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Context.—: Machine learning applications in the pathology clinical domain are emerging rapidly. As decision support systems continue to mature, laboratories will increasingly need guidance to evaluate their performance in clinical practice. Currently there are no formal guidelines to assist pathology laboratories in verification and/or validation of such systems. These recommendations are being proposed for the evaluation of machine learning systems in the clinical practice of pathology., Objective.—: To propose recommendations for performance evaluation of in vitro diagnostic tests on patient samples that incorporate machine learning as part of the preanalytical, analytical, or postanalytical phases of the laboratory workflow. Topics described include considerations for machine learning model evaluation including risk assessment, predeployment requirements, data sourcing and curation, verification and validation, change control management, human-computer interaction, practitioner training, and competency evaluation., Data Sources.—: An expert panel performed a review of the literature, Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute guidance, and laboratory and government regulatory frameworks., Conclusions.—: Review of the literature and existing documents enabled the development of proposed recommendations. This white paper pertains to performance evaluation of machine learning systems intended to be implemented for clinical patient testing. Further studies with real-world clinical data are encouraged to support these proposed recommendations. Performance evaluation of machine learning models is critical to verification and/or validation of in vitro diagnostic tests using machine learning intended for clinical practice., (© 2024 College of American Pathologists.)

The development and implementation of clinical decision support (CDS) that trains itself and adapts its algorithms based on new data-here referred to as Adaptive CDS-present unique challenges and considerations. Although Adaptive CDS represents an expected progression from earlier work, the activities needed to appropriately manage and support the establishment and evolution of Adaptive CDS require new, coordinated initiatives and oversight that do not currently exist. In this AMIA position paper, the authors describe current and emerging challenges to the safe use of Adaptive CDS and lay out recommendations for the effective management and monitoring of Adaptive CDS., (© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Objective: Utilize machine learning models to identify factors associated with seeking medical care for migraine., Background: Migraine is a leading cause of disability worldwide, yet many people with migraine do not seek medical care., Methods: The web-based survey, ObserVational survey of the Epidemiology, tReatment and Care Of MigrainE (US), annually recruited demographically representative samples of the US adult population (2018-2020). Respondents with active migraine were identified via a validated diagnostic questionnaire and/or a self-reported medical diagnosis of migraine, and were then asked if they had consulted a healthcare professional for their headaches in the previous 12 months (i.e., "seeking care"). This included in-person/telephone/or e-visit at Primary Care, Specialty Care, or Emergency/Urgent Care locations. Supervised machine learning (Random Forest) and Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) algorithms identified 13/54 sociodemographic and clinical factors most associated with seeking medical care for migraine. Random Forest models complex relationships (including interactions) between predictor variables and a response. LASSO is also an efficient feature selection algorithm. Linear models were used to determine the multivariable association of those factors with seeking care., Results: Among 61,826 persons with migraine, the mean age was 41.7 years (±14.8) and 31,529/61,826 (51.0%) sought medical care for migraine in the previous 12 months. Of those seeking care for migraine, 23,106/31,529 (73.3%) were female, 21,320/31,529 (67.6%) were White, and 28,030/31,529 (88.9%) had health insurance. Severe interictal burden (assessed via the Migraine Interictal Burden Scale-4, MIBS-4) occurred in 52.8% (16,657/31,529) of those seeking care and in 23.1% (6991/30,297) of those not seeking care; similar patterns were observed for severe migraine-related disability (assessed via the Migraine Disability Assessment Scale, MIDAS) (36.7% [11,561/31,529] vs. 14.6% [4434/30,297]) and severe ictal cutaneous allodynia (assessed via the Allodynia Symptom Checklist, ASC-12) (21.0% [6614/31,529] vs. 7.4% [2230/30,297]). Severe interictal burden (vs. none, OR 2.64, 95% CI [2.5, 2.8]); severe migraine-related disability (vs. little/none, OR 2.2, 95% CI [2.0, 2.3]); and severe ictal allodynia (vs. none, OR 1.7, 95% CI [1.6, 1.8]) were strongly associated with seeking care for migraine., Conclusions: Seeking medical care for migraine is associated with higher interictal burden, disability, and allodynia. These findings could support interventions to promote care-seeking among people with migraine, encourage assessment of these factors during consultation, and prioritize these domains in selecting treatments and measuring their benefits., (© 2024 Eli Lilly and Company and The Author(s). Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Headache Society.)

