Shale makes up about three-fourths of drilled formations. Even though the engineering properties of shale have been studied for several decades, shale engineering is still prone to unexpected instabilities and delays, representing a serious problem for the petroleum, mining and civil engineering industry. Distinct characteristics of shale make it exceptionally difficult to work with; three categories of potential stability problems in shale are mechanical problems, chemical reactivity and swelling, and thermal stimulation. When a number of these problems occur simultaneously, finding an optimized solution becomes even more challenging. Shale Engineering provides an integrative engineering approach to work towards practical solutions in handling shale. Accordingly, shale is defined and described from both an engineering and geological point of view. Elasticity and poroelasticity concepts, shale’s response to temperature changes, and finally chemical properties of shale and the impact thereof on the rock’s behavior are discussed in detail. In addressing the engineering aspects and parameters related to chemical, mechanical and thermal properties and integrating them into engineering models that can be applied in deep engineering projects, mining and other civil works, this book will serve as a reference to model designers and engineers working with shale in the petroleum industry and elsewhere. It is also suited for use in academic and professional courses in petroleum, mining, geological and civil engineering and drilling.
Essays on architecture in Kuwait, Iran, Israel, and other nations in the region, and how it can and must address the needs of local residents. As oil-rich countries in the Middle East are increasingly associated with soaring skyscrapers and modern architecture, attention is being diverted away from the pervasive struggles of social housing in those same urban settings. Social Housing in the Middle East traces the history of social housing—both gleaming postmodern projects and bare-bones urban housing structures—in an effort to provide a wider understanding of marginalized spaces and their impact on identities, communities, and class. While architects may have envisioned utopian or futuristic experiments, these buildings were often constructed with the knowledge and skill sets of local workers, and the housing was in turn adapted to suit the modern needs of residents. This tension between local needs and national aspirations are linked to issues of global importance, including security, migration, and refugee resettlement. The essays collected here consider how culture, faith, and politics influenced the solutions offered by social housing; they provide an insightful look at how social housing has evolved since the nineteenth century and how it will need to adapt to suit the twenty-first. “Essential reading . . . for architectural and social historians, planners, and policy makers.” —CAA Reviews
This book provides a systematic approach to realizing NiTi shape memory alloy actuation, and is aimed at science and engineering students who would like to develop a better understanding of the behaviors of SMAs, and learn to design, simulate, control, and fabricate these actuators in a systematic approach. Several innovative biomedical applications of SMAs are discussed. These include orthopedic, rehabilitation, assistive, cardiovascular, and surgery devices and tools. To this end unique actuation mechanisms are discussed. These include antagonistic bi-stable shape memory-superelastic actuation, shape memory spring actuation, and multi axial tension-torsion actuation. These actuation mechanisms open new possibilities for creating adaptive structures and biomedical devices by using SMAs.
Drawing on the history of post-independence Tunisia, the book studies the evolution of al-Nahḍah as a political party in Tunisia and its role in a protracted struggle to shape the post-authoritarian order along democratic lines. It explores al-Nahḍah's relationship with the Tunisian state, society and beyond that resulted in shaping its fluctuating expressions of ideology and practices. State repression, political participation, or internal differentiation (among other factors) place an Islamic movement (in this case al-Nahḍah) in such a situation that demands a perpetual self re-evaluation as well as implementation of ideology, objectives, and political programmes. The study explains how the socio-political setting in Tunisia demanded various ideologically opposite currents (Islamic, liberal, or leftist) to endure cross-ideological cooperation either to contest authoritarian regimes or to engage in the political process. It more importantly analyzes the trajectory of a gradual democratization process in the country and provides evidence explaining the impact and importance of a vibrant civil society, building alliances, and sharing of power. The book provides comparative analytical attention to the primary sources on these issues to create a critical historiography. It thus adds to the body of literature on the state, society, and politics in the MENA region and particularly targets students, scholars, and social scientists interested in understanding the nature of power and politics in Tunisia and beyond.
