The paper proposes a research model explaining the sequential mediation effect of job embeddedness and work engagement between ethical leadership and career satisfaction. The model also examines whether JE heightens WENG, a factor indirectly influenced by ethical practices ending in employee satisfaction. The study used a time-lagged data collection procedure and survey responses of 247 hotel workers in China. Data were analyzed through structural equation modeling. The results showed that EL directly and indirectly contributes to employee CS. The present empirical (...) framework extends the hospitality industry literature by explaining the precise mechanism through which EL generates CS among hospitality workers in China. The paper offers theoretical and practical implications and future research directions. (shrink)

A personalized recommender system is broadly accepted as a helpful tool to handle the information overload issue while recommending a related piece of information. This work proposes a hybrid personalized recommender system based on affinity propagation, namely, APHPRS. Affinity propagation is a semisupervised machine learning algorithm used to cluster items based on similarities among them. In our approach, we first calculate the cluster quality and density and then combine their outputs to generate a new ranking score among clusters for the (...) personalized recommendation. In the first phase, user preferences are collected and normalized as items rating matrix. This generated matrix is then clustered offline using affinity propagation and kept in a database for future recommendations. In the second phase, online recommendations are generated by applying the offline model. Negative Euclidian similarity and the quality of clusters are used together to select the best clusters for recommendations. The proposed APHPRS system alleviates problems such as sparsity and cold-start problems. The use of affinity propagation and the hybrid recommendation technique used in the proposed approach helps in improving results against sparsity. Experiments reveal that the proposed APHPRS performs better than most of the existing recommender systems. (shrink)

Presently, there is armed conflict in Darfur, Sudan. Armed conflict has adversely affected the social, economic and educational development of Darfur, Sudan. Purpose of this study is to know the impact of armed conflict on managerial behavior of the principals of secondary schools in Darfur, Sudan. In this study, the impact of armed conflict on performance of the secondary school principals was analyzed in perspective of their managerial behavior. Based on the findings of the study significant impact of armed conflict (...) was found on the managerial behavior of the principals. It was found that principals coordinated with the staff in activities of the school but were frightened and unable to perform their administrative and managerial duties freely and independently. There was communication gap between the principals, teachers and parents. The principals did not possess the skills to maintain school budget & finance properly. It was concluded that the principals need administrative and managerial training. Government of Sudan may establish academies of Educational Administration & Management to impart training to the principals of secondary schools and to take steps to control the existing armed conflict. (shrink)

Authentic leadership has appeared as a significant field of research. Building on social exchange theory that explicates how individuals mutually mechanize reciprocation and eventually establish a trust-based relationship, we postulated a positive relationship between authentic leadership and followers' organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB). Based on a two-wave time-lagged design, the data were obtained from 270 employees working in the private banking sector of Pakistan. We found that authentic leadership is positively associated with subordinate’s OCB, as well as, leads to a higher (...) level of both affective and cognitive-based followers' trust. The results also indicated that both affective and cognitive-based trust positively mediated the relationship between authentic leadership and OCB. The implication for theory and practice are discussed. (shrink)

This book reflects upon the political philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal, a towering intellectual figure in South Asian history, revered by many for his poetry and his thought. He lived in India in the twilight years of the British Empire and, apart from a short but significant period studying in the West, he remained in Punjab until his death in 1938. The book studies Iqbal's critique of nationalist ideology and his attempts to chart a path for the development of (...) the 'nation' by liberating it from the centralizing and homogenizing tendencies of the modern state structure. Iqbal frequently clashed with his contemporaries over his view of nationalism as 'the greatest enemy of Islam'. He constructed his own particular interpretation of Islam - forged through an interaction with Muslim thinkers and Western intellectual traditions - that was ahead of its time, and since his death both modernists and Islamists have continued to champion his legacy. (shrink)

