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Background: Nanoparticles' precise targeting properties are becoming increasingly important in treating cancer and starting to outweigh cancer therapies. Methods: The in vivo anticancer activity of ethyl acetate iron oxide nanoparticles (NPS EAE) of Acalypha wilkesiana Müll. Mosaica was tested using Ehrlich ascites carcinoma cells (EAC). Results: The value of the median lethal dose LD50 limit was found to be 3000 mg/kg. The value count of EAC cells was significantly decreased to 150±2.01 (106) and 275±2.01 (106) cells for each preventive and therapeutic group related to the positive group (525±4.3 (106) cell. Moreover, the results of biological markers decrease in alanine amino transferase activity (ALT), aspartate amino transferase activity (AST), creatinine (CREAT), UREA, albumin, globulin, and total protein level according to the confident group by restoring the abnormal dissimilarity in the biomedical parameters to normal values. Ethyl acetate nano particles induced apoptosis in hepatic and kidney cells. This was designated by increasing the apoptosis regulator Bcl-2 associated X (BAX) level and significantly reducing antiapoptotic assay B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2) level as an antiapoptotic marker. In the apoptotic marker BAX, there was a significant rise in therapeutic activity with a change of 273.87% and a significant increase in the preventive group with a change of 144.69% according to the positive group. However, in the antiapoptotic marker, Bcl-2 highly decreases in the therapeutic group and preventive group with changes -83.20% and -87.82% according to the positive group, which has a highly significant increase with a change of 5855%. Conclusion: Histopathology tests showed anticancer activity against (EAC) in both the preventive group and therapeutic group, especially in the preventive group in kidney organs showed no pathology with normal glomeruli and normal tubules, it also showed in liver foci of lobular inflammation with mild development of a portal tract accompanied by inflammation, but in the therapeutic group showed less activity than the preventive group as in the kidney many tubules displayed appearances of slight tubular injury with mild acute tubular injury and in the liver, the therapeutic group becomes a more effective representation in normal liver architecture, with no detected lobular or portal inflammation or confluent necrosis. So the preventive group was considered as protecting agent for the kidney organ. However, the therapeutic group is supposed to be the treatment agent for the liver organ. This is due to the fact that it has a defensive effect rather than a curative effect. There is a possibility that it is a favorable anticancer agent. Green synthesis of Fe3O4- NPS was successfully done using plant extract acting as a reducing, stabilizing, and capping agent.

Mobility data captures the locations of moving objects such as humans, animals, and cars. With the availability of GPS-equipped mobile devices and other inexpensive location-tracking technologies, mobility data is collected ubiquitously. In recent years, the use of mobility data has demonstrated significant impact in various domains including traffic management, urban planning, and health sciences. In this paper, we present the emerging domain of mobility data science. Towards a unified approach to mobility data science, we envision a pipeline having the following components: mobility data collection, cleaning, analysis, management, and privacy. For each of these components, we explain how mobility data science differs from general data science, we survey the current state of the art and describe open challenges for the research community in the coming years., Comment: Updated arXiv metadata to include two authors that were missing from the metadata. PDF has not been changed

(Benzimidazol-2-yl)-7-hydroxycoumarin and N-(2-hydroxyphenyl)-7-hydroxycoumarin-3-carboxamide have been synthesized by the condensation of ethyl 7-hydroxycoumarin-3-carboxylate in acetic acid. Acetylation with acetic anhydride and halogenation with bromine in acetic acid’s presence of the previous compounds has yielded the corresponding acetoxy and dibromo derivatives. The synthesized molecules that contain coumarin ring have been evaluated for their activities against breast cancer and they have shown good in vitro antiproliferative activities against a human breast cancer line (MCF-7). The results have shown that 3-(benzimidazol-2-yl)-7-acetoxycoumarin had a significant cytotoxic effect compared to the standard DOX (doxorubicin) drug.

This search aimed to study the bioactive components of lavender leaves and using it to prolong the shelf life of the cake. Different preparations of the lavender leaves including the extraction of the essential oil, the water extract, and the dried powder were obtained. The chemical composition and total phenols and flavonoids of lavender leaves were determined. The antioxidants, antibacterial, and cytotoxic activities of lavender leaves essential oil were measured. Total phenols content in lavender leaves powder was higher than that of lavender leaves water extract (15.74 vs. 2.36 mg gallic acid equivalent /g). The lavender leaves essential oil exhibited the highest antioxidant activity (85.32%) followed by lavender leaves powder (76.71%) then lavender leaves water extract (27.38 %). Also, lavender leaves essential oil has activity against pathogenic bacteria like Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus, Escherichia coli and Salmonella typhi, also it has a strong antitumor activity against intestinal carcinoma cells line (Caco-2). The results of sensory evaluation showed that the best characteristics were obtained with using 600 ppm of essential oil, 10% of the water extract, or 7.5% of the leaves powder. In conclusion, it is possible to extend the shelf life of the cake to 28 days by addition of 10% of the lavender leaves water extract or 7.5% of lavender leaves powder to cake ingredients or to 4 months by addition of 600 ppm of lavender leaves essential oil compared to 7 days for control sample at room temperature and also with good sensory properties for the produced cake.

