IJACSA Volume 7 Issue 8 - thesai.org

IJACSA Volume 7 Issue 8

Copyright Statement: This is an open access publication licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, even commercially as long as the original work is properly cited.

View Full Issue

Paper 1: Encoding a T-RBAC Model for E-Learning Platform on ORBAC Model

Abstract: with rapid development and increase in the amount of available resources in E-learning platforms, the need to design new architecture for such systems has become inevitable to improve the search quality and simplifying ways to take online courses. The integration of multi-agent systems has played a very important role in developing open, interactive and distributed learning systems. A lot of research in E-learning and multi-agent system have been put into developing infrastructure and providing content, security and trust issues have hardly ever been considered worth knowing that security issues may endanger the success of these platforms. The application of a control access policy, as one of the most important aspects of security, in E-learning platform based on multi agent systems , plays an important role to secure interaction with agents/users and reinforcing it with the integration of trust level .The work of this paper is to encode a new access control model developed in previous works based on ‘’ role based access control model ‘’ and trust level, on ‘’Organization based access control model’’ to improve the security level in E-learning platforms based on multi-agent systems. The encoded model is implemented and evaluated by “MotOrbac” tool, in order to define its validity context and limitations for a large and extended deployment.

Author 1: Kassid Asmaa

Author 2: Elkamoun Najib

Keywords: Security policies; Access control; Rbac model; Orbac model; e-learning platforms; trust; multi-agent systems

Paper 2: Simulation of Building Evacuation: Performance Analysis and Simplified Model

Abstract: Crowd evacuation from industrial buildings, factories, theatres, protest areas, festivals, exhibitions and religious/sports gatherings is very crucial in many dangerous scenarios, such as fire, earthquakes, threat and attacks. Simulation of crowd evacuation is an integral part of planning for emergency situations and training staff for crow management. In this paper, simulation of crowd evacuation for a large building-hall is studied using a popular crowd-simulation software BuildingEXODUS. Evacuation of the fully occupied hall is simulated with eleven test cases using the different experimental setups in the software. The results of the different evacuation scenarios are analysed to check the effect of various parameters involved in the evacuation performance. Finally, using the evacuation test results, simplified models are developed. It is found that the model outputs are in good agreement with the simulation results. Therefore, the models can readily be used for fast computation of the evacuation results without running the actual simulation.

Author 1: Yasser M. Alginahi

Author 2: Muhammad N. Kabir

Keywords: Crowd Evacuation; BuildingEXODUS; Modelling & Simulation; Least squares method

Paper 3: Towards Enhancing Supportive E-Learning Courses using Smart Tags

Abstract: E-learning management systems have emerged as a method of education development in many universities in the Arab world. E-learning management system tools provide a basic environment for interaction between faculty members and students, and these tools require information technology to obtain the most benefit. This paper proposes a method for enhancing the delivery of supportive e-learning courses using smart tags, such as NFC technique. The study sample comprises students at a supportive E-learning course in King Khaled University. This study aims to propose a technique to enhance the delivery of E-learning courses using these tags, which enable teachers and students to interact with the educational material and track their academic performance. The conducted experiments used receiver operating characteristic (ROC) prediction quality measurements to evaluate the proposed technique.

Author 1: Hayel Khafajeh

Author 2: Heider Wahsheh

Author 3: Ahmad Albhaishi

Author 4: Mofareh Alqahtani

Keywords: Learning Management System (LMS); Supportive courses; Blended courses; Online Courses; Quality Matters

Paper 4: A Novel Cylindrical DRA for C-Band Applications

Abstract: In this paper, we study a Dielectric Resonator Antenna of cylindrical shape with circular polarization for applications in the C band. The proposed antenna is composed of two different layers. The first is Polyflon Polyguide with relative permittivity er1 = 2.32 and a loss tangent tand = 0.002 as a lower layer. The second is Rogers RO3010 with relative permittivity er2 = 10.2 and a loss tangent tand = 0.0035 as an upper layer which is excited by dual probe feed. The 90° phase shift of two probes feed can create a circular polarization. In this study, we focused on the effect of the variations in the height of the Polyflon Polyguide as well as the probe feed. Simulations under HFSS software have led to bandwidth values of about 2.2 GHz and 2.6 GHz for the proposed antenna with one probe and dual probe, respectively. The obtained gains are higher than 5.4 dB and can range up 8.1 dB.

Author 1: Hamed Gharsallah

Author 2: Lotfi Osman

Author 3: Lassaad Latrach

Keywords: Dielectric Resonator Antenna; gain; reflection coefficient; circular polarization; axial ratio

Paper 5: Adaptive Threshold for Background Subtraction in Moving Object Detection using Stationary Wavelet Transforms 2D

Abstract: Both detection and tracking objects are challenging problems because of the type of the objects and even their presence in the scene. Generally, object detection is a prerequisite for target tracking, and tracking has no effect on object detection. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to detect and track moving objects automatically of a video sequence analysis, taken with a fixed camera. In the detection steps we perform a background subtraction algorithm, the obtained results are decomposed using discrete stationary wavelet transform 2D and the coefficients are thresholded using Birge-Massart strategy. The tracking step is based on the classical Kalman filter algorithm. This later uses the Kalman filter as many as the number of the moving objects in the image frame. The tests evaluation proved the efficiency of our algorithm for motion detection using adaptive threshold. The comparison results show that the proposed algorithm gives a better performance of detection and tracking than the other methods.

Author 1: Oussama Boufares

Author 2: Noureddine Aloui

Author 3: Adnene Cherif

Keywords: moving object detection; SWT; background subtraction; adaptive threshold; kalman filter

Paper 6: Optimization of OADM DWDM Ring Optical Network using Various Modulation Formats

Abstract: In this paper, the performance of the ring optical network is analyzed at bit rate 2.5 Gbps and 5 Gbps for various modulation formats such as NRZ rectangular, NRZ raised cosine, RZ soliton, RZ super Gaussian, RZ raised cosine and RZ rectangular. The effect of insertion losses is analyzed. It is observed that RZ Soliton performs better than all other formats and using this scheme system can exist up to 95 dB insertion loss. It has been observed that there is a rise in the system performance for NRZ rectangular and RZ soliton formats after 10 GHz bandwidth.

Author 1: Vikrant Sharma

Author 2: Dalveer Kaur

Keywords: NRZ; RZ; OADM; WDM; ADM; ROADM; PRBS

Paper 7: Performance Analysis & Comparison of Optimal Economic Load Dispatch using Soft Computing Techniques

Abstract: Power plants not situated at similar space from center of loads and their fuel prices are dissimilar. In this paper, ELD of actual power generation measured.ELD is preparation of generators to reduce total functioning price of generator units exposed to equality constraint of power balance within minimum and maximum working limits of producing units. In this paper FL, GAs & hybridization of GA-FL is utilized to find optimal solution of ELD systems. ELD resolutions found by resolving conservative load flow equations though at same time reducing fuel prices. Performance of results is analyzed by comparing the data values obtained with the help of soft computing techniques in ELD.

