Traditional power grid and its demand-side management (DSM) techniques are centralized and mainly focus on industrial consumers. The ignorance of residential and commercial sectors in DSM activities degrades the overall performance of a conventional grid. Therefore, the concept of DSM and demand response (DR) via residential sector makes the smart grid (SG) superior over the traditional grid. In this context, this paper proposes an optimized home energy management system (OHEMS) that not only facilitates the integration of renewable energy source (RES) and energy storage system (ESS) but also incorporates the residential sector into DSM activities. The proposed OHEMS minimizes the electricity bill by scheduling the household appliances and ESS in response to the dynamic pricing of electricity market. First, the constrained optimization problem is mathematically formulated by using multiple knapsack problems, and then solved by using the heuristic algorithms; genetic algorithm (GA), binary particle swarm optimization (BPSO), wind driven optimization (WDO), bacterial foraging optimization (BFO) and hybrid GA-PSO (HGPO) algorithms. The performance of the proposed scheme and heuristic algorithms is evaluated via MATLAB simulations. Results illustrate that the integration of RES and ESS reduces the electricity bill and peak-to-average ratio (PAR) by 19.94% and 21.55% respectively. Moreover, the HGPO algorithm based home energy management system outperforms the other heuristic algorithms, and further reduces the bill by 25.12% and PAR by 24.88%.

In recent years, demand side management (DSM) techniques have been designed for residential, industrial and commercial sectors. These techniques are very effective in flattening the load profile of customers in grid area networks. In this paper, a heuristic algorithms-based energy management controller is designed for a residential area in a smart grid. In essence, five heuristic algorithms (the genetic algorithm (GA), the binary particle swarm optimization (BPSO) algorithm, the bacterial foraging optimization algorithm (BFOA), the wind-driven optimization (WDO) algorithm and our proposed hybrid genetic wind-driven (GWD) algorithm) are evaluated. These algorithms are used for scheduling residential loads between peak hours (PHs) and off-peak hours (OPHs) in a real-time pricing (RTP) environment while maximizing user comfort (UC) and minimizing both electricity cost and the peak to average ratio (PAR). Moreover, these algorithms are tested in two scenarios: (i) scheduling the load of a single home and (ii) scheduling the load of multiple homes. Simulation results show that our proposed hybrid GWD algorithm performs better than the other heuristic algorithms in terms of the selected performance metrics.

Online social networks (ONSs) such as Twitter have grown to be very useful tools for the dissemination of information. However, they have also become a fertile ground for the spread of false information, particularly regarding the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Best described as an infodemic, there is a great need, now more than ever, for scientific fact-checking and misinformation detection regarding the dangers posed by these tools with regards to COVID-19. In this paper, we analyze the credibility of information shared on Twitter pertaining the COVID-19 pandemic. For our analysis, we propose an ensemble-learning-based framework for verifying the credibility of a vast number of tweets. In particular, we carry out analyses of a large dataset of tweets conveying information regarding COVID-19. In our approach, we classify the information into two categories: credible or non-credible. Our classifications of tweet credibility are based on various features, including tweet- and user-level features. We conduct multiple experiments on the collected and labeled dataset. The results obtained with the proposed framework reveal high accuracy in detecting credible and non-credible tweets containing COVID-19 information.

Information hiding aims to embed secret data into the multimedia, such as image, audio, video, and text. In this paper, two new quantum information hiding approaches are put forward. A quantum steganography approach is proposed to hide a quantum secret image into a quantum cover image. The quantum secret image is encrypted first using a controlled-NOT gate to demonstrate the security of the embedded data. The encrypted secret image is embedded into the quantum cover image using the two most and least significant qubits. In addition, a quantum image watermarking approach is presented to hide a quantum watermark gray image into a quantum carrier image. The quantum watermark image, which is scrambled by utilizing Arnold's cat map, is then embedded into the quantum carrier image using the two least and most significant qubits. Only the watermarked image and the key are sufficient to extract the embedded quantum watermark image. The proposed novelty has been illustrated using a scenario of sharing medical imagery between two remote hospitals. The simulation and analysis demonstrate that the two newly proposed approaches have excellent visual quality and high embedding capacity and security.

The importance of information credibility in society cannot be underestimated given that it is at the heart of all decision-making. Generally, more information is better; however, knowing the value of this information is essential for decision-making processes. Information credibility defines a measure of the fitness of information for consumption. It can also be defined in terms of reliability, which denotes the probability that a data source will appear credible to the users. A challenge in this topic is that there is a great deal of literature that has developed different credibility dimensions. Additionally, information science dealing with online social networks has grown in complexity, attracting interest from researchers in information science, psychology, human-computer interaction, communication studies, and management studies, all of whom have studied the topic from different perspectives. This work will attempt to provide an overall review of the credibility assessment literature over the period 2006–2017 as applied to the context of the microblogging platform, Twitter. Known interpretations of credibility will be examined, particularly as they relate to the Twitter environment. In addition, we investigate levels of credibility assessment features. We then discuss recent works, addressing a new taxonomy of credibility analysis and assessment techniques. At last, a cross-referencing of literature is performed while suggesting new topics for future studies of credibility assessment in social media context.