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Heterogeneous multiprocessor platforms are the foundation of systems that require high computational power combined with low energy consumption, like the IoT and mobile robotics. In this paper, we present five new algorithms for the design space exploration of platforms with elements grouped in clusters with very few connections in between, while these platforms have favorable electric properties and lower production costs, the limited interconnectivity and inability of heterogeneous platform elements to execute all types of tasks, significantly decrease the chance of finding a feasible mapping of application to the platform. We base the new algorithms on the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II) meta-heuristic and the previously published SDSE mapping algorithm designed for fully interconnected multiprocessor platforms. With the aim to improve the chance of finding feasible solutions for sparsely connected platforms, we have modified the parts of the search process concerning the penalization of infeasible solutions, chromosome decoding, and mapping strategy. Due to the lack of adequate existing benchmarks, we propose our own synthetic benchmark with multiple application and platform models, which we believe can be easily extended and reused by other researchers for further studying this type of platform. The experiments show that four proposed algorithms can find feasible solutions in 100% of test cases for platforms with dedicated clusters. In the case of tile-like platforms, the same four algorithms show an average success rate of 60%, with one algorithm going up to 84%.

We have carried out three-dimensional, computer-assisted, functional endoscopic sinus telesurgery. Surgeons at different locations up to 300 km apart could not only see and transfer video images but also transfer three-dimensional computer models and manipulate them in realtime during surgery. Two different approaches were used. In the first telesurgery procedure we used M-JPEG compression and transmitted the data using fibre optic connections (ATM OC-3) at a bandwidth of 155 Mbit/s. In the second telesurgery procedure video images were transmitted over four E1 digital lines, amounting to about 8 Mbit/s of bandwidth, with better compression standards, such as MPEG1 and 2. We found that MPEG2 video compression produced the best picture quality for the operating field and endoscopic cameras. For conferencing and consultation between two or more connected sites during the surgery, we used JPEG and MPEG1 video compression with audio. The main feature of our three-dimensional telesurgery was the use of three-dimensional modelling of the operative field. This is important for emergency surgical interventions. We do not advocate that inexperienced surgeons operate on patients, not even with the guidance of a remote surgeon. However, three-dimensional telesurgery may become very valuable for experienced surgeons in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Raini Cashmere goat is one of the most important breeds of goats in Iran, which has a high economic value in the world markets due to its high-quality fluff. It is mostly found in the southeast of Iran, especially in Kerman province where there are about three million head of this breeds. The present study aimed to evaluate serum lipids profile and thyroid hormones in the Raini Cashmere goat in peripartum for better identification of this breed. Blood samples were taken from the jugular vein of six adult Raini Cashmere goats and sent to the laboratory for evaluation of cholesterol, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein, low-density lipoprotein, very low-density lipoprotein, serum glucose, and thyroid hormones. The results showed that glucose, HDL, and LDL levels increased 2 to 3 weeks before parturition and decreased after parturition. However, the triglyceride, cholesterol, T3, and T4 concentrations decreased before parturition and increased after parturition. According to the results, it was concluded that the glucose concentration increases due to the high need of the mother for nutrients to grow the fetus too. Other factors such as triglycerides and cholesterol decrease due to the absorption of fatty acids by the liver and the storage of triglycerides and cholesterol. In addition, the negative energy balance preceding parturition is associated with a reduction in the T3 and T4 levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Frontiers of Computer Science & Technology is the property of Beijing Journal of Computer Engineering & Applications Journal Co Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The study examined the effect of teaching text-based programming with a physical programming tool on secondary school students' computational thinking skills and self-efficacy perceptions. The study was conducted according to a sequential explanatory design as a mixed method research. The study group consisted of 85 secondary school students. Within the scope of the study, a physical programming tool called Micro:bit was used to teach Python programming for a period of 6 weeks. Data were collected using the Self-Efficacy Perception Scale for Computational Thinking Skill, Bebras: International Challenge on Informatics and Computational Thinking Tasks, tests focused on programming tool, concepts, and processes, and through semi-structured interview questioning. According to the findings obtained from pretests and posttests, a significant and positive difference was found in the students' computational thinking skills and self-efficacy perceptions towards computational thinking skill. As a result of having received instruction in programming, the students satisfactorily learnt the required programming concepts and processes. Through learning Python programming with a physical programming tool, the students not only gained the skills required to write appropriate syntax, and to test and debug code, but they also learnt programming concepts such as variables, conditional expressions, loops, and functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign bodies in paranasal sinuses are found quite infrequently. They are usually detected after various types of head trauma and most commonly occur as a consequence of improper handling of firearms or explosives. In countries at war, eg, during the war in Croatia, adults and children were almost equally exposed to these injuries. The diagnosis should be based on results from precise computer tomography (CT) scanning in axial and coronal sections, and, using these data, tissues of different densities at these anatomical locations can be differentiated. The possibility of exact preoperative, noninvasive visualization of the spatial relationships of anatomic and pathologic structures with 3-dimensional (3D) computer-assisted diagnosis and intraoperative navigational techniques allows the surgeon to achieve a considerable advantage in the preoperative examination of the patient and to reduce the risk of intraoperative complications, all by the use of virtual surgery (VS) or virtual diagnosis. The expected contribution of the mentioned computer-assisted surgical technique manifests itself in defining the most appropriate mode of CT scanning of the head to design the 3D operating field model, and the possibility of active and dynamic 3D visualization of the desired anatomical regions is realized. 3D reconstruction of anatomic units becomes a routine preoperative procedure, providing a highly useful and informative visualization of the regions of interest, and, thus, advancing the definition of geometric information on anatomical contours of the 3D model by the transfer of so-called image pixel to contour pixel.

