National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences

Layout, Geometry or Generator? Dissecting Two-Stage Satellite-to-Street View Synthesis with Frozen Foundation Features

Satellite-to-street view synthesis asks a model to imagine a ground-level panorama from a single overhead tile. We dissect a two-stage pipeline on CVUSA, in which a semantic layout predicted from the tile guides a conditional generator, and measure which design choices actually m...

Freshwater contamination from industrial effluent discharge: heavy metal mobilisation, water quality degradation and probabilistic health risk assessment

Context Marble-processing facilities generate slurry-containing wastewater that may mobilise toxic metals through equipment wear, mineral dissolution and the use of polishing materials. Evidence on the combined pollution burden and probabilistic health risks associated with marbl...

Cotton leaf disease classification using deep learning models for smart agriculture

Agriculture is a leading economical sector that contributes significantly to the livelihoods and the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Pakistan. With cotton as a key crop, its production must be sustainable, and this becomes a challenge posed by environmental changes, pest in...

Cheby-FENN: a Chebyshev-enhanced feature expansion neural network for electricity theft detection

Abstract Electricity theft is a major contributor to non-technical losses in power systems, causing substantial financial losses and potentially affecting grid reliability. This paper proposes a lightweight neural network framework that incorporates a third-degree Chebyshev polyn...

Diagnosing a Lung Nodule Classification Pipeline: Near-Duplicate Leakage and Representation Mismatch on IQ-OTH/NCCD

Reported accuracies on the IQ-OTH/NCCD lung cancer dataset commonly exceed 98%. We show that a substantial part of that performance is consistent with near-duplicate images spanning the train/test boundary, and we measure the effect directly rather than by inference from a change...

Hashing Is Not Retrieval: A Three-Arm Study of Context Accumulation in Small-Model Code Cartography

Hashing Is Not Retrieval is a prospectively frozen three-arm evaluation of context accumulation in small-model multi-agent code cartography. It compares three ways for an orchestrator to hand work to a worker: 1. FULL HISTORY — retransmit prior worker outputs.2. OPAQUE REF — repl...

Hashing Is Not Retrieval: A Three-Arm Study of Context Accumulation in Small-Model Code Cartography

Hashing Is Not Retrieval is a prospectively frozen three-arm evaluation of context accumulation in small-model multi-agent code cartography. It compares three ways for an orchestrator to hand work to a worker: 1. FULL HISTORY — retransmit prior worker outputs.2. OPAQUE REF — repl...

Does Script Matter? Evaluating Large Language Models for Urdu Sentiment Analysis across Nastaliq, Roman Urdu, and Code-Switched Text

Urdu is spoken by more than 230 million people, but very little of the Urdu that people actually write online is in the language's formal Nastaliq script. Most of it is either Roman Urdu, which is Urdu typed in Latin letters, or a mixture of Urdu and English. Almost all existing...

A secure multilayer audio encryption scheme based on chain ring algebraic S-boxes, Rössler diffusion, and 4D hyperchaotic permutation

Abstract The secure transmission of digital audio requires encryption techniques that can protect audio information against different types of cryptanalytic attacks. Existing chaos-based audio encryption methods commonly use conventional $$\:GF\left({2}^{8}\right)$$ -based substi...

Comparative Benchmarking of Constraint Satisfaction Heuristics and Genetic Algorithms for Multi-Criteria Timetable Optimization

Academic timetabling represents an NP-hard combinatorial search problem characterized by a highly constrained decision space. Satisfying strict hard constraints such as room capacity limitations, instructor overlap, and temporal conflicts—while simultaneously optimizing soft pref...

INVESTIGATING THE EFFECTS OF WEB 2.0 TOOLS TRAINING ON PRESERVICE TEACHERS' PERCEPTIONS OF DIGITAL COMPETENCE, 21ST-CENTURY SKILLS, AND COMPETENCIES IN THE EDUCATIONAL USE OF WEB 2.0 TOOLS

Abstract The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of training programs on the use of Web 2.0 tools in education designed for preservice teachers on their perceptions of digital competence, 21st-century skills, and Web 2.0 tool usage competencies. The study employed a...

INVESTIGATING THE EFFECTS OF WEB 2.0 TOOLS TRAINING ON PRESERVICE TEACHERS' PERCEPTIONS OF DIGITAL COMPETENCE, 21ST-CENTURY SKILLS, AND COMPETENCIES IN THE EDUCATIONAL USE OF WEB 2.0 TOOLS

Abstract The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of training programs on the use of Web 2.0 tools in education designed for preservice teachers on their perceptions of digital competence, 21st-century skills, and Web 2.0 tool usage competencies. The study employed a...

A Review of Collaborative Filtering Techniques in Recommender Systems

Collaborative filtering is one of the oldest and most widely used techniques in recommender systems. Instead of relying on item content, it leverages user behavior, such as ratings, clicks, or interaction histories, to predict user preferences. This paper reviews the main categor...

Data and context matter: towards generalizing AI-based software vulnerability detection

AI-based solutions demonstrate remarkable results in identifying vulnerabilities in software, but research has consistently found that this performance does not generalize to unseen codebases. In this paper, we specifically investigate the impact of model architecture, parameter...

Numerical Assessment of Seismic Performance of a Lead-Rubber Base-Isolated RC Frame under Site-Specific Earthquake Excitations: A Case Study of Quetta, Pakistan

Quetta lies in one of Pakistan's most seismically active regions, where the Building Code of Pakistan (BCP-2007) assigns a design ground acceleration of 0.32 g and UBC-97 Seismic Zone 4 is adopted as the design basis. Despite this hazard, location-specific research on sei...

Eleven questions on Hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome management in the ICU

Hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome (HCPS) due to Andes virus (ANDV) is a fulminant yet potentially reversible cause of respiratory and circulatory failure requiring timely critical care. This article addresses eleven practical questions on ICU management, drawing on clinical exp...

Calibrated Station-Scale Temperature Downscaling from a Temperature-Agnostic Geospatial Foundation Model

We downscale coarse climate variables to station-scale temperature using frozen embeddings from a temperature-agnostic geospatial foundation model (Clay v1.5), and study when the resulting uncertainty can be trusted. Across three climate regimes, embedding-based decoders reduce R...

Annotation by Arithmetic: Exact Mark Placement on Construction Drawings by Separating Perception from Measurement

Automated construction estimation requires more than correct quantities: an estimator must be able to see, on the drawing itself, exactly which drawn element each line item refers to. Vision-language models identify millwork items on architectural sheets reliably, but the boundin...

SELM-CTR: a stacking ensemble deep learning model with SHAP-based analysis for large-scale click-through rate prediction

Purpose Click-through rate (CTR) prediction is a core challenge in digital advertising, as forecasting whether a user will click on an advertisement directly determines ad placement decisions and revenue outcomes. Standard machine learning and deep learning approaches achieve rea...