Copy number variation and expression of exportin-4 associates with severity of fibrosis in metabolic associated fatty liver disease

Background Liver fibrosis risk is a heritable trait, the outcome of which is the net deposition of extracellular matrix by hepatic stellate cell-derived myofibroblasts. Whereas nucleotide sequence variations have been extensively studied in liver fibrosis, the role of copy number variations (CNV) in which genes exist in abnormal numbers of copies (mostly due to duplication or deletion) has had limited exploration. Methods The impact of the XPO4 CNV on histological liver damage was examined in a cohort comprised 646 Caucasian patients with biopsy-proven MAFLD and 170 healthy controls. XPO4 expression was modulated and function was examined in human and animal models. Findings Here we demonstrate in a cohort of 816 subjects, 646 with biopsy-proven metabolic associated liver disease (MAFLD) and 170 controls, that duplication in the exportin 4 (XPO4) CNV is associated with the severity of liver fibrosis. Functionally, this occurs via reduced expression of hepatic XPO4 that maintains sustained activation of SMAD3/SMAD4 and promotes TGF-β1-mediated HSC activation and fibrosis. This effect was mediated through termination of nuclear SMAD3 signalling. XPO4 demonstrated preferential binding to SMAD3 compared to other SMADs and led to reduced SMAD3-mediated responses as shown by attenuation of TGFβ1 induced SMAD transcriptional activity, reductions in the recruitment of SMAD3 to target gene promoters following TGF-β1, as well as attenuation of SMAD3 phosphorylation and disturbed SMAD3/SMAD4 complex formation. Interpretation We conclude that a CNV in XPO4 is a critical mediator of fibrosis severity and can be exploited as a therapeutic target for liver fibrosis

{5-Chloro-2-[(2-hy­droxy­benzyl­idene)amino]­phen­yl}(phen­yl)methanone

The title Schiff base compound, C20H14ClNO2, adopts an E configuration about the azomethine bond. The phenol and chloro­benzene rings form dihedral angles of 84.71 (9) and 80.70 (8)°, respectively, with the phenyl ring and are twisted by 15.32 (8)° with respect to one another. The mol­ecular conformation is stabilized by an intra­molecular O—H⋯N hydrogen bond, which forms an S(6) ring motif. In the crystal, mol­ecules are linked by C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, forming columns parallel to the a axis

UAVs and Blockchain Synergy: Enabling Secure Reputation-based Federated Learning in Smart Cities

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be used as drones’ edge Intelligence to assist with data collection, training models, and communication over wireless networks. UAV use for smart cities is rapidly growing in various industries, including tracking and surveillance, military defense, managing healthcare delivery, wireless communications, and more. In traditional machine learning techniques, an enormous amount of sensor data from UAVs must be shared to central storage to perform model training, which poses serious privacy risks and risks of misuse of information. The federated learning technique (FL), which can be applied to UAVs, is a promising means of collaboratively training a global model while retaining local access to sensitive raw data. Despite this, FL is a significant communication burden for battery-constrained UAVs due to local model training and global synchronization frequency. In this article, we address the major challenges associated with UAV-based FL for smart cities, including single-point failure, privacy leakage, scalability, and global model verification. To tackle these challenges, we present a differentially private federated learning framework based on Accumulative Reputation-based Selection (ARS) for the edge-aided UAV network that utilizes blockchains to prevent single-point failures where we switched from central control to decentralized control, Interplanetary File System (IPFS) for off-chain model storage and their respective hash-keys on-chain to ensure model integrity. Due to IPFS, the size of the blockchain will be reduced, and local differential privacy will be applied to prevent privacy leakages. In the proposed framework, an aggregator will be selected based on its ARS score and model verification by the validators. After most validators approve it, it will be available for use. Several parameters are taken into consideration during evaluation, including accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and time consumption. It also evaluates the number of edge computers vs test accuracy, the number of edge computers vs time consumption for global model convergence, and the number of rounds vs test accuracy. This is done by considering two benchmark datasets: MNIST and CIFAR-10. The results show that the proposed work preserves privacy while achieving high accuracy. Moreover, it is scalable to accommodate many participants

