Journal of Clinical and Experimental Dentistry, 2019
Background: The growing interest on usage of probiotic lactobacilli in maintaining oral health ha... more Background: The growing interest on usage of probiotic lactobacilli in maintaining oral health has posed number of questions on its probable side effects. One such consideration could be an increased acid production in dental plaque, in turn leading to dental caries. Thus, the aim of this study was to comparatively evaluate the lactic acid producing ability of L. acidophilus and L. plantarum with and without dental plaque. Material and Methods: The study consisted of five groups: 3 control groups (Supragingival plaque, L. acidophilus and L. plantarum) and 2 test groups (Supragingival plaque with L. acidophilus and Supragingival plaque with L. plantarum). 26 samples for each group were collected and their baseline spectrophotometric values were recorded. The acid production was initiated by adding 25?l fructose (10%) and stopped by centrifugation for 2 min. The concentration of the lactic acid produced was determined with the aid of COBAS INTEGRA 400 plus. Results: On comparison of Lactic Acid estimation in mg/dl, the mean values of Plaque group was the highest followed by Plaque +L acidophilus, Plaque +L plantarum, L acidophilus and least in L plantarum. The posthoc analysis shows that the comparison of Group 1 (Plaque) and Group 2 (Plaque +L acidophilus) is statistically Significant results between all the groups except between the Plaque +L acidophilus and Plaque +L plantarum group. Conclusions: The lactic acid producing ability of pure suspensions of L.acidophilus and L.plantarum and the lactic acid producing efficiency becomes more when they are added to the supragingival plaque.
The present study aimed to unveil the phenotypic heterogeneity and heteroresistance of P. aerugin... more The present study aimed to unveil the phenotypic heterogeneity and heteroresistance of P. aeruginosa to acidic stress and imipenem. Furthermore, the growth, morphology, and potential for biofilm formation of the subject isolates at different pHs were assessed. Isolates of P. aeruginosa were recovered from juice samples and confirmed by molecular analysis. Antibiotics sensitivity was evaluated using the Kirby–Bauer-disk diffusion method, and the MIC for imipenem was determined, followed by a biofilm formation assay and population analysis. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to visualize biofilm formation. The subject isolates persisted in an acidic environment and adopted a biofilm lifestyle. The population analysis assay indicated the presence of two distinct phenotypes, i.e., a normal colony phenotype (NCP) and slow growing colony phenotype (SGCP). NCP showed visible colonies after 48 h, while SGCP colonies appeared after 72 h of incubation. Both displayed heteroresistance...
INTRODUCTION: Spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) is associated with a high in-hospital mo... more INTRODUCTION: Spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) is associated with a high in-hospital mortality and morbidity. One radiological parameter which was found significant in predicting mortality was the presence of hydrocephalus on CT brain (plain). The aim of this study was to determine the frequency of hydrocephalus in patients with spontaneous ICH and to determine the in-hospital outcome in patients of spontaneous ICH with hydrocephalus.MATERIALS AND METHODS: This was a descriptive case series carried out in Department of Neurology, Pakistan institute of Medical Sciences, Islamabad from December 30, 2013 to June 29, 2014. All patients who meet the inclusion criteria were selected for the study. Plain CT brain was done at the time of admission. Radiological parameters recorded included the presence of hydrocephalus on CT brain. Every patient was then being observed for outcome within 7 days. RESULTS: A total of 96 patients were included in the study. The mean age of patients w...
Journal of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, 2020
Background Phytochromes are plant photoreceptors that have long been associated with photomorphog... more Background Phytochromes are plant photoreceptors that have long been associated with photomorphogenesis in plants; however, more recently, their crucial role in the regulation of variety of abiotic stresses has been explored. Chilling stress is one of the abiotic factors that severely affect growth, development, and productivity of crops. In the present work, we have analyzed and compared physiological, biochemical, and molecular responses in two contrasting phytochrome mutants of tomato, namely aurea (aur) and high pigment1 (hp1), along with wild-type cultivar Micro-Tom (MT) under chilling stress. In tomato, aur is phytochrome-deficient mutant while hp1 is a phytochrome-sensitive mutant. The genotype-specific physiological, biochemical, and molecular responses under chilling stress in tomato mutants strongly validated phytochrome-mediated regulation of abiotic stress. Results Here, we demonstrate that phytochrome-sensitive mutant hp1 show improved performance compared to phytochrom...
