Transcriptomic profiling of the extremophile eutrema salsugineum response to environmental stressors

Plants are sessile organisms that are constantly exposed to a variety of abiotic and biotic environmental stresses. Some plants are known to be more tolerant to those environmental stressors than others; those are the extremophilic plants. Studying the stress response pathways in such plants is extremely important in developing transgenic crop plants with enhanced tolerance to environmental stresses. Eutrema salsugineum is an extremophilic plant that is known to be resistant to many abiotic stress factors such as drought, cold, salt, and nitrogen deficiency. Experiments were carried out in KAUST by exposing the extremophilic plant to heat stress and exogenous ABA stress. RNA sequencing was done in order to get the transcriptome profile of the plant in response to the stresses. De novo transcriptome assembly was done followed by transcript abundance quantification and normalization using Kallisto. Differential expression analaysis was done to identify the differentially expressed transcripts in response to the different treatments in the shoot and root using the R bioconductor package EdgeR. The transcripts were annotated using EggNOG. The protein coding transcripts were identified by aligning them to the nr protein database using tblastx. Functional analysis of the DE transcripts to get the enriched terms was carried out using DAVID. Trinity de novo assembly produced 49857 genes and 134493 transcripts. Out of the 134493 transcripts, 114692 (85.28%) transcripts had tblastx hits (protein coding). Thus, 19801 potentially non coding or novel transcripts have been identified. A large variety of proteins were found to be differentially expressed depending on the pair-wise comparison. The genes were mainly involved in plant heat and ABA stress, ROS signaling pathway, ROS scavenging, secondary metabolite production, and lipid transfer. Further investigation of the role of secondary metabolites such as flavonoids, and nitrogen and sulfur containing compounds in the abiotic stress response of E. salsugineum is needed since it appears to be a major mechanism used by the plant. The results of this research offer a wide variety of stress related protein in E.salsugineum. Investigation of the over-expression of some of these genes in stress sensitive plants will help in further understanding their functions and mechanisms of action

Primary User Emulation Attacks: A Detection Technique Based on Kalman Filter

Cognitive radio technology addresses the problem of spectrum scarcity by allowing secondary users to use the vacant spectrum bands without causing interference to the primary users. However, several attacks could disturb the normal functioning of the cognitive radio network. Primary user emulation attacks are one of the most severe attacks in which a malicious user emulates the primary user signal characteristics to either prevent other legitimate secondary users from accessing the idle channels or causing harmful interference to the primary users. There are several proposed approaches to detect the primary user emulation attackers. However, most of these techniques assume that the primary user location is fixed, which does not make them valid when the primary user is mobile. In this paper, we propose a new approach based on the Kalman filter framework for detecting the primary user emulation attacks with a non-stationary primary user. Several experiments have been conducted and the advantages of the proposed approach are demonstrated through the simulation results.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figure

Fast Fashion Assessment Tool: A Case Study of a Moroccan Apparel Supply Chain

In order to increase their profit margins and international expansion, many international fashion brands implemented a new supply chain strategy named fast fashion. It is a strategy that aims to rapidly get the trendiest fashion clothes in the stores. Several Moroccan fashion retailers tried to copy the fast fashion business model in order to get a responsive supply chain and a high profit margin. Thus, they need a practical tool to ensure that the fast fashion elements are properly implemented. This paper develops an assessment tool using a maturity evaluation model. This maturity assessment tool has been tested at a Moroccan fast fashion retailer. This pilot test adopted a qualitative research methodology with data collected using semi-structured interviews from a single retailer case operating in Moroccan apparel industry. The fast fashion assessment tool enables fashion retailers managers to have a view of the implementation progression and to eventually locate problems and mobilise other tools and mechanisms to explore them

The Need for Reform of Financial Markets in Times of Crisis in Emerging Economies: The Case of Lebanon

