Hepatitis B Surface Antigen and Hepatitis C Virus Antibodies among Drug Users in Burkina Faso

Introduction: The epidemiology of both hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections among drug users (DUs) is little known in West Africa. The study aimed to assess the prevalence of hepatitis B and C viruses among drug users in Burkina Faso. Methodology: This was a cross-sectional biological and behavioral survey conducted between June and August 2022, among drug users in Ouagadougou and Bobo Dioulasso, the two main cities of Burkina Faso. A respondent-driven sampling (RDS) was used to recruit drug users. Hepatitis B surface antigen was determined using lateral flow rapid test kits and antibodies to hepatitis C virus in serum determined using an Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay. Data were entered and analyzed using Stata 17 software. Weighted binary logistic regression was used to identify the associated factors of hepatitis B and C infections and a p-value Results: A total of 323 drug users were recruited with 97.5% males. The mean age was 32.7 years old. The inhaled or smoked mode was the most used by drug users. The adjusted hepatitis B and hepatitis C prevalence among study participants were 11.1% and 2.3% respectively. The marital status (p = 0.001), and the nationality (p = 0.011) were significantly associated with hepatitis B infection. The type of drug used was not significantly associated with hepatitis B infection or hepatitis C infection. Conclusion: The prevalence of HBsAg and anti-HCV antibodies among DUs are comparable to those reported in the general population in Burkina Faso. This result suggests that the main routes of contamination by HBV and HCV among DUs are similar to those in the population, and could be explained by the low use of the injectable route by DUs in Burkina Faso.

Reform of the Irrigation Sector and Creation of Functional and Sustainable Irrigation Water Users Associations (AUEI) in Niger: Capitalization of the Experience of the Konni AHA

During the 1980s, as part of a policy of liberalization, following budgetary cuts linked to the implementation of structural adjustment programs, management responsibilities for AHAs were transferred from ONAHA to cooperatives concerned. Due to lack of financial resources, but also because of poor management, everywhere in Niger we are witnessing an accelerated deterioration of the irrigation infrastructure of hydro-agricultural developments. Institutional studies carried out on this situation led the State of Niger to initiate a reform of the governance of hydro-agricultural developments, by streng-thening the status of ONAHA, by creating an Association of Irrigation Water Users (AUEI) and by restructuring the old cooperatives. Indeed, this research aims to analyze the creation of functional and sustainable Irrigation Water User Associations (AUEI) in Niger in a context of reform of the irrigation sector, and based on the experience of the Konni AHA. It is based on a methodological approach which takes into account documentary research and the collection of data from 115 farmers, selected by reasoned choice and directly concerned by the management of the irrigated area. The data collected was analyzed and the results were analyzed using the systemic approach and the diagnostic process. The results show that the main mission of the AUEI is to ensure better management of water, hydraulic equipment and infrastructure on the hydro-agricultural developments of Konni. The creation of the Konni AUEI was possible thanks to massive support from the populations and authorities in the implementation process. After its establishment, the AUEI experienced a certain lethargy for some time due to the rehabilitation work of the AHA but currently it is functional and operational in terms of associative life and governance. Thus, the constraints linked to the legal system, the delay in the completion of the work, the uncertainties of access to irrigation water but also the problems linked to the change in mentality of certain ONAHA agents constitute the challenges that must be resolved in the short term for the operationalization of the Konni AUEI.

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing Adaptive Technology for Multinode Users of Seawater Channel Based on Inductively Coupled Mooring Chain

As an important part of buoy-type ocean monitoring systems,the inductively coupled mooring chain solves the problem of data cotransmission through the multinode sensors that it carries,which is significant for the rapid acquisition of fish,hydrology,and other information.This paper is based on a seawater channel transmission model with a depth of 300 m and a bandwidth of 2 MHz.An orthogonal frequency division multiplexing(OFDM)technology is used to overcome the multipath effect of signal transmission on a seawater medium.The adaptive technology is integrated into the OFDM,and an improved joint subcarrier and bit power allocation algorithm is proposed.This algorithm solves the problem of dynamic subcarrier allocation during the cotransmission of underwater multinode user data in seawater channels.The results show that the algorithm complexity can be reduced by 0.18126×10^(-2)s during one complete OFDM system data transmission by the improved greedy algorithm,and a total of 216 bits are transmitted by the OFDM.The normalized channel capacity can be improved by 0.012 bit s^(-1)Hz^(-1).At the bit error ratio(BER)of 10^(-3),the BER performance can be improved by approximately 6 d B.When the numbers of users are 4 and 8,the improved algorithm increases the channel capacity,and the higher the number of users,the more evident the channel capacity improvement effect is.The results of this paper have an important reference value for enhancing the transmission performance of inductively coupled mooring chain underwater multinode data.

