The impact of COVID-19 on the service of emergency department
- Alharthi, Shaia, Al-Moteri, Modi, Plummer, Virginia, Thobiaty, Abdulellah
- Authors: Alharthi, Shaia , Al-Moteri, Modi , Plummer, Virginia , Thobiaty, Abdulellah
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Healthcare (Switzerland) Vol. 9, no. 10 (2021), p.
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: (1) Introduction: the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the number and acuity of emergency departments (ED) patients, specifically those with non-COVID-19-related health problems. However, the exact impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on ED services is the subject of comprehensive debate. (2) Aim: to gain insight into the consequences of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic based on non-COVID-19 presentations and patient acuity using the Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS). (3) Method: in Phase 1, the ED records of one of the main regional non-COVID-19 hospitals in Saudi Arabia were retrospectively audited from August 2020 to February 2021—after the first wave of COVID-19—then compared to information collected for the same period in previous year. Phase 2 included calculating the waiting time to identify delays and issues that may impact the triage effectiveness. (4) Results: a change across all CTAS levels was observed post the 1st wave of COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, there was an increase in the number of patients presenting as higher acuity (CTAS 1 and 2) and a decrease in patients presenting as lower acuity (CTAS 4 and 5). Longer waiting times for patients presenting to ED were also reported. Specifically, 83% of patients presenting as higher acuity experienced a delay. (5) Conclusion: further studies are required to investigate association between the 1st wave of COVID-19 and patient presentations and/or acuity or patient demand and ED capacity. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
- Authors: Alharthi, Shaia , Al-Moteri, Modi , Plummer, Virginia , Thobiaty, Abdulellah
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Healthcare (Switzerland) Vol. 9, no. 10 (2021), p.
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: (1) Introduction: the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the number and acuity of emergency departments (ED) patients, specifically those with non-COVID-19-related health problems. However, the exact impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on ED services is the subject of comprehensive debate. (2) Aim: to gain insight into the consequences of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic based on non-COVID-19 presentations and patient acuity using the Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS). (3) Method: in Phase 1, the ED records of one of the main regional non-COVID-19 hospitals in Saudi Arabia were retrospectively audited from August 2020 to February 2021—after the first wave of COVID-19—then compared to information collected for the same period in previous year. Phase 2 included calculating the waiting time to identify delays and issues that may impact the triage effectiveness. (4) Results: a change across all CTAS levels was observed post the 1st wave of COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, there was an increase in the number of patients presenting as higher acuity (CTAS 1 and 2) and a decrease in patients presenting as lower acuity (CTAS 4 and 5). Longer waiting times for patients presenting to ED were also reported. Specifically, 83% of patients presenting as higher acuity experienced a delay. (5) Conclusion: further studies are required to investigate association between the 1st wave of COVID-19 and patient presentations and/or acuity or patient demand and ED capacity. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Automatic gender detection based on characteristics of vocal folds for mobile healthcare system
- Alhussein, Musaed, Ali, Zulfiqar, Imran, Muhammad, Abdul, Wadood
- Authors: Alhussein, Musaed , Ali, Zulfiqar , Imran, Muhammad , Abdul, Wadood
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Mobile Information Systems Vol. 2016, no. (2016), p.
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: An automatic gender detection may be useful in some cases of a mobile healthcare system. For example, there are some pathologies, such as vocal fold cyst, which mainly occur in female patients. If there is an automatic method for gender detection embedded into the system, it is easy for a healthcare professional to assess and prescribe appropriate medication to the patient. In human voice production system, contribution of the vocal folds is very vital. The length of the vocal folds is gender dependent; a male speaker has longer vocal folds than a female speaker. Due to longer vocal folds, the voice of a male becomes heavy and, therefore, contains more voice intensity. Based on this idea, a new type of time domain acoustic feature for automatic gender detection system is proposed in this paper. The proposed feature measures the voice intensity by calculating the area under the modified voice contour to make the differentiation between males and females. Two different databases are used to show that the proposed feature is independent of text, spoken language, dialect region, recording system, and environment. The obtained results for clean and noisy speech are 98.27% and 96.55%, respectively. © 2016 Musaed Alhussein et al.
- Authors: Alhussein, Musaed , Ali, Zulfiqar , Imran, Muhammad , Abdul, Wadood
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Mobile Information Systems Vol. 2016, no. (2016), p.
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: An automatic gender detection may be useful in some cases of a mobile healthcare system. For example, there are some pathologies, such as vocal fold cyst, which mainly occur in female patients. If there is an automatic method for gender detection embedded into the system, it is easy for a healthcare professional to assess and prescribe appropriate medication to the patient. In human voice production system, contribution of the vocal folds is very vital. The length of the vocal folds is gender dependent; a male speaker has longer vocal folds than a female speaker. Due to longer vocal folds, the voice of a male becomes heavy and, therefore, contains more voice intensity. Based on this idea, a new type of time domain acoustic feature for automatic gender detection system is proposed in this paper. The proposed feature measures the voice intensity by calculating the area under the modified voice contour to make the differentiation between males and females. Two different databases are used to show that the proposed feature is independent of text, spoken language, dialect region, recording system, and environment. The obtained results for clean and noisy speech are 98.27% and 96.55%, respectively. © 2016 Musaed Alhussein et al.
Fundamental movement skills and physical activity of 3–4-year-old children within early childhood centers in New Zealand
- Ali, Ajmol, McLachlan, Claire, McLaughlin, Tara, Mugridge, Owen, Conlon, Cathryn
- Authors: Ali, Ajmol , McLachlan, Claire , McLaughlin, Tara , Mugridge, Owen , Conlon, Cathryn
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Children Vol. 8, no. 9 (2021), p.
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: We sought to describe and explore relationships between fundamental movement skills (FMS) and level of physical activity (PA; light-, medium-, vigorous, and kCal/hour) in preschool children, aged 3–4-years-old, across four early childhood education (ECE) settings. Children’s FMS were assessed using the Test for Gross Motor Development-2 (TGMD-2; n = 81) and PA via accelerometers (S = 53). Eighty-four children participated, with 50 in both assessments. The TGMD-2 showed as the children got older, their locomotor skills (p < 0.001, r = 0.512) and object control motor skills (p < 0.001, r = 0.383) improved. Accelerometry showed children were primarily inactive at ECE (78.3% of the time). There were significant correlations between kCal/hour and light (p < 0.001, r = −0.688), moderate (p < 0.001, r = 0.599) and vigorous (p < 0.001, rs = 0.707) activity, and between gross motor quotient and locomotor (p < 0.001, r = 0.798) and object control (p < 0.001, r = 0.367) skills. No correlation was observed between gross motor quotient and kCal/hour. To conclude, children in this cohort were primarily inactive during ECE center hours. Moreover, gross motor quotient was significantly correlated to locomotor and object control skills. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. **Please note that there are multiple authors for this article therefore only the name of the first 5 including Federation University Australia affiliate “Claire McLaughlin” is provided in this record**
- Authors: Ali, Ajmol , McLachlan, Claire , McLaughlin, Tara , Mugridge, Owen , Conlon, Cathryn
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Children Vol. 8, no. 9 (2021), p.
