Research Title: Seroprevalences of Toxoplasma gondii and Neospora caninum infections in Jordanian women who had a recent spontaneous abortion

Author: Marwan Abu-Halaweh, Published Year: 2021

evista Brasileira de Parasitologia Veterinária , 30 (3)

Faculty: Science

Abstract: This cross-sectional study investigatesToxoplasma gondii and Neospora caninum among 445 recently spontaneouslyaborted (RSA) Jordanian women using ELISA and indirect fluorescent antibody (at a cut-off value of 1/200) tests,respectively. The type of hospital, age, cat and dog contacts, raw and barbecued meat and wild plant consumption,number of abortions, and stillbirths were tested as independent variables using univariate and multivariate logisticregression analyses. The true seroprevalences were 22.1% for T. gondii-IgG, 22.7% for N. caninum-IgG, 2.6% forT. gondii-IgM, 10.6% for N. caninum-IgM, 0% for T. gondii-IgG and IgM, 6.7% for N. caninum-IgG and IgM, and 4.6%and 0% for both parasite IgG and IgM, respectively. T. gondii-IgM-seropositivity was associated with the number ofabortions with odds ratios (OR) of 2.4 and eating barbecued meat (OR = 0.12).N. caninum-IgG-seropositivity wasassociated with having a dog in the house (OR = 2.6), and with stillbirth (OR = 0.1). N. caninum-IgM was associatedwith visiting a private-hospital (OR = 2.7). RSA Jordanian women are equally exposed to both parasites withsignificantly (p < 0.05) higher seroprevalence of N. caninum-IgM compared to T. gondii-IgM suggestive of activeinfections among RSA women in Jordan.Keywords: Toxplasma gondii, Neospora caninum, seroprevalence, risk factors, abortion, Jordan

Keywords: Toxplasma gondii, Neospora caninum, seroprevalence, risk factors, abortion, Jordan

Research Title: Quadruplex qPCR for detection and discrimination of C. Coli, C. fetus, and C. Jejuni from other Campylobacter species in chicken and sheep meat

Author: Marwan Abu-Halaweh, Published Year: 2024

Faculty: Science

Abstract: Campylobacter is gram-negative bacteria considered the predominant genera isolated from poultry samples and associated with gastroenteritis. Due to the problems in conventional cultural methods of time-consuming and technically demanding requirements, a rapid and feasible method for their identification and discrimination of the closely related spp. Including Campylobacter coli, Campylobacter fetus, and Campylobacter jejuni is needed. This study analyzes the chicken and sheep meats samples (n = 125) using culture and pre-enrichment-based Quadraplex real-time PCR by targeting OrfA, CstA, HipO, and 16 S rRNA genes of C. coli, C. fetus, C. jejuni and Campylobacter spp. Respectively. The analysis of 125 chicken and sheep meat samples by culture and real-time PCR showed high concordance between the results of the two methods. The present study show high prevalence of Campylobacter species (35% and 32% from chicken and meat respectively) of which C. jejuni were the most abundant. Reaction efficiencies were between 90 and 110%, and detect as low as 8.9 fg in C. jejuni. The need for quick detection and discrimination methods in sheep and chicken meat can be met using the described Quadraplex real-time PCR methodology.

Keywords: real time PCR. Campylobacter, Detection, Discrimination

Research Title: Loss of symmetric cell division of apicalneural progenitors drives DENND5A-relateddevelopmental and epilepticencephalopathy

