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Portable document formats (PDFs) are widely used for document exchange due to their widespread usage and versatility. However, PDFs are highly vulnerable to malware attacks, which pose significant security risks. Existing defense mechanisms often struggle to effectively detect and mitigate these threats, highlighting the need for more robust solutions. This paper introduces a robust framework that uses advanced tree-based ensemble models to detect malicious PDFs using the Evasive-PDFMal2022 dataset. The proposed model achieves a recall rate of 100%, an accuracy rate of 99.95%, and a fast inference time of 0.1723 s. Furthermore, the framework exhibits minimal false positive and false negative rates, ensuring a high level of precision in distinguishing between malicious and benign PDFs. Shapley additive explanations are used to improve the interpretability and reliability of the model's predictions. The results highlight the effectiveness of the proposed model in improving PDF document security and addressing the challenges posed by malware attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Myrtus communis L. (Family: Myrtaceae) is naturally found in the western part of Asia, Southern Europe, and North Africa. It has been reportedly applied in pharmaceutical industry, traditional medicine, cosmetics, spices, and food. Pubmed, Google scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus were utilized to seek out relevant content concerning the therapeutic potential of M. communis. Subsequently, we conducted a review to identity noteworthy updates pertaining to M. communis. Myrtle berries, leaves, seeds, and essential oils are natural sources of several nutrients and bioactive compounds with marked health effects. The chemical analysis showed that M. communis contained oils, alkaloids, flavonoids, phenolics, coumarins, saponosides, tannins, quinines, and anthraquinones. A pharmacological investigation revealed that M. communis possessed anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antimicrobial, antiparasitic, antioxidant, antidiabetic, anticancer, antimutagenic, immunomodulatory, dermatological, cardiovascular, central nervous system, and gastrointestinal protective effects, among numerous other biological effects. This current review focused on the biochemical, pharmacological, therapeutic effects, and various biological activities of different parts of M. communis. It signifies that M. communis is a therapeutic plant with numerous applications in medicine and could be used as a drug isolate based on its safety and effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speaker identification has significant advantages for the field of human–computer interaction. Recently, many scholars have made contributions in this field and successfully created deep learning models for automatic speaker identification systems. However, most of the speech signal processing work is limited to English-only applications, despite numerous challenges with Arabic speech, particularly with the recitation of the Holy Quran, which is the Islamic holy book. In the light of these considerations, this study proposes a model for identifying the reciter of the Holy Quran using a dataset of 11,000 audio samples extracted from 20 Quran reciters. To enable feeding the audio samples' visual representation to the pre-trained models, the audio samples are converted from their original audio representation to visual representation using the Mel-Frequency Cepstrum Coefficients. Six pre-trained deep learning models are evaluated separately in the proposed model. The results from the test dataset reveal that the NASNetLarge model achieved the highest accuracy rate of 98.50% among the pre-trained models used in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cardiac image segmentation is a critical step in the early detection of cardiovascular disease. The segmentation of the biventricular is a prerequisite for evaluating cardiac function in cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMRI). In this paper, a cascaded model CAT-Seg is proposed for segmentation of 3D-CMRI volumes. CAT-Seg addresses the problem of biventricular confusion with other regions and localized the region of interest (ROI) to reduce the scope of processing. A modified DeepLabv3+ variant integrating SqueezeNet (SqueezeDeepLabv3+) is proposed as a part of CAT-Seg. SqueezeDeepLabv3+ handles the different shapes of the biventricular through the different cardiac phases, as the biventricular only accounts for small portion of the volume slices. Also, CAT-Seg presents a segmentation approach that integrates attention mechanisms into 3D Residual UNet architecture (3D-ResUNet) called 3D-ARU to improve the segmentation results of the three major structures (left ventricle (LV), Myocardium (Myo), and right ventricle (RV)). The integration of the spatial attention mechanism into ResUNet handles the fuzzy edges of the three structures. The proposed model achieves promising results in training and testing with the Automatic Cardiac Diagnosis Challenge (ACDC 2017) dataset and the external validation using MyoPs. CAT-Seg demonstrates competitive performance with state-of-the-art models. On ACDC 2017, CAT-Seg is able to segment LV, Myo, and RV with an average minimum dice symmetry coefficient (DSC) performance gap of 1.165%, 4.36%, and 3.115% respectively. The