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The concept of Internet of Things (IoT) provides us the opportunity to interconnect different objects with the communication and processing capabilities for a diverse range of applications. Recently, Vehicular Social Networks (VSNs) have been introduced through the combination of relevant concepts from two primary disciplines, i.e., social networks and Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs). Inspired from the social acquaintance in our daily life, we present a Social Acquaintance based Routing Protocol (SARP) for VSNs, which collectively consider three social feature metrics to make a forwarding decision. Proposed protocol aims to reduce End-to-End delay and improve packet delivery ratio in VSNs. Additionally, SARP overcomes the shortcoming of topology based routing and optimum local situation of geographically based routing protocols by considering the global and local community acquaintance of nodes. We performed extensive simulations under constant node density with different mobility speed and constant speed with varying node density to study the effect of node mobility speed and density on end-to-end delay and packet delivery ratio. The simulation results show that SARP outperforms GPSR by 22% and 26% in terms of end-to-end delay and packet delivery ratio respectively. Also, SARP outperforms AOVD in terms of end-to-end delay.

The essential oil and aqueous distillate composition of Origanum vulgare L. were analyzed by GC/MS. Sixty-seven different components were detected in both oils. Sixty-four components were characterized for the oil derived from the aerial parts, whereas thirty-three components in the volatile oil from the aqueous distillates of O. vulgare L., representing 99.8% and 98.5% of the oils, respectively. The main components of the volatile oil from the aerial parts of O. vulgare L. were carvacrol (70.2 ± 1.37%), γ-terpinene (5.6 ± 0.11%), p-cymene (4.5 ± 0.42%), trans-sabinene hydrate (3.8 ± 0.07%), and thymol (2.2 ± 0.12%). In comparison, the main compounds of the volatile oil of the O. vulgare L. aqueous distillates were carvacrol (92.5 ± 0.97%), thymol (2.5 ± 0.09%), and terpinen-4-ol (1.0 ± 0.03%). The antibacterial activity of both oils, along with that of the purified major component, carvacrol, against Gram-positive and Gram-negative strains was assessed. The results revealed that all three samples showed significant antibacterial activity against all tested strains. The IC50 values of the oils derived from the aerial parts and aqueous distillates of O. vulgare L. against the tested strains was in the range of 107–383 µg·mL−1, whereas, the IC50 value of carvacrol was in the range of 53–151 µg·mL−1. The data suggest that carvacrol, a major component of both oils, possesses the highest antibacterial activity of all the constituents and is the main component responsible for the antibacterial activity of Saudi O. vulgare L. oils.

A Vehicular Social Network (VSN) is an emerging field of communication where relevant concepts are being borrowed from two different disciplines, i.e., vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) and mobile social networks (MSNs). This emerging paradigm presents new research fields for content sharing, data dissemination, and delivery services. Based on social network analysis (SNA) applications and methodologies, interdependencies of network entities can be exploited in VSNs for prospective applications. VSNs involve social interactions of commuters having similar objectives, interests, or mobility patterns in the virtual community of vehicles, passengers, and drivers on the roads. In this paper, considering social networking in a vehicular environment, we investigate the prospective applications of VSNs and communication architecture. VSNs benefit from the social behaviors and mobility of nodes to develop novel recommendation systems and route planning. We present a state-of-the-art literature review on socially-aware applications of VSNs, data dissemination, and mobility modeling. Further, we give an overview of different recommendation systems and path planning protocols based on crowdsourcing and cloud-computing with future research directions.

This study is conducted to investigate the nexus between GDP, FDI, oil prices, and tourism using yearly data from 1995 to 2017. The integration order is investigated by applying the ADF, PP and Zivot and Andrews unit root tests that identify the integration order in the presence of one endogenous break. After identifying the unique order of integration, this study applies the Fourier autoregressive distributed lag model (FADL) to investigate the evidence of a long-run relationship. Moreover, the Maki (2012) test confirms the results of FADL in the presence of multiple breaks. This study also confirms the hidden cointegration among the negative components of the variables using the FADL test. Moreover, oil prices and tourist arrivals have a negative and positive effect on GDP under the symmetric framework. However, the effect of FDI is insignificant. Furthermore, the negative component of oil prices have a negative and significant effect, while negative components of FDI and tourist arrivals have positive and significant effect on GDP under the asymmetric framework. The results of the symmetric and asymmetric causality suggest the existence of a causal relationship from FDI to GDP and tourism. This highlights the importance of FDI that affects GDP and tourism. The findings suggest that more inward movement of FDI promotes tourism using the channel of oil prices and GDP. This study also validates the FDI-led growth hypothesis for Turkey in both symmetric and asymmetric (positive components). This highlights that the Turkish government must promote tourism to attract more FDI by ensuring sustainable development.

