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Simple Summary: Breast cancer is a significant cause of female cancer-related deaths in the US. Checking how severe the cancer is helps in planning treatment. Modern AI methods are good at grading cancer, but they are not used much in hospitals yet. We developed and utilized ensemble deep learning algorithms for addressing the tasks of classifying (1) breast cancer subtype and (2) breast cancer invasiveness from whole slide image (WSI) histopathology slides. The ensemble models used were based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) known for extracting distinctive features crucial for accurate classification. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive analysis of these models and the used methodology for breast cancer diagnosis tasks. Cancer diagnosis and classification are pivotal for effective patient management and treatment planning. In this study, a comprehensive approach is presented utilizing ensemble deep learning techniques to analyze breast cancer histopathology images. Our datasets were based on two widely employed datasets from different centers for two different tasks: BACH and BreakHis. Within the BACH dataset, a proposed ensemble strategy was employed, incorporating VGG16 and ResNet50 architectures to achieve precise classification of breast cancer histopathology images. Introducing a novel image patching technique to preprocess a high-resolution image facilitated a focused analysis of localized regions of interest. The annotated BACH dataset encompassed 400 WSIs across four distinct classes: Normal, Benign, In Situ Carcinoma, and Invasive Carcinoma. In addition, the proposed ensemble was used on the BreakHis dataset, utilizing VGG16, ResNet34, and ResNet50 models to classify microscopic images into eight distinct categories (four benign and four malignant). For both datasets, a five-fold cross-validation approach was employed for rigorous training and testing. Preliminary experimental results indicated a patch classification accuracy of 95.31% (for the BACH dataset) and WSI image classification accuracy of 98.43% (BreakHis). This research significantly contributes to ongoing endeavors in harnessing artificial intelligence to advance breast cancer diagnosis, potentially fostering improved patient outcomes and alleviating healthcare burdens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Influenza affects millions of people every year. It causes a considerable amount of medical visits and hospitalisations as well as hundreds of thousands of deaths. Forecasting influenza prevalence with good accuracy can significantly help public health agencies to timely react to seasonal or novel strain epidemics. Although significant progress has been made, influenza forecasting remains a challenging modelling task. In this paper, we propose a methodological framework that improves over the state-of-the-art forecasting accuracy of influenza-like illness (ILI) rates in the United States. We achieve this by using Web search activity time series in conjunction with historical ILI rates as observations for training neural network (NN) architectures. The proposed models incorporate Bayesian layers to produce associated uncertainty intervals to their forecast estimates, positioning themselves as legitimate complementary solutions to more conventional approaches. The best performing NN, referred to as the iterative recurrent neural network (IRNN) architecture, reduces mean absolute error by 10.3% and improves skill by 17.1% on average in nowcasting and forecasting tasks across 4 consecutive flu seasons. Author summary: Modelling the prevalence of an infectious disease enables public health organisations to prepare for and minimise its impact. However, traditional disease indicators are often quite restrictive as they provide information with a significant delay. Recent research efforts have provided evidence of the value of alternative information sources such as Web search activity trends. Our work incorporates this information into influenza forecasting models to achieve state-of-the-art accuracy. In addition, the proposed Bayesian neural network architectures also provide associated uncertainty estimates for the forecasts, positioning our methodology as a practical complementary tool for disease surveillance and policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology forecasting is an important and critical issue that determines the starting point of planning and is considered as a management tool directly related to the future. In the previous research items, the development of renewable energy technologies was of concern. Moreover, due to the increasing need of countries to produce electricity and facing the lack of resources, this research focuses on forecasting photovoltaic technology. Accordingly, in this paper, for technological research in the field of solar energy, the patents extracted from one of the most famous renewable energy databases in the United States (US patent database) between 200 and 2020 were examined. Next, research gaps were analyzed by using the artificial neural network clustering method and also by analyzing covered and uncovered compounds. The results show that in the future, photovoltaic technology research will move towards the third generation of technology (organic materials) as well as focus on environmental parameters and their effects on the performance of photovoltaic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colon and rectal cancers are the most common kinds of cancer globally. Colon cancer is more prevalent in men than in women. Early detection increases the likelihood of survival, and treatment significantly increases the likelihood of eradicating the disease. The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) programme is an excellent source of domestic cancer statistics. SEER includes nearly 30% of the United States population, covering various races and geographic locations. The data are made public via the SEER website when a SEER limited-use data agreement form is submitted and approved. We investigate data from the SEER programme, specifically colon cancer statistics, in this study. Our objective is to create reliable colon cancer survival and conditional survival prediction algorithms. In this study, we have presented an overview of cancer diagnosis methods and the treatments used to cure cancer. This paper presents an analysis of prediction performance of multiple deep learning approaches. The performance of multiple deep learning models is thoroughly examined to discover which algorithm surpasses the others, followed by an investigation of the network's prediction accuracy. The simulation outcomes indicate that automated prediction models can predict colon cancer patient survival. Deep autoencoders displayed the best performance outcomes attaining 97% accuracy and 95% area under curve-receiver operating characteristic (AUC-ROC). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper proposed a novel wind speed forecasting algorithm. • A new dataset division mechanism based on the moving window is used in this paper. • In order to improve the accuracy and stability simultaneously, the multi-objective particle swarm optimization is applied. • We compared the proposed MOPSO-Combined method with the combined model that published before in the paper. Accurate wind speed forecasting is important in power grid security, power system management, operation and market economics. However, most research has focused only on improving either accuracy or stability, with few studies addressing the two issues, simultaneously. Therefore, we proposed a novel combined model based on multi-objective particle swarm optimization, which is applied to optimize the key parameters of the echo state network. Most combined wind speed forecasting methods just use the combination theory to combine individual methods, this paper uses echo state network to combine the intermediate wind speed forecasting results of three artificial neural networks. Moreover, a new dataset division mechanism based on the moving window is applied in this paper. Firstly, the length of the input data is changed from 5 to 15 for 1-step, 2-step and 3-step wind speed forecasting, after that, the optimal length of the input vector can be got. And then we apply this optimal length of the input vector to another dataset for further verifying the proposed method. In order to verify the forecasting effectiveness of the proposed forecasting model, the 80/min wind speed data of M2 tower of the National Wind Power Technology Center of the United States were taken as an example. The experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm is superior to the other ten comparative models in prediction accuracy and stability, and it also performs better than the combined model that we have proposed before. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a novel methodology, referenced as ORFEO (Ordinal classifier and Regressor Fusion for Estimating an Ordinal categorical target), to enhance the performance in ordinal classification problems for which the latent variable is observable. ORFEO is an artificial neural network model incorporating two outputs, one for ordinal classification, using the cumulative link model, and one for regression, using a linear model. Both outputs are simultaneously optimised considering a loss function that linearly combines both classification and regression losses. The main motivation behind developing the proposed approach is to enhance the performance of a standard ordinal classifier. This improvement is facilitated by considering the regression output, which allows the model to differentiate between patterns within the same category. The ORFEO model is applied to two problems in the field of marine and ocean engineering: short-term prediction of both significant wave height and flux of energy. Both problems are addressed considering four different coastal zones of the United States of America, using 13 datasets formed by buoys measurements and reanalysis data. A comprehensive comparison against 20 methodologies, including regression and nominal/ordinal classification approaches is performed, by using diverse nominal and ordinal performance metrics. Ranks achieved indicate that ORFEO outperforms all the compared methodologies in terms of all the performance measures, demonstrating the efficacy and robustness of the proposal. Finally, a statistical analysis is conducted, concluding that there are statistically significant differences across ordinal and nominal performance metrics in favour of the proposed ORFEO model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose bag of adversarial features (BAFs) for identifying mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) patients from their diffusion magnetic resonance images (MRIs) (obtained within one month of injury) by incorporating unsupervised feature learning techniques. MTBI is a growing public health problem with an estimated incidence of over 1.7 million people annually in USA. Diagnosis is based on clinical history and symptoms, and accurate, concrete measures of injury are lacking. Unlike most of the previous works, which use hand-crafted features extracted from different parts of brain for MTBI classification, we employ feature learning algorithms to learn more discriminative representation for this task. A major challenge in this field thus far is the relatively small number of subjects available for training. This makes it difficult to use an end-to-end convolutional neural network to directly classify a subject from MRIs. To overcome this challenge, we first apply an adversarial auto-encoder (with convolutional structure) to learn patch-level features, from overlapping image patches extracted from different brain regions. We then aggregate these features through a bag-of-words approach. We perform an extensive experimental study on a dataset of 227 subjects (including 109 MTBI patients, and 118 age and sex-matched healthy controls) and compare the bag-of-deep-features with several previous approaches. Our experimental results show that the BAF significantly outperforms earlier works relying on