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This article has tried to provide an overview of the most sophisticated microfluidic biosensors for identifying nucleic acids and proteins at the site of treatment. Microfluidics, which also automates sample preparation and reduces processing time and reagent consumption, enables the analysis of small sample quantities. Microfluidics and biosensor technologies collaborate to provide diagnostics at the point of care with high throughput analysis, portability, and disposability. The high sensitivity and selectivity requirements, false response errors, and integration with other essential modules are some of the challenges posed by this merger. The broad categories of protein-based and DNA-based biosensor technology are covered in this review. Also, recent advancements in coupling the biosensors to microfluidics, the main challenges and potential solutions in deploying microfluidic biosensors for point-of-care diagnostics, and the most recent developments in these areas have been discussed.

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Abstract Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) is a viral infection that causes liver inflammation. Annually, approximately 3.4 million cases of HCV are reported worldwide. A diagnosis of HCV in earlier stages helps to save lives. In the HCV review, the authors used a single ML-based prediction model in the current research, which encounters several issues, i.e., poor accuracy, data imbalance, and overfitting. This research proposed a Hybrid Predictive Model (HPM) based on an improved random forest and support vector machine to overcome existing research limitations. The proposed model improves a random forest method by adding a bootstrapping approach. The existing RF method is enhanced by adding a bootstrapping process, which helps eliminate the tree’s minor features iteratively to build a strong forest. It improves the performance of the HPM model. The proposed HPM model utilizes a ‘Ranker method’ to rank the dataset features and applies an IRF with SVM, selecting higher-ranked feature elements to build the prediction model. This research uses the online HCV dataset from UCI to measure the proposed model’s performance. The dataset is highly imbalanced; to deal with this issue, we utilized the synthetic minority over-sampling technique (SMOTE). This research performs two experiments. The first experiment is based on data splitting methods, K-fold cross-validation, and training: testing-based splitting. The proposed method achieved an accuracy of 95.89% for k = 5 and 96.29% for k = 10; for the training and testing-based split, the proposed method achieved 91.24% for 80:20 and 92.39% for 70:30, which is the best compared to the existing SVM, MARS, RF, DT, and BGLM methods. In experiment 2, the analysis is performed using feature selection (with SMOTE and without SMOTE). The proposed method achieves an accuracy of 41.541% without SMOTE and 96.82% with SMOTE-based feature selection, which is better than existing ML methods. The experimental results prove the importance of feature selection to achieve higher accuracy in HCV research.

Abstract Fruits significantly impact everyday living, i.e., Citrus fruits. Numerous fruits have a solid nutritious value and are packed with multivitamins and trace components. Citrus fruits are delicate and susceptible to many diseases and infections. Many researchers have suggested deep and machine learning-based fruit disease detection and classification models. This research presents a precise fruit disease identification model based on context data fusion with Faster-CNN in an edge computing environment. The goal is to develop an accurate, efficient, and trustable fruit disease detection model, a critical component of autonomous food production in a robotic edge platform. This research examines and explores four different diseases of Citrus fruits using CNN deep learning models to be adopted as edge computing solutions. Identification of citrus diseases such as cankers black spot, greening, scab, melanosis, and healthy citrus fruits are implemented using the proposed sequential model without pruning, with pruning having different sparsity levels followed by post quantization. Through the transfer learning method, this model is optimized for the assignment of fruit disease detection employing visuals from two patterns: Near-infrared (NIFR) and RGB. Early and late data fusion techniques for integrating multi-model (NIFR and RGB) facts are evaluated. The accuracy obtained from the proposed model for the canker disease is 97%, scab 95%, melanosis 99%, Greening 97%, Black spot 97% and healthy 97%. In this paper, the results of the proposed model are compared and evaluated with the sparsity levels of 50–80%, 60–90%, 70–90%, and 80–90% pruning and also obtained the results of post-quantization on each level. The results show that the model size with 60–90% pruning can be counteracted to the 47.64 of the baseline model without significant loss of accuracy. Moreover, post-quantization can reduce the 60–90% pruning from 28.16 to 8.72. In addition to enhanced precision, the above initiative is much faster to implement for new fruit diseases because it needs bounding box annotation instead of pixel-level annotation.

Abstract There is an increase in cyberattacks directed at the network behind firewalls. An all-inclusive approach is proposed in this assessment to deal with the problem of identifying new, complicated threats and the appropriate countermeasures. In particular, zero-day attacks and multi-step assaults, which are made up of a number of different phases, some malicious and others benign, illustrate this problem well. In this paper, we propose a highly Boosted Neural Network to detect the multi-stageattack scenario. This paper demonstrated the results of executing various machine learning algorithms and proposed an enormously boosted neural network. The accuracy level achieved in the prediction of multi-stage cyber attacks is 94.09% (Quest Model), 97.29% (Bayesian Network), and 99.09% (Neural Network). The evaluation results of the Multi-Step Cyber-Attack Dataset (MSCAD) show that the proposed Extremely Boosted Neural Network can predict the multi-stage cyber attack with 99.72% accuracy. Such accurate prediction plays a vital role in managing cyber attacks in real-time communication.

Blockchain technology is now being used in every aspect of human life. It appears like everyone is racing to develop apps that run on top of the blockchain technology available today. Indeed, this is owing to the fact that it has distinct qualities and a distinctive design. However, it is not well suited to all applications of blockchain technology. Not merely altering the blockchain protocols would make it suitable, but instead redesigning its architecture is required to make it ideal for different applications. This paper describes the overview of blockchain technology thoroughly. It provides a detailed discussion on the prevalent core-oriented and client-oriented attacks on blockchain technology and the vulnerabilities exploited by them. It also presents the possible countermeasure to these attacks. Moreover, it provides insight into the creation of a better version of the blockchain that is more suitable for different types of blockchain applications.