While many countries were confronting immense financial crises, Lebanon was one of the few countries that were able to withstand the dramatic consequences of the crises despite suffering from decades of geopolitical and financial instability. However, the burdened capital structure of Lebanon was overstrained by the incrementing cost of borrowing. The actual beneficiary from the latter financial model was the domestic banking sector. This sponsored the process of attracting customer deposits to be reinvested in the government debt issued by different Lebanese governments for securing the funds needed in financing the process of the development and reconstruction following decades of continuous war and destruction. The Lebanese financial system was abridged by redirecting the investors in the financial sector towards placing their capitals in customer deposit schemes with the domestic banks rather than channeling the capitals towards other economic sectors. In fact, the incentive for the investors was designated in the high yields secured by the reinvestment opportunity in the government debt that has been rising every day to reach historic records while the incentive for the domestic banks remained the conventional scheme of premiums charged for intermediation between the lender and the borrower. The latter process led to increase the concentration risk of customer deposits as liabilities on the balance sheets of the local banks. This research study aims at demonstrating the feasibility of the implementation of a scientific reform by interpreting the recognition of modern investment alternatives for the investors in the Lebanese financial sector while securing the same funding level for the Lebanese government and governing the roles of the sponsoring banks. The study will adopt referenced fundamental and technical interpretation and arguments to emphasize the necessity of launching a new era of investment derived from stimulating the domestic financial market by activating and incentivizing the role of country’s stock exchange

Deep Learning-Based Intrusion Detection System for Advanced Metering Infrastructure

Smart grid is an alternative solution of the conventional power grid which harnesses the power of the information technology to save the energy and meet today's environment requirements. Due to the inherent vulnerabilities in the information technology, the smart grid is exposed to a wide variety of threats that could be translated into cyber-attacks. In this paper, we develop a deep learning-based intrusion detection system to defend against cyber-attacks in the advanced metering infrastructure network. The proposed machine learning approach is trained and tested extensively on an empirical industrial dataset which is composed of several attack categories including the scanning, buffer overflow, and denial of service attacks. Then, an experimental comparison in terms of detection accuracy is conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach with Naive Bayes, Support Vector Machine, and Random Forest. The obtained results suggest that the proposed approaches produce optimal results comparing to the other algorithms. Finally, we propose a network architecture to deploy the proposed anomaly-based intrusion detection system across the Advanced Metering Infrastructure network. In addition, we propose a network security architecture composed of two types of Intrusion detection system types, Host and Network-based, deployed across the Advanced Metering Infrastructure network to inspect the traffic and detect the malicious one at all the levels.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures. 2019 NISS19: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Networking, Information Systems & Securit

Impact of Excess Body Weight on Health-Related Quality of Life Among Adults in Lebanon

The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of excess body weight on Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL). A convenience sample of 320 adults was recruited from different health centers in Lebanon. Body mass index (kg/m2 ) was calculated based on measured weight and height. Participants were divided into three groups: normal-weight (18.5-24.9), overweight (25.0-29.9) and obese (≥30.0). HRQoL was assessed using the Short-Form health survey questionnaire (SF-36). The eight scales as well as the physical (PCS-36) and mental (MCS-36) component summary measures of the SF-36 were calculated and compared statistically among the three groups. The impact of Body Mass Index (BMI) on HRQoL was also examined through linear regressions, adjusting for sociodemographics, health behaviors and presence of chronic diseases. The results show that overweight and obese men reported reduced HRQoL on all physical scales, while overweight/obese women reported impairments on only two subscales: bodily pain and general health perceptions. PCS-36 showed lower scores in the obese and overweight subjects than the reference group. With regard to mental well-being, obese men and women displayed lower scores on vitality, social functioning and mental health subscales compared to the normalweight group. Additionally, MCS-36 showed lower scores in obese subjects. Results from linear regressions revealed significant negative correlations between BMI and both PCS-36 and MCS-36. In conclusion, overweight adults experience significantly worse physical HRQoL, while obese adults suffer from reduced physical and mental HRQoL. This highlights the importance of development and implementation of effective prevention strategies to improve HRQoL among adults with overweight and obesity

Trends and Decomposition Growth Analysis of the Most Important Cereal Crops in Egypt

This research aims to analyze the growth performance of the most important cereal crops of Egypt agriculture (wheat, rice, and maize) and the sources of the production growth of these crops during the period 1975-2017. This analysis is to implement appropriate policies that would enhance the production increase of these crops using component analysis. Based on the results of the Chow Breakpoint test, the study was divided into three periods: 1975-1986, 1987-2000 and 2001-2017, in addition to the full period 1975-2017.The results showed that the growth of wheat, rice and maize production during the study periods depends on changes in yield more than changes in area. So, the study emphasizes that the vertical expansion has a greater impact than the horizontal expansion. This is reflecting the effect of scientific research and development (R&D) on increasing cereal crops in Egypt