the mean values of MR metrics in selected brain regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: The assessment of bone age and skeletal maturity and its comparison to chronological age is an important task in the medical environment for the diagnosis of pediatric endocrinology, orthodontics and orthopedic disorders, and legal environment in what concerns if an individual is a minor or not when there is a lack of documents. Being a time-consuming activity that can be prone to inter- and intra-rater variability, the use of methods which can automate it, like Machine Learning techniques, is of value. OBJECTIVE: The goal of this paper is to present the state of the art evidence, trends and gaps in the research related to bone age assessment studies that make use of Machine Learning techniques. METHOD: A systematic literature review was carried out, starting with the writing of the protocol, followed by searches on three databases: Pubmed, Scopus and Web of Science to identify the relevant evidence related to bone age assessment using Machine Learning techniques. One round of backward snowballing was performed to find additional studies. A quality assessment was performed on the selected studies to check for bias and low quality studies, which were removed. Data was extracted from the included studies to build summary tables. Lastly, a meta-analysis was performed on the performances of the selected studies. RESULTS: 26 studies constituted the final set of included studies. Most of them proposed automatic systems for bone age assessment and investigated methods for bone age assessment based on hand and wrist radiographs. The samples used in the studies were mostly comprehensive or bordered the age of 18, and the data origin was in most of cases from United States and West Europe. Few studies explored ethnic differences. CONCLUSIONS: There is a clear focus of the research on bone age assessment methods based on radiographs whilst other types of medical imaging without radiation exposure (e.g. magnetic resonance imaging) are not much explored in the literature. Also, socioeconomic and other aspects that could influence in bone age were not addressed in the literature. Finally, studies that make use of more than one region of interest for bone age assessment are scarce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Malignancy is the tendency of a medical condition to progressively become fatal and generally refers to the presence of cancerous cells that can spread, invade, and destroy tissues. In the United States, a new cancer diagnosis is given every 30 s, and the rates of diagnosis are not indicating any slowdown. The number of cancer cases is projected to increase by 35% over the next decade. Increasing cancer cases have attracted researchers to find new approaches for their identification and characterization. Skin diseases are a significant healthcare burden, affecting millions of people globally. The early detection and diagnosis of skin diseases are essential to prevent adverse health consequences, including the development of malignant skin tumors. Dermoscopy-based diagnosis of skin diseases is a time-consuming process, particularly in resource-limited healthcare settings. Recent advancements in computer vision algorithms have led to the development of several smartphone-based applications for early skin disease prognosis. In this paper, we have utilized a set of 16 distinctive convolutional neural network models, based on deep learning, to process over 45,000 high-quality images from the HAM10000 dataset, encompassing seven categories of skin diseases. Our models were able to effectively identify and classify skin diseases using lesion images as input. Dermoscopy-based diagnosis of skin diseases is a time-consuming process, particularly in resource-limited healthcare settings. Our proposed application for early skin disease detection aims to prevent unintended health consequences, which can result in wastage of operating hours, resources, and, in some cases, compromised patient health. We have benchmarked our models against one another to evaluate their effectiveness and efficiency, using performance measures such as accuracy, precision, sensitivity, specificity, F-score, and G-Mean. Our results demonstrate that most deployed models achieve an accuracy of up to 99%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper predicts the condensation and evaporation pressure drops of R32, R125, R410A, R134a, R22, R502, R507a, R32/R134a (25/75 by wt%), R407C and R12 flowing inside various horizontal smooth and micro-fin tubes by means of the numerical techniques of artificial neural networks (ANNs) and non-linear least squares (NLS). In its analyses, this paper used experimental data from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Eckels and Pate, as presented in Choi et al.''s study provided by NIST. In their experimental setups, the horizontal test sections have 1.587, 3.78, 3.81 and 3.97m long countercurrent flow double tube heat exchangers with refrigerant flowing in the inner smooth (8, 8.01 and 11.1mm i.d.) and micro-fin (4.339, 5.45, 7.43 and 8.443mm i.d.) copper tubes and cooling water flowing in the annulus. Their test runs cover a wide range saturation temperatures, vapor qualities and mass fluxes. The pressure drops are calculated with 1485 measured data points, together with analyses of artificial neural networks and non-linear least squares numerically. Inputs of the ANNs of the best correlation are the measured values of the test sections, such as mass flux, tube length, inlet and outlet vapor qualities, critical pressure, latent heat of condensation, mass fraction of liquid and vapor phases, dynamic viscosities of liquid and vapor phases, hydraulic diameter, two-phase density and the outputs of the ANNs, which comprise the experimental total pressure drops of the evaporation and condensation data from independent laboratories. The total pressure drops of in-tube condensation and in-tube evaporation tests are modeled using the artificial neural network (ANN) method of multi-layer perceptron (MLP) with 12-40-1 architecture. Its average error rate is 7.085%, which came from the cross validation tests of 1485 evaporation and condensation data points. Dependency of the output of the ANNs from 12 numbers of input values is also shown in detail, and new ANN based empirical pressure drop correlations are developed separately for the conditions of condensation and evaporation in smooth and micro-fin tubes as a result of the analyses. In addition, a single empirical correlation for the determination of both evaporation and condensation pressure drops in smooth and micro-fin tubes is proposed with an error rate of 14.556%. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper presents a sensitivity analysis of similar days (SD) parameters to increase the accuracy of artificial neural network (ANN) and SD-based short-term price forecasting. Work presented in this paper is an extended version of previous works done by the authors to integrate ANN and SD method for predicting electricity price. The focus here is on sensitivity analysis of SD parameters while keeping the parameters same for ANN to forecast hourly electricity prices in the Pennsylvania--New Jersey--Maryland (PJM) (regional transmission organization in northeast America) electricity market. Several cases are simulated by choosing (a) two, (b) three, (c) four, and (d) five SD parameters to calculate the norm. In addition, sensitivity analysis has been carried out by changing the time framework of SD (d = 15,30, 45, 60) and the number of selected similar price days (N = 5, 10). From sensitivity analysis, it is identified that the optimized mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) is obtained using case-c with d = 30 and N = 10. MAPE of reasonably small value, along with forecast mean square error and mean absolute error of around 2$/MWh and 1$/MWh, is obtained for the PJM data, which has correlation coefficient of determination (R²) of 0.7758 between load and electricity price. Numerical results show that forecasts generated by the developed ANN model based on the optimized case are accurate and efficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• More accurate and explanatory model is proposed for natural gas storage deliverability. • A hybrid Sparse Autoencoder and Random Forest model shows on average of 5.7% increase in prediction accuracy. • The first use of machine learning and explanatory methods (XAI) in deliverability prediction for natural gas storage. Numerous subsurface factors, including geology and fluid properties, can affect the connectivity of the storage spaces in depleted reservoirs; hence, fluid flow simulations become more complicated, and predicting their deliverability remains challenging. This paper applies Machine Learning (ML) techniques to predict the deliverability of underground natural gas storage (UNGS) in depleted reservoirs. First, three baseline models were developed based on Support Vector Regression (SVR), Artificial Neural Network (ANN), and Random Forest (RF) algorithms. To improve the accuracy of the RF model as the best-performing baseline model, a unified framework, referred to as SARF, was developed. SARF combines the capabilities of Sparse Autoencoder (SA) and that of Random Forest (RF). To achieve this, the internal representations of the SA, which constitute extracted features of the input variables, are used in RF to develop the proposed SARF framework. The predictive capabilities of the baseline models and the proposed SARF model were validated using 3744 real-world storage data samples of 52 active storage reservoirs in the United States. The experimental result of this study shows that the proposed SARF model achieved an average 5.7% increase in accuracy on four separate data partitions over the baseline RF model. Furthermore, a set of eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) methods were developed to provide an intuitive explanation of which factors influence the deliverability of reservoir storage. The visualizations developed using the XAI method provide an easy-to-understand interpretation of how the SARF model predicted the deliverability values for separate reservoirs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overall performance of energy infrastructure in the United States has been assessed as D+. More than 65% of America's energy is transported through the oil and gas pipelines, which have experienced more than 10,000 failures during the last three decades. There is a critical need for a failure prediction tool that can forecast the consequences of the hazardous failures. Failure of gas pipelines has become the subject of interest for some studies in the past. Previous studies mainly focused on physical models that need inspection data or developed subjective models. This paper aims at developing a model to forecast the consequences of the potential failures of such pipes using the historical data of the U.S. gas pipes network. The model applies a neurofuzzy technique in order to recognize the existing pattern among the input and output variables. It estimates the financial consequences of various failure scenarios for specific pipes in terms of size and specified minimum yield strength. For this purpose, a bowtie model is developed, and all possible scenarios of failure are identified. Various combinations of the identified factors and different number and types of membership functions, are applied in order to optimize the model's efficiency. The developed model is validated with an approximate accuracy of 80%. This study assists practitioners and academics who are working on the risk assessment of gas pipelines to plan for their lifecycle inspection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liu, C., 2019. Attribution of marine crop production in the United States of America based on artificial neural network learning. In: Li, L.; Wan, X.; and Huang, X. (eds.), Recent Developments in Practices and Research on Coastal Regions: Transportation, Environment and Economy. Journal of Coastal Research Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 98, pp. 277–283. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. Marine crops play an important role in the food chain and in agriculture. Marine crop products are used as livestock feed and to meet people's food requirements. This paper examines what factors cause differences in marine crop production and attribution to marine crop yield. The paper builds a marine crop production model based on an artificial neural network. Then it analyzes the sensitivity of all factors to understand their contributions to marine crop production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study presents an adaptive intelligent algorithm for forecasting gasoline demand based of artificial neural network (ANN), conventional regression and design of experiment (DOE). To show the superiority and applicability of the proposed algorithm it has been applied for monthly demand estimation of gasoline in Japan, USA, Kuwait, Canada and Iran within 1992–2005. The economic indicators used in this paper are price, GDP (Gross Domestic Production), population, number of vehicles, gasoline demand in the last periods and correlation coefficient between variables. The proposed algorithm may be used to estimate gasoline demand in the future by optimizing parameter values. The proposed algorithm uses ANOVA to select either ANN or regression for future demand estimation. Furthermore, if the null hypothesis in ANOVA and F-test is rejected, the Duncan method is used to identify which model is closer to actual data at α level of significance. Neural network is an intelligent, adaptive and optimizing method for solving the complicated problems. The results show that ANN provides far less error than regression. Moreover, the proposed algorithm provides near optimal solution for gasoline demand estimation due to its flexibility and intelligibility. The intelligent algorithm is therefore ideal for policy making with respect to gasoline consumption estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Correct estimation of suspended sediment concentration carried by a river is very important for many water resources projects. The application of linear genetic programming (LGP), which is an extension to genetic programming (GP) technique, for suspended sediment concentration estimation is proposed in this paper. The LGP is compared with those of the adaptive neuro-fuzzy, neural networks and rating curve models. The daily streamflow and suspended sediment concentration data from two stations, Rio Valenciano Station and Quebrada Blanca Station, operated by the US Geological Survey (USGS) are used as case studies. The root mean square errors (RMSE) and determination coefficient (R 2) statistics are used for evaluating the accuracy of the models. Comparison of the results indicated that the LGP performs better than the neuro-fuzzy, neural networks and rating curve models. For the Rio Valenciano and Quebrada Blanca Stations, it is found that the LGP models with RMSE=44.4mg/l, R 2 =0.910 and RMSE=13.9mg/l, R 2 =0.952 in test period is superior in estimating daily suspended sediment concentrations than the best accurate neuro-fuzzy model with RMSE=52.0mg/l, R 2 =0.876 and RMSE=17.9mg/l, R 2 =0.929, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The West Nile virus (WNV) is an infectious disease spreading rapidly throughout the United States, causing illness among thousands of birds, animals, and humans. Yet, we only have a rudimentary understanding of how the mosquito-borne virus operates in complex avian–human environmental systems coupled with risk factors. The large array of multidimensional risk factors underlying WNV incidences is environmental, built-environment, socioeconomic, and existing mosquito abatement policies. Therefore it is essential to identify an optimal number of risk factors whose management would result in effective disease prevention and containment. Previous models built to select important risk factors assumed a priori that there is a linear relationship between these risk factors and disease incidences. However, it is difficult for linear models to incorporate the complexity of the WNV transmission network and hence identify an optimal number of risk factors objectively. There are two objectives of this paper, first, use combination of genetic algorithm (GA) and computational neural network (CNN) approaches to build a model incorporating the non-linearity between incidences and hypothesized risk factors. Here GA is used for risk factor (variable) selection and CNN for model building mainly because of their ability to capture complex relationships with higher accuracy than linear models. The second objective is to propose a method to measure the relative importance of the selected risk factors included in the model. The study is situated in the metropolitan area of Minnesota, which had experienced significant outbreaks from 2002 till present. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Reliable precipitation measurement is a crucial component in hydrologic studies. Although satellite-based observation is able to provide spatial and temporal distribution of precipitation, the measurements tend to show systematic bias. This paper introduces a grid-based precipitation merging procedure in which satellite estimates from the Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks–Cloud Classification System (PERSIANN–CCS) are adjusted based on the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) daily rain gauge analysis. To remove the bias, the hourly CCS estimates were spatially and temporally accumulated to the daily 1° × 1° scale, the resolution of CPC rain gauge analysis. The daily CCS bias was then downscaled to the hourly temporal scale to correct hourly CCS estimates. The bias corrected CCS estimates are called the adjusted CCS (CCSA) product. With the adjustment from the gauge measurement, CCSA data have been generated to provide more reliable high temporal/spatial-resolution precipitation estimates. In the case study, the CCSA precipitation estimates from the proposed approach are compared against ground-based measurements in high-density gauge networks located in the southwestern