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In the field of medical imaging, the increasing demand for advanced computer-aided diagnosis systems is crucial in radiography. Accurate identification of various diseases, such as COVID-19, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and pulmonary lung nodules, holds vital significance. Despite substantial progress in the medical field, a persistent research gap necessitates the development of models that excel in precision and provide transparency in decision-making processes. In order to address this issue, this work introduces an approach that utilizes transfer learning through the EfficientNet-B4 architecture, leveraging a pre-trained model to enhance the classification performance on a comprehensive dataset of lung X-rays. The integration of explainable artificial intelligence (XAI), specifically emphasizing Grad-CAM, contributes to model interpretability by providing insights into the neural network’s decision-making process, elucidating the salient features and activation regions influencing multi-disease classifications. The result is a robust multi-disease classification system achieving an impressive 96% accuracy, accompanied by visualizations highlighting critical regions in X-ray images. This investigation not only advances the progression of computer-aided diagnosis systems but also sets a pioneering benchmark for the development of dependable and transparent diagnostic models for lung disease identification.

In today's digital world, with growing population and increasing pollution, unhealthy lifestyle habits like irregular eating, junk food consumption, and lack of exercise are becoming more common, leading to various health problems, including kidney issues. These factors directly affect human kidney health. To address this, we require early detection techniques that rely on text data. Text data contains detailed information about a patient's medical history, symptoms, test results, and treatment plans, giving a complete picture of kidney health and enabling timely intervention. In this research paper, we proposed a range of sophisticated models, such as Gradient Boosting Classifier, Light GBM, CatBoost, Support Vector Classifier (SVC), Random Boost, Logistic Regression, XGBoost, Deep Neural Network (DNN), and an Improved DNN. The Improved DNN demonstrated exceptional performance, with an accuracy of 90 %, precision of 89 %, recall of 90 %, and an F1-Score of 89.5 %. By combining traditional machine learning and deep neural networks, this integrative approach enables the identification of intricate patterns in datasets. The model's data-driven processes consistently update internal parameters, guaranteeing flexibility in response to evolving healthcare settings. This research represents a notable advancement in the progress of creating a more detailed and individualised ability to diagnose kidney stones, which could potentially lead to better clinical results and patient treatment.

Abstract Music plays a vital role in human culture and society, serving as a universal form of expression. However, accurately classifying music emotions remains challenging due to the intricate nature of emotional expressions in music and the integration of diverse data sources. To address these challenges, we propose the Multilayered Music Decomposition and Multimodal Integration Interaction (MMD-MII) model. This model employs cross-processing to facilitate interaction between audio and lyrics, ensuring coherence in emotional representation. Additionally, we introduce a hierarchical framework based on the music theory, focusing on the main and chorus sections, with the chorus processed separately to extract precise emotional representations. Experimental results on the DEAM and FMA datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the MMD-MII model, achieving accuracies of 49.68% and 49.54% respectively. Compared with the existing methods, our model outperforms in accuracy and F1 scores, offering promising implications for music recommendation systems, healthcare, psychology, and advertising, where accurate emotional analysis is essential.

The rapid spread of COVID-19 pandemic across the world has not only disturbed the global economy but also raised the demand for accurate disease detection models. Although many studies have proposed effective solutions for the early detection and prediction of COVID-19 with Machine Learning (ML) and Deep learning (DL) based techniques, but these models remain vulnerable to data privacy and security breaches. To overcome the challenges of existing systems, we introduced Adaptive Differential Privacy-based Federated Learning (DPFL) model for predicting COVID-19 disease from chest X-ray images which introduces an innovative adaptive mechanism that dynamically adjusts privacy levels based on real-time data sensitivity analysis, improving the practical applicability of Federated Learning (FL) in diverse healthcare environments. We compared and analyzed the performance of this distributed learning model with a traditional centralized model. Moreover, we enhance the model by integrating a FL approach with an early stopping mechanism to achieve efficient COVID-19 prediction with minimal communication overhead. To ensure privacy without compromising model utility and accuracy, we evaluated the proposed model under various noise scales. Finally, we discussed strategies for increasing the model’s accuracy while maintaining robustness as well as privacy.

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Wearable Internet of Things (WIoT) for mental health detection is a promising area of research with the potential to revolutionize mental health monitoring and diagnosis. Since early detection of mental diseases, i.e., depression, is of great importance for diagnosis and treatment, a fast and convenient way is urgently needed. Traditional diagnostic methods are time-consuming, laborious, over-subjective, and easily lead to misdiagnosis. The advance in information techniques and wearable devices brings innovation to mental disease detection. Therefore, this article first compares intelligent depression detection methods and traditional methods to illustrate the significance and then analyzes the opportunities of the wearable device. Then we provide specific psychophysiological data measured by wearable devices and introduce relevant datasets for depression detection. An illustrative example of depression detection with sleep data is presented and discussed and our proposed ensemble method has improved nearly 10% to baselines. Analytical results demonstrate the great potential of using wearable device-measured psychophysiological data to detect depression intelligently.

Smart Healthcare has brought advantages to both healthcare professionals and individuals living in remote areas. However, deliberately or inadvertently altering medical records can result in an inaccurate diagnosis. As a result of telemedicine, patients can easily communicate with their healthcare providers, and the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices enable remote consultations, allowing for timely diagnosis and treatment. Medical data can be protected by watermarking, a combination of steganography, and fingerprinting. This paper proposes a hash-based approach using the Discrete Cosine Integer Wavelet Transform (DCIWT) to provide secure watermarking for confidential medical data. To preserve critical Region of Interest (RoI) integrity, we use SHA-256 cryptographic hash algorithm. The hashed Region of Interest (hRoI) is embedded in the Region of Non-Interest (RoNI) by DCIWT. To enhance the segmentation process, we employ adaptive thresholding, which dynamically adjusts the threshold based on local image characteristics, ensuring accurate segmentation of RoI and RoNI across varying image qualities. The hidden data is significantly affected if the watermarked image is altered. As a result of comparing the original RoI with the extracted RoI, we determine if an image has been altered. Tampered regions are be recovered by extracting the RoI and using it for diagnosis. The proposed digital watermarking technique maintains RoI integrity using message digests and histograms. Through extensive experiment results, we demonstrate that the perceptual properties of the images are intact in terms of Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Structural Similarity Index (SSIM).