Mushrooms are products which lose their unique organoleptic properties after harvesting and, it has a short shelf life. The effect of edible coating of mushroom on shelf life was evaluated by using carrageenan (1.5%) and different concentrations of tangerine (Citrus reticulate)essential oil (0.2, 0.4 and 0.6%). Edible coating solutions were prepared using different rotational speed of mixing (500, 1000 and 1500 rpm). Physiochemical properties of tangerineessential oil and rheological characteristics of edible coating solutions were measured. The results indicated that all edible coating solutions exhibited non-Newtonian pseudoplastic behavior. The highest value of water vapor permeability was for carrageenan (1.5%) incorporated with tangerine essential oil (0.2%) at 500 rpm sample. Essential oil and mixing speed affected the edible film morphology. Edible coating of mushroom affected the weight loss, firmness, moisture content and microbiological properties. The obtained results indicated the possibility of prolonging the period of preserving mushrooms by using the coating film prepared from carrageenan mixed with tangerine essential oil.

Although RF fingerprinting is one of the most commonly used techniques for localization, deploying it in a ubiquitous manner requires addressing the challenge of supporting a large number of heterogeneous devices and their variations. We present QHFP, a device-independent quantum fingerprint matching algorithm that addresses two of the issues for realizing worldwide ubiquitous large-scale location tracking systems: storage space and running time as well as devices heterogeneity. In particular, we present a quantum algorithm with a complexity that is exponentially better than the classical techniques, both in space and running time. QHFP also has provisions for handling the inherent localization error due to building the large-scale fingerprint using heterogeneous devices. We give the details of the entire system starting from extracting device-independent features from the raw RSS, mapping the classical feature vectors to their quantum counterparts, and showing a quantum cosine similarity algorithm for fingerprint matching. We have implemented our quantum algorithm and deployed it in a real testbed using the IBM Quantum machine simulator. Results confirm the ability of QHFP to obtain the correct estimated location with an exponential improvement in space and running time compared to the traditional classical counterparts. In addition, the proposed device-independent features lead to more than 20% better accuracy in median error. This highlights the promise of our algorithm for future ubiquitous large-scale worldwide device-independent fingerprinting localization systems., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2106.11751

Healthy diet for elderly not only provided them with their needs from all nutrients but also helped preventing and treating age-related disorders. So, the present study was to evaluate physical, chemical and sensory characteristics of nine formulated functional soup mixtures for elderly. This study was designed to prepare some soups contained some of vegetables and fruit which cooked in one of three liquids (water, chicken broth and whey). Nine soup mixtures of vegetables and fruits were prepared. Proximate composition, vitamins, minerals, physical characteristics and antioxidant activity were determined, sensory properties were evaluated, as well as caloric values and RDA (Recommended Dietary Allowances) were calculated. The soup colors varied between red to orange yellow or yellow. The results of the sensory evaluation showed that all the different soup mixtures were acceptable with values ranging from 8.38 to 9.50 for overall acceptability. The results indicated that one serving of soup mixtures which contained oat, spinach, broccoli and bananas covered the RDA of protein, crude fiber, fat, carbohydrates and caloric values for elderly male and female by about 14.3-18.5%, 29.3-44.3%, 10-12.5%, 29.6-30.6% and 9.4-10.7 kcal/cup of soup, respectively. While, vitamins A, C, B6 and B12 were covered by about 448%, 39%, 29% and 750%, respectively for male and 576%, 47%, 33% and 750%, respectively for female. In conclusion the formulated soup mixtures with high acceptability and antioxidant activity can provide elderly people with high percent of their requirements from nutrients.

A new series of hybrid 2-Quinolinone derivatives were synthesized and structurally proved using spectral and elemental analyses data. All the prepared compounds were tested for their in vitro cytotoxic activity against MCF-7 cell line. Compounds 6 and 8 showed potent anticancer activity, which were comparable to Doxorubicin as reference compound. While compound 3 was comparable to cisplatin. Cell cycle analysis of compounds 6 and 8 showed cell cycle arrest at S and G2/M phases of the cycle and induced apoptosis at pre-G1 phase. DNA synthesis inhibitory activity demonstrated that compound 6 showed equipotent activity to Doxorubicin. The extent of apoptosis was also determined using Annexin V-FITC assay. In addition, compounds 6 and 8 increase the activation of effector caspase 3 by four fold more than untreated control. On the other hand, the localization of compounds 3, 6 and 8 were found in the nucleus.