United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: There are a vast number of complex, interrelated processes influencing urban stormwater quality. However, the lack of measured fundamental variables prevents the construction of process-based models. Furthermore, hybrid models such as the buildup-washoff models are generally crude simplifications of reality. This has created the need for statistical models, capable of making use of the readily accessible data. In this paper, artificial neural networks (ANN) were used to predict stormwater quality at urbanized catchments located throughout the United States. Five constituents were analysed: chemical oxygen demand (COD), lead (Pb), suspended solids (SS), total Kjeldhal nitrogen (TKN) and total phosphorus (TP). Multiple linear regression equations were initially constructed upon logarithmically transformed data. Input variables were primarily selected using a stepwise regression approach, combined with process knowledge. Variables found significant in the regression models were then used to construct ANN models. Other important network parameters such as learning rate, momentum and the number of hidden nodes were optimized using a trial and error approach. The final ANN models were then compared with the multiple linear regression models. In summary, ANN models were generally less accurate than the regression models and more time consuming to construct. This infers that ANN models are not more applicable than regression models when predicting urban stormwater quality. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Heavy-duty trucks contribute approximately 20% of fuel consumption in the United States of America (USA). The fuel economy of heavy-duty vehicles (HDV) is affected by several real-world parameters like road parameters, driver behavior, weather conditions, and vehicle parameters, etc. Although modern vehicles comply with emissions regulations, potential malfunction of the engine, regular wear and tear, or other factors could affect vehicle performance. Predicting fuel consumption per trip based on dynamic on-road data can help the automotive industry to reduce the cost and time for on-road testing. Data modeling can easily help to diagnose the reason behind fuel consumption with a knowledge of input parameters. In this paper, an artificial neural network (ANN) was implemented to model fuel consumption in modern heavy-duty trucks for predicting the total and instantaneous fuel consumption of a trip based on very few key parameters, such as engine load (%), engine speed (rpm), and vehicle speed (km/h). Instantaneous fuel consumption data can help to predict patterns in fuel consumption for optimized fleet operations. In this work, the data used for modeling was collected at a frequency of 1Hz during on-road testing of modern heavy-duty vehicles (HDV) at the West Virginia University Center for Alternative Fuels Engines and Emissions (WVU CAFEE) using the portable emissions monitoring system (PEMS). The performance of the artificial neural network was evaluated using mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean square error (RMSE). The model was further evaluated with data collected from a vehicle on-road trip. The study shows that artificial neural networks performed slightly better than other machine learning techniques such as linear regression (LR), and random forest (RF), with high R-squared (R2) and lower root mean square error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Identification of vulnerabilities of water distribution systems and identification of appropriate counter-measures are important components of homeland security. These are difficult and time consuming tasks. This paper provides a new approach to resolve these problems in complex infrastructure systems. It is based on the use of co-evolutionary computation for the generation of both terrorist and security scenarios. The basic concepts of co-evolutionary computation are briefly explained. The concept of co-evolutionary generation of terrorist and security scenarios is introduced in the context of a hypothetical water distribution system for a small town. A tool developed at George Mason University is used for a number of experiments that reveal a variety of emerging security patterns. The experiments show that these patterns may be helpful in effectively protecting the network. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The generalization error bounds found by current error models using the number of effective parameters of a classifier and the number of training samples are usually very loose. These bounds are intended for the entire input space. However, support vector machine (SVM), radial basis function neural network (RBFNN), and multilayer perceptron neural network (MLPNN) are local learning machines for solving problems and treat unseen samples near the training samples to be more important. In this paper, we propose a localized generalization error model which bounds from above the generalization error within a neighborhood of the training samples using stochastic sensitivity measure. It is then used to develop an architecture selection technique for a classifier with maximal coverage of unseen samples by specifying a generalization error threshold. Experiments using 17 University of California at Irvine (UCI) data sets show that, in comparison with cross validation (CV), sequential learning, and two other ad hoc methods, our technique consistently yields the best testing classification accuracy with fewer hidden neurons and less training time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many neural network methods used for efficient classification of populations work only when the population is globally separable. In situ classification of highway vehicles is one of the problems with globally nonseparable populations. This paper presents a systematic procedure for setting up a probabilistic neural network that can classify the globally nonseparable population of highway vehicles. The method is based on a simple concept that any set of classifiable data can be broken down