Search

The integration of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) in urological practices and medical education has led to modern training systems that are cost-effective and with an increased expectation toward surgical performance and outcomes. VR aids the user in interacting with the virtual environment realistically by providing a three-dimensional (3D) view of the structures inside the body with high-level precision. AR enhances the real environment around users by integrating experience with virtual information over physical models and objects, which in turn has improved understanding of physiological mechanisms and anatomical structures. MR is an immersive technology that provides virtual content to interact with real elements. The field of urolithiasis has adapted the technological advancements, newer instruments, and methods to perform endourologic treatment procedures. This mini-review discusses the applications of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality in endourology and urolithiasis.

In today’s digital era, Internet of Things (IoT) is an amalgamation of various systems that incorporate conventional embedded systems, compact wireless sensors, and self-operating controlling mechanisms. The evolution of small and powerful hardware, high-speed Internet, and wireless communication has led to the increasing use of IoT-based applications in various application domains. Famous term “smart home” is a modern automated setup that makes use of Internet connected devices for the management of electronic devices, smart lighting solutions, and other home appliances. IoT-based smart-home-enabled devices can also work in combination with the other home devices and transfer information to other connected smart devices. Various smart-home application solutions empower the homeowners to remotely manage portions of the home often via a mobile app. Homeowners can configure time schedules for energy-efficient use of smart devices while providing additional convenience and time savings. While the emerging smart-home market still has plenty of potential for growth, smart-home devices based on IoT currently available in the market include Internet-enabled and controlled refrigerators and televisions, smart lights with light occupancy sensors, smart thermostats, smart door locks, and security systems. Let us explore the present and future of IoT-based smart-home applications and services in this chapter.

An ad hoc cloud computing environment on the infrastructure point of view is formed by consuming resources from existing occasionally available computing setups that are primarily used for some other purposes, for example, personal computers, mobile phones and such similar devices connected to the internet. In this paper, we propose a mechanism to secure the network layer communications particularity routing and data packet forwarding in ad hoc cloud environment. The paper details the proposed scheme and analyses its robustness on the security perspective.

Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) have been crucial in defending intrusive attacks (both active and passive) in various application scenarios in recent trends. Over the years, many research activities have been carried out on intrusion detection systems. The IDSs have been evolved over times with various detection methodologies, approaches, and technology types. The IDSs after several evaluations and different approaches still face a major challenge-performance improvement. This improvement can be quantified in two broad ways- the detection rate and the rate of false positives. The improved performance involves the efficiency and accuracy of detection. The efficiency can be attributed to performance in case of a very high amount of attacks and the accuracy can be attributed to a significantly low amount of false positives. In the same context, we have found that the IoT networks which are in high demand in recent trends also suffer from such types of attacks in operational environments due to limited storage and processing capabilities. In order to protect the IoT application, the scenario necessitates the need of IDS that is lightweight in implementation and provides a significantly higher amount of accuracy which is at par with the IDSs implemented in conventional networks. In this work, we have proposed an improved technique for performance improvement of IDSs in IoT domain.

The efficiency of parallel processors is achieved for the purpose of quick computing is mainly depending on the scheduling of activity. The most important factor for scheduling of activities are depend on the waiting time which is directly influence the computation time of overall activity. Minimizing the Variance of Waiting Time otherwise known as Waiting Time Variance (WTV) is one of the metrics of Quality of Services (QoS) which enhance the efficiency of activity scheduling. Allocate the activity from a set of activity pool and schedule them for each identical parallel processor for execution in a large scale by minimizing WTV is the main focusing area of this paper. In case of large scale computing activities are complex in nature. A prior knowledge of each activity must be known before the preparation of activity scheduling for efficient and rapid computing. A snake walks style of activity distribution among the parallel processor is presented in this paper for minimization problem. The minimization of WTV is measured with the help of three heuristic intend methods named as RSS, VS and BS. The results of the experiment are compared with current conspires and demonstrate the new snake style conspire is presenting the best practices for proven conspires and challenges in a wide range of activity. The algorithm's predictable findings appear as illustrated with graph.