Industry 5.0 is one of the emerging stages of industrialization in which humans collaborate with cutting-edge technologies to enhance various workplace processes. The primary objective is to emphasize meeting the needs of people and provide enhanced resilience and understanding of sustainability. Industry 5.0 enables cooperation with such advanced technologies and the stakeholders in the education sector to ensure efficiency and effectiveness in the teaching-learning process. The present study provides an exhaustive review of the role of Industry 5.0 in smart education. At the outset, a brief overview of the present scenario in the education sector and its associated challenges is presented. This sets the stage for establishing the need for Education 1.0 and its progressive transition to Education 4.0. Further, the motivation to integrate Industry 5.0 with Education 4.0 and the related enabling technologies that support are discussed. The paper extensively provides a description of the application of Industry 5.0 in various educational sectors namely in medical education, further learning, distance education, engineering education, and shop floor training. The study also presents seven case studies highlighting the successful implementation of Industry 5.0 in versatile sectors and regions. Finally, the challenges of Industry 5.0 in education are discussed pointing to potential future directions of research.

Ensuring robustness against adversarial attacks is imperative for Machine Learning (ML) systems within the critical infrastructures of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). This paper addresses vulnerabilities in IIoT systems, particularly in distributed environments like Federated Learning (FL) by presenting a resilient framework - Secure Federated Learning (SFL) specifically designed to mitigate data and model poisoning, as well as Sybil attacks within these networks. Sybil attacks, involving the creation of multiple fake identities, and poisoning attacks significantly compromise the integrity and reliability of ML models in FL environments. Our SFL framework leverages a Digital Twin (DT) as a critical aggregation checkpoint to counteract data and model poisoning attacks in IIoT’s distributed settings. The DT serves as a protective mechanism during the model update aggregation phase, substantially enhancing the system’s resilience. To further secure IIoT infrastructures, SFL employs blockchain-based Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) to authenticate participant identities, effectively preventing Sybil attacks by ensuring traceability and accountability among distributed nodes. Experimental evaluation within IIoT scenarios demonstrates that SFL substantially enhances defensive capabilities, maintaining the integrity and robustness of model learning. Comparative results reveal that the SFL framework, when applied to IIoT federated environments, achieves a commendable 97% accuracy, outperforming conventional FL approaches. SFL also demonstrates a remarkable reduction in loss rate, recording just 0.07 compared to the 0.14 loss rate experienced by standard FL systems. These findings highlight the efficiency and applicability of the SFL framework in enhancing data security and traceability within the IIoT ecosystem.

Around 2020, 5G began its commercialization journey, and discussions about the next-generation networks (such as 6G) emerged. Researchers predict that 6G networks will have higher bandwidth, coverage, reliability, energy efficiency, and lower latency, and will be an integrated “human-centric” network system powered by artificial intelligence (AI). This 6G network will lead to many real-time automated decisions, ranging from network resource allocation to collision avoidance for self-driving cars. However, there is a risk of losing control over decision-making due to the high-speed, data-intensive AI decision-making that may go beyond designers’ and users’ comprehension. To mitigate this risk, explainable AI (XAI) methods can be used to enhance the transparency of the black-box AI decision-making process. This paper surveys the application of XAI towards the upcoming 6G age, including 6G technologies (such as intelligent radio and zero-touch network management) and 6G use cases (such as industry 5.0). Additionally, the paper summarizes the lessons learned from recent attempts and outlines important research challenges in applying XAI for 6G use cases soon.

The Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) represents a notable breakthrough in the domain of natural language processing, which is propelling us toward the development of machines that can understand and communicate using language in a manner that closely resembles that of humans. GPT is based on the transformer architecture, a deep neural network designed for natural language processing tasks. Due to their impressive performance on natural language processing tasks and ability to effectively converse, GPT have gained significant popularity among researchers and industrial communities, making them one of the most widely used and effective models in natural language processing and related fields, which motivated to conduct this review. This review provides a detailed overview of the GPT, including its architecture, working process, training procedures, enabling technologies, and its impact on various applications. In this review, we also explored the potential challenges and limitations of a GPT. Furthermore, we discuss potential solutions and future directions. Overall, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of GPT, its enabling technologies, their impact on various applications, emerging challenges, and potential solutions.

Agriculture can be regarded as the backbone of human civilization. As technology evolved, the synergy between agriculture and remote sensing has brought about a paradigm shift, thereby entirely revolutionizing the traditional agricultural practices. Nevertheless, the adoption of remote sensing technologies in agriculture faces various challenges in terms of limited spatial and temporal coverage, high cloud cover, low data quality, etc. Industry 5.0 (I5.0) marks a new era in the industrial revolution, where humans and machines collaborate closely, leveraging their distinct capabilities, thereby enhancing the decision-making capabilities, sustainability, and resilience. This article provides a comprehensive survey of remote sensing technologies and related aspects in dealing with the various agricultural practices in the I5.0 era. We also elaborately discuss the various applications pertaining to I5.0-enabled remote sensing for agriculture. Finally, we discuss several challenges and issues related to the integration of I5.0 technologies in agricultural remote sensing. This comprehensive survey on remote sensing for agriculture in the I5.0 era offers valuable insights into the current state, challenges, and potential advancements in the integration of remote sensing technologies and I5.0 principles in agriculture, thus paving the way for future research, development, and implementation strategies in this domain.

The advent of the metaverse has sparked profound interest in its integration within the gaming domain. Games, being intrinsic components of the metaverse, have attracted considerable attention, prompting inquiries into the transformative influence of the metaverse on the gaming industry and its communities within this immersive digital realm. This study aims to synthesize the literature by providing a comprehensive overview of recent studies on the complex interplay between video games and the metaverse, illuminating the benefits, difficulties, and uncharted territory of this field. Fifteen (15) relevant studies were reviewed in accordance with PRISMA criteria, supplemented with the LDA topic modeling to answer the developed research questions. The research showed that the metaverse has many impacts on the gaming industry; it serves as a platform for interactive games, a driver for collaborative gaming environments, a medium for immersive virtual reality (VR) experiences, and a source of useful information about the basic aspects and mechanisms that support the connected relationship between the metaverse and gaming. Furthermore, the evolution of these dimensions and processes across time was investigated. This systematic review makes a noteworthy addition to the ongoing scholarly discussion over the convergence of the metaverse and gaming. This statement highlights the significant capacity for transformation that arises from the integration of these elements, while also recognizing the intricate and demanding nature of this process. The ongoing transformation of the gaming industry and its communities by the metaverse prompts an investigation that lays the groundwork for future scholarly inquiry. This study aims to provide a detailed examination and enhanced comprehension of the intricate relationship between these two domains.

Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) is a multifaceted autoimmune disease that presents with a diverse array of clinical signs and unpredictable disease progression. Conventional diagnostic methods frequently fall short in terms of sensitivity and specificity, which can result in delayed diagnosis and less-than-optimal management. In this study, we introduce a novel approach for improving the identification of SLE through the use of gene-based predictive modelling and Stacked deep learning classifiers. The study proposes a new method for diagnosing SLE using Stacked Deep Learning Classifiers (SDLC) trained on Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database data. By combining transcriptomic data from GEO with clinical features and laboratory results, the SDLC model achieves a remarkable accuracy value of 0.996, outperforming traditional methods. Individual models within the SDLC, such as SBi-LSTM and ACNN, achieved accuracies of 92% and 95%, respectively. The SDLC’s ensemble learning approach allows for identifying complex patterns in multi-modal data, enhancing accuracy in diagnosing SLE. This study emphasises the potential of deep learning methods, in conjunction with open repositories like GEO, to advance the diagnosis and management of SLE. Overall, this research shows strong performance and potential for improving precision medicine in managing SLE.

Abstract In India, over 25,000 people have died from cardiovascular annually over the past 4 years , and over 28,000 in the previous 3 years. Most of the deaths nowadays are mainly due to cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Arrhythmia is the leading cause of cardiovascular mortality. Arrhythmia is a condition in which the heartbeat is abnormally fast or slow. The current detection method for diseases is analyzing by the electrocardiogram (ECG), a medical monitoring technique that records heart activity. Since actuations in ECG signals are so slight that they cannot be seen by the human eye, the identification of cardiac arrhythmias is one of the most difficult undertakings. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of medical time and money to find professionals to examine a large amount of ECG data . As a result, machine learning-based methods have become increasingly prevalent for recognizing ECG features. In this work, we classify five different heartbeats using the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database . Wavelet self-adaptive thresholding methods are used to first denoise the ECG signal. Then, an efficient 12-layer deep 1D Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is introduced for better features extraction, and finally, SoftMax and machine learning classifiers are applied to classify the heartbeats. The proposed method achieved an average accuracy of 99.40%, precision of 98.78%, recall of 98.78%, and F1 score of 98.74%, which clearly show that it outperforms with the exiting model . Architecture of proposed work is simple but effective in remote cardiac diagnosis paradigm that can be implemented on e-health devices.

As topology has become extremely fast, VANETs (vehicular ad-hoc networks) have become increasingly complex, creating new routing protocols for geographic routing. A GPSR-enhanced system (E-GPSR) is presented in this paper, which includes extended capabilities that select the best route and bypass previous vehicles delivering such packets. The E-GPSR protocol also prevents packets from being sent to neighbours similarly, thus eliminating packet routing loops. Road accidents and dead-end roads are unavoidable reasons for link breakage, which the E-GPSR protocol helps to resolve. Simulation of Urban Mobility (SUMO) and Network Simulator-version 3 (NS-3.33) platforms were used to compare E-GPSR with traditional GPSR and Maxduration-Minangle GPSR (MM-GPSR). GPSR and MM GPSR have better packet loss ratios (PLR) and packet delivery ratios (PDR) than the proposed E-GPSR protocol.,

Due to mobile Internet technology's rapid popularization, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) can be seen everywhere in our daily lives. While IIoT brings us much convenience, a series of security and scalability issues related to permission operations rise to the surface during device communications. Hence, at present, a reliable and dynamic access control management system for IIoT is in urgent need. Up till now, numerous access control architectures have been proposed for IIoT. However, owing to centralized models and heterogeneous devices, security and scalability requirements still cannot be met. In this paper, we offer a smart contract token-based solution for decentralized access control in IIoT systems. Specifically, there are three smart contracts in our system, including the Token Issue Contract (TIC), User Register Contract (URC), and Manage Contract (MC). These three contracts collaboratively supervise and manage various events in IIoT environments. We also utilize the lightweight and post-quantum encryption algorithm-Nth-degree Truncated Polynomial Ring Units (NTRU) to preserve user privacy during the registration process. Subsequently, to evaluate our proposed architecture's performance, we build a prototype platform that connects to the local blockchain. Finally, experiment results show that our scheme has achieved secure and dynamic access control for the IIoT system compared with related research.

Abstract Vehicular Content Networks (VCNs) represent key empowering solution for content distribution in fully distributed manner for vehicular infotainment applications. In VCN, both on board unit (OBU) of each vehicle and road side units (RSUs) facilitate content caching to support timely content delivery for moving vehicles when requested. However, due to limited caching capacity available at both RSUs and OBUs, only selected content can be cached. Moreover, the contents being demanded in vehicular infotainment applications are transient in nature. The transient content caching in vehicular content networks with the use of edge communication for delay free services is fundamental issue and need to get addressed (Yang et al. in ICC 2022-IEEE international conference on communications. IEEE, pp 1–6, 2022). Therefore, this study focuses on edge communication in VCNs by firstly organizing a region based classification for vehicular network components including RSUs and OBUs. Secondly, a theoretical model is designed for each vehicle to decide its content fetching location (i.e. either RSU or OBU) in current region or neighboring region. Further, the caching of transient contents inside vehicular network components (such as RSU, OBU) is based on content caching probability. Finally, the proposed scheme is evaluated under different network condition in Icarus simulator for various performance parameters. The simulation results proved outstanding performance of the proposed approach over various state of art caching strategies.

