Cholera is an acute enteric infectious disease caused by the Gram-negative bacterium Vibrio Cholerae. Despite a huge body of research, the precise nature of its transmission dynamics has yet to be fully elucidated. Mathematical models can be useful to better understand how an infectious agent can spread and be properly controlled. We develop a compartmental model describing a Human population, a bacterial population as well as a phage population. We show that there might be eight equilibrium points; one of which is a disease free equilibrium point. We carry out numerical simulations and sensitivity analyses and we show that the presence of phage can reduce the number of infectious individuals. Moreover, we discuss the main implications in terms of public health management and control strategies.

A series of derivatives of trans-3-(2,4,6-trimethoxy phenyl)-4,5-dihydro isoxazolo-4,5-bis(aroylcarbohydrazide) and of trans-3-(2,4,6-trimethoxyphenyl)4,5-dihydroisoxazolo-4,5-bis[carbonyl-(4’phenyl)thiosemi- carbazide (9) were synthesized from trans-3-(2,4,6-trimethoxyphenyl)-4,5-dihydro-4,5-bis(hydrazenocarbonyl) Isoxazole (8). The structures of the Compounds were elucidated by elemental and spectral (IR, NMR, and MS) analysis. The compound 9 show activity against some bacterial species. Whereas, no activity was observed for compounds 10a, 10b and 10c against all bacterial species. The antioxidant activity of new compounds has been screened. Compound 9 showed higher antioxidant activity using the DPPH and ATBS method.

Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) continues to impact the health outcomes and emotional well-being of reproductive-age women, globally. Several studies have provided conflicting evidence concerning the role of dietary approaches in improving PMS symptoms. Accordingly, this study aimed to evaluate the possible influence of a healthy diet and motivational strategies on PMS symptoms and health-related quality of life among Omani adolescents. This open-label, randomized, prospective controlled trial was conducted in two randomly selected secondary schools, in Al Seeb Willayah, in Muscat region. Adolescents with PMS symptoms, who were at grade 10 or 11, aged 16 years or above, had regular menstrual cycles and not known to have psychiatric disorder, were included in this study. Participants in the intervention group received an individual face-to-face dietary consultation and motivational phone consultation. The health outcomes, including the PMS symptoms in both groups, and quality of life, were recorded via a daily record of severity of problems questionnaire (DRSP) and the 14-item Self-Reporting-Based Perceived Stress Scale tools, respectively. The primary outcome was the differences in the mean premenstrual symptom scores between the two groups. Secondary outcomes included the quality of life and stress levels of participants. The study period was from 1 February and ended 30 June 2021. SPSS was used to analyze the data and intention-to-treat analysis was utilized.A total of 72 adolescents with PMS were randomized to the intervention and control groups (n=36 each). Both groups were similar at baseline (P-value>0.05). No significant association was found between healthy-diet and PMS symptoms (P-value>0.05). In addition, no significant association was found between healthy-diet and quality of life at follow-up (P-value=0.216). The outcomes of this study refuted any possible relationships between healthy diet and PMS symptoms. Accordingly, dietary consultations may not facilitate the clinical management of PMS symptoms in adolescent females.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), locally known as Khaliji, is a group of six Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a significant public health concern in the GCC region, but the research that synthesized the trend has received scant attention. The present narrative review examines existing research on the prevalence and frequency of IPV among Khaliji women in GCC nations. This review synthesized studies on physical violence, sexual violence, emotional abuse, and controlling behaviors perpetrated by an intimate partner. The prevalence rates of IPV among Khaliji women are observed to be high: women reported facing different types of abuse from their partners, namely physical (7% - 71%), sexual (3.7% - 81%), financial (21.3% - 26%) and psychological (7.5% - 89%), which is a culmination of controlling behavior (36.8%), emotional (22% - 69%) and social violence (34%). The extant studies in the GCC suggest that the most endorsed IPV was psychological abuse (89%) followed by sexual violence (81%). Qualitative content analysis of the associated factors resulted in four meaningful descriptors such as demographics of the victim, sociocultural factors, socioeconomic, and perpetrator-related issues. The study on IPV is still nascent and few. The way forward will require developing culturally appropriate interventions that address unique risk factors for IPV among Khaliji populations, strengthening institutional responses, and increasing awareness and social support for the victim of IPV.

This paper introduces the complex Rayleigh-van der Pol-Duffing oscillators (RVDOs), which are hyperchaotic and can be either autonomous or non-autonomous. The fundamental dynamics of the autonomous and nonautonomous complex RVDOs including dissipation, symmetry, fixed points and their stability are studied. These oscillators are found in various important fields of physics and engineering. The paper proposes a scheme to achieve phase synchronization (PS) and antiphase synchronization (APS) for different dimensional models. These kinds of synchronization are considered as generalization of several other types of synchronization. For this scheme we use the active control method based on Lyapunov stability theory. By analytically determining the control functions, the scheme achieved PS and APS. Our scheme is applied to study PS of hyperchaotic behaviours for two distinct hyperchaotic non-autonomous and autonomous complex RVDOs. Additionally, the scheme is employed to achieve APS of chaotic real non-autonomous RVDO and hyperchaotic complex autonomous RVDO, including those with different dimensions. Our work presents numerical results that plot the amplitudes and phases of these hyperchaotic behaviours, demonstrating the successful achievement of PS and APS.

Background Eating disorders are complex illnesses with serious long-term consequences. They are linked to negative outcomes such as miscarriage, low birth weight, and other obstetric and postpartum difficulties. Our study in Muscat, Oman, examines the eating habits of pregnant women who consult primary care physicians. We aim to understand how eating disorders affect pregnant women and inform more effective interventions. Method We used the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire to assess the potential for the presence of eating disorders. Chi-Square and Fisher's Exact tests were used to analyze relationships between improper eating behavior and independent variables. Results The study showed that 1.6% of participants had a potential diagnosis of an eating disorder, with the most common inappropriate behavior being binge-eating at a prevalence of 18.8%. A pre- gestational low Body Mass Index (BMI) was associated with a higher prevalence of binge eating during pregnancy. Additionally, we found that pregnant women who were working were more prone to self-induced vomiting. High BMI before pregnancy was significantly associated with various inappropriate eating behaviors such as restraint behavior (p = 0.000), shape concern (p = 0.000), weight concern (p = 0.040), eating (p = 0.045), laxative use (p = 0.020), and excessive exercise (p = 0.043). Conclusion The study reveals a high prevalence of eating disorders in pregnancy. Less educated women exhibit higher laxative use, while working women show more instances of binge eating and self-induced vomiting. These findings emphasize the critical need to prioritize targeted interventions and support for vulnerable pregnant women.

The emergence of novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) in marked as the highest pathogenic coronavirus that has crossed from the hosts to the human population in the twenty-first century. The spreading of COVID-19 in different chinese cities and around the world is travel-related viral spread with the unprecedented nosocomial outbreaks. It has also shown with high case-fatality rates, indeed to urgent prophylactic and therapeutic settings. Scientific advancements of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic allowed for rapid progress to understand the epidemiology and pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2. This review highlights the the genomic structure of SARS-CoV-2 with the proposed roles of genotype and phenotype of SARS-CoV-2 in pathogenesis and discuss recent results supporting treatment strategies of COVID-19 with a special focus on how these new insights may facilitate rational development of SARS-CoV-2 for targeted therapies in the future.

Modern search engines encounter a significant challenge when it comes to handling duplicate and nearly identical web pages, particularly during the indexing process for vast amounts of web content. This issue can lead to slow search results and increased costs due to the accumulation of storage space necessary for storing indexes. To tackle this issue, different techniques have been proposed to find similar websites. However, it has long been a challenge in research to distinguish between web pages. In the current study, sentence-level features i.e., hashcode and thresholding are used to determine the nearly identical web pages. We employ an adaptive threshold that enables the application of our model in both large- and small-scale settings. The benchmark datasets consisting of Shakespeare’s collections, free text, job descriptions, and Reuters-21578 are used to test the proposed approach. With an accuracy of 0.99 and an F1-score of 0.97, the proposed technique outperforms existing methods.

Leveraging the liquid phase immiscibility effect and phase diagram calculations, a sequence of alloy powders with varying Fe content was designed and fabricated utilizing gas atomization method. Microstructural characterizations, employing SEM, EDS, and XRD analyses, revealed the successful formation of incomplete shell on the surfaces of Al-Bi-Fe powders, obviating the need for Sn doping. This study systematically investigated the microstructure, hydrolysis performance, and hydrolysis process of these alloys in deionized water. Notably, Al-10Bi-7Fe exhibited the highest hydrogen production, reaching 961.0 Nml/g, while Al-10Bi-10Fe demonstrated the peak conversion rate at 92.99%. The hydrolysis activation energy of each Al-Bi-Fe alloy powder was calculated using the Arrhenius equation, indicating a reduction in activation energy achieved through Fe doping.

this paper focuses on a scientific study of the restoration, rehabilitation and reuse of the great throne hall, the most important hall in al-jawhara palace. it also aims to study the most important factors and forces of damage that affected the great throne hall, natural, biological, and human, and the resulting damage. field tests were performed, laboratory tests to determine fracture stress, liquidity and spandex limits tests, chemical analysis on soil samples and geoelectrical testing of the soil, and the results did not show caves or voids in the ground until a depth of 10.00 m, construc-tion materials were studied and tested using x-ray, (xrd), mechanical tests (tensile, shear, com-pression), and a study of the effect of seismic loads on the walls; the results showed horizontal and vertical cracks; based on the study and analysis of these cracks, it was possible to present modern techniques in restoration and reinforcement methods, and in conclusion, the researcher's recommendations.

This paper addresses the capability to alter the wettability characteristics of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) polymer films doped with glycerol. Films of PVA and glycerol-choline chloride (GCC) blends have been prepared by solution casting method with different glycerol dopants ranging from 0% to 10% (wt %). The results show that as the dopant content increases from 0% to 10%, the wettability increases and hence increases the surface energy of the solid film. The wettability changes are observed by identifying the contact angle of 10 µL deionized water droplet which altered from 55o to 28o as dopant content changed from 0% to 10% per PVA solution weight. The results show that the roughness of film surfaces increases as the content of dopant (GCC) increases in the film which indicates that roughness has a strong influence on the wettability of the casted films.

This work analyzes the severity and risk associated with Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) message drop out in Detect and Avoid (DAA) function of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS). Performance assessment of the Universal Access Transceiver (UAT) ADS-B message implies that in some cases ADS-B fails to update within a specified update interval, which is referred to as drop out in this work. ADS-B is a fundamental surveillance sensor for both class 1 and class 2 DAA systems. Message loss or drop out has been found as one of the common limitations of the ADS-B system. The key feature of this study is incorporating the update rate of real ADS-B data transmitted from the manned aircraft. The data were received from the Grand Forks International Airport, North Dakota. Monte Carlo method has been adopted to resolve encounter scenarios in the presence of drop out. The change in the alert triggered by the UAS DAA in the presence of ADS-B drop out has been investigated. Furthermore, the risk matrices are created to quantify the associated risk with drop out affected alerts. Simulation results depict that both the duration of drop out and DAA look-ahead time affect the alert-triggering function of UAS. With a small look- ahead window and longer duration of drop out, the number of warning alerts increases. Also, alerts are affected more during an overtaking encounter than that of a head-to-head encounter. A system-level analysis is also carried out to recognize the potential reasons behind the ADS-B drop out.

Climate change is likely to have a complex effect on the growth of plants, their phenology, plant-pollinator interactions, and reproductive success. Therefore, we tested the impact of three key factors (temperature, water, and nitrogen supply) on traits, pollination, and seed production in Sinapis alba (Brassicaceae). We grew the plants in different combinations of temperature, water, and nitrogen supplementation, measured multiple vegetative and floral traits, and assessed the response of pollinators in the field. We also evaluated the effect of growing conditions on seed set in plants exposed to pollinators and hand-pollinated plants. Our results show that water stress impaired vegetative growth, decreased flower production, reduced visitation by pollinators and seed set, while nitrogen availability played an important role in nectar production. Temperature modulated the effect of water and nitrogen availability on vegetative and floral traits and strongly affected flowering phenology and flower production. We demonstrated that changes in temperature, water, and nitrogen availability induce changes in plant vegetative and floral traits which impact flower visitation and consequently plant reproduction. Climate change, particularly increasing temperature combined with reduced precipitation, thus may impact plant-pollinator interactions with negative consequences for the reproduction of wild plants and insect-pollinated crops.

WHO was informed on 31 December 2019 of cases of unknown cause pneumonia in Wuhan City, China. On 7 January 2020 Chinese authorities reported a novel coronavirus as the cause and was temporarily labeled "2019-nCoV." Coronaviruses (CoV) are a wide family of viruses which cause diseases ranging from common cold to more serious illnesses. A novel coronavirus (nCoV) is a new strain not previously found in humans. Countries around the globe have stepped up their surveillance to quickly detect any new 2019-nCoV cases. Blockchain is developing into a safe and efficient network for secure data sharing in applications such as the financial industry, operations management, food industry, energy market, the Internet of Things and healthcare. In this paper, we are using blockchain technology as a mean to share authentic data, tracking of relevant information and help speed up the treatment process. At the same time it will preserve person’s identity. Timely deployment and suitable implementation of the proposed model have the opportunity to curb COVID-19 transmissions and associated mortality, especially in environments with inadequate access to testing facilities. This work will also facilitate in the treatment of other infectious diseases. Smart contract have been designed and implemented using the ethereum blockchain platform which has been presented in this paper. This work would facilitate multiple stakeholders who are involved within the medical system to curb the transmission of this disease.

