Qatar Foundation Annual Research Conference Proceedings Volume 2016 Issue 1

Selenium is associated with insulin resistance and may therefore affect endothelial function, increasing type II diabetes risk and associated cardiovascular-disease risk. However the underpinning molecular mechanisms involved are not clear. High selenium doses cause apoptosis in some cancer cells through the induction of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress response, a mechanism also involved in the pathogenesis of insulin resistance and endothelial dysfunction (ED). Thus we hypothesised that high selenium intake could cause ED through ER stress.

Endothelial cells were treated with selenite (0.5–20 μM) in the presence or absence of the ER chemical chaperone, 4-phenylbutryic acid (PBA). High selenium concentrations (5–10 μM of selenite) compared to physiological concentration (0.5 μM) enhanced mRNA expression of several pro-apoptotic ER stress markers; such as activating transcription factor-4 (ATF4) and CAAA/enhanced-binding homologous protein (CHOP). In addition, Griess assay showed that high selenite treatment (5–20 μM) reduced NO production. Moreover, flow cytometry assays showed that high selenium enhanced ROS production and apoptosis in cells. Finally, supra-nutritional concentrations of selenite increased caspases 3/7 activity in endothelial cells compared to the physiological concentration. Interestingly, the pre-incubation of cells with PBA completely reversed all the effects of high selenium indicating the involvement of ER stress response.

Overall, we show here that high selenium treatment causes endothelial dysfunction and cell death through the activation of ER stress response. These results highlight the importance of a balanced selenium intake in order to achieve maximal health benefits. These findings also underscore the importance to monitor cardiovascular risk development in cancer patients supplemented with high amounts of selenium as part of their chemotherapeutic intervention.

Background and Objective

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are characterized by abnormalities in social interaction and communication skills, in addition to stereotypic behaviors and restricted activities and interests. Autism prevalence has dramatically increased from 1 case per 5000 children in the early 1980’s to1 case per 68 children as of 2015. A recent pilot study on the demographic distribution of children with autism in Qatar showed a preliminary ratio of 1 child with autism per 500 school children. Currently, It is widely accepted that abnormalities in serotonin (5-HT) neurotransmission is one of the most important reasons for ASD. Consequently, Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) have been utilized to target various symptoms of the disorders by their ability to increase 5-HT in synaptic clefts. Unfortunately, it was observed that there is a delay in the therapeutic effect of about 4–6 weeks that may be attributed to the time needed for 5-HT autoreceptor (5-HT1B/1D) desensitization. This delay adversely affects child compliance. Accordingly co-administration of SSRIs with 5-HT1B/1D antagonists would increase serotonin levels in the brain. It was then proposed that a “hybrid” drug that can act on both receptors would have the advantage of low cost and better compliance. In the presented study, we report the design of a dual pharmacophore model for binding with serotonin transporter and 5-HT1B/1D receptors, followed by the microwave-assisted synthesis of structurally diverse N-aryl and heteroarylpiperazines as dual antagonists at reuptake transporter and 5-HT autoreceptors.

Method

Molecular Modeling

All compounds with IC50 value <  10 nm against serotonin transporter were retrieved from ChEMBLdb database (Version 20, 1,463,270 molecules) and filtered using Lipinski's rule of five, which led to 367 inhibitors. The retrieved compounds were then clustered into 15 cohorts using FCFP_6 fingerprints implemented in Accelrys Discovery Studio software. The most active compound of each cohort was picked and used to build the pharmacophore model using Common Feature Pharmacophore Generation module of Discovery Studio. The pharmacophore hypotheses were evaluated, ranked and validated using a set of mixed actives and decoys.

Chemistry and Biology

The first reaction of the scheme was a modified Buchwald-Hartwig amination, in which different aryl and heteroaryl bromo-derivatives were coupled with 1-Boc-piperazine utilizing microwave energy. Deprotection was then performed to remove the Boc group from the synthesized compounds and liberate the free amine that was coupled with the activated acid that mimics the SSRI Fluoxetine. The Synthesized compounds obey Lipinski rule of five and pharmacophoric features were mapped using molecular modeling studies.

Results

The proposed compounds were successfully synthesized and purified using flash chromatography. The chemical structures were confirmed with mass spectrometry and NMR. The binding affinity was then tested at 5-HT1B/1D receptors and 5-HT reuptake transporter. Some of the compounds showed promising activity and further in-vivo assay will be performed.

Conclusion

A molecular modeling study was successfully performed to generate a hypothetical pharmacophore model. A microwave-assisted synthetic scheme was accomplished and all final compounds were purified. Chemical structures were confirmed using different spectroscopic techniques. Biological in-vitro testing was conducted and all relevant data will be presented.

Background

Cancer treatments are frequently associated with adverse effects, but there may be a cultural reluctance by care providers to be forthcoming with patients regarding these risks for fear of promoting non-adherence. Conversely, research in a number of countries indicates high levels of patient desire for this information. We sought to pharmacist and nurse views and experiences in educating patients regarding their treatment safety and tolerability as well as the roles of other professions in this regard and to explore cancer patient experiences, satisfaction, and preferences for medication risk communication in this Middle East care setting.

Design

In this mixed methods study, six focus group discussions of nurses and pharmacists were conducted were conducted at the National Center for Cancer Care and Research (NCCCR) in Qatar during 2015. Additionally/secondly, a 10-item questionnaire (Arabic, English) was developed and administered to a convenience sample of consenting adult patients receiving treatment at NCCCR. Ethics approval was obtained from both Hamad Medical Corporation and Qatar University Institutional Review Boards.

Results

Focus group

Eleven pharmacists and 22 nurses providing direct patient care participated. Concepts related to three key themes were drawn from the seeding questions and included factors for determining the level of risk they communicated: the specific treatment regimen in question; the patient; and their assessment of the patient. Patient-related considerations arose from additional subthemes; both nurses and pharmacists described aspects related to the perceived psychological health status of the patient, as well as anticipated comprehension, as ascertained by demonstrated education and language abilities. In all discussions, it was noted that physician and family non-disclosure of cancer diagnosis to the patient profoundly influenced the nature of information they provided. While a high level of cohesion in safety communication prioritization among these two health disciplines was found, a number of pharmacists asserted a more formal role compared to informal and repeated teaching by nurses.

Survey

One hundred and forty three patients were interviewed (15 of whom were Qatari). Most (88%) stated the level of side effect information they received was sufficient, with physicians (86%) followed by pharmacists (39%) as the preferred sources. The majority (97%) agreed that knowing about possible side effects would help them recognize and manage the reaction and 92% agreed it would help them understand how to minimize or prevent the risks. Overall, eighteen percent indicated this information would make them not want to take treatment,but some regional differences among patients emerged (37.5% Gulf Coast Country-origin vs 15.8% Middle East North Africa-origin, p = 0.029, vs 12.1% Phillipines, p = 0.030) Two-thirds (65%) had previously experienced intolerance to their cancer treatment regimen.

Conclusions

Nurses and pharmacists in this Middle East healthcare environment were not reluctant to discuss treatment side effects with patients and draw on similar professional judgements in prioritising treatment risk information. We found that they did not always recognise each other's informal educational encounters and that there are opportunities to explore increased collaboration in this regard to enhance the patient care experience.

Most patients surveyed expressed preference for the details of possible side effects they may encounter in their treatment. However, one in five considered such information a factor for non-adherence indicating the need for patient-specific approaches when communicating medication risks.

Acknowledgment

This research was made possible by UREP grant from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the author

Background

There is no longer a question as to whether viruses contribute to the pathogenesis of type 1 diabetes (T1D), as we recently reviewed, but rather how they contribute and, in particular, the role of viral diversity and evolution in the disease process. The recent finding of enterovirus (EV) capsid protein VP1 in pancreatic autopsy samples from the JDRF Network for Pancreatic Organ Donors with Diabetes (nPOD) supports earlier case series in which EVs (Coxsackievirus B, CVB)were isolated from pancreatic tissue and inoculated into human islets, causing functional impairment and β-cell death. The most interesting observation from the nPOD data is the patchy distribution of insulitis, with MHC class II hyper-expression on β-cells, which was co-located with viral protein. Indeed, it is well established that specific EV strains demonstrate β-cell tropism; we and others have shown that EVs infect and replicate in β-cells (Fig. 1), inducing inflammation, cytokine production and functional damage. There is also substantial epidemiological evidence that EVs have more than an occasional role in the disease; in our meta-analysis of >4000 cases, the odds ratio (OR) was ∼10 for EV infection at T1D onset vs controls, and OR∼4 for EV infection and islet autoimmunity (IA). While the genetic and immunological components of disease are not in question, the capacity for EVs to evolve is completely unexplored in the pathogenesis of human T1D. This information is critical for development of EV vaccines to prevent T1D, which is currently underway.

HYPOTHESIS-1: Variation in the capsid and non-structural regions of the EV genome determine β-cell tropism

AIM-1: To characterize human EV isolates in cases of IA and T1D using NGS – to identify regions in the EV genome associated with β-cell tropism

HYPOTHESIS-2: Increased genetic diversity of EVs at the full genome level is associated with seroconversion to IA and T1D

AIM-2: To examine the evolutionary dynamics and genetic diversity of EVs at the full genome level from children with IA and T1D, and to quantify the extent of intra-host evolution of EVs within an infection and the kinetics of intra-host virus evolution between infections.

Research Plan and Methods

EV prototype strains and clinical isolates from children with AI and T1D that infect and replicate in β-cells. Cohorts: Viruses in Genetically at Risk (VIGR), Environmental Determinants of Islet Autoimmunity (ENDIA), and children at onset of T1D (EET1DPP2). Samples collected at the study visit or at diagnosis of T1D. RNA extracted with QIAamp viral RNA, quantitative RT-PCR were performed on the Roche LC-480 platform. NGS: Full-length EV genomes were amplified as a single 7.4 kb fragment by RT-PCR, and NGS performed using the Illumina MiSeq sequencer. Phylogenetic analysis of the full-length viral consensus sequences performed using the neighbour joining and maximum likelihood method. Statistical analysis with R software. Trees were constructed from alignment of complete genome sequences by using best-fit models and visualised using FigTree (Figure2). Comparisons were performed with Viral Epidemiology Signature Pattern Analysis (VESPA).

Results and Discussion

Two of the EVs from IA+ cases had an N to S amino acid (AA) substitution within the 2C protein, which became dominant after 10 days passage in the islets. The 2C protein encodes for the viral helicase and lies just upstream of the viral region that shares significant homology with human GAD65. EV isolate from another IA+ case has 5 AA differences within the capsid protein VP4 at residues 3, 16, 18, 50 and 61 (Figure3). VP4 is an internal capsid protein linked to the genome. VP4 has been shown in vitro to be a target of human antibodies that enhance CVB induced synthesis of interferon α (IFN-α). CVB-induced IFN-α plays a role in the initiation and/or maintenance of chronic CVB infection in human islets. Antibodies directed towards the region 11–30 of the VP4 capsid enhance infection of peripheral blood cells with CVB4 in vitro. Therefore, our preliminary data suggest VP4 may be a determinant of ‘diabetogenicity’. Our novel NGS data will contribute to vaccine development from a global perspective. Our ultimate goal is to reduce the future burden of T1D.

Hypertension prevalence around the world has risen over the last few years. The gulf countries has become one of the most affected countries in the world. Saudi Arabia only estimated that 24% of the current population is suffering from hypertension. This has been attributed to elements such as lack of proper management systems for hypertension and inadequate education systems in the region. In addition to this health problem, gulf countries have increased its use of smart phones. The country's access to the internet has also increased.

Therefore, SHAMS aims to fill the gap of lacking special hypertension education program in gulf countries using mobile health technology such as a private social network for hypertensive patients in gulf countries. The system contains of two units: (1) medical staff whom might be hypertension educator. (2) hypertensive patients.

SHAMS system allows the medical staff to taught the hypertensive patient through private social network. The hypertension educator can Post information, Videos and pictures and also answer the hypertensive inquiries through the SHAMS. On the other hand, the hypertensive patients can share his thoughts with his doctor/educator and with other hypertensive patients in the SHAMS network.

In conclusion, there is substantial support for the adoption of the use SHAMS in order to improve the health awareness of hypertensive patients in Saudi Arabia. The research work is currently on-going, with a focus on the design and implementation of the integrated architecture with regard to SHAMS to be further evaluated and developed in the KSA.

Introduction and Objectives

Engineering living tissues or organs critically depends on the use of scaffolds to attract, house and instruct host cells. To achieve this, the scaffolds need to be functionalised using different strategies. One of these strategies relies on the use designer peptides to decorate scaffolds. Peptide linkers have shown increasing importance in the production of bioactive materials for various biological applications. In particular, they act as natural linkers for merging multiple functional domains and for attaching active motifs on the surface to induce cells and to enhance the function of biomaterials. However, intense structural customization of the linkers is required prior to examine them under experimental conditions for challenging tissue engineering applications such as heart valve repair. Thus, we here apply computer-aided molecular design to construct the linkers including essential properties such as multiple motif presentations and binding on scaffolds/nanoparticles.

Materials and Methods

The 3D structures of known functional motif (collagen and fibronectin inducing) with linkers were used in the interactive molecular dynamics simulations, which were carried out under physiological conditions after parameterization of all atomic properties. The simulations are to solve Newton equation of motion for 100 nanoseconds at the parallel super computer using algorithms of Groningen machine for chemical simulations. The trajectories of the simulations were collected at regular interval for analysing molecular behaviours, molecular interactions and structural properties of the linkers.

Results

Our recent modeling shows that the linkers based on valine and alanine can be used for merging dual bioactive motifs, which enhance the stimulation of collagen and fibronectin in human adipose derived stem cells under experimental conditions. By further applying the modeling strategy, here, we are developing linkers in specific conformations with surface attachment property. The computer aided-design used to analyse the structural role of key residues such as proline, serine, alanine, glycine, glutamic acid, lysine and cysteine in different lengths with several combinations to probe favourable linkers. The structural rigidity and self-assembly are the major molecular features that were used appropriately to create the efficient linkers for decoration and functionalization of biomaterials.

Conclusion

The design of customized linkers may offer many advantages for the production intelligent biomaterials with multi-functionality, enhanced bioactivity and to target specific sites/shapes for tissue engineering applications.

The state of health of the elderly members of society and the fact that most of this group of persons either live alone or with family creates a need for constant monitoring as they are often times left alone for the greater part of the day when their hosts or family members have to go to work. The most common cause of death among the aged is heart related. Heath related medical emergencies range from heart attacks to strokes which happen suddenly leaving the victims with little or no ability to call for help. This system provides a means of monitoring the heart rate, temperature and blood pressure of the individual. It also has the capability of sending a pre stored message to the control center which passes it on to the nearest medical team or emergency response team indicating the location of the user, the vital signs and some medical history in the event of an emergency when the alert function is activated. These messages are sent using the GSM-SMS technology and are delivered within seconds of activation. The system can be provided by the health care providers, emergency response service providers, HMO and hospitals. The device is to be worn all times by the individuals such that they are monitored in real time. The system also has a panic button which can be activated by the user for medical challenges other than heart related cases where the individual is not able to reach a phone. The system also incorporates a GPS receiver system capable of transmitting the location of the user in the event that the emergency occurred outdoors. The system provides a real time monitoring of the health conditions of the aged and enables a faster deployment of paramedics in the event of a medical emergency.

Introduction

A recent study of over 800 elderly citizens over 60 years in a middle east country showed that the prevalent medical challenges in the order of occurrence are hypertension (59.1%) followed by diabetes mellitus (57.3%), stroke (34.9%), dementia (28.5%), osteoarthritis (24.2%) and Alzheimer (21.4%). The females were observed to have a higher risk compared to the males for obesity (OR = 9.1; 95% CI = 3.51–12.8), followed by osteoporosis (OR = 8.7; 95% CI = 15.10–9.13) and fracture neck femur (OR = 3.9; 95 CI = 2.11–6.91). The result also showed that males are more susceptible to hypertension (OR = 1.4; 95% CI = 1.07–1.85), stroke (OR = 1.3; 95% CI = 1.08–1.89) and renal diseases (OR = 2.4; 95% CI = 1.25–4.54). The prevalence of Hypertension, diabetes and stroke can be monitored using heartbeat sensor and blood pressure sensor. This work utilizes sensors for monitoring the heartbeat, the blood pressure and the body temperature to detect the occurrence of a health emergency and thus enable the triggering of the appropriate response messages.

System design

The system design comprise of sensors for real-time monitoring of the patient and a microcontroller which integrates all the data from the sensor and determines when the patient is in an emergency condition. The system is registered to individual owners and the house address of the users and their medical history is stored in a database of the healthcare provider. The city to be covered by the system is regrouped into service areas with ambulance and paramedic teams located in each service area. In the event of a health crisis or a medical emergency from the user, the microcontroller interprets the sensor output and sends a message depending on the sensor message received from the user to the central control center. The control center working together Mobile operators generates a coarse location of the user and compares it with the user stored address. If the user is at home, the control center sends the user name and phone number to the response team. It also sends the address, basic medical details, the nature of the emergency, phone number of the next of kin to the nearest ambulance and paramedic team covering the service areas within which the user is located.

Background

Influenza is a highly infectious but preventable viral illness. Influenza vaccine remain the cornerstone of prevention, WHO encourages annual influenza vaccinations for all children and youth ≥ 6 months of age and those who have chronic illness at risk for the development of complications. Vaccinating pediatricians will reduce their risk of getting the flu and could potentially prevent illness in patients; their positive attitudes play a central role in educating parents and support decision-making to increase vaccine coverage in children's. Immunization schedule in Qatar matched the World Health Organization (WHO) recent recommendations and provide vaccination programs to public accordingly.

Free vaccine campaign started at HMC, Qatar in 2006 for all health care providers in hospital. The influenza target was set at ≥ 70 % vaccination rates. Data from the infection control department shown that there is consistently low compliance with seasonal Influenza vaccine among all health care workers: in 2011, the rate was 37% compared with 68% in 2012.

Although a safe and effective vaccine is available, there is little local data on percentage of vaccinated hospital based pediatricians and their attitudes toward seasonal flu vaccine.

Objective

To assess vaccination coverage rate, attitude and identify several factors to enhance seasonal influenza vaccine acceptance among pediatricians in Qatar

Methods

cross sectional survey was conducted among pediatricians working at different locations in the pediatric department such as pediatrics inpatients ward, pediatric intensive care unit, neonatal intensive care unit and pediatrics emergency department at Hamad Medical Corporation the main tertiary teaching hospital in Qatar, The survey consisted of details demographics, attitudes, uptake of influenza vaccine in the current year and factors influencing vaccine acceptance. The study protocol and Questionnaire was reviewed and approved by the Medical Research Centre. Hamad Medical Corpo-ration, Doha, Qatar. All Statistical analyses were done using statistical packages SPSS 22.0 (SPSS Inc. Chicago, IL).

Result

A total of 63 pediatricians from different department participated in this survey. Our study showed that percentages of participants who received sessional flu vaccination were (78%). Flu vaccination uptake was observed to be (58%) among physicians working in high-risk area such as PICU, NICU and Pediatrics Emergency compared to (42%) on inpatients ward. In order to promote immunization acceptance and coverage rate among pediatricians, use of evidence-based statement to support vaccine effectiveness ranked the highest (42%), followed by (23%) provides free on site vaccination, (20%) participating in multidisciplinary educational campaign and (10%) leadership support and being a role model, and lastly (5%) increase access to vaccine.

Conclusion

Personal experience of seasonal influenza vaccination, Evidence base benefit of vaccine and its safety plays an important factor in physician's attitude towards immunization.

Our finding showed that vaccine coverage among pediatricians working in a hospital setting close to the international target of 80% in healthcare facilities. Good compliance and high acceptance of influenza vaccination by pediatricians will positive impact on children immunization rate in Qatar. Our study described several practical intervention to enhance flu vaccine acceptance and achieve higher coverage rate.

There have been dramatic increases in the prevalence of allergic conditions throughout the world. Until recently conditions such as allergic asthma and rhinitis, and life-threatening anaphylaxis were relatively rare in Qatar and the Gulf states, but the proportion of the population affected now seem to be approaching the high levels of many Western countries. There is a pressing need for better means for effective diagnosis, for the prediction of those who are at risk of serious reactions and for new treatments.

Our studies focus on the mast cell, a cell type of pivotal importance in mediating allergic disease. Mast cells release a range of potent proteases and other mediators of inflammation. Three unique mast cell proteases, carboxypeptidase, tryptase and chymase may be valuable as markers for anaphylaxis; and even in asymptomatic subjects serum concentrations may be related to susceptibility to severe reactions. We propose to evaluate specific immunoassays for these enzymes as new laboratory tests.

These three genes encoding the three proteases have been codon optimized and synthesized for maximum expression in either E. coli or Pichia pastoris.

The carboxypeptidase A was sub cloned and overexpressed in E. coli using the pET28a. Two variants of human mast cell Tryptase and two variants of human mast cell Chymase were sub cloned into Pichia pasoris vectors pPIC9 or pPICZ alpha for expression.

Native proteases have also been produced from human lung mast cell.

Molecular characterizations of the three recombinant proteases are being done.

The potential for these three proteases as a novel target for therapeutic intervention in allergic disease will be carefully assessed. As drugs taken for allergic conditions are have attracted attention for their potential to lead to enhanced performance in athletes, the studies should be of relevance in the formulation of anti-doping policy.

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a chronic condition that emerged as serious medical, social and economic problem worldwide. Qatar was ranked by the IDF among the top 10 countries in the world with the highest prevalence of T2D that exceeds 20%. The causes of T2D are multiple but the contribution of genetic is well recognized. So far, large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified more than 80 susceptibility loci. However, these investigations were carried out mainly on European populations. The main goal of the present study was to conduct a T2D-GWAS analysis in Arab population. A case-control study using 870 T2D cases versus 666 controls was performed to compare allele frequencies across the genome of Moroccan samples. The Illumina Human Core Beadchip was used to genotype 298,930 SNP in these samples. Genotype calls were assigned using the GenCall algorithm as implemented in Illumina GenomeStudio (version 2010.3; Illumina Inc.). Stringent Quality Control (QC) criteria for filtering SNPs and samples for analyses were applied. All statistical analyses were performed using PLINK version 1.07 (http://pngu.mgh.harvard.edu/ ∼ purcell/plink/). Associations of SNPs with T2D were tested using logistic regression (-logistic command in PLINK), assuming an additive genetic model, and with either no adjustment or adjusting on the five first principal components. Correcting for potential confounders was a necessity since the large inflation factor (Genomic Control; GC = 1.176) was detectable in the unadjusted analysis. Increasing the number of PC to adjust for 10 corrected and decreased the genomic control under 1.07 (GC = 1.06). Imputation of non-observed genotypes is possible using linkage disequilibrium at genetic loci and a database of haplotypes from diverse populations (reference panel). This approach was implemented in all Moroccan samples and led to impute up to 30,071,165 variants (SNP + short INDELS). We selected the best SNP candidates for replication using the following criteria: P-value of association below 10–5, Quality of imputation I² ≥ 0.7 and Minor Allele frequency ≥ 5%. These three criteria led to a shortlist of 154 variants. Some of these variants were redundant because of linkage disequilibrium (r²>0.6). When two variants were in LD we selected the one showing the strongest association. By focusing on independent signals, we selected a list of 26 SNPs for further replication genotyping study. Replication study was performed in additional 1500 Moroccans T2D cases and controls using the Fluidigm genotyping platform and following the vendor instructions protocol. In this replication analysis, only 2 of the 26 SNPs (7.7%) showed nominal evidence of replication with a P-value adjusted

Qatar has one of the world's fastest growing population. The lifestyle and socio-economic situation of the Qatar, like other Arab countries are also vastly changing according to the growing trends. These changes finally reflected in the life expectancy and led to a rise in the “Non-Communicable diseases” or otherwise known as the diseases of longevity like Cancer, Cardio Vascular Diseases (CVD), Diabetes Mellitus (DM), Asthma, Liver Cirrhosis etc. According to the data of Qatar Health Report of the year 2012, Coronary Heart Disease is one of the most common causes of death in Qatar after road traffic accidents [1]. It is the foremost cause of death universally, demonstrating 30 percent and in Qatar it is 13.65 %. Cardio Vascular Disease is not considered as a solitary condition, but it is a collection of diverse conditions that affect both heart and blood carrying vessels. There are many biomarkers which are currently used for the detection of CVD in the early stage. C-reactive protein (CRP) is one among them which is seen in blood plasma which in turn is produced in the hepatocytes of liver. The synthesis of CRP is initiated due to the inflammation response from fat cells and macrophages. The clinical significance of CRP is that it is considered as one of the best authenticated biomarker for Cardio Vascular Diseases.

