Teachers' Perspectives on Obstacles Facing Gifted Students with Learning Disabilities in Saudi Arabia

Alsharif, Nawal,Alasiri, Hawazen International Journal of Computer ScienceNetwork S 2022 International journal of computer science and netw Vol.22 No.4

The purpose of this study was to identify the obstacles facing gifted students with learning disabilities (GSLDs) from the point of view of their teachers in the Makkah region and to find suggested solutions to overcome these obstacles. The study covered Makkah, Jeddah and Taif and used semi-structured interviews which included open-ended questions. The study findings indicated that there were several educational obstacles including the absence of adapted courses or specialized teachers for GSLDs category and the insufficient time for the students to express their talents. According to the findings, there were also societal obstacles including the society's failure to expect the presence of talents along with disabilities, or its denial or rejection of their talents in addition to ridiculing them. The findings also confirmed the existence of administrative obstacles including the lack of community partnership. There were also family obstacles such as the family's lack of encouragement for the students, and ignorance of the nature of GSLDs. The study came up with a number of solutions and proposals related to awareness, educational institutions, education and competitions for talented people with learning disabilities.

Oncologic Outcomes of Nipple-Sparing Mastectomy with Immediate Breast Reconstruction in Patients with Tumor-Nipple Distance Less than 2.0 cm

Emad Alsharif,유재민,최희준,남석진,김석원,유종한,채병주,이세경,이정언 한국유방암학회 2019 Journal of breast cancer Vol.22 No.4

Purpose: Although the indications for nipple-sparing mastectomy (NSM) are expanding, there remains a debate regarding the oncologic outcomes of patients treated with this method, especially those with a short tumor-nipple distance (STND). The aim of this study was to compare the long-term oncologic outcomes between patients with a long tumor-nipple distance (LTND) (≥ 2.0 cm) and those with STND (< 2.0 cm). Methods: This was a retrospective study in which 266 patients who underwent NSM with immediate breast reconstruction between January 2008 and December 2014 at a single institution were enrolled. Of these patients, 21 were excluded because of loss to follow-up; thus, 245 patients were finally analyzed. All patients underwent preoperative breast magnetic resonance imaging and intraoperative frozen biopsy. Results: The mean age of the patients was 42.4 years. STND was identified in 128 patients, and LTND in 117 patients. The mean follow-up period was 60.5 months. There were no significant differences between the 2 groups with respect to lymphovascular invasion, nuclear grade, nodal status, and subtype (p = 0.339, 0.372, 0.955, and 0.338, respectively). The STND group had significantly smaller tumors than the LTND group (p = 0.005). The median TND in the STND and LTND groups was 0.7 cm and 3.0 cm, respectively. Locoregional recurrence was reported in 4 patients in the STND group (3.1%) and 6 (5.1%) in the LTND group. A total of 3 patients died (1.2%; 2 in the STND group and one in the LTND group). There was no significant difference between the 2 groups with respect to disease-free survival or local recurrence-free survival (p = 0.334 and p = 0.477, respectively). Conclusion: The long-term oncologic outcomes of patients treated with NSM did not significantly differ according to TND when the intraoperative frozen biopsy was negative for tumor cells.

Strategic Market Growth and Policy Recommendations for Sustainable Solar Energy Deployment in South Korea

Mohammed H. Alsharif,Khalid Yahya,김종우 대한전기학회 2020 Journal of Electrical Engineering & Technology Vol.15 No.2

It is widely acknowledged that the solar energy markets have experienced increasing interest in the last decade in South Korea, due to a signifcant economic and ecological impact of solar energy in the coming years. Despite their great technical potential, the development and deployment of large-scale solar energy technologies in South Korea still need to overcome some technical, fnancial, regulatory, and institutional barriers in order to achieve a vision of the green and eco-sustainable energy. This article provides an updated comprehensive overview of the technical and economic strategies, as well as policies for the development and deployment of solar energy in South Korea. The article reviews and discusses: (1) solar energy resources and technologies, (2) economics and market status of solar energy, (3) policy support for solar energy development, and (4) obstacles to the development and implementation of solar energy technology. Policymakers are given recommendations in which the cost and impact of social, environmental, and geographical factors are considered. This review contributes towards the future of green and eco-sustainable solar energy in South Korea.

