Shades of grey reveal breast tumours

Breast cancer is the second most common cancer in women. Mammography is the best imaging technology for early detection of tumours in breast tissue.

Now, researchers in India have developed a new approach to the classification of abnormalities in the breast using a decision tree based on GLCM (grey level co-occurrence matrices). This allows useful texture and statistical features to be extracted from a medical image based on the pixel “brightness” value in the digital image.

In the new approach noise is reduced following data acquisition using pre-processing and then the image is examined using the GLCM technique to help discern between benign and malignant tissue seen in the mammogram.

Kamalakannan, J. and Babu, M.R. (2018) ‘Classification of breast abnormality using decision tree based on GLCM features in mammograms’, Int. J. Computer Aided Engineering and Technology, Vol. 10, No. 5, pp.504–512.

Inderscience journals to invite expanded papers from 2nd International Conference on Communication, Devices and Computing for potential publication

Extended versions of papers presented at the 2nd International Conference on Communication, Devices and Computing (14-15 March, 2019, Haldia, India) will be invited for review and potential publication by the following journals:

• Int. J. of Autonomic Computing
• Int. J. of Vehicle Information and Communication Systems

International Journal of Earthquake and Impact Engineering to invite expanded papers from International Civil Engineering and Architecture Conference for potential publication

Extended versions of papers presented at the International Civil Engineering and Architecture Conference (17- 20 April 2019, Trabzon, Turkey) will be invited for review and potential publication by the International Journal of Earthquake and Impact Engineering.

Research pick: South Africa’s financial imbalance - "An analysis of the financial inclusion in South Africa considering race, education and income"

Research from Egypt on financial inclusion in South Africa considering race, education, and income has concluded that Caucasian members of the population are more likely to have bank accounts. the work also showed that higher education is correlated with an increased awareness of financial planning.

Individuals described as “coloured” in the paper and individuals described as “Africans” were shown to be the least likely to own bank accounts. These individuals in the population were shown to have four years less education on average than Caucasian individuals.

The paper notes the considerable evidence that the success of self- employed individuals and entrepreneurs’ successes are related to ethnic group even after the end to racial segregation, Apartheid, in 1994. The paper shows a clear inequality between ethnic groups. Financial inclusion is needed for long-term economic growth and poverty reduction.

Omran, M.F. (2018) ‘An analysis of the financial inclusion in South Africa considering race, education and income’, World Review of Entrepreneurship, Management and Sustainable Development, Vol. 14, No. 5, pp.657–667. B

Research pick: ICT: The new A & E? - "ICT enabled collaborative e-health for cleft lip/palate treatment"

Researchers in the UK have been investigating the use of ICT (Information and Communications Technology) to improve access to medical services in remote areas. More specifically, they have been working on a practical ICT solution base on a case study carried out in Northern Thailand looking at cleft-lip/palate treatment.

Medical treatment of this condition requires many skills and several differing inputs from numerous disciplines. This means quality treatment is often limited in remote areas and receiving proper and effective treatment is difficult. In Thailand, because healthcare services are centralised, the researchers have proposed a collaborative framework. This includes the supporting of data sharing for medical teams to allow for the empowerment of local healthcare.

ICT can enhance knowledge transfer and one aim of this research is to create an expert system for conditions that require multidisciplinary treatment by generating an e-health service system. The hope is to improve care quality to patients in remote areas and there is continuing evaluation of the current platform implemented for cleft-lip/palate treatment.

Choosri, N., Khwanngern, K., Yu, H., Thongbunjob, K., Sukhahuta, R., Natwichai, J., Boonma, P., Atkins, A. and Sitthikham, S. (2018) ‘ICT enabled collaborative e-health for cleft lip/palate treatment’, Int. J. Agile Systems and Management, Vol. 11, No. 3, pp.270–292.

Special issue published: "Modelling and Simulation of Chaotic Processes"

International Journal of Simulation and Process Modelling 13(5) 2018

• A new biological snap oscillator: its modelling, analysis, simulations and circuit design
• Extreme multi-stability in hyperjerk memristive system with hidden attractors and its adaptive synchronisation scheme
• Complex walking behaviours, chaos and bifurcations of a simple passive compass-gait biped model suffering from leg length asymmetry
• String of scrolls from a time-delayed chaotic circuit
• Secure communication and image encryption scheme based on synchronisation of fractional order chaotic systems using backstepping
• Stability study and dynamical analysis of the multicellular chopper

Additional papers

• K-DBSCAN: an efficient density-based clustering algorithm supports parallel computing
• Cognitive smart environment: an approach based on concept hierarchies and sensor data fusion