Organic electronics have established into a sensational area of technology and research to substitute typical inorganic semiconductors. Out of that Organic Field Effect Transistor (OFET) have found new uses in the area of biosensors. OFET biosensors mainly use π-conjugated organic semiconductors as electronic materials which is encapsulated with a biological component which can be either antibodies, DNA, enzymes, proteins or bacteria. These are mainly due to their low manufacturing cost when compared to the traditional diagnosing techniques and faster response time. Another advantage of OTFT biosensors over other sensing techniques are the possibility of miniaturization and the output can be delivered in simple electronic form [2]. The biological component can be incorporated in to the active layer and when a source-drain voltage is supplied, the antibody/antigen binding behavior acts as a resistor in the circuit which will be a current flow as a result of charge carrier transport with respect to the corresponding biological or chemical reaction, which can be calculated and displayed. A linear rise in the drain current of the OFET devise can be observed in proportional to the concentration of the biological component [3]. The response time may vary from 10 to 20 seconds.

In this article we are demonstrating an OFET biosensor for the detection of C-reactive protein using antigen-antibody reaction. The biological component will be encapsulated inside the buffer layer of OFET which is spin coated using poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene–poly(styrene-sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS). The entrapment process is done by electrochemical polymerization. The device is fabricated in such a way that the antigen-antibody reaction will alter the electron flow of the OFET which can be attributed to the concentration of the C-reactive protein. This will in turn change the characteristic current-voltage produced which is measured using a Keithley electrical measurement system. A linear rise in the OTFT drain current may be observed with proportional to the amount of CRP-Anti CRP complex, which is further calculated and displayed in the form of digits.

References

1. Qatar Health Report of the year 2012.

2. Danesh, J., et al., C-Reactive Protein and Other Circulating Markers of Inflammation in the Prediction of Coronary Heart Disease. New England Journal of Medicine, 2004. 1387 p.

3. Maddalena F. Organic field-effect transistors for sensing applications. Groningen: s.n., 2011. 110 p.

Rationale

Myocardial infarction (MI) is one of the leading causes of death and disability worldwide. In Qatar specifically, cardiovascular diseases account for 20% of the main causes of death in the country, and the cases of MI is rising rapidly. Recent developments in the management of MI, particularly the emergent opening of the Culprit artery by primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI), have resulted in significant improvement of outcome in patients. In spite of that, the early and long outcome following MI varies considerably in different patients, and a significant number develop major adverse cardiac events (MACE) in the first year after successful PPCI. The clinical complications of MI, such as ventricular remodelling and heart failure, are thrombo-inflammatory processes that involve platelet activation and interactions with blood cells, the endothelium, and the myocardium. Increased platelet activation has been reported in numerous cardiovascular diseases including hypertension, atherosclerosis, stroke, acute coronary syndromes, and myocardial infarction. However, the course of platelet activation after MI and its role in adverse remodelling has not yet been assessed.

Objective

The aim of this study is to evaluate the time course of platelet activation markers in patients diagnosed with acute ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI) in Qatar. Findings will be correlated with patients’ clinical outcomes to evaluate the role of platelet activation markers as prognostic markers of disease progression in adverse remodelling after PPCI.

Methods

Platelet activation was assessed by expression of inflammatory markers platelet P-selectin (CD62P), and lysosome-associated membrane protein (CD63), and formation of platelet-neutrophil aggregates (PNA) using flow cytometry. Measurements were done in peripheral blood samples obtained from healthy subjects (n = 25) and from patients at admission to the cath lab at day 0 (n = 55) before PPCI, and 48 hours (n = 51) and, 1 month (n = 48) after PPCI. P-selectin and CD63 expression is defined as the percentage of antibody-positive platelets (P-sel+ and CD63+). PNA are gated by their characteristic forward and side scatter properties and identified as dual-labelled cells in the gate of neutrophils exhibiting leukocyte CD45 and platelet CD42b fluorescence (CD45+/CD42b+).

Results

Platelet P-selectin and CD63 expression were high in patients at day 0 than in healthy control subjects (% of expression: 24.4 ± 3.0 vs 9.0 ± 2.7; p

Background

Within the field of biomedicine, alginate applications are numerous, from wound healing and cell transplantation to delivery of bioactive molecules. Recently, alginate based biomaterials are entering into clinical trials for the treatment of myocardial infarction (1). Due to its non-thrombogenic nature, this polymer is very promising for cardiac applications, including as scaffold for heart valve tissue engineering. One pivotal property of alginates in this respect is the possibility to form virtually any shapes (films, fibers, beads) in a variety of sizes. Alginate solutions can form gels in mild conditions in the presence of calcium, by displacement of sodium ions and resulting attraction of the alginate molecules. Our aim is therefore to fabricate 3 dimensional (3D) alginate scaffolds mimicking precisely the anatomical shape of human aortic valves, as a substrate for valve tissue engineering and repair (see Fig. 1).

Methods

We used the gelling properties of alginate solutions to obtain scaffolds reproducing the complex geometry of aortic heart valves in a few easy steps. Briefly, the geometrical and structural design of a typical aortic heart valve (2–4) was obtained using Blender software (5). The generated 3D file was converted into stereo-lithography (STL) format and 3D printing performed in Objet Eden260VS - 3d printer (Stratasys, Edina, Minnesota, USA) using light-curable polyacrylate monomers. After printing the supporting material was removed manually which yielded flexible valve-like structure with sinuses of Valsalva and 3 coapting leaflets. Subsequently, agarose moulds were obtained by casting agarose saturated in CaCl2 solution (2% w/w) into the 3D printed form. Finally, alginate scaffold preparation was carried out by immersing the CaCl2-saturated agarose moulds into alginate solutions.

Results

Calcium ions diffused from the agarose mould and effectively cross-linked alginate solution in close vicinity, resulting in an alginate gel layer. The agarose mould could be easily removed in a subsequent step. The resulting alginate structure closely matched the agarose mould geometry and hence the 3D printed replica of a human aortic valve. Moreover by extending the length of mould immersion into sodium alginate solutions, scaffold thickness and composition could be controlled. Such control allowed forecasting further improvement to facilitate cellularisation and tissue formation and to improve mechanical properties.

Conclusion

Alginate can form versatile and tunable hydrogels which can be cast in 3D configurations that mimic the shape of a human aortic valve. As preparation steps can be freely adjusted to incorporate viable cells, such structures could serve as basis for in vitro tissue formation, which would further improve mechanical properties of the hydrogel. In addition, the ease of chemical modification and functionalization of alginate with cell ligands provides rational tools to increase cell interactions and attract cells in situ, which are important steps in the formation of functional valves in vivo.

Overall, this novel and flexible technique that can be readily integrated with other strategies presents an important potential to create the “ideal” scaffold for producing a living valve substitute.

Figure 1. Alginate shaped in tricuspid valve, ventricular view (a), side view (b), hinge - atrial view (C), and open valve view (D). (Scale bars 1 cm).

References

1. Anker SD, Coats AJS, Cristian G, Dragomir D, Pusineri E, Piredda M, et al. A prospective comparison of alginate-hydrogel with standard medical therapy to determine impact on functional capacity and clinical outcomes in patients with advanced heart failure (AUGMENT-HF trial). Eur Heart J. 2015 Sep 7;36(34):2297–309.

2. Chester AH, El-Hamamsy I, Butcher JT, Latif N, Bertazzo S, Yacoub MH. The living aortic valve: From molecules to function. Glob Cardiol Sci Pract. 2014 Jan 1;2014(1):11.

3. Yacoub MH, Kilner PJ, Birks EJ, Misfeld M. The aortic outflow and root: a tale of dynamism and crosstalk. Ann Thorac Surg. 1999 Sep;68(3 Suppl):S37–43.

4. Yacoub MH. In Search of Living Valve Substitutes. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2015 Aug 25;66(8):889–91.

5. Introduction — Blender Reference Manual [Internet]. [cited 2015 Nov 23]. Available from: http://www.blender.org/manual/getting_started/about_blender/introduction.html

Background and Aim

Organic cation transporters have critical role for absorption, distribution, metabolism, and elimination of many endogenous small organic cations as well as a wide array of drugs. These transporters act as uptake transporters (OCT1, OCT2, OCT3 and PMAT) or efflux transporters (MATE1 and MATE2) for cationic drugs including Metformin. PMAT, OCT1 and OCT3 are expressed in Intestine and may be involved in Intestinal transport of metformin. OCT1, OCT3 and MATE1 expression in liver may facilitate hepatic uptake of metformin. In Kidney OCT1, OCT2 and PMAT may act as influx transporter while MATE1 and MATE2 may act as efflux transporters. Metformin is the first line of drug for diabetes and may have beneficial effects in cancer treatment. Expression profile of metformin transporters may have crucial role in pharmacokinetics of the drug. At present there is very limited data for the expression of these transporters in different cell lines and db/db mice. No in-vitro data is present for comparative expression of these transporters in primary endothelial cells vs. cancerous cells and effect of high glucose/metformin treatment on the expression of drug transporters is still unknown. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the expression levels of OCT1, OCT2, OCT3, MATE1, MATE2 and PMAT in normal/cancerous cell lines as well as mice organs (intestine, liver and kidney) under normo/hyper-glycemic condition and low/high dosage of metformin treatment.

Material and methods

Different cancerous/non-cancerous cell lines (HUVECs, MCF7, PA1, Huh7, HEK293T and MMECs) were cultured in normal/high glucose mediums and treated with low/high dosage of metformin for 7 days. Cells in early passages (P3 to P6) were used and experiments were replicated five times. Mice samples (liver, kidney and small intestine) were collected from wild type (C57BL/6J) and db/db mice after treatment with metformin for 6–8 weeks. Total RNA and proteins were isolated from cell line/mice organ samples and gene/protein expressions were estimated by using real-time PCR and western blotting. Gene expressions were leveled by the endogenous controls (beta-actin and GAPDH) and comparative CT values were estimated. Relative gene expressions were calculated through 2-(ΔΔCT) method. Western blot analysis was done after normalizing densitometry data of transporter proteins with endogenous control protein (β-actin or GAPDH).

Results

We detected expression of all selected metformin transporters in endothelial cells and in majority of cancer cell lines. Comparative gene expressions of metformin transporters in all of the selected cell lines were estimated. The levels of OCT1/OCT2 expressions between non-cancerous/cancerous cell lines were significantly modulated (P

1) The method

The injuries suffered by newborns during birth are a major health issue. To improve the health outcomes of sick newborns using EEG measurements, a number of recent studies focused on the use of high-resolution Time-Frequency Distributions to extract critical information from the collected signals [1]. Several algorithms have been proposed. A major problem in the implementation of such algorithms for fully automated EEG signal classification systems is caused by artifacts. In particular, previous studies have shown that a respiratory artifact looks like a seizure signal and can be misinterpreted by the automatic abnormality detection system thus resulting in false alarms. Hence, the successful removal of the artifacts is important, as shown in several previous studies [2]; and, there are two basic approaches for this: (1) use machine learning technique to detect and reject EEG segments corrupted by artifact; but this would result in the loss of EEG data [2]. (2) Correct EEG segments corrupted by artifacts; some artifacts can be corrected by a simple filter in a frequency domain, e.g. notch filter can be used to remove 50 Hz noise. This approach does not require any reference signals. For more complicated cases, when the spectrum of artifacts overlaps with the spectrum of EEG signals, blind source separation (BSS) algorithms can be used. Typically a multi-component EEG signal is transformed into a linear combination of independent components (that can be interpreted as channels (ICs)) by blind source separation techniques such as the independent component analysis (ICA) or canonical correlation analysis. The independent channels that are corrupted by artifacts are identified either manually or automatically using correlation information from a reference signal. The artifact free signal is then constructed by combining only artifact-free ICs.

The abovementioned artifact correction approach has two problems:

1) Sometimes, multicomponent or multi-channel BSS methods fail to split artifacts from sources, i.e. some independent components may have some useful EEG information.

2) In some cases only single component or channel recordings are produced.

The empirical mode decomposition (EMD), a time-frequency (TF) filtering algorithm has been used to remove artifacts from single channel multicomponent recordings as well as remove artifacts from ICs obtained as results of ICA algorithm [3]. The EMD splits a single channel multicomponentchannel multicomponent EEG recording or the given IC into a number of intrinsic mode functions (IMFs), thus converting a single channel multicomponent recording into several monocomponent signals that can be interpreted as a multi-channel EEG signal. One way to remove artifacts is to simply discard IMF sources in the signal reconstruction [4]. Another approach is to treat IMFs as separate components (or channels) and then apply multi-component (or multi-channel) BSS algorithms to remove artifacts [5].

From a signal processing perspective, the EMD cannot resolve close signal components in the time-frequency (t,f) domain. So, if some artifacts are closely placed to EEG signals in the (t,f) domain, the EMD will fail to separate them.

In this study, the aim is to design a new EEG artifact removal algorithm that uses TF filtering and high resolution time –frequency distributions (TFDs) to extract close signal components.

The key steps of the proposed method are given below:

1. Analyze EEG signal using a high resolution TFD;

2. Localize the signal components in the (t,f) domain by estimating their IF using component linking method [6].

3. Once the signal components are located in the (t,f) domain, they can be extracted by TF filtering. In this study, the fractional Fourier transform is used as a TF filter to separate signal components [6].

4. Identify signal components corrupted by artifacts using prior information or correlation from reference signals.

5. Once the artifactual components are identified, they can be removed during the inverse blind source separation (BSS) transformation by simply subtracting them from the EEG signal.

2) Results and discussions

The proposed TF filtering algorithm can be used to remove respiratory artifacts that cause a major is a major problem in the automated implementation of EEG signal classification algorithms as its morphology is similar to that of seizure.

Let us consider a simulated EEG seizure signal corrupted by the respiratory artifact. The EEG signal is then given by

   s(t)=Seiz(t)+artif(t)  (1)

Previous studies have shown that aan EEG seizure signal can be modeled by a non-linear FM signal which generalizes simpler piece wise linear FM models used in earlier studies i.e.:

   Seiz(t)=cos(2π[1e^(–6) t³+0.075t])  (2)

The respiratory artifact which appears as a quasi-regular rhythmic activity is modeled as a pure sinusoid.

   artif(t)=cos(2π0.052t)  (3)

This signal is sampled at 32 Hz. The simulated signal, s(t), is analyzed using the adaptive directional TFD (ADTFD) as shown in Figure 1 [6]. The proposed TF filtering algorithm is then applied to extract signal components. The extracted components are shown in Figure 2. The EMD is also applied to separate signal components. The EMD algorithm decomposed the given signal into 6 IMFs. The IMFs closest to the desired seizure and artifact signals are plotted.

Experimental results show the EMD fails to correctly extract sources from time duration 0 to 4 s as two sources are close to each other in the (t,f) domain during this time interval. When signal components become well separated in the (t,f) domain, i.e. from 4-s to 8-s, the EMD algorithm accurately extracts the signal components. The proposed TF filtering method yields an improved superior performance as it correctly extracts the sources even when they are close to each other in the (t,f) domain. The superior performance achieved by the proposed method is due to the selection of a high-resolution TFD that results in an accurate IF estimation for close signal components.

3) Conclusion and Future Works

A time-frequency filter is designed for the removal of EEG artifacts. The approach is applied to the removal of simulated respiratory artifacts from simulated signals. The algorithm assumes that the artifacts and EEG background have TF signature that are non-overlapping in the (t,f) domain. The algorithm can be extended for more realistic situations by using methods that can estimate the IF of intersecting signal components using directional information for example. Moreover, the proposed TF filtering algorithm (just like the EMD) decomposes a signal into a number of components thus making a single channel multicompoonent signal into several monocomponents that can be interpreted as a multi-channel signal.

Bibliography

[1] B. Boualem, G. Azemi and J. M. O'Toole., “Time-frequency processing of nonstationary signals: Advanced TFD design to aid diagnosis with highlights from medical applications.,” Signal Processing Magazine, IEEE, vol. 30, no. 6, pp. 108–119, 2013.

[2] B. Boashash, G. Azemi and N. A. Khan, “Principles of time–frequency feature extraction for change detection in non-stationary signals: Applications to newborn EEG abnormality detection,” Pattern Recognition, p. 616–627, 2015.

[3] M. De Vos, W. Deburchgraeve, P. Cherian, M. Vladimir, R. Swarte, P. Govaert, G. H. Visser and S. Van Huffel, “Automated artifact removal as preprocessing refines neonatal seizure detection,” Clinical Neurophysiology, vol. 122, no. 22, pp. 2345–2354, 2011.

[4] H. Zeng, S. Aiguo, Y. Ruqiang and H. Qin, “EOG artifact correction from EEG recording using stationary subspace analysis and empirical mode decomposition,” Sensors, vol. 13, no. 11, pp. 14839–14859, 2013.

[5] B. Mijovic, M. De Vos, I. Gligorijevic, J. Taelman and S. Van Huffel, “Source separation from single-channel recordings by combining empirical-mode decomposition and independent component analysis,” IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, vol. 57, no. 9, pp. 2188–2196, 2010.

[6] B. Boashash, A. N. Khan and T. Ben-Jabeur, “Time–frequency features for pattern recognition using high-resolution TFDs: A tutorial review,” Digital Signal Processing, vol. 40, pp. 1–30, 2015.

Background

Qatar ranks among the top countries with highest prevalence of diabetes and obesity. Obesity is generally measured by a Body mass index (BMI). BMI has been found to be independent risk factor for development of diabetes. Also, diabetes when associated with obesity leads not only to its poor control but also causes increased long-term complications from diabetes.

Aim

To delineate the pattern of obesity among residents of Qatar and to classify them as per World Health Organization criteria. Secondary objectives included assessing the pattern of diabetes with increasing body mass index.

Method

All consecutive obese adult patients attending pre-surgical screening endoscopy clinic over an 18 months period were included. Patients under 14 years of age and those who had previous surgical treatment were excluded. Body mass index (BMI) was calculated as per standard criteria [weight (Kg)/Height (meters) 2] and was then classified as per World Health Organization criteria. Overweight, Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3 obesity was defined as BMI more than >25, >30, >35 and >40 respectively. Diabetes was defined as fasting plasma glucose ≥ 7 mmol/l. All patients underwent gastroduodenoscopy to assess the presence of helicobacter infection and evidence of mucosal inflammation prior to surgical treatment of obesity.

Results

A total of 529 patients with a mean age of 36.8 years were included 31.4% of obese patients were in 15–30 year age group. The mean weight, height and BMI were 123.6 Kg, 1.65 meters and 45.2 respectively. Overweight, Type I, II and III obesity was seen in 3 (0.6%), 30 (5.6%), 95(17.8%) and 401 (76%) patients respectively. Overall 34.5% had associated comorbid diseases. Type 2 Diabetes were seen in 11.1% of the patients. Diabetes was seen in 0%, 26.7%, 8.4% and 6.7% in overweight, Type I, Type II, Type III obesity respectively. Diabetes was significantly lower among very severely obese patients (Type III) as compared to those with overweight, moderately and severely obese patients (Overweight, Type I and II) (27/401, 6.7% versus 16/84,19% p = . 03).No correlation was found related to age, sex or helicobacter infection.

Conclusions

Among the residents of Qatar, 11% of obese patients were found to have diabetes. The highest prevalence of diabetes was seen in people with BMI of 25–30 (type 1 obese people). Diabetes prevalence did not increase with increasing obesity.

Most cancers are characterized by a high rate of glycolysis and overexpression of mitochondrial-bound isoforms of hexokinase, an enzyme that phosphorylates glucose in an ATP-dependent manner and this commences the first committed step in glucose metabolism. Type II hexokinase (HK II) plays a paramount role in metabolic reprogramming in tumors and its association with the voltage dependent anion channel (VDAC), a major channel for transport of metabolites and ions across the mitochondrial membrane, inhibits apoptosis in cancer cells and is therefore an important therapeutic target. A peptide corresponding to the mitochondrial membrane-binding N-terminal domain of HK II (pHK II) can potentially compete with the endogenous protein for binding to mitochondria and trigger apoptosis. In vitro studies in HeLa cells showed that coupling of pHK II to a short penetration accelerating sequence (Pas: FFLIPKG) enhances the peptide's intracellular delivery and cytosolic release, followed by localization to the mitochondria. Cell viability assays revealed that pHK II-pas was considerably more effective in inhibiting cell growth compared to pHK II alone. Moreover, pHK II-pas displayed an enhanced ability to deplete cellular ATP levels and induce apoptosis. Mitochondrial function analysis showed that exposure to pHK II-pas peptide resulted in a significant decrease in glycolytic capacity and glycolytic reserve, as well as basal oxygen consumption rate (OCR), spare respiratory capacity, and ATP turnover. Importantly, these effects were correlated with HK II release from mitochondria. Thus, the mode of action of pHK II-pas involves release of the HK II protein from the mitochondrial membrane resulting in loss of mitochondrial membrane potential, decreased cellular ATP levels and finally apoptosis. Our results underline the potential of the pHK II-pas cell-penetrating peptide (CPP) as an innovative and effective anti-tumor therapeutic strategy.

Hydrogels have become a popular source of research for cartilage tissue engineering but have been limited by their brittle nature at high water contents. Double network hydrogels (DNHG) are innovative materials that possess the ability to hold high water content whilst maintaining high mechanical strength, but require more accurate control over these properties. This study aims to achieve this goal by introducing a new concept by incorporating functionalized sol-gel nanoparticles (xSNP) as macro cross linkers rather than the conventional chemical cross linkers. DNHG are formed by a 1st network (1NW) polyelectrolyte and 2nd network (2NW) neutral polymer. This study investigates two separate DNHGs; polyacrylic acid (PAAc) and poly 2-acrylamido-2-methylpropane sulfonic acid (PAMPS) were the 1NW, chosen for their biocompatibility and hydrophilic nature. They were cross linked with amino-SNP (ASNP) and vinyl-SNP respectively. Polyacrylamide was chosen as the 2NW for both gels for its intrinsic strong mechanical properties. The aim of this study is to understand the effects of size and concentration of xSNP as a novel cross linking agent in DNHG for precisely controlling the properties of the gels. SNPs of 20, 50 and 100 nm were synthesized by the Stöber process, and functionalized in situ with 3-aminopropyl triethoxysilane and vinyl TEOS. The xSNP concentrations in the DNHGs were 0-50 wt. ? of the 1NW. SNPs were studied under TEM, SEM, FTIR, DLS, zeta potential and confocal microscopy to confirm size and functionalization. 1NW polymers were polymerized and cross linked in situ with xSNP under UV light; ASNP used carbodiimide chemistry to cross link with PAAc and VSNP was cross linked using a UV initiator. 1NW were soaked in 2NW solution and UV polymerized to form the DNHG. FTIR, swelling and water uptake studies were performed on heat/vacuum dried DNHGs. Compressive and dynamic mechanical properties were studied for fracture cyclic loading. DNHG cross sections were used for SEM and TEM imaging. Increasing size and concentration of xSNP caused a reduction in both water up take and swelling properties, providing evidence for higher cross linking in the DNHG. Water uptake ranged from 1230 ? for the control (0 wt. ? xSNP) to 750? for 50 wt. ? with 100 nm VSNP. Water content reduced from 93? for the control to 76? for 50 wt. ? with 100 nm VSNP, in the range of natural cartilage water content. Compressive strengths of the DNHGs increased with increased ASNP conc. and size up to a fracture stress of 15 MPa

with 75? water content, providing evidence that the SNPs are acting as cross linkers in the 1NW rather than fillers. Cross sections of the DNHGs under SEM and TEM show homogenous dispersion of xSNP within the structure, indicating successful incorporation. FTIR data of the DNHG after 3 drying and saturation cycles show Si-O-Si bands supporting the evidence of xSNP incorporation into the DNHG. These results show potential for further research and application of sol-gel nanoparticles in hydrogel applications. The best hydrogels from this reserach were chosen to be optimised. As the photopolymerisations were done under open atmosphere it is understood that atmopsheric O2 will interact with the monomer solution and inhibit the polymerisation from completing. This leads to shorter chain polymers and a lower degree of monomer to polymer conversion; hence leading to less polymer entanglement and lower mechanical integrity. Oxygen can be depleted from the monomer system by introducing glucose oxidase (GOX). Oxygen is eaten up by this enzyme in the presence of glucose to produce hydrogen peroxide. Full oxygen depletion is reached at 200 nM GOX, and 100 nm glucose. The enzyme works best at pH 5-6 therefore it was not possible to optimise the first network polymer AMPS.

