The Internet of Things (IoT) has become a popular computing technology paradigm. It is increasingly being utilized to facilitate human life processes through a variety of applications, including smart healthcare, smart grids, smart finance, and smart cities. Scalability, interoperability, security, and privacy, as well as trustworthiness, are all issues that IoT applications face. Blockchain solutions have recently been created to help overcome these difficulties. The purpose of this paper is to provide a survey and tutorial on the use of blockchain in IoT systems. The importance of blockchain technology in terms of features and benefits for constituents of IoT applications is discussed. We propose a blockchain taxonomy for IoT applications based on the most significant factors. In addition, we examine the most widely used blockchain platforms for IoT applications. Furthermore, we discuss how blockchain technology can be used to broaden the spectrum of IoT applications. Besides, we discuss the recent advances and solutions offered for IoT environments. Finally, we discuss the challenges and future research directions of the use of blockchain for the IoT.

Water pollution is a severe health concern. Several studies have recently demonstrated the efficacy of various approaches for treating wastewater from anthropogenic activities. Wastewater treatment is an artificial procedure that removes contaminants and impurities from wastewater or sewage before discharging the effluent back into the environment. It can also be recycled by being further treated or polished to provide safe quality water for use, such as potable water. Municipal and industrial wastewater treatment systems are designed to create effluent discharged to the surrounding environments and must comply with various authorities’ environmental discharge quality rules. An effective, low-cost, environmentally friendly, and long-term wastewater treatment system is critical to protecting our unique and finite water supplies. Moreover, this paper discusses water pollution classification and the three traditional treatment methods of precipitation/encapsulation, adsorption, and membrane technologies, such as electrodialysis, nanofiltration, reverse osmosis, and other artificial intelligence technology. The treatment performances in terms of application and variables have been fully addressed. The ultimate purpose of wastewater treatment is to protect the environment that is compatible with public health and socioeconomic considerations. Realization of the nature of wastewater is the guiding concept for designing a practical and advanced treatment technology to assure the treated wastewater’s productivity, safety, and quality.

Robotic manipulation refers to how robots intelligently interact with the objects in their surroundings, such as grasping and carrying an object from one place to another. Dexterous manipulating skills enable robots to assist humans in accomplishing various tasks that might be too dangerous or difficult to do. This requires robots to intelligently plan and control the actions of their hands and arms. Object manipulation is a vital skill in several robotic tasks. However, it poses a challenge to robotics. The motivation behind this review paper is to review and analyze the most relevant studies on learning-based object manipulation in clutter. Unlike other reviews, this review paper provides valuable insights into the manipulation of objects using deep reinforcement learning (deep RL) in dense clutter. Various studies are examined by surveying existing literature and investigating various aspects, namely, the intended applications, the techniques applied, the challenges faced by researchers, and the recommendations adopted to overcome these obstacles. In this review, we divide deep RL-based robotic manipulation tasks in cluttered environments into three categories, namely, object removal, assembly and rearrangement, and object retrieval and singulation tasks. We then discuss the challenges and potential prospects of object manipulation in clutter. The findings of this review are intended to assist in establishing important guidelines and directions for academics and researchers in the future.

Requirement elicitation represents one of the most vital phases in information system (IS) and software development projects. Selecting suitable elicitation techniques is critical for eliciting the correct specification in various projects. Recent studies have revealed that improper novice practices in this phase have increased the failure rate in both IS and software development projects. Previous research has primarily relied on creating procedural systems based on contextual studies of elicitation properties. In contrast, this paper introduces a deep learning model for selecting suitable requirement elicitation. An experiment was conducted wherein a collected dataset of 1684 technique selection attributes were investigate with respect to 14 elicitation techniques. The study adopted seven criteria to evaluate predictive model performance using confusion matrix accuracy, precision, recall, F1 Score, and area under the ROC curve (AUC) and loss curve. The model scored prediction accuracy of 82%, precision score of 0.83, recall score of 0.83, F1 score of 0.82, cross-validation score of 0.82 (± 0.10), One-vs-One ROC AUC score of 0.74, and One-vs-Rest ROC AUC score of 0.75 for each label. Our results indicate the model’s high prediction ability. The model provides a robust decision-making process for delivering correct elicitation techniques and lowering the risk of project failure. The implications of this study can be used to promote the automatization of the elicitation technique selection process, thereby enhancing current required elicitation industry practices.

Efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols are crucial for time-sensitive transmissions of safety and non-safety messages. The IEEE 802.11p standard requires enhancements for varying channel conditions, including error-prone environments. This paper proposes HVMAC, a hybrid VANET MAC protocol that enhances Quality of Service (QoS) for time-sensitive data traffic applications. It categorizes service channels into contention and scheduled channels. The HVMAC protocol is modeled with Markov chains and evaluated against IEEE 802.11p on offered load, average delay, throughput, reliability, and energy consumption (upto 90%). To improve HVMAC security during safety messages (SM) and service advertisement messages (SAM) transmission, a Post-Quantum Weighted Anonymous Authentication (PQWAA) is proposed. The weighted certificate authority (WCA) assigns priority weights to vehicles, for effective traffic management and resource distribution. PQWAA ensures secure authentication and message integrity using quantum-resistant cryptography and pseudonym-based key derivation. Integrating PQWAA with HVMAC ensures energy efficiency and secure communication for both safety and non-safety applications, offering a comprehensive solution for modern VANET environments. The proposed protocol is analyzed with existing techniques based on the packet delivery ratio, throughput, and average packet delay, values of 99%, (45-50)Mbps, and 50 ms. Also, the HVMAC protocol shows 81.23% lower channel collision than TDMA-MAC.

In recent years, several strategies have been introduced to enhance early warning systems and lower the risk of rock-falls. In this regard, this paper introduces a deep learning- and IoT-based framework for rock-fall early warning, devoted to reducing rock-fall risk with high accuracy. In this framework, the prediction accuracy was augmented by eliminating the uncertainties and confusion plaguing the prediction model. In order to achieve augmented prediction accuracy, this framework fused prediction model-based deep learning with a detection model-based Internet of Things. This study utilized parameters, namely, overall prediction performance measures based on a confusion matrix, to assess the performance of the framework in addition to its ability to reduce the risk. The result indicates an increase in prediction model accuracy from 86% to 98.8%. In addition, the framework reduced the risk probability from 1.51 × 10⁻³ to 8.57 × 10⁻⁹. Our findings demonstrate the high prediction accuracy of the framework, which also offers a reliable decision-making mechanism for providing early warning and reducing the potential hazards of rock falls.