| 1. |
- Eisenbeck, Nikolett, et al.
(författare)
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An international study on psychological coping during COVID-19 : Towards a meaning-centered coping style
- 2022
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Ingår i: International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology. - : Elsevier. - 1697-2600 .- 2174-0852. ; 22:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background/Objective: This study examined the role of different psychological coping mechanisms in mental and physical health during the initial phases of the COVID-19 crisis with an emphasis on meaning-centered coping.Method: A total of 11,227 people from 30 countries across all continents participated in the study and completed measures of psychological distress (depression, stress, and anxiety), loneliness, well-being, and physical health, together with measures of problem-focused and emotion-focused coping, and a measure called the Meaning-centered Coping Scale (MCCS) that was developed in the present study. Validation analyses of the MCCS were performed in all countries, and data were assessed by multilevel modeling (MLM).Results: The MCCS showed a robust one-factor structure in 30 countries with good test-retest, concurrent and divergent validity results. MLM analyses showed mixed results regarding emotion and problem-focused coping strategies. However, the MCCS was the strongest positive predictor of physical and mental health among all coping strategies, independently of demographic characteristics and country-level variables.Conclusions: The findings suggest that the MCCS is a valid measure to assess meaning-centered coping. The results also call for policies promoting effective coping to mitigate collective suffering during the pandemic.
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| 2. |
- Mostafa, Reham R., et al.
(författare)
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AEOWOA: hybridizing whale optimization algorithm with artificial ecosystem-based optimization for optimal feature selection and global optimization
- 2024
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Ingår i: Evolving Systems. - : SPRINGER HEIDELBERG. - 1868-6478 .- 1868-6486.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The process of data classification involves determining the optimal number of features that lead to high accuracy. However, feature selection (FS) is a complex task that necessitates robust metaheuristics due to its challenging NP-hard nature. This paper introduces a hybrid algorithm that combines the Artificial Ecosystem Optimization (AEO) operators with the Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA) to enhance numerical optimization and FS. While the WOA algorithm, inspired by the hunting behavior of whales, has been successful in solving various optimization problems, it can sometimes be limited in its ability to explore and may become trapped in local optima. To address this limitation, the authors propose the use of AEO operators to improve the exploration process of the WOA algorithm. The authors conducted experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of their proposed method, called AEOWOA, using the CEC'20 test suite for numerical optimization and sixteen datasets for FS. They compared the results with those obtained from other optimization methods. Through experimental and statistical analyses, it was observed that AEOWOA delivers efficient search results with faster convergence, reducing the feature size by up to 89% while achieving up to 94% accuracy. These findings shed light on potential future research directions in this field.
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| 3. |
- Ghazal, Ahmad, et al.
(författare)
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Venomous gland transcriptome and venom proteomic analysis of the scorpion Androctonus amoreuxi reveal new peptides with anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity
- 2024
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Ingår i: Peptides. - : Elsevier. - 0196-9781 .- 1873-5169. ; 173
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The recent COVID-19 pandemic shows the critical need for novel broad spectrum antiviral agents. Scorpion venoms are known to contain highly bioactive peptides, several of which have demonstrated strong antiviral activity against a range of viruses. We have generated the first annotated reference transcriptome for the Androctonus amoreuxi venom gland and used high performance liquid chromatography, transcriptome mining, circular dichroism and mass spectrometric analysis to purify and characterize twelve previously undescribed venom peptides. Selected peptides were tested for binding to the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the SARSCoV-2 spike protein and inhibition of the spike RBD - human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (hACE2) interaction using surface plasmon resonance-based assays. Seven peptides showed dose-dependent inhibitory effects, albeit with IC50 in the high micromolar range (117-1202 mu M). The most active peptide was synthesized using solid phase peptide synthesis and tested for its antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2 (Lineage B.1.1.7). On exposure to the synthetic peptide of a human lung cell line infected with replication-competent SARS-CoV-2, we observed an IC50 of 200 nM, which was nearly 600-fold lower than that observed in the RBD - hACE2 binding inhibition assay. Our results show that scorpion venom peptides can inhibit the SARS-CoV-2 replication although unlikely through inhibition of spike RBD - hACE2 interaction as the primary mode of action. Scorpion venom peptides represent excellent scaffolds for design of novel anti-SARS-CoV-2 constrained peptides. Future studies should fully explore their antiviral mode of action as well as the structural dynamics of inhibition of target virushost interactions.
