Harnessing Garlic Extract and AI for Sustainable Disease Mitigation in Aquaculture

This comprehensive study delves into alternative and sustainable disease management in aquaculture, particularly in cultured rabbitfish (Siganus rivulatus) susceptible to Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections. Acknowledging the vulnerabilities in conventional veterinary medications and the need for rapid diagnosis, the research investigates the use of raw garlic extract as a dietary supplement alongside machine learning-based diagnostic methodologies. Using histo-biochemical analyses, the study finds that fish treated with garlic extract showed significant resistance to infection without visible signs of lethality. Furthermore, machine learning classifiers achieved an accuracy rate of 97.2% in distinguishing healthy and infected fish. The study thus provides evidence for garlic's potential role as a sustainable antimicrobial agent, and machine learning's efficacy for rapid, accurate diagnosis

Heavy metals accumulation in willows growing on Spolic Technosols from the abandoned Imperina Valley mine in Italy

Human activities such as metals mining and milling operations provide one of the most important sources of contamination in the environment. Abandoned mines can be an important source of toxic elements. The threat of heavy metal pollution posed by mine soils generally concerns more than one metal. The aim of this study was to assess total concentration of six potentially toxic metals (Cd, Cr, Cu, Pb, Zn and Fe) in the soil and plant samples of three dominant willow species (Salix purpurea L., Salix caprea L. and Salix eleagnos Scop.) collected from abandoned mixed sulphide mine dumps (Imperina Valley, North-east Italy).Results demonstrate that metal concentrations in soils are in general above the Italian average limits and they are also significantly (except Cr), as compared with controls (p≤0.05), with averages of 2.12mgCdkg-1, 2267mgCukg-1, 9552mgPbkg-1, 1243mgZnkg-1 and 299,973mgFekg-1. The phytoremediation ability of selected Salix species for heavy metals was estimated. The results have revealed significant differences among willow species (p. ≤. 0.05) regardless of the species selected. The transfer factor and bioaccumulation coefficient of selected metals varied among plant species and from different sites. Some of the investigated species have potential for soil stabilization and extraction of heavy metals. The results indicate that there is an increasing need for further research projects mainly focused on the mechanisms whereby such willows are able to survive in contaminated soil

Heavy metals accumulation in willows growing on Spolic Technosols from the abandoned Imperina Valley mine in Italy

Human activities such as metals mining and milling operations provide one of the most important sources of contamination in the environment. Abandoned mines can be an important source of toxic elements. The threat of heavy metal pollution posed by mine soils generally concerns more than one metal. The aim of this study was to assess total concentration of six potentially toxic metals (Cd, Cr, Cu, Pb, Zn and Fe) in the soil and plant samples of three dominant willow species (Salix purpurea L., Salix caprea L. and Salix eleagnos Scop.) collected from abandoned mixed sulphide mine dumps (Imperina Valley, North-east Italy).Results demonstrate that metal concentrations in soils are in general above the Italian average limits and they are also significantly (except Cr), as compared with controls (p≤0.05), with averages of 2.12mgCdkg-1, 2267mgCukg-1, 9552mgPbkg-1, 1243mgZnkg-1 and 299,973mgFekg-1. The phytoremediation ability of selected Salix species for heavy metals was estimated. The results have revealed significant differences among willow species (p. ≤. 0.05) regardless of the species selected. The transfer factor and bioaccumulation coefficient of selected metals varied among plant species and from different sites. Some of the investigated species have potential for soil stabilization and extraction of heavy metals. The results indicate that there is an increasing need for further research projects mainly focused on the mechanisms whereby such willows are able to survive in contaminated soil

Usable Cryptographic QR Codes

QR codes are widely used in various settings such as consumer advertising, commercial tracking, ticketing and marketing. People tend to scan QR codes and trust their content, but there exists no standard mechanism for providing authenticity and confidentiality of the code content. Attacks such as the redirection to a malicious website or the infection of a smartphone with a malware are realistic and feasible in practice. In this paper, we present the first systematic study of usable state-of-the-art cryptographic primitives inside QR codes. We select standard, popular signature schemes and we compare them based on performance, size and security. We conduct tests that show how different usability factors impact on the QR code scanning performance and we evaluate the usability/security trade-off of the considered signature schemes. Interestingly, we find out that in some cases security breaks usability and we provide recommendations for the choice of secure and usable signature schemes

Evaluating Security, Privacy and Usability Features of QR Code Readers

The widespread of smartphones with advanced capabilities has motivated developers to design new mobile applications that are used as barcode scanners. Although several barcode readers are available, they still have security and privacy limitations. In this paper, we first present a comprehensive and systematic review of barcode reader applications by analyzing their security, privacy and usability features. We categorize these apps into four groups depending on their properties: URLs security, Crypto-based security, Popular applications, and Save-privacy. We also highlight their weaknesses and present design recommendations for usable, secure and privacy-guaranteed scanner applications. Based on our recommendations, we have developed BarSec Driod a proof-of-concept secure barcode reader Android app that exploits some features of other applications and at the same time overcomes their limitations. We have performed a user usability and security survey, on BarSec Driod and two other popular QR code readers, KasperSky and QR Droid Private. The results show that BarSec Driod is easy to use, satisfies the expectations of the users and is secure. Moreover, we have observed that following the design tips, user’s security awareness and usability increase