Differentiating male lineages using non-recombining Y-chromosomal genetic markers is highly informative for tracing human migration and for forensic studies. Recently, it has been shown that the level of male lineage resolution can be enhanced by analysing Rapidly Mutating (RM) Y-STRs. The aim of this study was to develop an allelic frequency database for Qatari population to evaluate the resolution power of 13 RM Y-STRs. The overall haplotype diversity (HD) was 100% It was found that the markers which contributed the most toward high HD were DYF399S1 and DYF403S1a/b. Together with their value for paternal male relative differentiation, these RM Y-STRs will be a valuable asset for forensic casework. AMOVA test was performed between Qatari population in comparison to Gulf countries, Middle East, and several worldwide population data sets. FST values were also calculated. Geography was found to account considerably for the pattern of population sub structuring. The RM Y-STR markers showed remarkable haplotype resolution power in the Qatari population, high gene diversity and sufficient robustness for a diverse range of applications.

Introduction: Diarrhea is the passage of three or more watery stool in a period of 24 hours (WHO, 2013). Types of diarrhea include acute watery diarrhea, acute bloody diarrhea known as dysentery and persistent diarrhea (WHO, 2013). It is caused by an infection of different pathogens including bacteria, viruses and parasites through fecal–oral transmission (WHO, 2013). Moreover, it can also be caused by food intolerance to certain food substances and as a side effect of certain medications such as laxatives (Burton & Ludwig, 2015). Diarrhea occurrence is most frequently associated with conditions of poor environmental sanitation and hygiene, poverty, inadequate water supply and limited education (Nelson & Masters, 2014). Worldwide, acute diarrhea disease is considered as the second cause of mortality and morbidity in children according to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2013). In 2012, WHO reported 1.9 million diarrheal cases in children aged under the age of five accounting for 18% of all deaths. The clinical manifestations of diarrhea in pediatric patients include abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and fever (WGO, 2012 & Maas et al., 2014). Diarrhea in children can lead to many consequences such as malnutrition, diminished growth and impaired cognitive development (WGO, 2012). Severe diarrhea can also result in life-threatening dehydration (Galvao et al., 2013). Thus it is important to replace the fluid and electrolytes by oral rehydration solution. Diarrhea is usually self-limiting. However, in cases of diarrhea persisting for longer than 1 week, broad-spectrum antimicrobial agents are administered to treat bacterial and parasitic infection (Koletzko & Osterrieder, 2009). Intestinal protozoa that are most commonly associated with diarrhea in children include Blastocyst, Dientamoeba fragilis, Giardia lamblia, Cryptosporidium species and Entamoeba species (Maas et al., 2014). Having updated information about the prevalence of these protozoan parasitic infections will aid in faster diagnosis and thus treatment. - Research question and objectives: Research Question: What are the most common protozoa and the risk factors for diarrhea in children under the age of 15 admitted to Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC). Objectives: To identify the prevalence of protozoa pathogen and the risk factors such as gender, age, season and geographical region associated with diarrhea in children. Materials and methods: Study subjects and sample collection: A total of 391 Diarrheal stool samples were collected from March-July 2015 in a sterile container from pediatrics patients (0- 15 years) admitted to HMC with diarrhea. The samples were transported on ice by Dr. Abu Madi's research group and frozen immediately at -70 °C. All required ethical approvals for the project were obtained from Medical Research Centre. - Stool examination: To recover the DNA of the enteric pathogens samples were thawed at +4 °C and 200 mg of the stool sample where weighed in a sterile 14 ml Falcon tube (BD Falcon). DNA was extracted using QIagen miniamp stool kit (Qiagen, Germany) following manufacturer's instructions with minor modifications. The extracted DNA samples were analyzed by uniplex real-time PCR using Applied Biosystems Cycler 7500. The protocol of the available literature has been used as a starting point. However, it was finalized by optimizing the concentrations of primer and probes and evaluating several cycles. The two different fluorescence reporters were used in which SYBR Green was used for Blastocyst, and TaqMan probe was used for D. fragilis, G. lamblia, Cryptosporidium and Entamoeba. For both reporters, Amplification reactions were performed in a 20 μL volume for each well with 17.5 master mix and and 2.5 DNA template. However, the mastermix of SYBR Green consist of 10 μL SYBR Green Mastermix reagent (Qiagen, Germany), 2.2 μL of primer mix, and 5 μL of PCR grade water H2O (Sigma, Germany). Whereas, Taqman reaction consists of 10 μL HotStar Taq Mastermix reagent (Qiagen, Germany), 1.3 μL of primer mix, 0.07 μL of probe and 6.2 of PCR grade water H2O (Sigma, Germany). The initial incubation step is carried out at 95 °C for 15 min to activate the HotStar Taq DNA polymerase, followed by a 40-cycle amplification program consisting of 15 s at 94 °C, 30s at 57 °C, 30s at 72 °C, and a final extension step at 72 °C for 30s. For each plate, internal positive controls were run consisted of positive samples brought from Hamad medical cooperation (HMC). Definition of variables: All Birth dates and collection dates were recorded and the ages of the subjects were categorized into five classes by years, 1.1-1.9, 2.0-4.9, 5.0-9.9 and 10.0-14.9. The collection dates were classified according to the season into summer (May-October) and winter (November-April). The subjects in this study came from 34 different countries. For the purpose of analysis, the subjects were grouped into four geographical groups. These were as follows: Qatar (N =  97), from three countries in the Arabian Peninsula (N = 16, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain); from five countries in the Eastern Mediterranean (N = 41, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran); from 7 countries in Asia (N = 131, India, Pakistan, Sri lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Mauritania, Philippines); from 7 countries in Africa (N =  86, Nigeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan, Djibouti, Eritrea, Moroccan); from 10 countries in Europe (N = 20, Canada, Poland, UK, Greek, US, Holland, Spain, Italy, Venezuela, France) Statistical analysis: Prevalence data are shown with 95% confidence limits calculated using (https://www.mccallum-layton.co.uk). For determining the significance of different classes in each category, chi-square test was conducted using crosstabs descriptive statistics in IBM SPSS software. A p-value less than 0.05 is considered statistically significant. Results: Screening for gastrointestinal pathogens using multiplex RT-PCR A total of 391 pediatrics patients participated in this study during the period of March-July 2015. Out of the 391 diarrheal patients (173 females and 218 males), 41 (10.7%) were positive for at least one protozoa (Table 1 and 2). Blastocyst was detected most frequently, in 4.1% (16/391), followed by D. fragilis in 3.3% (13/391), Cryptosporidium in 2.8% (11/391), G. lamblia in 2.0 (8/391) and Entamoeba histolytica in 0.3% (1/391) (Table 1). Most of diarrhea samples in the study came from the age group of 0-1 year (119/391) followed by 2-4.9 years (108/391), 1.1-1.9 years (105/391), 5-9.9 years (45/391) and 10-14.9 years (14/391) (Table 2). However, protozoa infections were highest at the age group of 5-9.9 years with a prevalence of 21.1% (Table 2 and Fig. 1). Blastocyst and Cryptosporidium showed the same pattern of infections among the age groups with the highest prevalence at the age group 5-9.9 years (Table 2). Whereas, G. lamblia and D. fragilis showed the highest prevalence among the age group of 10-14.9 (Table 2). Females had a higher prevalence than males in infections with Blastocyst (6.4%), Cryptosporidium (4.0%) and G. lamblia (2.9%) (Table 2 and Fig. 2). Whereas, males had a higher prevalence than females in infections with D. fragilis (4.1) and Entamoeba histolytica (0.5%). A total of 34 countries categorized into 6 geoprahical regions were sampled in this study, but most of them were from Asia, Qatar & Africa regions (Table 2). However, the prevelance of protozoa infections was the highest among Europe (15%), followed by Qatar (14.1%), Arabian Peninsula (12.5%), Asia (9.9%), Africa (8.1%) and Eastern mediterean (7.3%). Most of the diarrheal samples were collected during the summer season from May to July (Table 2 and Fig. 3). However, protozoa infections had an overall higher prevalence during the winter season that is March and April (12.5%) (Table 2 and Fig. 4).- Association of protozoa infections with age, gender, geographical distribution and seasonAlthough, most of the variables (i.e. gender, age, season) have shown a high value in one of the categories, the difference was not statistically significant (p>0.05) (Table 2). The only significant variables were the age in combined, Blastocyst and Cryptosporidium infections and the gender in Blastocyst (p < 0.05) (Table 2). Blastocyst and Cryptosporidium infections affects the combined protozoa infections and have both the highest prevalence among the age group of 5-9.9 years with the prevalence of 15.6 and 11.1 respectively (Table 2). Blastocyst infections in Females have higher prevalence than male with a prevalence of 6.4% (Table 1). Conclusion: This study has demonstrated that protozoa parasitic infections are still a public health problem in pediatrics patients with Blastocyst, Dientamoeba fragilis and Cryptosporidium being the most common respectively. Therefore, protozoa parasitic infections should be tested for in children complaining from diarrhea. The study also highlights the use of molecular techniques in diagnosis of protozoa parasitic infections.

Background: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is characterized by progressive decline in renal function; if left untreated, it ultimately results in end-stage renal disease (ESRD), a condition that demands either dialysis or kidney transplant for survival. CKD and ESRD are associated with a multitude of complications ranging from increased hospitalization to accelerated cardiovascular events and mortality. Currently, type-2 diabetes and hypertension are the two major risk factors for CKD. With the increasing incidence and prevalence of these conditions globally, the patient population with CKD is expanding worldwide. According to local sources, CKD affects about 13% of Qatar's population, and the prevalence of ESRD, the advanced phase of CKD, in Qatar was found to be 212 per million patients. The increased risk of complications associated with CKD in conjunction with its high prevalence in Qatar and in the rest of the world, necessitates its prevention and management as a high national and international priority. Elevated urinary albumin excretion (commonly referred to as proteinuria) is not only a hallmark of renal disease, but also strongly associated with the development and progression of CKD. Albuminuria is thought to induce endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, consequently triggering AKT pathway and resulting in inhibition of AMP-activated kinase (AMPK). AMPK, a fuel sensor present in cells, is primarily involved in the regulation of fatty acid oxidation and ATP synthesis. Inactivation of AMPK was found to trigger mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) pathway, and subsequently inhibit autophagy (a defense mechanism) and induce epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT). These signaling changes eventually accelerate renal cell apoptosis, and manifest into CKD. Thus, the objectives of this study are: 1) to standardize and characterize an in vitro model of albumin-induced renal cell injury using normal rat kidney proximal tubular (NRK-5E) cells, and 2) to explore the effect of AMPK activation on ER stress, AKT, mTOR, EMT, autophagy and apoptosis that are thought to mediate renal cell injury during proteinuria using the developed in vitro model of albumin-induced renal cell injury. Methods: NRK-52E cells were grown to 60% confluency and then serum-starved for 24 hours to arrest cell proliferation. Cells were then exposed to albumin, at concentrations ranging from 1 to 30 mg/ml, for 24 to 72 hours. At specific endpoints, cells were assessed for induction of ER stress and alterations in the status of AKT, AMPK, mTOR and autophagy and changes in cellular senescence via x-galactosidase (an enzyme that is expressed in senescent cells) staining. Following standardization of albumin-induced renal cell injury model, studies were performed in the presence and absence of AMPK activator metformin (1 mM) for 24 to 72 hours. Cells were then assessed for alterations in the status of AMPK, AKT and mTOR, and the markers of ER stress, EMT, autophagy and apoptosis. Results: Exposure to albumin for 72 hours caused a dose-dependent increase in cellular senescence in NRK-52E cells. In contrast, cells exposed to albumin for 24 and 48 hours did not reveal any marked changes in cellular senescence. A 4-fold induction in ER stress marker CHOP and the EMT marker a-SMA was noted. Moreover, higher concentrations of albumin, particularly 30 mg/ml, caused severe induction of ER stress and EMT, marked by 20-fold increase in CHOP and 6-fold increase in a-SMA respectively. Similarly, the phosphorylation of AKT and P70S6K (a downstream target of mTOR) was increased by more than 1.5-fold in cells subjected to albumin treatment. In addition, albumin treatment caused a dose-dependent reduction in AMPK phosphorylation and about 66% decrease in the expression of autophagy marker LC3-II. The above changes were observed in conjunction with prominent dose-dependent induction of apoptotic markers - caspase-3 and caspase-12 ranging between 1.5 to 3.5-fold and 3 to 5-fold respectively in cells exposed to albumin. In contrast, metformin co-treatment restored the levels of phosphorylated AMPK, and suppressed activation of AKT and P70S6K in NRK-52E cells exposed to albumin. Notably, metformin also prevented albumin-induced EMT; this was marked by a 50% decrease in a-SMA and a 60% increase in E-cadherin expression. In addition, 2.5-fold increase in LC3-II expression was noted. Intriguingly, the pro-apoptotic protein CHOP was induced following treatment with metformin; nonetheless, the expression of apoptotic markers caspase-12 and caspase-3 was reduced by 80% and 70% respectively, indicating that metformin protected the cells against albumin-induced apoptosis. Conclusion: Albumin treatment induces ER stress, and activates AKT, EMT and apoptosis, with concomitant decreases in autophagy and inactivation of AMPK in renal tubular cells. Activation of AMPK via metformin treatment suppresses AKT and mTOR activation, and prevents EMT and apoptosis, but increases autophagy and ER stress in renal tubular cells. Further studies are required to understand the mechanisms by which metformin differentially modulates ER stress and apoptosis in renal cells under proteinuria. Together, our findings suggest that AMPK activation via metformin could serve as a potential therapeutic strategy to prevent and/or treat the development of CKD in patients with established proteinuria.

Introduction: Polypharmacy (or the use of multiple medications at the same time by the same patient) could expose the patient to health risks and add an extra burden on the life of these patients in addition to the burden of illness. The Living with Medicines Questionnaire (LMQ) was developed to assess the burden of polypharmacy from the patient's perspective. This tool includes items relating to the use of medication and expressed as statements for which the respondents indicates his/her agreement using five-points Likert-type. There is a need to make available such a measure to contribute information generated from the Arabic-speaking world and to share research findings through an Arabic version of the LMQ, which is culturally equivalent to the original English tool. Objectives: We aimed at translating and culturally adapting the Living with Medicines Questionnaire into the Arabic context through a structured process utilizing best practices in translation and cultural adaptation. Methods: As means for adhering to best practice, permission to use the LMQ was sought from the developers, and a protocol for its translation and cultural adaptation was developed using guidelines developed by the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) for the translation and cultural adaptation process for patient-reported outcomes measures. Two forward translations were produced, compared, and reconciled into the first reconciled version. This version was then back translated into English and compared with the original tool leading to the second reconciled version. The emerging Arabic version of the LMQ was cognitively tested among purposively selected individuals to test the linguistic and cultural equivalence and produce the final Arabic translation. The results were documented and shared with the developers of the LMQ. Results: A comprehensive protocol, with the potential to inform future similar studies elsewhere, was developed and used as a guide to produce an Arabic version of the LMQ that is representative of the original tool, and suitable for the Arabic culture. No major issues were found in the demographics section of the questionnaire or the instructions to answer the questions. Issues identified and related to cultural and linguistic equivalence of some terms were resolved by re-wording some items in the tool. A total of seven people were purposively selected to be interviewed in order to assess the LMQ Arabic version in areas related to comprehension, time burden, and acceptability. Individuals were selected with consideration to balanced gender distribution, age, ethnicity/nationality, education, and all with Arabic language as their mother tongue. The cognitive debriefing exercise generated comments regarding the original tool's construct and its Arabic equivalent, which were communicated to the developers of the LMQ for their consideration while conducting further comparative studies. Conclusion: Through following methods based on best practice, we have joined the international efforts into the development of the first questionnaire aiming to measure medication burden in the Arabic-speaking region. We now make available a culturally equivalent Arabic translation of the Living with Médicines Questionnaire for use in Arabic speaking countries in research and/or clinical practice. However, further validation tests are needed to be conducted among Arabic-speaking population.

Antibiotic Susceptibility and Plasmid Profile of Vibrio vulnificus isolated from mussels in Qatar Vibrio vulnificus infections are the worldwide public health problems associated with illnesses resulting from consumption of raw or partially cooked seafood and exposure with the contaminated sea water. Infections of V. vulnificus are reported in many different countries in America, Europe and Asia notably in USA, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. The aim of this study is to isolate and identify V. vulnificus from Mussels in Qatar and detect antibiotic susceptibility and plasmid profiles. A total of 87 Mussels, 50 from Doha and 37 from Akhor were examined for the presence of V. vulnificus using Thiosulfate-citrate-bile salts-sucrose agar (TCBS) and Chromagar Vibrio (CV), 18% of Doha samples were positive and 13.5% of Alkhor samples were positive, 9 of 14 isolates from Doha and 5 of 14 isolates from Alkhor. The antibiotic susceptibility tests were performed for 12 antibiotics by the disc diffusion method. For molecular identification of the isolates, the 16S ribosomal RNA gene fragment was amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and the nucleotide data were subjected to Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) for analysis, Sequence comparison with public databases resulted in 96-100% similarity with V. vulnificus in 15 (60%), 99-100% similarity with V. paheamolyticus in 5 (20%); and 5 (20%), were identified as the non-vibrio species, The analysis of evolutionary relationships among isolates in this study was represented in seven cluster groups. The cluster A referred to non-vibrio isolates whereas the clusters B, C, E, F, and G included V. vulnificus.

V. paraheamolyticus was only represented in the cluster D. 16S rDNA-based identification confirmed the conventional identification for isolates. The morphological and biochemical test detected V. vulnificus in 32% of the Mussels samples all of which showed resistance for two to eight antibiotics. Plasmids were found in 88% of the isolates with 10 different profiles having two to four plasmids. Based on 16S rRNA gene sequence homology 15 isolates were identified as V. vulnificus, five as other Vibrios and five as nonvibrios. We have observed a marked difference between morphological methods and molecular methods in identification of V. vulnificus indicating the in adequacy of the morphological technique in discriminating the Vibrio species. The occurrence of V. vulnificus in the Mussels samples is quite high so consumption of uncooked and semicooked Mussels should be avoided in order to prevent food-borne infection by this pathogenic bacterium. There are observed a marked difference between morphological methods and molecular methods in identification of V. vulnificus indicating the in adequacy of the morphological technique in discriminating the Vibrio species. The occurrence of V. vulnificus in the cockle samples is quite high so consumption of uncooked and semicooked cockles should be avoided in order to prevent food-borne infection by this pathogenic bacterium. Antibiotic susceptibility. Bacterial isolates showing resistance to more than six antibiotics contained more than three plasmids. Plasmids are known to carry antibiotic resistance genes. Otherwise, V. vulnificus isolates in which no plasmids could detected also has resistance to some of antibiotics, that mean antibiotic resistance genes may also be carried on the chromosome of bacteria.

Introduction: Angiosarcomas are rare and malignant neoplasms that involve abnormal proliferation and migration of cancerous endothelial cells. Angiosarcomas can arise in any region of the body, but tend to be found in the skin, soft tissue, and liver. They are associated with high mortality rate due to their aggressiveness and high rate of metastasis. Therapeutic strategies for treating angiosarcomas involve use of cytotoxic drugs and radiotherapy. However, patient-resistance to these approaches is commonly reported. Hence, there is a need to further understand molecular mechanisms underlying angiosarcomas and explore novel therapeutic targets. Furthermore, because abnormal angiogenesis underlies nearly all types of cancer, a better understanding of cellular pathways regulating cancer endothelial cell function may also lead to development of novel anti-angiogenic therapies. The PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling pathway plays an important role in regulating cell proliferation and is also regarded as one of the most commonly dis-regulated pathway in cancer. Inhibitors have been developed targeting these signaling proteins and their therapeutic potential has been evaluated in different studies. However, there is little known about the relevance of this signaling pathway to angiosarcomas. Therefore, in this study, we explored the anticancer therapeutic potential of targeting the PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling pathway using inhibitors of PI3K, AKT or mTOR in a murine VEGF-dependent angiosarcoma cell line. Methods: Cell culture: MS1-VEGF cells (mouse endothelial cells capable of inducing angiosarcomas) were used. Cells were maintained in Dulbecco's Modified Eagle Medium, which was supplemented by 5% fetal bovine serum, 1% penicillin/streptomycin, and 11 mM glucose. Concentration-response experiments: The inhibitors used were: PI3K - LY294002 (10 μM); Akt – AKTi 1/2 inhibitor (AKTi, 10 μM); and mTOR - Temsirolimus (4 μM). LY294002 is a selective inhibitor of PI3K, but is not yet in clinical use. AKTi 1/2 is a non-ATP competitive inhibitor of Akt isoforms 1 and 2. Temsirolimus is a specific inhibitor of mTOR, and has been clinically used for the treatment of advanced renal cell carcinoma. The treatments were conducted over a 48 h period, with DMSO serving as the solvent control. Experiments was repeated at least three times using cells cultured in 12 or 6-well sterile tissue culture plates (Falcon). Cells were incubated in a 5% CO2 incubator at 37 °C. At the end of the treatment period, cell counts were performed and trypan blue dye exclusion was used to assay cell viability. This was done by pipetting a small volume of cell suspension mixed with trypan blue onto a dual chamber counting slide (Bio-Rad TC20 Automated Cell Counter). Proliferation Assay: In order to further assess the effectiveness of the inhibitors, proliferation assays were performed. Cells plated in 96-well plates with the inhibitors for 48 h were treated with the CellTiter 96 Aqueous One Solution reagent (Promega) and incubated in the CO2 incubator at 37 °C for 3 h. A PerkinElmer 2104 plate reader was used (EnVision software) to measure absorbance (at 492 nm). Western blots: Western blots were used to detect the expression of several proteins linked to the PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway and also to study changes resulting from treatment with inhibitors. Primary antibodies recognizing mTOR, AKT, PI3K, eNOS, LC3B, Beclin-1, ERK, Survivin, and Bcl-2 were used. All proteins probed have known roles in cell proliferation/apoptosis/autophagy. Images were captured using GeneSnap software on a PerkinElmer Geliance 600 imaging system. Quantitiy One (Biorad) was used to analyze Western blot data. Flow cytometry: Cell cycle analysis was performed on the LSR Fortessa analyzer (BD Biosciences) by staining fixed and permeabilized cells with propidium iodide. Data was processed with FACS Diva 8.0 software (BD Biosciences). Data analysis: All the data was analyzed using the statistical software GraphPad Prism 5.0 (GraphPad Software, Inc. CA, USA). Data is presented as mean ±  SEM. Statistical analysis was performed with using ‘t’ test or one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Post-hoc comparisons between groups after ANOVA were performed by Tukey's multiple comparison tests. ‘p’ values less than 0.05 were considered to be statistically significant. Results: Incubation of MS1 VEGF cells with LY294002, Akt-i ½ or Temsirolimus caused a reduction in cell number, indicating reduced cell proliferation. The Akt-i ½ was the most effective among the three and also caused a strong reduction ( < 25% viability) in cell viability (unlike LY294002 and Temsirolimus). Proliferation assays performed in 96-well plates indicate a reduction in MS1 VEGF cell proliferation with all three inhibitors, and Akt-i ½ was again the most effective in these assays. Cell cycle analysis revealed a robust increase in ‘sub G0/G1 population’ after treatment with Akt-i ½ (Control - 8% vs Akt-i ½ - 43%), suggesting an increase in cell death. To investigate the mechanisms underlying the actions of the inhibitors, western blot experiments were performed. The data (n = 4) demonstrated down-regulation of the anti-apoptotic Bcl family protein Bcl-2 and the inhibitor of apoptosis protein survivin after treatment with Akt-i ½ (but not LY294002 or Temsirolimus). Treatment with Akt-i ½ also reduced the phosphorylation of Akt and ERK proteins. Furthermore, there was a strong increase in the expression of the autophagy marker LC3B-II after treatment with Akt-i ½. Immuno-staining experiments confirmed aggregation of LC3B-II after Akt-I ½ treatment, suggesting an induction of autophagy. Inhibition of autophagy by 3-methyladenosine (3-MA) reversed Akt-i ½-induced LC3B-II puncta formation and also significantly enhanced Akt-i ½-induced cell toxicity. This suggests that autophagy induction acts as a cell survival mechanism after Akt inhibition. To investigate if Bcl-2 and survivin could be downstream effectors of Akt-i ½, experiments were performed using specific inhibitors: YM155 for survivin and TW37 for Bcl-2. A combination of YM155 and TW37 induced robust changes in cell cycle, increased the ‘sub G0/G1 population’ (Control - 9% vs. TW37 + YM155 - 38%) and reduced the proportion of cells in G0/G1, S as well as G2/M phase. Discussion: The data revealed promising anti-proliferative actions for LY294002, Temsirolimus and Akt-i ½ in MS1 VEGF cells. The drug, Akt-i ½, drug was particularly effective and also substantially reduced cell viability. The data also suggest that Bcl-2 and survivin may be critical components of the anti-proliferative action of Akt-i ½ thus making it a highly effective agent. The data also revealed that the cells induced autophagy as a survival mechanism when Akt was inhibited. In conclusion, multiple signaling pathways and proteins regulate MS1 VEGF cell proliferation and survival, which are targeted by Akt-i ½. Future studies: Future investigations will focus primarily on direct evaluation of apoptosis by flow cytometry and if possible experiments in nude mice to evaluate in vivo drug efficacy.