The homeostasis of the whole organism and the analysis of hematological parameters in red deer (Cervus elaphus) play an essential role in comparative physiology for health assessment and disease diagnosis. The obtained blood results can be the basis for assessing the condition of wild deer populations with an existing clinical picture or characterize the nutritional status, habitat, or other stress factors, as the hematopoietic system is susceptible to any changes in the animal body. In the course of the research, it was found that the body weight of adult deer varied depending on the population. Female deer of the Latvian and Lithuanian crossbreeds and the Eastern European population had the highest weight. As for the males, the animals of the Hungarian population had a higher weight than the English population. A high level of growth intensity in the early postnatal period was characteristic of both young females (body weight gain was in the range of 44.8–45.8 kg) and males (42.6–44.12 kg). The analysis of hematological parameters confirmed that the number of red blood cells and hemoglobin content increased in the blood of animals of the English population under technological stress (by 5.6 and 4.4 %). Regarding individual populations, it was noted that under the same conditions of immobilization of animals (medication), the number of red blood cells in the blood of Latvian crossbred deer was 8.5 % higher than the English population. The hemoglobin content was 5.3 % lower, and the saturation of red blood cells with hemoglobin was 12.9 % lower. It was found that the hematological parameters of 3–4 month-old fawns (females and males) of the English population were characterized by relative stability. Against the background of a tendency to a higher number of red blood cells in females (by 12.8 %), the hemoglobin content was 3.3 % lower than in males. The number of leukocytes in the blood of females was slightly higher than that of males, although no significant deviations were noted in some forms of white blood cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Creativity in nursing education is crucial for developing practical problem-solving skills, and humor is a valuable tool for stress management and fostering a positive learning environment. This study explored the relationship between creativity and humor among nursing students. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 265 convenient undergraduate nursing students aged 20 to 25. The Short Scale of Creative Self (SSCS) and the Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale (MSHS) were used to measure creativity and various aspects of humor. Results: Showed a significant positive correlation between humor and creativity (r = 0.238, p < 0.001). Positive correlations were found between Humor Production, Coping or Adaptive Humor, and Appreciation of Humor with creativity (r = 0.254, 0.230, and 0.461, p < 0.001, respectively). In contrast, Attitudes Toward Humor and Humorous People were negatively correlated with creativity (r=-0.343, p < 0.05). Humor accounted for 16.2% of the variance in creativity. Conclusion: The study concluded a strong link between humor and creativity, with positive correlations observed between creative self-efficacy and creative personal identity with different aspects of humor. The study recommends the incorporation of humor into nursing education and healthcare settings to encourage creative problem-solving and reduce burnout among students and staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The next-generation "Industrial Internet of Things" (IIoT) will support "Machine-to-Machine" (M2M) communications for smart Cyber-Physical-Systems and Industry 4.0, and require guaranteed cyber-security. This paper explores hardware-enforced cyber-security for critical infrastructures. It examines a quantum-safe "Software-Defined-Deterministic IIoT" (SDD-IIoT), with a new forwarding-plane (sub-layer-3a) for deterministic M2M traffic flows. A "Software-Defined Networking" (SDN) control plane controls many "Software-Defined-Deterministic Wide-Area Networks" (SDD-WANs), realized with FPGAs. The SDN control plane provides an "Admission-Control/Access-Control" system for network-bandwidth, using collaborating Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based "Zero Trust Architectures" (ZTAs). Hardware-enforced access-control eliminates all congestion, BufferBloat, and DoS/DDoS attacks, significantly reduces buffer-sizes, and supports ultra-reliable-low-latency communications in the forwarding-plane. The forwarding-plane can: (i) Encrypt/Authenticate M2M flows using quantum-safe ciphers, to withstand attacks by Quantum Computers; (ii) Implement "guaranteed intrusion detection systems" in FPGAs, to detect cyber-attacks embedded within billions of IIoT packets; (iii) Provide guaranteed immunity to external cyber-attacks, and exceptionally strong immunity to internal cyber-attacks; (iv) Save USD 100s of billions annually by exploiting FPGAs; and (v) Enable hybrid Classical-Quantum networks, by integrating a "quantum key distribution" (QKD) network with a classical forwarding plane with exceptionally strong cyber-security, determined by the computational hardness of cracking Symmetric Key Cryptography. Extensive experimental results for an SDD-WAN over the European Union are reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Salinomycin, belonging to ionophore antibiotics, has been used as a feed additive for poultry for its coccidiostatic effect. Poisoning by ionophore antibiotics has been reported in cattle and other sensitive animals due to the replacement of medicated feed and/or accidental overdoses. The aim of this paper is to report the toxicity of salinomycin for fallow deer and to describe the different levels of sensitivity of cervids to this substance. In the presented case study, a medicated feed containing ivermectin used for deworming red deer and fallow deer was accidentally contaminated with sodium salinomycinate in a concentration of 252.6 mg/kg. The contaminated feed was consumed by the animals over a period of four days. The mortality of fallow deer within 12 days was 58%. No mortality was recorded in the red deer. In the affected animals, clinical signs associated with acute and congestive heart failure were observed. The biochemical examination indicated prerenal azotaemia caused by circulatory insufficiency and ion imbalance. The histological examination revealed pronounced focal acute cardiomyopathy and massive subacute myopathy in the skeletal muscles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Specialna in Rehabilitacijska Pedagogika is the property of SOUS and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The widespread interest in using drones in maritime transport has rapidly grown alongside the development of unmanned ships and drones. To stimulate growth and address the associated technical challenges, this paper systematically reviews the relevant research progress, classification, applications, technical challenges, and possible solutions related to the use of drones in the maritime sector. The findings provide an overview of the state of the art of the applications of drones in the maritime industry over the past 20 years and identify the existing