This paper investigates the covert communication of cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems, where the near user serves as a decode-and-forward (DF) relay and the far user receives the covert information from both the source and the near user. To improve the covertness performance, cooperative jamming and power randomness are adopted. Specifically, we derive detection error probability (DEP) of Willie and the minimum detection error probability (MDEP) at the optimal decision threshold for each phase. In addition, the reliability of the proposed system is investigated by deriving closed-form expressions for the outage probability (OP) of the two users. Under the covertness and reliability constraints, an optimization algorithm to maximize the effective covert rate is designed. Simulation results have confirmed the correctness of the theoretical analysis, and the proposed scheme can achieve a better covert communication.

The human brain is an extremely intricate and fascinating organ that is made up of the cerebrum, cerebellum, and brainstem and is protected by the skull. Brain stroke is recognized as a potentially fatal condition brought on by an unfavorable obstruction in the arteries supplying the brain. The severity of brain stroke may be reduced or controlled with its early prognosis to lessen the mortality rate and lead to good health. This paper proposed a technique to predict brain strokes with high accuracy. The model was constructed using data related to brain strokes. The aim of this work is to use Multi Layer Perceptron (MLP) as a classification technique for stroke data and used multi-optimizers that include Adaptive moment estimation with Maximum (AdaMax), Root Mean Squared Propagation (RMSProp) and Adaptive learning rate method (Adadelta). The experiment shows RMSProp optimizer is best with a data training accuracy of 95.8% and a value for data testing accuracy of 94.9%. The novelty of work is to incorporate multiple optimizers alongside the MLP classifier which offers a comprehensive approach to stroke prediction, providing a more robust and accurate solution. The obtained results underscore the effectiveness of the proposed methodology in enhancing the accuracy of brain stroke detection, thereby paving the way for potential advancements in medical diagnosis and treatment.

IntroductionPaddy leaf diseases have a catastrophic influence on the quality and quantity of paddy grain production. The detection and identification of the intensity of various paddy infections are critical for high-quality crop production.MethodsIn this paper, infections in paddy leaves are considered for the identification of illness severity. The dataset contains both primary and secondary data. The four online repositories used for secondary data resources are Mendeley, GitHub, Kaggle and UCI. The size of the dataset is 4,068 images. The dataset is first pre-processed using ImageDataGenerator. Then, a generative adversarial network (GAN) is used to increase the dataset size exponentially. The disease severity calculation for the infected leaf is performed using a number of segmentation methods. To determine paddy infection, a deep learning-based hybrid approach is proposed that combines the capabilities of a convolutional neural network (CNN) and support vector machine (SVM). The severity levels are determined with the assistance of a domain expert. Four degrees of disease severity (mild, moderate, severe, and profound) are considered.ResultsThree infections are considered in the categorization of paddy leaf diseases: bacterial blight, blast, and leaf smut. The model predicted the paddy disease type and intensity with a 98.43% correctness rate. The loss rate is 41.25%.DiscussionThe findings show that the proposed method is reliable and effective for identifying the four levels of severity of bacterial blight, blast, and leaf smut infections in paddy crops. The proposed model performed better than the existing CNN and SVM classification models.

Hyperspectral image classification is vital for various remote sensing applications; however, it remains challenging due to the complex and high-dimensional nature of hyperspectral data. This paper introduces a novel approach to address this challenge by leveraging spectral and spatial features through a lightweight HResNeXt model. The proposed model is designed to overcome the limitations of traditional methods by combining residual connections and cardinality to enable efficient and effective feature extraction from hyperspectral images, capturing both spectral and spatial information simultaneously. Furthermore, the paper includes an in-depth analysis of the learned spectral–spatial features, providing valuable insights into the discriminative power of the proposed approach. The extracted features exhibit strong discriminative capabilities, enabling accurate classification even in challenging scenarios with limited training samples and complex spectral variations. Extensive experimental evaluations are conducted on four benchmark hyperspectral data sets, the Pavia university (PU), Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Salinas scene (SA), and Indian Pines (IP). The performance of the proposed method is compared with the state-of-the-art methods. The quantitative and visual results demonstrate the proposed approach’s high classification accuracy, noise robustness, and computational efficiency superiority. The HResNeXt obtained an overall accuracy on PU, KSC, SA, and IP, 99.46%, 81.46%, 99.75%, and 98.64%, respectively. Notably, the lightweight HResNeXt model achieves competitive results while requiring fewer computational resources, making it well-suited for real-time applications.

Blockchain (BC) and Computer Vision (CV) are the two emerging fields with the potential to transform various sectors. BC can offer decentralized and secure data storage, while CV allows machines to learn and understand visual data. The integration of the two technologies holds massive promise for developing innovative applications that can provide solutions to the challenges in various sectors such as supply chain management, healthcare, smart cities, and defense. This review explores a comprehensive analysis of the integration of BC and CV by examining their combination and potential applications. It also provides a detailed analysis of the fundamental concepts of both technologies, highlighting their strengths and limitations. This paper also explores current research efforts that make use of the benefits offered by this combination. The BC can be used as an added layer of security in CV systems and also ensure data integrity, enabling decentralized image and video analytics. The challenges and open issues associated with this integration are also identified, and appropriate potential future directions are also proposed.

Semantic segmentation is a significant task in the field of Remote Sensing and Computer Vision. DeepLabV3+ is a convolutional neural network architecture that excels in the task of semantic segmentation, which involves assigning a class label to each pixel in an input image. This Paper proposes an Adaptive Deeplabv3+ model for semantic segmentation of Aerial Images, which combines Deeplabv3+ with the Improved Golden Eagle Optimization Algorithm (IGEO), to solve imprecise target segmentation and poor border segmentation accuracy. To enhance the quality of segmentation, Adaptive DeepLabV3+ employs atrous spatial pyramid pooling (ASPP) with multiple dilation rates in the encoder and allows the model to capture multi-scale context information efficiently, enabling it to distinguish between objects with varying scales. The proposed model effectively segmented the aerial images by optimizing the hyper-parameters such as hidden neuron count and learning rate. The suggested model achieved 98.46% accuracy, 96.32% correlation, 96.48% precision and 98.36% dice coefficient within the computation time of 136.8912 and 147.2684 seconds for dataset 1 and 2 respectively. Therefore the evolutional outcomes of the proposed model show significantly improved than the state-of-the-art techniques.