One of the major reasons of death worldwide is Cardiovascular diseases. One of its type is Arrhythmia in which normal rhythm of heart is varied due to damage in heart muscles and electrolyte imbalance. To study cardiovascular disease, Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal is used that plays a significant role in identifying Arrhythmia. By using a combination of Multivariate Empirical Mode Decomposition (MEMD) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN), a hybrid technique is proposed in this research work to detect and classify Arrhythmia. MEMD, a promising technique that is used nowadays for denoising of multichannel signals, is used in this work. Two main features, i.e., RR interval and Heart Rate are extracted from the ECG signal for the detection of Arrhythmia. Using these features, Arrhythmia is classified into Tachycardia and Bradycardia. Classification is done using pattern recognition of ANN in which Multilayer feed forward neural network is used and trained through Back Propagation Algorithm. Results that are achieved using proposed technique is compared with previous existing techniques as in 2016 (Discrete Wavelet Transform) DWT and ANN gave 87.01% and in 2018 (Empirical Mode Decomposition) EMD and (Linear Discriminant Analysis) LDA gave 87% accuracy. As compare to these techniques, the proposed technique results show that it is an efficient technique that gives better accuracy of 89.8%.

The new coronavirus that produced the pandemic known as COVID-19 has been going across the world for a while. Nearly every area of development has been impacted by COVID-19. There is an urgent need for improvement in the healthcare system. However, this contagious illness can be controlled by appropriately donning a facial mask. If people keep a strong social distance and wear face masks, COVID-19 can be controlled. A method for detecting these violations is proposed in this paper. These infractions include failing to wear a facemask and failing to maintain social distancing. To train a deep learning architecture, a dataset compiled from several sources is used. To compute the distance between two people in a particular area and also predicts the people wearing and not wearing the mask, The proposed system makes use of YOLOv3 architecture and computer vision. The goal of this research is to provide valuable tool for reducing the transmission of this contagious disease in various environments, including streets and supermarkets. The proposed system is evaluated using the COCO dataset. It is evident from the experimental analysis that the proposed system performs well in predicting the people wearing the mask because it has acquired an accuracy of 99.2% and an F1-score of 0.99.

Generally, cloud computing is integrated with wireless sensor network to enable the monitoring systems and it improves the quality of service. The sensed patient data are monitored with biosensors without considering the patient datatype and this minimizes the work of hospitals and physicians. Wearable sensor devices and the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) have changed the health service, resulting in faster monitoring, prediction, diagnosis, and treatment. Nevertheless, there have been difficulties that need to be resolved by the use of AI methods. The primary goal of this study is to introduce an AI-powered, IoMT telemedicine infrastructure for E-healthcare. In this paper, initially the data collection from the patient body is made using the sensed devices and the information are transmitted through the gateway/Wi-Fi and is stored in IoMT cloud repository. The stored information is then acquired, preprocessed to refine the collected data. The features from preprocessed data are extracted by means of high dimensional Linear Discriminant analysis (LDA) and the best optimal features are selected using reconfigured multi-objective cuckoo search algorithm (CSA). The prediction of abnormal/normal data is made by using Hybrid ResNet 18 and GoogleNet classifier (HRGC). The decision is then made whether to send alert to hospitals/healthcare personnel or not. If the expected results are satisfactory, the participant information is saved in the internet for later use. At last, the performance analysis is carried so as to validate the efficiency of proposed mechanism.

Artificial Intelligent (AI) applications in e-health have evolved considerably in the last 25 years. To track the current research progress in this field, there is a need to analyze the most recent trend of adopting AI applications in e-health. This bibliometric analysis study covers AI applications in e-health. It differs from the existing literature review as the journal articles are obtained from the Scopus database from its beginning to late 2021 (25 years), which depicts the most recent trend of AI in e-health. The bibliometric analysis is employed to find the statistical and quantitative analysis of available literature of a specific field of study for a particular period. An extensive global literature review is performed to identify the significant research area, authors, or their relationship through published articles. It also provides the researchers with an overview of the work evolution of specific research fields. The study's main contribution highlights the essential authors, journals, institutes, keywords, and states in developing the AI field in e-health.

Speckle noise is a pervasive problem in medical imaging, and conventional methods for despeckling often lead to loss of edge information due to smoothing. To address this issue, we propose a novel approach that combines a nature-inspired minibatch water wave swarm optimization (NIMWVSO) framework with an invertible sparse fuzzy wavelet transform (ISFWT) in the frequency domain. The ISFWT learns a non-linear redundant transform with a perfect reconstruction property that effectively removes noise while preserving structural and edge information in medical images. The resulting threshold is then used by the NIMWVSO to further reduce multiplicative speckle noise. Our approach was evaluated using the MSTAR dataset, and objective functions were based on two contrasting reference metrics, namely the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and the mean structural similarity index metric (MSSIM). Our results show that the suggested approach outperforms modern filters and has significant generalization ability to unknown noise levels, while also being highly interpretable. By providing a new framework for despeckling medical images, our work has the potential to improve the accuracy and reliability of medical imaging diagnosis and treatment planning.

Brain tumors in Magnetic resonance image segmentation is challenging research. With the advent of a new era and research into machine learning, tumor detection and segmentation generated significant interest in the research world. This research presents an efficient tumor detection and segmentation technique using an adaptive moving self-organizing map and Fuzzyk-mean clustering (AMSOM-FKM). The proposed method mainly focused on tumor segmentation using extraction of the tumor region. AMSOM is an artificial neural technique whose training is unsupervised. This research utilized the online Kaggle Brats-18 brain tumor dataset. This dataset consisted of 1691 images. The dataset was partitioned into 70% training, 20% testing, and 10% validation. The proposed model was based on various phases: (a) removal of noise, (b) selection of feature attributes, (c) image classification, and (d) tumor segmentation. At first, the MR images were normalized using the Wiener filtering method, and the Gray level co-occurrences matrix (GLCM) was used to extract the relevant feature attributes. The tumor images were separated from non-tumor images using the AMSOM classification approach. At last, the FKM was used to distinguish the tumor region from the surrounding tissue. The proposed AMSOM-FKM technique and existing methods, i.e., Fuzzy-C-means and K-mean (FMFCM), hybrid self-organization mapping-FKM, were implemented over MATLAB and compared based on comparison parameters, i.e., sensitivity, precision, accuracy, and similarity index values. The proposed technique achieved more than 10% better results than existing methods.

