Academic Panel: Can Self-Managed Systems be trusted?

Trust can be defined as to have confidence or faith in; a form of reliance or certainty based on past experience; to allow without fear; believe; hope: expect and wish; and extend credit to. The issue of trust in computing has always been a hot topic, especially notable with the proliferation of services over the Internet, which has brought the issue of trust and security right into the ordinary home. Autonomic computing brings its own complexity to this. With systems that self-manage, the internal decision making process is less transparent and the ‘intelligence’ possibly evolving and becoming less tractable. Such systems may be used from anything from environment monitoring to looking after Granny in the home and thus the issue of trust is imperative. To this end, we have organised this panel to examine some of the key aspects of trust. The first section discusses the issues of self-management when applied across organizational boundaries. The second section explores predictability in self-managed systems. The third part examines how trust is manifest in electronic service communities. The final discussion demonstrates how trust can be integrated into an autonomic system as the core intelligence with which to base adaptivity choices upon

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Paroxysmal Autonomic Instability with Dystonia after Pneumococcal Meningoencephalitis

Streptococcus pneumoniae is a common cause of bacterial meningitis, frequently resulting in severe neurological impairment. A seven-month-old child presenting with Streptococcus pneumoniae meningoencephalitis developed right basal ganglia and hypothalamic infarctions. Daily episodes of agitation, hypertension, tachycardia, diaphoresis, hyperthermia, and decerebrate posturing were observed. The diagnosis of paroxysmal autonomic instability with dystonia was established. The patient responded to clonidine, baclofen, and benzodiazepines. Although this entity has been reported in association with traumatic brain injury, and as a sequel to some nervous system infections, this is the first case, to our knowledge, associated with pneumococcal meningoencephalitis

Measuring customer based beverage brand equity : investigating the relationship between perceived quality, brand awareness, brand image, and brand loyalty

This study examined the antecedents of brand equity such as, brand awareness, perceived quality and the mediating role of a brand Image on brand loyalty. Total number of (n = 150) questionnaires were distributed among the consumers living in four cities (Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Sialkot, and Sargodha) of Pakistan. Out of the total questionnaires only (n = 130, 86.6%) completed questionnaires were received. Pearson correlation, linear regression and multiple regression tests were used to test the data and infer the results. Results show a positive relationship between the independent and dependent variables. Additionally, mediation has been found between brand awareness, perceived quality and brand loyalty due to brand image. It means that brand awareness and perceived quality develop the brand image which ultimately yields brand loyalty. Thus loyalty programs of beverage companies should focus on brand awareness and consumers’ perception of quality. Overall, these results show that the influence on brand loyalty varies across various variables of the study. The results contribute significantly to the brand equity topic.Copyright for this article is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to the journal. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Educating Adolescents about Puberty: What are we Missing?

Adolescents undergo significant physical and cognitive changes during their pubertal development. These changes contribute to and impact their future development. Educating adolescents at an early age about their expected development decreases the possible anxiety associated with this period of life and also helps adolescents make better choices in regards to their sexuality. In order to assess the degree of education regarding pubertal development and sexuality, we conducted a survey of late adolescents (Median age 19 years) and parents of adolescents. A total of 409 adolescents (237 females, 172 males) and 124 parents completed the survey. 14.4% of teens (36.6% of males and 2% of females) reported that no one spoke to them prior or during puberty about pubertal development or sexuality issues. Teens receiving some form of puberty/sexuality education did so at a median age of 13 for girls and 15 for boys. More than one source of information was the most common (49%) followed by mother only (20%). 85% of parents reported talking to their teens about pubertal development and sexuality. There were several differences between areas reported covered by parents but not by teens, for example 72% of parents reported talking to their teens about gender differences in growth but only 31% of teens reported being spoken to about that. Areas that are very poorly covered are breast development in boys and sexual assault/date rape in girls at 5% and 26% respectively. In summary, it appears that we continue to do a relatively poor job in educating our kids about their development and sexuality and we do it late. Boys are even less likely than girls to be talked to about many areas of pubertal development and sexuality and when that is done, it is done at a later age

THE FUTURE OF CORRUPTION IN THE ERA OF CASHLESS SOCIETY

Purpose of Study: This paper aims to further understand the role of a cashless society in eradicating the corruption throughout the eliminating the usage of cash. Methodology: The method used for this conceptual paper is based on a wide range of literature reviews from journal articles, thesis proceedings and conferences, books and online news which are related to the keywords and research area. Results: Battling the corruption by enforcing the cashless society been introduced as sophisticated method to reduce the possibility of taking bribes while everything will be recorded. This way came under light after been applied by the central bank of Nigeria in 2012 to reduce the corruption and has also been used in India to overcome the issue of counterfeit notes in 2016. Meanwhile as the information age considered a historic period in the 21st century, introducing the cashless society comes in compatible with the current trend of digitizing all the monetary system. This paper concluded the main factors can help the cashless to curb the corruption and proposed new topics for future studies

The Cytotoxic Effect of the Extract of Anchusa strigosa (Him Him) Grown in Jordan Against Different Cancer Cell Lines