An analysis of the performance of Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) data received from the Grand Forks, North Dakota International Airport was carried out in this study. The purpose was to understand the vulnerabilities of Universal Access Transceiver (UAT) ADS-B system and recognize the effects on present and future Air Traffic Control (ATC) operation. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) mandated all the General Aviation aircraft to be equipped with ADS-B. The aircraft flying within United States and below the transition altitude (18,000 feet) are more likely to install an UAT ADS-B. At present unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and autonomous air traffic control (ATC) towers are being integrated into the aviation industry and UAT ADS-B is a basic sensor for both class 1 and class 2 Detect and Avoid (DAA) systems. As a fundamental component of future surveillance system, the anomalies and vulnerabilities of ADS-B system need to be identified to enable a fully utilized airspace with enhanced situational awareness. The data received was archived in GDL-90 format, which was parsed into readable data. The anomaly detection of ADS-B messages was based on the FAA ADS-B performance assessment report. The data investigation revealed ADS-B message suffered from different anomalies including drop out; missing payload; data jump; low confident data and altitude discrepancy. Among those studied, the most severe was drop out and 32.49% of messages suffered from this anomaly. Dropout is an incident where ADS-B failed to update within a specified rate. Considering the potential danger being imposed, an in-depth analysis was carried out to characterize message dropout. Three flight parameters were selected to investigate their effect on drop out. Statistical analysis was carried out and Friedman Statistical Test identified that altitude affected drop out more than any other flight parameters.

Ti-Al based alloys, particularly TiAl and Ti3Al two-phase alloys, have garnered significant attention as potential replacements for various high-temperature structural materials due to their exceptional properties, including low density, oxidation resistance, and high strength at elevated temperatures. Despite these advantages, experimental studies on the microstructure evolution of Ti-Al based alloys under complex conditions remain challenging to observe and characterize. This review article examines the current research on molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of Ti-Al based alloys, focusing on two-phase Ti-Al alloys, Ti-Al amorphous alloys, Ti-Al composite materials, and the welding and multi-layer/film applications of Ti-Al alloys. The review highlights the unique capabilities of MD simulations in predicting the behavior of Ti-Al based alloys and addresses existing scientific challenges. Furthermore, the article discusses future research directions and development prospects in this field.

Acute lower respiratory tract infection is a major health problem that affects more than 15% of the total population of Saudi Arabia each year. Epidemiological studies conducted over the last three decades have indicated that viruses are responsible for the majority of these infections. The epidemiology of respiratory viruses in Saudi Arabia is believed to be affected mainly by the presence and mobility of large numbers of foreign workers and the gathering of millions of Muslims in Mecca during the Hajj and Umrah seasons. Knowledge concerning the epidemiology, circulation pattern, and evolutionary kinetics of respiratory viruses in Saudi Arabia are scant, with the available literature being inconsistent. After reviewing the available data on epidemiology and evolution of respiratory viruses, this study examines the effect of varying vaccination rates across different age groups during the 2019/2020 influenza season in Saudi Arabia. Utilizing an age-structured SEIR (Susceptible–Exposed–Infectious–Recovered) model, it develops customized vaccination policies by considering age-specific incidence rates. This pioneering research segments the population into five age groups—infants and school-aged children, junior and older youth, young adults and adults, middle-aged, and seniors—across five regional areas in Saudi Arabis: Eastern, Central, Northern, Western, and Southern. A contact matrix, compiled from multiple sources, is used to delineate the dynamics of influenza transmission. The study undertakes a thorough comparison of three distinct vaccination scenarios: no vaccination, national vaccination, and optimized vaccine allocation policy, under various potential pandemic situations. It examines their impact on vaccination campaigns in terms of the total number of infections, mortality, and morbidity rates. The results emphasize the crucial impact of population demographics on disease transmission and vaccine distribution. According to the findings, the optimized vaccination scenario proved to be the most effective strategy in all scenarios.

In this project, four of fibers Bragg gratings were fabricated by injecting different volumes of liquids (star line Glass Mechanix optical adhesive material, olive oil diluted with ethanol) into the hollow core fiber. The amplitude splitting interferometric technique with a high resolution specially designed translation stage was used for the fabrication process. The fabrication was done using ultraviolet laser operated at wavelength 405nm. The fabricated Bragg length of the four fibers is equal to 3.8 cm. The results presented fiber Bragg grating (FBG) with successful fabrication at 653.3 nm Bragg reflected wavelength.

The complexity of software is increasing day by day due to the increase in the size of the projects being developed. For better planning and management of large software projects, estimation of software quality is important. During the development processes, complexity metrics are used for the indication of the attributes/characteristics of the quality software. There are many studies about the effect of the complexity of the software on the cost and quality. In this study, we discussed the effects of software complexity on the quality attributes of the software for open source and closed source software. Though, the quality metrics for open and closed source software are not distinct from each other. In this paper, we comparatively analyzed the impact of complexity metrics on open source and private software. We also presented various models for the management of the project complexity such as William’s Model, Stacey’s Agreement and Certainty matrix, Kahane’s Approach and UCP Model. Quality metrics here refer to the standards for the measurement of the quality of software which contains certain attributes or characteristics of the software that are related to the quality of the software. Certain quality attributes addressed in this study are Usability, Reliability, Security, Portability, Maintainability, Efficiency, Cost, Standards and Availability, etc. Both Open source and Closed source software are evaluated on the basis of these quality attributes. This study also recommended future approaches to manage the quality of project Open source and Closed source software and specify which one of them is mostly used in the industry.

Survivability is a critical concern in WSNs, heavily influenced by energy efficiency. Addressing severe energy constraints in WSNs requires solutions that meet application goals while prolonging network life. This paper presents an energy optimization approach (EOAMRCL) for WSNs, integrating the Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO) for enhanced performance. EOAMRCL aims to enhance energy efficiency by selecting the optimal duty-cycle schedule, transmission power, and routing paths. The proposed approach employs a centralized strategy using a hierarchical network architecture. During the cluster formation phase, an objective function, augmented with GWO, determines the ideal cluster heads (CHs). The routing protocol then selects routes with minimal energy consumption for data transmission to CHs, using transmission power as a metric. In the transmission phase, the MAC layer forms a duty-cycle schedule based on cross-layer routing information, enabling nodes to switch between active and sleep modes according to their network allocation vectors (NAV). This process is further optimized by an enhanced CSMA/CA mechanism, which incorporates sleep/activate modes and pairing nodes to alternate between active and sleep states. This integration reduces collisions, improves channel assessment accuracy, and lowers energy consumption, thereby enhancing overall network performance. EOAMRCL was evaluated in a MATLAB environment, demonstrating superior performance compared to EEUC, DWEHC, and CGA-GWO protocols, particularly in terms of network lifetime and energy consumption. This highlights the effectiveness of integrating GWO and the updated CSMA/CA mechanism in achieving optimal energy efficiency and network performance.

This article examines the complex interactions of the multiplier effect within the realm of tourism, with a specific emphasis on national parks. The main objective is to evaluate the multiplier effect within national parks, specifically focusing on Buiratau State National Nature Park in Kazakh-stan as a case study. The multiplier effect is a fundamental principle in the field of economic analysis. Economic multiplier effect is the term used to describe the occurrence when an initial infusion of spending in a certain industry leads to subsequent rounds of extra and sustainable economic activity. In the context of national parks, this phenomenon arises when visitor expendi-tures result in several favorable consequences, including increased employment, infrastructure advancement, and general economic expansion. The article seeks to measure the multiplier effect of tourism activities in Buiratau State National Nature Park through a thorough assessment. This entails examining several variables and datasets pertaining to visitor expenditure and its influ-ence. The study contributes to the existing literature by examining a recently constructed national park in a developing country. It compares the findings of this park with well-established national parks in other areas, emphasizing the distinct problems and opportunities it presents. Further-more, the research presents a methodological framework for evaluating the multiplier effect of national parks, which may be utilized in comparable contexts. This research ultimately enhances our comprehension of the economic implications of national parks and emphasizes their function as drivers for local and regional growth.

Recently, there has been growing interest in using smart eHealth systems to manage asthma. However, limitations still exist in providing smart services and accurate predictions tailored to individual patients’ needs. This study aims to develop an adaptive ubiquitous computing framework that leverages different bio-signals and spatial data to provide personalized asthma attack prediction and safe route recommendations. We proposed a smart eHealth framework consisting of multiple layers that employ telemonitoring application, environmental sensors, and advanced machine-learning algorithms to deliver smart services to the user. The proposed smart eHealth system predicts asthma attacks and uses spatial data to provide a safe route that drives the patient away from any asthma trigger. Additionally, the framework incorporates an adaptation layer that continuously updates the system based on real-time environmental data and daily bio-signals reported by the user. The developed telemonitoring application collected a dataset containing 665 records used to train the prediction models. The testing result demonstrates a remarkable 98% accuracy in predicting asthma attacks with a recall of 96%. The eHealth system was tested online by ten asthma patients, and its accuracy achieved 94% of accuracy and a recall of 95.2% in generating safe routes for asthma patients, ensuring a safer and asthma-trigger-free experience. The test shows that 89% of patients were satisfied with the safer recommended route than their usual one. This research contributes to enhancing the capabilities of smart healthcare systems in managing asthma and improving patient outcomes. The adaptive feature of the proposed eHealth system ensures that the predictions and recommendations remain relevant and personalized to the current conditions and needs of the individual.

Despite the effectiveness of insulin injections in managing hyperglycemia in Type 1 Diabetes, they fall short in addressing autoimmunity and regenerating damaged islets. This review aims to explore the potential of various treatment modalities for T1DM, including mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), MSC-derived exosomes, gene therapy, islet allotransplantation, and pancreatic islet cell transplantation. Results: MSCs demonstrate efficacy in T1DM treatment through immunomodulation and tissue regeneration, although further research is warranted to optimize their therapeutic potential. Gene therapy presents a promising approach despite challenges such as donor shortage and immune rejection. Pancreatic islet cell transplantation emerges as a viable option, albeit with associated risks including graft rejection and the need for immunosuppression. Teplizumab, an FDA-approved humanized monoclonal antibody, revolutionizes the treatment landscape of Type 1 Diabetes by significantly delaying its onset, offering a paradigm shift since the discovery of insulin Conclusion: Ongoing studies and technological advancements in T1DM management offer a promising outlook for improved treatments and possibly even eradication on a global scale. MSCs, MSC-derived exosomes, gene therapy, and pancreatic islet transplantation hold considerable potential.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the nature of relationship between service quality and customers’ satisfaction thorough SERVQUAL model. This study can be considered as an applied research, from purpose point of view and descriptive-survey, with regards to the nature and method. Passengers of Kaveh and Sofeh terminal in Isfahan have been considered as research population. Sample size included 200 passengers witch was determined by Cochran formula. Spss 19 was used to analyze collected data. Results show that there is a significant positive relationship between service quality and customers’ satisfaction. It is also proved that in terms of the importance of satisfactions’ dimensions, assurance is the most important aspect and then reliability, empathy, equipment appearance and responsiveness in sequence are the most important dimensions.

Uric acid being a diagnostic biomarker of gout and therapeutic agent in homeopathic medicines necessitates to develop simple and specific method for its determination. Therefore, present study describes the development and validation of simple and specific colorimetric method for determination of uric acid in homeopathic tablets. Uric acid upon reaction with acid and reagent mixture produced coloured derivative which was detected at 411 nm. The method was found linear over the whole range investigated with the correlation coefficient (R²) = 0.9975. Beer’s law was obeyed over the concentration ranges from 5.0 µg/mL to 240 µg/mL. The method was found to be reliable (95.7 to 108.2% recovery), repeatable intra-day accuracy (97.01 to 107.4%) and reproducible-inter day accuracy (99.45 to 107.8%) with relative standard deviation less than 5%. The results of the present study indicate the method is easy to perform, specific and suitable to be used for the determination of uric acid in homeopathic Acid Uric Tablet using less expensive derivitization.

The detection and recognition of tables in image-based documents is a challenging and essential task for automated data extraction and anal- ysis. This paper introduces a methodology that utilizes Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to address this problem. By harnessing the ro- bust visual recognition abilities of CNNs, the proposed method effectively detects and extracts tables from image-based documents. Additionally, an Encoder-Dual Decoder (EDD) architecture is employed to extract the textual content from table cells, enabling the transformation of visual data into structured, machine-readable formats. This structured data is then further processed using a Vector Space Model (VSM)-based language modeling technique for query-based table retrieval. The methodology’s accuracy is assessed by analyzing the spatial relationships between the extracted cells and comparing them against a pre-defined table structure. The results provide an evidence to the effectiveness of the proposed ap- proach, with an impressive 85% accuracy rate and a corresponding error rate of 15%. This accurate extraction and recognition of tables from image-based documents can significantly enhance applications in data analysis, information retrieval, and knowledge extraction.

We approximate the trigonometric function sine and cosine on the interval . This analysis provides two formulas to approximate sine and cosine. At first, we try to derive the formula which involves a square root, and then we derive another formula that does not require any use of a square root. Nevertheless, after deriving the procedure which requires no square root, we further try to increase its accuracy and then derive another formula that approximates trigonometric functions more accurately on the interval [0, pi/2]. So, this analysis provides mainly two types of procedures. One uses square roots, whereas the other does not. We also focus on ensuring the accuracy of these trigonometric functions in the interval [0,pi/2]. This accuracy analysis is portrayed using the graph. This graph shows the difference between the values generated by the functions defined here and the actual value of these functions. So, these graphs also indicate the error of these functions on that interval. Finally, we compare our approximation with the approximation formula of the 7th-century Indian Mathematician Bhaskara I.

Social media has become more popular in the last few years. It has been used in public health development and healthcare settings to promote healthier lifestyles. Given its important role in today's culture, it is necessary to understand its current trends and future directions in public health. This review aims to describe and summarize how public health professionals have been using social media to improve population outcomes. Additionally, it discusses potential future directions on how social media can be used to improve population health. The findings showed how social media has been used as a tool for research, designing and implementing health campaigns, messaging, and health promotion. In addition, social media integration with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Generative Pre-Trained transformers (GPT) can have a big impact and offer an innovative approach to tackle the problems and difficulties in health informatics. These innovations might improve patient participation, individualized assistance, and care experiences. The research showed how likely social media will keep growing and evolving and, if used effectively, have the potential to help close public health gaps across different cultures and improve population health.

