Foreign Policy Essay: Hamas's Islamist Foes

Editor’s Note: The United States rightly regards the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Palestinian organization Hamas as a terrorist group, but Hamas is also the de facto government of the Gaza Strip. There it juggles the responsibilities of governing Gaza and the associated need to mollify Israel with its self-image as an Islamic “resistance” movement. Making this difficult act even harder, Hamas faces a terrorism problem of its own. Gaza is home to a range of groups that see Hamas as too accommodating toward Israel and too lenient when it comes to imposing Islamic law at home. Beverley Milton-Edwards, a professor at Queen’s University Belfast and renowned expert on Hamas, assesses these Islamist rivals and the risks for Hamas of being too confrontational or too passive in dealing with them.

A note on the prediction of liquid hold-up with the stratified roll wave regime for gas/liquidco-current flow in horizontal pipes.

This note presents a simple model for prediction of liquid hold-up in two-phase horizontal pipe flow for the stratified roll wave (St+RW) flow regime. Liquid hold-up data for horizontal two-phase pipe flow [1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6] exhibit a steady increase with liquid velocity and a more dramatic fall with increasing gas rate as shown by Hand et al. [7 and 8] for example. In addition the liquid hold-up is reported to show an additional variation with pipe diameter. Generally, if the initial liquid rate for the no-gas flow condition gives a liquid height below the pipe centre line, the flow patterns pass successively through the stratified (St), stratified ripple (St+R), stratified roll wave, film plus droplet (F+D) and finally the annular (A+D, A+RW, A+BTS) regimes as the gas rate is increased. Hand et al. [7 and 8] have given a detailed description of this progression in flow regime development and definitions of the patterns involved. Despite the fact that there are over one hundred models which have been developed to predict liquid hold-up, none have been shown to be universally useful, while only a handful have proven to be applicable to specific flow regimes [9, 10, 11 and 12]. One of the most intractable regimes to predict has been the stratified roll wave pattern where the liquid hold-up shows the most dramatic change with gas flow rate. It has been suggested that the momentum balance-type models, which give both hold-up and pressure drop prediction, can predict universally for all flow regimes but particularly in the case of the difficult stratified roll wave pattern. Donnelly [1] recently demonstrated that the momentum balance models experienced some difficulties in the prediction of this regime. Without going into lengthy details, these models differ in the assumed friction factor or shear stress on the surfaces within the pipe particularly at the liquid–gas interface. The Baker–Jardine model [13] when tested against the 0.0454 m i.d. data of Nguyen [2] exhibited a wide scatter for both liquid hold-up and pressure drop as shown in Fig. 1. The Andritsos–Hanratty model [14] gave better prediction of pressure drop but a wide scatter for liquid hold-up estimation (cf. Fig. 2) when tested against the 0.0935 m i.d. data of Hand [5]. The Spedding–Hand model [15], shown in Fig. 3 against the data of Hand [5], gave improved performance but was still unsatisfactory with the prediction of hold-up for stratified-type flows. The MARS model of Grolman [6] gave better prediction of hold-up (cf. Fig. 4) but deterioration in the estimation of pressure drop when tested against the data of Nguyen [2]. Thus no method is available that will accurately predict liquid hold-up across the whole range of flow patterns but particularly for the stratified plus roll wavy regime. The position is particularly unfortunate since the stratified-type regimes are perhaps the most predominant pattern found in multiphase lines.

Outcome measurement and service evaluation - a note on research design.

The purpose of this research note is to demonstrate how an individualised quality of life instrument could be adapted to provide a more accurate estimate of the impact of a social service on a person’s quality of life. An increase in quality of life between the start and end of a service is often taken as an indication that the service impacted positively on quality of life. The modifications to the quality of life instrument suggested in this paper show that this assumption is not always accurate and should be questioned directly.

Molecular characterization of Nosema bombi (Microsporidia : Nosematidae) and a note on its sites of infection in Bombus terrestris (Hymenoptera : Apoidea)

Investigations of queen, worker and male bumble bees (Bombus terrestris) showed that all individuals became infected with Nosema bombi. Infections were found in Malpighian tubules, thorax muscles, fat body tissue and nerve tissue, including the brain. Ultrastructural studies revealed thin walled emptied spores in host cell cytoplasm interpreted as autoinfective spores, besides normal spores (environmental spores) intended for parasite transmission between hosts. The nucleotide sequence of the gene coding for the small subunit rRNA (SSU-rRNA) from Microsporidia isolated from B. terrestris, B. lucorum, and B. hortorum were identical, providing evidence that N. bombi infects multiple hosts. The sequence presented here (GenBank Accession no AY008373) is different from an earlier submission to GenBank (Accession no U26158) of a partial sequence of the same gene based on material collected from B. terrestris. It still remains to be investigated if there is species diversity among Microsporidia found in bumble bees.