Papers by Muhammad Qureshi
IEEE Access
As the field of information technology expands, there is a huge need for cloud service providers ... more As the field of information technology expands, there is a huge need for cloud service providers (CSP). CSP's vast solutions and services support Cloud, IoT, Fog, and Edge computing. In today's competitive cloud market, customer satisfaction is critical more than ever. CSP and consumer satisfaction with service level agreement (SLA) fulfillment have always been given more attention. As a result of signing SLA and CSP agreements to supply resources in high demand, customers are now experiencing issues with resource delivery. Cloud and heterogeneous environments necessitate an intelligent recommender and negotiation agent model (IRNAM) to handle responsibilities in the current system. The Recommender system recommends CSP as per users' priorities, which eases the filtration process. The negotiation process provided by IRNAM ensures that users' choices are prioritized with maximum jobs to CSP. IRNAM keeps track of the most critical metrics and can reach decisions quickly and for the best possible deal. It uses an analytical concession algorithm that analyzes consumer and CSP choices to find a reliable, secure server with the simplest solution. The negotiation process uses user's and CSP choice metrics, performance factors, evaluation measures, and success factors in the best execution time to decide. IRNAM provides a flexible and valuable way for selecting CSP and negotiating for services on the user's terms while considering CSP satisfaction. INDEX TERMS Agent, cloud management, cloud services, cloud computing, intelligent system, negotiation; recommender system, SLA, SLA life cycle.
International Journal of Molecular Sciences
Oral squamous cell carcinomas (OSCC) remain a major healthcare burden in Asian countries. In Paki... more Oral squamous cell carcinomas (OSCC) remain a major healthcare burden in Asian countries. In Pakistan alone, it is the most common cancer in males and second only to breast cancer in females. Alarmingly, treatment options for OSCC remain limited. With this context, investigations made to explore the inflammatory milieu of OSCC become highly relevant, with the hope of practicing immunotherapeutic approaches to address this highly prevalent tumor. We investigated the newly identified innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) and associated cytokines in well-defined human oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) as well as in a 7,12-dimethylbenz[a]anthracene (DMBA)-induced murine model of OSCC using flow cytometry and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). We further went on to explore molecular circuitry involved in OSCC by developing a murine model of OSCC and using an α-Thy1 antibody to inhibit ILCs. Amongst the ILCs that we found in human OSCC, ILC3 (23%) was the most abundant, fol...
IEEE Access
Automatic detection of plant diseases has emerged as a challenging field in the last decade. Comp... more Automatic detection of plant diseases has emerged as a challenging field in the last decade. Computer vision-based advancements have helped in the timely and accurate identification of diseases, making possible an appropriate treatment and hence ensuring an increased yield. Diseases attack in different formations on a plant; the most severe being multiple diseases appearing on a single leaf. Moreover, as various diseases progress, they generate similar-looking symptoms making the task of identification further difficult. This work addresses these two problems with the help of an improved YOLOX model. We propose a modified Spatial Pyramid Pooling (SPP) layer to effectively extract relevant features at various scales from the training data. It is achieved by concatenating multilevel features pooled from smaller to larger scales. To enhance the generalization capability of the design, various skip connections are also introduced. To improve the network convergence and detection accuracy, α IoU based regression loss function was employed. A dataset composed of 1, 112 cotton plant images with co-occurring diseases along with their progressive severity levels was collected from the Southern Punjab region of Pakistan. Apart from healthy images, the dataset comprises three severity stages of cotton leaf curl with co-occurring cotton sooty mold stress on a single leaf image. Experimental results revealed that our proposed improved SPP-based YOLOX-s model achieved 73.13% mAP on our self-collected dataset and achieved 3.27% better test accuracy than the original YOLOX model.