Nowadays, Blockchain technology has been proved to be the imperative and innovatory technological gadget enabling clarity and safety measures in terms of digital credentials and authentication for both users and business organizations. In addition to the technological invention, 5G mobile networks have augmented performance improvements in network communication technology, and IoT has come forward for adding new value to it by establishing the connection among millions of smart diversified objects that can transfer data among each other at a higher speed. But 5G technology applications are expected to face several challenges as the current network technology and IoT-based systems are working with a principle of centralization. Such limitations of 5G-enabled IoT devices can be taken care of with the integration of Blockchain technology into it that comes with default features like steadiness, reliability, seclusion, origin backtracking as well as digital proof of identity. Although integration of 5G technology with Blockchain can have endless potential in many business industry applications, still it is the need of the hour to give an impending focus into the areas of its application, benefits, security measures and challenges. In this chapter, the foundational ideas of both 5G and Blockchain technology have been narrated along with their complementary strength and weakness in various application domains followed by apparent attractiveness of application areas so that appropriateness of 5G with Blockchain can open up new research directions as well as future service-oriented applications for upcoming communicational network systems.

Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency ever created and traded using a decentralized ledger known as the blockchain. Altogether, Bitcoin is a network in which every computing node is responsible to service the others and allows shared access to the data, known peer to peer (P2P) network, and provides an adaption of electronic-cash that supports e-payments. Such payments are transferred directly from transacting parties to the receiver without the requirement of any intermediary monetary body. Satoshi Nakamoto introduced bitcoin in 2009 and since then it has emerged as the most thriving cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is a globally accepted and immutable e-payment system of digital currency. All the electronic transactions performed using bitcoin are verified by the intermediate nodes called miners and then added as a block in the distributed ledger. Bitcoin blockchains are maintained by the miners running Bitcoin software. Bitcoin depends on Proof-of-Work (PoW) to confront double-spending by a distributed timestamping service. To ensure the operations and security of Bitcoin, all the transactions and their execution order must be available to all Bitcoin users. In addition to its security robustness, anonymity is the key attribute for its success. There are several factors like market-cap, the marketplace, miners-revenue, etc. which causes the rise and fall of the price of Bitcoin. This chapter focus on the factors that are responsible for the rise and fall of Bitcoin Price with a comparison with other Cryptocurrencies.

The budding progress and relevance of digital information technology in quite a few areas of business, engineering, medical, agricultural and scientific studies are resulting in data explosion coined by the term “big data”. The dependency on digital media drives and devices has enlarged the dimensions of data formation and storage exponentially around the world, with a need of keeping a record of what data is accumulated and how the data is exercised. So it has raised an alarm of security for the data asset. To discover the pattern of interest leading to a decision from these voluminous data has put forth a challenge for the law enforcement and investigative agencies. Also, tracing such type of misutilization of digital technology in a big data age from the perspective of digital forensics requires minute bit-level examination and observations to locate the digital evidence that explains how maliciously nefarious activities have been done and by whom with the possible extent of the damage. The forensic examination and analysis in such a big data era requires appropriate digital investigation model with the application of tools, techniques and methodologies to boost decision-making and diagnostic process for advanced outfitted competence in digital forensic investigation with the intent of assembling valuable evidence from it. So, the need of the hour is to have a holistic outlook of the big data challenges and opportunities for its application in the digital forensic domain with the goal of making full-bodied investigation pronouncements. Much work has been done to model digital investigation as well as digital evidence but a comprehensive correlated and aggregated merging of voluminous data coming from different heterogeneous sources along with timely and accurate detection and analysis is the need of the hour. This chapter depicts the trends of digital forensics served for big data and the challenges of evidence acquisition, and further suggests the revision of the existing fusion-based digital investigation model by highlighting the formalization, quick detection and timely accurate analysis of digital evidence from multiple sources simultaneously. The modification adopted the inclusion of look-up table into the architecture with the application of data fusion to practice voluminous data effectually.