Author 1: Vijay Kumar

Author 2: Dr. Jagdev Singh

Author 3: Dr. Yaduvir Singh

Author 4: Dr. Sanjay Prakash Sood

Keywords: ELD; FL; GA; FCGA

Paper 8: A New DTC Scheme using Second Order Sliding Mode and Fuzzy Logic of a DFIG for Wind Turbine System

Abstract: This article present a novel direct torque control (DTC) scheme using high order sliding mode (HOSM) and fuzzy logic of a doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) incorporated in a wind turbine system. Conventional direct torque control strategy (C-DTC) using hysteresis controllers presents considerable flux and torque undulations at steady state period. In order to ensure a robust DTC method for the DFIG-rotor side converter and reduce flux and torque ripples, a second order sliding mode (SOSM) technique based on super twisting algorithm and fuzzy logic is used in this paper. Simulation results show the efficiency of the proposed method of control especially on the quality of the provided power comparatively to a C-DTC.

Author 1: Zinelaabidine BOUDJEMA

Author 2: Rachid TALEB

Author 3: Adil YAHDOU

Keywords: DFIG; wind turbine; DTC; SOSM; super twisting; fuzzy logic

Paper 9: FPGA Implementation of Parallel Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm and Compared with Genetic Algorithm

Abstract: In this paper, a digital implementation of Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm (PSO) is developed for implementation on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). PSO is a recent intelligent heuristic search method in which the mechanism of algorithm is inspired by the swarming of biological populations. PSO is similar to the Genetic Algorithm (GA). In fact, both of them use a combination of deterministic and probabilistic rules. The experimental results of this algorithm are effective to evaluate the performance of the PSO compared to GA and other PSO algorithm. New digital solutions are available to generate a hardware implementation of PSO Algorithms. Thus, we developed a hardware architecture based on Finite state machine (FSM) and implemented into FPGA to solve some dispatch computing problems over other circuits based on swarm intelligence. Moreover, the inherent parallelism of these new hardware solutions with a large computational capacity makes the running time negligible regardless the complexity of the processing.

Author 1: BEN AMEUR Mohamed sadek

Author 2: SAKLY Anis

Keywords: PSO algorithm; GA; FPGA; Finite state machine; hardware

Paper 10: Simulation of Shunt Active Power Filter Controlled by SVPWM Connected to a Photovoltaic Generator

Abstract: In this paper we study the shunt active power filter. This filter contains a voltage three-level inverter controlled by the SVPWM strategy supplied by a the DC bus powered by a solar array to improve the quality of electric energy and eliminate harmonics currents generated by non-linear loads, the latter identified by the method of multivariable filter. The objective of this study is to obtain an unpolluted source into the power grid where all the simulation results are obtained by using MATLAB Environment.

Author 1: Ismail BOUYAKOUB

Author 2: Abedelkhader DJAHBAR

Author 3: Benyounes MAZARI

Author 4: Omar MAAROUF

Keywords: shunt active power filter; harmonic currents; MVF; SVPWM; three level inverter; GPV

Paper 11: PSIM and MATLAB Co-Simulation of Photovoltaic System using “P and O” and “Incremental Conductance” MPPT

Abstract: The photovoltaic (PV) generator shows a nonlinear current-voltage (I-V) characteristic that its maximum power point (MPP) differs with irradiance and temperature. by employing simple maximum power point tracking algorithms, we can track this MPP and increase the efficiency of our photovoltaic system. Two methods for the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) of a photovoltaic system under variable temperature and insolation conditions are discussed in this work: Incremental Conductance compared to conventional tracking algorithm (P&O). In this paper, a new modeling solution is presented, using co-simulation between a specialist modeling tool called PSIM and the popular Matlab software using simcoupler module. Co-simulation is carried out by implementing the MPPT command circuits in PSIM and PV panel, boost DC-DC converter and battery in MATLAB/Simulink.

Author 1: ANAS EL FILALI

Author 2: EL MEHDI LAADISSI

Author 3: MALIKA ZAZI

Keywords: Photovoltaic; Boost; PWM; MPPT; P and O; Incremental Conductance; co-simulation

Paper 12: Implementing and Comparison between Two Algorithms to Make a Decision in a Wireless Sensors Network

Abstract: The clinical presentation of acute CO poisoning and hydrocarbon gas (Butane CAS 106-97-8) varies depending on terrain, humidity, temperature, duration of exposure and the concentration of gas toxic: From then consciousness disorders (100 ppm or 15%) rapidly limiting miners to ambient air and under oxygen until sudden coma (300 ppm or 45%) required hospitalization monitoring unit, if not the result in few minutes it’s death in the poisoning site [1]. Leakage of the filling butane gas in the plant and very close to the latter position at the Faculty and under gas detection project. Has met a set of sensors to warn of possible leak, which can affect students, teachers and staff of the institution. Therefore, this document describes the implementation of two methods: the first is Average filter and the second as Cusum algorithm, to make a warning decision swished a signal given by the wireless sensors [9] [14-15]. Which installed in the inner side of Faculty of Science and Technology in Errachidia.

Author 1: Fouad Essahlaoui

Author 2: Ahmed El Abbassi

Author 3: Rachid Skouri

Keywords: Wireless Network; Sensors; Stationary; Filter; CUSUM; Average; Arduino; Butane

Paper 13: Emotion Recognition from Speech using Prosodic and Linguistic Features

Abstract: Speech signal can be used to extract emotions. However, it is pertinent to note that variability in speech signal can make emotion extraction a challenging task. There are a number of factors that indicate presence of emotions. Prosodic and temporal features have been used previously for the purpose of identifying emotions. Separately, prosodic/temporal and linguistic features of speech do not provide results with adequate accuracy. We can also find out emotions from linguistic features if we can identify contents. Therefore, We consider prosodic as well as temporal or linguistic features which help increasing accuracy of emotion recognition, which is our first contribution reported in this paper. We propose a two-step model for emotion recognition; we extract emotions based on prosodic features in the first step. We extract emotions from word segmentation combined with linguistic features in the second step. While performing our experiments, we prove that the classification mechanisms, if trained without considering age factor, do not help improving accuracy. We argue that the classifier should be based on the age group on which the actual emotion extraction be required, and this becomes our second contribution submitted in this paper.

