During the current epoch, information and communication technology (ICT) is considered as one of ... more During the current epoch, information and communication technology (ICT) is considered as one of the core drivers towards women empowerment. The principal concern of the underlying study is to evaluate dynamic linkage among ICT, women empowerment, fertility rate, labour force and trade openness for selected South Asian countries from 2000 to 2016 by mean-group and pooled mean-group estimators that are robust to endogeneity and heterogeneity. The outcomes infer that ICT enhances women empowerment in South Asian countries. However, fertility rate negatively contributes to women empowerment. Sensitivity analysis using fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS) method is applied to check the validation, consistency, and robustness of the study for future policy implications. The analytics surmise future strategy for women empowerment with confined ICT expansion and discouraging fertility in South Asian countries.
Water use efficiency (WUE) is a key index for understanding the ecosystem of carbon–water couplin... more Water use efficiency (WUE) is a key index for understanding the ecosystem of carbon–water coupling. The undistinguishable carbon–water coupling mechanism and uncertainties of indirect methods by remote sensing products and process models render challenges for WUE remote sensing. In this paper, current progress in direct and indirect methods of WUE estimation by remote sensing is reviewed. Indirect methods based on gross primary production (GPP)/evapotranspiration (ET) from ground observation, processed models and remote sensing are the main ways to estimate WUE in which carbon and water cycles are independent processes. Various empirical models based on meteorological variables and remote sensed vegetation indices to estimate WUE proved the ability of remotely sensed data for WUE estimating. The analytical model provides a mechanistic opportunity for WUE estimation on an ecosystem scale, while the hypothesis has yet to be validated and applied for the shorter time scales. An optimiz...
Introduction: The reasons for the rapid resolution of diabetes (DM) following bariatric surgery i... more Introduction: The reasons for the rapid resolution of diabetes (DM) following bariatric surgery in a significant proportion of patients with morbid obesity remain unclear. This thesis investigates the putative role of changes in gastrointestinal (GI) motility and GI hormones as well as the possible significance of alterations in energy expenditure that occur as a consequence of weight loss. Methodology: My preliminary studies involved a systematic review of GI motility in obesity, and retrospective studies measuring GI motility with alternative methods including capsule endoscopy and hydrogen breath test. Subsequent to this I measured changes in GI motility in two very different patient cohorts; one following bariatric surgery for morbid obesity and the other a group of patients with proven gastroparesis treated with gastric neuromodulation (GNM). Parallel to the above I conducted studies of indirect calorimetry in these patients in an attempt to determine if changes in energy expenditure which occur as a consequence of weight loss were significant. Results: In our prospective study temporary GNM significantly improved gastric emptying and nutritional intake. There was conclusive evidence to causally relate alterations in GI motility and Glucagon like peptide-1 (GLP-1) with weight loss and resolution of DM following bariatric surgery. An interesting "spin off" result of my studies was validation of capsule endoscopy (CE) as a means of assessing GI motility. My results obtained from measure if indirect calorimetrty clearly show that standard equations tend to over estimate the energy requirements of this group. The implications of this are discussed. Conclusions: 1. Fast pouch emptying; an early and exaggerated GLP-1 response contributes in resolution of type 2 diabetes following RYGB. 2. GNM is an effective treatment for gastroparesis. 3. Capsule endoscopy may be used to assess GI motility. 4. Prediction equations over estimate energy requirements in morbidly obese patients.
To obtain the high-resolution multitemporal precipitation using spatial downscaling technique on ... more To obtain the high-resolution multitemporal precipitation using spatial downscaling technique on a precipitation dataset may provide a better representation of the spatial variability of precipitation to be used for different purposes. In this research, a new downscaling methodology such as the global precipitation mission (GPM)-based multitemporal weighted precipitation analysis (GMWPA) at 0.05° resolution is developed and applied in the humid region of Mainland China by employing the GPM dataset at 0.1° and the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) 30 m DEM-based geospatial predictors, i.e., elevation, longitude, and latitude in empirical distribution-based framework (EDBF) algorithm. The proposed methodology is a two-stepped process in which a scale-dependent regression analysis between each individual precipitation variable and the EDBF-based weighted precipitation with geospatial predictor(s), and to downscale the predicted multitemporal weighte...