Background: National ranking from the triennial Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) often serves as a barometer of national performance and human capital. Though excessive student- and school-level covariates (n > 700) may prove intractable for traditional least-squares estimate procedures, shrinkage methods may be more suitable for subset selection., Aims: With a focus on the United States, this paper proposes sparse regression for PISA 2012 to discover salient student- and school-level predictor variables for mathematical literacy achievement., Sample: The sparse regression analysis was conducted on 10 top-tiered OECD countries/economies, Canada, and the United States in mathematical literacy on the 2012 PISA. Two- and three-level hierarchical regression analyses were performed on Canadian and US students (N = 26,522) along with five of the ten top-tiered countries/economies (N = 58,385)., Methods: Using the 'least absolute shrinkage and selection operator' (LASSO) technique, the study (1) identified salient predictor variables of mathematical literacy performance for the top-tiered countries/economies, Canada, and the United States and (2) used these salient variables to perform two- and three-level hierarchical regression on data from Canada and the United States along with five top-tiered countries/economies. Weights and replicates were used to account for complex sample design. A weighted, two-level confirmatory factor analysis was performed to identify latent constructs. Missing data were handled through multiple imputation., Results: Separate two-level hierarchical models accounted for 32-35% student-level and 58-70% school-level variance in Canada and the United States, respectively; three-level models accounted for 33% of level-one variance, 62-65% level-two variance, and 13-44% of level-three variance for the US/Canada and US/Canada/top-tiered students, respectively. Following top-tiered countries/economies, Canadian students had high levels of self-efficacy, were more likely to encounter advanced concepts in class, were less activity/small group-centred, and were more likely to consider truancy a learning hindrance. Factor analyses revealed a positive relation with rigour and class organization (teacher-centred) for top-tiered countries and Canada, though not for the United States. For all countries, there was a strong relation between rigour and self-beliefs., Conclusion: Compared to top performers, a less rigorous curriculum, coupled with class and school factors, may explain lag in US performance., (© 2018 The British Psychological Society.)

Objective: To develop a predictive mathematical model for the early identification of ankylosing spondylitis (AS) based on the medical and pharmacy claims history of patients with and without AS., Methods: This retrospective study used claims data from Truven databases from January 2006 to September 2015 (Segment 1) and October 2015 to February 2018 (Segment 2). Machine learning identified features differentiating patients with AS from matched controls; selected features were used as inputs in developing Model A/B to identify patients likely to have AS. Model A/B was trained and developed in Segment 1, and patients predicted to have AS in Segment 1 were followed up in Segment 2 to evaluate the predictive capability of Model A/B., Results: Of 228,471 patients in Segment 1 without any history of AS, Model A/B predicted 1923 patients to have AS. Ultimately, 1242 patients received an AS diagnosis in Segment 2; 120 of these were correctly predicted by Model A/B, yielding a positive predictive value (PPV) of 6.24%. The diagnostic accuracy of Model A/B compared favorably with that of a clinical model (PPV, 1.29%) that predicted AS based on spondyloarthritis features described in the Assessment of SpondyloArthritis international Society classification criteria. A simplified linear regression model created to test the operability of Model A/B yielded a lower PPV (2.55%)., Conclusions: Model A/B performed better than a clinically based model in predicting a diagnosis of AS among patients in a large claims database; its use may contribute to early recognition of AS and a timely diagnosis.