Industrial automation systems are undergoing a revolutionary change with the use of Internet-connected operating equipment and the adoption of cutting-edge advanced technology such as AI, IoT, cloud computing, and deep learning within business organizations. These innovative and additional solutions are facilitating Industry 4.0. However, the emergence of these technological advances and the quality solutions that they enable will also introduce unique security challenges whose consequence needs to be identified. This research presents a hybrid intrusion detection model (HIDM) that uses OCNN-LSTM and transfer learning (TL) for Industry 4.0. The proposed model utilizes an optimized CNN by using enhanced parameters of the CNN via the grey wolf optimizer (GWO) method, which fine-tunes the CNN parameters and helps to improve the model’s prediction accuracy. The transfer learning model helps to train the model, and it transfers the knowledge to the OCNN-LSTM model. The TL method enhances the training process, acquiring the necessary knowledge from the OCNN-LSTM model and utilizing it in each next cycle, which helps to improve detection accuracy. To measure the performance of the proposed model, we conducted a multi-class classification analysis on various online industrial IDS datasets, i.e., ToN-IoT and UNW-NB15. We have conducted two experiments for these two datasets, and various performance-measuring parameters, i.e., precision, F-measure, recall, accuracy, and detection rate, were calculated for the OCNN-LSTM model with and without TL and also for the CNN and LSTM models. For the ToN-IoT dataset, the OCNN-LSTM with TL model achieved a precision of 92.7%; for the UNW-NB15 dataset, the precision was 94.25%, which is higher than OCNN-LSTM without TL.

Abstract Dynamic knee valgus (DKV) malalignment affects the biomechanical characteristic during sports activities. This cross-sectional study was conducted to evaluate mechanical energy absorption (MEA) strategies at initial contact (IC) and total landing (TL) phases during single-leg landing (SLL), and double-leg landing (DLL). Twenty-eight female athletes with DKV (age 10–14) were invited. MEA analysis of lower extremity joints was done in sagittal and frontal motion planes employing 8 Vicon motion capture cameras and 2 Kistler force plates. Statistical analysis was done using IBM Statistics (version24) by Bivariate Pearson Correlation Coefficient test. Knee extensors MEA during SLL (IC: P = 0.008, R = 0.522/TL: P

The development of autonomous vehicles (AVs) is becoming increasingly important as the need for reliable and safe transportation grows. However, in order to achieve level 5 autonomy, it is crucial that such AVs can navigate through complex and unconventional scenarios. It has been observed that currently deployed AVs, like human drivers, struggle the most in cases of adverse weather conditions, unsignalized intersections, crosswalks, roundabouts, and near-accident scenarios. This review paper provides a comprehensive overview of the various navigation methodologies used in handling these situations. The paper discusses both traditional planning methods such as graph-based approaches and emerging solutions including machine-learning based approaches and other advanced decision-making and control techniques. The benefits and drawbacks of previous studies in this area are discussed in detail and it is identified that the biggest shortcomings and challenges are benchmarking, ensuring interpretability, incorporating safety as well as road user interactions, and unrealistic simplifications such as the availability of accurate and perfect perception information. Some suggestions to tackle these challenges are also presented.

Although Kyphosis, an excessive forward rounding of the upper back, can occur at any age, adolescence is the most common time for Kyphosis. Surgery is frequently performed on Kyphosis patients; however, the condition may persist after the operation. The tricky part is figuring out, based on the patient’s traits, if the Kyphosis condition will continue after the treatment. There have been numerous models employed in the past to predict the Kyphosis disease, including Logistic Regression (LR), Naive Bayes (NB), Random Forest (RF), K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Deep Neural Network (DNN), and others. Unfortunately, the precision was overestimated. Based on the dataset received from Kaggle, we investigated how to predict Kyphosis disorders more accurately by using these models with Hyperparameter tuning. While the calculations were being performed, certain variables were modified. The accuracy was increased by optimizing the fit parameters based on Hyperparameter tuning. Accuracy, recall or sensitivity, specificity, precision, balanced accuracy score, F1 score, and AUC-ROC score of all models, including the Hyperparameter tuning, were compared. Overall, the Hyperparameter-tuned DNN models excelled over the other models. The DNN models’ accuracy was 87.72% with 5-fold cross-validation and 87.64% with 10-fold cross-validation. It is advised that when a patient has a clinical procedure, the DNN model be trained to detect and foresee Kyphosis disease. Medical experts can use this study’s findings to correctly predict if a patient will still have Kyphosis after surgery. We propose that deep learning should be adopted and utilized as a crucial and necessary tool throughout the broad range of resolving biological queries.

Visible Light Communication (VLC) is a novel optical wireless communication technology which uses Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) and Photodiodes for coherent detection and very-high-data rate data communication system. The stringent Line of Sight (LoS) requirement in VLC makes it very suitable for Indoor Positioning System (IPS), to be used for autonomous and smart city infrastructure. The current work aims to implement a real time IPS system using VLC link in Network Simulator (NS-3). The VLC module is implemented by modelling real-time attributes of LEDs, optical channel, and the photodiodes. The localization is carried out using trilateration schemes which measures the Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) and the Time Difference of Arrival (TDoA) for position estimation of the target. The project is further extended to obtain a comparative analysis between VLC link and other existing technology, Wi-Fi, as far as positioning accuracy and other important performance metrics are concerned. The simulation results show significant improvement for the VLC link over the Wi-Fi link specially for the TDoA scheme accompanied by increasing number of beacon nodes.

k-degree anonymity is known as one of the best models for anonymizing social network graphs. Although recent works have tried to address the privacy challenges of social network graphs, privacy levels are considered to be independent of the features of the graph degree sequence. In other words, the optimal value of k is not considered for the graph, leading to increasing information loss. Additionally, the graph may not need a high privacy level. In addition, determining the optimal value of k for the graph in advance is a big problem for the data owner. Therefore, in this paper, we present a technique named FSopt_k that is able to find the optimal value of k for each social network graph. This algorithm uses an efficient technique to partition the graph nodes to choose the best k value. It considers the graph structure features to determine the best privacy level. In this way, there will be a balance between privacy and loss in the anonymized graph. Furthermore, information loss will be as low as possible. The evaluation results depict that this algorithm can find the optimal value of k in a short time as well as preserve the graph’s utility.

