Search

The model integrates artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analytics, utilizing IoMT devices for data acquisition and Hadoop ecosystem for managing big data. The field of medical diagnosis is currently undergoing a remarkable transformation with the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, particularly deep learning and big data analytics. By harnessing the power of deep learning and big data analytics, AI-based e-diagnosis has the potential to revolutionize healthcare delivery. [Extracted from the article]

Mental stress is a common problem that affects individuals all over the world. Stress reduces human functionality during routine work and may lead to severe health defects. Early detection of stress is important for preventing diseases and other negative health-related consequences of stress. Several neuroimaging techniques have been utilized to assess mental stress, however, due to its ease of use, robustness, and non-invasiveness, electroencephalography (EEG) is commonly used. This paper aims to fill a knowledge gap by reviewing the different EEG-related deep learning algorithms with a focus on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Long Short-Term Memory networks (LSTMs) for the evaluation of mental stress. The review focuses on data representation, individual deep neural network model architectures, hybrid models, and results amongst others. The contributions of the paper address important issues such as data representation and model architectures. Out of all reviewed papers, 67% used CNN, 9% LSTM, and 24% hybrid models. Based on the reviewed literature, we found that dataset size and different representations contributed to the performance of the proposed networks. Raw EEG data produced classification accuracy around 62% while using spectral and topographical representation produced up to 88%. Nevertheless, the roles of generalizability across different deep learning models and individual differences remain key areas of inquiry. The review encourages the exploration of innovative avenues, such as EEG data image representations concurrently with graph convolutional neural networks (GCN), to mitigate the impact of inter-subject variability. This novel approach not only allows us to harmonize structural nuances within the data but also facilitates the integration of temporal dynamics, thereby enabling a more comprehensive assessment of mental stress levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent increases in global food demand have made this research and, therefore, the prediction of agricultural commodity prices, almost imperative. The aim of this paper is to build efficient artificial intelligence methods to effectively forecast commodity prices in light of these global events. Using three separate, well-structured models, the commodity prices of eleven major agricultural commodities that have recently caused crises around the world have been predicted. In achieving its objective, this paper proposes a novel forecasting model for agricultural commodity prices using the extreme learning machine technique optimized with the genetic algorithm. In predicting the eleven commodities, the proposed model, the extreme learning machine with the genetic algorithm, outperforms the model formed by the combination of long short-term memory with the genetic algorithm and the autoregressive integrated moving average model. Despite the fluctuations and changes in agricultural commodity prices in 2022, the extreme learning machine with the genetic algorithm model described in this study successfully predicts both qualitative and quantitative behavior in such a large number of commodities and over such a long period of time for the first time. It is expected that these predictions will provide benefits for the effective management, direction and, if necessary, restructuring of agricultural policies by providing food requirements that adapt to the dynamic structure of the countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurological disease that has been reported to have affected most people worldwide. Recent research pointed out that about 90% of PD patients possess voice disorders. Motivated by this fact, many researchers proposed methods based on multiple types of speech data for PD prediction. However, these methods either face the problem of low rate of accuracy or lack generalization. To develop an approach that will be free of these issues, in this paper we propose a novel ensemble approach. These paper contributions are two folds. First, investigating feature selection integration with deep neural network (DNN) and validating its effectiveness by comparing its performance with conventional DNN and other similar integrated systems. Second, development of a novel ensemble model namely EOFSC (Ensemble model with Optimal Features and Sample Dependant Base Classifiers) that exploits the findings of recently published studies. Recent research pointed out that for different types of voice data, different optimal models are obtained which are sensitive to different types of samples and subsets of features. In this paper, we further consolidate the findings by utilizing the proposed integrated system and propose the development of EOFSC. For multiple types of vowel phonations, multiple base classifiers are obtained which are sensitive to different subsets of features. These features and sample-dependent base classifiers are integrated, and the proposed EOFSC model is constructed. To evaluate the final prediction of the EOFSC model, the majority voting methodology is adopted. Experimental results point out that feature selection integration with neural networks improves the performance of conventional neural networks. Additionally, feature selection integration with DNN outperforms feature selection integration with conventional machine learning models. Finally, the newly developed ensemble model is observed to improve PD detection accuracy by 6.5%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

English expression, language characteristics and usage norms are quite special, which is quite different from Chinese. This has special requirements for auxiliary teaching tools that use computer technology for English text processing. Based on neural network algorithm, this paper combines the actual needs of English grammar error correction to construct an English grammar error correction model based on neural network. In data processing, after feature selection, logistic regression model is used to analyze the influence of different features on article error correction. The article error correction incorporating word vector features mainly explores how to effectively express the features in English grammar error correction. In addition, this paper proposes two methods to optimize the feature representation in article error correction. One is to directly use the word vector corresponding to the word as a feature, replacing the original One-hot encoding, and the other uses a clustering method to compress the article features. Finally, this paper designs experiments to study the performance of the model constructed in this paper. The results obtained show that the model constructed in this paper has a certain effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to overcome the shortcomings of the current English network learning system, based on the neural network algorithm, this paper constructs an intelligent English network learning system based on the improved algorithm. Moreover, by analyzing the coupling between recurrent neural networks by contrast methods, this paper infers the coupling between recurrent neural networks. Moreover, this paper studies the continuous attractors of the autoencoder neural network and studies the continuous attractors of different types of autoencoder models. On this basis, this paper expands the existing model, adds the module of the interaction between the external input and the visible layer and studies the conditions required for the continuous attractor of the autoencoder model. In addition, on the basis of actual needs, this paper constructs the basic structure of the model and integrates it into the improved algorithm proposed in this paper to realize English online intelligent learning. Finally, this paper designs experiments to analyze the practical effects of this model and analyzes the experimental results through mathematical statistics. The research results show that the English network learning system constructed in this paper is effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ExSeisDat is designed using standard message passing interface (MPI) library for seismic data processing on high-performance super-computing clusters. These clusters are generally designed for efficient execution of complex tasks including large size IO. The IO performance degradation issues arise when multiple processes try accessing data from parallel networked storage. These complications are caused by restrictive protocols running by a parallel file system (PFS) controlling the disks and due to less advancement in storage hardware itself as well. This requires and leads to the tuning of specific configuration parameters to optimize the IO performance, commonly not considered by users focused on writing parallel application. Despite its consideration, the changes in configuration parameters are required from case to case. It adds up to further degradation in IO performance for a large SEG-Y format seismic data file scaling to