MOTIVATING MANAGERS – BRIEF ANALYSIS AT S.C. TASMANIA

Research’s goal is to show what managers should know in order to improve employees’ performance by guiding their behaviour and motivating them. To succeed, the manager must develop positive attitudes towards himself and the circumstances in which he is located.motivation, leading, success, style of leadership.

A systematic review on machine learning models for online learning and examination systems

Examinations or assessments play a vital role in every student’s life; they determine their future and career paths. The COVID pandemic has left adverse impacts in all areas, including the academic field. The regularized classroom learning and face-to-face real-time examinations were not feasible to avoid widespread infection and ensure safety. During these desperate times, technological advancements stepped in to aid students in continuing their education without any academic breaks. Machine learning is a key to this digital transformation of schools or colleges from real-time to online mode. Online learning and examination during lockdown were made possible by Machine learning methods. In this article, a systematic review of the role of Machine learning in Lockdown Exam Management Systems was conducted by evaluating 135 studies over the last five years. The significance of Machine learning in the entire exam cycle from pre-exam preparation, conduction of examination, and evaluation were studied and discussed. The unsupervised or supervised Machine learning algorithms were identified and categorized in each process. The primary aspects of examinations, such as authentication, scheduling, proctoring, and cheat or fraud detection, are investigated in detail with Machine learning perspectives. The main attributes, such as prediction of at-risk students, adaptive learning, and monitoring of students, are integrated for more understanding of the role of machine learning in exam preparation, followed by its management of the post-examination process. Finally, this review concludes with issues and challenges that machine learning imposes on the examination system, and these issues are discussed with solutions

A systematic literature review on spam content detection and classification

The presence of spam content in social media is tremendously increasing, and therefore the detection of spam has become vital. The spam contents increase as people extensively use social media, i.e ., Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and E-mail. The time spent by people using social media is overgrowing, especially in the time of the pandemic. Users get a lot of text messages through social media, and they cannot recognize the spam content in these messages. Spam messages contain malicious links, apps, fake accounts, fake news, reviews, rumors, etc. To improve social media security, the detection and control of spam text are essential. This paper presents a detailed survey on the latest developments in spam text detection and classification in social media. The various techniques involved in spam detection and classification involving Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and text-based approaches are discussed in this paper. We also present the challenges encountered in the identification of spam with its control mechanisms and datasets used in existing works involving spam detection

An Hybrid Text-Image Based Authentication for Cloud Services

The problem of securing access to the online information is acute today when access to bank accounts, health records, intellectual property and business or politically sensitive information are made by only a few clicks, regardless of geographic location. At the same time, more and more of these accesses are made from handsets. Cloud Computing is eminently suitable for addressing problems related to limited client resources, as it offloads computation from clients and offers dynamic provisioning of compute resources. Authentication of the companys users to the cloud service is mandatory because in this way it is eliminated the attacks risks to enter into the Cloud services. A suitable authentication is required for organizations that want to access the Cloud services. Our solution regards increasing security at the Security Access Point level of Cloud Computing and it is in fact a strong hybrid user authentication solution based on using image combined with text in order to avoid the weakness of simple user and password solution for authentication. A two factor password image based authentication method is proposed in this paper for cloud services. This authentication approach is used without additional hardware involved and presents the advantages of utilization in terms of security and usability. Every time when the user will be asked to provide his/her identity, a form for each image included in the photo will be listed. The user will have to remember the secret code for each image and to carefully introduce them in the forms. The global cloud access solution will be based on our hybrid proposed text-image based solution, and will be completed by the X.509 certificates

PMA-Treatment of Human Monocytes Induces a M1 Phenotype in Adherent Macrophages

Background: Human monocyte lines are widely used in basic research as model of inflammation, mostly following adherence with phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA). However, the SC line, of normal human monocytes is not well documented, unlike tumour-derived cell lines, such as THP-1. Aim: The purpose of this study was to determine the phenotype of adherent macrophages, induced after the treatment with PMA in three different concentrations, starting from the most widely reported concentration in the literature. Methods: Normal human monocytes SC (ATCC CRL-9855) were routinely maintained according to manufacturer’s instructions. Cells were treated with Phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA Sigma Aldrich P1585), in concentrations of 200 ng/mL, 100 ng/mL, 25 ng/mL and adhesion was documented using an Evos phase-contrast inverted microscope. Cell behaviour was validated by real-time impedance readings. The adhered cells were treated with bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in concentrations of 50 ng/mL (mimicking chronic inflammation) and 1 μg/mL (mimicking acute inflammation). The supernatant was collected twice, after 4 hours, respectively after 18 hours of treatment with LPS. A screening of pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines was performed using the multiplexing platform Luminex 200. ELISA tests were performed to validate the cytokines secretion: IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, IL-23 and TNF-ɑ, using a LEGEND MAX Human ELISA kit specific to each cytokine.   Results: Cell adhesion was studied by time-lapse microscopy for 48 hrs. The lowest concentration of PMA which induced cell adherence was 25 ng/mL. Multiplex screening of cytokines showed a pro-inflammatory phenotype of macrophages stimulated with LPS. This finding was validated by ELISA tests for IL-6, IL-8, IL-23 and TNF-ɑ (as pro-inflammatory cytokine) and IL-10 (an anti-inflammatory molecule). For the first category, we noticed a time-dependent response, present in adherent macrophages, but not in circulating monocytes. Regarding the second category of cytokines, the secretion is present only for the adhered and LPS treated cells. It is also present in a time-dependent manner (a higher concentration can be noticed in the collected supernatant after 18 hours of treatment compared with the one collected after 4 hours of treatment). Conclusion: The macrophages obtained from normal human monocytes with PMA are M1 type, regardless of the concentration used for differentiation

