Towards a Cloud-Based Ontology for Service Model Security -- Technical Report

The adoption of cloud computing has brought significant advancements in the operational models of businesses. However, this shift also brings new security challenges by expanding the attack surface. The offered services in cloud computing have various service models. Each cloud service model has a defined responsibility divided based on the stack layers between the service user and their cloud provider. Regardless of its service model, each service is constructed from sub-components and services running on the underlying layers. In this paper, we aim to enable more transparency and visibility by designing an ontology that links the provider's services with the sub-components used to deliver the service. Such breakdown for each cloud service sub-components enables the end user to track the vulnerabilities on the service level or one of its sub-components. Such information can result in a better understanding and management of reported vulnerabilities on the sub-components level and their impact on the offered services by the cloud provider. Our ontology and source code are published as an open-source and accessible via GitHub: \href{https://github.com/mohkharma/cc-ontology}{mohkharma/cc-ontology}Comment: 8 page

SALMA: Arabic Sense-Annotated Corpus and WSD Benchmarks

SALMA, the first Arabic sense-annotated corpus, consists of ~34K tokens, which are all sense-annotated. The corpus is annotated using two different sense inventories simultaneously (Modern and Ghani). SALMA novelty lies in how tokens and senses are associated. Instead of linking a token to only one intended sense, SALMA links a token to multiple senses and provides a score to each sense. A smart web-based annotation tool was developed to support scoring multiple senses against a given word. In addition to sense annotations, we also annotated the corpus using six types of named entities. The quality of our annotations was assessed using various metrics (Kappa, Linear Weighted Kappa, Quadratic Weighted Kappa, Mean Average Error, and Root Mean Square Error), which show very high inter-annotator agreement. To establish a Word Sense Disambiguation baseline using our SALMA corpus, we developed an end-to-end Word Sense Disambiguation system using Target Sense Verification. We used this system to evaluate three Target Sense Verification models available in the literature. Our best model achieved an accuracy with 84.2% using Modern and 78.7% using Ghani. The full corpus and the annotation tool are open-source and publicly available at https://sina.birzeit.edu/salma/

ArBanking77: Intent Detection Neural Model and a New Dataset in Modern and Dialectical Arabic

This paper presents the ArBanking77, a large Arabic dataset for intent detection in the banking domain. Our dataset was arabized and localized from the original English Banking77 dataset, which consists of 13,083 queries to ArBanking77 dataset with 31,404 queries in both Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Palestinian dialect, with each query classified into one of the 77 classes (intents). Furthermore, we present a neural model, based on AraBERT, fine-tuned on ArBanking77, which achieved an F1-score of 0.9209 and 0.8995 on MSA and Palestinian dialect, respectively. We performed extensive experimentation in which we simulated low-resource settings, where the model is trained on a subset of the data and augmented with noisy queries to simulate colloquial terms, mistakes and misspellings found in real NLP systems, especially live chat queries. The data and the models are publicly available at https://sina.birzeit.edu/arbanking77

Browning the Fat May Reset the Metabolome: Role of PPAR [gamma] Network of Genes in Obesity and Cardiovascular Diseases

Obesity is a major global health problem; its associated metabolic-induced disorders have been the spotlight of modern life and contemporary research. The quality of fat and its distribution in the fabric of adipose through age and development can influence the overall metabolism in the body. The imbalance in brown fat ratio compared to white fat in the body could be the consequence or the driving force of metabolism associated with inflammation, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and other chronic non- communicable diseases (NCDs), including cancers. In either case, the brown fat is a healthier and likely factor in diverting many metabolic disturbances. This review explores current research emphasizing and elucidating the positive role of brown fat as a possible candidate for enrichment and amelioration in obesity-associated metabolic diseases, including inflammation, diabetes and CVDs. Furthermore, the review tries to gather some specific information on constellation of candidate genes and molecules that play clear roles in browning the fat. With supportive research and educated deductions, this study highlights the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARy) network of gene interactions with transforming growth factor beta (TGF-ß) and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-a) as major performers in metabolic harmony. The cross-talk mediators between such major players are done through many smaller molecules and proteins such as forkhead box protein C2 (FOXC2) and PRDM16 transcriptional regulators and thermogenic genes; uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1) and peroxisome proliferatoractivated receptor gamma coactivator 1-alpha (PGC-1a) regulates thermogenesis and (brown adipose tissue) BAT development. The review concludes that the central metabolome genes of PPARy, TNF-a and TGF-ß are interconnected and that rebooting the PPARy central network of genes will rebalance the storage of fats and its consumption. Several clinical and preclinical studies have demonstrated the beneficial effects of PPAR ligands on various cardiovascular risk factors as well