Spinal muscular atrophy is a neuromuscular genetic condition associated with progressive muscle weakness and atrophy. Nusinersen is an antisense oligonucleotide therapy approved for the treatment of 5q spinal muscular atrophy in pediatric and adult patients. The objective of this clinical case series is to describe the efficacy and safety of nusinersen in treating spinal muscular atrophy in 20 pediatric and 18 adult patients across six treatment centers in Kuwait. Functional motor assessments (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Infant Test of Neuromuscular Disorders, Hammersmith Functional Motor Scale Expanded, and Revised Upper Limb Module) were used to assess changes in motor function following nusinersen treatment. Safety assessment involved clinical monitoring of adverse events. The results demonstrate clinically meaningful or considerable improvement in motor performance for nearly all patients, lasting over 4 years in some cases. 70% of patients in the pediatric cohort and 72% of patients in the adult cohort achieved clinically meaningful improvement in motor function following nusinersen treatment. Additionally, nusinersen was well-tolerated in both cohorts. These findings add to the growing body of evidence relating to the clinical efficacy and safety of nusinersen.

Software project complexity increases day by day because the software engineering products is being used in the solution of more technically difficult problem and the size of project continuous to grow. The increase complexity causes to high numbers of software project failures in term of time, cost and quality. The main question regarding to this problem is how to handle or cope with this complexity. There is no single way to handle this, software engineer uses different perspective to handle complexity without affecting the overall project performance. A management perspective recognizes that the success of complex project requires good project management. A technically perspective reveals new paradigms for software development i.e.; object oriented and formal methods etc. and software engineer also look for automation perspective in order to reduce the complexity issues. In this paper we will find out the main software project complexity factors by focusing on the management aspects of software project development and also the problems of managing complexity in software engineering products from these different perspectives. The paper is divided in three main sections; paradigms of software development, project management in term of time, cost and quality and third one is automated support that includes methods and tools used to manage the complexity.

: Seasonal influenza (a.k.a flu) is responsible for considerable morbidity and mortality across the globe. The three recognized pathogens that cause epidemics during the winter season are influenza A, B and C. The influenza virus is particularly dangerous due to its mutability. Vaccines are an effective tool in preventing seasonal influenza, and their formulas are updated yearly according to WHO recommendations. However, in order to facilitate decision-making in the planning of the intervention, policymakers need information on the projected costs and quantities related to introducing the influenza vaccine, in order to help governments obtain an optimal allocation of the vaccine each year. In this paper, an approach based on a Controlled Elitism Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (CENSGA) model is introduced to optimize the allocation of influenza vaccination. A bi-objective model is formulated to control the infection volume, and reduce the unit cost of the vaccination campaign. An SIR (Susceptible–Infected–Recovered) model is employed for representing a potential epidemic. The model constraints are based on the epidemiological model, time management, and vaccine quantity. A two-phase optimization process is proposed: guardian control followed by contingent controls. The proposed approach is an evolutionary metaheuristic multi-objective optimization algorithm with a local search procedure based on a hash table. Moreover, in order to optimize the scheduling of a set of policies over a predetermined time to form a complete campaign, an extended CENSGA is introduced with a variable-length chromosome (VLC) along with mutation and crossover operations. To validate the applicability of the proposed CENSGA, it is compared with the classical Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II). The results are analyzed using graphical and statistical comparisons in terms of cardinality, convergence, distribution and spread quality metrics, illustrating that the proposed CENSGA is effective and useful for determining the optimal vaccination allocation campaigns.

The literature study delves into novel therapeutic strategies in transplantation medicine, highlighting unique approaches that could revolutionize current practices. It emphasizes novel patterns that have the potential to transform the current landscape. Commencing with a thorough examination of the historical environment, it traces crucial advances and changes in transplantation. The focus is on traditional techniques, emphasizing their limitations and challenges. An extensive examination of contemporary transplantation therapies offers valuable insights into the most recent progress in organ, cellular, and tissue transplantation. This analysis examines the immunological obstacles and outlines the current advancements and constraints. The exploration further navigates into novel models and concepts such as immunomodulation, developments in organ preservation techniques, gene editing, biomaterials, scaffold-based solutions, and the integration of precision medicine, artificial intelligence, and machine learning applications. Each section analyzes the potential for change and current progress in various areas, backed by relevant scientific sources up to 2023. The subsequent sections delve into innovative cellular therapies, biotechnological progress, current clinical trials, and case studies demonstrating effective applications. This examination delves into the ethical and regulatory considerations of innovative therapeutic procedures, emphasizing ethical implications, regulatory frameworks, and the importance of balancing innovation with patient welfare. The literature review concludes by offering a forward-looking perspective, emphasizing potential progress, anticipated challenges, and advocating for collaboration and interdisciplinary approaches to overcome limitations in the field of transplantation medicine.

Terminalia arjuna possesses significant cardio protective, antidiabetic and antioxidant properties as these properties are described in Ayurveda. In the present study, three flavonoids were isolated through the separation and chromatographic purification of the whole plant material of T. arjuna. Spectroscopic characterization identified one of them as a new flavonoid “Terminalone A (1)” and two known flavonoids i.e. 6-hydroxy-2-(4-hydroxyphenyl)-7-methoxy-4H-chromen-4-one (2) and 2-(3,4-dihydroxyphenyl)-5,7-dihydroxy-4H-chromen-4-one (3). The bioactivity studies showed considerable antibacterial and antioxidant (DPPH was used as a scavenger) potential for all the three compounds 1-3 where the compound 1 showed strong antibacterial and antioxidant activity.

Pakistan is an agricultural country, and an exporter of crops in many countries. The crop production is an important factor to earn revenue for the country. But the agriculture of Pakistan is still not revolutionized and no modern system has been deployed commonly. Whereas the farmers face difficulty in growing some crops because those crops needs more care and calculated steps. Moreover the farmers face difficulty at different stages of the crop growth like to check fertility of soil and if the soil is non-fertile then which chemical property is lacking. The objective of this research is to provide digitize the agriculture of Pakistan. An emerging technology IoT and Deep learning based system will be developed. The IoT part contains some devices like sensors,gateways and communication technologies whereas the software part consists of Deep learning models that can make predictions about the fertility of the soil. The motive of this system is to provide best results in term of accuracy. Whereas the dataset used is publicly available on kaggle but it was of non-fertile values, so data augmentation is also performed to generate data for fertile values. We have implemented LSTM,RNN,CNN among them LSTM performed best for the prediction of soil fertility.

In this study, the olive pomace was considered because of its importance in the environment. So, this study carried out to estimate the total nitrogen content and the fatty acids profile of olive pomace. The olive pomace samples were collected from Irbid, Jarash, Ajloun and Mafraq during the harvesting season 2014 to study the biochemical characteristics of fatty acid composition and the total nitrogen (TN) content. The total nitrogen content was determined by standard Kjeldahl method and the fatty acid profile was detected by gas chromatography (GC). The results show that the total nitrogen content ranged from (0.39 ± 0.0) to (0.62 ± 0.02) with statistically significant difference suggesting that the composition of matrices and their percentage may be responsible for composition of amendments. The calculated total protein percentage ranged between (2.43 ± 0.00) to (3.87 ± 0.17). Also, 13 different fatty acids were quantitatively profiled and quantitated. Oleic acid (C 18:1) was found to be the highest percentage of all other fatty acids and ranged between (59.03%) and (63.81%), moreover the C 18:1/C 18:2 (oil quality) was calculated and C.V% showed variation meaning that nutritional implication could affect the oxidative stability of oils. In conclusion, OP by-product could give a sustainable and alternative-cheap source for fertilizers, pharmaceutical industries, cosmetics and other industries.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in utilizing natural antioxidants as alternatives to synthetic additives in food products. Apples and apple by-products have gained attention as a potential source of natural antioxidants due to their rich phenolic content. This review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the antioxidant properties of apples and apple by-products, their extraction techniques as well as potential applications in food products because of their an-tioxidant or nutritional properties. The findings here reported highlights the proper utilization of apples and their by-products in food to reduce the detrimental effect on the environment and provide a positive impact on the economy.

The variability of ozone over Egypt has been studied in this work. Higher values of coefficient of variation (COV) at eight stations occur at winter while lowest values occur at summer. The COV is function of latitude in annual, winter and spring where it decreases gradually from the north to south of Egypt. The trend analysis of ozone over the eight stations indicates negative trends over northern stations for both annual and seasonal time series with the greatest one at winter. The horizontal distribution of ozone trend values is negative over all Egypt in winter while it positive over middle and south Egypt in the other seasons. The long-term variability of the behavior of the annual ozone shows positive trend values in ozone are the dominant features during the period 1979- 1989 at the most stations. Negative trend values in ozone are the dominant features during the period 1990- 2014 at all stations. The Mann–Kendall test confirms that there is an abrupt change towards decreasing of ozone occurs in 1981, 1984, 2012, 1999, 2000, 1998 and 2010, while a change towards increasing of ozone appears in 2006, 2014, 1993 and 1989.

Demand for environmentally friendly types of energy is growing all over the world, which naturally increases the intensity of work on the production of hydrogen-containing fuel mixtures. Steam reforming of methanol is one of the most effective areas of research, as it is a process with low energy consumption. The results of steam reforming of methanol on the catalysts prepared by solution combustion synthesis (SCS) and impregnation by moisture capacity are presented. Investigation of the activity of Cu-Ce-Al catalysts of different composition was carried out for production of hydrogen and comparison of SCS with traditional impregnation method. Methanol conversion reaches 99%, while the selectivity of H2 was 88%, at 500 °C. It was found that CuAl2O4 spinel formation is due to substitution of Al3+ with Cu2+ Ce3+ cations. A consequence CuAl2O4 and CeAlO3 lattice parameters increase because of difference in ionic radius of Al3+ (0.53 Å) and Cu2+ (0.73 Å), Ce3+ (1.07 Å). Advantages of SCS catalysts in steam reforming of methanol were shown. The aim of this research is to develop a new catalyst for conversion of methanol into hydrogen containing fuel mixtures, which will further promote the organization of a new era of environmentally friendly energy-saving production methods.

Background: Given the extensive translation of the Prolapse Quality of Life Questionnaire (P-QoL) into many languages, it is imperative to develop an Arabic version to facilitate study on Pelvic organ health within the Arabian culture. Objective: To investigate, cross culturally adapt and validate Arabic version of the P-QoL. Study Design: Cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric testing. Methods: A total of 90 participants were included in the study. This cross-sectional study went through two phases; during phase I, the P-QoL was translated and adapted from English into Arabic. The Arabic version was psychometrically validated during phase II using the test-retest reliability internal consistency with Cronbach’s alpha coefficient, convergent construct validity (CC) among the four study tools using Spearman’s coefficient (r) and discriminative validity using Mann-Whitney test to find differences between the means of the two samples. Results: A satisfactory level of semantic, conceptual, idiomatic, and content comparability was reached in the cross-cultural adaptation of the Arabic version of the P-QoL questionnaire. The internal consistency was high in terms of psychometric validation, with a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.971 for the P-QoL questionnaire. The test-retest results showed a high reliability with interclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of P-QoL = 0.987. The convergent construct validity was highly accepted (moderately strong), reflecting a positive correlation between the Arabic version of the P-QoL and the Australian Pelvic Floor Dysfunction Questionnaire (APFD) r = 0.68 (p < 0.001). Similarly, a significant convergent validity of P-QoL Arabic version and Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) r = 0.47 (p < 0.001) was found, as well as the correlation between the APFD and the VAS r = 0.46 (p < 0.001). However, there were no significant correlation between the SF-12, the P-QoL, the APFD, and the VAS. Conclusion: Based on a significant correlation between the Arabic APFD and the VAS, the results reveal good reliability, internal consistency, and construct validity. It is recommended that Arabic-speaking females with pelvic organ prolapse use the Arabic version of the P-QoL. More research is needed to assess the responsiveness of the P-QoL.

Background: Asthma is a widespread chronic respiratory disease that poses a significant public health challenge. The current study investigated the associations between air pollution and asthma severity among individuals residing near the Sohar industrial port (SIP) in Oman. Despite the presence of multiple major industrial complexes in Oman, limited knowledge regarding their impact on respiratory health is accredited. Hence, the primary objective of this study is to offer valuable insights into the respiratory health consequences of industrial air pollution in Al Batinah North. Methods: The state health clinics' records for patient visits related to asthma were collected for the timeframe spanning 2014 to 2022. Exposure was defined as the distance from SIP, Majan Industerial Area (MIA) and Sohar Industerial Zone (SIZ) to determine high, intermediate, and low exposure zones (12 km, respectively). Exposure effect modifications by age, gender, and smoking status were also examined. Results: The conducted cross-sectional study of 410 patients (46.1% males and 53.9% females) living in over 17 areas around SIP revealed that 73.2% of asthmatics were under 50 years old, with severity significantly associated with closeness to the port. Risk ratios were estimated to be (RR:2.42; CI95%: 1.01–5.78), (RR:1.91; CI95%: 1.01–3.6), and (RR:1.68; CI95%: 0.92–3.09) for SIP, MIP and SIZ areas, respectively, compared to the control area. Falaj Al Qabail (6.4 km) and Majees (6 km) had the highest number of asthma patients (N. 69 and N. 72), and highest percentages of severe asthma cases among these patients (28% and 24%) with significant risk ratios (RR:2.97; CI95%: 1.19–7.45 and RR:2.55; CI95%: 1.00–6.48), correspondingly. Moreover, severe asthma prevalence peaked in the 25-50 age group (RR:2.05; CI95%: 1.26–3.33), and this linkage between asthma and age was much more pronounced in males than females. Smoking and exposure to certain contaminant (dust and smoke) increased also the risk of severe asthma symptoms, but their effects were less important in the high risk zone, suggesting much more important risk factor. A neural network model accurately predicted asthma risk (94.8% accuracy), with proximity to Sohar Industrial Port as the most influential predictor. Conclusion: The study highlights the High asthma burden near Sohar Industrial Port, linked to port proximity and smoking and wind direction as major risk factors. These findings inform vital public health policies to reduce air pollution and improve respiratory health in the region, prompting national policy review.