Time passes away and the objects of the world are tried communicated between themselves automatically due to Internet of Things (IoT) and its communication process. This creates an unbelievable environment where the reaction reflected instantly after things happened. This is only possible because of IoT-based sensor devices and cloud computing. The IoT-based sensor devices receive the signals from the environment and send it to the cloud for processing and transmitting. But a number of challenges are come up when the system try to achieve the speed. Such challenges are to minimize the latency time, maximum use of memory having less capacity of storage and provide services when breakdown occurred in a network. To overcome these challenges CISCO designed an optimistic computing technology coined as fog computing. This computing provides facilities of computation, storage and network services by staying between IoT-based devices and cloud computing data centers. Today’s healthcare sector always tries to establish a rocky relationship with this upcoming computing technology and IoT-based sensor devices for providing the Quality of Services (QoS) to their patients and staffs. In the field of healthcare huge amount of patient data are generated through the IoT-based sensor devices. Collection, analysis, visualization and utilization of these data in a proper and meaningful way are the big challenges from the point of view of a patient care. The IoT-based sensor devices are usually ubiquitous in nature and highly acceptable in the field of health care for data collection. On the other hand, the cloud computing is widely acceptable by healthcare organization for storage and processing of patient data. Fog computing makes these process more efficient from the point of view of cost, penetration and social benefit. This chapter at first tries to present the working environment and integrated architecture of fog computing with IoT. The author tries to present the importance of fog computing with IoT in healthcare sector with the help of different services and applications. At last with the help of a case study different issues and challenges are also highlighted for the purpose of research in near feature.

In the modern business world, business management techniques are continuously increased and governed by smart devices and innovative technologies. These devices are associated with internet can be called as a device of Internet of Things (IoT). Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Infrared and Hotspot technologies are the connecting medium for these devices. Somehow, these devices are connected to the servers for processing the user request. These sensing devices are producing enormous amount of data in structured or semi-structured or unstructured form otherwise known as big data. The data are stored, manipulated and analyzed with the help of big data techniques for taking well-defined decisions. Thus, the top management people of the business world are able to drive their business in real time. The uses of smart devices are rapidly increased in different application categories of IoT known as Personal, Group, Community and Industrial. Due to easy access to internet, independent power source and sensing without human intervention makes smart devices as an important component of IoT. This chapter first gives a brief introduction on IoT with its structure. Then different technologies are discussed in the field of IoT. The different application areas of IoT are also presented. Finally, Big Data and the importance of IoT based sensor devises in Big Data is presented.

Parallel processing is one of the arising concepts that are used to process batch of 'n' numbers of tasks through 'm' numbers of parallel processors. These processors are either identical or uniform or unrelated in nature. Scheduling is the discipline of decision making for executing the tasks through parallel processors. One of the important criteria of good scheduling is the schedule with minimum Waiting Time variance (WTV). Therefore minimizing WTV is an objective of designing schedulers. Minimizing the variance of the tasks waiting time in the scheduler's ready queue is a NP-Hard problem. Achieving the Quality of Service (QoS) in the parallel Processors by minimizing the variance of the tasks waiting time in the scheduler's ready queue is a problem of task scheduling. To enhance the performance of parallel processing, it is required to develop a stable and none overlap scheduler where variance of waiting time of individual tasks should be minimized treated as an important parameter. This paper presents a unique task distribution style among uniform parallel processor and then applies the three heuristic based solutions named as VS, BS and RSS are intended for Q_m |prec|WTV minimization problem. The experimental results are compared with the existing approaches and shows that the proposed approach provides the best performance for the compared approaches and problems tested with large task set. The findings of intended algorithm are shown in the form of graph for consonant problems.

The popular waterfall model is widely accepted approach for project management paradigm; however lean based agile model is the recent revolution to reduce work in progress items and makes transformation to better process by identifying and eliminating non-value-add activities and increase productivity with quality of deliverables. This paper includes the issues that involved in lean- agile process.

Scheduling number of jobs in a single machine is a “Uni-machine job scheduling problem”. The mean of variation of job's waiting time is called Waiting time Variance (WTV). Minimization of WTV directly improves the quality of service (QoS) of systems involved with job scheduling. WTV minimization is a NP-hard problem. As a matter of fact minimization of the WTV on computer networks can lead to stable and predictable network performance. The main objective of this paper is to provide a secure and predictable computer and network systems by proposing a heuristic based novel approach to minimize the WTV. This approach illustrated with small size problems along with randomly new generated problems. The experimental results are compared with existing approaches. The experimental result shows the proposed approach gives best performance for the compared approaches and problems tested. The findings of intended algorithm are shown in the form of table for consonant problems.