Microbes have dominated life on Earth for the past two billion years, despite facing a variety of obstacles. In the 20th century, antibiotics and immunizations brought about these changes. Since then, microorganisms have acquired resistance, and various infectious diseases have been able to avoid being treated with traditionally developed vaccines. Antibiotic resistance and pathogenicity have surpassed antibiotic discovery in terms of importance over the course of the past few decades. These shifts have resulted in tremendous economic and health repercussions across the board for all socioeconomic levels; thus, we require ground-breaking innovations to effectively manage microbial infections and to provide long-term solutions. The pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors have been radically altered as a result of nanomedicine, and this trend is now spreading to the antibacterial research community. Here, we examine the role that nanomedicine plays in the prevention of microbial infections, including topics such as diagnosis, antimicrobial therapy, pharmaceutical administration, and immunizations, as well as the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.

Cancer stands out as one of the fatal diseases people are facing all the time. Each year, a countless number of people die because of the late diagnosis of cancer or wrong treatments. Glioma, one of the most common primary brain tumors, has different aggressiveness and sub-regions, which can affect the risk of disease. Although prediction of overall survival based on multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is challenging, in this study, we assess if and how location-based features of tumors can affect overall survival prediction. This approach is evaluated independently and in combination with radiomic features. The process is carried out on a data set entailing MRI images of patients with glioblastoma. To assess the impact of resection status, the data set is divided into two groups, patients were reported as gross total resection and unknown resection status. Then, different machine learning algorithms were used to evaluate how location features are linked with overall survival. Results from regression models indicate that location-based features have considerable effects on the patients’ overall survival independently. Additionally, classifier models show an improvement in prediction accuracy by the addition of location-based features to radiomic features.

Abstract Recently, vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is greatly considered by many service providers in urban environments. These networks can not only improve road safety and prevent accidents, but also provide a means of entertainment for passengers. However, according to recent studies, efficient routing has still remained as a big open issue in VANETs. In other words, broadcast storm can considerably degrade the routing performance. To address this problem, this research proposes TIHOO, an enhanced intelligent hybrid routing protocol based on improved fuzzy and cuckoo approaches to find the most stable path between a source and a destination node. In TIHOO, the route discovery phase is limited intelligently using the fuzzy logic system and, by limiting the route request messages, the imposed extra overhead can be efficiently controlled. Moreover, in figure of an intelligent hybrid approach, the improved cuckoo algorithm, which is one of the most effective meta-algorithms especially in the large search space, intelligently selects the most stable and optimal route among known routes by calculating an enhanced fitness function. The simulation results using NS2 tool demonstrate that TIHOO considerably improves network throughput, routing overhead, packet delivery ratio, packet loss ratio, and end-to-end delay compared to similar routing protocols.

In high-speed digital wireless communication applications, the intersymbol interference channel may have spectral nulls or erasures, which may degrade the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) bit error rate (BER) performance. In this paper, we prove that the BER performance of the OFDM system is considerably refined if the erased symbols in erasure channel (or received symbols on the deep-faded subcarriers in Rayleigh fading channel) are estimated based on the rest symbols in each OFDM signal. Also, an oversampled OFDM scheme which is a particular form of the pre-coded OFDM schemes is considered to guarantee high enough sampling rate. Furthermore, a new iterative receiver is proposed for perfect symbol recovery. A comprehensive Monte Carlo simulation study is performed to validate the theoretical results and affirm the superior performance of the oversampled OFDM scheme with the iterative receiver, compared with the typical detector for the OFDM scheme.

Due to the rapid growth in IT technology, digital data have increased availability, creating novel security threats that need immediate attention. An intrusion detection system (IDS) is the most promising solution for preventing malicious intrusions and tracing suspicious network behavioral patterns. Machine learning (ML) methods are widely used in IDS. Due to a limited training dataset, an ML-based IDS generates a higher false detection ratio and encounters data imbalance issues. To deal with the data-imbalance issue, this research develops an efficient hybrid network-based IDS model (HNIDS), which is utilized using the enhanced genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization(EGA-PSO) and improved random forest (IRF) methods. In the initial phase, the proposed HNIDS utilizes hybrid EGA-PSO methods to enhance the minor data samples and thus produce a balanced data set to learn the sample attributes of small samples more accurately. In the proposed HNIDS, a PSO method improves the vector. GA is enhanced by adding a multi-objective function, which selects the best features and achieves improved fitness outcomes to explore the essential features and helps minimize dimensions, enhance the true positive rate (TPR), and lower the false positive rate (FPR). In the next phase, an IRF eliminates the less significant attributes, incorporates a list of decision trees across each iterative process, supervises the classifier’s performance, and prevents overfitting issues. The performance of the proposed method and existing ML methods are tested using the benchmark datasets NSL-KDD. The experimental findings demonstrated that the proposed HNIDS method achieves an accuracy of 98.979% on BCC and 88.149% on MCC for the NSL-KDD dataset, which is far better than the other ML methods i.e., SVM, RF, LR, NB, LDA, and CART.

In the present study, the thermal energy storage of a hot petal tube inside a shell-tube type Thermal Energy Storage (TES) unit was addressed. The shell is filled with the capric acid Phase Change Material (PCM) and absorbs the heat from a hot U-tube petal. The governing equations for the natural convection flow of molten PCM and phase change heat transfer were introduced by using the enthalpy-porosity approach. An automatic adaptive mesh scheme was used to track the melting interface. The accuracy and convergence of numerical computations were also controlled by a free step Backward Differentiation Formula. The modeling results were compared with previous experimental data. It was found that the present adaptive mesh approach can adequately the melting heat transfer, and an excellent agreement was found with available literature. The effect of geometrical designs of the petal tube was investigated on the melting response of the thermal energy storage unit. The phase change behavior was analyzed by using temperature distribution contours. The results showed that petal tubes could notably increase the melting rate in the TES unit compared to a typical circular tube. Besides, the more the petal numbers, the better the heat transfer. Using a petal tube could increase the charging power by 44% compared to a circular tube. The placement angle of the tubes is another important design factor which should be selected carefully. For instance, vertical placement of tubes could improve the charging power by 300% compared to a case with the tubes' horizontal placement.

