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A brain tumour is one of the major reasons for death in humans, and it is the tenth most common type of tumour that affects people of all ages. However, if detected early, it is one of the most treatable types of tumours. Brain tumours are classified using biopsy, which is not usually performed before definitive brain surgery. An image classification technique for tumour diseases is important for accelerating the treatment process and avoiding surgery and errors from manual diagnosis by radiologists. The advancement of technology and machine learning (ML) can assist radiologists in tumour diagnostics using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images without invasive procedures. This work introduced a new hybrid CNN-based architecture to classify three brain tumour types through MRI images. The method suggested in this paper uses hybrid deep learning classification based on CNN with two methods. The first method combines a pre-trained Google-Net model of the CNN algorithm for feature extraction with SVM for pattern classification. The second method integrates a finely tuned Google-Net with a soft-max classifier. The proposed approach was evaluated using MRI brain images that contain a total of 1426 glioma images, 708 meningioma images, 930 pituitary tumour images, and 396 normal brain images. The reported results showed that an accuracy of 93.1% was achieved from the finely tuned Google-Net model. However, the synergy of Google-Net as a feature extractor with an SVM classifier improved recognition accuracy to 98.1%.

The advent of social networks and micro-blogging sites online has led to an abundance of user-generated content. Hence, the enormous amount of content is viewed as inappropriate and unimportant information by many users on social media. Therefore, there is a need to use personalization to select information related to users’ interests or searchers on social media platforms. Therefore, in recent years, user interest mining has been a prominent research area. However, almost all of the emerging research suffers from significant gaps and drawbacks. Firstly, it suffers from focusing on the explicit content of the users to determine the interests of the users while neglecting the multiple facts as the personality of the users; demographic data may be a valuable source of influence on the interests of the users. Secondly, existing work represents users with their interesting topics without considering the semantic similarity between the topics based on clusters to extract the users’ implicit interests. This paper is aims to propose a novel user interest mining approach and model based on demographic data, big five personality traits and similarity between the topics based on clusters. To demonstrate the leverage of combining user personality traits and demographic data into interest investigation, various experiments were conducted on the collected data. The experimental results showed that looking at personality and demographic data gives more accurate results in mining systems, increases utility, and can help address cold start problems for new users. Moreover, the results also showed that interesting topics were the dominant factor. On the other hand, the results showed that the current users’ implicit interests can be predicted through the cluster based on similar topics. Moreover, the hybrid model based on graphs facilitates the study of the patterns of interaction between users and topics. This model can be beneficial for researchers, people on social media, and for certain research in related fields.

The search algorithm based on symbiotic organisms’ interactions is a relatively recent bio-inspired algorithm of the swarm intelligence field for solving numerical optimization problems. It is meant to optimize applications based on the simulation of the symbiotic relationship among the distinct species in the ecosystem. The task scheduling problem is NP complete, which makes it hard to obtain a correct solution, especially for large-scale tasks. This paper proposes a modified symbiotic organisms search-based scheduling algorithm for the efficient mapping of heterogeneous tasks to access cloud resources of different capacities. The significant contribution of this technique is the simplified representation of the algorithm’s mutualism process, which uses equity as a measure of relationship characteristics or efficiency of species in the current ecosystem to move to the next generation. These relational characteristics are achieved by replacing the original mutual vector, which uses an arithmetic mean to measure the mutual characteristics with a geometric mean that enhances the survival advantage of two distinct species. The modified symbiotic organisms search algorithm (G_SOS) aims to minimize the task execution time (makespan), cost, response time, and degree of imbalance, and improve the convergence speed for an optimal solution in an IaaS cloud. The performance of the proposed technique was evaluated using a CloudSim toolkit simulator, and the percentage of improvement of the proposed G_SOS over classical SOS and PSO-SA in terms of makespan minimization ranges between 0.61–20.08% and 1.92–25.68% over a large-scale task that spans between 100 to 1000 Million Instructions (MI). The solutions are found to be better than the existing standard (SOS) technique and PSO.