Frankincense (Boswellia carterii) has many medicinal benefits. In Egypt, a few people like to use it in chewing and sometimes in incense. This study aimed to use the water extract of frankincense powder prepared by soaking in drinkable water for 24 hours (T1) and boiling in water for one hour (T2) for the fortification of guava nectar in concentrations ranging from 0.25 to 2% (volume/ volume (v/v)). The chemical composition, phenols, and flavonoids contents of the frankincense were determined. Anti-oxidant (DPPH method) and antimicrobials (pathogenic bacteria) and cytotoxicity (HepG-2 and MCF-7 human cancer cell lines) activities were measured. Sensory evaluation and the physical properties of the guava nectar mixed with water extracts of frankincense were evaluated. The phenols and total flavonoid contents of the T2 sample were 0.869 and 0.147 mg/g, respectively. However, it was 0.748 and 0.070 mg/g, respectively for T1. The results showed that frankincense powder has 93.74% antioxidant activity with 67.26 mg/ml IC50. The results also showed that the T2 sample has antibacterial activity against Salmonella typhi and Bacillus cereus. The results also showed that the frankincense powder has cytotoxic activity and this activity is strong on HepG-2 human cancer cell lines compared to the positive control (doxorubicin), however, it is less activity on the human breast adenocarcinoma (MCF-7). The IC50 values of the frankincense powder were 7.8 and 33.9 µM, respectively, while doxorubicin values were 10.3 and 28.5 µM, respectively. The results of the sensory evaluation showed that water extracts of the frankincense can be added to guava nectar at concentrations up to1%.It can be concluded that it is possible to mix aqueous extracts of the frankincense with guava nectar to obtain a product with a pleasant taste, color, and aroma and having also the advantages of frankincense.

In Egypt, squid ink is disposed of during squid preparation, which may cause environmental pollution and health problems. Therefore, this study was carried out to make use of the active ingredients found in the squid ink as by-products. The chemical composition, the mineral, total phenols, and flavonoids contents of squid ink were determined. DPPH radical scavenging activity, cytotoxicity, and antitumor activity of squid ink on human tumor cell line (Lung carcinoma cell line) were also tested beside its antimicrobial activity. Two mixtures of black or brown squid ink sauce were prepared. The results indicated that the antioxidant activity was 91.66%. The results of the cell viability and toxicity assay of squid ink indicated that as the concentration of squid ink increased the viability percentages were decreased, while inhibitory activity percentages were increased. The IC50 [the concentration causing the death of 50% of the human tumor cell line (Lung carcinoma cell line A549)] was 22 µg/ml. The results also indicated that the squid ink had antimicrobial activity against Bacillus subtilis, Aspergillus fumigates, Aspergillus niger, Candida albicans, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumonia, and Proteus vulgaris with zone inhibitions of 19, 18, 12, 13, 11, 13, 12, and 10 mm, respectively. The overall acceptability scores of the black and brown squid ink sauces were 9.35 and 10, respectively. In conclusion, the formulated squid ink sauces with a strong odor, high acceptability, and different colors as well as anti-oxidant, anti-microbial, and anti-cancer activities can fulfill the desires of many consumers.

Marine pollution is a growing worldwide concern, affecting health of marine ecosystems, human health, climate change, and weather patterns. To reduce underwater pollution, it is critical to have access to accurate information about the extent of marine pollutants as otherwise appropriate countermeasures and cleaning measures cannot be chosen. Currently such information is difficult to acquire as existing monitoring solutions are highly laborious or costly, limited to specific pollutants, and have limited spatial and temporal resolution. In this article, we present a research vision of large-scale autonomous marine pollution monitoring that uses coordinated groups of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV)s to monitor extent and characteristics of marine pollutants. We highlight key requirements and reference technologies to establish a research roadmap for realizing this vision. We also address the feasibility of our vision, carrying out controlled experiments that address classification of pollutants and collaborative underwater processing, two key research challenges for our vision., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, 15 references

Comparative acute toxicity studies of the latex and sequential extracts of Leptadenia pyrotechnica (Forsk.) Decne (Asclepiadaceae) were recorded using brine shrimp. The higher toxicities were exhibited in latex; methanol, methanol/dichloromethane (1:1), defatted methanol/dichloromethane (1:1), defatted methanol and dichloromethane extracts. The other extracts; aqueous, alkaloids, ethyl acetate and n-butanol exhibited less toxicities compared with the other extracts. The estimated LC50 and its 95% confidence limits for these extracts expressed in ppm were: methanol, latex 18.84 (11.22-31.61), methanol/dichloromethane 19.95 (7.76-53.70), defatted methanol/dichloromethane 21.38 (7.24-63.10), defatted methanol 28.19 (16.27-48.81) and dichloromethane 30.90 (11.75-79.43). The anti-tumor activities; potato disc assays of methanol, ethyl acetate and alkaloids extracts showed good activities as anti-tumor agent which represented-49.30,-43.20 an -33.60%, respectively. While latex and aqueous extract represented-30.80 and-28.17%, respectively.