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a progressive, debilitating and fatal condition [1]. Current PAH therapy relies on vasodilator drugs, which are seriously limited by their systemic side effects. We suggest that advances made in the field of nanomedicine could be used to improve the utility of drugs to treat PAH. Whilst not currently used clinically, metal organic frameworks (MOFs) such as the Material from Institute Lavoisier (MIL) class, are good candidates since (i) they can be tailored to accommodate different types of drugs including those with the molecular weights of PAH medications (MW; 300-500) [2], (ii) are biocompatible and biodegradable [3]; (iii) have a large internal surface area and low density with commensurate high drug loading capacity; (iv) are thermal and mechanically stable; and (v)have a long drug release period with the ability to incorporate different functional groups [2, 4-6]. However, the idea that nanomedicines can be used to treat PAH is very new and the use of MOFs in this regard is untested. Thus, we must first: (i) validate their chemical structure/stability, (ii) establish MOF cytotoxicity and effect on inflammatory responses in relevant cell types and (iii) investigate their behaviour in vivo model. In PAH, endothelial cells are critical cells to target. This is because the role of endothelial cells in releasing a delicate balance of vasoactive hormones is disrupted in PAH where cardioproective mediators such as nitric oxide and prostacyclin are reduced whilst the release of the constrictor peptide endothelin (ET)-1 is increased. Indeed, current PAH drugs work to boost nitric oxide and prostacyclin pathways and to block ET-1 receptor signalling. Aim: The aims of this work are to (i) synthesis and characterise MOFs designed to accommodate PAH drugs; (ii) to investigate the cytotoxic effect of MOFs in a comprehensive range of cell models relevant to PAH in vitro and the toxicity and distribution of MOFs in vivo. Methods: The nanoporous iron MOF (MIL-89), and a polyethylene glycol formulation (MIL-89 PEG) were prepared as previously described [2], then characterized using infrared spectroscopy (IR), powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Endothelial cells grown from human blood progenitors of control subjects and PAH patients were cultured as we have done previously [7] and the effect of MOFs on viability determined using the AlamarBlue® Assay. In addition the effect of MOFs on endothelial cell inflammatory function was determined by measuring the release of the cytokine CXCL8 and on markers of PAH disease by measuring ET-1 using specific ELISAs. To investigate the effects of MOFs in vivo rats were injected with the MOF MIL-89 (50 mg/kg) in glucose solution twice a week for various times up to two weeks, while the control group was injected with glucose solution only. Animals were killed and tissues including; blood, heart, lung, brain, thymus, liver and kidney as well as urine and faeces were collected at days 1,3,7,10 and 14. Results: MIL-89 and MIL-89 PEG retained functional groups, and were crystalline, spherical and stable in air up to 200 °C. Neither preparations caused toxicity in cells grown from control donors or patients with PAH at concentrations up to 10 μg/ml (Fig. 1). Interestingly, both preparations of MOFs displayed anti-inflammatory effects; inhibiting CXCL8 and ET-1 release from endothelial cells from healthy donors as well as from PAH patients (Fig. 1). These MIL-89 had no affect on body weight of the rats and did not cause any gross changes in their lungs (Fig. 2). Conclusion: Both MIL-89 and MIL-89 PEG represent non-toxic potential drug-carriers with predicted molecular capacity for the current PAH medications, which include treprostinil sodium, bosentan and sildenafil. Furthermore, they both display some evidence of anti-inflammatory properties in vitro that may be of therapeutic benefit in the treatment of PAH. MIL-89 had no overt toxic effects in vivo, although these will need to be explored in more detail in future studies.

References

1. Archer, S.L., E.K. Weir, and M.R. Wilkins, Basic science of pulmonary arterial hypertension for clinicians: new concepts and experimental therapies. Circulation, 2010. 121(18): p. 2045-2066.

2. Horcajada, P., et al., Porous metal-organic-framework nanoscale carriers as a potential platform for drug delivery and imaging. Nat Mater, 2010. 9(2): p. 172-178.

3. Huxford, R.C., J. Della Rocca, and W. Lin, Metal-organic frameworks as potential drug carriers. Curr Opin Chem Biol, 2010. 14(2): p. 262-268.

4. Kızılel, S.K.a.S., Biomedical Applications of Metal Organic Framework, 2010, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering: Koc- University, Rumelifeneri Yolu, 34450, Sarıyer, Istanbul, Turkey.

5. Ferey, G., et al., A chromium terephthalate-based solid with unusually large pore volumes and surface area. Science, 2005. 309(5743): p. 2040-2042.

6. Horcajada, P., et al., Metal-organic frameworks as efficient materials for drug delivery. Angew Chem Int Ed Engl, 2006. 45(36): p. 5974-5978.

7. Reed, D.M., et al., Morphology and vasoactive hormone profiles from endothelial cells derived from stem cells of different sources. Biochem Biophys Res Commun, 2014. 455(3-4): p. 172-177.

A bacteriophage is a virus that infects a bacteria, it uses the bacteria as a host to further replicate by controlling the replication and protein synthesis machinery of the cell. They are composed of a protein capsule and DNA or RNA genome. Bacteriophages are used in the treatment of bacterial infections, known as the phage therapy. This results from phages invading the bacteria, as they undergo a lytic cycle, where the replication and protein synthesis machinery is used to produce virions, that later cause the cell to lyse, thus killing the bacteria. This technique has higher efficiency compared to the use of antibiotics as bacteria can develop a resistance against antibiotics, while remaining susceptible to the infection of the phage. In addition, phages can evolve and adapt to new mutations that might arise in the bacteria. Lastly, phages might be engineered to contain a survival gene needed by the bacteria to ensure that the bacteria will replicate and synthesize the new virons, leading to lysis and death.

This research explores the potential of the use of bacteriophages in the treatment of water, to disinfect the water from microbial bacterial and other bacteria that were used to detoxify the water. Phages were previously extracted from Qatar's sand and were used as the infecting agents. The model host chosen is Arthobacter bacteria, which is a denitrification bacteria, as it is similar to the bacteria used in water treatment. Denitrifying bacteria reduce nitrates to nitrogen-containing gases, allowing for the recycling of nitrogen back to the atmosphere.

The goal of my research is to analyze the genome of a phage extracted from Qatar's Sand. A culture of Arthobacter grown in Smeg media was used as a host. Unlike the normal optimal growth temperature of Arthobacter at 32 °C, it was shown that higher phage titer was produced when the culture was grown to saturation in smeg media at 37 °C. In addition, the culture was initially grown in luria Broth which is rich in nutrients including tryptone, yeast extract and NaCl. However, low phage titer was produced compared to switching the media to smeg media, which contains Middlebrook 7H9 broth base with supplements of albumin, dextrose and salts.

After manipulating the growth conditions of the host culture to obtain the highest titer, the optimum conditions were found to be a saturated culture of Arthobacter grown in Smeg media at 37 °C. Later, lysis conditions of the phage were optimized by varying several factors. First, the type of the top agar and plates used for pour plating were varied. Several top agars were used this includes LB top agar, LB top agar in 1 mM CaCl2 and PYCA top agar. It was concluded that the top agar that resulted in the highest titer was LB top agar in 1 mM CaCl2. Several plates have been used for pour plating this include LB plates and PYCA plates. Plaques formed using LB plates produced unclear plaques, this unclearness is an indication of persistence of the lysogenic state and not the lytic state. In the lysogenic state the phage genome gets incorportated into the host genome and replicates along with the cell cycle, thus remaining in a dormant state. On the other hand, in the lystic cycle, the phage uses the replication and protein synthesis machinery to produce more phages, that will later lead to lysis. In contrast, PYCA plates containing CaCl2 formed clearer plaques, indicating dominance of the lytic state. Therefore, addition of calcium in the top agar and the plates aided in the phages’ shift from the lysogenic cycle to the lytic cycle. This correlates with previous work, where calcium was shown to be essential for the penetration of the phage's genome into the host.

Finally, the incubation temperature of the plates containing the infected host Arthobacter by Qatar's sand's phage was varied. Initially the plates were incubated at 32 °C, however no plaques were formed. When the temperature was later increased to 37 °C, lysis was observed and a high phage titer was obtained.

After obtaining a high titer lysate, the DNA was isolated and a sample of the phage was sent to obtain an electron micrograph image of the phage. A restriction enzyme digest was preformed on the isolated DNA and the profile created was compared to the profile of lambda phage. Both the phages are lytic and lyse at similar temperatures, which allows for comparisons.

Lastly, motifs were identified between the Qatar's sand bacteriophage and T7 bacteriophage using blast tools in a previously extracted and sequenced Qatar's sand phage, primers will then be designed to verify if they exist in the actual phage.

Future work will focus on the analyzing the sequence of the phage to identify potential lysis genes, In addition, strengthening the lytic ability of the phage by cloning the gene of lysozyme into a T7-based vector system and test its adaptability to temperature using Arthrobacter as the host system.

Diabetes is a disease that occurs when there is an abundance of glucose in the blood stream and the body cannot produce enough insulin in the pancreas to transfer the sugar from the blood to other areas in the body for energy. Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are both prevalent in Qatar however, Type 2 diabetes is more common and it is mainly what is causing the epidemic Qatar is facing. Type 1 diabetes is inherited and is not related to eating habits or lifestyle, and it is diagnosed in juvenile years. However, Type 2 diabetes can be caused by obesity, unhealthy eating habits, and lack of exercise and overall fitness. It is treatable but not curable and can be treated by maintaining a healthy diet, regular exercise, insulin intakes, and oral medication.

Diabetes is the 3rd most common cause of death in Qatar after road accidents and heart disease (http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/country-health-profile/qatar). In fact, in 2011, Qatar ranked 6th for the highest percentage of diabetes in the world. The amount of overweight adolescents in Qatar is very large resulting in higher diabetes rates amongst children and young adults. The percentage of overweight children doubled from 17% in 1997 to 35% in 2007 according to The Peninsula newspaper. Awareness is crucial at this age because most of the human body fat is put on during teenage years when the body is constantly growing and it is very important to maintain a healthy weight at this time.

Students at the secondary school level should understand whether or not they are at risk of developing this disease compared to ordinary people. Each student should know their chances of risk due to their family relations, history, and habits. In Qatar we find that the parents of many students our age face diabetes because of the habits of their parents and so on, therefore all of us are at a higher risk. The fact that fast food is so available and practical keeps people, especially those at a young age constantly consuming such unhealthy products. With the statistics of obesity so alarmingly high, education and awareness is the only key to solving the problem. We plan on increasing the diabetic awareness at our school by conducting surveys, presenting posters, interviewing students, as well as working hand-in-hand with the Qatar Diabetes Association (QDA) to be as successful as possible.

Although many efforts are being made by the government, many students do not know enough about the danger that they may be putting themselves in, and the consequences that result because of their actions. Many students at this age are allowed to choose what they eat and their diets are not regulated by parents anymore, therefore they need to learn to make proper choices. The high temperatures in Qatar also make it inconvenient to exercise outside, however there are numerous alternatives. The goal of this research is to enlighten our peers with this given information and compare their knowledge of diabetes before and after. Awareness is the first step to prevention, and that needs to begin at a young age. Research Methods: The first step to our project on spreading awareness about diabetes is to know the level at which the students are already aware. Therefore, using Google Forums, we will create a survey with questions about how much the students already know about diabetes, if they know of family history, if they have been tested, if they know the symptoms, etc. Once we have fully created the survey, we will email the link to all of the high school students at our high school asking them to each fill out the survey with the appropriate responses. In order to insure that we have accurate gatherings, we will each interview an equal amount of students randomly and record their answers to work from there.

After receiving 189 responses from the high school students we began to analyze the results. Only 22% of the students had been tested for or against diabetes. Out of those who had been checked 48% had checked more than a year ago. 58% of the students knew of family members with diabetes. Most had checked the correct symptoms for diabetes along with a lot of unrelated ones like coughing or vomiting. Also for the things you could do to prevent diabetes, 8% responded with “washing your hands”, 30% responded with “not smoking”, and surprisingly even 3% responded with “dressing modestly”. After witnessing the high percentage of wrong responses, it was made clear that we definitely had to increase our effort in educating our peers.

Once discussing the open ended question of “What do you know about diabetes?” we ranked each student's response out of 10 (Based on the below scale). Then, we performed a chi-squared statistical test to compare our expected value of 7/10 to 3.323/10 which was the average student rank. This proved a significant difference between the levels of awareness we expected from the students, to what we actually received.

The data from the survey proved the indeed lack of awareness among the students of the high school level. We created fun awareness posters and posted them on glass doors to the cafeteria, science wing and specific lockers where they were most visible to the student population. Results and Discussion: Upon the completion of our presentation to the 10th grade health class, we conducted a second survey regarding what the students had learned and the quality of our presentation. The table below shows the responses received from the students after the presentation. Conclusions: Unfortunately at the beginning of this research, we were shocked at noticing the extreme lack of awareness amongst our student population. Considering the high rates of diabetes in the State of Qatar, we expected a basic understanding about the disease especially since many people here are prone to it. It is very alarming that which current trends it is expected that 73% of men and 69% of women would have reached obesity in the country by 2030. Indeed it can be stated that a lot of work needs to be done.

One of the major purposes of this research was to gain insight about this issue and it is quite obvious that these high rates are leading to a huge problem in the nation. Fortunately Qatar has been working hard to increase awareness with events like National Sports Day and hosting events like the 2022 world cup to promote fitness in the country. As mentioned previously, since diabetes type 2 is the major concern because it is developed later in life and is preventable, young students are the target for spreading information too. Habits develop during the adolescent years so spreading the word among students at this age is critical.

This research was very successful in promoting awareness in our own school, but from what we have learned, there is a long way to go in order to decrease the high statistical quantities of diabetes rates. Benefit to students: The Qatar National Research Strategy (QNRS) principle were designed to increase the quality of research occurring in Qatar. The third most important area of research in Qatar was health and under the Addressing National Health Priorities column, Type II diabetes was first in importance. We feel that by following the research plan addressed by H.H. Sheikha Moza that our research could have a strong impact on the research culture in Qatar indeed.

Some of the specific benefits to the students participating in this project include the following;

- How to conduct literature survey

- An increased knowledge and understanding about Diabetes, its causes, preventions and symptoms

- The seriousness of the issue worldwide and in Qatar

- The realization that the awareness of the students they spoke to increased so much that they can now give a lecture about the topic to their peers

- Presentation skills, video, poster, lecture

- Survey design

- How to conduct statistical analysis using statistical software

- Incorporating creative ways in educating their peers

- Communicating with professional societies such as Qatar Diabetes Association

- Took part in the joint program of Qatar Diabetes Association Sports Day event for the Action on Diabetes Campaign

- Interviewing skills as the asked questions of students and health care professionals working with diabetes

- Time management with creating a Letter of Intent and Proposal Report on time

- How to work as a team and how to divide the tasks to cover all requirements efficiently and effectively

- It is noteworthy to mention that the entire research methodology and the final report were fully prepared and conducted by the two students involved. The teacher's role was solely advisory

Qatar National Research Strategy (QNRS) mentions that diabetes is the 3rd most important area of research for QNRS.

Presenting the information about Diabetes to the high school student body, will not only benefit the students and teachers themselves in insuring their health and being aware of what may happen if they do not control some unnecessary desires, but it will inform them about the SSREP program in Qatar. As students participating in a research project during our secondary school years, presenting to our peers will allow them to realize the benefits that come from conducting research projects and inspire them to contribute in the following years.

Acknowledgement

Qatar National Research Fund – SSREP Program

Streptomyces are Gram positive aerobic bacteria from the phylum Actinobacteria with close to 570 known species. They are popular for providing a variety of compounds having medicinal properties including - antibiotics, antifungals, antitumor amongst others. Various researches in the past have tested these properties of Streptomyces sp. and species including Streptomyces avermitilis, Streptomyces venezuelae, Streptomyces aureofaciens, Streptomyces clavuligerns and Streptomyces erythrens have been found effective in producing these varied compounds. For instance, S. avermitilis produces avermectins which are used to treat river blindness while S. venezuelae secretes chloramphenicol. Additionally S. venezuelae has been suggested as ideal test organism for studies based on physiology and also for analysis of differentiation on biochemical basis (Chater, 2013). Although a high number of metabolites of Streptomyces are now available in the health care industry as effective drugs for a variety of diseases, increasing number of cases of antibiotic resistance is threatening global public health. The emergence of resistance has resulted in drug ineffectiveness and there is a wide search for suppressing these strains. Such resistance has been identified to have occurred due to both phenotypic and genotypic modifications (Suzuki, Horinouchi, & Furusawa, 2015). Properties of Streptomyces and increasing cases of antibiotic resistance have fuelled research to identify more and more species of Streptomyces and to look out for novel metabolites released from them. Other reasons for the need of identifying newer compounds include the breakout of new diseases in the second half of the last century, incompetence in fighting naturally resistant bacteria such as P.aerogenosa that causes fatal infections and the toxic effects resulting from consumption of currently available antibiotic drugs (Sanchez & Demain, 2011).

Hence this research attempted to study antimicrobial properties of three Streptomyces species isolated from the desert soil of Qatar. The antimicrobial properties were assessed firstly through direct testing against five test organisms - Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas sp. as Gram-negative bacteria, Candida albicans as fungi, Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus faecolis as Gram-positive bacteria. The three strains designated as sp. A, sp. B and sp. D exhibited good inhibition of the test organisms. Acetone, ethanol, ethyl acetate and methanol were used to prepare extracts of the three species and were used to re-assess antibacterial properties and also determine anticancer and antifungal properties. Antimicrobial properties were re-tested using disc-diffusion and puncture method while anticancer properties were studied by subjecting HCT-116 cancer cells to two different concentrations of extracts – 0.05%(v/v) and 0.5%(v/v). Acetone extracts showed some kind of inhibitory pattern hence a third concentration of 5%(v/v) was tested. Antifungal properties were examined by testing all extracts at 10%(v/v) against Aspergillus niger and Penicillium sp. Acetone extracts of all three species A,B and D displayed high inhibition of Aspergillus niger with 99.07% ±  0.12, 99.2% ±  0.01 and 99.19% ±  0.00 inhibition percentages respectively, and also inhibited growth of Penicillium sp. with 82.62% ±  1.62, 79.63% ±  0.11 and 87.44% ±  0.2 inhibition percentage respectively (% as compared to acetone control). These extracts were then re-tested at two other concentrations of 2.5%(v/v) and 5%(v/v). While the extracts at these concentrations were effective against Aspergillus niger, they could not inhibit growth of Penicillium sp.

References

Chater, K. F. (2013). Streptomyces. In S. M. Hughes (Ed.), Brenner's Encyclopedia of Genetics (Second Edition) (pp. 565–567). San Diego: Academic Press.

Sanchez, S., & Demain, A. L. (2011). 1.12 – Secondary Metabolites. In M. Moo-Young (Ed.), Comprehensive Biotechnology (Second Edition) (pp. 155–167). Burlington: Academic Press.

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Background and Purpose: Great advances have occurred in the field of robotics in the past few years. The integration of robotics in our daily life became not only limited to manufacturing or industrial usage, but also in health care delivery, aerospace, humanitarian aids and others. Most of the existing robots systems rely on the programmer to set the rule it plays within the working environment or rely on a trainer to teach the system what should and need to be done and where they are ought to move. Other robotic systems might involve more intelligent systems to explore and handle tasks within their environment. Most of these systems are usually situated to work within well organized and planned environment. Having modifications on any of the parameters of the environment might produce unpredictable consequences. Depending on the complexity of the system and how intelligent it is, the consequences might be unfavorable in achieving the goals intended and reducing oneself-damages.

Species in nature represents rich source of innovative ideas and creative concepts that can be investigated by researchers. Nature has been inspiring scientists into developing new ways of looking at things, by observing the various living organisms' behaviors in their own habitats. Behavior-based roboticists are concerned with the development of robots based on observing and the studying of neuroscience, psychology and ethology of animals in nature. Humans, animals and plants physiology is yet another rich source of researching potential (Fig. 1). For example, reflexes in living organisms represent a means of survival in the outer environment and means of regulating internal body operations. If we could observe and try to mimic some of the reflex behaviors, we could end up with a machine (E.g. Robots) that has the ability to avoid dangerous situations and keep the outer structure intact.

Figure 1: The potential of reflex systems in intelligent robotics. Objective: Adopting an intelligent reflex system in the robot system similar to that found in humans, animals, and plants can have significant advantages on the overall behavior of the system. A reflex system can improve the risk avoiding capabilities in the unfavorable scenarios. Design: The approach toward reflex based robotic system involves the intensive investigation and review of the fundamental concepts found in the reflex systems of human, animals, and plants. Attention to details, such as the behavior of the organism when subjected to a certain stimulus and the latency it takes for the reflex arc to execute the right response, are among the most important things to consider when trying mimicking the behavior of a living organism. A deduced conceptual model should be based on the distinguishing components found in the reflex arc. An actual design based on this proposed model, will include the basic components that can be achieved by using electronic/mechanical components that are at the same time analogous in function to the ones found in the reflex arc. For example, to mimic the temperature sensing capabilities of a human hand, a simple one-point temperature sensor will not be sufficient to give a desirable realistic result. Instead, a sophisticated flexible array that is capable to sense the temperature at any point must be used. Another design consideration is the controlling method to be used. Will it be centralized or decentralized or a mix of both? Regardless of the answer the controlling mechanism involved should be independent of a central controller (i.e. the brain) and it must be localized to achieve the desirable fast response as that founded in the reflex arc. Conclusion: The reflex based robotic system will be unique and innovative for the applications intended. The system can be incorporated with pre-existing systems to add value especially in the field of medical robotics and more specifically in prosthetics. Artificial reflex systems will add great value, protective feature and life-like sensation for a smarter prosthetic artefacts. With the implementation of the reflex arc at the right latencies and order, the gap between artificial and the actual hand should get narrower.

Acknowledgment

This publication was made possible by the support of an NPRP grant from the Qatar National Research Fund (NPRP 7-673-2-251). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors.

Keywords

Intelligent Robotics, Reflex System, Prosthetics

Pain is an emotion and neuropathic pain symptoms are modulated by supraspinal structures such as the amygdala. If the central nucleus of the amygdala is often named as the “nociceptive amygdala”, little is known on the role of the basolateral amygdala. Here, we monitored the mechanical nociceptive thresholds of in a mouse model of neuropathic pain and infused modulators of the glutamate/GABAergic transmission in the BLA via chronically-implanted can nulas. First, we found that NMDA-type glutamate receptor antagonist (MK-801) exerted a potent anti-allodynic effect whereas a transient allodynia was induced after perfusion of bicuculline, a GABAA receptor antagonist. Potentiating GABAA receptor function using diazepam (DZP) or etifoxine (EFX, a nonbenzodiazepine anxiolytic) fully but transiently alleviated mechanical allodynia. Interestingly, the anti-allodynic effect of EFX disappeared in animals incapable of producing 3alpha-steroids. DZP had a similar effect but of shorter duration. As indicated by patch-clamp recordings of BLA neurons, these effects were mediated by a potentiation of GABAA R-mediated synaptic transmission. Together with a presynaptic elevation of miniature IPSC frequency, the duration and amplitude of GABAA mIPSCs was also increased (postsynaptic effect). The analgesic contribution of endogenous neurosteroid seemed to be exclusively postsynaptic. This study highlights the importance of BLA and of the local inhibitory/excitatory neuronal network activity while setting the mechanical nociceptive threshold. Furthermore, it appears that promoting inhibition in this specific nucleus could fully alleviate pain symptoms. Therefore BLA could be a novel interesting target to develop pharmacological or non pharmacological therapies.

