Time Complexity of Color Camera Depth Map Hand Edge Closing Recognition Algorithm

The objective of this paper is to calculate the time complexity of the colored camera depth map hand edge closing algorithm of the hand gesture recognition technique. It has been identified as hand gesture recognition through human-computer interaction using color camera and depth map technique, which is used to find the time complexity of the algorithms using 2D minima methods, brute force, and plane sweep. Human-computer interaction is a very much essential component of most people's daily life. The goal of gesture recognition research is to establish a system that can classify specific human gestures and can make its use to convey information for the device control. These methods have different input types and different classifiers and techniques to identify hand gestures. This paper includes the algorithm of one of the hand gesture recognition “Color camera depth map hand edge recognition” algorithm and its time complexity and simulation on MATLAB

Toxicopathological effects of endosulfan in female Japanese Quails (Coturnix japonica)

Background: The current study was planned to investigate the toxico-pathological effects of endosulfan in female Japanese quails.Methods: A total of 120 quail of 4 weeks old were divided into six equal groups (A-F) and administered endosulfan in feed at dose rate of 0, 5, 25, 50, 100, and 500 mg/kg feed, respectively for 90 days. Parameters studied included clinical signs, feed intake, body weight and mortality. Hematology, serum biochemistry, hatchability and fertility were also determined. Gross and microscopic changes on different organs were recorded.Results: The quails of the group B did not show any clinical signs and had significantly lower values of feed intake, testes relative weight and leukocyte number than those of the control group A. The quails of group C and D had mild depression while those of the group E and F showed nervous excitation following ingestion of endosulfan. There was a dose related delay in onset of crowing, appearance of foamy material in the droppings. The feed intake, erythrocyte and leukocyte counts, hematocrit values, and serum total proteins of endosulfan fed quails were significantly (p < 0.05) lower than that of the group A. The total egg production in groups A, B and C was significantly higher from group D, E and F.  The hatchability in group A and B was significantly higher from groups C, D, E and F. The difference of dead in shell % and early dead among different groups was nonsignificant. Infertile egg percentage was significantly higher in group E compared with all other groups except group F. The necrotic changes were observed in all parts of oviduct in high dose groups, similarly necrotic changes and vacuolar degeneration was observed in hepatic parenchyma in high dose groups D-F.Conclusion: It may be concluded that endosulfan leads to dose dependent changes in the quails.Keywords: Body weight; Coturnix japonica; Endosulfan; Haematological values; Histopatholog

Convalescent plasma in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 (RECOVERY): a randomised controlled, open-label, platform trial

SummaryBackground Azithromycin has been proposed as a treatment for COVID-19 on the basis of its immunomodulatoryactions. We aimed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of azithromycin in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19.Methods In this randomised, controlled, open-label, adaptive platform trial (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19Therapy [RECOVERY]), several possible treatments were compared with usual care in patients admitted to hospitalwith COVID-19 in the UK. The trial is underway at 176 hospitals in the UK. Eligible and consenting patients wererandomly allocated to either usual standard of care alone or usual standard of care plus azithromycin 500 mg once perday by mouth or intravenously for 10 days or until discharge (or allocation to one of the other RECOVERY treatmentgroups). Patients were assigned via web-based simple (unstratified) randomisation with allocation concealment andwere twice as likely to be randomly assigned to usual care than to any of the active treatment groups. Participants andlocal study staff were not masked to the allocated treatment, but all others involved in the trial were masked to theoutcome data during the trial. The primary outcome was 28-day all-cause mortality, assessed in the intention-to-treatpopulation. The trial is registered with ISRCTN, 50189673, and ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04381936.Findings Between April 7 and Nov 27, 2020, of 16 442 patients enrolled in the RECOVERY trial, 9433 (57%) wereeligible and 7763 were included in the assessment of azithromycin. The mean age of these study participants was65·3 years (SD 15·7) and approximately a third were women (2944 [38%] of 7763). 2582 patients were randomlyallocated to receive azithromycin and 5181 patients were randomly allocated to usual care alone. Overall,561 (22%) patients allocated to azithromycin and 1162 (22%) patients allocated to usual care died within 28 days(rate ratio 0·97, 95% CI 0·87–1·07; p=0·50). No significant difference was seen in duration of hospital stay (median10 days [IQR 5 to >28] vs 11 days [5 to >28]) or the proportion of patients discharged from hospital alive within 28 days(rate ratio 1·04, 95% CI 0·98–1·10; p=0·19). Among those not on invasive mechanical ventilation at baseline, nosignificant difference was seen in the proportion meeting the composite endpoint of invasive mechanical ventilationor death (risk ratio 0·95, 95% CI 0·87–1·03; p=0·24).Interpretation In patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19, azithromycin did not improve survival or otherprespecified clinical outcomes. Azithromycin use in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 should be restrictedto patients in whom there is a clear antimicrobial indication