International Journal of Computer Applications, 2021
This paper describes an Internet of Things (IoT) based model that can automatically water the pla... more This paper describes an Internet of Things (IoT) based model that can automatically water the plants or lands when it needs water based on weather. Although many related works have been established on this topic, this proposed system would spontaneously water the plants or lands using groundwater when no reserved rainwater is available in the water tank. In the proposed model, a user connected to the internet would be able to control and monitor all the watering processes using a mobile application. The smart watering system uses solar energy to save electricity with a water pumping system. All the sensors, Arduino, Cloud, router, App, and its functionality have been adequately discussed in this paper. The sensor's data which is collected is processed by the control module and is sent to the cloud so that it can be retrieved in the user's mobile application. The proposed system can do all the tasks mechanically with the help of Machine learning, Big data, and IoT by taking permission from the user through the application. The result justifies the effectiveness of the proposed system.
Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal, 2021
Tuberculosis (TB) continues to be the leading cause of deaths due to its persistent drug resistan... more Tuberculosis (TB) continues to be the leading cause of deaths due to its persistent drug resistance and the consequent ineffectiveness of anti-TB treatment. Recent years witnessed huge amount of sequencing data, revealing mutations responsible for drug resistance. However, the lack of an up-to-date repository remains a barrier towards utilization of these data and identifying major mutations-associated with resistance. Amongst all mutations, non-synonymous mutations alter the amino acid sequence of a protein and have a much greater effect on pathogenicity. Hence, this type of gene mutation is of prime interest of the present study. The purpose of this study is to develop an updated database comprising almost all reported substitutions within the Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb) drug target genes rpoB, inhA, katG, pncA, gyrA and gyrB. Various bioinformatics prediction tools were used to assess the structural and biophysical impacts of the resistance causing non-synonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms (nsSNPs) at the molecular level. This was followed by evaluating the impact of these mutations on binding affinity of the drugs to target proteins. We have developed a comprehensive online resource named MycoTRAP-DB (Mycobacterium tuberculosis Resistance Associated Polymorphisms Database) that connects mutations in genes with their structural, functional and pathogenic implications on protein. This database is accessible at http://139.59.12.92. This integrated platform would enable comprehensive analysis and prioritization of SNPs for the development of improved diagnostics and antimycobacterial medications. Moreover, our study puts forward secondary mutations that can be important for prognostic assessments of drug-resistance mechanism and actionable anti-TB drugs.
International Journal of Clinical Pediatric Dentistry, 2021
Aim and objective: Apical extrusion of debris and cleaning efficacy in primary root canal treatme... more Aim and objective: Apical extrusion of debris and cleaning efficacy in primary root canal treatment has not been well elucidated by using specialized pediatric rotary endodontic files. The purpose of this study is to compare the amount of apically extruded debris and cleaning efficacy during the preparation of primary molar root canals using Pro AF Baby Gold and Kedo-S pediatric rotary files. Materials and methods: Twenty extracted primary molar teeth were assigned randomly to two groups (n = 10 teeth for each group), injected with Indian Ink and instrumented using Kedo-S and Pro AF Baby Gold pediatric rotary files, respectively. The apically extruded debris was collected and dried in pre-weighed using Eppendorf tubes. The dry weight was calculated by subtracting the preoperative weight from the postoperative weight. The cleaning efficacy was evaluated after the diaphanization process. Statistics: Data were analyzed statistically using the independent sample t-test. Results: The amount of apically extruded debris was significantly less for the Pro AF Baby rotary files group compared to the Kedo-S rotary files group (p < 0.05). Cleaning efficacy was significantly better with Pro AF Baby Gold when compared to Kedo-S rotary files in the apical region of the tooth. Conclusion: All instruments caused apically extruded debris in primary teeth. Pro AF baby Gold files can be used with less apical extrusion of debris. Cleaning efficacy was shown to be better with the Pro AF Baby Gold pediatric rotary endodontic file.
The key aim of the study is to establish an agreed standardised core outcome set (COS) for use wh... more The key aim of the study is to establish an agreed standardised core outcome set (COS) for use when evaluating non-pharmacological health and social care interventions for people living at home with dementia. Drawing on the guidance and approaches of the Core Outcome Measures in Effectiveness Trials (COMET), this study uses a four-phase mixed-methods design: 1 Focus groups and interviews with key stakeholder groups (people living with dementia, care partners, relevant health and social care professionals, researchers and policymakers) and a review of the literature will be undertaken to build a long list of outcomes. 2 Two rounds of Delphi surveys will be used with key stakeholder groups. Statements for the Delphi surveys and participation processes will be developed and informed through substantial member involvement with people living with dementia and care partners. A consensus meeting will be convened with key participant groups to discuss the key findings and finalise the COS. ...