2022 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP)
In this paper, we propose a new comprehensive Video Surveillance Quality Assessment Dataset (VSQu... more In this paper, we propose a new comprehensive Video Surveillance Quality Assessment Dataset (VSQuAD) dedicated to Video Surveillance (VS) systems. In contrast to other public datasets, this one contains many more videos with distortions and diversified content from common video surveillance scenarios. These videos have been artificially degraded with various types of distortions (single distortion or multiple distortions simultaneously) at different severity levels. In order to improve the efficiency of the surveillance systems and the versatility of the video quality assessment dataset, night vision CCTV videos are also included. Furthermore, a comprehensive analysis of the content in terms of diversity and challenging problems is also presented in this study. The interest of such database is twofold. First, it will serve for benchmarking different video distortion detection and classification algorithms. Second, it will be useful for the design of learning models for various challenging VS problems such as identification and removal of the most common distortions. The complete dataset is made publicly available as part of a challenge session in this conference through the following link: https://www.l2ti.univ-paris13.fr/VSQuad/.
JISR management and social sciences & economics
Technological advancement is one of the key sources of competitive advantage for modern-day busin... more Technological advancement is one of the key sources of competitive advantage for modern-day businesses. Specifically, IT-based innovations in financial services such as mobile banking (MB) have revolutionized banking practices. However, in developing countries like Pakistan with decrepit infrastructure and less education, mobile banking has gained less attention. This study, through a systematic literature review, aims to assess the key factor of mobile banking acceptance. An electronic search was carried out incorporating 11 databases of majorly publish multidisciplinary articles. The outcomes are limited to the country of Pakistan and restricted by the year. 12 articles were identified as relevant to this particular systematic review based on the identified keywords. All the information is extracted from every single research article to impart data for the research title, author, journal name, methodology/model, year, study purpose, and major findings. The findings of this study s...
Systems Research and Behavioral Science
The complexity surrounding the maximization of firm value agenda demands a comprehensive causal m... more The complexity surrounding the maximization of firm value agenda demands a comprehensive causal model that effectively embeds the intertwining relationships of the variables and the policies involved. System dynamics provides an appropriate methodology to model and simulate such complex relationships to facilitate decision making in a complex business environment. The objective of the study is to analyze the impact of capital structure policy, being a key managerial decision, on the firm value. For this purpose, the study develops a system dynamics‐based corporate planning model for an oil firm, including the operational as well as financial processes. Various scenarios and capital structure policies have been designed and simulated to identify the policy that helps in increasing the firm value. The results demonstrate that increase in debt percentage in capital structure mix increase the firm value.
Frontiers in Psychology
Social interactions through social commerce platforms empower consumers to share their personal e... more Social interactions through social commerce platforms empower consumers to share their personal experiences with others, but its role becomes more significant for societal protection during COVID-19. Numerous scholars have studied e-commerce extensively, but there is a lack of studies to identify social commerce characteristics to attract potential consumers during COVID-19. This study aims to examine the role of social commerce constructs by integrating social presence as a moderator in the model to explain consumers online shopping intentions in a Pakistani context, where lack of trust on the reliability and validity of comments from other consumers being considered the growing concern toward the success of social commerce. The quantitative data were collected from the respondents living in different cities of Pakistan. Most of the hypothesis supported and demonstrate the positive response from the Pakistani consumers having experience in shopping through social commerce platforms...
NICE Research Journal, 2018
In the regime of globalization, many companies around the world attempt to globalize their busine... more In the regime of globalization, many companies around the world attempt to globalize their business network beyond domestic boundaries. The stimulus behind that is to nourish, avail opportunities, and earn profits by leveraging the global skills and resources. Such an extension of business can not only benefit them but also to the domestic economies, and overseas economies too in many respects. This study intensively examines the way investors and financers’ assist Pakistani companies to expand their business worldwide. When companies flourish their business ventures and even go global, investors feel confident in investing with them. Similarly, financers trust them and finance them at soft/discounted terms. This is a novel study in the matrix of Pakistan. One earlier research on this issue in some other country ascertained only about the role of bank lending in corporate globalization, while this probe also enlarges its scope by probing about the relationship among investors and gl...
Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention, 2021
Dear Editor Effective national level cancer registration system does not exist in Pakistan (Qures... more Dear Editor Effective national level cancer registration system does not exist in Pakistan (Qureshi et al., 2015). It has always been a matter of concern for all stakeholders within the country as well as amongst relevant international authorities. Unfortunately, no minimal and inefficacious efforts have been made in the past by the policy makers in Pakistan to facilitate the establishment of a nationwide functional cancer registration authority. However, regional cancer registries have substantially contributed towards establishing cancer statistics in Pakistan. One such regional cancer registry was the Karachi Cancer Registry (KCR) which was founded by Dr. Yasmin Bhurgri and published several reports detailing cancer patterns from Karachi South. However, after the death of Dr. Yasmin, the KCR went practically nonfunctional until recently when it was revived by a group of relevant stakeholders from various institutions in Karachi. Recent publication of a number of reports detailing cancer patterns in Karachi is noticeable and effectively highlight revival of cancer registration in Karachi, Pakistan. Qureshi et al in 2016 reported 6-year (2010-2015) cancer data from the Dow Cancer Registry which represents the largest public sector diagnostic and reference laboratory of the city (Qureshi et al.,2016). More recently, another report from the Dow Cancer Registry detailed cancer patterns in Karachi during 2010-2019 (Qureshi et al., 2020). Importantly, revival of the KCR was announced in a recent report which describes cancer patterns in Karachi during 2017-2019 (Pervez et al., 2020). It is important to mention there that after Dr. Bhurgri's death, this is the first notable report from the platform of the KCR and thus a considerable step towards establishing cancer registration in Karachi. These regular publications describing high quality regional cancer data indicate the commitment and dedication demonstrated by cancer researchers from the largest city of Pakistan towards establishing cancer registration in the city. While these regional efforts are highly appreciable, it is now high time that an effective national cancer registration system is formulated in Pakistan. The government of Pakistan, relevant policy makers as well as international cancer registration authorities will have to play a vital role in this regard.
Genes, 2022
Oculocutaneous albinism (OCA) is associated with a wide range of clinical presentations and has b... more Oculocutaneous albinism (OCA) is associated with a wide range of clinical presentations and has been categorized with syndromic and non-syndromic features. The most common causative genes in non-syndromic OCA are TYR and OCA2 and HSP1 is in the syndromic albinism. The objective of this study was to identify pathogenic variants in congenital OCA families from Pakistan. Eight consanguineous families were recruited, and clinical and ophthalmological examination was carried out to diagnose the disease. Whole blood was collected from the participating individuals, and genomic DNA was extracted for sequencing analysis. TruSight one-panel sequencing was carried out on one affected individual of each family, and termination Sanger sequencing was carried out to establish the co-segregation of the causative gene or genes. In silico analysis was conducted to predict the causative pathogenic variants. Two families were found to have novel genetic pathogenic variants, and six families harbored p...
IEEE Access, 2022
Opinion Mining from user reviews is an emerging field. Sentiment Analysis of Natural Language tex... more Opinion Mining from user reviews is an emerging field. Sentiment Analysis of Natural Language text helps us in finding the opinion of the customers. These reviews can be in any language e.g. English, Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, Urdu, and Hindi. This research presents a model to classify the polarity of the review(s) in Roman Urdu text (reviews). For the purpose, raw data was scraped from the reviews of 20 songs from Indo-Pak Music Industry. In this research a new dataset of 24000 reviews of Roman Urdu text is created. Nine Machine Learning algorithms-Naïve Bayes, Support Vector Machine, Logistic Regression, K-Nearest Neighbors, Artificial Neural Networks, Convolutional Neural Network, Recurrent Neural Networks, ID3 and Gradient Boost Tree, are attempted. Logistic Regression outperformed the rest, based on testing and cross validation accuracies that are 92.25% and 91.47% respectively.
