally the thought of human rights also became a political reality as they were implemented in democratic states and constitutions. However, it would be a wrong conslusion, as for instance has been emphasized by Heiner Bielefeldt, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, to say that the ability to implement human rights, in particular thoughts about freedom and the equality of all people, is a one-sided affair and can only occur in the Western-Christian context. As far as Heiner Bielefeldt is concerned, this historic development, however, justifies neither the assertion that it had to happen as it did, nor does it justify Western representatives’ taking sole occupation of considerations relating to human rights thinking. Viewed from this perspective, human rights cannot boast a “Western” origin or a “Christian” character in a way that they would be incompatible with notions justified by Islam. Having that said, one is still to a large degree able to recognize a desolate situation in matters relating to human rights in Muslim-majority countries. But conflicts between Islam and human rights do not arise automatically out of the religious affiliation of a majority of the people. They certainly do stand out in those places where for political decision-making authorities Sharia law ranks higher than human rights and the granting of human rights is made dependent upon a traditional interpretation of the Sharia. Apart from the societal advocacy of human rights, there is the question as to the framework within which theological assessments of human rights questions occur. The following article aims at pointing to three discernable positions about human rights in the context of Islamic theologians, the a) the inclusive position, b) the pragmatic position, and c) the progressive position.

The aim of the article is to present the issue of loneliness of Iraqi women on the basis of selected novels written by Iraqi female writers in the 21st century. The first part of the article, which is preceded by an introduction to the topic, includes general information about the development of novels by Iraqi women writers since the second half of the 1990s and some remarks about their methods of portraying female characters. The second part of the article provides examples of lonely women in their narratives whereas the third part depicts a story of Riyām, the heroine in the novel Riyām wa-Kafā (Riyam and Kafa, 2014) by Hadiya Husayn, in a more detailed way.

The 13th-century Persian poet Saʿdi from Shiraz is considered to be one of the most prominent representatives of medieval Persian ethical literature. His works full of moralizing anecdotes were well known and widely read not only in Persia, but in the other parts of the Islamic world as well. Due to his highly humanistic approach, the relations between people were one of the most important issues discussed by the poet. This article is an attempt to define the status of ‘speech’ in Saʿdi’s moral imagination and to show how it becomes a key instrument in shaping relations with others. In the poet’s opinion, the right words reasonably spoken, just like an appropriate silence, shape the relationship between people and help them avoid conflict and open dispute. Quarrels and confrontations, according to the poet, not only damage a person literally by exposing his flaws and imperfections of character, thereby compromising his reputation (aberu), but may also undermine the basis of social life, generating hostility between people. That is why Saʿdi urges his readers to use soft and gentle speech in dealing with people and always behave in a conciliatory manner in response to aggression and rudeness. Highlighting the moral aspect of speech, Saʿdi shows how kind words form an invisible veil between people, which should be preserved if man desires to maintain his image, good name and dignity.

It is difficult to give an unambiguous answer for the question presented in the title. J.B. Glubb considered himself to be a friend of Arabs and the Arab issue. At the same time he was a loyal officer of the British Army. He did not see any contradiction in this. J.B. Glubb began his work in the Transjordan Emirate in 1931. In the beginning he commanded the border guard made of Bedouins and since 1939 the whole army of Transjordan, namely the Arab Legion. During World War II he considerably developed these armed forces. In 1946 Transjordan gained independence. Despite this J.B. Glubb maintained his command over the Arab Army until 1956. In 1948 he commanded the army during the conflict with Israel that was coming into being. During his military service he attempted to care about the interests of the House of Hashimites. Basically, he associated the Arab issue with the interests of this house. He believed that it was possible to permanently combine Arab interests viewed in that perspective with the influence of the British in the Middle East. Such reasoning turned out to be an absolute misconception. The officer was becoming more and more hated by a large part of Arabs. For many he was a symbol of being enslaved by the British. His reasoning of the Arab issue was becoming an anachronism. Eventually, he became a nuisance also for the Hashimites. Therefore, in march 1956 young king Husayn took the command from him and removed him from Jordan. Despite such ending of his military and political career one must admit that he was one of more interesting figures of the late British Empire.