BackgroundThere has been an increased focus towards improving quality of care within the NHS in t... more BackgroundThere has been an increased focus towards improving quality of care within the NHS in the last 15 years; as part of this, there has been an emphasis on the importance of patient feedback within policy, through National Service Frameworks and the Quality and Outcomes Framework. The development and administration of large-scale national patient surveys to gather representative data on patient experience, such as the national GP Patient Survey in primary care, has been one such initiative. However, it remains unclear how the survey is used by patients and what impact the data may have on practice.ObjectivesOur research aimed to gain insight into how different patients use surveys to record experiences of general practice; how primary care staff respond to feedback; and how to engage primary care staff in responding to feedback.MethodsWe used methods including quantitative survey analyses, focus groups, interviews, an exploratory trial and an experimental vignette study.Result...
International Journal of Contemporary Research and Review, 2017
This study was conducted at Boloso Sore Woreda. The woreda lacks in-depth studies factors that af... more This study was conducted at Boloso Sore Woreda. The woreda lacks in-depth studies factors that affect the participation in irrigation practice and also there was not well known to what extent the households using irrigation water are better-off than those who depend on rain-fed agriculture. This study was focused on to assess factors that affect the participation in irrigation practice and its effects on rural household farm income. Descriptive statistics, inferential statistics and binary logistic regression analysis were used to analyzing quantitative data. The model result showed that education level, household labor and land holding size had significant positive effect on the use of irrigation water at 5% significance level. However, age and farm distance from river had significant negative effect on the use of irrigation water at 10% and 5% significance level respectively. Out of the total irrigation user respondents (79.7%) have harvested perennial crops more than two times and grown annual crops two times per year from the same farm. While out of the total irrigation non-user respondents' household depended on only rain fed agriculture (56.4%) have grown annual crops only one time per year from the same farm. Consequently, the independent sample test result showed that the irrigation user respondents' household obtained significantly larger mean annual gross farm income than irrigation non-user respondents' household at 1% significance level. As a result, the irrigation user respondents' household obtained excess of 17067.98 birr of mean annual gross farm income that obtained by irrigation non-user respondents' household. According to the finding, in addition to river water it should be better to initiate farmers to develop and use spring water at community level and shallow wale at household level. It is likely to be valuable for future irrigation development. And also the concerned bodies should give emphasis on adult education to improve farmers' awareness; provision of credit, which improves their financial capital to purchase irrigation technologies and to hire labor which fills the gap of family labor shortage.
Parenting a differently abled child is not an easy task. Such parents experience variety of stres... more Parenting a differently abled child is not an easy task. Such parents experience variety of stress related issues. For this difficult task parents especially mothers' require every help and possible encouragement. Parents and siblings should experience variety of extreme adjustments to adapt to the presence of a disabled child. Analysis have shown that families which can cope successfully with a differently abled child are able to mobilize their internal and external means of support to tackle efficiently with the special needs of their child. This review article highlights the parenting stress associated with differently abled children which may indirectly influence their approach towards seeking dental care.
Background: Ethnic minorities report poorer evaluations of primary health care compared to White ... more Background: Ethnic minorities report poorer evaluations of primary health care compared to White British patients. Emerging evidence suggests that when a doctor and patient share ethnicity and/or language this is associated with more positive reports of patient experience. Whether this is true for adults in English general practices remains to be explored. Methods: We analysed data from the 2010/2011 English General Practice Patient Survey, which were linked to data from the NHS Choices website to identify languages which were available at the practice. Our analysis was restricted to single-handed practices and included 190,582 patients across 1,068 practices. Including only single-handed practices enabled us to attribute, more accurately, reported patient experience to the languages that were listed as being available. We also carried out sensitivity analyses in multi-doctor practices. We created a composite score on a 0-100 scale from seven survey items assessing doctor-patient communication. Mixed-effect linear regression models were used to examine how differences in reported experience of doctor communication between patients of different self-reported ethnicities varied according to whether a South Asian language concordant with their ethnicity was available in their practice. Models were adjusted for patient characteristics and a random effect for practice. Results: Availability of a concordant language had the largest effect on communication ratings for Bangladeshis and the least for Indian respondents (p < 0.01). Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian respondents on average reported poorer communication than White British respondents [-2.9 (95%CI-4.2,-1.6),-1.9 (95%CI-2.6,-1.2) and-1.9 (95%CI-2.5,-1.4), respectively]. However, in practices where a concordant language was offered, the experience reported by Pakistani patients was not substantially worse than that reported by White British patients (-0.2, 95%CI-1.5,+1.0), and in the case of Bangladeshi patients was potentially much better (+4.5, 95%CI-1.0,+10.1). This contrasts with a worse experience reported among Bangladeshi (-3.3, 95%CI-4.6,-2.0) and Pakistani (-2.7, 95%CI-3.6,-1.9) respondents when a concordant language was not offered.