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: We sought to describe and explore relationships between fundamental movement skills (FMS) and level of physical activity (PA; light-, medium-, vigorous, and kCal/hour) in preschool children, aged 3–4-years-old, across four early childhood education (ECE) settings. Children’s FMS were assessed using the Test for Gross Motor Development-2 (TGMD-2; n = 81) and PA via accelerometers (S = 53). Eighty-four children participated, with 50 in both assessments. The TGMD-2 showed as the children got older, their locomotor skills (p < 0.001, r = 0.512) and object control motor skills (p < 0.001, r = 0.383) improved. Accelerometry showed children were primarily inactive at ECE (78.3% of the time). There were significant correlations between kCal/hour and light (p < 0.001, r = −0.688), moderate (p < 0.001, r = 0.599) and vigorous (p < 0.001, rs = 0.707) activity, and between gross motor quotient and locomotor (p < 0.001, r = 0.798) and object control (p < 0.001, r = 0.367) skills. No correlation was observed between gross motor quotient and kCal/hour. To conclude, children in this cohort were primarily inactive during ECE center hours. Moreover, gross motor quotient was significantly correlated to locomotor and object control skills. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. **Please note that there are multiple authors for this article therefore only the name of the first 5 including Federation University Australia affiliate “Claire McLaughlin” is provided in this record**
The effect of a 10-week physical activity programme on fundamental movement skills in 3–4-year-old children within early childhood education centres
- Ali, Ajmol, McLachlan, Claire, Mugridge, Owen, McLaughlin, Tara, Conlon, Cathryn, Clarke, Linda
- Authors: Ali, Ajmol , McLachlan, Claire , Mugridge, Owen , McLaughlin, Tara , Conlon, Cathryn , Clarke, Linda
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Children Vol. 8, no. 6 (2021), p.
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: The objective of this study was to examine the effect of a 10-week physical activity (PA) programme, in early childhood education (ECE) settings, on 3 and 4-year-old children’s fundamental movement skills (FMS). A further aim was to examine FMS three-months post-intervention. The PA instructors delivered one 45 min session/week over 10 weeks, to 3-and 4-year-old children (n = 46), across four ECE centres. These sessions involved participation from ECE teachers. Children in the control group (CON; n = 20) received no PA classes and completed pre-and post-intervention assessments only. Locomotor (e.g., running/hopping) and object-control (e.g., kicking/throwing) skills were assessed using the Test for Gross Motor Development-2 (TGMD-2), before and after the intervention and, for the intervention group (EXP), at 3 months. Locomotor and object-control skills significantly improved in the EXP group, with typically no change in the CON group. The EXP group’s locomotor and object-control skills were maintained at 3 months. The 10-week PA intervention successfully improved 3-and 4-year-old children’s FMS. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
- Authors: Ali, Ajmol , McLachlan, Claire , Mugridge, Owen , McLaughlin, Tara , Conlon, Cathryn , Clarke, Linda
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Children Vol. 8, no. 6 (2021), p.
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: The objective of this study was to examine the effect of a 10-week physical activity (PA) programme, in early childhood education (ECE) settings, on 3 and 4-year-old children’s fundamental movement skills (FMS). A further aim was to examine FMS three-months post-intervention. The PA instructors delivered one 45 min session/week over 10 weeks, to 3-and 4-year-old children (n = 46), across four ECE centres. These sessions involved participation from ECE teachers. Children in the control group (CON; n = 20) received no PA classes and completed pre-and post-intervention assessments only. Locomotor (e.g., running/hopping) and object-control (e.g., kicking/throwing) skills were assessed using the Test for Gross Motor Development-2 (TGMD-2), before and after the intervention and, for the intervention group (EXP), at 3 months. Locomotor and object-control skills significantly improved in the EXP group, with typically no change in the CON group. The EXP group’s locomotor and object-control skills were maintained at 3 months. The 10-week PA intervention successfully improved 3-and 4-year-old children’s FMS. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
The effect of physical activity classes on motor skill in 12-24-month-old children
- Ali, Ajmol, Pigou, Deborah, Clarke, Linda, McLachlan, Claire
- Authors: Ali, Ajmol , Pigou, Deborah , Clarke, Linda , McLachlan, Claire
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Advances in Physical Education Vol. 9, no. (2019), p. 288-302
- Full Text:
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- Description: Background: Children with enhanced fundamental movement skills may benefit from improved physical, social and psychological development, resulting in an increased likelihood of an active lifestyle in later years. Aim: We investigated the effects of a nine-week, child-centred, physical activity programme on cognitive and motor skills in typically developing 12 - 24-month-old toddlers. Methods: In a randomised control trial, 90 toddlers (age 17.0 ± 2.6 months; 52.2% male) were split into two groups stratified by age and sex. The intervention completed was either nine weeks of one-hour per week physical activity classes (n = 45; EXP) or normal physical activity (n = 45; control). Prior to and following the intervention period, safety skills (nine-skill test battery), anthropometric measures (mass and height), motor and cognitive development (Bayley Scales of Infant Development) were assessed. Results: EXP improved overall safety skills score (P = 0.04), toddlers’ abilities to climb over a small-runged A-frame while using a cylinder grip and safe face-the-slope dismount (P = 0.001), and the execution of a safety roll down a foam wedge (P = 0.02). Improvements in development as measured by the Bayley’s Scales were attributed to typical development rather than the intervention. Conclusions: A 9-week, physical activity programme improved toddlers’ safety skills but not overall cognitive or motor development.
- Authors: Ali, Ajmol , Pigou, Deborah , Clarke, Linda , McLachlan, Claire
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Advances in Physical Education Vol. 9, no. (2019), p. 288-302
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Background: Children with enhanced fundamental movement skills may benefit from improved physical, social and psychological development, resulting in an increased likelihood of an active lifestyle in later years. Aim: We investigated the effects of a nine-week, child-centred, physical activity programme on cognitive and motor skills in typically developing 12 - 24-month-old toddlers. Methods: In a randomised control trial, 90 toddlers (age 17.0 ± 2.6 months; 52.2% male) were split into two groups stratified by age and sex. The intervention completed was either nine weeks of one-hour per week physical activity classes (n = 45; EXP) or normal physical activity (n = 45; control). Prior to and following the intervention period, safety skills (nine-skill test battery), anthropometric measures (mass and height), motor and cognitive development (Bayley Scales of Infant Development) were assessed. Results: EXP improved overall safety skills score (P = 0.04), toddlers’ abilities to climb over a small-runged A-frame while using a cylinder grip and safe face-the-slope dismount (P = 0.001), and the execution of a safety roll down a foam wedge (P = 0.02). Improvements in development as measured by the Bayley’s Scales were attributed to typical development rather than the intervention. Conclusions: A 9-week, physical activity programme improved toddlers’ safety skills but not overall cognitive or motor development.
