Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) are important for protecting modern the networks against increasingly known cyber-attacks. However, the traditional IDS methods are also characterized by high dimensional data, low detection accuracy and the interpretability, this research is aimed at providing an explainable intrusion detection framework to combine the ExtraTrees-based feature selection with the ensemble ML models based on UNSW-NB15 dataset. The introduced methodology will start with the in-depth of the data preprocessing, such as the handling missing values, categorical attributes, and feature normalization to improve the quality of data and model performance. ExtraTrees feature selection is subsequently performed in order to [...]

The rapid urbanisation is putting pressure on city infrastructures around the world, and the Internet of Things (IoT) is the main technological layer that municipalities are using to respond. However, the literature on IoT-enabled smart cities remains fragmented: architectural frameworks, application domain studies, and challenge analyses are usually reported in isolation, with little cross comparison to guide implementation decisions. This paper addresses that fragmentation through a structured review of 61 peer-reviewed studies (2022–2024, plus select foundational works from 2013–2019) from IEEE Xplore, Elsevier, and SpringerLink. A direct comparison of three dominant IoT architectural paradigms: layered, distributed (edge/fog), and service-oriented; on [...]

The retail fuel price forecasting of emerging economies is important for the energy policy, fiscal planning and consumer welfare. Pakistan, where petrol and diesel prices are periodically revised (twice every fortnight) using an Import Parity Pricing (IPP) mechanism, is strongly influenced by changes in the international crude oil benchmarks (Brent and WTI) and Pakistani Rupee (PKR) to US dollar exchange rate. The paper presents a hybrid machine learning model that combines an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model for trend extraction with a Random Forest (RF) regressor of nonlinear residual patterns. With real-time crude prices, historical PKR/USD weekly data (2026), [...]

Recognition of faces with partial occlusions poses an exceptionally difficult challenge for contemporary researchers working on biometric identification tasks. Various real-life use cases in areas such as border crossings, healthcare services, smart surveillance, etc., usually require performing face identification despite masks, sunglasses, scarfs, and similar accessories blocking parts of the face, causing poor recognition performance. In this study, we conduct a systematic analysis of occluded face recognition research works that have been carried out between 2021 and 2026. After the application of inclusion/exclusion criteria to our initial database consisting of relevant peer-reviewed articles in IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, Springer, and arXiv [...]

Intangible resources are ever-increasingly vital to individual businesses' success and competitiveness in today's emerging knowledge economy. Against this background, this study explores and empirically models the influence of Intellectual Capital on Sales Growth, with Corporate Governance as a moderator, in the Information Technology industry of Karachi. In this research, Intangible Resources comprise three dimensions of Intellectual Capital-Human Capital, Structural Capital and Relationship Capital; and three theoretical perspectives-Resource Based View, Knowledge Based View and Agency Theory. Knowledge resources are accumulated through the process of knowledge integration resulting in revenue growth through increased efficiency and effectiveness, while effective Corporate Governance determines alignment [...]

Abstract: This work presents a systematic literature review of smart library management system. By studying different papers for past 10 years to address several research questions, the findings are presented. A smart library is based on employing smart information and communication technologies (ICT) to facilitate readers. Five major research questions are answered. What is smart library, the major research challenges in implementing smart library, the advantages of smart library, and the enabling technologies for smart library. Finally, this work presents a smart library management system based on deep learning technique. An android mobile application is developed that digitizes the book [...]

Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) are important for protecting modern the networks against increasingly known cyber-attacks. However, the traditional IDS methods are also characterized by high dimensional data, low detection accuracy and the interpretability, this research is aimed at providing an explainable intrusion detection framework to combine the ExtraTrees-based feature selection with the ensemble ML models based on UNSW-NB15 dataset. The introduced methodology will start with the in-depth of the data preprocessing, such as the handling missing values, categorical attributes, and feature normalization to improve the quality of data and model performance. ExtraTrees feature selection is subsequently performed in order to [...]

The rapid urbanisation is putting pressure on city infrastructures around the world, and the Internet of Things (IoT) is the main technological layer that municipalities are using to respond. However, the literature on IoT-enabled smart cities remains fragmented: architectural frameworks, application domain studies, and challenge analyses are usually reported in isolation, with little cross comparison to guide implementation decisions. This paper addresses that fragmentation through a structured review of 61 peer-reviewed studies (2022–2024, plus select foundational works from 2013–2019) from IEEE Xplore, Elsevier, and SpringerLink. A direct comparison of three dominant IoT architectural paradigms: layered, distributed (edge/fog), and service-oriented; on [...]