Online social networks are being increasingly used for analyzing various societal phenomena such ... more Online social networks are being increasingly used for analyzing various societal phenomena such as epidemiology, information dissemination, marketing and sentiment flow. Popular analysis techniques such as clustering and influential node analysis, require the computation of eigenvectors of the real graph's adjacency matrix. Recent de-anonymization attacks on Netflix and AOL datasets show that an open access to such graphs pose privacy threats. Among the various privacy preserving models, Differential privacy provides the strongest privacy guarantees. In this paper we propose a privacy preserving mechanism for publishing social network graph data, which satisfies differential privacy guarantees by utilizing a combination of theory of random matrix and that of differential privacy. The key idea is to project each row of an adjacency matrix to a low dimensional space using the random projection approach and then perturb the projected matrix with random noise. We show that as compared to existing approaches for differential private approximation of eigenvectors, our approach is computationally efficient, preserves the utility and satisfies differential privacy. We evaluate our approach on social network graphs of Facebook, Live Journal and Pokec. The results show that even for high values of noise variance σ = 1 the clustering quality given by normalized mutual information gain is as low as 0.74. For influential node discovery, the propose approach is able to correctly recover 80% of the most influential nodes. We also compare our results with an approach presented in [43], which directly perturbs the eigenvector of the original data by a Laplacian noise. The results show that this approach requires a large random perturbation in order to preserve the differential privacy, which leads to a poor estimation of eigenvectors for large social networks.
2010 IEEE International Conference on Communications, 2010
The major contribution of this paper is two-folds: (1) we present our novel variable-length syste... more The major contribution of this paper is two-folds: (1) we present our novel variable-length system call representation scheme compared to existing fixed-length sequence schemes, and (2) using this representation, we present our in-execution malware detector that can not only identify zero-day malware without any a priori knowledge but can also detect a malicious process while it is executing. Our representation scheme-a more generalized version of n-gram-can be visualized in a k-dimensional hyperspace in which processes move depending upon their sequence of system calls. The process marks its impact in space by generating hyper-grams that are later used to evaluate an unknown process according to their profile. The proposed technique is evaluated on a real world dataset extracted from a Linux System. The results of our analysis show that our in-execution malware detector with hyper-gram representation achieves low processing overheads and improved detection accuracies as compared to conventional n-grams.
To describe the accuracy of ethnicity coding in contemporary National Health Service (NHS) hospit... more To describe the accuracy of ethnicity coding in contemporary National Health Service (NHS) hospital records compared with the 'gold standard' of self-reported ethnicity. Design: Secondary analysis of data from a crosssectional survey (2011). Setting: All NHS hospitals in England providing cancer treatment. Participants: 58 721 patients with cancer for whom ethnicity information (Office for National Statistics 2001 16-group classification) was available from self-reports (considered to represent the 'gold standard') and their hospital record. Methods: We calculated the sensitivity and positive predictive value (PPV) of hospital record ethnicity. Further, we used a logistic regression model to explore independent predictors of discordance between recorded and self-reported ethnicity.
Proceedings of the 2nd ACM workshop on Security and artificial intelligence, 2009
Run-time monitoring of program execution behavior is widely used to discriminate between benign a... more Run-time monitoring of program execution behavior is widely used to discriminate between benign and malicious processes running on an end-host. Towards this end, most of the existing run-time intrusion or malware detection techniques utilize information available in Windows Application Programming Interface (API) call arguments or sequences. In comparison, the key novelty of our proposed tool is the use of statistical features which are extracted from both spatial (arguments) and temporal (sequences) information available in Windows API calls. We provide this composite feature set as an input to standard machine learning algorithms to raise the final alarm. The results of our experiments show that the concurrent analysis of spatio-temporal features improves the detection accuracy of all classifiers. We also perform the scalability analysis to identify a minimal subset of API categories to be monitored whilst maintaining high detection accuracy.
Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, PPSN XI, 2010
System administrators have to analyze a number of system parameters to identify performance bottl... more System administrators have to analyze a number of system parameters to identify performance bottlenecks in a system. The major contribution of this paper is a utility-EvoPerf-which has the ability to autonomously monitor different system-wide parameters, requiring no user intervention, to accurately identify performance based anomalies (or bottlenecks). EvoPerf uses Windows Perfmon utility to collect a number of performance counters from the kernel of Windows OS. Subsequently, we show that artificial intelligence based techniques-using performance counters-can be used successfully to design an accurate and efficient performance monitoring utility. We evaluate feasibility of six classifiers-UCS, GAssist-ADI, GAssist-Int, NN-MLP, NN-RBF and J48-and conclude that all classifiers provide more than 99% classification accuracy with less than 1% false positives. However, the processing overhead of J48 and neural networks based classifiers is significantly smaller compared with evolutionary classifiers.
