Improvement of Fuzzy Image Contrast Enhancement Using Simulated Ergodic Fuzzy Markov Chains

This paper presents a novel fuzzy enhancement technique using simulated ergodic fuzzy Markov chains for low contrast brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The fuzzy image contrast enhancement is proposed by weighted fuzzy expected value. The membership values are then modified to enhance the image using ergodic fuzzy Markov chains. The qualitative performance of the proposed method is compared to another method in which ergodic fuzzy Markov chains are not considered. The proposed method produces better quality image

(R2025) Improving the LDA Linear Discriminant Analysis Method by Eliminating Redundant Variables for the Diagnosis of COVID-19 Patients

Nowadays, with the increase in data production speed, the process of data analysis has faced many problems because this big data is often accompanied by plug-in data and redundant data. Therefore, the use of dimensional methods in the pre-data analysis stage is necessary. In data mining, dimensional reduction is one of the most important steps in data pre-processing. Principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) are often used to reduce dimensions in data mining. The LDA method is a monitored and controlled method but the PCA is not controlled method. When the number of samples in classes is large and when training data is uniformly distributed, LDA works better. LDA is a traditional statistical method for classification. In this research, we improve the LDA method by identifying and removing redundant variables. Then we use this improved LDA method to classify the diagnosis data of Covid-19 patients

Three classifications on branching processes and their behavior for finding the solution of nonlinear integral equations

In this paper, we consider the Monte Carlo method for finding the solution of nonlinear integral equations at a fixed point xo‐ In this method, simulated Galton‐Watson branching process is employed for solving the proposed integral equation. The main goal of this paper is to compare the behavior of three classifications of branching process based on the mean progeny, i.e. the subcritical, critical and supercritical process. First published online: 09 Jun 201

The role of professors and students in developing and revising the universities curriculum in Afghanistan

The main aim of this research is the professors and students involvement in the main decision-making of developing and revising the Afghanistan university curriculum? The researcher has used the latest studies related to this issue in other countries for the field research, a mixed-method (quantitative and qualitative), were used. The results of previous studies in other countries indicate that the role of professors and students in Developing or revising the university curriculum are highly significant, the present study indicates that despite the efforts of the Afghan Ministry of Higher Education in revising the curriculum, there are still significant issues. In achieving an ideal curriculum, otherwise, the curriculum would face serious challenges

Required faculty competencies for teaching in higher education institutes in technology era

Background and Objectives: Third Mellenium World is a world that is faced with rapid scientific, cultural, and technological change. Increasing access to education services at higher education levels has resulted in admission of students with personal differences to higher education institutes. The change in the higher education context is associated with a change in the roles and responsibilities of faculty members. Therefore, in order to fulfill their duties and take their responsibilities, it is necessary for faculty members to deploy their understanding, knowledge, and skills in different areas and improve them in accordance with the changes that occur in the society and deploy the teaching-learning approaches to take these differences into consideration. This study is aimed at identifying the qualifications required for becoming a faculty member at higher education institutes on the basis of their roles and responsibilities. Materials: This study is a Basic Qualitative research with a pragmatic and epistemological, interpretive / constructivist approach.  First, the documents related to the teaching qualifications in higher education were collected. Then, in order to understand the views and experiences of the Iranian universities’ faculty members, semi-structured in-depth interviews with 14 faculty members were conducted. The documents were  described  in a qualitative Metasynthesis approach in terms of concepts and themes in a deductive manner within the research context and on the basis of a theoretical framework, and, then,  they were analyzed along with the concepts and themes identified in the interviews in an interpretive (deductive and inductive) manner  and in the last stage, the concepts and themes were inductively integrated and interpreted and line-by-line coding in MAXQDA 10 was used to analyze the documents and interviews. Findings: In this study, 349 semantic units (open codes), 32 categories and 9 themes (competencies) were extracted which are as follows: Competencies related to: futurology (futurism, risk-taking, entreprenuership), professional ethics  ( no abuse of powere, observing students’  boundary, attending with readiness, assuming responsibility for educating the community and observing professionalism), personal competencies (personal identity, ethics and personal behavior, being up-to-date, problem-solving ability and thinking skills), interpersonal-social competencies (cultural identity, effective communication skills, role modeling, patnership and cooperation), organizational competencies (organizational identity, familiarity with objectives and missions of the organization, familiarity with roles including  offering services competencies, research competenceies, education competencies, management competencies (self-management, leadership, occupational management, resource management, teaching-learning management, preparation and learning environment management, research management, education-research guidance,  planning and organization), practical competencies ( the ability to connect science and practice, effectiveness), writing competencies (knowledge of language and academic writing), and competencies related to acceptability in the communities of practice (scientific community approval. Conclusion: Analysis of the findings showed differences between competencies identified among faculty members in Iran and outside Iran. 10 out of 14 interviewees pointed out abuse of others’ scientific abilities and abuse of power by some faculty members in their own professional condition which probably indicates the need to emphasize this principle in the Iranian higher education society whereas foreign documents mostly emphasized technology.  Not mentioning this issue in the interviews by most professors may indicate that some faculty members in Iran are not still amiliar with this concept. The competencies identified in this research can be used to make informed decisions and to determine the required content for the development programs of the candidates intending to cooperate with the higher education institutes as faculty member. ===================================================================================== COPYRIGHTS©2021 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers. ====================================================================================