The retail fuel price forecasting of emerging economies is important for the energy policy, fiscal planning and consumer welfare. Pakistan, where petrol and diesel prices are periodically revised (twice every fortnight) using an Import Parity Pricing (IPP) mechanism, is strongly influenced by changes in the international crude oil benchmarks (Brent and WTI) and Pakistani Rupee (PKR) to US dollar exchange rate. The paper presents a hybrid machine learning model that combines an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model for trend extraction with a Random Forest (RF) regressor of nonlinear residual patterns. With real-time crude prices, historical PKR/USD weekly data (2026), [...]

Recognition of faces with partial occlusions poses an exceptionally difficult challenge for contemporary researchers working on biometric identification tasks. Various real-life use cases in areas such as border crossings, healthcare services, smart surveillance, etc., usually require performing face identification despite masks, sunglasses, scarfs, and similar accessories blocking parts of the face, causing poor recognition performance. In this study, we conduct a systematic analysis of occluded face recognition research works that have been carried out between 2021 and 2026. After the application of inclusion/exclusion criteria to our initial database consisting of relevant peer-reviewed articles in IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, Springer, and arXiv [...]

Intangible resources are ever-increasingly vital to individual businesses' success and competitiveness in today's emerging knowledge economy. Against this background, this study explores and empirically models the influence of Intellectual Capital on Sales Growth, with Corporate Governance as a moderator, in the Information Technology industry of Karachi. In this research, Intangible Resources comprise three dimensions of Intellectual Capital-Human Capital, Structural Capital and Relationship Capital; and three theoretical perspectives-Resource Based View, Knowledge Based View and Agency Theory. Knowledge resources are accumulated through the process of knowledge integration resulting in revenue growth through increased efficiency and effectiveness, while effective Corporate Governance determines alignment [...]

Abstract: This work presents a systematic literature review of smart library management system. By studying different papers for past 10 years to address several research questions, the findings are presented. A smart library is based on employing smart information and communication technologies (ICT) to facilitate readers. Five major research questions are answered. What is smart library, the major research challenges in implementing smart library, the advantages of smart library, and the enabling technologies for smart library. Finally, this work presents a smart library management system based on deep learning technique. An android mobile application is developed that digitizes the book [...]

Abstract: This paper talks about a novel comparison of two deep learning models namely Long short-term memory (LSTM) and Gated recurrent unit (GRU). The target domain is e-commerce sales prediction applied on behavioral data from a Shopify store. The dataset comprises 87000 records stepped by hours. The dataset contains details about various features such as session duration, bounce rate, cart addition, checkout activity. It has been found that LSTM and GRU both were able to learn the spatiotemporal dependencies present in the data. These models predict with good accuracy the probability of making a purchase in a session. By means [...]

This qualitative study investigates the relationship between cyberbullying and social withdrawal in 12–20 years teenage population. The study reviews survey data collected from students at different frequencies from own educational institutions to analyze the extent of cyberbullying, its emotional effects and leading to the behavioral changes. The results show a notable correlation between cyberbullying and social withdrawal; a large number of the surveyed teenagers reported experiencing anxiety, trust issues, and indivisibility: the preference to chat with each other online instead of meeting in person. The findings highlight the importance of systemic change and networking support in facing this growing issue. [...]

Abstract: This work presents a systematic literature review of smart library management system. By studying different papers for past 10 years to address several research questions, the findings are presented. A smart library is based on employing smart information and communication technologies (ICT) to facilitate readers. Five major research questions are answered. What is smart library, the major research challenges in implementing smart library, the advantages of smart library, and the enabling technologies for smart library. Finally, this work presents a smart library management system based on deep learning technique. An android mobile application is developed that digitizes the book [...]

The challenge of predicting rainfall is undoubtedly a difficult one because there are an extensive number of different factors and elements that influence the conditions of the climate. It is of extreme significance to have accurate rainfall forecasts, particularly for the agricultural sector, which is highly reliant on timely and sufficient rainfall for the growth and yield of crops. The contribution that agriculture makes to the economy is another factor that highlights the need of accurate rainfall forecasts. There are many different ways that have been utilized all around the world in order to forecast the patterns of rainfall. These [...]

Abstract: With the growing interest in academics and industry towards research and the availability of large number of publishers, the frequency of publications is also on the rise. It is found that researchers are very careful about the selection of the related periodicals and the proceedings with good research index and well-known publishers. In this direction, this research performed a quantitative analysis of the publication by various authors in leading journals. We identified their interests/ selection of the periodicals for their research publication. For this purpose, a scrapping tool was developed, and data was scrapped for scientific publications published in [...]

Cloud computing is the transformation of IT infrastructure into a utility which allows the users to plug-in infrastructure over the internet, and utilizes the computing resources without their installation and maintenance on-premises. It is time-consuming and a headache to manage resources on your own. Cloud computing provides shared and dedicated resources to facilitate large scale tasks or time-consuming tasks. To get the full benefit from cloud computing we need algorithms to allocate resources according to client needs and algorithms for fast access to the cloud servers. Here comes load balancing. Load balancing is a technique to distribute load among various [...]