Journal of Clinical and Experimental Dentistry, 2019
Background: The growing interest on usage of probiotic lactobacilli in maintaining oral health ha... more Background: The growing interest on usage of probiotic lactobacilli in maintaining oral health has posed number of questions on its probable side effects. One such consideration could be an increased acid production in dental plaque, in turn leading to dental caries. Thus, the aim of this study was to comparatively evaluate the lactic acid producing ability of L. acidophilus and L. plantarum with and without dental plaque. Material and Methods: The study consisted of five groups: 3 control groups (Supragingival plaque, L. acidophilus and L. plantarum) and 2 test groups (Supragingival plaque with L. acidophilus and Supragingival plaque with L. plantarum). 26 samples for each group were collected and their baseline spectrophotometric values were recorded. The acid production was initiated by adding 25?l fructose (10%) and stopped by centrifugation for 2 min. The concentration of the lactic acid produced was determined with the aid of COBAS INTEGRA 400 plus. Results: On comparison of Lactic Acid estimation in mg/dl, the mean values of Plaque group was the highest followed by Plaque +L acidophilus, Plaque +L plantarum, L acidophilus and least in L plantarum. The posthoc analysis shows that the comparison of Group 1 (Plaque) and Group 2 (Plaque +L acidophilus) is statistically Significant results between all the groups except between the Plaque +L acidophilus and Plaque +L plantarum group. Conclusions: The lactic acid producing ability of pure suspensions of L.acidophilus and L.plantarum and the lactic acid producing efficiency becomes more when they are added to the supragingival plaque.
The present study aimed to unveil the phenotypic heterogeneity and heteroresistance of P. aerugin... more The present study aimed to unveil the phenotypic heterogeneity and heteroresistance of P. aeruginosa to acidic stress and imipenem. Furthermore, the growth, morphology, and potential for biofilm formation of the subject isolates at different pHs were assessed. Isolates of P. aeruginosa were recovered from juice samples and confirmed by molecular analysis. Antibiotics sensitivity was evaluated using the Kirby–Bauer-disk diffusion method, and the MIC for imipenem was determined, followed by a biofilm formation assay and population analysis. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to visualize biofilm formation. The subject isolates persisted in an acidic environment and adopted a biofilm lifestyle. The population analysis assay indicated the presence of two distinct phenotypes, i.e., a normal colony phenotype (NCP) and slow growing colony phenotype (SGCP). NCP showed visible colonies after 48 h, while SGCP colonies appeared after 72 h of incubation. Both displayed heteroresistance...
INTRODUCTION: Spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) is associated with a high in-hospital mo... more INTRODUCTION: Spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) is associated with a high in-hospital mortality and morbidity. One radiological parameter which was found significant in predicting mortality was the presence of hydrocephalus on CT brain (plain). The aim of this study was to determine the frequency of hydrocephalus in patients with spontaneous ICH and to determine the in-hospital outcome in patients of spontaneous ICH with hydrocephalus.MATERIALS AND METHODS: This was a descriptive case series carried out in Department of Neurology, Pakistan institute of Medical Sciences, Islamabad from December 30, 2013 to June 29, 2014. All patients who meet the inclusion criteria were selected for the study. Plain CT brain was done at the time of admission. Radiological parameters recorded included the presence of hydrocephalus on CT brain. Every patient was then being observed for outcome within 7 days. RESULTS: A total of 96 patients were included in the study. The mean age of patients w...
Journal of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, 2020
Background Phytochromes are plant photoreceptors that have long been associated with photomorphog... more Background Phytochromes are plant photoreceptors that have long been associated with photomorphogenesis in plants; however, more recently, their crucial role in the regulation of variety of abiotic stresses has been explored. Chilling stress is one of the abiotic factors that severely affect growth, development, and productivity of crops. In the present work, we have analyzed and compared physiological, biochemical, and molecular responses in two contrasting phytochrome mutants of tomato, namely aurea (aur) and high pigment1 (hp1), along with wild-type cultivar Micro-Tom (MT) under chilling stress. In tomato, aur is phytochrome-deficient mutant while hp1 is a phytochrome-sensitive mutant. The genotype-specific physiological, biochemical, and molecular responses under chilling stress in tomato mutants strongly validated phytochrome-mediated regulation of abiotic stress. Results Here, we demonstrate that phytochrome-sensitive mutant hp1 show improved performance compared to phytochrom...