Background: Bangladeshi students from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) often struggle with solving many mathematical problems in different pedagogic contexts. They mostly lack the considerable prior learning or strong basics required to cope with the teaching and learning materials used at the undergraduate levels, which leads many students to take readmissions every year. Objective: This research aims at investigating the factors affecting the success and deficit of university undergraduate mathematics students in Bangladesh. The mixed-method research incorporates quantitative and qualitative data analysis on the students' and teachers’ perspectives regarding the issues. The authors focus more on categorizing the reasons influencing effective mathematics pedagogies than on identifying new or unknown causes. Methodology: This study is outlined in three phases. The phases include i. Exploratory qualitative survey ii. Quantitative triangulation survey, iii. Explanatory semi-structured interviews. Findings: First, the qualitative survey exposes the important factors that highlight the student’s success and failure in mathematics. Next, the quantitative data confirm that there are some similarities and dissimilarities between students’ and teachers’ perceptions. Also, the coefficient correlation analysis shows male students lack consistency and passion for study resulting in poor performances. Conversely, female students emphasize the inability to connect mathematical theories to real-life usages, curriculum loads, and unavailable resources as the reasons for underperformance. Finally, the interview data demonstrate the students attribute their failure to inadequate practices, memorizing habits, poor teaching, low motivation, and external distractions. Also, students acknowledge the necessity of steady practice, clear understanding, regular study, and working strategies for successful mathematics education. Teachers emphasize students’ clear concepts, aptitude, motivation, and curiosity for successful learning. Conclusion: This conclusion proposes a fresh start with the local mathematics pedagogic practices by analyzing teacher-student feedback on the success and failure factors impacted by varied individual and contextual elements. The study offers inclusive feedback on the part of both stakeholders. However, an open discussion or interaction between students and teachers might be needed to enhance mutual trust and understanding between them.

Calcium phosphates and manganese phosphates play a significant role in biomedical and engineering applications, and these compounds are both synergistic. These compounds could have great potential for use in different applications, particularly as precursors of biomaterials. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore the effect of the gradual replacement of Ca2+ with Mn2+ on the phase composition and crystal structure of brushite (CaHPO4·2H2O), which could be useful for the production of Mono- and Biphasic Ca1−xMnxHPO4·nH2O Compounds. In order to prepare the starting solutions required for this study, Ca(NO3)2·4H2O, (NH4)2·HPO4, and Mn(NO3)2·4H2O were used at various molar concentrations. Afterwards, the Ca1−xMnxHPO4·nH2O compounds were prepared using dissolution and precipitation methods. These compounds were characterized using XRD, SEM, FT-IR, XPS, and TGA techniques. The findings revealed that Mn substituted Ca partially at low Mn/Ca molar ratios, 0.25, and Mn doping increased the unit cell of CaHPO4·2H2O. The produced biphasic compound was composed of monoclinic CaHPO4·2H2O and nanostructured orthorhombic MnHPO4·(H2O)3 after a continuous increase in the Mn/Ca molar ratio to 1.5. When the Ca/Mn molar ratio was above 1.5, a monophasic compound of the MnHPO4·(H2O)3 phase was formed. The MnHPO4·(H2O)3 compound was successfully prepared for the first time using this dissolution-precipitation method. It was also established that the Mn/Ca ratio of the starting solution can be modified to produce CaHPO4·2H2O and MnHPO4·(H2O)3 phases with specific weight percent compositions.

Introduction: The management performance of hospitals in emergency departments in coping with clinical hazards is necessary for their success in providing quality services. The purpose of this study is to provide an optimization procedure and applying management performance in health and medical emergency on the rate of emergency preparedness of the suburb city hospitals. Research method: A semi-experimental and interventional descriptive study in the emergency department of Shahid Motahari Hospital in 2015-2016. Data was collected through the standard checklist of hospital emergency responsiveness test to WHO disasters with 90 questions in 9 domains which is codified by the World Health Organization, in the form of interviews and observing evidences , and if necessary a numerical analysis. Initially, the situation was measured according to this checklist. In the next stage, a set of solutions was developed and then the solutions were implemented according to the obtained information. Data analysis before and after proposing the procedure and its application in order to improve the quality of health management performance and emergency preparedness was performed using central indices, and for describing and presenting the survey results, tables and graphs were used. Results: The highest and lowest emergency preparedness rates for disasters and emergencies before the proposed procedure were the Communication Factor (%77/8) and Human resource factor (%2/8) respectively. The degree of preparedness of the medical center was measured in the management performance according to the model (WHO) before proposing the procedure (%77.98). The researcher's procedure provided and applied based on the information obtained from survey environment, location and type of hospital structure. After providing the procedure, the maximum and minimum rates were the continuity of service factor (%58.3) and post-accident rebuilding factor (%100), respectively. Generally, the rate of emergency preparedness of studied medical center in management performance for coping with disasters and medical emergencies was measured (%97.2) according to hospital emergency responsiveness test for accidents and (WHO). The significance level is less than 0.05, so we can say that the effectiveness with confidence (95%) was effective. Conclusion: According to the statistics of accidents and disasters in the suburb cities, the results of the research and the importance of the role of emergency departments in interurban hospitals in controlling accidents, the need for planning and implementation of practical measures such as conducting training courses on health management in disasters and emergencies, having an estimate of critical and essential resources, changing the structure, providing manpower (emergency management) in order to more precise control and ease of service, maintenance and repair of equipment, timely triage and retrofitting of hospitals were effective in improving their preparedness.

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) have been utilised to forecast the foreign exchange market (Forex). However, such models usually exhibit unstable behaviour, as data perturbations often downgrade the functionality of the entire network due to their monolithic architecture. Hence, this study proposes a novel neuroscience-informed modular network applied to the closing prices and the sentiments retrieved from Yahoo Finance and Twitter APIs, aiming to anticipate better price fluctuations in Euro to British Pound Sterling (EUR/GBP) rather than monolithic methods. The proposed model is based on a new modular CNN, replacing pooling layers with orthogonal kernel initialisation RNNs coupled with Monte Carlo Dropout (MCD), namely MCoRNNMCD. It combines two modules: i) a convolutional simple RNN and ii) a convolutional Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), where orthogonality and MCD are added to reduce the overfitting, assessing each module's uncertainty. These parallel feature extraction modules concatenate their outputs to a final three-layer Artificial Neural Network (ANN) decision-making module. A comprehensive comparison viewing objective evaluation metrics such as the Mean Square Error (MSE) proved that the proposed MCoRNNMCD-ANN outperformed single CNN, LSTM, GRU, and the state-of-the-art hybrid BiCuDNNLSTM, CLSTM, CNN-LSTM, and LSTM-GRU in forecasting hourly EUR/GBP closing price fluctuations.

The key question for the understanding of corrosion phenomena of Si3N4-SiC material in Al reduction cell – whether corrosion by gases (and oxidation in particular) opens way for the corrosion by molten cryolite, or corrosion of Si3N4-SiC by cryolite plays its own role in degradation of the material in service. More probably the reactions of silicon carbide and silicon nitride with molten cryolite go after the stage of pre oxidation to silicon dioxide. The corrosion of Si3N4-SiC material in the reduction cell may take place by “gas-solid” reaction and by “liquid-solid” reaction. There are several variants of lab corrosion test for the evaluation of corrosion resistance of Si3N4-SiC material to cryolite. The results of investigation of Si3N4-SiC lab corrosion test give no direct evidence of selective dissolution of specific phase (Si3N4 or SiC, α-Si3N4 or β-Si3N4) in cryolite. The existing variants of lab corrosion testing require clarification.

κ Draconis is a binary system with a classical Be star as the primary component. Its emission-line spectrum consists of hydrogen lines, notably the Hα line with a peak intensity ratio (V/R) variations phase-locked with the orbital period P = 61.55 days. Among binaries demonstrating the Be phenomenon, κ Dra stands out as one of a few systems with a discernible mass of its secondary component. Based on more than 200 spectra obtained in 2014 − 2023, we verified the physical parameters and constructed the mass function. We used part of these data obtained in 2014 − 2021 to investigate regions in the circumstellar disk of the primary component that emit the Hα line using the Doppler tomography method. The results show that the disk has a non-uniform density distribution with a prominent enhancement at Vy≈ 99 km s−1 and Vx≈−6 km s−1 that corresponds to a cloud-like source of the double-peaked Hα line profile. We argue that this enhancement’s motion is responsible for the periodic variations of the Hα V/R ratio, which is synchronised in orbital phase with the radial velocity (RV) of absorption lines from the atmosphere of the primary component.

Silicon carbide particle-reinforced aluminum matrix (SiCp/Al) composites are significant lightweight metal matrix composites extensively utilized in precision instruments and aerospace sectors. Nevertheless, the inclusion of rigid SiC particles exacerbates tool wear in mechanical machining, resulting in a decline in the quality of surface finish. This work undertakes a comprehensive investigation into the problem of tool wear in SiCp/Al composite materials throughout the machining process. Initially, a comprehensive investigation was conducted to analyze the effects of cutting velocity vc, feed per tooth fz, milling depth ap, and milling width ae on tool wear during high-speed milling under SCCO2-MQL (Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Minimum Quantity Lubrication) ultrasonic vibration conditions. Furthermore, a prediction model for tool wear was developed by employing the orthogonal test method and multiple linear regression. The model's relevance and accuracy were confirmed using F-tests and t-tests. Ultimately, through the utilization of a genetic algorithm, the milling parameters were optimized, resulting in the identification of the most optimal combination of parameters. Empirical findings suggest that the careful selection of milling parameters can significantly mitigate tool wear, extend the lifespan of the tool, and enhance the quality of the surface. This work serves as a significant point of reference for the processing of SiCp/Al composite materials.

Background - Technological developments induced lifestyle changes and increase population physical inactivity. This change in lifestyle can affect the male-female morphological and physical fitness differences. The aim of this study is to determine and to compare the effect of sex differences in percentage of body fat on speed and endurance running performance. Methods - 72 male and 64 female students aged 20 to 23 years participated in this study. After assessing their morphological characteristics, running performances during 30 m and 400 m, and maximum aerobic velocity (MAV) and maximal oxygen consumption (VO2max) during a 20 m shuttle running test have been estimated for each subject. Male students were re-tested after being overweighed down with a weight equivalent to the mean differences in body fat recorded between the two sexes in the form of a loaded worn vest. Results – Male presented a percentage of fat mass (17.2 ±2%) significantly (p <0.001) lower than that of women subject (25.0 ±2.5%). Running performances during 30 m and 400 m, MAV and VO2max were significantly (p<0.001) better in males. During the weighted condition, male performances during 30 m and 400 m, MAV and VO2max were attenuated by 6.89%, 14.16%, 6.48% and 10.07%, respectively but remain significantly better than those of female students. Conclusion - The persistence of sex differences after overweighting male students indicates that body fat could be responsible for ≈ 50 to 70% of the observed differences between sexes performances during short and long sprints, and 20 m shuttle running test.

Background: Despite their generally favorable prognosis, hepatic fibrosis remains a possible complication for hepatitis B virus (HBV) inactive carriers. This study aimed to estimate the prevalence of significant fibrosis and associated risk factors among Omani HBV inactive carriers. Methods: A retrospective study was conducted of 200 Omani HBV inactive carriers visiting a tertiary hospital in Muscat, Oman, between January 2017 and December 2018. Significant fibrosis (stage F2 or higher) was identified using two-dimensional shear-wave elastography. Baseline clinical, laboratory, and radiological data were analyzed to determine associations. Results: Of the total sample, 106 patients (53%) were male, and the mean age was 44.6 ± 9.3 years. The prevalence of significant fibrosis was 20% (n = 40). Male gender (p = 0.007), age ≥60 years (p = 0.024), and fatty changes in liver ultrasound (p = 0.044) were found to be independent factors for significant fibrosis. Conclusion: the prevalence of significant fibrosis was relatively high among a sample of Omani HBV inactive carriers, with several sociodemographic and clinical risk factors identified. Periodic assessment of liver function is needed for patients with these risk factors; moreover, routine biochemical parameters could be useful predictors of disease prognosis. Further research is recommended to substantiate these findings.

This research investigates the impact of Al and Ti elements on the formation of self-generated ordered phase in high-entropy alloys (HEA), which have been receiving widespread concentration in present times thanks to their remarkable multifunctional properties and wide range of component selection. By adjusting the dual elements of Al and Ti, the study explores the regulation of quantity and distribution of the in-situ self-generated ordered phases in the alloy. The results of the annealing heat treatment process demonstrated that, through accession Al and Ti elements, the Cr-Fe-Ni medium-entropy alloy transfer from BCC phase to BCC+FCC phase and the precipitation of new phases such as B2, L21, and σ. This led to a synergistic impact of second phase strengthening, and also of solid solution strengthening, resulting in improved compressive properties of HEA.

The research presented in the article is devoted to the study of the influence of phase compounds on the friability of the Fe-Si-Mn-Al complex alloy. The urgency of the problem lies in the development of technology for producing a non-scatterable alloy from manganese-containing ores and high-ash coals. The main goal of the work is to determine the range of alloy compositions and the resulting phases that affect the dispersibility of the alloy, which is critically important for its industrial implementation. Research methods include thermodynamic diagram analysis (TDA) using data on the standard enthalpy of formation of intermetallic compounds, as well as experimental tests in an ore-thermal electric furnace with a capacity of 200 kV*A. The results show that Fe-Si-Mn-Al complex alloys form a variety of silicide and aluminide phases, including intermetallic compounds and ternary systems, which is critical for understanding and controlling their physicochemical properties. When smelting a complex alloy, the content of leboite (Fe3Si7) in the Fe-Si-Mn-Al system plays a significant role. The development of smelting technology will be aimed at avoiding the FeSi2-Fe3Si7-F2(FeAl3Si2)-Mn11Si19 tetrahedron area. This approach to controlling the composition of a complex alloy is critical to ensuring its consistent friability properties in industrial applications. Thus, this work represents an important step in understanding the physical properties and stability of Fe-Si-Mn-Al complex alloys, which have potential for widespread use in metallurgical and other industrial applications.

Nowadays recurrent implantation failure (RIF) after invitro fertilization is common problem that reproductive specialists usually faced. The phenomenon of thin endometrium in RIF patients has yet not completely understood and properly treated. This study aimed to reveal significantly dysregulated selected genes expression between RIF patients with thin endometrium and fertile women. Endometrial samples were collected in the implantation window days (LH+7 – LH+10) of the natural menstrual cycle from RIF patients (n=20) and fertile women (n=14). Ten genes were chosen as target genes regarding their possible relations with the implantation process. Endometrial gene expression levels showed differences in RIF samples compared to fertile samples. The significant downregulation was observed for CXCL1 (p=0.005) and C4BPA (p=0.03) genes. There was no statistically significant difference between the RIF groups and the fertile group in the expression of 8 genes: CXCL8, HPRT1, MMP10, INFG, VEGFB, HAND2, IL15 and TNC (p&gt;0.05). The use of a combination of two markers (C4BPA + CXCL1) allows for good discrimination of RIF patients from fertile women (AUC 0.806).