Corneal disease is one of the most significant causes of blindness around the world. Presently, corneal transplantation is the only way to treat cornea blindness. It should be noted that the amount of cornea that people donate is so much less than that required (1:70). Therefore, scientists have tried to resolve this problem with tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Fabricating cornea with traditional methods is difficult due to their unique properties, such as transparency and geometry. Bioprinting is a technology based on additive manufacturing that can use different biomaterials as bioink for tissue engineering, and the emergence of 3D bioprinting presents a clear possibility to overcome this problem. This new technology requires special materials for printing scaffolds with acceptable biocompatibility. Hydrogels have received significant attention in the past 50 years, and they have been distinguished from other materials because of their unique and outstanding properties. Therefore, hydrogels could be a good bioink for the bioprinting of different scaffolds for corneal tissue engineering. In this review, we discuss the use of different types of hydrogel for bioink for corneal tissue engineering and various methods that have been used for bioprinting. Furthermore, the properties of hydrogels and different types of hydrogels are described.

Due to the growing number of users, power, and spectral effectiveness, most communication systems are complex and difficult to implement on a large scale. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has played an outstanding role in the implementation of theoretical systems in the real world, with less complexity achieving better results. In this direction, we compare the Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) technique for a multiuser Visible Light Communication (VLC) system with Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC) for two types of detectors: (1) the deep learning-based system and (2) the traditional maximum likelihood (ML) decoder-based system. For multiplexing, we compare the variations of novel Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) multiplexing and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) with Index Modulation (IM). In this article, we implement OFDM-IM and OAM-IM for four users for the Gaussian fading MIMO Line-of-Sight (LoS) and Non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) VLC channels. The suggested systems’ bit error rate (BER) performances are compared in simulations for a wide range of Signal-to-Noise Ratios (SNRs), which shows that deep learning-based systems outperform the ML-based system for both users to ensure better decoding at the receiver end, especially at higher SNR values. The detection error is lower in a deep learning-based system at around 20% and around 30% for low SNR and high SNR values, respectively.

Microwave Ablation (MWA) is one of the most recent developments in the field of thermal therapy. This approach is an effective method for thermal tumor ablation by increasing the temperature above the normal physiological threshold to kill cancer cells with minimum side effects to surrounding organs due to rapid heat dispersive tissues. In the present study, the effects of the shape and size of the tumor on MWA are investigated. To obtain the temperature gradient, coupled bio-heat and electromagnetic equations are solved using a three-dimensional finite element method (FEM). To extract cellular response at different temperatures and times, the three-state mathematical model was employed to achieve the ablation zone size. Results show that treatment of larger tumors is more difficult than that of smaller ones. By doubling the diameter of the tumor, the percentage of dead cancer cells is reduced by 20%. For a spherical tumor smaller than 2 cm, applying 50 W input power compared to 25 W has no significant effects on treatment efficiency and only increases the risk of damage to adjacent tissues. However, for tumors larger than 2 cm, it can increase the ablation zone up to 21%. In the spherical and oblate tumors, the mean percentage of dead cells at 6 GHz is nearly 30% higher than that at 2.45GHz, but for prolate tumors, treatment efficacy is reduced by 10% at a higher frequency. Moreover, the distance between two slots in the coaxial double slot antenna is modified based on the best treatment of prolate tumors. The findings of this study can be used to choose the optimum frequency and the best antenna design according to the shape and size of the tumor.

Following the announcement of the outbreak of COVID-19 by the World Health Organization, unprecedented efforts were made by researchers around the world to combat the disease. So far, various methods have been developed to combat this “virus” nano enemy, in close collaboration with the clinical and scientific communities. Nanotechnology based on modifiable engineering materials and useful physicochemical properties has demonstrated several methods in the fight against SARS-CoV-2. Here, based on what has been clarified so far from the life cycle of SARS-CoV-2, through an interdisciplinary perspective based on computational science, engineering, pharmacology, medicine, biology, and virology, the role of nano-tools in the trio of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment is highlighted. The special properties of different nanomaterials have led to their widespread use in the development of personal protective equipment, anti-viral nano-coats, and disinfectants in the fight against SARS-CoV-2 out-body. The development of nano-based vaccines acts as a strong shield in-body. In addition, fast detection with high efficiency of SARS-CoV-2 by nanomaterial-based point-of-care devices is another nanotechnology capability. Finally, nanotechnology can play an effective role as an agents carrier, such as agents for blocking angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors, gene editing agents, and therapeutic agents. As a general conclusion, it can be said that nanoparticles can be widely used in disinfection applications outside in vivo. However, in in vivo applications, although it has provided promising results, it still needs to be evaluated for possible unintended immunotoxicity. Reviews like these can be important documents for future unwanted pandemics.

This study numerically analyzes the fluid flow and solute transport in a solid tumor to comprehensively examine the consequence of normalization induced by anti-angiogenic therapy on drug delivery. The current study leads to a more accurate model in comparison to previous research, as it incorporates a non-homogeneous real-human solid tumor including necrotic, semi-necrotic, and well-vascularized regions. Additionally, the model considers the effects of concurrently chemotherapeutic agents (three macromolecules of IgG, F(ab′)2, and F(ab′)) and different normalization intensities in various tumor sizes. Examining the long-term influence of normalization on the quality of drug uptake by necrotic area is another contribution of the present study. Results show that normalization decreases the interstitial fluid pressure (IFP) and spreads the pressure gradient and non-zero interstitial fluid velocity (IFV) into inner areas. Subsequently, wash-out of the drug from the tumor periphery is decreased. It is also demonstrated that normalization can improve the distribution of solute concentration in the interstitium. The efficiency of normalization is introduced as a function of the time course of perfusion, which depends on the tumor size, drug type, as well as normalization intensity, and consequently on the dominant mechanism of drug delivery. It is suggested to accompany anti-angiogenic therapy by F(ab′) in large tumor size (Req=2.79 cm) to improve reservoir behavior benefit from normalization. However, IgG is proposed as the better option in the small tumor (Req=0.46 cm), in which normalization finds the opportunity of enhancing uniformity of IgG average exposure by 22%. This study could provide a perspective for preclinical and clinical trials on how to take advantage of normalization, as an adjuvant treatment, in improving drug delivery into a non-homogeneous solid tumor.

