1,721,591 research outputs found
Collection Sheet of Holos 4.0 (Data_Algorithms_EFs)
No full text<p>Collection Sheet of Holos 4.0 (Data_Algorithms_EFs). The work has been funded as part of the ERA-Net scheme, which supports the bottom-up coordination of national and regional programmes in the European Union, in this case through the joint call of the co-fund ERA-Nets SusCrop (Grant N° 771134), FACCE ERA-GAS (Grant N° 696356), ICT-AGRI-FOOD (Grant N° 862665) and SusAn (Grant N° 696231).</p>
User Guide Draft of Holos version 4.0
No full text<p>User Guide Draft of Holos version 4.0. The work has been funded as part of the ERA-Net scheme, which supports the bottom-up coordination of national and regional programmes in the European Union, in this case through the joint call of the co-fund ERA-Nets SusCrop (Grant N° 771134), FACCE ERA-GAS (Grant N° 696356), ICT-AGRI-FOOD (Grant N° 862665) and SusAn (Grant N° 696231).</p>
The Legacy of Khalil Ibrahim, the Founder of JEM, Sudan
Full text linkDepending on which calendar you care to use, it is just over a year since Dr. Khalil Ibrahim was murdered. We do not take this occasion to mourn his loss, for heroes do not die. Their legacy outlives their physical existence and the heritage they leave behind remains a shining path for generations to come. These words are, therefore, meant to celebrate the achievements of Dr. Khalil and honour the ultimate sacrifice he gave for a better Sudan; A Sudan that is fit to live in, inclusive and accommodative for all
Muconic acid isomers as platform chemicals and monomers in the biobased economy
No full textsponsorship: The authors thank the SPICY (Sugar-based chemicals and Polymers through Innovative Chemocatalysis and engineered Yeast) project of VLAIO Catalisti for funding. (SPICY (Sugar-based chemicals and Polymers through Innovative Chemocatalysis and engineered Yeast) project of VLAIO Catalisti)status: Publishe
The Study of Oxidative Stress in Fibrotic and Non-Fibrotic Skin of Patients with Systemic Sclerosis
Full text linkBackground and Objectives
Systemic Sclerosis (SSc) is a chronic multisystemic connective tissue disease characterized by progressive fibrosis affecting skin and internal organs. Despite serious efforts to unveil the pathogenic mechanisms of SSc, they are still unclear. High levels of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) in affected patients have been shown, and ROS are suggested to play a role in fibrosis pathogenesis. In this study we evaluate ROS levels in non-fibrotic and fibrotic skin of patients with SSc and we compare them with those obtained from healthy controls.
Patients and Methods
We enrolled 9 SSc patients fulfilling the EULAR/ACR classification criteria and 7 healthy controls. Patients included were 4 men and 5 women with mean age of 46 ±10 yrs. Controls were matched by sex and age. All patients were affected by diffuse cutaneous form of SSc and the ANA pattern anti-Scl70. Mean disease duration was 7.5±5 yrs. Skin involvement was evaluated by modified Rodnan Skin Score (mRSS). Skin samples (4mm punch biopsy) were taken from fibrotic skin and non-fibrotic skin of patients and from healthy controls as well. To detect ROS, specimens were analyzed immediately after sampling by electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy. Blood samples have been drawn from all patients and controls to assess oxidative stress biomarkers.
Results
ROS levels (expressed as median and range, unit of measurement was nmol/l/min/mg of dry weight) were 24.7 (10.9– 47.0) in fibrotic skin, 18.7 (7.3–34.0) in non-fibrotic skin and 7.7 (3.5–13.6) in healthy controls skin. ROS levels in Fibrotic and Non-fibrotic skin of SSc patients were significantly higher than in Healthy Controls (p=0.002 and p=0.009, respectively). ROS levels in fibrotic skin were raised in comparison to non-fibrotic skin, when samples related to each patient were compared (p=0.01). ROS levels in fibrotic skin were correlated with forced vital capacity (r= -0.75, p=0.02) and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (r=0.70, p=0.04). All other clinical and lab parameters showed no significant correlation. When compared to controls, blood from SSc patients showed lower ascorbate (vitamin C) levels (8 [3.8-9.8] vs. 10.5 [9-19.1] mg/L, p=0.004) and higher lipid peroxides (873.5 [342-1973] vs. 422 [105-576] μmol/L, p=0.004).