petabytes. The SEG-Y IO and file sorting operations are the two of the main features of ExSeisDat. This research paper proposes technique to optimize these SEG-Y operations based on artificial neural networks (ANNs). The optimization involves auto-tuning of the related configuration parameters, using IO bandwidth prediction by the trained ANN models through machine learning (ML) process. Furthermore, we discuss the impact on prediction accuracy and statistical analysis of auto-tuning bandwidth results, by the variation in hidden layers nodes configuration of the ANNs. The results have shown the overall improvement in bandwidth performance up to 108.8% and 237.4% in the combined SEG-Y IO and file sorting operations test cases, respectively. Therefore, this paper has demonstrated the significant gain in SEG-Y seismic data bandwidth performance by auto-tuning the parameters settings on runtime by using an ML approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The risk of death incurred by breast cancer is rising exponentially, especially among women. This made the early breast cancer detection a crucial problem. In this paper, we propose a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system, called CADNet157, for mammography breast cancer based on transfer learning and fine-tuning of well-known deep learning models. Firstly, we applied hand-crafted features-based learning model using four extractors (local binary pattern, gray-level co-occurrence matrix, and Gabor) with four selected machine learning classifiers (K-nearest neighbors, support vector machine, random forests, and artificial neural networks). Then, we performed some modifications on the Basic CNN model and fine-tuned three pre-trained deep learning models: VGGNet16, InceptionResNetV2, and ResNet152. Finally, we conducted a set of experiments using two benchmark datasets: Digital Database for Screening Mammography (DDSM) and INbreast. The results of the conducted experiments showed that for the hand-crafted features based CAD system, we achieved an area under the ROC curve (AUC) of 95.28% for DDSM using random forest and 98.10% for INbreast using support vector machine with the histogram of oriented gradients extractor. On the other hand, CADNet157 model (i.e., fine-tuned ResNet152) was the best performing deep model with an AUC of 98.90% (sensitivity: 97.72%, specificity: 100%), and 98.10% (sensitivity: 100%, specificity: 96.15%) for, respectively, DDSM and INbreast. The CADNet157 model overcomes the limitations of traditional CAD systems by providing an early detection of breast cancer and reducing the risk of false diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Invasive sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) has historically inflicted considerable economic and ecological damage in the Great Lakes and continues to be a major threat. Accurately monitoring sea lampreys are critical to enabling the deployment of more targeted and effective control measures to minimize the impact associated with this species. This paper presents the first stand-alone system for real-time detection of sea lamprey attachment on underwater surfaces through the use of classifier models deployed on a microcontroller system. A range of low-complexity models was explored: single-layer artificial neural networks, logistic regression, Gaussian Naive-Bayes, decision trees, random forest, and Scalable, Efficient, and Fast classifieR (SEFR). Threshold models tuned using a multi-objective optimization formulation were also considered. Classifier models were trained with a dataset generated through live animal testing and presented accuracies between 80 and 86%. The models were deployed on an Arduino microcontroller platform and compared in classification accuracy, detection performance, time complexity, and memory size using real-time detection testing. Classification accuracies between 65 and 75% were observed during validation. Models demonstrated good capture rates for lamprey attachments (63–85%), and average detection delays ranging from 9 to 36 s. A video demonstrating the operation of the system during a real-time validation test is also included in this work. While there is room for improving the accuracy of the system, this research presents the first step toward an electronic sea lamprey monitoring system that can provide a detailed view of sea lamprey activity enhancing control and conservation efforts across its entire range. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2022, the World Health Organization declared an outbreak of monkeypox, a viral zoonotic disease. With time, the number of infections with this disease began to increase in most countries. A human can contract monkeypox by direct contact with an infected human, or even by contact with animals. In this paper, a diagnostic model for early detection of monkeypox infection based on artificial intelligence methods is proposed. The proposed method is based on training the artificial neural network (ANN) with the adaptive artificial bee colony algorithm for the classification problem. In the study, the ABC algorithm was preferred instead of classical training algorithms for ANN because of its effectiveness in numerical optimization problem solutions. The ABC algorithm consists of food and limit parameters and three procedures: employed, onlooker and scout bee. In the algorithm standard, artificial onlooker bees are produced as much as the number of artificially employed bees and an equal number of limit values are assigned for all food sources. In the advanced adaptive design, different numbers of artificial onlooker bees are used in each cycle, and the limit numbers are updated. For effective exploitation, onlooker bees tend toward more successful solutions than the average fitness value of the solutions, and limit numbers are updated according to the fitness values of the solutions for efficient exploration. The performance of the proposed method was investigated on CEC 2019 test suites as examples of numerical optimization problems. Then, the system was trained and tested on a dataset representing the clinical symptoms of monkeypox infection. The dataset consists of 240 suspected cases, 120 of which are infected and 120 typical cases. The proposed model's results were compared with those of ten other machine learning models trained on the same dataset. The deep learning model achieved the best result with an accuracy of 75%. It was followed by the random forest model with an accuracy of 71.1%, while the proposed model came third with an accuracy of 71%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognizing the plant disease and pests in its golden time is a highly critical problem to be addressed, since the herbalist can apply treatments within this period and save the agricultural product. In this paper, a deep learning approach to recognize the disease from the leaves of the plants has been pursued. A client-server system is proposed in which the server-side model can leverage huge deep CNN architectures to classify the diseases, whereas the client-side model is to be chosen among small deep CNN architectures with low number of parameters in order to be easily deployed on the end-user mobile devices with poor processing powers. Here, a novel knowledge distillation technique has been leveraged that improves the accuracy level of the small client-side model significantly. This technique distills the perception knowledge of a large model classifier and transfers this knowledge to the small model in order to perform a similar prediction capability. By applying this idea on Plantvillage dataset, we could achieve 97.58 % accuracy on a small MobileNet architecture which is very close to the accuracy of a large Xception model on the server with 99.73 % accuracy. Through applying this teacher-student idea, we could improve the classification rate of the state-of-the-art tiny model by 2.12 % . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Skin cancer, primarily resulting from the abnormal growth of skin cells, is among the most common cancer types. In recent decades, the incidence of skin cancer cases worldwide has risen significantly (one in every three newly diagnosed cancer cases is a skin cancer). Such an increase can be attributed to changes in our social and lifestyle habits coupled with devastating man-made alterations to the global ecosystem. Despite such a notable increase, diagnosis of skin cancer is still challenging, which becomes critical as its early detection is crucial for increasing the overall survival rate. This calls for advancements of innovative computer-aided systems to assist medical experts with their decision making. In this context, there has been a recent surge of interest in machine learning (ML), in particular, deep neural networks (DNNs), to provide complementary assistance to expert physicians. While DNNs have a high processing capacity far beyond that of human experts, their outputs are deterministic, i.e., providing estimates without prediction confidence. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to develop DNNs with uncertainty-awareness to provide confidence in their predictions. Monte Carlo dropout (MCD) is vastly used for uncertainty quantification; however, MCD suffers from overconfidence and being miss calibrated. In this paper, we use MCD algorithm to develop an uncertainty-aware DNN that assigns high predictive entropy to erroneous predictions and enable the model to optimize the hyper-parameters during training, which leads to more accurate uncertainty quantification. We use two synthetic (two moons and blobs) and a real dataset (skin cancer) to validate our algorithm. Our experiments on these datasets prove effectiveness of our approach in quantifying reliable uncertainty. Our method achieved 85.65 ± 0.18 prediction accuracy, 83.03 ± 0.25 uncertainty accuracy, and 1.93 ± 0.3 expected calibration error outperforming vanilla MCD and MCD with loss enhanced based on predicted entropy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Machine learning neural network (NN) algorithms are being applied for the past few years in all engineering and science domain, economic sectors, image processing synthesis and analysis, and so on. Due to this, this paper work considered employing these machine learning neural models for forecasting application in respect of renewable energy applications and in particular focused on the forecasting of wind speed. It is crucial for power grid dispatchability, stability, and controllability, and its precision is necessary for making the most use of wind resources. This article describes the development of a novel hybrid forecasting system to anticipate the wind speed of real-time wind farm datasets using a hybrid probabilistic neural network (PNN) model and optimization method. The particle swarm optimization (PSO)–ant lion optimization technique is utilized to modify the designed adaptive PNN in order to optimize the weight parameters. The machine learning model employed in this study is an adaptive PNN with a probability density function and a decision-making function that adhere to Bayes' rule to achieve faster convergence and higher prediction accuracy. The obtained simulation results show that the recommended hybrid optimized PNN model outperforms the other techniques that were evaluated and compared from the literature. This establishes that the built optimized adaptive PNN model is applicable and suitable to serve as a predictor, as shown by the outcome of the statistical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To reliably and accurately classify complicated "big" datasets, machine learning models must be continually improved. This research proposes straightforward yet competitive neural networks for text classification, even though graph neural networks (GNN) have reignited interest in graph-based text classification models. Convolutional neural networks (CNN), artificial neural networks (ANN), and their refined "fine-tuned" models (denoted as FT-CNN and FT-ANN) are the names given to our proposed models. The models presented in this paper demonstrate that our simple models like (CNN, ANN, FT-CNN, and FT-ANN) can perform better than more complex GNN ones such as (SGC, SSGC, and TextGCN) and are comparable to others (i.e., HyperGAT and Bert). The process of fine-tuning is also highly recommended because it improves the performance and reliability of models. The performance of our suggested models on five benchmark datasets (namely, Reuters (R8), R52, 20NewsGroup, Ohsumed, and Mr) is vividly illustrated. According to the experimental findings, on the majority of the target datasets, these models—especially those that have been fine-tuned—perform surprisingly better than SOTA approaches, including GNN-based models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a common data-driven method, artificial neural networks have been widely used in electricity spot price forecasting. To improve the accuracy of short-term forecasts, this paper proposes an optimized artificial neural network model for monthly electricity spot prices forecasting. A genetic algorithm is applied to regulate the weights and biases parameters of the artificial neural network structure. This study uses various historical dataset at monthly periods selected from Nordic electricity spot prices. For efficiency comparison, one-step ahead forecast method based on Schwartz-Smith stochastic model and two other prediction models, artificial neural network trained by Levenberg–Marquardt and particle swarm optimization algorithms are also presented. The comparison results show that the prediction model based on the genetic optimization algorithm is more accurate than the other prediction models. The proposed forecasting model can be considered as an alternative technique for the electricity spot price forecasting in the Nordic regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are widely regarded as the most effective learning tool for dealing with large datasets, and they have been successfully used in thousands of applications in a variety of fields. Based on these large datasets, they are trained to learn the relationships between various variables. The adaptive moment estimation (Adam) algorithm, a highly efficient adaptive optimization algorithm, is widely used as a learning algorithm in various fields for training DNN models. However, it needs to improve its generalization performance, especially when training with large-scale datasets. Therefore, in this paper, we propose HN Adam, a modified version of the Adam Algorithm, to improve its accuracy and convergence speed. The HN_Adam algorithm is modified by automatically adjusting the step size of the parameter updates over the training epochs. This automatic adjustment is based on the norm value of the parameter update formula according to the gradient values obtained during the training epochs. Furthermore, a hybrid mechanism was created by combining the standard Adam algorithm and the AMSGrad algorithm. As a result of these changes, the HN_Adam algorithm, like the stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm, has good generalization performance and achieves fast convergence like other adaptive algorithms. To test the proposed HN_Adam algorithm performance, it is evaluated to train a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) model that classifies images using two different standard datasets: MNIST and CIFAR-10. The algorithm results are compared to the basic Adam algorithm and the SGD algorithm, in addition to other five recent SGD adaptive algorithms. In most comparisons, the HN Adam algorithm outperforms the compared algorithms in terms of accuracy and convergence speed. AdaBelief is the most competitive of the compared algorithms. In terms of testing accuracy and convergence speed (represented by the consumed training time), the HN-Adam algorithm outperforms the AdaBelief algorithm by an improvement of 1.0% and 0.29% for the MNIST dataset, and 0.93% and 1.68% for the CIFAR-10 dataset, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, conductive polymer-based composites in order to have higher electrical conductivity have been constructed using different nanoparticles and numerically considered by different classification techniques. Due to non-conducting feature of polymer-based composites, their other positive advantages (e.g., light weight and stress corrosion) underneath non-conducting defect in which this paper has tried to overcome the faced challenges. For this purpose, carbon black (CB), carbon nanotube (CNT), and expanded graphite (EG) with different weight percentages are added to the epoxy resin as input factors and the electrical conductivity of the samples are measured as response factor. The analysis of input factors is performed and the Taguchi method, artificial neural networks (ANNs) and extreme learning machine (ELM) are designed and used for the prediction of the response factor. The predicted responses using the applied methods are compared with the experimental results. In order to increase the mechanical strength, ten layers of unidirectional carbon fiber are used. The simulation results show that the ANNs and ELM provide good compatible predictions with respect to actual experiment data. Besides, obtained experimental results prove that the highest electrical conductivity has been achieved using 10, 15, and 25 percent using the CNT, EG, and CB, respectively. As a novelty of this paper, the constructed sample composite reaches the acceptable electrical conductivity suggested by United Stated Department of Energy standard considered as material development. In particular, the findings of this research can be used to construct conductive electrodes particularly in oil and gas industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How to build a football match prediction model and use scientific methods to solve the prediction problem has become a key point in the application of artificial intelligence in the sports industry. In this paper, we choose a BP neural network model that is powerful in processing nonlinear data to perform research. According to the demand, this paper constructs a gray fuzzy prediction model based on neural network, a gray extreme learning machine prediction model, and a gray fuzzy extreme learning machine prediction combination model based on neural network. Moreover, this paper tests the neural network model by comparing actual results with predicted results. In addition, by predicting and analyzing the football league data, this article tests the three models in terms of match result prediction accuracy, data processing speed, data transmission accuracy, match analysis scores, etc., and uses statistical analysis methods to process data, and uses intuitive statistical graphs to obtain the processing results. The research results show that the gray fuzzy extreme learning machine prediction combination model based on neural network constructed in this paper can retain the advantages of a single model and effectively improve the prediction accuracy of the model and the performance of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reinforcement learning (RL) and imitation learning (IL) are quite two useful machine learning techniques that were shown to be potential in enhancing navigation performance. Basically, both of these methods try to find a policy decision function in a reinforcement learning fashion or through imitation. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm named Reinforcement Imitation Learning (RIL) that naturally combines RL and IL together in accelerating more reliable and efficient navigation in dynamic environments. RIL is a hybrid approach that utilizes RL for policy optimization and IL as some kind of learning from expert demonstrations with the inclusion of guidance. We present the comparison of the convergence of RIL with conventional RL and IL to provide the support for our algorithm's performance in a dynamic environment with moving obstacles. The results of the testing indicate that the RIL algorithm has better collision avoidance and navigation efficiency than traditional methods. The proposed RIL algorithm has broad application prospects in many specific areas such as an autonomous driving, unmanned aerial vehicles, and robots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automatic handwritten character recognition plays a significant role in various applications across multiple fields. With the growing interest in automatic handwriting recognition and the advancement of deep learning methods, researchers have achieved significant improvements in the development of English handwriting recognition methods. However, the recognition of Arabic handwriting has received insufficient attention. In this paper, a novel "DeepAHR" model is presented to accurately and efficiently recognize Arabic handwritten characters using deep learning techniques. The "DeepAHR" model is based on a convolutional neural network (CNN) and is trained using two recent public datasets: Hijaa and Arabic handwritten characters dataset (AHCD). The overall accuracies of the proposed model were 98.66% and 88.24% on the AHCD and Hijaa datasets, respectively.The experimental results showed that DeepAHR outperformed state-of-the-art methods in the literature. These promising results provide evidence of the successful use of the DeepAHR model for recognizing handwritten Arabic characters [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Once realized, autonomous aerial refueling will revolutionize unmanned aviation by removing current range and endurance limitations. Previous attempts at establishing vision-based solutions have come close but rely heavily on near perfect extrinsic camera calibrations that often change midflight. In this paper, we propose dual object detection, a technique that overcomes such requirement by transforming aerial refueling imagery directly into receiver aircraft reference frame probe-to-drogue vectors regardless of camera position and orientation. These vectors are precisely what autonomous agents need to successfully maneuver the tanker and receiver aircraft in synchronous flight during refueling operations. Our method follows a common 4-stage process of capturing an image, finding 2D points in the image, matching those points to 3D object features, and analytically solving for the object pose. However, we extend this pipeline by simultaneously performing these operations across two objects instead of one using machine learning and add a fifth stage that transforms the two pose estimates into a relative vector. Furthermore, we propose a novel supervised learning method using bounding box corrections such that our trained artificial neural networks can accurately predict 2D image points corresponding to known 3D object points. Simulation results show that this method is reliable, accurate (within 3 cm at contact), and fast (45.5 fps). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a condition that degenerates over time and impairs speech and pronunciation because brain cells have died. This research work aims to predict parkinson disease using the voice features extracted from speech signals recorded from PD individuals with dysphonic speech disorders by employing deep learning algorithms. PD is challenging to diagnose early on in the clinical presentation. To address the issue in machine learning methods, this paper proposes a neural network model by processing speech signals to classify PD using the University of California Irvine (UCI) machine learning repository dataset. Initially, a pre-loss reduction module is created by using pre-sampling to make the dataset balanced by reducing the dimensionality and maintaining the size of the space without influencing the learning process for data preparation. The relevant features are derived using a novel multi-agent salp swarm (MASS) algorithm, and a novel Parkinson classification neural network (PCNN) is proposed to classify Parkinson's patients with high accuracy employing these derived features. The result shows that the models that use MASS-PCNN produce higher classification accuracy of 99.1%, precision of 97.8%, recall of 94.7% and F1-score of 0.995 when paralleled to the existing models. As an outcome, the suggested model will perform superior to common convolutional neural networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we introduce a supervised learning algorithm, which avoids backward recursive gradient computation, for training deep convolutional spiking neural networks (SNNs) with single-spike-based temporal coding. The algorithm employs a linear approximation to compute the derivative of the spike latency with respect to the membrane potential, and it uses spiking neurons with piecewise linear postsynaptic potential to reduce the computational cost and the complexity of neural processing. To evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm in deep architectures, we employ it in convolutional SNNs for the image classification task. For two popular benchmarks of MNIST and Fashion-MNIST datasets, the network reaches accuracies of, respectively, 99.2 and 92.8 % . The trade-off between memory storage capacity and computational cost with accuracy is analyzed by applying two sets of weights: real-valued weights that are updated in the backward pass and their signs, binary weights, that are employed in the feedforward process. We evaluate the binary CSNN on two datasets of MNIST and Fashion-MNIST and obtain acceptable performance with a negligible accuracy drop with respect to real-valued weights (about 0.6 and 0.8 % drops, respectively). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are mimicking computationally powerful biologically inspired models in which neurons communicate through sequences of spikes, regarded here as sparse binary sequences of zeros and ones. In neuroscience it is conjectured that time encoding, where the information is carried by the temporal position of spikes, is playing a crucial role at least in some parts of the brain where estimation of the spiking rate with a large latency cannot take place. Motivated by the efficiency of temporal coding, compared with the widely used rate coding, the goal of this paper is to develop and train an energy-efficient time-coded deep spiking neural network system. To ensure that the similarity among input stimuli is translated into a correlation of the spike sequences, we introduce correlative temporal encoding and extended correlative temporal encoding techniques to map analog input information into input spike patterns. Importantly, we propose an implementation where all multiplications in the system are replaced with at most a few additions. As a more efficient alternative to both rate-coded SNNs and artificial neural networks, such system represents a preferable solution for the implementation of neuromorphic hardware. We consider data classification tasks where input spike patterns are presented to a feed-forward architecture with leaky-integrate-and-fire neurons. The SNN is trained by backpropagation through time with the objective to match sequences of output spikes with those of specifically designed target spike patterns, each corresponding to exactly one class. During inference the target spike pattern with the smallest van Rossum distance from the output spike pattern determines the class. Extensive simulations indicate that the proposed system achieves a classification accuracy at par with that of state-of-the-art machine learning models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The explosive growth of geospatial data is increasing requirements for automatic and efficient data learning abilities. Many deep learning methods have been widely applied for geospatial data understanding tasks, such as road networks and geospatial object detection. However, the demands for more accurate learning of high-level features require the use of deeper neural networks. To further improve the learning efficiency of deep neural networks, in this paper, we propose an improved convolutional neural network named EDense. First, we use its dense connectivity to integrate a CNN with an extreme learning machine. Then, we expand the kernels in the convolutional layers to increase the width of the network model. Furthermore, we propose one-feature EDense (OF-EDense), which is a simplified version of EDense, to fit conditions in which the number of parameters is strictly limited. Finally, the experimental results fully