Probiotic Yeast: Mode of Action and Its Effects on Ruminant Nutrition

The main purpose of yeast supplementation is to treat rumen microbial dysbiosis which may enhance the nutrient utilization leading to enhanced animal growth and productivity. Yeast improves rumen ecosystem by two ways: by direct production of digestive enzymes and growth stimulator and by promoting the growth and function of beneficial microbiota. Yeasts have potential to produce metabolites, which stimulate the growth, like rumen acetogens and antimicrobial compounds which inhibit potential pathogens. The yeast probiotic impact on animals depend on different interacting factors including animal breed, supplemented dose, type, diet, strain, physiological stage and feeding system. In the situation of a high feed cost all over the world, probiotic yeast gives a useful nutritional strategy which allows increasing diet digestibility and consequently enhances the performance in ruminants in cost-effective manner. Many yeast culture-based products are commercially available worldwide, but their effectiveness as probiotic dietary supplement in a particular breed is mostly questionable. Therefore, exploration of the new indigenous probiotic strain is of great interest in this context. The probiotic strains of same ecological origin may be more compatible with rumen microbiome giving maximum outputs. Moreover, the breed specific probiotic yeast is an economical and viable option for farmers to overcome the effects of malnutrition

Towards a low complexity scheme for medical images in scalable video coding

Medical imaging has become of vital importance for diagnosing diseases and conducting noninvasive procedures. Advances in eHealth applications are challenged by the fact that Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) requires high-resolution images, thereby increasing their size and the associated computational complexity, particularly when these images are communicated over IP and wireless networks. Therefore, medical research requires an efficient coding technique to achieve high-quality and low-complexity images with error-resilient features. In this study, we propose an improved coding scheme that exploits the content features of encoded videos with low complexity combined with flexible macroblock ordering for error resilience. We identify the homogeneous region in which the search for optimal macroblock modes is early terminated. For non-homogeneous regions, the integration of smaller blocks is employed only if the vector difference is less than the threshold. Results confirm that the proposed technique achieves a considerable performance improvement compared with existing schemes in terms of reducing the computational complexity without compromising the bit-rate and peak signal-to-noise ratio. © 2013 IEEE

Novel one time signatures (NOTS) : a compact post-quantum digital signature scheme

The future of the hash based digital signature schemes appears to be very bright in the upcoming quantum era because of the quantum threats to the number theory based digital signature schemes. The Shor's algorithm is available to allow a sufficiently powerful quantum computer to break the building blocks of the number theory based signature schemes in a polynomial time. The hash based signature schemes being quite efficient and provably secure can fill in the gap effectively. However, a draw back of the hash based signature schemes is the larger key and signature sizes which can prove a barrier in their adoption by the space critical applications, like the blockchain. A hash based signature scheme is constructed using a one time signature (OTS) scheme. The underlying OTS scheme plays an important role in determining key and signature sizes of a hash based signature scheme. In this article, we have proposed a novel OTS scheme with minimized key and signature sizes as compared to all of the existing OTS schemes. Our proposed OTS scheme offers an 88% reduction in both key and signature sizes as compared to the popular Winternitz OTS scheme. Furthermore, our proposed OTS scheme offers an 84% and an 86% reductions in the signature and the key sizes respectively as compared to an existing compact variant of the WOTS scheme, i.e. WOTS +

Impact of supply chain complexity on firm operational performance:The moderating role of supply chain ambidexterity

The increasing complexity in the supply chains (SC) has adverse consequences for businesses. The extant literature is limited in explaining the ways firms in developing economies facing supply chain complexities (SCC), both structural and dynamic, organize themselves to improve firm performance. We adopted SC ambidexterity as a dynamic capability to investigate its influence on the SCC-firm performance. Using empirical data from Pakistan, we employed SEM to evaluate the hypothesis. The outcomes of this study imply that businesses in dynamic settings learn from their experiences and build dynamic capabilities to adapt to the external shocks inherited in complex supply networks

An efficient network intrusion detection and classification system

Intrusion detection in computer networks is of great importance because of its effects on the different communication and security domains. The detection of network intrusion is a challenge. Moreover, network intrusion detection remains a challenging task as a massive amount of data is required to train the state-of-the-art machine learning models to detect network intrusion threats. Many approaches have already been proposed recently on network intrusion detection. However, they face critical challenges owing to the continuous increase in new threats that current systems do not understand. This paper compares multiple techniques to develop a network intrusion detection system. Optimum features are selected from the dataset based on the correlation between the features. Furthermore, we propose an AdaBoost-based approach for network intrusion detection based on these selected features and present its detailed functionality and performance. Unlike most previous studies, which employ the KDD99 dataset, we used a recent and comprehensive UNSW-NB 15 dataset for network anomaly detection. This dataset is a collection of network packets exchanged between hosts. It comprises 49 attributes, including nine types of threats such as DoS, Fuzzers, Exploit, Worm, shellcode, reconnaissance, generic, and analysis Backdoor. In this study, we employ SVM and MLP for comparison. Finally, we propose AdaBoost based on the decision tree classifier to classify normal activity and possible threats. We monitored the network traffic and classified it into either threats or non-threats. The experimental findings showed that our proposed method effectively detects different forms of network intrusions on computer networks and achieves an accuracy of 99.3% on the UNSW-NB15 dataset. The proposed system will be helpful in network security applications and research domains. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