This paper addresses the issues of selfishness, limited network resources, and their adverse effects on real-time dissemination of Emergency Warning Messages (EWMs) in modern Autonomous Moving Platforms (AMPs) such as Vehicular Social Networks (VSNs). For this purpose, we propose a social intelligence based identification mechanism to differentiate between a selfish and a cooperative node in the network. Therefore, we devise a crowdsensing based mechanism to calculate a tie-strength value based on several social metrics. Moreover, we design a recursive evolutionary algorithm for each node’s reputation calculation and update. Given that, then we estimate each node’s state-transition probability to select a super-spreader for rapid dissemination. In order to ensure a seamless and reliable dissemination process, we incorporate 5G network structure instead of conventional short range communication which is used in most vehicular networks at present. Finally, we design a real-time dissemination algorithm for EWMs and evaluate its performance in terms of network parameters such as delivery-ratio, delay, hop-count, and message-overhead for varying values of vehicular density, speed, and selfish nodes’ density based on realistic vehicular mobility traces. In addition, we present a comparative analysis of the performance of the proposed scheme with state-of-the-art dissemination schemes in VSNs.

To ensure users' safety on the road, a plethora of dissemination schemes for Emergency Warning Messages (EWMs) have been proposed in vehicular networks. However, the issue of false alarms triggered by malicious users still poses serious challenges, such as disruption of vehicular traffic especially on highways leading to precarious effects. This paper proposes a novel Trust based Dissemination Scheme (TDS) for EWMs in Vehicular Social Networks (VSNs) to solve the aforementioned issue. To ensure the authenticity of EWMs, we exploit the user-post credibility network for identifying true and false alarms. Moreover, we develop a reputation mechanism by calculating a trust-score for each node based on its social-utility, behavior, and contribution in the network. We utilize the hybrid architecture of VSNs by employing social-groups based dissemination in Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) mode, whereas nodes' friendship-network in Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) mode. We analyze the proposed scheme for accuracy by extensive simulations under varying malicious nodes ratio in the network. Furthermore, we compare the efficiency of TDS with state-of-the-art dissemination schemes in VSNs for delivery ratio, transmission delay, number of transmissions, and hop-count. The experimental results validate the significant efficacy of TDS in accuracy and aforementioned network parameters.

Background Survivin expression is often associated with aggressive tumor behavior and therapy resistance. In this study, we investigated the effect of survivin knockdown by survivin-siRNA lentiviral vector (Svv-Lent) on the response of HNSCC to chemo-radiotherapy, tumor growth and metastasis. Methods Four human HNSCC (OSC19, Cal27, Cal33 and FaDu) and one normal HOK cell lines were included in the study, and survivin knockdown was achieved with Svv-Lent treatment. Cell proliferation and apoptosis were measured by MTT and TUNEL assay, respectively. Transwell assays were performed to measure in vitro cell migration and matrigel invasion. Xenograft tumors were developed in nude mice by injecting Cal27 cells subcutaneously and following tail-vein injection of lung and liver metastasis. Results Knockdown of survivin significantly suppressed HNSCC cell proliferation and induced apoptosis in vitro . Survivin inhibition could also significantly reduce in vitro cell migration and matrigel invasion that might be due to inactivation of matrix metalloproteinases. In vivo studies showed significant repression of Cal27 xenograft tumor growth and tissue metastasis leading to improvement in mice survival in the Svv-Lent treated group compared to controls. Our data indicated that survivin expression in HNSCC cells contributed to chemo-radioresistance, and its down-regulation increased anti-cancer effects of paclitaxel, cisplatin and radiation. Conclusions Our findings suggest that sustained survivin expression facilitates HNSCC tumor growth and confers resistance to chemo-radiotherapy. Svv-Lent therapy may be able to enhance the cytotoxic effect of commonly used anticancer drugs such as cisplatin and paclitaxel, and radiotherapy that could provide a promising strategy for the effective control of resistant head and neck cancer.

