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Shaimaa Nasr Amin,1,2 Gehan El-Akabawy,3– 5 Layth Baker Saleh,6 Alhawraa Salem Sulaiman,6 Abdulfattah Ahmed Alsharif,6 Mohammed Ahmed Qamoum,6 Mohammad Basheer Fahmawi,6 Alaa Al-Matrouk,6 Hana Taha,7– 9 Ahmed A Ismail10,11 1Department of Anatomy, Physiology and Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, The Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan; 2Department of Medical Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt; 3Department of Basic Medical Sciences, College of Medicine, Ajman University, Ajman, United Arab Emirates; 4Centre of Medical and Bioallied Health Sciences Research, Ajman University, Ajman, United Arab Emirates; 5Department of Anatomy and Embryology, Faculty of Medicine, Menoufia University, Menoufia, Egypt; 6House Officer, Medical Graduates Training Program, Jordan Medical Council, Amman, Jordan; 7Department of Pharmacology, Public Health and Clinical Skills, Faculty of Medicine, The Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan; 8Department of Family and Community Medicine, School of Medicine, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan; 9Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; 10Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Menoufia University, Shebin Elkom, Egypt; 11Kansas Department of Health and Environment, Topeks, KS, USACorrespondence: Shaimaa Nasr Amin, Department of Anatomy, Physiology and Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, the Hashemite University, PO Box 330127, Zarqa, 13133, Jordan, Tel +962770507906, Email shaimaa@hu.edu.joPurpose: Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is a common metabolic disorder with negative impacts on brain functions. Social cognition and vicarious experience impairments are features of DM. This research aimed to estimate the social cognition and vicarious experience among Jordanian people with diabetes.Patients and Methods: Cognitive abilities were assessed using the Vicarious Pain Questionnaire (VPQ) and the Mirror Touch Questionnaire (MTQ). Data on disease history, medications, routine laboratory measurements, and anthropometric indices.Results: Patients had lower pain responses and intensity scores, and higher unpleasantness scores than the control group (p < 0.05). Most of the VPQ and MTQ measures were mainly impaired among study participants who had higher education, were not practicing exercises, and were not consuming healthy diets (p < 0.05). The number of responses to the VPQ and average pain intensity were negatively correlated with age and positively correlated with both the serum aminotransferase (AST) concentration and the serum urea concentration (p < 0.05). The average unpleasantness score was positively correlated with the duration of therapy, serum creatinine, and albumin concentrations (p < 0.05). The final regression models for the number of pain responses and localized–generalized included group, practicing exercise, and AST, while the model for the average pain intensity included only the grouping variable. The model for average unpleasantness included grouping, AST, Albumin, consuming a healthy diet, and duration of therapy.Conclusion: The Jordanian diabetic patients who participated in the study had impaired social cognition and vicarious experience. A healthy lifestyle had a significant effect on the scores of the vicarious experience in addition to the level of education. Despite being the first study in Jordan to assess vicarious experience in DM, further studies are needed considering imaging and electrophysiological workup. Besides, further prospective studies are needed to determine the significance of the current study.Keywords: diabetes mellitus, social cognition, vicarious experience

This work expands on a novel piecewise mathematical model of Lumpy Skin Disease (LSD) in three time intervals by utilizing fractional stochastic derivatives and variable-order differential equations. The LSD model is developed into two crossover hybrid variable-order derivatives. This study's piecewise mathematical model representation of lumpy skin disease has revealed a property that has never been taken into account or seen in previous research employing mathematical models based on classical, different fractional derivatives and variable order fractional derivatives. The Caputo derivative and the Riemann-Liouville integral are merged linearly to produce the hybrid fractional order derivative. The variable-order fractional and hybrid fractional operators are approximated using the Grünwald-Letnikov approximation. We introduce the hybrid variable-order operator combined with the non-standard finite difference method. The stability, boundedness, positivity, and existence of the suggested model are examined. The effectiveness of the techniques and the validity of the theoretical results were verified through a number of numerical experiments.

This study investigates the VAR time series data of the overall expenditures and income in the Kurdistan ‎Region of Iraq. It applies multivariate wavelet shrinkage within the VAR model, comparing it to ‎traditional methods to identify the most appropriate model. The chosen model will then be used to ‎predict general expenditures and revenues for the years 2022-2026. The analysis involved assessing the ‎stationarity of the expenditure and revenue time series, which are interrelated variables during the ‎interval 1997-2021, and identifying the overall trend through differencing to achieve stationarity. The ‎proposed method incorporated multivariate wavelet shrinkage in the VAR model to address data ‎contamination in expenditures and revenue using various wavelets like Coiflets, Daubechies, Symlets, ‎and Fejér–Korovkin at different orders. Threshold levels were estimated using the SURE method and soft ‎thresholding rules to denoise the data for the following analysis within the VAR model. Model selection ‎was based on Akaike and Bayes information criteria. The analysis, conducted using MATLAB, indicated ‎the superiority of the proposed method over traditional methods, forecasting a continued rise in ‎expenditures and revenues for the Iraqi Kurdistan region from 2022 to 2026. The findings suggest that ‎advanced techniques can offer more accurate economic forecasts, benefiting regional planning and ‎policy-making.‎

Social media has become an integral part of everyday life for many individuals, serving as a platform to express opinions, share memories and lifestyles, follow news, and adapt to social trends and norms. The wealth of user information and analytics on these platforms has facilitated the development and sale of tailored products and services, benefiting advertisers and researchers seeking survey participants. Social media advertising has demonstrated its effectiveness in reaching hard-to-reach populations. However, transport researchers have yet to capitalise on this potential fully. This paper presents our experience using social media to recruit participants for two smartphone travel surveys conducted in Australia. We demonstrate that social media recruitment and smartphone-based travel surveys are highly effective, adaptable, and can be rapidly deployed in response to research opportunities, such as during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic when traditional methods may be less suitable. This approach also holds great potential for travel surveys targeting the general population. This paper shares several lessons from this experiment, including our administrative approach and detailed technical instructions to utilise open-source software tools for conducting smartphone travel surveys like ours. This approach significantly reduces study costs compared to most commercial solutions.

