Application of Technology Acceptance Model on Database Normalizer

Normalization is one of the most important activities in database designing. The good database design is the database that meets user requirements and designed its structure carefully. Therefore, this study focused on developing a database normalization application that helps database designers to perform the normalization process automatically and improves the database designing by avoiding the problems of carrying out normalization manually which has many drawbacks such as time consuming, prone to errors and requires more than one skilled user. The main objective of this study is to develop a database normalizer application to normalize the database tables up to the third normal form (3NF). This study provides a normalization algorithm to perform the 1NF, 2NF, and 3NF automatically based on Microsoft Access and SQL Server databases. Experiment was conducted to check the functionality in performing the normalization process. The experiment result showed that the prototype achieved the result successfully as expected and fulfills the requirements and rules of normalization processes. Moreover, a questionnaire based on the Technology Acceptance Model technique has been adopted to ensure of the prototype level in terms of easiness of use, and satisfaction

Macrodystrophia Lipomatosa of the Finger: A Case Report

Introduction: Macrodystrophia lipomatosa is a rare benign condition characterized by a progressive persistent proliferation of the mesenchymal components and elements, with a disproportionate increase in fibro-adipose tissue. It causes a debilitating functional and psychological effect on the patient and his family. Case presentation: A 25-years-old male patient presented complaining of left middle finger swelling which was painless and progressive in size with no restriction of range of motion. Plain X-ray films of the left hand showed a heterogeneous lobulated soft tissue mass on the volar aspect of the middle finger which was confirmed by MRI scan. Surgery was performed by doing a left middle finger soft tissue excision and diagnosis of Macrodystrophia lipomatosa was confirmed by the histopathology report. Patient was on regular follow up in the clinic with no tumour recurrence and an excellent cosmetic as well as functional result with full finger joints range of motion. Conclusion: Macrodystrophia lipomatosa should be suspected with this kind of presentations. Combination of the clinical history and examination with the aid of radiological assays aided in the diagnosis of this extremely rare case and led to the appropriate management by excising this mass and restoring the normal function of the patient’s hand

Anywhere On-Keyboard Password technique

Traditional authentication technique generally requires an id and password to verify the identity of user.By nature, user is looking for a password that is easy to remember and secured from any attack.However, remembering many complicated passwords, especially when user has different accounts, is not an easy task.Moreover,Traditional technique is still vulnerable to attack such as hidden camera.To overcome these drawbacks, we propose a new password authentication technique called “Anywhere On-Keyboard Password (AOKP)”.The experiment results show that 40% of the spies succeed to catch the password shape but all of them fail to detect the number of the strokes.Therefore, the proposed technique provides more secure and memorable authentication method through changing password from text to mix shape and number of strokes. In addition, it has high level of scalability and simplicity though the freedom of writing the password anywhere on keyboard, password length and language independent

Visible Light Photocatalytic Activity of Ag/WO3 Nanoparticles and its Antibacterial Activity Under Ambient Light and in The Dark

Nanomaterial such as metals and metal oxide photocatalysts have emerged as important tools for removing contaminants from wastewater and as antibacterial agents to prevent infections; this is mainly due to their stability under different irradiation conditions. Herein, the catalytic and antimicrobial activities of nanocrystalline silver (Ag), supported on tungsten oxide (WO3) nanoparticles prepared using the deposition-precipitation synthesis technique, are studied. The synthesized material was characterized as XRD, XPS, TEM, and TEM-EDS to investigate their physio-chemical properties. HRTEM, XPS analysis shows that the photocatalyst has a large sheet-like morphology with well-dispersed small metallic Ag particles (<3 nm) on the WO3 nanoparticle's surface, with most particles near the edges. Ultraviolet–visible spectra analysis observed a large redshift in the absorbing band edge and decreased bandgap energy from 2.6 to 2.1 eV. Photocatalytic analysis at different concentrations of 1% Ag/WO3 under visible light indicated a high degradation efficiency. The largest degradation efficiency of Methylene Blue (MB) under visible light irradiation was (∼80%) in 120 min at 1 g/L catalyst dosage. The photodegradation of MB under visible light as a function of catalyst dose followed the pseudo-first-order kinetics. In addition, the catalyst shows high degradation efficiency and significant dose-dependent inhibition of Gram-negative E. Coli and the Gram-positive S. aureus. Furthermore, the catalyst showed excellent stability and recyclability

Etiological spectrum and treatment outcome of Obstructive jaundice at a University teaching Hospital in northwestern Tanzania: A diagnostic and therapeutic challenges