Small Cells Integration with the Macro‑Cell Under LTE Cellular Networks and Potential Extension for 5G

Mohammed H. Alsharif,Rosdiadee Nordin,Mohammed Mudhafer Shakir,Athirah Mohd Ramly 대한전기학회 2019 Journal of Electrical Engineering & Technology Vol.14 No.6

Heterogeneous Networks (HetNet) requires the deployment of small cell networks that can co-exist with the existing macrocell. To provide a high Quality of Service (QoS), a massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) must be equipped with a HetNet of a macro-cell base station to the multiple users. This paper highlights three important aspects of the emerging small cell wireless networks. First, the architectures of small cell networks in LTE wireless network is reviewed, with specifc references to the current wireless network standards. Second, the performance evaluation of overlay small cells integrated with the underlay macro-cell is investigated. The third part of this study focuses on the future trends of small cell deployment in 5G and the critical technical preparation needs to be done to allow integration with the existing 4G network. The results show that the proposed integration of 5G small cells into existing macro 4G networks has improved both of the data rate (91.46%) and energy efciency (98.66%).

Image Enhancement Using Splitting α-Rooting Method in Wavelet Domain

Foisal Hossain,Mohammad Reza Alsharif 대한전자공학회 2008 ITC-CSCC :International Technical Conference on Ci Vol.2008 No.7

This paper will present an enhancement technique based upon splitting α-rooting method in wavelet domain. Wavelets transform concentrate most of the energy in the approximation coefficient. In splitting signal, a twodimensional image is represented uniquely by a set of onedimensional signal, which carries the spectral information of the image at frequency points of specific sets. Using splitting α-rooting method in the approximation coefficient of wavelet transform, the image enhancement procedure can be reduced to processing splitting signals and the process requires only a few spectral components of the image. A measure of enhancement based on contrast measure with respect to transform will be used as a tool for evaluating the performance of the proposed enhancement technique and for finding optimal values for variables contained in the enhancement. The algorithm’s performance will be compared quantitatively to classical histogram equalization and splitting α-rooting method using the aforementioned measure of enhancement.

Signal Piloted Processing of the Smart Meter Data for Eff ective Appliances Recognition

Saeed Mian Qaisar,Futoon Alsharif 대한전기학회 2020 Journal of Electrical Engineering & Technology Vol.15 No.5

The installation of smart meters is fast growing to eff ectively support various smart grid stack holders. Collection and processing of fi ne-grained metering data is important for proper analysis and decision support. The traditional smart meters are based on standardized and time-invariant tactics to acquire and process the data. This results in the collection, storage, and processing of a huge amount of unneeded data. The focus of this paper is to enhance the contemporary smart meters data acquisition and processing chains. The objective is to attain real-time compression and computational eff ectiveness to enhance the system performance in terms of data analysis, storage and transmission and to diminish its consumption overhead. In this framework, the signal-piloted event-driven sampling and processing tactics are exploited. The novel adaptive rate techniques are used for data segmentation and extraction of features. Household appliances consumption patterns related features are being classifi ed subsequently. It is realized by employing the mature K-Nearest Neighbor and the Artifi cial Neural Network classifi ers. Results demonstrate a 3.8-fold compression gain and computational eff ectiveness of the designed solution over traditional counterpart while securing the best classifi cation accuracy of 94.4% for the 6-class appliances dataset.

Use of Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy after Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy in Patients with Axillary Node-Positive Breast Cancer in Diagnosis

최희준,김이삭,Emad Alsharif,박성민,김재명,류재민,남석진,김석원,유종한,이세경,이정언 한국유방암학회 2018 Journal of breast cancer Vol.21 No.4