A novel method to improve the performance of the frequency band is cognitive radio that was introduced in 1999. Due to a lot of advantages of the OFDM, adaptive OFDM method, this technique is used in cognitive radio (CR) systems, widely. In adaptive OFDM, transmission rate and power of subcarriers are allocated based on the channel variations to improve the system performance. This paper investigates adaptive resource allocation in the CR systems that are used OFDM technique to transmit data. The aim of this paper is to maximize the achievable transmission rate for the CR system by considering the interference constraint. Although secondary users can be aware form channel information between each other, but in some wireless standards, it is impossible for secondary user to be aware from channel information between itself and a primary user. Therefore, due to practical limitation, statistical interference channel is considered in this paper. This paper introduces a novel suboptimal power allocation algorithm. Also, this paper introduces a novel bit loading algorithm. In the numerical results sections, the performance of our algorithm is compared by optimal and conventional algorithms. Numerical results indicate our algorithm has better performance than conventional algorithms while its complexity is less than optimal algorithm.

A novel non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme is proposed to improve the throughput and the outage probability of the cognitive radio (CR) inspired system which has been implemented to adapt multiple services in the nextgeneration network (5G). In the proposed scheme, the primary source (PS) had sent a superposition code symbol with a predefined power allocation to relays, it decoded and forwarded (DF) a new superposition coded symbol to the destination with the other power allocation. By using a dual antenna at relays, it will be improved the bandwidth efficiency in such CR NOMA scheme. The performance of the system is evaluated based on the outage probability and the throughput with the assumption of the Rayleigh fading channels. According to the results obtained, it is shown that the outage probability and throughput of the proposed full-duplex (FD) in CR-NOMA with reasonable parameters can be able deploy in practical design as illustration in numerical results section.

One of the crucial advancements in next-generation 5G wireless networks is the use of high-frequency signals specifically those are in the millimeter wave (mm-wave) bands. Using mmwave frequency will allow more bandwidth resulting higher user data rates in comparison to the currently available network. However, several challenges are emerging (such as fading, scattering, propagation loss etc.), whenever we utilize mm-wave frequency wave bands for signal propagation. Optimizing propagation parameters of the mm-wave channels system are much essential for implementing in the real-world scenario. To keep this in mind, this paper presents the potential abilities of high frequencies signals by characterizing the indoor small cell propagation channel for 28, 38, 60 and 73 GHz frequency band, which is considered as the ultimate frequency choice for many of the researchers. The most potential Close-In (CI) propagation model for mm-wave frequencies is used as a Large-scale path loss model. Results and outcomes directly affecting the user experience based on fairness index, average cell throughput, spectral efficiency, cell-edge user’s throughput and average user throughput. The statistical results proved that these mm-wave spectrum gives a sufficiently greater overall performance and are available for use in the next generation 5G mobile communication network.

This article has two outreach aims. It concisely summarizes the main research and technical efforts in the EC H2020 ARIES Integrating Activity – Accelerator Research and Innovation for European Science and Society [1] during the period 2017/2018. ARIES is a continuation of CARE, TIARA and EuCARD projects [2-3]. The article also tries to show these results as an encouragement for local physics and engineering, research and technical communities to participate actively in such important European projects. According to the author’s opinion this participation may be much bigger [4-27]. All the needed components to participate – human, material and infrastructural are there [4,7]. So why the results are not satisfying as they should be? The major research subjects of ARIES are: new methods of particles acceleration including laser, plasma and particle beam interactions, new materials and accelerator components, building new generations of accelerators, energy efficiency and management of large accelerator systems, innovative superconducting magnets, high field and ultra-high gradient magnets, cost lowering, system miniaturization, promotion of innovation originating from accelerator research, industrial applications, and societal implications. Two institutions from Poland participate in ARIES – these are Warsaw University of Technology and Institute of Nuclear Chemistry and Technology in Warsaw. There are not present some of the key institutes active in accelerator technology in Poland. Let this article be a small contribution why Poland, a country of such big research potential, contributes so modestly to the European accelerator infrastructural projects? The article bases on public and internal documents of ARIES project, including the EU Grant Agreement and P1 report. The views presented in the paper are only by the author and not necessarily by the ARIES.