Portfolio theory underpins portfolio management, a much-researched yet uncharted field. This research suggests a collective framework combined with the essence of deep learning for stock selection through prediction and optimal portfolio formation through the mean-variance (MV) model. The CNN-LSTM model, proposed in Stage I blends the benefits of the convolutional neural network (CNN) and the long-short-term memory network (LSTM). The model combines feature extraction and sequential learning about temporal data fluctuations. The experiment considers thirteen input features, combining fundamental market data and technical indicators to capture the nuances of the wildly fluctuating stock market data. The input data sample of 21 stocks was collected from the National Stock Exchange (NSE) of India from January 2005 to December 2021, spanning two significant market crashes. Thus, the sample makes it possible to catch subtle market shifts for model execution. The shortlisted stocks with high potential returns are advanced to Stage II for optimal stock allocation using the MV model. The proposed hybrid CNN-LSTM outperformed the single models, i.e., CNN and LSTM, per the six-performance metrics and advocated by the 10-fold cross-validation technique. Furthermore, the statistical significance of the model is established using non-parametric tests followed by post hoc analysis. In addition, this method is validated by comparing the proposed model to four baseline strategies and relevant pieces of research, which it considerably outperforms in terms of cumulative return per year, Sharpe ratio, and average return to risk with and without transaction cost. These findings highlight the effectiveness of the hybrid CNN-LSTM approach in stock selection and portfolio optimization.

The development of new technologies and their expanding use in a wide range of educational environments are driving the transformation of higher education. Assistive technologies are cutting-edge technologies that can help students learn more effectively and make education accessible to everyone. Assistive technologies can enhance, maintain, or improve the capacities of students with learning difficulties. Students with learning difficulties will be greatly benefited from the use of assistive technologies. If these technologies are used effectively, students with learning difficulties can compete with their peers and complete their academic tasks. The aim of this review is to better understand the role of assistive technologies in providing inclusive higher education for students with learning difficulties. The review begins with the introduction of learning difficulties and their causes; inclusive education and the need for assistive technologies; the motivation behind this review; and a summary of related reviews on assistive technologies for students with learning difficulties in inclusive higher education. Then, we discuss the preliminaries of the types of learning difficulties and assistive technologies. Later, we discuss the effects of assistive technologies on inclusive higher education for students with learning difficulties. Additionally, we discuss supporting tools and related projects available in inclusive higher education for students with learning difficulties. We also explore the challenges and potential solutions related to using assistive technologies in higher education to provide inclusive education for students with learning difficulties. We conclude the review with a discussion on promising future directions.

Networks-on-Chip (NoCs) provides a packet-based communication model for the System-on-Chip (SoC) architecture to achieve objectives of lower power, higher performance and optimized area. To evaluate NoC performance and explore architectural design options, synthetic traffic models provide better solution in terms of simulation flexibility and faster simulation. In this synthetic traffic, models are generated for the simulation to optimize the computational resources requirements which will be placed inside NoC’s architecture before the early design process. In this paper, Wavelet-based Rosenblatt synthetic traffic [RST] is designed and examined which is a non-Gaussian process based on the $2^{nd}$ -order Hermite Process. The proposed traffic is applied to SPLASH-2 benchmarks and compared with Gaussian and Non-Gaussian traffic on the parameters of latency, power and buffer-loss. We applied the synthetic traffic on multicore architecture to capture parameters which would be helpful for network designers to choose optimized network resources during the early design architecture. We demonstrate our traffic model: first, how it can be used to describe and acquire non-gaussian burstier traffic on NoC; second, how it can be used to produce synthetic traffic traces that can drive exploration of the early design space for NoCs. Our traffic model helps the chip network designer to choose optimized queue storage inside the router in early design process.

The rapid progress in digitalization and automation have led to an accelerated growth in healthcare, generating novel models that are creating new channels for rendering treatment at reduced cost. The Metaverse is an emerging technology in the digital space which has huge potential in healthcare, enabling realistic experiences to the patients as well as the medical practitioners. The Metaverse is a confluence of multiple enabling technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, internet of medical devices, robotics, quantum computing, etc. through which new directions for providing quality healthcare treatment and services can be explored. The amalgamation of these technologies ensures immersive, intimate and personalized patient care. It also provides adaptive intelligent solutions that eliminates the barriers between healthcare providers and receivers. This article provides a comprehensive review of the Metaverse for healthcare, emphasizing on the state of the art, the enabling technologies to adopt the Metaverse for healthcare, the potential applications, and the related projects. The issues in the adaptation of the Metaverse for healthcare applications are also identified and the plausible solutions are highlighted as part of future research directions.

Abstract Big Data applications require extensive resources and environments to store, process and analyze this colossal collection of data in a distributed manner. Containerization with cloud computing provides a pertinent remedy to accommodate big data requirements, however requires a precise and appropriate load-balancing mechanism. The load on servers increases exponentially with increased resource usage thus making load balancing an essential requirement. Moreover, the adjustment of containers accurately and rapidly according to load as per services is one of the crucial aspects in big data applications. This study provides a review relating to containerized environments like Docker for big data applications with load balancing. A novel scheduling mechanism of containers for big data applications established on Docker Swarm and Microservice architecture is proposed. The concept of Docker Swarm is utilized to effectively handle big data applications' workload and service discovery. Results shows that increasing workloads with respect to big data applications can be effectively managed by utilizing microservices in containerized environments and load balancing is efficiently achieved using Docker Swarm. The implementation is done using a case study deployed on a single server and then scaled to four instances. Applications developed using containerized microservices reduces average deployment time and continuous integration.

Abstract Software has to be updated frequently to match the customer needs. If software maintainability is not given priority, it affects the software development life cycle and maintenance expenses, which deplete organizational assets. Before releasing software, maintainability must be estimated, as the impact of bugs and errors can affect the cost and reputation of the organization after deployment. Regardless of the programming paradigm, it’s important to assess software maintainability. Many software maintainability prediction models’ compatibilities with new programming paradigms are criticized because their limited applicability over heterogeneous datasets. Due this challenge small and medium-sized organizations may even skip the maintainability assessment, resulting in huge lose to such organizations. Motivated by this fact, we used Genetic Algorithm optimized Random Forest technique (GA) for software maintainability prediction models over heterogeneous datasets. To find optimal model for software maintainability prediction, the Technique for Order preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), a popular multiple-criteria decision-making model, is adopted. From the results, it is concluded that the GA is optimal for predicting maintainability of software developed in various paradigms.