Profit-sharing contzacts have recently captured the attention of academicians, bankers, and policymakers, particularly those in the Middle East. These contracts are characterized by risk sharing, an element that forces the contracting parties (especially the financier) to fund only sound projects. The theoretical analyses of such contracts have received a major boost from a variety of models, including Khan (1986) and Haque and Mirakhor (1986), and empirical support from, for example, Darrat (1988) and Bashir et al. (1991). The bold claim of these models is that if the interest payment on financial capital were to be replaced by the profit sharing arrangement, the level of investment would be enhanced instead of weakened. A commonly used profit-sharing financial contract is known as musharakah (equity participation). This contract is a limited partnership in which the investor(s) and the entrepreneur pool their capital to finance a specific investment project. Another version of musharukah involves the investor participating in an existing enterprise by contributing capital. In both cases, the pro-rata distribution of profit is stated in the contract and losses are shared according to capital contribution. The investor is eligible to participate in the project’s management, but may also waive this right.’ A musharakah arrangement can be modeled as a two-person, two-period partnership game. In this setup, each player‘s utility depends on the other player’s action through a commonly observed consequence (profit), which is itself a function of both players’ actions and an exogenous stochastic environment. The game is thus one of decentralized decision making in which individual optimizers ...

Human visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is an endemic disease in eastern Sudan, particularly in Al Gadarif State, causing significant morbidity and fatality rates. This disease is induced by Leishmania donovani and Leishmania infantum. Several studies have suggested that dogs (Canis familiaris), which are known for being the primary reservoir hosts of L. infantum (causing canine leishmaniasis), may play a vital role in transmitting human VL caused by L. donovani. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of leishmaniasis in general and L. donovani, particularly in dogs, and to investigate the potential risk factors associated with the disease in Al Gadarif State. Blood samples were collected from 151 dogs from five localities and examined using Giemsa-stained blood smears and PCR. The overall prevalence was 44.4% based on microscopic examination. Significant variation in the prevalence of leishmaniasis was observed among the localities (p = 0.000), where the highest prevalence was reported in Algurreisha (85%) and the lowest was observed in Alhawata (4.2%). Dog type was another risk factor that was shown to be significantly associated with infection (p = 0.041). The highest prevalence was reported in household dogs (47.7%) compared to stray dogs (23.8%). The analysis revealed that factors such as the use of dogs, sex, and age were not statistically linked to the disease. However, among household dogs, the highest prevalence was reported in pet dogs (59.7%), males (49.1%) compared to females (32.6%), and young dogs (50%) compared to older dogs (40.9%). All blood samples tested negative for L. donovani by PCR, thus requiring further investigation to identify the causative species in dogs and their possible roles in the epidemiology of zoonotic leishmaniasis in Sudan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biofloc systems represent a promising approach for achieving greater sustainability and productivity in aquaculture. This trial aimed to investigate the physio-histological impacts of different concentrations of biofloc on antioxidant capacities and the histology of both hepatopancreas and gills structure and abnormalities of the white leg shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei). The study used three ratios of C:N (1:10, 1:15, 1:20) with three different levels of density (10, 20, 20 individuals/100L) for each ratio with triplicate for 56 days. The results of antioxidants activities showed that antioxidants (SOD, CAT, GPXs, MDH, LYZ) were significantly increased in biofloc treatments and reached its best activity in 1:15 treatment with a stocking density of 20 individuals/100L. The histological records indicated that 1:15 ratio enhanced the structure for both hepatopancreas and gills tissues. Tissues in the control and 1:10 ratio treatment seemed to be normal. In the 1:15 treatment, the hepatopancreas showed all important cells as blazeZellen cells (B) and embryonal Zellen cells (E) and normal arrangement of cells and normal interlamellar space for gills. With the increase of C:N ratio and stocking density, hepatopancreas showed a severe cell deformation, vacuoles, while the gills showed epithelial edema and abnormalities, particularly in 1:30 treatment, with 30 individuals/100L. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A feeding trial was carried out to investigate the effects of a dietary fermented poultry by-product (FPBP) on the growth performance, feed efficiency, body chemical composition, blood biochemical tests and economic efficiency of the Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus fingerlings. Poultry by-product was subjected to solid-state fermentation then incorporated into four experimental (Isonitrogenous 30% and iso-caloric 4400Kcal/ Kg) diets containing 0, 25, 50 and 75% FPBP instead of soybean meal. Results revealed that the replacement of soybean meal with FBPP had significantly high (P≤ 0.05) growth performance and feed utilization. Moreover, body ash content decreased insignificantly (P≤ 0.05) compared to the control. At a low substitution level of 25% FPBP, a significant increase in body fat content (P≤ 0.05) was recorded compared to the control. Furthermore, body ash and energy contents demonstrated a significant increase (P≤ 0.05) compared with the control. Additionally, biochemical blood tests revealed that FPBP does not have any harmful effects on either liver or kidney function parameters. It could be concluded that the replacement of soybean meal with FPBP at a level of 25% was the best in terms of growth performance and feed utilization under these experimental conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A cold cathode plasma source is constructed for modifying PTFE surface characteristics. The source was easily built, had a consistent plasma discharge medium and acceleration system. A cylindrical Langmuir probe is also used to evaluate plasma parameters like density, temperature or even plasma potential. This probe is designed to be moveable so that it may approach any desired position in the plasma volume. The influences of nitrogen pressure and probe-cathode gap on plasma parameters were investigated. The electron temperature T e fluctuated from 7. 7 3 × 1 0 4 to 6. 8 × 1 0 4 eV as the pressure rises from 0.2 to 0.4 mbar. Further, by increasing the cathode-probe gap from 0.4 to 2 cm, the electron densities increased from 0. 4 6 × 1 0 1 0 cm − 3 to 0. 8 9 × 1 0 1 0 cm − 3 . Furthermore, the contact angles, work of adhesion and surface free-energy of pristine as well as irradiated PTFE films, were estimated. The results demonstrated that by extending the plasma exposure duration from 0 to 12 min, the water contact angle is lowered from 82.2∘ to 30.5∘. At these conditions, the work of adhesion is raised from 81.9 to 134.1 mJ/m2, as the surface free energy is increased from 29.8 to 71.8 mJ/m2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A feeding trial was conducted to evaluate the effect of replacing soybean meal diet with fermented cottonseed meal (FCSM) on the growth performance, feed utilization, body composition and economical evaluation of Nile tilapia fingerlings at rates (20, 40, 60, 80 and 100% FCSM for T1, T2, T3, T4 and T5, respectively. The basal diet was designed to contain (FCSM-0%) as a control). Three hundred and sixty Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) fingerlings with initial weight of 3.5 ± 0.12 g were divided into six groups (20 fish per tank, Triplicate per treatment). Fingerlings Nile tilapia were hand-fed to visual satiation at two meals per day for 90 days. Fish were fed diets containing different levels of FCSM had no significant differences regarding survival. Final weight, Weight gain, SGR and PER were significantly higher in group of fish on T5and T4 groups, respectively. FCR was the lowest in T5 (1 0 0 %) and T4 (80%) replacement of soybean meal with fermented cottonseed meal compared with the control group and other experimental dieys. Feed and protein intake were significantly highest in group of fish fed on control and T1diets and the lowest in group of fish fed on T5and T4. Body protein significantly increased with increasing level of incorporation of fermented cottonseed meal in the diets. These results indicated that incorporation of fermented cotton seed meal into fingerlings Nile tilapia fingerlings diets reduced the price of one kg diet to 82.93, 72.93, 64.71, 57.66 and 61.25% for the T1, T2, T3, T4 and T5, respectively compared to the control group (100% of the price). In conclusion, fermented cotton seed meal can be replaced soybean meal at levels 80 or 100% without negative effects on growth performance and feed utilization of Nile tilapia fingerlings under experimental conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) was mixed with concentration of 5%, 7.5%, and 10% of manganese dioxide (MnO2) to form PVA/MnO2 films using solution cast approach method. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) verified that the nanomaterials films were successfully fabricated. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) illustrates the uniform MnO2 dispersion within the PVA host matrix. Additionally, the influence of MnO2 on the optical properties is recorded. The refractive index (n0) is improved by adding MnO2, from 1.29 for PVA to 1.87 for PVA/5%MnO2 and 2.86 for PVA/10%MnO2. The PVA had a dispersion energy of 2.53 eV, while PVA with 5% MnO2 had 4.86 eV, PVA with 7.5% MnO2 had 5.74 eV, and PVA with 10%MnO2 had 7.12 eV. In addition, the oscillation energy E0 decreased from 3.79 for PVA to 1.94, 1.72, and 0.99 eV, respectively for PVA/5%MnO2, PVA/7.5%MnO2, and PVA/10%MnO2. It is evident from the data that the incorporation of MnO2 to the PVA polymer alters its optical properties. This proved the existence of strong interactions of PVA and MnO2 due to the modification of the PVA/MnO2 electronic structure. Moreover, the plasma frequency W p value increased from 0.79 × 1013 s−1 for PVA to 2.06 × 1013 s−1 for PVA/10%MnO2. These shifts in W p provided the polarization is modified for the PVA/MnO2. The results obtained in this study provide evidence of the advantages associated with the utilization of MnO2 nanoparticles as a filler of improved polymeric structures. These findings also propose the potential suitability of MnO2 nanoparticles for application in the field of optics and electronic devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Cancer patients have a high risk of fungal infections, especially by Candida species. Non- C. albicans Candida infections and less common yeast infections have been increasing in recent years. Identification by conventional methods can be difficult and sometimes inconclusive. This study aimed to detect the prevalence of oral yeast species isolated from cancer patients, from oral swab, sputum and urine, using Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) sequence analysis, since little is known about this problem in Sudan. Methods: The study involved 333 cancer patients (168 patients under treatment [study group] and 165 patients before treatment [control group]). Oral swabs were collected from all patients. Urine or sputum specimens were collected from patients under treatment showing clinical features of UTI or lower respiratory tract infection, respectively. ITS1 and ITS2 region of isolated yeast were amplified by PCR and sequenced. The obtained sequences were compared to reference sequence available in the GenBank database using BLAST. Results: Culture results showed oral yeast species were isolated from 69/168 (41.1%) and 74/165 (44.8%) of patients among study and control groups, respectively (P value > 0.05). 2/9 (22.2%) patients were urine growth positive and 8/14 (57.1%) patients were sputum culture positive. Sequence analysis showed, C. albicans was the most prevalent organism (93; 52.5%) followed by C. tropicalis (29; 16.4%), and C. glabrata (24; 13.6%). Non- C. albicans Candida and uncommon rare yeast were found to be associated with oral infections and colonization among the study and control groups, whereas C.albicans was the most common species (66.7%) associated with oral candidiasis among the treated patients. Conclusion: Cancer patients were highly colonized with different oral yeast species, which indicates that ITS sequence analysis is an accurate method for identification. This will aid effective management to prevent dissemination of disease especially among those who are under chemo and/or radiotherapy treatment.

The Suez Canal has three lakes including Timsah, and the Great and Little Bitter Lakes, which are important fishery resources in Egypt. These lakes produce highly economically important fish species, viz. grey mullet, shrimp, cuttlefish, striped piggy, crab, soles, gastropods and bivalves. The Timsah Lake is located nearly halfway along the Suez Canal between 30° 13' 00" to 32° 35' 18" N and 32° 16' 30" to 32° 18' 30" E. It is a shallowwater basin with an average depth of about 6m and a surface area of nearly 15km2. It is a brackish lake with significant variations in salinity. The Bitter Lakes (30°20' N, 32°23' E), the largest water bodies along the Suez Canal, are saline lakes with a surface area of about 250km². The total annual commercial landings from Suez Canal lakes varied between 6289 and 2260 tons during the last 20 years. In 2020, a total of 3428 tons landed corresponded to a value of almost 300 million LE. A number of fishing methods are used in the lakes including gill nets, crab nets, shrimp nets, beach seine, hattata and trammel nets. The present work investigated the fishing methods used in Suez Canal lakes, their characteristics, the catch composition, catch trend and the relative abundance of different commercial species measured by the catch per unit fishing effort CPUE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]