Diagnosis of Cancer type is as important as the right classification of benign and malignant tumor cells. It is also very critical to achieve precision diagnosis to help doctor's find better clinical outcomes. Endometrial type of a cancer that starts in the uterus and found at an early stage as it frequently produces abnormal vaginal bleeding and hence it becomes critical to not only classify the tumor but also to detect the type and grade of the cancer. In the United States of America, endometrial cancer is a top five leading cancer with fifty-two thousand unique cases reported in the year 2014. This number raised to around sixty thousand in the year of 2016 and these numbers are further estimated to increase to around sixty-two thousand in 2019. The dataset used is composed of radiology and pathology images from Corpus Endometrial Carcinoma (CPTAC) Patients. This paper uses the Machine learning approaches that will classify the cell as malignant or benign. Deep learning approaches are used to provide Precision diagnosis that provides better outcomes to the clinicians. Convolutional Neural Network algorithms have been successfully used in diagnosis of Brain tumor, Skin Cancer and similar approaches can be used to tackle this problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Skin cancer has a significant impact on the lives of many individuals annually and is recognized as the most prevalent type of cancer. In the United States, an estimated annual incidence of approximately 3.5 million people receiving a diagnosis of skin cancer underscores its widespread prevalence. Furthermore, the prognosis for individuals afflicted with advancing stages of skin cancer experiences a substantial decline in survival rates. This paper is dedicated to aiding healthcare experts in distinguishing between benign and malignant skin cancer cases by employing a range of machine learning and deep learning techniques and different feature extractors and feature selectors to enhance the evaluation metrics. In this paper, different transfer learning models are employed as feature extractors, and to enhance the evaluation metrics, a feature selection layer is designed, which includes diverse techniques such as Univariate, Mutual Information, ANOVA, PCA, XGB, Lasso, Random Forest, and Variance. Among transfer models, DenseNet-201 was selected as the primary feature extractor to identify features from data. Subsequently, the Lasso method was applied for feature selection, utilizing diverse machine learning approaches such as MLP, XGB, RF, and NB. To optimize accuracy and precision, ensemble methods were employed to identify and enhance the best-performing models. The study provides accuracy and sensitivity rates of 87.72% and 92.15%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, a great number of papers have been published in the pediatric field. Objective: We aimed to assess research around the globe on COVID-19 in the pediatric field by bibliometric analysis, identifying publication trends and topic dissemination and showing the relevance of publishing authors, institutions, and countries. Methods: The Scopus database was comprehensively searched for all indexed documents published between January 1, 2020, and June 11, 2020, dealing with COVID-19 in the pediatric population (0-18 years). A machine learning bibliometric methodology was applied to evaluate the total number of papers and citations, journal and publication types, the top productive institutions and countries and their scientific collaboration, and core keywords. Results: A total of 2301 papers were retrieved, with an average of 4.8 citations per article. Of this, 1078 (46.9%) were research articles, 436 (18.9%) were reviews, 363 (15.8%) were letters, 186 (8.1%) were editorials, 7 (0.3%) were conference papers, and 231 (10%) were categorized as others. The studies were published in 969 differentjournals, headed by The Lancet. The retrieved papers were published by a total of 12,657 authors from 114 countries. The most productive countries were the United States, China, and Italy. The four main clusters of keywords were pathogenesis and clinical characteristics (keyword occurrences: n=2240), public health issues (n=352), mental health (n=82), and therapeutic aspects (n=70). Conclusions: In the pediatric field, a large number of articles were published within a limited period on COVID-19, testifying to the rush to spread new findings on the topic in a timely manner. The leading authors, countries, and institutions evidently belonged to the most impacted geographical areas. A focus on the pediatric population was often included in general articles, and pediatric research about COVID-19 mainly focused on the clinical features, public health issues, and psychological impact of the disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing availability of bridge data from the National Bridge Inventory (NBI) offers a great opportunity to perform predictive analytics (such as bridge deterioration prediction) using machine learning (ML) pipelines for supporting