This book provides in-depth examination of the recent confrontation between Islamists and secularists in Egypt and Tunisia. Presenting a new approach to understand Islamism and secularism, the research addresses the variables that could affect the outcome of transitional negotiations. The secularist-Islamist conflict proved to be a major hindrance for democratisation and a main source of political instability in the Middle East. During the Arab Spring, disputes between both political trends sparked shortly after getting rid of their common enemy: the autocratic rulers. First, they disagreed on how to lead the transitional period. Then, polarisation grew deeper with the political competition in the parliamentary and presidential elections and the ideological disagreements during the drafting of the constitution. Eventually, this conflict put Tunisia at a verge of civil strife in the summer of 2013 and led to collapse of the transitional process in Egypt after the military coup. Examining the causes of the conflict between the secularists and the Islamists during the transitional period, the work provides new insights from the Arab Spring experience. Updating the transition literature, the book is a key resource to academics and students interested in democratization theory and Middle East politics.
The main focus of Literary Subterfuge and Contemporary Persian Fiction is to identify components and elements which define Persian modernist fiction, placing an emphasis on literary concepts and devices which provide the dynamics of the evolutionary trajectory of this modernism. The question of ‘who writes Iran’ refers to a contested area which goes beyond the discipline of literary criticism. Non-literary discourses have made every effort to impose their "committed" readings on literary texts; they have even managed to exert influence on the process of literary creation. In this process, inevitably, many works, or segments of them, and many concepts which do not lend themselves to such readings have been ignored; at the same time, many of them have been appropriated by these discourses. Yet components and elements of Persian literary tradition have persistently engaged in this discursive confrontation, mainly by insisting on literature’s relative autonomy, so that at least concepts such as conformity and subterfuge, essential in terms of defining modern and modernist Persian fiction, could be defined in a literary manner. Proffering an alternative in terms of literary historiography; this book supports a methodological approach that considers literary narratives which occur in the margins of dominant discourses, and indeed promote non-discursivity, as the main writers of Persian modernist fiction. It is an essential resource for scholars and researchers interested in Persian and comparative literature, as well as Middle Eastern Studies more broadly.
A groundbreaking account of how prolonged grassroots mobilization lays the foundations for durable democratization When protests swept through the Middle East at the height of the Arab Spring, the world appeared to be on the verge of a wave of democratization. Yet with the failure of many of these uprisings, it has become clearer than ever that the path to democracy is strewn with obstacles. Mohammad Ali Kadivar examines the conditions leading to the success or failure of democratization, shedding vital new light on how prodemocracy mobilization affects the fate of new democracies. Drawing on a wealth of new evidence, Kadivar shows how the longest episodes of prodemocracy protest give rise to the most durable new democracies. He analyzes more than one hundred democratic transitions in eighty countries between 1950 and 2010, showing how more robust democracies emerge from lengthier periods of unarmed mobilization. Kadivar then analyzes five case studies—South Africa, Poland, Pakistan, Egypt, and Tunisia—to investigate the underlying mechanisms. He finds that organization building during the years of struggle develops the leadership needed for lasting democratization and strengthens civil society after dictatorship. Popular Politics and the Path to Durable Democracy challenges the prevailing wisdom in American foreign policy that democratization can be achieved through military or coercive interventions, revealing how lasting change arises from sustained, nonviolent grassroots mobilization.
Examining the connection between the concept of authority and the transformation of the Ismaili imamate, Authority without Territory is the first study of the imamate in contemporary times with a particular focus on Aga Khan, the 49th hereditary leader of Shi?a Imami Ismaili Muslims.