To address the critical need for enhancing Quality of Service (QoS) monitoring in the logistics service delivery domain, this paper introduces a blockchain-based QoS monitoring framework that aims to automate service delivery and dispute resolution processes. Traditional QoS monitoring solutions rely heavily on human judgment and intervention, which may increase operational costs and reduce service reliability. Such behaviour highlights the demand for more efficient and transparent logistics services, which underlines the importance of utilizing blockchain technology’s immutable and decentralized nature. The proposed framework in this paper employs a graph-based approach to transform QoS requirements into Deterministic Finite Automata (DFA) format. This strategy simplifies delivery monitoring and the identification of service violations through efficient DFA traversal. By using the Ethereum network as the deployment environment, we demonstrate that traversing a DFA is computationally efficient and reduces operational costs. Extensive experiments were conducted to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the framework, showing that monitoring a delivery using this framework costs approximately ${\$}$ 2.59. This finding underscores the framework’s advantages in operational cost optimization compared to traditional human-based methods. Moreover, the decentralized nature of our proposed framework allows customers and businesses to define and monitor QoS parameters jointly. Therefore, the business partners can establish a transparent and trust-based relationship.

A new series of bis-triazole 19a-l was synthesised for the purpose of being hybrid molecules with both anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer activities and assessed for cell cycle arrest, NO release. Compounds 19c, 19f, 19h, 19 l exhibited COX-2 selectivity indexes in the range of 18.48 to 49.38 compared to celecoxib S.I. = 21.10), inhibit MCF-7 with IC50 = 9–16 μM compared to tamoxifen (IC50 = 27.9 μM). and showed good inhibitory activity against HEP-3B with IC50 = 4.5–14 μM compared to sorafenib (IC50 = 3.5 μM) (HEP-3B). Moreover, derivatives 19e, 19j, 19k, 19 l inhibit HCT-116 with IC50 = 5.3–13.7 μM compared to 5-FU with IC50 = 4.8 μM (HCT-116). Compounds 19c, 19f, 19h, 19 l showed excellent inhibitory activity against A549 with IC50 = 3–4.5 μM compared to 5-FU with IC50 = 6 μM (A549). Compounds 19c, 19f, 19h, 19 l inhibit aromatase (IC50 of 22.40, 23.20, 22.70, 30.30 μM), EGFR (IC50 of 0.112, 0.205, 0.169 and 0.066 μM) and B-RAFV600E (IC50 of 0.09, 0.06, 0.07 and 0.05 μM).

Two new series of pyrazolyl-thiazolidinone/thiazole derivatives 16a–b and 18a–j were synthesised, merging the scaffolds of celecoxib and dasatinib. Compounds 16a, 16b and 18f inhibit COX-2 with S.I. 134.6, 26.08 and 42.13 respectively (celecoxib S.I. = 24.09). Compounds 16a, 16b, 18c, 18d and 18f inhibit MCF-7 with IC50 = 0.73–6.25 μM (dasatinib IC50 = 7.99 μM) and (doxorubicin IC50 = 3.1 μM) and inhibit A549 with IC50 = 1.64–14.3 μM (dasatinib IC50 = 11.8 μM and doxorubicin IC50 = 2.42 μM) with S.I. (F180/MCF7) of 33.15, 7.13, 18.72, 13.25 and 8.28 respectively higher than dasatinib (4.03) and doxorubicin (3.02) and S.I. (F180/A549) of 14.75, 12.96, 4.16, 7.07 and 18.88 respectively higher than that of dasatinib (S.I. = 2.72) and doxorubicin (S.I = 3.88). Derivatives 16a, 18c, 18d, 18f inhibit EGFR and HER-2 IC50 for EGFR of 0.043, 0.226, 0.388, 0.19 μM respectively and for HER-2 of 0.032, 0.144, 0.195, 0.201 μM respectively.

This paper delves into the importance of understanding the psychological and cognitive factors that play a vital role in individuals' decision-making and behaviour when it comes to transport. It recognises that while quantitative-based utilities such as cost and performance are important considerations, they are not the only determinants of behaviour. The paper aims to develop a conceptual perspective of psychological and moral values, societal experiences, and service perception and discuss their implications for individuals’ behaviour in transport contexts. To achieve this, the paper draws on theories and concepts from psychology literature, specifically subjective norms and affective attributes. These are used to explore the contextual dimensions of travellers' behaviour and identify the key factors that influence their behaviour and decisions. Thus, two main contributions of the paper are 1) developing a conceptual model that can be used to analyse the decisions of transport users and predict their behaviour 2) reviewing the implications of these factors in the transport context. In particular, the importance of socio-ethical factors in individuals' behaviour toward using transport services and their possible implications in long-term transport planning is discussed.