Author: Tawfiq Froukh, Published Year: 2024

Faculty: Science

Abstract: Developmental and epileptic encephalopathies (DEEs) feature altered braindevelopment, developmental delay and seizures, with seizures exacerbatingdevelopmental delay. Here we identify a cohort with biallelic variants inDENND5A, encoding a membrane trafficking protein, and develop animalmodels with phenotypes like the human syndrome. We demonstrate thatDENND5A interacts with Pals1/MUPP1, components of the Crumbs apicalpolarity complex required for symmetrical division of neural progenitor cells.Human induced pluripotent stem cells lacking DENND5A fail to undergosymmetric cell division with an inherent propensity to differentiate into neu-rons. These phenotypes result from misalignment of the mitotic spindle inapical neural progenitors. Cells lacking DENND5A orient away from the pro-liferative apical domain surrounding the ventricles, biasing daughter cellstowards a more fate-committed state, ultimately shortening the period ofneurogenesis. This study provides a mechanism for DENND5A-related DEE thatmay be generalizable to other developmental conditions and provides variant-specific clinical information for physicians and families

Keywords: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-51310-z

Research Title: GENETIC DIVERSITY OF AWASSI SHEEP REARED IN FERTILE CRESCENT BASED ON MICROSATELLITES

Author: Raed Mahmoud Al-Atiyat, Published Year: 2024

Journal of Animal and Plant Sciences ‎, 34

Faculty: Science

Abstract: In general, many domestic breeds of livestock evolved to different geographical regions, Awassi sheep in particular, adapted to Fertile Crescent region where cradle of domestication took place. Awassi sheep has tremendous genetic diversity compared to other domestic sheep breeds of the world. Nowadays, Awassi sheep is in danger of losing their unique and ancient genetic diversity as a result mainly of unwarranted crossing with high-yielding exotic breeds. Another reason for losing diversity is reduction in the population size of Awassi sheep in their origin region of the Fertile Crescent. Unveiling genetic diversity marks the inaugural phase in the execution of breeding and conservation initiatives. Previous literature revealed that microsatellite markers were widely used and accepted until nowadays as useful molecular markers for evaluating genetic diversity of sheep populations along with other markers such as Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNP). Most studies based on microsatellite markers provided information on genetic diversity parameters (e.g. observed and expected heterozygosity, PIC, alleles number, inbreeding coefficient, effective population size, genetic distances values and cluster analyses) within and among Awassi populations. These markers enabled phylogenetic relationships among populations by tree building approach based on genetic distance values. On the other hand, crossbreeding practices are thought to contribute to the genetic erosion of the original Awassi sheep breed, while a reduction in population size is anticipated to have adverse effects on genetic diversity. In this work, we reviewed the microsatellite-based studies which have been published for detecting genetic diversity of Awassi sheep breed in various countries of Fertile Crescent.

Keywords: Genetic diversity, Awassi Sheep, Fertile Crescent, Genetic Markers.

Research Title: Exploring the impact of chaos engineering with various user loads on cloud native applications: an exploratory empirical study

Author: Lamis Al-Qoran, Published Year: 2024

Computing, 106

Faculty: Information Technology

Abstract: One of the most popular models that provide computer resources today is cloud computing. Today’s dynamic and successful platforms are created to take advantage of various resources available from service providers. Ensuring the performance and availability of such resources and services is a crucial problem. Any software system may be subject to faults that might propagate to cause failures. Such faults with the potential of contributing to failures are critical because they impair performance and result in a delayed reaction, which is regarded as a dependability problem. To ensure that critical faults can be discovered as soon as possible, the impact of such faults on the system must be tested. The performance and dependability of cloud-native systems are examined in this empirical study using fault injection, one of the chaos engineering techniques. The study explores the impacts and results of injecting various delay times into two cloud-native applications with diverse user numbers. The performance of the applications with various numbers of users is measured in relation to these delays, which accordingly reflects measuring the dependability of those systems. Firstly, the systems’ architecture were identified, and serverless with two Lambda functions and containerised microservices applications were chosen, which depend on utilising and incorporating cloud-native services. Secondly, faults are injected in order to quantify performance attributes such as throughput and latency. The results of several controlled experiments carried out in real-world cloud environments provide exploratory empirical data, which promoted comparisons and statistical analysis that we utilised to identify the behaviour of the application while experiencing stress. Typical results from this investigation include an overall reduction in performance that is embodied in an increase in latency with injecting delays. However, a remarkable result is noticed at a particular delay in which defects and availability problems appear out of nowhere. These findings assist in highlighting the value of using chaos engineering in general and fault injection in particular to assess the dependability of cloud-native applications and to find unpredicted failures that could arise quickly from defects that aren’t supposed to spread and result in dependability issues.