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| 4. |
- Al-Babtain, Reham A
(författare)
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Periodontal implications of Salvadora persica L
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Periodontal disease is a major public health problem throughout the world and is the most common cause of tooth loss in adults. For periodontitis to develop, specific gram-negative, anaerobic bacteria must predominate in the subgingival microflora, but simple the presence of these bacteria is insufficient to cause periodontal disease as disease progression involves a complex, sequential relationship between infection, inflammation and tissue destruction. Treatment of periodontal disease targets inflammation through reduction of pathogenic bacteria, eliminating of pathogenic pockets, and use of mechanical debridement techniques along with chemically effective plaque-control agents. To treatment efficacy, disease management should be a holistic approach with medications that have proven antibacterial, and anti-inflammatory properties. Popular concern about the side effects of synthetic drugs and the increasing antibiotic resistance is significant and growing. In the periodontal field, efforts to find natural antimicrobial agents for preventing and treating periodontal disease have been stepped up. Many communities use the Miswak, a chewing stick made from the roots, twigs, or stems of Salvadora persica L., as an oral health tool. Studies have indicated that the Miswak has both an antibacterial and an anti-inflammatory effect, conferred by benzyl isothiocyanate (BITC), the major multi biologically active component. Hence, the overall aim of this thesis was to investigate the possible chemical effects of chewing sticks made from S. persica L., Miswak, in order to create optimum-use guidelines for the Miswak as a way of improving the treatment efficacy of periodontal disease. Study I, a double-blind, cross-over trial evaluated the efficacy of active and inactive S. persica L. on dental plaque, subgingival microbiota, and gingival inflammation in 24 patients with mild-to-moderate periodontitis. Clinical parameters were evaluated before and immediately after all experimental periods. Samples of subgingival plaque and gingival crevicular fluid were also taken. Plaque samples were analyzed with a DNA-DNA hybridization technique. Compared with pre-treatment values, populations of 16 bacterial species increases significantly in the group using a placebo inactive Miswak, (p<0.05), while no species showed a similar change in the group using active Miswak. The plaque and gingival indices on all tooth surfaces, however, differed non-significantly between the active and inactive Miswak groups. Study II measured the amount of BITC released into the mouth after brushing with Miswak and assessed its retention time in saliva. The study also tested the antibacterial and cytotoxic efficacy of the salivary BITC. Salivary BITC and BITC on used brushes were quantified using solid phase microextraction and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The antibacterial effects of BITC and Miswak Essential oil (EO) against Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans, Haemophilus influenzae, and Porphyromonas gingivalis; and cytotoxic effects on human gingival fibroblasts and oral keratinocytes were investigated. The highest concentrations of the active compounds were detected in saliva after using a Miswak tip for one time and immediately. Concentrations were significantly decreased when the Miswak tip was used more than once and thus after 10 minutes. Miswak EO and BITC inhibited the growth of the tested bacteria in a dose dependent manner, with P.gingivalis being the most sensitive. A methyl tetrazolium-based MTT assay found BITC and Miswak EO to be cytotoxic to gingival fibroblasts while oral keratinocytes exhibiting resistance, which suggests that, to ensure maximum effect, the Miswak tip should be cut before each use. Study III investigated the anti-inflammatory activities of Miswak EO from S. persica and the main antimicrobial compound BITC by evaluating their effect on the secretion of pro-inflammatory mediators from human gingival fibroblasts and oral keratinocytes: interleukin (IL)-6, IL-8, and matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-1 from IL-1β (300 pg/ml) stimulated and non-stimulated gingival fibroblasts and oral keratinocytes. An ELISA assessment found a significant decrease in the levels of IL-1β-induced IL-6 and IL-8 in gingival fibroblasts and oral keratinocytes treated with Miswak EO and BITC. In both cell types, levels if secreted MMP-1 were unaltered. Viewing these results, we concluded that Miswak has a weak effect on the subginival microbiota of patients with periodontitis. Cutting a fresh Miswak tip each brushing time is necessary in order to attain a sufficient antibacterial effect. Claimed brushing frequencies with Miswak of five times a day should be considered for maximal effect. Results also showed that Miswak has an anti-inflammatory effect on the pro-inflammatory mediators secreted by gingival fibroblasts and oral keratinocytes. Since periodontitis is a hyper-inflammatory reaction to periodontal pathogens, a treatment that combines an anti-bacterial and an anti-inflammatory effect, like Miswak could be potentially new path of treating periodontitis in a non-synthetic, natural manner.
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| 5. |
- Alsaffar, Abdul Kareem K., et al.