Cell–extracellular matrix interactions are important in the process of tumor cell invasion and metastasis. In particular, the interactions of tumor cells with basement membranes of tissue epithelial, as well as vascular endothelial, cells are likely to represent key steps in the metastatic process. The interactions between cells and the connective tissue matrix are mediated by a large family of cell surface receptors, the integrins, which represent multiple receptors the integrins, which represent multiple receptors for extracellular matrix and basement membrane components. (...) Here, I review recent progress in elucidating the roles of integrins in tumor cell invasion. Altered expression of this large family of receptors on invasive tumor cells, as compared with non‐invasive cells, may represent a fundamental step in the progressive expression of the invasive phenotype. (shrink)

Nowadays, mobile telephony interruptions in our daily life activities are common because of the inappropriate ringing notifications of incoming phone calls in different contexts. Such interruptions may impact on the work attention not only for the mobile phone owners, but also for the surrounding people. Decision tree is the most popular machine-learning classification technique that is used in existing context-aware mobile intelligent interruption management model to overcome such issues. However, a single-decision tree-based context-aware model may cause over-fitting problem and thus (...) decrease the prediction accuracy of the inferred model. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an ensemble machine-learning-based context-aware mobile telephony model for the purpose of intelligent interruption management by taking into account multi-dimensional contexts and name it “E-MIIM”. The experimental results on individuals’ real-life mobile telephony data sets show that our E-MIIM model is more effective and outperforms existing MIIM model for predicting and managing individual’s mobile telephony interruptions based on their relevant contextual information. (shrink)

Includes an introd. of 49 p. by S. G. Abbas.

Mining social network data and developing user profile from unstructured and informal data are a challenging task. The proposed research builds user profile using Twitter data which is later helpful to provide the user with personalized recommendations. Publicly available tweets are fetched and classified and sentiments expressed in tweets are extracted and normalized. This research uses domain-specific seed list to classify tweets. Semantic and syntactic analysis on tweets is performed to minimize information loss during the process of tweets classification. After (...) precise classification and sentiment analysis, the system builds user interest-based profile by analyzing user’s post on Twitter to know about user interests. The proposed system was tested on a dataset of almost 1 million tweets and was able to classify up to 96% tweets accurately. (shrink)

This study aims to analyze the impact of Foreign Direct Investment, external debt and population growth on economic progress of Pakistan by using time series data from 1980 to 2014. It analyzes the correlation between Gross Domestic Product,FDI, external debt and population growth. Augmented Dickey Fuller test has been used to check stationarity in time series data. To evaluate the empirical results multiple regression method is used. GDP has been used as a dependent variable while FDI, external debt and population (...) as independent variables. Findings of this paper show the positive and significant impact of FDI, and population growth on GDP but external debt has negative impact on GDP. (shrink)

In lattice theory the two well known equational class of lattices are the distributive lattices and the modular lattices. All distributive lattices are modular however a modular lattice in general is not distributive. In this book, new classes of lattices called supermodular lattices and semi-supermodular lattices are introduced and characterized.

The current study proposes a novel conceptual model in which Islamic work ethics has a mediating role in the relationship between servant leadership and employees’ life satisfaction within Pakistan’s banking sector. The model draws on the theory of leader-member exchange. Data from a sample of 240 were evaluated using structural equation modeling using SmartPLS 3.2.7 software. The findings indicate that servant leadership significantly impacts employees’ life satisfaction. Furthermore, Islamic work ethics mediated this effect. This study introduces ground-breaking bank inputs by (...) creating a new integrated model based on LMX theory. While the impact of several dimensions of Islamic work ethics on employees’ life satisfaction has been widely investigated, the present study is the first to explore the roles of servant leadership and Islamic work ethics in leveraging bank employees’ life satisfaction. The results suggest that bank managers should enact servant leadership in their business and serve their employees ethically to improve their life satisfaction. Additionally, this study provides key theoretical contributions to the literature on Islamic banking. (shrink)

