Modeling a Secured Digital Image Encryption Scheme Using a Three Moduli Set

This paper proposes a new digital image coding scheme that uses a three moduli set with a common factor. The proposed scheme is specific to a particular three moduli set {2n+2, 2n+1,2n}. The design of the scheme is based on the residue to binary converter which achieves in terms of area and critical path delay as compared to the state of the art. This scheme offers high-speed processing because in the reverse converter the computation of the multiplicative inverse is eliminated, and it achieves low-power VLSI implementation for image processing such as digital image transform and digital image filtering

Antenatal care attendance and low birth weight of institutional births in sub-Saharan Africa.

BACKGROUND: Low birth weight (LBW) remains a major health problem that affects newborns worldwide. However, there has been growing evidence that antenatal care (ANC) is associated with LBW. Yet, there is a dearth of research investigating the association between ANC attendance and LBW in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This study examined the association between the number of ANC visits and LBW using data from 10 sub-Saharan African countries. METHODS: This study pooled data from the recent Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) of 10 sub-Saharan African countries conducted from 2018 to 2020. A total of 33,585 women aged 15-49 who had live births in the five years preceding the survey were included in this study. Bivariable and multivariable multilevel regression models were fitted to show the association between the number of ANC visits and LBW. Crude odds ratio (cOR) and adjusted odds ratio (aOR) at 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used in presenting the results of the regression analysis. RESULTS: The pooled prevalence of LBW was 5.7%. The highest prevalence of LBW was recorded in Gambia (7.2%) with the lowest found in Sierra Leone (2.9%). In terms of eight or more ANC visits, the overall prevalence was 14.5%. Nigeria had the highest prevalence of eight or more ANC visits (43.5%) with the lowest in Rwanda (0.2%). We found a statistically significant association between the number of ANC visits and LBW. Mothers who had eight or more ANC visits were less likely to have LBW children compared to mothers who had less than eight ANC visits [cOR = 0.66; CI = 0.55 - 0.79] and this persisted after controlling for the covariates [aOR = 0.68; CI = 0.56 - 0.82]. Covariates associated with LBW were maternal age, marital status, level of education, age of child, and wealth index. CONCLUSION: This study has shown a statistically significant association between ANC and LBW in SSA, with women who had eight or more ANC visits being at lower risks of giving birth to children with LBW. We found that eight or more ANC attendance was a protective factor against LBW in SSA. Therefore, it is important for sub-Saharan African countries with low prevalence of eight or more ANC attendance and high LBW prevalence to channel their efforts towards promoting more ANC attendance

Are non-market benefits of soybean production significant? : An extended economic analysis of smallholder soybean farming in Upper West region of northern Ghana

Background: Traditional cost–benefit analysis of soybean production tends to largely focus on financial benefits to farmers, and less so on non-market co-benefits in sustaining smallholder farming systems. Relying solely on the standard financial analysis undermines the actual benefit of soybean production, which often results in ineffectual policy designs. An economic analysis that incorporates key non-pecuniary co-benefits of soybean production provide vital insight that contributes to improving productivity and overall economic well-being of farmers. Cross-sectional data were collected from 271 farmers to estimate the overall economic benefit of soybean that captures both market and non-market attributes in three major producing districts (Sissala-West, Wa-East, and Dafiama-Busie-Issa (DBI)) of Ghana. Results: When non-market co-benefits were omitted, soybean production was not profitable (-Gh¢103.10/ha or -US$22.91) in DBI while Sissala-West and Wa-East had modest profit margins. However, the financial analysis changed dramatically when an average non-market value of Gh¢345.69 (US$76.82) was incorporated in the analysis. The soybean system was, therefore, financially viable for all the districts when the non-market attributes of the crop were considered. Conclusions: The findings demonstrate the importance of the non-pecuniary benefits of soybean in smallholder farming systems for policy decision-making. For instance, farmers’ motivation for soybean production is closely linked to those ancillary benefits like the biological nitrogen fixed in the soil for cultivation of other crops. Similarly, crop administrators and policy makers’ support for conservation agriculture and green environment is tied to these non-market co-benefits. © 2020, The Author(s)

From technology adoption to understanding innovation: lessons from plantain innovation systems in four countries

Plantain is an important staple food and cash crop in Latin America and West Africa with growing market demand. In recent decades, new production technologies and varieties have become available and are being tested in major producing countries. The purpose of the project ‘Intensification of plantain production in Latin America and West Africa” which results are presented on this poster was 1) to identify determinants for successful technological change for intensification in plantain production and bottlenecks in the socio-economic and market context, and innovation and seed systems in Latin America and 2) analyze how these elements are relevant under conditions in West Africa, so as to contribute to intensification and off-season plantain production for West African smallholders

Analyzing the performances of squash functions in capsnets on complex images

AbstractClassical Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have been the benchmark for most object classification and face recognition tasks despite their major shortcomings, including the inability to capture spatial co-location and the preference for invariance over equivariance. In order to overcome CNN’s shortcomings, CapsNets’ hierarchical routing layered architecture was developed. The capsule replaces average or maximum pooling techniques used in CNNs with dynamic routing between lower level and higher level neural units. It also introduces regularization mechanisms for dealing with equivariance properties in reconstruction, improving hierarchical data representation and improving hierarchical data representation. Since capsules can overcome existing limitations, they can serve as potential benchmarks for detecting, segmenting, and reconstructing objects. As a result of analyzing the fundamental MNIST handwritten digit dataset, CapsNets demonstrated state-of-the-art results. Through the use of two fundamental datasets, MNIST and CIFAR-10, we investigated a number of squash functions in order to further enhance this distinction. When compared to Sabour and Edgar’s models, the optimized squash function performs marginally better and presents fewer test errors. In comparison to both squash functions, the optimized squash function converges faster as it is more efficient, scalable, and similar and can be trained on any neural network