Distribution System Power Losses Minimization Using Network Reconfiguration

This paper shows an efficacious approach for the perfect arrangement of a distribution system. To discover the switches best fusion, which outcomes a minimal power loss for the distribution radial configuration. To resolve the non-linear optimization problem here Modified Particle Swarm Optimization (MPSO) technique is projected for the minimization of system power losses. MPSO is an improved Binary Particle Swarm Optimization (BPSO) with modification of particle velocity in search space. To reveal the fitness of the anticipated approach relative investigation of MPSO with other preceding optimization techniques is done. To reconfigure a distribution network system, under base case loading conditions, IEEE 33 bus radial system is used. It is inspected that MPSO executes well as compare to GA, ACA and SPSO in respective of significance of power losses, which are improved and minimized up to 138.9275kW and profile of voltage, which are enhanced and stabilized up to 0.94234 per unit in terms of minimum voltage in the system

Signature-Based Protection from Code Reuse Attacks

Abstract—Code Reuse Attacks (CRAs) recently emerged as a new class of security exploits. CRAs construct malicious programs out of small fragments (gadgets) of existing code, thus eliminating the need for code injection. Existing defenses against CRAs often incur large performance overheads or require extensive binary rewriting and other changes to the system software. In this paper, we examine a signature-based detection of CRAs, where the attack is detected by observing the behavior of programs and detecting the gadget execution patterns. We first demonstrate that naive signature-based defenses can be defeated by introducing special “delay gadgets ” as part of the attack. We then show how a software-configurable signature-based approach can be designed to defend against such stealth CRAs, including the attacks that manage to use longer-length gadgets. The proposed defense (called SCRAP) can be implemented entirely in hardware using simple logic at the commit stage of the pipeline. SCRAP is realized with minimal performance cost, no changes to the software layers and no implications on binary compatibility. Finally, we show that SCRAP generates no false alarms on a wide range of applications.

Implementation of a drive-through testing clinic in Qatar for residents having recently returned from a country with a Covid-19 travel warning

© 2020 Alinier, Morris, Abu, Shaikh, Owen, licensee HBKU Press. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.INTRODUCTION: The spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has caused chaos around the world. At the onset of the virus' detection in the State of Qatar, a free-testing system was rapidly established to invite individuals who had recently returned from countries with a COVID-19 disease travel warning to avoid putting other people at risk. The testing site needed to be accessible to individuals without requiring them to enter the hospital and congregate in a waiting area. The aim of this article is to share our experience with the early implementation of a drive-through testing clinic using the invited person's vehicle as an isolation compartment during screening to minimize person-to-person contamination. METHODS: A Hamad Medical Corporation site was selected to stage a drive-through testing facility to avoid congestion and offer space to facilitate the process. A process was rapidly agreed upon, and staff received the required training regarding infection control measures and documentation. At the testing site, individuals were subjected to the following steps: registration and history taking, temperature measurement, swabbing, and receipt of a sick leave certificate and a flyer about self-quarantine. RESULTS: Over the first six days of implementation, the relevant authorities determined that 687 individuals had to be contacted, 103 attended their testing appointment in that period, and an additional 327 people (close relations of the individuals contacted or individuals contacted but without a health card) also subjected themselves to the testing process, which took a median time of 11 minutes 39 seconds. No individual exhibited symptoms that warranted immediate isolation while they were at the drive-through testing clinic. However, four individuals were diagnosed with COVID-19 following laboratory analysis of the swab taken and followed up. The median time between swab collection and laboratory testing was 13 hours 41 minutes 59 seconds. CONCLUSIONS: Collaboration among various key health, governmental, and travel industry partners was essential to the successful and rapid implementation of a COVID-19 drive-through testing clinic in the early days of the pandemic in Qatar. The general public reacted well to this process. Communication, coordination, and planning were identified as critical factors at every step of the process. It started from the initial call to the travelers who had recently returned from a country with a newly instituted travel warning and concluded by them leaving with their sick leave certificate and an information flyer with reminders about preventative infection control measures and encouraging them to self-quarantine after having been swabbed.Peer reviewe

IFRS Compliance and Nonfinancial Information in Annual Reports of Malaysian Firms