Literature review on motor skill and physical activity in preschool children in new zealand
- Ali, Ajmol, Pigou, Deborah, Clarke, Linda, McLachlan, Claire
- Authors: Ali, Ajmol , Pigou, Deborah , Clarke, Linda , McLachlan, Claire
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Advances in physical education Vol. 7, no. 1 (2017), p. 10-26
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Children’s physical activity levels have decreased significantly over the past 20 - 30 years, coinciding with obesity rates reaching epidemic levels. There is little research into typically developing preschool (birth to 5 year-olds) children’s physical activity, with the majority of research focusing on children at risk of motor skill or neurological deficiencies. This review examines current research into young children’s development, especially motor development and physical activity, the effectiveness of intervention programmes for promoting children’s physical development and the various methods used to assess physical development. A decrease in children’s physical activity levels has coincided with an increase in obesity rates. Further research is needed to determine culturally and contextually appropriate and effective interventions for preschool children. Areas for further research include preschool children’s physical activity, particularly in regards to movement guidelines and requirements for this age-group and ways to overcome potential barriers to meeting physical activity requirements. Young children’s physical activity and motor skill proficiency may be an important predictor of later-life physically active behaviors. Physical literacy and physical activity interventions within early childhood education could potentially support academic skills as well as physical skills and behaviors.
- Authors: Ali, Ajmol , Pigou, Deborah , Clarke, Linda , McLachlan, Claire
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Advances in physical education Vol. 7, no. 1 (2017), p. 10-26
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Children’s physical activity levels have decreased significantly over the past 20 - 30 years, coinciding with obesity rates reaching epidemic levels. There is little research into typically developing preschool (birth to 5 year-olds) children’s physical activity, with the majority of research focusing on children at risk of motor skill or neurological deficiencies. This review examines current research into young children’s development, especially motor development and physical activity, the effectiveness of intervention programmes for promoting children’s physical development and the various methods used to assess physical development. A decrease in children’s physical activity levels has coincided with an increase in obesity rates. Further research is needed to determine culturally and contextually appropriate and effective interventions for preschool children. Areas for further research include preschool children’s physical activity, particularly in regards to movement guidelines and requirements for this age-group and ways to overcome potential barriers to meeting physical activity requirements. Young children’s physical activity and motor skill proficiency may be an important predictor of later-life physically active behaviors. Physical literacy and physical activity interventions within early childhood education could potentially support academic skills as well as physical skills and behaviors.
Channel clustering and QoS level identification scheme for multi-channel cognitive radio networks
- Ali, Amjad, Yaqoob, Ibrar, Ahmed, Adnan, Imran, Muhammad, Kwak, Kyung
- Authors: Ali, Amjad , Yaqoob, Ibrar , Ahmed, Adnan , Imran, Muhammad , Kwak, Kyung
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: IEEE Communications Magazine Vol. 56, no. 4 (2018), p. 164-171
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: The increasing popularity of wireless services and devices necessitates high bandwidth requirements; however, spectrum resources are not only limited but also heavily underutilized. Multiple license channels that support the same levels of QoS are desirable to resolve the problems posed by the scarcity and inefficient use of spectrum resources in multi-channel cognitive radio networks (MCRNs). One reason is that multimedia services and applications have distinct, stringent QoS requirements. However, due to a lack of coordination between primary and secondary users, identifying the QoS levels supported over available licensed channels has proven to be problematic and has yet to be attempted. This article presents a novel Bayesian non-parametric channel clustering scheme, which identifies the QoS levels supported over available license channels. The proposed scheme employs the infinite Gaussian mixture model and collapsed Gibbs sampler to identify the QoS levels from the feature space of the bit rate, packet delivery ratio, and packet delay variation of licensed channels. Moreover, the real measurements of wireless data traces and comparisons with baseline clustering schemes are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme. © 1979-2012 IEEE. **Please note that there are multiple authors for this article therefore only the name of the first 5 including Federation University Australia affiliate “Muhammad Imran” is provided in this record**
- Authors: Ali, Amjad , Yaqoob, Ibrar , Ahmed, Adnan , Imran, Muhammad , Kwak, Kyung
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: IEEE Communications Magazine Vol. 56, no. 4 (2018), p. 164-171
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: The increasing popularity of wireless services and devices necessitates high bandwidth requirements; however, spectrum resources are not only limited but also heavily underutilized. Multiple license channels that support the same levels of QoS are desirable to resolve the problems posed by the scarcity and inefficient use of spectrum resources in multi-channel cognitive radio networks (MCRNs). One reason is that multimedia services and applications have distinct, stringent QoS requirements. However, due to a lack of coordination between primary and secondary users, identifying the QoS levels supported over available licensed channels has proven to be problematic and has yet to be attempted. This article presents a novel Bayesian non-parametric channel clustering scheme, which identifies the QoS levels supported over available license channels. The proposed scheme employs the infinite Gaussian mixture model and collapsed Gibbs sampler to identify the QoS levels from the feature space of the bit rate, packet delivery ratio, and packet delay variation of licensed channels. Moreover, the real measurements of wireless data traces and comparisons with baseline clustering schemes are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme. © 1979-2012 IEEE. **Please note that there are multiple authors for this article therefore only the name of the first 5 including Federation University Australia affiliate “Muhammad Imran” is provided in this record**
The role of FAIR data towards sustainable agricultural performance : a systematic literature review
- Ali, Basharat, Dahlhaus, Peter
- Authors: Ali, Basharat , Dahlhaus, Peter
- Date: 2022
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Agriculture (Switzerland) Vol. 12, no. 2 (2022), p.
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Feeding a growing global population requires improving agricultural production in the face of multidimensional challenges; and digital agriculture is increasingly seen as a strategy for better decision making. Agriculture and agricultural supply chains are increasingly reliant on data, including its access and provision from the farm to the consumer. Far-reaching data provision inevitably needs the adoption of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) that offer data originators and depository custodians with a set of guidelines to safeguard a progressive data availability and reusability. Through a systematic literature review it is apparent that although FAIR data principles can play a key role in achieving sustainable agricultural operational and business performance, there are few published studies on how they have been adopted and used. The investigation examines: (1) how FAIR data assimilate with the sustainability framework; and (2) whether the use of FAIR data by the agriculture industry, has an impact on agricultural performance. The work identifies a social science research gap and suggests a method to guide agriculture practitioners in identifying the specific barriers in making their data FAIR. By troubleshooting the barriers, the value propositions of adopting FAIR data in agriculture can be better understood and addressed. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
- Authors: Ali, Basharat , Dahlhaus, Peter
- Date: 2022
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Agriculture (Switzerland) Vol. 12, no. 2 (2022), p.
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Feeding a growing global population requires improving agricultural production in the face of multidimensional challenges; and digital agriculture is increasingly seen as a strategy for better decision making. Agriculture and agricultural supply chains are increasingly reliant on data, including its access and provision from the farm to the consumer. Far-reaching data provision inevitably needs the adoption of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) that offer data originators and depository custodians with a set of guidelines to safeguard a progressive data availability and reusability. Through a systematic literature review it is apparent that although FAIR data principles can play a key role in achieving sustainable agricultural operational and business performance, there are few published studies on how they have been adopted and used. The investigation examines: (1) how FAIR data assimilate with the sustainability framework; and (2) whether the use of FAIR data by the agriculture industry, has an impact on agricultural performance. The work identifies a social science research gap and suggests a method to guide agriculture practitioners in identifying the specific barriers in making their data FAIR. By troubleshooting the barriers, the value propositions of adopting FAIR data in agriculture can be better understood and addressed. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Roles of selective agriculture practices in sustainable agricultural performance : a systematic review
- Ali, Basharat, Dahlhaus, Peter
- Authors: Ali, Basharat , Dahlhaus, Peter
- Date: 2022
- Type: Text , Journal article , Review
- Relation: Sustainability (Switzerland) Vol. 14, no. 6 (2022), p.