Tomato is an important agricultural crop and facing severe drought stress. PEG-6000 in five different concentrations was used to artificially induced drought stress in two tomato varieties; Nagina and 17905.The results demonstrated that seed germination significantly reduced upto 60% for variety Nagina at 8% PEG-6000. Other phenotypic traits such as shoot length, leaf length, leaves number and leaf area also reduced with increasing concentration of PEG-6000, however, root length increased with increasing PEG-6000 concentration. Fresh biomass for both varieties was found maximum as 1.51 g and 2.50 g at 2% PEG-6000 and minimum as 1.20 g and 1.14 g at 8% PEG-6000, respectively. However, Nagina variety showed more tolerance than variety 17,905 at different PEG-6000 concentrations. At molecular level, the three selected genes i.e. SlAREB, SlNCED3, and SlERF024 were found to be over expressed with increasing concentration of PEG-6000. In silico characterization of these genes revealed important conserved protein domains, involved in the drought stress. These results concurred to conclude that the different concentrations of PEG-6000 induced drought stress in tomato plant and SlAREB, SlNCED3, SlERF024 could be used to produce drought tolerant tomato varieties through plant transformation.

The ability of Paenibacillus lentimorbus B-30488 r (B-30488 r ) in reducing the early blight (EB) disease caused by Alternaria solani in tomato was assessed. Foliar application of the bacteria reduced the disease incidence by 45.3% as compared to control. In vitro studies indicated that B-30488 r effectively reduces the radial growth of A. solani in dual culture, and SEM studies demonstrated complete degradation of fungal hyphae on co-culture with B-30488 r . Both B-30488 r and A. solani exhibited high similarity in the nutrient utilization of carbon sources present in tomato tissues. Changes in gene expression studied using RT-PCR analyses indicate significant up-regulation of defense and growth-related genes in tomato plants treated with B-30488 r foliar spray and A. solani challenged plants pre-treated with B-30488 r foliar spray. Principal component analysis results indicated that tomato plants treated with A. solani affected microbial community structure and population of the rhizosphere as compared to B-30488 r . Results suggest that P. lentimorbus B-30488 r has a multiple mode of action for its biological control activity by inducing resistance in tomato plants, by degrading the pathogen cell wall, and by competing for similar sources of nutrients on the phyllosphere. Additionally, B-30488 r would not affect microbial populations on the rhizosphere of the tomato plants.

Background/Purpose The aim of this study was to evaluate the anomalous clinical anatomy of congenital pouch colon (CPC) associated with anorectal agenesis in 22 consecutive girls managed over a study period of 7 years. Methods The 22 patients were categorized into 2 groups. Group A consisted of 10 patients who presented during the neonatal period (n = 9) or as a young infant (n = 1). In these patients, only preliminary assessment results were available. Group B (12 patients) comprised 5 newborns who remained on follow-up and 7 patients who presented after the age of 1 year. These 12 patients were assessed and investigated in more detail. Results In group A patients, apart from absence of the normal anal opening, the appearance of the external genitalia and perineum was essentially normal. Retraction of the labial folds showed radiation of folds inward from the margins of the vulval vestibule toward the center, at a point of confluence located at a higher level. At laparotomy, the subtypes of CPC were type I (n = 4), type II (n = 5), and type III (n = 1). In 8 patients, uterus didelphys was present. In all group B patients, the appearance of the external genitalia was similar to that in group A patients. However, separate openings of the urethra, septate vagina, and vestibular fistula (if present) were visible in 5 patients, whereas in 3 patients, a single perineal opening was identified. A total of 9/12 patients (75%) had urinary incontinence. Examination under anesthesia and endoscopy revealed a septate vagina in all 12 patients and an open, incompetent bladder neck with reduced bladder capacity in the 9 patients with urinary incontinence. The terminal fistula of the colonic pouch opened just distal to the bladder neck (n = 1), just posterior and cephalad to the urethral opening (n = 2), low in the vestibule (n = 5), and undetermined (n = 4). The subtypes of CPC were type I CPC (n = 2), type II CPC (n = 9), and type III CPC (n = 1). All 12 patients had uterus didelphys. Conclusions The characteristics in the anomalous clinical anatomy of CPC in girls, as described here, appear to be almost invariable and, especially in regions where CPC is common, should alert the clinician to the presence of this malformation.