Author 1: Mahwish Pervaiz

Author 2: Tamim Ahmed Khan

Keywords: Emotion Extraction; Prosodic Features; Temporal Features; Dynamic Time Wrapping; Segmentation

Paper 14: Medical Image Inpainting with RBF Interpolation Technique

Abstract: Inpainting is a method for repairing damaged images or to remove unwanted parts of an image. While this process has been performed by professional artists in the past, today, the use of this technology is emerging in the medical area – especially in the medical imaging realm. In this study, the proposed inpainting method uses a radial basis function (RBF) interpolation technique. We first explain radial basis functions and then, the RBF interpolation system. This technique generally depends on matrix processes. Thus, matrix operations are executed after the interpolation and form a main part of the process. This interpolation matrix has a known value used for interpolating n values and we need to find M – 1 for the n + 1 values of the original and inserted data. Implementation of an inpainting operation is carried out in an object-oriented programming (OOP) language. This is where the process is completed. The algorithm used in this study has a graphical user interface. Further, several skin images are used for testing this system. The obtained output represents a high level of accuracy that can support the validity of the proposed method.

Author 1: Mashail Alsalamah

Author 2: Saad Amin

Keywords: Inpainting; interpolate; texture synthesis; exemplar texture inpainting; Radial Basis Function

Paper 15: Content based Video Retrieval Systems Performance based on Multiple Features and Multiple Frames using SVM

Abstract: In this paper, Content Based Video Retrieval Systems performance is analysed and compared for three different types of feature vectors. These types of features are generated using three different algorithms; Block Truncation Coding (BTC) extended for colors, Kekre’s Fast Codebook Generation (KFCG) algorithm and Gabor filters. The feature vectors are extracted from multiple frames instead of using only key frames or all frames from the videos. The performance of each type of feature is analysed by comparing the results obtained by two different techniques; Euclidean Distance and Support Vector Machine (SVM). Although a significant number of researchers have expressed dissatisfaction to use image as a query for video retrieval systems, the techniques and features used here provide enhanced and higher retrieval results while using images from the videos. Apart from higher efficiency, complexity has also been reduced as it is not required to find key frames for all the shots. The system is evaluated using a database of 1000 videos consisting of 20 different categories. Performance achieved using BTC features calculated from color components is compared with that achieved using Gabor features and with KFCG features. These performances are compared again with the performances obtained from systems using SVM and the systems without using SVM.

Author 1: Mohd Aasif Ansari

Author 2: Hemlata Vasishtha

Keywords: CBVR; KFCG; Multiple Frames; SVM; BTC; Gabor filter

Paper 16: Finite Elements Modeling of Linear Motor for Automatic Sliding Door Application

Abstract: In this paper, a linear switched reluctance motor is designed and investigated to be used as a sliding door drive system. A non linear two dimensions finite model is built to predict the performance of the designed motor. Thus, the static electromagnetic characteristics are investigated and analyzed. The inductance and the electromagnetic force are determined for different translator position and current intensities with consideration of magnetic saturation effects. The results of analysis prove that the magnetic behavior of this motor is non linear. Furthermore, an important asymmetry of the static and dynamic characteristics between the extreme phases and the central phase is observed in high excitation levels.

Author 1: Aymen Lachheb

Author 2: Lilia El Amraoui

Author 3: Jalel Khedhiri

Keywords: linear motor; sliding door; 2D-finite-element analysis; switched reluctance

Paper 17: A Review of Solutions for SDN-Exclusive Security Issues

Abstract: Software Defined Networking is a paradigm still in its emergent stages in the realm of production-scale networks. Centralisation of network control introduces a new level of flexibility for network administrators and programmers. Security is a huge factor contributing to consumer resistance to implementation of SDN architecture. Without addressing the issues inherent from SDNs centralised nature, the benefits in performance and network configurative flexibility cannot be harnessed. This paper explores key threats posed to SDN environments and comparatively analyses some of the mechanisms proposed as mitigations against these threats – it also provides some insight into the future works which would enable a securer SDN architecture.

Author 1: Jakob Spooner

Author 2: Dr Shao Ying Zhu

Keywords: SDN; software; security; OpenFlow; networking; network security; NFV

Paper 18: Optimized Voting Scheme for Efficient Vanishing Point Detection in General Road Images

Abstract: Next generation automobile industries are aiming for development of vision-based driver assistance system and driver-less vehicle system. In the context of this application, a major challenge lies in the identification of efficient road region segmentation from captured image frames. Recent research work suggests that use of a global feature like vanishing point makes the road detection algorithm more robust and general for all types of roads. The goal of this research work is the reduction of computational complexity involved with voting process for identification of vanishing point. This paper presents an efficient and optimized voter selection strategy to identify vanishing point in general road images. The major outcome of this algorithm is the reduction in computational complexity as well as improvement in efficiency of vanishing point detection algorithm for all types of road images. The key attributes of the methodology are dominant orientation selection, voter selection based on voter location and modified voting scheme, combining dominant orientation and distance based soft voting process. Results of a number of qualitative and quantitative experiments clearly demonstrate the efficiency of proposed algorithm.

Author 1: Vipul H. Mistry

Author 2: Ramji Makwana

Keywords: Road Detection; Vanishing Point; Gabor Filter; voting scheme; general road segmentation

Paper 19: Automated Simulation P2P Botnets Signature Detection by Rule-based Approach

Abstract: Internet is a most salient services in communication. Thus, companies take this opportunity by putting critical resources online for effective business organization. This has given rise to activities of cyber criminals actuated by botnets. P2P networks had gained popularity through distributed applications such as file-sharing, web caching and network storage whereby it is not easy to guarantee that the file exchanged not the malicious in non-centralized authority of P2P networks. For this reason, these networks become the suitable venue for malicious software to spread. It is straightforward for attackers to target the vulnerable hosts in existing P2P networks as bot candidates and build their zombie army. They can be used to compromise a host and make it become a P2P bot. In order to detect these botnets, a complete flow analysis is necessary. In this paper, we proposed an automated P2P botnets through rule-based detection approach which currently focuses on P2P signature illumination. We consider both of synchronisation within a botnets and the malicious behaviour each bot exhibits at the host or network level to recognize the signature and activities in P2P botnets traffic. The rule-based approach have high detection accuracy and low false positive.

Author 1: Raihana Syahirah Abdullah

Author 2: Faizal M.A.

Author 3: Zul Azri Muhamad Noh

Author 4: Nurulhuda Ahmad

Keywords: Botnets; P2P Botnets; Signature; Rule-based

Paper 20: A Survey on Case-based Reasoning in Medicine

Abstract: Case-based reasoning (CBR) based on the memory-centered cognitive model is a strategy that focuses on how people learn a new skill or how they generate hypothesis on new situations based on their past experiences. Among various Artificial Intelligence tracks, CBR, due to its intrinsic similarity with the human reasoning process has been very promising in the utilization of intelligent systems in various domains, in particular in the domain of medicine. In this paper, we extensively survey the literature on CBR systems that are used in the medical domain over the past few decades. We also discuss the difficulties of implementing CBR in medicine and outline opportunities for future work.

