Developing effective students communication in engineering mathematics

The Malaysian workplace needs graduates with employability skills such as critical thinking, problem solving and ability to communicate. In 2006, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) has integrated these goals in undergraduate education but studies at UTM have indicated that the goals have not been translated into successful implementation. In this presentation, we will share how we had implemented an integrated approach which addressed students’ knowledge, thinking, problem solving and generic skills, in particular, communication. We had developed a framework which was used to guide our instructions in Engineering Mathematics I since 2009/2010 session, in Engineering Mathematics II since 2010/2011, and in Differential Equations since 2012/2013 session. The same strategies were implemented in Malaysia Japan International Institute of Technology (MJIIT, UTM KL) in Engineering Mathematics III for the 2011/2012 and 2013/2014 sessions

Bleeding classification of enhanced wireless capsule endoscopy images using deep convolutional neural network

This paper investigates the performance of a Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN) algorithm to identify bleeding areas of wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) images without known prior knowledge of bleeding and normal features of the images. In this study, a pre-processing technique has been proposed to improve the classification accuracy of WCE images into bleeding areas and normal areas by enhancing the WCE images. The proposed technique is applied to WCE images from six cases and divided into one training case and five test cases. To evaluate the effectiveness of the processes, the results were then compared between DCNN, SVM and Fuzzy, and also between DCNN with completely enhanced images and DCNN with normalized images. DCNN has shown to give a better result compared to SVM and Fuzzy logic; and the latter experiment has shown that the WCE images that have undergone the proposed enhancement technique gives better classification result compared to those images that did not go through the technique. The specificity, sensitivity and average are 0.8703, 0.8271 and 0.8907 respectively. In conclusion, DCNN has been proven to be able to successfully detecting bleeding areas from images without having any specific knowledge on imaging diagnosis or pathology

Pre-processing Technique for Wireless Capsule Endoscopy Image Enhancement

Wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) is used to examine human digestive tract in order to detect abnormal area. However, it has been a challenging task to detect abnormal area such as bleeding due to poor quality and dark images of WCE. In this paper, pre-processing technique is introduced to ease classification of the bleeding area. Anisotropic contrast diffusion method is employed in our pre-processing technique as a contrast enhancement of the images. There is a drawback to the method proposed B. Li in which the quality of WCE image is degraded when the number of iteration increases. To solve this problem, variance is employed in our proposed method. To further enhance WCE image, Discrete Cosine Transform is used with anisotropic contrast diffusion. Experimental results show that both proposed contrast enhancement algorithm and sharpening WCE image algorithm provide better performance compared with B. Li’s algorithm since SDME and EBCM value is stable whenever number of iterations increases, and sharpness measurement using gradient and PSNR are both improved by 31.5% and 20.3% respectively

Privacy issues and protection in secure data outsourcing

Utilizing database encryption to safeguard data in several conditions where access control is not sufficient is unavoidable. Database encryption offers an extra layer of security to traditional access control methods. It stops users that are unauthorized, such as hackers breaking into a system, and observing private data. Consequently, data is safe even when the database is stolen or attacked. Nevertheless, the process of data decryption and encryption causes degradation in the database performance. In conditions where the entire information is kept in an encrypted format, it is not possible to choose the database content any longer. The data must be first decrypted, and as such, the unwilling and forced tradeoff occurs between the function and the security. The suitable methods to improve the function are techniques that directly deal with the data that is encrypted without having to decrypt them first. In this study, we determined privacy protection and issues that each organization should consider when it decides to outsource own data

Energy Efficient Handover Management in Cluster Based Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless sensors are compact-size, low power, inexpensive devices which are capable to measure local environmental conditions or other parameters such as temperature, acceleration, and forward such information to a sink for proper processing. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been under development by both academic and industrial societies for a while. By moving toward applications such as the area of medical care and disaster response mobility in wireless sensor networks has attracted a lot of attentions. In energy constraint sensor network, mobility handling introduces unique challenges in aspects like resource management, coverage, routing protocols, security, etc. This paper, proposes an energy-efficient mobility-aware MAC protocol to handle node handover among different clusters. The simulation-based experiments show that the proposed protocol has better performance compared to the existing S-MAC method