Blood donation among medical students: Knowledge, Attitude and Practices

Introduction The healthy, active and receptive huge student population is potential blood donors to meet safe blood requirements. However, there is a paucity of studies on awareness and attitude among medical students on voluntary blood donation. The objective of this study was to determine the knowledge, attitude and practices about blood donation among medical students in three leading medical colleges of Karachi, Pakistan. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted in three leading medical colleges of Karachi. A total of 599 medical students were interviewed using structured survey questionnaire. Medical students were selected on the basis of convenient non- probability sampling methodology. Chi-square test was used to find differences in knowledge, attitude and practices among medical students of pre-clinical years and clinical years and also among three medical colleges of Karachi. Results: Out of 599 medical students, 98.3% knew that donating blood saves life. However, only 23% of the medical students have ever donated blood in their life. 'Feeling of underweight', 'scared of donating blood', 'parent's prohibition' and 'not asked to donate blood' were the major reasons for not donating blood. 57.2% believed they should always take permission from their parents before donating blood. 82.6% thought in case of emergency, they will be willing to donate blood. 58.7% of student donated blood in post clinical years (Year 3-5), as compared to 41.3% of pre-clinical years (Year 1-2) students and their difference was found to be significant (P <0.01). The proportion of students that donated blood was also highest in private sector Liaquat National Medical college LNMC (41.3%) as compare to public sector Sindh Medical college SMC which was lowest (22.5%) and the difference among all three medical colleges was found to be significant (P<0.001). Conclusion: This study elicits the importance of adopting effective measures in our campuses to motivate about voluntary blood donation among students. Key Words: Knowledge; Attitude; blood donation; Medical students, Pakistansch_podpub2776pu

Blood donation among medical students: Knowledge, Attitude and Practices

Introduction The healthy, active and receptive huge student population is potential blood donors to meet safe blood requirements. However, there is a paucity of studies on awareness and attitude among medical students on voluntary blood donation. The objective of this study was to determine the knowledge, attitude and practices about blood donation among medical students in three leading medical colleges of Karachi, Pakistan. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted in three leading medical colleges of Karachi. A total of 599 medical students were interviewed using structured survey questionnaire. Medical students were selected on the basis of convenient non- probability sampling methodology. Chi-square test was used to find differences in knowledge, attitude and practices among medical students of pre-clinical years and clinical years and also among three medical colleges of Karachi. Results: Out of 599 medical students, 98.3% knew that donating blood saves life. However, only 23% of the medical students have ever donated blood in their life. 'Feeling of underweight', 'scared of donating blood', 'parent's prohibition' and 'not asked to donate blood' were the major reasons for not donating blood. 57.2% believed they should always take permission from their parents before donating blood. 82.6% thought in case of emergency, they will be willing to donate blood. 58.7% of student donated blood in post clinical years (Year 3-5), as compared to 41.3% of pre-clinical years (Year 1-2) students and their difference was found to be significant (P <0.01). The proportion of students that donated blood was also highest in private sector Liaquat National Medical college LNMC (41.3%) as compare to public sector Sindh Medical college SMC which was lowest (22.5%) and the difference among all three medical colleges was found to be significant (P<0.001). Conclusion: This study elicits the importance of adopting effective measures in our campuses to motivate about voluntary blood donation among students. Key Words: Knowledge; Attitude; blood donation; Medical students, Pakistansch_podpub2776pu

Comparative evaluation of PCR success with universal primers of maturase K (matK) and ribulose-1, 5-bisphosphate carboxylase oxygenase large subunit (rbcL) for barcoding of some arid plants

