E-learning adoption in higher education in Jordan: vision, reality and change

This paper discusses the implementation of an e-learning program at a Jordanian University (Al-Ahliyya Amman University). The program originally aimed to establish a virtual university which offers totally online courses but due to a number of reasons there had to be some changes in the implementation process. The paper discusses such changes and challenges faced by AAU in implementing its e-learning program from an IS project management point of view. Findings suggest that implementing such projects needs careful consideration of a variety of issues to ensure that the objectives are achieved. The case provides rich insights to other educational institutions wishing to implement such projects

Dynein Light Chain 1 (DYNLT1) interacts with normal and oncogenic nucleoporins

<div><p>The chimeric oncoprotein NUP98-HOXA9 results from the t(7;11)(p15;p15) chromosomal translocation and is associated with acute myeloid leukemia. It causes aberrant gene regulation and leukemic transformation through mechanisms that are not fully understood. NUP98-HOXA9 consists of an N-terminal portion of the nucleoporin NUP98 that contains many FG repeats fused to the DNA-binding homeodomain of HOXA9. We used a Cytotrap yeast two-hybrid assay to identify proteins that interact with NUP98-HOXA9. We identified Dynein Light Chain 1 (DYNLT1), an integral 14 KDa protein subunit of the large microtubule-based cytoplasmic dynein complex, as an interaction partner of NUP98-HOXA9. Binding was confirmed by <i>in vitro</i> pull down and co-immunoprecipitation assays and the FG repeat region of NUP98-HOXA9 was shown to be essential for the interaction. RNAi-mediated knockdown of DYNLT1 resulted in reduction of the ability of NUP98-HOXA9 to activate transcription and also inhibited the ability of NUP98-HOXA9 to induce proliferation of primary human hematopoietic CD34+ cells. DYNLT1 also showed a strong interaction with wild-type NUP98 and other nucleoporins containing FG repeats. Immunofluorescence analysis showed that DYNLT1 localizes primarily to the nuclear periphery, where it co-localizes with the nuclear pore complex, and to the cytoplasm. Deletion studies showed that the interactions of the nucleoporins with DYNLT1 are dependent predominantly on the C-terminal half of the DYNLT1. These data show for the first time that DYNLT1 interacts with nucleoporins and plays a role in the dysregulation of gene expression and induction of hematopoietic cell proliferation by the leukemogenic nucleoporin fusion, NUP98-HOXA9.</p></div

Robust Lag Weighted Lasso for Time Series Model

The lag-weighted lasso was introduced to deal with lag effects when identifying the true model in time series. This method depends on weights to reflect both the coefficient size and the lag effects. However, the lag weighted lasso is not robust. To overcome this problem, we propose robust lag weighted lasso methods. Both the simulation study and the real data example show that the proposed methods outperform the other existing methods

Advanced Flowrate Control of Petroleum Products in Transportation: An Optimized Modified Model Reference PID Approach

Efficient flowrate control is paramount for the seamless operation and reliability of petroleum transportation systems, where precise control of fluid movement ensures not only operational efficiency but also safety and cost-effectiveness. The main aim of this paper is to develop a highly effective modified model reference PID controller, tailored to ensure optimal flowrate control of petroleum products throughout their transportation. Initially, the petrol transportation process is analyzed to establish a suitable mathematical model based on vital factors like pipeline diameter, length, and pump attributes. However, using a basic first-order time delay model for petrol transportation systems is limiting due to inaccuracies, variable delay issues, safety oversights, and real-time control complexities. To improve this, the delay portion is approximated as a third-order transfer function to better reflect complex physical conditions. Subsequently, the PID controller is synthesized by modifying its structure to address flowrate control issues. These modifications primarily focus on the controller’s derivative component, involving the addition of a first-order filter and alterations to its structure. To optimize the proposed controller, the genetic, black hole, and zebra optimization techniques are employed, aiming to minimize an integral time absolute error cost function and ensure that the outlet flow of the controlled system closely follows the response of an appropriate reference model. They are chosen for their proficiency in complex optimization to enhance the controller's effectiveness by optimizing parameters within constraints, adapting to system dynamics, and ensuring optimal conditions. Through simulations, it is demonstrated that the proposed controller significantly enhances the stability and efficiency of the control system, while maintaining practical control signals. Moreover, the proposed modifications and intelligent tuning of the PID controller yield remarkable improvements compared to previous related work, resulting in a 36% reduction in rise time, a 63% reduction in settling time, an 80% reduction in overshoot, and a 98% reduction in cost value

STAR RATING FOR BH ROAD, SHIVAMOGGA CITY USING iRAP ASSESSMENT

Road traffic crashes kill over millions of children and young people each year. Understanding the emergency of the situation and the need to act, governments from all over the world unanimously reducing road deaths and injuries by using this software. The major goal of this study is to conduct a road safety evaluation utilising the iRAP visualizer in Shivamogga, India. For this length of road, a traffic video graphics study was conducted. The iRAP\u27s road attributes are then coded. Star Rating demonstrator to obtain the Star Rating for each road users

Variations in the physico-chemical properties of Dal Lake, Srinagar, Kashmir

Basic physical and chemical characteristics of the water in Dal lake Srinagar were determined. Surface water was sampled on monthly basis from June 2010 to April 2011. To determine the variations in physico-chemical parameters of Dal lake, a total of 21 physico-chemical parameters from six different site spread in four basins of lake was monitored. Our findings highlighted the deterioration of water quality in the lake due to anthropogenic activity in the lake and urbanization. The lake can be considered as eutrophic as evidenced by its shallow depth (1 to 4.5 m), low transparency (1 to 2.8 m), and higher concentrations of other nutrients such as phosphates, nitrates, sulphates and chloride. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated to identify the strength of relation between the variables. The significant correlation was found among the temperature, depth, alkalinity, calcium, ammonia, nitrate and total phosphorus. Cluster analysis was additionally performed to obtain similarity between the sites.Key words: Physico-chemical characteristics, Dal lake, anthropogenic activity