bridge asset management. However, data quality issues (e.g., outliers and missing values) can significantly affect ML pipelines, requiring upstream tasks to be performed for ensuring the validity, applicability, and generalizability of pipelines. Among the tasks, outlier removal and missing value imputation are the most challenging due to a highly laborious process, a lack of data governance, and a mixture of heterogenous data quality issues and data types. To address this challenge, this paper proposes an upstream workflow for enhancing the downstream predictive analytics of bridge-related ML pipelines. The proposed upstream workflow was developed based on the NBI data collected for all States in the United States, which includes a total of 617,084 observations/bridges. Existing bridge domain knowledge from multiple sources (such as the bridge design manual and regulations) was leveraged to remove outliers. Then, this study applied and compared 10 statistical and ML-based data imputation techniques to impute missing values. Statistical analysis and imputation evaluation of NBI data indicated that: (1) 19 and 15 out of the total 38 frequently used features or variables had outliers and missing values, respectively; (2) categorical features are generally more prone to data dropping due to inapplicable values, while numeric features are more subjected to outliers; and (3) ML-based data imputation is more suitable than statistical imputation for both numeric and categorical features, especially for features with high missing rate. The proposed workflow was validated on its capability of improving downstream predictive analytics for bridge deck condition prediction, increasing the balanced accuracy by 6.85%–9.76%. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge by offering a novel upstream workflow that can be utilized as a benchmark for guiding researchers and bridge engineering practitioners to handle NBI data quality issues for better preforming predictive analytics using ML pipelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The use of both clinical factors and social determinants of health (SDoH) in referral decision-making for case management may improve optimal use of resources and reduce outcome disparities among patients with diabetes., Objective: This study proposes the development of a data-driven decision-support system incorporating interactions between clinical factors and SDoH into an algorithm for prioritizing who receives case management services. The paper presents a design for prediction validation and preimplementation assessment that uses a mixed methods approach to guide the implementation of the system., Methods: Our study setting is a large, tertiary care academic medical center in the Deep South of the United States, where SDoH contribute to disparities in diabetes-specific hospitalizations and emergency department (ED) visits. This project will develop an interpretable artificial intelligence model for a population with diabetes using SDoH and clinical data to identify which posthospitalization cases have a higher likelihood of subsequent ED use. The electronic health record data collected for the study include demographics, SDoH, comorbidities, hospitalization-related factors, laboratory test results, and medication use to predict posthospitalization ED visits. Subsequently, a mixed methods approach will be used to validate prediction outcomes and develop an implementation strategy from insights into patient outcomes from case managers, clinicians, and quality and patient safety experts., Results: As of December 2023, we had abstracted data on 174,871 inpatient encounters between January 2018 and September 2023, involving 89,355 unique inpatients meeting inclusion criteria. Both clinical and SDoH data items were included for these patient encounters. In total, 85% of the inpatient visits (N=148,640) will be used for training (learning from the data) and the remaining 26,231 inpatient visits will be used for mixed-methods validation (testing)., Conclusions: By integrating a critical suite of SDoH with clinical data related to diabetes, the proposed data-driven risk stratification model can enable individualized risk estimation and inform health professionals (eg, case managers) about the risk of patients' upcoming ED use. The prediction outcome could potentially automate case management referrals, helping to better prioritize services. By taking a mixed methods approach, we aim to align the model with the hospital's specific quality and patient safety considerations for the quality of patient care and the optimization of case management resource allocation., International Registered Report Identifier (irrid): DERR1-10.2196/56049., (©Seung-Yup Lee, Leslie W Hayes, Bunyamin Ozaydin, Steven Howard, Alison M Garretson, Heather M Bradley, Andrew M Land, Erin W DeLaney, Amy O Pritchett, Amanda L Furr, Ashleigh Allgood, Matthew C Wyatt, Allyson G Hall, Jane C Banaszak-Holl. Originally published in JMIR Research Protocols (https://www.researchprotocols.org), 25.09.2024.)

