A Proposed Style to Rationalize Decision-Making in Public Policy Making in Gulf Cooperation Countries

The approach of this paper is both normative and analytical. The normative aspect intends to present one possible rational approach, i.e., Multigoal Analysis, to address the challenges posed by some types of public policy problems in the Gulf Cooperation Countries and to help provide manageable information on public policy problems to address uncertainty surrounding them. Many important public policy issue areas present considerable challenges to policymakers in the Gulf Cooperation Countries. The traditional economic tools such as cost-benefit analysis (CBO) and cost-effectiveness (CE), emphasize the criteria of efficiency and admit only quantitatively monetized criteria. Therefore they are not suitable for some ill-structured types of public problems encountered by the Gulf Cooperation Countries policymakers because they involve many criteria. Unlike the economic tools, the Multigoal approach integrates economic, social, political, administrative as well as other types of criteria that are important to policymakers in the Gulf Cooperation Countries. Unfortunately, at present policy advisors in the GCC in different areas of ill-structured problems are drawn from economists and business administration specialists who, by their very training, do not consider any criteria beyond efficiency and effectiveness. The analytical side of the paper seeks to review critically in public policy analysis the literature and to analyze the particular political context in the Gulf Cooperation Countries and the types of public problems it produces

Privacy-preserving patient clustering for personalized federated learning

Federated Learning (FL) is a machine learning framework that enables multiple organizations to train a model without sharing their data with a central server. However, it experiences significant performance degradation if the data is non-identically independently distributed (non-IID). This is a problem in medical settings, where variations in the patient population contribute significantly to distribution differences across hospitals. Personalized FL addresses this issue by accounting for site-specific distribution differences. Clustered FL, a Personalized FL variant, was used to address this problem by clustering patients into groups across hospitals and training separate models on each group. However, privacy concerns remained as a challenge as the clustering process requires exchange of patient-level information. This was previously solved by forming clusters using aggregated data, which led to inaccurate groups and performance degradation. In this study, we propose Privacy-preserving Community-Based Federated machine Learning (PCBFL), a novel Clustered FL framework that can cluster patients using patient-level data while protecting privacy. PCBFL uses Secure Multiparty Computation, a cryptographic technique, to securely calculate patient-level similarity scores across hospitals. We then evaluate PCBFL by training a federated mortality prediction model using 20 sites from the eICU dataset. We compare the performance gain from PCBFL against traditional and existing Clustered FL frameworks. Our results show that PCBFL successfully forms clinically meaningful cohorts of low, medium, and high-risk patients. PCBFL outperforms traditional and existing Clustered FL frameworks with an average AUC improvement of 4.3% and AUPRC improvement of 7.8%

Game Theory in Political Science and Public Policy: The Case of the Establishment of the United Arab Emirates

The objective of this article is quasi-experimental. By using the logic of game theory to explain the establishment of the state of the United Arab Emirates, the article intends to test the ability of game theory to explain a pre-played game. Although formal game theory is not susceptible to experimentation, game to political science and public policy is like experiments to psychology. Hence this paper attempts to use the already played game of the establishment of the state of the United Arab Emirates as an experiment to answer the question: is the outcome of this game conforms with game theory modeling. Thus, the article models that game as the Extended Battle of Sexes game and use both the normal and extensive forms to address that question

Modeling, Identification, Validation and Control of a Hybrid Maglev Ball System

In this thesis, the electrodynamics of a single axis hybrid electromagnetic suspension Maglev system was modeled and validated by applying it to a single axis hybrid maglev ball experiment. By exploring its linearized model, it was shown that the single axis hybrid Maglev ball has inherently unstable dynamics. Three control scenarios were explored based on the linearized model; (1) Proportional, Deferential (PD) control, (2) Proportional, Deferential, Integral (PID) and (3) PID controller with pre-filtering. This thesis has shown that a PID controller with a pre-filtering technique can stabilize such a system and provide a well-controlled response. A parametric system identification technique was applied to fit the theoretically derived model to a single axis hybrid maglev ball experiment. It is known that the identified model has different model parameters than the theoretically derived parameters. This thesis has examined and discussed the deviation from the theoretical model. Importantly, it was shown that such a system can be identified by estimating the values of two parameters instead of five to increase the accuracy. A Numerical nonlinear simulation was developed for the experiment based on the theoretically derived and experimentally identified model. This simulation was validated by real-time experiment outputs

Evaluation of Antimalarial Activity of Sesquiterpene Lactones of Wild Sudanese Basil (Ocimum basilicum L.) through Their in vitro Inhibition of Dihydrofolate Reductase (DHFR)