demonstrate the strong learning ability and high learning efficiency of EDense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) to a broad variety of tasks demands methods for coping with the complex and opaque nature of these architectures. When a gold standard is available, performance assessment treats the DNN as a black box and computes standard metrics based on the comparison of the predictions with the ground truth. A deeper understanding of performances requires going beyond such evaluation metrics to diagnose the model behavior and the prediction errors. This goal can be pursued in two complementary ways. On one side, model interpretation techniques "open the box" and assess the relationship between the input, the inner layers and the output, so as to identify the architecture modules most likely to cause the performance loss. On the other hand, black-box error diagnosis techniques study the correlation between the model response and some properties of the input not used for training, so as to identify the features of the inputs that make the model fail. Both approaches give hints on how to improve the architecture and/or the training process. This paper focuses on the application of DNNs to computer vision (CV) tasks and presents a survey of the tools that support the black-box performance diagnosis paradigm. It illustrates the features and gaps of the current proposals, discusses the relevant research directions and provides a brief overview of the diagnosis tools in sectors other than CV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In machine learning models, one of the most popular models is artificial neural networks. The activation function is one of the important parameters of neural networks. In this paper, the sigmoid function is used as an activation function with a fractional derivative approach to minimize the convergence error in backpropagation and to maximize the generalization performance of neural networks. The proportional Caputo definition is considered a fractional derivative. We evaluated three neural network models on the usage of the proportional Caputo derivative. The results show that the proportional Caputo derivative approach has higher classification accuracy than traditional derivative models in backpropagation for neural networks with and without L2 regularization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a method to approximate the solutions to nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODE) using a deep learning feedforward artificial neural networks (ANNs). The efficiency of the proposed—unsupervised type machine learning—method is shown by solving two boundary value problems (BVPs) from quantum mechanics and nanofluid mechanics. The proposed mean-squared loss function is the sum of two terms: the first term satisfies the differential equation, while the second term satisfies the initial or boundary conditions. The total loss function is minimized by using general type of quasi-Newton optimization methods to get a desired network output. The approximation capability of the proposed method is verified for two sets of boundary value problems: first, a second-order nonlinear ODE and, second, a system of coupled nonlinear third-order ODEs. Point-wise comparison of our approximation shows a strong agreement with the available exact solutions and/or Runge–Kutta-based numerical solutions. We remark that the proposed algorithm minimizes the overall learnable network hyperparameters in a given initial or boundary value problems. More importantly, for the coupled system of third-order nonlinear ordinary differential equations, the proposed method does not need any adjustment with the initial/boundary conditions. Also, the current method does not require any special type of computational mesh. A straightforward minimization of total loss function yields a highly accurate results even with less number of epochs. Therefore, the proposed framework offers an attractive setting for the fluid mechanics community who are interested in studying heat and mass transfer problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Age estimation from face images can be profitably employed in several applications, ranging from digital signage to social robotics, from business intelligence to access control. Only in recent years, the advent of deep learning allowed for the design of extremely accurate methods based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) that achieve a remarkable performance in various face analysis tasks. However, these networks are not always applicable in real scenarios, due to both time and resource constraints that the most accurate approaches often do not meet. Moreover, in case of age estimation, there is the lack of a large and reliably annotated dataset for training deep neural networks. Within this context, we propose in this paper an effective training procedure of CNNs for age estimation based on knowledge distillation, able to allow smaller and simpler "student" models to be trained to match the predictions of a larger "teacher" model. We experimentally show that such student models are able to almost reach the performance of the teacher, obtaining high accuracy over the LFW+, LAP 2016 and Adience datasets, but being up to 15 times faster. Furthermore, we evaluate the performance of the student models in the presence of image corruptions, and we demonstrate that some of them are even more resilient to these corruptions than the teacher model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a developed method of an artificial neural networks (ANN) architecture for estimating the residual strength of clay soil. To implement this purpose, a database of input soil parameters is built, including liquid limit, plasticity index, A-line value, clay fraction, massive minerals, mica, kaolinite, and smectite, in which the output is the residual friction angle. The ANN model was developed by extensively analyzing a number of hidden layers and number of neurons in every layer, incorporating a statistical investigation of the model performance. The obtained results indicate that the ANN model is an outperformed and promising method based on various well-known indicators such as correlation coefficient, mean absolute error, and root mean square error. The achieved ANN model also gives higher estimation accuracy than those results in the literature. Finally, partial dependence plot 2-D was used for sensitivity analysis within the ANN algorithm to investigate the effect of coupled input variables on the estimated residual friction angle of the soil. It was found that A-line value, clay fraction, and massive minerals are the most important input parameters influencing the residual friction angle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the previous works on heat stress detection, various state-of-the-art machine learning techniques had been used to detect stress patterns from electroencephalographic (EEG) signals. Since the handcrafted feature engineering-based approaches pose certain limitations and are sensitive to transform the nonlinearities of EEG, deep learning techniques have drawn attention in the domain of EEG-based applications. Moreover, existing approaches for stress detection consider the whole frequency band (delta to gamma) which conceals the redundant and lossy information that increased the false detection rate. Also, these approaches were implemented only to identify the stress in binary classes and confined their application to identifying the level of stress. Therefore, a multi-scale channel-wise convolution-based multi-level heat stress assessment has been proposed in this paper. The novel contributions of this work are (1) designing a multi-scale convolutional neural network (MS-CNN) for extracting precise information from individual frequency bands of EEG, (2) use of sparse connectivity to reduce the redundant information and increase the performance with less trainable parameters, and (3) multi-level heat stress assessment for precise identification of the severity of stress. The proposed approaches were evaluated on pre-recorded data of 10 rats in a simulated laboratory environment. The high accuracy of approximately 96–97% and 90–92% has been achieved for binary and multi-level stress detection. There is approximately a 6 to 50% reduction in the trainable parameters with a 2% improvement of accuracy achieved on adopting channel-wise convolution over MS-CNN and deep convolutional neural network (DCNN). This demonstrates the effectiveness of the adopted multiscale feature extraction and sparse connectivity to improve the performance with a less complex model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic accidents as a result of driver fatigue and drowsiness have caused many injuries and deaths. Therefore, driver fatigue detection and prediction system have been recognized as important potential research areas to prevent accidents caused by fatigue and drowsiness while driving. In this study, driver fatigue is determined by using behavior-based measurement information. Recent studies show that deep neural network is trending state-of-the-art machine learning approaches. Hence, we propose the deep belief network (DBN) model, a deep learning type, used for classification of the symptoms of fatigue in this study. DBN structure is a kind of neural network. The number of hidden layers within the network and the number of units in each hidden layer play important roles in the design of any neural