The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930) is Muhammad Iqbal's major philosophic work: a series of profound reflections on the perennial conflict among science, religion, and philosophy, culminating in new visions of the unity of human knowledge, of the human spirit, and of God. Iqbal's thought contributed significantly to the establishment of Pakistan, to the religious and political ideals of the Iranian Revolution, and to the survival of Muslim identity in parts of the former USSR. It now (...) serves as new bridge between East and West and between Islam and the other Religions of the Book. With a new Introduction by Javed Majeed, this edition of The Reconstruction opens the teachings of Iqbal to the modern, Western reader. It will be essential reading for all those interested in Islamic intellectual history, the renewal of Islam in the modern world, and political theory of Islam's relationship to the West. (shrink)

_The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam_ is Muhammad Iqbal's major philosophic work: a series of profound reflections on the perennial conflict among science, religion, and philosophy, culminating in new visions of the unity of human knowledge, of the human spirit, and of God. Iqbal's thought contributed significantly to the establishment of Pakistan, to the religious and political ideals of the Iranian Revolution, and to the survival of Muslim identity in parts of the former USSR. It now serves (...) as new bridge between East and West and between Islam and the other Religions of the Book. With a new Introduction by Javed Majeed, this edition of _The Reconstruction_ opens the teachings of Iqbal to the modern, Western reader. It will be essential reading for all those interested in Islamic intellectual history, the renewal of Islam in the modern world, and political theory of Islam's relationship to the West. (shrink)

Digital Health Technologies (DHTs) are currently the subject of much debate both in terms of their technological frontiers as well as their ethical, legal and societal implications (ELSI). Regulation of such technologies as medical devices currently lacks behind their level of adoption. Digital Twins are the next evolution step of such DHTs and provide an opportunity to anticipate and act on ELSI before adoption again leaps before the necessary review. This paper introduces the concept and use cases of digital twins (...) in medicine, then frames the debate through the lens of related technologies, machine learning and personalized medicine, and maps ethical challenges stemming from those. Finally, we lay out how digital twins may change and challenge the future practice of medicine. (shrink)

Drawing on the conservation of resources theory and contingency theories of leadership, this study aims to investigate how sustainable leadership influences employees' wellbeing through employee resilience and to examine the moderating effect of environmental turbulence on the “sustainable leadership-employees' wellbeing” relationship. Data were collected from 593 employees and 373 supervisors adopting two-wave design among small and medium-sized enterprises in China. The authors used structural equation modeling to empirically test the hypothesized model in this study. The research shows that SL is (...) significantly related to the employees' WB in SMEs. Regarding mediating effect, SL also indirectly influences employees' WB through ER. Moreover, the impact of SL on employees' WB becomes more prominent in the presence of lower ET. To the best of the authors' knowledge, no prior study is available about the integrated relationship of SL, ER, ET, and employee WB. (shrink)

The intention of this paper is to examine the impact of corporate social responsibility disclosure on financial performance in a case study of listed Pharmaceutical firms in Pakistan. For this case study, the panel data of 10 years from 2005 to 2014 are obtained through content analysis of annual reports. Quantitative tools were used to measure variables studied in which index was developed and used scoring methodology. Further, brand equity is introduced as a mediator between CSRD and financial performance. The (...) results of content analysis revealed that GSK Pakistan laboratories involved in greater level of disclosure as compared to other pharmaceutical firms. The average rate of disclosure of listed pharmaceutical firms is increasing annually. Among four themes, the results showed that pharmaceutical firms mostly disclose information regarding community involvement. The results of regression which were significant shows that brand equity act as mediator between the corporate social responsibility disclosure and financial performance. (shrink)

This essay analyzes a silent short film portraying an urban canoeist. The film suggests that it is possible to make conscious choices about one’s means of conveyance through the city. Using a critical theoretical framework to unpack the implications of the film, this paper argues for the need to imagine unconventional modes of transportation and examine the power structures of automotive hegemony.

