The inclusion of usability heuristics into the metaverse is aimed at solving the unique issues raised by virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) environments. This research points out the usability challenges of metaverse user interfaces (UIs), such as information overloading, complex navigation, and the need for intuitive control mechanisms in these immersive spaces. By adapting the existing usability models to suit the metaverse context, this study presents a detailed list of heuristics and sub-heuristics that are designed to improve the overall usability of metaverse UIs. These heuristics are essential when it comes to creating user-friendly, inclusive, and captivating virtual environments (VEs) that take care of the needs of three-dimensional interactions, social dynamics demands, and integration with digital–physical worlds. It should be noted that these heuristics have to keep up with new technological advancements, as well as changing expectations from users, hence ensuring a positive user experience (UX) within the metaverse.

Digital learning is becoming increasingly important in the crisis COVID-19 and is widespread in most countries. The proliferation of smart devices and 5G telecommunications systems are contributing to the development of digital learning systems as an alternative to traditional learning systems. Digital learning includes blended learning, online learning, and personalized learning which mainly depends on the use of new technologies and strategies, so digital learning is widely developed to improve education and combat emerging disasters such as COVID-19 diseases. Despite the tremendous benefits of digital learning, there are many obstacles related to the lack of digitized curriculum and collaboration between teachers and students. Therefore, many attempts have been made to improve the learning outcomes through the following strategies: collaboration, teacher convenience, personalized learning, cost and time savings through professional development, and modeling. In this study, facial expressions and heart rates are used to measure the effectiveness of digital learning systems and the level of learners’ engagement in learning environments. The results showed that the proposed approach outperformed the known related works in terms of learning effectiveness. The results of this research can be used to develop a digital learning environment.

Cloud computing technology is known as a distributed computing network, which consists of a large number of servers connected via the internet. This technology involves many worthwhile resources, such as applications, services, and large database storage. Users have the ability to access cloud services and resources through web services. Cloud computing provides a considerable number of benefits, such as effective virtualized resources, cost efficiency, self-service access, flexibility, and scalability. However, many security issues are present in cloud computing environment. One of the most common security challenges in the cloud computing environment is the trojan horses. Trojan horses can disrupt cloud computing services and damage the resources, applications, or virtual machines in the cloud structure. Trojan horse attacks are dangerous, complicated and very difficult to be detected. In this research, eight machine learning classifiers for trojan horse detection in a cloud-based environment have been investigated. The accuracy of the cloud trojan horses detection rate has been investigated using dynamic analysis, Cukoo sandbox, and the Weka data mining tool. Based on the conducted experiments, the SMO and Multilayer Perceptron have been found to be the best classifiers for trojan horse detection in a cloud-based environment. Although SMO and Multilayer Perceptron have achieved the highest accuracy rate of 95.86%, Multilayer Perceptron has outperformed SMO in term of Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) area.

Effective spam filtering plays a crucial role in enhancing user experience by sparing them from unwanted messages. This imperative underscores the importance of safeguarding email systems, prompting scholars across diverse fields to delve deeper into this subject. The primary objective of this research is to mitigate the disruptive effects of spam on email usage by introducing improved security measures compared to existing methods. This goal can be accomplished through the development of a novel spam filtering technique designed to prevent spam from infiltrating users’ inboxes. Consequently, a hybrid filtering approach that combines an information gain philter and a Wrapper Grey Wolf Optimizer feature selection algorithm with a Naive Bayes Classifier, is proposed, denoted as GWO-NBC. This research is rigorously tested using the WEKA software and the SPAMBASE dataset. Thorough performance evaluations demonstrated that the proposed approach surpasses existing solutions in terms of both security and accuracy.

Emerging technologies in artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced optimization methodologies have opened up a new frontier in the field of software engineering. Among these methodologies, optimization algorithms such as the multi-verse optimizer (MVO) provide a compelling and structured technique for identifying software vulnerabilities, thereby enhancing software robustness and reliability. This research investigates the feasibility and efficacy of applying an augmented version of this technique, known as the test path distance multiverse optimization (TPDMVO) algorithm, for comprehensive path coverage testing, which is an indispensable aspect of software validation. The algorithm’s versatility and robustness are examined through its application to a wide range of case studies with varying degrees of complexity. These case studies include rudimentary functions like maximum and middle value extraction, as well as more sophisticated data structures such as binary search trees and AVL trees. A notable innovation in this research is the introduction of a customized fitness function, carefully designed to guide TPDMVO towards traversing all possible execution paths in a program, thereby ensuring comprehensive coverage. To further enhance the comprehensiveness of the test, a metric called ‘test path distance’ (TPD) is utilized. This metric is designed to guide TPDMVO towards paths that have not been explored before. The findings confirm the superior performance of the TPDMVO algorithm, which achieves complete path coverage in all test scenarios. This demonstrates its robustness and adaptability in handling different program complexities.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has transformed various sectors with its power to create human-like texts, images, and multimedia content. However, with all this power and creativity in content production, real-time generation and creativity come significant risks, including adversarial attacks, data poisoning, misinformation campaigns, and theft of intellectual property. This chapter takes a different approach by discussing security concerns regarding GenAI through its core technologies—Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), Variational Autoencoders (VAEs), and Transformer-based Large Language Models (LLMs)—so they may be used maliciously.