Improving students’ higher order thinking skills in learning health systems using mobile-based instructional approach

Aims Learning health systems are healthcare systems in which awareness formation processes are inserted into daily practice to provide constant development in care. Many students have difficulty completing the health systems courses due to a lack of Higher-Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). Therefore, this study aims to improve students’ HOTS using a mobile-based instructional approach. Materials & Methods The enhanced HOTS is measured using indicators of critical and creative thinking processes known as Bloom’s taxonomy concept. Furthermore, this is experimental research with a pre-test-post-test random control group pattern and ADDIE technique to develop the mobile-based instructional Approach. The study involved 120 students who were evenly divided into the experimental class and the control class. Respondents were selected from 650 SMK students in Central Java using the random cluster sampling method. Findings Based on the results, this is evidenced by the ability to answer challenging questions associated with critical and creative reasons. Conclusion Therefore, using a mobile-based instructional Approach supports independent learning

Bio-inspired optimization in integrated river basin management

Water resources worldwide are facing severe challenges in terms of quality and quantity. It is essential to conserve, manage, and optimize water resources and their quality through integrated water resources management (IWRM). IWRM is an interdisciplinary field that works on multiple levels to maximize the socio-economic and ecological benefits of water resources. Since this is directly influenced by the river’s ecological health, the point of interest should start at the basin-level. The main objective of this study is to evaluate the application of bio-inspired optimization techniques in integrated river basin management (IRBM). This study demonstrates the application of versatile, flexible and yet simple metaheuristic bio-inspired algorithms in IRBM. In a novel approach, bio-inspired optimization algorithms Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) are used to spatially distribute mitigation measures within a basin to reduce long-term annual mean total nitrogen (TN) concentration at the outlet of the basin. The Upper Fuhse river basin developed in the hydrological model, Hydrological Predictions for the Environment (HYPE), is used as a case study. ACO and PSO are coupled with the HYPE model to distribute a set of measures and compute the resulting TN reduction. The algorithms spatially distribute nine crop and subbasin-level mitigation measures under four categories. Both algorithms can successfully yield a discrete combination of measures to reduce long-term annual mean TN concentration. They achieved an 18.65% reduction, and their performance was on par with each other. This study has established the applicability of these bio-inspired optimization algorithms in successfully distributing the TN mitigation measures within the river basin. Stakeholder involvement is a crucial aspect of IRBM. It ensures that researchers and policymakers are aware of the ground reality through large amounts of information collected from the stakeholder. Including stakeholders in policy planning and decision-making legitimizes the decisions and eases their implementation. Therefore, a socio-hydrological framework is developed and tested in the Larqui river basin, Chile, based on a field survey to explore the conditions under which the farmers would implement or extend the width of vegetative filter strips (VFS) to prevent soil erosion. The framework consists of a behavioral, social model (extended Theory of Planned Behavior, TPB) and an agent-based model (developed in NetLogo) coupled with the results from the vegetative filter model (Vegetative Filter Strip Modeling System, VFSMOD-W). The results showed that the ABM corroborates with the survey results and the farmers are willing to extend the width of VFS as long as their utility stays positive. This framework can be used to develop tailor-made policies for river basins based on the conditions of the river basins and the stakeholders' requirements to motivate them to adopt sustainable practices. It is vital to assess whether the proposed management plans achieve the expected results for the river basin and if the stakeholders will accept and implement them. The assessment via simulation tools ensures effective implementation and realization of the target stipulated by the decision-makers. In this regard, this dissertation introduces the application of bio-inspired optimization techniques in the field of IRBM. The successful discrete combinatorial optimization in terms of the spatial distribution of mitigation measures by ACO and PSO and the novel socio-hydrological framework using ABM prove the forte and diverse applicability of bio-inspired optimization algorithms

A computer vision system for the automatic classification of five varieties of tree leaf images

