A Transactional Approach to Enforce Resource Availabilities: Application to the Cloud

This paper looks into the availability of resources, exemplified with the cloud, in an open and dynamic environment like the Internet. A growing number of users consume resources to complete their operations requiring a better way to manage these resources in order to avoid conflicts, for example. Resource availability is defined using a set of consumption properties (limited, limited-but-renewable, and non-shareable) and is enforced at run-time using a set of transactional properties (pivot, retriable, and compensatable). In this paper, a CloudSim-based system simulates how mixing consumption and transactional properties allows to capture users’ needs and requirements in terms of what cloud resources they need, for how long, and to what extent they tolerate the unavailability of these resources

A rapid and easy method for the DNA extraction from Cryptococcus neoformans

DNA isolation from C. neoformans is difficult due to a thick and resistant capsule. We have optimized a new and rapid DNA isolation method for Cryptococcus using a short urea treatment followed by a rapid method using a chelex resin suspension. This procedure is simpler than previously reported methods

On Modelling and Analyzing Composite Resources’ Consumption Cycles using Time Petri-Nets

ICT community cornerstones (IoT in particular) gain competitive advantage from using physical resources. This paper adopts Time Petri-Nets (TPNs) to model and analyze the consumption cycles of composite resources. These resources consist of primitive, and even other composite, resources that are associated with consumption properties and could be subject to disruptions. These properties are specialized into unlimited, shareable, limited, limited-but-renewable, and non-shareable, and could impact the availability of resources. This impact becomes a concern when disruptions suspend ongoing consumption cycles to make room for the unplanned consumptions. Resuming the suspended consumption cycles depends on the resources’ consumption properties. To ensure correct modeling and analysis of consumption cycles, whether disrupted or not, TPNs are adopted to verify that composite resources are reachable, bound, fair, and live

A Guiding Framework for Vetting the Internet of Things

© 2020 Like any emerging and disruptive technology, multiple obstacles are slowing down the Internet of Things (IoT) expansion for instance, multiplicity of things’ standards, users’ reluctance and sometimes rejection due to privacy invasion, and limited IoT platform interoperability. IoT expansion is also accompanied by the widespread use of mobile apps supporting anywhere, anytime service provisioning to users. By analogy to vetting mobile apps, this paper addresses the lack of principles and techniques for vetting IoT devices (things) in preparation for their integration into mission-critical systems. Things have got vulnerabilities that should be discovered and assessed through proper device vetting. Unfortunately, this is not happening. Rather than sensing a nuclear turbines steam level, a thing could collect some sensitive data about the turbine without the knowledge of users and leak these data to third parties. This paper presents a guiding framework that defines the concepts of, principles of, and techniques for thing vetting as a pro-active response to potential things vulnerabilities

STEM learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in Qatar: Secondary school students’ and teachers’ perspectives

This study examines how students and teachers perceive science, mathematics, engineering and technology (STEM) learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data was collected through student and teacher surveys, conducted in 22 public and 17 private secondary schools at Qatar. Participants included 1,505 students and 545 teachers in grades 11 and 12. Results showed students’ and teachers’ demographic factors, including gender, school type, grade level, and majors, emerged as salient predictors of perceptions of the pandemic as disruptive to students’ STEM learning. Specifically, both students and teachers perceived keeping up with coursework, being physically isolated from classmates, and keeping a regular schedule at home to be key barriers. Results further revealed that neither students nor teachers viewed communicating with staff and teachers, losing contact with teachers, or accessing and using technology as barriers. Moreover, school type and gender were important predictors of how students and teachers perceived STEM learning during the pandemic.This research is supported by the Qatar University Office of Research Support, under the grant number QUCG-SESRI20/21-1 for the project entitled “Barriers to Student Participation STEM Education in Qatar”

A Plug&Play approach for modeling and simulating applications in the era of internet of social things

This article presents an approach to model and simulate Plug&Play social things. Confined into silos, existing (not social) things are restricted to basic operations like sensing and actuating, which deprive them from participating in the satisfaction of complex business applications. Contrarily, social things are expected to engage in collaborative scenarios and to tap into specific relations that connect them to peers when achieving these scenarios. These relations are referred to as complimentary, antagonism, and competition, and allow to develop networks of things. To capitalize on such networks, the approach to model and simulate Plug&Play social things puts forward four stages that are referred to as connecting to demystify social relations between things, influencing to examine the impact of social relations on things, playing to make things perform while considering influence, and incentivizing to reward things based on their performance. A smart system for elderly the care centers has been developed to showcase the technical doability of Plug&Play social things. The system is an integrated development environment allowing IoT engineers to define the collaboration of social things, thanks to a set of drag&drop operations

A systematic review of STEM education research in the GCC countries: trends, gaps and barriers