Applied Sciences, 2022
The design of an intracavity spectroscopy based two-mode biomedical sensor involves a thorough in... more The design of an intracavity spectroscopy based two-mode biomedical sensor involves a thorough investigation of the system. For this purpose, the individual components that are present in the system must be examined. This work describes the principle of two very important gadgets, namely the Fibre Bragg Grating (FBG), and the tunable coupler. We adhere to a Petri network scheme to model and analyze the performance of the FBG, and the results mirror strikingly low difference in the values of Bragg Wavelength during its ascending and descending operational principle, thereby maintaining the accuracy of the sensor’s results. Next, a pseudocode is developed and implemented for the investigation of the optical coupler in LabView. The values of its maximum output power are determined, and the coupling ratio for various values of controlling voltage is determined at three different wavelengths. The hysteresis results mirror an extremely low difference between the forward and reverse values...
NICE Research Journal, 2020
In the industry of goods, the product is the primary brand. However, with services, the company i... more In the industry of goods, the product is the primary brand. However, with services, the company is the primary brand. Branding is not for visible goods but also a significant factor of performance for services. The ability to educate consumers of their expertise and credence values before the order has contributed to the general awareness of the value of products in the service industry in relation to consumer preference. If the brand is an essential consideration in any campaign initiative, it is crucial to consider the meaning of its equity. Brand value is the confidence gained in a brand regardless of customer experience. Because of the strategic advantages of established and established products, brand value is significant. Brand equity can make a significant contribution to the visualization of intangible goods for service companies. Given that there is no research available, this study seeks to suggest descriptive brand equity dimensions in Pakistan's service markets. The ...
In light of competitive pressure, increasing financial performance and competitiveness in the org... more In light of competitive pressure, increasing financial performance and competitiveness in the organizations, employee’s retention plays an important role.This paper aims to review the existing literature and propose a model on employee’s retention for better understanding the critical factors that helps to increase the employee’s retention.Extensive literature has been reviewed to find relationship between leadership style and employee’s retention and identified significant determinants of employee’s retention in an organization.Review of literature indicated that transformational leadership and transactional leadership has positive relationship with employee’s retention.Transformational leadership and transactional leadership have positive relationship with job satisfaction and organizational commitment. It also indicated that there is positive relationship exists between job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Moreover there is positive relationship exists between job sati...
International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, 2018
In the digital economy of Pakistan, banks and financial institutions are continuously engaged in ... more In the digital economy of Pakistan, banks and financial institutions are continuously engaged in efforts to launch new variants of plastic money. At present, the debit and credit cards are widely accepted, among other forms of plastic money, as convenient mode of payment in Pakistan. This increasing trend of debit/credit card usage is encouraging researchers to analyze the opinions of public regarding plastic card usage. This research undertaking highlights the consumer attitude towards usage of these cards in Karachi by considering demographic factors: income, education, age, and gender along with some attitudinal variables: perception of benefits and risks of plastic money. The data is gleaned through survey from the sample of 372 respondents of Karachi. The results reveal that monthly household income, education, and age do not have any significant impact on the plastic card usage. Moreover, the findings uncover that males are using plastic cards more frequently than females. The...
The CEED2016 is newly developed image database dedicated for contrast enhancement evaluation. The... more The CEED2016 is newly developed image database dedicated for contrast enhancement evaluation. The database contains 30 original color images and 180 enhanced images obtained using six different CE methods. The database is built with our own captured images and some common pictures used by the image processing community. The subjective experiments were performed at Universite Paris 13 at Laboratoire de Traitement et Transport de l'Information (L2TI). The images were displayed on a calibrated LCD monitor in a dark room environment to avoid any problem with the illumination adaptation of background. Twenty-three observers, 10 experts, and 13 non-experts, from different age groups, gender, and background participated in the experiments. To obtain the ranking scores, we adopted a balanced pairwise preference based ranking protocol. The interface for the subjective experiments was developed in Matlab, where, for each original image, we randomly displayed all possible pair combinations of enhanced images to the observers. We also showed the original image in the center of the screen (a pair of enhanced images are to its left and right), to facilitate the analysis of after effects of CE. The observers had the choice to rank equally similar stimuli. In the PC ranking protocol, each enhanced image is compared with the others in pairs and ranking results are stored in a preference matrix.