Designing a maintenance free multi-channel wireless sensor network protocol

Wireless sensors are low powered device that is scattered to monitor its surroundings. These energy-constrained devices are usually constructed in a hierarchical structured manner where after sometime some of the nodes may deplete energy resulting disruption of the routing topology in a wireless sensor network. A faulty parent node may cause the reconstruction of the network’s routing topology if a maintenance solution is not provided to the protocol. Thus this study focuses on the maintenance free environment for a multi-channel wireless sensor network. A tree-based solution is proposed for the multi-channel protocol and a route diversion is proposed for the maintenance solution. The multi-channel characteristics is used as a tool to determine the route diversion of the children node. A simulation is built to compare the proposed protocol with existing tree-based multi-channel protocol. The result of the proposed protocol shows an improvement to the packet delivery rate by 15%

Mapping Skills Education Through Social Media Platform For Technical Vocational Education And Training (TVET) In Malaysia

Web 2.0 applications have evolved significantly in producing high quality learning environments where the effects can cater for Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) learning pathways. In the shift to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, information and communication technology involving new media elements such as social media applications have impacted society in many aspects relating to thinking, cultural and economic diversities. As social media shows an exponential growth in our daily usage, TVET and the skills education pathways can adopt this digital trend to conform to a collaborative learning experience. This research presents a conceptual framework by adapting graph theory analytics to map specific skill sets that can conform to the National Occupational Skills Standards (NOSS) in correlation to the learning outcome domains of the Malaysian Qualifications Framework (MQF) through a personalized social media platform. Sampling only selected sub-sectors within the NOSS registry, this research aims to apply social media mechanics in enabling a strong network of collaborators to enhance the TVET learning experience. Subsequently, this research adds value in the sampling enhancement of current outdated NOSS, as well as reviewing the ability in mapping new jobs for the future

VoIP based tele-medicine call center-issues, challenges and proposed solution

In recent years, medical call centers have started using IP telephony services to minimize the overhead telecom expenses. However, the advent of Voice-Over-IP (VoIP) technology has also created a major discontinuity in telecommunication sector due to illegal VoIP or gray calls, causing a great impact on the voice market. This brought few challenges to the countries' regulatory bodies. In this paper, we spell out one of the key challenges: in order to mitigate illegal VoIP calls, whether the regulatory body should allow IP telephony to be practiced for both domestic and international voice driven tele-medical consultation center operation combined or separately. We propose architecture and schemes for a medical call center. We also propose some guidelines and/or policies for both call center operator and the telecom regulatory authority. The proposed architecture and schemes are implemented in a pilot project basis in two phases and the test bed result is presented in this article

Energy Efficient Handover Management in Cluster Based Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless sensors are compact-size, low power, inexpensive devices which are capable to measure local environmental conditions or other parameters such as temperature, acceleration, and forward such information to a sink for proper processing. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been under development by both academic and industrial societies for a while. By moving toward applications such as the area of medical care and disaster response mobility in wireless sensor networks has attracted a lot of attentions. In energy constraint sensor network, mobility handling introduces unique challenges in aspects like resource management, coverage, routing protocols, security, etc. This paper, proposes an energy-efficient mobility-aware MAC protocol to handle node handover among different clusters. The simulation-based experiments show that the proposed protocol has better performance compared to the existing S-MAC method

A survey on self-organized cluster-based wireless sensor network

Study on Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) has been expended enormously in recent years. Sensor nodes are deployed in harsh environment which is operated autonomously. Network formation of WSNs are of two types, namely flat network and cluster-based network. Cluster-based network has various advantages as compare to flat network such as, efficient topology management, energy efficiency, minimized delay, better network communication, etc. Another important feature of cluster-based network is self-organized network. Self-organized enables new nodes joining to increase the coverage of the network and existing nodes leaving the network as node have limited energy. In recent years the demand of self-organized network is tremendously increasing to overcome the problem of node joining and leaving which maintain the smooth data communication. Thus, this survey addresses latest research works regarding self-organized cluster-based network. Moreover, a unique performance matrix is also investigated in this article to measure the algorithms. Finally, open research issues are highlighted for self-organized clustering schemes that might be future line of action