Efficient projection onto a low-dimensional ball

Projection onto convex sets is a technique well known in optimization for its versatility and wide range of applications. This article presents an efficient projection onto a low-dimensional ball. The technique is based on analytically solving a quartic equation, and is exceptionally computationally efficient. An example application of this projection technique relates to acoustic impulse response shaping. Acoustic impulse response shaping is a pre-filtering technique to reduce reverberation of sound reproduction inside a room. If the focus is solely on the time domain, peaks and troughs in the frequency domain can occur. The projection approach presented in this article has been combined with the shaping algorithm to flatten the frequency response, thus providing control of both time domain and frequency domain characteristics.     

Prediction of cardiovascular risk by measuring carotid intima media thickness from an ultrasound image for type II diabetic mellitus subjects using machine learning and transfer learning techniques

The Journal of Supercomputing - Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a fatal disease that causes increased death in developing and developed nations. Among the various reasons, the increase in carotid...     

Diagnosis of faulty gears by modified AlexNet and improved grasshopper optimization algorithm (IGOA)

Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology - Gearbox is a significant part for the transmission of vehicles and various mechanical devices and is being utilized broadly in the industries despite...     

Image SR-based NLM and DCNN improved IBP with cubic B-spline

ABSTRACT

Image super-resolution (SR) techniques aim to estimate high-resolution (HR) image from low-resolution (LR) image. Existing SR method has slow convergence and recovery of high-frequency details are inaccurate. To overcome these issues, two algorithms have been proposed for image SR based on non-local means improved iterative back projection (NLM-IIBP), deep convolutional neural network improved iterative back projection (DCNN-IIBP) to produce high-resolution images with low noise, minimal blur by restoring high-frequency details. In NLM-IIBP denoised images have been interpolated using cubic B-spline interpolation and processed using IIBP based on guided bilateral method. NLM preserves the edges effectively, but does not consider high dimensional information and over smoothing during noise minimization. To further improve the resolution, NLM is replaced by DCNN. DCNN denoising method suppresses different noises at different noise levels. The proposed algorithms have been analysed and compared with existing approaches using various parameters to prove the effectiveness.     

Tuning the morphology of PVDF membranes using inorganic clusters for oil/water separation

Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membranes with modified membrane morphology were prepared by phase inversion process using iron alkoxide as a novel pore-forming additive (PFA). Higher pure water flux was observed for PVDF/PFA (iron alkoxide) membranes treated with 5% HCl, due to higher porosity produced by the leaching out of the iron alkoxide additive. The untreated membrane containing 0.04% iron alkoxide showed ~99% efficiency oil removal from a surfactant-stabilized oil–water emulsion. After acid treatment, there was a slight decrease in the rejection efficiency (~96.5%); however, this membrane still exhibited the highest emulsion flux. The fouling propensity of the membrane with 0.04 wt % iron alkoxide tested in a crossflow condition decreases indicating a lower amount of oil adsorbed onto the surface and a greater flux recovery ratio. The treated membranes showed appreciable anti-biofouling property when the membranes were challenged with Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis obtained from freshwater and/or seawater. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2019 , 136, 47641.     

A Novel Resource Allocation for SWIPT-NOMA Enabled AF Relay Based Cooperative Network

Today, the use of large networks under the cloud and big data has become very common, as well as learning methods and artificial intelligence have been designed for them. One of the main issues in the banking and Big Data industry is granting bank facilities to people. The main challenge in evaluating the customers’ credit in the banking industry is that, due to the large volume of the data, it is impossible to review them manually, as we have to use computer algorithms for this purpose. Hence, the accuracy of the algorithm used for this purpose is essential and influential. In this paper, several predictive algorithms are employed on the problem, so that the result would be a prediction based on the combination of the results of each of them. To integrate the results of the algorithms, the weight to each of the algorithms is allocated, which presents the amount of importance of the algorithm in the result. The Ordered weighting averaging is used in this research. By applying these techniques, the proposed algorithms are described in this paper to achieve better accuracy than the existing ones.

     

Impact of h-index on author’s rankings: an improvement to the h-index for lower-ranked authors

Scientometrics - In academia, the research performance of a faculty is evaluated based on the number of publications, the number of citations, and the impact of publication where one publishes....     

A Framework for e-Voting System Based on Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies

Election allows the voter of a country to select the most suitable group of candidates to run the government. Election in Pakistan is simply paper-based method but some certain political and socio-economic issues turn that simple process in complicated and disputes once. Solutions of such problems are consisting of many methods including the e-voting system. The e-voting system facilitates the voters to cast their votes by electronic means with very easy and convenient way. This also allows maintaining the security and secrecy of the voter along with election process. Electronic voting reduces the human-involvement throughout the process from start to the end. Such system is not established yet in Pakistan. Hence, every election is disputed always. In this paper we proposed the framework of an e-voting system and simulation with the use of blockchain ledger technology. The proposed framework owns the capacity to deal with ballots in Pakistan. The novelty of the framework is that the e-voting system is linked to National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) database which assures voter's validation. The fundamental requirements were kept in consideration during the performance evaluation of the system. The results are processed and depicted specially with reference to the number of voters and voting stations, real time of vote casting, network bandwidth and controlling principles. The results support the decision makers and guide them in the foundation and customization of an e-voting system in Pakistan.