This study analyzes the level of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) compliance practice by the nonfinancial corporations from the different sectors, listed on the main market of Bursa Malaysia. It also analyzes the association between the level of IFRS compliance practice and nonfinancial information like early adoption of IFRS, good corporate governance practice, transparency and disclosure in their annual reports, etc. Research methodology includes content analysis to measure the level of IFRS compliance practice in annual reports of the firms, based on the measurement attributes of disclosure requirements of commonly used 14 IFRS. Multiple regression model estimates the instrumental nonfinancial variables that are accounted for the financial reporting with higher IFRS compliance practice by the firms in Malaysia. The findings highlight that financial reporting with the higher level of IFRS compliance in the annual reports is positively associated with nonfinancial factors like early adoption of IFRS, corporate governance, and transparency and disclosure practice. This study contributes to the evidence of higher IFRS compliance practice by the firms in Malaysia, and reveals the significant role of nonfinancial factors in achieving the mission of full convergence with IFRS in the internationalization of accounting in Malaysia

Association between Helicobacter pylori genotypes and severity of chronic gastritis, peptic ulcer disease and gastric mucosal interleukin-8 levels: evidence from a study in the Middle East

Background: The varied clinical presentations of Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection are most likely due to differences in the virulence of individual strains, which determines its ability to induce production of interleukin-8 (IL-8) in the gastric mucosa. The aim of this study was to examine association between cagA, vacA-s1 and vacA-s2 genotypes of H. pylori and severity of chronic gastritis and presence of peptic ulcer disease (PUD), and to correlate these with IL-8 levels in the gastric mucosa. Methods: Gastric mucosal biopsies were obtained from patients during esophagogastroduodenoscopy. The severity of chronic gastritis was documented using the updated Sydney system. H. pylori cagA and vacA genotypes were detected by PCR. The IL-8 levels in the gastric mucosa were measured by ELISA. Results: H. pylori cagA and/or vacA genotypes were detected in 99 patients (mean age 38.4±12.9; 72 males), of whom 52.5% were positive for cagA, 44.4% for vacA-s1 and 39.4% for vacA-s2; and 70.7% patients had PUD. The severity of inflammation in gastric mucosa was increased with vacA-s1 (p=0.017) and decreased with vacA-s2 (p=0.025), while cagA had no association. The degree of neutrophil activity was not associated with either cagA or vacA-s1, while vacA-s2 was significantly associated with decreased neutrophil activity (p=0.027). PUD was significantly increased in patients with cagA (p=0.002) and vacA-s1 (p=0.031), and decreased in those with vacA-s2 (p=0.011). The level of IL-8 was significantly increased in patients with cagA (p=0.011) and vacA-s1 (p=0.024), and lower with vacA-s2 (p=0.004). Higher levels of IL-8 were also found in patients with a more severe chronic inflammation (p=0.001), neutrophil activity (p=0.007) and those with PUD (p=0.001). Conclusions: Presence of vacA-s1 genotype of H. pylori is associated with more severe chronic inflammation and higher levels of IL-8 in the gastric mucosa, as well as higher frequency of PUD. Patients with vacA-s2 have less severe gastritis, lower levels of IL-8, and lower rates of PUD. The presence of cagA genotype is not associated with the severity of gastritis or IL-8 induction in the gastric mucosa. The association of cagA with PUD may be a reflection of its presence with vacA-s1 genotype

Subnational mapping of HIV incidence and mortality among individuals aged 15–49 years in sub-Saharan Africa, 2000–18 : a modelling study

