A Cognitive Model for Developing University Students' Communication Skills

This paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of a learning model in developing students' communication skills and reducing their communication apprehension level. This model consists of three main elements, each of which has sub-elements. It takes the students through three different phases starting with raising awareness and reaching autonomy. A training program and an assessment battery were developed and administered. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to analyze data. There were significant differences among the pre, post, and follow-up measurements. The pedagogical implications of the study have been discussed.

A Robust and Secure Video Steganography Method in DWT-DCT Domains Based on Multiple Object Tracking and ECC

Over the past few decades, the art of secretly embedding and communicating digital data has gained enormous attention because of the technological development in both digital contents and communication. The imperceptibility, hiding capacity, and robustness against attacks are three main requirements that any video steganography method should take into consideration. In this paper, a robust and secure video steganographic algorithm in discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and discrete cosine transform (DCT) domains based on the multiple object tracking (MOT) algorithm and error correcting codes is proposed. The secret message is preprocessed by applying both Hamming and Bose, Chaudhuri, and Hocquenghem codes for encoding the secret data. First, motion-based MOT algorithm is implemented on host videos to distinguish the regions of interest in the moving objects. Then, the data hiding process is performed by concealing the secret message into the DWT and DCT coefficients of all motion regions in the video depending on foreground masks. Our experimental results illustrate that the suggested algorithm not only improves the embedding capacity and imperceptibility but also enhances its security and robustness by encoding the secret message and withstanding against various attacks

Extracting Synonyms from Bilingual Dictionaries

We present our progress in developing a novel algorithm to extract synonyms from bilingual dictionaries. Identification and usage of synonyms play a significant role in improving the performance of information access applications. The idea is to construct a translation graph from translation pairs, then to extract and consolidate cyclic paths to form bilingual sets of synonyms. The initial evaluation of this algorithm illustrates promising results in extracting Arabic-English bilingual synonyms. In the evaluation, we first converted the synsets in the Arabic WordNet into translation pairs (i.e., losing word-sense memberships). Next, we applied our algorithm to rebuild these synsets. We compared the original and extracted synsets obtaining an F-Measure of 82.3% and 82.1% for Arabic and English synsets extraction, respectively.Comment: In Proceedings - 11th International Global Wordnet Conference (GWC2021). Global Wordnet Association (2021

A Simulation Model for Hierarchical Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks

One of the critical issues in wireless sensor network is power saving scheme as network should be considered to operate more efficiently. The sensor nodes are usually operated by a finite number of batteries and it should have a certain lifetime for gathering, processing, and transmitting information. Since some sensor nodes may fail due to lack of power, this consideration has led to give more interest about routing protocols. Depending on the network structure, a sensor network can be hierarchical or cluster-based hierarchical model, where the nodes will play different roles in the networks. We present three different types of routing protocols: LEACH, PEGASIS, and VGA, several simulations are conducted to analyze the performance of these protocols including the power consumption and overall network performance. On the average, VGA has the worst power consumption when the sensing range is limited, while VGA is the best when the sensing range is increased

Novel Steganography Over HTML Code Process

Different security strategies have been developed to protect the transfer of information between users. This has become especially important after the tremendous growth of internet use. Encryption techniques convert readable data into a ciphered form. Other techniques hide the message in another file, and some powerful techniques combine hiding and encryption concepts

A Dynamic Clustering Algorithm for Object Tracking and Localization in WSN

A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is an assemblage of cooperative sensor nodes acting together into an environment to monitor an event of interest. However, one of the most limiting factors is the energy constrain for each node; therefore, it is a trade-off is required for that factor in designing of a network, while reporting, tracking or visualizing an event to be considered. In this paper, two object tracking techniques used in Wireless Sensor Networks based on cluster algorithms have been combined together to perform many functions in the proposed algorithm. The benefit of using clusters algorithms can be count as the detection node in a cluster reports an event to the Cluster Head (CH) node according to a query, and then the CH sends all the collected information to the sink or the base station. This way reduces energy consuming and required communication bandwidth. Furthermore, the algorithm is highly scalable while it prolongs the life time of the network

Genetic and morphological identification of some crabs from the Gulf of Suez, Northern Red Sea, Egypt

AbstractMost crab species inhabiting the Red Sea have not been characterized morphologically and genetically. In the current work, five different crab species were collected from the northern part of the Egyptian Red Sea. They were morphologically identified through description of colors, dentations of the carapace and shapes of chelipeds and pereiopods. They were also genetically characterized by the partial sequencing of the barcode region in the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) gene, which is known to be hypervariable among different crab species. Morphological and genetic characterization identified the crab species as: Charybdis (Charybdis) hellerii (A. Milne-Edwards, 1867), Charybdis (Charybdis) natator (Herbst, 1794), Portunus (Portunus) pelagicus (Linnaeus, 1758), Liocarcinus corrugatus (Pennant, 1777), and Atergatis roseus (Rüppell, 1830). This is the first record of L. corrugatus in the Egyptian Red Sea, despite being previously recorded in the Indian and Atlantic Ocean as well as in the Mediterranean Sea. DNA barcoding with precise morphological identification was effective in characterizing the crab species collected from the Egyptian Red Sea water

Evaluating the Impact of the Influx of Syrian Refugees on Land Use/Land Cover Change in Irbid District, Northwestern Jordan

The refugee movement creates urban and environmental pressures at their destination locations. This pressure often presents in the form of Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) change. This study seeks to understand the impact of the Syrian refugees’ influence on changing the urban and agricultural land dynamics in Irbid district in northwestern Jordan from 1985 to 2021, including the period of the civil war in Syria, using Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) images for the years 1985 and 2004, and the Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) for the years 2013 and 2021. The Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform was used to conduct all image processing and perform calculations and classification analysis using the Random Forest (RF) approach. The study of the classified images compared LULC before and during the Syrian crisis using images from 1985, 2004, 2013, and 2021. The results show that the urban area increased. In parallel, agricultural land increased. During the Syrian refugee crisis, agriculture became a significant livelihood activity for Syrian refugees. In summary, the movement of the refugees to Irbid district caused an increased demand for land and housing, which accelerated the building and construction process