Trip Purposes of Automobile Users Inference Using Multi-day Traffic Monitoring Data

Determining trip purpose is an important link to explore travel rules. In this paper,we takea utomobile users in urban areas as the research object,combine unsupervised learning and supervised learningm ethods to analyze their travel characteristics,and focus on the classification and prediction of automobileu sers’trip purposes. However,previous studies on trip purposes mainly focused on questionnaires and GPSd ata,which cannot well reflect the characteristics of automobile travel. In order to avoid the multi-dayb ehavior variability and unobservable heterogeneity of individual characteristics ignored in traditional traffic questionnaires,traffic monitoring data from the Northern District of Qingdao are used,and the K-meansc lustering method is applied to estimate the trip purposes of automobile users. Then,Adaptive Boosting(AdaBoost)and Random Forest(RF)methods are used to classify and predict trip purposes. Finally,ther esult shows:(1)the purpose of automobile users can be mainly divided into four clusters,which includeC ommuting trips,Flexible life demand travel in daytime,Evening entertainment and leisure shopping,andT axi-based trips for the first three types of purposes,respectively;(2)the Random Forest method performss ignificantly better than AdaBoost in trip purpose prediction for higher accuracy;(3)the average predictiona ccuracy of Random Forest under hyper-parameters optimization reaches96.25%,which proves the feasibilitya nd rationality of the above clustering results.

Effects of Emotion on Decision-Making ofMethamphetamine Users: Based on theEmotional Iowa Gambling Task

The relapse of methamphetamine (meth) is associated with decision-making dysfunction. The present study aims to investigate theimpact of different emotions on the decision-making behavior of meth users. We used 2 (gender: male, female) × 3 (emotion:positive, negative, neutral) × 5 (block: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) mixed experiment design. The study involved 168 meth users who weredivided into three groups: positive emotion, negative emotion and neutral emotion group, and tested by the emotional IowaGambling Task (IGT). The IGT performance of male users exhibited a decreasing trend from Block 1 to Block 3. Female methusers in positive emotion had the best performance in IGT than females in the other two groups. In positive emotion, the IGTperformance of female meth users was significantly better than that of men. Female meth users in positive emotion had betterdecision-making than those in negative or neutral emotion. Female meth users in positive emotion had better decision-makingperformance than males in positive emotion. In negative and neutral emotions, there was no significant gender difference indecision-making.

Reliable and Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning with Anomalous Users

Recently,various privacy-preserving schemes have been proposed to resolve privacy issues in federated learning(FL).However,most of them ignore the fact that anomalous users holding low-quality data may reduce the accuracy of trained models.Although some existing works manage to solve this problem,they either lack privacy protection for users’sensitive information or introduce a two-cloud model that is difficult to find in reality.A reliable and privacy-preserving FL scheme named reliable and privacy-preserving federated learning(RPPFL)based on a single-cloud model is proposed.Specifically,inspired by the truth discovery technique,we design an approach to identify the user’s reliability and thereby decrease the impact of anomalous users.In addition,an additively homomorphic cryptosystem is utilized to provide comprehensive privacy preservation(user’s local gradient privacy and reliability privacy).We give rigorous theoretical analysis to show the security of RPPFL.Based on open datasets,we conduct extensive experiments to demonstrate that RPPEL compares favorably with existing works in terms of efficiency and accuracy.

