The rapidly growing use and storage of private, sensitive, and personal information across different applications have given rise to the need to restrict access to such information; thus, leading to the development of biometric authentication. Multimodal biometric authentication has improved system accuracy, but it has not been able to overcome all the vulnerabilities of biometric authentication. To reduce the amount of data that is stored or communicated during the authentication process and to ensure the authenticity of the biometric templates, image-watermarking techniques have been used to embed the information in one template over the other. In this paper, a new watermarking method is proposed, based on the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) method and the Least Significant Bit (LSB) method. The LSBs of the quantized DCT coefficients of a face image are manipulated according to the values of a binarized fingerprint image. This combination was used to allow the storing and communication of the watermarked images using the popular JPEG format. As the watermark information is not hand-crafted, tamper detection could not be achieved by comparing a static image to the extracted watermark. Thus, a Machine-Learning (ML)-based method was implemented to detect the existence of fingerprint patterns in the watermark. However, as the proposed system used a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to measure the similarity between the templates collected from the user and those stored in the model database, tamper detection was already embedded in the same neural network. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed system. The results show a 98.96% average accuracy, where each prediction took an average processing time of 139.06 ms. The results also showed that the accuracy of tampering detection was 100%. Besides, the size of the files on the disk (or the bandwidth required to communicate the files) was reduced to less than 50% of their original size using the proposed fragile multibiometric watermarking technique.

Abstract

Background: Warts are a common skin condition that affects people all over the world. This ailment affects 2–20% of students in primary school. A well-known keratolytic agent, potassium hydroxide (KOH), has many dermatological uses. Vitamin D is important in the proliferation and differentiation of keratinocytes.

Objective: The aim of the current work was to compare the efficacy and safety of intralesional vitamin D3 injections and 5% KOH cream separately and in combination with each other in the treatment of warts.

Patients and Methods: This study was carried out at the private outpatient Al- Ahlam Center of Dermatology and Cosmetology in Gharyan, Libya from 1^st of Sep to last of Dec 2021. 45 patients with warts were included in the study. They were classified into 3 groups according to method of treatment into Vitamin D3 group, 5% KOH cream group, and combination group.

Results: The mean age of patients was 27.04 ± 11.7 years. 31 patients completed the study. Complete response was seen in 12 patients with vitamin D injection after period of 4 months, 9 patients with 5% KOH cream after period 2-3 months, and 10 patients with combination both treatment after a period of 1 month.

Conclusions: It could be concluded that intralesional vitamin D with 5% KOH cream is safe, effective, and inexpensive treatment option for recalcitrant palmoplantar and periungual warts.

 KeywordsVitamin D3; Palmoplanter; Periungual; KOH; Warts

Abstract

The present work was carried out in order to investigate the physical and chemical quality of the Libyan Asbi'ah groundwater and the degree of its contamination. The achieved results were compared with international quality standards for drinking water. The sampleswere collected from five water wells of the Asbi'ah region. Several parameters were examined including Colour, Taste, smell, pH, total dissolved solids (TDS), Calcium and Magnesium Hardness, Total Hardness, Iron, Fluoride, Ammonia, Phosphate and Chloride. The results showed that the groundwater of Asbi'ah area were within the limitations of WHO Standards. For instance, the maximum values of Fe, PO4, F, NH3 and Cl were (0.92, 0.16, 1.2, 0.05)mg/L respectively. However, some samples had a bit high of concentrations for TDS (590mg/L) and Total Hardness (702mg/L). The most of the water wells shared the high concentration of Total Hardness which might be due to the earth geology of the studied area. This makes the water taste unacceptable and therefore, the water might not be used as drinking water.

Keywords: Natural Groundwater, Chemical & Physical Properties, Contamination, Asbi'ah -Libya.

م إجراء هذه الدراسة للتحقق من الجودة الفيزيائية والكيميائية للمياه الجوفية ودرجة تلوثها في منطقة الأصابعة الليبية.

تمت مقارنة النتائج المتحصل عليها مع معايير الجودة العالمية لمياه الشرب.

جمعت العينات من خمسة آبار مياه جوفية بمنطقة الأصابعة.

تم فحص العديد من المعايير بما في ذلك اللون، الطعم، الرائحة، الأس الهيدروجيني، المواد الصلبة الذائبة الكلية (TDS)، صلابة الكالسيوم والمغنيسيوم، الصلابة الكلية، الحديد، الفلورايد، الأمونيا، الفوسفات والكلوريد.

أظهرت النتائج أن المياه الجوفية في منطقة الدراسة كانت ضمن الحدود المسموح بها من منظمة الصحة العالمية.

على سبيل المثال، كانت القيم القصوى ل Fe، PO4، F، NH3، Cl هي (0.92، 0.16، 1.2، 0.05) مجم / لتر على التوالي.

من جهة أخرى، كان لبعض العينات تركيزات عالية قليلا بالنسبة TDS (590 ملجم / لتر (والعسر الكلي (702 ملجم/لتر).