The form of commemoration offered by Remembrance Day ceremonies works to produce a sense of nationalist patriotism. The ‘public history’ of the nation, as a mode of self-representation, presents a particular narrative of limited scope, occluding all elements that do not fit its ideological framework. Remembrance Day simultaneously invokes and educates Canadian collective memory and public history, mediated through the contemporary power/knowledge discourse on war. The values, structure, and 'tendencies of a society' become evident in collective memory and this cultural (...) heritage of society becomes a site at which it is 'visible to itself'. (shrink)

Computational aesthetics is a relatively new subfield of artificial intelligence (AI). It includes research that enables computers to "recognize" (and evaluate) beauty in various domains such as visual art, music, and games. Aside from the benefit this gives to humans in terms of creating and appreciating art in these domains, there are perhaps also philosophical implications about the nature and "mechanics" of aesthetic perception in humans. We can, potentially, learn more about ourselves as we replicate or simulate this ability in (...) machines. My original intention or objective was to develop an aesthetics model or method for computers to recognize beauty in the game of chess since it is greatly appreciated by .. (shrink)

In step with rapid advancements in computer vision, vehicle classification demonstrates a considerable potential to reshape intelligent transportation systems. In the last couple of decades, image processing and pattern recognition-based vehicle classification systems have been used to improve the effectiveness of automated highway toll collection and traffic monitoring systems. However, these methods are trained on limited handcrafted features extracted from small datasets, which do not cater the real-time road traffic conditions. Deep learning-based classification systems have been proposed to incorporate the (...) above-mentioned issues in traditional methods. However, convolutional neural networks require piles of data including noise, weather, and illumination factors to ensure robustness in real-time applications. Moreover, there is no generalized dataset available to validate the efficacy of vehicle classification systems. To overcome these issues, we propose a convolutional neural network-based vehicle classification system to improve robustness of vehicle classification in real-time applications. We present a vehicle dataset comprising of 10,000 images categorized into six-common vehicle classes considering adverse illuminous conditions to achieve robustness in real-time vehicle classification systems. Initially, pretrained AlexNet, GoogleNet, Inception-v3, VGG, and ResNet are fine-tuned on self-constructed vehicle dataset to evaluate their performance in terms of accuracy and convergence. Based on better performance, ResNet architecture is further improved by adding a new classification block in the network. To ensure generalization, we fine-tuned the network on the public VeRi dataset containing 50,000 images, which have been categorized into six vehicle classes. Finally, a comparison study has been carried out between the proposed and existing vehicle classification methods to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed vehicle classification system. Consequently, our proposed system achieved 99.68%, 99.65%, and 99.56% accuracy, precision, and F1-score on our self-constructed dataset. (shrink)

Knowledge hiding has become an alarming issue for the organizations. Knowledge hiding is an employee’s intentional attempt to conceal knowledge requested by others at the workplace. Employee knowledge hiding significantly influences an organization’s effective functioning. This research is an attempt to extend previous work on antecedents of knowledge hiding. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, it is proposed that receiving poor treatment by organizations in the form of organizational dehumanization creates psychological distress among employees toward the organization. Distress among workers (...) in turn intervenes the path and increases the likelihood of engaging in knowledge hiding behaviors. An employee’s felt obligation for constructive change may moderate the relationship between organizational dehumanization and employee psychological distress. Data for the current study were collected from 245 employees of the telecommunication sector in three-time lags. The results support the direct and indirect effect of organizational dehumanization on employee knowledge hiding behaviors through the mediation of psychological distress. The results also support the moderation of FOCC between organizational dehumanization and psychological distress. Furthermore, the findings of the study may help organizational practitioners and managers about the value of effective organizational climate and practices for better organizational functioning through knowledge sharing and providing insight into undesirable repercussions of organizational dehumanization. Implications for organizations and practitioners are discussed. (shrink)

Traditionally, mainstream psychology mostly presented religion in a negative light. However, recent years have witnessed a growing realization that religion has a substantial role to play in improving physical and mental health. Given the importance of religion, the American Psychological Association has division 36 “Psychology of religion.” But the perspective of mainstream psychology does not acknowledge the spiritual nature of human beings and their connection to God. Islamic psychology is one of the religion-based perspectives which acknowledges it. This perspective has (...) also attracted the attention of Western psychologists. Three different trends have been identified in this area: the Islamic filter approach, the comparison approach, and the Islamic psychology approach. However, despite more than 40 years of work, there is a considerable lack of progress in the development of this paradigm. The present article discussed the emergence and challenges in the development of this new perspective. Moreover, we suggest that the research paradigms of Western social and behavioral sciences are useful for developing Islamic psychology. (shrink)