Background: End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) is a progressive worsening of kidney function over a period of months or years. It is a complex debilitating disease that needs a lifelong treatment. Because patients with ESRD cannot be cured of their underlying conditions and mostly underwent hemodialysis program, it usually leads to many physical and medical consequences and complications, and beside them, there are lots of concealed social and spiritual factors that can affect people who have this disease or are on renal dialysis. Some studies about medical and clinical consequences of ESRD and renal dialysis were conducted but this study will be the first one to determine the factors affecting the social and spiritual wellbeing of patients who are on renal dialysis in Gaza Strip. Objectives: It is important to give a detailed picture about the social and spiritual wellbeing of patients who are on renal dialysis to help the medical professionals to recognize the social and spiritual variables, so early intensive intervention can be performed once necessary. Methods: A total of 120 patients who had ESRD and were treated with hemodialysis completed face to face questionnaires. A self-designed questionnaire has been used; the end result is a questionnaire consisted of 6 sections including demographic data, physical, social, psychological and spiritual wellbeing, degree of coping with current condition, uncertainties about health in future, self-esteem and dependency, and the impact on marital relationship. Results: Among 120 participants, 55% were females and the mean age was 48.5 (SD: 16.7).

An eighty one point seven percent were unemployed and 81.7% of the participants were of low educational level. Thirty percent of the patients have family history of hemodialysis; 55.6% of them are first degree relatives and 44.4% for the second and third degree relatives. Seventy two point two of patients have co-morbidities, mostly hypertension (49.4%). Fatigue (93.8%) and insomnia (56.2%) are the two major physical complaints after the process of hemodialysis, however, (53.3%) of the patients felt more comfortable after it.

Seventy seven percent of the patients suffered from a financial impact and 60.3% had weak social relationships. Sixty percent considered that the process of hemodialysis makes their life restless to the extent that makes their daily activities to be negatively affected by 73.8%.

Among 85 married patients, the sexual performance and the sexual desire were negatively affected by 54.2% and 52.2% respectively. Only 50% of the patients stated that they have a goal they want to achieve in their life. Seventy eight percent of the patients were uncertain about their health and 67.3% were worried from about the future. However, 70% of the participants claimed that spiritual devotions and stronger faith has made them more able to accept their disease and deals in a positive manner towards being involved in the hemodialysis program. Conclusion: Social and spiritual well-being should be considered as important predictive factors for a better quality of life in hemodialysis patients. Results also suggest that assessing and addressing social and spiritual well-being among hemodialysis patients may help in providing a holistic medical care.

Background: Pharmaceutical care (PC) is changing pharmacy practice in to patient -centered care and personalized medicine approach. It focuses on maximizing drug therapy outcomes and improving patient's quality of life (QOL). Pharmacy students who are the future pharmacy practitioner, need to have adequate knowledge, skills and positive attitudes to apply PC when they graduate. However, comparative studies are limited among pharmacy students from different pharmacy schools within the Middle East region about the PC teaching received, preparedness to deliver the service in practice, and expected barriers. Objectives: This study's aims are exploring the attitudes and perceptions of final year pharmacy students in the College of Pharmacy at Qatar University (QU-CPH) and Faculty of Pharmacy in Kuwait University (KU-FoP) towards PC, assessing students’ preparedness to provide PC when they graduate and investigating the perceived barriers against the application of PC. Methods: Descriptive, cross-sectional, web based survey was used to collect data. The study instrument was developed based on validated tools: Pharmaceutical Care Attitude Survey (PCAS) and Preparedness to Provide Pharmaceutical Care (PREP). The data were analyzed using the IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS®) Version 22. Chi-Square tests and independent t-test were used to compare between the 2 universities for categorical data. P ≤  0.05 was considered statistical significant. The results were summarized using tables and figures generated by Excel. The final questionnaire included five sections: demographics of the students (6 items); perception of PC (7 items); attitudes towards PC (13 items); preparedness to deliver PC (25 items) and; barriers that may affect applying PC (5 items). The survey was administered using SurveyMonkey®. Results: Of a total of 77 students, 63 students completed the questionnaire (21 students from QU and 42 students from KU) overall response rate 82%. The mean age of the students was similar between the two universities. The majority of the respondents (95.2%) from both universities were female (QU-CPH is female-only college). KU-FoP had significantly higher proportion of national students than QU-CPH. Both QU-CPH and KU-FoP students prefer to work in the hospital setting in the future (57.1%, 64.3% respectively). No significant differences between the two universities in terms of students’ confidence and perception in applying PC (P ≥  0.05). There were no significant differences between the students’ attitude in the two programs about the provision of PC (P ≥  0.05), and all respondents believed that PC services will improve health outcomes. There was a statistically significant differences in documenting information related to detecting, resolving and preventing drug-related problem (p = 0.044). Some of the barriers identified by students from both institutions include: lack of private counseling area, limited pharmacists time, lack of patients records, lack of policy for pharmacists’ patient care role. No differences in opinions between QU and KU students regarding the most important barrier that may affect PC provision above. There was statistical significant difference between students’ opinions in considering poor image of pharmacists role in society as barrier. Conclusion: Final year pharmacy from Qatar and Kuwait had demonstrated positive attitudes towards PC and its potential application in practice when they graduate. They have, however, identified some potential barriers. Students in KU-FoP placed low expectation of the pharmacist's role by the society and within health care team as important barrier; while students in QU-CPH thought that documentation and communication between pharmacists and healthcare providers can have an impact on PC services. More efforts should be directed to resolve the perceived barriers in order to optimize PC provision and ultimately patient care outcomes.

Background and Aim: In the United States alone, diabetic limb complications and amputations are estimated to cost $17 billion. Significant risk factors that may lead to amputation of the diabetic foot include ineffective wound healing and infection of a wound or ulcer. Previous studies have shown that wound healing is slowed and patient's susceptibility to infection is increased when a patient is under chronic stress. To date, objective measures of stress have not been used to determine if stress affects the rate at which wounds heal. Our study used novel real-time monitoring of patient's heart rate variability to objectively determine the stress levels of patients visiting a surgery clinic for wound dressing changes. The wound healing rates of patients with high stress levels were compared to healing rates of low-stress individuals to assess the effect of stress on rates of wound healing among diabetics with a history of foot ulceration. Methods: Twenty patients (age: 56.7 ±  12.2 years) with diabetic foot ulcers were equipped with a chest-worn sensor (Bioharness 3, Zephyr Technology Corp., Annapolis, MD) during their 45-minute appointments where the patients’ wound was re-dressed. The chest sensor contained a uni-channel ECG recorder, and a novel algorithm was developed to determine heart rate variability from sensor output. Low frequency (0.04 to 0.15 Hz) HRV signals were isolated from high frequency signals (0.15 to 0.40 Hz), and the ratio of their amplitudes was used as a measure of stress. Patients were categorized as low-stress if the ratio of the signals was less than 1, and were otherwise categorized as high-stress individuals. Regardless of classification, each patient's wound size (length, width, depth) was recorded at baseline and in follow-up visits. High and low-stress patients were compared to see if wound sizes decreased more rapidly in either group. Results: Results indicate that patients with low levels of stress reduced their wound size by 79% between baseline and the first follow-up appointment (1.36 mm³ to 0.28 mm³). In contrast, patients with high levels of stress had adverse outcomes, with their wound sizes increasing nearly four times between baseline and follow-up (0.17 mm³ vs 0.84 mm³). Although high stress individuals had smaller wound sizes than low stress individuals initially (0.17 mm³ vs. 1.36 mm³, p <  0.05), the wound sizes of high stress individuals were nearly 3 times larger by the first follow-up (0.84 mm³ vs. 0.28 mm³, p =  0.10). Conclusion: Our research proposes that an individual's stress level can be objectively measured using an algorithm that processes ECG data from a single body-worn sensor that is lightweight and comfortable to wear. The stress levels measured with our algorithm are predictive of positive clinical outcomes. Specifically, individuals with low levels of recorded stress at baseline have faster healing rates and greater reductions in wound size by their second clinical appointment. This indicates that real-time patient stress monitoring using body-worn sensors may help clinicians identify risk factors that prolong wound healing times. In addition, it can be inferred that managing stress in diabetic patients will quicken the pace of wound healing. Surprisingly, however, our results suggest that initial wound sizes are not good indicators of stress levels in patients during initial clinical appointments. In fact, wound sizes of high stress individuals were significantly lower than low-stress individuals at baseline.

Background & objective: The gliptins, dipeptidyl peptidase inhibitors (DPP-4 inhibitors) are a relatively new class of antidiabetic drugs that, via their inhibition of DPP-4, a cell membrane–associated serine-type protease enzyme, promote the effects of the endogenous incretins such as glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) and enhance glucose disposal. The advantage of the gliptins over GLP-1 analogues is that they are orally effective whereas the clinically used incretins, exenatide and liraglutide, have to be administered via sub-cutaneous injection. The first gliptin, sitagliptin, was approved by the FDA in 2006 and six other gliptins have subsequently been approved – vildagliptin (2007 in Europe); saxagliptin (2009, FDA); linagliptin (2011, FDA); anagliptin (2012, Japan); teneligliptin (2012, Japan); alogliptin (2013, FDA). There is a close association between diabetes and cardiovascular disease (CVD) and vascular complications associated with diabetes are responsible for 75% of the deaths of diabetics. Therefore it is important that for any new class of antidiabetic drugs introduced for clinical use that we determine whether such drugs not only show therapeutic efficacy as antidiabetic drugs, but also that they are vasculoprotective and reduce both cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Endothelial dysfunction that can be functionally defined as a reduced vasorelaxation response to an endothelium-dependent vasodilator, such as acetylcholine, or, at the molecular level, a reduction in the bioavailability of nitric oxide (NO) and/or reduced activity of the enzyme responsible for the generation of NO, namely, endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS). Endothelial dysfunction is a very early indicator of the onset of vascular disease and thus determining whether the gliptins also reduce endothelial dysfunction is very important. The literature concerning the vasculoprotective effects of the gliptins is contradictory with some of the clinical data suggesting a negative effect of the gliptins on vascular function. Thus, the objective of this study was to determine whether the gliptins possess positive or negative effects on endothelial function. Materials & methods: In the present study we used a cell culture protocol with mouse vascular endothelial endothelial cells (MS1-VEGF; CRL-2460, from ATCC, USA) of micro-vascular endothelial origin. The endothelial cells, MMECs, were either cultured under normoglycaemic (NG) conditions for a mouse, 11 mM, or high glucose 40 mM (HG) – a level that equates to the plasma glucose levels that are seen in mouse models of type 2 diabetes, such as the db/db leptin receptor mutant model of type 2 diabetes. The gliptin, alogliptin was chosen for this study and the protocols were designed to determine whether this gliptin reduced, or prevented, the high glucose induced reduction in eNOS phosphorylation at serine 1177 (p-eNOSser1177) as determined by western immunoblot densitometry quantification. A reduction in p-eNOSser1177 will result in a reduced activity of eNOS and hence a reduction in the generation of NO. Thus, the quantification of p-eNOSser1177 serves as a measure of endothelial function. The band densities of the western blot images for eNOS and p-eNOSser1177 were quantified using the basic Quantity One software (Biorad, Inc. CA, USA). Statistical analysis was performed using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and post-hoc comparisons between groups were performed by Tukey's multiple comparison tests. ‘p’ values less than 0.05 were considered to be statistically significant. Results: Our data indicates that a 24-hour exposure to HG reduced p-eNOSser1177 phosphorylation, but the presence of alogliptin reverses the effects of HG and significantly increased the phosphorylation of eNOS, suggesting that this gliptin does protect the microvascular endothelium against hyperglycaemia-induced endothelial dysfunction. Furthermore, the effects of alogliptin were concentration-dependent and were significant with 50 or 100 μM, but not 10 μM alogliptin. Conclusion: Our findings indicate that, in a concentration-dependent manner, alogliptin protects endothelial cells against the negative effects that hyperglycaemia (high glucose) has on endothelial function as measured by alogliptin-induced changes in the phosphorylation of eNOS at serine 1177. Further studies are underway, using a functional myograph assay, to determine whether alogliptin can also prevent hyperglycaemia-induced endothelial dysfunction in mouse aortic vessels.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by a Summer Student Research Fellowship (SSRF) from Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar and an Undergraduate Research Experience Program grant, UREP 18-055-3-012 from the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors.

Background: Around 14.1 million new cancer cases and 8.2 million deaths caused by cancer were reported in 2012, expected to rise up to 22 million within the next 2 decades. The parenteral route (intravenous dosage form) has been the most common administration route for chemotherapeutic agents, which is associated with the need for hospitalization and a range of significant adverse drug reaction. A new generation of chemotherapies that is orally administered has been introduced to practices as a superior and more efficient therapeutic alternative. Oral anticancer drugs (OACDs) have shown to be eliminating the need for hospitalization, decreasing the rate of adverse drug reactions and, ultimately, improving patients' quality of life. Economically, this translates into reduction in inpatient hospitalization costs, including several of the associated costs, such as the cost of treating side effects. A disadvantage of OACDs however, is the increased acquisition costs as compared to those for the intravenously administered alternatives. This resulted into resistance to include OACDs by several international insurance schemes and drug formulary practices, including in Qatar. Objectives: The current project sought to analyze the medical literature in relation to published economic evaluations (pharmacoeconomics) of OACDs, especially as compared to the parenteral alternatives. This will identify the decision analytic modeling conducted as well as the variety of methods used. Strengths and weaknesses of study designs will be determined, including gaps in knowledge. Methodology: A thematic systematic review was conducted using the search engines: PubMed, Medline, EconLit, Embase and Economic Evaluation Database. The following 3 categories were considered: (i) therapy (chemotherapy [Mesh]); (ii) dosage form (oral [Mesh]); and (iii) research design (economics [Mesh] OR cost-benefit analysis [Mesh]). These included full-text, English articles incorporating comparative economic evaluations of oral chemotherapies. Excluded studies were: non-comparative, non-economic based models, of secondary indications (not cancer), and/or reviews. This process was followed by two stages of manual exclusion; based on title/abstract content and, then, the full-text article content. A data extraction form was developed and pilot tested for the purpose of data collection. Article inclusion and data collection was conducted twice, each by a different investigator. Included articles were finally summarized according to methodological themes of interest. Results: A total of 235 records were identified. After screening and removing duplicates, only 18 studies were deemed eligible study inclusion. It was found that the pharmacoeconomics evaluations were mostly of cost-utility analyses (13 out of 18), measuring cost per quality adjusted life years (QALY) gained, and from the payer perspective (15 out of 18). Primary sources of clinical and economic data were randomized clinical trials, expert panels and medical charts. Other sources included medicine databases, reimbursement schedules, drug policies and price lists, treatment guidelines, case reports and patient interviews. In 13 out of 18 cases, dominance status was reported in favor of OACDs, in relation to cost and/or clinical effect. Decision analytic modeling was used in the majority of studies, mostly constituting Markov modeling for the simulation of life long use of drugs. Sensitivity analyses were conducted in most studies, mostly constituting one-way sensitivity analysis to ensure robustness of study results. The types of cancers, where the effect of OACDs was studied, were the metastatic renal carcinoma, gastrointestinal tumors, colon cancer, chronic myeloid leukemia and non-small cell lung cancer. Most included articles were published during the last seven years. Most studies were conducted in the UK, US and Europe, while none were conducted in Australia or the Middle East. Conclusion: This is first systematic review of the economic methods used in the evaluation of OACDs. There seems to be a recent increasing interest of this type of research, whereby the QALYs measurement is of priority for the decision making in relation to the comparative value of OACDs in practices. Most important, is that despite the higher acquisition cost, OACDs were demonstrated to be mostly superior over the parenteral alternatives. Furthermore, the decision analytic modeling, mostly constituting Markov modeling, is valued and enables a structured decision analyses of therapies. The pharmacoeconomics research is difficult to generalize, whereby published economic evaluations are locally specific, especially for the purpose of practical interpretation. The current review of literature proposes valuable methods for the local Qatari implementation and guidance of decision makers. This is most relevant to National Center for Cancer Care & Research (NCCCR), which is the only tertiary service provider of cancer therapy in Qatar, where confusion in relation to the use of oral chemotherapies exists, particularly the therapies vinorelbine and capacitabine.

Background: The interest in the economic evaluations of “prophylactic” systemic antifungals is on the rise, especially with the emergence of newer expensive agents for prophylaxis of invasive fungal infections (IFI). Decision analytic modeling is a systematic approach that has become integral in the economic evaluation process for the purpose of simplifying the decision making. This systematic review aims to identify the prevalence of decision-analytic modeling in the pharmacoeconomic literature regarding prophylactic therapies for systemic fungal infections, and to identify variations in model designs used along with defining specific areas of strengths and weaknesses. Method: A systematic literature search was conducted using the e-databases Pubmed, Medline, Embase, Economic Evaluation, Econlit, and Cochrane to obtain all model-based economic evaluations of antifungal agents. Search terms were under three categories: (i) therapy (antifungal agent [Mesh] OR Prophylaxis); (ii) disease (mycosis [Mesh] OR fungal disease [Mesh] OR invasive OR systemic); and (iii) research design (economics [Mesh] OR decision analysis [Mesh] OR costs and cost analysis [Mesh]). Publications were included if they were journal articles, full text publications, human studies, English language. Study articles were excluded if they were reviews, studying topical antifungal, non-invasive infections, or non-economic models. Journal article inclusion and data extraction, via a data collection form, were conducted twice, each by different researcher. Results: Out of 841 citations, only 19 articles were eligible for inclusion. Most of studies were relatively recent, conducted in 2008–2013. Seventeen of them used sources of clinical data from pooled randomized control trials. Evaluations were mostly in USA (7), the remaining in Australia, Canada, Spain, The Netherland, Korea, Greece, France, Germany, and Switzerland (1–2 articles each). All articles utilized the cost-effectiveness method using decision tree models; including 10 using Markov modeling for simulating future use of medications. This was, as appropriate, associated with discounting type of cost adjustment. Drug comparisons in included studies (27/29) were mostly between an old cheaper antifungals and more expensive newer ones. The 19 articles incorporated 15 studies with cost per life year gained measure, six with cost per IFI avoided, one with cost per Quality Adjusted Life Year, and four included cost saving per patient measure. Most important, is that same clinical measures were defined differently in different studies. Most studies reported dominance state, the majority were in favor of posaconazole (9 out of 12), and five studies required incremental cost effectiveness ratio analysis. Only direct medical costs were considered in studies despite that six articles had social perspectives instead of the hospital perspective. All articles had adjusted costs either for inflation (9/19 articles) or discounting. Fourteen articles used only one way sensitivity analysis while few used a combination with multivariate (2) or scenario (3) analyses. Conclusion: Decision making in relation to prophylactic antifungals is not complex, including the economic considerations; whereby straightforward therapy dominance status was demonstrated in the majority of studies. Most important, is that the literature evidence in relation the cost-effectiveness of systematic antifungals is not cumulative in nature, which is due to that same outcomes are defined differently in studies. This also meant that literature economic models are incomparable and not generalizable since different decision makers appear to be interested in different outcomes, including for the same antifungal agent. Studies are limited by not considering cost of side effects and alternative therapy options. Further studies are needed to compare among the newer more expensive agents, where evidence is lacking. Also, studies should be enhanced by better adhering to guidelines in relation to standardized definitions of health states, enabling a cumulative evidence generation and generalizability of findings.

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is a severe, acute respiratory illness caused by Corona Virus (CDC, 2015). Globally, there are 1599 cases diagnosed with MERS Corona virus and at least 574 related death cases were reported in the year 2012 (WHO, 2015). In Qatar, a total of 17 cases were reported between November 2013–May 2015 (WHO, 2015). The routes of transmission of MERS-COV includes direct contact with an infected person, touching contaminated objects or surfaces then touching your mouth, nose or eyes and direct contact with infected camels. A study in Qatar showed that MERS-COV was detected in 3 camels out of 14 from nose swabs taken from these camels. It also showed that the virus fragments were similar to what was found in two human cases from the same farm (Haagmans et al., 2014). Another study was conducted at Al-Shahaniya-Qatar in 2014 confirmed the presence of MERS-CoV in the milk of five camels. This explains that camels are a source of transmission of MERS-COV in the State of Qatar (Reusken et al., 2014). The purpose of this study is to examine knowledge of MERS-CoV transmission, symptoms and prevention techniques among female students at Qatar University, and further evaluate the effect of an awareness event organized by the Public Health Program. Participants (N =  33) were female students at Qatar University aged from 18–26 years old. Public health students designed a survey to test the knowledge of MERS-CoV transmission, symptoms and prevention techniques among female students at Qatar University. A pre-test survey was distributed in an awareness event of MERS-CoV that was held on the 19th of November 2015 at the college of Arts and Sciences. The survey included questions about demographics such as age, college, and nationality. It also included five questions to examine the level of knowledge about transmission routes for the virus, symptoms associated with the infection, the prevention techniques and the preferred strategy to be educated about the disease among students. Later, participants attended activities organized by public health students to be educated about MERS-CoV. They were exposed to epidemiological facts through distributed flyers and screen slides. The transmission routes were explained to the students using a creative and meaningful poster, Moreover, students were informed about the symptoms by another poster and a demonstration of MERS-CoV model. The prevention techniques regarding MERS-CoV were also explained through a poster and attractive, colorful brochures. The same recipients answered same questions as a post-test to measure changes in knowledge about MERS-CoV. For the analysis, SPSS software was used to analyze the pre- and post-test data. The McNemar's Test was used to compare the pre- and post-test results. P-value less than 0.05 was considered to be significant. The results showed the percentage of recipients aged (18-20) years and (21-23) years was the same (45.5%) for both age groups. The majority of the recipients were from the college of Science (57.6%); however, neither was from the college of Medicine nor the college of Law. Moreover, due to the high diversity in Qatar University, students form different nationalities participated in our survey such as, Qatari, Gulf countries, Egyptian, Palestinian, Iranian, Jordanian, Sudanese, Pakistani and Others. Most of the students were Qatari (21.2%), whereas Iranian and Pakistani had the lowest number of recipients (3.0%), (see Table 1). The results showed that prior to the educational event, the majority of the recipients thought that they didn't have enough knowledge about MERS-Corona Virus (54.5%). However, after the event, the majority agreed that they have enough knowledge about MERS-CoV, McNemar's Test (P = 0.000). In addition, the findings regarding transmission routes showed that the majority of recipients didn't know any of the transmission routes (33.3%), on the other hand, after the event 78% of the recipients were aware of all the transmission routes, McNemar's Test (P = 0.000). The next result showed that, most recipients knew about the symptoms associated with MERS-Corona Virus in pretest (51.5%), additively, the majority showed that they knew about these symptoms, but their knowledge improved compared to pre-test (90.9%), McNemar's Test (P = 0.001). When it comes to prevention, most recipients chose washing hands as preventive methods (33.3%) in pretest. However, the results after the event showed that recipients were aware of all of the preventive methods, but without statistical significance, McNemar's Test (P = 0.424). Finally, the pretest regarding the best educational methods showed that all the strategic methods were effective to educate about MERS-Corona Virus (75.8%). The percentage increased in the post-test (84.4%) but without statistical significance, McNemar's Test (P = 0.375) (see Table 2). Future research should focus more on comprehensive educational interventions that are needed to facilitate adoption of precautions associated with MERS-COV, and more follow up studies to see if these educational interventions promote changes in knowledge and behavior of students.

References

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Reusken, C. B., Farag, E. A., Jonges, M., Godeke, G. J., El-Sayed, A. M., Pas, S. D., & Koopmans, M. P. (2014). Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) RNA and neutralising antibodies in milk collected according to local customs from dromedary camels, Qatar, April 2014. Euro Surveill, 19(23), pii20829.

World Heath Organization (2015). Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) – Qatar. Retrieved from: http://www.who.int/csr/don/11-february-2015-mers-qatar/en/. On: November 12, 2015.

World Heath Organization (2015). Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) – Republic of Korea. Retrieved from: http://www.who.int/csr/don/25-october-2015-mers-korea/en/. On: November 12, 2015.