problems and bottlenecks in this field. A new classification scheme is established based on their flight characteristics to aid in distinguishing drones' applications in maritime transport. Further, this paper discusses the specific use cases and technical aspects of drones in maritime rescue, safety, navigation, environment, communication, and other aspects, providing in-depth guidance on the future development of different mainstream applications. Lastly, the challenges facing drones in these applications are identified, and the corresponding solutions are proposed to address them. This research offers pivotal insights and pertinent knowledge beneficial to various entities such as maritime regulatory bodies, shipping firms, academic institutions, and enterprises engaged in drone production. This paper makes new contributions in terms of the comprehensive analysis and discussion of the application of drones in maritime transport and the provision of guidance and support for promoting their further development and integration with intelligent transport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, with the rise of digital currency, its underlying technology, blockchain, has become increasingly well-known. This technology has several key characteristics, including decentralization, time-stamped data, consensus mechanism, traceability, programmability, security, and credibility, and block data is essentially tamper-proof. Due to these characteristics, blockchain can address the shortcomings of traditional financial institutions. As a result, this emerging technology has garnered significant attention from financial intermediaries, technology-based companies, and government agencies. This article offers an overview of the fundamentals of blockchain technology and its various applications. The introduction defines blockchain and explains its fundamental working principles, emphasizing features such as decentralization, immutability, and transparency. The article then traces the evolution of blockchain, from its inception in cryptocurrency to its development as a versatile tool with diverse potential applications. The main body of the article explores fundamentals of block chain systems, its limitations, various applications, applicability etc. Finally, the study concludes by discussing the present state of blockchain technology and its future potential, as well as the challenges that must be surmounted to unlock its full potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital transformation is nowadays one of key areas of industrial practice, which needs to be addressed in connection with further development of Industry 4.0. Its implementation creates prerequisites for increasing efficiency of process operations at various corporate levels, including logistics. Business logistics processes represent an important element in the value chain of final products manufacturing and services provision. One of main tasks they ensure is transport and handling processes implementation, which can currently be ensured through many technologies, among which continuous transport systems have a significant place. In the paper, a process of digital transformation focused on conveyor transport will be presented in more detail, while individual parameters and key indicators will be specified. Experimental measurement method is considered as a starting point for digital transformation implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapidly increasing number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, various interconnected devices have become targets of growing cyberattacks. Keeping the firmware of an IoT device up-to-date is one feasible way to protect the device against cyberattacks. The existing approaches of firmware update (including distribution and validation) are not scalable in distribution to increasing numbers of devices, however, let alone able to provide reliable validation. To address the above issues, this study proposes a hybrid update scheme, including distributed membership-based firmware sharing for firmware distribution and smart-contract-enabled firmware validation via a blockchain (BC). This hybrid update approach leverages the advantages of a peer-to-peer network and a blockchain. Evaluation of the study has shown that the proposed distributed membership-based firmware sharing is more secure and scalable to an increasing number of devices. The proposed smart-contract-enabled firmware validation is more efficient than the firmware validation in existing studies since it can effectively reduce unwanted repeat validation via a smart contract in a blockchain. In addition, it can help make sure all members of an IoT-enabled service having the right firmware before providing the service to users. Such designs can improve service quality and also reduce as much human intervention to leverage the strengths of an IoT-enabled application or system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, according to the intention of many hospitals and medical centers to computerize their processes and medical treatments, including data forms and medical images, which are generating a considerable amount of data, IT specialists and data scientists who are oriented to eHealth and related issues know the importance of data integration and its benefits. This study indicates the significance of data integration, especially in medical information systems. It means that the medical subsystems in the HIS (hospital information system) must be integrated, and it is also necessary to unify with the MIS (management information system). In this paper, the accuracy level of the extracted reports from the information system (to evaluate the staff's performance) will be measured in two ways: (1) At first, the performance of the clinic reception staff will be evaluated. In this way, the personnel attendance system is an independent and separate software, and the mentioned evaluation has been performed by its report. (2) The following year, in the same location, the same evaluation has been performed based on the data extracted from the personnel attendance subsystem, which has been added to the medical information system as an integrated information system. After comparing the accuracy level of both ways, this paper concludes that when the personnel attendance subsystem as a part of the MIS has been unified with the HIS, the reports and, consequently, management decisions will be more accurate; therefore, the managers and decision-makers will perceive the importance of data integration more than in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) modules are widely used as power switching devices. In actual working conditions, the failure of bonding wires is one of the most important failure modes. At present, the influence of bonding wire failure is not considered in the reliability evaluation of the device, resulting in a large error in the life prediction result. Therefore, this paper proposes a life evaluation method for IGBT modules that takes into account the failure of the bonding wire. The transient thermal impedance of 1200 V/50 A IGBT module under the failure conditions of different numbers of bonding wires is calculated by constructing a finite element simulation model of device electro‐thermal coupling. Both simulation and experimental results show that with the increase of the number of bonding wire failures, the transient thermal impedance curve of the device rises and the steady‐state thermal impedance