Abstract: “Dengue" is an African word meaning “bone
breaking" because it causes severe joint and muscle pain that feels
like bones are breaking. It is an infectious disease mainly transmitted
by female mosquito, Aedes aegypti, and causes four serotypes of
dengue viruses. In recent years, a dramatic increase in the dengue
fever confirmed cases around the equator-s belt has been reported.
Several conventional indices have been designed so far to monitor the
transmitting vector populations known as House Index (HI),
Container Index (CI), Breteau Index (BI). However, none of them
describes the adult mosquito population size which is important to
direct and guide comprehensive control strategy operations since
number of infected people has a direct relationship with the vector
density. Therefore, it is crucial to know the population size of the
transmitting vector in order to design a suitable and effective control
program. In this context, a study is carried out to report a new
statistical index, ABURAS Index, using Poisson distribution based
on the collection of vector population in Jeddah Governorate, Saudi Arabia.
Abstract: Deciding the numerous parameters involved in
designing a competent artificial neural network is a complicated task.
The existence of several options for selecting an appropriate
architecture for neural network adds to this complexity, especially
when different applications of heterogeneous natures are concerned.
Two completely different applications in engineering and medical
science were selected in the present study including prediction of
workpiece's surface roughness in ultrasonic-vibration assisted turning
and papilloma viruses oncogenicity. Several neural network
architectures with different parameters were developed for each
application and the results were compared. It was illustrated in this
paper that some applications such as the first one mentioned above
are apt to be modeled by a single network with sufficient accuracy,
whereas others such as the second application can be best modeled
by different expert networks for different ranges of output.
Development of knowledge about the essentials of neural networks
for different applications is regarded as the cornerstone of
multidisciplinary network design programs to be developed as a
means of reducing inconsistencies and the burden of the user
intervention.
Abstract: The feature of HIV genome is in a wide range because
of it is highly heterogeneous. Hence, the infection ability of the virus changes related with different chemokine receptors. From this point,
R5 and X4 HIV viruses use CCR5 and CXCR5 coreceptors respectively while R5X4 viruses can utilize both coreceptors. Recently, in Bioinformatics, R5X4 viruses have been studied to
classify by using the coreceptors of HIV genome.
The aim of this study is to develop the optimal Multilayer
Perceptron (MLP) for high classification accuracy of HIV sub-type viruses. To accomplish this purpose, the unit number in hidden layer
was incremented one by one, from one to a particular number. The statistical data of R5X4, R5 and X4 viruses was preprocessed by the
signal processing methods. Accessible residues of these virus sequences were extracted and modeled by Auto-Regressive Model
(AR) due to the dimension of residues is large and different from each other. Finally the pre-processed dataset was used to evolve MLP with various number of hidden units to determine R5X4
viruses. Furthermore, ROC analysis was used to figure out the optimal MLP structure.
Abstract: In this study, three subtypes of influenza A viruses (pH1N1, H5N1 and H3N2) which naturally infected human were analyzed by bioinformatic approaches to find candidate human cellular miRNAs targeting viral genomes. There were 76 miRNAs targeting influenza A viruses. Among these candidates, 70 miRNAs were subtypes specifically targeting each subtype of influenza A virus including 21 miRNAs targeted subtype H1N1, 27 miRNAs targeted subtype H5N1 and 22 miRNAs targeted subtype H3N2. The remaining 6 miRNAs target on multiple subtypes of influenza A viruses. Uniquely, hsa-miR-3145 is the only one candidate miRNA targeting PB1 gene of all three subtypes. Obviously, most of the candidate miRNAs are targeting on polymerase complex genes (PB2, PB1 and PA) of influenza A viruses. This study predicted potential human miRNAs targeting on different subtypes of influenza A viruses which might be useful for inhibition of viral replication and for better understanding of the interaction between virus and host cell.
Abstract: As days go by, we hear more and more about HIV,
Ebola, Bird Flu and other dreadful viruses which were unknown a
few decades ago. In both detecting and fighting viral diseases
ordinary methods have come across some basic and important
difficulties. Vaccination is by a sense introduction of the virus to the
immune system before the occurrence of the real case infection. It is
very successful against some viruses (e.g. Poliomyelitis), while
totally ineffective against some others (e.g. HIV or Hepatitis-C). On
the other hand, Anti-virus drugs are mostly some tools to control and
not to cure a viral disease. This could be a good motivation to try
alternative treatments. In this study, some key features of possible
physical-based alternative treatments for viral diseases are presented.
Electrification of body parts or fluids (especially blood) with micro
electric signals with adjusted current or frequency is also studied. The
main approach of this study is to find a suitable energy field, with
appropriate parameters that are able to kill or deactivate viruses. This
would be a lengthy, multi-disciplinary research which needs the
contribution of virology, physics, and signal processing experts. It
should be mentioned that all the claims made by alternative cures
researchers must be tested carefully and are not advisable at the time
being.