Due to its importance in prolonging the lifetime of battery-restricted wireless sensor networks, network longevity has garnered considerable research attention, with the rechargeable wireless sensor network emerging as a viable solution. In this research, the novel methodology of a trust-based mechanism for enhanced security integrated with an energy utility and re-usability model is proposed with software-defined networking (SDN) to maximize energy utilization. We proposed a novel framework with SDN for the service station in a wireless sensor network (WSN). The results showed that the life capacity of the network increases to a maximum of 290% when compared with no charging, with the charge increasing by 30% intervals. We also present how the network survives through this choice of sink. As there is variation in the network size while it increases, the proposed approach with the static method works well until the network size reaches 200. Furthermore, the proposed approach also uses the heuristic method to achieve the best performance.

This paper deals with the mathematical modeling of the second wave of COVID-19 and verifies the current Omicron variant pandemic data in India. We also we discussed such as uniformly bounded of the system, Equilibrium analysis and basic reproduction number R0. We calculated the analytic solutions by HPM (homotopy perturbation method) and used Mathematica 12 software for numerical analysis up to 8th order approximation. It checked the error values of the approximation while the system has residual error, absolute error and h curve initial derivation of square error at up to 8th order approximation. The basic reproduction number ranges between 0.8454 and 2.0317 to form numerical simulation, it helps to identify the whole system fluctuations. Finally, our proposed model validated (from real life data) the highly affected five states of COVID-19 and the Omicron variant. The algorithm guidelines are used for international arrivals, with Omicron variant cases updated by the Union Health Ministry in January 2022. Right now, the third wave is underway in India, and we conclude that it may peak by the end of May 2022.

Intraperitoneal (IP) chemotherapy has emerged as a promising method for the treatment of peritoneal malignancies (PMs). However, microenvironmental barriers in the tumor limit the delivery of drug particles and their deep penetration into the tumor, leading to reduced efficiency of treatment. Therefore, new drug delivery systems should be developed to overcome these microenvironmental barriers. One promising technique is magnetically controlled drug targeting (MCDT) in which an external magnetic field is utilized to concentrate drug-coated magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) to the desired area. In this work, a mathematical model is developed to investigate the efficacy of MCDT in IP chemotherapy. In this model, considering the mechanism of drug binding and internalization into cancer cells, the efficacy of drug delivery using MNPs is evaluated and compared with conventional IP chemotherapy. The results indicate that over 60 min of treatment with MNPs, drug penetration depth increased more than 13 times compared to conventional IPC. Moreover, the drug penetration area (DPA) increased more than 1.4 times compared to the conventional IP injection. The fraction of killed cells in the tumor in magnetic drug delivery was 6.5%, which shows an increase of more than 2.5 times compared to that of the conventional method (2.54%). Furthermore, the effects of magnetic strength, the distance of the magnet to the tumor, and the magnetic nanoparticles’ size were evaluated. The results show that MDT can be used as an effective technique to increase the efficiency of IP chemotherapy.

Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) is relatively simple to implement in urban areas on ground or/and building-roofs, the development of appropriate design of VAWT will open new opportunities for the large-scale acceptance of these machines. The primary objective of this research was to design and modeling of a small-scale VAWT, which can be used to meet the power for low demand applications. Two new shapes of Savonius rotor blades were examined in terms of their rotational performances against the conventional straight and the curved blades. MATLAB simulation was utilized to develop a mathematical model, which comprised of wind power coefficient, tip speed ratio, mechanical and electrical subcomponents. The measured results of developed turbine were used for the validation of the model. The aims were to analyze the turbine blade shapes, develop a mathematical algorithm, and to establish the techno-economic performance of the new curved shape design. It was modeled that the proposed turbine is capable of producing an annual energy output of 7838 kWh and the annual electricity cost/saving in Ontario turned out to be $846.51 (the price of electricity was taken $0.108/kWh). Keywords: Vertical axis wind turbine, Blade design, Power coefficient, Simulation, Annual energy output

Combination therapy, a treatment modality that combines two or more therapeutic methods, provides a novel pathway for cancer treatment, as it targets the region of interest (ROI) in a characteristically synergistic or additive manner. To date, liposomes are the only nano-drug delivery platforms that have been used in clinical trials. Here, we speculated that it could be promising to improve treatment efficacy and reduce side effects by intravenous administration of thermo-sensitive liposomes loaded with doxorubicin (TSL-Dox) during magnetic hyperthermia (MHT). A multi-scale computational model using the finite element method was developed to simulate both MHT and temperature-sensitive liposome (TSL) delivery to a solid tumor to obtain spatial drug concentration maps and temperature profiles. The results showed that the killing rate of MHT alone was about 15%, which increased to 50% using the suggested combination therapy. The results also revealed that this combination treatment increased the fraction of killed cells (FKCs) inside the tumor compared to conventional chemotherapy by 15% in addition to reducing side effects. Furthermore, the impacts of vessel wall pore size, the time interval between TSL delivery and MHT, and the initial dose of TSLs were also investigated. A considerable reduction in drug accumulation was observed in the tumor by decreasing the vessel wall pore size of the tumor. The results also revealed that the treatment procedure plays an essential role in the therapeutic potential of anti-cancer drugs. The results suggest that the administration of MHT can be beneficial in the TSL delivery system and that it can be employed as a guideline for upcoming preclinical studies.

