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Fulltext Critical product features' identification using an opinion analyzer

Shamim A, Balakrishnan V, Tahir M, Shiraz M

ScientificWorldJournal, 2014;2014:340583.
PMID: 25506612 DOI: 10.1155/2014/340583

The increasing use and ubiquity of the Internet facilitate dissemination of word-of-mouth through blogs, online forums, newsgroups, and consumer's reviews. Online consumer's reviews present tremendous opportunities and challenges for consumers and marketers. One of the challenges is to develop interactive marketing practices for making connections with target consumers that capitalize consumer-to-consumer communications for generating product adoption. Opinion mining is employed in marketing to help consumers and enterprises in the analysis of online consumers' reviews by highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the products. This paper describes an opinion mining system based on novel review and feature ranking methods to empower consumers and enterprises for identifying critical product features from enormous consumers' reviews. Consumers and business analysts are the main target group for the proposed system who want to explore consumers' feedback for determining purchase decisions and enterprise strategies. We evaluate the proposed system on real dataset. Results show that integration of review and feature-ranking methods improves the decision making processes significantly.
Fulltext Extramedullary plasmacytoma in the maxillary sinus

Megat Shiraz MA, Jong YH, Primuharsa Putra SH

Singapore Med J, 2008 Nov;49(11):e310-1.
PMID: 19037537

Extramedullary plasmacytoma is a rare malignant plasma cell tumour. We report an extremely aggressive case of extramedullary plasmacytoma of the right maxillary sinus, which had metastasised to the brain and rib. A 56-year-old man presented with recurrent epistaxis and acute anaemia. Nasendoscopy revealed a medialised medial wall of the right maxilla and a mass occupying the whole nasopharynx. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed a right maxillary tumour with extension to the ipsilateral nasal cavity, nasopharynx, right sphenoid and ethmoidal sinuses. There was an extra-axial brain metastasis. There were metastases to the right parietal region and left eighth rib. Histopathology examination of the maxillary mass revealed abundant plasma cells with kappa-chain restriction. He was planned for four cycles of chemotherapy. Unfortunately, in view of the advanced stage of disease, he succumbed to his disease during the first cycle of chemotherapy.
Fulltext Big data: survey, technologies, opportunities, and challenges

Khan N, Yaqoob I, Hashem IA, Inayat Z, Ali WK, Alam M, et al.

ScientificWorldJournal, 2014;2014:712826.
PMID: 25136682 DOI: 10.1155/2014/712826

Big Data has gained much attention from the academia and the IT industry. In the digital and computing world, information is generated and collected at a rate that rapidly exceeds the boundary range. Currently, over 2 billion people worldwide are connected to the Internet, and over 5 billion individuals own mobile phones. By 2020, 50 billion devices are expected to be connected to the Internet. At this point, predicted data production will be 44 times greater than that in 2009. As information is transferred and shared at light speed on optic fiber and wireless networks, the volume of data and the speed of market growth increase. However, the fast growth rate of such large data generates numerous challenges, such as the rapid growth of data, transfer speed, diverse data, and security. Nonetheless, Big Data is still in its infancy stage, and the domain has not been reviewed in general. Hence, this study comprehensively surveys and classifies the various attributes of Big Data, including its nature, definitions, rapid growth rate, volume, management, analysis, and security. This study also proposes a data life cycle that uses the technologies and terminologies of Big Data. Future research directions in this field are determined based on opportunities and several open issues in Big Data domination. These research directions facilitate the exploration of the domain and the development of optimal techniques to address Big Data.
Fulltext A lightweight distributed framework for computational offloading in mobile cloud computing

Shiraz M, Gani A, Ahmad RW, Adeel Ali Shah S, Karim A, Rahman ZA

PLoS One, 2014;9(8):e102270.
PMID: 25127245 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0102270

The latest developments in mobile computing technology have enabled intensive applications on the modern Smartphones. However, such applications are still constrained by limitations in processing potentials, storage capacity and battery lifetime of the Smart Mobile Devices (SMDs). Therefore, Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) leverages the application processing services of computational clouds for mitigating resources limitations in SMDs. Currently, a number of computational offloading frameworks are proposed for MCC wherein the intensive components of the application are outsourced to computational clouds. Nevertheless, such frameworks focus on runtime partitioning of the application for computational offloading, which is time consuming and resources intensive. The resource constraint nature of SMDs require lightweight procedures for leveraging computational clouds. Therefore, this paper presents a lightweight framework which focuses on minimizing additional resources utilization in computational offloading for MCC. The framework employs features of centralized monitoring, high availability and on demand access services of computational clouds for computational offloading. As a result, the turnaround time and execution cost of the application are reduced. The framework is evaluated by testing prototype application in the real MCC environment. The lightweight nature of the proposed framework is validated by employing computational offloading for the proposed framework and the latest existing frameworks. Analysis shows that by employing the proposed framework for computational offloading, the size of data transmission is reduced by 91%, energy consumption cost is minimized by 81% and turnaround time of the application is decreased by 83.5% as compared to the existing offloading frameworks. Hence, the proposed framework minimizes additional resources utilization and therefore offers lightweight solution for computational offloading in MCC.
Fulltext A comprehensive review on adaptability of network forensics frameworks for mobile cloud computing