The presented work falls within one of Qatar's Research Grand Challenges, namely the area of Cyber Security. We have designed a new public-key cryptosystem that can improve the security of communication networks. This new cryptosystem combines two important ideas. The first idea is the difficulty of finding an invariant of infinite diagonalizable group. More specifically, for the coding purposes, we build an infinite diagonalizable group that has a given polynomial invariant of high degree. One possible attack on this cryptosystem is to find an invariant of this group. However, during the design of the system we guarantee that the minimal degree of invariants of this group is very high which makes the direct attempt to find any invariant using linear algebra techniques computationally expensive. The second idea is based on our discovery that when working over the ring Z of integers, another attack to break the cryptosystem is possible. This attack is based on replacing the prime factorization of integers by finding a factorization of “atoms” and can be implemented using the Euclidean algorithm. Similar algorithm works for rings that are unique factorization domains. To prevent this type of attack, we work over number fields that are not unique factorization domains (there are many such suitable number fields of small degrees). By doing so we invoke the well-known problem of prime factorization (used in commercial cryptosystems like RSA) which becomes principally more complicated over number fields that are not unique factorization domains. We have also showed that similar system based on finite diagonalizable groups are not secure against attack because such a system can be broken in polynomial time using an algorithm that finds a root of every polynomial p(x) with complex coefficients such that all of its roots are roots of unity. All invariants considered for diagonalizable groups are linear combinations of monomial invariants. The situation is more complicated for diagonalizable supergroups. Since it could improve the safety of the cryptosystem, we also investigated the case of supergroups and derived theoretical results about the minimal degrees of invariants. Since the diagonalizable supergroups enjoy more complicated structural properties, a cryptosystem based on them would be even more secured. In order to move to the supergroups, a better understanding of general linear supergroups was desired. We have established theoretical results describing and proving the linkage principle for these supergroups and we gained an understanding how are the composition factors of highest weight modules related. For the future work, we plan to implement the algorithm for the public-key cryptosystem that we have designed and test the speed of coding and test the security of the system by determining the time and space complexities of known attacks of the system.

In order to improve the effectiveness and safety of control systems, the problem of integrated fault diagnosis and control (IFDC) design has attracted significant attention in the recent years, both in the research and in the application domains. The integrated design unifies the control and diagnosis units into a single unit which leads to less complexity as compared to the case of separate designs. Nowadays, the IFDC modules are implemented on digital platforms. However, in almost all of these implementations, the IFDC task is executed periodically with a constant sampling period, which is called “time-triggering” sampling. However, the time-triggering sampling scheme produces many useless messages if the current sampled signal has not significantly changed in contrast to the previous sampled signal, which leads to a conservative usage of the communication bandwidth. This is especially disadvantageous in applications where the measured outputs and/or the actuator signals have to be transmitted over a shared (and possibly wireless) communication network, where the bandwidth of the network (and power consumption of the wireless radios) should be constrained. To mitigate the unnecessary waste of computation and communication resources in conventional time-triggered IFDC design, the problem of event-triggered integrated fault diagnosis and control (E-IFDC) for discrete-time linear systems is considered in this paper. A single E-IFDC module based on a dynamic filter is proposed which produces two signals, namely the residual and the control signals. The parameters of the E-IFDC module should be designed such that the effects of disturbances on the residual signals are minimized (for accomplishing the fault detection objective) subject to the constraint that the mapping matrix function from the faults to the residuals is equal to a pre- assigned diagonal mapping matrix (for accomplishing the fault isolation objective), while the effects of disturbances and faults on the specified control output are minimized (for accomplishing the fault-tolerant control objective). Two event-triggered conditions are proposed and designed to reduce the transmissions from the sensor to the E- IFDC module and from the E-IFDC module to the actuator. These event-triggered conditions determine whether the newly measured data or control output, respectively, should be transmitted or not. Indeed, the sensor measurement (controller output) is sent to the E-IFDC module (actuator) only when the difference between the latest transmitted sensor (controller) value and the current sensor measurement (controller output) is sufficiently large as compared to the current sensor (controller) value. This property reduces the burden on the network communication and saves the communication bandwidth in the network. Consequently, it is possible to significantly reduce the usage of communication resources for diagnosis and control tasks as compared to a conventional time-triggered IFDC approach. A multi-objective formulation of the problem is presented based on the H∞ and H- performance indices. The sufficient conditions for solvability of the problem are obtained in terms of linear matrix inequality (LMI) feasibility conditions. Indeed, the filter parameters and the event-triggered conditions are simultaneously obtained using strict LMI conditions. The main advantage of the proposed LMI formulation is that it is convex, and is therefore solved effectively using interior-point methods. Application of our methodology to a linearized model of the Subzero III ROV is presented to illustrate the effectiveness and capabilities of our proposed methodology. Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) are underwater robotic platforms that have become increasingly important tools in a wide range of applications including offshore oil operations, fisheries research, dam inspection, salvage operations, military applications, among others. Since transmission resources are limited under water, using an event-triggered scheme for communication is more efficient. Therefore, the results of this paper are applied for designing an event-triggered IFDC module for the Subzero III ROV.

This paper presents the blueprint for the design of a practical system that would promote sharing of ideas among researchers, to allow them to identify optimal partners, to protect their intellectual capital, to ensure attribution of their ideas and to create equitable sharing in the ownership and revenue of any eventual commercializable invention. The title, Crowd Inventing, reflects the fact that the signaling among researchers in search of best partners – the “crowd” – is itself an inventive element in their larger enterprise. The combination of legal and technological components that the Crowd Inventing system offers allows it to reduce the transaction costs of this search. It is an invention about the inventive process that promises theoretical and practical advantages that will hopefully attract research sponsors or private enterprise to invest in promising projects and to thereby better promote and reward innovation. Qatar's rich research environment and entrepreneurial aspirations make it an ideal forum to implement the Crowd Inventing system as a platform that will allow it to capitalize on its investments through commercialization of products and processes. Crowd Inventing is designed to help researchers and innovators:

• Find valuable complementary ideas and research collaborators that are missing from their research team and that threaten to impair or, worse still, cripple their project. The drive to commercialization of research, as well as the basic goal of ensuring attribution of one's research, confronts huge challenges when all the inventive elements are not part of one large enterprise that has designed its own proprietary signaling and invention protection system. The open community of researchers who publish in conferences and journals confronts these challenges, with the result that researchers engage in greater secrecy that limits communication and impairs collaboration and, if they do publish, of losing all attribution and commercial value to the inventor who builds a successful product on their ideas.

• Address the inability of intellectual property to protect against a downstream user's failure to attribute or share revenue. Intellectual property imposes little or no legal obligations on such users to attribute the source of the ideas they employ. It also focuses all reward on the last person to combine the inventive ideas into a final, commercializable product; there is no legal requirement of sharing revenues with contributors that fall outside its corporate or contractual network. Neither copyright nor trademark protect the functional ideas that a researcher discloses in his/her publications. These ideas are deemed to pass into the public domain to become free for competitors to use. Nor do they provide the researcher adequate protection against false attribution. As a result, a downstream user can pluck the idea from the public domain, use it without attributing its source, and even itself claim full attribution.

• Reach their patent goal. Patent law provides researchers with protection for their novel functional ideas, but its reduction-to-practice requirement means that the proprietary reward that it offers is very distant from many research projects. In many areas of innovation the authors lack the collaboration and capital to put together all of the pieces, with the result that the entity adding the last needed element can capture the full commercial benefit of the invention. In a world where ever-increasingly complex projects result in cost-prohibitive and prolonged research and the demanding search for collaborators to stay the course to eventual invention, the patent hurdle produces huge unintended consequences. Increased secrecy is one consequence and this has strong negative effects on publication and on the signaling required to find the missing elements for successful invention. Large enterprises whose rich financial and human capital is congregated in a single corporate silo often emerge as the winners in this environment – and when they do achieve a patent they have the financial resources to protect and defend their resulting property rights. However, academic or disbursed research communities do not typically have these resources or systems in place to compete. Even though their decentralized structure and flexibility mean they are increasingly the sites of path-breaking discovery, they are unable to successful achieve patenting and their ideas pass to others to commercialize them or to fade into obscurity. The proposed Crowd Inventing system crafts a legal and a technological solution that offers the following practical solutions to research and innovation problems:

• The signaling mechanism needed for successful collaboration; more effective sharing of ideas; full attribution to all contributors; equitable sharing in the rewards of patenting; and the enhanced ability to attract financial investment to projects. Researchers that subscribe to Crown Inventing would contractually enter the system through a master agreement that defines and protects member's attribution and revenue-sharing rights. Underlying this is a technological information-sharing platform whereby data is shared in standardized form and access is monitored and controlled using a system of digital management that would help secure and control information flows. The researcher submitting the information (the source) could track access to its information and ensure attribution, while the user could more easily verify the lineage of ideas and link it more closely to the reputation of its source. Thereby both sides could gain. The Crowd Inventing master agreement would also supply contractual templates to provide standardized resolution of the revenue sharing aspects of any resulting joint ventures and its trained intermediaries could facilitate agreements, either of which could be less expensive than employing the lawyers and the other professionals that typically exact heavy taxes on every venture or technology transfer transaction.

• The means to find out the conditions under which the research data was generated and to identify and approach the source through the clearing function of the information sharing system. Once the parties had identified themselves they could begin to work together to learn more about one another's work and address the terms of any relationship between them based on this information. The Crown Inventing System anticipates the contractual needs of their relationship facilitating an ensuing master agreement which avoids the potentially long delays of initial contracting. (If necessary the identity of the source could be held back until a formal approach is made by the interested party to the source).

• The apparatus to more successfully monitor and publish the reputations of the members of its user community. Crowd Inventing would facilitate a community where not only the reputation of products (academic or applied) could be charted by registering the number of transactions, but also the reputations of companies and academic labs as joint venture partners (their good faith and candor) could be logged thereby creating a system of accountability and verifiable reputation.

• The means to create a “market” based on failed experiments conducted by other researchers in related areas. While the Crown Inventing system is designed principally to promote maximum innovation and successful invention, it could also be adapted to create a “market” based on failed or stalled experiments conducted by other researchers in related areas. Currently there is a dearth of communication within the scientific community concerning unsuccessful experiments and failed hypotheses. Only successful experiments are published; scientists do not expose their failures perhaps out of fear that it will lower their prestige and because of a lack of an appropriate, widely-disseminated forum for this purpose. The Crowd Inventing system could be used to address sharing of information about failed or shelved experiments as readily as it could regarding successful experiments, and in the process it could create market value for such information.

• A useful complement to the internal governance structure of large corporations. While it is contemplated that the Crown Inventing system would be ideally suited to communities of scattered researchers or small independent companies, it could also be employed as a useful complement to the internal governance structure of large corporations. Such enterprises confront at the level of their inter-departmental relationships, problems of how to share information between departments, employee attribution, what budgets to set for each department, and the departments, compensations, which the Crown Inventing system could address. In summary, Crowd Inventing aspires to offer the research community a solution to the impediments to collaborative communication and the inequities of an intellectual property system that rewards the last contributor and that fails to protect attribution of prior inputs. In the process it promises to help researchers more easily find the collaborators and commercial funding and other resources they need to reach invention. It is itself an academic-conceived invention that with adequate community or commercial funding could become a reality that makes Qatar a leader in facilitating innovation. This proposal is led by Professor Clinton Francis, the Founding Dean of the Hamad bin Khalifa University, who is joined by HBKU Juris Doctorate students who will assist in conducting the research for, and design of, Crowd Inventing – an innovation about innovation.

Data analytics is at the core of any organization that wants to obtain measurable value from its growing data assets. Data analytic tasks may range from simple to extremely complex pipelines, such as data extraction, transformation and loading, online analytical processing, graph processing, and machine learning (ML). Following the dictum “one size does not fit all”, academia and industry have embarked on a race of developing data processing platforms for supporting all of these different tasks, e.g., DBMSs and MapReduce-like systems. Semantic completeness, high performance and scalability are key objectives of such platforms. While there have been major achievements in these objectives, users are still faced with many road-blocks.

MOTIVATING EXAMPLE

The first roadblock is that applications are tied to a single processing platform, making the migration of an application to new and more efficient platforms a difficult and costly task. As a result, the common practice is to re-implement an application on top of a new processing platform; e.g., Spark SQL and MLlib are the Spark counterparts of Hive and Mahout. The second roadblock is that complex analytic tasks usually require the combined use of different processing platforms where users will have to manually combine the results to draw a conclusion.

Consider, for example, the Oil & Gas industry and the need to produce reports by using SQL or some statistical method to analyze the data. A single oil company can produce more than 1.5TB of diverse data per day. Such data may be structured or unstructured and come from heterogeneous sources, such as sensors, GPS devices, and other measuring instruments. For instance, during the exploration phase, data has to be acquired, integrated, and analyzed in order to predict if a reservoir would be profitable. Tens of thousands downhole sensors in exploratory wells produce real-time seismic structured data for monitoring resources and environmental conditions. Users integrate these data with the physical properties of the rocks to visualize volume and surface renderings. From these visualizations, geologists and geophysicists formulate hypotheses and verify them with ML models, such as regression and classification. Training of the models is performed with historical drilling and production data, but oftentimes users also have to go over unstructured data, such as notes exchanged by emails or text from drilling reports filed in a cabinet. Therefore, an application supporting such a complex analytic pipeline should access several sources for historical data (relational, but also text and semi-structured), remove the noise from the streaming data coming from the sensors, and run both traditional (such as SQL) and statistical analytics (such as ML algorithms).

RESEARCH CHALLENGES

Similar examples can be drawn from other domains such as healthcare: e.g., IBM reported that North York hospital needs to process 50 diverse datasets, which are on a dozen different internal systems. These applications show the need for complex analytics coupled with a diversity of processing platforms, which raises several challenges. These challenges relate to the choices users are faced with on where to process their data, each choice with possibly orders of magnitude differences in terms of performance. For example, one may aggregate large datasets with traditional queries on top of a relational database such as PostgreSQL, but the subsequent analytic tasks might be much faster if executed on Spark. However, users have to be intimate with the intricacies of the processing platform to achieve high efficiency and scalability. Moreover, once a decision is taken, users may still end up tied up to a particular platform. As a result, migrating the data analytics stack to a different, more efficient processing platform often becomes a nightmare. In the above example, one has to re-implement the myriad of PostgreSQL-based applications on top of Spark.

RHEEM VISION

To tackle these challenges, we are building RHEEM, a system that provides both platform independence and interoperability across multiple platforms. RHEEM acts as a proxy between user applications and existing data processing platforms. It is fully based on user-defined functions (UDFs) to provide adaptability as well as extensibility. The major advantages of RHEEM are its ability to free applications and users from being tied to a single data processing platform (platform-independence) and provides interoperability across multiple platforms (multi-platform execution).

RHEEM exposes a three-layer data processing abstraction that sits between user applications and data processing platforms (e.g., Hadoop or Spark). The application layer models all application-specific logic; the core layer provides the intermediate representation between applications and processing platforms; and the platform layer embraces all processing platforms. In contrast to DBMSs, RHEEM decouples physical and execution levels. This separation allows applications to express physical plans in terms of algorithmic needs only, without being tight to a particular processing platform. The communication among these levels is enabled by operators defined as UDFs. Providing platform-independence is the first step towards realizing multi-platform task execution. RHEEM can receive a complex analytic task, seamlessly divide it into subtasks and choose the best platform on which each subtask should be executed.

RHEEM ARCHITECTURE

The three layers separation allows applications to express a physical plan in terms of algorithmic needs only, without being tied to a particular processing platform. We detail these levels below.

Application Layer. A logical operator is an abstract UDF that acts as an application-specific unit of data processing. In other words, one can see a logical operator as a template whereby users provide the logic of their analytic tasks. Such abstraction enables both (i) ease-of-use by hiding all the implementation details from users, and (ii) high performance by allowing several optimizations, e.g., seamless distributed execution. A logical operator works on data quanta, which are the smallest units of data elements from the input datasets. For instance, a data quantum represents a tuple in the input dataset or a row in a matrix. This fine-grained data model allows RHEEM to apply a logical operator in a highly parallel fashion and thus achieve better scalability and performance.

Example 1: Consider a developer who wants to offer end users logical operators to implement various machine learning algorithms. The developer defines five such operators: (i) Transform, for normalizing input datasets, (ii) Stage, for initializing algorithm-specific parameters, e.g., initial cluster centroids, (iii) Compute, for computations required by the ML algorithm, e.g., finding the nearest centroid of a point, (iv) Update, for setting global values of an algorithm, e.g., centroids, for the next iteration, and (v) Loop, for specifying the stopping condition. Users implement algorithms such as SVM, K-means, and linear/logistic regression, using these operators.

The application optimizer translates logical operators into physical operators that will form the physical plan at the core layer.

Core Layer. This layer exposes a pool of physical operators, each representing an algorithmic decision for executing an analytic task. A physical operator is a platform-independent implementation of a logical operator. These operators are available to the developer to deploy a new application on top of RHEEM. Developers can still define new operators as needed.

Example 2: In the above ML example, the application optimizer maps Transform to a Map physical operator and Compute to a GroupBy physical operator. RHEEM provides two different implementations for GroupBy: the SortGroupBy (sort-based) and HashGroupBy (hash-based) operators from which the optimizer of the core level will have to choose.

Once an application has produced a physical plan for a given task, RHEEM divides the physical plan of a task into task atoms, i.e., sub-tasks, which are the units of execution. A task atom (a part of the execution plan) is a sub-task to be executed on a single data processing platform. It then translates the tasks atoms into an execution plan by optimizing each task atom according to a target platform. Finally, it schedules each task atom to be executed on its corresponding processing platform. Therefore, in contrast to DBMSs, RHEEM produces execution plans to run in multiple data processing platforms.

Platform Layer. At this layer, execution operators define how a task is executed on the underlying processing platform. An execution operator is the platform-dependent implementation of a physical operator. RHEEM relies on existing data processing platforms to run input tasks. In contrast to a logical operator, an execution operator works on multiple data quanta rather than a single one. This enables the processing of multiple data quanta with a single function call, hence reducing overhead.

Example 3: Again in the above ML example, the MapPartitions and ReduceByKey execution operators for Spark are one way to perform Transform and Compute.

Defining mappings between execution and physical operators is the developers’ responsibility whenever a new platform is plugged to the core. In the current prototype of RHEEM, the mappings are hard-coded. Our goal is to rely on a mapping structure to model the correspondences between operators together with context information. Such context is needed for the effective and efficient execution of each operator. For instance, the Compute logical operator maps to two different physical operators (SortGroupBy and HashGroupBy). In this case, a developer could use the context to provide hints to the optimizer for choosing the right physical operator at runtime. Developers will provide only a declarative specification of such mappings; the system will use them to translate physical operators to execution operators. A simple and extensible operator mapping is crucial as it enables developers to easily provide extensions and optimizations via new operators.

PRELIMINARY RESULTS

We have implemented two applications on top of RHEEM, one for data cleaning, BigDansing [1], and one for machine learning. The performance of both applications are encouraging and already demonstrate the advantages of our vision.

Our results show that, in both cases, RHEEM enable orders of magnitude better performance than baseline system. These improvements come from a series of optimization done at the application layer as well as at the core layer. As an example of optimization at the core layer, we extended the set of physical operators with a new physical operator for joins, called IEJoin [2], This new physical operator provides a fast algorithm for joins containing only inequality conditions.

REFERENCES:

[1] Z. Khayyat, I. F. Ilyas, A. Jindal, S. Madden, M. Ouzzani, P. Papotti, J.-A. Quian-Ruiz, N. Tang, and S. Yin. BigDansing: A System for Big Data Cleansing. In ACM SIGMOD, pages 1215-1230, 2015.

[2] Z. Khayyat, W. Lucia, M. Singh, M. Ouzzani, P. Papotti, J.-A. Quiane-Ruiz, N. Tang, and P. Kalnis. Lightning Fast and Space Efficient Inequality Joins. PVLDB 8(13): 2074-2085, 2015.

The Web is barely 25 years old but in that time it has changed every aspect of our lives. Because of its sociotechnical rather than purely engineered nature, not only is the Web changing society but also we shape the way the technology evolves. The whole process is inherently co-constituted and as such its evolution is unlike any other system. In order to understand how the Web might evolve in the future - for good or bad - we need to study how it has evolved since its inception and the associated emergent behaviours. We call this new research discipline Web Science [1,2], and it is important for all our futures that we urgently address its major research challenges.

We are fast becoming part of a world of digital inter-connectivity, where devices such as smartphones, watches, fitness trackers, and household goods are part of a growing network, capable of sharing data and information. Increasingly, the Web has become the ubiquitous interface to access this network of devices. From sensors, to mobile applications, to fitness devices, these devices are transmitting their data to - often - centralised pools of data, which then become available via Web services. The sheer scale of this data leads to a rich set of high-volume, real-time streams of human activity, which are often is made publicly consumable (potentially at a cost) via some API. For academia, the combination of these sources are providing social scientists and digital ethnographers a far richer understanding of society, and how we as individuals operate.

These streams represent a global network of human and machine communication, interaction, and transaction, and with the right analytical methods, may contain valuable research and commercial insights. In domains such as health and fitness for example, the aggregation of data from mobile devices is supporting the transition towards the quantified-self, and offers rich insight into the health and well-being of individuals, with the potential of diagnosing or decreasing disease.

Why the need for Web Observatories?

Studying the Web provides us with critical insights about how we as individuals and society operate in the digital world. The actions, communications, interactions, and transactions produced by humans and machines has the potential to offer rich insight into our world, allowing us to better understand how we operate at a micro and macro scale. However, there are a number of barriers that prevent researchers from making the most of those data resources.

Herein lies a challenge, and a great opportunity. We are now in a position where the technologies used within the big data processing pipeline are maturing, as are the methods we use to analyse data to provide valuable insights. Yet, overshadowing these benefits are issues of data access, control, and ownership. Whilst the data being produced continue to grow, their availability beyond the walled-gardens of the data holder - whether commercial or institutional - reduce the full potential of analysis envisaged in the big data era.

(a) Datasets are distributed across different domains (b) Metadata about those datasets are not available or are in different vocabularies/formats, (c) Searching or for or inside datasets is not possible, (d) Applying analytics on one or more datasets requires copying them into a central location, (e) Datasets are often provided in the context of specific disciplines lacking the metadata and enrichment that could make them available in other disciplines, (f) The nature of some of the datasets often requires access control in the interest of privacy. (g) There is a need for engines that lower the barrier of engagement with analytics for individuals, organisations and interdisciplinary research communities by supporting the easy application of analytics across datasets without requiring them to be copied into a central location, (h) There is a need for services enabling the publication and sharing of analytical tools within and across interdisciplinary communities.

Addressing the challenges described above, we have introduced the Web Observatory [3], a globally distributed infrastructure that enables users to share data with each other, whilst retaining control over who can view, access, query, and download their data. At its core, a Web Observatory comprises of a list of architectural principles that describe a scalable solution to enable controlled access to heterogeneous forms of historical and real-time data, visualisations, and analytics. In order to handle these new forms of big, and small data, significant effort has gone into developing technologies capable of storing, querying, and analysing high-volume datasets - or streams - in a timely fashion, returning useful insights of social activity and behaviour.

A Global Network of Web Observatories

The Web Observatory (WO) project, developed under the auspices of the Web Science Trust, aims to develop the standards and services that will interlink a number of existing or emergent Web Observatories to enable the sharing, discoverability and use of public or private datasets and analytics across Web Observatories, on a large, distributed scale (http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/big.2014.0035). It involves the publication or sharing of both datasets and analytic or visualisation tools (http://webscience.org/web-observatory/). At the same time, it involves the development of appropriate standards to enable the discovery, use, combination and persistence of those resources; effort in the direction of standards is already underway in the W3C Web Observatory community group (http://www.w3.org/community/webobservatory/).

International research collaboration is one of the primary goals of creating a network of Web Observatories. There has already been significant effort in creating a number of Web Observatory nodes globally [4,5]

In this paper will describe an instance of the Web Observatory, the Southampton Web Observatory (SUWO) and how it is being applied both at Southampton and at other institutions in areas such as integrated health management in particular in support of an aging population

We believe that the true potential of the Web Observatory vision will be realised when the different observatories become part of a global network of Wide Web of Observatories, allowing cross-observatory querying and analysis. Only through working through a set of initial application areas, we will show the immediate value that the Web Observatory platform will provide, from the sharing of datasets and resources, to improving international collaboration and research opportunities as a result of the raised awareness of institutional resources.

References

[1] Berners-Lee, Tim, Hall, Wendy, Hendler, James, Shadbolt, Nigel and Weitzner, Danny Creating a Science of the Web. Science, 313, (5788), 769-771.

[2] Hendler, James, Shadbolt, Nigel, Hall, Wendy, Berners-Lee, Tim and Weitzner, Daniel (Web science: an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the Web. Communications of the ACM, 51, (7), 60-69.

[3] Tiropanis, Thanassis, Hall, Wendy, Shadbolt, Nigel, De Roure, David, Contractor, Noshir and Hendler, Jim, The Web Science Observatory. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 28, (2), 100-104.

[4] Tinati, Ramine, Wang, Xin, Tiropanis, Thanassis and Hall, Wendy, Building a real-time web observatory. IEEE Internet Computing (In Press).

[5] Wang, Xin, Tinati, Ramine, Mayer, Wolfgang, Rowland-Campbell, Anni, Tiropanis, Thanassis, Brown, Ian, Hall, Wendy and O'Hara, Kieron, 2Building a web observatory for south Australian government: supporting an age friendly population. In, 3rd International workshop on Building Web Observatories (BWOW), 10pp.

