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While the proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT) has revolutionized several industries, it has also created severe data security concerns. The security of these network devices and the dependability of IoT networks depend on efficient threat detection. Device heterogeneity, computing resource constraints, and the ever-changing nature of cyber threats are a few of the obstacles that make detecting cyber threats in IoT systems difficult. Complex threats often go undetected by conventional security measures, requiring more sophisticated, adaptive detection methods. Therefore, this study presents the Hybrid approach based on the Support Vector Machines Rule-Based Detection (HSVMR-D) method for an all-encompassing approach to identifying cyber threats to the IoT. The HSVMR-D employs SVM to categorize known and unknown threats using attributes acquired from IoT data. Identifying known attack signatures and patterns using rule-based approaches improves detection efficiency without retraining by adapting pre-trained models to new IoT contexts. Moreover, protecting vital infrastructure and sensitive data, HSVMR-D provides a thorough and adaptable solution to improve the security posture of IoT deployments. Comprehensive experiment analysis and simulation results compared to the baseline study have confirmed the efficiency of the proposed HSVMR-D. Furthermore, increased resilience to completely novel changing threats, fewer false positives, and improved accuracy in threat detection are all outcomes that show the proposed work outperforms others. The HSVMR-D approach is helpful where the primary objective is a secure environment in the Internet of Things (IoT) when resources are limited.

This paper presents a pioneering approach to bolstering network security and privacy by implementing chaotic optical communication with a hybrid optical feedback system (HOFS). The current baseline methods in network security are often less feasible for hybrid feedback systems, including limited robustness, compromised security, and synchronization challenges. Therefore, this paper proposes a hybrid approach to address these shortcomings by integrating the HOFS into chaotic optical communication systems (HOFS-COCS) to overcome the baseline challenges. This paper aims to improve network security while significantly maintaining efficient communication channels. Moreover, We designed two algorithms, one for chaotic maps generation and another for text encryption and decryption, to improve security in the hybrid feedback system. Our findings demonstrate through rigorous experimentation and analysis that the proposed (HOFS-COCS) method significantly improves network security by enabling reliable chaos generation, synchronization, and secure message transmission in chaotic optical communication systems. This research represents a significant advancement towards enhanced secrecy and synchronization in chaotic optical communication systems, promising a paradigm shift in network security protocols.

In Korea, Hand-foot-and-mouth disease (HFMD) is a recurring illness that presents significant public health challenges, primarily because of its unpredictable epidemic patterns. The accurate prediction of the spread of HFMD plays a vital role in the effective management of the disease. We have devised a dynamic model that accurately represents the transmission dynamics of HFMD. The model includes compartments for susceptible, exposed, inpatients, outpatients, recovered, and deceased individuals. By utilizing monthly inpatient and outpatient data, the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) method was employed to perform a joint estimation of model parameters and state variables. The calibration of model parameters involved using data from the months of January to May, while generating forecasts for the timeframe spanning from June to December. The findings reveal a significant alignment between the model and the observed data, as evidenced by root-mean-square error (RMSE) values below 1000 for inpatients and below 10000 for outpatients starting in June. The correlation coefficients surpassed 0.9, except for the year 2015. The implications of our findings suggest a notable shift in transmission and recovery rates, starting in 2015. The model successfully predicted the peak and magnitude of HFMD outbreaks occurring between June and December, closely matching the observed epidemic patterns. The model's efficacy in predicting epidemic trends and informing preventive strategies is reinforced by the insights gained from monthly variations in parameter estimates of HFMD transmission dynamics.

This work investigates the metric dimension (MD) and edge metric dimension (EMD) of SiO 2 nanostructures, specifically nanosheets, nanotubes, and nanotorii. The metric dimension describes the minimum number of vertices required to uniquely identify every other point in a graph. In contrast, the edge metric dimension is the minimum number of vertices needed to distinguish each edge. Understanding these dimensions is essential for characterizing the geometric and structural properties of nanoparticles. Using graph theory techniques, we compute the MD and EMD of various SiO 2 nanostructures to elucidate their unique geometries and configurations. Our findings offer precise formulas for these dimensions, critical for designing and optimizing SiO 2 -based materials with targeted properties. This study provides valuable insights for applications in chemistry, materials science, and nanotechnology, where knowledge of structural characteristics at the nanoscale is crucial.