Region of Interest Extraction in 3D Face Using Local Shape Descriptor

Recently, numerous efforts were focused on 3D face models due to its geometrical information and its reliability against pose estimation and identification problems. The major objective of this work is to reduce the massive amount of information contained the entire 3D face image into a distinctive and informative subset interested regions based 3D face analysis systems. The interested regions are represented by nose and eyes regions of frontal and profile 3D images. These regions are detected based on distance to local plan descriptor only which is copes well with profile views of 3D images. The statistical distribution of distance to local plane descriptor is predicted using Gaussian distribution. The framework of the proposed approach involves two modes: training mode and testing mode. In the training mode, a learning process for local shape descriptor related to the interested regions is carried out. The interested regions (nose and eyes) are extracted automatically in the testing mode. The performance evaluation of the proposed approach has been conducted using 3D images taken from GAVADB 3D face database which consists of both frontal and profile views. The proposed approach achieved high detection rate of interested regions for both frontal and profile views

Effects of Parallel Processing Implementation on Balanced Load-Division Depending on Distributed Memory Systems

Complex problems need long time to be solved, with low efficiency and performance. Therefore, to overcome these drawbacks, the studies went toward the approaches of breaking the problem into independent parts, and treating each part individually in the way that each processing element can execute its part of the problem simultaneously with the others.Parallel processors are computer systems that consist of multiple processing units connected via some interconnection network and the software needed to make the processing units work together. Parallel processing is divided into three types; Shared, Distributed and Hybrid memory systems.In this paper, distributed memory systems addressed depending on client/servers principles, the network can contain any number of nodes; one of them is a client and the others are servers. The algorithms used here are capable of calculating the (Started, Terminated, Consumed -CPU and Total Execution- times and CPU usage) of servers and the Client's -CPU and total execution- times. This work addresses an improved approach for problem subdivision in balanced form and design flexible algorithms to communicate efficiently between client-side and servers-side in the way to overcome the problems of hardware networking components and message passing problems. We addressed Matrix-Algebra case-study to display the effect of balance loaddivision for this approach. The obtained results are checked and monitored by special programming-checkingsubroutines through many testing-iterations and proved a high degree of accuracy. All of these algorithms implemented using Java Languag

DAPPER: a data-mining resource for protein-protein interactions.

BACKGROUND: The identification of interaction networks between proteins and complexes holds the promise of offering novel insights into the molecular mechanisms that regulate many biological processes. With increasing volumes of such datasets, especially in model organisms such as Drosophila melanogaster, there exists a pressing need for specialised tools, which can seamlessly collect, integrate and analyse these data. Here we describe a database coupled with a mining tool for protein-protein interactions (DAPPER), developed as a rich resource for studying multi-protein complexes in Drosophila melanogaster. RESULTS: This proteomics database is compiled through mass spectrometric analyses of many protein complexes affinity purified from Drosophila tissues and cultured cells. The web access to DAPPER is provided via an accelerated version of BioMart software enabling data-mining through customised querying and output formats. The protein-protein interaction dataset is annotated with FlyBase identifiers, and further linked to the Ensembl database using BioMart's data-federation model, thereby enabling complex multi-dataset queries. DAPPER is open source, with all its contents and source code are freely available. CONCLUSIONS: DAPPER offers an easy-to-navigate and extensible platform for real-time integration of diverse resources containing new and existing protein-protein interaction datasets of Drosophila melanogaster.This work was supported financially by grants from the Cancer Research UK (CRUK), the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the Medical Research Council to DMG (C3/A11431, BB/I013938/1, G1001696), by a Cancer Research UK Career Development Fellowship to YK (C40697/A12874), and by Cancer Research UK grants to PPD (C12296/A8039 and C12296/A12541). ZL is on leave from the Biological Research Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Institute of Biochemistry, Szeged, Hungary) and was supported by a Long-Term Fellowship of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS)

Spatiotemporal dynamics of Spc105 regulates the assembly of the Drosophila kinetochore

The formation of kinetochores shortly before each cell division is a prerequisite for proper chromosome segregation. The synchronous mitoses of Drosophila syncytial embryos have provided an ideal in vivo system to follow kinetochore assembly kinetics and so address the question of how kinetochore formation is regulated. We found that the nuclear exclusion of the Spc105/KNL1 protein during interphase prevents precocious assembly of the Mis12 complex. The nuclear import of Spc105 in early prophase and its immediate association with the Mis12 complex on centromeres are thus the first steps in kinetochore assembly. The cumulative kinetochore levels of Spc105 and Mis12 complex then determine the rate of Ndc80 complex recruitment commencing only after nuclear envelope breakdown. The carboxy-terminal part of Spc105 directs its nuclear import and is sufficient for the assembly of all core kinetochore components and CENP-C, when localized ectopically to centrosomes. Super-resolution microscopy shows that carboxy-terminus of Spc105 lies at the junction of the Mis12 and Ndc80 complexes on stretched kinetochores. Our study thus indicates that physical accessibility of kinetochore components plays a crucial role in the regulation of Drosophila kinetochore assembly and leads us to a model in which Spc105 is a licensing factor for its onset