Awareness Campaign Against Cell Phone Radiation Hazard: Case Study Oman

AbstractThe fast spread of mobile phone usage is a subject of several polemics in terms of adverse health effect such as cancers, headaches and memory loss as shown by recent research. Cell phone's radiation became one of the most pervasive problems worldwide. With the aim of attracting public attention to this issue and increasing awareness in health's dangers and risks of cell phone radiation a campaign incorporating educational strategies and including a logo and poster design by a student of Dhofar University in Sultanate of Oman was initiated. At the completion of this campaign, a mobile phone's radiation influence on peoples’ health awareness program was developed and implemented through gearing it to the clinics, hospitals, doctor offices, supermarkets and schools

CLINICAL DATA WAREHOUSE: A REVIEW

Clinical decisions are crucial because they are related to human lives. Thus, managers and decision makers inthe clinical environment seek new solutions that can support their decisions. A clinical data warehouse (CDW) is animportant solution that is used to achieve clinical stakeholders’ goals by merging heterogeneous data sources in a centralrepository and using this repository to find answers related to the strategic clinical domain, thereby supporting clinicaldecisions. CDW implementation faces numerous obstacles, starting with the data sources and ending with the tools thatview the clinical information. This paper presents a systematic overview of purpose of CDWs as well as the characteristics;requirements; data sources; extract, transform and load (ETL) process; security and privacy concerns; design approach;architecture; and challenges and difficulties related to implementing a successful CDW. PubMed and Google Scholarare used to find papers related to CDW. Among the total of 784 papers, only 42 are included in the literature review. Thesepapers are classified based on five perspectives, namely methodology, data, system, ETL tool and purpose, to findinsights related to aspects of CDW. This review can contribute answers to questions related to CDW and providerecommendations for implementing a successful CDW

Anticholinesterase activity of endemic plant extracts from Soqotra

A total of 30 chloroform and methanol extracts from the following endemic Soqotran plants Acridocarpus socotranus Olive, Boswellia socotranao Balf.fil, Boswellia elongata Balf. fil., Caralluma socotrana N. Br, Cephalocroton socotranus Balf.f, Croton socotranus Balf. fil.., Dendrosicycos socotrana Balf.f., Dorstenia gigas Schweinf. ex Balf. fil., Eureiandra balfourii Cogn. & Balf. fil., Kalanchoe farinaceae Balf.f, Limonium sokotranum (Vierh) Radcl. Sm), Oldenlandia pulvinata, Pulicaria diversifolia( Balf. and Pulicaria stephanocarpa Balf. were screened for their acetylcholinesterase inhibitory activity by using in vitro Ellman method at 50 and 200 μg/ml concentrations. Chloroform extracts of Croton socotranus, Boswellia socotrana, Dorstenia gigas, and Pulicaria stephanocarpa as well as methanol extracts of Eureiandra balfourii exhibited inhibitory activities higher than 50 % at concentration of 200 μg. At a concentrations of 50 μg, the chloroform extract of Croton socotranus exhibited an inhibition of 40.6 %.Key words: plant extracts, acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, Soqotra, Alzheimer’s diseas

Predicting Student Performance in Higher Education Institutions Using Decision Tree Analysis

The overall success of educational institutions can be measured by the success of its students. Providing factors that increase success rate and reduce the failure of students is profoundly helpful to educational organizations. Data mining is the best solution to finding hidden patterns and giving suggestions that enhance the performance of students. This paper presents a model based on decision tree algorithms and suggests the best algorithm based on performance. Three built classifiers (J48, Random Tree and REPTree) were used in this model with the questionnaires filled in by students. The survey consists of 60 questions that cover the fields, such as health, social activity, relationships, and academic performance, most related to and affect the performance of students. A total of 161 questionnaires were collected. The Weka 3.8 tool was used to construct this model. Finally, the J48 algorithm was considered as the best algorithm based on its performance compared with the Random Tree and RepTree algorithms

A REVIEW ON INTERNET OF THINGS ARCHITECTURE FOR BIG DATA PROCESSING

The importance of big data implementations is increased due to large amount of gathered data via the online gates. The businesses and organizations would benefit from the big data analysis i.e. analyze the political, market, and social interests of the people. The Internet of Things (IoT) presents many facilities that support the big data transfer between various Internet objects. The integration between the big data and IoT offer a lot of implementations in the daily life like GPS, Satellites, and airplanes tracking. There are many challenges face the integration between big data transfer and IoT technology. The main challenges are the transfer architecture, transfer protocols, and the transfer security. The main aim of this paper is to review the useful architecture of IoT for the purpose of big data processing with the consideration of the various requirements such as the transfer protocol. This paper also reviews other important issues such as the security requirements and the multiple IoT applications. In addition, the future directions of the IoT-Big data are explained in this paper