Studying how traditional knowledge regarding wild food plants and particularly wild vegetables changes over time and space is crucial for understanding which socio-ecological variables may have an influence on traditional foraging behaviors. Recent work has found that religious affiliation may play a central role since, in specific cultural contexts, religion shapes kinship relations and consequently the vertical transmission of traditional knowledge and practices. In order to further test this hypothesis, a field ethnobotanical study specifically focusing on wild vegetables was conducted among four religious communities (Shias, Sunnis, Christians, and Sikhs) in Kurram District, North-West Pakistan. Results show that a remarkable bio-cultural heritage comprising fifty-five folk wild food taxa survives today; most of the wild plants were however quoted by few informants, suggesting that this traditional knowledge system is possibly under threat. More than the half of the quoted wild vegetables were not yet reported so far in the Pakistan wild food ethnobotanical literature. The most commonly gathered wild vegetables were Amaranthus viridis L. , Margarospermum officinale L. , Malva neglecta Wallr., Portulaca oleracea L., and Rumex dentatus L. Most of the recorded wild vegetables were quoted by Shia and, to less extent, by Sunni community members, while Christians and Sikhs showed an extremely restricted wild plant food repertoire. These differences may be related to the different history and socio-economic conditions of the considered religious groups,  to geographical/ecological factors and probably to the very specific origin of the Shia groups (Turi tribe) of the region, which moved from Western Asia a few centuries ago. Moreover, a remarkable portion of the quoted wild vegetables are perceived to have specific medicinal properties. A serious reconsideration of the recorded wild food plant resources, especially also within educational platforms, could be crucial for fostering culturally-appropriate food security strategies in marginal areas of Pakistan.

On May 4, 2023, four schoolteachers and four drivers, including the young ethnobotanist Sayed Hussain, lost their lives at their school, massacred by religious extremists in the village of Teri Mangal, Kurram District, NW Pakistan, near the Pakistani-Afghan border. Ethnobiologists working in this area believe in the power of education and community-centered rural development as prominent tools for bringing about decent sustainable livelihoods in the near future and ultimately fostering social cohesion, tolerance, and peace. Ethnobiology was expressly conceived and designed to play a pivotal role in celebrating the richness of diversity of both indigenous and minority groups and especially to stop their oppression and discrimination, building the conditions for providing them true agency in their inalienable right to shape a decent future for their children. Field ethnobiologists in Kurram feel the palpable social tension, the fears local people confront daily and even sometimes the reluctance of a few community members to discuss and share their folk knowledge, while at other times, the burden of accessing militarily controlled areas and territories affected by landmines made their field research unfeasible. Nevertheless, ethnobiologists conducting field studies and navigating through these major difficulties exercise their daily resilience daily and believe in the power of the continuous dialogue between local knowledge holders and scholars.

In a long-lasting major disease outbreak such as that of COVID-19, the challenge for public health authorities is to keep people motivated and keen on following safety guidelines. In this study, a compartmental model with a heterogeneous transmission rate (based on awareness) is utilized to hypothesize about the public adoption of preventive guidelines. Three subsequent outbreaks in South Korea, Pakistan, and Japan were analyzed as case studies. The transmission, behavior change, and behavioral change ease rates of the disease were measured in these countries. The parameters were estimated using the maximum likelihood method with an additional identifiability analysis performed to determine the uniqueness of the estimated parameters for quantitatively comparing them during the first three waves of COVID-19. The mathematical analysis and simulation results show that individual responses had a significant effect on the outbreak. Individuals declining to follow the public health guidelines in Korea and Japan between the second and third waves contributed to making the third peak the highest of the three peaks. In Pakistan, however, individual responses to following public health guidelines were maintained between the second and third waves, resulting in the third peak being lower than the first, rather than being associated with the highest transmission rate. Thus, maintaining a high level of awareness is critical for containing the spread. Improvised public health campaigns are recommended to sustain individual attention and maintain a high level of awareness.