The study is based on validating and exploring the effects of a mega project plan on infrastructure development and Sustainable Project Management. The CPEC has great importance to infrastructure development and economy-boosting. The current study's primary aim is to deal with environmental protection, economic boost up, international relations influencing to the Project's success. The paper also addressed project management as a moderator between environmental protection, economic boost up, international relations, and the CPEC project's success. The primary data has been gathered (...) by using questionnaires, and PLS-SEM has been employed for the analysis. The results revealed that environmental protection, economy boost up, and international relations have a positive association with the success of CPEC. The outcomes also exposed that project management moderating among the nexus of economy boosts up the international relations and success of CPEC. The present study results guided how Pakistan and China make the CPEC project stronger with the efficient implementation of practices required for protecting the environment, with the economic growth and boost up, and good strong relations with foreign countries. This study was an attempt to validate the different factors to check their association with each other in a new environment, resulting in a leading edge for the success of mega projects that influence project management. (shrink)

Book Name MUHAMMAD: A PROPHET FOR OUR TIME Review written by Mr Kashif Iqbal.

The purpose of the present study was to explore the direct influence of self-concept and self-imagination on English language learning outcomes. Furthermore, this study examined the mediating role of self-efficacy in the relationship between self-concept, self-imagination, and ELLO. A survey questionnaire of 21 items was used in this study. We distributed the questionnaire through QR code and collected the data from 2,517 participants who enrolled in blended learning courses at the undergraduate level in Chinese universities. The relationship among the variables (...) was measured through SmartPLS-SEM 3.3.3. The outcomes of the present study indicated a direct, positive, and significant connection of self-concept, self-imagination, and self-efficacy with ELLO. Looking at indirect influences, self-concept and self-imagination, positive and significant, influence ELLO through self-efficacy. Thus, self-efficacy was indicated to play a mediating role between self-concept, self-imagination and ELLO. We can conclude that self-concept, self-imagination, and self-efficacy are the main predictors of ELLO in blended learning courses during the pandemic. Additionally, self-concept and self-imagination along with the intervening role of self-efficacy, play a more effective role in improving ELLO. Moreover, this study provided some useful, practical implications, and future research directions. (shrink)

This paper empirically investigates the impact of cognitive board diversity in education, expertise, and tenure facets on financial distress likelihood in the emerging economy of China. This study examines how this relationship varies across State-Owned Enterprises and Non-State-Owned Enterprises. Paper argues that the Chinese stock market, as a typical emerging market, is an excellent laboratory for studying the impact of board diversity on the probability of financial distress. Its underdeveloped financial system and inadequate investor protection leave firms unprotected from financial (...) hardship. A sample of 12,366 observations from 1,374 firms from 2010 to 2018 shows that cognitive diversity qualities are positively linked with Z-score, implying that directors with different educational backgrounds, financial skills, and tenures can assist in reducing the probability of financial distress. Cognitive board diversity reduces the likelihood of financial distress in SOEs and NSOEs. However, tenure diversity is insignificant in all cases. Furthermore, the robustness model “two-step system Generalized Methods of Moments ” demonstrated a positive association between educational diversity, financial expertise, and financial distress scores. The results have significant implications for researchers, managers, investors, regulators, and policymakers. (shrink)

The constitution of Pakistan contains wide range of provisions for the protection of labour rights. Pakistan has been bestowed with 70 labour laws along with 90 rules and regulations thereunder. In spite of these labour laws along with rules and regulations, labour force is facing multifarious challenges that posit direct threat to their legal recognised rights. In this regard this study was carried out to study the main hurdles that labour rights encountered in historical perspective. Moreover, in the wake of (...) devolution plan through 18th amendment to the constitution of Pakistan, what problems in respect of enforceability and legality have arisen? Labour laws promulgated in various Pakistani regimes have been discussed to figure out what really prevented successive governments to ensure minimum protection to labour strata of the nations. The article concludes with some recommendation that are sin-qua-non in current globalization where rights have emerged as the most sacred instruments in the hands of weaker portion of a society. (shrink)

