University of Jordan

About: University of Jordan is a education organization based out in Amman, Jordan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Health care. The organization has 7796 authors who have published 13764 publications receiving 213526 citations.

Seismic behaviour of the Dead Sea fault along Araba valley, Jordan

Abstract: The Dead Sea fault zone is a major left-lateral strike-slip fault. South of the Dead Sea basin, the Wadi Araba fault extends over 160 km to the Gulf of Aqaba. The Dead Sea fault zone is known to have produced several relatively large historical earthquakes. However, the historical events are unequally distributed along the fault and only four events have been reported in the Araba valley over the last few thousands of years. Magnitudes estimated from the historical record are probably slightly smaller than that of the M_w ∼ 7.3 earthquake that struck the Gulf of Aqaba in 1995. The fault cuts straight across Pleistocene to Holocene alluvium and shows morphologic evidence for essentially pure strike-slip motion. Regional seismic monitoring reveals little microseismicity along the fault except around the Dead Sea and Gulf of Aqaba, where the fault splays into complex pull-apart basin fault systems. We have investigated the fault zone at several sites selected from SPOT images and the study of aerial photography. At the site of the now destroyed Tilah Castle, a well-preserved wall, dated to be about 1200 yr BP (^(14)C age on charcoal), is cut by the fault and offset by 2.2 m. Comparison with offset gullies at a nearby site 3 km to the north and at three other sites, respectively 25, 50 and 65 km to the south, reveals that this specific fault displacement is probably related to the last seismic event that ruptured that fault segment, possibly in AD 1458. Moreover, the offset gullies suggest a characteristic slip behaviour with recurring slip of about 1.5 m on average. Given the 4 ± 2 mm yr^(−1) slip rate derived for this fault segment, we infer that the fault should produce M_w ∼ 7 earthquakes along some segment in the Araba valley about every 200 years. The historical period, with only four well-documented large earthquakes in AD 1068, AD 1212, AD 1293 and AD 1458, thus appears to have been relatively quiescent, with a 20 per cent deficit of M_w ∼ 7 earthquakes. However, our data do not exclude the possibility of larger M_w ∼ 7.6 earthquakes or time clustering of earthquakes over longer timespans. An alternative seismic behaviour involves M_w ∼ 7.6 earthquakes about every 6000 years and M_w ∼ 7 earthquakes about every 250 years. The historical catalogue would then appear to be complete for M_w ∼ 7 earthquakes.

HaBiTs: Blockchain-based Telesurgery Framework for Healthcare 4.0

Abstract: Telesurgery has a huge potential to deliver a real-time healthcare surgical services to the remote or distant locations with high quality and accuracy over the wireless communication channel. It provides benefits to the society with improved precision and accuracy in diagnosis procedures. However, the existing telesurgery system has the security, privacy, and interoperability issues, which limits its applicability in healthcare centers across the world in future. To mitigate these issues, in this paper, we propose, a framework named as HaBiTs (blockchain-based secure and flawless inter-operable telesurgery), where security can be achieved with immutability and interoperability by Smart Contracts (SCs). SC is a piece of code written in solidity or other blockchain specific languages to establish the trust between all the parties connected through blockchain and also eliminate the need of an intermediary for data sharing. Finally, we highlight some issues of the traditional telesurgery system and how they are mitigated with usage of the proposed HaBiTs framework.

Comprehensive Structural and Molecular Comparison of Spike Proteins of SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, and Their Interactions with ACE2.

Abstract: The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has recently emerged in China and caused a disease called coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The virus quickly spread around the world, causing a sustained global outbreak. Although SARS-CoV-2, and other coronaviruses, SARS-CoV and Middle East respiratory syndrome CoV (MERS-CoV) are highly similar genetically and at the protein production level, there are significant differences between them. Research has shown that the structural spike (S) protein plays an important role in the evolution and transmission of SARS-CoV-2. So far, studies have shown that various genes encoding primarily for elements of S protein undergo frequent mutation. We have performed an in-depth review of the literature covering the structural and mutational aspects of S protein in the context of SARS-CoV-2, and compared them with those of SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. Our analytical approach consisted in an initial genome and transcriptome analysis, followed by primary, secondary and tertiary protein structure analysis. Additionally, we investigated the potential effects of these differences on the S protein binding and interactions to angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), and we established, after extensive analysis of previous research articles, that SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV use different ends/regions in S protein receptor-binding motif (RBM) and different types of interactions for their chief binding with ACE2. These differences may have significant implications on pathogenesis, entry and ability to infect intermediate hosts for these coronaviruses. This review comprehensively addresses in detail the variations in S protein, its receptor-binding characteristics and detailed structural interactions, the process of cleavage involved in priming, as well as other differences between coronaviruses.

Least-square identification with error bounds for real-time signal processing and control

Abstract: Set-membership (SM) identification, which refers to a class of algorithms using certain a priori knowledge about a parametric model to constrain the solutions to certain sets, is considered. The focus is on a class of SM-based techniques that are of particular interest in applications requiring real-time processing. The optimal bounding ellipsoid (OBE) algorithms are interpreted as a blending of the classical least-square error minimization approach with knowledge of bounds on model errors arising from SM considerations. Using this interpretation, a general framework embracing all currently used OBE algorithms is developed, and strategies for adaptation and for implementation on parallel machines are discussed. Computational complexity benefits are considered for the various algorithms. The treatment is tutorial, leaving many of the formal details to an appendix that presents an archival theoretical treatment of the key results. A second appendix gives an overview of current research in the general SM identification field. >