Detecting DDoS Attacks in Cloud Computing Environment

This paper is focused on detecting and analyzing the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks in cloud computing environments. This type of attacks is often the source of cloud services disruptions. Our solution is to combine the evidences obtained from Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) deployed in the virtual machines (VMs) of the cloud systems with a data fusion methodology in the front-end. Specifically, when the attacks appear, the VM-based IDS will yield alerts, which will be stored into the Mysql database placed within the Cloud Fusion Unit (CFU) of the front-end server. We propose a quantitative solution for analyzing alerts generated by the IDSs, using the Dempster-Shafer theory (DST) operations in 3-valued logic and the fault-tree analysis (FTA) for the mentioned flooding attacks. At the last step, our solution uses the Dempsters combination rule to fuse evidence from multiple independent sources

Obese Childhood Dyslipidemia Management Beyond Statins — MUFA, PUFA, and Sea-buckthorn Supplements

The dyslipidemia pattern usually associated with childhood obesity consists of a combination of elevated triglyceridemia, decreased plasma high density lipoprotein cholesterol concentration and LDL-c concentration at the upper limit of the normal range. This type of dyslipidemia is associated with dense and small LDL, which are proatherogenic. High circulating levels of oxidized LDL were described in extreme pediatric obesity, in children with high fructose intake and are associated with insulin resistance. The worst effect on blood lipids have trans and saturated fatty acids. But the amount of total energy intake plays more important role in lipid profiles. In childhood obesity it seems that insulin resistance precedes the development of the metabolic syndrome feature and insulin resistance is correlated with dyslipidemia. Insulin resistance increases free fatty acid flux to the liver by decreased inhibition of lipolysis and also by increased de novo lipogenesis. Fish oil is rich in eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and has hypotriglyceridemic effect in comparison to monounsaturated fatty acids. Passive in utero exposure to a hyperlipidemic environment may have programmed these children for accelerated atherosclerosis. The infant formula should be enriched with long chain fatty acids because this supplementation is associated with lower blood pressure during later childhood. In obese children, supplements with Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids improve lipid profile, blood pressure values and inflammatory markers. Omega-3 fatty acids prevent metabolic syndrome, by reducing hepatic steatosis, visceral fat, by reducing serum triglycerides and improving insulin sensitivity. Potentially all compounds of the Sea buckthorn berry, including flavonols, carotenoids, fatty acids, tocopherols and phytosterols can affect the metabolic profile. Special features of the berry oils are high proportions of palmitoleic acid as well as vitamin E, carotenoids, and sterols. The palmitoleic acid stimulates muscle insulin action, suppresses hepatosteatosis and prevent the deleterious effects of saturated fatty acids and high glucose on human pancreatic beta-cell turnover and function. Phenolic compounds and flavonoids from sea buckthorn ameliorate bodyweight, blood glucose, and serum lipid profile. By reducing triglyceridemia and by improving the blood pressure levels, sea buckthorn pulp oil may prevent metabolic syndrome in obese children. The treatment is recommended in hypertriglyceridemic waist phenotype obese children. Omega-3 supplements and sea buckthorn pulp oil supplements reversed the carotid intima media thickness values in obese children and they have beneficial effects in childhood obesit

Inflammation and Chronic Kidney Disease: Current Approaches and Recent Advances

Despite being a “silent epidemic” disease, chronic kidney disease (CKD) is considered one of the major causes of mortality, together with its main complication, the cardiovascular disease, which contributes to the poor prognosis of these patients. Inflammation has been recognized as an essential part of CKD and is closely linked to cardiovascular complications. The identification of novel biomarkers using omics technologies is rapidly advancing and could improve the early detection in renal diseases. Omics approaches, including proteomics, could provide novel insights into disease mechanisms, identifying at the same time accurate inflammatory biomarker panels with an essential role in disease monitoring and follow-up. Recent advances highlight the gut microbiota as an important source of inflammation in kidney diseases. An increasing body of evidence reveals the cross talk between microbiota and host in CKD; in addition, gut dysbiosis may represent an underappreciated cause of inflammation and subsequently could lead to malnutrition, accelerated cardiovascular disease and CKD progression. This chapter discusses the relationship between inflammation and CKD and highlights the novel approaches regarding microbiota involvement in CKD pathology, as well as their potential to facilitate improving the quality of life

Secure Data Retention of Call Detail Records

In today’s world communication is relying heavily on electronic means, both for voice and other native data. All these communication sessions leave behind journaling information by the very nature of the underlying services. This information is both sensitive with respect to user’s rights and important for law enforcement purposes, so proper storage and retrieval techniques have to be taken into consideration. The paper discusses such techniques in relation with recent EU recommendations and suggests some methods for achieving good performance while preserving the required security levels