Special issue published: "Headlines of Russian Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies in 2017"

International Journal of Nanotechnology 15(4/5) 2018

• Attosecond nanotechnology: from subatomic electrostatic strings entangling electron pairs to supra-atomic quantum nanoelectromechanical systems energy storage in materials
• Agro ecological grounding for the application of metal nanopowders in agriculture
• Preparation of liposomes containing benzophenanthridine alkaloid sanguinarine and evaluation of its cytotoxic activity
• Elaboration of a bacterial cellulose matrix for the immobilisation of Escherichia coli cells
• On the interaction of thermal and strain-wave processes in coals
• Nanocomposites for luminescent tumour diagnostics and theranostics
• Research of sheet thickness effect on mechanical and technological properties of Al-1%Mn aluminium alloy
• Multicriteria optimisation of the formulation of modified fine-grained fibre concretes containing carbon nanostructures
• Problems of education in the field of nanotechnology
• Nanopowders of cuprum, cobalt and their oxides used in the intensive technology for growing cucumbers
• Information representation and retrieval in nanoengineering applications
• Investigation of Finemet nanocrystalline alloy coating obtained by the electric spark method
• Complementary memristive diode cells for the memory matrix of a neuromorphic processor
• Mesoporous carbon materials for supercapacitors prepared by the pyrolysis of polymers
• The effect of Langmuir arachidic acid layers on surface morphology and electrical properties of a polycrystalline CdS film
• Epilam multifunctional nanosized protective films: synergy effect of antiadhesive and anti-frictional properties
• The influence of hydrothermal nanosilica powder aquaspersions on the vital capacity of Daphnia magna Straus crustaceans
• Sorption activity of nanostructured materials

Press release: Emergency mobile - "Swift personal emergency help facilitated by the mobile cloud"

Medical emergencies inevitably require an urgent response from doctors and other healthcare workers. Response time can mean the difference between life and death. As such, there are ongoing efforts in many areas of research to find technological approaches to reducing response times in order to improve medical outcomes. Writing in the International Journal of High Performance Computing and Networking, an academic team from Ireland explain how and why mobile cloud computing can be an answer.

The team of Hazzaa Alshareef and Dan Grigoras has responded to the problem by developing a mobile cloud service, which they explain works side-by-side with the existing emergency system. It is “aimed at reducing the time spent waiting for emergency help to arrive, as well as making the best use of medical professionals who may be located in close proximity to the medical case,” the team writes.

In earlier work, the team introduced a mobile ad hoc network, MANET, manager service that is hosted in the cloud. This system allows all mobile users to be reached, including those without “cellular” connectivity but who are connected to the internet via Wi-Fi. In subsequent work, they proposed a way to manage active sessions between users on the same MANET to reduce save mobile resource demands and preclude data loss or misuse. In a third paper, they brought the technology together to introduce a novel system that provides healthcare services to people who are involved in an emergency and are out of reach of home or office.

Now, they have extended this work to extend what might be possible to include wearable sensors, approaches to capturing the time needed to connect those involved in an emergency with those who might assist and so optimize the communication channels, and finally they have improved security.

In trials of the application, the team found that the amount of time needed to find a medical professional and establish communication was between 4 (via the internet) and 25 seconds (text messaging, short message service, SMS), depending on the particular communication method used. In other words, negligible time is added to the process, but the new connectivity could improve the chance of a positive outcome.

Critically, the system augments the conventional emergency services by locating professionals in the vicinity of an emergency and notifying them of what is happening and allowing them to respond appropriately and in a much timelier manner.

“Our future work will develop an algorithm for better management of registered professionals’ activity to achieve fair and efficient outcome, including when they start/end dealing with emergency cases and how often they provide emergency support,” the team concludes. They also plan to extend the options available with wearable smart sensors for people with particular medical needs who might find themselves in an emergency situation.

Alshareef, H. and Grigoras, D. (2018) ‘Swift personal emergency help facilitated by the mobile cloud’, Int. J. High Performance Computing and Networking, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp.1–12.

Research pick: Bayesian malaria classification - "A framework for predicting malaria using naïve Bayes classifier"

A type of statistics first developed in the 19th Century could help improve our understanding of the spread of malaria, which very much remains a lethal infection in this century.

Researchers from Nigeria have employed a naïve Bayes as a probability classifier to help them predict whether or not new patients arriving with symptoms first actually have the parasitic disease and if they do what level of severity of infection and symptoms they are suffering. Such classification could help prioritise those patients who need urgent treatment.