ANALYSIS OF URDU LANGUAGE COLLECTION IN UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES OF LAHORE, PAKISTAN

Mother language and national language play pivotal role in the educational developments of the nations. Much importance is being awarded for the promotion of these languages all over the world as well as inPakistan. National languages are considered as official languages in many of the countries. In this regard recently the Government of Pakistan and courts ruled out the implementation of Urdu as official language. Quantitative research method followed by survey was opted for the completion of this study. Two separate questionnaires were used to get the relevant data from the respondents (Librarians and Students). This study explored library collection (including Urdu language collection) which is in total 1299384 books, 497 journals, 76 magazines, 89 newspapers, 34504 thesis/ dissertations/ projects, 13211 audio/ video (CDs/DVDs) and 18000 other types of collections available cumulatively in the public sector university libraries of the Lahore and also explored that majority of public sector libraries in Lahore have collection in Urdu language on various subjects but a very little in numbers. Change of curricula in English medium; lack of enough space in libraries and availability of similar information in other languages are pointed out as major hurdle for acquisition of the material in Urdu language. Regarding users’ perception it was revealed that they consider the books in Urdu language as more useful for the better understanding of concepts. Regarding satisfaction the users it is found they are satisfied with the availability of collection in Urdu language in their university libraries. The majority of respondents read books in Urdu language for leisure reading while books in English language for their course work

Characterizing the role of vehicular cloud computing in road traffic management

Vehicular cloud computing is envisioned to deliver services that provide traffic safety and efficiency to vehicles. Vehicular cloud computing has great potential to change the contemporary vehicular communication paradigm. Explicitly, the underutilized resources of vehicles can be shared with other vehicles to manage traffic during congestion. These resources include but are not limited to storage, computing power, and Internet connectivity. This study reviews current traffic management systems to analyze the role and significance of vehicular cloud computing in road traffic management. First, an abstraction of the vehicular cloud infrastructure in an urban scenario is presented to explore the vehicular cloud computing process. A taxonomy of vehicular clouds that defines the cloud formation, integration types, and services is presented. A taxonomy of vehicular cloud services is also provided to explore the object types involved and their positions within the vehicular cloud. A comparison of the current state-of-the-art traffic management systems is performed in terms of parameters, such as vehicular ad hoc network infrastructure, Internet dependency, cloud management, scalability, traffic flow control, and emerging services. Potential future challenges and emerging technologies, such as the Internet of vehicles and its incorporation in traffic congestion control, are also discussed. Vehicular cloud computing is envisioned to have a substantial role in the development of smart traffic management solutions and in emerging Internet of vehicles. © The Author(s) 2017

A prospective hospital based study of relation between carotid artery intimal medial thickness in patients with type 1 diabetes

Background: The aim of this study was to found association between Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus and Carotid Arterial Intimal Thickness (CIMT).Methods: Study design: It was a prospective case control hospital-based study. One hundred type 1 diabetes patient between the age group 3-36 years were taken. The association between type 1 diabetes with CIMT was studied. All the measurements were standardized. 50 age and sex matched controls were taken for comparison.Results: There is positive correlation between type 1 diabetes and CIMT (p<0.0001). The correlation further extends between duration of diabetes, glycemic control, age of onset, frequency and severity of diabetic related complication with CIMT.Conclusions: Carotid atherosclerosis as measured by CIMT has definite association with type 1 diabetes

The silver lining of supply chain complexity : Building supply chain resilience and robustness through exploitation and exploration

The study aims to analyze whether the presence of supply chain complexity (SCC) influences firms to improve their supply chain (SC) resilience and SC robustness capability. We also examine an important paradox: if investing in both exploitation and exploration practices is conflicting or complementary in enabling SC resilience and SC robustness in the presence of SCC. We used a survey-based approach to collect 242 useful responses from supply chain professionals of Pakistani firms, an important emerging economy context. The data were analyzed with covariance-based structural equation modelling to statistically validate our model. The analysis reveals several key findings: (a) the presence of SCC has a direct, positive influence on SC resilience and SC robustness; (b) while exploitation practices only partially mediate the nexus between SCC and SC resilience, they fully mediate the relationship between SCC and SC robustness; (c) while exploration practices partially mediate the nexus between SCC and SC resilience, they do not mediate the relationship between SCC and SC robustness; and, (d) SCC has a significant influence on SC resilience and SC robustness sequentially through exploitation and exploration (i.e. one after the other). These findings help to reconcile the exploitation versus exploration paradox in cultivating SC resilience and SC robustness in the presence of SCC. The findings assist SC managers in determining how to deploy their limited resources most effectively to enhance SC resilience and SC robustness while facing SCC. We devise and empirically validate a unique framework that demonstrates how the presence of SCC works as a stimulus to build SC resilience and SC robustness