Visual Question Generation (VQG) from images is a rising research topic in both fields of natural language processing and computer vision. Although there are some recent efforts towards generating questions from images in the open domain, the VQG task in the medical domain has not been well-studied so far due to the lack of labeled data. In this paper, we introduce a goal-driven VQG approach for radiology images called VQGRaD that generates questions targeting specific image aspects such as modality and abnormality. In particular, we study generating natural language questions based on the visual content of the image and on additional information such as the image caption and the question category. VQGRaD encodes the dense vectors of different inputs into two latent spaces, which allows generating, for a specific question category, relevant questions about the images, with or without their captions. We also explore the impact of domain knowledge incorporation (e.g., medical entities and semantic types) and data augmentation techniques on visual question generation in the medical domain. Experiments performed on the VQA-RAD dataset of clinical visual questions showed that VQGRaD achieves 61.86% BLEU score and outperforms strong baselines. We also performed a blinded human evaluation of the grammaticality, fluency, and relevance of the generated questions. The human evaluation demonstrated the better quality of VQGRaD outputs and showed that incorporating medical entities improves the quality of the generated questions. Using the test data and evaluation process of the ImageCLEF 2020 VQA-Med challenge, we found that relying on the proposed data augmentation technique to generate new training samples by applying different kinds of transformations, can mitigate the lack of data, avoid overfitting, and bring a substantial improvement in medical VQG.

This study aimed to investigate the fatigue performance and interfacial strengthening mechanisms of Al6061-to-Cu dissimilar lap joints via electromagnetic pulse welding (EMPW). The load-bearing capacity of the joints at discharge voltages of 14 kV and 16 kV was superior to that of 12 kV. Furthermore, the fatigue life of the 14 kV joints was one order of magnitude higher compared to the 12 kV joints. SEM observation of the fatigue fracture surface revealed the presence of typical "tire-mark" fatigue striations only in the 14 kV joint, indicating higher ductility and the ability to withstand extended plastic deformation. Notably, ultra-fine nanocrystalline Al2Cu phase, amorphous phase, and numerous dislocations hindered EBSD acquisition in the transition zone. Nevertheless, dense low-angle grain boundaries (LAGBs) and refined grains were examined at the bonding interface. This suggests that the high-velocity collision caused severe plastic deformation and led to the formation of substructures. The interfacial strength was attributed not only to the "wave-like" or "inverted hook-like" diffusion layer but also to the presence of refined grains along the interface and nanocrystalline Al2Cu in the transition zone. Furthermore, the hybrid nanocrystalline-amorphous microstructure strengthened the joint by regulating the balance between strength and ductility.

In the era of mounting water scarcity, particularly in arid regions, the agricultural sector is striving to optimize the water resource management practices. Treated wastewater (TWW) has emerged as a viable alternative to freshwater for irrigation, offering a sustainable solution to water conservation. However, ensuring the safety and quality of TWW is paramount to safeguard for both crop health and environmental integrity. Electrical conductivity (EC), a critical factor in assessing TWW suitability for irrigation, can significantly impact crop yields and soil health since it is directly linked to the concentration of dissolved salts and ions. Therefore, this study delves into the development of advanced predictive models for EC assessment by employing supervised machine learning (ML) techniques like the Support Vector Regression (SVR), Adaptive Network-based Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS), and Multiple Linear Regression (MLR). The TWW samples collected from Al-Qatif area, Saudi Arabia were assessed in the lab through a sensor-based real-time monitoring system integrated with Internet of Things (IoT) network and a multiprobe device. The key water quality parameters assessed involved, temperature (T), pH, Oxidation Reduction Potential (ORP), Resistivity (RES), Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), Salinity and Turbidity which served as the foundation for these models, given their profound influence on and their anticipated impact on EC levels. Following feature selection, two distinct model combinations were identified for the SVR, ANFIS and MLR models. Furthermore, to evaluate prediction performance, four statistical criteria, including coefficient of determination (R²), correlation coefficient (R), mean square error (MSE), and root mean square error (RMSE), were employed. Overall, the comparative performance results proved that ANFIS-M2 indicated the strongest predictive capability with the R² value of 0.99572 and 0.75145 and the RMSE values of 0.00965 and 0.01134, respectively in both calibration and verification stages.

This paper investigates the influence of magnetic field for a two dimensional deformations on a two temperature problem at the free surface of a semi-infinite semiconducting medium under the effect of mechanical force during a photothermal theory and the effect of hydrostatic initial stress on the medium. The Harmonic Wave Method (Normal Mode Analysis) has been used to obtain the equations of elastic waves, heat conduction equation, quasi-static electric field, carrier density, two temperature coefficient, ratios, and constitutive relationships for the thermo-magnetic-electric medium. The effects of several parameters as thermoelastic and thermoelectric coupling parameters and two temperature parameter of this force on the displacement component, force stress, carrier density and temperature distribution has been depicted graphically.

A new class of nano-cube core-shell heterostructures containing Ag coating on the top of WO₃ was fabricated. Physical vapor deposition was used to produce WO₃ based nano-heterostructures. All kind of wet toxic chemical process was avoided to make the process simple and contaminant free. Sputtering of WO₃ and a subsequent thermal annealing process was done to create nano-cubes of WO₃. After that, sputtering of Ag was performed to form the Ag-WO₃ core-shell nano-heterostructures (CSNH). The CSNHs were characterized using field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) and UV-vis spectroscopy. The morphologies, elemental analysis, interfaces, crystallinity, phases, and chemical compositions were analyzed. The bottom-up growth of WO₃ nanocubes was studied using different time periods at 900°C. Ag coating was also studied before and after annealing. Finally, an optical property (band gap) was also analyzed using Tauc plot derive from absorption spectra. The tailoring the band gap of WO₃ from ~2.9eV to ~ 2.45 eV was observed while Ag-WO₃ CSNH formed.

Inula viscosa is a widely used plant in traditional Mediterranean and Middle Eastern medicine for various illnesses. I. viscosa has been shown to have anticancerous effects against various cancers, but its effects against lung cancer have been under limited investigation. At the same time, I. viscosa is rich in terpenoids whose anti-lung cancer effects have been poorly investigated. This study aimed to examine the potential anticancerous properties of methanolic and aqueous extracts of stems and leaves of I. viscosa and its terpenoid-rich fraction against human lung cancer A549 cells. Results showed a high radical scavenging capacity and polyphenol and flavonoid contents of I. viscosa methanolic rather than aqueous extracts. In addition, leaves methanolic extracts (IVLM) showed the highest reduction in viability of A549 cells among all the extracts. IVLM also reduced the viability of human ovarian SK-OV-3, breast MCF-7, liver HepG2, and colorectal HCT116 cancer cells. A terpenoid-rich I. viscosa fraction (IVL DCM), prepared by liquid-liquid separation of IVLM in dichloromethane (DCM), displayed a substantial reduction in the viability of A549 cells (IC₅₀= 27.8 ± 1.5 µg/mL at 48 h) and the panel of tested cancerous cell lines but was not cytotoxic to normal human embryonic fibroblasts (HDFn). The assessment of IVL DCM phytochemical constituents using GC-MS analysis revealed 21 metabolites, highlighting an enrichment in terpenoids, such as lupeol and its derivatives, caryophyllene oxide, betulin, and isopulegol, known to exhibit proapoptotic, and antimetastatic functions. IVL DCM also showed robust antioxidant capacity and decent polyphenol and flavonoid contents. Furthermore, Western blotting analysis indicated that IVL DCM reduced proliferation (reduction of proliferation marker Ki67 and induction of proliferation inhibitor proteins P21 and P27), contaminant with P38 MAP kinase activation, and induced the intrinsic apoptotic pathway (P53/BCL2/BAX/ Caspase3/PARP) in A549 cells. IVL DCM also reduced the migration of A549 cells, potentially by reducing FAK activation. Future identification of anticancer metabolites of IVL DCM, especially terpenoids, is recommended. These data place I. viscosa as a new resource of herbal anticancer agents.

The preservation of biodiversity has become a major concern in contemporary society. It is essential to understand teachers' representations of biodiversity to effectively guide educational efforts because of the significant role of education in raising awareness and promoting sustainable behavior. Through a survey of a sample of 118 teachers, we adopted a mixed-method approach combining both a closed questionnaire and interviews. We used these methods to explore teachers' representations of the concept of biodiversity as an integral part of the school curriculum, as well as to gather their views on certain features of its teaching. The results state that the majority of teachers perceive biodiversity as a whole and in its most complex relationships. During their professional experience, they have developed a biocentric and anthropocentric conception of biodiversity. This study provides valuable information to guide future pedagogical practices and educational policies in sustainable education.

Reproductive disorders are a common event in modern reproductive medicine, occurring both in spontaneous and assisted pregnancies. Studies of the molecular mechanisms of implantation disorders in thin endometrium, including the study of gene transcriptional activity, have shed light on the identification of potential biological markers of endometrial receptivity. Background/Objectives: to reveal significantly dysregulated selected genes expression between RIF and RPL patients with thin endometrium. Methods: Endometrial samples were collected in the implantation window days (LH+7 – LH+10) of the natural menstrual cycle from RIF patients (n=20) and RPL patients (n=19). Ten genes were chosen as target genes regarding their possible relations with the implantation process. Total RNA was purified, reverse-transcribed; gene expression was quantified by RT-PCR. Results: The expression of the IL-15, INFG and HPRT1 genes were significantly decreased in RIF with thin endometrium patients compared to the RPL patients (log2 fold change=0.92, p=0.023 for IL-15, log2 fold change=1.24, p=0.046 for INFG, and log2 fold change=0.579, p=0.046 for HPRT1). There were not significant differences in expression of CXCL8, CXCL1, MMP10, C4BPA, TNC, VEGFB and HAND2 genes between groups. Conclusions: decreased expression of IL-15, INFG and HPRT1 genes was found in patients with RIF with thin endometrium compared to the endometrium of women with RPL. This has practical significance for clinicians for differentiated prescription of immunomodulatory therapy in patients undergoing ART programs.

We used the Taylor-Ulitovsky Technique to prepare nanocrystalline Co2MnGe Heusler alloy glass-coated microwires with a metallic nucleus diameter of 18 ± 0.1 µm and a total diameter of 27.2 ± 0.1 µm. Magnetic and structural studies were carried out to determine the fundamental magneto-structural characteristics of Co2MnGe glass-coated microwires. XRD revealed a well-defined nanocrystalline structure with average grain size about 63 nm, lattice parameter a = 5.62 and a unique mixture of L21 and B2 phases. The magnetization curves for field cooling and field heating (FC-FH) demonstrate a considerable dependence on the applied magnetic field, ranging from 50 Oe to 20 kOe. Internal stresses, originated by the production process, resulted in various magnetic phases, which were responsible for the notable difference of field cooling (FC) and field heating (FH) curves on magnetization dependence versus temperature. Furthermore, the ferromagnetic behavior and expected high Curie temperature together with high degree of L21 ordered makes it a promising candidate for many applications.

Peste des Petits Ruminants (PPR) is one of the major transboundary animal diseases that severely impact livestock production and trade worldwide. An investigation was carried into the seroprevalence and risk factors of PPR in small ruminants, camels, and wild ruminants in Bahrain. A total of 1240 serum samples were collected from 119 sheep flocks and 1224 serum samples from 125 goat herds. In addition, 100 sera from camels and 38 sera from wild ruminants, were collected. Serum samples were tested for the presence of PPR specific antibodies using a competitive ELISA. Flock management and health information of the flocks and herds were collected using a semi-structured questionnaire. The individual prevalence of PPR in sheep and goats was 26% and 25.5%, respectively. The flock or herd level prevalence of PPR was 22.7% and 29.6% in sheep and goats, respectively. None of the tested camels or wild ruminants were positive for PPR-specific antibodies. Sheep and goats from the Northern governorate were more likely to be seropositive to PPR than in other governorates. On the individual animal level, the univariate analysis suggested; age (&lt;12 months), sex (male), and health status (weak animals) as risk factors for PPR seropositivity. On the flock/herd level, the multivariable logistic regression analysis identified large flock/herd size and semi-intensive farming as risk factors for PPR seropositivity.

Gestational trophoblastic diseases (GTDs) encompass a spectrum of conditions characterized by abnormal trophoblastic cell growth, ranging from benign molar pregnancies to malignant trophoblastic neoplasms. This systematic review explores the molecular underpinnings of GTDs, focusing on genetic and epigenetic factors that influence disease progression and clinical outcomes. Based on 65 studies identified through systematic search and selection criteria, key findings include dysregulations in tumor suppressor genes such as p53, aberrant apoptotic pathways involving BCL-2, and altered expression of growth factor receptors and microRNAs. These molecular alterations not only differentiate molar pregnancies from normal placental development but also contribute to their clinical behavior, from benign moles to potentially malignant forms. The review synthesizes insights from immunohistochemical studies and molecular analyses to provide a comprehensive understanding of GTD pathogenesis and implications for personalized care strategies.

Salmonella Typhimurium is a typical Gram-Negative bacterium associated with food-borne illness threatening public health. This pathogen is reported to have caused millions of infections and thousands of hospitalizations yearly in the United States alone. Salmonella Typhimurium has a sophisticated array of virulent factors, including its flagella, which contributes significantly to its pathogenicity. Cannabidiol (CBD), the non-psychoactive component of the cannabis plant, has attracted the interest of many researchers recently because of its antimicrobial properties. With the growing interest in exploring CBD’s antimicrobial properties, we, in this study, have delved into unravelling how prolonged exposure of Salmonella Typhimurium to CBD influences the expression of the flgA gene. We hypothesized that the exposure of Salmonella Typhimurium to CBD may result in flgA upregulation, causing the bacteria to withstand various stresses and potentially enhance its survival rates and pathogenicity. We have employed several assays, such as mRNA expression, motility assays, pH induction assays, nutrient starvation interventions, and biofilm analysis, to explore the influence of CBD on the pathophysiology of Salmonella Typhimurium. Our findings reveal that CBD-resistant strains exhibit enhanced resilience to extreme pH levels and motility and survive poorly under nutrient starvation, with more robust biofilm formation compared to the susceptible strains. The results contribute to the broader comprehension of CBD resistance mechanisms in bacteria. This work provides insight into the potential therapeutic interventions for controlling CBD-resistant bacterial infections. This study also underscores the essence of exploring novel alternative antimicrobial agents to tackle the ever-persistence of bacterial antibiotic resistance.