Sudan is one of the countries severely afflicted with malaria. The spread of resistance of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum to currently used antimalarial drugs calls for continued efforts to discover new ones. Basil (Ocimum basilicum L), which grows widely as a rainy season wild annual plant, is used, limitedly though, as one of the folk remedies of malaria in Sudan. In this study, crude ethanol extracts of the leaves of wild basil caused 100%, 79.8% and 49% inhibition of the growth of P. falciparum, at doses of 500, 50 and 5 ?g/ml, respectively, when tested in vitro using RPMI 1640 media. Subsequent work focused on Sesquiterpene lactones present in the ethanol extract of basil, isolated as a group by the method of Harborne (1989) and further separated by preparative TLC, yielding 11 individual compounds. These separated compounds were evaluated for potential antimalarial activity by assaying their in vitro inhibition of dihydrofolate reductase (inhibitors of this enzyme deprive protozoa, as well as bacteria, of reduced folates, carriers of one-carbon fragments required for the biosynthesis of nucleic acids). Inhibition of DHFR was carried out using a commercially available DHFR enzyme (Sigma Co., USA) and spectrophotometrically following the coupled conversion of NADPH to NADP+. Of the eleven compounds, eluted from TLC plates and tested, two were inhibitory to DHFR, resulting in specific activities of 17.2 and 8.7 ?mole/min/mg protein. Further work is underway. Keywords: Antimalarial, Ocimum basilicum, Dihydrofolate reductase inhibitors, Sesquiterpene lactone

Industrial Ethernet Protocols IPv6 enabling approach

The current Internet Protocol (IPv4) made Ethernet with TCP/IP find application in industrial automation environment via Industrial Ethernet Protocols. The question "Can things go smooth in Internet Protocol next generation (IPv6)?". This paper answers the question by proposing solutions and proofing via simulation using OPNET Modeler simulator that IPv6 introduction in industrial automation environment introduces very small (negligible) delay relative to IPv4. Measured delays include: global Ethernet delay, IP node end-to-end delay and delay variation for 72, 520 and 1500 bytes transported packet size. Results showed that IPv6 introduces very small delay relative to IPv4, the various delays increase with increased packet size and IPv6 can be used in industrial automation environment. &nbsp

STUDIES ON THE SUDANESE INDIGENOUS AFRICAN TOAD BUFO SPP. (Amphibia): PARTIAL CHARATERIZATION OF ANTIBACTERIAL PEPTIDES AND PROTEINS OF THE PARATOID GLAND

The parotoid gland secretion of Bufo spp., obtained by manual compression, was found to contain 23.1-41.2% (w/w) of total protein. Gel filtration chromatography showed the existence of four fractions of peptides and proteins responsible for antibacterial activity. Thin layer chromatography showed seven Ninhydrin-positive spots in addition to the origin, in the parotoid gland secretion of Bufo spp. Sodium Dodecyl Sulphate Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis revealed the existence, in the crude secretion, of 2 bands of proteins (P1 and P2) and 2 bands of peptides (P3 and P4) with various molecular weights

IPv6 Applicability in SCADA System Network

     The trend today is to build a secure fault tolerant Internet/Intranet connected distributed SCADA system networks using open and standard software/hardware. This paper made use of advances in Ethernet such as Fast/Gigabit Ethernet, micro-segmentation and full-duplex operation using switches, IPv6 enhanced features and TCP/IP to fulfill the real-time requirements for SCADA system network. OPNET Modeler simulator is used for modeling and simulating the network. The various measured delays showed that IPv6 introduction in such network introduces very small (negligible) delay and shows better performance on applying Quality of Service relative to IPv4. Also it is found that delays increase with increased transported packet size

BALANITES KERNEL OIL FOR THE TREATMENT OF DERMATOPHYTES: A CLINICAL TRIAL

In a previous in vitro study, we have shown that the kernel oil of fruits of the tree Balanites aegyptiaca referred to as Balanites kernel oil ((BKO) is active against dermatophytes (i.e. superficial mycosis, ringworms, tineas (T. captitis, T. cercinata and T. pedis). We report here our clinical trials with BKO. Trials were performed on patients presenting at Wad Medani Dermatology Teaching Hospital as well as primary school children in Elsoreeba Town (5 km south of Wad Medani). Not all patients followed treatment till completely cured. Patients treated with BKO (half of the total) achieved complete cure in 3-5 weeks, on average, while those treated with the standard antifungal drug Miconazole (half of the total patients) did the same in the longer period of 3-8 weeks. Photographs showing progress of response to BKO treatments are included. BKO has great potential for development as a commercial drug for the treatment of dermatophytes