The paper is inspired by Edward Said’s Orientalism, where it is emphasized that the Occident feels the need to liberate the Orient. The reasonings of why Islam is perceived as the Orient today will be discussed, which will lead to a discussion of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS’) oppression of the Yezidi women in Iraq and Syria. In a New York Times article, “ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape,” Rukmini Callimachi reports several accounts of Yezidi women who successfully escaped the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, where they were raped in the name of religion. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria claim that sexual slavery is supported by the Quran, the holy book of Islam. Based on their claims of Quranic support, “the Islamic State [of Iraq and Syria] codifie[d] sex slavery in conquered regions of Iraq and Syria” (Callimachi, 2015). Therefore, ISIS’ claim that Islam allows such an inhumane behavior towards females will be questioned while exploring Islam’s actual stance on the subject of sexual slavery. First, the Islamic stance on sexual slavery will be explored, the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria will be examined, followed by a thorough investigation of the perception of sexual slavery in Islam by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ending with a comparison and contrast among the two stances.

This paper examines a California-based microgrid?s decision to invest in a distributed generation (DG) unit fuelled by natural gas. While the long-term natural gas generation cost is stochastic, we initially assume that the microgrid may purchase electricity at a fixed retail rate from its utility. Using the real options approach, we find a natural gas generation cost threshold that triggers DG investment. Furthermore, the consideration of operational flexibility by the microgrid increases DG investment, while the option to disconnect from the utility is not attractive. By allowing the electricity price to be stochastic, we next determine an investment threshold boundary and find that high electricity price volatility relative to that of natural gas generation cost delays investment while simultaneously increasing the value of the investment. We conclude by using this result to find the implicit option value of the DG unit when two sources of uncertainty exist.

We take the perspective of a microgrid that has installed distribution energy resources (DER) in the form of distributed generation with combined heat and power applications. Given uncertain electricity and fuel prices, the microgrid minimizes its expected annual energy bill for various capacity sizes. In almost all cases, there is an economic and environmental advantage to using DER in conjunction with demand response (DR): the expected annualized energy bill is reduced by 9percent while CO2 emissions decline by 25percent. Furthermore, the microgrid's risk is diminished as DER may be deployed depending on prevailing market conditions and local demand. In order to test a policy measure that would place a weight on CO2 emissions, we use a multi-criteria objective function that minimizes a weighted average of expected costs and emissions. We find that greater emphasis on CO2 emissions has a beneficial environmental impact only if DR is available and enough reserve generation capacity exists. Finally, greater uncertainty results in higher expected costs and risk exposure, the effects of which may be mitigated by selecting a larger capacity.

Many human genes are associated with dispersed arrays of transcriptional enhancers that regulate their expression in time and space. Studies in invertebrate model systems have suggested that these elements function as discrete and independent regulatory units, but the in vivo combinatorial properties of vertebrate enhancers remain poorly understood. To explore the modularity and regulatory autonomy of human developmental enhancers, we experimentally concatenated up to four enhancers from different genes and used a transgenic mouse assay to compare the in vivo activity of these compound elements with that of the single modules. In all of the six different combinations of elements tested, the reporter gene activity patterns were additive without signs of interference between the individual modules, indicating that regulatory specificity was maintained despite the presence of closely-positioned heterologous enhancers. Even in cases where two elements drove expression in close anatomical proximity, such as within neighboring subregions of the developing limb bud, the compound patterns did not show signs of cross-inhibition between individual elements or novel expression sites. These data indicate that human developmental enhancers are highly modular and functionally autonomous and suggest that genomic enhancer shuffling may have contributed to the evolution of complex gene expression patterns in vertebrates

The ongoing deregulation of electricity industries worldwide is providing incentives for microgrids to use small-scale distributed generation (DG) and combined heat and power (CHP) applications via heat exchangers (HXs) to meet local energy loads. Although the electric-only efficiency of DG is lower than that of central-station production, relatively high tariff rates and the potential for CHP applications increase the attraction of on-site generation. Nevertheless, a microgrid contemplating the installation of gas-fired DG has to be aware of the uncertainty in the natural gas price. Treatment of uncertainty via real options increases the value of the investment opportunity, which then delays the adoption decision as the opportunity cost of exercising the investment option increases as well. In this paper, we take the perspective of a microgrid that can proceed in a sequential manner with DG capacity and HX investment in order to reduce its exposure to risk from natural gas price volatility. In particular, with the availability of the HX, the microgrid faces a tradeoff between reducing its exposure to the natural gas price and maximising its cost savings. By varying the volatility parameter, we find that the microgrid prefers a direct investment strategy for low levels of volatility and a sequential one for higher levels of volatility.

This paper examines a California-based microgrid s decision to invest in a distributed generation (DG) unit that operates on natural gas. While the long-term natural gas generation cost is stochastic, we initially assume that the microgrid may purchase electricity at a fixed retail rate from its utility. Using the real options approach, we find natural gas generating cost thresholds that trigger DG investment. Furthermore, the consideration of operational flexibility by the microgrid accelerates DG investment, while the option to disconnect entirely from the utility is not attractive. By allowing the electricity price to be stochastic, we next determine an investment threshold boundary and find that high electricity price volatility relative to that of natural gas generating cost delays investment while simultaneously increasing the value of the investment. We conclude by using this result to find the implicit option value of the DG unit.