Background: Heat stress remains a major environmental factor affecting poultry production. With growing concerns surrounding climate change and its antecedent of global warming, research on heat stress in poultry has gradually gained increased attention. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the current status, identify the research frontiers, and highlight the research trends on heat stress in poultry research using bibliometric analysis.Methods: The literature search was performed on the Web of Science Core Collection database for documents published from 2000 to 2021. The documents retrieved were analyzed for their publication counts, countries, institutions, keywords, sources, funding, and citation records using the bibliometric app on R software. Network analysis for co-authorship, co-occurrence, citation, co-citation, and bibliographic coupling was visualized using the VOSviewer software.Results: A total of 468 publications were retrieved, and over the past two decades, there was a gradual increase in the annual number of publications (average growth rate: 4.56%). China had the highest contribution with respect to the number of publications, top contributing authors, collaborations, funding agencies, and institutions. Nanjing Agricultural University, China was the most prolific institution. Kazim Sahin from Firat University, Turkey contributed the highest number of publications and citations to heat stress in poultry research, and Poultry Science was the most productive and the most cited journal. The top 10 globally cited documents mainly focused on the effects of heat stress, alleviation of heat stress, and the association between heat stress and oxidative stress in poultry. All keywords were grouped into six clusters which included studies on “growth performance”, “intestinal morphology”, “heat stress”, “immune response”, “meat quality”, and “oxidative stress” as current research hotspots. In addition, topics such as; “antioxidants”, “microflora”, “intestinal barrier”, “rna-seq”, “animal welfare”, “gene expression”, “probiotics”, “feed restriction”, and “inflammatory pathways” were identified for future research attention.Conclusion: This bibliometric study provides a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the global research trends on heat stress in poultry over the last two decades, and it is expected to serve as a useful reference for potential research that will help address the impacts of heat stress on poultry production globally.

The success of mRNA vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 implies that this technology can be applied to target any pathogen. However, the scientific production and research trends using the bibliometric method are still unknown. The top 100 most cited articles on mRNA vaccine research were obtained from the Scopus database from 1995 to 2021. Bibliometrix, an R-Package, and VOSviewer 1.6.11 were used for data analysis. There is a rapid growth in scientific outputs with a gradual increase in 2021. The United States produced 45 (45%) of the articles, followed by Germany with 15 (15%) and Israel with 10 (10%). The New England Journal of Medicine published the most papers in this field 13 (13%), followed by Nature 6(6%). Barney S. Graham was the most productive author among the top 100 most cited mRNA vaccine articles. University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, US, was the top ranking institution, having 37 (37%). The visualization map clearly and spontaneously displayed the current state and research hot spots of mRNA research from a specific perspective. The most frequent keywords were COVID-19, vaccine, mRNA vaccine, mRNA, SARS-CoV-2, and immunogenicity, among others. A systematic review of the articles provided evidence that out of 100 articles, approximately 25 (25%) were focused on vaccine production and evaluation, followed by 26 (26%) in mRNA vaccine safety and efficacy, 23 (23%) were into mRNA vaccination, 23 (23%) considered risk factors associated with mRNA vaccination, while 8 (8%) of the articles covered the issue of mRNA vaccine delivery. In addition, 42% of the articles focused on COVID-19, 17% on cancer, 8% on influenza virus, 4% on COVID-19 and kidney disease, 3% COVID-19 and myocarditis, and 3% on rabies virus, among others. The findings of this systematic and thematic analysis provided the knowledge basis for further research on mRNA vaccines globally.

The study was carried out to assess the diversity of the farming system and the associated development needs of Bedouin communities in the rural area of the hot dry Coastal Zone of Western Desert (CZWD), Egypt with the objective of improving surveillance of the Bedouin communities to the harsh desert conditions. The area has low irritated rainfall (60–140 mm/yr.) and frequent incidences of drought. Specially designed questionnaires were adopted on 151 householders and 51 women groups in 4 locations. More than 50% of the householders are fully engaged in agriculture activities, whereas 31% of them are partially engaged in other businesses. The householders are extended families of 12.2 members on average. Gender differences in education are recognizable; 20% of boys ≥15 years of age are illiterate vs. 60% of girls. Dominant agricultural activities of the householders are sheep raising (98.7%), goat raising (89.4%), olive and figs cultivation (84%), and rain-fed barley (78%). Land tenure averages 31.3 acres/ household. Crop cultivation relies on rainfall, 29% of the householders apply supplement irrigation for fruit trees and vegetables. Natural pasture is an important asset for livestock, where small householders do not hold pastureland. Females do not contribute to field cropping, while 53% of them participate in animal husbandry, especially at the house. The typology of the studied stakeholders showed clear diversification in farming systems. They are clustered into four groups; depending mainly on the livestock assets, followed by the land/crop and human assets. Number of species and flock size are the most important variables for the diversity of stakeholders. The cultivated area is the main variable within land/crop assets, family members in livestock and family size are the main variables from human assets. Most of the householders (95%) give their top need for water cisterns, water reservoirs ranked second (78.6%), followed by raising and improving goats. Pasture development got the lowest priority. Goat and poultry rearing, followed by dairy processing got the top needs of women.