Purpose: This study aimed to evaluate the effects of sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) on recurrence and survival after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) in breast cancer patients with cytology-proven axillary node metastasis. Methods: We selected patients who were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer and axillary lymph node metastasis and were treated with NAC followed by curative surgery between January 2007 and December 2014. We classified patients into three groups: group A, negative sentinel lymph node (SLN) status and no further dissection; group B, negative SLN status with backup axillary lymph node dissection (ALND); and group C, no residual axillary metastasis on pathology with standard ALND. Results: The median followup time was 51 months (range, 3–122 months) and the median number of retrieved SLNs was 5 (range, 2–9). The SLN identification rate was 98.3% (234/238 patients), and the false negative rate of SLNB after NAC was 7.5%. There was no significant difference in axillary recurrence-free survival (p=0.118), diseasefree survival (DFS; p=0.578) or overall survival (OS; p=0.149) among groups A, B, and C. In the subgroup analysis of breast pathologic complete response (pCR) status, there was no significant difference in DFS (p=0.271, p=0.892) or OS (p=0.207, p=0.300) in the breast pCR and non-pCR patients. Conclusion: These results suggest that SLNB can be feasible and oncologically safe after NAC for cytology-determined axillary node metastasis patients and could help reduce arm morbidity and lymphedema by avoiding ALND in SLN-negative patients.

ICA-based blind MIMO OFDM Receiver with Low-complexity by using Stone BSS

Mahdi Khosravy,Mohammad Reza Alsharif,Hai Lin,Katsumi Yamashita 대한전자공학회 2009 ITC-CSCC :International Technical Conference on Ci Vol.2009 No.7

In order to reduce the complexity of the Blind ICA-based MIMO-OFDM receiver an algorithm of employing blind source separation (BSS) methods has been proposed. The proposed algorithm exploits high performance of kullback leibler ICA as well as low complexity of Stone BSS. Stone BSS reduces the number of iteration required for convergence of KL ICA by initializing the separator matrix. The complexity of KL ICA has been reduced even more by using a NlogN kernel entropy estimation method. The numerical evaluation demonstrates the significant reduction in complexity of the blind MIMO OFDM receiver. In order to reduce the complexity of the Blind ICA-based MIMO-OFDM receiver an algorithm of employing blind source separation (BSS) methods has been proposed. The proposed algorithm exploits high performance of kullback leibler ICA as well as low complexity of Stone BSS. Stone BSS reduces the number of iteration required for convergence of KL ICA by initializing the separator matrix. The complexity of KL ICA has been reduced even more by using a NlogN kernel entropy estimation method. The numerical evaluation demonstrates the significant reduction in complexity of the blind MIMO OFDM receiver.

A Probabilistic Short-length Linear Predictability Approach to Blind Source Separation

Mahdi Khosravy,Mohammad Reza Alsharif,Katsumi Yamashita 대한전자공학회 2008 ITC-CSCC :International Technical Conference on Ci Vol.2008 No.7

A merit function based on short length linear predictability of signal in an objective probabilistic algorithm is defined and used for blind source separation (BSS) of linear mixtures of signals. In BSS literatures, it has been conjectured that linear mixture of statistically independent source signals will result in a set of signals which each of them has less predictability than (or equal to) that of any of component source signals. We have used this property to extract source signals by finding an un-mixing matrix that maximizes the proposed merit function of predictability for each recovered signal. This method which is called Probabilistic Short-length Linear Predictability BSS (PSLP-BSS), its performance has been driven with many tests performed with mixtures of different kinds (speech, audio, image, constructed mathematical signals like saw tooth and sinusoidal). In all cases, correlation between each of source signals and each of extracted signals shows near-perfect performance of the method. The proposed BSS doesnt require any assumption regarding the probability density function of source signals. It has been demonstrated that PSLP-BSS can separate signal mixtures in which each mixture is a linear combination of source signals with gaussian, super-gaussian and sub-gaussian probability density functions. However, the method is adapted to temporal structure of recovered signals. Since, the un-mixing matrix that is concluded by proposed merit function can be obtained as the solution to a generalized eigenvalue routine, signals can be extracted simultaneously using the fast eigen value.

A Consideration of Noise Cancellation by using PCA-ICA Method with Delay Estimation

Toshiaki Yokoda,Mohammad Reza Alsharif,Mahdi Khosravy 대한전자공학회 2008 ITC-CSCC :International Technical Conference on Ci Vol.2008 No.7

The noise cancellation technologies are useful for speech recognition and other applications. There are some kind of methods for cancellation of background noise. In this paper, The desired signals are separated from background noise by using proposed PCA-ICA method (Principal Component Analysis, Independent Component Analysis). The proposed PCA-ICA method requires several number of observed signals that is, the same as the number of sources. The noise signal can be removed in the same way as BSS (Blind Source Separation). We have done experiments (two-observation one-source one-noise, with delay) and evaluated the results.