Some Fixed Point Theorems in Fuzzy n-Normed Spaces

The main purpose of this paper is to study the existence of a fixed points in fuzzy n-normed spaces. we proved our main results, a fixed point theorem for a self mapping and a common fixed point theorem for a pair of weakly compatible mappings on fuzzy n-normed spaces. Also we gave some remarks on fuzzy n-normed spaces

Phytochemical composition and biological activity of extracts from Lebanese medicinal plants

The Mediterranean area especially the eastern part including Lebanon, is rich in term of plant biodiversity, including high valuable medicinal plants that are largely used by people as herbal medicine, these plants represent an important source of plant-derived bioactive compounds, besides, there is a need to characterize these compounds, evaluate their bioactivity and clarify scientifically the use of these plant as traditional and alternative medicine, lack of these information may limit their use, by contrast, studying the compositions and bioactivity of these plants may improve their use, discovery of new natural bioactive compounds and finally formulate new plant-based nutraceutical and therapeutically agents. In this context, the aim of my PhD thesis, and as a part of our ongoing program in the medicinal plants filed, was the characterization of a pool of phytochemical compounds with a special focus on polyphenols isolated from different medicinal plants from the Lebanese flora, using analytical tools (as described later in the chapters) including high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled with different detectors such as UV-visible and electrospray ioniziation (ESI) Mass spectrometry (MS), following by the study of their biological activities using different in vitro cellular well-established model for several chronic diseases. The plants that I choose for my study have a significant value in the traditional medicine in Lebanon, where they are employed as a food but also in folk medicine to treat/prevent many illnesses. I employed different cellular models of oxidative stress and related chronic diseases (NAFLD, inflammation and cancer)

Runtime Enforcement for Component-Based Systems

Runtime enforcement is an increasingly popular and effective dynamic validation technique aiming to ensure the correct runtime behavior (w.r.t. a formal specification) of systems using a so-called enforcement monitor. In this paper we introduce runtime enforcement of specifications on component-based systems (CBS) modeled in the BIP (Behavior, Interaction and Priority) framework. BIP is a powerful and expressive component-based framework for formal construction of heterogeneous systems. However, because of BIP expressiveness, it remains difficult to enforce at design-time complex behavioral properties. First we propose a theoretical runtime enforcement framework for CBS where we delineate a hierarchy of sets of enforceable properties (i.e., properties that can be enforced) according to the number of observational steps a system is allowed to deviate from the property (i.e., the notion of k-step enforceability). To ensure the observational equivalence between the correct executions of the initial system and the monitored system, we show that i) only stutter-invariant properties should be enforced on CBS with our monitors, ii) safety properties are 1-step enforceable. Given an abstract enforcement monitor (as a finite-state machine) for some 1-step enforceable specification, we formally instrument (at relevant locations) a given BIP system to integrate the monitor. At runtime, the monitor observes and automatically avoids any error in the behavior of the system w.r.t. the specification. Our approach is fully implemented in an available tool that we used to i) avoid deadlock occurrences on a dining philosophers benchmark, and ii) ensure the correct placement of robots on a map.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1109.5505 by other author

Combining EEG source connectivity and network similarity: Application to object categorization in the human brain

A major challenge in cognitive neuroscience is to evaluate the ability of the human brain to categorize or group visual stimuli based on common features. This categorization process is very fast and occurs in few hundreds of millisecond time scale. However, an accurate tracking of the spatiotemporal dynamics of large-scale brain networks is still an unsolved issue. Here, we show the combination of recently developed method called dense-EEG source connectivity to identify functional brain networks with excellent temporal and spatial resolutions and an algorithm, called SimNet, to compute brain networks similarity. Two categories of visual stimuli were analysed in this study: immobile and mobile. Networks similarity was assessed within each category (intra-condition) and between categories (inter-condition). Results showed high similarity within each category and low similarity between the two categories. A significant difference between similarities computed in the intra and inter-conditions was observed at the period of 120-190ms supposed to be related to visual recognition and memory access. We speculate that these observations will be very helpful toward understanding the object categorization in the human brain from a network perspective.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. Accepted for 2016 IEEE Workshop on Statistical Signal Processin

Students engagement in Open University Malaysia graduate centre (OUM GC): Does information seeking behaviour plays a role?

The objective of this study is to examine the relationships between Information Seeking Behaviour (ISB) and engagement of students in Open University Malaysia Graduate Centre (OUM GC). A literature review was undertaken to develop the instrument. Face-to-face data collection method was adopted. A total of 89 respondents from convenient sampling was analysed to answer the research hypotheses. A factor analysis was performed on the independent variable to manage the items and discover new constructs as a way to contribute to the area of study. The Kaiser Meyer Olkin figure is reported to be 0.77, indicating validity of the model. Cronbach Alpha for all variables are reported to be above 0.70, indicating reliability. There is a relationship between information seeking behaviour and student engagement as designated in the regression model. This paper will also give more information to ODL universities which can help them in their decision making process and ability to allocate resources. (Abstract by authors

The level of awareness among Muslims employees of Felda Palm Industries Sdn Bhd towards Islamic pre-need funeral plan in Kuala Lumpur / Mohamad Sha’hrul Rizal Mohd Khalil

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate the awareness level among Muslims regarding Islamic pre-need funeral service and identify antecedents affecting level of awareness for Islamic pre-need funeral service. Specifically, there are four research objectives: To study awareness level (RO1), to determine any significant difference between gender (RO2), to investigate association between social influence, perception and religiosity with awareness level (RO3) and to identify most influential factor for awareness of Islamic pre-need funeral plan (RO4) Methodology – 105 respondents for Felda Palm Industries Sdn Bhd were selected using stratified random-sampling technique. Questionnaire consists of 2 sections which are demographic and questions on variables: social influence, perception and religiosity and awareness. Descriptive statistics, t-test, correlation and regression are used to answer research objectives. Finding – It is found that awareness level among employees is moderate (RO1). It also found that there is no significant difference between male and female in term of awareness (RO2). Social influence and perception have significant relationship with awareness of Islamic pre-need funeral service (RO3). The results also show that social influence is the most influential factor toward Islamic pre-need funeral service (RO4). Practical Implication – Service provider should realize that media referent and word of mouth play a major role in influencing consumer as social influence for this study has the most impact toward awareness of Islamic pre-need funeral plan. Therefore, they should enhance more advertising and personal selling to create Muslims awareness on Islamic pre-need funeral plan. Keywords – Muslims, Islamic pre-need funeral plan, awareness, social influence, perception, religiosity. Paper Type – Research paper