Abstract With time, textual data is proliferating, primarily through the publications of articles. With this rapid increase in textual data, anonymous content is also increasing. Researchers are searching for alternative strategies to identify the author of an unknown text. There is a need to develop a system to identify the actual author of unknown texts based on a given set of writing samples. This study presents a novel approach based on ensemble learning, DistilBERT, and conventional machine learning techniques for authorship identification. The proposed approach extracts the valuable characteristics of the author using a count vectorizer and bi-gram Term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF). An extensive and detailed dataset, “All the news” is used in this study for experimentation. The dataset is divided into three subsets (article1, article2, and article3). We limit the scope of the dataset and selected ten authors in the first scope and 20 authors in the second scope for experimentation. The experimental results of proposed ensemble learning and DistilBERT provide better performance for all the three subsets of the “All the news” dataset. In the first scope, the experimental results prove that the proposed ensemble learning approach from 10 authors provides a better accuracy gain of 3.14% and from DistilBERT 2.44% from the article1 dataset. Similarly, in the second scope from 20 authors, the proposed ensemble learning approach provides a better accuracy gain of 5.25% and from DistilBERT 7.17% from the article1 dataset, which is better than previous state-of-the-art studies.

Abstract Extensive research has been conducted on healthcare technology and service advancements during the last decade. The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) has demonstrated the ability to connect various medical apparatus, sensors, and healthcare specialists to ensure the best medical treatment in a distant location. Patient safety has improved, healthcare prices have decreased dramatically, healthcare services have become more approachable, and the operational efficiency of the healthcare industry has increased. This research paper offers a recent review of current and future healthcare applications, security, market trends, and IoMT-based technology implementation. This research paper analyses the advancement of IoMT implementation in addressing various healthcare concerns from the perspectives of enabling technologies, healthcare applications, and services. The potential obstacles and issues of the IoMT system are also discussed. Finally, the survey includes a comprehensive overview of different disciplines of IoMT to empower future researchers who are eager to work on and make advances in the field to obtain a better understanding of the domain.

In the digital age, ensuring the authenticity and security of academic certificates is a critical challenge faced by educational institutions, employers, and individuals alike. Traditional methods for verifying academic credentials are often cumbersome, time-consuming, and susceptible to fraud. However, the emergence of blockchain technology offers a promising solution to address these issues. The proposed system utilizes a blockchain network, where each academic certificate is stored as a digital asset on the blockchain. These digital certificates are cryptographically secured, timestamped, and associated with unique identifiers, such as hashes or public keys, ensuring their integrity and immutability. Anyone with access to the blockchain network can verify a certificate’s authenticity, using the MetaMask extension and Ethereum network, eliminating the need for intermediaries and reducing the risk of fraudulent credentials. The main strength of the paper is that the data that are stored in the blockchain are unique identifiers of the encrypted data, which is encrypted by using an encryption technique that provides more security to the academic certificates. Furthermore, IPFS is also used to store large amounts of encrypted data.

With the alarmingly increasing rate of cybercrimes worldwide, there is a dire need to combat cybercrimes timely and effectively. Cyberattacks on computing machines leave certain artifacts on target device storage that can reveal the identity and behavior of cyber-criminals if processed and analyzed intelligently. Forensic agencies and law enforcement departments use several digital forensic toolkits, both commercial and open-source, to examine digital evidence. The proposed research survey focuses on identifying the current state-of-the-art digital forensics concepts in existing research, sheds light on research gaps, presents a detailed introduction of different computer forensic domains and forensic toolkits used for computer forensics in the current era. The proposed survey also presents a comparative analysis based on the tool’s characteristics to facilitate investigators in tool selection during the forensics process. Finally, the proposed survey identifies and derives current challenges and future research directions in computer forensics.

Utilities produce and supply products following local requirements and with the synchronizations which connect subscribers. Harmonics is a power efficiency/quality variable caused by electronic devices that domestic and industrial consumers use. The famous IEEE Standard 519 is maintained to calculate harmonic limits, which ensures power efficiency. In a standard power system, currents and voltages generate pure sine wave signals during regular operations. As harmonics influence the power system, they cause interference in the sine wave signals. So, the best practice method should be used to resolve the harmonics issue. One of the problem-solving techniques of harmonics is the measurement and reduction of harmonics detection, and it uses Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). Therefore, power output should assess in a peer-to-peer Blockchain scheme by measuring and minimizing harmonics detection. This paper uses a Shunt Active Power Filter (SHAPF). It describes the simulation analysis and reduction of harmonics detection in a peer-to-peer interconnected 3-phase power system with the help of an FFT algorithm. This research was carried out to assess the efficiency of the AC signal by collecting, processing, and evaluating power data. Using the shunt active filter, the proposed design outperformed the traditional methods for both six and twelve pulse rectifiers, achieving total harmonic distortion (THD) of only 1.42% and 0.92%, respectively.

The number of users of the Internet has been continuously rising, with an estimated 5.1 billion users in 2023, which comprises around 64.7% of the total world population. This indicates the rise of more connected devices to the network. On average, 30,000 websites are hacked daily, and nearly 64% of companies worldwide experience at least one type of cyberattack. As per IDC’s 2022 Ransomware study, two-thirds of global organizations were hit by a ransomware attack that year. This creates the desire for a more robust and evolutionary attack detection and recovery model. One aspect of the study is the bio-inspiration models. This is because of the natural ability of living organisms to withstand various odd circumstances and overcome them with an optimization strategy. In contrast to the limitations of machine learning models with the need for quality datasets and computational availability, bio-inspired models can perform in low computational environments, and their performances are designed to evolve naturally with time. This study concentrates on exploring the evolutionary defence mechanism in plants and understanding how plants react to any known external attacks and how the response mechanism changes to unknown attacks. This study also explores how regenerative models, such as salamander limb regeneration, could build a network recovery system where services could be automatically activated after a network attack, and data could be recovered automatically by the network after a ransomware-like attack. The performance of the proposed model is compared to open-source IDS Snort and data recovery systems such as Burp and Casandra.