Obstructive jaundice poses diagnostic and therapeutic challenges to general surgeons practicing in resource-limited countries. This study was undertaken to highlight the etiological spectrum, treatment outcome of obstructive jaundice in our setting and to identify prognostic factors for morbidity and mortality. This was a descriptive prospective study which was conducted at Bugando Medical Centre between July 2006 and June 2010. All patients with a clinical diagnosis of obstructive jaundice were, after informed consent for the study, consecutively enrolled into the study. Data were collected using a pre-tested structured questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS computer software version 11.5. A total of 116 patients were studied. Females outnumbered males by a ratio of 1.3:1. Patients with malignant obstructive jaundice were older than those of benign type. Ca head of pancreas was the commonest malignant cause of jaundice where as choledocholithiasis was the commonest benign cause. Abdominal ultrasound was the only diagnostic imaging done in all patients and revealed dilated intra and extra-hepatic ducts, common bile stones and abdominal masses in 56.2%, 78.9%, 58.1% and 72.4% of the cases respectively. A total of 110 (94.8%) patients underwent surgical treatment and the remaining 6 (5.2%) patients were unfit for surgery. The complication rate was 22.4% mainly surgical site infections. The mean hospital stay and mortality rate were 14.54 days and 15.5% respectively. A low haematocrit and presence of postoperative sepsis were the main predictors of the hospital stay (P < 0.001), whereas age > 60 years, prolonged duration of jaundice, malignant causes and presence of postoperative complications mainly sepsis significantly predicted mortality (P < 0.001). Obstructive jaundice in our setting is more prevalent in females and the cause is mostly malignant. The result of this study suggests that early diagnosis and treatment plays an important role in the prognosis of patients with obstructive jaundice

Cell Encapsulation in Sub-mm Sized Gel Modules Using Replica Molding

For many types of cells, behavior in two-dimensional (2D) culture differs from that in three-dimensional (3D) culture. Among biologists, 2D culture on treated plastic surfaces is currently the most popular method for cell culture. In 3D, no analogous standard method—one that is similarly convenient, flexible, and reproducible—exists. This paper describes a soft-lithographic method to encapsulate cells in 3D gel objects (modules) in a variety of simple shapes (cylinders, crosses, rectangular prisms) with lateral dimensions between 40 and 1000 μm, cell densities of 105 – 108 cells/cm3, and total volumes between 1×10−7 and 8×10−4 cm3. By varying (i) the initial density of cells at seeding, and (ii) the dimensions of the modules, the number of cells per module ranged from 1 to 2500 cells. Modules were formed from a range of standard biopolymers, including collagen, Matrigel™, and agarose, without the complex equipment often used in encapsulation. The small dimensions of the modules allowed rapid transport of nutrients by diffusion to cells at any location in the module, and therefore allowed generation of modules with cell densities near to those of dense tissues (108 – 109 cells/cm3). This modular method is based on soft lithography and requires little special equipment; the method is therefore accessible, flexible, and well suited to (i) understanding the behavior of cells in 3D environments at high densities of cells, as in dense tissues, and (ii) developing applications in tissue engineering

Long Read Alignment with Parallel MapReduce Cloud Platform

Genomic sequence alignment is an important technique to decode genome sequences in bioinformatics. Next-Generation Sequencing technologies produce genomic data of longer reads. Cloud platforms are adopted to address the problems arising from storage and analysis of large genomic data. Existing genes sequencing tools for cloud platforms predominantly consider short read gene sequences and adopt the Hadoop MapReduce framework for computation. However, serial execution of map and reduce phases is a problem in such systems. Therefore, in this paper, we introduce Burrows-Wheeler Aligner’s Smith-Waterman Alignment on Parallel MapReduce (BWASW-PMR) cloud platform for long sequence alignment. The proposed cloud platform adopts a widely accepted and accurate BWA-SW algorithm for long sequence alignment. A custom MapReduce platform is developed to overcome the drawbacks of the Hadoop framework. A parallel execution strategy of the MapReduce phases and optimization of Smith-Waterman algorithm are considered. Performance evaluation results exhibit an average speed-up of 6.7 considering BWASW-PMR compared with the state-of-the-art Bwasw-Cloud. An average reduction of 30% in the map phase makespan is reported across all experiments comparing BWASW-PMR with Bwasw-Cloud. Optimization of Smith-Waterman results in reducing the execution time by 91.8%. The experimental study proves the efficiency of BWASW-PMR for aligning long genomic sequences on cloud platforms

Inaudible Attack on AI Speakers

The modern world does not stand still. We used to be surprised that technology could speak, but now voice assistants have become real family members. They do not simply turn on the alarm clock or play music. They communicate with children, help solving problems, and sometimes even take offense. Since all voice assistants have artificial intelligence, when communicating with the user, they take into account the change in their location, time of day and days of the week, search query history, previous orders in the online store, etc. However, voice assistants, which are part of modern smartphones or smart speakers, pose a threat to their owner’s personal data since their main function is to capture audio commands from the user. Generally, AI smart speakers such as Siri, Google Assistance, Google Home, and so on are moderately harmless. As voice assistants become versatile, like any other product, they can be used for the most nefarious purposes. There are many common attacks that people with bad intentions can use to hack our voice assistant. We show in our experience that a laser beam can control Google Assistance, smart speakers, and Siri. The attacker does not need to make physical contact with the victim’s equipment or interact with the victim; since the attacker’s laser can hit the smart speaker, it can send commands. In our experiments, we achieve a successful attack that allows us to transmit invisible commands by aiming lasers up to 87 m into the microphone. We have discovered the possibility of attacking Android and Siri devices using the built-in voice assistant module through the charging port