International Journal of Computer Applications, 2021
This paper describes an Internet of Things (IoT) based model that can automatically water the pla... more This paper describes an Internet of Things (IoT) based model that can automatically water the plants or lands when it needs water based on weather. Although many related works have been established on this topic, this proposed system would spontaneously water the plants or lands using groundwater when no reserved rainwater is available in the water tank. In the proposed model, a user connected to the internet would be able to control and monitor all the watering processes using a mobile application. The smart watering system uses solar energy to save electricity with a water pumping system. All the sensors, Arduino, Cloud, router, App, and its functionality have been adequately discussed in this paper. The sensor's data which is collected is processed by the control module and is sent to the cloud so that it can be retrieved in the user's mobile application. The proposed system can do all the tasks mechanically with the help of Machine learning, Big data, and IoT by taking permission from the user through the application. The result justifies the effectiveness of the proposed system.
Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal, 2021
Tuberculosis (TB) continues to be the leading cause of deaths due to its persistent drug resistan... more Tuberculosis (TB) continues to be the leading cause of deaths due to its persistent drug resistance and the consequent ineffectiveness of anti-TB treatment. Recent years witnessed huge amount of sequencing data, revealing mutations responsible for drug resistance. However, the lack of an up-to-date repository remains a barrier towards utilization of these data and identifying major mutations-associated with resistance. Amongst all mutations, non-synonymous mutations alter the amino acid sequence of a protein and have a much greater effect on pathogenicity. Hence, this type of gene mutation is of prime interest of the present study. The purpose of this study is to develop an updated database comprising almost all reported substitutions within the Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb) drug target genes rpoB, inhA, katG, pncA, gyrA and gyrB. Various bioinformatics prediction tools were used to assess the structural and biophysical impacts of the resistance causing non-synonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms (nsSNPs) at the molecular level. This was followed by evaluating the impact of these mutations on binding affinity of the drugs to target proteins. We have developed a comprehensive online resource named MycoTRAP-DB (Mycobacterium tuberculosis Resistance Associated Polymorphisms Database) that connects mutations in genes with their structural, functional and pathogenic implications on protein. This database is accessible at http://139.59.12.92. This integrated platform would enable comprehensive analysis and prioritization of SNPs for the development of improved diagnostics and antimycobacterial medications. Moreover, our study puts forward secondary mutations that can be important for prognostic assessments of drug-resistance mechanism and actionable anti-TB drugs.
International Journal of Clinical Pediatric Dentistry, 2021
Aim and objective: Apical extrusion of debris and cleaning efficacy in primary root canal treatme... more Aim and objective: Apical extrusion of debris and cleaning efficacy in primary root canal treatment has not been well elucidated by using specialized pediatric rotary endodontic files. The purpose of this study is to compare the amount of apically extruded debris and cleaning efficacy during the preparation of primary molar root canals using Pro AF Baby Gold and Kedo-S pediatric rotary files. Materials and methods: Twenty extracted primary molar teeth were assigned randomly to two groups (n = 10 teeth for each group), injected with Indian Ink and instrumented using Kedo-S and Pro AF Baby Gold pediatric rotary files, respectively. The apically extruded debris was collected and dried in pre-weighed using Eppendorf tubes. The dry weight was calculated by subtracting the preoperative weight from the postoperative weight. The cleaning efficacy was evaluated after the diaphanization process. Statistics: Data were analyzed statistically using the independent sample t-test. Results: The amount of apically extruded debris was significantly less for the Pro AF Baby rotary files group compared to the Kedo-S rotary files group (p < 0.05). Cleaning efficacy was significantly better with Pro AF Baby Gold when compared to Kedo-S rotary files in the apical region of the tooth. Conclusion: All instruments caused apically extruded debris in primary teeth. Pro AF baby Gold files can be used with less apical extrusion of debris. Cleaning efficacy was shown to be better with the Pro AF Baby Gold pediatric rotary endodontic file.
The key aim of the study is to establish an agreed standardised core outcome set (COS) for use wh... more The key aim of the study is to establish an agreed standardised core outcome set (COS) for use when evaluating non-pharmacological health and social care interventions for people living at home with dementia. Drawing on the guidance and approaches of the Core Outcome Measures in Effectiveness Trials (COMET), this study uses a four-phase mixed-methods design: 1 Focus groups and interviews with key stakeholder groups (people living with dementia, care partners, relevant health and social care professionals, researchers and policymakers) and a review of the literature will be undertaken to build a long list of outcomes. 2 Two rounds of Delphi surveys will be used with key stakeholder groups. Statements for the Delphi surveys and participation processes will be developed and informed through substantial member involvement with people living with dementia and care partners. A consensus meeting will be convened with key participant groups to discuss the key findings and finalise the COS. ...