Evaluating and Comparing the Usability of Mobile Banking Applications in Saudi Arabia

In many countries, the rapid growth of the Internet and mobile technologies has led to the expansion of Internet banking, especially mobile banking. Many banks seek to provide integrated banking services through mobile applications (apps) to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. A quick look at the reviews of the mobile banking apps in Saudi Arabia reveals different usability issues among these apps. This research analyzed, evaluated, and compared the usability of all Saudi mobile banking apps available for the iOS and Android systems. Usability (as defined by ISO 9241) was measured using three criteria—effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. This research also identified and discussed the most critical weaknesses of the Saudi banks’ apps in regard to providing satisfactory solutions to developers. The results showed that the most critical issues existed in the user interfaces and functionality of the apps, especially those that frequently received updates. Furthermore, the lack of customer support made the interaction between banks and customers weak, leading to customer dissatisfaction

Security Threats and Solutions for Two-Dimensional Barcodes: A Comparative Study

A barcode is a graphical image that stores data in special patterns of vertical spaced lines (linear or 1D barcode), or special patterns of vertical and horizontal squares (2D barcode). The encoded data can be retrieved using imaging devices such as barcode scanner machines and smartphones with specific reader applications. 2D barcodes are considered inexpensive tools in business marketing, and several companies are using them to facilitate the post sale follow-up procedure of their products. Many previous studies discussed the potential risks in using 2D barcodes, and proposed different security solutions against barcodes threats. In this paper, we present a comparative study of various attacks to 2D barcodes and of the available protection mechanisms. We highlight the limitations and weaknesses of these mechanisms, and explore their security capabilities. According to our analysis, although many of the available barcode security systems offer cryptographic solutions, they can still have weak points such as the adoption of insecure cryptographic mechanisms. In some cases, cryptographic solutions do not even provide enough detail to evaluate their effective security. We revise potential weaknesses and suggest remedies based on the recommendations from the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA)

Evaluating and Comparing the Usability of Mobile Banking Applications in Saudi Arabia

In many countries, the rapid growth of the Internet and mobile technologies has led to the expansion of Internet banking, especially mobile banking. Many banks seek to provide integrated banking services through mobile applications (apps) to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. A quick look at the reviews of the mobile banking apps in Saudi Arabia reveals different usability issues among these apps. This research analyzed, evaluated, and compared the usability of all Saudi mobile banking apps available for the iOS and Android systems. Usability (as defined by ISO 9241) was measured using three criteria—effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. This research also identified and discussed the most critical weaknesses of the Saudi banks’ apps in regard to providing satisfactory solutions to developers. The results showed that the most critical issues existed in the user interfaces and functionality of the apps, especially those that frequently received updates. Furthermore, the lack of customer support made the interaction between banks and customers weak, leading to customer dissatisfaction

An Empirical Analysis of E-Governments’ Cookie Interfaces in 50 Countries

Cookies have been used by websites to store information about user behavior. Although they provide several benefits, including improving user experience, they can threaten user privacy, particularly when websites use third-party cookies for data analysis. Websites must inform their users about what data are collected and how they are used through the cookie interface. Thus, it is important to understand the effects of cookie interface design on user behavior to verify whether these interfaces provide users with the required information to make an informed decision. In this paper, we evaluated the cookie interfaces of 243 E-Government websites based on well-defined guidelines to understand the critical factors designers should consider when designing cookie interfaces. To evaluate the cookies interfaces’ usability, we selected one of the inspection-based methods called the individual expert review method. The results showed that European websites are more compliant with the adopted guidelines. Surprisingly, more than 50% of the websites did not provide a cookie interface to their users, while more than 40% did not provide a privacy policy. The primary finding of this study is that over 90% of the websites use dark patterns in their interfaces. The study concludes with some recommendations to help in designing a usable privacy interface

OLAWSDS: An Online Arabic Web Spam Detection System

Abstract—For marketing purposes, Some Websites designers and administrators use illegal Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques to optimize the ranking of their Web pages and mislead the search engines. Some Arabic Web pages use both content and link features, to increase artificially the rank of their Web pages in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). This study represents an enhancement to previous work in this field. It includes the design and implementation of an online Arabic Web spam detection system, based on algorithms and mathematical foundations, which can detect the Arabic content and link web spam depending on the tree of the spam detection conditions, beside depending on the user’s feedback through a custom Web browser. The users can participate in making the decision about any Web page, through their feedbacks, so they judge if the Arabic Web pages in the browser are relevant fo