Abstract DNA barcoding is the use of short DNA sequences (~650 bp) of the standard segment of the genome for large scale species identification. The Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL) plant-working group recommended the 2-locus combination of rbcL and matK as the standard plant barcode. These two regions of chloroplast DNA were chosen due to efficient recovery of quality sequences and high levels of species discrimination. We evaluated the success rates of universal primers for amplification of matK and rbcL loci in 26 different plant species (covering 14 families) from Saudi Arabia. Success rate in PCR was higher for rbcL (88%) compared with matK (69%). The universal primers of both matK and rbcL failed to amplify the DNA form 3 plant species belonging to the family Asteraceae (Anthemis deserti, Pulicaria undulate, and Sonchus oleraceus). Two plant species Malva parviflora (Malvaceae) and Salsola imbricate (Chenopodiaceae) indicated different primer binding site (matK) as the amplified PCR products were of lower size than expected for these species. These findings indicate that although currently used universal primers of rbcL and matK are able to amplify many of the plant species they may fail in certain cases due to primer mismatch at the annealing site. Further studies are therefore needed for protocol development, particularly designing of novel universal primers, to extend the barcoding for a broader coverage of plant species

A Simple Method for DNA Extraction from Mature Date Palm Leaves: Impact of Sand Grinding and Composition of Lysis Buffer

Molecular marker techniques have been widely used for cultivar identification of inbred date palms (Phoenix dactylifera L.; Arecaceae) and biodiversity conservation. Isolation of highly pure DNA is the prerequisite for PCR amplification and subsequent use such as DNA fingerprinting and sequencing of genes that have recently been developed for barcoding. To avoid problems related to the preservation and use of liquid nitrogen, we examined sterile sand for grinding the date palm leaves. Individual and combined effects of sodium chloride (NaCl), polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and lithium chloride (LiCl) with the cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) method for a DNA yield of sufficient purity and PCR amplification were evaluated in this study. Presence of LiCl and PVP alone or together in the lysis buffer did not significantly improve the DNA yield and purity compared with the addition of NaCl. Our study suggested that grinding of date palm leaf with sterile sand and inclusion of NaCl (1.4 M) in the lysis buffer without the costly use of liquid nitrogen, PVP and LiCl, provides a DNA yield of sufficient purity, suitable for PCR amplification

TNN-IDS: Transformer neural network-based intrusion detection system for MQTT-enabled IoT Networks

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a global network that connects a large number of smart devices. MQTT is a de facto standard, lightweight, and reliable protocol for machine-to-machine communication, widely adopted in IoT networks. Various smart devices within these networks are employed to handle sensitive information. However, the scale and openness of IoT networks make them highly vulnerable to security breaches and attacks, such as eavesdropping, weak authentication, and malicious payloads. Hence, there is a need for advanced machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL)-based intrusion detection systems (IDS). Existing ML-based IoT-IDSs face several limitations in effectively detecting malicious activities, mainly due to imbalanced training data. To address this, this study introduces a transformer neural network-based intrusion detection system (TNN-IDS) specifically designed for MQTT-enabled IoT networks. The proposed approach aims to enhance the detection of malicious activities within these networks. The TNN-IDS leverages the parallel processing capability of the Transformer Neural Network, which accelerates the learning process and results in improved detection of malicious attacks. To evaluate the performance of the proposed system, it was compared with various IDSs based on ML and DL approaches. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed TNN-IDS outperforms other systems in terms of detecting malicious activity. The TNN-IDS achieved optimum accuracies reaching 99.9% in detecting malicious activities

Smart android based home automation system using internet of things (IoT)

Recently, home automation system has getting significant attention because of the fast and advanced technology, making daily living more convenient. Almost everything has been digitalized and automated. The development of home automation will become easier and more popular because of the use of the Internet of Things (IoT). This paper described various interconnection systems of actuators, sensors to enable multiple home automation implementations. The system is known as HAS (Home automation system). It operates by connecting the robust Application Programming Interface (API), which is the key to a universal communication method. The HAS used devices, often implemented the actuators or sensors that have an upwards communication network followed by HAS (API). Most of the devices of the HAS (home automation system) used Raspberry Pi boards and ESP8285 chips. A smartphone application has been developed that allows users to control a wide range of home appliances and sensors from their smartphones. The application is user-friendly, adaptable, and beneficial for consumers and disabled people. It has the potential to be further extended via the use of various devices. The main objectives of this work are to make our home automation system, more secure and intelligent. HAS is a highly effective and efficient computational system that may be enhanced with a variety of devices and add-ons