How can the UAE government best promote a successful national innovation ecosystem?

This thesis aims to develop a framework for the UAE to activate its national innovation ecosystem. The present study was guided by the following research questions: What is the current nature of the national innovation ecosystem that exists in the UAE? What are the main drivers that influence or hinder a sustainable (educational) innovation-based national ecosystem? How can the UAE Government best promote and activate a successful national innovation ecosystem? These questions were answered using qualitative and quantitative methods to gather data about innovation in the UAE. A total of 24 semi-structured interviews were conducted and thematically analysed, representing the qualitative aspect of the study. Then, 207 descriptively analysed surveys were conducted, providing quantitative data. These were used to validate the qualitative findings. An initial draft of the national innovation framework was developed, which was validated through further semi-structured interviews with six influential policymakers from the UAE national ecosystem of innovation. Their input was considered carefully and used to refine the final version of the framework

Geographic Automata Systems and the OBEUS software for their implementation

for their implementation Recently, an automata-based approach to portraying urban systems has been proposed. It is based on the concept of Geographic Automata System (GAS) (Benenson and Torrens 2004). According to the GAS concept, any urban system consists of unitary automata of different types, fixed and non-fixed. Non-unitary urban entities are considered as ensembles of unitary automata that satisfy a predetermined set of predicates. It is shown that the majority, if not all, Cellular Automata and Multi-Agent urban models proposed until now can be reformulated in a GAS framework. In parallel, the above object-based view of urban systems is implemented as a software environment (Benenson, Aronovich et al. 2004). After the first, experi-mental, stage, a user-friendly shareware version of the software (OBEUS) is de-veloped, adjusted to the GAS theory, and presented in the paper. From arbitrarily spatial units to geographic object

Computing Two-Terminal Reliability in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract — Most of the existing techniques for network relia-bility evaluation are based on assumptions that all the nodes are perfect and the communication links are static and irreplaceable. However, these assumptions are not applicable for mobile ad hoc networks because of the rapid changes in connectivity and link characteristics due to nodes ’ mobility. Reliability computations in mobile ad hoc networks should consider the failures of nodes and links in addition to the dynamic of network connectivity caused by nodes ’ mobility. In this paper, we consider the computation of the two-terminal reliability in ad hoc networks by extending the algorithm proposed by Rai et al [1] to handle imperfect nodes and the dynamic network connectivity. The effect of nodes failure rates and the mobility pattern on the two-terminal reliability are presented. I

Spiropyran as a potential molecular diagnostic tool for double-stranded RNA detection

Abstract Background Long double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs) are duplex RNAs that can induce immune response when present in mammalian cells. These RNAs are historically associated with viral replication, but recent evidence suggests that human cells naturally encode endogenous dsRNAs that can regulate antiviral machineries in cellular contexts beyond immune response. Results In this study, we use photochromic organic compound spiropyran to profile and quantitate dsRNA expression. We show that the open form of spiropyran, merocyanine, can intercalate between RNA base pairs, which leads to protonation and alteration in the spectral property of the compound. By quantifying the spectral change, we can detect and quantify dsRNA expression level, both synthetic and cellular. We further demonstrate that spiropyrans can be used as a molecular diagnostic tool to profile endogenously expressed dsRNAs. Particularly, we show that spiropyrans can robustly detect elevated dsRNA levels when colorectal cancer cells are treated with 5-aza-2′-deoxycytidine, an FDA-approved DNA-demethylating agent used for chemotherapy, thus demonstrating the use of spiropyran for predicting responsiveness to the drug treatment. Conclusion As dsRNAs are signature of virus and accumulation of dsRNAs is implicated in various degenerative disease, our work establishes potential application of spiropyrans as a simple spectral tool to diagnose human disease based on dsRNA expression

Tetrazoles: XLIII. Polydentate tetrazole-containing ligands for biomimetic studies

1(2)-Aryl-5-methylsulfonyltetrazoles react with ethylene glycol, di- and triethylene glycols, and tris(2-hydroxyethyl)amine in acetonitrile in the presence of sodium hydroxide to give tetrazole-containing ethers. The products can be used as polydentate ligands for biomimetic studies