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This paper examines Egypt's labor market transition dynamics post-Arab Spring based on the two most recent rounds of the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey conducted in 2012 and 2018. In addition to providing disaggregated level analysis by examining labor market transitions by gender, education, and age groups, our paper provides a cross-country perspective by comparing Egypt's labor market transitions with Jordan's. Regression analyses focusing on transitions to and from the dominant absorbing labor market states in Egypt – public sector employment for both genders, non-participation for women, and the informal sector for men – show that having a post-secondary education is associated with a lower probability of remaining out of the labor force (OLF) for women who were already OLF at baseline, while being married at baseline is found to be a significant predictor for women to stay out of the labor force if they were already so. As for men, the better educated are found to be more likely to secure formal employment, be it in the public or in the private sector, and also more likely to keep their public formal jobs once they secure them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental applications play a significant role in the ongoing research area of Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) image classification. In this paper, a new model is proposed for classifying PolSAR images and applied to a part of the Greater Cairo area in the Nile basin, South of Delta, Egypt. First, the proposed model performs data pre-processing by extracting the coherency and covariance elements noted as [T] and [C] matrices, respectively. Second, temporal convolutional networks (TCN) deep learning is used to extract the features from coherency and covariance elements and then train the model. Third, the SoftMax classifier is used to classify the PolSAR image. Finally, the proposed model is tested with evaluation metrics. The obtained results show that the proposed model can achieve high classification performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the individual might feel isolated, and his psychological capital (PsyCap) is negatively influenced. Most research on peer support has focused on its contribution to employee well-being when the peers are in the same workplace. Scant research targets the times of lockdowns and social distancing. This paper investigates how peer support influences employee PsyCap during the COVID-19 pandemic. By conducting a questionnaire with N = 42 employees and three online focus groups with N = 15 employees out of N = 350 employees working at an international organization operating in Egypt as a bilateral development partner funded by the German government, the paper concludes that peer support has a positive influence on employee PsyCap, especially self-efficacy, hope, and optimism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The South African bioeconomy strategy did not clearly articulate the measurement framework to monitor the implementation of the strategy. This paper provides an analysis of bioeconomy patents, the most prolific organizations and citations at the EPO and USPTO for South Africa, BRICS, Egypt and Nigeria during the Ten-Year Innovation Plan 2008–2018. The terms 'biotechnology', 'medical technology', 'pharmaceuticals' and 'selected environment-related technologies' were used to search for patents. The OECD patents by technology, the EPO PATSTAT and the USPTO PatFT databases were used to map patents and citations. The results show that South Africa ranked last in the BRICS group but produced a higher number of patents than Egypt and Nigeria. The number of patents generally decreased for the selected countries except for China. The total citations for the selected countries was generally inconsistent. The important innovators for South Africa in the bioeconomy are mainly universities and public research institutions. A new fiscal approach to encourage knowledge application in bioeconomy in South Africa is required. Incentives from government that encourage collaboration between research institutions and industry to direct research with industry application are required. The study contributes to the development of metrics to monitor the bioeconomy in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the juristic discussions about women’s access to their financial rights during late Ottoman Egypt. Taking fatwa collections as a source of social history, one can recognize that women sometimes gave up their financial entitlements to their male relatives voluntarily. This concession is thought to have occurred due to the influence of deeply ingrained social customs in some tribes. While various historical and anthropological studies have explored this social practice, this paper focuses instead on the Islamic law ruling concerning this phenomenon. I discuss in this paper how some ostensibly conservative ulama in nineteenth-century Egypt, in pursuit of upholding women’s financial rights against patriarchal oppression, recognized an important principle of social coercion. By considering fear of social stigma as a constraint on women’s free will and thus as a form of legal duress, those ulama enabled women to reclaim their rights when possible— likely following the death of their male relatives. This paper urges us to rethink the position of the ulama in nineteenth-century Egypt regarding women’s rights. Furthermore, it illuminates an overarching concept of coercion in Islamic law, which holds relevance to various modern debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social entrepreneurs face the challenge of resource constraints that affect their ability to scale social impact and expand in various geographical locations. In order to overcome resource barriers and to scale up social impact, social ventures deploy resources currently owned, and form distinct partnerships to acquire new resources, and hence implement unique strategies to achieve a pre-determined social impact. Through the lens of the Resource Based View (RBV) and Resource Dependency Theory (RDT), this paper explores the current discourse on social venture growth