Performance of standard Direction of Arrival (DOA) estimation techniques degraded under real-time signal conditions. The classical algorithms are Multiple Signal Classification (MUSIC), and Estimation of Signal Parameters via Rotational Invariance Technique (ESPRIT). There are many signal conditions hamper on its performance, such as closely spaced and coherent signals caused due to the multipath propagations of signals results in a decrease of the signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the received signal. In this paper, a novel DOA estimation technique named CW-PCA MUSIC is proposed using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to threshold the nearby correlated wavelet coefficients of Dual-Tree Complex Wavelet transform (DTCWT) for denoising the signals before applying to MUSIC algorithm. The proposed technique improves the detection performance under closely spaced, and coherent signals with relatively low SNR conditions. Also, this method requires fewer snapshots, and less antenna array elements compared with standard MUSIC and wavelet-based DOA estimation algorithms.

Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) is a multiple antenna technology used extensively in wireless communication systems. With the ever increasing demand in high data rates, MIMO system is the necessity of wireless communication. In MIMO wireless communication system, where the multiple antennas are placed on base station and mobile station, the major problem is the constant power of base station, which has to be allocated to data streams optimally. This problem is referred as a power allocation problem. In this research, singular value decomposition (SVD) is used to decouple the MIMO system in the presence of channel state information (CSI) at the base station and forms parallel channels between base station and mobile station. This practice parallel channel ensures the simultaneous transmission of parallel data streams between base station and mobile station. Along with this, water filling algorithm is used in this research to allocate power to each data stream optimally. Further the relationship between the channel capacity of MIMO wireless system and the number of antennas at the base station and the mobile station is derived mathematically. The performance comparison of channel capacity for MIMO systems, both in the presence and absence of CSI is done. Finally, the effect of channel correlation because of antennas at the base stations and the mobile stations in the MIMO systems is also measured.

GNSS systems are susceptible to radio interference despite then operating in a spread spectrum. The commerce jammers power up to 2 watts that can block the receiver function at a distance of up to 15 kilometers in free space. Two original methods for GNSS receiver testing were developed. The first method is based on the usage of a GNSS simulator for generation of the satellite signals and a vector signal RF generator for generating different types of interference signals. The second software radio method is based on a software GNSS simulator and a signal processing in Matlab. The receivers were tested for narrowband CW interference, FM modulated signal and chirp jamming signals and scenarios. The signal to noise ratio usually drops down to 27 dBc-Hz while the jamming to signal ratio is different for different types of interference. The chirp signal is very effective. The jammer signal is well propagated in free space while in the real mobile urban and suburban environment it is usually strongly attenuated.

In this paper, we propose a new algorithm that improves the performance of the operation of Handover (HO) in LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) networks. As recognized, Mobility Management (MM) is an important pillar in LTE/LTE-A systems to provide high quality of service to users on the move. The handover algorithms define the method and the steps to follow to ensure a reliable transfer of the UEs from one cell to another without interruption or degradation of the services offered by the network. In this paper, the authors proposed a new handover algorithm for LTE/LTE-A networks based on the measurement and calculation of two important parameters, namely the available bandwidth and the Received Power (RSRP) at the level of eNodeBs. The proposed scheme named LTE Available Bandwidth and RSRP Based Handover Algorithm (LABRBHA) was tested in comparison with well-known algorithms in the literature as the LHHA, LHHAARC and the INTEGRATOR scheme using the open source simulator LTE-Sim. Finally, the network performances were investigated via three indicators: the number of lost packets during the handover operation, the latency as well as the maximum system throughput. The results reported that our algorithm shows remarkable improvements over other transfer schemes.