Producción CientíficaA computer vision system for automatic recognition and classification of five varieties of plant leaves under controlled laboratory imaging conditions, comprising: 1–Cydonia oblonga (quince), 2–Eucalyptus camaldulensis dehn (river red gum), 3–Malus pumila (apple), 4–Pistacia atlantica (mt. Atlas mastic tree) and 5–Prunus armeniaca (apricot), is proposed. 516 tree leaves images were taken and 285 features computed from each object including shape features, color features, texture features based on the gray level co-occurrence matrix, texture descriptors based on histogram and moment invariants. Seven discriminant features were selected and input for classification purposes using three classifiers: hybrid artificial neural network–ant bee colony (ANN–ABC), hybrid artificial neural network–biogeography based optimization (ANN–BBO) and Fisher linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Mean correct classification rates (CCR), resulted in 94.04%, 89.23%, and 93.99%, for hybrid ANN–ABC; hybrid ANN–BBO; and LDA classifiers, respectively. Best classifier mean area under curve (AUC), mean sensitivity, and mean specificity, were computed for the five tree varieties under study, resulting in: 1–Cydonia oblonga (quince) 0.991 (ANN–ABC), 95.89% (ANN–ABC), 95.91% (ANN–ABC); 2–Eucalyptus camaldulensis dehn (river red gum) 1.00 (LDA), 100% (LDA), 100% (LDA); 3–Malus pumila (apple) 0.996 (LDA), 96.63% (LDA), 94.99% (LDA); 4–Pistacia atlantica (mt. Atlas mastic tree) 0.979 (LDA), 91.71% (LDA), 82.57% (LDA); and 5–Prunus armeniaca (apricot) 0.994 (LDA), 88.67% (LDA), 94.65% (LDA), respectively.Unión Europea (project 585596-EPP-1-2017-1-DE-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP

A Computer Vision System for the Automatic Classification of Five Varieties of Tree Leaf Images

Abstract A computer vision system for automatic recognition and classification of five varieties of plant leaves under controlled laboratory imaging conditions, comprising: 1–Cydonia oblonga (quince), 2–Eucalyptus camaldulensis dehn (river red gum), 3–Malus pumila (apple), 4–Pistacia atlantica (mt. Atlas mastic tree) and 5–Prunus armeniaca (apricot), is proposed. 516 tree leaves images were taken and 285 features computed from each object including shape features, color features, texture features based on the gray level co-occurrence matrix, texture descriptors based on histogram and moment invariants. Seven discriminant features were selected and input for classification purposes using three classifiers: hybrid artificial neural network–ant bee colony (ANN–ABC), hybrid artificial neural network–biogeography based optimization (ANN–BBO) and Fisher linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Mean correct classification rates (CCR), resulted in 94.04%, 89.23%, and 93.99%, for hybrid ANN–ABC; hybrid ANN–BBO; and LDA classifiers, respectively. Best classifier mean area under curve (AUC), mean sensitivity, and mean specificity, were computed for the five tree varieties under study, resulting in: 1–Cydonia oblonga (quince) 0.991 (ANN–ABC), 95.89% (ANN–ABC), 95.91% (ANN–ABC); 2–Eucalyptus camaldulensis dehn (river red gum) 1.00 (LDA), 100% (LDA), 100% (LDA); 3–Malus pumila (apple) 0.996 (LDA), 96.63% (LDA), 94.99% (LDA); 4–Pistacia atlantica (mt. Atlas mastic tree) 0.979 (LDA), 91.71% (LDA), 82.57% (LDA); and 5–Prunus armeniaca (apricot) 0.994 (LDA), 88.67% (LDA), 94.65% (LDA), respectively.This research was funded in part by the European Union (EU) under the Erasmus+ project entitled “Fostering Internationalization in Agricultural Engineering in Iran and Russia” [FARmER] with grant number 585596-EPP-1-2017-1-DE-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP

IoT in smart communities, technologies and applications.