to subclasses of locally separable data. Hence, if these locally separable data can be identified, then the classification problem can be carried out in two hierarchical steps; step one classifies the data according to the local subclasses, and step two classifies the local subclasses into the global classes. The proposed approach was tested on the problem of classifying highway vehicles according to the US Federal Highway Administration standard, which is normally handled by decision tree methods that use vehicle axle information and a set of IF-THEN rules. By using a sample of 3326 vehicles, the proposed method showed improved classification results with an overall misclassification rate of only 2.9% compared to 9.7% of the decision tree methods. A similar setup can be used with different neural networks such as recurrent neural networks, but they were not tested in this study especially since the focus was for in situ applications where a high learning rate is desired. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precipitation is arguably the most important meteorological forcing variable in land surface modeling. Many types of precipitation datasets exist (with various pros and cons) and include those from atmospheric data assimilation systems, satellites, rain gauges, ground radar, and merged products. These datasets are being evaluated in order to choose the most suitable precipitation forcing for real-time and retrospective simulations of the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS). This paper first presents results of a comparison for the period from March 2002 to February 2003. Later, GLDAS simulations 14 months in duration are analyzed to diagnose impacts on GLDAS land surface states when using the Mosaic land surface model (LSM). A comparison of seasonal total precipitation for the continental United States (CONUS) illustrates that the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) Merged Analysis of Precipitation (CMAP) has the closest agreement with a CPC rain gauge dataset for all seasons except winter. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) model performs the best of the modeling systems. The satellite-only products [the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Real-time Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis and the Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks (PERSIANN)] suffer from a few deficiencies—most notably an overestimation of summertime precipitation in the central United States (200–400 mm). CMAP is the most closely correlated with daily rain gauge data for the spring, fall, and winter seasons, while the satellite-only estimates perform best in summer. GLDAS land surface states are sensitive to different precipitation forcing where percent differences in volumetric soil water content (SWC) between simulations ranged from -75% to +100%. The percent differences in SWC are generally 25%–75% less than the percent precipitation differences, indicating that GLDAS and specifically the Mosaic LSM act to generally “damp” precipitation differences. Areas where the percent changes are equivalent to the percent precipitation changes, however, are evident. Soil temperature spread between GLDAS runs was considerable and ranged up to ±3.0 K with the largest impact in the western United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital image recognition has been experimented for steel bridge painting assessment by the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) in September 1999. Although the application was successfully carried out as a whole, there are still some minor problems left to be improved. Nonuniform illumination is one of the problems that affect the accuracy of recognition results. To address this problem, the neuro-fuzzy recognition approach (NFRA) is proposed, which segments an image into three areas based on illumination and conducts area-based thresholding with the help of an artificial neural network (ANN) and a fuzzy adjustment system. In this paper, the framework of NFRA will be presented, followed by the application of NFRA to steel bridge painting assessment and its performance comparison with the multiresolution pattern classification (MPC) method and the iterated conditional modes (ICM) algorithm. The conclusions will be presented last. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Malignant melanoma accounts for about 1–3% of all malignancies in the West, especially in the United States. More than 9000 people die each year. In general, it is difficult to characterize a skin lesion from a photograph. In this paper, we propose a deep learning-based computer-aided diagnostic algorithm for the classification of malignant melanoma and benign skin tumors from RGB channel skin images. The proposed deep learning model constitutes a tumor lesion segmentation model and a classification model of malignant melanoma. First, U-Net was used to classify skin lesions in dermoscopy images. We implement an algorithm to classify malignant melanoma and benign tumors using skin lesion images and expert labeling results from convolutional neural networks. The U-Net model achieved a dice similarity coefficient of 81.1% compared to the expert labeling results. The classification accuracy of malignant melanoma reached 80.06%. As a result, the proposed AI algorithm is expected to be utilized as a computer-aided diagnostic algorithm to help early detection of malignant melanoma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Temporal and spatial features are used for wind speed forecasting. • A novel probabilistic deep learning model is proposed for wind speed forecasting. • The proposed model shows the best performance compared with other models. • Temporal and spatial uncertainty of the wind speed are estimated based on the model. Reliable and accurate probabilistic forecasting of wind speed is of vital importance for the utilization of wind energy and operation of power systems. In this paper, a probabilistic spatiotemporal deep learning model for wind speed forecasting is proposed. The underlying wind turbines are embedded into a grid space, which fully expresses the spatiotemporal variation process of the airflow. Thus, advanced image recognition methods can be employed to solve the spatiotemporal wind speed forecasting problem. The proposed model is based on a spatial–temporal neural network (STNN) and variational Bayesian inference. The proposed STNN combines the convolutional GRU model and 3D Convolutional Neural Network and uses an encoding-forecasting structure to generate the spatiotemporal predictions. Variational Bayesian inference is employed to obtain the approximated posterior parameter distribution of the model and determine the probability of the prediction. The proposed model is applied in two real-world case studies in United States. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model significantly outperforms other models in both forecast skill and forecast reliability. The uncertainty estimation is also shown and it demonstrates that the proposed model is able to provide effective uncertainty estimation in both the time level and space level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Successful disaster management requires data describing disaster impact and extent of damage. • Aerial data collection is resource-intensive and requires offline post-processing. • We introduce convolutional neural network (CNN) models for ground object detection. • The models recognize building roofs, cars, vegetation, debris, and flooded areas. • We achieve 80.69% and 74.48% mAP for high and low altitude footage, respectively. Accurate and timely access to data describing disaster impact and extent of damage is key to successful disaster management (a process that includes prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery). Airborne data acquisition using helicopter and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) helps obtain a bird's-eye view of disaster-affected areas. However, a major challenge to this approach is robustly processing a large amount of data to identify and map objects of interest on the ground in real-time. The current process is resource-intensive (must be carried out manually) and requires offline computing (through post-processing of aerial videos). This research introduces and evaluates a series of convolutional neural network (CNN) models for ground object detection from aerial views of disaster's aftermath. These models are capable of recognizing critical ground assets including building roofs (both damaged and undamaged), vehicles, vegetation, debris, and flooded areas. The CNN models are trained on an in-house aerial video dataset (named Volan2018) that is created using web mining techniques. Volan2018 contains eight annotated aerial videos (65,580 frames) collected by drone or helicopter from eight different locations in various hurricanes that struck the United States in 2017–2018. Eight CNN models based on You-Only-Look-Once (YOLO) algorithm are trained by transfer learning, i.e., pre-trained on the COCO/VOC dataset and re-trained on Volan2018 dataset, and achieve 80.69% mAP for high altitude (helicopter footage) and 74.48% for low altitude (drone footage), respectively. This paper also presents a thorough investigation of the effect of camera altitude, data balance, and pre-trained weights on model performance, and finds that models trained and tested on videos taken from similar altitude outperform those trained and tested on videos taken from different altitudes. Moreover, the CNN model pre-trained on the VOC dataset and re-trained on balanced drone video yields the best result in significantly shorter training time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since wildfires have occurred frequently in recent years, accurate burned area mapping is required for wildfire severity assessment and burned land reconstruction. Satellite remote sensing is an effective technology that can provide valuable information for wildfire assessment. However, the common approaches based on using a single satellite image to promptly detect the burned areas have low accuracy and limited applicability. This paper develops a new burned area mapping method that surpasses the detection accuracy of previous methods, while still using a single Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor image. The key innovation is integrating optimal spectral indices and a neural network algorithm. We used the traditional empirical formula method, multi-threshold method and visual interpretation method to extract the sample sets of five typical types (burned area, vegetation, cloud, bare soil, and cloud shadow) from the MODIS data of several wildfires in the American states of Nevada, Washington and California in 2016. Afterward, the separability index M was adopted to assess the capacity of seven spectral bands and 13 spectral indices to distinguish the burned area from four unburned land cover types. Based on the separability analysis between the burned area and unburned areas, the spectral indices with an M value higher than 1.0 were employed to generate the training sample sets that were assessed to have an overall accuracy of 98.68% and Kappa coefficient of 97.46%. Finally, we utilized a back-propagation neural network (BPNN) to learn the spectral differences of different types from the training sample sets and obtain the output burned area map. The proposed method was applied to three wildfire cases in the American states of Idaho, Nevada and Oregon in 2017. A comparison of detection results between the new MODIS-based burned area map and the reference burned area map compiled from Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) data indicates that the proposed method can effectively exploit the spectral characteristics of various land cover types. Also, this new method can achieve higher accuracy with the reduction of commission error (CE, >10%) and omission error (OE, >6%) compared to the traditional empirical formula method. The new burned area mapping method could help managers and the public perform more effective wildfire assessments and emergency management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]