increases. The Foster thermal network models of the devices are updated, and the number of power cycles of the device with bonding wire failure under DC and sinusoidal pulse width modulation (SPWM) conditions is calculated. When the number of bonding wire failures and fatigue accumulation have a linear relationship, the life will be reduced by 48.29% compared to the healthy state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hematological and biochemical parameters of endangered wildlife during gestation can provide knowledge of normal physical conditions and recognition of every event, thus contributing to conservation and management. For better breeding management of a Chinese water deer (Hydropotes inermis) reintroduced population, a series of hematological parameters were tested and analyzed, viz. white blood cells (WBC), red blood cells (RBC), hemoglobin (HGB), packed-cell volume (PCV), platelet count (PLT), mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH), mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC), mean corpuscular volume (MCV), mean red blood cell distribution width coefficient of variation (RDW), and different serum biochemical parameters, e.g. total protein (TP), albumin (ALB), globulin (GLB), albumin to globulin ratio (A/G), total bilirubin (TBIL), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), γ-glutamyl transferase (GGT), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), AST/ALT, creatinine, urea (BUN), uric acid (URIC), total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride, creatine kinase (CK), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), and cortisol. The WBC value of pregnant does was significantly lower than that of non-pregnant does, while the concentrations of TC and TBIL were both significantly higher than those of non-pregnant does. The changes in hematological and serum biochemical parameters during pregnancy can be not only used for health monitoring and disease diagnosis and reference for Chinese water deer, but can also be referred for other cervids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an exploratory study of humour in multilingual, multicultural healthcare interactions with an interpreter. Data are part of a dataset of healthcare encounters observed in a hospital in Madrid (Spain) for a period of five months, which included the participation of six interpreters. Four aspects were analysed: (1) who initiates humour, (2) who receives humour, (3) what the functions of humour are, and (4) how interpreters behave vis-à-vis humour occurrences. Preliminary findings indicate that humour allows patients, healthcare providers and interpreters to pursue relational and transactional goals similar to those present in monolingual healthcare interactions, such as handling negative emotions. Interpreters are active co-constructors of humour, and all participants in the triad work together towards the establishment and recognition of a humorous frame, where hierarchical relationships seem to exist. Together with linguistic and cultural differences between participants, interpreters must appropriately render background and contextual knowledge to ensure humour maintains its intended function, which emphasises the healthcare interpreter's active role in interaction. These findings call for greater attention to research on humour, as well as specific training for interpreters to highlight its relational power and, thus, ensure successful communication in multicultural, multilingual (healthcare) settings. Resumen: Este artículo presenta un estudio exploratorio del humor en interacciones sanitarias multilingües y multiculturales con participación de un intérprete. Los datos forman parte de un conjunto de encuentros sanitarios con participación de seis intérpretes que se observaron en un hospital de Madrid durante un período de cinco meses. Se analizaron cuatro aspectos: (1) quién inicia el humor y (2) a quién lo dirige, (3) cuáles son las funciones de dicho humor y (4) cómo se comportan los intérpretes en este tipo de situaciones. Los resultados preliminares indican que el humor permite a pacientes, personal sanitario e intérpretes perseguir objetivos de índole relacional y transaccional similares a los presentes en interacciones sanitarias monolingües, como la gestión de emociones negativas. Los intérpretes son coconstructores activos del humor y todos los participantes de la tríada colaboran en el establecimiento y reconocimiento de un marco humorístico, en el que parecen existir relaciones jerárquicas. Junto con las diferencias lingüísticas y culturales entre los participantes, los intérpretes deben transmitir adecuadamente información sobre el trasfondo y el contexto para garantizar que el humor mantenga su función prevista, lo que subraya el papel activo del intérprete sanitario en la interacción. Estos resultados exigen una mayor atención a la investigación sobre el humor, así como una formación específica para los intérpretes que ponga de relieve el poder relacional de dicho humor y, por tanto, se garantice el éxito de la comunicación en entornos (sanitarios) multiculturales y multilingües. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dependence of humans on computers is increasing in today's era of technology. All transactions, as well as digital data transformations, are done with the help of the network, so third parties or intruders can attack the network to access data and use it in the wrong way. Organizations and individuals use the network for their work. Due to the easy availability of the internet, there is always a risk of information falling into the wrong hands. This paper presents a detailed study of networking attacks and security algorithms, as well as an analysis of various viable network attack observation tools to detect attacks. The algorithms discussed include Symmetric Key Algorithm, Asymmetric Key Algorithm, and their respective types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite all the research being done in an attempt to bridge the gap between control systems and artificial intelligence, there is still an immense risk of failure and instability that exists. One particular application that this research will look into and expand on is aircraft control mechanisms. This article will examine the existing uncertainties within these systems that could be suspected as the cause of failure in the artificial control operation of an aircraft. This study will act as a further extension of research on the feedback linearization of an aircraft's control architecture using adaptive neural networks to decrease the probability of an uncontrolled error resulting from the nonlinearity of the aircraft's dynamic characteristics. The stability of previously implemented mechanisms to control aircraft systems will also be investigated. This research will require a thorough approach and understanding of various possible areas of malfunction and instability caused by multiple factors, including, external interferences and inefficiencies that accumulate within the controller that can mislead or cause an undesirable effect on the system. Examining similar areas where this study may be used for further research, while also discussing opportunities to apply these procedures to relatable applications will be analyzed, as it is of key importance for the progression of this technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is a new concept, derived from combining VANET and Internet of Things (IoT), aiming at increasing road' user