Presenting a comparative model of stock investment portfolio optimization based on Markowitz model

Investment is the selection of assets to hold and earn more pro t for greater prosperity in the future. The selection of a portfolio based on the theory of constraint is classical data covering analysis evaluation and ranking Sample function. The in vestment process is related to how investors act in deciding on the types of tradable securities to invest in and the amount and timing. Various methods have been proposed for the investment process, but the lack of rapid computational methods for determining investment policies in securities analysis makes performance appraisal a long term challenge. An approach to the investment process consists of two parts. Major is securities analysis and portfolio management. Securities analysis involvesestimating the bene ts of each investment, while portfolio management involves analyzing the composition of investments and managing and maintaining a set of investments. Classical data envelopment analysis (DEA) models are recognized as accurate for rating and measuring efficient sample performance. Unluckily, this perspective often brings us to get overwhelmed when it's time to start a project. When it comes to limiting theory, the problem of efficient sample selection using a DEA models to test the performance of the PE portfolio is a real discontinuous boundary and concave has not been successful since 2011. In order to solve this problem, we recommend a DEA method divided into business units based on the Markowitz model. A search algorithm is used to introduce to business units and prove their validity. In any business unit, the boundary is continuous and concave. Therefore, DEA models could be applied as PE evaluation. To this end, 25 companies from the companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange for the period 1394 to 1399 were selected as the sample size of statistics in data analysis. To analyzethe data, after classi cation and calculations were analysed by MATLAB software, the simulation results show that performance evaluation based on constraint theory based on DEA approach and the Markowitz model presented in this paper is efficient and feasible in evaluating the portfolio of constraint theory

Identification of strengths, defects, opportunities and threats in MOOC-based curricula in Iran’s higher education system

Background and Objective:Although the fields of teaching and learning have changed very little compared to other categories more than two thousand years ago, today, with the help of information technology, it has undergone rapid changes. In recent years, virtual education has emerged as one of the most important applications of new information and communication technologies in the world and extensive activities have begun in this direction. Virtual education has created a new paradigm and has enabled learning in any field, for any person, at any time and in any place. Among the various forms of e-learning, there has been a significant expansion of free online courses, MOOCs in recent years. The purpose of this study is to delineate the strengths, defects, opportunities and threats in MOOC-based curricula. This research is applied and used a qualitative method.   Methods: The statistical population of the qualitative section includes experts who have been engaged in the process of providing educational services during MOOC-based educational courses. From among this population, 14 individuals have been chosen as the statistical sample through purposive sampling. The data have been gathered through semi-structured interviews.   Findings: The findings show that the most significant strengths include: promotion of access to curricula, learner-orientation, the possibility of realization in learning society, enjoying high quality teaching and promotion of dynamism. Among the most important defects are the possibility of neglecting real situations in education, the possibility of lack of proper educational organization, the possibility of an increase in the financial burden of the curriculum, the possibility of exclusivity in curriculum development, the possibility of not being able to evaluate high order thinking skills, the possibility of taking teacher freedom away, the possibility of lack of organization in evaluation, the possibility of arising problems in precise verification of the evaluated person. The most significant opportunities are supporting the extension of educational justice, the possibility of investment, supporting up-to-date knowledge, extending international communication in higher education curriculum development, the possibility of revising university curricula, facilitating the promotion of evaluation methods efficiency and making the education more applicatory. The most prominent threats are disruption in university functions, making instructors’ professions questionable, lack of educational purposiveness, incompetency of curriculum objectives, opposition of values and superficiality of curriculum objectives, instrumental exploitation of MOOCs, incompatibility between content and the audience’s needs, evaluations becoming quantitative, disregarding the market requirements in the process of evaluation and doubtfulness and pessimism towards MOOCs. Conclusions: Based on the results of the present study, considering the contextual conditions and planning in the field of strengthening and its optimal preparation, as conditions affecting all the components and factors involved in the design of MOOCs in higher education; universities and higher education institutions should invest in the development of a culture that seeks to discover, invent, innovate, and create curricula based on MOOCs in order to establish a knowledge-based structure; expand the scope of MOOC-based curricula in academic settings through teamwork question and answer sessions between students and faculty, group discussions, and the formation of workshops and seminars in collaboration with other institutions and higher education centers.   ===================================================================================== COPYRIGHTS  ©2019 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers.  ====================================================================================