BackgroundThere has been an increased focus towards improving quality of care within the NHS in t... more BackgroundThere has been an increased focus towards improving quality of care within the NHS in the last 15 years; as part of this, there has been an emphasis on the importance of patient feedback within policy, through National Service Frameworks and the Quality and Outcomes Framework. The development and administration of large-scale national patient surveys to gather representative data on patient experience, such as the national GP Patient Survey in primary care, has been one such initiative. However, it remains unclear how the survey is used by patients and what impact the data may have on practice.ObjectivesOur research aimed to gain insight into how different patients use surveys to record experiences of general practice; how primary care staff respond to feedback; and how to engage primary care staff in responding to feedback.MethodsWe used methods including quantitative survey analyses, focus groups, interviews, an exploratory trial and an experimental vignette study.Result...
International Journal of Contemporary Research and Review, 2017
This study was conducted at Boloso Sore Woreda. The woreda lacks in-depth studies factors that af... more This study was conducted at Boloso Sore Woreda. The woreda lacks in-depth studies factors that affect the participation in irrigation practice and also there was not well known to what extent the households using irrigation water are better-off than those who depend on rain-fed agriculture. This study was focused on to assess factors that affect the participation in irrigation practice and its effects on rural household farm income. Descriptive statistics, inferential statistics and binary logistic regression analysis were used to analyzing quantitative data. The model result showed that education level, household labor and land holding size had significant positive effect on the use of irrigation water at 5% significance level. However, age and farm distance from river had significant negative effect on the use of irrigation water at 10% and 5% significance level respectively. Out of the total irrigation user respondents (79.7%) have harvested perennial crops more than two times and grown annual crops two times per year from the same farm. While out of the total irrigation non-user respondents' household depended on only rain fed agriculture (56.4%) have grown annual crops only one time per year from the same farm. Consequently, the independent sample test result showed that the irrigation user respondents' household obtained significantly larger mean annual gross farm income than irrigation non-user respondents' household at 1% significance level. As a result, the irrigation user respondents' household obtained excess of 17067.98 birr of mean annual gross farm income that obtained by irrigation non-user respondents' household. According to the finding, in addition to river water it should be better to initiate farmers to develop and use spring water at community level and shallow wale at household level. It is likely to be valuable for future irrigation development. And also the concerned bodies should give emphasis on adult education to improve farmers' awareness; provision of credit, which improves their financial capital to purchase irrigation technologies and to hire labor which fills the gap of family labor shortage.
Parenting a differently abled child is not an easy task. Such parents experience variety of stres... more Parenting a differently abled child is not an easy task. Such parents experience variety of stress related issues. For this difficult task parents especially mothers' require every help and possible encouragement. Parents and siblings should experience variety of extreme adjustments to adapt to the presence of a disabled child. Analysis have shown that families which can cope successfully with a differently abled child are able to mobilize their internal and external means of support to tackle efficiently with the special needs of their child. This review article highlights the parenting stress associated with differently abled children which may indirectly influence their approach towards seeking dental care.
Background: Ethnic minorities report poorer evaluations of primary health care compared to White ... more Background: Ethnic minorities report poorer evaluations of primary health care compared to White British patients. Emerging evidence suggests that when a doctor and patient share ethnicity and/or language this is associated with more positive reports of patient experience. Whether this is true for adults in English general practices remains to be explored. Methods: We analysed data from the 2010/2011 English General Practice Patient Survey, which were linked to data from the NHS Choices website to identify languages which were available at the practice. Our analysis was restricted to single-handed practices and included 190,582 patients across 1,068 practices. Including only single-handed practices enabled us to attribute, more accurately, reported patient experience to the languages that were listed as being available. We also carried out sensitivity analyses in multi-doctor practices. We created a composite score on a 0-100 scale from seven survey items assessing doctor-patient communication. Mixed-effect linear regression models were used to examine how differences in reported experience of doctor communication between patients of different self-reported ethnicities varied according to whether a South Asian language concordant with their ethnicity was available in their practice. Models were adjusted for patient characteristics and a random effect for practice. Results: Availability of a concordant language had the largest effect on communication ratings for Bangladeshis and the least for Indian respondents (p < 0.01). Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian respondents on average reported poorer communication than White British respondents [-2.9 (95%CI-4.2,-1.6),-1.9 (95%CI-2.6,-1.2) and-1.9 (95%CI-2.5,-1.4), respectively]. However, in practices where a concordant language was offered, the experience reported by Pakistani patients was not substantially worse than that reported by White British patients (-0.2, 95%CI-1.5,+1.0), and in the case of Bangladeshi patients was potentially much better (+4.5, 95%CI-1.0,+10.1). This contrasts with a worse experience reported among Bangladeshi (-3.3, 95%CI-4.6,-2.0) and Pakistani (-2.7, 95%CI-3.6,-1.9) respondents when a concordant language was not offered.