average maximum improvement in terms of DSC in segmenting LV, Myo and RV is 4.395%, 6.84% and 7.315% respectively. On MyoPs external validation, CAT-Seg outperformed the state-of-the-art in segmenting LV, Myo, and RV with an average minimum performance gap of 6.13%, 5.44%, and 2.912% respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the dual issues of antibiotic resistance and bioaccumulation toxicity, antibiotics are ubiquitously present in aquatic environments, and this is causing serious concern. Herein, novel nickel ferrite (NiFe2O4) nanoparticles were successfully loaded onto activated biochar (BC) derived from banana peel (BP) to obtain magnetic nanocomposite (BC-NiFe2O4) as an effective biosorbent for the ciprofloxacin antibiotic (CIP) elimination from pharmaceutical effluent. A facile co-precipitation approach was utilized to construct the heterogeneous BC-NiFe2O4. The synthesized materials were systematically characterized using techniques such as XRD, FE-SEM, EDX, HR-TEM, BET, FTIR, and XPS. In addition, the magnetic measurements indicated the ferromagnetic behavior of the BC-NiFe2O4 sample. The influencing factors (i.e., pH, contact time, initial concentration, dose of adsorbent, ions interference, and solution temperature) of the adsorption process were also well studied. The adsorption capacity of the BC-NiFe2O4 heterostructure was 68.79 mg g−1 compared to the BC sample (35.71 mg g−1), confirming that the loading of magnetically NiFe2O4 nanoparticles onto the surface of porous biochar enhanced its stability and adsorption performance for CIP removal, wherein the metal-antibiotic complex has a significant effect for the removal of CIP. Moreover, the Langmuir adsorption isotherm and the pseudo-second-order model displayed a good fit for the experimental data. The values of △H° and △G° revealed that the adsorption process was endothermic and spontaneous. The coordination affinities, π-π stacking, and H-bonding interactions play a more critical role in the adsorption mechanism that confirmed by FTIR and XPS analysis. To study the stability of BC-NiFe2O4 nanocomposites, desorption and recycling studies were investigated. The results revealed that after three cycles, no significant loss in removal efficiency was detected, reflecting the stability and reusability of the prepared BC-NiFe2O4 nanocomposite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The convergence of the Nubian plate toward Eurasia and the spreading rate between the Nubian and South American plates are currently subjects of scientific debates. In this paper, we improve the estimation of Euler pole parameters and the recent relative velocities of the Nubian plate using Global Positioning System (GPS) velocities. These estimates are based on mathematical models and statistical tests for plate tectonic motion represented on a spherical surface. First, we derive the angular velocity and the precise coordinates of the Euler pole to describe the Nubian plate absolute motion expressed in the ITRF2014 geodetic system. This derivation is obtained by inverting the horizontal velocities of 202 GPS stations well distributed across the Nubian plate. Then, we use the same data to obtain the current relative velocities and parameters of the Euler pole characterizing the Nubia–Eurasia and Nubia–South America relative plate motion. A number of 21 and 29 GPS stations located on tectonically stable domains are used to fix the Eurasian and the South American plates, respectively. The results show Nubia–Eurasia relative velocities ranging from 1 to 7 mm/yr, with a direction of NW to WNW for the northern Nubian plate. The velocity in the southern part of this plate reveals a NNE to N direction. The inversion of these velocities allows the determination of the Euler pole parameters: the coordinates P Nub - Eu λ Nub - Eu = - 23.17 ∘ ± 0.92892 ; φ Nub - Eu = - 5.62 ∘ ± 0.72322 and the angular velocity Ω Nub - Eu = 0.053 ∘ / M y r ± 0.00101 . On the other hand, the estimated relative velocity of Nubia–South America is varying in the range of 15–30 mm/yr, with a NE to ENE direction and rotating around the pole P Nub - SA λ Nub - SA = - 44.5263 ∘ ± 0.57624 , φ Nub - SA = 66.7484 ∘ ± 0.16524 with an angular velocity Ω Nub - SA = 0. 26689 ∘ / M yr ± 0.0007 . The obtained research results demonstrate an improved precision compared to the existing studies. Furthermore, the use of the Algerian GPS velocities played a key role in the enhancement of the estimates' precision, which allows us to better understand and monitor the crustal deformations at the limit of the plates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background : Catheter ablation is an effective treatment for ventricular tachycardia (VT), albeit the decision to undergo this procedure is often influenced by underlying comorbidities. The present study aims at evaluating the effects of chronic kidney disease (CKD) on clinical outcomes of VT ablation. Methods: We identified 7212 patients who presented between 2016 and 2018 and underwent catheter ablation for VT. Their clinical data were retrospectively accrued from the national readmission database (NRD) using the corresponding diagnosis codes. We compared clinical outcomes between patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD group) and patients without. Odds ratios (OR) for the primary and secondary outcomes were calculated, and multivariable regression analysis was utilized