Abundant research conducted in many countries has underlined the critical role of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) in developing human capital in fields important to a nation’s global competiveness and prosperity. In the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) States, recent long-term policy plans emphasize the ever-increasing need of transition to a knowledge-based economy and preparing highly qualified nationals with credentials in STEM fields to meet the current and future needs of the labor market. Yet, despite multiple educational reforms and substantial resources, national and international indicators of student performance still demonstrate insignificant improvement in GCC students’ achievement in STEM subjects. Demonstrably, the GCC youth still lack interest in STEM careers and represent low enrollment rates in STEM fields. This paper presents the results of a systematic review conducted on STEM education research in GCC countries. The review seeks to contribute to the body of the existing STEM literature, explore the factors influencing student participation in STEM, and identify the gaps in STEM education research in those countries

HLA Class II Alleles Susceptibility Markers of Type 1 Diabetes Fail to Specify Phenotypes of Ketosis-Prone Diabetes in Adult Tunisian Patients

We aimed to characterize the different subgroups of ketosis-prone diabetes (KPD) in a sample of Tunisian patients using the Aβ scheme based on the presence or absence of β-cell autoantibodies (A+ or A−) and β-cell functional reserve (β+ or β−) and we investigated whether HLA class II alleles could contribute to distinct KPD phenotypes. We enrolled 43 adult patients with a first episode of ketosis. For all patients we evaluated clinical parameters, β-cell autoimmunity, β-cell function and HLA class II alleles. Frequency distribution of the 4 subgroups was 23.3% A+β−, 23.3% A−β−, 11.6% A+β+ and 41.9% A−β+. Patients from the group A+β− were significantly younger than those from the group A−β− (P = .002). HLA susceptibility markers were significantly more frequent in patients with autoantibodies (P = .003). These patients also had resistance alleles but they were more frequent in A+β+ than A+β− patients (P = .04). Insulin requirement was not associated to the presence or the absence of HLA susceptibility markers. HLA class II alleles associated with susceptibility to autoimmune diabetes have not allowed us to further define Tunisian KPD groups. However, high prevalence of HLA resistance alleles in our patients may reflect a particular genetic background of Tunisian KPD population

Sperm DNA fragmentation and oxidation are independent of malondialdheyde

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>There is clinical evidence to show that sperm DNA damage could be a marker of sperm quality and extensive data exist on the relationship between DNA damage and male fertility status. Detecting such damage in sperm could provide new elements besides semen parameters in diagnosing male infertility. We aimed to assess sperm DNA fragmentation and oxidation and to study the association between these two markers, routine semen parameters and malondialdehyde formation.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Semen samples from 55 men attending the Histology-Embryology Laboratory of Sfax Faculty of Medicine, Tunisia, for semen investigations were analysed for sperm DNA fragmentation and oxidation using flow cytometry. The Sperm was also assessed spectrophotometrically for malondialdehyde formation.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Within the studied group, 21 patients were nonasthenozoospermic (sperm motility ≥ 50%) and 34 patients were considered asthenozoospermic (sperm motility < 50%). A positive correlation was found between sperm DNA fragmentation and oxidation (p = 0.01; r = 0.33). We also found a negative correlation between sperm DNA fragmentation and some sperm parameters: total motility (p = 0.001; r = -0.43), rapid progressive motility (type a motility) (p = 0.04; r = -0.27), slow progressive motility (type b motility) (p = 0.03; r = -0.28), and vitality (p < 0.001; r = -0.65). Sperm DNA fragmentation was positively correlated with coiled tail (p = 0.01; r = 0.34). The two parameters that were found to be correlated with oxidative DNA damage were leucocytes concentrations (p = 0.01; r = 0.38) and broken neck (p = 0.02; r = 0.29). Sperm MDA levels were negatively correlated with sperm concentration (p < 0.001; r = -0.57), total motility (p = 0.01; r = -0.35) and type a motility (p = 0.03; r = -0.32); but not correlated with DNA fragmentation and DNA oxidation.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our results support the evidence that oxidative stress plays a key role in inducing DNA damage; but nuclear alterations and malondialdehyde don't seem to be synchronous.</p

Clinical Significance of Epigenetic Inactivation of hMLH1 and BRCA1 in Tunisian Patients with Invasive Breast Carcinoma

Aberrant hypermethylation of gene promoter regions is one of the mechanisms for inactivation of tumour suppressor genes in many human cancers including breast carcinoma. In the current study, we aimed to assess by MSP, the methylation pattern of two cancer-related genes involved in DNA repair: hMLH1 (mutL homolog 1, colon cancer, nonpolyposis type 2 (E. coli) and BRCA1 (breast cancer 1, early onset) in 78 primary breast cancers from Tunisian patients. The methylation frequencies were 24.36% for hMLH1 and 46% for BRCA1. BRCA1 methylation correlated with age at diagnosis (P = .015) and 5-years disease free survival (P = .016) while hMLH1 methylation was more frequent in larger tumors (P = .002) and in presence of distant metastasis (P = .004). Furthermore, methylation of hMLH1 significantly correlated with high level of P53 expression (P = .006) and with overall survival (P = .015) suggesting that silencing of hMLH1 through aberrant promoter methylation could be used as a poor prognosis indicator in breast cancer