The endocannabinoid system (ECS) is a complex neuromodulatory network in the human body that have enormous impact in developing the central nervous system, as well as modulates various physiological processes. The ECS is made up of anandamide, 2-arachidonoylglycerol (2-AG), which are responsible for the synthesis and degradation of endocannabinoids, and enzymes such as FAAH and MAGL ensures the precise control over endocannabinoid levels. The ECS relies on CB1 receptors found in the central nervous system (CNS), and CB2 receptors found in the peripheral nervous system and immune cells. Dysregulation of the ECS has been associated with several health conditions, prompting investigations into its association with phytocannabinoids to harness their therapeutic potential. The ECS is intricately linked with the nervous system, and it is known to modulate neuronal activities in the CNS, influencing pain and mood modulation. The ECS is also associated with neuropathies-peripheral nerve damage leading to symptoms such as weakness, numbness and pain as evidenced in diabetic neuropathy, Guillain-Barré Syndrome, carpal tunnel syndrome, peripheral neuropathy, and postherpetic neuralgia. The focus of this review is on the interplay between 2-arachidonoylglycerol and anandamide amidohydrolase in neuropathy, elucidating their roles in pain regulation, inflammation, and specific neuropathies. The knowledge generated is expected to have broad implications, providing comprehensive insights into neuropathic conditions and how to improve on them. Ultimately, this understanding may lead to more effective treatments and improved quality of life for individuals affected by these conditions.

Dietary intake of Wistar rats of biofortified with 8-hydroxy-7-iodo-5-quinolinesulfonic acid (8-OH-7-I-5QSA) kale of both cultivars ‘Oldenbor F1’ and ‘Redbor F1’ for 8 weeks resulted in sig-nificantly higher iodine concentrations in the urine and kidneys of rats, which proves iodine bio-availability. Rats diets with 'Oldenbor F1' and 'Redbor F1' kale non- and -biofortified with 8-OH-7-I-5QSA had a significantly lower or a tendency for lower concentration of TSH, triglyc-eride, total and direct bilirubin, TBARs, uric acid, aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) concentrations in serum. Dietary intake of 'Oldenbor F1' and 'Redbor F1' kale biofortified with 8-OH-7-I-5QSA significantly increased the total antioxidant status (TAS). The study confirms that kale biofortified with iodine in organic form iodoquinoline 8-OH-7-I-5QSA is bioavailable and well absorbed by the Wistar rat and has a positive effect on selected biochemical parameters.

Our daily activities hinge on the flexibility of our fingers, and a fractured finger can significantly disrupt these routines. The finger bones enable us to bend and fold the fingers and thumb to pick up or grasp objects and do all of our daily activities. A broken finger can cause adverse effects on our daily life activities. It is important to treat broken finger as soon as possible. Swift and precise treatment begins with capturing multiple X-rays, followed by the critical step of fracture detection in these images. Relying on the naked eye for this task carries the risk of overlooking small fractures. To address this issue an automated diagnoses of fractured fingers from images is required for which the current research employs advanced deep learning models—ResNet34, ResNet50, ResNet101, ResNet152, VGG-16, and VGG-19—to classify finger images from the Musculoskeletal Radiographs (MURA) dataset as either fractured or non-fractured. The results emphasize the consistently strong performance of ResNet models, attaining an impressive accuracy of 81.9%. This surpasses VGG models by 3.4% and establishes ResNet as the new benchmark for state-of-the-art accuracy.

Over the years, the need for autonomous systems such as drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), has significantly increased in popularity across several industries, including the military. The Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) represents a modern technological advancement that significantly enhances the operational efficacy of defense systems. It establishes an integrated military force by connecting individuals to intelligent technology in drones, radios, equipment, antennas and ground stations. This is achieved through the utilization of cloud and edge computing, sensors, mobile devices, embedded systems, and IoT-based systems. However, IoBT security is significantly compromised by enemies that exploit the vulnerabilities and malicious intrusions that specifically target the external environment or to obtain sensitive data. In addition, a comprehensive understanding of cyberattacks and countermeasures is essential for assuring the security of IoBT. On the other hand, as cyber threats get more complicated, trust becomes increasingly important for the security of digital systems. Within this context, the zero trust architecture contends that the security of a complex network is inherently vulnerable to internal and external threats. In defense, UAV security system applications, for example, the primary purpose of the zero trust architecture is to limit the vulnerability of military UAV systems to cyberattacks, hence reducing the possibility of data breaches and illegal entry. This study conducts a systematic review aimed at identifying different aspects of cybersecurity strategies for protecting UAV systems within the IoBT domain. Furthermore, zero trust architecture is presented in the study as an effective prospective solution to the security issues that develop in defense UAV systems.

High dimensional datasets are highly likely to have redundant, irrelevant, and noisy features that negatively affect the performance of the classification algorithms. Selecting the most relevant features and reducing the dimensions of datasets by removing the undesired features is a dimensional reduction technique called Feature Selection (FS). In this paper, we propose an FS approach based on the Black Hole Algorithms (BHO) with a mutation technique called MBHO. Generally, BHO contains two major phases. At the exploitation phase, a set of stars are modified based on some rule and according to some objective function, the best star is selected as the black hole which attracts other stars. Furthermore, when a star gets closer to the event horizon, it will be swallowed and a new one will be randomly generated in the search space which thus is the exploration phase. However, randomness may cause the algorithm to fall into the trap of local optima, and to overcome such complications, inversion mutation is used. Furthermore, we modify a widely utilized objective function in most of the proposed works for wrapper feature selection by combining two new terms that are based on the correlation among the selected subset of features and the features and the classification label. We also utilize a transfer function, known as the V2 transfer function, to convert continuous values into discrete ones to enhance search. We assess our approach via extensive evaluation experiments using fourteen benchmark datasets. We benchmark the performance of a wrapper FS approach called Binary Cuckoo Search (BCS), and three filter-based FS approaches (namely Mutual Information Maximisation (MIM), Joint Mutual Information (JMI), and minimum Redundancy Maximum Relevance (mRMR)). Our evaluation has shown that the proposed model is an effective approach for FS, in selecting better features that enhance the performance metrics on the classifiers. Thus, MBHO can be utilized as one alternative to the existing state-of-art-approaches. We release the source codes of our implementation for the community to build on with new methods and datasets.

Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR) is beneficial microorganisms that inhabit the rhizosphere of plants and play a crucial role in enhancing plant growth and development. This review provides an overview of the significant role of PGPR in sustainable agriculture. The mechanisms that promote plant growth, such as nitrogen fixation, phosphate solubilization, and growth hormones, are discussed. The potential of PGPR in improving plant tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses, reducing the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and enhancing nutrient availability, soil fertility, and uptake is also highlighted. Moreover, the ecological and economic benefits of using PGPR for sustainable agriculture include improving crop productivity, reducing environmental pollution, and ensuring food security.

Astola Island is the first marine protected area of Pakistan acknowledged 2017, June 15. It is a rich biodiversity hotspot, Ramsar site inhabiting endangered species like Green turtle, Hawksbill turtle, and Arabian Humpback whale. A saw-scaled Russell’s viper is endemic to Island. Marine ecology of Astola Island is affected by plastic pollution resulting in coral destruction, ocean acidification, global warming, fishing nets blockage, water pollution, and coastal erosion. Zeolite catalyst synthesized from environmentally friendly way by coal fly ash to degrade collected plastic waste from Island into useful products in pyrolysis reactor. The synthesized catalyst functionalized further with three type of organosilane(1) Octyltriethoxysilane(OS),(2)Phenyltriethoxysilane(PS)(3)Vinyltriethoxysilane(VS).Zeolite functionalize with octyltriethoxy silane (ZO) shows the highest performance in plastic pyrolysis, resulting in lower degradation temperature, low residue and more product formation may be due to having long chain hydrocarbon and acidic sites. Plastic recycling is the promising solution to tackle plastic blooming issue. Which is negatively impacting all the compartments of ecosystem especially marine environment.

This article delves into the enduring relevance of Liberal International Relations (IR) Theory amidst persistent criticisms regarding power dynamics and its applicability in emerging states. Despite its detractors, Liberal IR Theory offers a nuanced understanding of state behavior, blending social contexts with power dynamics. It recognizes the intricacies of economic interdependence and advocates for a balanced approach in advancing democracy and human rights. While nationalism poses challenges to international institutions, their adaptability endures. Leaders, albeit constrained, retain the capacity to foster peace through visionary leadership and global cooperation. By acknowledging its limitations and fostering open dialogue, Liberal IR Theory continues to evolve, poised to contribute to a just and peaceful global order.

The paper delineates the developed vision system of the UR5 cobot and the operating algorithm of the robotic quality control station. The hardware-software architecture of the developed robotic station was shown, consisting of a UR5 cobot equipped with a web camera and a stationary industrial camera with a lighting system. Image processing and analysis algorithms were described, the method of control and communication between the station components was discussed, and two operating scenarios were presented as a single robotic station and a robotic line. Based on the results obtained, the level of measurement noise, accuracy, and repeatability of the developed vision system were estimated.

Contamination in coastal regions attributed to fluoride and nitrate cannot be disregarded, given the substantial environmental and public health issues they present worldwide. Maintaining water quality is crucial for environmental well-being. This comprehensive study was performed to assess the spatial as well as indexical water quality, identify contamination sources, and evaluate associated health risks pertaining to nitrate and flouride in AlHassa region, KSA. The physiochemical results revealed a pervasive pollution of the overall groundwater. The dominant water type was Na-Cl, indicating saltwater intrusion and reverse ion exchange impact. Spatiotemporal variations in physicochemical properties suggest diverse hydrochemical mechanisms, with geogenic factors primarily influencing groundwater chemistry. The groundwater pollution index varied between 0.8426 and 4.7172, classifying samples as moderately to very highly polluted. Similarly, the synthetic pollution index (in the range of 0.5021-4.0715) revealed that none of the samples had excellent water quality, with various degrees of pollution categories. Nitrate Health Quotient (HQ) values indicated chronic human health risks ranging from low to severe, with newborns being the most vulnerable. Household use of nitrate-rich groundwater for showering and cleaning did not pose significant health risks. Fluoride HQ decreased with age, and children faced the highest risk of fluorosis. The Hazard Index (HI) yielded moderate to high-risk values. Nitrate risks were 1.21 times higher than fluoride risks, as per average HI assessment. All samples fell into the vulnerable category based on the Total Hazard Index (THI), with 88.89% classified as very high risk. This research provides valuable insights into groundwater quality, guiding water authorities, inhabitants, and researchers in identifying safe water sources and vulnerable human populations. The results highlight the need for appropriate treatment techniques and long-term coastal groundwater management plans.

Dietary habits, including meal frequency, meal timing, and skipping meals, have been extensively studied due to their association with the development of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). This study describes dietary habits, meal timing, meal frequency, skipping meals, and late-night eating in Kuwaiti adults. The Kuwait National Nutrition Surveillance System data was utilized to reach the objectives of this study. The findings reveal that approximately 50% of the adults in Kuwait eat after 10 p.m., 29% skip breakfast, and 9.8% skip dinner. Furthermore, adults in Kuwait consume 4.4 meals per day on average. Women skip breakfast more often and have extended night fasting than men (p&lt;0.001). Married adults skip breakfast and dinner less than unmarried adults (p&lt;0.001). In conclusion, this descriptive study provides valuable insights into the dietary habits of Kuwaiti adults, emphasizing the importance of further investigating the association between meal timing, meal frequency, and the prevalence of NCDs in Kuwait.

Background/Objectives: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic neurological disorder characterized by various clinical presentations and manifestations that include biopsychosocial impediments. This study has three interrelated goals relevant to biopsychosocial functioning. The first is to compare cognitive, neuropsychological, and affective functioning and quality of life between patients with MS (PwMS) and a control group. The second is to examine whether cognitive and neuropsychological performance is affected by gender, and the third is to examine whether variation in QoL hinges on cognitive neuropsychological performance. Methods: This multicenter study was carried out among clinically stable PwMS under follow-up in two tertiary care units in urban Oman. Healthy controls, matched for age and sex, were also recruited as a comparison group. Data were collected using cognitive batteries sensitive to current reasoning ability and conventional neuropsychological batteries designed to measure verbal learning, visual-spatial ability, and processing speed. The affective range (anxiety and depressive symptoms) and quality of life (QoL) were also assessed. Results: The PwMS group scored lower on current reasoning ability, verbal learning, visual-spatial ability, and processing speed compared with the control group. The incidence of anxiety was higher in the PwMS group but there was no statistically significant difference in depressive symptoms. No significant differences were found in cognitive variables between the two sexes, except in visual-spatial ability, where women outperformed men. PwMS with low QoL scored lower on the attention and concentration indices than those with adequate QoL. According to QoL, no significant differences were observed in reasoning, verbal learning, and visual-spatial ability. Conclusions: The present sentinel study suggests that the Omani cohort with MS tends to have lower indices of current reasoning ability, visual and spatial memory and cognitive speed compared to control subjects. Gender differences are minimal, except for visual-spatial abilities where women outperform men. Quality of life significantly affects cognitive functioning. In general, the biopsychosocial impediment appears to be significant, indicating the need for comprehensive evaluation and care in the management of MS.

