Jordan University of Science and Technology

About: Jordan University of Science and Technology is a education organization based out in Irbid, Irbid, Jordan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Medicine. The organization has 7582 authors who have published 13166 publications receiving 298158 citations. The organization is also known as: JUST.

Diagnosis of recent and relapsed cases of human brucellosis by PCR assay

Abstract: Background: Brucellosis affects human populations in many developing countries including the Middle East, and Latin America where it is still endemic. It has been prevalent in Jordan for years, where 7842 cases of human brucellosis were registered at the Ministry of Health during 10 yearperiod. This study was initiated by the recent increase in the number of human cases diagnosed in a rural area in the Northern Jordan to help assess the status of the disease in that area. For this purpose blood specimens from brucellosis suspected cases were tested by serology, culture and PCR. Methods: Peripheral blood specimens from 50 healthy control subjects and 165 seropositive patients having compatible signs and symptoms that were clinically diagnosed to have brucellosis were tested by blood culture, and by PCR. The PCR assay used genus-specific primers from the conserved region of the 16S rRNA sequence, which showed high specificity for the Brucella spp. Results: Diagnosis of Brucella was established by PCR in 120 cases (72.7%). All of them were seropositive and 20 were positive by culture. Forty-eight of 58 (82.8%) of the relapsed cases two months after completing the treatment with an increase in the previous serological titers were positive by PCR. The assay has 85.7% positive predicative value, 100% sensitivity and specificity since it correctly identified all cases that were positive by blood cultures, 95.8% by serology and none of the control group was positive. Conclusions: Results showed that PCR assay can be applied with serology for the diagnosis of brucellosis suspected cases and relapses regardless of the duration or type of the disease without relying on the blood cultures, especially in chronic cases.

Novel hybrid schemes employing packet marking and logging for IP traceback

Abstract: Tracing DoS attacks that employ source address spoofing is an important and challenging problem. Traditional traceback schemes provide spoofed packets traceback capability either by augmenting the packets with partial path information (i.e., packet marking) or by storing packet digests or signatures at intermediate routers (i.e., packet logging). Such approaches require either a large number of attack packets to be collected by the victim to infer the paths (packet marking) or a significant amount of resources to be reserved at intermediate routers (packet logging). We adopt a hybrid traceback approach in which packet marking and packet logging are integrated in a novel manner, so as to achieve the best of both worlds, that is, to achieve a small number of attack packets to conduct the traceback process and a small amount of resources to be allocated at intermediate routers for packet logging purposes. Based on this notion, two novel traceback schemes are presented. The first scheme, called distributed link-list traceback (DLLT), is based on the idea of preserving the marking information at intermediate routers in such a way that it can be collected using a link list-based approach. The second scheme, called probabilistic pipelined packet marking (PPPM), employs the concept of a "pipeline" for propagating marking information from one marking router to another so that it eventually reaches the destination. We evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed schemes against various performance metrics through a combination of analytical and simulation studies. Our studies show that the proposed schemes offer a drastic reduction in the number of packets required to conduct the traceback process and a reasonable saving in the storage requirement.

Meckel’s Diverticulum: Comparison of Incidental and Symptomatic Cases

Abstract: Although Meckel's diverticulum is the commonest congenital gastrointestinal anomaly, there is still debate concerning the proper management of asymptomatic diverticula Records of all patients whose Meckel's diverticulum was resected at our hospitals between 1990 and 2002 were reviewed Clinical characteristics, mode of presentations, and management for all patients were analyzed Meckel's diverticula were resected in 68 patients Patients were divided into two groups: the incidental group included 40 patients (24 males) in whom the diagnosis of diverticula was incidental The symptomatic group included 28 patients (20 males) who presented with diverticulum-related complications Preoperative diagnosis was possible in only four cases In four patients from the symptomatic group, Meckel's diverticula were found and left untouched during a previous laparotomy There was no significant difference between the two groups with respect to gender (p = 048) Patients in the symptomatic group were significantly younger than patients in the incidental group (p = 0002) The diverticula in the symptomatic group tended to be longer (p = 0001) with a narrower base (p = 0001) than the diverticula in the incidental group A diameter of < or = 2 cm was significantly associated with more complications (p = 001) Heterotopic tissue was present more significantly in the symptomatic group than the incidental group (p = 001) There was no significant difference in the morbidity rate between the two groups (p = 071), and there was no mortality in either group Preoperative diagnosis of Meckel's diverticulum is difficult and should be kept in mind in cases of acute abdomen Resection of incidentally found diverticula is not associated with increased operative morbidity or mortality