The design and syntheses of several novel pyrazole derivatives (2, 5, 6 and 7) and pyrazole derivatives (3 and 4) containing thiazole moiety via by ethyl β-(p-chlorophenyl)–α-cyanoacrylate (1) and thiosemicarbazide as starting materials. Pyrazole derivatives (3 and 4) containing thiazole moiety were synthesized via cyclization of pyrazole derivative (2) with bromomethyl arylketones, to give compound 3, followed by acetylation. N- (3- methoxy-2-hydroxybenzal) -3- (p -chlorophenyl)-4- cyano-5-oxopyrazol-1-thiocarboxamide (6) was synthesized via reaction of compound 2 with 3-methoxy-2-hydroxybenzaldehyde. Structures of all compounds were confirmed by elemental analysis, FT-IR, 1H-NMR, 13C-NMR and mass spectrometry. The cytotoxic activity of all the synthetic compounds were evaluated against Leukemia HL-60 compared with Doxorubicicn. The cytotoxic activity was checked in vitro for the recently prepared compounds by using the MTT assay. Compounds 4, 6 and 9 were the most active against Leukemia HL-60. The IC50 values of them were less than 5 µM in the range of 1.35-4.78 µM. In addition, compounds 3 and 5 showed less antiproliferative activity against Leukemia HL-60 cells with IC50 values in the range 5.39-8.82 µM. Compound 6 was the most potent cytotoxic activity. The studies biological activity includes cell cycle analysis, apoptosis detection assay and Topoisomerase II inhibition activity assay explained that compound 6 is a strong Topo II inhibitor.

GC-MS analysis of isolated alkaloids from aerial parts of Leptadenia pyrotechnica (Forsk.) Decne (Asclepiadaceae) was performed. Twenty-four alkaloids and six simple amines were detected for the first time in this plant. Almost all of the alkaloids belonged to pyridine, pyrrole, pyrazine, and indole types. The acute LC50 of the total alkaloids and alcohol extracts estimated by means of brine shrimp toxicity test were 63.09 and 11.89 ppm, respectively. The antitumor activities of these extracts, using potato disc screen, showed good activity represented by −33.6% and −49.3%, respectively.

Investigation of the chemical constituents of Leptadenia pyrotechnica (Forsk.) Decne (Asclepiadaceae) led to the isolation of three cardiac glycosides; 14,19-dihydroxycard-20 (22)-enolide-3-O-[β-d-glucopyranosyl-β-d-digitoxoside] C-I, 14,19-dihydroxycard-20 (22)-enolide-3-O-[β-d-glucopyranosyl-β-d-glucopyranoside] C-II and 14,19-dihydroxycard-20 (22)-enolide-3-O-β-d-digitoxoside C-III. The isolation and identification of these compounds were carried out using rotation locular counter current chromatography (RLCCC), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The structures of the isolated compounds were established by fast-atom bombardment (FAB) and electrospray ionization (ESI) mass spectrometry (MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopic analysis. The acute toxicity studies of the cardiac glycosides and total alcohol extracts were examined by brine shrimp. Their lethal concentration 50 (LC50) were 18.84 and 11.89 ppm, respectively. The antitumor activity potato disk assays of the cardiac ...

An investigation of Leptadenia pyrotechnica (Forsk.) Decne (Asclepiadaceace) chemical constituents led to the isolation of six flavonoids, kaempferol-3-O-α- l-rhamnopyranosyl (1999→699)-O-β-d-glucopyranoside (E-I.1), kaempferol-3-O-β-d-rhamnopyranosyl (1999→699)-O-β-d-glucopyranoside (E-I.2), texasin-7-O-β-dglucopyranoside E-II.2, kaempferol-3-O-β-d-glucopyranoside (E-III.1), kaempferol (E-IV.1) and kaempferide3-O-α-l-rhamnopyranosyl (1999→699)-O-β-d-glucopyranoside (E-I.1a). The isolation of these compounds was carried out using Sephadex LH-20 low pressure liquid chromatography (LPLC), preparative paper chromatography (PC), and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The chemical structures of the isolated compounds were established by mass spectrometry (FAB- and EI- techniques), nuclear magnetic resonance NMR ( 1 H-, 13 C- and COSY) spectral data and ultraviolet (UV) spectroscopic techniques. The acute toxicity of total alcoholic and total flavonoid extracts were examined by brine shrimp. The LC 50 values were 11.89 and 84.14 ppm for the total alcoholic and total flavonoid extracts, respectively. The mortality rates of the isolated flavonoid fractions of E-I, E-I.1, E-I.2 represent the higher percentages of mortality compared with the rest of the flavonoid fractions. The plant exhibited activity as an antitumor agent in the initial potato disc screen.

