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Numerous nations have prioritised the inclusion of citizens with disabilities, such as hearing loss, in all aspects of social life. Sign language is used by this population, yet they still have trouble communicating with others. Many sign language apps are being created to help bridge the communication gap as a result of technology advances enabled by the widespread use of smartphones. These apps are widely used because they are accessible and inexpensive. The services and capabilities they offer and the quality of their content, however, differ greatly. Evaluation of the quality of the content provided by these applications is necessary if they are to have any kind of real effect. A thorough evaluation like this will inspire developers to work hard on new apps, which will lead to improved software development and experience overall. This research used a systematic literature review (SLR) method, which is recognised in gaining a broad understanding of the study whilst offering additional information for future investigations. SLR was adopted in this research for smartphone-based sign language apps to understand the area and main discussion aspects utilised in the assessment. These studies were reviewed on the basis of related work analysis, main issues, discussions and methodological aspects. Results revealed that the evaluation of sign language mobile apps is scarce. Thus, we proposed a future direction for the quality assessment of these apps. The findings will benefit normal-hearing and hearing-impaired users and open up a new area where researchers and developers could work together on sign language mobile apps. The results will help hearing and non-hearing users and will pave the way for future collaboration between academicians and app developers in the field of sign language technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile apps for sign language are a fascinating area of research that merits a lot of attention. These apps are widely used due to their affordability and usability. Nevertheless, the quality of these apps needs to be evaluated if they are to have a significant influence. The outcomes of app quality assessment can also stimulate app development efforts and improvements to their functionality and accuracy. Therefore, to gain more in depth understanding, four academic databases (Science Direct, IEEE, Association for Computing Machinery, and Web of Science) were searched as part of a systematic literature review. The review highlighted that sign language apps require further development to support users in achieving the greatest possible usage and learning experience. We present a solution framework based on a quality assessment criterion for sign language mobile apps that could be adopted by academics and developers. Alternative identification, criteria, and development are the three primary aspects of the framework. The results demonstrate that the new assessment approach can establish a detailed set of criteria for sign language mobile app development. Future academics could gain a thorough understanding of mobile app development criteria from this study. The results are advantageous and open up a new field where researchers and developers could collaborate on sign language mobile app development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When COVID-19 spread in China in December 2019, thousands of studies have focused on this pandemic. Each presents a unique perspective that reflects the pandemic's main scientific disciplines. For example, social scientists are concerned with reducing the psychological impact on the human mental state especially during lockdown periods. Computer scientists focus on establishing fast and accurate computerized tools to assist in diagnosing, preventing, and recovering from the disease. Medical scientists and doctors, or the frontliners, are the main heroes who received, treated, and worked with the millions of cases at the expense of their own health. Some of them have continued to work even at the expense of their lives. All these studies enforce the multidisciplinary work where scientists from different academic disciplines (social, environmental, technological, etc.) join forces to produce research for beneficial outcomes during the crisis. One of the many branches is computer science along with its various technologies, including artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, big data, decision support systems (DSS), and many more. Among the most notable DSS utilization is those related to multicriterion decision making (MCDM), which is applied in various applications and across many contexts, including business, social, technological and medical. Owing to its importance in developing proper decision regimens and prevention strategies with precise judgment, it is deemed a noteworthy topic of extensive exploration, especially in the context of COVID-19-related medical applications. The present study is a comprehensive review of COVID-19-related medical case studies with MCDM using a systematic review protocol. PRISMA methodology is utilized to obtain a final set of (n = 35) articles from four major scientific databases (ScienceDirect, IEEE Xplore, Scopus, and Web of Science). The final set of articles is categorized into taxonomy comprising five groups: (1) diagnosis (n = 6), (2) safety (n = 11), (3) hospital (n = 8), (4) treatment (n = 4), and (5) review (n = 3). A bibliographic analysis is also presented on the basis of annual scientific production, country scientific production, co-occurrence, and co-authorship. A comprehensive discussion is also presented to discuss the main challenges, motivations, and recommendations in using MCDM research in COVID‐19-related medial case studies. Lastly, we identify critical research gaps with their corresponding solutions and detailed methodologies to serve as a guide for future directions. In conclusion, MCDM can be utilized in the medical field effectively to optimize the resources and make the best choices particularly during pandemics and natural disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the wide range of research on pedestrian safety, previous studies have failed to analyse the real-time data of pedestrian walking misbehaviour on the basis of either pedestrian behaviour distraction or movements during specific activities to realise pedestrian safety for positive (normal) or aggressive pedestrians. Practically, pedestrian walking behaviour should be recognised, and aggressive pedestrians should be differentiated from normal pedestrians. This type of pedestrian behaviour recognition can be converted into a classification problem, which is the main challenge for pedestrian safety systems. In addressing the classification challenge, three issues should be considered: identification of factors, collection of data and exchange of data in the contexts of wireless communication and network failure. Thus, this work proposes a novel approach to pedestrian walking behaviour classification in the aforementioned contexts. Three useful phases are proposed for the methodology of this study. In the first phase involving factor identification, several factors of the irregular walking behaviour of mobile phone users are established by constructing a questionnaire that can determine users' options (attitudes/opinions) about mobile usage whilst walking on the street. In the second phase involving data collection, four different testing scenarios are developed to acquire the real-time data of pedestrian walking behaviour by using gyroscope sensors. In the third phase involving data exchange, the proposed approach is presented on the basis of two modules. The first module for pedestrian behaviour classification uses random forest and decision tree classifiers part of machine learning techniques via wireless communication when a server becomes available. The developed module is then trained and evaluated using five category sets to obtain the best classification of pedestrian walking behaviour. The second module is based on four standard vectors for classifying pedestrian walking behaviour when a server is unavailable. Fault-tolerant pedestrian walking behaviour is identified and is initiated when failures occur in a network. Two sets of real-time data are presented in this work. The first dataset is related to the questionnaire data from 262 sampled respondents, and the second dataset comprises data on 263 sampled participants with pedestrian walking signals. Experimental results confirm the efficacy of the proposed approach relative to previous ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have shown significantly pervasive interest in mobile applications (hereinafter "apps"). The number and popularity of these apps are dramatically increasing. Even though mobile apps are diverse, countless ones are available through many platforms. Some of these apps are not useful nor do they possess rich content, which benefits end users as expected, especially in medical-related cases. This research aims to review and analyze articles associated with medical app assessment across different platforms. This research also aimed to provide the best practices and identify the academic challenges, motivations and recommendations related with quality assessments. In addition, a methodological approach followed in previous research in this domain was also discussed to give some insights for future comers with what to expect. We systematically searched articles on topics related to medical app assessment. The search was conducted on five major databases, namely, Science Direct, Springer, Web of Science, IEEE Xplore and PubMed from 2009 to September 2019. These indices were considered sufficiently extensive and reliable to cover our scope of the literature. Articles were selected on the basis of our inclusion and exclusion criteria (n = 72). Medical app assessment is considered a major topic which warrants attention. This study emphasizes the current standpoint and opportunities for research in this area and boosts additional efforts towards the understanding of this research field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]