Mathematicians considered lattices as early as the first half of the nineteenth century, e.g. Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss and Joseph-Louis Lagrange explored point lattices in small dimensions. After the pioneering work of Hermann Minkowski around 1900, lattices were extensively studied in the twentieth century until engineering applications in the areas of digital communications, data compression, and cryptography were recently discovered. Nowadays it is admitted that lattices are good for almost everything, including many new fields such as physical-layer security, post-quantum cryptographic primitives, and coding for wireless mobile channels.

In this talk, after introducing the mathematical background for point lattices in multi-dimensional Euclidean spaces, we shall describe how lattices are used to guarantee reliable and secure communications. The talk will include strong technical material but it is intended to a large audience including engineers and scientists from all areas. The talk shall also present new results on lattices found in Qatar under projects NPRP 6-784-2-329 and NPRP 5-597-2-241 funded by QNRF.

Lattices are mathematical structures with specific algebraic and topological properties. We consider the simplest form of lattices, i.e. lattices in real Euclidean spaces equipped with the standard scalar product. In communication theory, lattices can play different roles in the processing and the transmission of information. They are suitable for vector quantization of analog sources, for channel coding as coded modulations, and also for joint source-channel coding. In the recent literature, lattices are found to be good tools in network coding and secure coding at the physical layer. More information on lattice for communications can be found in [1] and references therein. A lattice is a Z-module of the Euclidean vector space R^N or equivalently it is a discrete additive subgroup of R^N. A new family of lattices, referred to as Generalized Low-Density Lattices (GLD) was built in Qatar. GLD lattices are obtained by Construction A from non-binary GLD codes. Their impressive performance and analysis can be found in [2].

In his seminal paper [3], Miklos Ajtai showed how lattices could be used as cryptographic primitives. Since Ajtai's result, lattice-based cryptography became very popular in the cryptography community. One important area is Learning With Errors (LWE), see [4]. LWE is a clear example of elementary mathematical problem with an algorithmically complex solution. Thanks to its intrinsic connection with lattice-based problems that are known to be hard also for quantum algorithms, LWE has raised much interest in the last decade, it is part of the so-called post-quantum cryptography. Another area in lattice-based cryptography is GGH. This is the first McEliece-like scheme for lattices, referred to as GGH cryptosystem, and was proposed by Goldreich, Goldwasser, and Halevi in 1997. GGH is a lattice equivalent of the McEliece cryptosystem based on error-correcting codes. Many other cryptosystems based on lattices were investigated and proposed by several researchers. In this talk, after presenting how lattices are used for reliable communications, we also present how lattices are used to secure data communications. The attached slides constitute a draft mainly focusing on the communication aspects of lattices. These slides will be completed by a second part on security based on lattices.

[1] R. Zamir, Lattice Coding for Signals and Networks, Cambridge, 2014.

[2] J.J. Boutros, N. di Pietro, and Y.C. Huang, “Spectral thinning in GLD lattices”, Information Theory and Applications Workshop (ITA), La Jolla, pp. 1-9, Feb. 2015. Visit http://www.ita.ucsd.edu/workshop/15/files/paper/paper_31.pdf

[3] M. Ajtai, “Generating Hard Instances of Lattice Problems,” Proc. of the Twenty-Eighth Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, pp. 99-108. doi:10.1145/237814.237838, 1996.

[4] V. Lyubashevsky, C. Peikert, and O. Regev, “A Toolkit for Ring-LWE Cryptography,” in EUROCRYPT, pp. 35-54, 2013.

This paper presents an abstract of the final phase of an on-going research project aiming at investigating the antecedents and consequences of research and innovating within Lebanese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The role of training personnel and introducing supporting activities in moderating the relationship between R & D and introducing knowledge management systems within Lebanese small- medium –sized innovation in Lebanon still suffer from funding shortages, short of IT personnel training and lack of the ability to adequately use existing knowledge. Ashrafi, and Murtaza suggest that “Large organizations have enough resources to adopt ICT while on the other hand SMEs have limited financial and human resources to adopt ICT” (Ashrafi and Murtaza, 2008 P. 126). Even though, Lebanese government is trying to create a digital economy, Lebanon ranked 94th out of 144 countries on the Network Readiness Index in 2012 and “In the Arab world, Lebanon ranked in 10th position, right behind Morocco (89th worldwide), but right ahead of Algeria (131st Worldwide)” (BankMed, 2014; P.19). What it is imperative, however, to note here is that “SMEs have been recognized as an important source of innovative product and process” (HanGyeol et al 2015; P.319). It is widely believed that “Research and development (R&D) intensity is crucial for increasing the innovative capacity of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)” (Nunes et al 2010; P.292). Most interestingly, “the Labour Market Survey (2001) showed a clear relationship between business failure and a lack of planning or training by SMEs” (Javawarna et al 2007; P.321). Based on existing review of literature, it is found that business expansion oblige SMEs to adopt new and original information technology solutions. Simultaneously, it is suggested that “Lack of training and skills of IT in organizations will result in a limited use of IT and lack of success in reaping benefits from computer hardware and software in organizations” (Ghobakhloo et al 2012, P.44). All that is said is true, “Information technologies (IT) have become one of the most important infrastructural elements for SMEs” (Uwizeyemungu and Raymond, 2011 P.141). As a result, it is generally believed that information technology has an imperative role to play in gaining innovation and competitiveness for SMEs. What is more, it has always been recognized that investing in technology is necessary but insufficient by itself. An imperative need exists for businesses of all sizes to protect their customers by protecting themselves from cyber attack. This is to be accomplished via changing the attitude towards cyber security and the development of cyber culture. Valli and his associates note that “There is little literature available about the ability of SMEs to deploy, use and monitor cyber security countermeasures” (Valli et al 2014;P. 71). Borum and his colleagues believe that “Industries and commercial sectors must collaborate with the government to share and disseminate information, strengthen cyber intelligence capabilities and prevent future cyber incidents” (Borm et al 2015 P.329). Uwizeyemungu and Raymond suggest that “IT adoption and assimilation in these firms should be the product of an alignment between the strategic orientation and competencies that characterize their organizational context on one hand, and specific elements in their technological and environmental contexts on the other hand” (Uwizeyemungu and Raymond 2011, P.153). A study by Ghobakhloo and his colleague “suggested that through the passing of cyber laws by governments to regulate and secure online transaction activities, and also by providing appropriate anti-virus and/or firewall/security protocols for SMEs by vendors and service providers to reduce or prevent the attacks of hackers, viruses and spyware, the perceived risk of IT adoption by these businesses, should be alleviated” (Ghobakhloo et al 2012, P.57). To lead the way to successful innovation within SMEs, this study will be a significant effort in promoting the key sustainability issues affecting innovation within SMEs. The best way to start is by understanding innovation within the Lebanese SMEs. A study such as the one conducted here is recommended by experts in this area. Armbruster and his associates noted that “There is still plenty of research to do before organizational innovation surveys achieve the degree of homogeneity and standardization that advanced R&D and technical innovation surveys possess” (Armbruster et al 2008, P.656). The purpose of this investigation is to determine the relative importance of introducing supporting activities, training personnel and R & D on the variation in introducing knowledge management systems within Lebanese SMEs. To this end, The aim of this project is to investigate the adoption of existing technologies to new applications in a concrete SME business case in addition to what motivate innovation within Lebanese SMEs and the challenges and barriers facing SMEs in adopting innovation. The population of the study consists of all SMEs in Lebanon. Most of SMEs are family businesses and as to be expected “Family involvement in a firm has an impact on many aspects of organizational behaviour” (Cromile and O'Sullivan, 1999, p. 77). Morris and his colleagues argue that “family firms violate a tent of contemporary models of organizations, namely, the separation of ownership from management” (Morris et al, 1996, p. 68) This leads to a lot of complications including the succession problems, role conflict and role ambiguity that may represent major barriers to adopting IT and innovation within SMEs. The sample for this study is relatively large sample and the instrument for collecting the primary data was a well constructed questionnaire. Cronbach's alpha and factor analysis were used to establish the reliability and construct validity of the instrument. Findings of the study show that introducing new or significantly improved supporting activities, training personnel, having an employee who is fully in charge of the website and having an R&D department are the significant factors affecting introducing new or significantly improved knowledge management systems to better use or exchange information, knowledge and skills within Lebanese SMEs. Findings of this study are in line with previous findings. Schienstock and associates believe that firms have to develop their competence to learn and innovate by introducing new knowledge management practices and organizational restructuring. In fact, they criticized the traditional approach in the classical studies of “the so-called linear model, traditional innovation policy focuses primarily on the creation of new scientific and technical knowledge, supposing some kind of automatic transformation of this new knowledge into new products” (Schienstock et al 2009, PP.49–50). What is more, Molero and García believe that “the theory about factors affecting firms' innovation has still a long way to go because the analytical object is complex and difficult to set limits for” (Molero and García 2008, P.20). This project has implications for policy making, decision making and recommendations for further research.

References:

Armbruster, H. Bikfalvi, A. Kinkel, S. and Lay, G (2008) “Organizational innovation: The challenge of measuring non-technical innovation in large-scale surveys”, Technovation 28, 644–657. The full text is available at: www.sciencedirect.com

Ashrafi, R. and Murtaza, M. (2008), “Use and Impact of ICT on SMEs in Oman.” The Electronic Journal Information Systems Evaluation Volume 11 Issue 3, pp. 125–138. The full text is available at: www.ejise.com

BankMed (April 2014) “ANALYSIS OF LEBANON'S ICT SECTOR”, P.19. The full text is available at: http://www.bankmed.com.lb/LinkClick aspx?fileticket = xGkIHVHVrM4%3D&portalid = 0

Borum, R.; Felker, J.; Kern, S.; Dennesen, K; Feyes, T. (2015), “Strategic cyber intelligence”, Information & Computer Security, Vol. 23 Iss: 3, pp.317–332. The full text is available at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com.ezproxy.aub.edu.lb/doi/10.1108/ICS-09-2014–0064

Cromile, S. and O'Sullivan, S. (1999), “Women as managers in family firms”, Women in Management Review, Vol. 14 No. 3, pp.76–88. The full text is available at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/09649429910269884

Ghobakhloo, M.; Hong, T.S.; Sabouri, M.S.; Zulkifli, N. (2012), “Strategies for successful information technology adoption in small and medium-sized enterprises”. Information 3, 36–67. The full text is available at: file:///C:/Users/PC/Desktop/information-03-00036%20(2).pdf

Hangyol, S. Yanghon, C. Dongphil, C and Chungwon, W. (2015), “Value capture mechanism: R&D productivity comparison of SMEs”, Management Decision, Vol. 53 Iss: 2, pp.318–337. The full text is available at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com.ezproxy.aub.edu.lb/doi/abs/10.1108/MD-02-2014–0089

Javawarna, D., Macpherson, A. and Wilson, A. (2007), “Training commitment and performance in manufacturing SMEs: Incidence, intensity and approaches”, Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, Vol. 14 Iss: 2, pp.321–338. The full text is available at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com.ezproxy.aub.edu.lb/doi/abs/10.1108/14626000710746736

Molero, J. and García, A. (2008), “Factors affecting innovation revisited”, WP05/08, PP:1–30. The full text is available at: https://www.ucm.es/data/cont/docs/430-2013-10-27-2008%20WP05-08.pdf

Morris, M. H. Williams, R. W. Nel, D. (1996), “Factors influencing family business succession”, International Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research. Vol. 2 No. 3, pp.60–81. The full text is available at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/13552559610153261

Nunes, P.M. Serrasqueiro, Z. Mendes, L. Sequeira, T.N (2010), “Relationship between growth and R&D intensity in low-tech and high-tech Portuguese service SMEs”, Journal of Service Management, Vol. 21 Iss: 3, pp.291–320. The full text is available at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com.ezproxy.aub.edu.lb/doi/pdfplus/10.1108/09564231011050779

Schienstock, G. Rantanen, E. and TyniIAREG, P. (April 2009) “Organizational innovations and new management practices: Their diffusion and influence on firms' performance. Results from a Finnish firm survey”. IAREG Working Paper 1.2.d. PP. 1–64. The full text is available at: http://www.iareg.org/fileadmin/iareg/media/papers/WP_IAREG_1.2d.pdf

Uwizeyemungu, S. and Raymond, L. (2011), “Information Technology Adoption and Assimilation: Towards a Research Framework for Service Sector SMEs,” Journal of Service Science and Management, Vol. 4 No. 2, pp. 141-157, doi: 10.4236/jssm.2011.42018. The full text is available at: http://www.scirp.org/Journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID5229 World Economic Forum (2015), Global Information Technology Report 2015. The full text is available at: http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Global_IT_Report_2015.pdf

Valli, C. Martinus, I. and Johnstone, M. (Aug 2, 2014), “Small to Medium Enterprise Cyber Security Awareness: an initial survey of Western Australian Business”, The 2014 International Conference on Security and Management, At Las Vegas, Nevada, PP:71-75. The full text is available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264417744_Small_to_Medium_Enterprise_Cyber_Security_Awareness_an_initial_survey_of_Western_Australian_Business

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is the eighth largest oil producing country in the world. It has about 800 km of coastline. Beyond the coastline, its territorial water and exclusive economic zone have very rich and extensive marine life and natural resources. Most of the oil and natural gas in the UAE is produced from the offshore oil fields. Maritime oil exploration and transportation has increased more steeply due to the expansion of the world crude oil and natural gas production, and the trend of using larger-shaped and higher-speed container vessels. The probability of oil rigs pollution, burning and explosion continues to rise. All these factors stimulate a greater danger for vessels, oil operation safety and maritime environment. Therefore, maritime security and environmental protection are of great interest, both from the academia and petroleum industry point of view. The continuous surveillance of the offshore oil fields is essential to secure the production flow, avoid trespassing and prevent vandalism from intruders and pirates. With the emergence of the new technologies such as maritime wireless mesh network (MWMN) and camera sensor network (CSN), maritime surveillance systems have been gradually improving due to the accuracy, reliability and efficiency of the maritime data acquisition systems. However, in order to realize the oil operation security, it is necessary to control and implement a dynamic system to monitor the maritime environment. The monitoring objects include vessels, fishery boats, pollution, navigational and sailing conditions. By the same token, the legacy monitoring systems such as very-high frequency (VHF) communication, marine navigational radar, vessel traffic service (VTS) and automatic identification system (AIS) are still insufficient to satisfy the increasing demand of the maritime surveillance. The objective of the paper is to provide full-view coverage CSN for a triangular grid based deployment and to reduce the total transmission power of the image to cope with the limited available power in the CSN. The rough and random movements of the sea surface can lead to a time-varying uncovered area by displacing the CSN from its initial location. Thus, it is important to investigate and analyze the effects of the sea waves on the CSN to provide full-view coverage in such complex environments. The main challenges in the deployment of the CSN are the dynamic maritime environment and the time-varying full-view coverage provided by the sea waves. Therefore, quasi-mobile platforms such as buoys are envisaged to hold the camera sensor nodes. The buoys will be nailed at the sea floor to limit the movement of the buoys due to the sea waves. In addition, cooperative transmission method has been proposed to reduce the total transmission power of the image in the CSN. A CSN is formed by autonomous, self-organized ad-hoc camera sensor nodes that are equipped with wireless communication devices, processing unit and power supply. The design, implementation and deployment of a CSN for maritime surveillance stimulate new challenges different to that which exist on the land, as the maritime environment hinders the development of such a network.

The main differences are summarized as follows:

• Dynamic aspect of the maritime environment which requires rigorous levels of device protection.

• Deployment characteristic of a CSN in maritime environment which is highly affected by wind direction and speed, sea wave, and tide.

• Requirement of flotation and anchoring platforms for a CSN and the possible vandalism from intruders and pirates.

• Coverage problem of a CSN due to the random and rough sea movement.

• High energy consumption if battery-power based cameras are used continuously.

• Communication signals are highly attenuated by the constant sea movement.

In this context, CSNs with ubiquitous and substantive camera sensor nodes can be utilized to monitor offshore oil fields to secure the production flow, avoid trespassing and vandalism from intruders and pirates. However, camera sensor nodes can generate various views of the same target if they are captured at different viewpoints if the image is taken near or at a frontal viewpoint, then, the target will be more likely to be recognized by the recognition system. It is fundamental to understand how the coverage of a given camera depends on different network parameters to better design numerous application scenarios. The coverage of a particular CSN represents the quality of surveillance provided by the CSN. As the angle between the target's facing direction and the camera's viewing direction increases, the detection rate drops severely. Consequently, the camera's viewing direction has a considerable effect on the quality of surveillance in a CSN. Recently, a novel concept, which is called full-view coverage, has been introduced to characterize the intrinsic property of camera sensor nodes and assess the coverage in CSNs. A target is full-view covered if its facing direction is always within the scope of a camera, regardless of the target's actual facing direction. Simply, the underlying contribution of full-view coverage tackles the pledge of capturing the target's face image. Consequently, designing a CSN with full-view coverage is of major importance, as the network does not only provide the detection of a target, but also the recognition of it. In many network configurations, camera sensor nodes are not mobile and they remain stationary after the initial deployment. In a stationary CSN, when the deployment characteristic and sensing model for the CSN are defined, the coverage can be deduced and remain unchanged over time. In order to address the hostile maritime environment, there has been a strong desire to deploy sensors mounted on quasi-mobile platforms such as buoys. Such quasi-mobile CSNs are extremely beneficial for offshore oil field surveillance where buoys move with the sea waves. Hence, the coverage of a quasi-mobile CSN depends not only on the initial network deployment, but also on the mobility pattern of the CSN. Nevertheless, the full-view coverage under a quasi-mobile CSN in maritime network has not been investigated. This problem is pivotal for the network design parameters and application scenarios of CSNs where conventional deployment characteristics such as air-drop fail or is not appropriate in a maritime environment. Since a priori knowledge of the terrain is available, a grid-based deployment can be utilized for the given terrain. The endeavor to design a practical mobility pattern for CSNs gives rise to model the cable attached to the buoy as a spring. In this practical mobility pattern, buoys start from an initial coordinate assignment, then oscillate based on spring force, sea wave, wind direction and speed and ultimately converge to a consistent solution. Specifically, this mobility pattern is based on two stages. The first stage is the effects of sea wave, wind direction and speed that move a buoy. The second stage is the spring reaction, based on the previous effects. Then, the design concept is followed and extended to develop a mobility pattern for CSNs in maritime environment. A CSN is considered that constitutes of a small number of buoys whose locations are initially known and consecutively their locations will be derived based on spring relaxation technique. With this technique, coverage issues arisen in a CSN and design a cooperative transmission method to reduce the total transmission power in the CSN are studied. One primary problem is how to design a realistic sea wave model for a given deployed CSN to achieve full-view coverage. Compared with the traditional sea wave model which assumes sine wave model for simplicity analysis, there are two elements that increase the complexity of the problem in a realistic sea wave model. First, the force that acts on the surface of the sea, which is supposed to be the main driving force for the creation of waves in deep water. Second, the force from the sea surface and ground interaction, which is the main contributing force near shoreline, however, this type of force becomes dominant in deep water when seaquakes occur. The realistic sea wave model should encounter the extruding of a two dimensional sine wave model into a three dimensional sea wave model. However, there should be some order of variation along the wave propagation direction for the finite wide waves. In conventional wireless sensor networks (WSNs), scalar phenomena can be traced using thermal or acoustic sensor nodes. In camera sensor networks (CSNs), images and videos can significantly enrich the retrieved information from the monitored environment, and hence provide more practicality and efficiency to WSNs. Recently; there has been enormous development of applications in surveillance, environment monitoring and biomedicine for CSNs that has brought a new spectrum to the coverage problem. It is indispensable to understand how the coverage of a camera depends on various network parameters to better design numerous application scenarios. In many network configurations, cameras are not mobile and they remain stationary after the initial deployment. However, different from a stationary CSN, maritime environment poses challenges on the deployment characteristic and mobility pattern for CSNs. In stationary CSNs, when the deployment characteristic and sensing model are defined, the coverage can be deduced and remain unchanged over time. In the maritime environment, camera sensors are mounted on quasi-mobile platforms such as buoys. This paper aims to provide full-view coverage CSN for maritime surveillance using cameras mounted on buoys. It is important to provide full-view coverage because in full-view coverage, targets facing direction is taken into account to judge whether a target is guaranteed to be captured. Image shot at the frontal viewpoint of a given target considerably increases the possibility to detect and recognize the target. The full-view coverage has been achieved using equilateral triangle grid-based deployment for the CSN. To accurately emulate the maritime environment, a mobility pattern has been developed for the buoy which is attached with a cable that is nailed at the sea floor. The buoy movement follows the sea wave that is created by the wind and it is limited by the cable. The average percentage of full-view coverage has been evaluated based on different parameters such as equilateral triangle grid length, sensing radius of camera, wind speed and wave height. Furthermore, a method to improve the target detection and recognition has been proposed in the presence of poor link quality using cooperative transmission with low power consumption. In some parameter scenario, the cooperative transmission method has achieved around 70% improvement in the average percentage of full-view coverage of a given target and total reduction of around 13% for the total transmission power PTotal(Q).

I. Abstract: Despite recent advances in sensor and mobile technology, there is still a lack of an accurate, scalable, and non-intrusive way to knowing how much sunlight we are exposed to. For the first time, we devise a mobile phone software application (SUN BATH), that utilizes a variety of on-board sensors and data sets to accurately predict the sunlight exposure each person is exposed to. The algorithm is able to take into account the sunlight exposure based on the person location, the local weather, sun location, and shadow from buildings. The algorithm achieves this by using the mobile user's location and other sensors to determine whether it is indoors or outdoors, and uses building data to calculate shadow effects and weather data to calculate diffused light contributions. This will ultimately allow the user to be more informed about sunlight exposure and compare it with daily recommended levels to encourage positive behaviour change. In order to show the value added by the application, SUN BATH is distributed to a sample of students population for benchmarking and user experience trials. The latest stable version of the application, suggests a scalable and affordable way compared to survey or physical sensing methods. II. Introduction: In this particular proposal, we examine how to live healthily in cities using a data-driven mobile-sensing approach. Cities are partly defined by a high building concentration and a human lifestyle that is predominantly spent indoors or in the shadow of buildings. Some cities in particular, also suffer from heavy pollution effects that significantly reduces the level of direct solar radiation. As a result, one area of concern is the urban dwellers lack of exposure to the ultra-violet (UV) band of sunlight and the wide range of associated health problems. The large scale and chronic nature of the health problems can lead to a time bomb in the National Health Service and cause irreversible future damage to the economy. This article proposes using the ray tracing SORAM model by Erdelyi et al. as an innovative and flexible technique for modelling and estimating the amount of solar irradiation can be collected at a time and certain location. SORAM module is already benchmarked against real measurement data, hence, our work here will benefit from this by taking the calculated ray-tracing information as a primary filter. The aim is to devise an affordable and accurate way of continuously estimating each person's UV exposure. Primarily, this is achieved by developing an Android smartphone application that uses the SORAM advanced modelling techniques to estimate the level of UV exposure each person is subjected to at any given time and location. The research novelty is that the proposed solution does not require additional purpose-built hardware such as a photovoltaic sensor, but instead utilizes a combination of accurate wireless localization, and weather-/terrain-informed sunlight propagation mapping. The challenges addressed include how to accurately locate a human and how to model the propagation of sunlight in complex urban environments. The latest stable version of the application, suggests a novel and affordable way compared to traditional or physical methods when calculating the amount of sunshine we are exposed to. III. System Overview: We implemented and evaluated SUN BATH application with the Android platform using different mobile phone models such as Samsung S5, Asus Zen5 and Archos tablet. The application is developed using Android Studio as IDE for Android application development. The application allows the user to create a profile using a user name and some information such as date of birth, height, weight, skin colour, country of origin, and level of income. To be used later for future detailed reporting with relation to the amount of sun bathing for different groups and ethnicities. SUN BATH only relies on lightweight “sensors to server” modelling which allows continuous low-energy and low-cost tracking of the user location and state transitions. In particular, we will present the process to show that we were able to use SORAM within the smart-phone environment to accurately infer the amount of sunshine in a user is exposed to based on the accuracy of the GPS and other location modules for Android mobile phones. To meet stringent design requirements, SUN BATH utilizes a series of lightweight ‘sensors – server’ for a fault-tolerant location detection. SUN BATH primarily makes use of three types of location-aware detectors: WiFi, cellular-network, and GPS. The aforementioned three wireless location detectors are used in conjunction to improve resolution and resilience. WiFi hub SSID identifiers are used to locate the hub in known open and commercial databases up to an accuracy of a few metres. In the absence of WiFi, a combination of cell tower location area and assisted GPS is used to get an accuracy of 10–15 m in urban areas with shadow effects. WiFi detector adopts the distributed IP address to capture the source location to determine the region the user is in. Cellular-network detector detects the source and attenuation of signals caused by objects on its path (e.g., trees, buildings). It normally help to indicate the movement of the user as the mobile signal gets handed from one network to another. The Application utilizes the GPS sensor to exactly pinpoint the coordinates of the user location i.e. Latitude and Longitude. The system time clock is also used to assist the detection of the local time. The App cache-in those parameters and sends it to a remote server whenever there is an Internet connection. The server hosts the SORAM calculation algorithm which generates a live estimate of the amount of sun exposure the user is experiencing. The results are then passed back to the applications through the Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) middleware service to permanently store the results in a secure database management system (DBMS). IV. Soram Ray-tracing Methodology: A person positioned in an out-door environment is surrounded by solar radiation, which consists of direct and diffuse rays. Direct and diffuse radiation data on a horizontal surface are usually collected at various locations and weather stations across the universe. The raw datasets collected can be used to estimate the amount of global radiation at any point of earth of a given slope and azimuth. Due to cost and scarcity of live data, the SORAM algorithm embed and made use of the Reindel Model, to estimate the direct and diffuse irradiation from hourly horizontal global radiation data. In addition and to go light on computation and avoid calculations for the nighttime hours, the SORAM determines the sunrise time for each day of the year and the amount of solar radiation data from that point onwards which is then calculated until sunset. The algorithm also estimates and with high accuracy direct and diffuse radiation on a surface of given slope and azimuth from their counterparts on a horizontal access considering surrounding shading conditions. We tested SUN BATH in simulated and real locations for five continuous days from sunrise to sunset in around the School of Engineering building complex at the University of Warwick campus. Simulated tests were carried manually, using two fixed location parameters i.e Longitude and Latitude. A quick memory and CPU monitor view revealed that the SUN BATH energy consumptions and resource-constraint on the used smartphone devices were moderate. A full memory and CPU monitor view can be easily produced, but it is beyond the scope of this article. V. Conclusions and Future Work: This research presented the architecture of SUN BATH mobile sensing application that gathers a variety of lightweight sensors information and utilised ray-tracing algorithm to derive the level of human sun exposure in urban areas. The application has demonstrated that it can be an affordable and pervasive way of accurately measuring the level of sunlight exposure each person is exposed to. Further work is required to scale the project to the global level, which requires big data sets on urban building maps and meterological data from all the cities.