Heat stress caused by climatic changes is one of the most significant stresses on livestock in hot and dry areas. It has particularly adverse effects on the ability of the breed to maintain homeothermy. Developing countries are advised to protect and prepare their animal resources in the face of potential threats such as climate change. The current study was conducted in Egypt’s three hot and dry agro-ecological zones. Three local sheep breeds (Saidi, Wahati, and Barki) were studied with a total of 206 ewes. The animals were exercised under natural heat stress. The heat tolerance index of the animals was calculated to identify animals with high and low heat tolerance based on their response to meteorological and physiological parameters. Genomic variation in these breeds was assessed using 64,756 single nucleotide polymorphic markers (SNPs). From the perspective of comparative adaptability to harsh conditions, our objective was to investigate the genomic structure that might control the adaptability of local sheep breeds to environmental stress under hot and dry conditions. In addition, indices of population structure and diversity of local breeds were examined. Measures of genetic diversity showed a significant influence of breed and location on populations. The standardized index of association (rbarD) ranged from 0.0012 (Dakhla) to 0.026 (Assuit), while for the breed, they ranged from 0.004 (Wahati) to 0.0103 (Saidi). The index of association analysis (Ia) ranged from 1.42 (Dakhla) to 35.88 (Assuit) by location and from 6.58 (Wahati) to 15.36 (Saidi) by breed. The most significant SNPs associated with heat tolerance were found in the MYO5A, PRKG1, GSTCD, and RTN1 genes (p ≤ 0.0001). MYO5A produces a protein widely distributed in the melanin-producing neural crest of the skin. Genetic association between genetic and phenotypic variations showed that OAR1_18300122.1, located in ST3GAL3, had the greatest positive effect on heat tolerance. Genome-wide association analysis identified SNPs associated with heat tolerance in the PLCB1, STEAP3, KSR2, UNC13C, PEBP4, and GPAT2 genes.

As a critical factor in ensuring the growth of the electronic auction (e-auction) domain, the privacy and security of the participants (sellers and buyers) must always be guaranteed. Traditionally, auction data, including participant details, are stored in a third party (auctioneer) database. This leads to a high risk of a single point of failure in terms of privacy and security. Toward this end, blockchain technology has emerged as a promising decentralized communication paradigm to address such risks. This paper presents a blockchain-based auction framework as a decentralized e-auctioning framework for location-aware services. In particular, the framework consists of three components: pre-auctioning, main auctioning, and post-auctioning processes with four algorithms. Our primary focus is on location-aware services, such as storage space rental, apartment rental, transport hire, and parking space rental. The trading volumes are expected to be high; hence, simplifying the design is a crucial requirement. In addition to the benefits of eliminating the centralized entity (the auctioneer), fees are redistributed among participants as rewards. Further, we incorporate a service quality monitoring method that ranks the services provided by participants. This ranking allows participants to determine the rank of other participants with whom they wish to trade. We have conducted several experiments to evaluate the proposed framework’s cost feasibility and to ensure the ease of the business flow.

Definition of bi-supra topological space via graph theory was introduced in this study. We also studied some concepts related of bi supra-topological space via graph theory. "At least many theorems were proofed as a characterization and some examples introduced to explain the subject".

To date, SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) has spread to almost every region of the world, infecting millions and resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Although it was predicted that Africa would suffer a massive loss of life due to this pandemic, the number of COVID-19 cases has been relatively low across the continent. Researchers have speculated that several factors may be responsible for this outcome in Africa, including the extensive experience that countries have with infectious diseases and the young median age of their populations. However, it is still important for African countries to adopt aggressive and bold approaches against COVID-19, in case the nature of the pandemic changes. This short review will summarize the status of the outbreak in Africa and propose possible reasons for current trends, as well as discuss interventions aimed at preventing a rapid increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in the future.

Alkali-activated materials, were synthesized from glass waste powder (cullet from window-type sheets) with NaOH solution. In order to get a high porous microstructure, the hardened pastes were subjected for thermal treatment at temperatures of 400, 500, 600, 700, and 800 °C for 60 min. An important increase in the specimen's volume and porosity appeared during the thermal treatment; this is due to the foaming/intumescent phenomenon specific to this type of material. For the specimen's pastes based on the partial replacement of glass waste powder with graphite (1, 3 and 5 wt.%), it was determined that the increase of compressive strength assessed after thermally treated. The increase of graphite amount also resulted in the decrease of the initial temperature of the intumescent process (i.e., at 500 °C). The microstructure with high porosity after thermal treatment of these materials, with various sizes of closed pores, makes them suitable for use as both thermal and acoustical insulation materials.

Introduction Cancer is a major public health problem and a global leading cause of death where the screening, diagnosis, prediction, survival estimation, and treatment of cancer and control measures are still a major challenge. The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques and their applications in various fields have brought immense value in providing insights into advancement in support of cancer control. Methods A systematic and thematic analysis was performed on the Scopus database to identify the top 100 cited articles in cancer research. Data were analyzed using RStudio and VOSviewer.Var1.6.6. Results The top 100 articles in AI and ML in cancer received a 33 920 citation score with a range of 108 to 5758 times. Doi Kunio from the USA was the most cited author with total number of citations (TNC = 663). Out of 43 contributed countries, 30% of the top 100 cited articles originated from the USA, and 10% originated from China. Among the 57 peer-reviewed journals, the “Expert Systems with Application” published 8% of the total articles. The results were presented in highlight technological advancement through AI and ML via the widespread use of Artificial Neural Network (ANNs), Deep Learning or machine learning techniques, Mammography-based Model, Convolutional Neural Networks (SC-CNN), and text mining techniques in the prediction, diagnosis, and prevention of various types of cancers towards cancer control. Conclusions This bibliometric study provides detailed overview of the most cited empirical evidence in AI and ML adoption in cancer research that could efficiently help in designing future research. The innovations guarantee greater speed by using AI and ML in the detection and control of cancer to improve patient experience.