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Feeding the growing global population while improving the Earth’s economic, environmental, and social values is a challenge recognised in both the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Sustaining global agricultural performance requires regular revision of current farming models, attitudes, and practices. In systematically reviewing the international literature through the lens of the sustainability framework, this paper specifically identifies precision conservation agriculture (PCA), digital agriculture (DA), and resilient agriculture (RA) practices as being of value in meeting future challenges. Each of these adaptations carries significantly positive relationships with sustaining agricultural performance, as well as positively mediating and/or moderating each other. While it is clear from the literature that adopting PCA, DA, and RA would substantially improve the sustainability of agricultural performance, the uptake of these adaptations generally lags. More in-depth social science research is required to understand the value propositions that would encourage uptake of these adaptations and the barriers that prevent them. Recommendations are made to explore the specific knowledge gap that needs to be understood to motivate agriculture practitioners to adopt these changes in practice. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
- Authors: Ali, Basharat , Dahlhaus, Peter
- Date: 2022
- Type: Text , Journal article , Review
- Relation: Sustainability (Switzerland) Vol. 14, no. 6 (2022), p.
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Feeding the growing global population while improving the Earth’s economic, environmental, and social values is a challenge recognised in both the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Sustaining global agricultural performance requires regular revision of current farming models, attitudes, and practices. In systematically reviewing the international literature through the lens of the sustainability framework, this paper specifically identifies precision conservation agriculture (PCA), digital agriculture (DA), and resilient agriculture (RA) practices as being of value in meeting future challenges. Each of these adaptations carries significantly positive relationships with sustaining agricultural performance, as well as positively mediating and/or moderating each other. While it is clear from the literature that adopting PCA, DA, and RA would substantially improve the sustainability of agricultural performance, the uptake of these adaptations generally lags. More in-depth social science research is required to understand the value propositions that would encourage uptake of these adaptations and the barriers that prevent them. Recommendations are made to explore the specific knowledge gap that needs to be understood to motivate agriculture practitioners to adopt these changes in practice. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Canonical finite element method for solving nonconvex variational problems to post buckling beam problem
- Authors: Ali, Elaf , Gao, David
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Relation: 2nd International Conference on Numerical Computations : Theory and Algorithms, NUMTA 2016; Pizzo Calabro, Italy; 19th-25th June 2016; published in AIP Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference "Numerical Computations: Theory and Algorithms Vol. 1776, p. 1-4
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: The goal of this paper is to solve the post buckling phenomena of a large deformed elastic beam by a canonical dual mixed finite element method (CD-FEM). The total potential energy of this beam is a nonconvex functional which can be used to model both pre-and post-buckling problems. Different types of dual stress interpolations are used in order to verify the triality theory. Applications are illustrated with different boundary conditions and external loads by using semi-definite programming (SDP) algorithm. The results show that the global minimum of the total potential energy is stable buckled configuration, the local maximum solution leads to the unbuckled state, and both of these two solutions are numerically stable. While the local minimum is unstable buckled configuration and very sensitive to both stress interpolations and the external loads.
- Authors: Ali, Elaf , Gao, David
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Relation: 2nd International Conference on Numerical Computations : Theory and Algorithms, NUMTA 2016; Pizzo Calabro, Italy; 19th-25th June 2016; published in AIP Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference "Numerical Computations: Theory and Algorithms Vol. 1776, p. 1-4
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: The goal of this paper is to solve the post buckling phenomena of a large deformed elastic beam by a canonical dual mixed finite element method (CD-FEM). The total potential energy of this beam is a nonconvex functional which can be used to model both pre-and post-buckling problems. Different types of dual stress interpolations are used in order to verify the triality theory. Applications are illustrated with different boundary conditions and external loads by using semi-definite programming (SDP) algorithm. The results show that the global minimum of the total potential energy is stable buckled configuration, the local maximum solution leads to the unbuckled state, and both of these two solutions are numerically stable. While the local minimum is unstable buckled configuration and very sensitive to both stress interpolations and the external loads.
On SPD method for solving canonical dual problem in post buckling of large deformed elastic beam
- Authors: Ali, Elaf , Gao, David
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Communications in Mathematical Sciences Vol. 16, no. 5 (2018), p. 1225-1240
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: This paper presents a new methodology and algorithm for solving post buckling problems of a large deformed elastic beam. The total potential energy of this beam is a nonconvex functional, which can be used to model both pre- and post-buckling phenomena. By using a canonical dual finite element method, a new primal-dual semi-definite programming (PD-SDP) algorithm is presented, which can be used to obtain all possible post-buckled solutions. Applications are illustrated by several numerical examples with different boundary conditions. We find that the global minimum solution of the nonconvex potential leads to a stable configuration of the buckled beam, the local maximum solution leads to the unbuckled state, and both of these two solutions are numerically stable. However, the local minimum solution leads to an unstable buckled state, which is very sensitive to axial compressive forces, thickness of beam, numerical precision, and the size of finite elements. The method and algorithm proposed in this paper can be used for solving general nonconvex variational problems in engineering and sciences.
- Authors: Ali, Elaf , Gao, David
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Communications in Mathematical Sciences Vol. 16, no. 5 (2018), p. 1225-1240
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: This paper presents a new methodology and algorithm for solving post buckling problems of a large deformed elastic beam. The total potential energy of this beam is a nonconvex functional, which can be used to model both pre- and post-buckling phenomena. By using a canonical dual finite element method, a new primal-dual semi-definite programming (PD-SDP) algorithm is presented, which can be used to obtain all possible post-buckled solutions. Applications are illustrated by several numerical examples with different boundary conditions. We find that the global minimum solution of the nonconvex potential leads to a stable configuration of the buckled beam, the local maximum solution leads to the unbuckled state, and both of these two solutions are numerically stable. However, the local minimum solution leads to an unstable buckled state, which is very sensitive to axial compressive forces, thickness of beam, numerical precision, and the size of finite elements. The method and algorithm proposed in this paper can be used for solving general nonconvex variational problems in engineering and sciences.