safety and reducing the number of accidents. In IoV, different types of communication are possible, namely, vehicle-to-sensor, as the car is considered as a powerful multisensory object, vehicle-to-pedestrian i.e. sharing data between vehicle and people, and vehicle-to-cloud communication in which cloud data centers and vehicles are the main actors. Indeed, the IoV's topology is very dynamic and non-uniform; it can be a target of several types of attacks that could menace people's lives. This paper is a detailed review of the internet of vehicles by presenting first of all the VANET networks including their different components, their possible communication, and their applications. The reasons behind the transition from VANET to IoV are also carried out in this review. After this, an in-depth study of IoV is being done by discussing its architecture and the different sensors and network protocols used in IoV. As it is not standardized, a comparison of the existing architecture is also elaborated in this review. Taking into account its importance, we devoted a part of this work to the security aspect for IoV by presenting the security requirements and the possible attacks, moreover, a study of the proposed security solutions will be done [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The specifics of meat production from free-ranging animals include the killing of animals in the wild with firearms. This type of uncontrolled killing sometimes leads to the phenomenon that the game does not die immediately but after a certain time from the shot to death, which may ultimately affect the quality of the meat. During one hunting year on free-ranging red deer (Cervus elaphus) (RD), roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) (RoD), and wild boar (Sus scrofa) (WB), the effect of time from shot to death on final pH, water-holding capacity (WHC), water content, and colour (L*, a*, b*) was investigated. All analyses were performed on Musculus biceps femoris (BF). After shooting, the animals were divided into two categories (A = time from shot to death ≤ 1 min; B = time from shot to death > 1 min). In RD, group B had significantly lower (p < 0.05) water content. In RoD, group B had significantly lower (p < 0.05) values of L* and b*. In WB, group B had significantly lower (p < 0.05) L* value and significantly higher (p < 0.05) pH value. The study proves that in BF of the three studied game species, the time extension from shot to death significantly affects the final water content values in RD, L* and b* in RoD and pH and L * in WB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of identifying and managing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) risks has become a concern and a challenge for public and private organizations. In this context, risk management methodologies within the Brazilian Federal Public Administration organizations have become indispensable to help the managers of these organizations in decision making, especially in the distribution of public funds, elaboration of public policies focused on transparency, social actions contemplating indemnities, and social benefits, among others. In addition, the various ICT projects controlled by the public administration need a methodology to perform their management of ICT resources. In this article, we present the Governance and Risk Management methodology used to model the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) macro processes. The proposed methodology used the risk management process aligned to the ISO 31000 standards. This alignment was necessary for mapping CADE's risk events, regardless of their complexity. The modeled ICT risk processes will support the organization's managers in decision making and may be used or customized by any other organization of the Brazilian Federal Public Administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The automatic detection of software vulnerabilities is considered a complex and common research problem. It is possible to detect several security vulnerabilities using static analysis (SA) tools, but comparatively high false-positive rates are observed in this case. Existing solutions to this problem depend on human experts to identify functionality, and as a result, several vulnerabilities are often overlooked. This paper introduces a novel approach for effectively and reliably finding vulnerabilities in open-source software programs. In this paper, we are motivated to examine the potential of the clonal selection theory. A novel deep learning-based vulnerability detection model is proposed to define features using the clustering theory of the clonal selection algorithm. To our knowledge, this is the first time we have used deep-learned long-lived team-hacker features to process memories of sequential features and mapping from the entire history of previous inputs to target vectors in theory. With an immune-based feature selection model, the proposed approach aimed to improve static analyses' detection abilities. A real-world SA dataset is used based on three open-source PHP applications. Comparisons are conducted based on using a classification model for all features to measure the proposed feature selection methods' classification improvement. The results demonstrated that the proposed method got significant enhancements, which occurred in the classification accuracy also in the true positive rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annals for Istrian & Mediterranean Studies / Annales: Series Historia et Sociologia is the property of Historical Society of Southern Primorska of Koper and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Ever since the internet became part of the everyday lives of humans providing network security has been considered of utmost importance. Over the years lot of time and energy has been devoted by people in the research community and industry to provide better, improved and secure mechanisms to ensure secure communications on the internet. Amongst the many fields of study, the most prominent and ever evolving one has been the study of network traffic for attack detection and mitigation. The advent of new technologies has led to an increase in the pace of network based attacks and therefore novel modified approaches are needed to be able to cope with these latest trends. Distributed machine learning with the development of new tools and frameworks like RDD structure in Apache Spark provides an immense scope of growth in this direction. Moreover, the dynamic nature of present day network traffic called concept drift has also necessitated studying solutions from a different angle. We, therefore, in this paper have worked on distributed machine learning based ensemble techniques to detect the presence of concept drift in network traffic and detect network based attacks. The work has been done in three parts. Firstly, two classifiers, namely, Random Forest and Logistic Regression have been used as level '0′ learners and Support Vector Machine has been used as level '1′ learner. Secondly, to handle the process of concept drift we have used a sliding window based K-means clustering. And thirdly ensemble based techniques for detection of attacks in the traffic. The experiments have been performed on three datasets, namely, the NSL-KDD dataset, the CIDDS-2017 dataset and generated Testbed dataset. These tests have been conducted on different machines by varying the number of executor cores to study time latency in a distributed environment. An accuracy of 