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Enhancing Data Integrity in Blockchain through Fuzzy Augmented Lagrangian Optimization and Compact Blocks to Minimize Redundancy
Get PDFBlockchain is a method of storing data that makes it difficult or impossible to modify, steal, or swindle the system. Every block in a blockchain has its header with the unique nonce, timestamp, hash, the previous hash, transaction data, and the Merkle root. The Merkle tree is crucial in a block for consolidating data into a single hash, but it can suffer from data redundancy concerns during its structure formation. The central focus of the paper revolves around data redundancy and presents a novel approach for ensuring data integrity in blockchain with a compactness technique. Compactness is accomplished using Fuzzy Augmented Lagrangian Optimization to reduce data redundancy (FALORR). We integrate compact blocks into regular blockchain setup, bringing out a faster and more efficient way to reduce memory requirements. This effectual transaction verification structure improves the overall security and efficiency of the blockchain network by detecting and preventing malicious activities. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed system, we employed Hyperledger Caliper, a specialized benchmarking tool tailored for gauging the performance of blockchain solutions. The results of our implementation and evaluation demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed structure in minimizing data redundancy and maintaining the data integrity of transactions in the blockchain system
The Soviet-Polish War and its Legacy: Lenin’s Defeat and the Rise of Stalinism
No full textThis detailed study traces the history of the Soviet-Polish War (1919-20), the first major international clash between the forces of communism and anti-communism, and the impact this had on Soviet Russia in the years that followed. It reflects upon how the Bolsheviks fought not only to defend the fledgling Soviet state, but also to bring the revolution to Europe. Peter Whitewood shows that while the Red Army's rapid drive to the gates of Warsaw in summer 1920 raised great hopes for world revolution, the subsequent collapse of the offensive had a more striking result. The Soviet military and political leadership drew the mistaken conclusion that they had not been defeated by the Polish Army, but by the forces of the capitalist world – Britain and France – who were perceived as having directed the war behind-the-scenes. They were taken aback by the strength of the forces of counterrevolution and convinced they had been overcome by the capitalist powers
A duoethnographic exploration of colonialism in the cultural layer of the objective psyche
Get PDFUsing a duoethnological approach, supported by Jung’s theory of archetypes and the layered objective psyche, the paper demonstrates how a duoethnological encounter can lead to new formulations of archetypal theory that challenge attitudes to diversity. The paper arises from the authors’ desire to explore the shame and pain of colonialism, initially in a diversity workshop and later by way of duoethnological dialogue, using transcripts of recorded conversation between the authors as well as email exchange. Notions of a colonizer archetype and ethnic shadow are presented and elaborated. The six conceptualized themes in relation to the exploration of colonialism in the cultural layer of the objective psyche are as follows: (1) Belonging, (2) The layered psyche and our understanding of difference, (3) Facing the ethnic shadow, (4) The colonizing archetype in the consulting room, (5) The exploration of colonial structures in the psyche and, lastly, (6) Valuing emancipatory encounter. These themes support an argument for the praxis of societal and internal encounters in order to raise the colonizer archetype and split off shadow material to consciousness, in the hope of bringing about a personal and cultural shift away from oppression
How To Leverage Blockchain To Address Climate Change, Inequality And Food And Water Insecurity
No full textDiverse landscapes of school governing body practices: the business sector learning cross boundaries.
No full textGlobal policy changes to school governance mean that school governing bodies are diverse landscapes of practice which include professionals from the business community. Prior research views governors from business as a threat to stakeholder models of governance. This chapter is drawn from an evaluation of Lloyds Banking Group’s (LBG) school governance programme where 18 LBG employees were interviewed throughout the first year in their governor roles. Adapting Young’s categorisation of knowledge as ‘managerial’, ‘educational’ and ‘lay’, this chapter articulates how LBG governors acquired ‘educational’ and ‘lay’ knowledge to transform their practices and how this was underpinned by ‘authenticity’ associated with the stakeholder model. Data demonstrate how professional development of these governors was tentative and impactful rather than a threat. Pre COVID-19, some attended meetings remotely, demonstrating how technology can help governance in remote locations. The chapter concludes that the business sector has a role to play in school governance and understanding professional development is key
Neither Eastern nor Western: Patterns of independence and interdependence in Mediterranean societies.
