Using multidimensional scaling technique in image dimension reduction for satellite image

A satellite multispectral sensor provides data in the form of several spectral image of particular area of the earth under observation. The amount of data by multispectral exhibit high-inter band correlation with redundancy of the information. In this research, we suggested using multidimensional scaling technique as a statistical technique to reduce image dimensions for reconstruction of a new image form multispectral image. The results proved the efficiency of this technique in providing high quality low dimension images based on the value of Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) that was measured to the new image. At the same time, the ability of this technique to reduce dimensions while preserving the basic characteristics of the image has been confirmed

Synthesis, characterization, antimicrobial activity and molecular docking studies of combined pyrazol-barbituric acid pharmacophores

Purpose: To synthesize, and determine the antibacterial activity and binding mode of new pyrazolbarbituric acid derivatives in a search for new antimicrobial agents.Methods: One-pot multi-component reaction of aldehyde derivatives, barbituric acid and 3-methyl-1- phenyl-1H-pyrazol-5(4H)-one in the presence of NHEt2 to afford Michael adduct was carried out. The reaction was carried out in water and afforded new heterocycles in a one-step fashion, with expedient work-up and high yield without extraction and purification steps. The synthesized compounds were evaluated for antimicrobial activity using agar disc diffusion. Molecular docking approach via MOE-Dock program was applied to predict the binding interactions of some of the new pyrazol-barbituric acid derivatives against six different target proteins downloaded from Protein Data Bank.Results: A series of pyrazole-barbituric acid derivatives were successfully synthesized and characterized. The synthesized compounds showed moderate to very good antibacterial activity against S. aureus ATCC 29213 and E. faecalis ATCC29212, as well as also antifungal activity against Candida albicans ATCC 10400Conclusion: A series of pyrazole-barbituric acid derivatives has been synthesized and some of them display antimicrobial activities.Keywords: Pyrazole, Barbituric acid, Pyrazole-barbituric acid derivatives, Antimicrobial activity, Molecular dockin

The global burden of cancer attributable to risk factors, 2010-19 : a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Background Understanding the magnitude of cancer burden attributable to potentially modifiable risk factors is crucial for development of effective prevention and mitigation strategies. We analysed results from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019 to inform cancer control planning efforts globally. Methods The GBD 2019 comparative risk assessment framework was used to estimate cancer burden attributable to behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risk factors. A total of 82 risk-outcome pairs were included on the basis of the World Cancer Research Fund criteria. Estimated cancer deaths and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) in 2019 and change in these measures between 2010 and 2019 are presented. Findings Globally, in 2019, the risk factors included in this analysis accounted for 4.45 million (95% uncertainty interval 4.01-4.94) deaths and 105 million (95.0-116) DALYs for both sexes combined, representing 44.4% (41.3-48.4) of all cancer deaths and 42.0% (39.1-45.6) of all DALYs. There were 2.88 million (2.60-3.18) risk-attributable cancer deaths in males (50.6% [47.8-54.1] of all male cancer deaths) and 1.58 million (1.36-1.84) risk-attributable cancer deaths in females (36.3% [32.5-41.3] of all female cancer deaths). The leading risk factors at the most detailed level globally for risk-attributable cancer deaths and DALYs in 2019 for both sexes combined were smoking, followed by alcohol use and high BMI. Risk-attributable cancer burden varied by world region and Socio-demographic Index (SDI), with smoking, unsafe sex, and alcohol use being the three leading risk factors for risk-attributable cancer DALYs in low SDI locations in 2019, whereas DALYs in high SDI locations mirrored the top three global risk factor rankings. From 2010 to 2019, global risk-attributable cancer deaths increased by 20.4% (12.6-28.4) and DALYs by 16.8% (8.8-25.0), with the greatest percentage increase in metabolic risks (34.7% [27.9-42.8] and 33.3% [25.8-42.0]). Interpretation The leading risk factors contributing to global cancer burden in 2019 were behavioural, whereas metabolic risk factors saw the largest increases between 2010 and 2019. Reducing exposure to these modifiable risk factors would decrease cancer mortality and DALY rates worldwide, and policies should be tailored appropriately to local cancer risk factor burden. Copyright (C) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY 4.0 license.Peer reviewe

Zirconium Sulfate as Catalyst for Biodiesel Production by Using Reactive Distillation

Production of fatty acid esters (biodiesel) from oleic acid and 2-ethylhexanol using sulfated zirconia as solid catalyst for the production of biodiesel was investigated in this work. The parameters studied were temperature of reaction (100 to 130°C), molar ratio of alcohol to free fatty acid (1:1 to 3:1), concentration of catalyst (0.5 to 3%wt), mixing speed (500 to 900 rpm) and types of sulfated zirconia (i.e modified, commercial, prepared catalyst according to literature and reused catalyst). The results show the best conversion to biodiesel was 97.74% at conditions of 130°C, 3:1, 2wt% and 650 rpm using modified catalyst respectively. Also, modified catalyst gave identical results to that of commercial one. Simulation study was adopted from basic principles of reactive distillation and the results were close to an acceptable degree

