Architecture in Sudan: The Post–Independence Era (1956-1970). Focus on the Work of Abdel Moneim Mustafa

This article is part of a study on the Sudanese social and political context during the formation of the Modern Movement and the manifestations in built form and spatial expression during the period 1900-1970. The study has been on–going for several years and includes a literature search, local surveys (of unpublished and undocumented information) as well as photographs taken by the authors, sourced from architects or published material. It is argued that the Sudanese response to the International Style was in fact early experimentation in critical regionalism. The most notable architectural heritage in Sudan are the archaeological remains at Kerma and Napata as well as the remains of ancient Meroe about 180 km north of Khartoum. These cultures demonstrated sophistication in building materials and construction techniques. Due to climate changes, political changes and religious changes over a large stretch of time (642AD with the signing of the Bagt Treaty–1898 at the demise of the Mahdist era) the qualities of the built environment became more transient and rudimentary in character with a greater focus on manifesting tradition through body images, clothing and rituals that were not necessarily tied to a particular physical location rather than through monuments. With foreign interest in the strategic location of the Sudan, and as a part of the scramble for Africa, came specific stylistic and technical manifestations

Stress and its associated factors among medical students in a public medical faculty, Malaysia

Background: Stress is common among university students. Levels of stress vary between the students of different courses in the university and many factors are associated with it. As compared to other professional courses, medical students are more prone to get depressed because medical education is known to be stressful and very demanding. Materials and Methods: This is a cross-sectional study using a pretested, self-administered questionnaire involving all medical students in academic session 2013/2014. The questionnaire consists of 3 parts; socio-demographic information, family factors and personal factors; Depression, Anxiety and Stress Score 21 questionnaire (DASS 21) and Duke University Religion Index (DUREL). DUREL measures religiosity in 3 scales namely; organized religious activity (ORA), non-organized religious activity (NORA) and intrinsic religiosity (IR). The questionnaire was distributed to all medical students available in FMHS during the data collection period. Data collected were analyzed using IBM SPSS version 21. Result: Of 409 medical students, 329 (80.4%) responded. Most (50.5%) were aged 22 years and above, majority (62.3%) were female students. Respondents were mainly Malay (54.4%) and Muslims (56.8%). Stress prevalence in medical students were 19.8%. Stress prevalence was higher among students aged ≤ 21 years (22.1%), male (20.2%), Indian (24.0%) and Hindus (31.6%),among students with father of primary education level (21.4%), mother of tertiary education level (25%) and low income family (21.4%). Prevalence of stress among students in pre-clinical year (21.4%) and clinical year students (17.9%), p>0.05. Stress among students who did not undergo matriculation course and those who attended were 21.7% and 18.8%, respectively. Proportion of stress students who entered medical school not on their own choice and on their own choice were 24.3% and 18.5%, respectively, p>0.05. Medical students with poor ORA and NORA showed higher proportion of stress (20.2%, 20.6% respectively) however, students with good IR had higher proportion of stress compared to those with poor IR (20.0%, 19.5%, p>0.05). Conclusion: Stress is prevalent among almost one-fifth of medical students, especially those in their pre-clinical years of studies. Students’ involvement in religious activities could be beneficial to prevent stress. Further research is needed to assess the effect of medical training on stress and the effect of religiosity on stress coping

A HYBRIDIZED ENCRYPTION SCHEME BASED ON ELLIPTIC CURVE CRYPTOGRAPHY FOR SECURING DATA IN SMART HEALTHCARE

Recent developments in smart healthcare have brought us a great deal of convenience. Connecting common objects to the Internet is made possible by the Internet of Things (IoT). These connected gadgets have sensors and actuators for data collection and transfer. However, if users' private health information is compromised or exposed, it will seriously harm their privacy and may endanger their lives. In order to encrypt data and establish perfectly alright access control for such sensitive information, attribute-based encryption (ABE) has typically been used. Traditional ABE, however, has a high processing overhead. As a result, an effective security system algorithm based on ABE and Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) is developed to protect health-related data. ABE is a workable option for one-to-many communication and perfectly alright access management of encrypting data in a cloud environment. Without needing to decode the encrypted data, cloud servers can use the FHE algorithm to take valid actions on it. Because of its potential to provide excellent security with a tiny key size, elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) algorithm is also used. As a result, when compared to related existing methods in the literature, the suggested hybridized algorithm (ABE-FHE-ECC) has reduced computation and storage overheads. A comprehensive safety evidence clearly shows that the suggested method is protected by the Decisional Bilinear Diffie-Hellman postulate. The experimental results demonstrate that this system is more effective for devices with limited resources than the conventional ABE when the system’s performance is assessed by utilizing standard model

Tunable Plasmonic Microcapsules with Embedded Noble Metal Nanoparticles for Optical Microsensing

