Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) is a technique to establish the interrelationships between elements of interest in a specific domain through experts’ knowledge of the context of the elements. This technique has been applied in numerous domains and the list continues to grow due to its simplistic concept, while sustainability has taken the lead. The partially automated or manual application of this technique has been prone to errors as witnessed in the literature due to a series of mathematical steps of higher-order computing complexity. Therefore, this work proposes to develop an end-to-end graphical software, SmartISM, to implement ISM technique and MICMAC (Matrice d’Impacts Croisés Multiplication Appliquée á un Classement (cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification)), generally applied along with ISM to classify variables. Further, a scoping review has been conducted to study the applications of ISM in the previous studies using Denyer and Tranfield’s (2009) framework and newly developed SmartISM. For the development of SmartISM, Microsoft Excel software has been used, and relevant algorithms and VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) functions have been illustrated. For the transitivity calculation the Warshall algorithm has been used and a new algorithm reduced conical matrix has been introduced to remove edges while retaining the reachability of variables and structure of digraph in the final model. The scoping review results demonstrate 21 different domains such as sustainability, supply chain and logistics, information technology, energy, human resource, marketing, and operations among others; numerous types of constructs such as enablers, barriers, critical success factors, strategies, practices, among others, and their numbers varied from 5 to 32; number of decision makers ranged between 2 to 120 with a median value of 11, and belong to academia, industry, and/or government; and usage of multiple techniques of discourse and survey for decision making and data collection. Furthermore, the SmartISM reproduced results show that only 29 out of 77 studies selected have a correct application of ISM after discounting the generalized transitivity incorporation. The outcome of this work will help in more informed applications of this technique in newer domains and utilization of SmartISM to efficiently model the interrelationships among variables.

The depletion of natural resources and the intermittence of renewable energy resources have pressed the need for a hybrid microgrid, combining the benefits of both AC and DC microgrids, minimizing the overall deficiency shortcomings and increasing the reliability of the system. The hybrid microgrid also supports the decentralized grid control structure, aligning with the current scattered and concentrated load scenarios. Hence, there is an increasing need to explore and reveal the integration, optimization, and control strategies regarding the hybrid microgrid. A comprehensive study of hybrid microgrid’s performance parameters, efficiency, reliability, security, design flexibility, and cost-effectiveness is required. This paper discusses major issues regarding the hybrid microgrids, the integration of AC and DC microgrids, their security and reliability, the optimization of power generation and load management in different scenarios, the efficient management regarding uncertainty for renewable energy resources, the optimal placement of feeders, and the cost-effective control methodologies for the hybrid microgrid. The major research areas are briefly explained, aiming to find the research gap that can further improve the performance of the grid. In light of the recent trends in research, novel strategies are proposed that are found most effective and cost-friendly regarding the hybrid microgrid. This paper will serve as a baseline for future research, comparative analysis, and further development of novel techniques regarding hybrid microgrids.

Machine learning is emerging nowadays as an important tool for decision support in many areas of research. In the field of education, both educational organizations and students are the target beneficiaries. It facilitates the educational sector in predicting the student’s outcome at the end of their course and for the students in deciding to choose a suitable course for them based on their performances in previous exams and other behavioral features. In this study, a systematic literature review is performed to extract the algorithms and the features that have been used in the prediction studies. Based on the search criteria, 2700 articles were initially considered. Using specified inclusion and exclusion criteria, quality scores were provided, and up to 56 articles were filtered for further analysis. The utmost care was taken in studying the features utilized, database used, algorithms implemented, and the future directions as recommended by researchers. The features were classified as demographic, academic, and behavioral features, and finally, only 34 articles with these features were finalized, whose details of study are provided. Based on the results obtained from the systematic review, we conclude that the machine learning techniques have the ability to predict the students’ performance based on specified features as categorized and can be used by students as well as academic institutions. A specific machine learning model identification for the purpose of student academic performance prediction would not be feasible, since each paper taken for review involves different datasets and does not include benchmark datasets. However, the application of the machine learning techniques in educational mining is still limited, and a greater number of studies should be carried out in order to obtain well-formed and generalizable results. We provide future guidelines to practitioners and researchers based on the results obtained in this work.