Inter-Communication Classification for Multi- View Face Recognition

Abstract: In this paper we present a new multi-view face recognition approach. Besides the recognition performance gain and the computation time reduction, our main objective is to deal with the variability of the face pose (multi-view) in the same class (identity). Several new methods were applied on face images to calculate our biometric templates. The Laplacian Smoothing Transform (LST) and Discriminant Analysis via Support Vectors (SVDA) have been used for the feature extraction and selection. For the classification, we have developed a new inter-communication technique using a model for the automatic pose estimation of the head in a face image. Experimental results conducted on UMIST database show that an average improvement for face recognition performance has been obtained in comparison with several multi-view face recognition techniques in the literature. Moreover, the system maintains a very acceptable running time and a high performance even in uncontrolled conditions

Anthropomorphism and Its Negative Attitudes, Sociability, Animacy, Agency, and Disturbance Requirements for Social Robots: A Pilot Study

A social robot that meets the acceptability requirements of the target end-users presents a significant challenge to robot designers. The design process is often iterative and requires continuous improvements and optimization over time. One key aspect in designing an acceptable social robot is anthropomorphism. Social roboticists have developed assessment tools to evaluate different aspects for the perception of the observer. In this study, we evaluated the attitude of children toward four robots with different degrees of anthropomorphic traits. Questionnaires based on the Negative Attitude toward Robots Scale (NARS) and the Human-Robot Interaction Evaluation Scale (HRIES) were used to acquire the responses of 33 participants. To identify any changes due to interactions, a pre-test questionnaire was given prior to the interaction with a robot. It was then followed by a post-test questionnaire. Statistical tests were used to analyze the effects of gender, test (i.e., pre-test vs post-test), and the four robots, on the observers’ perception. Statistical differences were found between the four robots in the subscales of HRIES, namely, Sociability, Animacy, and Disturbance. The preferences of the children were leaning toward the humanoid robot (i.e., Alpha) with the moderate anthropomorphic traits in the Disturbance subscale. Low to moderate correlations were found between the subscales of NARS and HRIES

Trace Attack against Biometric Mobile Applications

With the exponential increase in the dependence on mobile devices in everyday life, there is a growing concern related to privacy and security issues in the Gulf countries; therefore, it is imperative that security threats should be analyzed in detail. Mobile devices store enormous amounts of personal and financial information, unfortunately without any security. In order to secure mobile devices against different threats, biometrics has been applied and shown to be effective. However, biometric mobile applications are also vulnerable to several types of attacks that can decrease their security. Biometric information itself is considered sensitive data; for example, fingerprints can leave traces in touched objects and facial images can be captured everywhere or accessed by the attacker if the facial image is stored in the mobile device (lost or stolen). Hence, an attacker can easily forge the identity of a legitimate user and access data on a device. In this paper, the effects of a trace attack on the sensitivity of biometric mobile applications are investigated in terms of security and user privacy. Experimental results carried out on facial and fingerprint mobile authentication applications using different databases have shown that these mobile applications are vulnerable to the proposed attack, which poses a serious threat to the overall system security and user privacy

New drug target identification in Vibrio vulnificus by subtractive genome analysis and their inhibitors through molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulations

Vibrio vulnificus is a rod shape, Gram-negative bacterium that causes sepsis (with a greater than 50% mortality rate), necrotizing fasciitis, gastroenteritis, skin, and soft tissue infection, wound infection, peritonitis, meningitis, pneumonia, keratitis, and arthritis. Based on pathogenicity V. vulnificus is categorized into three biotypes. Type 1 and type 3 cause diseases in humans while biotype 2 causes diseases in eel and fish. Due to indiscriminate use of antibiotics V. vulnificus has developed resistance to many antibiotics so curing is dramatically a challenge. V. vulnificus is resistant to cefazolin, streptomycin, tetracycline, aztreonam, tobramycin, cefepime, and gentamycin. Subtractive genome analysis is the most effective method for drug target identification. The method is based on the subtraction of homologous proteins from both pathogen and host. By this process set of proteins present only in the pathogen and perform essential functions in the pathogen can be identified. The entire proteome of Vibrio vulnificus strain ATCC 27562 was reduced step by step to a single protein predicted as the drug target. AlphaFold2 is one of the applications of deep learning algorithms in biomedicine and is correctly considered the game changer in the field of structural biology. Accuracy and speed are the major strength of AlphaFold2. In the PDB database, the crystal structure of the predicted drug target was not present, therefore the Colab notebook was used to predict the 3D structure by the AlphaFold2, and subsequently, the predicted model was validated. Potent inhibitors against the new target were predicted by virtual screening and molecular docking study. The most stable compound ZINC01318774 tightly attaches to the binding pocket of bisphosphoglycerate-independent phosphoglycerate mutase. The time-dependent molecular dynamics simulation revealed compound ZINC01318774 was superior as compared to the standard drug tetracycline in terms of stability. The availability of V. vulnificus strain ATCC 27562 has allowed in silico identification of drug target which will provide a base for the discovery of specific therapeutic targets against Vibrio vulnificus