Online social networks are being increasingly used for analyzing various societal phenomena such ... more Online social networks are being increasingly used for analyzing various societal phenomena such as epidemiology, information dissemination, marketing and sentiment flow. Popular analysis techniques such as clustering and influential node analysis, require the computation of eigenvectors of the real graph's adjacency matrix. Recent de-anonymization attacks on Netflix and AOL datasets show that an open access to such graphs pose privacy threats. Among the various privacy preserving models, Differential privacy provides the strongest privacy guarantees. In this paper we propose a privacy preserving mechanism for publishing social network graph data, which satisfies differential privacy guarantees by utilizing a combination of theory of random matrix and that of differential privacy. The key idea is to project each row of an adjacency matrix to a low dimensional space using the random projection approach and then perturb the projected matrix with random noise. We show that as compared to existing approaches for differential private approximation of eigenvectors, our approach is computationally efficient, preserves the utility and satisfies differential privacy. We evaluate our approach on social network graphs of Facebook, Live Journal and Pokec. The results show that even for high values of noise variance σ = 1 the clustering quality given by normalized mutual information gain is as low as 0.74. For influential node discovery, the propose approach is able to correctly recover 80% of the most influential nodes. We also compare our results with an approach presented in [43], which directly perturbs the eigenvector of the original data by a Laplacian noise. The results show that this approach requires a large random perturbation in order to preserve the differential privacy, which leads to a poor estimation of eigenvectors for large social networks.
2010 IEEE International Conference on Communications, 2010
The major contribution of this paper is two-folds: (1) we present our novel variable-length syste... more The major contribution of this paper is two-folds: (1) we present our novel variable-length system call representation scheme compared to existing fixed-length sequence schemes, and (2) using this representation, we present our in-execution malware detector that can not only identify zero-day malware without any a priori knowledge but can also detect a malicious process while it is executing. Our representation scheme-a more generalized version of n-gram-can be visualized in a k-dimensional hyperspace in which processes move depending upon their sequence of system calls. The process marks its impact in space by generating hyper-grams that are later used to evaluate an unknown process according to their profile. The proposed technique is evaluated on a real world dataset extracted from a Linux System. The results of our analysis show that our in-execution malware detector with hyper-gram representation achieves low processing overheads and improved detection accuracies as compared to conventional n-grams.
To describe the accuracy of ethnicity coding in contemporary National Health Service (NHS) hospit... more To describe the accuracy of ethnicity coding in contemporary National Health Service (NHS) hospital records compared with the 'gold standard' of self-reported ethnicity. Design: Secondary analysis of data from a crosssectional survey (2011). Setting: All NHS hospitals in England providing cancer treatment. Participants: 58 721 patients with cancer for whom ethnicity information (Office for National Statistics 2001 16-group classification) was available from self-reports (considered to represent the 'gold standard') and their hospital record. Methods: We calculated the sensitivity and positive predictive value (PPV) of hospital record ethnicity. Further, we used a logistic regression model to explore independent predictors of discordance between recorded and self-reported ethnicity.
Proceedings of the 2nd ACM workshop on Security and artificial intelligence, 2009
Run-time monitoring of program execution behavior is widely used to discriminate between benign a... more Run-time monitoring of program execution behavior is widely used to discriminate between benign and malicious processes running on an end-host. Towards this end, most of the existing run-time intrusion or malware detection techniques utilize information available in Windows Application Programming Interface (API) call arguments or sequences. In comparison, the key novelty of our proposed tool is the use of statistical features which are extracted from both spatial (arguments) and temporal (sequences) information available in Windows API calls. We provide this composite feature set as an input to standard machine learning algorithms to raise the final alarm. The results of our experiments show that the concurrent analysis of spatio-temporal features improves the detection accuracy of all classifiers. We also perform the scalability analysis to identify a minimal subset of API categories to be monitored whilst maintaining high detection accuracy.
Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, PPSN XI, 2010
System administrators have to analyze a number of system parameters to identify performance bottl... more System administrators have to analyze a number of system parameters to identify performance bottlenecks in a system. The major contribution of this paper is a utility-EvoPerf-which has the ability to autonomously monitor different system-wide parameters, requiring no user intervention, to accurately identify performance based anomalies (or bottlenecks). EvoPerf uses Windows Perfmon utility to collect a number of performance counters from the kernel of Windows OS. Subsequently, we show that artificial intelligence based techniques-using performance counters-can be used successfully to design an accurate and efficient performance monitoring utility. We evaluate feasibility of six classifiers-UCS, GAssist-ADI, GAssist-Int, NN-MLP, NN-RBF and J48-and conclude that all classifiers provide more than 99% classification accuracy with less than 1% false positives. However, the processing overhead of J48 and neural networks based classifiers is significantly smaller compared with evolutionary classifiers.
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