Hybrid information security system via combination of compression, cryptography, and image steganography

Today, the world is experiencing a new paradigm characterized by dynamism and rapid change due to revolutions that have gone through information and digital communication technologies, this raised many security and capacity concerns about information security transmitted via the Internet network. Cryptography and steganography are two of the most extensively that are used to ensure information security. Those techniques alone are not suitable for high security of information, so in this paper, we proposed a new system was proposed of hiding information within the image to optimize security and capacity. This system provides a sequence of steps by compressing the secret image using discrete wavelet transform (DWT) algorithm, then using the advanced encryption standard (AES) algorithm for encryption compressed data. The least significant bit (LSB) technique has been applied to hide the encrypted data. The results show that the proposed system is able to optimize the stego-image quality (PSNR value of 47.8 dB) and structural similarity index (SSIM value of 0.92). In addition, the results of the experiment proved that the combination of techniques maintains stego-image quality by 68%, improves system performance by 44%, and increases the size of secret data compared to using each technique alone. This study may contribute to solving the problem of the security and capacity of information when sent over the internet

‘E-Barter’ Exchanging System: Toward a Smart and Sustainable Community

The developed e-bartering system enables people within a society to exchange surplus goods and items that are not needed without monetary payments and share services and experiences. This bartering system aims at achieving social and environmental goals, such as increasing community cohesion and public benefits and filling individuals’ needs smartly, improving the communal harmony and happiness among society members and achieving more green and sustainable society. From an environmental point of view, the system is conscious of the importance of waste risks to the environment and the importance of reusing items and recycling them. The methodology followed for developing the system was the system development life cycle, where the e-bartering website went through the phases of the planning, analysis, design, and implementation. A short survey was also shared among the community members of the United Arab Emirates as a market research tool to understand people’s willingness to accept this system and use it

RPGR-Related Retinopathy: Clinical Features, Molecular Genetics, and Gene Replacement Therapy

Retinitis pigmentosa GTPase regulator (RPGR) gene variants are the predominant cause of X-linked retinitis pigmentosa (XLRP) and a common cause of cone-rod dystrophy (CORD). XLRP presents as early as the first decade of life, with impaired night vision and constriction of peripheral visual field and rapid progression, eventually leading to blindness. In this review, we present RPGR gene structure and function, molecular genetics, animal models, RPGR-associated phenotypes and highlight emerging potential treatments such as gene-replacement therapy

Evaluation the Oxidative Stress in Patients with Diabetes Mellitus (Type I and Type II) and Study Genetic Level of Glutathione-S-transferase mu 1.

Diabetes mellitus is a group of metabolic diseases. Hyperglycemia in diabetes creates free radicals .These free radicals produce oxidative stress and thus debilitate the endogenous antioxidant defense system. The present study was conducted in (75) diabetic patients, (25) of them were treated with insulin, other (25) were using insulin and metformin and the last (25) were on metformin and glibinclimide .The study also included (25) apparently healthy subjects were taken as control group. These groups were collected from Merjan Teaching Hospital from November 2013 to April 2014. Bothe the (insulin & metformin) and (metformin & glibinclimide groups)groups were highly significant decrease in the total antioxidant when compared with control group ( p ≤0.01)  and no significant difference between them also the results showed insulin group was significant decrease against control (p value = 0.036) . LSD test shows there was no significant difference in glutathione S-transferase activity in three treated groups (p ≥ 0.05). In the gene level of the study, genotyping of glutathione S-transferase mu 1gene by PCR were defined as GSTM1 and GSTM0 or deletion association to the present and absences of the guanine nucleotide in the gene sequence. There was statistically difference in the genotyping distribution and the frequency of   GSTM0 among study groups were 44% for insulin and metformin group, 68% for metformin and glibinclimide, 44% insulin and 28% for control healthy group. Conclusions raised from the present study involve that diabetes mellitus association with decrease total anti-oxidant capacity. Genetic polymorphism of glutathione S-transferase mu 1gene may be considered as risk factor for both types of diabetes mellitus