There is an exponential rise in the use of smartphones in government and private institutions due to business dependencies such as communication, virtual meetings, and access to global information. These smartphones are an attractive target for cybercriminals and are one of the leading causes of cyber espionage and sabotage. A large number of sophisticated malware attacks as well as advanced persistent threats (APTs) have been launched on smartphone users. These attacks are becoming significantly more complex, sophisticated, persistent, and undetected for extended periods. Traditionally, devices are targeted by exploiting a vulnerability in the operating system (OS) or device sensors. Nevertheless, there is a rise in APTs, side-channel attacks, sensor-based attacks, and attacks launched through the Google Play Store. Previous research contributions have lacked contemporary threats, and some have proven ineffective against the latest variants of the mobile operating system. In this paper, we conducted an extensive survey of papers over the last 15 years (2009–2023), covering vulnerabilities, contemporary threats, and corresponding defenses. The research highlights APTs, classifies malware variants, defines how sensors are exploited, visualizes multiple ways that side-channel attacks are launched, and provides a comprehensive list of malware families that spread through the Google Play Store. In addition, the research provides details on threat defense solutions, such as malware detection tools and techniques presented in the last decade. Finally, it highlights open issues and identifies the research gap that needs to be addressed to meet the challenges of next-generation smartphones.

Magnetic resonance imaging is the most generally utilized imaging methodology that permits radiologists to look inside the cerebrum using radio waves and magnets for tumor identification. However, it is tedious and complex to identify the tumorous and nontumorous regions due to the complexity in the tumorous region. Therefore, reliable and automatic segmentation and prediction are necessary for the segmentation of brain tumors. This paper proposes a reliable and efficient neural network variant, i.e., an attention-based convolutional neural network for brain tumor segmentation. Specifically, an encoder part of the UNET is a pre-trained VGG19 network followed by the adjacent decoder parts with an attention gate for segmentation noise induction and a denoising mechanism for avoiding overfitting. The dataset we are using for segmentation is BRATS’20, which comprises four different MRI modalities and one target mask file. The abovementioned algorithm resulted in a dice similarity coefficient of 0.83, 0.86, and 0.90 for enhancing, core, and whole tumors, respectively.

Lung cancer is the cellular fission of abnormal cells inside the lungs that leads to 72% of total deaths worldwide. Lung cancer are also recognized to be one of the leading causes of mortality, with a chance of survival of only 19%. Tumors can be diagnosed using a variety of procedures, including X-rays, CT scans, biopsies, and PET-CT scans. From the above techniques, Computer Tomography (CT) scan technique is considered to be one of the most powerful tools for an early diagnosis of lung cancers. Recently, machine and deep learning algorithms have picked up peak energy, and this aids in building a strong diagnosis and prediction system using CT scan images. But achieving the best performances in diagnosis still remains on the darker side of the research. To solve this problem, this paper proposes novel saliency-based capsule networks for better segmentation and employs the optimized pre-trained transfer learning for the better prediction of lung cancers from the input CT images. The integration of capsule-based saliency segmentation leads to the reduction and eventually reduces the risk of computational complexity and overfitting problem. Additionally, hyperparameters of pretrained networks are tuned by the whale optimization algorithm to improve the prediction accuracy by sacrificing the complexity. The extensive experimentation carried out using the LUNA-16 and LIDC Lung Image datasets and various performance metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, specificity, and F1-score are evaluated and analyzed. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed framework has achieved the peak performance of 98.5% accuracy, 99.0% precision, 98.8% recall, and 99.1% F1-score and outperformed the DenseNet, AlexNet, Resnets-50, Resnets-100, VGG-16, and Inception models.

Cash payment is still king in several markets, accounting for more than 90% of the payments in almost all the developing countries. The usage of mobile phones is pretty ordinary in this present era. Mobile phones have become an inseparable friend for many users, serving much more than just communication tools. Every subsequent person is heavily relying on them due to multifaceted usage and affordability. Every person wants to manage his/her daily transactions and related issues by using his/her mobile phone. With the rise and advancements of mobile-specific security, threats are evolving as well. In this paper, we provide a survey of various security models for mobile phones. We explore multiple proposed models of the mobile payment system (MPS), their technologies and comparisons, payment methods, different security mechanisms involved in MPS, and provide analysis of the encryption technologies, authentication methods, and firewall in MPS. We also identify current challenges and future directions of mobile phone security.

The internet of things (IoT) is prominently used in the present world. Although it has vast potential in several applications, it has several challenges in the real‐world. One of the most important challenges is conservation of battery life in devices used throughout IoT networks. Since many IoT devices are not rechargeable, several steps to conserve the battery life of an IoT network can be taken using the early prediction of battery life. In this study, a machine learning based model implementing a random forest regression algorithm is used to predict the battery life of IoT devices. The proposed model is experimented on ‘Beach Water Quality – Automated Sensors’ data set generated from sensors in an IoT network from the city of Chicago, USA. Several pre‐processing techniques like normalisation, transformation and dimensionality reduction are used in this model. The proposed model achieved a 97% predictive accuracy. The results obtained proved that the proposed model performs better than other state‐of‐art regression algorithms in preserving the battery life of IoT devices.

Aiming at the problems of cold start and data sparsity in the process of traditional education resource matching, a resource matching model based on machine learning is designed to get the best resource matching result of a better intelligent education system. Firstly, the similarity hierarchical weighting method is used to calculate the user and resource feature similarity by K-means. Then, the target resources and the nearest neighbor are predicted, and the resources with the highest score to match the target user can be selected according to the nearest neighbor score results. The test results show that the recall rate and coverage rate of the matching results of this model are higher than 98% and 96%, which proves that this model can effectively improve the problems of cold start of resource matching and data sparsity.

