American University in Cairo

About: American University in Cairo is a education organization based out in Cairo, Egypt. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 2472 authors who have published 5339 publications receiving 73741 citations.

Community psychology and civil society: opportunities for growth in egypt and lebanon

Abstract: American University of BeirutWestern theories and products, focused mostly on the individual level ofanalysis, inform psychology in Egypt and Lebanon. Psychologists in thesenations have not yet played a significant role in addressing systemiccommunity priorities, such as poverty and politically motivated violence.In the absence of community psychology, a vibrant network of civil societyorganizations has emerged to address urgent national concerns. We discussand critique three types of civil society efforts that intersect with communitypsychology values and practice: community development, refugee services,and human rights advocacy. The emerging specialization of communitypsychology can address limitations of these fields and provide analternative psychological perspective to community practice. This articleexamines how Egyptian and Lebanese community psychologies maytranspire, including the roles community psychologists can play, valuesthat may be integrated in this work, and considerations for formalizingtraining programs.

The effect of gender preference on contraceptive use and fertility in rural Egypt.

Abstract: Data are used from two surveys of currently married women aged 15-44 conducted in 1979-80 and 1990-91 to explore the changing impact of gender preference on modern contraceptive use and on fertility in rural Menoufia Egypt. The significantly positive effects on contraceptive use of having one or more sons in 1979 remained constant in 1990. Families without living sons had higher odds of having a birth than did families with two or more sons during 1979-80 and these relative odds were even higher in 1990-91 among families with three or more living children. The implications of these findings for subsequent declines in aggregate fertility are discussed. (authors)

Fuzzy PSO: a generalization of particle swarm optimization

Abstract: In standard particle swarm optimization (PSO), the best particle in each neighborhood exerts its influence over other particles in the neighborhood. In this paper, we propose fuzzy PSO, a generalization which differs from standard PSO in the following respect: charisma is defined to be a fuzzy variable, and more than one particle in each neighborhood can have a non-zero degree of charisma, and, consequently, is allowed to influence others to a degree that depends on its charisma. We evaluate our model on the weighted maximum satisfiability (maxsat) problem, comparing performance to standard PSO and to Walk-Sat.