Digital maps have become a part of our daily life with a number of commercial and free map services. These services have still a huge potential for enhancement with rich semantic information to support a large class of mapping applications. In this paper, we present Map++, a system that leverages standard cell-phone sensors in a crowdsensing approach to automatically enrich digital maps with different road semantics like tunnels, bumps, bridges, footbridges, crosswalks, road capacity, among others. Our analysis shows that cell-phones sensors with humans in vehicles or walking get affected by the different road features, which can be mined to extend the features of both free and commercial mapping services. We present the design and implementation of Map++ and evaluate it in a large city. Our evaluation shows that we can detect the different semantics accurately with at most 3% false positive rate and 6% false negative rate for both vehicle and pedestrian-based features. Moreover, we show that Map++ has a small energy footprint on the cell-phones, highlighting its promise as a ubiquitous digital maps enriching service., Comment: Published in the Eleventh Annual IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication, and Networking (IEEE SECON 2014)

Network coding has proved its efficiency in increasing the network performance for traditional ad-hoc networks. In this paper, we investigate using network coding for enhancing the throughput of multi-hop cognitive radio networks. We formulate the network coding throughput maximization problem as a graph theory problem, where different constraints and primary users' characteristics are mapped to the graph structure. We then show that the optimal solution to this problem in NP-hard and propose a heuristic algorithm to efficiently solve it. Evaluation of the proposed algorithm through NS2 simulations shows that we can increase the throughput of the constrained secondary users' network by 150\% to 200\% for a wide range of scenarios covering different primary users' densities, traffic loads, and spectrum availability., Comment: Accepted for publication in the IEEE Globecom 2014

Fungal spore populations in the outdoor and indoor atmosphere of Ismailia have been studied during the period from March 1992 to May 1993. A total of 23 350 cfu and 73 species were recorded,Cladosporium cladosporioides, Aureobasidium pullulans andAspergillus flavus were the most abundant. The indoor and outdoor mycoflora showed marked quantitative and qualitative differences. In view of count, recorded species could be categorized into three groups as follows: (a) species showing higher counts in out- than indoor, (b) species showing the opposite trend i.e. lower counts in out-door than indoor, (c) species showing approximately equal counts in out- and indoor. Regarding seasonal periodicity, March and either September or October showed the highest count for both normal fungal flora (NFF) and opportunistic fungal flora (OFF). While January and July showed the lowest count of them both, May but not July was the lowest as for outdoor NFF.

Device-free (DF) localization is an emerging technology that allows the detection and tracking of entities that do not carry any devices nor participate actively in the localization process. Typically, DF systems require a large number of transmitters and receivers to achieve acceptable accuracy, which is not available in many scenarios such as homes and small businesses. In this paper, we introduce MonoStream as an accurate single-stream DF localization system that leverages the rich Channel State Information (CSI) as well as MIMO information from the physical layer to provide accurate DF localization with only one stream. To boost its accuracy and attain low computational requirements, MonoStream models the DF localization problem as an object recognition problem and uses a novel set of CSI-context features and techniques with proven accuracy and efficiency. Experimental evaluation in two typical testbeds, with a side-by-side comparison with the state-of-the-art, shows that MonoStream can achieve an accuracy of 0.95m with at least 26% enhancement in median distance error using a single stream only. This enhancement in accuracy comes with an efficient execution of less than 23ms per location update on a typical laptop. This highlights the potential of MonoStream usage for real-time DF tracking applications.

Device-free (DF) localization in WLANs has been introduced as a value-added service that allows tracking indoor entities that do not carry any devices. Previous work in DF WLAN localization focused on the tracking of a single entity due to the intractability of the multi-entity tracking problem whose complexity grows exponentially with the number of humans being tracked. In this paper, we introduce Spot as an accurate and efficient system for multi-entity DF detection and tracking. Spot is based on a probabilistic energy minimization framework that combines a conditional random field with a Markov model to capture the temporal and spatial relations between the entities' poses. A novel cross-calibration technique is introduced to reduce the calibration overhead of multiple entities to linear, regardless of the number of humans being tracked. This also helps in increasing the system accuracy. We design the energy minimization function with the goal of being efficiently solved in mind. We show that the designed function can be mapped to a binary graph-cut problem whose solution has a linear complexity on average and a third order polynomial in the worst case. We further employ clustering on the estimated location candidates to reduce outliers and obtain more accurate tracking. Experimental evaluation in two typical testbeds, with a side-by-side comparison with the state-of-the-art, shows that Spot can achieve a multi-entity tracking accuracy of less than 1.1m. This corresponds to at least 36% enhancement in median distance error over the state-of-the-art DF localization systems, which can only track a single entity. In addition, Spot can estimate the number of entities correctly to within one difference error. This highlights that Spot achieves its goals of having an accurate and efficient software-only DF tracking solution of multiple entities in indoor environments., Comment: 14 pages, 24 figures