The grid denotes the electric grid which consists of communication lines, control stations, transformers, and distributors that aids in supplying power from the electrical plant to the consumers. Presently, the electric grid constitutes humongous power production units which generates millions of megawatts of power distributed across several demographic regions. There is a dire need to efficiently manage this power supplied to the various consumer domains such as industries, smart cities, household and organizations. In this regard, a smart grid with intelligent systems is being deployed to cater the dynamic power requirements. A smart grid system follows the Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) model, in which Information Technology (IT) infrastructure is integrated with physical systems. In the scenario of the smart grid embedded with CPS, the Machine Learning (ML) module is the IT aspect and the power dissipation units are the physical entities. In this research, a novel Multidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (MLSTM) technique is being proposed to predict the stability of the smart grid network. The results obtained are evaluated against other popular Deep Learning approaches such as Gated Recurrent Units (GRU), traditional LSTM and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN). The experimental results prove that the MLSTM approach outperforms the other ML approaches.

Mahalanobis taguchi system (MTS) is a multi-variate statistical method extensively used for feature selection and binary classification problems. The calculation of orthogonal array and signal-to-noise ratio in MTS makes the algorithm complicated when more number of factors are involved in the classification problem. Also the decision is based on the accuracy of normal and abnormal observations of the dataset. In this paper, a multiclass model using Improved Mahalanobis Taguchi System (IMTS) is proposed based on normal observations and Mahalanobis distance for agriculture development. Twenty-six input factors relevant to crop cultivation have been identified and clustered into six main factors for the development of the model. The multiclass model is developed with the consideration of the relative importance of the factors. An objective function is defined for the classification of three crops, namely paddy, sugarcane and groundnut. The classification results are verified against the results obtained from the agriculture experts working in the field. The proposed classifier provides 100% accuracy, recall, precision and 0% error rate when compared with other traditional classifier models.

Synchronous Data Flow (SDF) is a graphical computation model used for analyzing digital signal processing and real time multimedia applications. In general, these applications have two primary performance metrics - throughput and latency. Latency is important in multimedia processing applications such as video-conferencing, Internet telephony and games since latency surpassing a specific limit results in poor quality of service (QoS). Past work had focused on computing the latency of SDF graphs on homogeneous multiprocessor platforms. In this paper, we present an approach to compute the latency of a static schedule for a given unfolding factor with an optimal throughput for an SDF graph on a heterogeneous multiprocessor platform using timed automata. We use timed automata as a semantic model to represent the system model, which includes a synchronous data flow graph and an execution platform. We use the UPPAAL model-checker to specify the resulting network of timed automata and compute the latency.

Connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) have witnessed significant attention from industries, and academia for research and developments towards the on-road realisation of the technology. State-of-the-art CAVs utilise existing navigation systems for mobility and travel path planning. However, reliable connectivity to navigation systems is not guaranteed, particularly in urban road traffic environments with high-rise buildings, nearby roads and multi-level flyovers. In this connection, this paper presents TAKEN-Traffic Knowledge-based Navigation for enabling CAVs in urban road traffic environments. A traffic analysis model is proposed for mining the sensor-oriented traffic data to generate a precise navigation path for the vehicle. A knowledge-sharing method is developed for collecting and generating new traffic knowledge from on-road vehicles. CAVs navigation is executed using the information enabled by traffic knowledge and analysis. The experimental performance evaluation results attest to the benefits of TAKEN in the precise navigation of CAVs in urban traffic environments.

Privacy preservation of image data has been a top priority for many applications. The rapid growth of technology has increased the possibility of creating fake images using social media as a platform. However, many people, including researchers, rely on image data for various purposes. In rural areas, lane images have a high level of importance, as this data can be used for analyzing various lane conditions. However, this data is also being forged. To overcome this and to improve the privacy of lane image data, a real-time solution is proposed in this work. The proposed methodology assumes lane images as input, which are further classified as fake or bona fide images with the help of Error Level Analysis (ELA) and artificial neural network (ANN) algorithms. The U-Net model ensures lane detection for bona fide lane images, which helps in the easy identification of lanes in rural areas. The final images obtained are secured by using the proxy re-encryption technique which uses RSA and ECC algorithms. This helps in ensuring the privacy of lane images. The cipher images are maintained using fog computing and processed with integrity. The proposed methodology is necessary for protecting genuine satellite lane images in rural areas, which are further used by forecasters, and researchers for making interpretations and predictions on data.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has rapidly progressed in recent years and immensely influenced many industries in how they operate. Consequently, IoT technology has improved productivity in many sectors, and smart farming has also hugely benefited from the IoT. Smart farming enables precision agriculture, high crop yield, and the efficient utilization of natural resources to sustain for a longer time. Smart farming includes sensing capabilities, communication technologies to transmit the collected data from the sensors, and data analytics to extract meaningful information from the collected data. These modules will enable farmers to make intelligent decisions and gain profits. However, incorporating new technologies includes inheriting security and privacy consequences if they are not implemented in a secure manner, and smart farming is not an exception. Therefore, security monitoring is an essential component to be implemented for smart farming. In this paper, we propose a cloud-enabled smart-farm security monitoring framework to monitor device status and sensor anomalies effectively and mitigate security attacks using behavioral patterns. Additionally, a blockchain-based smart-contract application was implemented to securely store security-anomaly information and proactively mitigate similar attacks targeting other farms in the community. We implemented the security-monitoring-framework prototype for smart farms using Arduino Sensor Kit, ESP32, AWS cloud, and the smart contract on the Ethereum Rinkeby Test Network and evaluated network latency to monitor and respond to security events. The performance evaluation of the proposed framework showed that our solution could detect security anomalies within real-time processing time and update the other farm nodes to be aware of the situation.

The detection of water bodies from satellite images plays a vital role in research development. It has a wide range of applications such as the prediction of natural disasters and detecting drought and flood conditions. There were few existing applications that focused on detecting water bodies that are becoming extinct in nature. The dataset to train this deep learning model is taken from Kaggle. It has two classes, namely water bodies and masks. There is a total of 2841 sentinel-2 satellite images with corresponding 2841 masks. Additionally, the present work focuses on using UNet, Tensorflow to detect the water bodies. It uses a Nadam optimizer to reduce the losses. It also finds best-optimized parameters for the activation function, a number of nodes in each layer. This proposed model achieves integrity by embedding a security feature Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA). It generates a digital signature for the predicted area of water bodies which helps to secure the key and the detected water bodies while transmitting in a channel. Thus, the proposed model ensures the performance accuracy of 94% which can also work the same for edge detection, detection in blurred and low-resolution images. The model is highly robust.