Abstract: Security is an interesting and significance issue for
popular virtual platforms, such as virtualization cluster and cloud
platforms. Virtualization is the powerful technology for cloud
computing services, there are a lot of benefits by using virtual machine
tools which be called hypervisors, such as it can quickly deploy all
kinds of virtual Operating Systems in single platform, able to control
all virtual system resources effectively, cost down for system platform
deployment, ability of customization, high elasticity and high
reliability. However, some important security problems need to take
care and resolved in virtual platforms that include terrible viruses, evil
programs, illegal operations and intrusion behavior. In this paper, we
present useful Intrusion Detection Mechanism (IDM) software that not
only can auto to analyze all system-s operations with the accounting
journal database, but also is able to monitor the system-s state for
virtual platforms.
Abstract: In April 2009, a new variant of Influenza A virus
subtype H1N1 emerged in Mexico and spread all over the world. The
influenza has three subtypes in human (H1N1, H1N2 and H3N2)
Types B and C influenza tend to be associated with local or regional
epidemics. Preliminary genetic characterization of the influenza
viruses has identified them as swine influenza A (H1N1) viruses.
Nucleotide sequence analysis of the Haemagglutinin (HA) and
Neuraminidase (NA) are similar to each other and the majority of
their genes of swine influenza viruses, two genes coding for the
neuraminidase (NA) and matrix (M) proteins are similar to
corresponding genes of swine influenza. Sequence similarity between
the 2009 A (H1N1) virus and its nearest relatives indicates that its
gene segments have been circulating undetected for an extended
period. Nucleic acid sequence Maximum Likelihood (MCL) and
DNA Empirical base frequencies, Phylogenetic relationship amongst
the HA genes of H1N1 virus isolated in Genbank having high
nucleotide sequence homology.
In this paper we used 16 HA nucleotide sequences from NCBI for
computing sequence relationships similarity of swine influenza A
virus using the following method MCL the result is 28%, 36.64% for
Optimal tree with the sum of branch length, 35.62% for Interior
branch phylogeny Neighber – Join Tree, 1.85% for the overall
transition/transversion, and 8.28% for Overall mean distance.
Abstract: Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 viruses have created demand for a cost-effective vaccine to prevent a pandemic of the disease. Here, we report that Trichoplusia ni (T. ni) larvae can act as a cost-effective bioreactor to produce recombinant HA5 (rH5HA) proteins as an potential effective vaccine for chickens. To facilitate the recombinant virus identification, virus titer determination and access the infected larvae, we employed the internal ribosome entry site (IRES) derived from Perina nuda virus (PnV, belongs to insect picorna like Iflavirus genus) to construct a bi-cistronic baculovirus expression vector that can express the rH5HA protein and enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) simultaneously. Western blot analysis revealed that the 70 kDa rH5HA protein and partially cleaved products (40 kDa H5HA1) were generated in T. ni larvae infected with recombinant baculovirus carrying the H5HA gene. These data suggest that the baculovirus-larvae recombinant protein expression system could be a cost-effective platform for H5N1 vaccine production.
Abstract: The study was conducted to investigate the profile of
hepatitis in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and to determine which age
group hepatitis viruses most commonly infect. The epidemiology of
viral hepatitis in Saudi Arabia has undergone major changes,
concurrent with major socioeconomic developments over the last two
to three decades. This disease represents a major public health
problem in Saudi Arabia resulting in the need for considerable
healthcare resources. A retrospective cross sectional analysis of the
reported cases of viral hepatitis was conducted based on the reports
of The Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia about Hepatitis A, B and C
infections in all regions from the period of January 2006 to December
2010. The study demonstrated that incidence of viral Hepatitis is
decreasing, except for Hepatitis B that showed minimal increase. Of
hepatitis A, B, and C, Hepatitis B virus (HBV) was the most
predominant type, accounting for (53%) of the cases, followed by
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) (30%) and HAV (17%). HAV infection
predominates in children (5–14 years) with 60% of viral hepatitis
cases, HBV in young adults (15–44 years) with 69% of viral hepatitis
cases, and HCV in older adults (>45 years) with 59% of viral
hepatitis cases. Despite significant changes in the prevalence of viral
hepatitis A, B and C, it remains a major public health problem in
Saudi Arabia; however, it showed a significant decline in the last two
decades that could be attributed to the vaccination programs and the
improved health facilities. Further researches are needed to identify
the risk factors making a specific age group or a specific region in
Saudi Arabia targeted for a specific type of hepatitis viruses.
Abstract: Mathematical models can be used to describe the
transmission of disease. Dengue disease is the most significant
mosquito-borne viral disease of human. It now a leading cause of
childhood deaths and hospitalizations in many countries. Variations
in environmental conditions, especially seasonal climatic parameters,
effect to the transmission of dengue viruses the dengue viruses and
their principal mosquito vector, Aedes aegypti. A transmission model
for dengue disease is discussed in this paper. We assume that the
human and vector populations are constant. We showed that the local
stability is completely determined by the threshold parameter, 0 B . If
0 B is less than one, the disease free equilibrium state is stable. If
0 B is more than one, a unique endemic equilibrium state exists and
is stable. The numerical results are shown for the different values of
the transmission probability from vector to human populations.