93% on NSL-KDD, 98% on CIDDS-2017 and 97% on Testbed datasets for SVM based blending model have been achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) plays a significant role in threatening the cloud-based services. DDoS is a kind of attack which targets the CPU, bandwidth and other resources and makes them unavailable to benign users. The DDoS attack has an enormous impact on multi-tenant cloud network than the traditional network due to the cloud features like virtualization, load balancing, resource scaling and migrations. These features spread attack effects in the whole cloud network, which introduces the collateral damages to the non-target stakeholders. Some of these stakeholders are co-hosted virtual machines (VMs), host physical server, co-hosted physical server, cloud service providers and users, etc. Therefore, there is a need for a method that can reduce such collateral damages. In this work, we focus on reducing VM level collateral damages caused to the co-hosted VMs residing with the victim VM on the same host. The proposed architecture consists of: (i) a request awareness based module to reduce VM level collateral damages, (ii) to obtain the request awareness, a novel Cuckoo Search based IDentification of Request (CS-IDR) method using bivariate flight is also proposed. The CS-IDR method helps in taking the request-aware decision, which eventually reduces VM level collateral damages. The result also shows that the proposed method minimizes the CPU usage, RAM usage, power consumption, overall load, and incurred cost caused due to DDoS attack on non-target co-hosted VM, and hence reduces such collateral damages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anomaly detection in the Internet of Things (IoT) is imperative to improve its reliability and safety. Detecting denial of service (DOS) and distributed DOS (DDOS) is one of the critical security challenges facing network technologies. This paper presents an anomaly detection mechanism using the Kullback–Leibler distance (KLD) to detect DOS and DDOS flooding attacks, including transmission control protocol (TCP) SYN flood, UDP flood, and ICMP-based attacks. This mechanism integrates the desirable properties of KLD, the capacity to quantitatively discriminate between two distributions, with the sensitivity of an exponential smoothing scheme. The primary reason for exponentially smoothing KLD measurements (ES–KLD) is to aggregate all of the information from past and actual samples in the decision rule, making the detector sensitive to small anomalies. Furthermore, a nonparametric approach using kernel density estimation has been used to set a threshold for ES-KLD decision statistic to uncover the presence of attacks. Tests on three publicly available datasets show improved performances of the proposed mechanism in detecting cyber-attacks compared to other conventional monitoring procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Denial of service (DoS) attack is the menace to private cloud computing environment that denies services provided by cloud servers leading to huge business losses. Efficient DoS attack detection mechanisms are demanded which necessitates the extraction of features for its best performance. The lacuna in the existing feature extraction based detection systems is the sensitiveness of initial cluster center which leads to high false alarm rate and low accuracy. In this paper, this issue is addressed by proposing a class center based triangle area vector (CCTAV) method which computes the mean of target classes individually and extracts the correlation between features. Mahalanobis distance measure is used for profile construction and DoS attacks detection. The proposed CCTAV method is tested with five publicly available datasets and compared with existing methods. It is noticed that the proposed statistical method reduces the complexity of feature extraction and enhances the attack detection process. The proposed approach is evaluated by conducting tenfold cross validation to compute 95% confidence interval. It is evident that the accuracy obtained for all the datasets are within the confidence interval. Further, the proposed CCTAV method provides significant results compared to the state-of-the-art attack detection methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sense of humor constitutes a part of everyday life and work and an indispensable part of healthcare. However, the relationship between sense of humor and nursing occupational health and stress is yet to be studied in Iran. This study aimed to analyze the interplay of demographic factors, occupational stress, sense of humor, and health status of nurses working at the hospitals affiliated with the Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Iran. In this descriptive-analytical study, the statistical population consisted of 203 nurses. Occupational stress was assessed using the Iranian version of the Effort-Reward-Imbalance (ERI) Questionnaire. The Sense of Humor Questionnaire (SHQ) and the Iranian version of the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) were employed to assess the sense of humor and physio-psychological health, respectively. Data collected were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software. 81% (n=164) of the participants had an "external effort" (E) and "reward" (R) ratio greater than 1, indicating very high occupational stress. 39% (n=79) nurses with high occupational stress displayed their commitment to the workplace. Approximately 42% (n=85) of nurses were suffering from health problems. The mean humor score of participants was 2.90±0.41. Major life events over the past 3 months (p<0.01), weekly working hours (p<0.01), high occupational stress (p<0.01), and sense of humor (p<0.01) were determined to be significant predictors of nurses' health problems. Decision-makers are recommended to reduce nursing working hours through work shift management in order to maintain nurses' health status and reduce their occupational stress. In addition, hospital directors should promote a sense of humor in hospital environments with the help of culture-building practices, comedy books, music CDs, and training courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to improve the search performance of rich text content, a cloud search engine system based on rich text content is designed. On the basis of traditional search engine hardware system, several hardware devices such as Solr index server, collector, Chinese word segmentation device and searcher are installed, and the data interface is adjusted. On the basis of hardware equipment and database support, this paper uses the open source Apache Tika framework to obtain the metadata of rich text documents, implements word segmentation according to the rich text content and semantics, and calculates the weight of each keyword. Input search keywords, establish a text index, use BM25 algorithm to calculate the similarity between keywords and text, and output the search results of rich text according to the similarity calculation results. The experimental results show that the design system has high recall rate, high throughput, and the construction time of each data item index in different files is short, which improves the search efficiency and search accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The technology used in drones is similar or identical across drone types and components, with many common risks and opportunities. The purpose of this study is to enhance