and scale-up strategies, and employs a grounded theory approach on 20 social ventures in Egypt to further develop a matrix for social ventures' scale-up strategies based on resources' availability. In addition, the paper introduces a typology of social impact scaling strategies given social ventures' social impact objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2005, a team of Polish archaeologists discovered three Coptic codices, two on papyrus and one on parchment, in the rubbish dump of a hermitage at Sheik Abd el-Gurna, Egypt. While the parchment codex and the remains of the bindings of the papyrus ones have been conserved, the text blocks of the papyrus codices were opened and disassembled and after being disinfected remained untouched for nearly 15 years, until the current project started. Currently, all three books are stored in the collection of the Coptic Museum in Cairo. Our team undertook the conservation of and archaeometric research on the papyrus codices. The first of the books contains the Canons of Pseudo-Basil, while the second is an Encomium of St. Pisenthios. Both codices have been palaeographically dated to the seventh-eighth centuries CE. In this paper, we describe our project and present the results of the work carried out on the Canons of Pseudo-Basil. Our work involved photography in transmitted light, measurements of the thickness of the papyrus leaves, and digital microscopy under three-light illumination. These measurements allowed us to determine the types of the inks and characterize the papyrus writing substrate. For conservation, we used a novel method developed in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin that comprises suspending papyrus folios on a translucent, extremely thin Japanese paper inside glass frames without the use of adhesives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The observed low level of information and communication technology (ICT) usage among micro, small, and medium-sized enterprise (MSME) firms in many African countries may serve as a major constraint to their productivity. The productivity of service and manufacturing firms is impacted differently due to this low uptake of ICT. This paper seeks to examine the differential effects of ICT on MSMEs' productivity in emerging African economies, specifically Egypt and Nigeria. This study evaluates the effects of ICT on MSMEs' productivity across different sectors (services and manufacturing), by size and aggregated. The estimated results support the positive impact of MSMEs' website presence and use of email on their productivity, though the magnitude varies across different analyses and sectors. This appears to support the differential sectoral impacts of ICT on MSMEs' productivity across countries in emerging markets. Specifically, this study finds evidence for a higher impact of firms' website presence on productivity in the manufacturing sector than the services sector across emerging economies. The study, therefore, recommends that emerging markets economies that want to implement appropriate national technology policies to enhance their firms' productivity should always consider their differential effects on various sectors, as universal ICT policies may not achieve the desired objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper delineates a distinctly post-1960s expression of hunger and desire for food in Cuban and Egyptian cultural production. Hunger has always been present in aesthetic renditions of everyday life in both locales. Following the early-1960s socialist expansion of the role of the state, a new expression of hunger for animal protein emerged that relied on vegetarian tropes and parodied official discourse. Expressions of this "new hunger" captured the contradictory state of being conditioned, through state food programs, to see the consumption of animal products as the epitome of a healthy diet that endows one with the status of being "developed" and "modern" while simultaneously not being afforded satisfactory access to those food items due to conditions beyond one's individual control. In such contexts, the average citizen is primarily vegetarian and not by choice, while those with access to power live the promised dream of carnivorous plenty. This article analyzes several political speeches, cartoons, jokes, and songs to map the rhetorical and aesthetic characteristics of such satiric expressions and demonstrate how they were informed by the growing gap between early revolutionary official promises of food for all and actual food shortages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to identify the extent to which neurodiverse individuals experience fair representation in public sector organizations in Egypt and the main factors that foster such representation. A systematic qualitative research method was used with data collected through semi-structured interviews with 36 street-level bureaucrats who have the title "general manager." The findings show the underrepresentation of neurodiverse individuals in the Egyptian public sector. Moreover, we consider the three main categories of barriers hindering the active participation of people with neurological conditions in the Egyptian public sector to be as follows: individual barriers (inability to create social dialogue, lower educational level), organizational barriers (neurotypical employees lack the socio-cultural readiness to accept neuro-atypical colleagues, traditional means of recruiting, lack of flexibility of jobs in public organizations) and national barriers (high unemployment rate among neurodiverse individuals in Western countries, discretionary power granted to public employees, slow adoption of the social approach to disability in the Egyptian context). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a long decline, fertility in Tunisia, as in some Arab countries like Algeria and Egypt, recorded an unexpected increasing trend over the 2000 – 2018 period. To account for such demographic change, this paper re-examined the behavior of the main fertility decline factors tested by the previous empirical studies (such as education, income, mortality, and contraceptive use) to check whether they have changed in favor of an upward fertility evolution. Deepening the analysis, it introduced three new socio-economic factors that are likely to favor fertility increase: divorce, unemployment, and longevity. The dynamic one-step generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation on a cylindrical data panel from 1998 to 2018 for eight Tunisian regions confirmed the positive effect of these new variables. Additionally, the education-fertility interaction was found to be no longer obvious. The family planning program appeared to no longer play its role in limiting fertility. The income effect overcame the substitution effect in favor of a fertility increase. The observed increasing fertility trend in Tunisia seems to be more explained by the dominance of some sociocultural factors. Thus, policymakers should seek to better focus on the family institution's behavior to sustain fertility decline and improve the efficiency of its family planning program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The practice of burying boats and digging boat-shaped pits inside funerary complexes belonging to Early Dynastic elites and kings is well attested in early Egypt. However, the origins of this custom and its evolution from the 1st Dynasty until the Middle Kingdom remain to be fully addressed holistically and diachronically. This paper aims to re-evaluate current data regarding Early Dynastic boat burials and boat-shaped pits, to share some insights on the development of this tradition, and to address its adaptation to Old Kingdom religious and political innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Egypt's need for clean and renewable energy is pressing for numerous reasons, such as unpredictable fuel prices, diminishing fossil fuel resources, and growing concern about environmental degradation. Harvesting untapped geothermal resources could meet domestic electricity needs besides enabling Egypt to export electricity. The location of Egypt confirms that it has suitable geothermal energy potential areas in some provinces around the country, especially along the Gulf of Suez, the Red Sea, and the Western Desert. The Red Sea coast and the coasts of the Gulf of Suez exhibit several surface manifestations (hot springs and thermal water wells), indicating the presence of geothermal systems in these areas. The objective of this paper is to investigate the geothermal resources and obtain a full image of the geothermal potential of the Hurghada area along the Red Sea coast using geophysical potential field data. Aeromagnetic and aerogravity data were used to identify the most promising target regions for geothermal potentiality. Power spectral analysis of the aeromagnetic data was utilised to appraise the Curie point depth (CPD) and obtain geothermal gradient and heat flow maps of the Hurghada area, whereas a 3-D inversion of gravity data was utilised to estimate the depths to the Precambrian basement rocks. In addition to 3-D inversion of magnetic data to evaluate the spatial distribution of magnetic susceptibility. This study found no direct relationship between basement depths and the CPD, where basement rock outcrops at some locations correlate to a decrease in the Curie surface, while at others, they correspond to an increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does urban migrant and refugee settlement occur in face of national inaction on immigration policy? This paper focuses on recent migration to Cairo, a Global South megacity that is home to migrants and refugees from across sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Using in-depth fieldwork, it examines the informal policies that have developed in the absence of national legislation, and explores the impact these have on: (1) the ability for individual migrants and refugees to participate socially, politically and economically; (2) the ability for civil society organizations to organize, provide social services, or engage in activism; (3) occasions when the Egyptian state will forego its hands-off approach in favour of direct intervention. This informs our understanding of the relationship between national policy, informal urban governance, and migrant and refugee settlement in the context of Global South cities, with potential applications to other urban environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing an institutionalist approach, this paper traces the historical transitions of formal-informal interactions in the Egyptian political system before and after the 2011 Revolution. I argue that formal-informal interactions moved from Complementary during the first two decades of Mubarak's rule, to Competing in his last decade, then back to Complementary under Sisi. Each transition was motivated by a critical juncture. The first transition was driven by Mubarak's desire to bequeath power to his son, Gamal, while the second was motivated by the collapse of his regime in 2011. Each transition was marked by differing means. Mubarak used electoral politics to manage formal-informal relations, while the current regime under Sisi is heavily reliant on coercion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on recent research on extreme work and social exchange theory, this paper presents a pioneering study focussed on public hospital nurses' engagement in extreme work conditions and its associated ethical aspects. The empirical part comprises of 32 in-depth interviews conducted with nurses in four public hospitals in Egypt. Our findings highlight how a misunderstanding of religion, gender inequality, average education, and staff shortages are the main reasons of nurses' engagement in intensive jobs. Moreover, poor physical and mental health, lack of time for personal commitments, and a sense of coercion emerged as aspects that raise questions regarding the (un)ethicality of nurses engaging in extreme work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to analyse enterprises' performance in terms of the National Innovation System – NIS in three Africans countries: Egypt, Côte d'Ivoire and Cameroon. Drawing inspiration from the Schumpeterian approach of innovation and using the World Bank Enterprises Survey (WBES-2016) data, we estimated a multinomial logit model. The results show that innovation