Although GPS has been considered a ubiquitous outdoor localization technology, we are still far from a similar technology for indoor environments. While a number of technologies have been proposed for indoor localization, they are isolated efforts that are way from a true ubiquitous localization system. A ubiquitous indoor positioning system is envisioned to be deployed on a large scale worldwide, with minimum overhead, to work with heterogeneous devices, and to allow users to roam seamlessly from indoor to outdoor environments. Such a system will enable a wide set of applications including worldwide seamless direction finding between indoor locations, enhancing first responders' safety by providing anywhere localization and floor plans, and providing a richer environment for location-aware social networking applications. We describe an architecture for the ubiquitous indoor positioning system (IPS) and the challenges that have to be addressed to materialize it. We then focus on the feasibility of automating the construction of a worldwide indoor floor plan and fingerprint database which, as we believe, is one of the main challenges that limit the existence of a ubiquitous IPS system. Our proof of concept uses a crowd-sourcing approach that leverages the embedded sensors in today's cell phones as a worldwide distributed floor plan generation tool. This includes constructing the floor plans and determining the areas of interest (corridors, offices, meeting rooms, elevators, etc). The cloud computing concepts are also adopted for the processing and storage of the huge amount of data generated and requested by the system's users. Our results show the ability of the system to construct an accurate floor plan and identify the areas of interest with more than 90% accuracy. We also identify different research directions for addressing the challenges of realizing a true ubiquitous IPS system., Comment: Under submission

Teaching is one of the most important factors affecting any education system. Many research efforts have been conducted to facilitate the presentation modes used by instructors in classrooms as well as provide means for students to review lectures through web browsers. Other studies have been made to provide acoustical design recommendations for classrooms like room size and reverberation times. However, using acoustical features of classrooms as a way to provide education systems with feedback about the learning process was not thoroughly investigated in any of these studies. We propose a system that extracts different sound features of students and instructors, and then uses machine learning techniques to evaluate the acoustical quality of any learning environment. We infer conclusions about the students' satisfaction with the quality of lectures. Using classifiers instead of surveys and other subjective ways of measures can facilitate and speed such experiments which enables us to perform them continuously. We believe our system enables education systems to continuously review and improve their teaching strategies and acoustical quality of classrooms., Comment: 7 pages, technical report

Calotropis procera (Ait.) R.Br. (Asclepiadaceae) is a shrub or small tree that grows wild in Egypt. Calotropis acts as a purgative, anthelmintic, anticoagulant, palliative (in problems with respiration, blood pressure), antipyretic, and analgesic, and induces neuromuscular blocking activity. Little research has been done to study the electrophysiological effects of this plant's extracts on cardiac, smooth, and skeletal muscle activities.The present study was conducted to determine the phytochemical composition and the effect of the total alcohol extract of the shoot of the plant, which contains almost all of C. procera's cardiac glycosides, flavonoids, and saponins. Also, this study attempted to throw more light on the electrophysiological effects of the plant extracts on cardiac, smooth, and skeletal muscle activities and to clarify the mechanism(s) of their observed action(s).The aerial parts of the plant were air dried and their ethanol extracts partitioned with successive solvents. Cardiac, smooth, and skeletal muscles were used in this study to investigate the physiological and pharmacological effects of the plant extracts from different solvents. The data were analyzed by paired t-test.The phytochemical investigation of Calotropis procera revealed the presence of cardenolides, flavonoids, and saponins. The effects of ethanol, n-butanol, and ethyl acetate (EtOAc) extracts were each evaluated on isolated toad heart and their mechanisms of action determined. Perfusion with 2 μg/mL ethanol, 0.2 μg/mL butanol, and 0.2 μg/mL EtOAc extracts caused a significant decrease in heart rate (bradycardia), significant increase in the force of ventricular contraction, and increase in T-wave amplitude. In addition, the effects of different extracts of the studied plant on smooth muscle and skeletal muscle were investigated in this study. The different extracts and latex of C. procera induced a negative chronotropic effect and decreased the heart rate (HR) of isolated toad heart. The different extracts increased the power of contraction of the duodenum (trace a). Pretreatment with atropine sulfate as a muscarinic receptor blocker abolished the stimulatory effect of the different plant extracts and latex of C. procera (trace b).The present data suggest that ethanol, butanol, and EtOAc extracts of Calotropis procera have negative chronotropism and positive inotropism. Verapamil could abolish the inotropic effect of ethanol as well as that of butanol and EtOAc extracts. Meanwhile, atropine did not abolish the observed negative chronotropic effect. The ethanol extract increased the power of contraction of rabbit duodenum, but atropine abolished this effect. It also decreased the skeletal muscle contraction; this effect could be through blocking of the nicotinic receptors. Butanol and EtOAc extract data for smooth and skeletal muscles are very close to those for the corresponding ethanol extract of the studied plant. The present data for C. procera indicate its direct action on the myocardium, its increase of smooth muscle motility, and its relaxation of skeletal muscle contraction. The chemical constituents could directly affect the cell membrane probably through receptors coupling to G proteins. They regulate the ion channel physiology as in the myocardium.The present data on the extracts of C. procera indicate a direct action on the myocardium, stimulatory effect on smooth muscle motility, and relaxant action on skeletal muscle contraction. Chemical constituents could directly affect the cell membrane probably through receptors coupling to G proteins. They regulate the ion channel physiology as in the myocardium.