COVID‐19, although now at the endemic stage in numerous regions, is a serious public health challenge. While the virus spreads primarily through direct human‐to‐human contact, it can also be transmitted indirectly through contaminated environments. In this study, we propose a nonlinear epidemic model to analyze the first three waves of COVID‐19 in Nigeria, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. Through the maximum likelihood method, we derive estimates for various parameters, including the direct transmission rate, indirect transmission rate, and initial infection rate. Our studies investigate changes in both direct and indirect transmission in the early waves of COVID‐19 across West Africa, placing the virus’s behavior in perspective in several outbreaks. We also draw attention to the importance of consideration of structurally and practically identifiable combinations of parameters in producing realizations with biological significance. The results demonstrated significant variations in direct transmission rates, notably in Nigeria, whereas indirect transmission rates were generally steady across every country. It should be noted that direct transmission is higher compared with indirect transmission due to increased social interaction and mobility within the pandemic area. The low environmental survival of the virus is also a contributory factor to the limiting effect observed with indirect transmission. These pieces of evidence point to public health interventions that must focus on the prevention of direct transmission, such as the promotion of social distancing and mask use, with consideration for environmental factors. Our results emphasize the need for multiple control strategies to be considered for any future pandemic management in the region.

The foot-and-mouth disease virus is a highly contagious and economically devastating virus of cloven-hooved animals, including cattle, buffalo, sheep, and goats, causing reduced animal productivity and posing international trade restrictions. For decades, chemically inactivated vaccines have been serving as the most effective strategy for the management of foot-and-mouth disease. Inactivated vaccines are commercially produced in cell culture systems, which require successful propagation and adaptation of field isolates, demanding a high cost and laborious time. Cell culture adaptation is chiefly indebted to amino acid substitutions in surface-exposed capsid proteins, altering the necessity of RGD-dependent receptors to heparan sulfate macromolecules for virus binding. Several amino acid substations in VP1, VP2, and VP3 capsid proteins of FMDV, both at structural and functional levels, have been characterized previously. This literature review combines frequently reported amino acid substitutions in virus capsid proteins, their critical roles in virus adaptation, and functional characterization of the substitutions. Furthermore, this data can facilitate molecular virologists to develop new vaccine strains against the foot-and-mouth disease virus, revolutionizing vaccinology via reverse genetic engineering and synthetic biology.

Background Good health can prolong one’s lifespan and is a fundamental human right. Thus, human health is being influenced by prejudiced from sociological, environmental, economic, and geographic aspects. The economy and transportation system pose a serious challenge to the assessment of the health performance of economies. Objective This study aims to assess the health performance of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) economies by using economic and transport-related indicators and examining the role of health expenditure and governance in improving efficiency. Methods This study measures the economy- and transport-oriented health efficiency of 35 OECD economies for the period of 2000–2022. In the first stage, this study employs a slacks-based measure and the data envelopment analysis–window analysis approach to conduct individual (economy and transportation) and joint assessments to measure health efficiency. In the second stage, this study uses the tobit regression method to investigate the effects of influencing factors, namely, government general health and pharmaceutical expenditures, the medical infrastructure, and governance, on health efficiency. Results Empirical results reveal that a 1-unit change in the health expenditure during the research period improves economy-oriented health efficiency by 71% and transport-oriented health efficiency by 58%. The econometric analysis demonstrates that all the coefficients of economy- and transport-oriented health efficiency are significant and positive. Notably, a 1-unit change in the medical infrastructure increases economy- and transport-oriented health efficiency by 50.8%, and a 1% increase in pharmaceutical expenditure increases the health, economy, and transport efficiency scores by 16.3%, 33%, and 58.6%, respectively. Conclusions The findings suggest that some of the economies were efficient with regard to their health-oriented outputs, that is, quality of life and mortality and morbidity rates, and most of the economies demonstrated excellent economic performance. The findings of the transport-oriented health efficiency assessment reveal that the economies were unable to perform well in the last year of the research period owing to the nationwide lockdowns. Nonetheless, they demonstrated efficiency in the first half of the research period. The joint assessment of economy- and transport-oriented health efficiency indicates that economic and transport input resources can adversely affect the GDP and life expectancy simultaneously, and the medical infrastructure, pharmaceutical expenditure, and number of medical graduates serve as constructive stimuli for health efficiency improvement.