Patient Engagement's Research results a mobile Application Patient Center to Manage Appointments, Personal Health Records and to avail Emergency Online Healthcare across all hospitals in Patient Center Network. It's Single Mobile App to manage and engage Patients actively in Healthcare across Qatar.

Problem Statement: Healthcare trends moving towards Patient Centric Healthcare Model from Hospital Centric Model. Qatar is having more than 350 Health facilities. Most of Health facilities not connected each other. Global Healthcare trends are implementing Interoperable Systems in Hospitals (Integrated Health Network), so that they can exchange their health data and Patient's Care will be continued and data will be shared with partnered networks and also government entities Biggest Gap in Healthcare process will be Patient Engagement. Providers and patients working together to improve health. A patient's greater engagement in healthcare contributes to improved health outcomes, and information technologies can support engagement. Patients want to be engaged in their healthcare decision-making process, and those who are engaged as decision-makers in their care tend to be healthier and have better outcomes Outpatients in Hospitals. Outpatient's work flow is very much defined in Healthcare Process, By Current technology, we need to reduce out patient's visit to hospital by having remote healthcare facility, so that Providers can provide better health outcomes on Inpatients Study: Book Name: Engage! Transforming Healthcare Through Digital Patient Engagement Edited by Jan Oldenburg, Dave Chase, Kate T. Christensen, MD, and Brad Tritle, CIPP This book explores the benefits of digital patient engagement, from the perspectives of physicians, providers, and others in the healthcare system, and discusses what is working well in this new, digitally-empowered collaborative environment. Chapters present the changing landscape of patient engagement, starting with the impact of new payment models and Meaningful Use requirements, and the effects of patient engagement on patient safety, quality and outcomes, effective communications, and self-service transactions. The book explores social media and mobile as tools, presents guidance on privacy and security challenges, and provides helpful advice on how providers can get started. Vignettes and 23 case studies showcase the impact of patient engagement from a wide variety of settings, from large providers to small practices, and traditional medical clinics to eTherapy practices. Book Name: Applying Social Media Technologies in Healthcare Environments Edited by Jan Oldenburg, Dave Chase, Kate T. Christensen, MD, and Brad Tritle, CIPP Applying Social Media Technologies in Healthcare Environments provides an indispensable overview of successful use of the latest innovations in the healthcare provider-patient relationship. As professionals realize that success in the business of healthcare requires incorporation of the tools of social media into all aspects of their worlds and recognize the value offered by the numerous media channels, this compendium of case studies from various voices in the field – caregivers, administrators, marketers, patients, lawyers, clinicians, and healthcare information specialists – will serve as a valuable resource for novices as well as experienced communicators. Written by experienced players in the healthcare social media space and edited with the eye of an administrator, chapters provide insight into the motivation, planning, execution, and evaluation of a range of innovative social media activities. Complete with checklists, tips, and screenshots that demonstrate proven application of various social channels in a range Based on the research on Patient Engagement, I have designed mobile based Patient Engagement solution called Patient Center. Using Patient Center mobile app, we can search nearest Specialties, Doctors with review ratings and also can book appointments in Health Facilities which are part of Patient Center Network. Patients can securely access their health records mobile and also can exchange health records to any provider for better treatment. Patient Center App works as personal health advisor by reminding patients medications, exercises and discharge notes etc. Patient Center is trying solve problems in following areas Reducing Phone calls for booking appointments and reducing time to fill forms prior to Encounter Patient Center Network contains several Providers, Payers, Pharmacies and Laboratories, all are completely interoperable and exchange Health Data with HIPPA Compliance Patients no need to carry bundles of his/her health records in papers when they meet doctor, instead all personal health records across all hospitals can be downloaded to Patient's Mobile and Patient can securely exchange his/her health data to any provider Single Mobile App to manage and access Appointments, lab orders medications, diagnoses, care plans, immunization history, and more On Emergency Cases, Patient Can click Emergency Service Menu in App and automatically nearest ambulance services will be alerted with Patient's GPS Location Complex Discharge Notes will be illustrated in Mobile App with images. Medication Consumption Alarms as per doctor's Advice in mobile Communications with Doctor from home using Patient Center, Healthcare Wearables which can provide Heart Rate, Blood Pressure, ECG, Diabetes Readings to Doctor in Real Time, so that, Doctor can diagnose patient online. Patient Center will try to reduce 60% outpatient visits and get Quality Healthcare right from Home In addition to the resources above, Patient Center will focus on following areas Social and Behavioral which covers social media, texting and gaming, wearables and mobile, and the social determinants of health Home Health which covers remote monitoring and telehealth, patient education, and smart homes Financial Health which includes managing health insurance and expenses, transparency and consumerism, patient onboarding and financial options Technology We are going to build entire application using IHE Profiles to achieve Interoperability in our networked hospitals (Integrated health Management). Integrated Health Enterprise (IHE) is an initiative by healthcare professionals and industry to improve the way computer systems in healthcare share information. IHE promotes the coordinated use of established standards such as DICOM and HL7 to address specific clinical needs in support of optimal patient care. Systems developed in accordance with IHE communicate with one another better, are easier to implement, and enable care providers to use information more effectively. The Exchange of Personal Health Record Content (XPHR) profile provides a standards-based specification for managing the interchange of documents between a Personal Health Record used by a patient and systems used by other healthcare providers to enable better interoperability between these systems. The Exchange of Personal Health Record Content (XPHR) integration profile describes the content and format of summary information extracted from a PHR system used by a patient for import into healthcare provider information systems, and vice versa. The purpose of this profile is to support interoperability between PHR systems used by patients and the information systems used by healthcare providers. Patient Center leverage other IHE Integration and Content Profiles for interoperability in addition to the XPHR Content Profile. For example, a PHR Systems may implement XDS-MS to import medical summaries produced by EHR systems, XDS-I to import imaging information, XDS-Lab to import laboratory reports, etc Patient Center Mobile Application is connected to Intersystems Healthshare Platform which is Health informatics platform certified by IHE. Patient Center app will be developed in ios and Android native application development platforms and connected to Healthshare server using web services and REST. Healthshare will be connected to network hospitals using IHE transactions. We use IHE XPHR for personal health records exchange.

Conclusion

These scenarios are not theoretical; early adopting consumers across these various patient personae are currently using Patient Engagement Solutions. Consumers appreciate the idea of remote health monitoring, and 89% of physicians would prescribe a mobile health app to patients. Patients continue to trust their personal physicians above most other professionals, following nurses and pharmacists. Patient Center is designed for better Health outcomes, Clinical Decision Support, Engaging Patients actively in Healthcare and reducing outpatient visits and repetitive encounters.

I. Introduction

Studies reveal that often group members collaborate when searching for information even if they were not explicitly asked to collaborate [1]. The activity that involves a group of people engaging in a common information seeking task is called Collaborative Information Seeking (CIS). Over the past few years, CIS research has focused on providing solutions and frameworks to support the process [2]. However, work in this field to date has always assumed that information seekers engaged in CIS activity are using the same access modality, the visual modality. The attention on this modality has failed to address the needs of users who employ different access modalities such as haptic and/or audio. Visual Impaired (VI) employees in a workplace may often have to collaborate with their sighted team members when searching the web. Given that the VI individual's search behaviour is challenged by poor web design and the shortcomings of current assistive technology [3][4]; collaboratively engaging in web search activity with peers can be considered as a major barrier to workplace inclusion. This study explores the under investigated area of cross-modal collaborative information seeking (CCIS), that is the challenges and opportunities that exist in supporting VI users to take an effective part in collaborative web search tasks with sighted peers in the workplace.

II. Study Design

To develop our understanding of the issues, we investigated the CCIS activity of pairs of VI and sighted participants. The study consisted of an observational experiment that involved 14 VI and sighted users completing two web search tasks which was followed up by scenario-based interviews which conducted with seven of the 14 pairs from the experiment. We conducted the experiment to examine the patterns of CCIS behaviour and the challenges that occur. In the scenario-based interviews we examined the techniques used, tools employed and the ways information is organized both for individual and collaborative use. In the observational study, all VI participants used a speech-based screen reader. Each pair was given two search tasks; one task was performed in a co-located setting and the other task was performed in a distributed setting. For the co-located task, the participants were asked to work collaboratively to organize a trip to the United States while for the distributed task they were asked to plan a trip in Australia. In the distributed condition, participants were seated in different locations and were told that they were free to use any method of communication they preferred; 5 pairs used emails and 9 pairs used Skype. Seven pairs from the observational studies took part in the scenario-based interviews. The interviews involved the interviewer describing a CIS activity to the participants followed by four scenarios that contain questions relating to the management of the retrieved information.

III. Observational Study Findings

A. Division of Labour

In the co-located condition, discussion about the division of labour occurred at two levels. Firstly in the initial discussion and secondly as a result of one participant interrupting his/her partner in order to complete a certain action. Three reasons were identified for these interruptions: (1) When viewing large amounts of information with assistance from their sighted participant. (2) When browsing websites with inaccessible components, VI users asked sighted participants to perform the task or assist them in performing it. (3) The third reason is related to the context of the task. In contrast, in the distributed condition, the discussion about the division of labour occurred only at the beginning of the task. The pair divided the work and started work independently. The participants only updated each other about their progress through the communication tool. Unlike, the co-located sessions, collaboration in the later stages was not observed. Additionally, VI participants' requests for assistance were fewer in this condition as they seemed to be more reluctant to ask for support in the distributed condition. When a VI participant encountered an accessibility issue, they would try on average 3 websites before asking their sighted partner to assist them. The majority (13 pairs in the co-located and 12 pairs in the distributed setting) divided the labour so that sighted participants performed booking related activities and VI participants performed event organization activities. VI participants emphasised that they chose this approach to avoid any issues related to accessibility. Vigo and Harper [5] categorized this type of behaviour as “emotional coping”, in which users past experience relating to an inaccessible action in a similar webpage or similar task affects their judgment on website use or tasks conducted. It is clear from the results that VI users put some thought into either dividing the labour in a specific way or to find some other way to get around the issues encountered.

B. Awareness

In the co-located condition, the main method to implement awareness was verbal communication. In the distributed condition, the only method to implement awareness was through email and instant messaging. To facilitate awareness of partner's activities while performing the task, participants informed their partners about actions. The participants tended to provide their partner constantly with information about their current activities to enrich group awareness in the absence of a tool that supported awareness in both conditions. In fact, pairs who completed more of the task in both conditions communicated more information about their activities. It was observed that when more information to avoid duplication of effort was communicated, the higher was the performance in the distributed condition. This indicates that making this type of information available between distributed collaborators might enhance their ability to complete tasks efficiently. This was not the case in the sessions in the co-located condition, as the sessions with lowest and highest performance reported the same amount of information communicated relating to duplication of effort. However, it was observed that pairs who performed well in the co-located sessions have communicated more information related to the actions they are performing that is not essential for the other pair to know. This indicates that facilitating the appropriate type and amount of awareness information in each condition is crucial to team performance and can increase team productivity [6].

C. Search Results exploration and management

Collaboration occurred mainly in two stages of the information seeking process: the results exploration and results management. In the results exploration stage, collaboration was triggered when VI participants viewed large amounts of information with their sighted partner's assistance or by both partners deciding to explore search results together. The average number of search results viewed collaboratively was higher than the average number of search results viewed by VI participants alone. Screen readers' presentation of large volumes of data imposes a number of challenges such as short term memory overload and a lack of contextual information [3]. This stage is highlighted as one of the most challenging stages faced by VI users during the IS process [4]. The amount of retrieved information kept by sighted users is nearly double the amount of information kept by VI users. The reasons for this were twofold: (1) Sighted users viewed more results than their VI partners. (2) The cognitive overhead that VI users experience when switching between the web browser and an external application used to take notes. This increased cognitive load is likely to slow down the process. The effect of this is more apparent in the distributed condition where VI users are required to switch between three applications: the email client or instant chat application, the web browser and the note taking application.

IV. Scenario-based interviews findings

The scenario-based interview is a tool that allows exploration of the context of the task. This type of scenario narrative approach provides a natural way for people to describe their actions in a given task context. The scenario-based interviews revealed that collaborative searching is quite a common practice as all the participants were able to relate the given scenario with similar activities they had undertaken in the past. It found that often ad hoc combinations of everyday technologies are used to support this activity rather than the use of dedicated solutions. There were clear instances of the use of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to support the sharing of retrieved results by both VI and sighted interviewees. Individual and cross-modal challenges were also extensively mentioned by VI interviewees, as current screen readers' fall short of conveying information relating to spatial layout and helping users form a mental model of web pages congruent with that of their sighted partners. It is clear that the VI participants interviewed were fully aware of the drawbacks that the serial nature of screen readers impose on their web search activities. In fact, these challenges have led them to choose to perform some web search activities collaboratively when that was an option. In the interviews, sighted users tended to use more complex structures for storing retrieved information, such as under headings or multi-level lists, while VI users tended to use simpler flat or linear lists of information.

V. Implications

The studies we carried out highlighted the challenges encountered when VI and sighted users perform a collaborative web search activity. In this section we propose a number of design implications for the design of CCIS systems. Due to space limitations in this paper, we only present three.

1. Overview of Search Results

Developing a mechanism that provides VI group members with an overview of search results and the ability to focus on particular pieces of information of interest could help in increasing VI participants' independence in CCIS activities. VI web searchers are likely to perform the results exploration stage more effectively and efficiently if they could firstly get a gist of results retrieved and could then drill down for more details as required. This will advantage both individual and collaborative information seeking activities.

2. Cross-modal Shared workspace

Having a common place to save and review information retrieved can enhance both the awareness and the sense making processes and reduce the overhead of using multiple tools, especially in the case of VI users, who do not have sight of the whole screen at one time. The system should support a cross-modal representation of all changes made by collaborators in the shared workspace. As changes in a visual interface can be represent it in colours, changes in the audio interface might be represented by a non-speech sound or a modification to one or more properties of the speech sound, for example timbre or pitch.

3. Cross-modal representation of collaborators Search Query Terms and Search Results

Allowing collaborators to know their partner's query terms and results viewed will inform them about their partner's progress during a task. Additionally, having a view of partners search results can allow sighted users to collaborate with their VI partners while going through search results.

VI. Conclusion

This paper discussed CCIS; an area that has not previously been explored in research. The studies presented in this paper is a part of a project that aims to provide support to the CCIS process. The next part of the project is to investigate the validity of the design implications in supporting CCIS and their effect on collaborators performance and engagement.

References

[1] Morris, M. R. (2008). A survey of collaborative web search practices. In Proceedings of the twenty-sixth annual SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, New York, USA. ACM.

[2] Golovchinsky, G., Pickens, J., and Back, M. (2009). A taxonomy of collaboration in online information seeking. In JCDL Workshop on Collaborative Information Retrieval.

[3] Stockman, T., and Metatla, O. (2008). The influence of screen readers on web cognition. Proceedings of Accessible design in the digital world conference. York, United Kingdom.

[4] Sahib, N. G., Tombros, A., and Stockman, T. (2012). A comparative analysis of the information-seeking behavior of visually impaired and sighted searchers. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.

[5] Vigo, M., and Harper, S. (2013). Coping tactics employed by visually disabled users on the web. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies.

[6] Shah, C., and Marchionini, G. (2010). Awareness in collaborative information seeking. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.

Device-to-device (d2d) communication has emerged as a solution that promises high bit rates, low delay and low energy consumption which represents the key for novel technologies such as Google Glass, S Beam, and LTE-Direct. Such d2d communication has enabled computational offloading among collaborative mobile devices for a multitude of purposes such as reducing the overall energy, ensuring resource balancing across device, reducing the execution time, or simply executing applications whose computing requirements transcend what can be accomplished on a single device. While this novel computation platform has offered convenience and multiple other advantages, it obviously enables new security challenges and mobile network vulnerabilities. We anticipate challenging future security attacks resulting from the adoption of collaborative mobile edge cloud computing platforms, such as MDCs and FemtoClouds. In typical botnet attacks, “vertical communication” between a botmaster and infected bots, enables attacks that originate from outside the network. While intrusion detection systems typically analyze network traffic to detect anomalies, honeypots are used to attract and detect attackers, and firewalls are placed at the network periphery to filter undesired traffic. However, these traditional security measures are not as effective in protecting networks from insider attacks such as MobiBots, a mobile-to-mobile distributed botnet. This shortcoming is due to the mobility of bots and the distributed coordination that takes place in MobiBot attacks. In contrast to classical network attacks, these attacks are difficult to detect because MobiBots adopt “horizontal communication” that leverages frequent contacts amongst entities capable of exchanging data/code. In addition, this architecture does not provide any pre-established command and control channels (C&C) between a botmaster and its bots. Overall, such mobile device infections will circumvent classical security measures, ultimately enabling more sophisticated and dangerous attacks from within the network. We propose HoneyBot, a defense technique that detects, tracks, and isolates malicious device-to-device communication insider attacks. HoneyBots operate in three phases: detection, tracking, and isolation. In the detection phase, the HoneyBot operates in a vulnerable mode in order to detect lower layer and service-based malicious communication. We adopt a data driven approach, using real world indoor mobility traces, to evaluate the impact of the number of HoneyBots deployed and their placement on the detection delay performance. Our results show that utilizing only a few HoneyBot nodes helps detect malicious infection in no more than 15 minutes. Once the HoneyBot detects malicious communication, it initiates the tracking phase which consists of disseminating control messages to help “cure” the infected nodes and trace back the infection paths used by the malicious nodes. We show that HoneyBots are able to accurately track the source(s) of the attack in less than 20 minutes. Once the source(s) of the attack is/are identified, the HoneyBot activates the isolation phase that aims at locating the suspected node. We assume that the suspect node is not a cooperative device that aims at hiding its identity by ignoring all the Honeybot messages. Therefore, the HoneyBot requests wireless fingerprints from all nodes that have encountered this suspect nodes at a given time period. These fingerprints are used to locate these nodes and narrow down the suspect's location. To evaluate our localization accuracy, we first deploy an experimental testbed where we show that HoneyBots accurately localize the suspect node within 4 to 6 m². HoneyBots can operate efficiently in small numbers, as few as 2 or 3 nodes while improving the detection, tracking, and the isolation by a factor of 2 to 3. We also assess the scalability of HoneyBots using a large scale mobility trace with more than 500 nodes. We consider, in the attached Figure, a scenario of a corporate network consisting of 9 vulnerable devices labeled 1 to 9. Such network is attacked by one or many botmaster nodes using d2d MobiBot communication. We notice that attacks are propagated horizontally, bypassing all Firewall and intrusion detection techniques deployed by the corporate network administrators. In this scenario, we identify 3 main actors; the botmaster (red hexagon), the HoneyBot (green circle), the infected bot (red circle), and the cured or clear node (blue circle). We assume that the 9 nodes shown in the figure only represent the vulnerable d2d nodes in this corporate networks. We propose detection, tracking and isolation technique that aim at accurately and efficiently defend networks from insider d2d malicious communication.

Programming and coordinating decentralized ensembles of computing devices is extremely hard and error-prone. With cloud computing maturing and the emerging trend of embedding computation into mobile devices, the demand for building reliable distributed and decentralized systems is becoming increasingly common and complex. Because of these growing technical challenges, solutions for effective programming and coordination of decentralized ensembles remain elusive. Most main-stream programming methodologies only offer a node-centric view of programming, where a programmer specifies distributed computations from the perspective of each individual computing node (e.g., MPI, transactional memory, the Actor model, Linda Tuple Space, graph processing frameworks). When programming distributed computations in this style, programmers experience minimal shifts in paradigm but such concurrency primitives offer minimal support for the coordination problem. However, as systems grow in complexity and sophistication, maintaining code in this node-centric style of ten becomes costly, as the lack of concurrency abstraction means that programmers assumes all the responsibility of avoiding concurrency pitfalls (e.g., deadlocks and race-conditions). Because of this, ensemble-centric concurrency abstractions are now growing in popularity. In this style of programming, programmers are able to specify complex distributed computations from the perspective of entire collections of computing nodes as a whole (e.g., MapReduce, Google Web Tool-kit, choreographic programming), making implementations of distributed computations more concise and even making large classes of concurrency pitfalls syntactically impossible. However, programming distributed computations in this style typically require programmers to adopt a new perspective of computation. At times, they are overly restrictive and hence not applicable to a wider range of distributed coordination problems.

Our work centers on developing a concurrency abstraction to overcome the above challenges, by (1) providing a high-level ensemble-centric model of coordinating distributed computations, and (2) offering a clean and intuitive integration with traditional main-stream imperative programming languages. This framework as a whole, orthogonally combines a high-level concurrency abstraction together with established lower-level main-stream programming methodologies, maintaining a clean separation between the ensemble-centric concurrency model and the underlying sequential computation model, yet allowing them to interact with each other in a symbiotic manner. The benefit of this separation is twofold: first, a clear distinction of the elements of the coordination model from the computation model helps lower the learning curve of this new programming framework. Hence, developers familiar with the underlying main-stream computation model can incrementally build their technical understanding of the framework, by focusing solely on the coordination aspects of the framework. Second, by building the coordination model on top of an underlying main-stream computation model, we inherit all existing libraries, optimizations, as well as programming expertise available to it. We have addressed several key challenges of developing such an ensemble-centric concurrency model. In particular, we have developed a choreographic transformation scheme that transform our ensemble-centric programs into node-centric encodings, and we have also developed a compilation scheme that convert such node-centric encodings into lower-level imperative codes that can be executed by individual computing nodes. Finally, we proved the soundness of this choreographic compilation scheme by showing a two-step correspondence from ensemble-centric specifications to node-centric encodings, then to node-centric compilations. We have implemented an instance of this distributed programming framework for coordinating decentralized ensembles of Android mobile devices. This system is called CoMingle and it is built to integrate with Java and the Android SDK. The ensemble-centric nature of this programming abstraction simplifies the coordination of multiple Android devices, and in we demonstrate how the clean integration with Java and Android SDK allow local computations within each device to be implemented in a traditional manner, hence leveraging from an Android programmer's expertise, rather than forcing him/her to work with an entirely new programming environment. As proof-of-concept, we have developed a number of distributed mobile Android applications. CoMingle is open-source and available for download at https://github.com/sllam/comingle.