Identification of Influential Users in Online Social Network: A Brief Overview

Information networks where users join a network, publish their own content, and create links to other users are called Online Social Networks (OSNs). Nowadays, OSNs have become one of the major platforms to promote both new and viral applications as well as disseminate information. Social network analysis is the study of these information networks that leads to uncovering patterns of interaction among the entities. In this regard, finding influential users in OSNs is very important as they play a key role in the success above phenomena. Various approaches exist to detect influential users in OSNs, starting from simply counting the immediate neighbors to more complex machine-learning and message-passing techniques. In this paper, we review the recent existing research works that focused on identifying influential users in OSNs.

AMachine Learning Approach to User Profiling for Data Annotation of Online Behavior

The user’s intent to seek online information has been an active area of research in user profiling.User profiling considers user characteristics,behaviors,activities,and preferences to sketch user intentions,interests,and motivations.Determining user characteristics can help capture implicit and explicit preferences and intentions for effective user-centric and customized content presentation.The user’s complete online experience in seeking information is a blend of activities such as searching,verifying,and sharing it on social platforms.However,a combination of multiple behaviors in profiling users has yet to be considered.This research takes a novel approach and explores user intent types based on multidimensional online behavior in information acquisition.This research explores information search,verification,and dissemination behavior and identifies diverse types of users based on their online engagement using machine learning.The research proposes a generic user profile template that explains the user characteristics based on the internet experience and uses it as ground truth for data annotation.User feedback is based on online behavior and practices collected by using a survey method.The participants include both males and females from different occupation sectors and different ages.The data collected is subject to feature engineering,and the significant features are presented to unsupervised machine learning methods to identify user intent classes or profiles and their characteristics.Different techniques are evaluated,and the K-Mean clustering method successfully generates five user groups observing different user characteristics with an average silhouette of 0.36 and a distortion score of 1136.Feature average is computed to identify user intent type characteristics.The user intent classes are then further generalized to create a user intent template with an Inter-Rater Reliability of 75%.This research successfully extracts different user types based on their preferences in online content,platforms,criteria,and frequency.The study also validates the proposed template on user feedback data through Inter-Rater Agreement process using an external human rater.

Channel Correlation Based User Grouping Algorithm for Nonlinear Precoding Satellite Communication System

Low Earth Orbit(LEO)multibeam satellites will be widely used in the next generation of satellite communication systems,whose inter-beam interference will inevitably limit the performance of the whole system.Nonlinear precoding such as Tomlinson-Harashima precoding(THP)algorithm has been proved to be a promising technology to solve this problem,which has smaller noise amplification effect compared with linear precoding.However,the similarity of different user channels(defined as channel correlation)will degrade the performance of THP algorithm.In this paper,we qualitatively analyze the inter-beam interference in the whole process of LEO satellite over a specific coverage area,and the impact of channel correlation on Signal-to-Noise Ratio(SNR)of receivers when THP is applied.One user grouping algorithm is proposed based on the analysis of channel correlation,which could decrease the number of users with high channel correlation in each precoding group,thus improve the performance of THP.Furthermore,our algorithm is designed under the premise of co-frequency deployment and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing(OFDM),which leads to more users under severe inter-beam interference compared to the existing research on geostationary orbit satellites broadcasting systems.Simulation results show that the proposed user grouping algorithm possesses higher channel capacity and better bit error rate(BER)performance in high SNR conditions relative to existing works.

Deep Learning Social Network Access Control Model Based on User Preferences

A deep learning access controlmodel based on user preferences is proposed to address the issue of personal privacy leakage in social networks.Firstly,socialusers andsocialdata entities are extractedfromthe social networkandused to construct homogeneous and heterogeneous graphs.Secondly,a graph neural networkmodel is designed based on user daily social behavior and daily social data to simulate the dissemination and changes of user social preferences and user personal preferences in the social network.Then,high-order neighbor nodes,hidden neighbor nodes,displayed neighbor nodes,and social data nodes are used to update user nodes to expand the depth and breadth of user preferences.Finally,a multi-layer attention network is used to classify user nodes in the homogeneous graph into two classes:allow access and deny access.The fine-grained access control problem in social networks is transformed into a node classification problem in a graph neural network.The model is validated using a dataset and compared with other methods without losing generality.The model improved accuracy by 2.18%compared to the baseline method GraphSAGE,and improved F1 score by 1.45%compared to the baseline method,verifying the effectiveness of the model.