In this paper we propose distributed flooding-based storage algorithms for large-scale wireless sensor networks. Assume a wireless sensor network with $n$ nodes that have limited power, memory, and bandwidth. Each node is capable of both sensing and storing data. Such sensor nodes might disappear from the network due to failures or battery depletion. Hence it is desired to design efficient schemes to collect data from these $n$ nodes. We propose two distributed storage algorithms (DSA's) that utilize network flooding to solve this problem. In the first algorithm, DSA-I, we assume that every node utilizes network flooding to disseminate its data throughout the network using a mixing time of approximately O(n). We show that this algorithm is efficient in terms of the encoding and decoding operations. In the second algorithm, DSA-II, we assume that the total number of nodes is not known to every sensor; hence dissemination of the data does not depend on $n$. The encoding operations in this case take $O(C\mu^2)$, where $\mu$ is the mean degree of the network graph and $C$ is a system parameter. We evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms through analysis and simulation, and show that their performance matches the derived theoretical results.

The widespread usage of wireless local area networks and mobile devices has fostered the interest in localization systems for wireless environments. The majority of research in the context of wireless-based localization systems has focused on device-based active localization, in which a device is attached to tracked entities. Recently, device-free passive localization (DfP) has been proposed where the tracked entity is neither required to carry devices nor participate actively in the localization process. DfP systems are based on the fact that RF signals are affected by the presence of people and objects in the environment. The DfP concept enables a wide range of applications including intrusion detection and tracking, border protection, and smart buildings automation. Previous studies have focused on small areas with direct line of sight and/or controlled environments. In this paper, we present the design, implementation and analysis of Nuzzer, a large-scale device-free passive localization system for real environments. Without any additional hardware, it makes use of the already installed wireless data networks to monitor and process changes in the received signal strength (RSS) transmitted from access points at one or more monitoring points. We present probabilistic techniques for DfP localization and evaluate their performance in a typical office building, rich in multipath, with an area of 1500 square meters. Our results show that the Nuzzer system gives device-free location estimates with less than 2 meters median distance error using only two monitoring laptops and three access points. This indicates the suitability of Nuzzer to a large number of application domains., Comment: 9 pages

Additional file 1. Demographic and medical background

Additional file 2: Figure S1. Oral Candida status in non-pregnant mothers. (A) Oral (saliva and plaque) Candida species detection in non-pregnant women. (B). Candida species carriage in the saliva and plaque of non-pregnant women.

Additional file 2: Figure S1. Oral Candida status in non-pregnant mothers. (A) Oral (saliva and plaque) Candida species detection in non-pregnant women. (B). Candida species carriage in the saliva and plaque of non-pregnant women.

Additional file 1. Demographic and medical background

The essence of smart pervasive Cyber-Physical Environments (CPEs) is to enhance the dependability, security and efficiency of their encompassing systems and infrastructures and their services. In CPEs, interactive information resources are integrated and coordinated with physical resources to better serve human users. To bridge the interaction gap between users and the physical environment, a CPE is instrumented with a large number of small devices, called sensors, that are capable of sensing, computing and communicating. Sensors with heterogeneous capabilities should autonomously organize on-demand and interact to furnish real-time, high fidelity information serving a wide variety of user applications with dynamic and evolving requirements. CPEs with their associated networked sensors promise aware services for smart systems and infrastructures with the potential to improve the quality of numerous application domains, in particular mission-critical infrastructure domains. Examples include healthcare, environment protection, transportation, energy, homeland security, and national defense. To build smart CPEs, Networked Sensor Environments (NSEs) are needed to manage demand-driven sharing of large-scale federated heterogeneous resources among multiple applications and users. We informally define NSE as a tailorable, application agnostic, distributed platform with the purpose of managing a massive number of federated resources with heterogeneous computing, communication, and monitoring capabilities. We perceive the need to develop scalable, trustworthy, cost-effective NSEs. A NSE should be endowed with dynamic and adaptable computing and communication services capable of efficiently running diverse applications with evolving QoS requirements on top of federated distributed resources. NSEs should also enable the development of applications independent of the underlying system and device concerns. To our knowledge, a NSE with the aforementioned capabilities does not currently exist. The large scale of NSEs, the heterogeneous node capabilities, the highly dynamic topology, and the likelihood of being deployed in inhospitable environments pose formidable challenges for the construction of resilient shared NSE platforms. Additionally, nodes in NSE are often resource challenged and therefore trustworthy node cooperation is required to provide useful services. Furthermore, the failure of NSE nodes due to malicious or non-malicious conditions represents a major threat to the trustworthiness of NSEs. Applications should be able to survive failure of nodes and change their runtime structure while preserving their operational integrity. It is also worth noting that the decoupling of application programming concerns from system and device concerns has not received the appropriate attention in most existing wireless sensor network platforms. In this dissertation, we present a Biologically-inspired Secure Elastic Networked Sensor Environment (BioSENSE) that synergistically integrates: (1) a novel bio-inspired construction of adaptable system building components, (2) associative routing framework with extensible adaptable criteria-based addressing of resources, and (3) management of multi-dimensional software diversity and trust-based variant hot shuffling. The outcome is that an application using BioSENSE is able to allocate, at runtime, a dynamic taskforce, running over a federated resource pool that would satisfy its evolving mission requirements. BioSENSE perceives both applications and the NSE itself to be elastic, and allows them to grow or shrink based upon needs and conditions. BioSENSE adopts Cell-Oriented-Architecture (COA), a novel architecture that supports the development, deployment, execution, maintenance, and evolution of NSE software. COA employs mission-oriented application design and inline code distribution to enable adaptability, dynamic re-tasking, and re-programmability. The cell, the basic building block in COA, is the abstraction of a mission-oriented autonomously active resource. Generic cells are spontaneously created by the middleware, then participate in emerging tasks through a process called specialization. Once specialized, cells exhibit application specific behavior. Specialized cells have mission objectives that are being continuously sought, and sensors that are used to monitor performance parameters, mission objectives, and other phenomena of interest. Due to the inherent anonymous nature of sensor nodes, associative routing enables dynamic semantically-rich descriptive identification of NSE resources. As such, associative routing presents a clear departure from most current network addressing schemes. Associative routing combines resource discovery and path discovery into a single coherent role, leading to significant reduction in traffic load and communication latency without any loss of generality. We also propose Adaptive Multi-Criteria Routing (AMCR) protocol as a realization of associative routing for NSEs. AMCR exploits application-specific message semantics, represented as generic criteria, and adapts its operation according to observed traffic patterns. BioSENSE intrinsically exploits software diversity, runtime implementation shuffling, and fault recovery to achieve security and resilience required for mission-critical NSEs. BioSENSE makes NSE software a resilient moving target that : 1) confuses the attacker by non-determinism through shuffling of software component implementations; 2) improves the availability of NSE by providing means to gracefully recover from implementation flaws at runtime; and 3) enhances the software system by survival of the fittest through trust-based component selection in an online software component marketplace. In summary, BioSENSE touts the following advantages: (1) on-demand, online distribution and adaptive allocation of services and physical resources shared among multiple long-lived applications with dynamic missions and quality of service requirements, (2) structural, functional, and performance adaptation to dynamic network scales, contexts and topologies, (3) moving target defense of system software, and (4) autonomic failure recovery. Ph. D.