Winner of the I.R. Iran World Award for Book of the Year In The Middle Path of Moderation in Islam, leading Islamic law expert Mohammad Hashim Kamali examines the concept of wasatiyyah, or moderation, arguing that scholars, religious communities, and policy circles alike must have access to this governing principle that drives the silent majority of Muslims, rather than focusing on the extremist fringe. Kamali explores wasatiyyah in both historical/conceptual terms and in contemporary/practical terms. Tracing the definition and scope of the concept from the foundational sources of Islam, the Qu'ran and Hadith, he demonstrates that wasatiyyah has a long and well-developed history in Islamic law and applies the concept to contemporary issues of global policy, such as justice, women's rights, environmental and financial balance, and globalization. Framing his work as an open dialogue against a now-decades long formulation of the arguably destructive Huntingtonian "clash of civilizations" thesis as well as the public rhetoric of fear of Muslim extremism since the attacks of September 11, 2001, Kamali connects historical conceptions of wasatiyyah to the themes of state and international law, governance, and cultural maladies in the Muslim world and beyond. Both a descriptive and prescriptive meditation on a key but often neglected principle of Islam, The Middle Path of Moderation in Islam provides insight into an idea that is in the strategic interest of the West both to show and practice for themselves and to recognize in Muslim countries.
This book provides readers with extensive information on path planning optimization for both single and multiple Autonomous Guided Vehicles (AGVs), and discusses practical issues involved in advanced industrial applications of AGVs. After discussing previously published research in the field and highlighting the current gaps, it introduces new models developed by the authors with the goal of reducing costs and increasing productivity and effectiveness in the manufacturing industry. The new models address the increasing complexity of manufacturing networks, due for example to the adoption of flexible manufacturing systems that involve automated material handling systems, robots, numerically controlled machine tools, and automated inspection stations, while also considering the uncertainty and stochastic nature of automated equipment such as AGVs. The book discusses and provides solutions to important issues concerning the use of AGVs in the manufacturing industry, including material flow optimization with AGVs, programming manufacturing systems equipped with AGVs, reliability models, the reliability of AGVs, routing under uncertainty, and risks involved in AGV-based transportation. The clear style and straightforward descriptions of problems and their solutions make the book an excellent resource for graduate students. Moreover, thanks to its practice-oriented approach, the novelty of the findings and the contemporary topic it reports on, the book offers new stimulus for researchers and practitioners in the broad field of production engineering.
Since the 1979 revolution, scholars and policy makers alike have tended to see Iranian political actors as religiously driven—dedicated to overturning the international order in line with a theologically prescribed outlook. This provocative book argues that such views have the link between religious ideology and political order in Iran backwards. Religious Statecraft examines the politics of Islam, rather than political Islam, to achieve a new understanding of Iranian politics and its ideological contradictions. Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar traces half a century of shifting Islamist doctrines against the backdrop of Iran’s factional and international politics, demonstrating that religious narratives in Iran can change rapidly, frequently, and dramatically in accordance with elites’ threat perceptions. He argues that the Islamists’ gambit to capture the state depended on attaining a monopoly over the use of religious narratives. Tabaar explains how competing political actors strategically develop and deploy Shi’a-inspired ideologies to gain credibility, constrain political rivals, and raise mass support. He also challenges readers to rethink conventional wisdom regarding the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, the U.S. embassy hostage crisis, the Iran-Iraq War, the Green Movement, nuclear politics, and U.S.–Iran relations. Based on a micro-level analysis of postrevolutionary Iranian media and recently declassified documents as well as theological journals and political memoirs, Religious Statecraft constructs a new picture of Iranian politics in which power drives Islamist ideology.
This study attempts to analyze a major facet of the international struggle against Da’ish: its media war, which the organization wages alongside its efforts to expand and to fight surrounding regional and international powers. The study observes Da’ish’s media phenomena in the context of the integral role of the media in modern international conflicts, with attention to the development of media tools in Jihadist organizations since the seventies. This investigation reveals the remarkable evolution of the terrorist group in its bid to entrench itself as a caliphate state. The study focuses on Da’ish’s media administration structure and its strategy in deploying its various high-grade audiovisual products to attract youth around the globe. The organization has been able to amass numerous volunteers and extensive equipment to serve its media strategy by constructing an organizational structure that combines hierarchal and non-centralized networks.
King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies (KFCRIS)
Published Date
ISBN 10
6038206043
ISBN 13
9786038206041
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