We report a comprehensive investigation of the synthetic conditions leading to the formation of tunable plasmonic microcapsules (MCs) made of a hydrophobic liquid core encapsulated into a hard silica shell embedding plasmonic metallic nanoparticles (NPs). The distinctive and remarkable features of the prepared MCs are the inert nanometer-thin silica shell and the small plasmonic NPs embedded in it, which confer interesting optical absorbance properties. We tie the mechanical robustness of the MCs to the thickness of their silica shell. We show that several oils can be used for the synthesis of MCs and we evidence how the relative solubility of the silica precursor and the polarity of the oil phase influence the final MC characteristics. We also evidence the synthesis of “monoflavor” or “multiflavor” MCs with, respectively, a single type of NPs or a mixture of metallic NPs, respectively, embedded in the silica shell. Using experiments and simulations, we demonstrate that the optical response of the MCs can be finely tuned by choosing the right ratio between Ag and Au NPs initially suspended in the solution. Our heterogeneous hybrid MCs exhibit optical properties directly resulting from the choice of NP composition and shell thickness, making them of great interest not only for mechanical and chemical microsensing but also for applications in photothermal therapy, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy studies, microreactor vesicles for interfacial electrocatalysis, antimicrobial activity, and drug delivery. Our simple and versatile emulsion template method holds great promise for the tailored design of a generation of multifunctional MCs consisting of modular nanoscale building blocks

Colorectal carcinoma associated with schistosomiasis: a possible causal relationship

The association between schistosomiasis and colorectal malignancy has long been suggested in the literature, but it is not uniformly accepted. In the Far East, considerable evidence supports an etiological link between Schistosoma japonicum and colorectal cancer. However, the available data regarding the role of Schistosoma mansoni in colorectal carcinogenesis are conflicting and most often do not show causality. We report on a patient with sigmoid colonic cancer coexisting with schistosomiasis, and we provide a comprehensive review of the literature regarding the epidemiology and pathobiology of this association

Bivariate spline interpolation with optimal approximation order

Let be a triangulation of some polygonal domain f c R2 and let S9 (A) denote the space of all bivariate polynomial splines of smoothness r and degree q with respect to A. We develop the first Hermite-type interpolation scheme for S9 (A), q >_ 3r + 2, whose approximation error is bounded above by Kh4+i, where h is the maximal diameter of the triangles in A, and the constant K only depends on the smallest angle of the triangulation and is independent of near-degenerate edges and nearsingular vertices. Moreover, the fundamental functions of our scheme are minimally supported and form a locally linearly independent basis for a superspline subspace of Sr, (A). This shows that the optimal approximation order can be achieved by using minimally supported splines. Our method of proof is completely different from the quasi-interpolation techniques for the study of the approximation power of bivariate splines developed in [71 and [181

Design and Construction of an Arduino - Based Solar Power Parameter-Measuring System with Data Logger

Accurate monitoring and measurement of solar photovoltaic panel parameters are important for solar power plant analysis to evaluate the performance and predict the future energy generation. There are always challenges of getting such data readily available due to huge amount of money to be spent on state of the art equipment or the purchase of reliable satellite weather data. This study aimed at the development of a cost-effective parameter-measuring system for a solar photovoltaic panel using Arduino microprocessor board. The systems measure five parameters, including voltage, current, light intensity, temperature, and pressure. The hardware circuit was designed to link different sensors with the Arduino board and the measured data were in turn were documented into a computer for further analysis. The accuracy of the constructed device was ascertained by comparing the measured parameters with that of conventional standard measuring instruments which shows good agreement. The measured parameters show that the output energy generation from solar photovoltaic panel largely depends on the solar irradiance and temperatur

Optimization of Furfural Production from Corncobs using p-Toluene Sulphonic Acid

Furfural is a promising renewable platform compound derived from lignocellulosic biomass that can be further converted to bio-based industrial chemicals. About 90% of what is used in Nigeria is imported, translating to hundreds of millions of Dollars in foreign exchange. Hence, this research aim was to optimize the production process of furfural from corncobs, a lignocellulosic biomass using a three steps methods which includes; pretreatment of raw materials, acid hydrolysis and distillation according to standard methods. The corncobs were grind to powdered form and then hydrolysed in a stirred reactor using p-toluene sulphonic acid (p-TsOH) by varying parameters which includes; temperature (60, 65 and 70 oC), reaction time (1, 2 and 3hrs) and concentration (30 ml, 40 ml and 50 ml). Analysis using FTIR was conducted to identify the functional group present in the furfural produced. The results showed yield of furfural increased from 23.66 % to 28 %, and the highest yield of furfural production was obtained using 50 ml p-TsOH at 70 oC for 3 h

LATEST ADVANCES ON SECURITY ARCHITECTURE FOR 5G TECHNOLOGY AND SERVICES

The roll out of the deployment of the 5G technology has been ongoing globally. The deployment of the technologies associated with 5G has seen mixed reaction as regards its prospects to improve communication services in all spares of life amid its security concerns. The security concerns of 5G network lies in its architecture and other technologies that optimize the performance of its architecture. There are many fractions of 5G security architecture in the literature, a holistic security architectural structure will go a long way in tackling the security challenges. In this paper, the review of the security challenges of the 5G technology based on its architecture is presented along with their proposed solutions. This review was carried out with some keywords relating to 5G securities and architecture; this was used to retrieve appropriate literature for fitness of purpose. The 5G security architectures are mojorly centered around the seven network security layers; thereby making each of the layers a source of security concern on the 5G network. Many of the 5G security challenges are related to authentication and authorization such as denial-of-service attacks, man in the middle attack and eavesdropping. Different methods both hardware (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, field programmable logic arrays) and software (Artificial intelligence, Machine learning, Blockchain, Statistical Process Control) has been proposed for mitigating the threats. Other technologies applicable to 5G security concerns includes: Multi-radio access technology, smart-grid network and light fidelity. The implementation of these solutions should be reviewed on a timely basis because of the dynamic nature of threats which will greatly reduce the occurrence of security attacks on the 5G network