the risk assessment procedures for Drone as a Service (DaaS) capabilities. STRIDE is an acronym that includes the following security risks: Spoofing, Tampering, Repudiation, Information Disclosure, Denial of Service, and Elevation of Privileges. The paper presents a modified STRIDE threat model and prioritizes its desired properties (i.e., authenticity, integrity, non-reputability, confidentiality, availability, and authorization) to generate an appropriate DaaS threat model. To this end, the proposed DIREST threat model better meets the overall security assessment needs of DaaS. Moreover, this paper discusses the security risks of drones, identifies best practices for security assessment, and proposes a novel software update mechanism for drones during their operations. We explore the best practices related to drone penetration testing, including an effective methodology to maintain the continuity of drone operations, particularly drones used for emergency, safety, and rescue operations. Moreover, this research raises awareness of DaaS and drone operation in general as well as in the forensic science community due to its focus on the importance of securely operated drones for first responders. Furthermore, we address various aspects of security concerns, including data transmission, software restrictions, and embedded system-related events. In order to propose a security assessment for drones, we incorporate digital forensics and penetration testing techniques related to drone operations. Our results show that the proposed threat model enhances the security of flying devices and provides consistency in digital forensic procedures. This work introduces modifications to the STRIDE threat model based on the current literature, drone images provided by the NIST program, and a firmware static analysis of a zino hubsan brand drone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perhaps there are never too many different theories about the organization of society, ideas about the normative framework of life in a political community and suggestions on how to institutionalize the political system. Perhaps they go out in public too early. This could also apply to those reflections on society and to those political philosophies that bear the label of utopia. There is no doubt about the importance of such human investigations of what is and what should be. And there is no doubt about the usefulness of constantly imagining what it should be. However, analytical and explanatory caution is required when the word utopia is used to suggest the utopian nature of an idea. In other words, what looks like a utopia can already be presented to us as a provable and tangible fact, only that too many people do not perceive it for too long, and therefore it remains unfulfilled in social practice. Is this really a utopia? On the other hand, what may seem completely understandable, feasible or even self-evident can appear extremely utopian when it comes to the normative approaches to social regulation and the conditions for achieving a "better society." The deviation of political practice and legal practice from what should be understandable or even self-evident according to the text of the constitution and international law, the findings of jurisprudence, philosophical insights and common sense in political decision-making and in the drafting and implementation of the applicable law is so great that, paradoxically, precisely that which is understandable, feasible or even self-evident appears utopian. And how can utopianism be combined with the realization that so many major and persistent social problems can be solved so easily and quickly - even if only by rethinking the legal system and social realm? How can a human being efficiently oppose neoliberal politics and unbridled capitalist practice, the poor functioning of the rule of law, the low quality of the welfare state, the excessive threat to fundamental human rights and freedoms, the inadequate protection of social rights, the insufficient commitment to the value of solidarity and the inadequate role and weakness of morality in social practice? Can the answers to fundamental social questions and solutions to the greatest problems only be found in a real and literal utopia? I do not believe so. I believe that communitarianism can be a good political alternative. Understood as social liberalism and as a social democracy based on the rule of law, morally founded on social solidarity as a fundamental value. I am convinced that the constitutions of the EU Member States and the EU legal order enable it. A strong and interventionist state is needed to realize the constitutional possibilities of a high-quality welfare state, effectively protected social rights, the realized social function of property and a society based on solidarity. Ideas are needed. Even if they seem so crazy, even if they seem utopian. In these times when the devil has taken the joke away, when people are again protesting massively in the streets, when they protest (unsuccessfully, of course), when it is difficult to know exactly what is happening and why, when more and more people are increasingly confused and frightened, when systemic violence increasingly turns into physical violence, when it is difficult to remain calm and thoughtful, when it is difficult to tame anger and rage..., it is necessary to step out of the existing coordinate system, out of the cube, to form and communicate ideas that seem crazy, utopian... Now, right now, ideas are needed, crazy ideas. We need a utopia. And faith and hope in it. Faith and hope, which will be the driving force of active action, of striving for realization – of a utopia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, the providers of cloud computing services are among the most prominent service suppliers worldwide. Availability of cloud services is one of the most important concerns of cloud service providers (CSPs) and cloud users (CUs). Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are common types of security issues which affect cloud services and consequently, can lead to unavailability of the services. Therefore, reducing the effects of DDoS attacks helps CSPs to provide high quality services to CUs. In this paper, first, we propose an anomaly-based DDoS attack detection framework in cloud environment using a third party auditor (TPA). Second, we provide multiple basic assumptions and configurations of cloud environments for establishing simulation tests to evaluate our proposed framework. Then, we provide results of simulation tests to analyze the feasibility of our approach. Simulation results demonstrate that our method for detecting DDoS attacks in CSPs has following advantages: efficiency, because of the low overhead of computations on CSPs for attack detection; rapid, due to informing a CSP about an attack in a short course of time regarding the maximum valid response time which is defined in a service level agreement (SLA); and precision, through no false positive detection as well as a low rate of false negative detection which is < 2% of all scenarios of the simulation tests. Finally, we present a table to compare characteristics of our framework with other ones in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Recently, numerous exploitations and attacks in IoT environment occurred all over the world. One of the major attacking channels is utilizing the firmware of IoT devices as the access interface to compromise the targeted IoT devices. Therefore, it