Fossil fuel vehicles, emitting air toxics into the atmosphere, impose a heavy burden on the economy through additional health care expenses and ecological degradation. Air pollution is responsible for millions of deaths and chronic and acute health problems every year, such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The fossil-fuel-based transportation system releases tons of toxic gases into the atmosphere putting human health at risk, especially in urban areas. This analysis aims to determine the economic burden of environmental and health impacts caused by Highway 401 traffic. Due to the high volume of vehicles driving on the Toronto Highway 401 corridor, there is an annual release of 3771 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). These emissions are mainly emitted onsite through the combustion of gasoline and diesel fuel. The integration of electric and hydrogen vehicles shows maximum reductions of 405–476 g CO2e per vehicle-kilometer. Besides these carbon dioxide emissions, there is also a large amount of hazardous air pollutants. To examine the impact of air pollution on human health, the mass and concentrations of criteria pollutants of PM2.5 and NOx emitted by passenger vehicles and commercial trucks on Highway 401 were determined using the MOVES2014b software. Then, an air dispersion model (AERMOD) was used to find the concentration of different pollutants at the receptor’s location. The increased risk of health issues was calculated using hazard ratios from literature. Finally, the health cost of air pollution from Highway 401 traffic was estimated to be CAD 416 million per year using the value of statistical life, which is significantly higher than the climate change costs of CAD 55 million per year due to air pollution.

One of the most important challenges in live video streaming in mobile vehicular networks is the optimal use of broadband and point-to-point packet delay. Recent studies show that the sheer use of frames flow compression methods (such as H.264 or HEVC) and the proper communication overlay, such as Peer-to-Peer (P2P), has no absolute influence on increasing the quality of received video in VANET networks. Therefore, the use of an appropriate data exchange method, such as network coding, seems to be of great importance. Compared to Random Network Coding (RNC), XoR Network Coding (XNC) method has the least computational load for the network which is an important factor in optimal use of limited energy of nodes in a wireless network. The basic problem in XNC is that when a node is supposed to combine several frames and transmit them through an encoded frame, how this combination could be made to enable other nodes of the network to be broadcasted through receiving this packet and how can the available packets in their buffers decode as well as extract the largest number of frames in order to experience a higher video quality. To fulfil this aim, an encoding intelligent method is required which is based on the buffers' status of neighbours. In the proposed method in this article, the best frame combination is reached through buffers status of neighbours and AHP methods or AHP-TOPSIS methods, and the encoded frames are broadcasted through XNC. Simulation results show that due to the reduction in number of transmitted packets in the network, parameters such as congestion and point-to-point delay are significantly reduced and vehicles experience a higher video quality compared with other similar methods.

Adaptive and flexible control techniques have recently been examined as methods of controlling flow and reducing the potential noise in vertical axis wind turbines. Two-Dimensional (2D) fluid flow simulation around rod-airfoil is addressed in this study as a simple component of the wind turbine by using Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) equations for prediction of noise using Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings (FW-H) analogy. To control the flow and reduce noise, the active controlling vibration rod method is utilized with a maximum displacement ranging from 0.01 C to 1 C (C: airfoil chord). Acoustic assessment indicates that the leading edge of the blade produces noise, that by applying vibration in cylinder, blade noise in 0.1 C and 1 C decreases by 22 dB and 35 dB, respectively. Applying vibration is aerodynamically helpful since it reduces the fluctuations in the airfoil lift force by approximately 48% and those in the rod by about 46%. Strouhal assessment (frequency) shows that application of control is accompanied by 20% increase. Applying vibration in the rod reduces the flow fluctuations around the blade, thus reduces the wind turbine blade noise. This idea, as a simple example, can be used to study the incoming flow to turbines and their blades that are affected by the upstream flow.

During recent decades, researchers all around the world have focused on the characteristic pros and cons of the different drug delivery systems for cornea tissue change for sense organs. The delivery of various drugs for cornea tissue is one of the most attractive and challenging activities for researchers in biomaterials, pharmacology, and ophthalmology. This method is so important for cornea wound healing because of the controllable release rate and enhancement in drug bioavailability. It should be noted that the delivery of various kinds of drugs into the different parts of the eye, especially the cornea, is so difficult because of the unique anatomy and various barriers in the eye. Nanoparticles are investigated to improve drug delivery systems for corneal disease. Biodegradable nanocarriers for repeated corneal drug delivery is one of the most attractive and challenging methods for corneal drug delivery because they have shown acceptable ability for this purpose. On the other hand, by using these kinds of nanoparticles, a drug could reside in various part of the cornea for longer. In this review, we summarized all approaches for corneal drug delivery with emphasis on the biodegradable nanoparticles, such as liposomes, dendrimers, polymeric nanoparticles, niosomes, microemulsions, nanosuspensions, and hydrogels. Moreover, we discuss the anatomy of the cornea at first and gene therapy at the end.

In this study, a numerical and empirical scheme for increasing cooling tower performance is developed by combining the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm with a neural network and considering the packing’s compaction as an effective factor for higher accuracies. An experimental setup is used to analyze the effects of packing compaction on the performance. The neural network is optimized by the PSO algorithm in order to predict the precise temperature difference, efficiency, and outlet temperature, which are functions of air flow rate, water flow rate, inlet water temperature, inlet air temperature, inlet air relative humidity, and packing compaction. The effects of water flow rate, air flow rate, inlet water temperature, and packing compaction on the performance are examined. A new empirical model for the cooling tower performance and efficiency is also developed. Finally, the optimized performance conditions of the cooling tower are obtained by the presented correlations. The results reveal that cooling tower efficiency is increased by increasing the air flow rate, water flow rate, and packing compaction.

An Internal Reforming Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (IRSOFC) is modeled thermodynamically; a Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT) is designed; the combined IRSOFC-HAWT system should create a reliable source of electricity for the demand of a village located in Manjil, Iran. The output power of HAWT is unstable, but by controlling the fuel rate for the IRSOFC it is possible to have a stable power output from the combined system. When the electricity demand is over the peak or the wind speed is low/unstable/significantly high, the generated power may not be sufficient. To solve this problem, two scenarios are considered: connecting to the grid or using a Pumped Hydro Storage (PHS). For the second scenario, the extra produced electricity is saved when the production is more than demand and can be used when the extra power is needed. The economic analysis is done based on the economic conditions in Iran. The results will show a period of return about 9.5 and 13 years with the levelized cost of electricity about 0.0747 and 0.0882 $/kWh for the first and second scenarios, respectively. Furthermore, effects of some parameters such as the electricity price and the real interest rate are discussed.