Conclusion
Our results indicate the presence of high oxidative stress both in non-fibrotic skin and fibrotic skin of SSc patients, but with higher tendency in the latter. Raised ROS levels in non-fibrotic skin of SSc patients might be a hint of early involvement in skin fibrogenesis. However, a longitudinal prospective study is necessary for such proof
Tertiary English language foundation programme quality management: case study of learning outcome standards’ impact on English language teachers’ classroom instructional practices
No full textSeeking quality in education is a recent trend that has emerged originally from the field of industry in the mid of the twentieth century in order to define, manage and later enhance quality of products and services. The success of quality management in industry and later in the services sector has been viewed as a fostering factor for the gradual adoption of its theorizations and approaches in general education and recently in second/foreign language education. The use of learning- outcome standards, as specifiers of the outputs of the educational process is an approach of quality management that has been increasingly utilized in different contexts in the globe as in Europe with the CEFR standards, in the USA with ACTFL standards and in some Arabian gulf states. In the context of Oman where this case study took place, the use of such learning-outcome standards for English language programme at tertiary level has been recently used as a tool for quality management by Oman Academic Accreditation Authority (OAAA) for quality assurance purposes.The pedagogical impact of such standard-based language programmes on what teachers need to do in classrooms in order to achieve such learning outcome standards is an area that is found to be under- researched, not only locally in the Omani context but also globally. Little research based on classroom empirical data has been conducted to illuminate the intersection between standards as specifiers of learning outcomes and teachers’ real classroom instructional practices at the enacted version of an outcome-based curriculum. Therefore, this case study, adopting an interpretivist paradigmatic positioning, aims to further investigate the impact relation of OAAA’s learning outcome standards on teachers’ classroom instruction and the factors that foster or hinder such an impact in order to extend our understanding of this new phenomenon of quality management in language education.To do so, this study was conducted in three phases. The identification of the instructional assumptions implicitly embedded in the learning outcome standards developed by the OAAA was conducted first through the investigation of their external relations with the wider discourse of English language teaching (ELT) in phase one of this study. In phase two, classroom observations with four teachers (four cases) from an Omani tertiary English language institution were conducted to identify how the observed teachers’ real classroom instructional practices intersected with two instructional assumptions of OAAA’s EFP standards. That was conducted through the analysis of selected classroom discourse episodes transcribed from the classroom observations. Later in phase three, the factors that have fostered and hindered such intersection were traced through the use of the thematic analysis of the interviews conducted with the observed teachers and their two course coordinators. Those interviews aimed to give the participants the opportunity to justify the observed classroom instructional practices in order to identify such factors.Finally, three main findings can be reported out of the three phases of this study. First, the apparent reliance on principles derived from Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and Strategy- based Instruction (SBI) has been found to be directing the standards development in phase 1. Second, the complexity and variability of the observed teachers’ instructional practices have presented a form of hybrid intersection between the teachers’ classroom instructional practices and the standards’ implicit instructional assumptions. In phase three, teachers- related and institution- related factors have apparently contributed to shape this hybrid intersection
Exploiting Cost-Effective IoT Devices for Trustless Agri-Food Supply Chain Management: A Practical Case Study
No full textThe exponential rise in the adoption of diverse Internet of Things (IoT) devices has reached the Agriculture and Food (Agri-Food) supply chains. Small and cost-effective sensing IoT devices are fostering substantial research and innovation toward developing reliable, auditable, and transparent traceability systems. Current IoT-based traceability and provenance systems for Agri-Food supply chains are built on top of centralized infrastructures, introducing security and privacy issues such as data integrity, tampering, and single points of failure. In recent years, blockchain technology is attracting the interest of the IoT as a decentralized platform for a trusted record of information, realizing decentralized trustless systems. The inherent properties of this digital technology provide fault-tolerance, immutability, transparency, and full traceability of the stored transaction records. However, there has been little discussion on the role of cost-effective IoT devices in these blockchain-based systems. In this chapter, we propose an architecture for a blockchain-based traceability system for Agri-Food supply chain management. Our architecture seamlessly integrates cost-effective IoT devices producing and consuming digital data along the process. To effectively assess our proposal, we first defined a classical use case within the given vertical domain, namely from-farm-to-fork. Then, we deploy a full-fledged showcase using off-the-shelf constrained sensing devices and two different blockchain implementations. From a device perspective, we measure the overhead that our architecture introduces in the system in terms of memory and program space footprint, processing time, and power consumption. Our results show that cost-effective devices, with an internal clock running at less than 100 MHz, can support our proposed solution in both Ethereum and Hyperledger Sawtooth blockchain networks
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
A comparative study of the ports of Beirut, Lattakia, and Aqaba time and cost study - by Khalil Ibrahim Khalil Al-Farr
No full textThesis (M.B.A.)--Dept. of Business Administration, A.U.B
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