Keywords: Chaos engineering · Fault injection · Dependability · Performance · Availability · Cloud-native systems

Research Title: Towards antifragility of cloud systems: An adaptive chaos driven framework

Author: Lamis Al-Qoran, Published Year: 2024

Information and Software Technology, 174

Faculty: Information Technology

Abstract: Context: Unlike resilience, antifragility describes systems that get stronger rather than weaker under stress and chaos. Antifragile systems have the capacity to overcome stressors and come out stronger, whereas resilient systems are focused on their capacity to return to their previous state following a failure. As technology environments become increasingly complex, there is a great need to develop software systems that can benefit from failures while continuously improving. Most applications nowadays operate in cloud environments. Thus, with this increasing adoption of Cloud-Native Systems, they require antifragility due to their distributed nature. Objective: The paper proposes UNFRAGILE framework, which facilitates the transformation of existing systems into antifragile systems. The framework employs chaos engineering to introduce failures incrementally and assess the system’s response under such perturbation and improves the quality of system response by removing fragilities and introducing adaptive fault tolerance strategies. Method: The UNFRAGILE framework’s feasibility has been validated by applying it to a cloud-native using a real-world architecture to enhance its antifragility towards long outbound service latencies. The empirical investigation of fragility is undertaken, and the results show how chaos affects application performance metrics and causes disturbances in them. To deal with chaotic network latency, an adaptation phase is put into effect. Results: The findings indicate that the steady stage’s behaviour is like the antifragile stage’s behaviour. This suggests that the system could self-stabilise during the chaos without the need to define a static configuration after determining from the context of the environment that the dependent system was experiencing difficulties. Conclusion: Overall, this paper contributes to ongoing efforts to develop antifragile software capable of adapting to the rapidly changing complex environment. Overall, the research provides an operational framework for engineering software systems that learn and improve through exposure to failures rather than just surviving them.

Keywords: Antifragility Resilience Chaos engineering Self-adaptive software Resilience testing Cloud computing

Research Title: A confirmatory factor analysis of a job satisfaction scale for healthcare providers in emergency departments

Author: Audi Naji Khaled Al Smadi, Published Year: 2024

International Journal of Healthcare Management,

Faculty: Business

Abstract: ABSTRACT Objective: Performance of health care providers in a hospital’s emergency department is crucial as they are the first liners in the hospital. This study used a confirmatory factor analysis to verify the validity and reliability of a newly developed multi-dimensional job satisfaction scale for healthcare providers in emergency departments. Method: A convenience sampling method used to collect data from emergency departments of Jordan Middle District hospitals. A total of 286 healthcare providers from 11 hospitals participated in the study. The job satisfaction questionnaire was distributed in these hospitals from the beginning of June 2020 until the end of August 2020. Data analysis was performed using AMOS 21 after data entry into SPSS 25. Result: A model of four-factor with 16 items yielded adequate goodness-of-fit values with good convergent and discriminant validity after model re-specification. Four confirmed factors in this study were the most common dimensions used in measuring job satisfaction. Namely; physical environment and workplace safety, supervisor support, promotion and compensation, and staff communication and relationship domains. Conclusion: The job satisfaction scale was proven to provide a valid measurement model and reliable constructs measuring accurately job satisfaction of healthcare providers in emergency departments and exploring ways to improve their performance.

