A novel DeepMaskNet model for face mask detection and masked facial recognition

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has significantly affected the daily life activities of people globally. To prevent the spread of COVID-19, the World Health Organization has recommended the people to wear face mask in public places. Manual inspection of people for wearing face masks in public places is a challenging task. Moreover, the use of face masks makes the traditional face recognition techniques ineffective, which are typically designed for unveiled faces. Thus, introduces an urgent need to develop a robust system capable of detecting the people not wearing the face masks and recognizing different persons while wearing the face mask. In this paper, we propose a novel DeepMasknet framework capable of both the face mask detection and masked facial recognition. Moreover, presently there is an absence of a unified and diverse dataset that can be used to evaluate both the face mask detection and masked facial recognition. For this purpose, we also developed a largescale and diverse unified mask detection and masked facial recognition (MDMFR) dataset to measure the performance of both the face mask detection and masked facial recognition methods. Experimental results on multiple datasets including the cross-dataset setting show the superiority of our DeepMasknet framework over the contemporary models

Performance improvement of shunt active power filter based on indirect control with a new robust phase-locked loop

Introduction. Since the development of the first active power filter (APF) in 1976, many efforts have been focused on improving the performances of the APF control as the number of different nonlinear loads has continued to increase. These nonlinear loads have led to the generation of different types of current harmonics, which requires more advanced controls, including robustness, to get an admissible total harmonic distortion (THD) in the power system. Purpose. The purpose of this paper is to develop a robust phase-locked loop (PLL) based on particle swarm optimization-reference signal tracking (PSO-RST) controller for a three phase three wires shunt active power filter control. Methodology. A robust PLL based on PSO-RST controller insert into the indirect d-q control of a shunt active power filter was developed. Results. Simulation results performed under the MATLAB/SimPowerSystem environment show a higher filtering quality and a better robustness compared to the classical d-q controls. Originality. Conventional PLLs have difficulty determining the phase angle of the utility voltage sources when grid voltage is distorted. If this phase angle is incorrectly determined, this leads to a malfunction of the complete control of the active power filters. This implies a bad compensation of the current harmonics generated by the nonlinear loads. To solve this problem we propose a robust and simple PLL based on PSO-RST controller to eliminate the influence of the voltage harmonics. Practical value. The proposed solution can be used to improve the functioning of the shunt active power filter and to reduce the amount of memory implementation.Вступ. З моменту розробки першого фільтра активної потужності (ФАП) у 1976 р. багато зусиль було спрямовано на покращення характеристик управління ФАП, оскільки кількість різних нелінійних навантажень продовжувала зростати. Ці нелінійні навантаження призвели до генерації різних типів гармонік струму, що потребує більш досконалих засобів управління, у тому числі стійких, для отримання допустимого повного гармонічного спотворення (THD) в енергосистемі. Мета. Метою даної статті є розробка надійного контуру фазового автопідстроювання частоти (ФАПЧ) на основі контролера відстеження еталонного сигналу оптимізації рою частинок (ВЕС ОРЧ) для трифазного трипровідного шунтуючого фільтра активної потужності. Методологія. Розроблено надійну систему ФАПЧ на основі контролера ВЕС ОРЧ, вбудованого в непрямий d-q контроль шунтуючого фільтра активної потужності. Результати. Результати моделювання, виконаного в середовищі MATLAB/SimPowerSystem, демонструють високу якість фільтрації та більшу надійність у порівнянні з класичним d-q керуванням. Оригінальність. Звичайні ФАПЧ мають труднощі з визначенням фазового кута джерел напруги, коли напруга мережі спотворена. Неправильне визначення цього фазового кута призводить до порушення повного керування фільтрами активної потужності. Це означає погану компенсацію гармонік струму, створюваних нелінійними навантаженнями. Для вирішення цієї проблеми ми пропонуємо стійкий та простий ФАПЧ на основі контролера ВЕС ОРЧ для усунення впливу гармонік напруги. Практична цінність. Запропоноване рішення може бути використане для поліпшення роботи шунтуючого фільтра активної потужності і зменшення обсягу потрібної пам'яті.