In order to establish the formation patterns of the Co–Mg oxide system, samples with different Co:Mg ratios and heat treatment temperatures were synthesized and studied. Study of the sam-ples confirmed the phase transition of MgxCo2–xO4 spinels into corresponding solid solutions at 800–900 °C. The similarity of formation patterns for different compositions is shown. The rock-salt oxide in low-temperature samples is an anion-modified paracrystalline phase that forms a “true” solid solution only upon spinel decomposition. TPR profiles of decomposed Co3O4 spinel show surface Co3O4 peaks and a wide peak corresponding to well-crystallized CoO, while par-tial Co3O4 TPR up to 380 °C results in dispersed and amorphous CoO. High-temperature non-stoichiometric samples are poorly reduced, indicating their low oxygen reactivity. Spinel reoxidation after heat treatment to 1100 °C by calcination at 750 °C showed complete regenera-tion for MgCo2O4–Co3O4 samples and its absence in case of an excess of MgO relative to stoi-chiometry. Based on the data obtained, it can be concluded that the processes governing the formation of Co–Mg oxide systems are determined by both Co:Mg ratio and the heat treatment conditions, potentially providing the possibility of fine tuning for specific catalytic processes.

The proliferation of fake news on social media platforms poses significant challenges to information authenticity and public trust. In this study, the impact of various word embedding techniques on the performance of both machine learning and deep learning models for fake news detection is systematically evaluated. The comprehensive TruthSeeker dataset, which spans over a decade of labeled news articles and social media posts, is utilized. Three popular word embedding techniques are analyzed: TF-IDF, Word2Vec, and FastText. These embeddings were tested with multiple machine learning classifiers, including logistic regression, naive Bayes, K-nearest neighbors, support vector machines, multilayer perceptrons, decision trees, and random forests, as well as deep learning models, specifically convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Among machine learning models, the Support Vector Machine (SVM) with TF-IDF achieved the highest accuracy of 99.03%, precision of 98.92%, recall of 99.15%, and F1 score of 99.03%. The Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) also demonstrated strong performance with Word2Vec, reaching an accuracy of 95.24%, precision of 94.95%, recall of 95.50%, and F1 score of 95.07%. For deep learning models, CNNs combined with TF-IDF embeddings showed outstanding results, achieving an accuracy of 98.99%, precision of 98.56%, recall of 99.48%, and F1 score of 99.02%. These results highlight the critical role of word embeddings in enhancing model accuracy and reliability in misinformation detection.

The interest in natural remedies in modern medicine has revealed potent disease-fighting agents, such asCUR(CUR) and nicotinamide (NIC), known for their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and immune-boosting properties. This study explores the antibacterial and antimelanoma potential of a CUR-NIC combination and its liposomal formulation. The antibacterial efficacy was assessed against skin infection-causing bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus, while cytotoxicity and migration assays were conducted on the melanoma B16 cancer cell line. The CUR-NIC combination (1:1) demonstrated an inhibition zone of 18±0.8 mm against S. aureus and a MIC of 31.25 µg/ml, outperforming CUR alone. Whereas Lip-CUR-NIC showed an inhibition zone of 12±0.8 mm against S. aureus and a MIC of 37.5 µg/ml. Notably, the cytotoxicity assay revealed that the CUR-NIC duo synergistically inhibited melanoma cell proliferation (CI<1). Liposomal preparations further enhanced this effect, with Lip-CUR-NIC showing a remarkably low IC50 of 8.5 ± 0.3 µM compared to CUR (IC50= 9.8 ± 2.2 µM) and NIC (IC50=135.95 ± 10.2 µM). These findings highlight the synergistic potential of CUR and NIC, especially in their liposomal form, offering a promising strategy for more effective cancer treatment.

Microbial composition across substrates in mangroves, particularly in the Middle East, remains unclear. This study characterized bacterial communities in sediment, water, Terebralia palustris snail guts, and plastic associated with Avicennia marina mangrove forests in two coastal lagoons in the Sea of Oman using 16S rDNA gene MiSeq sequencing. The genus Vibrio dominated all substrates except water, which featured unique genera Sunxiuqinia and Pseudomonas. There were significant differences in bacterial communities on different substrata, in particular plastic. Snail guts harbored the highest number of unique Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) in both lagoons. Plastic in the polluted Sawadi lagoon with low salinity harbored distinct genera like Vibrio, Aestuariibacter, Zunongwangia, and Jeotgalibacillus absent in Qurum lagoon with higher salinity and low pollution. Sawadi lagoon exhibited higher species diversity in sediment and plastic substrates, Qurum lagoon demonstrated lower overall species diversity. The PCA indicates that environmental factors like salinity, pH, and nutrient levels significantly influence bacterial community composition across substrates. Variations in organic matter and potential anthropogenic influences, particularly from plastics, further shape bacterial communities. This study highlights the complex microbial communities in mangrove ecosystems, emphasizing the importance of considering multiple substrates in mangrove microbial ecology studies.

The Yb/Al multilayer films exhibit excellent theoretical reflectivity in the 54-90nm wavelength range. This study attempted to incorporate 1.5% wt.% of Si impurities into Al to suppress the crystallization of Al, reduce interfacial roughness, and enhance the actual reflectivity of the prepared Yb/Al multilayer films. The internal microstructure changes of the film layers before and after Si impurity doping were investigated using GIXRR, AFM, and XRD techniques. The reflectivity of two types of multilayer films, Yb/Al(1.5wt.%Si) and Yb/Al(pure), was tested to evaluate the effect of Si impurity on the film performance.

Many reports showed a dramatic decrease in the levels of physical activity during the current pandemic of SARS-COV-2. This has substantial immunometabolic implications, especially in those at risk or with metabolic diseases including individuals with obesity and Type 2 diabetes. Here we discuss the route from physical inactivity to immnometabolic aberrancies; focusing on how insulin resistance could represent an adaptive mechanism to the low physical activity levels and/or high energy intake and on how such an adaptive mechanism could derail to be a pathognomonic feature of metabolic diseases creating a vicious circle of immune and metabolic aberrancies. We provide a theoretical framework to the severe immunopathology of COVID-19 in patients with metabolic diseases. We finally discuss the idea of exercise as a potential adjuvant against COVID-19 and emphasize how even interrupting prolonged periods of sitting with short time breaks of very light activity could be a feasible strategy to limit the deleterious effects of sedentary behavior.

Rice blast is the most harmful disease caused by Magnaporthe oryzae, leading to yield loss. The aim of the work is to improve resistance of rice to blast by introducing and pyramiding genes using conventional breeding technique and modern MAS analysis. Pyramiding is the combination of several resistance genes in one genotype, in this case it improves the resistance of rice to pathogens. MAS analysis revealed that 3 out of 4 studied domestic high-yielding rice cultivars (Bakanasski, Aisaule and Aru) contain 1 blast resistance gene (Pi-2). It was discovered 7 pyramidal lines with the introduction of a combination of 2 blast resistance genes (Pi-1 and Pi-ta) into 6 hybrids and 3 genes (Pi-1, Pi-33 and Pi-ta) into 1 line. Phytopathological test of local cultivars and pyramidal lines of rice showed that 3 out of 7 pyramidal lines have moderate resistance: 2 lines (F2 Bakanasski/7667 (var. vulgaris Koern.) and F2 Aisaule/7664 (var. italica Alef.)), containing 2 resistance genes (Pi-1 and Pi-ta) and 1 line – F2 Aisaule/7689 (var. zeravschanica Brsch.), carrying 3 genes (Pi-1, Pi-33 and Pi-ta), while the local cultivars Bakanasski, Aisaule and Aru are susceptible. As a result, the blast resistance of rice was improved by creating pyramidal lines. Pyramided lines can be used for germplasm exchange and in rice breeding programs to improve blast resistance in rice.

This paper presents the deformation of the joined sheet after the clinch-riveting process. The DX51D steel sheet with zinc coating was used. The samples to be joined with clinch riveting technology had a thickness of 1±0.05 mm and 1.5±0.1 mm. The sheet deformation was measured before and after the joining process. The rivet was pressed in the sheets with the same dimension between the rivet axis and three sheet edges: 20, 30 and 40 mm. For fixed segments of the die, from the rivet side close to the rivet, the sheet deformation was greater than that of the area with movable segments. The movement of die sliding element caused more sheet material to flow in the space between the fixed part of the die and movable segments. Hence, the sheet deformation in these places was smaller than for the die fixed element – sheet material was less compressed. For sheets thickness 1.5 mm and width 20 mm, the bulk of the sheet was observed. For a sheets width of 20 mm, it was observed that the deformation of the upper and lower sheets in the area of the rivet is greater than for sheets width of 30 or 40 mm.

Generative artificial intelligence tools are flourishing across various sciences, particularly in the educational domain. ChatGPT, with its versions 3.5 and 4.0, stands out for its multilingual capabilities, catering to both students and educators. This research aimed to evaluate the performance differences between these versions, and importantly, to compare the accuracy of ChatGPT's responses in English versus Arabic. In our study, we presented ChatGPT with 39 chemistry problems related to 6th-7th grade curriculum, including twenty-five open questions and fourteen multiple-choice questions. Each response was categorized as accurate, partially accurate, or inaccurate. Our analysis, focused on trends across versions and languages, revealed significant enhancements in version 4.0, particularly in its ability to process Arabic. However, despite these improvements, our findings indicate that responses in English consistently outperformed those in Arabic in terms of accuracy. In light of this discrepancy, we suggest that ChatGPT either incorporates additional Arabic databases into its training regimen or develops a code that adopts the following strategy to ensure more accurate responses in science education: questions should first be translated from Arabic to English, addressed, and then retranslated into Arabic before being presented to the user. This approach takes advantage of the greater accuracy of responses in English to benefit Arabic-speaking users, and it may also improve outcomes for speakers of other languages who experience less precise answers in the fields of chemistry or science education.

Cytologic diagnosis of extra‐adrenal paraganglioma presenting as a peripancreatic mass is challenging with a high rate of diagnostic error. We present a case of a peripancreatic mass identified by radiology as a gastrointestinal stromal tumor. Endoscopic ultrasound‐guided fine needle aspiration (FNA) of the mass showed a moderately cellular tumor composed of small to medium sized neoplastic cells with round to oval nuclei arranged singly and in loose clusters. The cells were positive for neuroendocrine markers (synaptophysin and chromogranin) and negative for CD117. A diagnosis of a neoplasm with a neuroendocrine tumor (NET) was made on FNA cytology. The subsequent surgical resection of the tumor revealed peripancreatic paraganglioma with immunohistochemistry positive for synaptophysin, chromogranin, and S100. The latter delineates the sustentacular cells. Although paraganglioma is a well recognized tumor, a detailed comparison of peripancreatic paraganglioma versus pancreatic/gastrointestinal NET is still lacking.

Solar pasteurization, as a means of treating milk in remote rural areas without electrical power, is based on using solar energy to thermally inactivate pathogenic microorganisms at temperatures below the boiling point to maintain or improve milk quality. A solar milk pasteurizer of flat‐plate water‐heating glass acting as the solar collector, connected to a stainless-steel cylindrical milk vat, was constructed and evaluated in Navrongo, in the tropical savanna zone of Ghana, West Africa. The novel approach taken in this project is to integrate the solar collection and heat exchanger into a single unit using materials and fabrication techniques readily available in the developing world. The vat comprises a 1.5 mm thick stainless steel cylindrical tank, a 2.2 cm wide hot water jacket, and an outer layer of 5.0 mm thick aluminium foil insulation. Hot water produced by the collector was used for pasteurizing milk. The optimum quantity of milk that this device could pasteurize under the study conditions was 8 L. The device could pasteurize raw milk to a maximum temperature of 74 °C at 14:00 h GMT. The ambient temperature during the pasteurization ranged from 30 °C to 43 °C. The microbial analysis before and after the pasteurization was done, and the result shows that the total bacteria count before pasteurization was 6.6x10⁶ log CFU/mL per unit volume, and the total bacteria count after pasteurization was 1.0x10² log CFU/mL. By acceptable standards, the total bacteria count after pasteurization is within a safe range for consumption, and coliform counts were negative. The solar milk pasteurization system is cost-effective. Hence, it is appropriate for milk producers in arid pastoral areas without electricity to adopt the solar pasteurizer as an alternative to firewood as a fuel source for milk pasteurization. This approach can potentially create a cottage industry that may also play a crucial role as a water treatment technology that will improve the health of rural populations.

FER zeolites has a unique framework structure and acid distribution, and is widely studied as a catalyst for reactions such as n-butene skeletal isomerization and dimethyl ether carbonylation. The BAS located in the 10-MR of FER zeolites serves as the active site for the isomerization reaction of n-butene skeletal to produce isobutene. In contrast, the acid site found in the 8-MR is prone to side reactions, such as polymerization and cracking, which can adversely affect the selectivity of isobutene. This study prepared five types of FER zeolites using different method, inducing Na-form or H-form crystal seeds without organic structure directing agents (OSDAS), using pyridine alone as a template, and combining the seeds with pyridine. The differences in the structure and acid distribution of the five zeolites were investigated, as well as their catalytic performance for the the skeletal isomerization of n-Butene. Experiments and characterization results showed that under hydrothermal synthesis conditions, the FER-PY+SH zeolites synthesized by using both H-form zeolites seeds and pyridine exhibited the highest aluminum concentrations at T1 and T3 positions, along with the greatest BAS of 10-MR. This unique composition contributed to the highest selectivity of isobutene. The FER-PY+SH catalyst was continuously used for 720 hours at 350 ℃, 0.1 MPa, and n-butene mass space velocity of 2.0 h^-1 for three recycles on 2160 h. During this period, the conversion of n-butene over 39%, while the selectivity of isobutene exceeded 95%.The catalyst exhibited excellent stability and activity.

Modern building automation systems implement plenty of advanced control and monitoring functions considering various parameters like users’ activity, lighting, temperature changes etc. Moreover, new solutions based on Internet of Things and cloud services are also being developed for smart buildings to ensure comfort of use, user safety, energy efficiency improvements and integration with smart grids and smart city platforms. Such a wide spectrum of technologies and functions requires a new approach in building automation systems design to provide effective way of their implementation and flexibility during operation. At the same time, in the building design and operation industries, tools based on building information modeling and digital twins are being developed. In this paper, the authors discuss development directions and application areas of these solutions, identifying new trends and possibilities of their use in smart homes and buildings. In particular, the focus is on procedures for selecting automation functions, effective integration, and interoperability of building management systems with Internet of Things considering organization of prediction mechanisms and dynamic functional changes in buildings and smart networks. Chosen solutions and functions should consider the requirements from EN ISO 52120 standard and the guidelines defined for the Smart Readiness Indicator.

