Autonomous Unbiased Study Group Formation Algorithm for Rapid Knowledge Propagation

Knowledge propagation is a necessity,both in academics and in the industry.The focus of this work is on how to achieve rapid knowledge propaga-tion using collaborative study groups.The practice of knowledge sharing in study groupsfinds relevance in conferences,workshops,and class rooms.Unfortu-nately,there appears to be only few researches on empirical best practices and techniques on study groups formation,especially for achieving rapid knowledge propagation.This work bridges this gap by presenting a workflow driven compu-tational algorithm for autonomous and unbiased formation of study groups.The system workflow consists of a chronology of stages,each made of distinct steps.Two of the most important steps,subsumed within the algorithmic stage,are the algorithms that resolve the decisional problem of number of study groups to be formed,as well as the most effective permutation of the study group participants to form collaborative pairs.This work contributes a number of new algorithmic concepts,such as autonomous and unbiased matching,exhaustive multiplication technique,twisted round-robin transversal,equilibrium summation,among others.The concept of autonomous and unbiased matching is centered on the constitution of study groups and pairs purely based on the participants’performances in an examination,rather than through any external process.As part of practical demon-stration of this work,study group formation as well as unbiased pairing were fully demonstrated for a collaborative learning size of forty(40)participants,and partially for study groups of 50,60 and 80 participants.The quantitative proof of this work was done through the technique called equilibrium summation,as well as the calculation of inter-study group Pearson Correlation Coefficients,which resulted in values higher than 0.9 in all cases.Real life experimentation was carried out while teaching Object-Oriented Programming to forty(40)under-graduates between February and May 2021.Empirical result showed that the per-formance of the learners was improved appreciably.This work will therefore be of immense benefit to the industry,academics and research community involved in collaborative learning.

Impact of creatinine methodology on glomerular filtration rate estimation in diabetes

AIM To evaluate the influence of creatinine methodology on the performance of chronic kidney disease(CKD)-Epidemiology Collaboration Group-calculated estimated glomerular filtration rate(CKD-EPI-eGFR) for CKD diagnosis/staging in a large cohort of diabetic patients. METHODS Fasting blood samples were taken from diabetic patients attending our clinic for their regular annual examination, including laboratory measurement of serum creatinine and eGFR.RESULTS Our results indicated an overall excellent agreement in CKD staging(kappa = 0.918) between the Jaffé serum creatinine-and enzymatic serum creatinine-based CKDEPI-eGFR, with 9% of discordant cases. As compared to the enzymatic creatinine, the majority of discordances(8%) were positive, i.e., associated with the more advanced CKD stage re-classification, whereas only 1% of cases were negatively discordant if Jaffé creatinine was used for eGFR calculation. A minor proportion of the discordant cases(3.5%) were re-classified into clinically relevant CKD stage indicating mildly to moderately decreased kidney function(< 60 m L/min per 1.73 m^2). Significant acute and chronic hyperglycaemia, assessedas plasma glucose and Hb A1 c levels far above the recommended glycaemic goals, was associated with positively discordant cases. Due to a very low frequency, positive discordance is not likely to present a great burden for the health-care providers, while intensified medical care may actually be beneficial for the small number of discordant patients. On the other hand, a very low proportion of negatively discordant cases(1%) at the 60 m L/min per 1.73 m^2 eGFR level indicate a negligible possibility to miss the CKD diagnosis, which could be the most prominent clinical problem affecting patient care, considering high risk of CKD for adverse patient outcomes. CONCLUSION This study indicate that compensated Jaffé creatinine procedure, in spite of the glucose-dependent bias, is not inferior to enzymatic creatinine in CKD diagnosis/staging and therefore may provide a reliable and cost-effective tool for the renal function assessment in diabetic patients.

Fine-grained cooperative access control scheme with hidden policies

The traditional ciphertext policy attribute-based encryption(CP-ABE) has two problems: one is that the access policy must be embedded in the ciphertext and sent, which leads to the disclosure of user's privacy information, the other is that it does not support collaborative decryption, which cannot meet the actual demand of conditional collaborative decryption among multiple users. In order to deal with the above two problems at the same time, a fine-grained cooperative access control scheme with hidden policies(FCAC-HP) is proposed based on the existing CP-ABE schemes combined with blockchain technology. In FCAC-HP scheme, users are grouped by group identifier so that only users within the same group can cooperate. In the data encryption stage, the access policy is encrypted and then embedded in the ciphertext to protect the privacy information of the access policy. In the data access stage, the anonymous attribute matching technology is introduced so that only matched users can decrypt ciphertext data to improve the efficiency of the system. In this process, a smart contract is used to execute the verification algorithm to ensure the credibility of the results. In terms of security, FCAC-HP scheme is based on the prime subgroup discriminative assumption and is proved to be indistinguishable under chosen plaintext attack(CPA) by dual system encryption technology. Experimental verification and analysis show that FCAC-HP scheme improves computational efficiency while implementing complex functions.