Author 1: Nabanita Choudhury

Author 2: Shahin Ara Begum

Keywords: case-based reasoning; medicine; artificial intelligence; soft computing

Paper 21: MRPPSim: A Multi-Robot Path Planning Simulation

Abstract: Multi-robot path planning problem is an interesting problem of research having great potential for several optimization problems in the world. In multi-robot path planning problem domain (MRPP), robots must move from their start locations to their goal locations avoiding collisions with each other. MRPP is a relevant problem in several domains, including; automatic packages inside a warehouse, automated guided vehicles, planetary exploration, robotics mining, and video games. This work introduces MRPPSim; a new modeling, evaluation and simulation tool for multi-robot path planning algorithms and its applications. In doing so, it handles all the aspects related to the multi-robot path planning algorithms. Through its working, MRPPSim unifies the representation for the input. This algorithm provides researchers with a set of evaluation models with each of them serving a set of objectives. It provides a comprehensive method to evaluate and compare the algorithm’s performance to the ones that solve public benchmark problems inas shown in literature. The work presented in this paper also provides a complete tool to reformat and control user input, critical small benchmark, biconnected, random and grid problems. Once all of this is performed, it calculates the common performance measurements of multi-robot path planning algorithms in a unified way. The work presented in this paper animates the results so the researchers can follow their algorithms’ executions. In addition, MRPPSim is designed as set of models, each is dedicated to a specific function, this allows new algorithm, evaluation model, or performance measurements to be easily plugged into the simulator.

Author 1: Ebtehal Turki Saho Alotaibi

Author 2: Hisham Al-Rawi

Keywords: component; simulation; modeling; evaluation; multi-robot path planning problem; performance measurements

Paper 22: Software Design Principles to Enhance SDN Architecture

Abstract: SDN as a network architecture emerged on top of existing technologies and knowledge. Through defining the controller as a software program, SDN made a strong connection between networking and software engineering. Traditionally, network programs were vendor specific and embedded in hardware switches and routers. SDN focuses on isolation between control and forwarding or data planes. However, in the complete SDN network, there are many other areas (i.e. CPU, memory, hardware, bandwidth and software). In this paper, we propose extending SDN architecture and propose isolation layers with the goal of improving the overall network design. Such flexible architecture can support future evolution and changes without the need to significantly change original components or modules.

Author 1: Iyad Alazzam

Author 2: Izzat Alsmadi

Author 3: Khalid M.O Nahar

Keywords: component; SDN; OpenFlo; Software design; SDN architecture; Design principles; Design patterns

Paper 23: Evaluating the Usability of Optimizing Text-based CAPTCHA Generation

Abstract: A CAPTCHA is a test that can, automatically, tell human and computer programs apart. It is a mechanism widely used nowadays for protecting web applications, interfaces, and services from malicious users and automated spammers. Usability and robustness are two fundamental aspects with CAPTCHA, where the usability aspect is the ease with which humans pass its challenges, while the robustness is the strength of its segmentation-resistance mechanism. The collapsing mechanism, which is removing the space between characters to prevent segmentation, has been shown to be reasonably resistant to known attacks. On the other hand, this mechanism drops considerably the human-solvability of text-based CAPTCHAs. Accordingly, an optimizer has previously been proposed that automatically enhances the usability of a CAPTCHA generation without sacrificing its robustness level. However, this optimizer has not yet been evaluated in terms of improving the usability. This paper, therefore, evaluates the usability of this optimizer by conducting an experimental study. The results of this evaluation showed that a statistically significant enhancement is found in the usability of text-based CAPTCHA generation.

Author 1: Suliman A. Alsuhibany

Keywords: text-based CAPTCHA; usability; security; optimization; experimentation; evaluation

Paper 24: Performance Optimization of the Multi-Pumped Raman Optical Amplifier using MOICA

Abstract: In order to achieve the best gain profile for multi pump distributed Raman amplifiers in Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) transmission systems, the power and wavelength of pumps, the type of pumping configuration and the number of pump signals are the most important factors. In this paper, using a Multi-Objective Imperialist Competition Optimization Algorithm (MOICA) with lowest power consumption and lowest number of pumps, we propose the most uniform gain profile for two types of pumping configurations in S- band and compare the results. Considering the design conditions including the type of pumping configuration, fiber length, fiber type and number of pump signals and using the multi-objective algorithm, we propose a method which can be used to achieve a gain level in which the amplifier has the lowest power consumption and lowest gain ripple. According to this, we can design a powerful WDM transmission system by Distributed Raman Amplifier (DRA) with a good performance and efficiency.

Author 1: Mohsen Katebi Jahromi

Author 2: Seyed Mojtaba Saif

Author 3: Masoud Jabbari

Keywords: Raman amplifier; ICA; WDM System; Optical fiber; Multi-objective Optimization

Paper 25: Influence of Adopting a Text-Free User Interface on the Usability of a Web-based Government System with Illiterate and Semi-Literate People

Abstract: Illiterate and semi-literate people usually face different types of difficulties when they use the Internet, such as reading and recognising text. This research aims to develop and examine the influence of adopting a text-free user interface on the usability of a web-based government system with illiterate and semi-literate people. A number of steps have been followed in order to achieve this research goal. An extensive literature review has been carried out to explore the adoption of different concepts or representations of content to help illiterate/semi-literate people in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) projects. Then a consolidated framework is proposed and adopted in order to develop a text-free user interface. This can help in building a text-free user interface for a certain service here in Saudi Arabia. Cultural factors, education level, text-free icons, and usability guidelines have been considered in the above-mentioned framework. A prototype of a web-based government system after taking into account the above framework has been designed and developed. Usability testing and heuristic evaluation have been used as usability assessment methods in order to evaluate the system usability and its impact on the usability for illiterate people in Saudi Arabia. The results are encouraging as the achieved results of usability measures imply that adopting the consolidated framework has influenced the usability in this research.

