An intelligent hybrid approach for hepatitis disease diagnosis: Combining enhanced k‐means clustering and improved ensemble learning

In real world, the automatic detection of liver disease is a challenging problem among medical practitioners. The intent of this work is to propose an intelligent hybrid approach for the diagnosis of hepatitis disease. The diagnosis is performed with the combination of k‐means clustering and improved ensemble‐driven learning. To avoid clinical experience and to reduce the evaluation time, ensemble learning is deployed, which constructs a set of hypotheses by using multiple learners to solve a liver disease problem. The performance analysis of the proposed integrated hybrid system is compared in terms of accuracy, true positive rate, precision, f‐measure, kappa statistic, mean absolute error, and root mean squared error. Simulation results showed that the enhanced k‐means clustering and improved ensemble learning with enhanced adaptive boosting, bagged decision tree, and J48 decision tree‐based intelligent hybrid approach achieved better prediction outcomes than other existing individual and integrated methods.     

COVIDScreen: explainable deep learning framework for differential diagnosis of COVID-19 using chest X-rays

Neural Computing and Applications - COVID-19 has emerged as a global crisis with unprecedented socio-economic challenges, jeopardizing our lives and livelihoods for years to come. The...     

Studies on high-performance blended/multiblended cements and their durability characteristics

Number of blends were prepared by intergrinding clinker, gypsum, fly ash, calcined clay, microsilica and limestone in laboratory ball mill in varying percentages, and their physical properties such as fineness, consistency, setting time and compressive strength have been determined. The durability tests on selected compositions were also conducted by exposing the mortar cubes separately in 5% Na₂SO₄ and 5% NaCl solutions till the age of 90 and 180 days. The performance was observed by compressive strength development criteria after various length of exposure. Results have been discussed and found that the durability of blended cement is higher than the ordinary Portland cement.     

A unified method for optimal arbitrary pole placement

We consider the classic problem of pole placement by state feedback. We offer an eigenstructure assignment algorithm to obtain a novel parametric form for the pole-placing feedback matrix that can deliver any set of desired closed-loop eigenvalues, with any desired multiplicities. This parametric formula is then exploited to introduce an unconstrained nonlinear optimisation algorithm to obtain a feedback matrix that delivers the desired pole placement with optimal robustness and minimum gain. Lastly we compare the performance of our method against several others from the recent literature.     

A spatio‐temporal water quality assessment of the Beas and Sutlej Rivers at the Harike Wetland: A Ramsar site in Punjab,India

Lakes play a vital role in regulating water storage, flow of river water, and ultimately maintaining a balanced ecosystem. Spatial and temporal variations in physicochemical parameters of water in Harike Wetland, a Ramsar site in the northwestern state of Punjab, India, were studied. This study was conducted on a monthly basis from January to December 2015. The water quality was studied at ten locations from sites 1 to 10 upstream, central and downstream from Harike Lake for ten physicochemical parameters, including temperature, pH, electrical conductivity, turbidity, dissolved oxygen concentration biological oxygen demand, nitrate and phosphate concentrations and salinity. The findings of this study revealed that, except for temperature and pH, all parameters exhibited relatively higher values for the Sutlej River, compared with the Beas River, with sampling sites 5 to site 7 exhibiting intermediate results. The mean seasonal temperature variations ranged from 16.9 to 26.6 °C, the pH from 7.7 to 8.2, electrical conductivity from 223 to 303 μS cm^?1 and TDS concentration from 148.7 to 180.4 ppm. Correlation analysis was conducted to assess the relations between the variables. The electrical conductivity exhibited a high positive correlation with salinity and biological oxygen demand, whereas it correlated negatively with the dissolved oxygen concentration. Box and whisker plots were also plotted for the study results to better examine the data distribution.     

Geospatial technology applied to spatiotemporal assessment of Harike Wetland,Punjab

The Harike Wetland situated in Punjab is a Ramsar site and a wetland of national importance. The present study was undertaken to assess the spatiotemporal dynamics of the wetland on the basis of geospatial technology and ground‐based studies. Landsat images for the years 2002 and 2014 were acquired from the United States Geological Survey and classified digitally to generate landuse/land cover maps involving four classes (water, grassland (including water hyacinth), agriculture, built‐up (settlement), barren land). The total area of the Harike Wetland was found to be 8023.68 ha. Water sampling at eleven sites was carried out and evaluated for physicochemical parameters. The water quality at several sampling points was found to be severely degraded. Change detection analysis revealed the submerged area (area under water) and grassland (including water hyacinth) had decreased over the past 12 years, whereas that area under agriculture and built‐up land has increased, indicating a shrinkage in the total wetland area. The present study also indicated that the near‐infrared band is a good indicator of water quality parameters, as indicated by the significant positive correlation between the near‐infrared band and relevant water parameters. Because the wetland is important from both an ecological perspective and economic perspective, regular monitoring is recommended, for which geospatial technology has proven to be very useful.     

Rightful ownership through image adaptive DWT-SVD watermarking algorithm and perceptual tweaking

In this paper, a tailored blended image adaptive watermarking scheme has been presented, which is based on DWT and SVD. Through this paper an attempt has been made to solve the problem of false positive while maintaining the robustness and imperceptibility with the help of principal component and perceptual tuning of the image. Perceptual tuning is a non-blind technique and based on the objective quality of image. The embedding strength is made dependent on watermark features as well as of host in wavelet domain by using tuning parameter which is user specific. The idea of embedding the principal component of intermediate frequency sub-bands of watermark image into singular values of perceptually tuned intermediate frequency sub-bands of host image have been exploited. The proposed algorithm is providing the adaptive behavior towards the image content for perceptual transparency and at the same time avoiding the possibility of false watermark extraction well supported by a private key, which is necessary at the time of extraction. Thus the proposed watermarking algorithm is a kind of non-blind, image adaptive and suitable for rightful ownership. Various comparative results make the algorithm superior in terms of intentional and non-intentional attacks. Also the algorithm is strong against the print and scan attack.     

Graft copolymerization of 2‐acrylamido‐2‐methyl‐1‐propanesulfonic acid onto carboxymethylcellulose (sodium salt) by H2O2/Fe+2 redox pair

The effect of the reaction conditions on the grafting parameters during grafting of 2‐acrylamido‐2‐methyl‐1‐propanesulfonic acid onto sodium carboxymethylcellulose using H₂O₂/Fe⁺² redox pair are studied at 30°C. The grafting ratio, add on, and conversion initially increase with the H₂O₂ concentration in the range of (10.0–15.0) × 10^?2 mol dm^?3. Thereafter, these parameters decrease with the H₂O₂ concentration. The grafting ratio, add on, and conversion increase when increasing the ferrous ion concentration from (0.5 to 4.0) × 10^?2 mol dm^?3 and decrease with a further increase in the concentration. It is observed that the grafting ratio and add on increase with the monomer concentration, whereas the conversion decrease. The hydrogen ions seem to be facilitating the grafting reaction up to a certain concentration and after this concentration seem to be retarding the process. The grafting ratio, add on, and conversion decrease with the sodium carboxymethylcellulose concentration. When increasing the time period from 60 to 90 min, the grafting parameters increase but decrease thereafter. Similarly, when increasing the temperature from 25 to 30°C, the grafting parameters increase and decrease thereafter. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 100: 4819–4825, 2006