The Glyde mural in the University of Alberta’s Rutherford Library is a testament to the history of Alberta as it was understood by white society in the 1950s. A contemporary viewer described the painting as depicting “the civilizing influences in the early life of the Province.” The prominent historical heroes in the mural represent the main institutions that were involved in this process of ‘civilizing the savages'. An artefact of modern colonial racism, it has overshadowed the threshold of the library’s (...) South reading room since 1951. This article brings the ideas of several historical theorists to bear on the impact and implications of the historical memory invoked by the mural. (shrink)

The incident of 1971 is a historical concern. Both wings of Pakistan were united at the time of the creation of Pakistan but some policies that were adopted after the creation of Pakistan were inadequate to resolve the growing differences between the both wings. Writers are divided regarding the causes of the Fall of Dhaka. Indian involvement has been highlighted frequently and it is also said that East Bengal was on the distance of 1000 km from West Pakistan. Apart from (...) these causes, this study will highlight a new perspective regarding the separation of East Bengal. From 1947 to 1971 the central governments of Pakistan took some measure regarding formulating policies and the policies were not sufficient to bring people of the both wings closer. Thus, the major policies and their consequences would be analysed in this paper. Further, this research would be a new one in a sense that there would be a general description of the policies from both wings. (shrink)

BackgroundValue-driven career attitude is considered a dimension of a protean career attitude. Individuals with this attitude seek out personally meaningful experiences and set their own psychological career success standards. This study investigates the association between value-driven career attitude and job performance. It looks at how organizational citizenship behavior affects the relationship between value-driven career attitudes and job performance.MethodsA self-reported questionnaire was used to collect data from 400 random employees of SMEs in Pakistan during the early pandemic. We chose Cochran’s formula (...) to determine the appropriate sample size, and PLS-SEM was used to analyze the model. P-O fit and self-determination theory is the theoretical lenses used in this study. The underpinning theories to this study enable the researchers to establish a link between VDCA, OCB, and job performance.ResultsBy analyzing a sample of 400 employees from active enterprises, we discover that VDCA contributes to an improvement in job performance. Furthermore, OCB plays an intervening effect in the relationship between VDCA and job performance. Thus, the study provided evidence for the underpinning models of P-O fit and self-determination theory.ConclusionThis study adds to the body of knowledge by investigating the connections between VDCA, OCB, and job performance in SMEs. The existing literature sheds scant light on these linkages, leaving a gap that this study will address. The current study expands on other themes to provide an in-depth analysis of many under-explored PCA outcomes, which may open up new avenues for future researchers to broaden and strengthen PCA with other constructs. (shrink)

_This study examines the proposition that exports cause growth in gross domestic product GDP in the economy of Pakistan from 1973 to 2022. The study intends to analyze the export promotion strategy that was adopted by Pakistan's economy in the 1990s. Cointegration test reveals there is a long-run relationship between these two variables. However, causality is proved in both short and long-run from GDP to exports. The Trade openness and export growth both are prolonged association but in case of Pakistan (...) persistent depreciation of PKR could not achieve desired level of export earning which implies that J-Curve theory does not exist in Pakistan. This implies that growth in the domestic production base is vital to expansion in exports. The government or policymakers should give importance to and incentivize various production sectors of an economy so that they can contribute to the expansion of export markets._. (shrink)

Abstract:This essay traces the ambivalent work of ghurba (estrangement, exile, alienation) across four ethnographic scenes: Orthodox Christian activists in austerity Beirut refuse to abandon the corrupted world; a Syrian Islamic scholar in Jordan insists on the patient work of rehabilitation; Orthodox ascetics in a monastic community outside Tripoli turn to the hidden alienation borne in the world; and a Muslim calligrapher in Canada relinquishes the guarantee of ethical relation. Taken together, these scenes form a tableau of estrangement in the shared (...) vocabulary of Eastern Christianity and Islam. Drawing on Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah–in its articulations of soul, community, and world always already shadowed by their undoing–we then situate these four scenes along spatio-temporal axes of destruction and production, city and desert, paradise and hellfire: a purgatorial topology which modulates what Agamben calls the contemporary destruction of experience. (shrink)