No full textSocial science research has highlighted “honor” as a central value driving social behavior in Mediterranean societies, which requires individuals to develop and protect a sense of their personal self-worth and their social reputation, through assertiveness, competitiveness, and retaliation in the face of threats. We predicted that members of Mediterranean societies may exhibit a distinctive combination of independent and interdependent social orientation, self-construal, and cognitive style, compared to more commonly studied East Asian and Anglo-Western cultural groups. We compared participants from eight Mediterranean societies (Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus [Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities], Lebanon, Egypt) to participants from East Asian (Korea, Japan) and Anglo-Western (the United Kingdom, the United States) societies, using six implicit social orientation indicators, an eight-dimensional self-construal scale, and four cognitive style indicators. Compared with both East Asian and Anglo-Western samples, samples from Mediterranean societies distinctively emphasized several forms of independence (relative intensity of disengaging [vs. engaging] emotions, happiness based on disengaging [vs. engaging] emotions, dispositional [vs. situational] attribution style, self-construal as different from others, self-directed, self-reliant, self-expressive, and consistent) and interdependence (closeness to in-group [vs. out-group] members, self-construal as connected and committed to close others). Our findings extend previous insights into patterns of cultural orientation beyond commonly examined East–West comparisons to an understudied world region. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved
Determinants of multidimensional poverty index for smallholder organic and non-organic vegetable farming household in Southwest Nigeria
No full textHouseholds in Nigeria with agriculture as their main source of income have the greatest poverty rates, particularly those practicing non-organic farming due to the use of inorganic and agrochemicals, which has resulted in poor soil health and low agricultural production. As a result, organic farming has the potential to lift such farmers out of poverty. Therefore, this study assessed the determinants of the multidimensional poverty index for smallholder organic and non-organic vegetable farming households in Ekiti and Oyo states, Nigeria. A structured questionnaire was used to sample 384 vegetable households using a multistage sampling technique. The data were analyzed using the Multidimensional Poverty Index and multiple regression models. According to the findings, organic households were less deprived and had a higher standard of living than non-organic farmers. Farmers are thus encouraged to adopt organic farming due to the positive effects it has on the general well-being and living conditions of organic adopter
Lumbar facet joint arthrosis on magnetic resonance imaging and its association with low back pain in a selected Ghanaian population
Get PDFObjectives:
Facet joint arthrosis is a common radiologic finding but remains controversial as a source of low back pain. We conducted a study to evaluate some of the potential risk factors contributing to the development of facet joint arthrosis, such as age, gender, and body mass index (BMI). The study aimed at establishing an association between these factors and facet joint arthrosis in the Ghanaian population, as a foundation for further research on low back pain.
Materials and Methods:
This was a retrospective study done at the Department of Radiology, Korle Bu Teaching Hospital from January 2019 to December 2021. The study population included all cases referred to our department with complaints of low back pain. Patients below 18 years and those with a history of congenital lesions, trauma, infection, and malignancies were excluded. A total of 1017 cases were identified with facet joint arthrosis. The mean difference in age and BMI between males and females was compared using an independent sample t -test. Statistical association was done using Pearson’s Chi-square test. P ≤ 0.05 was used as statistical significance.
Results:
Majority of the study subjects were overweight with a mean BMI of 27.31 ± 5.37 kg/m 2 . The mean age was 53.61 ± 16.22 years, and majority were within the age of 51–60 years. Age was significantly associated with the prevalence of facet joint arthrosis.
Conclusion:
The prevalence of facet joint arthrosis is significantly associated with increasing age but not with the BMI. Lumbar facet joint arthrosis is more prevalent in women than in men, which may be due to the sensitivity of cartilage to female sex hormones
A Novel ML Approach for Computing Missing Sift, Provean, and Mutassessor Scores in Tp53 Mutation Pathogenicity Prediction
Get PDFCancer is often caused by missense mutations, where a single nucleotide substitution leads to an amino acid change and affects protein function. This study proposes a novel machine learning (ML) approach to calculate missing values in the tp53 database for three computational methods: SIFT, Provean, and Mutassessor scores. The computed values are compared with those obtained from the imputation method. Using these values, an ML classification model trained on 80,406 samples achieves an accuracy of 85%, while the impute method achieves 75%. The scores and statistics are used to classify samples into five classes: Benign, likely pathogenic, possibly pathogenic, pathogenic, and a variant of uncertain significance. Additionally, a comparative analysis is conducted on 58,444 samples, evaluating six ML techniques. The accuracy obtained by each of these mentioned in mentioned alongside the algorithm: logistic regression (89%), k-nearest neighbor (99%), decision tree (95%), random forest (99.8%), support vector machine with the polynomial kernel (91%), support vector machine with RBF kernel (84%), and deep neural networks (98.2%). These results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed ML approach for pathogenicity prediction