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What is the role of the northern Nigerian Muslim women in national development? This is a question for which we do not have a good answer. All that we know is how important women are in marital life as housewives but their role in politics and civil service remain obscure. This is because the literature on Nigeria's national development is relatively silent on the contributions of Muslim women. In northern Nigeria, awareness about the role of Muslim women in development gained momentum in 1985 with the formation of The Federation of Muslim Women’s Associations in Nigeria (FOMWAN). Awareness was further enhanced in 1995 as a result of the effective participation of northern Nigerian Muslim women in the International Conference on Women in Beijing, China. The case study is an attempt to analyze the role of Muslim Women in an urban middle-class context in Northern Nigeria.

The relationship between the religions, customs, and status of women across the world is an enduring global mystery. In northern Nigeria, several years ago, Muslim women remain disadvantaged in many areas of life, including education, employment, health, and civil rights. Gradually, some of the changes appeared in the picture which have greatly improved the lives and status of women in the region, particularly the social, economic and political status. The northern Nigerian Muslim women have switched over from the backstage to the forward. Hence, in northern Nigeria today, we have women in virtually all spheres of life. A lot has been said about the status of women in northern Nigeria, however, so far, most research was limited to general introduction or explanations to the single facts, such as polygyny, divorce etc. This research-which I consider a pilot study is a description of the changing status of Muslim women in northern Nigeria.

October 2018 was a very exciting month for us in JOSHA. We have had a most stimulating competition with many interesting theses of students from different universities in Germany. This competition has been called DEMETRIOS PRIZE 2018 and has its focus on Bachelor-, Master- and Ph.D. Theses. The DEMETRIOS PRIZE 2019 will be announced shortly in JOSHA. "Arts: The mother of all inventions" was the motto of this year`s concert with the Soprano Kim-Lillian Strebel and the Poet Zazie-Charlotte Pfeiffer. A full audience, a wonderful concert, and a fascinating short story, as well as the presentation of the Demetrios Prizes 2018 will stimulate us to continue our strategy to support young scientists and artists by scholarships, prizes, as well as cultural and scientific events. Moreover, we would like to inform our readers that selected articles published in the future are going to be available in other languages as well.

Universal access to knowledge is a fundamental principle of science and humanities. Today, however, publications of science and humanities are locked behind high paywalls and non-transparent selection procedures. In the efforts to resolve the misery, a first important milestone was the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities” of 2003. This year, a second milestone was reached: Eleven European research funding institutions have committed to require from 2020 on that all results from research funded by these institutions are published immediately in compliant Open Access journals or platforms. The negative liabilities of Peer-review procedures, including the “Semmelweis reflex” are shown to represent further barriers for an immediate universal dissemination of knowledge. To overcome inappropriate locking of science and humanities behind walls, the remaining future milestone is that authors retain a non-exclusive copyright.

The study identified the policies and practices that impede women career progression in the Osun state civil service and ascertained the challenges faced by women in their career progression in Osun state civil service. These were with the view to assessing career progression of women in Osun State civil service. The study made use of primary data through the administration of a questionnaire. 145 female respondents were drawn from three ministries; Women Affairs and Child Development, Health and Education, Science and Technology. Data gathered were analyzed using frequency distribution. The result showed that there had been no improvement on the policies and practices on women’s career progression in Osun State civil service as there is limited access to professional training, sexual harassment for promotion, and differential rates promotion due to child bearing. The study concluded that women in Osun State civil service have negative experience in their career progression.

The study using secondary source of data, such as the Electoral Act (2010), newspaper articles, journal articles, fourth republican constitution of Nigeria, etc. identified the processes involved in the emergence of a candidate for election in Nigeria and also examined the implications of the process for representative government in Nigeria. The paper revealed that the process involved in the emergence of a candidate from political party platform for election is by shadow or primary election or internal democracy. The paper also revealed that the process of a candidate’s emergence on a political party platform is a determinant of sustainable democratic practice in Nigeria. The study concludes that for democracy to be sustained in Nigeria, qualified party members must be allowed to take active part in primary elections and qualified adult citizens to vote in general elections.

This article unleashes the torturous post-war effects in Kamila Shamsie’s A God in Every Stone (2014) and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient (1996), that had altered the ideologies of colonized. This is a qualitative research and theory applied in this article is post-colonial criticism. The study is an effort to expand the ways through which the war and colonialism paid their contribution to the alter the ideologies of colonizers and colonized. I will be analyzing the fragmented loyalties of characters in war incidents mentioned in the text of the novels. The novel attacks the colonial power, identity crisis, and the euro-centric approach of the British.

In this article we briefly introduce CAT CaSe. CAT CaSe is an innovative Android app, entirely based on an improved version of CAT (Cataldo Advanced Transformations), expressly meant for musicians (professionals and students). The app allows to instantly carry out a detailed analysis of any harmonic progression, without any exception whatsoever. All the phases that constitute the analysis are shown to the user, and the Harmonic Substitutions that occur are accurately discussed.

With this editorial, we close the 7th issue. The highlight of this issue was the announcement of the Demetrios prize 2018. The prize was awarded to 4 outstanding contributions to JOSHA in diverse topics and the readers have the opportunity to enjoy reading the winning articles. We would also like to draw your attention to the other noteworthy articles in the field of music, literature and culture and architectural design that were published in this issue. In this issue, we also have an interesting article by Prof. Gerhard Steinmann and Prof. Roland Mertelsmann. They talk about the new policy that was announced by Austrian science fonds FWF (Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung) which is crucial in the development of open access journals.

In the light of the inevitable twinning of linguistic theory and literary critical interpretation and appreciation, Ray Bradbury's narrative techniques constitute his thematic and aesthetic discourse. Bradbury’s stylistic narrative discourse evokes a set of narrative tools through which characters communicate ideas, thoughts, and feelings, creating aesthetic effects that appeal to readers. These blended artistic elements are interpreted in the light of the theoretical fictional context of narratorcharacter, character-character, narrator-reader interactions. Exploring a web of narrativecharacterization centers in Bradbury’s story Cistern, the paper sheds light on the centers of the point of view, dialogic narrative technique, and thematic concerns that include internal and external conflicts. Meantime, the paper draws on Gérard Genette’s analytical method of study of narrative discourse, among others.