New patterns of twist-bend liquid crystal phase behaviour : the synthesis and characterisation of the 1-(4-cyanobiphenyl-4′-yl)-10-(4-alkylaniline-benzylidene-4′-oxy)decanes (CB10O·m)

Open Access via the RSC OA Agreement Funding Information: A. F. A. wishes to thank the Ministry of Education and the University of Hail, Saudi Arabia through the Cultural Bureau of Saudi Arabia, London for their financial support during the study period. E. G. and D. P. thank the National Science Centre (Poland) for financial support under the grant no. 2016/22/A/ST5/00319.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Molecular Predictors of Anakinra Treatment Success in Heart Failure Patients with Reduced Ejection Fraction

Background. Kineret (Anakinra) is an interleukin-1 antagonist that is under investigation for its novel clinical application treating patients that have heart failure with reduced (\u3c50%) ejection fraction (HFrEF). A prior study from our group indicated that Anakinra may restore heart function by addressing dysregulations in HFrEF metabolic pathways. Herein, we attempt to elicit Anakinra’s effects on both metabolome and lipidome. Methods. Lipids and metabolites that had previously been quantified by mass spectrometry (MS) from patients (n=49) who had ≥2 mg/L of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) were mTIC normalized and transformed. We conducted a stepwise Linear Discriminant Analysis (r- LDA) to test Anakinra (2 and 12 weeks) vs placebo for separation from combined baseline. Metabolic pathway analysis was performed with Fisher’s exact test algorithm for detection of over-represented and enriched analytes. Univariate analysis (one tailed t-test p\u3c0.05) compared placebo and Anakinra after 12-weeks for effect(s). Metaboanalyst 4.0, JMP Pro 14.0, and a proprietary package in R (version 3.4.4) were the software for all analyses and data wrangling. Results. Analytes such as acylcarnitines C10:0 and C16:0 and hsCRP showed significant improvements after 12 weeks of Anakinra, leading to improved mitochondrial function, reduced inflammation, and overall better health outcomes. Statistically significant (p\u3c0.05) pathways including the citrate cycle, cysteine and methionine metabolism, galactose metabolism among others were associated with treatment. Conclusions. We were able to determine significant alterations to metabolomic and lipidomic concentrations after 12 weeks of Anakinra therapy. Our biochemical analyses verifies that Anakinra did improve heart function within our HFrEF pilot cohort.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/gradposters/1081/thumbnail.jp

Phishing websites detection by using optimized stacking ensemble model

Phishing attacks are security attacks that do not affect only individuals’ or organizations’ websites but may affect Internet of Things (IoT) devices and networks. IoT environment is an exposed environment for such attacks. Attackers may use thingbots software for the dispersal of hidden junk emails that are not noticed by users. Machine and deep learning and other methods were used to design detection methods for these attacks. However, there is still a need to enhance detection accuracy. Optimization of an ensemble classification method for phishing website (PW) detection is proposed in this study. A Genetic Algorithm (GA) was used for the proposed method optimization by tuning several ensemble Machine Learning (ML) methods parameters, including Random Forest (RF), AdaBoost (AB), XGBoost (XGB), Bagging (BA), GradientBoost (GB), and LightGBM (LGBM). These were accomplished by ranking the optimized classifiers to pick out the best classifiers as a base for the proposed method. A PW dataset that is made up of 4898 PWs and 6157 legitimate websites (LWs) was used for this study's experiments. As a result, detection accuracy was enhanced and reached 97.16 percent

The Risk of Hepatotoxicity with Fluoroquinolones: A National Case-Control Safety Study

Purpose. Fluoroquinolones are generally considered safe and well-tolerated. However, suspected fluoroquinolone induced hepatotoxicity has been increasingly reported, but data are lacking. Thus, the objective of this study was to assess the risk of hepatotoxicity in patients using fluoroquinolones compared to non-users. Methods. National Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital admissions were assessed between January 1, 2002 and December 31, 2008. Our case-control study matched patients with a primary diagnosis of hepatotoxicity (cases) to those with myocardial infarction (controls) on admission date (matched up to 1:6). Conditional logistic regression was used to compute adjusted odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) of hepatotoxicity associated with fluoroquinolone exposure. Results. Our study included 7,862 cases and 45,512 matched controls. The majority of study patients were white (63.4%), males (97.7%), with a mean age of 61 years. After adjusting for confounders, fluoroquinolone use was significantly associated with a 20% increased risk of hepatotoxicity development (OR 1.20, 95% CI 1.04-1.38) compared to non-users. A statistically significant increased risk of hepatotoxicity was associated with ciprofloxacin use individually (OR 1.29, 95% CI 1.05-1.58), but not with levofloxacin or moxifloxacin use. Conclusion. The use of fluoroquinolones was associated with an increased risk of hepatotoxicity relative to non-users in our national VA study population

Radial Expander Design for an Engine Organic Rankine Cycle Waste Heat Recovery System

© 2017 The Author(s). It is commonly accepted that waste heat recovery technologies are significant contenders in future powertrain thermal management to further minimize fuel consumption and CO 2 emissions. Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) systems are currently regarded as amongst the most potent candidates in recovering engine exhaust energy and converting it to electrical power. Crucial areas for the maximization of the efficiency of the ORC system are the appropriate selection of working fluid and the optimization of the expander design. In this study, a novel design methodology of a radial turbine expander for a heavy duty engine ORC waste heat recovery system is presented. The preliminary design of the radial turbine expander includes the development and utilization of an in-house 0/1D code that can be coupled with various organic fluids properties for the calculation of the basic expander geometry. The initial mean-line model for a 200kW-class Diesel engine application investigated produced a solution for a 20kW turbine with 73% isentropic efficiency. The preliminarily optimized expander geometry was used as an input in a detailed CFD code to further optimize rotor geometry. The rotor geometric optimization showed that by increasing exit tip radius by 10% and adopting a 54°back-swept blade design, the maximum isentropic efficiency achieved can exceed 83%