(författare)
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Development of eco-friendly wall insulation layer utilising the wastes of the packing industry
- 2023
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Ingår i: Heliyon. - : Elsevier. - 2405-8440. ; 9:11
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Efficient thermal insulation materials considerably lower power consumption for heating and cooling of buildings, which in turn minimises CO2 emissions and improves indoor comfort conditions. However, the selection of suitable insulation materials is governed by several factors, such as the environmental impact, health impact, cost and durability. Additionally, the disposal of used insulation materials is a major factor that affects the selection of materials because some materials could be very toxic for humans and the environment, such as asbestos-containing materials. Therefore, there is a continuous research effort, in both industry and academia, to develop sustainable and affordable insulation materials. In this context, this work aims at utilising the packing industry wastes (cardboard) to develop an eco-friendly insulation layer, which is a biodegradable material that can be disposed of safely after use. Experimentally, wasted cardboard was collected, cleaned, and soaked in water for 24 h. Then, the wet cardboard was minced and converted into past papers, then cast in square moulds and left in a ventilated oven at 75 °C to dry before de-moulding them. The produced layers were subjected to a wide range of tests, including thermal conductivity, acoustic insulation, infrared imaging and bending resistance. The obtained results showed the developed material has a good thermal and acoustic insulation performance. Thermally, the developed material had the lowest thermal conductivity (λ) (0.039 W/m.K) compared to the studied traditional materials. Additionally, it successfully decreased the noise level from 80 to about 58 dB, which was better than the efficiency of the commercial polyisocyanurate layer. However, the bending strength of the developed material was a major drawback because the material did not resist more than 0.6 MPa compared to 2.0 MPa for the commercial polyisocyanurate and 70.0 MPa for the wood boards. Therefore, it is recommended to investigate the possibility of strengthening the new material by adding fibres or cementitious materials.
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| 6. |
- ElSayed, Doaa Ali, et al.
(författare)
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Validation and Cultural Adaptation of the Parent Attitudes about Childhood Vaccines (PACV) Questionnaire in Arabic Language Widely Spoken in a Region with a High Prevalence of COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy
- 2022
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Ingår i: Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease. - : MDPI AG. - 2414-6366. ; 7:9
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The parents’ attitude toward vaccinating children and adolescents against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) remains inconsistent and needs further elucidation. The high rates of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region require intensive research to understand the determinants of this phenomenon. This study aimed to validate a version of the Parent Attitudes about Childhood Vaccines (PACV) tool in Arabic, the most widely spoken language in the MENA. The study objectives included the investigation of Arab-speaking parents’ views regarding COVID-19 vaccination of their children. Parents living in Egypt with at least one child aged 5–18 years were eligible to participate in the study that was conducted through an online survey with 15 PACV items. The PACV tool was translated into Arabic using forward and backward translation. To assess the psychometric properties of the Arabic version of PACV, Pearson’s correlation coefficient and exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (EFA and CFA) were performed. A total of 223 parents participated in the study: 59.82% aged 30–39 years, 69.20% were females, 46.19% were university-educated, and 40.63% had one child. The overall Cronbach’s alpha for the Arabic version of PACV was 0.799. The EFA of the 15 items showed that three domains were most conceptually equivalent. All items had a positive significant correlation with the mean score of each subscale except for item 4 (r = 0.016, p = 0.811). Regression analyses results indicated that education, previous COVID-19 infection, vaccine status of parents, and PACV score were significantly associated with the intention of the parents to vaccinate their children against COVID-19. The CFA results showed that most of the factor loadings were statistically significant (p < 0.010) except for items 4 and 7. However, the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA = 0.080) and the standardized root mean squared residual (SRMR = 0.080) indicated that the model had a reasonable fit, and the three factors were good in reproducing each correlation. Our study results indicated the validity and reliability of the PACV instrument in Arabic language. Consequently, the PACV can be used to assess COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in a majority of MENA countries for better delineation of this highly prevalent phenomenon in the region.
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| 7. |
- Hashim, Fatma A., et al.
(författare)
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An efficient adaptive-mutated Coati optimization algorithm for feature selection and global optimization
- 2023
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Ingår i: Alexandria Engineering Journal. - : ELSEVIER. - 1110-0168 .- 2090-2670. ; 85, s. 29-48
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The feature selection (FS) problem has occupied a great interest of scientists lately since the highly dimensional datasets might have many redundant and irrelevant features. FS aims to eliminate such features and select the most important ones that affect classification performance. Metaheuristic algorithms are the best choice to solve this combinatorial problem. Recent researchers invented and adapted new algorithms, hybridized many algorithms, or enhanced existing ones by adding some operators to solve the FS problem. In our paper, we added some operators to the Coati optimization algorithm (CoatiOA). The first operator is the adaptive s-best mutation operator to enhance the balance between exploration and exploitation. The second operator is the directional mutation rule that opens the way to discover the search space thoroughly. The final enhancement is controlling the search direction toward the global best. We tested the proposed mCoatiOA algorithm in solving) in solving challenging problems from the CEC'20 test suite. mCoatiOA performance was compared with Dandelion Optimizer (DO), African vultures optimization algorithm (AVOA), Artificial gorilla troops optimizer (GTO), whale optimization algorithm (WOA), Fick's Law Algorithm (FLA), Particle swarm optimization (PSO), Harris hawks optimization (HHO), and Tunicate swarm algorithm (TSA). According to the average fitness, it can be observed that the proposed method, mCoatiOA, performs better than the other optimization algorithms on 8 test functions. It has lower average standard deviation values compared to the competitive algorithms. Wilcoxon test showed that the results obtained by mCoatiOA are significantly different from those of the other rival algorithms. mCoatiOA has been tested as a feature selection algorithm. Fifteen benchmark datasets of various types were collected from the UCI machine-learning repository. Different evaluation criteria are used to determine the effectiveness of the proposed method. The proposed mCoatiOA achieved better results in comparison with other published methods. It achieved the mean best results on 75% of the datasets.
