The most sensitive Arabic text available online is the digital Holy Quran. This sacred Islamic religious book is recited by all Muslims worldwide including non-Arabs as part of their worship needs. Thus, it should be protected from any kind of tampering to keep its invaluable meaning intact. Different characteristics of Arabic letters like the vowels (), Kashida (extended letters), and other symbols in the Holy Quran must be secured from alterations. The cover text of the Quran and its watermarked text are different due to the low values of the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Embedding Ratio (ER). A watermarking technique with enhanced attributes must, therefore, be designed for the Quran’s text using Arabic vowels with kashida. The gap addressed by this paper is to improve the security of Arabic text in the Holy Quran by using vowels with kashida. The purpose of this paper is to enhance the Quran text watermarking scheme based on a reversing technique. The methodology consists of four phases: The first phase is a pre-processing followed by the second phase-the embedding process phase—which will hide the data after the vowels. That is, if the secret bit is “1”, then the kashida is inserted; however, the kashida is not inserted if the bit is “0”. The third phase is the extraction process and the last phase is to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme by using PSNR (for the imperceptibility) and ER (for the capacity). The experimental results show that the proposed method of imperceptibility insertion is also optimized with the help of a reversing algorithm. The proposed strategy obtains a 90.5% capacity. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm attained 66.1% which is referred to as imperceptibility. ... Read more

Purpose: In recent years, data science has become a high-demand profession, thereby attracting transmuters (individuals who want to change their profession due to industry trends) to this field. The primary purpose of this paper is to guide transmuters in becoming data scientists. Design/methodology/approach: An exploratory study was conducted to uncover the challenges faced by data scientists according to their educational backgrounds. An extensive set of responses from 31 countries was received. Findings: The results reveal that skill requirements and tool usage vary significantly with educational background. However, regardless of differences in academic background, the data scientists surveyed spend more time analyzing data than operationalizing insight. Research limitations/implications: The collected data are available to support replication in various scenarios, for example, for use as a roadmap for those with an educational background in art-related disciplines. Additional empirical studies can also be conducted specific to geographical location. Practical implications: The current work has categorized data scientists by their fields of study making it easier for universities and online academies to suggest required knowledge (courses) according to prospective students' educational background. Originality/value: The conducted study suggests the required knowledge and skills for transmuters to acquire, based on their educational background, and reports a set of motivational factors attracting them to adopt the data science field. ... Read more

Scientific Workflow Applications (SWFAs) can deliver collaborative tools useful to researchers in executing large and complex scientific processes. Particularly, Scientific Workflow Scheduling (SWFS) accelerates the computational procedures between the available computational resources and the dependent workflow jobs based on the researchers’ requirements. However, cost optimization is one of the SWFS challenges in handling massive and complicated tasks and requires determining an approximate (near-optimal) solution within polynomial computational time. Motivated by this, current work proposes a novel SWFS cost optimization model effective in solving this challenge. The proposed model contains three main stages: (i) scientific workflow application, (ii) targeted computational environment, and (iii) cost optimization criteria. The model has been used to optimize completion time (makespan) and overall computational cost of SWFS in cloud computing for all considered scenarios in this research context. This will ultimately reduce the cost for service consumers. At the same time, reducing the cost has a positive impact on the profitability of service providers towards utilizing all computational resources to achieve a competitive advantage over other cloud service providers. To evaluate the effectiveness of this proposed model, an empirical comparison was conducted by employing three core types of heuristic approaches, including Single-based (i.e., Genetic Algorithm (GA), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), and Invasive Weed Optimization (IWO)), Hybrid-based (i.e., Hybrid-based Heuristics Algorithms (HIWO)), and Hyper-based (i.e., Dynamic Hyper-Heuristic Algorithm (DHHA)). Additionally, a simulation-based implementation was used for SIPHT SWFA by considering three different sizes of datasets. The proposed model provides an efficient platform to optimally schedule workflow tasks by handling data-intensiveness and computational-intensiveness of SWFAs. The results reveal that the proposed cost optimization model attained an optimal Job completion time (makespan) and total computational cost for small and large sizes of the considered dataset. In contrast, hybrid and hyper-based approaches consistently achieved better results for the medium-sized dataset. ... Read more

Truck platooning is an application of cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) which relies on vehicle-to-vehicle communications facilitated by vehicle ad-hoc networks. Communication uncertainties can affect the performance of a CACC controller. Previous research has not considered the full spectrum of possible car-following scenarios needed to understand how the longitudinal behaviour of truck platoons would be affected by changes in the communication network. In this paper, we investigate the impact of radio channel parameters on the string stability and collision avoidance capabilities of a CACC controller governing the longitudinal behaviour of truck platoons in a majority of critical car-following situations. We develop and use a novel, sophisticated and open-source VANET simulator OTS-Artery, which brings microscopic traffic simulation, network simulation, and psychological concepts in a single environment, for our investigations. Our results indicate that string stability and safety of truck platoons are mostly affected in car-following situations where truck platoons accelerate from the standstill to the maximum speed and decelerate from the maximum speed down to the standstill. The findings suggest that string stability can be improved by increasing transmission power and lowering receiver sensitivity. However, the safety of truck platoons seems to be sensitive to the choice of the path loos model. ... Read more

Scientific Workflow Applications (SWFA) play a vital role for both service consumers and service providers in designing and implementing large and complex scientific processes. Previously, researchers used parallel and distributed computing technologies, such as utility and grid computing to execute the SWFAs, these technologies provide limited utilization for the shared resources. In contrast, the scalability and flexibility challenges are better handled by using cloud-computing technologies for SWFA. Since cloud computing offers a technology that can significantly utilize the amounts of storage space and computing resources necessary for processing large-size and complex SWFAs. The workflow pattern design has provided the facility of re-using previously developed workflow solutions that enable the developers to adopt them for the considered SWFA. Inspired by this, the researchers have adopted several patterns of design to better design the SWFA. Effective pattern design that can consider challenges that may not become visible only in the implementation stage of a SWFA. However, the selection of the most effective pattern design in accordance with an execution method, data size, and problem complexity of a SWFA remains a challenging task. Motivated by this, we have proposed a conceptual framework that facilitates in recommending a suitable pattern design based on the quality requirements and capabilities are given and advertised by cloud consumers and providers, respectively. Finally, guidelines to assist in a smooth migrating of SWFA from other computation paradigms to cloud computing. ... Read more