The leaves of Nicotiana glauca (Solanaceae) plant, are known for its major cause of health concern. This study investigated the antioxidant activity and polyphenols composition of aerial parts of N.glauca collected from its wild habitat in Jordan, using Methanol-Conventional (MC) and deep eutectic solvents (DESs) extraction methods in addition to nicotine content determination using UHPLC. The results have shown that the MC extract contains fewer total phenols and flavonoid content than the DES extract at ratio of 90% (0.1194 ±0.009 and 0.311± 0.020 mg/mL equivalent to gallic acid) and (0.01084±0.005 and 0.928 ± 0.09 mg/mL equivalent to rutin), respectively. Moreover, the study showed that the MC extract contains 635.07 ppm nicotine compared to the DES extraction method, which contains 1194.91 ppm. Both the MC and the DES extracts exhibited weak antioxidant activities with the highest was 33%inhibition equivalent to ascorbic acid was found for DES at (90%) ratio. The UHPLC-MS/MS analysis revealed the presence of variations in the detected compounds between the two extraction methods used. This study found that en-vironmentally friendly DES extraction of N. glauca produced higher phenol and flavonoid content than MC method, highlighting green chemistry methods' superior efficiency and environmental benefits for extracting valuable phytoconstituents.

Dry Fish is a rich source of proteins and nutrients and can be eaten in many forms. Oman is one of the important fish producers in the world and having high demand in neighboring countries for Oman’s fish. Fishery sector is considered as one of the important economic development sector in sultanate of Oman. In the fishery sector, use of technology is not up to the mark because of less awareness of technology application among Omani fishermen. Also, there is a demand for a greater number of cold storages in different regions to store fresh fishes which is not materialized yet. Similarly, there is a demand of perfect and cheap technology in Oman to dry fishes to improve the profit to the fishermen. Solar energy is abundantly available in Oman and there are high possibilities in Oman to use solar energy in domestic and industrial applications. Since the sunlight is available throughout the year, it is possible to convert in to thermal energy or electrical energy. Electricity can be produced from photovoltaic principle (PV) or indirectly with concentrated solar power. Similarly, we can use solar concentrators for many thermal applications. The solar dryer is a device which is used to dry fruits, vegetables, leaves, clothes etc. If any of the items are dried with the help of solar energy, then we can save lot of non-renewable source of energy and can help to improve economy of the country. The sun can, at least seasonally at Oman’s latitudes, provide a substantial part of the energy needed for various applications. In this work, we used solar dryer to make dry fish with high quality. Use of parabolic type concentrator to dry the fish is an effective solution which is an innovative idea to the fishermen. The temperature variation in dryer is directly proportional to the intensity of solar. The tracking mechanism is a combination of electronic and mechanical design which tracks the sun automatically. In this work, a parabolic concentrator with automatic tracking mechanism was designed and the performance analysis have been done. In the design, copper tubes are used for heat transfer and then the hot fluid is circulated in the box which is used to dry the fishes. As per the experiment, fish drying efficiency obtained from solar dryer is 77.9% and it took 3 days to dry king fish of 20kg. There are many advantages in parabolic type solar concentrators relate to the quality of dryness in the fishes and time taken to dry the fishes which are elaborately discussed in this paper. This solar dryer technology will improve green environment and also will save non-renewable sources of sultanate of Oman for longer period of time.

Fractional cointegration in time series data has been explored by several authors, but panel data applications have been largely neglected. A previous study of ours discovered that the Chen and Hurvich fractional cointegration test for time series was fairly robust to a moderate degree of heterogeneity across sections, out of the six tests considered. Therefore, this paper advances a customized version of the Chen and Hurvich methodology to detect cointegrating connections in panels with unobserved fixed effects. Specifically, we develop a test statistic that accommodates variation in the long-term cointegrating vectors and fractional cointegration parameters across observational units. The behaviour of our proposed test is examined through extensive Monte Carlo experiments under various data generating processes and circumstances. The findings reveal that our modified test performs quite well comparatively and can successfully identify fractional cointegrating relationships in panels even in the presence of idiosyncratic disturbances unique to each cross-sectional unit. Furthermore, the proposed modified test procedure established the presence of long-run equilibrium between the exchange rate and labour wage of 36 countries agricultural markets.

In the world of digital avatars, three-dimensional (3D) human models are utilized to replicate real-world appearance and movements with a higher degree of realism compared to traditional 2D representations. Currently, extensive person-specific data capturing and 3D artists are required to create photorealistic avatars of existing people. Determining the 3D pose and articulation of an avatar from 2D images requires complex algorithms, a capability commonly found in the Visual Effects (VFX) industry but not readily available elsewhere. Hence, this study proposes an approach to generate 3D avatar from a 2D image of a person with uncanny resemblance and an accurate depiction of the subject’s likeness. The proposed approach, PIFu+CycleGAN, combines Pixel-aligned Implicit Function (PIFu) and cycleGAN for textured avatar construction. PIFu is specifically used to capture intricate details and arbitrary topology. Additionally, the hourglass architecture-based module is utilized for T-pose estimation for predicting the initial geometry and shape. Evaluating the proposed approach on the benchmark RenderPeople dataset, it outperforms the state-of-the-art models with values of 1.53 and 1.50 for the Chamfer and P2S distance, respectively. This indicates the creation of high-quality 3D meshes with promising textures, which are of exceptional quality and suitable for animation.

In current study we have obtained Co2FeSi-glass coated microwires with different geometrical aspect ratio, ρ = d/Dtot (diameter of metallic nucleus, d and total diameter, Dtot). The structure and magnetic properties are investigated at a wide range of temperature. XRD analysis illustrates a notable changing in the microstructure by increasing the aspect ratio of Co2FeSi glass coated microwires. Amorphous structure is detected for the sample with the lowest aspect ratio (ρ = 0.23), whereas a growth of crystalline structure is observed in the other samples (aspect ratio ρ = 0.30 and 0.43). This change at the microstructure properties correlates with dramatic changing in magnetic properties. For the sample with the lowest ρ -ratio, non-perfect square loops are obtained with low normalized remanent magnetization. A notable enhancement in the squareness and coercivity are obtained by increasing ρ -ratio. Changing the internal stresses strongly affects the microstructure, resulting in a complex magnetic reversal process. The thermomagnetic curves show large irreversibility for the Co2FeSi with low ρ -ratio. Meanwhile, if we increase the ρ -ratio, the sample shows perfect ferromagnetic behavior without irreversibility. The current result illustrates the ability to control the microstructure and magnetic properties of Co2FeSi-glass-coated microwires by changing only their geometric properties without performing any addition heat treatment. The modification of geometric parameters of Co2FeSi glass-coated microwires allows to obtain microwires which exhibit an unusual magnetization behavior that offers opportunities to understand the phenomena of various types of magnetic domain structures, which is essentially helpful for designing sensing devices based on thermal magnetization switching.

Sustainable development and education in sustainable development (ESD) are crucial and interconnected topics under wide discussion today. Young adults need to be educated in how to help bring about change. Thus, the dynamic relationship between school and home is important. In education, use could be made of English language classes, especially since English is a global language that enables access to the sustainability literature and facilitates discussion in global conferences and meetings. Consequently, English as a foreign language (EFL) students could gain confidence from being able to understand and use the terminology of, for example, sustainability. In this paper, the use of competence-based language teaching (CBLT) is proposed as a means of introducing sustainability topics into EFL writing classes at a university in Saudi Arabia. Students’ competence in sustainable development is therefore considered based on their ability to write about suggested sustainable development topics, measured on a scale for five dimensions of ESD proposed by Michelsen and Fischer (2017). The results demonstrate that the students possessed competence in sustainable development and intended to participate in its implementation. Thus, recommendations are made for the stakeholders in the education sector to include sustainable development topics as an initial offering in the curricula of various specialties using the CBLT approach.

Mosquito-borne diseases (MBDs) are a group of illnesses transmitted by mosquitoes and can be caused by bacteria, viruses, or parasites. These diseases represent a significant global burden of infectious diseases, including morbidity and mortality. This systematic review delves into the multifaceted factors contributing to the spread of mosquito-borne diseases (MBDs) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Following PRISMA guidelines, a thorough analysis of peer-reviewed articles from May 1990 to Jan 2023 was conducted, highlighting the interplay of population, environmental, disease, and mosquito factors in disease transmission and prevalence. The review incorporated 31 studies that revealed a complex relationship between various risk factors and the presence of MBDs. Significant associations were observed with age, certain occupations, environmental conditions such as rainfall and temperature, sanitation practices, specific pathogen variants, clinical symptoms, and Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Conversely, gender, socioeconomic status, educational status, and certain sanitation-related factors showed inconsistent association with the spread of MBDs. The review underscores the need for targeted interventions, including vector control, improved sanitation, and educational campaigns to mitigate the spread of MBDs in the MENA region. This review could guide research studies to address data gaps and assist in developing effective surveillance programs in the MENA region. This work emphasizes the need for region-specific public health strategies and further research to understand and curb the burden of these diseases effectively.

Antibiotics are released into the environment either directly in an unchanged form or in a partially metabolized form. The discharge is usually through untreated waste or industrial treatment effluents. The potential concern is the uptake of these antibiotics by crops irrigated by treated wastewater. This study collected wastewater from eight points at the Pagla, Kadamtali, Dhaka treatment plant. Here we consider three crucial antibiotics, Doxycycline, Ciprofloxacin, and Tetracycline, used mainly during the last two years of the pandemic. A PDA detector was used in high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis to determine the raw and processed effluent antibiotics. The most frequently seen antibiotics in natural wastewater were Doxycycline and Ciprofloxacin, with the highest concentration of 0.23µgL-1and 0.20 µgL-1(raw water), respectively. Tetracycline was not detected in natural water. Contrarily, Doxycycline was discovered in the Pagla plant's completed water and had the highest concentration (0.12 gL-1), whereas Ciprofloxacin and Tetracycline were not found in the dead water. The findings of this study showed that Doxycycline was still present in both the raw and processed effluent. Both natural and finished wastewater was subjected to a microbial-resistant test in the presence of all three antibiotics. The results revealed that the samples detected both heterotrophic bacteria and total coliform. The viable aerobic heterotrophic bacteria ranged between 5.421 and 4.754 log cfu/ml. Total bacteria load gradually decreased in the finished wastewater.

BACKGROUND: Scoliosis is a widespread musculoskeletal disorder of bending and twisting of spine. In this medical ailment, spine curves to the side and even in severe cases it can twist and can take several bends. For the diagnosis and treatment of scoliotic patients, the Cobb’s angle is a critical marker of the body’s curvature. OBJECTIVE: There are many researches that have been conducted to automate the manual measurement of the angle and every investigation has their own limita- tions. METHODS: This paper presents a method for precisely measuring the Cobb’s an- gle using deep learning based techniques. Mainly it comprises of feature enhance- ment of augmented dataset, a bespoke code for landmark estimation on the spine, segmentation model based on the U-Net architecture and a custom code for Cobb’s angle measurement. These measured angles are then compared to the given angles for the segmentation on biomedical (X-ray) images. RESULTS: The findings demonstrate that the proposed technique offers an auto- mated and impartial way for precisely measuring this angle with an overall accu- racy of 97% and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 4.99, which can lower the variability, facilitate early detection, accurate diagnosis, and monitoring of scolio- sis progression. Additionally, it aids in the treatment planning and evaluating treat- ment outcomes. CONTRIBUTION: By leveraging the applications of Cobb’s angle measurement, healthcare professionals can enhance the quality of care and can improve long-term outcomes for individuals with scoliosis.

Osteopetrosis incidence is less than 1:200,000 birth in most populations (Worth, 1963) . It's more common in consanguineous people as it's unusual in two members of the same family. The defined treatment for Osteopetrosis is Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). With a 73% five years disease-free survival in donors. The incidence of Hypertrophic pyloric stenosis is 1 in 300–900 newborns. Hypertrophic pyloric stenosis is due to hypertrophy of the smooth muscle of the pyloric sphincter. The classic age of occurrence is the first few months of life, and the classic presentation is non-bilious projectile vomiting after feeding. We reported a four family members with Osteopetrosis and Pyloric stenosis and their three cousins with Osteopetrosis, which is a very rare presentation and association.

Hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae (hvKp) is a variant that has been increasingly linked to severe, life threatening infections including pyogenic liver abscess and bloodstream infections. HvKp belonging to the capsular serotypes K1 and K2 have been reported worldwide, however very scarce studies are available on the their genomics and virulence. In the current study we report four hypermucoviscous hvKp ESBL clinical strains of capsular serotype K1 and K2 isolated from pus and urine of critically ill patients in tertiary care hospitals in Oman. These strains belong to diverse sequence types (STs) namely ST-23(K1), ST-231(K2), ST-881(K2), and ST-14(K2). To study their virulence, Galleria Mellonella model and resistance to human serum killing were used. The G. mellonella model revealed that the K1/ST-23 isolate is the most virulent as 50% of the larvae died in the first day, followed by isolate K2/ST-231 for which 75% of the larvae died in the second day and isolate K2/ST-14 for which 50% of the larvae died in the second day. Resistance to human serum killing showed there was complete inhibition of bacterial growth of all four isolates by the end of the first hour and up to the third hour. For ST-23(K1), ST-231(K2), ST-881(K2), and ST-14(K2), there was a gradual decrease in the number of colonies up to the second to third hour, which indicates neutralization of bacterial cells by the serum components. However, this was followed by sudden increase of bacterial growth, indicating possible resistance of bacteria against human serum bactericidal activity. Whole genome sequencing (WGS) revealed that hvKp strains display unique genetic arrangement of k-loci. Whole genome SNP-based phylogenetic analysis revealed that these hvKp isolates are phylogenetically distinct, belonging to diverse clades and belong to different STs in comparison to global isolates. This is the first report from Oman detailing the WGS of hvKp clinical isolates and assessing their resistance and virulence genomics, which reinforce our understanding of their epidemiology and dissemination in clinical settings.