Checking and Enforcing Security through Opacity in Healthcare Applications

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a paradigm that can tremendously revolutionize health care thus benefiting both hospitals, doctors and patients. In this context, protecting the IoT in health care against interference, including service attacks and malwares, is challenging. Opacity is a confidentiality property capturing a system's ability to keep a subset of its behavior hidden from passive observers. In this work, we seek to introduce an IoT-based heart attack detection system, that could be life-saving for patients without risking their need for privacy through the verification and enforcement of opacity. Our main contributions are the use of a tool to verify opacity in three of its forms, so as to detect privacy leaks in our system. Furthermore, we develop an efficient, Symbolic Observation Graph (SOG)-based algorithm for enforcing opacity

High-level cefotaxime-resistant Proteus mirabilis strain isolated from a Tunisian intensive care unit ward: CTX-M-8 extended-spectrum β-lactamase coproduced with a plasmid mediated AmpC lactamase

The aimed of this study was to determine the implication of the biochemical and the molecular mechanism and to describe the properties of an extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL) CTX-M-8 which was reported for the first time in Africa. A clinical isolate of Proteus mirabilis FS6449 was isolated from a patient hospitalized at an intensive care unit of the Military Hospital in Tunisia in 2009. Antimicrobial susceptibility was determined with the disk diffusion method according to Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) guidelines and revealed that this strain was resistant to expanded-spectrum β-lactams. Analysis of P. mirabilis FS6449 by double-disk synergy test yielded a positive result suggesting the production of ESBLs. Sonicate of the isolate hydrolysed cefotaxime and benzylpenicillin. Isoelectric focusing exhibited four β-lactamase bands of isoelectric points (pIs) 5.6, 6, 6.5 and over 7.6. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and sequencing experiments revealed the presence of four β-lactamase genes encoding TEM-2, CTX-M-8, TEM-24, and an AmpC enzyme. Among them, the genes encoding TEM-24 and an AmpC enzyme were transferred to the recipient by conjugation experiments.Keywords: Resistance, β-lactamase, Proteus mirabilisAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(21), pp. 3278-328

Biochemical characterization of a cefotaximehydrolysing &#946-lactamase encoded by a conjugative plasmid

During the nosocomials infections occurring in the intensive care unit of the military hospital of Tunis in 2005, the Enterobacter cloacae BW 1150 strain was isolated from a stool culture. This strain was found to have a high level resistance to broad-spectrum -lactams. Resistance profile against thevarious families of antibiotics was determined using the disc diffusion test. The minimal inhibitory concentrations values showed that this strain was resistant to the -lactams such as ampicillin and the extended spectrum cephalosporins (cefotaxime, ceftriaxon and cefpirome). Analysis of this strain by the disk diffusion test revealed synergies between amoxicillin-clavulanate (AMX-CA) and ceftriaxon, ceftazidime and cefotaxime. Cell sonicate of this isolate is very active against cefotaxime and showed aspecific activity (AS) of 7.54 U/mg for the same antibiotic. This activity was inhibited by the sulbactam and the clavulanic acid. Isoelectrofocusing methods revealed that the crude extract of the E. cloacae BW 1150 strain showed 1 - lactamase activity with an isoelectric piont (pI) of about 8. This activity was transferred by conjugation and was highly expressed in the transconjugant

A step towards mobile arsenic measurement for surface waters.

Surface modified quantum dots (QDs) are studied using a bio-inspired cysteine rich ligand (glutathione, GSH) and their quenching response and selectivity to arsenic examined. As predicted from As(3+) binding with highly crosslinked phytochelatin-(PCn)-like molecules, better arsenic selectivity is obtained for a thicker more 3-dimensional GSH surface layer, with exposed sulfhydryl groups. A detection limit of at least 10 μM can be achieved using CdSe/ZnS core-shell QDs capped with this GSH structure. The system is also demonstrated using a mobile phone camera to record the measurement, producing a detection limit of 5 μM. However, copper remains the main interferent of concern. Water-soluble CdTe QDs show little sensitivity to As(3+) even with a GSH surface, but they remain sensitive to Cu(2+), allowing a copper baseline to be established from the CdTe measurement. Despite anticipating that spectrally non overlapping fluorescence would be required from the two types of QDs to achieve this, a method is demonstrated using RGB channels from a mobile phone and processing the raw data for CdTe QDs, with an emission wavelength of 600 nm, and CdSe/ZnS QDs, with emission maximum of 630 nm. It is shown that As(3+) measurement remains feasible at the WHO guideline value of 10 μg L(-1) up to a copper concentration of around 0.3 μM Cu(2+), which corresponds to the highest recorded level in a selection of large rivers world-wide.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available via RSC at http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2015/AN/c4an02368d#!divAbstract

Generation of stable Drosophila cell lines using multicistronic vectors

Insect cell culture is becoming increasingly important for applications including recombinant protein production and cell-based screening with chemical or RNAi libraries. While stable mammalian cell lines expressing a protein of interest can be efficiently prepared using IRES-based vectors or viral-based approaches, options for stable insect cell lines are more limited. Here, we describe pAc5-STABLEs, new vectors for use in Drosophila cell culture to facilitate stable transformation. We show that viral-derived 2A-like (or "CHYSEL") peptides function in Drosophila cells and can mediate the multicistronic expression of two or three proteins of interest under control of the Actin5C constitutive promoter. The current vectors allow mCherry and/or GFP fusions to be generated for positive selection by G418 resistance in cells and should serve as a flexible platform for future applications