Author 1: Ms. Ghadam Alduhailan

Author 2: Dr. Majed Alshamari

Keywords: text-free interface; web-based system; usability; e-services; government; consolidated framework

Paper 26: Chemical Reaction Optimization for Max Flow Problem

Abstract: This study presents an algorithm for MaxFlow problem using "Chemical Reaction Optimization algorithm (CRO)". CRO is a recently established meta-heuristics algorithm for optimization, inspired by the nature of chemical reactions. The main concern is to find the best maximum flow value at which the flow can be shipped from the source node to the sink node in a flow network without violating any capacity constraints in which the flow of each edge remains within the upper bound value of the capacity. The proposed MaxFlow-CRO algorithm is presented, analyzed asymptotically and experimental test is conducted. Asymptotic runtime is derived theoretically. The algorithm is implemented using JAVA programming language. Results show a good performance with a complexity of O(I E2), for I iterations and E edges. The number of iterations I in the algorithm, is an important factor that will affect the results obtained. As number of iterations is increased, best possible max-Flow value is obtained.

Author 1: Reham Barham

Author 2: Ahmad Sharieh

Author 3: Azzam Sliet

Keywords: Chemical reaction optimization(CRO); Decomposition; Heuristic; Max Flow problem; Molecule; Optimization; Reactions; Synthesis

Paper 27: Factors Influencing Patients’ Attitudes to Exchange Electronic Health Information in Saudi Arabia: An Exploratory Study

Abstract: Health Information Exchange (HIE) systems electronically transfer patients’ clinical, demographic, and health-related information between different care providers. These exchanges offer improved health care quality, reduced medical errors and health care costs, increase patient safety and organizational efficiency. However, technologies cannot bring such improvements if patients are reluctant to share personal health information which could impede the success of HIE system. The purpose of this study is to identify different factors that determine patients’ acceptance for sharing their medical information among different care provider. Based preliminary on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) combined with patients’ perspective an integrated model is proposed. A questionnaire survey is conducted to measure the proportion of respondents’ willingness to share their information with the residence of the eastern province of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A sample of 300 respondents over 18 years of age is collected. Basic descriptive statistical analysis, reliability and validity assessment is conducted to analyze data and measure the goodness of model. Furthermore, Structural Equation Modelling is used to test research hypothesis. The finding shows that perceived benefit, perceived risk, subjective norms and attitude are the main predictors of patients’ willingness or unwillingness to share their health information. The study revealed that more attention should be directed to these factors during the design and implementation of future HIE system to avoid expected barriers.

Author 1: Mariam Al-Khalifa

Author 2: Shaheen Khatoon

Author 3: Azhar Mahmood

Author 4: Iram Fatima

Keywords: Health Information Exchange; Electronic Medical Record; TAM; Theoretical Model Introduction

Paper 28: Efficient Load Balancing Algorithm for the Arrangement-Star Network

Abstract: The Arrangement-Star is a well-known network in the literature and it is one of the promising interconnection networks in the area of super computing, it is expected to be one of the attractive alternatives in the future for High Speed Parallel Computers. The Arrangement-Star network has many attractive topological properties such as small diameter, low degree, good connectivity, low broadcasting cost and flexibility in choosing the desired network size. Although, some of the research work has been done on Arrangement-Star network, it still needs more investigation and research efforts to explore these attractive topologies and utilize it to solve some real life applications. In this paper we attempt to fill this gap by proposing an efficient algorithm for load balancing among different processors of the Arrangement-Star network. The proposed algorithm is named as Arrangement Star Clustered Dimension Exchange Method ASCDEM presented and implemented on the Arrangement-Star network. The algorithm is based on the Clustered Dimension Exchange Method (CDEM). The ASCDEM algorithm is shown to be efficient in redistributing the load balancing among all different processors of the network as evenly as possible. A complete detail of this algorithm in addition to examples and discussions to explore the benefits of applying this distributed algorithm is presented in this paper. Furthermore an analytical study on the algorithm is presented and discussed to explore the attractive performance of the proposed algorithm.

Author 1: Ahmad M. Awwad

Author 2: Jehad A. Al-Sadi

Keywords: Interconnection Networks; Topological Properties; Arrangement-Star; Load balancing

Paper 29: Analytical Performance Evaluation of IPv6 and IPv4 Over 10 Gigabit Ethernet and InfiniBand using IPoIB

Abstract: IPv6 is the response to the shortage of IPv4 addresses. It was defined almost twenty years ago by the IETF as a replacement of IPv4, and little by little, it is becoming more preponderant as the Internet protocol. The growth of Internet has led to the development of high performance networks. On one hand, Ethernet has evolved significantly and today it is common to find 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks in LANs. On the other hand, another approach for high performance networking is based on RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) which offers innovative features such as kernel bypass, zero copy, offload of splitting and assembly of messages in packets to the CAs (Channel Adapters), etc. InfiniBand is currently the most popular technology that implements RDMA. It uses verbs instead of sockets and a big effort of the community is required to port TCP/IP software to InfiniBand, to take advantage of its benefits. Meanwhile, IPoIB (IP over InfiniBand) is a protocol that has been proposed and permits the execution of socket-based applications on top of InfiniBand, without any change, at the expense of performance. In this paper, we make a performance evaluation of IPv6 and IPv4 over 10 Gigabit Ethernet and IPoIB. Our results show that 10 Gigabit Ethernet has a better throughput than IPoIB, especially for small and medium payload sizes. However, as the payload size increases, the advantage of 10 Gigabit Ethernet is reduced in comparison to IPoIB/FDR. With respect to latency, IPoIB did much better than 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Finally, our research also indicates that in a controlled environment, IPv4 has a better performance than IPv6.

Author 1: Eric Gamess

Author 2: Humberto Ortiz-Zuazaga

Keywords: IPv4; IPv6; Performance Evaluation; InfiniBand; IP over InfiniBand; 10 Gigabit Ethernet; Benchmarking Tools

Paper 30: Ontology-based Query Expansion for Arabic Text Retrieval

Abstract: The semantic resources are important parts in the Information Retrieval (IR) such as search engines, Question Answering (QA), etc., these resources should be available, readable and understandable. In semantic web, the ontology plays a central role for the information retrieval, which use to retrieves more relevant information from unstructured information. This paper presents a semantic-based retrieval system for the Arabic text, which expands the input query semantically using Arabic domain ontology. In the proposed approach, the search engine index is represented using Vector Space Model (VSM), and the Arabic’s place nouns domain ontology has been used which constructed and implemented using Web Ontology Language (OWL) from Arabic corpus. The proposed approach has been experimented on the Arabic Quran corpus, and the experiments show that the approach outperforms in terms of both precision and recall the traditional keyword-based methods.