network. Therefore, the hidden layer and the count of units in the DBN model designed in this paper have been selected as a result of various experiments. A greedy method has been adopted to adjust the structure of the deep belief network. Subsequently, the proposed DBN architecture test on KOU-DFD, YawDD and Nthu-DDD datasets. Comparative and experimental results concluded that the proposed DBN architecture is as robust as the other approaches found in the literature and achieves an accuracy rate of approximately 86%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional computing architecture (Von Neumann) that requires data transfer between the off-chip memory and processor consumes a large amount of energy when running machine learning (ML) models. Memristive synaptic devices are employed to eliminate this inevitable inefficiency in energy while solving cognitive tasks. However, the performances of energy-efficient neuromorphic systems, which are expected to provide promising results, need to be enhanced in terms of accuracy and test error rates for classification applications. Improving accuracy in such ML models depends on the optimal learning parameter changes from a device to algorithm-level optimisation. To do this, this paper considers the Adadelta, an adaptive learning rate technique, to achieve accurate results by reducing the losses and compares the accuracy, test error rates, and energy consumption of stochastic gradient descent (SGD), Adagrad and Adadelta optimisation methods integrated into the Ag:a-Si synaptic device neural network model. The experimental results demonstrated that Adadelta enhanced the accuracy of the hardware-based neural network model by up to 4.32% when compared to the Adagrad method. The Adadelta method achieved the best accuracy rate of 94%, while DGD and SGD provided an accuracy rate of 68.11 and 75.37%, respectively. These results show that it is vital to select a proper optimisation method to enhance performance, particularly the accuracy and test error rates of the neuro-inspired nano-synaptic device-based neural network models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parkinson's disease (PD) genes identification plays an important role in improving the diagnosis and treatment of the disease. A number of machine learning methods have been proposed to identify disease-related genes, but only few of these methods are adopted for PD. This work puts forth a novel neural network-based ensemble (n-semble) method to identify Parkinson's disease genes. The artificial neural network is trained in a unique way to ensemble the multiple model predictions. The proposed n-semble method is composed of four parts: (1) protein sequences are used to construct feature vectors using physicochemical properties of amino acid; (2) dimensionality reduction is achieved using the t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE) method, (3) the Jaccard method is applied to find likely negative samples from unknown (candidate) genes, and (4) gene prediction is performed with n-semble method. The proposed n-semble method has been compared with Smalter's, ProDiGe, PUDI and EPU methods using various evaluation metrics. It has been concluded that the proposed n-semble method outperforms the existing gene identification methods over the other methods and achieves significantly higher precision, recall and F Score of 88.9%, 90.9% and 89.8%, respectively. The obtained results confirm the effectiveness and validity of the proposed framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automated continuous condition monitoring of industrial electrical machines to identify internal faults has become one of the critical research areas for the past decade. Among various defects, early-stage identification of insulation failure in stator winding is of notable demand as it often occurs and accounts for 37% of the overall motor failures. Identifying the current signature at its embryonic stage will effectively improve industrial machinery's downtime and repair costs. Recent advances in computational performance and sensor technology concede advanced systems for achieving these goals. The design of an AI-based fault signature analyzer (FSA) has been developed in this paper. FSA uses real-time stator current data in the time and frequency domain from healthy and faulty induction motors to train the various AI-based machine learning classifiers to identify health conditions using wavelets. Comparing machine learning algorithms such as artificial neural network, random forest, fuzzy logic, neuro-fuzzy logic, K-nearest neighbors is performed, and various performance attributes are quantified. A reliable, automatic fault signature from a motor current is thus analyzed using the fusion of a wavelet-based feature extraction technique and a capable knowledge-based efficient artificial intelligence (AI) approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solutions in geotechnics have been optimizing with the aid of machine learning methods. The aim of this paper is to apply different machine learning algorithms in order to achieve rock mass classification. It is demonstrated that RMR classification system can be obtained using only variables which are closely related to rock mass quality, instead of all RMR variables, without missing significant accuracy. The different machine learning algorithms used are the naïve Bayes, random forest, artificial neural networks and support vector machines. The variables to calculate RMR, selected by factor analysis, are: rock strength, rock weathering, spacing, persistence and aperture of discontinuities and presence of water. The machine learning models were trained and tested thirty times, with random subsampling, using two-thirds of the total database for training sample. The models presented average accuracy greater than 0.81, which was calculated from the confusion matrix, using the proportion of true positives and true negatives in the test sample. Significant values of efficiency, precision and reproducibility rates were achieved. The study shows the application of machine learning algorithms allows obtaining the RMR classes, even with a small number of variables. In addition, the results of the evaluation metrics of the developed algorithms show that the methodology can be applied to new database, working as a valuable way to achieve rock mass classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a novel combination of deep learning recurrent neural network and Lyapunov time is proposed to forecast the consumption of electricity load, in Greece, in normal/abrupt change value areas. Our method verifies the chaotic behavior of load time series through chaos time series analysis and with the application of deep learning recurrent neural networks produces predictions for 10 and 20 days ahead. Specifically, four different neural network models constructed (a) feed forward neural network, (b) gated recurrent unit (GRU) neural network, (c) long short-term memory (LSTM) recurrent and (d) bidirectional LSTM neural network to implement the prediction in a prediction horizon, produced through the extraction of maximum Lyapunov exponent. We constructed sequences of algorithms to feed the neural networks, creating three scenarios (a) 1-step, (b) 10-step and (c) 20-step sequences. For each neural network model, we used its predictions as inputs to predict steps forward, iteratively, to examine the accuracy of the proposed models, for horizons that are both inside and outside to that defined by Lyapunov time. The results show that the deep learning GRU neural network produces iterative predictions of high accuracy and stability, following the trend evolution of actual values, even outside the safe horizon for 1-step and 10-step cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predicting the critical buckling loads of functionally graded material (FGM) plates using an analytical method requires solving complex equations with various modes of deformation to determine the minimum loads. The approach is too complex for application in engineering practice. In this paper, a data-driven model using the artificial neural network (ANN) is proposed for the critical buckling load of FGM plates, as an alternative tool for practicing engineers. A database is first developed for randomly selected inputs using an analytical solution based on first-order shear deformation theory for simply supported FGM plates. The database is then divided into a training dataset with 80% of the data and a testing dataset with 20% of the data for developing and validating, respectively, the ANN model. The ANN model developed using six hidden layers with 32 nodes in each layer is found to match the data with a coefficient of determination of 99.95%. Using the ANN model, the stochastic characteristic of the critical buckling load is examined with respect to randomness of the input parameters. The study reveals that along with the dimensional parameters, the critical buckling load is significantly affected by the randomness of the volume fraction ratio and ratio of the modulus of elasticity of the ceramic and the metal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sand–cement stabilization is considered as one of the most common in situ methods in the soil improvement practices. Despite the importance of studying some fundamental characteristics such as the stress (q)–strain (ε ) and the pore pressure (u)–strain (ε ) behavior of the stabilized soils, very few studies have examined this so far. Hence, this paper aims at adopting an initiative approach which is group method of data handling (GMDH)-type neural network to specifically predict such behavior for cement-treated sands using the consolidated undrained (CU) triaxial test results. To do so, the q– ε and u– ε results from the CU tests are considered on the basis of different variables such as cement content (C), confining pressure (CP), porosity (η ) and curing time (D). The obtained data, regarding similar statistical characteristics, are randomly sorted into three groups namely training, validation and testing. Current modeling is based on the first group (80% of the data), whereas the comparisons are made among other approaches in terms of the last one. Moreover, to achieve more accurate predictions, parameters related to the stress ( q n - 1 ) and pore pressure ( u n - 1 ) in the previous strain level are assumed in the modeling. It can be concluded that the two-hidden layer model is capable of accurately predicting the q– ε and u– ε behavior for the testing data, compared to other machine learning methods. By and large, GMDH modeling is strongly suggested as a potent method to estimate the soil mechanical properties like brittle index (IB), maximum strength (qmax), failure strain (ε f) and stiffness (E50). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multimedia analysis is one of the most important branches of artificial intelligence, which focuses on the description, measurement and classification of patterns involved in multimedia data. Zhou and Jiao [[2]] set up the functional structure of this paper based on the neural network model structure and build an intelligent analysis system for signal processing tasks based on the LSTM recurrent neural network algorithm. [Extracted from the article]

We propose "Deep Autoencoders for Feature Learning in Recommender Systems," a novel discriminative model based on the incorporation of features from autoencoders in combination with embeddings into a deep neural network to predict ratings in recommender systems. The work has two major motivations. The first is to engineer features for recommender systems in a domain-agnostic way using autoencoders. The second is to develop a method that sets a benchmark for predictive accuracy. In our proposed solution, we build a user autoencoder and item autoencoder that extract latent features for the users and items, respectively. The additional features engineered are the latent features for the users and items, and these come from the bottleneck activations of the autoencoder. Our method of feature engineering is domain agnostic, as the inner-most activations would differ for domains without any additional effort required on part of the modeler. Next, we then use the activations of the inner-most layers of the autoencoders as features in a subsequent deep neural network to predict the ratings along-with user and item embeddings. Our method incorporates additional linear and nonlinear latent features from the autoencoders to improve predictive accuracy. This is different from the existing approaches that use autoencoders as full-fledged recommender systems or use autoencoders to generate features for a subsequent supervised learning algorithm or without using embeddings. We demonstrate the out performance of our solution on four different datasets of varying sizes and sparsity, namely MovieLens 100 K, MovieLens 1 M, FilmTrust and BookCrossing datasets, with strong experimental results. We have compared our DAFERec method against mDA-CF, TrustSVD, SVD variants, BiasedMF, ItemKNN and I-AutoRec methods. The results demonstrate that our proposed solution beats the benchmarks and is a highly flexible model that works on different datasets solving different business problems like book recommendations, movie recommendations and trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In mature reservoirs, there are hundreds or thousands of producing and injecting wells operating simultaneously, so it is important to understand the impact of injection wells on producers to maintain pressure and control water production. In this work, we propose a workflow with two strategies, reduced-physics and data-driven modeling, to monitoring producer and injector wells based on interwell connectivity. The monitoring the wells allows to increase oil production, reducing water rate, and avoiding possible fracturing or fault reactivations. Both strategies use production history data only. The inputs in both strategies are injection rates, while output are liquid production rates. The first one, the reduced-physics modeling strategy, is based on the capacitance-resistance modeling for producers (CRMP), which calculates the liquid flowrate of the producing well based on the injection rate, productivity index of producers, time constant, and the connectivity between injectors and producers. The parameters of the CRMP model are obtained by minimizing the error between the observed and calculated liquid flowrates. The optimization algorithm that minimizes the error is the Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) and the gradient is obtained by finite differences. The second one, the data-driven modeling strategy is based on artificial neural networks (ANNs), which only use input and output data. The parameters of the artificial neural network, weights, and biases, are adjusted during the training process. Three architectures are proposed to match the outputs based on the inputs: single-layer perceptron, deep learning with multiple layers, and convolutional neural networks. The backpropagation algorithm is used to adjust the weights and biases of the architectures during training. In this study, we propose three alternatives for calculating the connectivities based on the trained model. The first one is based on the optimal weights. The second one is based on the average error after training and shuffling the input data, and the last one is based on the gradient importance. Two synthetic models, Two-phases, and Brush Canyon Outcrop, are used to validate the proposed workflow. The results show that the connectivities calculated by the gradient importance approach are closer to the connectivities obtained by the capacitance-resistance model. On the other hand, the connectivities obtained through the optimal weights and average error strategies show differences of 4% and 5%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes a two-stage screening system to predict the most suitable EOR method for a candidate reservoir using artificial neural networks (ANN) trained with more than 1000 worldwide experiences of EOR projects. In the first stage, an ANN is trained to classify the projects into three main categories including water-based, gas and thermal EOR. The prediction accuracy of the trained model in this stage is around 90% over non-observed projects. More specifically, for thermal category, 99 out of 108, for gas category, 96 out of 104 and for water-based category, 47 out of 55 projects in the test data (non-observed data) were assigned to the right category by the model. In the second stage, for each of three categories, a separate ANN is trained with the corresponding datasets to classify the projects into their main sub-categories. The three models developed for classifying water-based, gas and thermal EOR projects into their main sub-categories, delivered a very well performance with average accuracies of 96, 90 and 94%, respectively. The proposed screening system in this work introduces two main opportunities over the previous works in this field. First, the two-stage structure allows for a more accurate EOR selection since the model is less probable to be biased by larger EOR classes, and second, it allows for using additional input features for specific methods which are not available for all types of EOR methods. Finally, we demonstrated the applicability of the proposed system, by considering 12 Iranian candidate reservoirs, for which the primary EOR screening processes was performed in a study established by Mashayekhizadeh et al. in 2014. Screening results in both works are in a full agreement which demonstrates the efficiency and quickness of the proposed system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to increase the market value and quality of wheat, it is important to separate different types and determine the amount of foreign matter using the visual properties of durum and bread wheat. In this study, the extreme learning machine (ELM) algorithm, which is often preferred in real-time applications, was used to make classifications using features obtained from images containing the wheat kernel and foreign matter. The feature selection process was applied to remove the irrelevant ones from the obtained 236 features. In addition, the Harris hawks' optimizer (HHO), a novel method in the literature, and the particle swarm optimizer (PSO), one of the well-known algorithms, were used to improve the ELM model. As part of this study, new models called HHO-ELM and PSO-ELM were created and compared with the original ELM model and other artificial neural networks (ANNs) studies published in the literature. As a result, in comparison with other models, the optimized ELM models demonstrated good stability and accuracy, having 99.32% in binary classification and 95.95% in multi-class classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A computerized coconut tree detection system can help dendrologists and laypersons in identifying coconut trees based