Internet scams are fraudulent attempts aim to lure computer users to reveal their credentials or redirect their connections to spoofed webpages rather than the actual ones. Users’ confidential information, such as usernames, passwords, and financial account numbers, is the main target of these fraudulent attempts. Internet scammers often use phishing attacks, which have no boundaries, since they could exceed hijacking conventional cyber ecosystems to hack intelligent systems, which emerged recently for the use within smart cities. This paper therefore develops a real-time framework inspired by the honeybee defense mechanism in nature for filtering phishing website attacks in smart cities. In particular, the proposed framework filters phishing websites through three main phases of investigation: PhishTank-Match (PM), Undesirable-Absent (UA), and Desirable-Present (DP) investigation phases. The PM phase is used at first in order to check whether the requested URL is listed in the blacklist of the PhishTank database. On the other hand, the UA phase is used for investigation and checking for the absence of undesirable symbols in uniform resource locators (URLs) of the requested website. Finally, the DP phase is used as another level of investigation in order to check for the presence of the requested URL in the desirable whitelist. The obtained results show that the proposed framework is deployable and capable of filtering various types of phishing website by maintaining a low rate of false alarms.

Several researchers have proposed secure authentication techniques for addressing privacy and security concerns in the fifth-generation (5G)-enabled vehicle networks. To verify vehicles, however, these conditional privacy-preserving authentication (CPPA) systems required a roadside unit, an expensive component of vehicular networks. Moreover, these CPPA systems incur exceptionally high communication and processing costs. This study proposes a CPPA method based on fog computing (FC), as a solution for these issues in 5G-enabled vehicle networks. In our proposed FC-CPPA method, a fog server is used to establish a set of public anonymity identities and their corresponding signature keys, which are then preloaded into each authentic vehicle. We guarantee the security of the proposed FC-CPPA method in the context of a random oracle. Our solutions are not only compliant with confidentiality and security standards, but also resistant to a variety of threats. The communication costs of the proposal are only 84 bytes, while the computation costs are 0.0031, 2.0185 to sign and verify messages. Comparing our strategy to similar ones reveals that it saves time and money on communication and computing during the performance evaluation phase.

The accurate diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) plays an important role in patient treatment, especially at the disease's early stages, because risk awareness allows the patients to undergo preventive measures even before the occurrence of irreversible brain damage. Although many recent studies have used computers to diagnose AD, most machine detection methods are limited by congenital observations. AD can be diagnosed-but not predicted-at its early stages, as prediction is only applicable before the disease manifests itself. Deep Learning (DL) has become a common technique for the early diagnosis of AD. Here, we briefly review some of the important literature on AD and explore how DL can help researchers diagnose the disease at its early stages.

LBP is one of the simplest yet most powerful feature extraction descriptors. Many descriptors based on LBP have been proposed to improve its performance. Completed Local Ternary Pattern (CLTP) is one of the important LBP variants that was proposed to overcome LBP's drawbacks. However, despite the impressive performance of CLTP, it suffers from some limitations, such as high dimensionality, thereby leading to higher computation time and may affect the classification accuracy. In this paper, a new rotation invariant texture descriptor (Feat-WCLTP) is proposed. In the proposed Feat-WCLTP descriptor, first the redundant discrete wavelet transform RDWT is integrated with the original CLTP. Then, CLTP is extracted based on the LL wavelet coefficients. Next, the mean and variance features are used to describe the magnitude information instead of using P-dimensional features as the normal magnitude components of CLTP. Reducing the number of extracted features positively affected the computational complexity of the descriptor and the dimensionality of the resultant histogram. The proposed Feat-WCLTP is evaluated using four texture datasets and compared with some well-known descriptors. The experimental results show that Feat-WCLTP outperformed the other descriptors in terms of classification accuracy. It achieves 99.66% in OuTex, 96.89% in CUReT, 95.23% in UIUC and 99.92% in the Kylberg dataset. The experimental results showed that the Feat-WCLTP not only overcomes the CLTP's dimensionality problem but also further improves the classification accuracy.

Face recognition is one of the most interesting areas of research areas because of its importance in authentication and security. Differentiating between different facial images is not easy because of the similarities in facial features. Human faces can also be covered obscured by eyeglasses, facial expressions and hairstyles can also be changed causing difficulty in finding similar faces. Thus, the need for powerful image features has become a critical issue in the face recognition systems. Many texture features have been used in these systems, including Local Binary Pattern (LBP), Local Ternary Pattern (LTP), Completed Local Binary Pattern (CLBP), Completed Local Binary Count (CLBC) and Completed Local Ternary Pattern (CLTP). In this paper, a new texture descriptor, namely, Completed Local Ternary Count (CLTC), is proposed by adding a threshold value for the CLBC to overcome its sensitivity to noise drawback. The CLTC is also enhanced by adding the Fast-Local Laplacian filter during the pre-processing stage to increase the discriminative property of the proposed descriptor. The proposed Fast-Local Laplacian CLTC (FLL-CLTC) texture descriptor is evaluated for face recognition task using five different face image datasets. The experimental results of the FLL-CLTC showed that the proposed FLL-CLTC outperformed the CLBP and CLTP texture descriptors in term of recognition accuracy. The FLL-CLTC achieved 99.1%, 86.93%, 93.21%, 84.92% and 99.15% with JAFFE, YALE, Georgia Tech, Caltech and ORL face image datasets, respectively.