Horizontal and vertical cup to disc ratios are the most crucial parameters used clinically to detect glaucoma or monitor its progress and are manually evaluated from retinal fundus images of the optic nerve head. Due to the rarity of the glaucoma experts as well as the increasing in glaucoma’s population, an automatically calculated horizontal and vertical cup to disc ratios (HCDR and VCDR, resp.) can be useful for glaucoma screening. We report on two algorithms to calculate the HCDR and VCDR. In the algorithms, level set and inpainting techniques were developed for segmenting the disc, while thresholding using Type-II fuzzy approach was developed for segmenting the cup. The results from the algorithms were verified using the manual markings of images from a dataset of glaucomatous images (retinal fundus images for glaucoma analysis (RIGA dataset)) by six ophthalmologists. The algorithm’s accuracy for HCDR and VCDR combined was 74.2%. Only the accuracy of manual markings by one ophthalmologist was higher than the algorithm’s accuracy. The algorithm’s best agreement was with markings by ophthalmologist number 1 in 230 images (41.8%) of the total tested images.

A hydrogen rail (hydrail) powertrain is conceptualized in this study, using drive cycles collected from the trains currently working on the Union Pearson Express (UPE) railroad. The powertrain consists of three preliminary different subsystems: fuel cell, battery, and hydrogen storage systems. A backward design approach is proposed to calculate the time-variable power demand based on a “route simulation data” method. The powertrain components are then conceptually sized according to the calculated duty cycle. The results of this study show that 275 kg of hydrogen is sufficient to satisfy the daily power and energy demand of a hydrogen locomotive with drive cycles similar to the ones currently working on the UPE rail route.

With the increasing demand on the usage of smart and networked cameras in intelligent and ambient technology environments, development of algorithms for such resource-distributed networks are of great interest. Multi-view action recognition addresses many challenges dealing with view-invariance and occlusion, and due to the huge amount of processing and communicating data in real life applications, it is not easy to adapt these methods for use in smart camera networks. In this paper, we propose a distributed activity classification framework, in which we assume that several camera sensors are observing the scene. Each camera processes its own observations, and while communicating with other cameras, they come to an agreement about the activity class. Our method is based on recovering a low-rank matrix over consensus to perform a distributed matrix completion via convex optimization. Then, it is applied to the problem of human activity classification. We test our approach on IXMAS and MuHAVi datasets to show the performance and the feasibility of the method.

The behavior of a water-based nanofluid containing motile gyrotactic micro-organisms passing an isothermal nonlinear stretching sheet in the presence of a non-uniform magnetic field is studied numerically. The governing partial differential equations including continuity, momentums, energy, concentration of the nanoparticles, and density of motile micro-organisms are converted into a system of the ordinary differential equations via a set of similarity transformations. New set of equations are discretized using the finite difference method and have been linearized by employing the Newton's linearization technique. The tri-diagonal system of algebraic equations from discretization is solved using the well-known Thomas algorithm. The numerical results for profiles of velocity, temperature, nanoparticles concentration and density of motile micro-organisms as well as the local skin friction coefficient Cfx, the local Nusselt number Nux, the local Sherwood number Shx and the local density number of the motile microorganism Nnx are expressed graphically and described in detail. This investigation shows the density number of the motile micro-organisms enhances with rise of M, Gr/Re2, Pe and Ω but it decreases with augment of Rb and n. Also, Sherwood number augments with an increase of M and Gr/Re2, while decreases with n, Rb, Nb and Nr. To show the validity of the current results, a comparison between the present results and the existing literature has been carried out.

Heterogeneous networks with dense deployment of small cells can employ cognitive features to efficiently utilize the available spectrum resources. Spectrum sensing is the key enabler for cognitive radio to detect the unoccupied channels for data transmission. In order to deal with shadowing and multipath fading in sensing channels, cooperative spectrum sensing is designed to increase the accuracy of the sensed signal. In this paper, an optimized local decision rule is implemented for the case that the received data from primary users are possibly correlated due to the sensing channel impairments. Since the prior information is unavailable in the real systems, Neyman-Pearson criterion is used as the cost function. Then, a discrete iterative algorithm based on Gauss-Seidel process is applied to optimize the local cognitive user decision rules under a fixed fusion rule. This method with low complexity can minimize the cost using the golden section search method in a finite number of iterations. ROC curves are depicted using the achieved probability of detection and false alarm by numerical examples to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm. Simulation results also confirm the superiority of the proposed method compared to the conventional topologies and decision rules.

Glaucoma is the second leading cause of loss of vision in the world. Examining the head of optic nerve (cup-to-disc ratio) is very important for diagnosing glaucoma and for patient monitoring after diagnosis. Images of optic disc and optic cup are acquired by fundus camera as well as Optical Coherence Tomography. The optic disc and optic cup segmentation techniques are used to isolate the relevant parts of the retinal image and to calculate the cup-to-disc ratio. The main objective of this paper is to review segmentation methodologies and techniques for the disc and cup boundaries which are utilized to calculate the disc and cup geometrical parameters automatically and accurately to help the professionals in the glaucoma to have a wide view and more details about the optic nerve head structure using retinal fundus images. We provide a brief description of each technique, highlighting its classification and performance metrics. The current and future research directions are summarized and discussed.

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) cannot completely guarantee good performance of traffic sources such as video streaming. To improve the network performance, this study proposes an efficient engineering solution named Wireless-to-Ethernet-Mesh-Portal-Passageway (WEMPP) that allows effective use of wired communication in WMNs. WEMPP permits transmitting data through wired and stable paths even when the destination is in the same network as the source (Intra-traffic). Tested with four popular routing protocols (Optimized Link State Routing or OLSR as a proactive protocol, Dynamic MANET On-demand or DYMO as a reactive protocol, DYMO with spanning tree ability and HWMP), WEMPP considerably decreases the end-to-end delay, jitter, contentions and interferences on nodes, even when the network size or density varies. WEMPP is also cost-effective and increases the network throughput. Moreover, in contrast to solutions proposed by previous studies, WEMPP is easily implemented by modifying the firmware of the actual Ethernet hardware without altering the routing protocols and/or the functionality of the IP/MAC/Upper layers. In fact, there is no need for modifying the functionalities of other mesh components in order to work with WEMPPs. The results of this study show that WEMPP significantly increases the performance of all routing protocols, thus leading to better video quality on nodes.