Muhammad Arsyad Al-Banjari who lived from 1710 to 1812 in Borneo, Indonesia, applied a model of integrating uses of the Banjarese tradition into Islamic Jurisprudence based on a dialectical constitution of qiyās, the legal argumentation theory for parallel reasoning and analogy, he learned from the Shāfi‘ī-school of jurisprudence (uṣūl al-fiqh). Our paper focuses in the model of integration proposed and practiced by Al-Banjari, a rational debate grounded on a dynamic view on legal systems. We will illustrate the method with the (...) help of two different kinds of qiyās deployed by Al-Banjari in order to argue for the rejection of some traditional Banjarese offering-rituals for avoiding disease or calamities (manyanggar and mambuang pasilih), and for the acceptance of the use of consuming the traditional drink called lahang made of the juice of sugar-palm. As our dialogical reconstruction shows, the development of the debates, particularly the first one, is quite sophisticated, with a Banjarese opponent that does not surrender easily to the rejection of his use of those rituals. (shrink)

Automatic incident detection plays a vital role among all the safety-critical applications under the parasol of Intelligent Transportation Systems to provide timely information to passengers and other stakeholders in smart cities. Moreover, accurate classification of these incidents with respect to type and severity assists the Traffic Incident Management Systems and stakeholders in devising better plans for incident site management and avoiding secondary incidents. Most of the AID systems presented in the literature are incident type-specific, i.e., either they are designed for (...) the detection of accident or congestion. While traveling along the road, one may come across different types of traffic incidents, such as accidents, congestion, and reckless driving. This necessitates that the AID system detects and classifies not only all the popular traffic incident types, but severity as well that is associated with these incidents. Therefore, this study aims to propose an efficient incident detection and classification framework for smart cities, by incorporating the efficacy of model stacking, to classify the incidents with respect to their types and severity levels. The experimental results showed that the proposed E-IDC framework achieved performance gains of 5%–56% in terms of incident severity classification and 1%–14% in terms of incident type classification when applied with different classifiers. We have also applied the Wilcoxon test to benchmark the performance of our proposed framework that reflects the significance of our approach over existing individual incident predictors in terms of severity and type classification. Moreover, it has been observed that the proposed E-IDC framework outperforms the existing ensemble technique, such as XGBoost used for the classification of incidents. (shrink)

We propose a new hybrid data mining method for predicting protein-protein interactions combining Likelihood-Ratio with rule induction algorithms. In essence, the new method consists of using a rule induction algorithm to discover rules representing partitions of the data, and then the discovered rules are interpreted as “bins” which are used to compute likelihood ratios. This new method is applied to the prediction of protein-protein interactions in the Saccharomyces Cerevisiae genome, using predictive genomic features in an integrated scheme. The results show (...) that the new hybrid method outperforms a pure likelihood ratio based approach. (shrink)

In today’s postmodern world with the latest and top notch internet technologies in the market, if it has become easy and accessible for everyone to communicate with others sitting at the other corner of the world, it has also given rise to the cybercrimes including cyber terro rism which has not only provided grave threats to the whole world but also posed a question of whether with the manipulation of cyber space, cyber terrorists can damage or destroy the physical infrastructure (...) of its target. Owing to easy access to everyone and strong damage done as compared to traditional terrorism, today terrorists are relying on cyber terrorism as well. The Islamic State has emerged as one of the brutal and violent terrorist organization s which hired cyber experts and manipulated cyber space to the extent that today they are most active and professional cyber users’ terrorist organization of the world. The main focus of the paper is to highlight the basic definition of cyber terrorism, how often it is different from traditional terrorism, use of cyber terrorism, how cyber terrorism can be manipulated through various latest tools and techniques and how Islamic State is using cyber space to spread its message. (shrink)