Canonical dual finite element method for solving nonconvex mechanics and topology optimization
- Authors: Ali, Elaf
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
- Full Text:
- Description: Canonical duality theory (CDT) is a newly developed, potentially powerful methodological theory which can transfer general multi-scale nonconvex/discrete problems in Rn to a unified convex dual problem in continuous space Rm with m n and without a duality gap. The associated triality theory provides extremality criteria for both global and local optimal solutions, which can be used to develop powerful algorithms for solving general nonconvex variational problems. This thesis, first, presents a detailed study of large deformation problems in 2-D structural system. Based on the canonical duality theory, a canonical dual finite element method is applied to find a global minimization to the general nonconvex optimization problem using a new primal-dual semi-definite programming algorithm. Applications are illustrated by numerical examples with different structural designs and different external loads. Next, a new methodology and algorithm for solving post buckling problems of a large deformed elastic beam is investigated. The total potential energy of this beam is a nonconvex functional, which can be used to model both pre- and post-buckling phenomena. By using the canonical dual finite element method, a new primal-dual semi-definite programming algorithm is presented, which can be used to obtain all possible post-buckled solutions. In order to verify the triality theory, mixed meshes of different dual stress interpolation are applied to obtain the closed dimensions between discretized displacement and discretized stress. Applications are illustrated by several numerical examples with different boundary conditions. We find that the global minimum solution of the nonconvex potential leads to the unbuckled state, and both of these two solutions are numerically stable. However, the local minimum solution leads to an unstable buckled state, which is very sensitive to the external load, thickness of the beam, numerical precision, and the size of finite elements. Finally, a mathematically rigorous and computationally powerful method for solving 3-D topology optimization problems is demonstrated. This method is based on CDT developed by Gao in nonconvex mechanics and global optimization. It shows that the so-called NP-hard Knapsack problem in topology optimization can be solved deterministically in polynomial-time via a canonical penalty-duality (CPD) method to obtain precise global optimal 0-1 density distribution at each volume evolution. The relation between this CPD method and Gao's pure complementary energy principle is revealed for the first time. A CPD algorithm is proposed for 3-D topology optimization of linear elastic structures. Its novelty is demonstrated by benchmark problems. Results show that without using any artificial technique, the CPD method can provide mechanically sound optimal design, also it is much more powerful than the well-known BESO and SIMP methods. Finally, computational complexity and conceptual/mathematical mistakes in topology optimization modeling and popular methods are explicitly addressed.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
- Description: Canonical duality theory (CDT) is a newly developed, potentially powerful method- ological theory which can transfer general multi-scale nonconvex/discrete problems in Rn to a unified convex dual problem in continuous space Rm with m
- Authors: Ali, Elaf
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
- Full Text:
- Description: Canonical duality theory (CDT) is a newly developed, potentially powerful methodological theory which can transfer general multi-scale nonconvex/discrete problems in Rn to a unified convex dual problem in continuous space Rm with m n and without a duality gap. The associated triality theory provides extremality criteria for both global and local optimal solutions, which can be used to develop powerful algorithms for solving general nonconvex variational problems. This thesis, first, presents a detailed study of large deformation problems in 2-D structural system. Based on the canonical duality theory, a canonical dual finite element method is applied to find a global minimization to the general nonconvex optimization problem using a new primal-dual semi-definite programming algorithm. Applications are illustrated by numerical examples with different structural designs and different external loads. Next, a new methodology and algorithm for solving post buckling problems of a large deformed elastic beam is investigated. The total potential energy of this beam is a nonconvex functional, which can be used to model both pre- and post-buckling phenomena. By using the canonical dual finite element method, a new primal-dual semi-definite programming algorithm is presented, which can be used to obtain all possible post-buckled solutions. In order to verify the triality theory, mixed meshes of different dual stress interpolation are applied to obtain the closed dimensions between discretized displacement and discretized stress. Applications are illustrated by several numerical examples with different boundary conditions. We find that the global minimum solution of the nonconvex potential leads to the unbuckled state, and both of these two solutions are numerically stable. However, the local minimum solution leads to an unstable buckled state, which is very sensitive to the external load, thickness of the beam, numerical precision, and the size of finite elements. Finally, a mathematically rigorous and computationally powerful method for solving 3-D topology optimization problems is demonstrated. This method is based on CDT developed by Gao in nonconvex mechanics and global optimization. It shows that the so-called NP-hard Knapsack problem in topology optimization can be solved deterministically in polynomial-time via a canonical penalty-duality (CPD) method to obtain precise global optimal 0-1 density distribution at each volume evolution. The relation between this CPD method and Gao's pure complementary energy principle is revealed for the first time. A CPD algorithm is proposed for 3-D topology optimization of linear elastic structures. Its novelty is demonstrated by benchmark problems. Results show that without using any artificial technique, the CPD method can provide mechanically sound optimal design, also it is much more powerful than the well-known BESO and SIMP methods. Finally, computational complexity and conceptual/mathematical mistakes in topology optimization modeling and popular methods are explicitly addressed.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
- Description: Canonical duality theory (CDT) is a newly developed, potentially powerful method- ological theory which can transfer general multi-scale nonconvex/discrete problems in Rn to a unified convex dual problem in continuous space Rm with m
Lossless image coding using hierarchical decomposition and recursive partitioning
- Ali, Mortuza, Murshed, Manzur, Shahriyar, Shampa, Paul, Manoranjan
- Authors: Ali, Mortuza , Murshed, Manzur , Shahriyar, Shampa , Paul, Manoranjan
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: APSIPA Transactions on Signal and Information Processing Vol. 5, no. (2016), p. 1-11
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP130103670
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: State-Of-The-Art lossless image compression schemes, such as JPEG-LS and CALIC, have been proposed in the context-adaptive predictive coding framework. These schemes involve a prediction step followed by context-adaptive entropy coding of the residuals. However, the models for context determination proposed in the literature, have been designed using ad-hoc techniques. In this paper, we take an alternative approach where we fix a simpler context model and then rely on a systematic technique to efficiently exploit spatial correlation to achieve efficient compression. The essential idea is to decompose the image into binary bitmaps such that the spatial correlation that exists among non-binary symbols is captured as the correlation among few bit positions. The proposed scheme then encodes the bitmaps in a particular order based on the simple context model. However, instead of encoding a bitmap as a whole, we partition it into rectangular blocks, induced by a binary tree, and then independently encode the blocks. The motivation for partitioning is to explicitly identify the blocks within which the statistical correlation remains the same. On a set of standard test images, the proposed scheme, using the same predictor as JPEG-LS, achieved an overall bit-rate saving of 1.56% against JPEG-LS. © 2016 The Authors.
- Authors: Ali, Mortuza , Murshed, Manzur , Shahriyar, Shampa , Paul, Manoranjan
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: APSIPA Transactions on Signal and Information Processing Vol. 5, no. (2016), p. 1-11
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP130103670
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: State-Of-The-Art lossless image compression schemes, such as JPEG-LS and CALIC, have been proposed in the context-adaptive predictive coding framework. These schemes involve a prediction step followed by context-adaptive entropy coding of the residuals. However, the models for context determination proposed in the literature, have been designed using ad-hoc techniques. In this paper, we take an alternative approach where we fix a simpler context model and then rely on a systematic technique to efficiently exploit spatial correlation to achieve efficient compression. The essential idea is to decompose the image into binary bitmaps such that the spatial correlation that exists among non-binary symbols is captured as the correlation among few bit positions. The proposed scheme then encodes the bitmaps in a particular order based on the simple context model. However, instead of encoding a bitmap as a whole, we partition it into rectangular blocks, induced by a binary tree, and then independently encode the blocks. The motivation for partitioning is to explicitly identify the blocks within which the statistical correlation remains the same. On a set of standard test images, the proposed scheme, using the same predictor as JPEG-LS, achieved an overall bit-rate saving of 1.56% against JPEG-LS. © 2016 The Authors.