Developing a Mooc-based curriculum model for higher education based on grounded theory: Case Study; Iranian Higher Education

Background and Objective: Not only has MOOC been able to reach a valuable place in the world of teaching and learning as an online educational tool, but it has also been recognized as a wave of thought that has attracted the attention of many writers and researchers. However, this issue is questionable in Iran because not only is MOOC not used as a dominant educational tool, but so far no research has been done on this issue. But in order to establish the effectiveness of this system in universities and educational centers, a comprehensive view of its situation in other countries must be obtained. Given the benefits as well as the challenges and threats that MOOCs may have for the country's higher education, foresight and adopting measures and strategies in the field of proper management in the use of MOOCs and their local production is very basic. Also, due to the need for adaptation of universities and educational institutions in Iran to different learning methods and online and new educational plans to ensure quality in providing services to users and adaptation to technological spaces that grow and develop online, conducting academic research on developments Higher education is very vital. The purpose of this study was developing a conceptual model for Mooc-based curriculum in higher education. Methods: This was a qualitative study and conducted based on grounded theory approach. The statistical population includes educational technology and higher education technology experts. Using the purposeful sampling approach and interviewing 14 people, theoretical saturation was achieved in the categories. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews. The reliability and validity in qualitative part of the research was through reviewing by experts who did not participate in the study. Findings: The important issue of current study is the higher education curriculum which is developed in four aspects of goal, content, teaching-learning methods and evaluation analysis and according to causal conditions, the underlying conditions and mediation terms of terms of developing strategies and based on that the final model is presented. Conclusion: The production of MOOCs in Iran is done by considering the contextual conditions and requirements of the environment, considering the philosophy of this matter, and adopting strategies in order to realize the MOOC-based curriculum model, which, if done correctly its effective consequences can be seen. In the present study, it was revealed that despite the weaknesses and challenges associated with MOOCs, the view of experts is positive about the existence of a MOOC-based curriculum. This means that the MOOC-based curriculum model can be used in higher education. Higher education, by taking appropriate measures in line with these challenges, can provide a suitable platform for this innovation in the field of teaching-learning. Also, due to the multicultural nature of Iranian society and the open space of discourse that exists in the MOOCs, it can be used for communication between cultures and subcultures in Iran considering these subcultures in the field of education.   ===================================================================================== COPYRIGHTS  ©2019 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers.  ====================================================================================

A Remedy to the Misery of Language Learning Efficacy: Flipped Classroom

Choosing the right method for teaching is an important step in learning. Corporate trainers have always been interested in finding new ways to achieve effective learning. The present study seeks to improve language learning by measuring, comparing and prioritizing the effectiveness of three methods: traditional, blended and flipped method. In terms of purpose and nature, the present study was experimental and with respect to method it was quasi-experimental including a pre-test and a post-test designed with an equivalent control group. The participants consisted of 66 employees in an Iranian organization who were required to attend English language courses. The participants were sampled in accordance with training needs analysis results in the organization. Moreover, data were analyzed by means of descriptive and inferential statistics including mean analysis, standard deviation, F-way ANOVA, and Scheffe post hoc test using SPSS software version 25. The findings of the study indicate a significant difference between the three groups and the ranking of methods in terms of learning effectiveness from the highest to the lowest level includes; 1)Flipped 2) Blended 3) Traditional, respectively. The results showed that in spite of the high effectiveness of the flipped classroom to the other methods, some cultural differences such as family preference, feasts,  training customs and also resistance to new methods of learning hindered the allocation of sufficient time for practicing the lesson at home. In addition, such hindrances partially trace back to ancient Iranian culture. In conclusion, some suggestions were proposed to modify technology acceptance and other related weaknesses