Khan S, Shiraz M, Wahab AW, Gani A, Han Q, Rahman ZB

ScientificWorldJournal, 2014;2014:547062.
PMID: 25097880 DOI: 10.1155/2014/547062

Network forensics enables investigation and identification of network attacks through the retrieved digital content. The proliferation of smartphones and the cost-effective universal data access through cloud has made Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) a congenital target for network attacks. However, confines in carrying out forensics in MCC is interrelated with the autonomous cloud hosting companies and their policies for restricted access to the digital content in the back-end cloud platforms. It implies that existing Network Forensic Frameworks (NFFs) have limited impact in the MCC paradigm. To this end, we qualitatively analyze the adaptability of existing NFFs when applied to the MCC. Explicitly, the fundamental mechanisms of NFFs are highlighted and then analyzed using the most relevant parameters. A classification is proposed to help understand the anatomy of existing NFFs. Subsequently, a comparison is given that explores the functional similarities and deviations among NFFs. The paper concludes by discussing research challenges for progressive network forensics in MCC.
Fulltext Cloud service selection using multicriteria decision analysis

Whaiduzzaman M, Gani A, Anuar NB, Shiraz M, Haque MN, Haque IT

ScientificWorldJournal, 2014;2014:459375.
PMID: 24696645 DOI: 10.1155/2014/459375

Cloud computing (CC) has recently been receiving tremendous attention from the IT industry and academic researchers. CC leverages its unique services to cloud customers in a pay-as-you-go, anytime, anywhere manner. Cloud services provide dynamically scalable services through the Internet on demand. Therefore, service provisioning plays a key role in CC. The cloud customer must be able to select appropriate services according to his or her needs. Several approaches have been proposed to solve the service selection problem, including multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA). MCDA enables the user to choose from among a number of available choices. In this paper, we analyze the application of MCDA to service selection in CC. We identify and synthesize several MCDA techniques and provide a comprehensive analysis of this technology for general readers. In addition, we present a taxonomy derived from a survey of the current literature. Finally, we highlight several state-of-the-art practical aspects of MCDA implementation in cloud computing service selection. The contributions of this study are four-fold: (a) focusing on the state-of-the-art MCDA techniques, (b) highlighting the comparative analysis and suitability of several MCDA methods, (c) presenting a taxonomy through extensive literature review, and (d) analyzing and summarizing the cloud computing service selections in different scenarios.
Fulltext Maxillary sinus tumours--a review of twenty-nine patients treated by maxillectomy approach

Mazlina S, Putra SH, Shiraz MA, Hazim MY, Roszalina R, Abdul AR

Med J Malaysia, 2006 Aug;61(3):284-7.
PMID: 17240576

A retrospective data of 29 patients who underwent various types of maxillectomy from January 1998 till January 2004 in UKM hospital were reviewed. There were 21 males (72%) and 8 females (28%) with mean age of 42 years. Malays were the majority of patients 17 (59%), Chinese 11 (38%) and Indian 1 (3%). Seventeen patients (59%) presented with malignant tumours while 12 patients (41%) with benign tumours. Inverted papilloma (50%) was the commonest benign tumour and squamous cell carcinoma (36%) was the commonest malignancy. Medial maxillectomy was performed in ten patients (35%), total maxillectomy in seven patients (24%), three patients (10%) had near total, three patients (10%) had partial maxillectomy and six patients (21%) underwent inferior maxillectomy.
Fulltext Neck abscess: five year retrospective review of Hospital University Kebangsaan Malaysia experience

Mazita A, Hazim MY, Megat Shiraz MA, Primuharsa Putra SH

Med J Malaysia, 2006 Jun;61(2):151-6.
PMID: 16898304

The most commonly involved space was the parapharyngeal and superficial anterior triangle followed by submandibular, retropharyngeal, posterior triangle and submental spaces respectively. Thirty-three percent of patients had diabetes mellitus as a predisposing factor. More than half of them had no known aetiological cause for the neck abscess. We encountered one mortality in an elderly patient with diabetes who succumbed to overwhelming septicaemia despite early abscess drainage and intensive medical treatment.
Fulltext Paediatric tracheostomy in Hospital University Kebangsaan Malaysia - a changing trend