This study analyzes the impact of education, experience, and social capital on firm survival usin... more This study analyzes the impact of education, experience, and social capital on firm survival using two waves of a survey conducted in 2008 and 2017 for the electrical fittings cluster based in Sargodha, Pakistan. Estimating a probit model, we find that the entrepreneur’s education, experience, and social network are each positively correlated with firm survival. The interactions of education with both production and marketing experience are also significantly and positively related to firm survival while interactions of social capital with experience are not. Therefore, for the firms in this sector, education plays an important role directly as well as through production and marketing experience.
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 2019
Image-based line segment extraction plays an important role in a wide range of applications. Trad... more Image-based line segment extraction plays an important role in a wide range of applications. Traditional line segment extraction algorithms focus on the accuracy and efficiency, without considering the integrity. Serious line segmentation fracture problems caused by image quality will result in poor subsequent applications. To solve this problem, a multi-constrained line segment extraction method, based on multi-scale image space, is presented. Firstly, using Gaussian down-sampling with a classical line segment detection method, a multi-scale image space is constructed to extract line segments in each image scale and all line segments are projected onto the original image. Then, a new line segment optimization and purification strategy is proposed with the horizontal and vertical distances and angle geometric constraint relationships between line segments to merge fracture line segments and delete redundant line segments. Finally, line segments with adjacent positions are optimized ...
International Journal of Digital Content Technology and its Applications, 2009
The emerging Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) have great potential to revolutionize the future... more The emerging Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) have great potential to revolutionize the future of ubiquitous health technologies. They provide unprecedented opportunities to monitor the patient's health status with real-time updates to the physician. Since WBAN devices are used to collect sensitive (lifecritical) information and may operate in hostile environments, they require strict security mechanisms to prevent the malicious interaction with the system. However, unlike Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) devices, these devices are limited in terms of power efficiency and communication, and therefore pose numerous security challenges than traditional WSNs. In this paper, we first highlight major security requirements and Denial of Service (DoS) attacks in a WBAN. Then we discuss different security modes (originally proposed for IEEE 802.15.4) for a WBAN that include AES-CTR, AES-CBC-MAC, and AES-CCM modes.
Salmonellae are ubiquitous, found in animals, humans, and the environment, a condition which faci... more Salmonellae are ubiquitous, found in animals, humans, and the environment, a condition which facilitates transmission and cross contamination. Salmonella enterica serotypes exert huge health and economic impacts due to their virulence or carriage of antibiotic resistance traits. To address this significant issues with regard to public health, availability of adequate information on the prevalence and antibiotic resistance patterns of Salmonella, and establishment of adequate measures to control contamination and infection are needed. A cross-sectional study was conducted to assess the level of Salmonella infection in slaughtered bovines and ovines at Addis Ababa abattoir. Samples were collected randomly and processed for identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing of Salmonella spp. From 280 animals examined, 13 (4.64%) (8 bovines and 5 ovines) were positive, with most samples (12/13, 92%) comprising Salmonella Dublin. Very high level of resistance to some antibiotics us...
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Body Area Networks, 2013
In recent years, provisioning of human-centric services through body area networks, robotics tech... more In recent years, provisioning of human-centric services through body area networks, robotics technology and cloud computing is continuously attracting extensive attention from both academia and industry. In this paper, we propose a novel robotics and cloudassisted healthcare system (ROCHAS), which combines these three technologies to provide pervasive healthcare services and especially the mental healthcare for empty-nester who are typically old-aged, lonely and depressed. ROCHAS includes four major components, i.e., robotics-assisted health monitoring and healthcare services, wireless and wired networks, cloud-assisted healthcare system, and healthcare service supporting infrastructure.
A TR-UWB Downconversion Autocorrelation Receiver for Wireless Body Area Network
EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, 2009
Applicability of Telemedicine in Bangladesh: Current Status and Future Prospects
2008 Third International Conference on Convergence and Hybrid Information Technology, 2008
Performance evaluation of RESTful web services and AMQP protocol
2013 Fifth International Conference on Ubiquitous and Future Networks (ICUFN), 2013
Web services appeared as a promising technology for Web environments independent of technologies,... more Web services appeared as a promising technology for Web environments independent of technologies, services, and applications. Currently, there are some issues related with this approach that should be studied. For instance, if massive quantities of data are sent to databases it can influence significantly the performance of the whole system. The Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMPQ) appears as a promising solution to address this problem. Then, in order to evaluate the performance of this approach, this paper presents a performance comparison study of RESTful Web services and the AMQP Protocol considering exchanging messages between client and server. The study is based on the averaged exchanged messages for a period of time. It was observed and concluded that, for large quantities of messages exchange, the best results comes from the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol.