system's different spheres (academic, governmental, enterprise, societal and environmental) of the quintuple helix contribute more to improving the performance of technological innovation in Egypt than in other countries. In addition, the analyses enabled us to highlight the embryonic state of the NIS in Africa. Thus, underlying innovation policies have been proposed to improve enterprises' performance in terms of the NIS in the different countries studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'Arab Spring' posed major emotional challenges to European diplomats. Sympathies for the demonstrators' open embrace of European norms and values merged with discomfort about incalculable consequences following the former rulers' eventual fall. Focusing on Egypt, this contribution analyses how European diplomats reacted to Hosni Mubarak's ouster and the following developments. With their reminiscences to Europe's own history and the European Union's (EU) self-perception as 'force for good', a two-sided sense of disillusionment grew among European representatives: about the regime's eventual unwillingness to reform, and about their own incapacity to meaningfully support change. Based on extensive research in Cairo and Brussels, this article analyses the emotions that escorted the actions of officials from the EU and its member states in Egypt. From a multi-level perspective, it considers activities by the EU Delegation to Egypt and EU member states' embassies in Cairo, plus initiatives coming from Brussels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the determinants of capital flight in three resource scarce MENA countries namely Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia. Our methodology involves both the linear and nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration approaches, with a focus on asymmetric relationships between capital flight and the real exchange rate, to distinguish the impact of real appreciation and depreciation of domestic currency on capital flight. The results based on nonlinear ARDL approach using annual data between 1977 and 2019 indicate that in Egypt, financial openness is negatively related with capital flight, while real depreciation seems to increase it in the long run. Our findings also reveal that the real GDP growth rate, institutional quality as well as inflation are important factors affecting capital flight in Morocco, whereas financial openness and the real exchange rate influence capital flight significantly in Tunisia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aims of this research are to investigate the reasons for adopting big data (BD) and big data analytics (BDA), determine their extent of usage, and identify potential obstacles to their adoption in a developing country, Egypt. Motivation: Prior literature criticized the audit profession for the slow adoption of BDA, and little is known about the adoption of BD and BDA in developing countries. The reluctance to incorporate BD and BDA into auditing can be attributed to their potential obstacles. In addition, prior studies focused on the Big-4 audit firms in developed countries with little known about adopting BD and BDA in local audit firms and developing countries. Design/methodology/approach:To achieve the objectives of this study, 16 audit practitioners with various positions, specializations, and experience levels were interviewed. The 16 participants belong to audit firms of different sizes: international audit firms, local audit firms, and a governmental auditing agency. Thematic analysis was employed through using the MAXQDA software package to analyze the data. Main findings: The findings revealed that the reasons for using BD and BDA go beyond improving audit efficiency and effectiveness and satisfying clients. All audit firms collect and analyze large volumes of traditional accounting data. However, the Big-4 firms manage and analyze non-financial data and new data items as complementary audit evidence. Also, it was found that the type of audit firm affects the use of these technologies, with international firms being superior to other firms. The Accountability State Authority lags behind other audit firms in adopting BD and BDA. Furthermore, it was found that some obstacles to adopting BD and BDA arise due to the specific characteristics of the Egyptian context, while others are universal. Practical implications/Managerial impact: Determining the reasons for and obstacles to adopting BD BDA is useful for audit firms and regulators to remove these obstacles and encourage using such new audit technologies. The findings might help developers of BDA software packages to enhance their packages to meet auditor requirements. Moreover, academic scholars can benefit from the findings of this study by gaining an understanding of the main differences between developed and developing countries in relation to adopting BD and BDA. Novelty/Contribution: This study was conducted in Egypt, a developing country with a an underdeveloped audit environment. Therefore, this study enriches the relevant literature by providing information about BD and BDA in an unexplored developing environment. Besides, it delves deeper into the reasons and obstacles to using BD and BDA in external financial auditing in a developing country. Also, it adds to the literature by identifying the most common BDA software packages and techniques that auditors use in a developing country. Moreover, it considers audit practitioners' viewpoints on audit firms of various sizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution marks the achievements made in the past decades by a group of mainly Egyptian palynologists. The data generated covers a long-time span from the Precambrian to the Holocene of Egypt. Previously published results are devoted primarily to the study of many exploration wells and outcrop sections. Comprehensive studies were carried out on a range of palynomorph groups including spores and pollen, algae and prasinophytes, dinoflagellate cysts, acritarchs, scolecodonts, chitinozoans, and other miscellaneous forms as well as palynofacies. Particular attention is given to the history of palaeopalynology. This study has identified three main phases. The results