إن نبات لسان الثور المزغّب او الحمحم من عائلة البوراجينيسي، هو نبات شوكي معمّر، طوله واحد متر تقريباً، له شعيرات شوكية صلبة، أوراقه مستطيلة إلى سنيّة الشكل، مكتظة عند القاعدة، شديدة الخشونة وشوكية. يتراوح وقت الإزهار بين شهر شباط إلى شهر حزيران.  تنمو على جوانب الطريق وفي الحقول. إن الهدف من هذه الدراسة هو اختبار التأثير السمّي لمستخلص لسان الثور المزغّب  / الجذور والأوراق وأجزائهم ضد خطوط الخلايا السرطانية المختلفة. حيث تمّ استخلاص كل من جذور وأوراق نبات لسان الثور المزغّب بواسطة طرق استخلاص مختلفة والتي تشمل طريقة النقع البارد، وجهاز السوكسليت مع استخدام نطاق واسع من المذيبات ذات القطبيات المختلفة: (كلوروفورم، ميثانول، إيثانول، بتروليوم إيثر، إلخ...)، إلى جانب ذلك لقد تم فصل مكوّنات النبات عن طريق الفصل الكروماتوغرافي ا ، ومن ثمّ تحديدها بواسطة الفصل الكروماتوغرافي والكواشف الكيميائية. لقد تم إيجاد الأثر السمّي لمستخلص نبات لسان الثور المزغّب وأجزائه ضد خطوط الخلايا السرطانية المختلفة مثل: ( سرطان الثدي، سرطان القولون والمستقيم) بواسطة فحص التحليل اللوني لمادة السلفرهودامين، حيث أشارت النتائج أنه وفي جميع الحالات كانت النسبة المئوية لتكاثر الخلايا أكثر من 50%.كما و بينت النتائج  أن فاعلية  مستخلص أوراق النبات  كانت أفضل من حيث التقليل من نسبة تكاثر الخلايا السرطانية من مستخلص جذور النبات ذاته.Anchusa strigosa - prickly alkanet from Boraginaceae grows in roadsides, and fields of a broad range of habitats from mediterranean woodlands, to steppe vegetation, to true desert. It is commonly known as" him him" or "lisan al thawr". Anchusa can withstand hard weather conditions and hence is widely cultivated. The color of its flowers can range from pure white to deep cobalt blue. Various parts of A. strigosa are used in traditional medicine for treating several diseases or symptoms, such as abdominal pain, bronchitis, cough, and diarrhea. The goal of this study was to examine the cytotoxic effect of the crude extract of A. strigosa roots and leaves and their fractions against various tumor cell lines: adenocarcinoma MCF-7, human breast ductal carcinoma T-47D; human breast carcinoma MDA-MB-231; and colorectal carcinomas Caco-2. In conclusion the antiproliferative effect was assessed by SRB assay where it showed that the phytochemical constituents in the leaf part of the plant (A. strigosa) do have more potential in depressing the proliferation rate of the cell lines than the root part

SparkFlow : towards high-performance data analytics for Spark-based genome analysis

The recent advances in DNA sequencing technology triggered next-generation sequencing (NGS) research in full scale. Big Data (BD) is becoming the main driver in analyzing these large-scale bioinformatic data. However, this complicated process has become the system bottleneck, requiring an amalgamation of scalable approaches to deliver the needed performance and hide the deployment complexity. Utilizing cutting-edge scientific workflows can robustly address these challenges. This paper presents a Spark-based alignment workflow called SparkFlow for massive NGS analysis over singularity containers. SparkFlow is highly scalable, reproducible, and capable of parallelizing computation by utilizing data-level parallelism and load balancing techniques in HPC and Cloud environments. The proposed workflow capitalizes on benchmarking two state-of-art NGS workflows, i.e., BaseRecalibrator and ApplyBQSR. SparkFlow realizes the ability to accelerate large-scale cancer genomic analysis by scaling vertically (HyperThreading) and horizontally (provisions on-demand). Our result demonstrates a trade-off inevitably between the targeted applications and processor architecture. SparkFlow achieves a decisive improvement in NGS computation performance, throughput, and scalability while maintaining deployment complexity. The paper’s findings aim to pave the way for a wide range of revolutionary enhancements and future trends within the High-performance Data Analytics (HPDA) genome analysis realm.Postprin

Workplace Violence against Nurses and Health Care Professionals in Jordan: A Plan of Action

Abstract Violence at workplace toward health care professionals including nurses is gaining a thoughtful concern worldwide. The prevalence of workplace violence in the Middle East including Jordan is considerably high although governmental policies and legislations exist. Tackling and preventing such issue of workplace violence necessitates reinforcing and reviving existing policies. The researchers in the current study adopted a plan of action using a systematic method to establish and implement specific strategies and policies to prevent workplace violence against health care professionals in Jordan. A detailed description for developing the policy was provided in this study based on the following steps: describing context of the problem, identifying policy goals and options, weighing policy alternatives, highlighting the recommended solutions, and providing a strategy for implementation and evaluatio