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| 8. |
- Hashim, Fatma A., et al.
(författare)
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Dimensionality reduction approach based on modified hunger games search: case study on Parkinsons disease phonation
- 2023
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Ingår i: Neural Computing & Applications. - : SPRINGER LONDON LTD. - 0941-0643 .- 1433-3058. ; 35:29, s. 21979-22005
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Hunger Games Search (HGS) is a newly developed swarm-based algorithm inspired by the cooperative behavior of animals and their hunting strategies to find prey. However, HGS has been observed to exhibit slow convergence and may struggle with unbalanced exploration and exploitation phases. To address these issues, this study proposes a modified version of HGS called mHGS, which incorporates five techniques: (1) modified production operator, (2) modified variation control, (3) modified local escaping operator, (4) modified transition factor, and (5) modified foraging behavior. To validate the effectiveness of the mHGS method, 18 different benchmark datasets for dimensionality reduction are utilized, covering a range of sizes (small, medium, and large). Additionally, two Parkinsons disease phonation datasets are employed as real-world applications to demonstrate the superior capabilities of the proposed approach. Experimental and statistical results obtained through the mHGS method indicate its significant performance improvements in terms of Recall, selected attribute count, Precision, F-score, and accuracy when compared to the classical HGS and seven other well-established methods: Gradient-based optimizer (GBO), Grasshopper Optimization Algorithm (GOA), Gray Wolf Optimizer (GWO), Salp Swarm Algorithm (SSA), Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA), Harris Hawks Optimizer (HHO), and Ant Lion Optimizer (ALO).
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| 9. |
- Hashim, Fatma A., et al.
(författare)
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Fick’s Law Algorithm: A physical law-based algorithm for numerical optimization
- 2023
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Ingår i: Knowledge-Based Systems. - : ELSEVIER. - 0950-7051 .- 1872-7409. ; 260
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recently, many metaheuristic optimization algorithms have been developed to address real-world issues. In this study, a new physics-based metaheuristic called Ficks law optimization (FLA) is presented, in which Ficks first rule of diffusion is utilized. According to Ficks law of diffusion, molecules tend to diffuse from higher to lower concentration areas. Many experimental series are done to test FLAs performance and ability in solving different optimization problems. Firstly, FLA is tested using twenty well-known benchmark functions and thirty CEC2017 test functions. Secondly, five real-world engineering problems are utilized to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed FLA. The findings are compared with 12 well-known and powerful optimizers. A Wilcoxon rank-sum test is carried out to evaluate the comparable statistical performance of competing algorithms. Results prove that FLA achieves competitive and promising findings, a good convergence curve rate, and a good balance between exploration and exploitation. The source code is currently available for public from: https://se.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/121033-fick-s-law-algorithm-fla.(c) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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| 10. |
- Mostafa, Reham R., et al.
(författare)
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Enhanced COOT optimization algorithm for Dimensionality Reduction
- 2022
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Ingår i: 2022 FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF WOMEN IN DATA SCIENCE AT PRINCE SULTAN UNIVERSITY (WIDS-PSU 2022). - : IEEE. - 9781665408127 - 9781665408134 ; , s. 43-48
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- COOT algorithm is a recent metaheuristic algorithm that simulates American coot birds when moving in the sea. However, the COOT algorithm like other metaheuristic techniques may be stuck in local regions. In this study, a modified COOT algorithm called (mCOOT) is presented which is based on 2 techniques: Opposition-based Learning (OBL) & Orthogonal Learning to overcome these limitations. Moreover, to test the novel algorithm called mCOOT, we apply it to the dimensionality reduction problem using 9 UCI datasets and compare it with the original algorithm and 3 other ones. Results prove the effectivness and superiority of the proposed algorithm in solving feature selection in terms of classification accuracy and selected features numbers.
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