A study of visitor satisfaction in tourism enterprises
- Authors: Ali, Shameen
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Thesis , DBA
- Full Text:
- Description: Satisfying customers is fundamental to the marketing concept and has long been recognised as important, firstly in the economic discipline and subsequently in marketing and in business generally. In a competitive marketplace customer satisfaction is closely linked to the ability of the organisation to deliver quality. Therefore, organisations rely on the feedback received from customers about how satisfied or dissatisfied they are with product and service provision and their perceptions of the value received. The study examines the various product and service attributes that contribute to visitor satisfaction and experience, and evaluates the role of price-value perceptions and behavioural intentions. This examination was undertaken by the study of three tourism enterprises operating in the heritage tourism area. These included Sovereign Hill, which is an historic goldfields township; Brambuk, which is an indigenous cultural centre located in the Grampians in Western Victoria; and Werribee Mansion, which depicts the life of a wealthy farming family in the early periods in Victoria. This study has provided insight into the understanding of visitor satisfaction in tourism enterprises by evaluating the relationship between overall satisfaction and dissatisfaction and how these influence revisit and recommending behaviour, as well as the influence of price-value perceptions on satisfaction, experience and enjoyment. The study shows that price-value dissatisfaction impacts negatively on the willingness of visitors to recommend a tourism venue to others and that price dissatisfaction tends to impact negatively on satisfaction. The results provide some insight into what contributes to tourist satisfaction, enjoyment and experience. The findings are expected to assist strategic and operational managers in their quest for continued quality enhancement and the provision and renewal of tourism products and services. It is expected that the findings will provide some guidance to managers, tourism operators, marketers and researchers alike in developing well informed data and analyses that are the key to strategic and competitive advantage.
- Description: Doctor of Business Adminstration
- Authors: Ali, Shameen
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Thesis , DBA
- Full Text:
- Description: Satisfying customers is fundamental to the marketing concept and has long been recognised as important, firstly in the economic discipline and subsequently in marketing and in business generally. In a competitive marketplace customer satisfaction is closely linked to the ability of the organisation to deliver quality. Therefore, organisations rely on the feedback received from customers about how satisfied or dissatisfied they are with product and service provision and their perceptions of the value received. The study examines the various product and service attributes that contribute to visitor satisfaction and experience, and evaluates the role of price-value perceptions and behavioural intentions. This examination was undertaken by the study of three tourism enterprises operating in the heritage tourism area. These included Sovereign Hill, which is an historic goldfields township; Brambuk, which is an indigenous cultural centre located in the Grampians in Western Victoria; and Werribee Mansion, which depicts the life of a wealthy farming family in the early periods in Victoria. This study has provided insight into the understanding of visitor satisfaction in tourism enterprises by evaluating the relationship between overall satisfaction and dissatisfaction and how these influence revisit and recommending behaviour, as well as the influence of price-value perceptions on satisfaction, experience and enjoyment. The study shows that price-value dissatisfaction impacts negatively on the willingness of visitors to recommend a tourism venue to others and that price dissatisfaction tends to impact negatively on satisfaction. The results provide some insight into what contributes to tourist satisfaction, enjoyment and experience. The findings are expected to assist strategic and operational managers in their quest for continued quality enhancement and the provision and renewal of tourism products and services. It is expected that the findings will provide some guidance to managers, tourism operators, marketers and researchers alike in developing well informed data and analyses that are the key to strategic and competitive advantage.
- Description: Doctor of Business Adminstration
A zero-watermarking algorithm for privacy protection in biomedical signals
- Ali, Zulfiqar, Imran, Muhammad, Alsulaiman, Mansour, Zia, Tanveer, Shoaib, Muhammad
- Authors: Ali, Zulfiqar , Imran, Muhammad , Alsulaiman, Mansour , Zia, Tanveer , Shoaib, Muhammad
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Future Generation Computer Systems Vol. 82, no. (2018), p. 290-303
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Confidentiality of health information is indispensable to protect privacy of an individual. However, recent advances in electronic healthcare systems allow transmission of sensitive information through the Internet, which is prone to various vulnerabilities, attacks and may leads to unauthorized disclosure. Such situations may not only create adverse effects for individuals but may also cause severe consequences such as hefty regulatory fines, bad publicity, legal fees, and forensics. To avoid such predicaments, a privacy protected healthcare system is proposed in this study that protects the identity of an individual as well as detects vocal fold disorders. The privacy of the developed healthcare system is based on the proposed zero-watermarking algorithm, which embeds a watermark in a secret key instead of the signals to avoid the distortion in an audio sample. The identity is protected by the generation of its secret shares through visual cryptography. The generated shares are embedded by finding the patterns into the audio with the application of one-dimensional local binary pattern. The proposed zero-watermarking algorithm is evaluated by using audio samples taken from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary voice disorder database. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves imperceptibility and is reliable in its extraction of identity. In addition, the proposed algorithm does not affect the results of disorder detection and it is robust against noise attacks of various signal-to-noise ratios. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.
- Authors: Ali, Zulfiqar , Imran, Muhammad , Alsulaiman, Mansour , Zia, Tanveer , Shoaib, Muhammad
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Future Generation Computer Systems Vol. 82, no. (2018), p. 290-303
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Confidentiality of health information is indispensable to protect privacy of an individual. However, recent advances in electronic healthcare systems allow transmission of sensitive information through the Internet, which is prone to various vulnerabilities, attacks and may leads to unauthorized disclosure. Such situations may not only create adverse effects for individuals but may also cause severe consequences such as hefty regulatory fines, bad publicity, legal fees, and forensics. To avoid such predicaments, a privacy protected healthcare system is proposed in this study that protects the identity of an individual as well as detects vocal fold disorders. The privacy of the developed healthcare system is based on the proposed zero-watermarking algorithm, which embeds a watermark in a secret key instead of the signals to avoid the distortion in an audio sample. The identity is protected by the generation of its secret shares through visual cryptography. The generated shares are embedded by finding the patterns into the audio with the application of one-dimensional local binary pattern. The proposed zero-watermarking algorithm is evaluated by using audio samples taken from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary voice disorder database. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves imperceptibility and is reliable in its extraction of identity. In addition, the proposed algorithm does not affect the results of disorder detection and it is robust against noise attacks of various signal-to-noise ratios. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.
Chaos-based robust method of zero-watermarking for medical signals
- Ali, Zulfiqar, Imran, Muhammad, Alsulaiman, Mansour, Shoaib, Muhammad, Ullah, Sana
- Authors: Ali, Zulfiqar , Imran, Muhammad , Alsulaiman, Mansour , Shoaib, Muhammad , Ullah, Sana
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Future Generation Computer Systems Vol. 88, no. (2018), p. 400-412
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: The growing use of wireless health data transmission via Internet of Things is significantly beneficial to the healthcare industry for optimal usage of health-related facilities. However, at the same time, the use raises concern of privacy protection. Health-related data are private and should be suitably protected. Several pathologies, such as vocal fold disorders, indicate high risks of prevalence in individuals with voice-related occupations, such as teachers, singers, and lawyers. Approximately, one-third of the world population suffers from the voice-related problems during the life span and unauthorized access to their data can create unavoidable circumstances in their personal and professional lives. In this study, a zero-watermarking method is proposed and implemented to protect the identity of patients who suffer from vocal fold disorders. In the proposed method, an image for a patient's identity is generated and inserted into secret keys instead of a host medical signal. Consequently, imperceptibility is naturally achieved. The locations for the insertion of the watermark are determined by a computation of local binary patterns from the time–frequency spectrum. The spectrum is calculated for low frequencies such that it may not be affected by noise attacks. The experimental results suggest that the proposed method has good performance and robustness against noise, and it is reliable in the recovery of an individual's identity. © 2018 Elsevier B.V.