WojoodNER 2023: The First Arabic Named Entity Recognition Shared Task

We present WojoodNER-2023, the first Arabic Named Entity Recognition (NER) Shared Task. The primary focus of WojoodNER-2023 is on Arabic NER, offering novel NER datasets (i.e., Wojood) and the definition of subtasks designed to facilitate meaningful comparisons between different NER approaches. WojoodNER-2023 encompassed two Subtasks: FlatNER and NestedNER. A total of 45 unique teams registered for this shared task, with 11 of them actively participating in the test phase. Specifically, 11 teams participated in FlatNER, while $8$ teams tackled NestedNER. The winning teams achieved F1 scores of 91.96 and 93.73 in FlatNER and NestedNER, respectively

Assessment of Eating Habits and Lifestyle during Coronavirus Pandemic in the MENA region: A Cross-Sectional Study

© The Authors 2020. The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has rapidly spread globally, forcing countries to apply lockdowns and strict social distancing measures. The aim of this study was to assess eating habits and lifestyle behaviors among residents of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region during the lockdown. A cross-sectional study among adult residents of the MENA region was conducted using an online questionnaire designed on Google Forms during April 2020. A total of 2970 participants from 18 countries participated in the current study. During the pandemic, over 30% reported weight gain, 6.2% consumed five or more meals per day compared to 2.2% before the pandemic (p\u3c0.001), and 48.8% did not consume fruits on daily basis. Moreover, 39.1% did not engage in physical activity, over 35% spent more than five hours per day on screens. A significant association between the frequency of training during the pandemic and the reported change in weight was found (p \u3c 0.001). A significantly higher percentage of participants reported physical and emotional exhaustion, irritability, and tension either all the time or a large part of the time during the pandemic (p \u3c 0.001). Although a high percentage of participants reported sleeping more hours per night during the pandemic, 63% had sleep disturbances. The study highlights that the lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic caused a variety of lifestyle changes, physical inactivity, and psychological problems among adults in the MENA region

Cytochrome allelic variants and clopidogrel metabolism in cardiovascular diseases therapy

Clopidogrel and aspirin are among the most prescribed dual antiplatelet therapies to treat the acute coronary syndrome and heart attacks. However, their potential clinical impacts are a subject of intense debates. The therapeuticefficiencyof clopidogrel iscontrolledby the actions of hepatic cytochrome P450 (CYPs) enzymes and impacted by individual genetic variations. Inter-individual polymorphisms in CYPs enzymes affect the metabolism of clopidogrelintoitsactivemetabolitesand,therefore,modify its turnover and clinical outcome.Sofar, clinical trials failto confirm higher or lower adverse cardiovascular effects in patients treated with combinations of clopidogrel and proton pump inhibitors, compared with clopidogrel alone. Such inconclusive findings may be due to genetic variations in the cytochromes CYP2C19 and CYP3A4/5. To investigate potential interactions/effects of these cytochromes and their allele variants on the treatment of acute coronary syndrome with clopidogrel alone or in combination with proton pump inhibitors, we analyze recent literature and discuss the potential impact of the cytochrome allelic variants on cardiovascular events and stent thrombosis treated with clopidogrel. The diversity of CYP2C19 polymorphisms and prevalence span within various ethnic groups, subpopulations and demographic areas are also debated

Cytochrome allelic variants and clopidogrel metabolismin cardiovascular diseases therapy