تشترك معظم آبار المياه في التركيز العالي للعسر الكلي والذي قد يكون بسبب التكوينات الجيولوجية للأرض في منطقة الدراسة.

هذه التراكيز العالية تجعل طعم الماء غير مقبول وغير مستساغ وبالتالي قد لا يمكن استخدام هذه المياه كمياه للشرب.

Thyroid function is impaired by diabetes,

resulting into thyroid disorders, accompanied by

the alteration of thyroid-stimulating hormone

(TSH) and thyroxine (T4) levels. The aim of this

study was to investigate the role of vitamin D

supplementation on TSH and total T4 levels in

serum of Libyan patients suffering from type 2

diabetes mellitus

(T2DM) with thyroid

disorders. A total of 180 subjects were recruited

and distributed into two groups: 80 participants

in control group (43 females and 37 males), with

an age range of 26-72 years, and 100

participants in T2DM patient group (54 females

and 46 males), with an age range of 26-63 years.

Each T2DM patient received a monthly

intramuscular injection of 200000 ng/ml vitamin

D for three months. Glucose, vitamin D, total T4

and TSH levels were determined in serum

samples of healthy subjects and of T2DM

patients (pre- and post-administration of vitamin

D). After the T2DM group received vitamin D

supplementation, the mean of vitamin D level

increased in the T2DM, while the mean of

glucose level decreased. Most importantly, the

mean of total T4 level for patients increased

significantly (p ˂ 0.05) from 1.34 to 8.23 g/dL,

both of which were lower than the control group

mean 10.99 g/dL. In contrast, the mean of TSH

level for patients decreased significantly (p ˂

0.05) from 11.77 to 2.71 mU/L, and both values

were greater than the control group mean 2.01

mU/L. ANOVA results showed that age, gender,

and body mass index had no significant

individual interactions (p > 0.05) with vitamin D

supplementation on total T4 and TSH levels.

Vitamin D supplementation had a beneficial role

on total T4 and TSH levels in serum of Libyan

T2DM patients with thyroid disorders.

Keywords: T2DM, thyroid disorder, total T4,

TSH, vitamin D supplementation, ANOVA, t

test.

In this paper, a novel robust blind grayscale image digital watermarking scheme is introduced based on lifting wavelet transform (LWT) in combination with discrete cosine transform (DCT), Hessenberg decomposition, and entropy analysis for copyright protection of multimedia information. At first, the two levels of LWT are applied to the host grayscale image to improve the imperceptibility of the watermarking scheme and then the high-frequency sub-band of the 2-level of LWT is decomposed by DCT. Next, the DCT coefficients are divided into 4× 4 non-overlapping blocks. After that, Hessenberg decomposition performs on each selected block, whereas the first row, first column element of the upper Hessenberg matrix is utilized to hide the watermark. To evaluate the imperceptibility and robustness of the proposed digital watermarking scheme, the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), and normalized cross-correlation (NC) are utilized to measure the quality and the ability of the proposed watermarking scheme to robust against signal processing operations and geometric attacks. Experimental and analysis results have demonstrated that the proposed scheme is achieved a very good tradeoff between imperceptibility and robustness. The comparison with other scheme have shown that the proposed digital watermarking schemes have a superior performance in terms of imperceptibility and robustness than other

ABSTRACT:

Words in English are not always spelled as they are pronounced. English spelling follows some basic rules, but there are always acceptations to these rules. Students need to learn spelling rules and their exceptions as well. However, English Students face difficulties with spelling especially those whose first language is not English. Libyan undergraduates of Mizdah Arts and Science College commit spelling errors when they write English words. The main reason behind conducting this research is to identify the types and reasons behind making spelling errors by second year students of Mizdah Arts and Science College at Gharian University. In all, 20 students made up of females and males were used for the study. The data for the study was obtained by using a test and a questionnaire were administered to twenty undergraduates. There are six error categories used in the spelling test; homonyms, substitution, omission, spelling rules, transposition, and phoneme-grapheme irregularity. Spelling errors of various categories were identified, computed, and grouped. The study revealed that the highest percentage of errors was committed on substitution category (69.2%). The study indicates that the main cause of spelling errors is the first language interference, the linguistic difference between Arabic and English languages, in addition to the lack of the students’ awareness of the English spelling errors. The findings suggest that teachers are required to pay more attention to the major types of spelling errors and should encourage students to practice English more often until they master the rules of spelling.

Keywords: Students spelling errors, teaching method, ESL writing, academic writing

• Abstract: The aim of this study is to investigate some punctuation errors made by English majors at Faculty of Arts, Assab'ah, University of Gheryan. To reach to this goal, the researchers administered a test to a group of 12 students, 2 males and 10 females. The results revealed that the most common errors committed by the participants were: wrong capitalization, misuse of the comma, the inappropriate use of full stop, dropping question marks, and some problems in using hyphen and quotation marks. In the light of the study findings, the researchers suggests that teachers should emphasize the importance of all the punctuation marks in writing. Key words: punctuation, committed, Majors, errors.