An optimized stacking ensemble model for phishing websites detection

Security attacks on legitimate websites to steal users’ information, known as phishing attacks, have been increasing. This kind of attack does not just affect individuals’ or organisations’ websites. Although several detection methods for phishing websites have been proposed using machine learning, deep learning, and other approaches, their detection accuracy still needs to be enhanced. This paper proposes an optimized stacking ensemble method for phishing website detection. The optimisation was carried out using a genetic algorithm (GA) to tune the parameters of several ensemble machine learning methods, including random forests, AdaBoost, XGBoost, Bagging, GradientBoost, and LightGBM. The optimized classifiers were then ranked, and the best three models were chosen as base classifiers of a stacking ensemble method. The experiments were conducted on three phishing website datasets that consisted of both phishing websites and legitimate websites—the Phishing Websites Data Set from UCI (Dataset 1); Phishing Dataset for Machine Learning from Mendeley (Dataset 2, and Datasets for Phishing Websites Detection from Mendeley (Dataset 3). The experimental results showed an improvement using the optimized stacking ensemble method, where the detection accuracy reached 97.16%, 98.58%, and 97.39% for Dataset 1, Dataset 2, and Dataset 3, respectivel

Heliconical nematic and smectic phases: the synthesis and characterisation of the CB4O.m and CB8O.m series.

The synthesis and characterisation of two series of nonsymmetric dimers belonging to the family of compounds, the 1-(4-cyanobiphenyl-4′-yl)-ω-(4-alkylanilinebenzylidene-4′-oxy)alkanes (CBnO.m) is reported; in the acronym, n refers to the number of carbon atoms in the spacer, and m in the terminal alkyl chain. The two series reported, CB4O.m and CB8O.m, both show twist-bend nematic (NTB) and smectic phases (SmCTB-SH and SmCTB-DH). Their phase behaviour is compared to that of the CB6O.m and CB10O.m series. For each series, locally intercalated molecular packing is observed for short terminal chains and interdigitated packing for long terminal chains. The intercalated anticlinic smectic CA phase is observed for the CB8O.m and CB10O.m series. All four series exhibit the SmCTB-SH and SmCTB-DH phases for the longer terminal chains and all have an interdigitated molecular arrangement. The absence of an intercalated heliconical phase is attributed to the high viscosity associated with the network intercalated structure

Experimental Investigation of Bio-Enhancer Drilling Fluid Additive: Can Palm Tree Leaves Be Utilized as a Supportive Eco-Friendly Additive in Water-Based Drilling Fluid System?

Serious problems will be presented due to using conventional chemical additives to regulate the drilling mud properties, as they have health, safety, and environmental side effects. Thus, there is a considerable necessity for alternative multifunctional bio-enhancer drilling mud additives, which can assist in optimizing the drilling fluid specifications and enhance its effectiveness with the least effects on the environment and the drilling personnel safety. The effects of adding two concentrations of palm tree leaves powder (PTLP) to water-based mud were conducted under fresh and aged conditions using standard API drilling fluids testing methods such as rheometer/viscometer, pH meter and temperature, and filter press. All tests results were minutely recorded to understand the influence of PTLP additives on the drilling mud properties. The results indicated that PTLP as an effective material to be used as pH reducer, viscosity reducer, and as an excellent filtration loss control agent under the surface and sub-surface conditions. Thus, PTLP has excellent feasibility to be utilized as biodegradable drilling mud additive replacing or at least supporting other conventional chemical additives, which have usually been used for the same purposes such as lignosulphonate, chrome-lignite, and Resinex. Finally, this work can serve as a practical guide for minimizing the cost of the drilling fluid and reducing the amount of non-biodegradable waste disposed to the environment

Validation of the Arabic version of the Social Communication Questionnaire

Validated screening and diagnostic tools for autism spectrum disorder for use in Arabic-speaking individuals are scarce. This study validated the Arabic version of the Social Communication Questionnaire. The total study sample included 206 children with autism spectrum disorder and 206 typically developing children (73.8% male; mean age: 8.5 (standard deviation = 2.6) years). The mean Social Communication Questionnaire total score was significantly higher in autism spectrum disorder children than in typically developing children (p < 0.0001). Scores on the three Social Communication Questionnaire subscales also differed significantly between the groups (p < 0.001). Of the 39 items, 37 were endorsed significantly more often in the autism spectrum disorder group. The total Social Communication Questionnaire score did not vary by age or gender. Internal consistency was excellent (alpha = 0.92). In the receiver operating characteristic analysis, the area under the curve for the total score showed excellent discrimination between autism spectrum disorder and typically developing children (area under the curve = 0.95; 95% confidence interval: 0.93–0.97). The areas under the curve for the scale subscores were 0.923 (95% confidence interval: 0.898–0.949) for the social interaction score, 0.872 (95% confidence interval: 0.838–0.905) for the communication score, and 0.856 (95% confidence interval: 0.819–0.893) for the repetitive behaviors score. The findings support the use of the Arabic Social Communication Questionnaire to successfully differentiate children with clinically diagnosed autism spectrum disorder using the established cutoff value for the English version.The authors would like to thank all the staff of the autism centers and schools who contributed in distributing and collecting the SCQ forms. They also would like to thank Western Psychological Services (WPS) staff for their help during the process of translating and reviewing the Arabic SCQ. They acknowledge Jennifer Holmes, ELS, for medical editing. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The study was funded by the Qatar National Research Fund (NPRP 6-093-3-024)