Primuharsa Putra SH, Wong CY, Hazim MY, Megat Shiraz MA, Goh BS

Med J Malaysia, 2006 Jun;61(2):209-13.
PMID: 16898313

Indication for pediatric tracheostomy has changed. Upper airway obstruction secondary to infectious disorders is no longer the commonest indication. The aim of this study was to establish data on indications, outcome and complications of pediatric tracheostomy. A retrospective analysis of pediatric tracheostomies carried out between March 2002 to March 2004 was done. Eighteen patients were identified. The commonest indication was prolonged ventilation (94.5%) followed by pulmonary toilet (5.5%). None was performed for upper airway obstruction. Postoperative complications were encountered in six patients (33.3%), the commonest being accidental decannulation notably in children less than six years of age. Twelve patients (66.6%) were successfully decannulated. The mortality rate was 16.6%. All death were non tracheostomy related. The commonest indication for tracheostomy was prolonged ventilation and tracheostomy in children is relatively safe despite complications.
Sinonasal inverted papilloma with malignant transformation in the middle ear: a multicentric origin?

Mazlina S, Shiraz MA, Hazim MY, Amran AR, Zulkarnaen AN, Wan Muhaizan WM

J Laryngol Otol, 2006 Jul;120(7):597-9.
PMID: 16672089

Inverted papilloma is a rare, benign tumour representing only 0.5 to 4 per cent of all sinonasal neoplasms; its involvement of the middle ear is extremely rare. We present a case of multicentric inverted papilloma in the sinonasal region and middle ear in a 54-year-old man. The patient later developed neck metastasis secondary to malignant transformation of the inverted papilloma in the middle ear.
Fulltext Entropy and Gaussian Filter-Based Adaptive Active Contour for Segmentation of Skin Lesions

Mustafa S, Iqbal MW, Rana TA, Jaffar A, Shiraz M, Arif M, et al.

Comput Intell Neurosci, 2022;2022:4348235.
PMID: 35909861 DOI: 10.1155/2022/4348235

Malignant melanoma is considered one of the deadliest skin diseases if ignored without treatment. The mortality rate caused by melanoma is more than two times that of other skin malignancy diseases. These facts encourage computer scientists to find automated methods to discover skin cancers. Nowadays, the analysis of skin images is widely used by assistant physicians to discover the first stage of the disease automatically. One of the challenges the computer science researchers faced when developing such a system is the un-clarity of the existing images, such as noise like shadows, low contrast, hairs, and specular reflections, which complicates detecting the skin lesions in that images. This paper proposes the solution to the problem mentioned earlier using the active contour method. Still, seed selection in the dynamic contour method has the main drawback of where it should start the segmentation process. This paper uses Gaussian filter-based maximum entropy and morphological processing methods to find automatic seed points for active contour. By incorporating this, it can segment the lesion from dermoscopic images automatically. Our proposed methodology tested quantitative and qualitative measures on standard dataset dermis and used to test the proposed method's reliability which shows encouraging results.
Fulltext Genetic determinants of obesity heterogeneity in type II diabetes

Hosseini Khorami SA, Mutalib MSA, Feili Shiraz M, Abdullah JA, Rejali Z, Ali RM, et al.

Nutr Metab (Lond), 2020;17:55.
PMID: 32670384 DOI: 10.1186/s12986-020-00476-6

Background: Although obesity is considered as the main cause of Type II diabetes (T2DM), non-obese individuals may still develop T2DM and obese individuals may not.
Method: The mRNA expression of PI3K/AKT axis from 100 non-obese and obese participants with insulin sensitivity and insulin resistance states were compared in this study toward the understanding of obesity heterogeneity molecular mechanism.
Result: In present study, there was no statistically significant difference in gene expression levels of IRS1 and PTEN between groups, whereas PI3K, AKT2 and GLUT4 genes were expressed at a lower level in obese diabetic group compared to other groups and were statistically significant. PDK1 gene was expressed at a higher level in non-obese diabetic group compared to obese diabetic and non-obese non-diabetics groups. No statistically significant difference was identified in gene expression pattern of PI3K/AKT pathway between obese non-diabetics and non-obese non-diabetics.
Conclusion: The components of PI3K/AKT pathway which is related to the fasting state, showed reduced expression in obese diabetic group due to the chronic over-nutrition which may induced insensitivity and reduced gene expression. The pathogenesis of insulin resistance in the absence of obesity in non-obese diabetic group could be due to disturbance in another pathway related to the non-fasting state like gluconeogenesis. Therefore, the molecular mechanism of insulin signalling in non-obese diabetic individuals is different from obese diabetics which more investigations are required to study insulin signalling pathways in greater depth, in order to assess nutritional factors, contribute to insulin resistance in obese diabetic and non-obese diabetic individuals.