The Impact of Lean Practices on Educational Performance: An Empirical Investigation for Public Sector Universities of Malaysia

Education is considered the backbone of any country. Although Malaysia is a growing economy, this growth cannot sustain without education. In the last few decades, this factor has affected negatively, particularly due to the reduction in the budget; public sector universities have suffered significantly. However, various strategies and approaches are available in the literature that can help institutions to tackle the problems by improving efficiency and effectiveness. Lean management is considered as a crucial element for every organization. By applying lean approaches organizations can improve not only the performance for the manufacturing sector but also for service sectors as well. The purpose of the current article is to determine the probable advantages of lean approaches in the public sector of Malaysia. Three approaches were selected for this study, “total quality management (TQM), 5’s services and quick change over”. A questionnaire was adopted and distributed among the public sector universities of Malaysia. Meanwhile, after the screening, 367 responses were considered for data analysis. SPSS version 23 has been used for data analysis. Missing values, outliers, linearity, and normality was assessed before multiple regressions. The results revealed that all three approaches positively and significantly enhanced the educational performance of Malaysia. This study will help the administrators of the universities to understand better how they can reduce their work; build their operations more effectively and efficiently. There is a necessity to examine other approaches and conduct a qualitative study to discover the lean management in the educational system in Malaysi

A secure blockchain-oriented data delivery and collection scheme for 5G-enabled IoD environment

−There are innumerable ways the Internet of Drones (IoD) technology can impact our society. With the deployment of an airborne network, the IoD can support real-time low-cost delivery of services ranging from military surveillance to a myriad of civilian applications. Nevertheless, the drones employ insecure wireless communication channels to communicate with other entities in the system, inhibiting its induction in sensitive installations if insecure or inefficient Authenticated Key Agreement (AKA) schemes are employed. The blockchain, an open distributed ledger-based technology, is increasingly being adopted to address the security concern as discussed. Recently, Bera et al. presented an efficient blockchain-enabled AKA scheme for data management among various entities in IoD network. However, their scheme does not support anonymity and untraceability for the drones; also, it does not provide resistance to Ground station server impersonation attack, while the protocol has a few redundancies. Later, we proposed an enhanced blockchain-enabled AKA scheme BOD5-IOD to authenticate drones in the system. The BOD5-IOD, other than supporting a robust access control mechanism between drones and GSS, also ensures safe transactions among all entities in the IoD environment. The formal analysis and performance evaluation endorse that our scheme supports security requirements with computational and communication efficiency of 34.4% and 23.3%, respectively

SUSIC:A Secure User Access Control mechanism for SDN-enabled IIoT and Cyber Physical Systems