Orthopedic trauma results in the injury of bone joints and tendons of the body. A radiologist reviews and monitors large numbers of radiographs daily, which can lead to the diagnostic error. Therefore, there is a need to automate the detection of bone fractures in X-ray images, particularly humerus bone fractures. In this paper, we have proposed an ensemble model that can detect the fracture in an x-ray image. In this paper, we proposed an ensemble model designed for fracture detection in X-ray images. An ensemble model combines multiple diverse models to improve predictive accuracy and robustness by aggregating their individual predictions. The model leverages MobileNetV2, Vgg16, InceptionV3, and ResNet50, using histogram equalization for preprocessing and a Global Average Pooling layer for feature extraction. The entire humerus from the public Mura-v1.1 dataset is utilized for analysis, utilizing a single training-validation split. The dataset is divided into a ratio of 80:20 for experiments for the training and validation datasets. The proposed model outperformed the modified deep-learning models and achieved 92.96%, 91.62%, and 92.14% accuracy, recall, and F1 scores, respectively. The ensemble model presented effectively automates bone fracture detection in X-ray images of the humerus, demonstrating superior performance compared to modified deep-learning models. A comparison has been made between a novel ensemble model and state-of-the-art models, bench-marking their performance. These findings underscore its potential for enhancing diagnostic accuracy and efficiency in orthopedic radiology.

One of the most important concerns in the planning and operation of an electric power generation system is the effective scheduling of all power generation facilities to meet growing power demand. Economic load dispatch (ELD) is a phenomenon where an optimal combination of power generating units is selected in such a way as to minimize the total fuel cost while satisfying the load demand, subject to operational constraints. Different numerical and metaheuristic optimization techniques have gained prominent importance and are widely used to solve the nonlinear problem. Although metaheuristic techniques have a good convergence rate than numerical techniques, however, their implementation seems difficult in the presence of nonlinear and dynamic parameters. This work is devoted to solving the ELD problem with the integration of variable energy resources using a modified directional bat algorithm (dBA). Then the proposed technique is validated via different realistic test cases consisting of thermal and renewable energy sources (RESs). From simulation results, it is observed that dBA reduces the operational cost with less computational time and has better convergence characteristics than that of standard BA and other popular techniques like particle swarm optimization (PSO) and genetic algorithm (GA).

Mobile edge computing (MEC) is a paradigm novel computing that promises the dramatic effect of reduction in latency and consumption of energy by computation offloading intensive; these tasks to the edge clouds in proximity close to the smart mobile users. In this research, reduce the offloading and latency between the edge computing and multiusers under the environment IoT application in 5G using bald eagle search optimization algorithm. The deep learning approach may consume high computational complexity and more time. In an edge computing system, devices can offload their computation-intensive tasks to the edge servers to save energy and shorten their latency. The bald eagle algorithm (BES) is the advanced optimization algorithm that resembles the strategy of eagle hunting. The strategies are select, search, and swooping stages. Previously, the BES algorithm is used to consume the energy and distance; to improve the better energy and reduce the offloading latency in this research and some delays occur when devices increase causes demand for cloud data, it can be improved by offering ROS (resource) estimation. To enhance the BES algorithm that introduces the ROS estimation stage to select the better ROSs, an edge system, which offloads the most appropriate IoT subtasks to edge servers then the expected time of execution, got minimized. Based on multiuser offloading, we proposed a bald eagle search optimization algorithm that can effectively reduce the end-end time to get fast and near-optimal IoT devices. The latency is reduced from the cloud to the local; this can be overcome by using edge computing, and deep learning expects faster and better results from the network. This can be proposed by BES algorithm technique that is better than other conventional methods that are compared on results to minimize the offloading latency. Then, the simulation is done to show the efficiency and stability by reducing the offloading latency.