This paper presents a computational model for measuring diversity in terms of variety, balance and disparity. This model is informed by the Stirling’s framework for understanding diversity from social science and underpinned by semantic techniques from computer science. A case study in learning is used to illustrate the application of the model. It is driven by the desire to broaden learners’ perspectives in an increasingly diverse and inclusive society. For example, interpreting body language in a job interview may be influenced by the different background of observers. With the explosion of digital objects on social platforms, selecting the appropriate ones for learning can be challenging and time consuming. The case study uses over 2000 annotated comments from 51 YouTube videos on job interviews. Diversity indicators are produced based on the comments for each video, which in turn facilitate the ranking of the videos according to the degree of diversity in the comments for the selected domain.

Abstract—With a rapidly increasing incidence of melanoma

skin cancer, there is a need for decision support systems to

detect it in its early stages, which would lead to better decisions

in treating it successfully. However, developing such systems is

still a challenging task for researchers. Several Computer Aided-

Diagnosis (CAD) systems have been proposed in the last two

decades to increase the accuracy of melanoma detection. Image

feature extraction is a critical step in differentiating between

melanoma and normal skin lesions. In this paper, we propose

to improve a bag-of-words approach by combining features

consisting of the color histogram and first order moments with the

Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG). Experimental results

show that the proposed technique significantly improves the

detection accuracy, with an average sensitivity of 91% and

specificity of 85%. The proposed system was validated on a

dataset of 200 medically annotated images (40 melanomas and

160 non-melanomas) obtained from the database of the Hospital

Pedro Hispano. 

This paper presents a novel secure and robust steganographic technique in the compressed video domain namely embedding-based byte differencing (EBBD). Unlike most of the current video steganographic techniques which take into account only the intra frames for data embedding, the proposed EBBD technique aims to hide information in both intra and inter frames. The information is embedded into a compressed video by simultaneously manipulating the quantized AC coefficients (AC-QTCs) of luminance components of the frames during MPEG-2 encoding process. Later, during the decoding process, the embedded information can be detected and extracted completely. Furthermore, the EBBD basically deals with two security concepts: data encryption and data concealing. Hence, during the embedding process, secret data is encrypted using the simplified data encryption standard (S-DES) algorithm to provide better security to the implemented system. The security of the method lies in selecting candidate AC-QTCs within each non-overlapping 8 × 8 sub-block using a pseudo random key. Basic performance of this steganographic technique verified through experiments on various existing MPEG-2 encoded videos over a wide range of embedded payload rates. Overall, the experimental results verify the excellent performance of the proposed EBBD with a better trade-off in terms of imperceptibility and payload, as compared with previous techniques while at the same time ensuring minimal bitrate increase and negligible degradation of PSNR values.

This chapter aims, to highlight a review of IAS history, followed by approaches of accounting regulations. The development of accounting regulation within developing countries is also highlighted and discussed in the context of cultural diversity. It also aims to shed light into the motives that drive the adoption and implementation of IASs/IFRS. The political nature of lobbying and accounting standards setting process is also discussed in this chapter. In addition, the chapter discusses those factors that may be perceived as challenges which may delay or even block the convergence into the IASs/IFRS. Finally the authors provide key remarks about the IASs and venues for future research

The measurement errors problem is endemic in many econometric studies, and one of the oldest known statistical problems. Instrumental variable (IV) method is one of the popular solutions adopted to deal with the mismeasured variables in statistical and econometric analyses. This paper proposes an efficient IV estimator to the parameters of the simple regression model where both variables are subject to measurement errors. The proposed IV is defined using simple mathematical transformation of the manifest independent variable (mismeasured variable). The proposed method is straightforward, and easy to implement. The theoretical superiority of the proposed estimator over the existing IV based estimators due to Wald (1940), Bartlett (1949), and Durbin (1954) is established by analytical comparison and geometric expositions. Simulation based numerical comparisons of the proposed estimator with four different existing estimators are also included.

Abstract- Many methods have been applied in order to reduce nitrate concentration in aqueous solutions, among them

is the adsorption onto the surface of agricultural wastes. In this study, batch experiments were carried out to investigate

the adsorption of nitrate onto olive pomace (OP), a solid by-product of olive oil industry. To achieve this, six parameters

were studied by varying only one parameter at a time. These parameters were the effect of: pH, contact time,

temperature, adsorbent weight, agitation speed and nitrate concentration. The optimum pH was found to be 5, while the

optimum time was 75 minutes. Nitrate removal percentage was found to increase with increasing adsorbent weight or

temperature, with 92.5% of nitrate removed by using 2 g of OP and 48% of nitrate was removed at 60ºC. Generally,

agitation speed increased the nitrate removal percentage, while high initial concentration of nitrate was found to decrease

its removal percentage. These findings, combined with the low cost of OP and its abundance, suggest that OP is a

potential adsorbent for nitrate removal provided that the optimum conditions are applied. Applying this method for

nitrate removal will make drinking water safer to drink and wastewater safer to discharge.

The object of the present paper is to derive some results on differential subordination associated with a generalized derivative operator for certain normalized analytic functions in the open unit disc. The authors establish sandwich type theorems. These results extend many previously known results.

The object of the present paper is to introduce a new subclass of p-valent starlike functions with negative coefficients in the open unit disc which is defiined by a generalized derivative operator. We obtain coefficient inequalities, growth and distortion theorems and extreme points for the subclass of p-valent functions.

Recent developments in both information and communication security have heightened interest in enhancing the embedding capacity for data handling techniques. Although many steganographic techniques, in the literature, have been developed for this purpose, most of them distort the quality of the host-signal during data embedding and the changes will be become visible to the human eye especially for those signals distributed via the Internet which must be processed by a low bit rate compression due to bandwidth limitations. Therefore, the challenge is to create a steganographic technique that is able to hide acceptable amount of data without altering the quality of the host-signal. In this paper, pixel-value differencing (PVD) steganographic scheme and its two modified versions, namely, enhanced pixel-value differencing (EPVD) and tri-way pixel-value differencing (TPVD) were implemented, analyzed and compared in terms of invisibility, fidelity and impact of data hiding on the compression efficiency. Experimental results indicate that the EPVD scheme is capable of providing better performance than other compared schemes.