Internet of Things is a system that integrates different devices and technologies, removing the necessity of human intervention. This enables the capacity of having smart (or smarter) cities around the world. By hosting different technologies and allowing interactions between them, the internet of things has spearheaded the development of smart city systems for sustainable living, increased comfort and productivity for citizens. The Internet of Things (IoT) for Smart Cities has many different domains and draws upon various underlying systems for its operation, in this work, we provide a holistic coverage of the Internet of Things in Smart Cities by discussing the fundamental components that make up the IoT Smart City landscape, the technologies that enable these domains to exist, the most prevalent practices and techniques which are used in these domains as well as the challenges that deployment of IoT systems for smart cities encounter and which need to be addressed for ubiquitous use of smart city applications. It also presents a coverage of optimization methods and applications from a smart city perspective enabled by the Internet of Things. Towards this end, a mapping is provided for the most encountered applications of computational optimization within IoT smart cities for five popular optimization methods, ant colony optimization, genetic algorithm, particle swarm optimization, artificial bee colony optimization and differential evolution. For each application identified, the algorithms used, objectives considered, the nature of the formulation and constraints taken in to account have been specified and discussed. Lastly, the data setup used by each covered work is also mentioned and directions for future work have been identified. Within the smart health domain of IoT smart cities, human activity recognition has been a key study topic in the development of cyber physical systems and assisted living applications. In particular, inertial sensor based systems have become increasingly popular because they do not restrict users’ movement and are also relatively simple to implement compared to other approaches. Fall detection is one of the most important tasks in human activity recognition. With an increasingly aging world population and an inclination by the elderly to live alone, the need to incorporate dependable fall detection schemes in smart devices such as phones, watches has gained momentum. Therefore, differentiating between falls and activities of daily living (ADLs) has been the focus of researchers in recent years with very good results. However, one aspect within fall detection that has not been investigated much is direction and severity aware fall detection. Since a fall detection system aims to detect falls in people and notify medical personnel, it could be of added value to health professionals tending to a patient suffering from a fall to know the nature of the accident. In this regard, as a case study for smart health, four different experiments have been conducted for the task of fall detection with direction and severity consideration on two publicly available datasets. These four experiments not only tackle the problem on an increasingly complicated level (the first one considers a fall only scenario and the other two a combined activity of daily living and fall scenario) but also present methodologies which outperform the state of the art techniques as discussed. Lastly, future recommendations have also been provided for researchers

Using new artificial bee colony as probabilistic neural network for breast cancer data classification

Purpose – Breast cancer is an important medical disorder, which is not a single disease but a cluster more than 200 different serious medical complications. Design/methodology/approach – The new artificial bee colony (ABC) implementation has been applied to probabilistic neural network (PNN) for training and testing purpose to classify the breast cancer data set. Findings – The new ABC algorithm along with PNN has been successfully applied to breast cancers data set for prediction purpose with minimum iteration consuming. Originality/value – The new implementation of ABC along PNN can be easily applied to times series problems for accurate prediction or classification

An Empirical Model for Thyroid Disease Classification using Evolutionary Multivariate Bayseian Prediction Method

Thyroid diseases are widespread worldwide. In India too, there is a significant problems caused due to thyroid diseases. Various research studies estimates that about 42 million people in India suffer from thyroid diseases [4]. There are a number of possible thyroid diseases and disorders, including thyroiditis and thyroid cancer. This paper focuses on the classification of two of the most common thyroid disorders are hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism among the public. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) states that about 1% of Americans suffer from Hyperthyroidism and about 5% suffer from Hypothyroidism. From the global perspective also the classification of thyroid plays a significant role. The conditions for the diagnosis of the disease are closely linked, they have several important differences that affect diagnosis and treatment. The data for this research work is collected from the UCI repository which undergoes preprocessing. The preprocessed data is multivariate in nature. Curse of Dimensionality is followed so that the available 21 attributes is optimized to 10 attributes using Hybrid Differential Evolution Kernel Based Navie Based algorithm. The subset of data is now supplied to Kernel Based NaEF;ve Bayes classifier algorithm in order to check for the fitness