Author 1: Waseem Alromima

Author 2: Ibrahim F. Moawad

Author 3: Rania Elgohary

Author 4: Mostafa Aref

Keywords: Information Retrieval; Arabic Ontology; Semantic Search; Arabic Quran Corpus

Paper 31: A Hybrid Approach for Measuring Semantic Similarity between Documents and its Application in Mining the Knowledge Repositories

Abstract: This paper explains about similarity measure and the relationship between the knowledge repositories. This paper also describes the significance of document similarity measures, algorithms and to which type of text it can be applied Document similarity measures are of full text similarity, paragraph similarity, sentence similarity, semantic similarity, structural similarity and statistical measures. Two different frameworks had been proposed in this paper, one for measuring document to document similarity and the other model which measures similarity between documents to multiple documents. These two proposed models can use any one of the similarity measures in implementation aspect, which is been put forth for further research.

Author 1: Ms. K. L. Sumathy

Author 2: Dr. Chidambaram

Keywords: dataset documents; research similarity documents; ontology and corpus

Paper 32: A Novel Approach for Submission of Tasks to a Data Center in a Virtualized Cloud Computing Environment

Abstract: The submission of tasks to a data center plays a crucial role to achieve the services like scheduling, processing in a cloud computing environment. Energy consumption of a data center must be considered for task processing as it results in high operational expenditures and bad environmental impact. Unfortunately, none of the current research works focus on energy factor while submitting tasks to a cloud. In this paper a framework is proposed to select a data center with minimum energy consumption. The service provider has to register all the data centers in a registry. The energy consumed by task processing using virtualization and energy of IT equipments like routers, switches is calculated. The data center selection framework finally selects the data center with minimum energy consumption for task processing. The experimental results indicate that the proposed idea results in a less energy when compared to the existing algorithms for selection of data centers.

Author 1: B. Santhosh Kumar

Author 2: Dr. Latha Parthiban

Keywords: Energy consumption; Virtualization; Data Center Selection Framework

Paper 33: Evaluation of Wellness Detection Techniques using Complex Activities Association for Smart Home Ambient

Abstract: Wireless Sensor Network based smart homes have the potential to meet the growing challenges of independent living of elderly people in smart homes. However, wellness detection of elderly people in smart homes is still a challenging research domain. Many researchers have proposed several techniques; however, majority of these techniques does not provide a comprehensive solution because complex activities cannot be determined easily and comprehensive wellness is difficult to diagnose. In this study’s critical review, it has been observed that strong association lies among the vital wellness determination parameters. In this paper, an association rules based model is proposed for the simple and complex (overlapped) activities recognition and comprehensive wellness detection mechanism after analyzing existing techniques. It considers vital wellness detection parameters (temporal association of sub activity location and sub activity, time gaps between two adjacent activities, temporal association of inter and intra activities). Activity recognition and wellness detection will be performed on the basis of extracted temporal association rules and expert knowledgebase. Learning component is an important module of our proposed model to accommodate the changing trends in the frequent pattern behavior of an elderly person and recommend a caregiver/expert to adjust the expert knowledgebase according to the found abnormalities.

Author 1: Farhan Sabir Ujager

Author 2: Azhar Mahmood

Author 3: Shaheen Khatoon

Author 4: Muhammad Imran

Author 5: Umair Abdullah

Keywords: Wellness detection; Elderly people; WSN Smart homes; Activity recognition

Paper 34: A Study of Resilient Architecture for Critical Software-Intensive System-of-Systems (Sisos)

Abstract: The role of critical system-of-systems have become considerably software-intensive. A critical system-of-system has to satisfy correctness properties of liveness and safety. As critical system-of-systems have to operate in open environments in which they interact and collaborate with other systems, satisfy action of the requirements through traditional offline top-down engineering no longer suffice. Most of the critical software-intensive system-of-systems have no fixed boundaries and services provided by other systems will come and go in unpredictable ways; in these systems assuring correctness is a challenging issue. These systems need to tolerate faults in the face of change; they need a resilient architecture. An approach has been proposed for the analysis, design, formal specification and verification of critical Software-intensive System-of-Systems.

Author 1: Nadeem Akhtar

Author 2: Malik Muhammad Saad Missen

Author 3: Nadeem Salamat

Author 4: Amnah Firdous

Author 5: Mujtaba Husnain

Keywords: Resilient architecture; Critical systems; System-of-System (SoS); Software-intensive SoS (SiSoS); Emergent behavior; Correctness; Safety

Paper 35: Speech Impairments in Intellectual Disability: An Acoustic Study

Abstract: Speech is the primary means of human communication. Speech production starts in early ages and matures as children grow. People with intellectual or learning disabilities have deficit in speech production and faces difficulties in communication. These people need tailor-made therapies or trainings for rehabilitation to lead their lives independently. To provide these special trainings , it is important to know the exact nature of impairment in the speech through acoustic analysis. This study calculated the spectro-temporal features relevant to brain structures, encoded at short and long timescales in the speech of 82 subjects including 32 typically developing children, 20 adults and 30 participants with intellectual disabilities (severity ranges from mild to moderate). The results revealed that short timescales, which encoded information like formant transition in typically developing group were significantly different from intellectually disabled group, whereas long timescales were similar amongst groups. The short timescales were significantly different even within typically developing group but not within intellectually disabled group. The findings suggest that the features encoded at short timescales and ratio (short/long) play a significant role in classifying the group. It is shown that the classifier models with good accuracy can be constructed using acoustic features under investigation. This indicates that these features are relevant in differentiating normal and disordered speech. These classification models can help in early diagnostics of intellectual or learning disabilities.

Author 1: Sumanlata Gautam

Author 2: Latika Singh

Keywords: speech development; spectro-temporal; intellectual disabilities; timescales; learning disability; classification model

Paper 36: Urdu Text Classification using Majority Voting

Abstract: Text classification is a tool to assign the predefined categories to the text documents using supervised machine learning algorithms. It has various practical applications like spam detection, sentiment detection, and detection of a natural language. Based on the idea we applied five well-known classification techniques on Urdu language corpus and assigned a class to the documents using majority voting. The corpus contains 21769 news documents of seven categories (Business, Entertainment, Culture, Health, Sports, and Weird). The algorithms were not able to work directly on the data, so we applied the preprocessing techniques like tokenization, stop words removal and a rule-based stemmer. After preprocessing 93400 features are extracted from the data to apply machine learning algorithms. Furthermore, we achieved up to 94% precision and recall using majority voting.