Background: High-resolution estimates of HIV burden across space and time provide an important tool for tracking and monitoring the progress of prevention and control efforts and assist with improving the precision and efficiency of targeting efforts. We aimed to assess HIV incidence and HIV mortality for all second-level administrative units across sub-Saharan Africa. Methods: In this modelling study, we developed a framework that used the geographically specific HIV prevalence data collected in seroprevalence surveys and antenatal care clinics to train a model that estimates HIV incidence and mortality among individuals aged 15–49 years. We used a model-based geostatistical framework to estimate HIV prevalence at the second administrative level in 44 countries in sub-Saharan Africa for 2000–18 and sought data on the number of individuals on antiretroviral therapy (ART) by second-level administrative unit. We then modified the Estimation and Projection Package (EPP) to use these HIV prevalence and treatment estimates to estimate HIV incidence and mortality by second-level administrative unit. Findings: The estimates suggest substantial variation in HIV incidence and mortality rates both between and within countries in sub-Saharan Africa, with 15 countries having a ten-times or greater difference in estimated HIV incidence between the second-level administrative units with the lowest and highest estimated incidence levels. Across all 44 countries in 2018, HIV incidence ranged from 2 ·8 (95% uncertainty interval 2·1–3·8) in Mauritania to 1585·9 (1369·4–1824·8) cases per 100 000 people in Lesotho and HIV mortality ranged from 0·8 (0·7–0·9) in Mauritania to 676· 5 (513· 6–888·0) deaths per 100 000 people in Lesotho. Variation in both incidence and mortality was substantially greater at the subnational level than at the national level and the highest estimated rates were accordingly higher. Among second-level administrative units, Guijá District, Gaza Province, Mozambique, had the highest estimated HIV incidence (4661·7 [2544·8–8120·3]) cases per 100000 people in 2018 and Inhassunge District, Zambezia Province, Mozambique, had the highest estimated HIV mortality rate (1163·0 [679·0–1866·8]) deaths per 100 000 people. Further, the rate of reduction in HIV incidence and mortality from 2000 to 2018, as well as the ratio of new infections to the number of people living with HIV was highly variable. Although most second-level administrative units had declines in the number of new cases (3316 [81· 1%] of 4087 units) and number of deaths (3325 [81·4%]), nearly all appeared well short of the targeted 75% reduction in new cases and deaths between 2010 and 2020. Interpretation: Our estimates suggest that most second-level administrative units in sub-Saharan Africa are falling short of the targeted 75% reduction in new cases and deaths by 2020, which is further compounded by substantial within-country variability. These estimates will help decision makers and programme implementers expand access to ART and better target health resources to higher burden subnational areas

Burnout among surgeons before and during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: an international survey

Background: SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has had many significant impacts within the surgical realm, and surgeons have been obligated to reconsider almost every aspect of daily clinical practice. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study reported in compliance with the CHERRIES guidelines and conducted through an online platform from June 14th to July 15th, 2020. The primary outcome was the burden of burnout during the pandemic indicated by the validated Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure. Results: Nine hundred fifty-four surgeons completed the survey. The median length of practice was 10 years; 78.2% included were male with a median age of 37 years old, 39.5% were consultants, 68.9% were general surgeons, and 55.7% were affiliated with an academic institution. Overall, there was a significant increase in the mean burnout score during the pandemic; longer years of practice and older age were significantly associated with less burnout. There were significant reductions in the median number of outpatient visits, operated cases, on-call hours, emergency visits, and research work, so, 48.2% of respondents felt that the training resources were insufficient. The majority (81.3%) of respondents reported that their hospitals were included in the management of COVID-19, 66.5% felt their roles had been minimized; 41% were asked to assist in non-surgical medical practices, and 37.6% of respondents were included in COVID-19 management. Conclusions: There was a significant burnout among trainees. Almost all aspects of clinical and research activities were affected with a significant reduction in the volume of research, outpatient clinic visits, surgical procedures, on-call hours, and emergency cases hindering the training. Trial registration: The study was registered on clicaltrials.gov "NCT04433286" on 16/06/2020

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Apoptosis induced anticancer potential of aspirin on A549 Carcinoma Cell

Recent research has discovered that using aspirin for a long time lowers the long-term risk of certain cancers, particularly colon cancer. However, the mechanism of anti-cancerous activity of aspirin against lung cancer is less studied. A molecular docking strategy was employed to identify the possible targets of aspirin while5-Fluorouracil (5-FU) was used as a positive control against lung cancer cell line A459. The In-silico analysis suggested that Caspase-3, Bax, andBcl-2could be potential targets for aspirin. The estimation of binding energies for these proteins resulted in -5.2, -5.8, and -5.7 Kcal/mol, respectively, which were better than 5FU (-4.8, -4.6, and -4.4, respectively).Trypan blues dye exclusion test exhibited a reduction in cell viability with the increase in Aspirin concentration. The IC50 values of Aspirin were calculated as 2.79 mM by MTT assay. The treatment of A459 cells with aspirin enhanced the levels of apoptotic genes at mRNA as well as at protein levels. The effect on the A549 lung cancer cell line, this study contributes to a better understanding of how Aspirin and 5-FU work in lung cancer