The 802.11ax standard final specification is expected in 2019, however first parameters are just released. The target of the new standard is four times improvement of the average throughput within the given area. This standard is dedicated for usage in dense environment such as stadiums, means of municipal communication, conference halls and others. The main target is to support many users at the same time with the single access point. The question arises if the new standard will have higher throughput then previous ones in the single user mode. The author calculated the maximal theoretical throughput of the 802.11ax standard and compared the results with the throughput of older 802.11 standards such as 802.11n and 802.11ac. The new he-wifi-network example included in the ns-3.27 release of the NS-3 simulator was used to simulate the throughput between the access point and the user terminal. The results indicate that in some conditions the 802.11ac standard has higher throughput than the new 802.11ax standard.

This paper presents active inductor based VCO design for wireless applications based on analysis of active inductor models (Weng-Kuo Cascode active inductor & Liang Regular Cascode active inductor) with feedback resistor technique. Embedment of feedback resistor results in the increment of inductance as well as the quality factor whereas the values are 125.6@2.4GHz (Liang) and 98.7@3.4GHz (Weng-Kuo). The Weng-Kuo active inductor based VCO shows a tuning frequency of 1.765GHz ~2.430GHz (31.7%), while consuming a power of 2.60 mW and phase noise of -84.15 dBc/Hz@1MHz offset. On the other hand, Liang active inductor based VCO shows a frequency range of 1.897GHz ~2.522GHz (28.28%), while consuming a power of 1.40 mW and phase noise of -80.79 dBc/Hz@1MHz offset. Comparing Figure-of-Merit (FoM), power consumption, output power and stability in performance, designed active inductor based VCOs outperform with the stateof- the-art.

An available bandwidth at a link is an unused capacity. Its measuring and/or estimation is not simple in practice. On the other hand, we know that its continuous knowledge is crucial for the operation of almost all networks. Therefore, there is a continuous effort in improving the existing and developing new methods of available bandwidth measurement and/or estimation. This paper deals with these problems. Network calculus terminology allows to express an available bandwidth in terms of a service curve. The service curve is a function representing a service available for a traffic flow which can be measured/estimated in a node as well as at an endto- end connection of a network. An Internet traffic is highly unpredictable what hinders to a large extent an execution of the tasks mentioned above. This paper draws attention to pitfalls and difficulties with application of the existing network calculus methods of an available bandwidth estimation in a real Internet Service Provider (ISP) network. The results achieved in measurements have been also confirmed in simulations performed as well as by mathematical considerations presented here. They give a new perspective on the outcomes obtained by other authors and on their interpretations.

This paper describes a “distributed method” of introducing the humanitarian engineering principles and concepts to the curriculum of telecommunications at a maritime university. That is by modifying appropriately the syllabi of the telecommunications subjects taught. The propositions made in this area are illustrated by the concrete examples taken from the current Polish Qualifications Framework for the higher education system in Poland. And, for clarity and consistency of presentation, fundamentals and principles as well as a basic terminology and features of this Framework are also highlighted here shortly. Moreover, it has been shown that the approach presented in this paper is more useful compared to a method based on organization of some special courses for students on the humanitarian engineering, in particular when this regards a maritime university.

The paper presents the use of visual evoked potentials VEP to the objective assessment of visual acuity. Methods of using visual evoked potentials (VEP) rely on the assessment of changes of the electrical action potentials generated within the cortex. To diagnose the degree of weakening eyesight a series of studies on healthy people and visually impaired ones were made. Electrophysiological studies of the eye, using noninvasive VEP examination allow a noninvasive and objective assessment of visual acuity. The use of visual evoked potentials gives the objectivity in assessment of visual acuity what may be very important in ophthalmology. This particularly may concern children examination, people with mental retardation and suspected of simulation.