Joint Optimization of Resource Allocation and Trajectory Based on User Trajectory for UAV-Assisted Backscatter Communication System

The Backscatter communication has gained widespread attention from academia and industry in recent years. In this paper, A method of resource allocation and trajectory optimization is proposed for UAV-assisted backscatter communication based on user trajectory. This paper will establish an optimization problem of jointly optimizing the UAV trajectories, UAV transmission power and BD scheduling based on the large-scale channel state signals estimated in advance of the known user trajectories, taking into account the constraints of BD data and working energy consumption, to maximize the energy efficiency of the system. The problem is a non-convex optimization problem in fractional form, and there is nonlinear coupling between optimization variables.An iterative algorithm is proposed based on Dinkelbach algorithm, block coordinate descent method and continuous convex optimization technology. First, the objective function is converted into a non-fractional programming problem based on Dinkelbach method,and then the block coordinate descent method is used to decompose the original complex problem into three independent sub-problems. Finally, the successive convex approximation method is used to solve the trajectory optimization sub-problem. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme and algorithm have obvious energy efficiency gains compared with the comparison scheme.

Resource Allocation in Multi-User Cellular Networks:A Transformer-Based Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach

To meet the communication services with diverse requirements,dynamic resource allocation has shown increasing importance.In this paper,we consider the multi-slot and multi-user resource allocation(MSMU-RA)in a downlink cellular scenario with the aim of maximizing system spectral efficiency while guaranteeing user fairness.We first model the MSMURA problem as a dual-sequence decision-making process,and then solve it by a novel Transformerbased deep reinforcement learning(TDRL)approach.Specifically,the proposed TDRL approach can be achieved based on two aspects:1)To adapt to the dynamic wireless environment,the proximal policy optimization(PPO)algorithm is used to optimize the multi-slot RA strategy.2)To avoid co-channel interference,the Transformer-based PPO algorithm is presented to obtain the optimal multi-user RA scheme by exploring the mapping between user sequence and resource sequence.Experimental results show that:i)the proposed approach outperforms both the traditional and DRL methods in spectral efficiency and user fairness,ii)the proposed algorithm is superior to DRL approaches in terms of convergence speed and generalization performance.

Resource Allocation for IRS Assistedmm Wave Wireless Powered Sensor Networks with User Cooperation

In this paper,we investigate IRS-aided user cooperation(UC)scheme in millimeter wave(mmWave)wirelesspowered sensor networks(WPSN),where two single-antenna users are wireless powered in the wireless energy transfer(WET)phase first and then cooperatively transmit information to a hybrid access point(AP)in the wireless information transmission(WIT)phase,following which the IRS is deployed to enhance the system performance of theWET andWIT.We maximized the weighted sum-rate problem by jointly optimizing the transmit time slots,power allocations,and the phase shifts of the IRS.Due to the non-convexity of the original problem,a semidefinite programming relaxation-based approach is proposed to convert the formulated problem to a convex optimization framework,which can obtain the optimal global solution.Simulation results demonstrate that the weighted sum throughput of the proposed UC scheme outperforms the non-UC scheme whether equipped with IRS or not.

Age of Information Based User Scheduling and Data Assignment in Multi-User Mobile Edge Computing Networks:An Online Algorithm

This paper investigates the age of information(AoI)-based multi-user mobile edge computing(MEC)network with partial offloading mode.The weighted sum AoI(WSA)is first analyzed and derived,and then a WSA minimization problem is formulated by jointly optimizing the user scheduling and data assignment.Due to the non-analytic expression of the WSA w.r.t.the optimization variables and the unknowability of future network information,the problem cannot be solved with known solution methods.Therefore,an online Joint Partial Offloading and User Scheduling Optimization(JPOUSO)algorithm is proposed by transforming the original problem into a single-slot data assignment subproblem and a single-slot user scheduling sub-problem and solving the two sub-problems separately.We analyze the computational complexity of the presented JPO-USO algorithm,which is of O(N),with N being the number of users.Simulation results show that the proposed JPO-USO algorithm is able to achieve better AoI performance compared with various baseline methods.It is shown that both the user’s data assignment and the user’s AoI should be jointly taken into account to decrease the system WSA when scheduling users.