to adjust for confounding variables. Results: Compared with patients without CKD, patients in CKD group were older (mean age 67.9 vs. 60.5 years, P < 0.01), had a longer mean length of stay (8.73 vs. 5.69 days, P < 0.01), and higher in-hospital mortality 113 (6.7%) vs. 119 (2.2%) (OR 2.24, 95% confidence interval (CI) (1.29–3.88), P < 0.01). CKD group patients had increased risk of developing acute kidney injury 726 (43%) vs. 623 (11.3%) (3.69 95% CI (2.87–4.74), P < 0.01). Conclusion: In patients with CKD, VT ablation is associated with worse clinical outcomes in-hospital mortality, acute kidney injury, mean length of stay, and total hospital charge. This significantly influences the decision-making prior to performing this procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: An association between COVID-19 and olfactory dysfunction has been noted in many patients worldwide. The olfactory adaptation process leads to an increase in intracellular calcium cation levels. Nitrilotriacetic acid trisodium salt has high selective chelation for calcium cations from olfactory mucus. The aim of this work is to test the effect of an intranasal nitrilotriacetic acid trisodium salt to lower the elevated calcium cations in COVID-19 patients with relevant symptoms of olfactory dysfunction. Methods: Fifty-eight COVID-19 adult patients with relevant symptoms of olfactory dysfunction were enrolled in a prospective randomized controlled trial. They received a nasal spray containing either 0.9% sodium chloride or 2% nitrilotriacetic acid trisodium salt. Olfactory function was assessed before and after treatment using the Sniffin' Sticks test. Quantitative analysis of calcium cation concentration in nasal secretions was performed using a carbon paste ion-selective electrode. Results: After the application of nitrilotriacetic acid trisodium salt compared to sodium chloride, a significant improvement from functional anosmia to healthy normosmia with significant decrease in calcium cation concentration was observed. Conclusions: Further collaborative research is needed to fully investigate the effect of an intranasal nitrilotriacetic acid trisodium salt in the treatment of olfactory disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantum image processing is the use of quantum computing to store, transmit, and process digital images on quantum computers. This paper introduces two enhanced quantum image representations to store quantum images. The first enhanced quantum representation based on the flexible representation for quantum images (EFRQI) is an amplitude representation that uses the partial negation operator to store the values of the pixels of 2 n × 2 n image in the amplitudes of the qubits. The second enhanced quantum representation based on the novel enhanced quantum representation of digital images (ENEQR) is a basis state representation that uses the CNOT gate to store the values of the pixels in a qubit sequence. The proposed methods have better time complexity and quantum cost when compared with related models in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transportation fuels with high sulfur content are one of the primary contributors to air pollution because they emit massive quantities of sulfur oxides upon combustion. The emitted sulfur oxides undoubtedly contribute to global warming and climate change. Therefore, they should be minimized. The current study accurately describes a novel and direct synthetic pathway for the incorporation of sulfonic acid groups (-SO3H) into mesoporous silica surface. The structure of the prepared materials was confirmed using FTIR, SEM, BET, SA-XRD, TEM, and TGA techniques. The batch adsorption technique was used to carefully evaluate the adsorption efficiency of the prepared adsorbent towards dibenzothiophene (DBT). At optimal adsorption conditions, a maximum adsorption capacity of 75-mg DBT/g adsorbent was achieved. The desulfurization process fitted well to Langmuir and pseudo-second-order models. In addition, the desulfurization process was found to be a spontaneous and exothermic process. As a final point, the practical applicability of the prepared adsorbent, as well as its reusability, was properly investigated, and the results were promising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quantum state discrimination problem is to distinguish between non-orthogonal quantum states. This problem has many applications in quantum information theory, quantum communication and quantum cryptography. In this paper, a quantum algorithm using weak measurement and partial negation will be proposed to solve the quantum state discrimination problem using a single copy of an unknown qubit. The usage of weak measurement makes it possible to reconstruct the qubit after measurement since the superposition will not be destroyed due to measurement. The proposed algorithm will be able to determine, with high probability of success, the state of the unknown qubit and whether it is encoded in the Hadamard or the computational basis by counting the outcome of the successive measurements on an auxiliary qubit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reversible logic has been considered as an important solution to the power dissipation problem in the existing electronic devices. Many universal reversible libraries that include more than one type of gates have been proposed in the literature. This paper proposes