- Authors: Ali, Zulfiqar , Imran, Muhammad , Alsulaiman, Mansour , Shoaib, Muhammad , Ullah, Sana
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Future Generation Computer Systems Vol. 88, no. (2018), p. 400-412
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: The growing use of wireless health data transmission via Internet of Things is significantly beneficial to the healthcare industry for optimal usage of health-related facilities. However, at the same time, the use raises concern of privacy protection. Health-related data are private and should be suitably protected. Several pathologies, such as vocal fold disorders, indicate high risks of prevalence in individuals with voice-related occupations, such as teachers, singers, and lawyers. Approximately, one-third of the world population suffers from the voice-related problems during the life span and unauthorized access to their data can create unavoidable circumstances in their personal and professional lives. In this study, a zero-watermarking method is proposed and implemented to protect the identity of patients who suffer from vocal fold disorders. In the proposed method, an image for a patient's identity is generated and inserted into secret keys instead of a host medical signal. Consequently, imperceptibility is naturally achieved. The locations for the insertion of the watermark are determined by a computation of local binary patterns from the time–frequency spectrum. The spectrum is calculated for low frequencies such that it may not be affected by noise attacks. The experimental results suggest that the proposed method has good performance and robustness against noise, and it is reliable in the recovery of an individual's identity. © 2018 Elsevier B.V.
Protection of records and data authentication based on secret shares and watermarking
- Ali, Zulfiqar, Imran, Muhammad, McClean, Sally, Khan, Naveed, Shoaib, Muhammad
- Authors: Ali, Zulfiqar , Imran, Muhammad , McClean, Sally , Khan, Naveed , Shoaib, Muhammad
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Future Generation Computer Systems Vol. 98, no. (2019), p. 331-341
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: The rapid growth in communication technology facilitates the health industry in many aspects from transmission of sensor's data to real-time diagnosis using cloud-based frameworks. However, the secure transmission of data and its authenticity become a challenging task, especially, for health-related applications. The medical information must be accessible to only the relevant healthcare staff to avoid any unfortunate circumstances for the patient as well as for the healthcare providers. Therefore, a method to protect the identity of a patient and authentication of transmitted data is proposed in this study. The proposed method provides dual protection. First, it encrypts the identity using Shamir's secret sharing scheme without the increase in dimension of the original identity. Second, the identity is watermarked using zero-watermarking to avoid any distortion into the host signal. The experimental results show that the proposed method encrypts, embeds and extracts identities reliably. Moreover, in case of malicious attack, the method distorts the embedded identity which provides a clear indication of fabrication. An automatic disorder detection system using Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients and Gaussian mixture model is also implemented which concludes that malicious attacks greatly impact on the accurate diagnosis of disorders. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.
- Authors: Ali, Zulfiqar , Imran, Muhammad , McClean, Sally , Khan, Naveed , Shoaib, Muhammad
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Future Generation Computer Systems Vol. 98, no. (2019), p. 331-341
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: The rapid growth in communication technology facilitates the health industry in many aspects from transmission of sensor's data to real-time diagnosis using cloud-based frameworks. However, the secure transmission of data and its authenticity become a challenging task, especially, for health-related applications. The medical information must be accessible to only the relevant healthcare staff to avoid any unfortunate circumstances for the patient as well as for the healthcare providers. Therefore, a method to protect the identity of a patient and authentication of transmitted data is proposed in this study. The proposed method provides dual protection. First, it encrypts the identity using Shamir's secret sharing scheme without the increase in dimension of the original identity. Second, the identity is watermarked using zero-watermarking to avoid any distortion into the host signal. The experimental results show that the proposed method encrypts, embeds and extracts identities reliably. Moreover, in case of malicious attack, the method distorts the embedded identity which provides a clear indication of fabrication. An automatic disorder detection system using Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients and Gaussian mixture model is also implemented which concludes that malicious attacks greatly impact on the accurate diagnosis of disorders. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.
An IoT-based smart healthcare system to detect dysphonia
- Ali, Zulfiqar, Imran, Muhammad, Shoaib, Muhammad
- Authors: Ali, Zulfiqar , Imran, Muhammad , Shoaib, Muhammad
- Date: 2022
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Neural Computing and Applications Vol. 34, no. 14 (2022), p. 11255-11265
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Smart healthcare systems for the internet of things (IoT) platform are cost-efficient and facilitate continuous remote monitoring of patients to avoid unnecessary hospital visits and long waiting times to see practitioners. Presenting a smart healthcare system for the detection of dysphonia can reduce the suffering and pain of patients by providing an initial evaluation of voice. This preliminary feedback of voice could minimize the burden on ENT specialists by referring only genuine cases to them as well as giving an early alarm of potential voice complications to patients. Any possible delay in the treatment and/or inaccurate diagnosis using the subjective nature of tools may lead to severe circumstances for an individual because some types of dysphonia are life-threatening. Therefore, an accurate and reliable smart healthcare system for IoT platform to detect dysphonia is proposed and implemented in this study. Higher-order directional derivatives are used to analyze the time–frequency spectrum of signals in the proposed system. The computed derivatives provide essential and vital information by analyzing the spectrum along different directions to capture the changes that appeared due to malfunctioning the vocal folds. The proposed system provides 99.1% accuracy, while the sensitivity and specificity are 99.4 and 98.1%, respectively. The experimental results showed that the proposed system could provide better classification accuracy than the traditional non-directional first-order derivatives. Hence, the system can be used as a reliable tool for detecting dysphonia and implemented in edge devices to avoid latency issues and protect privacy, unlike cloud processing. © 2021, Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature.
- Authors: Ali, Zulfiqar , Imran, Muhammad , Shoaib, Muhammad
- Date: 2022
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Neural Computing and Applications Vol. 34, no. 14 (2022), p. 11255-11265
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Smart healthcare systems for the internet of things (IoT) platform are cost-efficient and facilitate continuous remote monitoring of patients to avoid unnecessary hospital visits and long waiting times to see practitioners. Presenting a smart healthcare system for the detection of dysphonia can reduce the suffering and pain of patients by providing an initial evaluation of voice. This preliminary feedback of voice could minimize the burden on ENT specialists by referring only genuine cases to them as well as giving an early alarm of potential voice complications to patients. Any possible delay in the treatment and/or inaccurate diagnosis using the subjective nature of tools may lead to severe circumstances for an individual because some types of dysphonia are life-threatening. Therefore, an accurate and reliable smart healthcare system for IoT platform to detect dysphonia is proposed and implemented in this study. Higher-order directional derivatives are used to analyze the time–frequency spectrum of signals in the proposed system. The computed derivatives provide essential and vital information by analyzing the spectrum along different directions to capture the changes that appeared due to malfunctioning the vocal folds. The proposed system provides 99.1% accuracy, while the sensitivity and specificity are 99.4 and 98.1%, respectively. The experimental results showed that the proposed system could provide better classification accuracy than the traditional non-directional first-order derivatives. Hence, the system can be used as a reliable tool for detecting dysphonia and implemented in edge devices to avoid latency issues and protect privacy, unlike cloud processing. © 2021, Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature.