Framework to Model User Request Access Patterns in the World Wide Web

In this paper, we present a novel approach to model user request patterns in the World Wide Web. Instead of focusing on the user traffic for web pages, we capture the user interaction at the object level of the web pages. Our framework model consists of three sub-models: one for user file access, one for web pages, and one for storage servers. Web pages are assumed to consist of different types and sizes of objects, which are characterized using several categories: articles, media, and mosaics. The model is implemented with a discrete event simulation and then used to investigate the performance of our system over a variety of parameters in our model. Our performance measure of choice is mean response time and by varying the composition of web pages through our categories, we find that our framework model is able to capture a wide range of conditions that serve as a basis for generating a variety of user request patterns. In addition, we are able to establish a set of parameters that can be used as base cases. One of the goals of this research is for the framework model to be general enough that the parameters can be varied such that it can serve as input for investigating other distributed applications that require the generation of user request access patterns.

Building Custom Spreadsheet Functions with Python: End-User Software Engineering Approach

End-user computing empowers non-developers to manage data and applications, enhancing collaboration and efficiency. Spreadsheets, a prime example of end-user programming environments widely used in business for data analysis. However, Excel functionalities have limits compared to dedicated programming languages. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a prototype for integrating Python’s capabilities into Excel through on-premises desktop to build custom spreadsheet functions with Python. This approach overcomes potential latency issues associated with cloud-based solutions. This prototype utilizes Excel-DNA and IronPython. Excel-DNA allows creating custom Python functions that seamlessly integrate with Excel’s calculation engine. IronPython enables the execution of these Python (CSFs) directly within Excel. C# and VSTO add-ins form the core components, facilitating communication between Python and Excel. This approach empowers users with a potentially open-ended set of Python (CSFs) for tasks like mathematical calculations, statistical analysis, and even predictive modeling, all within the familiar Excel interface. This prototype demonstrates smooth integration, allowing users to call Python (CSFs) just like standard Excel functions. This research contributes to enhancing spreadsheet capabilities for end-user programmers by leveraging Python’s power within Excel. Future research could explore expanding data analysis capabilities by expanding the (CSFs) functions for complex calculations, statistical analysis, data manipulation, and even external library integration. The possibility of integrating machine learning models through the (CSFs) functions within the familiar Excel environment.

The Use of Smart Textiles in the Healthcare Space: Towards an Improvement of the User-Patient Experience

This article explores the role of smart textiles in transforming healthcare environments into spaces that prioritize patient well-being. We will examine the advantages of smart textiles in healthcare settings, such as the real-time monitoring of vital signs through connected clothing. Additionally, we will introduce metadesign as a design approach that considers the interactions between users, healthcare environments, and technologies to create fulfilling experiences. By combining the advanced features of smart textiles with a patient-centered metadesign approach, it becomes possible to create care spaces that cater to patient needs. The objective of this article is to present the integration of metadesign in the design of smart textiles as a process aimed at enhancing the quality of the patient user experience. In this process, we will emphasize the collaborative approach and embrace technological innovation to harness the potential for ongoing improvement and provide users with high-quality experiences. Lastly, we will underscore the significance of adopting a multidimensional approach to evaluate the impact of smart textiles on the patient user experience.

Proxy-Users系统收入分配的Stackelberg模型及解的存在性

用对策论的Stackelberg平衡理论研究了Proxy-Users系统中Proxy和Users之间分配收入问题.对Proxy和Users的地位不平等且Proxy不能按到达率提供服务的情况,建立了收入分配的Stackelberg策略模型,得到了一个双层规划模型,并证明了模型的解的存在性.

Server-Proxy-Users系统收入分配的对策论模型及解的存在性

用对策论研究了Server-Proxies-Users系统中Server、Proxies和Users之间的收入分配问题，建立了收入分配的对策论模型，得到了三层规划模型。根据三层规划模型的特殊性，把它分解成两个双层规划模型，同时证明了模型的解的存在性。

Server-Agents-Users通信系统的Stackelberg模型

在多媒体通信系统中引入代理服务器,使其成为Server-Agents-Users系统,并用对策论的Stackelberg理论研究该系统.针对Server、Agents和Users地位不平等的情况,建立了该系统的Stackelberg策略模型,得到一个三层规划模型.