a novel reversible n-bit gate that is proved to be universal for synthesizing reversible circuits. Reducing the reversible circuit synthesis problem to permutation group allows Schreier-Sims Algorithm for the strong generating set-finding problem to be used in the synthesize of reversible circuits using the proposed gate. A novel optimization rules will be proposed to further optimize the synthesized circuits in terms of the number of gates, the quantum cost and the utilization of library to achieve better results than that shown in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantum computers require quantum processors. An important part of the processor of any computer is the arithmetic unit, which performs binary addition, subtraction, division and multiplication, however multiplication can be performed using repeated addition, while division can be performed using repeated subtraction. In this paper we present two designs using the reversible R3 gate to perform the quantum half adder/subtractor and the quantum full adder/subtractor. The proposed half adder/subtractor design can be used to perform different logical operations, such as AND, XOR, NAND, XNOR, NOT and copy of basis. The proposed design is compared with the other previous designs in terms of the number of gates used, the number of constant bits, the garbage bits, the quantum cost and the delay. The proposed designs are implemented and tested using GAP software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper was to propose a bounded-error quantum polynomial-time algorithm for the max-bisection and the min-bisection problems. The max-bisection and the min-bisection problems are fundamental NP-hard problems. Given a graph with even number of vertices, the aim of the max-bisection problem is to divide the vertices into two subsets of the same size to maximize the number of edges between the two subsets, while the aim of the min-bisection problem is to minimize the number of edges between the two subsets. The proposed algorithm runs in $$O(m^2)$$ for a graph with m edges and in the worst case runs in $$O(n^4)$$ for a dense graph with n vertices. The proposed algorithm targets a general graph by representing both problems as Boolean constraint satisfaction problems where the set of satisfied constraints are simultaneously maximized/minimized using a novel iterative partial negation and partial measurement technique. The algorithm is shown to achieve an arbitrary high probability of success of $$1-\epsilon $$ for small $$\epsilon >0$$ using a polynomial space resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe a scalable protocol for optimizing the quantum cost of the 3-bit reversible circuits built using NCT library. This technique takes into account a group theory approach. The algorithm analyzes the equivalent quantum circuits obtained by decomposing the reversible circuit to its elementary quantum gates and then applies optimization rules to reduce the number of the used elementary quantum gates. We apply the obtained algorithm using different quantum cost metrics that compare favorably with the relevant methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a new formulation of quantum algorithm which allows to distribute amplitudes over two copies of small quantum subsystems. The new method gives a fixed number of copies and applied to the control of multi-qubit system. The analysis for the amount of error due to the distribution process has been presented for a system of 10 qubits with a small quantum subsystems to be copied. The present scheme provides a new way to distribute amplitudes over small quantum subsystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immunotherapies revolutionized cancer treatment by harnessing the immune system to target cancer cells. However, most patients are resistant to immunotherapies and the mechanisms underlying this resistant is still poorly understood. Here, we report that overexpression of BMP7, a member of the TGFB superfamily, represents a mechanism for resistance to anti-PD1 therapy in preclinical models and in patients with disease progression while on immunotherapies. BMP7 secreted by tumor cells acts on macrophages and CD4+ T cells in the tumor microenvironment, inhibiting MAPK14 expression and impairing pro-inflammatory responses. Knockdown of BMP7 or its neutralization via follistatin in combination with anti-PD1 re-sensitizes resistant tumors to immunotherapies. Thus, we identify the BMP7 signaling pathway as a potential immunotherapeutic target in cancer. The mechanisms underlying resistance to immunotherapy are still poorly understood. Here, the authors show that BMP7, a molecule part of the TGF-beta superfamily, suppresses proinflammatory antitumor responses and may represent a target for overcoming resistance to PD1 inhibitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a novel algorithm to synthesize a low-cost reversible circuits for any Boolean function with n inputs represented as a Positive Polarity Reed–Muller expansion. The proposed algorithm applies a predefined rules to reorder the terms in the function to minimize the multi-calculation of common parts of the Boolean function to decrease the quantum cost of the reversible circuit. The paper achieves a decrease in the quantum cost and/or the circuit length, on average, when compared with relevant work in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]