Author 1: Muhammad Usman

Author 2: Zunaira Shafique

Author 3: Saba Ayub

Author 4: Kamran Malik

Keywords: Text Classification; Tokenization; Stemming; Naïve Bayes; SVM; Random Forest; Bernoulli NB; Multinomial NB; SGD; Classifier; Majority Voting

Paper 37: An Item-based Multi-Criteria Collaborative Filtering Algorithm for Personalized Recommender Systems

Abstract: Recommender Systems are used to mitigate the information overload problem in different domains by providing personalized recommendations for particular users based on their implicit and explicit preferences. However, Item-based Collaborative Filtering (CF) techniques, as the most popular techniques of recommender systems, suffer from sparsity and new item limitations which result in producing inaccurate recommendations. The use of items’ semantic information besides the inclusion of multi-criteria ratings can successfully alleviate such problems and generate more accurate recommendations. This paper proposes an Item-based Multi-Criteria Collaborative Filtering algorithm that integrates the items’ semantic information and multi-criteria ratings of items to lessen known limitations of the item-based CF techniques. According to the experimental results, the proposed algorithm prove to be very effective in terms of dealing with both of the sparsity and new item problems and therefore produce more accurate recommendations when compared to standard item-based CF techniques.

Author 1: Qusai Shambour

Author 2: Mou’ath Hourani

Author 3: Salam Fraihat

Keywords: Collaborative Filtering; Recommender Systems; Multi-Criteria; Sparsity; New Item

Paper 38: Pattern Recognition Approach in Multidimensional Databases: Application to the Global Terrorism Database

Abstract: This paper presents a pattern recognition approach in multidimensional databases. The approach is based on a clustering method using the distance measurement between a reference profile and the database observations. Two distance measurements will be proposed: an adaptation of the Khi2 formula to the multidimensional context, extracted from the Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA), and the Euclidean distance. A comparison between the two distances will be provided to retain the most efficient one for the multidimensional clustering context. The proposed approach will be applied to a real case study representing armed attacks worldwide stored in the Global Terrorism Database (GTD).

Author 1: Semeh BEN SALEM

Author 2: Sami NAOUALI

Keywords: clustering; pattern recognition; multidimensional databases; distance measurement; Khi2 formula; Euclidean distance; Multiple Correspondence Analysis

Paper 39: An Improved Pulmonary Nodule Detection Scheme based on Multi-Layered Filtering and 3d Distance Metrics

Abstract: This paper proposed a computer-aided detection (CAD) system to automatically detect pulmonary nodules from thoracic computed tomography (CT) images. Automatically detect pulmonary nodules is a difficult job because of the large deviation in size, shape, location and density of nodules. The proposed CAD scheme applies multiple 3D disk-shaped laplacian filters to enhance the shape of spherical regions. Optimal multiple thresholding and 3D distance mapping is used to extract regions of interest and separate nodules. Finally, rule-based pruning removes easily dismissible false positive structures. The proposed system provides an overall nodule detection rate of 80% with an average of 12.2 false positives per scan. The experimental results reveals that the proposed CAD can attain a comparatively high performance.

Author 1: Baber Jahangir

Author 2: Muhammad Imran

Author 3: Qamar Abbas

Author 4: Shahina Rabeel1line

Author 5: Ayyaz Hussain

Keywords: computer-aided detection system; nodule detection lung nodule

Paper 40: Autonomous Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) Decision Making in Roundabout using Game Theory

Abstract: Roundabout intersections promote a continuous flow of traffic. Roundabouts entry move traffic through an intersection more quickly, and with less congestion on approaching roads. With the introduction of smart vehicles and cooperative decision-making, roundabout management shortens the waiting time and leads to a more efficient traffic without breaking the traffic laws and earning penalties. This paper proposes a novel approach of cooperative behavior strategy in conflict situations between the autonomous vehicles in roundabout using game theory. The game theory presents a strategic decision-making technique between independent agents - players. Each individual player tends to achieve best payoff, by analyzing possible actions of other players and their influence on game outcome. The Prisoner's Dilemma game strategy is selected as approach to autonomous vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) decision making at roundabout test-bed, because the commonly known traffic laws dictate certain rules of vehicle's behavior at roundabout. It is shown that, by integrating non-zero-sum game theory in autonomous vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) decision making capabilities, the roundabout entry problem can be solved efficiently with shortened waiting times for individual autonomous vehicles.

Author 1: Lejla Banjanovic-Mehmedovic

Author 2: Edin Halilovic

Author 3: Ivan Bosankic

Author 4: Mehmed Kantardzic

Author 5: Suad Kasapovic

Keywords: autonomous vehicles; decision making; non-zero-sum game theory; mobile robots; roundabout; vehicle-to-vehicle cooperation (V2V); wireless communication

Paper 41: Analytical and Numerical Study of the Onset of Electroconvection in a Dielectric Nanofluid Saturated a Rotating Darcy Porous Medium

Abstract: The simultaneous effect of rotation and a vertical AC electric field on the onset of electroconvection in a horizontal dielectric nanofluid layer saturated a Darcy porous medium is investigated. The boundaries of the dielectric nanofluid layer are considered isothermal, where the vertical nanoparticle flux is zero. The resulting eigenvalue problem is solved analytically by the Galerkin weighted residuals technique (GWRT) and numerically using the power series method (PSM).The results show that an increase either in the AC electric Rayleigh-Darcy number, in the Lewis number, in the nanoparticle Rayleigh-Darcy number or in the modified diffusivity ratio allows to hasten the onset of electroconvection in dielectric nanofluids, while the Taylor-Darcy number and the porosity of the medium allow to delay it.

Author 1: Abderrahim Wakif

Author 2: Zoubair Boulahia

Author 3: Rachid Sehaqui

Keywords: Linear Stability; Electroconvection; Dielectric Nanofluid; Rotation; Porous Medium; Power Series Method

Paper 42: BRIQA: Framework for the Blind and Referenced Visual Image Quality Assessment

Abstract: Our proposal is to present a Blind and Referenced Image Quality Assessment or BRIQA. Thus, the main proposal of this paper is to propose an Interface, which contains not only a Full-Referenced Image Quality Assessment (IQA) but also a No- Referenced or Blind IQA applying perceptual concepts by means of Contrast Band-Pass Filtering (CBPF). Then, this proposal consists in contrast a degraded input image with the filtered versions of several distances by a CBPF, which computes some of the Human Visual System (HVS) variables. If BRIQA detects only one input, it performs a Blind Image Quality Assessment, on the contrary if BRIQA detects two inputs, it considers that a Referenced Image Quality Assessment will be computed. Thus, we first define a Full-Reference IQA and then a No-Reference IQA, which correlation is important when is contrasted with the psychophysical results performed by several observers. BRIQA weights the Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio by using an algorithm that estimates some properties of the Human Visual System. Then, we compare BRIQA algorithm not only with the mainstream estimator in IQA, PSNR, but also state-of-the-art IQA algorithms, such as Structural SIMilarity (SSIM), Mean Structural SIMilarity (MSSIM), Visual Information Fidelity (VIF), etc. Our experiments show that the correlation of BRIQA correlated with PSNR is important, but this proposal does not need imperatively the reference image in order to estimate the quality of the recovered image.