Keywords: Job satisfaction, Jordan, Emergency Department

Research Title: Biallelic variants in consanguineous families causing neurodevelopmental disorders

Author: Tawfiq Froukh, Published Year: 2024

ASHG2024, USA

Faculty: Science

Abstract: Since the introduction of whole exome sequencing (WES) and new genetic variants linked to neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) are continuously identified, published and catalogued to be used in routine genetic diagnostics. In our continuous research, WES was used for ten unrelated consanguineous families from Jordan characterized by one or two affected members with NDD. Six homozygous variants were identified by cross-link to the pathogenic variants in ClinVar and in our in-house database. Three of them were previously reported in Jordan in unrelated families compared to the families in this study, the variants are: NM_018359.5:c.344T>A, p.Val115Glu in the gene UFSP2, NM_000487.6:c.256C>G, p.Arg86Gly in the gene ARSA and NM_017882.3:c.144G>A, p.Trp48* in the gene CLN6. The new bi-allelic variants are missense NM_001457.4:c.609G>T, p.Gln203His and NM_152722.5:c.503G>A, p.Cys168Tyr in the genes FLNB and HEPACAM respectively, frameshift NM_022725.4:c.109dup, p.Trp37Leufs*54 in the gene FANCF and one in the splice acceptor NM_000191.3:c.498-1G>A in the gene HMGCL. The results of this study stress the importance of continuous research using WES for NDD in Jordan to identify new variants.

Keywords: Genetic testing ; Neurogenetics ; Metabolic disorder ; Phenotype ; Genotype-phenotype correlations

Research Title: The influence of infant characteristics on postpartum depression among mothers with hospitalized infant in NICU

Author: Mariam Mofleh Kawafha, Published Year: 2024

Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics, 310

Faculty: Nursing

Abstract: Purpose The purpose of the study to determine the prevalence of mother postpartum depression and to examine the association between infant characteristics and postpartum depression in the neonatal intensive care unit. Methods A quantitative cross-sectional survey design was conducted in three government teaching hospitals in Jordan. A convenience sample of 188 mothers with hospitalized 188 infants in NICU was recruited. Questionnaires were used to collect the quantitative data, which include Infant Demographic Data Questionnaire, Mother Demographic Data Questionnaire and Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS). The study revealed that infant characteristics such as gestational age, medical condition classification, and birth weight are found to be significant factors that influence depression among mothers. Results The results showed that mothers with infants admitted to NICU experience postpartum depression with a mean of 3.82 and median of 4.04. There were significant differences based on gestational age, birth weight, and classification of medical condition and mothers’ postpartum depression. Conclusion Knowing the relationship of certain infant’s characteristics and postpartum depression can help to focus on relevant infant characteristics so that timely interventions to improve mothers’ well-being can be developed.

Keywords: Postpartum depression · NICU · Mother · Infant · Characteristic

Research Title: Does Vitamin D Have an Effect on Patients With Depression?

Author: Mohammad Abdel Qaedr Al-Maani, Published Year: 2014

MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRY AND ALZHEIMERS, 5

Faculty: Nursing

Abstract: Aim: This paper aims to address the question “does vitamin D have an effect on patients with depression?” and searches the literature to provide an understanding of the previous studies regarding effect of vitamin D on patients with depression; in addition to focusing on the relationship between vitamin D deficiency and depression. Finally recommendations for the approaches to vitamin D deficiency are outlined. Background: Vitamin D is a steroid, a hormone important in cognitive function and mental health, and in addition, affects on mood health, and affects patients with depression. Method: A literature search was performed in PUBMED and EBSCO with the following key words used to search the electronic databases: vitamin D, Depression, vitamin D deficiency, and relationship between vitamin D and depression. The key words were used in multiple combinations to conduct an extensive search of these databases; also a manual search of the reference lists of relevant articles was performed . Conclusion: In summary the author did find an association between low level of vitamin D and depressive symptoms in addition to focusing on the impact of vitamin D on depressed patients.

Keywords: Vitamin D, Depression Inpatients, Vitamin D Deficiency.