University of Jordan

About: University of Jordan is a education organization based out in Amman, Jordan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Health care. The organization has 7796 authors who have published 13764 publications receiving 213526 citations.

Binary dragonfly optimization for feature selection using time-varying transfer functions

Abstract: The Dragonfly Algorithm (DA) is a recently proposed heuristic search algorithm that was shown to have excellent performance for numerous optimization problems. In this paper, a wrapper-feature selection algorithm is proposed based on the Binary Dragonfly Algorithm (BDA). The key component of the BDA is the transfer function that maps a continuous search space to a discrete search space. In this study, eight transfer functions, categorized into two families (S-shaped and V-shaped functions) are integrated into the BDA and evaluated using eighteen benchmark datasets obtained from the UCI data repository. The main contribution of this paper is the proposal of time-varying S-shaped and V-shaped transfer functions to leverage the impact of the step vector on balancing exploration and exploitation. During the early stages of the optimization process, the probability of changing the position of an element is high, which facilitates the exploration of new solutions starting from the initial population. On the other hand, the probability of changing the position of an element becomes lower towards the end of the optimization process. This behavior is obtained by considering the current iteration number as a parameter of transfer functions. The performance of the proposed approaches is compared with that of other state-of-art approaches including the DA, binary grey wolf optimizer (bGWO), binary gravitational search algorithm (BGSA), binary bat algorithm (BBA), particle swarm optimization (PSO), and genetic algorithm in terms of classification accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, area under the curve, and number of selected attributes. Results show that the time-varying S-shaped BDA approach outperforms compared approaches.

Epidemiology and Outcome of Glioblastoma

Abstract: Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most aggressive malignant primary brain tumor With an incidence rate of 319 per 100,000 persons in the United States and a median age of 64 years, it is uncommon in children The incidence is 16 times higher in males compared to females and 20 times higher in Caucasians compared to Africans and Afro-Americans, with lower incidence in Asians and American Indians GBM is commonly located in the supratentorial region (frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes) and is rarely located in cerebellum Genetic and environmental factors have been investigated in GBM Risk factors include prior radiotherapy, decreased susceptibility to allergy, immune factors and immune genes, as well as some single nucleotide polymorphisms detected by genomic analysis Use of anti-inflammatory medication has been found to be protective against GBM Survival from GBM is poor; only few patients survive 25 years and less than 5% of patients survive 5 years following diagnosis Survival rates for patients with GBM have shown no notable improvement in population statistics in the last three decades Molecular epidemiology integrates molecular technology into epidemiological studies and outcomes The future of the epidemiology of GBM will depend on multicenter studies generating large clinical data sets of genomic data potentially leading to further understanding of the roles of genes and environment in the development of this devastating disease

Consumer attitudes towards online shopping

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine consumer attitudes toward online shopping in Jordan. The paper introduces an integrated model which includes trust, perceived benefits, perceived web quality, and electronic word of mouth (eWOM) along with their relationships in order to examine their effects on consumer attitudes toward online shopping. Design/methodology/approach – A structured and self-administered online survey was employed targeting online shoppers of a reputable online retailer in Jordan; i.e. MarkaVIP. A sample of 273 online shoppers was involved in the online survey. A series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to assess the research constructs, unidimensionality, validity, and composite reliability. Structural path model analysis was also used to test the hypothesized relationships of the research model. Findings – The empirical findings of this study indicate that consumer attitudes toward online shopping is determined by trust and perceived benefits. Trust ...