Clopidogrel and aspirin are among the most prescribed dual antiplatelet therapies used to treat the acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and heart attacks. However, their potential clinical impacts are a subject of intense debates. The therapeutic efficiency of clopidogrel is controlled by the actions of hepatic cytochrome P450 (CYPs) enzymes and impacted by individual genetic variations. Inter-individual polymorphisms in CYPs enzymes affect the metabolism of clopidogrel into its active metabolites and, therefore, modify its turnover and clinical outcome. So far, clinical trials fail to confirm higher or lower adverse cardiovascular effects in patients treated with combinations of clopidogrel and proton pump inhibitors, compared with clopidogrel alone. Such inconclusive findings may be due to genetic variations in the cytochromes CYP2C19 and CYP3A4/5. To investigate potential interactions/effects of these cytochromes and their allele variants on the treatment of acute coronary syndrome with clopidogrel alone or in combination with proton pump inhibitors, we analyze recent literature and discuss the potential impact of the cytochrome allelic variants on cardiovascular events and stent thrombosis treated with clopidogrel. The diversity of CYP2C19 polymorphisms and prevalence span within various ethnic groups, subpopulations and demographic areas are also debated

EFFECTS OF CAFFEINE, PARACETAMOL AND ΒNAPHTHOFLAVONE ON THE LIPID CONTENT AND DIFFERENTIATION OF HUMAN ADIPOSE DERIVED MESENCHYMAL STEM CELLS IN VITRO

Obesity is a complex multifactorial disorder involving the differentiation of pre-adipocytes to mature adipocytes which is achieved through the process of adipogenesis via interaction with different adipogenic transcription factors and mediators. Many drugs and their interactions has been implicated with the common feature of adipose tissue enlargement through hyperplasia and hypertrophy. Caffeine and Paracetamol are few of the most common used drugs which have been theorized by previous researches to have some influence on the adipogenic process. In our study, we investigated the effects of Caffeine, Paracetamol and β-Naphthoflavone on the differentiation of Human Adipose Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells (HAD-MSC). Cells were cultured in vitro using differentiation inducing media with and without the presence of different combinations of the drugs. Biochemical markers of adipogenesis were evaluated using biochemical assays for triglyceride and glycerol quantification. Our results show that there is an increase of glycerol and triglyceride concentration in cells treated with caffeine suggesting its anti-lipogenesis characteristics through the enhancement of the lipolytic process.Paracetamol also appears to have anti-adipogenic effects due to its apparent role in suppressing the accumulation of triglycerides. In addition, only the use of βNaphthoflavone in combination with caffeine and Paracetamol, resulted in lower triglyceride concentrations than the latter two drugs alone which may indicate its possible enhancing anti-adipogenic properties is through its interaction with the other two drugs

METHYL-CpG-BINDING PROTEIN 2 IS LOCALIZED IN THE POSTSYNAPTIC COMPARTMENT: AN IMMUNOCHEMICAL STUDY OF SUBCELLULAR FRACTIONS

Rett syndrome (RS) is a developmental neurologic disorder characterized by severe cognitive impairment, autistic behavior, stereotypic movements, and frequently also seizures (Naidu, 1997). The disorder is associated in a majority of cases with mutations of the coding region of the gene for methyl-CpG-binding protein 2 (MeCP2) (Shahbazian and Zoghbi, 2001; Hoffbuhr et al., 2001). More recently, other neurologic syndromes different from RS have been reported as associated with MeCP2 mutations (Imessaoudene et al., 2001; Watson et al., 2001; Dotti et al., 2002). Only limited data are available about the expression of MeCP2 in the CNS. These immunochemical studies describe a predominant neuronal compartmentalization (LaSalle et al., 2001; Shahbazian et al., 2002), and a pattern of expression that parallels neuronal differentiation (Akbarian et al., 2001; Shahbazian et al., 2002). Despite this information, and considering that MeCP2 has wide tissue distribution (LaSalle et al., 2001; Shahbazian et al., 2002), it is still unclear why abnormal MeCP2 expression is mainly associated with neurologic dysfunction. Moreover, recent data show that several transcription factors, with expression in the CNS and other organs, may have a unique neuronal distribution characterized by both nuclear and synaptic localizations (Paratcha et al., 2000; Eberwine et al., 2001). For these reasons, we examined MeCP2 expression in normal human neocortex with special emphasis on its subcellular localization