The “framework” developed by the team has now been tested successfully on a sample dataset of some 700 records from a hospital in Yola, in Nigeria’s Adamawa State.

Aliyu, A., Prasad, R. and Fonkam, M. (2018) ‘A framework for predicting malaria using naïve Bayes classifier’, Int. J. Telemedicine and Clinical Practices, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp.78–93.

New Editor for International Journal of Computational Materials Science and Surface Engineering

Prof. Fei Yin from the Wuhan University of Technology in China has been appointed to take over editorship of the International Journal of Computational Materials Science and Surface Engineering.

Research pick: Lean healthcare - "A comparative analysis of lean implementations in NHS England hospitals"

A “lean” business approach to healthcare could reducing patient times, allow staff to be employed more effectively, improve the quality of healthcare provision, decrease waste and lower costs. However, three case studies carried out in the UK’s National Health Service suggests that there are still significant barriers to the adoption of “lean” practices that aim to streamlines processes and interactions and operate on an as-needed basis in terms of the provision of supplies and services. The main barrier for almost nine out of every ten NHS staff interviewed was one of terminology and understanding the fundamental concepts of “lean”. Leadership and better communication of the paradigm are needed if the rewards of implementing a lean approach are to be wrought.

Deara, A., Deara, M., Bamber, C. and Elezi, E. (2018) ‘A comparative analysis of lean implementations in NHS England hospitals’, Int. J. Lean Enterprise Research, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp.218–239.

Special issue published: "Enterprise Network Management Technologies and Tools for E-Commerce, Mobile Commerce and Social Commerce Frameworks"

International Journal of Enterprise Network Management 9(3/4) 2018

• Entropy a new measure to gauge search engine optimisation
• Impact of talent management practices on employee retention - an empirical study in select IT companies with special reference to Chennai
• Classification approach to avoid link failures in wireless sensor networks in mobile virtual communities and teleworking
• Wireless system for flight safety industry
• SaaS multitenant performance testing over social networks
• An anomaly-based network intrusion detection system using ensemble clustering
• Power efficient digital circuits for ECG front end data acquisition mobile system
• Three phase optimisation for qualified and secured VMs for resource allocation
• Determinants of smartwatch adoption among IT professionals - an extended UTAUT2 model for smartwatch enterprise
• An efficient protocol for power consumption in wireless enterprise ad hoc virtual community network with Triso framework
• A framework for antecedents of trust in social commerce
• Authentication as a service in cloud from a fuzzy perspective
• An empirical study on customer adoption of mobile payment application in India
• Ontology-based effective information retrieval from the web using concept aware user profile construction
• The effects of brand image in purchasing of online marketing among university students
• Multisite aggregate production and distribution planning: a review
• Stress of new age entrepreneurs and its implications of affecting heart-alerting-heart using MIOT
• An automatic construction of domain ontology to analyse competence prerequisites of jobs
• Determinants of online consumer behaviour towards e-tailing in India

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Quality Engineering and Technology

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Quality Engineering and Technology are now available here for free:

• Quality Insights: Impact of cognitive load on the manufacturing cost of quality
• Identifying factors for evaluating software project proposals
• Designing of CUSUM chart with transformed Rayleigh distributed data
• Multivariate Bayesian control chart based on economic and economic-statistical design using Monte Carlo method and ABC algorithm
• Decreasing the effect of measurement errors on detecting and diagnosing performance of MAX-EWMAMS control chart in Phase II
• Visualising the cost of quality investment using equity breakeven point
• Multivariate exponentially weighted moving sample covariance control chart for monitoring covariance matrix
• Economic and economic statistical designs of X control charts under Burr XII shock model

Research pick: Work-life balance - "An empirical research on quality of work-life – an employee perspective"

Dramatic advances in technology and the intensification of global competition in the business world have disrupted considerably the work-life balance of many people the world over, where prior to the advent of smartphones and “always-on” connectivity, home time was to some extent personal and private, but today work impinges increasingly in that environment through those devices. Moreover, the global nature of business now means that timezones are irrelevant and employees are often expected to be accessible and available 24/7 in many realms of work, particularly those in the employ of multinational companies with worldwide dominance. Researchers in India have studied this imbalance and offer new suggestions as to how employers can compromise in terms of the company’s demands and the needs of the individual members of staff.

Swarochi, G., Seema, A. and Sujatha, S. (2018) ‘An empirical research on quality of work-life – an employee perspective’, Int. J. Management Development, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp.34–80.