Author 1: Jaime Moreno

Author 2: Oswaldo Morales

Author 3: Ricardo Tejeida

Author 4: Eduardo Garc´ia

Keywords: Image Quality Assessment; Contrast Band-Pass Filtering; Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio

Paper 43: Cohesion Based Personalized Community Recommendation System

Abstract: Our life is totally engaged by the progressive growth of online social networking. Because, millions of users are interconnecting with each other using different social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram etc. Most of the social sites like Facebook, Google+ allow users to join different groups or communities where people can share their common interests and express opinions around a common cause, problem or activity. However, an information overloading issue has disturbed users as thousands of communities or groups are creating each day. To resolve this problem, we have presented a community or group recommendation system centered on cohesion where cohesion represents high degree of connectedness among users in social network. In this paper, we emphasis on suggesting useful communities (or groups in term of Facebook) that users personally attracted in to join; reducing the effort to find useful information based on cohesion. Our projected framework contains of the steps like: extracting sub-network from a social networking site (SNS), computing the impact of amity(both real-life or social and SNS connected), measuring user proclivity factor, calculating threshold from existing communities or groups of a user and lastly recommending community or group based on derived threshold. In result analysis part, we consider the precision-recall values by discarding community or group one at a time from the list of communities or groups of a certain user and checking whether the removed community or group is recommended by our proposed system. We have evaluated our system with 20 users and found 76% F1 accuracy measure.

Author 1: Md Mamunur Rashid

Author 2: Kazi Wasif Ahmed

Author 3: Hasan Mahmud

Author 4: Md. Kamrul Hasan

Author 5: Husne Ara Rubaiyeat

Keywords: Social network, Community or Group recommendation, Cohesion, Amity factor, User Preferences or proclivity

Paper 44: Face Recognition in Uncontrolled Environment

Abstract: This paper presents a novel method of facial image representation for face recognition in uncontrolled environment. It is named as augmented local binary patterns (A-LBP) that works on both, uniform and non-uniform patterns. It replaces the central non-uniform pattern with a majority value of the neighbouring uniform patterns obtained after processing all neighbouring non-uniform patterns. These patterns are finally combined with the neighbouring uniform patterns, in order to extract discriminatory information from the local descriptors. The experimental results indicate the vitality of the proposed method on particular face datasets, where the images are prone to extreme variations of illumination.

Author 1: Radhey Shyam

Author 2: Yogendra Narain Singh

Keywords: Face recognition, A-LBP, descriptor, distance metrics, area under curve, decidability index

Paper 45: Architecture Considerations for Big Data Management

Abstract: A network architecture is concerned with holistic view of interconnection of different nodes with each other. This refers to both physical and logical ways of interconnection of all nodes in the network. The way in which they are connected influences the strategies adopted for Big Data Management. In this present day of Internet of Things (IoT), each kind of device is required and made possible for communicating with other completely different kinds of devices. The heterogeneous nature of devices in the network needs a completely new architecture to efficiently handle Big Data which is generated continually, either for providing services to end users or for study and analysis in a research process. It is thus very essential to visit various kinds of devices that are available on the Internet, their characteristics and requirements, how they communicate and process data, and eventually how the human society embraces the Big Data generation for their daily consumption. This paper is dedicated to bringing all theses aspects together in one place, bringing different technologies into one single network architecture.

Author 1: Khalim Amjad Meerja

Author 2: Khaled Almustafa

Keywords: Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, Cloud network, RFID, Sensor Networks, 5G

Paper 46: An Improved Approach for Text-Independent Speaker Recognition

Abstract: This paper presents new Speaker Identification and Speaker Verification systems based on the use of new feature vectors extracted from the speech signal. The proposed structure combine between the most successful Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients and new features which are the Short Time Zero Crossing Rate of the signal. A comparison between speaker recognition systems based on Gaussian mixture models using the well known Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients and the novel systems based on the use of a combination between both reduced Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients features vectors and Short Time Zero Crossing Rate features is given. This comparison proves that the use of the new reduced feature vectors help to improve the system’s performance and also help to reduce the time and memory complexity of the system which is required for realistic applications that suffer from computational resource limitation. The experiments were performed on speakers from TIMIT database for different training durations. The suggested systems performances are evaluated against the baseline systems. The increase of the proposed systems performances are well observed for identification experiments and the decrease of Equal Error Rates are also remarkable for verification experiments. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the new approach which avoids the use of more complex algorithms or the combination of different approaches requiring lengthy calculation.

Author 1: Rania Chakroun

Author 2: Leila Beltaïfa Zouari

Author 3: Mondher Frikha

Keywords: GMM; speaker verification; speaker recognition; speaker identification

Paper 47: Using Persuasive Recommendations in Wellness Applications based upon User Activities

Abstract: Recently, a large number of mobile wellness ap-plications have emerged for assisting users in self-monitoring of daily food intake and physical activities. While such applications are in abundance, many research surveys have found that the users soon give them up after giving some initial try. This article presents our application for healthcare self-management that monitors users’ activities but –unlike the existing applications–it focuses on keeping the users engaged for self-management. The distinguishing feature of our application is that it uses persuasive mechanisms to help users adopt healthy behavior. For this purpose, users’ various activities are monitored and then they are persuaded using different persuasion strategies that are adaptive and are according to their behavior. For each user, a behavior model is created that is based on Fogg’s behavior model but, in addition, it also holds within it user preferences, and user health profile. The behavior model is then used to create a persuasion profile of the user that allows us to propose personalized suggestions targeted to overcome his lacking behavior. We also describe a case study that describes the actual application.

Author 1: Hamid Mukhtar

Keywords: user goal; modeling; user feedback; context; preferences

Paper 48: Towards Securing Medical Documents from Insider Attacks

Abstract: Medical organizations have sensitive health related documents. Unauthorized access attempts for these should not only be prevented but also detected in order to ensure correct treatment of the patients and to capture the malicious intent users. Such organizations normally rely on the principle of least privileges together with the deployment of some commercial available software to cope up this issue. But such methods can’t be helpful in some of the misuse methods e.g. covert channels. As insiders may be the part of the team which developed such software, he may have deliberately inserted such channels in the source code of that software. The results may be catastrophic not only to that organization but for the patients too. This paper presents an application for securely exchange of documents in medical organizations of our country. The induction of water marking and hash protected documents enhances its security and make it fit to deploy in medical related organizations. The deployment is done in such a way that only higher management has access to the source code for reviewing. Results demonstrate its effectiveness in preventing and detecting majority of the information misuse channels.

Author 1: Maaz Bin Ahmad

Author 2: Muhammad Fahad

Author 3: Abdul Wahab Khan

Author 4: Muhammad Asif

Keywords: covert channels; misuse; insider; medical; documents