Climate change discourse integrates 3Ps – People, Planet, and Profit. However, we do not find any... more Climate change discourse integrates 3Ps – People, Planet, and Profit. However, we do not find any empirical study that integrates 3Ps. Therefore, using a large global panel dataset from 46 countries this study intends to fill this gap by providing empirical evidence about investors’ value proposition of corporate climate performance in different cultural environments. The results show that Hofstede’s cultural dimensions affect corporate climate performance and its market pricing. We find that in cultures with high power distance, low individualism, high masculinity, high uncertainty avoidance, high long-term orientation, and high restraint, the investors generally penalize the firms disclosing higher environmental performance. Strangely enough, corporate waste production is universally value irrelevant. Our results indicate some policy implications.
IBT Journal of Business Studies, 2015
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to assess the effects of psychological problems faced by ID... more Purpose: The purpose of this study is to assess the effects of psychological problems faced by IDPs (displaced as a result of Operation Zarb-i-Azb) of North Waziristan on local Community. IDPs coming from Waziristan and surroundings including men and women of all ages and children are the ones who are more vulnerable to physical and mental stresses likely to be caused by military actions of terrorists and counteraction by Pakistani Armed Forces. They have residence in shelter homes, tents are in a community which is different and most of the time hostile from their own community. The stresses like violence, migration, imposed poverty unhygienic and unsystematic living atmosphere of camps lead the IDPs to a change in everyday life activities away from their own cultural routines which in turn is causing deterioration of society as well. Methodology/Sampling: This is primarily an exploratory study done on the field in IDP camps situated in Bannu district. We approached a sample of 500...
Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 2021
China has emerged as the world's largest pollutant emitter due to rapid industrialization and a r... more China has emerged as the world's largest pollutant emitter due to rapid industrialization and a remarkable economic upsurge in recent decades. Rising carbon emissions have exerted more social and regulatory pressure on Chinese corporations to undertake environmental protection investments. However, the implications of such investments on the nancial fundamentals of a rm remain unclear. Especially little is known about how environmental protection investments affect the performance of nancially constrained rms. This study explores the mediating role of nancial constraints in the nexus between corporate environmental protection investment and the accounting and market performance of Chinese listed rms during 2009-2016. The empirical outcomes of the generalized method of moments (GMM) based regressions reveal that environmental investments of non-constrained rms have a positive impact on the accounting and market performance of such rms measured by ROA and Tobin's q respectively. Interestingly, environmental protection investments have a signi cant negative association with both the accounting and market performance proxies of rms that are facing nancial constraints. These ndings imply that in pursuit of environment preservation and pollution abatement, policymakers shall provide more nancial exibility and enabling environment to nancially constrained rms to optimize their role in pollution abatement.
Computers, Materials & Continua, 2022
In machine learning, sentiment analysis is a technique to find and analyze the sentiments hidden ... more In machine learning, sentiment analysis is a technique to find and analyze the sentiments hidden in the text. For sentiment analysis, annotated data is a basic requirement. Generally, this data is manually annotated. Manual annotation is time consuming, costly and laborious process. To overcome these resource constraints this research has proposed a fully automated annotation technique for aspect level sentiment analysis. Dataset is created from the reviews of ten most popular songs on YouTube. Reviews of five aspects-voice, video, music, lyrics and song, are extracted. An N-Gram based technique is proposed. Complete dataset consists of 369436 reviews that took 173.53 s to annotate using the proposed technique while this dataset might have taken approximately 2.07 million seconds (575 h) if it was annotated manually. For the validation of the proposed technique, a sub-dataset-Voice, is annotated manually as well as with the proposed technique. Cohen's Kappa statistics is used to evaluate the degree of agreement between the two annotations. The high Kappa value (i.e., 0.9571%) shows the high level of agreement between the two. This validates that the quality of annotation of the proposed technique is as good as manual annotation even with far less computational cost. This research also contributes in consolidating the guidelines for the manual annotation process.
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Papers by Muhammad Qureshi