Future passive optical networks will require simultaneous provision of wired and wireless services to provide high-capacity and high-speed information access network to overcome the capacity demand. In this paper, a converged fiber-wireless (FiWi) network architecture including an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing passive optical network (OFDM-PON) and a radio over fiber (RoF) system is proposed. Two multiple-input multiple-output radio over fiber channels are inserted into the left and right side of OFDM-PON spectrum, using a single-sideband frequency translation (SSB-FT) technique. The significant merit of the proposed architecture is its high spectral efficiency as the two multiple-input multiple-output radio over fiber channels and OFDM-PON transmit at the same frequency, which reduces the complexity of transceiver design by applying a novel method for the implementation of local oscillators in both transmitter and receiver. A proof-of-concept downstream link over 20 km standard-PON was conducted by simulation to demonstrate the performance of the proposed converged fiber-wireless network architecture and the link performance was assessed using error vector magnitude and bit error rate.

Sickle cell disease (SCD) remains a global public health problem in sub‐Saharan Africa and other countries. Limited information is available on the scientific research productivity on SCD. The study aims to assess the growth of global scientific research output on SCD and provide historical insights for a scientific research community. A bibliometric method was applied using the Web of Science (WoS) database from 1900 to 2020. Keywords terms: Title ‘sickle cell*’ OR ‘sickle cell anemia*’ were used. Fundamental bibliometric indicators were analyzed using HistCite, VOS-viewer, and “Bibliometrix app.” using R-studio cloud and SPSS version. 0.19.Search strategy retrieved 11917 documents, written by 31072 authors and published in 1813 prestigious journals, with an average of 27.34 citations per document, 2.8 collaboration index, and 2.61 authors per document. Blood, American and British Journals of Hematology are the most productive journals, and the most active author is Serjeant GR. The fund comes from the United States Department of Health Human Services, and the USA was the most productive country. ‘Anemia,’ ‘children,’ ‘disease,’ and management were the most credence keywords.‘Hematology’ and ‘General internal medicine’ were top WoS research categories. There is a significant (P

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused severe health and economic impacts globally. Strategies to safely reopen economies, travel and trade are a high priority. Until a reliable vaccine is available, non-pharmaceutical techniques are the only available means of disease control. In this paper, we aim to evaluate the extent to which social distancing (SD) and facemask (FM) use can mitigate the transmission of COVID-19 when restrictions are lifted. We used a microsimulation activity-based model for Sydney Greater Metropolitan Area, to evaluate the power of SD and FM in controlling the pandemic under numerous scenarios. The hypothetical scenarios are designed to picture feasible futures under different assumptions. Assuming that the isolation of infected cases and the quarantining of close contacts are in place, different numerical tests are conducted and a full factorial two-way MANOVA test is used to evaluate the effectiveness of the FM and SD control strategies. The main and interactive effects of the containment strategies are evaluated by the total number of infections, percentage of infections reduction, the time it takes to get the pandemic under control, and the intensity of active cases.

The emergence of larger databases has made image retrieval techniques an essential component, and has led to the development of more efficient image retrieval systems. Retrieval can be either content or text-based. In this paper, the focus is on the content-based image retrieval from the FGNET database. Input query images are subjected to several processing techniques in the database before computing the squared Euclidean distance (SED) between them. The images with the shortest Euclidean distance are considered as a match and are retrieved. The processing techniques involve the application of the median modified Weiner filter (MMWF), extraction of the low-level features using histogram-oriented gradients (HOG), discrete wavelet transform (DWT), GIST, and Local tetra pattern (LTrP). Finally, the features are selected using Viola-Jones algorithm. In this study, the average PSNR value obtained after applying Wiener filter was 45.29. The performance of the AGA was evaluated based on its precision, F-measure, and recall, and the obtained average values were respectively 0.75, 0.692, and 0.66. The performance matrix of the AGA was compared to those of particle swarm optimization al-gorithm (PSO) and genetic algorithm (GA) and found to perform better; thus, proving its effi-ciency.

In this paper, the authors report a case of an 11-year-old boy with epidermolytic ichthyosis who presented with multiple scattered erosions and typical hyperkeratotic plaques over the face, upper and lower extremities, the trunk, palms and soles. Family history revealed an affected older male sibling and an affected first-degree female relative. In addition, there was a positive history of generations of consanguinity in the patient's family pedigree, increasing the probability of an autosomal recessive inheritance. The clinical diagnosis was confirmed by histopathology; however, mutations in the keratin 1 and 10 genes were absent. This case report addresses the importance of establishing correct diagnosis and mode of inheritance, with literature review of genetic mutations, possible differential diagnosis and the most common and successful treatment modalities for epidermolytic ichthyosis.