is important for IoT device manufacturers to support secure and efficient firmware update functionality for sold or deployed IoT devices. In this paper, a secure and verifiable blockchain-based firmware update framework for IoT environment is proposed. The aims of the proposed framework are providing secure peer-to-peer verification mechanism on each new version of firmware released by corresponding device manufacturer and providing a reliable way to distribute the updated firmware to IoT devices in timely manner. Furthermore, the utilization of blockchain technology in the proposed framework ensures the integrity of firmware during its distribution through Internet. The proposed firmware update framework consists of four processes: creation of firmware update contract, creation of third-party firmware update contract, PUSH update mechanism and PULL update mechanism. Six corresponding protocols are derived to support the four processes. The evaluation on performance and security strength of the proposed firmware update framework is conducted. Based on the proofs of formal security analysis, the proposed framework supports mutual authentication and defends against major cyber attacks: firmware modification attack, impersonation attack, man-in-the-middle attack and replay attack. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study was conducted in one of the animal farm, province of Baghdad, January 2019. This experiment included 10 (5 pregnant and 5 non-pregnant), Qatari goats. The blood samples for hematological, biochemical, plasma minerals and hormones assay. Excluding data for MCHC, lymphocyte and Eosinophil in pregnant goats showed higher significant differences (P=0.05). All other hematological parameters showed higher significant differences (P=0.05) in non- pregnant. Glucose, albumin ALT, AST, Alkalina Ph, Cholesterol, Triglycerides, HDL and VLDL exhibited higher significant different (P=0.05) pregnant females goats. Urea was showed increased significant different (P=0.05) non-pregnant female goats. Calcium and magnesium were increased significantly different (P=0.05) higher in pregnant. Highest (P<0.05) level of progesterone and testosterone concentration was recorded in pregnant, and lowest in non-pregnant. Estradiol-17ß concentration was significantly (P=0.05) increased in the non-pregnant group as compared with pregnant group. The rest of the parameters were showed no significant different (P=0.05) between pregnant and non- pregnant. In conclusion, effects of pregnant and non-pregnant were noticed on some hematological, biochemical, minerals parameters as well as levels hormones of Qatari goats in Iraq. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ongoing effort to reach the exascale computing barrier has led to a myriad of research and publications in the topic of alternative energy-efficient architectures, such as ARM, for HPC systems. The staggering pace at which ARM architectures have evolved has increased the volume of publications on this topic even more. A complex subject as the race to exascale touches on several aspects such as floating-point performance, scalability issues in coupled workloads, net energy consumption and ratio of energy to performance. In this context, we see the opportunity to contribute to this subject by: (1) analyzing the state of the art to identify essential papers; (2) highlighting important developments of ARM architecture in support to HPC; (3) discussing both positive and negative trends observed regarding the use of ARM for HPC; and (4) listing key topics concerning the use of ARM for exascale computing, along with distinguished references for each one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Security issue in cloud environment is one of the major obstacle in cloud implementation. Network attacks make use of the vulnerability in the network and the protocol to damage the data and application. Cloud follows distributed technology; hence it is vulnerable for intrusions by malicious entities. Intrusion detection systems (IDS) has become a basic component in network protection infrastructure and a necessary method to defend systems from various attacks. Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are a great problem for a user of computers linked to the Internet. Data mining techniques are widely used in IDS to identify attacks using the network traffic. This paper presents and evaluates a Radial basis function neural network (RBF-NN) detector to identify DDoS attacks. Many of the training algorithms for RBF-NNs start with a predetermined structure of the network that is selected either by means of a priori knowledge or depending on prior experience. The resultant network is frequently inadequate or needlessly intricate and a suitable network structure could be configured only by trial and error method. This paper proposes Bat algorithm (BA) to configure RBF-NN automatically. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annals for Istrian & Mediterranean Studies / Annales: Series Historia et Sociologia is the property of Historical Society of Southern Primorska of Koper and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copper‐plated interconnects were widely adopted for volume manufacture of integrated circuits after more than a decade of intensive research to demonstrate that use of Cu would not impact device reliability. However, although Cu‐plated metallisation promises significantly reduced costs for Si photovoltaics, its adoption in manufacturing has not gained the same traction. This review identifies some key challenges facing the introduction of Cu‐plated metallisation for Si photovoltaics. These include the following: (1) increased carrier recombination due to the use of Cu for metal contact formation; (2) reduced module reliability due to adhesion or contact integrity failures; and (3) limited availability of cost‐effective processes and equipment for metal plating. For integrated circuits, Cu's low electrical resistance and high resistance to electromigration provided an impetus for the large investment in process development that was required to realise Cu‐plated interconnects. However, the technical advantages of using Cu for Si solar cell contacts are not as compelling, as solar cells can tolerate larger feature sizes thus reducing the criticality of the contact metal's conductivity and electromigration properties. Additionally, for Si photovoltaics, low cost is paramount, and new challenges arise from the need for modules to absorb light and operate in the field for 25+ years in diverse outdoor climates. However, with the scale of Si photovoltaic manufacturing expected to increase dramatically in the next decade, the use of large quantities of silver for cell metallisation will provide an incentive to address reliability concerns regarding the use of Cu for Si photovoltaic metallisation. Copper‐plated interconnects were widely adopted for volume manufacture of integrated circuits after more than a decade of intensive research. However, although Cu‐plated metallisation promises significantly reduced costs, its adoption in Si photovoltaic manufacturing has not gained the same traction. This review identifies some key challenges facing the introduction of Cu plating for Si photovoltaics and in particular discusses (1) increased carrier recombination due to Cu, (2) reduced module reliability, and (3) limited availability of cost‐effective processes and equipment for metal plating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]