Beth Mardutho

Abstract It is argued here that functionalism lies at the heart of garshunographic writing systems (where one language is written in a script that is sociolinguistically associated with another language). Giving historical accounts of such systems that began as early as the eighth century, it will be demonstrated that garshunographic systems grew organically because of necessity and that they offered a certain degree of simplicity rather than complexity. While the paper discusses mostly Syriac-based systems, its arguments can probably be expanded to other garshunographic systems.

We present in this chapter some basic linguistic facts about Semitic languages, covering orthography, morphology, and syntax. We focus on Arabic (both standard and dialectal), Ethiopian languages (specifically, Amharic), Hebrew, Maltese and Syriac. We conclude the chapter with a contrastive analysis of some of these phenomena across the various languages.

On the morning of July 7, 2003, Mar Raphael Bidawid, Patriarch of the Chaldean Church passed away in Beirut, Lebanon.The 81-year old Patriarch had been suffering for a few months from an acute health problem.The news of his death was first announced to the Syriac studies community two days later during the opening session of the North American Syriac Symposium in Princeton, NJ.The gathered scholars recalled Mar Raphael's various scholarly contributions.[2]Raphael Yousif Warda was born on April 17, 1922 in Mosul, Iraq.His parents enrolled him at the very young age of 11 in the Chaldean seminary.Shortly thereafter, in 1936, he was sent to Rome where he studied for 10 years.

Abstract Syria Shell Petroleum Development is a joint venture partner in major EP activities in Syria. Many road transport fatalities were associated with these activities and therefore it was decided to try to improve this grim state of affairs by executing a dedicated road safety program fully funded by Shell. Drastic improvements in the road safety statistics were seen since then. The average number of fatalities dropped from more than 5 per year to 1. This paper gives you some brief highlights of the various initiatives aimed at reducing road transport fatalities. In spite of the drastic improvement in road safety it was recognised that the unsupervised driver in his vehicle remained the weakest element in ensuring safe road transport. In-Vehicle Monitoring Systems (IVMS) are often seen as the solution for this problem as it offers a means to supervise drivers. Unfortunately, the application of the "conventional" IVMS technology is often less effective. As part of the road safety program a novel method aimed at aligning drivers’ short-term benefits with long term safety interests by using IVMS was developed. The second part of the paper describes this novel approach and gives the encouraging result of a field trial as carried out in Syria. It is shown that substantial improvements in accident potential can be accomplished by using this novel way of applying IVMS. These results were accomplished without the usual problems associated with using IVMS and with hardly any noticeable burden on the organisation.

Expression of the adenovirus E1A oncogene stimulates both cell proliferation and p53-dependent apoptosis in rodent cells. p53 implements apoptosis in all or in part through transcriptional activation of bax, the product of which promotes cell death. The adenovirus E1B 19K product is homologous in sequence and in function to Bcl-2, both of which bind to and inhibit the activity of Bax and thereby suppress apoptosis. The E1B 19K protein also interacts with the nuclear lamins, but the role of this interaction in the regulation of apoptosis is not known. Lamins are, however, substrates for members of the interleukin-1 beta-converting enzyme (ICE) family of cysteine proteases that are activated during apoptosis and function downstream of Bcl-2 in the cell death pathway. lamins are degraded during E1A- induced p53-dependent apoptosis. Lamin A and C are cleaved into 47- and 37-kD fragments, respectively, and the site of proteolysis is mapped to a conserved aspartic acid residue at position 230. The cleavage of lamins during apoptosis is consistent with the activation of an ICE- related cysteine protease down-stream of p53. No lamin protease activity was detected in cells expressing the E1B 19K protein, indicating that 19K functions upstream of protease activation in inhibiting apoptosis. Substitution of the aspartic acid at the cleavage site produced a mutant lamin protein that was resistant to proteolysis both in vitro and in vivo. Expression of uncleavable mutant lamin A or B attenuated apoptosis, delaying cell death and the associated DNA fragmentation by 12 h. Mutant lamin expressing cells failed to show the signs of chromatin condensation and nuclear shrinkage typical of cell death by apoptosis. Instead, the nuclear envelope collapsed and the nuclear lamina remained intact. However, the late stage of apoptosis was morphologically unaltered and formation of apoptotic bodies was evident. Thus, lamin breakdown by proteolytic degradation facilitates the nuclear events of apoptosis perhaps by facilitating nuclear breakdown.