In this paper , we introduces a new definition in bi-supra topological space , called M-θ- ii- open and via this definition , we introduce a new types of functions called quasi M-θ-ii-continuous functions which unifies some weak forms of quasi θ-ii-continuous functions in bi-supra topological spaces and investigate their properties.

Cancer is a disease initiated and propelled forward by the accumulation and interaction of genetic and epigenetic mutations of genes involved in the regulation of cell signaling and growth. Epigenetics refers to the heritable alterations in gene expression, not attributable to changes in DNA sequence. The two predominant epigenetic mechanisms are DNA methylation and histone modification. The role of epigenetics in the regulation of gene expression has been considered as a basic pathway in the progression and pathogenesis of various malignancies, such as cancers of the urogenital organs. Recently, several studies have focused on the epigenetics of male urogenital system cancers. Epigenetic modifications in the DNA of cancer patients and precancerous lesions provide the promise of novel biomarkers for early cancer prediction, diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment response. In addition, numerous epigenetic modifications represent a potential goal of novel therapeutic strategies and treatment design. Ultimately, pioneering diagnostic methods and treatment regimens probably will be based on epigenetic mechanisms and included into medical practices that address the needs of patients with male urogenital organ cancers.

Objective: To explore effect of gum arabic (GA) on semen quality and oxidative stress capacity of alloxan induced diabetes rats. Methods: In this study, male Sprague–Dawley rats were divided into 3 groups (n = 20 of each): control group, diabetic group which were injected with alloxan, and diabetic group which was given 10% GA in the form of drinking water for 10 weeks. The effect of GA on testicular oxidative stress and sperm quality were investigated. Testicular antioxidant was detected by the measurement of antioxidant enzymes, malondialdehyde in testis tissue. Moreover, plasma lipids, testis histopathological changes and oxidative stress related genes mRNA were evaluated. Results: The treatment of GA significantly (P

Obesity is a global health concern associated with high morbidity and mortality. Therapeutic strategies include surgery and synthetic drugs, and may cause high costs and serious complications. Gum Arabic (GA, Acacia senegal) considered as a dietary fiber that reduces body fat deposition. Yet, the effect of the GA on reproductive functions in high fat diet remains unclear. In this study, we fed mice either a normal diet (control), low fat diet (low), high fat diet (high) or a high fat diet supplemented with 10% w/w GA (high + gum) for 12 weeks. Body weight, visceral adipose tissue (VAT), plasma lipid profile and blood glucose were determined. Ovarian antioxidant capacity was evaluated by the measurement of antioxidant enzymes, malondialdehyde (MDA) and antioxidant enzymes activity. Moreover, ovarian histopathological changes and oxidative stress related genes mRNA were measured. GA treatment significantly (P

Objective: The acute stress response is an adaptive physiological mechanism which allows an organism to respond and survive deleterious stimuli in the surrounding environment. In mammals, prenatal glucocorticoids exposure (GCs) reprograms offspring phenotype and reproductive performance. In the present study, we investigated potential prenatal GC exposure on the glucocorticoid receptor (GR), mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) and GC metabolic genes mRNA expression in the ovary of chickens. Methods: We injected low (0.2 μg) and high (1.0 μg) doses of corticosterone (CORT) in ovo before incubation and measured the changes in GCs metabolic enzymes genes in ovarian follicles 1 (F1), F2 and F3 post hatching. Results: The high dose CORT treatment significantly (P

Huda Taha,1 Archik Das,2 Satyajit Das1,3 1Integrated Sexual Health Service Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust, Coventry, 2School of Medicine, Birmingham University, Birmingham, 3Coventry University, Coventry, UK Abstract: Dolutegravir (DTG) is a second-generation integrase strand transfer inhibitor (INSTI), which has now been licensed to be used in different countries including the UK. Earlier studies have demonstrated that DTG when used with nucleoside backbone in treatment-naïve and -experienced patients has been well tolerated and demonstrated virological suppression comparable to other INSTIs and superiority against other first-line agents, including efavirenz and boosted protease inhibitors. Like other INSTIs, DTG uses separate metabolic pathways compared to other antiretrovirals and is a minor substrate for CYP-450. It does not appear to have a significant interaction with drugs, which uses the CYP-450 system. Nonetheless, it uses renal solute transporters that may potentially inhibit the transport of other drugs and can have an effect on the elimination of other drugs. However, the impact of this mechanism appears to be very minimal and insignificant clinically. The side effect profiles of DTG are similar to raltegravir and have been found to be well tolerated. DTG has a long plasma half-life and is suitable for once daily use without the need for a boosting agent. DTG has all the potential to be used as a first-line drug in combination with other nucleoside backbones, especially in the form of a single tablet in combination with abacavir and lamivudine. The purpose of this review article is to present the summary of the available key information about the clinical usefulness of DTG in the treatment of HIV infection. Keywords: dolutegravir, integrase inhibitors, HIV, antiretroviral, treatment