of the first phase were limited, as the knowledge of palynology in Egypt was poorly known from 1959 until 1979. Between 1980 and 2000, which represents the second or shaping phase, an intensive study of surface and subsurface material was carried out. The third phase (2000 until now) provides the academic and commercial expansion of palynological research in Egypt, where palynology can have immediate application in petroleum exploration studies. In the first phase, the application of palynology was seriously hampered by the limited extent of the published data. Only 27 works emerged by the end of 1979. A considerable acceleration was noted in the second phase when palynological research was established in many national institutions and started to play a considerable role in petroleum exploration. Beyond academia, some of the operating oil companies started to set up palynological laboratories and staff as part of biostratigraphy teams. These included, for example, GPC, Khalda Petroleum Company with a focus on the north Western Desert, and GUPCO with a focus on the Gulf of Suez, and most of the results obtained were incorporated with the internal data on the well files. During the period 2000–2009, especially when palynofacies studies were incorporated, the progress and the direction of palynological research changed. This allowed for a more accurate reconstruction of the depositional process and eventually a palaeobiogeographical history mainly for the Cretaceous, which is an important target for hydrocarbon exploration in Egypt. From 2010 onwards, the number of publications has clearly grown and reached 23 publications in 2020. Such a high pace of development seems to have been at the expense of basic research comprising taxonomy and biostratigraphy, something that might negatively impact the quality of research and also researchers, especially early career researchers. The change brought about through this phase by integrating organic geochemistry, sedimentology, and other disciplines may, however, have left a positive impact, principally in terms of international collaborations and expansion of palynological applications beyond the standard academic cluster. Important highlights and outputs, and prospective forthcoming developments and recommendations pertaining to Egyptian palynology generally (and in each phase) are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to identify the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on school trips using a survey of 1120 students and their households in Cairo, Egypt. We found that students' age, distance to school, and school type (public or private) influence the mode used to school, the majority of parents would prefer to wait for one month or more after the lockdown before sending their children to school, and the pandemic has a significant impact on parents' evaluation of the various schooling options. Based on the responses and using different scenarios, we predicted that the original vehicle-kilometers-traveled would increase by 17% to 34%, with most of the expected modal shift occurring from large occupancy vehicles to smaller vehicles. This shift was attributed to; the distance to school, the father's occupation and education level, parents waiting more time to send children to school, and parents expecting reduced class capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently the Nile and the Orontes River basins are in the international spotlight as tension escalates between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia in the former and between Syria and Turkey in the latter. In this article we investigate the cooperation dynamics between nation states in the two basins. We analyze the obstacles to cooperation that prevent the improvement of these dynamics through a novel analytical framework that enables researchers and policymakers to understand the cooperation dynamics in these transboundary river basins through a common set of terminologies and definitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributions of 16 PAHs in 50 samples collected from the Nile River in Egypt through 1 year were investigated to understand the carcinogenic risk. Determination of PAHs through the validated method with LOQ 0.01 µg/l, RC% ranged from 95% to 114%, RSD% ranged from ±4–9% using HPLC, and results showed that (∑PAHs) were ranged from 0.01 to 0.87 ±0.26 μg/L in which the highest in Giza and the dominant of PAHs was fluoranthene. Fifty per cent of the total analysed PAHs were from 4-rings and 5-rings PAHs. Toxicity was expressed by the presence of PAHs in terms of benzo(a)pyrene (BaP) concentration by establishing toxic, mutagenic equivalency factors (TEFs, MEFs) for PAHs. ΣTEQ and ΣMEQ for seven PAHs were 0.070 μg/L and 0.086 μg/L respectively. These compounds are considered traces, but exposure to it impacts mutagenic risk greater than carcinogenic risk. Incremental Lifetime Cancer Risk (ILCR) was 2*10−4 to 6*10−4 for adults and 2*10−4 to 7*10−4 for children, there is a chance for cancer risk except for ILCR of BaP 4*10−3 has no carcinogenic risk. Hazard Index (HI) <1, but we should not be ignored in the long-term our results provided useful information for decision-makers to control carcinogens PAHs and establish a standard national programme for permissible levels with treatment advanced technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Productive urban landscapes (PULs) offer a promising solution to address pressing challenges such as urbanisation, food and water scarcity, and climate change. Despite their potential, PULs have not yet been incorporated into Egypt's urban planning or upgrading processes. Therefore, this study aims to develop a model that can guide sustainable management decisions for PULs. The model outlines the steps involved in the different phases of PULs and food systems, employing a value chain approach based on a literature review. Furthermore, sustainability indicators are derived based on Orientor's theory, and their correlation to the model value chain phases is examined through expert interviews. Finally, the study presents recommended strategies to enhance urban sustainability through PUL value chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]