on three morphological parameters including height, inclination, and orientation. These three parameters help to determine the health and the nature of growth of coconut trees which influences the design and use of robots for harvesting coconuts. Deep learning is a powerful tool used for feature extraction as it is better in extracting deeper details (features) in an image. In this research work, a new Modified Inception Net based Hyper Tuning Support Vector Machine classification method named MIN-SVM is proposed for coconut tree classification based on three morphological parameters including height, inclination and orientation. The features from the pre-processed coconut tree images were extracted using four distinct Convolutional Neural Network models including Visual Geometry Group, Inception Net, ResNet, and MIN-SVM. These extracted features were then classified using a Machine Learning model named Support Vector Machine (SVM). The MIN-SVM have achieved a remarkable accuracy of 95.35 percent as contrasted to Visual Geometry Group (91.90%), Inception Net (81.66%), and ResNet (71.95%). The features extracted from Modified Inception Net fitted good with SVM classifier. Experimental results show that MIN-SVM can be powerful computerized automated system to identify coconut trees based on height, inclination, and orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prediction of the ultimate settlement is vital for the assessment of the service life of a structure, particularly when it is underlain by fine-grained soils. As known, this value is a function of the compression index (Cc) of soils, which can simply be found by performance of oedometer tests. For this purpose, more than 2000 test results from past studies were compiled to constitute a database. Then, multiple linear regression analyses were employed to predict the Cc parameter by use of toughness limit (TL) and a function of this parameter, namely the soil state index (SSI). It was noticed that SSI was a better predictor of Cc, in comparison with TL. Prediction ability of many equations from literature was questioned, and it was concluded that these equations were good predictors of their own data. Moving to a generalized behavior, data show a more scattered structure, which needs more sophisticated methods using above-mentioned parameters as inputs. In this regard, artificial neural networks were employed to estimate the Cc by use of single input parameters: TL or SSI. Additionally, a combination of Atterberg limits was also instructed as inputs for prediction of Cc. A comparative analysis of the effects of learning algorithm, input data, and number of neurons in hidden layer was given. It was concluded that the TL and SSI are reasonable predictors of compression index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many prediction methods proposed in the literature can be concerned under two main headings: probabilistic and non-probabilistic methods. In particular, as a kind of non-probabilistic model, artificial neural networks (ANNs), having different properties, have been commonly and effectively used in the literature. Some ANNs operate the additive aggregation function in the structure of their neuron models, while others employ the multiplicative aggregation function. Recently proposed dendritic neural networks also have both additional and multiplicative neuron models. The prediction performance of such an artificial neural network will inevitably be negatively affected by the outliers that the time series of interest may contain due to the neuron model in its structure. This study, for the training of a dendritic neural network, presents a robust learning algorithm. The presented robust algorithm is the first for the training of DNM in the literature as far as is known and uses Huber's loss function as the fitness function. The iterative process of the robust learning algorithm is carried out by particle swarm optimization. The productivity and efficiency of the suggested learning algorithm were evaluated by analysing different real-life time series. All analyses were performed with original and contaminated data sets under different scenarios. The R-DNM has the best performance for the original data sets with a value of 2.95% in the ABC time series, while the FTSE showed the best performance in approximately 27% and the second best in 33% of all analyses. The proposed R-DNM has been the least affected by outliers in almost all scenarios for contaminated ABC data sets. Moreover, it has been the least affected model by outliers in approximately 71% of the 90 analyses performed for the contaminated FTSE time series. The obtained results show that the dendritic artificial neural network trained by the proposed robust learning algorithm produces the satisfactory predictive results in the analysis of time series with and without outliers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate rainfall estimation is crucial to adequately assess the risk associated with extreme events capable of triggering floods and landslides. Data gathered from Rain Gauges (RGs), sensors devoted to measuring the intensity of the rain at individual points, are commonly used to feed interpolation methods (e.g., the Kriging geostatistical approach) and estimate the precipitation field over an area of interest. However, the information provided by RGs could be insufficient to model complex phenomena, and computationally expensive interpolation methods could not be used in real-time environments. Integrating additional data sources (e.g., radar and geostationary satellites) is an effective solution for improving the quality of the estimate, but it needs to cope with Big Data issues. To overcome all these issues, we propose a Rainfall Estimation Model (REM) based on an Ensemble of Deep Neural Networks (DeepEns-REM) that can automatically fuse heterogeneous data sources. The usage of Residual Blocks in the base models and the adoption of a Snapshot procedure to build the ensemble guarantees a fast convergence and scalability. Experimental results, conducted on a real dataset concerning a southern region in Italy, demonstrate the quality of the proposal in comparison with the Kriging interpolation technique and other machine learning techniques, especially in the case of exceptional rainfall events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Author profiling (AP) is a highly relevant natural language processing (NLP) problem; it deals with predicting features of authors such as gender, age and personality traits. It is done by analyzing texts written by the authors themselves; take for instance documents such as books, articles, and more recently posts in social media platforms. In the present study, we focus in the latter, which is an scenario with a number of applications in marketing, security, health and others. Surprisingly, given the achievements of deep learning (DL) strategies on other NLP tasks, for AP DL architectures regularly underperform, left behind by classical machine learning (ML) approaches. In this study we show how a deep learning architecture based on transformers offers competitive results by exploiting a joint-intermediate fusion strategy called the Wide & Deep Transformer (WD-T). Our methodology implements a fusion of contextualized word vector representations and handcrafted features, by using a self-attention mechanism and a novel encoding technique that incorporates stylistic, topic, and personal information from authors. This allows for the creation of more accurate, fine-grained predictions. Our approach attained competitive performance against top-quartile results from the 2017–2019 editions at the Plagiarism analysis, Authorship identification, and Near-duplicate detection forum (PAN) in English and Spanish languages for gender and language variety predictions, and the Kaggle Myers–Briggs-type indicator (MBTI) dataset for personality forecasting. Our proposal consistently surpasses all other deep learning methods in PAN collections by as much as 2.4%, and up to 3.4% in the MBTI dataset. These results suggest that this DL strategy effectively addresses and improves upon the limitations of previous techniques and paves the way for new avenues of inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an approach that uses a deep learning model, in particular, a MultiLayer Perceptron, for estimating the missing values of a variable in multivariate time series data. We focus on filling a long continuous gap (e.g., multiple months of missing daily observations) rather than on individual randomly missing observations. Our proposed gap filling algorithm uses an automated method for determining the optimal MLP model architecture, thus allowing for optimal prediction performance for the given time series. We tested our approach by filling gaps of various lengths (three months to three years) in three environmental datasets with different time series characteristics, namely daily groundwater levels, daily soil moisture, and hourly Net Ecosystem Exchange. We compared the accuracy of the gap-filled values obtained with our approach to the widely used R-based time series gap filling methods ImputeTS and mtsdi. The results indicate that using an MLP for filling a large gap leads to better results, especially when the data behave nonlinearly. Thus, our approach enables the use of datasets that have a large gap in one variable, which is common in many long-term environmental monitoring observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]