Objective: This study was conducted to evaluate serum CA 15-3 in breast cancer patients after surgery and chemotherapy. The relationship between serum CA 15-3 and Her-2/neu, estrogen, or progesterone receptors were also studied in the breast cancer patients. Patients and methods: This study was conducted at Al-Jammhori Teaching Hospital, and Al-Zahrawi Private Hospital, Mosul, Iraq, during the period from January to Jun 2011. Fifty breast cancer women diagnosed by using triple assessments by a surgeon (history examination, ultrasound mammography, and fine needle aspiration cytology) were included in the study. Blood samples (5 mL) were taken from the patients and analyzed for serum CA 15-3 by monoclonal antibody technique. The blood samples were taken from the patients a week before and after one week of the operation and other blood samples were taken after two weeks of the first cycle of chemotherapy treatment. Combination therapy of 5-fluorouracil, epirubicin, cyclophosphamide, for three cycles every 21 days, was given to the patients, followed by three cycles docytaxil every 21 days. Samples from the tumor on paraffin sections taken from the patients were analyzed for Her-2/neu, estrogen and progesterone receptors by immunochemical methods. Results: Serum CA 15-3 was significantly decreased by 54% (p ≤ 0.001) after surgical removal of the cancer compared with results before surgery. Chemotherapy of the patients further decreased serum CA 15-3 significantly by 78% (p ≤ 0.001) compared with the results before surgery. CA 15-3 and tumor size in positive Her-2/neu patients were significantly higher than in negative Her-2/neu patients. However, serum CA 15-3 and tumor size in positive estrogen patients were significantly lower than in negative estrogen patients. In progesterone positive patient's serum CA 15-3 was only significantly (p ≤ 0.001) lower than in the negative progesterone patients. Mean ages was significantly (p ≤ 0.001) higher in positive Her-2/neu patients than in negative Her-2/neu patients. However, mean ages was significantly (p ≤ 0.001) higher in positive estrogen and progesterone patients than in negative receptors. Metastasis occurred in 39 patients (78 %) out of the studied patients. Negative significant correlation was noticed between Her 2/neu and estrogen receptors (r= - 0.745, p ≤ 0.001). Negative significant correlation was also noticed between Her 2/neu and progesterone receptors (r= - 0.786, p ≤ 0.001). Weak but significant correlation was found between serum CA 15-3 and tumor size (r= 0.281, p≤ 0.05). Conclusion: CA 15-3 and Her 2/neu are useful tumor markers for diagnosis of breast cancer in the treatment through surgery and chemotherapy. The co-expression between hormonal and Her-2/neu receptors is negative. The need for more sensitive tumor markers is still wanted.

In this paper, we introduced a new definitions .We study some relations among them and we show the hereditary and topological properties of its .

The aim of this paper Is to generalize the concept of intuitionistic fuzzy strongly irresolute precontinuous functions due to B.Krsteska &S. Abbas , [2] to intuitionistic fuzzy special topological spaces. Also we study some of their properties and relations with intuitionistic fuzzy special strongly precontinuous functions .we investigate several characterizing theorem.

Despite the fact that the two texture descriptors, the completed modeling of Local Binary Pattern (CLBP) and the Completed Local Binary Count (CLBC), have achieved a remarkable accuracy for invariant rotation texture classification, they inherit some Local Binary Pattern (LBP) drawbacks. The LBP is sensitive to noise, and different patterns of LBP may be classified into the same class that reduces its discriminating property. Although, the Local Ternary Pattern (LTP) is proposed to be more robust to noise than LBP, however, the latter’s weakness may appear with the LTP as well as with LBP. In this paper, a novel completed modeling of the Local Ternary Pattern (LTP) operator is proposed to overcome both LBP drawbacks, and an associated completed Local Ternary Pattern (CLTP) scheme is developed for rotation invariant texture classification. The experimental results using four different texture databases show that the proposed CLTP achieved an impressive classification accuracy as compared to the CLBP and CLBC descriptors.

Corrosion- induced damage in reinforced concrete structure such as bridges, parking garages, and buildings, and the related cost for maintaining them in a serviceable condition, is a source of major concern for the owners of these structures. Fly ash produced from south Baghdad power plant with different concentrations (20, 25 and 30) % by weight from the cement ratio were used as a corrosion inhibitor as a weight ratio from the cement content. The concrete batch ratio under study was (1:1.5:3) cement, sand and gravel respectively which is used in Iraq. All the raw materials used were locally manufactured. Concrete slabs (250x250x70) mm dimensions were casted, using Poly-wood molds. Two steel bars were embedded in the central position of each slab at the mid- height (about 35 mm), with a space of 100 mm between each other. A 16 concrete slabs were prepared (0, 20, 25 and 30) wt. % of fly ash. The specimens were partially immersed in 3.5 wt. % NaCl solution in order to predict the corrosion. Half-cell potential test technique was used to estimate the corrosion rate which is occurred in the steel bar due to the migration of chloride ions through the concrete, depending on the ASTM C876-08. The result shows that the potential values of steel in concrete were shifts to the positive direction with increasing the percentage of fly ash, because the reduction of porosity by the addition of fly ash which fill the pores and inhibit the chloride ions to reach to steel. The results also show that the further increase of fly ash (30%) the possibility of carbonation is increased which result in reduction its alkalinity, thereby permitting corrosion of embedded steel.

This paper deals with the direct solution of the pole placement problem for single-input linear systems using state-derivative feedback. This pole placement problem is always solvable for any controllable systems if all eigenvalues of the original system are nonzero. Then any arbitrary closed-loop poles can be placed in order to achieve the desired system performance. The solving procedure results in a formula similar to the Ackermann formula. Its derivation is based on the transformation of a linear single-input system into Frobenius canonical form by a special coordinate transformation, then solving the pole placement problem by state derivative feedback. Finally the solution is extended also for single-input time-varying control systems. The simulation results are included to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.