The growing need for a trustworthy Future Internet demands evolutionary approaches unfettered by legacy constrains and concepts. The networking community is calling for new network architectural proposals that address the deficiencies identified in present network realizations, acknowledge the need for a trustworthy IT infrastructure, and satisfy the society's emerging and future requirements. Proposed architectures need to be founded on well-articulated design principles, account for network operational and management complexities, embrace technology and application heterogeneity, regulate network-inherent emergent behavior, and overcome shortcomings attributed to present network realizations. This dissertation presents our proposed clean-slate Concern-Oriented Reference Model (CORM) for architecting future computer networks. CORM stands as a guiding framework from which network architectures can be derived according to specific functional, contextual, and operational requirements or constraints. CORM represents a pioneering attempt within the network realm, and to our knowledge, CORM is the first reference model that is bio-inspired and derived in accordance with the Function-Behavior-Structure (FBS) engineering framework. CORM conceives a computer network as a software-dependent complex system whose design needs to be attempted in a concern-oriented bottom-up approach along two main dimensions: a vertical dimension addressing structure and configuration of network building blocks; and a horizontal dimension addressing communication and interactions among the previously formulated building blocks. For each network dimension, CORM factors the design space into function, structure, and behavior, applying to each the principle of separation of concerns for further systematic decomposition. In CORM, the network-building block is referred to as the Network Cell (NC), which represents CORM's first basic abstraction. An NC's structure and inherent behavior are bio-inspired, imitating a bacterium cell in a bacteria colony, thus it is capable of adaptation, self-organization and evolution. An NC's functional operation is defined by CORM second basic abstraction; the ACRF framework. The ACRF framework is a conceptual framework for network-concerns derived according to our interpretation of computer network requirement specifications. CORM networks are recursively synthesized in a bottom-up fashion out of CORM NCs. CORM addresses the multi-dimensionality of computer networks by modeling the network structure and behavior using a network structural template (NST), and an information flow model (IFM), respectively. Being developed according to a complex system paradigm, CORM refutes the long endorsed concept of layering, intrinsically accounts for emergent behavior, and ensures system integrity and stability. As a reference model, CORM is more typical of conventional engineering. Therefore it was validated using the FBS engineering framework. However, the behavior to be realized in CORM-based networks was substantiated and evaluated by deriving CellNet, our proposed CORM-based network architecture. CellNet-compliant protocols' behavioral adaptation and modification were illustrated and evaluated through simulation. CORM will have a profound impact on the operation and behavior of computer networks composing the Internet. By introducing awareness adaptability and evolvability as network intrinsic features, CORM-based Internet will proactively respond to changes in operational contexts, underlying technologies, and end user requirements. A major direction in CORM future work would be to detail the IFM component. Ph. D.