An automatic digital audio authentication/forensics system
- Ali, Zulfiqar, Imran, Muhammad, Alsulaiman, Mansour
- Authors: Ali, Zulfiqar , Imran, Muhammad , Alsulaiman, Mansour
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: IEEE Access Vol. 5, no. (2017), p. 2994-3007
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: With the continuous rise in ingenious forgery, a wide range of digital audio authentication applications are emerging as a preventive and detective control in real-world circumstances, such as forged evidence, breach of copyright protection, and unauthorized data access. To investigate and verify, this paper presents a novel automatic authentication system that differentiates between the forged and original audio. The design philosophy of the proposed system is primarily based on three psychoacoustic principles of hearing, which are implemented to simulate the human sound perception system. Moreover, the proposed system is able to classify between the audio of different environments recorded with the same microphone. To authenticate the audio and environment classification, the computed features based on the psychoacoustic principles of hearing are dangled to the Gaussian mixture model to make automatic decisions. It is worth mentioning that the proposed system authenticates an unknown speaker irrespective of the audio content i.e., independent of narrator and text. To evaluate the performance of the proposed system, audios in multi-environments are forged in such a way that a human cannot recognize them. Subjective evaluation by three human evaluators is performed to verify the quality of the generated forged audio. The proposed system provides a classification accuracy of 99.2% ± 2.6. Furthermore, the obtained accuracy for the other scenarios, such as text-dependent and text-independent audio authentication, is 100% by using the proposed system. © 2017 IEEE.
- Authors: Ali, Zulfiqar , Imran, Muhammad , Alsulaiman, Mansour
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: IEEE Access Vol. 5, no. (2017), p. 2994-3007
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: With the continuous rise in ingenious forgery, a wide range of digital audio authentication applications are emerging as a preventive and detective control in real-world circumstances, such as forged evidence, breach of copyright protection, and unauthorized data access. To investigate and verify, this paper presents a novel automatic authentication system that differentiates between the forged and original audio. The design philosophy of the proposed system is primarily based on three psychoacoustic principles of hearing, which are implemented to simulate the human sound perception system. Moreover, the proposed system is able to classify between the audio of different environments recorded with the same microphone. To authenticate the audio and environment classification, the computed features based on the psychoacoustic principles of hearing are dangled to the Gaussian mixture model to make automatic decisions. It is worth mentioning that the proposed system authenticates an unknown speaker irrespective of the audio content i.e., independent of narrator and text. To evaluate the performance of the proposed system, audios in multi-environments are forged in such a way that a human cannot recognize them. Subjective evaluation by three human evaluators is performed to verify the quality of the generated forged audio. The proposed system provides a classification accuracy of 99.2% ± 2.6. Furthermore, the obtained accuracy for the other scenarios, such as text-dependent and text-independent audio authentication, is 100% by using the proposed system. © 2017 IEEE.
Occupational characteristics and disability-free survival after retirement age : an exploratory analysis from the ASPREE study
- Alif, Sheikh, Benke, Geza, Ronaldson, Kathlyn, Walker-Bone, Karen, Woods, Robyn, Tran, Cammie, Beilin, Lawrence, Tonkin, Andrew, Owen, Alice, McNeil, John
- Authors: Alif, Sheikh , Benke, Geza , Ronaldson, Kathlyn , Walker-Bone, Karen , Woods, Robyn , Tran, Cammie , Beilin, Lawrence , Tonkin, Andrew , Owen, Alice , McNeil, John
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Frontiers in Public Health Vol. 11, no. (2023), p.
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Background: Certain occupational characteristics have been linked with poor health and reduced longevity. However, the association between occupational characteristics and survival free of disability in a post-retirement age group has not been investigated. Methods: We investigated outcomes in 12,215 healthy older Australian adults in the Aspirin in Reducing Events in the Elderly (ASPREE) and ASPREE Longitudinal Study of Older Persons (ALSOP) sub-study. The ISCO-88 major occupational groups, settings, and activity levels were assigned based on free-text job descriptions. The Finnish Job Exposure Matrix was used to assign occupational characteristics to the three longest-held jobs. The primary endpoint, disability-free survival, was defined as a composite measure of death, dementia, or persistent physical disability. The endpoint of all-cause mortality was analyzed separately. Because of multiple exploratory analyses, only those associations with a two-sided value of p less than 0.005 were considered statistically significant. Cox proportional hazard models were used to calculate adjusted hazard ratios. Results: Having worked in an ‘elementary’ occupation was associated with a reduction in disability-free survival. A specific impact on disability-free survival was observed among those whose work had involved high accident risk and adverse social climate. No significant relationship was identified with those previously exposed to sedentary work, vigorous physical activity, work primarily outdoors, or a range of other occupational characteristics. All-cause mortality was not increased among any of the occupational groups. Conclusion: This exploratory study found a reduction in disability-free survival among people who worked in ‘elementary’ occupations, with specific risks associated with occupations involving high accident risks and adverse social climate. Copyright © 2023 Alif, Benke, Ronaldson, Walker-Bone, Woods, Tran, Beilin, Tonkin, Owen and McNeil.
- Authors: Alif, Sheikh , Benke, Geza , Ronaldson, Kathlyn , Walker-Bone, Karen , Woods, Robyn , Tran, Cammie , Beilin, Lawrence , Tonkin, Andrew , Owen, Alice , McNeil, John
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Frontiers in Public Health Vol. 11, no. (2023), p.
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Background: Certain occupational characteristics have been linked with poor health and reduced longevity. However, the association between occupational characteristics and survival free of disability in a post-retirement age group has not been investigated. Methods: We investigated outcomes in 12,215 healthy older Australian adults in the Aspirin in Reducing Events in the Elderly (ASPREE) and ASPREE Longitudinal Study of Older Persons (ALSOP) sub-study. The ISCO-88 major occupational groups, settings, and activity levels were assigned based on free-text job descriptions. The Finnish Job Exposure Matrix was used to assign occupational characteristics to the three longest-held jobs. The primary endpoint, disability-free survival, was defined as a composite measure of death, dementia, or persistent physical disability. The endpoint of all-cause mortality was analyzed separately. Because of multiple exploratory analyses, only those associations with a two-sided value of p less than 0.005 were considered statistically significant. Cox proportional hazard models were used to calculate adjusted hazard ratios. Results: Having worked in an ‘elementary’ occupation was associated with a reduction in disability-free survival. A specific impact on disability-free survival was observed among those whose work had involved high accident risk and adverse social climate. No significant relationship was identified with those previously exposed to sedentary work, vigorous physical activity, work primarily outdoors, or a range of other occupational characteristics. All-cause mortality was not increased among any of the occupational groups. Conclusion: This exploratory study found a reduction in disability-free survival among people who worked in ‘elementary’ occupations, with specific risks associated with occupations involving high accident risks and adverse social climate. Copyright © 2023 Alif, Benke, Ronaldson, Walker-Bone, Woods, Tran, Beilin, Tonkin, Owen and McNeil.