The integration of thriving information and communications technology (ICT) and cyber-physical systems (CPSs) has spawned several innovative applications, such as remote healthcare, smart and intelligent transportation, smart logistics, smart grids, and public safety. An emerging software-defined networks (SDNs) technology further enabled to optimize the communication among Industrial IoT (IIoT) and CPS entities. Nonetheless, the communication on public channel among different IIoT entities in an SDN-enabled environment may be exposed to various security threats due to wireless and insecure communication channels. To counter these security challenges in the way of wider CPS or IIoT adoption, we propose a novel three-factor authenticated key exchange mechanism (SUSIC) for SDN-enabled IIoT ecosystem. The SUSIC enables a registered user to access real-time data from physical IIoT environment directly after having mutual authentication performed through SDN-enabled controller node. The scheme is proved to be secure under rigorous formal and informal security analysis. Moreover, the simulation results and performance evaluation signifies toward achieving a better tradeoff between security functionalities and computational overheads comparatively

Unraveling health risk and speciation of arsenic from groundwater in rural areas of Punjab, Pakistan

This study determined the total and speciated arsenic (As) concentrations and other health-related water quality parameters for unraveling the health risk of As from drinking water to humans. Groundwater samples (n = 62) were collected from three previously unexplored rural areas (Chichawatni, Vehari, Rahim Yar Khan) of Punjab in Pakistan. The mean and median As concentrations in groundwater were 37.9 and 12.7 µg·L−1 (range = 1.5–201 µg·L−1). Fifty three percent groundwater samples showed higher As value than WHO safe limit of 10 µg·L−1. Speciation of As in groundwater samples (n = 13) showed the presence of inorganic As only; arsenite (As(III)) constituted 13%–67% of total As and arsenate (As(V)) ranged from 33% to 100%. For As health risk assessment, the hazard quotient and cancer risk values were 11–18 and 46–600 times higher than the recommended values of US-EPA (i.e., 1.00 and 10−6, respectively). In addition to As, various water quality parameters (e.g., electrical conductivity, Na, Ca, Cl−, NO3−, SO42−, Fe, Mn, Pb) also enhanced the health risk. The results show that consumption of As-contaminated groundwater poses an emerging health threat to the communities in the study area, and hence needs urgent remedial and management measures

Diagnostic accuracy of intraoperative brain smear: A meta-analysis of studies from resource-limited settings

Background: Intraoperative brain smear is an easy, rapid, and cost-effective technique for immediate diagnosis of brain tumors. Earlier studies have gauged its application on a limited number of samples, but its diagnostic accuracy especially in low-resource settings, where its practice would be extremely helpful is still undetermined.Objective: To investigate the diagnostic accuracy of intraoperative brain smear in resource-limited settings for diagnosis of brain tumors.Methods: A systematic search was conducted on PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), and Embase for all articles utilizing intraoperative brain smears that were extracted. Studies from low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) with test performance characteristics were selected and subsequent values were summarized using a hierarchical summary receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve via STATA and pooled using a random-effects model on MetaDiSc 2.0.Results: Twelve studies consisting of 1124 patients were identified. Six studies included both adult and pediatric population groups, while four investigated adults and two included pediatric patients. The pooled diagnostic odds ratio was calculated to be 212.52 (CI: [104.27 - 433.13]) of Bivariable pooled specificity and sensitivity were 92% (CI: [86%-96%]) and 96% (CI: [93%-98%]), respectively.Conclusion: Our study shows that intraoperative brain smear is not only an accurate and sensitive diagnostic modality in resource-rich settings, but it is also equally useful in resource-limited settings, making it an ideal method for rapid diagnosis

A low-cost privacy preserving user access in mobile edge computing framework

The computational offloading from conventional cloud datacenter towards edge devices sprouted a new world of prospective applications in pervasive and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) paradigm, leading to substantial gains in the form of increased availability, bandwidth with low latency. The MEC offers real-time computing and storage facility within the proximity of mobile user-access network, hence it is imperative to secure communication between end user and edge server. The existing schemes do not fulfill real time processing and efficiency requirements for using complex crypto-primitives. To this end, we propose a novel two-factor biometric authentication protocol for MEC enabling efficient and secure combination of Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) with user-oriented biometrics employing fuzzy extractor-based procedures. The performance analysis depicts that our scheme offers resistance to known attacks using lightweight operations and supports 30% more security features than comparative studies. Our scheme is provably secure under Real-or-Random (ROR) formal security analysis model