International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, 2014
Timely segregation of critical/noncritical nodes is extremely crucial in mobile ad hoc and sensor... more Timely segregation of critical/noncritical nodes is extremely crucial in mobile ad hoc and sensor networks. Most of the existing segregation schemes are centralized and require maintaining network wide information, which may not be feasible in large-scale dynamic networks. Moreover, these schemes lack rigorous validation and entirely rely on simulations. We present a localized algorithm for segregation of critical/noncritical nodes (LASCNN) to the network connectivity. LASCNN establishes and maintains a k-hop connection list and marks a node as critical if its k-hop neighbours become disconnected without the node and noncritical otherwise. A noncritical node with more than one connection is marked as intermediate and leaf noncritical otherwise. We use both formal and nonformal techniques for verification and validation of functional and nonfunctional properties. First, we model MAHSN as a dynamic graph and transform LASCNN to equivalent formal specification using Z notation. After a...
Eurasip Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, 2014
In the last decade, both scientific community and automotive industry enabled communications amon... more In the last decade, both scientific community and automotive industry enabled communications among vehicles in different kinds of scenarios proposing different vehicular architectures. Vehicular delay-tolerant networks (VDTNs) were proposed as a solution to overcome some of the issues found in other vehicular architectures, namely, in dispersed regions and emergency scenarios. Most of these issues arise from the unique characteristics of vehicular networks. Contrary to delay-tolerant networks (DTNs), VDTNs place the bundle layer under the network layer in order to simplify the layered architecture and enable communications in sparse regions characterized by long propagation delays, high error rates, and short contact durations. However, such characteristics turn contacts very important in order to exchange as much information as possible between nodes at every contact opportunity. One way to accomplish this goal is to enforce cooperation between network nodes. To promote cooperation among nodes, it is important that nodes share their own resources to deliver messages from others. This can be a very difficult task, if selfish nodes affect the performance of cooperative nodes. This paper studies the performance of a cooperative reputation system that detects, identify, and avoid communications with selfish nodes. Two scenarios were considered across all the experiments enforcing three different routing protocols (First Contact, Spray and Wait, and GeoSpray). For both scenarios, it was shown that reputation mechanisms that punish aggressively selfish nodes contribute to increase the overall network performance.
EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, 2010
The performance of the implant inside a human body with polarisation, distance, and different pow... more The performance of the implant inside a human body with polarisation, distance, and different power settings at the base-station is presented. In addition, the unslotted CSMA/CA protocol is studied for a heterogeneous WBAN.
The seamless integration of low-power, miniaturised, invasive/non-invasive lightweight sensor nod... more The seamless integration of low-power, miniaturised, invasive/non-invasive lightweight sensor nodes have contributed to the development of a proactive and unobtrusive Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). A WBAN provides long-term health monitoring of a patient without any constraint on his/her normal dailylife activities. This monitoring requires the low-power operation of invasive/non-invasive sensor nodes. In other words, a power-efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is required to satisfy the stringent WBAN requirements, including low-power consumption. In this paper, we first outline the WBAN requirements that are important for the design of a low-power MAC protocol. Then we study low-power MAC protocols proposed/investigated for a WBAN with emphasis on their strengths and weaknesses. We also review different powerefficient mechanisms for a WBAN. In addition, useful suggestions are given to help the MAC designers to develop a low-power MAC protocol that will satisfy the stringent requirements.
The IEEE 802.15.6 standard is a communication standard optimized for low-power and short-range in... more The IEEE 802.15.6 standard is a communication standard optimized for low-power and short-range in-body/ on-body nodes to serve a variety of medical, consumer electronics and entertainment applications. Providing high mobility with guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) to a WBAN user in heterogeneous wireless networks is a challenging task. A WBAN uses a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) to gather data from body sensors and forwards it to a remote server through wide range wireless networks. In this paper, we present a coexistence study of WBAN with Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) and Wireless Wide Area Networks (WWANs). The main issue is interworking of WBAN in heterogenous wireless networks including seamless handover, QoS, emergency services, cooperation and security. We propose a Seamless Interworking Architecture (SIA) for WBAN in heterogenous wireless networks based on a cost function. The cost function is based on power consumption and data throughput costs. Our simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms typical approaches in terms of throughput, delay and packet loss rate.
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Papers by Sana Ullah