The objective 1 of this study was to investigate trends in breast cancer (BC) prediction using machine learning (ML) publications by analysing country, first author, journal, institutional collaborations and co-occurrence of author keywords. The objective 2 was to provide a review of studies on BC prediction using ML and a blood analysis dataset (Breast Cancer Coimbra Dataset [BCCD]), and the objective 3 was to provide a brief review of studies based on BC prediction using ML and patients' fine needle aspirate cytology data (Wisconsin Breast Cancer Dataset [WBCD]). The design of this study was as follows: for objective 1: bibliometric analysis, data source PubMed (2015-2019); for objective 2: systematic review, data source: Google and Google Scholar (2018- 2019); for objective 3: systematic review, data source: Google Scholar (2016-2019). The inclusion criteria for objective 1 were all publication results yielded from the searches. All English papers that had a 'PDF' option from the search results were included for objective 2. A sample of the 'PDF' English papers were included for objective 3. All 116 female patients from the BCCD, consisting of 64 positive BC patients and 52 controls were included in the study for objective 2. For the WBCD, all 699 female patients comprising of 458 with a benign BC tumour and 241 with a malignant BC tumour were included for objective 3. All 2928 publications were included for objective 1. The results showed that the United States of America (USA) produced the highest number of publications (n=803). In total, 2419 first authors contributed towards the publications. Breast Cancer Research and Treatment was the highest ranked journal. Institutional collaborations mainly occurred within the USA. The use of ML for BC screening and detection was the most researched topic. A total of 19 distinct papers were included for objectives 2 and 3. The findings from these studies were never presented to clinicians for validations. In conclusion, the use of ML for BC screening and detection is promising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing precipitation-type algorithms have difficulty discerning the occurrence of freezing rain and ice pellets. These inherent biases are not only problematic in operational forecasting but also complicate the development of model-based precipitation-type climatologies. To address these issues, this paper introduces a novel light gradient-boosting machine (LightGBM)-based machine learning precipitation-type algorithm that utilizes reanalysis and surface observations. By comparing it with the Bourgouin precipitation-type algorithm as a baseline, we demonstrate that our algorithm improves the critical success index (CSI) for all examined precipitation types. Moreover, when compared with the precipitation-type diagnosis in reanalysis, our algorithm exhibits increased F1 scores for snow, freezing rain, and ice pellets. Subsequently, we utilize the algorithm to compute a freezing-rain climatology over the eastern United States. The resulting climatology pattern aligns well with observations; however, a significant mean bias is observed. We interpret this bias to be influenced by both the algorithm itself and assumptions regarding precipitation processes, which include biases associated with freezing drizzle, precipitation occurrence, and regional synoptic weather patterns. To mitigate the overall bias, we propose increasing the precipitation cutoff from 0.04 to 0.25 mm h−1, as it better reflects the precision of precipitation observations. This adjustment yields a substantial reduction in the overall bias. Finally, given the strong performance of LightGBM in predicting mixed precipitation episodes, we anticipate that the algorithm can be effectively utilized in operational settings and for diagnosing precipitation types in climate model outputs. Significance Statement: Freezing rain can have significant impacts on transportation and infrastructure, making accurate prediction of precipitation types crucial. In this study, we use a machine learning method known as LightGBM to predict precipitation types. We show that the new algorithm performs better than the existing methods for all precipitation types examined. Additionally, we compute a freezing-rain climatology over the eastern United States. Although the resulting climatology pattern corresponds well to observations, the algorithm overpredicts freezing-rain occurrence. We argue that this bias can be substantially reduced by increasing the precipitation cutoff from 0.04 to 0.25 mm h−1. Overall, this work highlights the potential of the LightGBM algorithm for both weather forecasting and diagnosing precipitation types in climate models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predicting epidemic evolution is essential for making informed decisions and guiding the implementation of necessary countermeasures. Computational models are vital tools that provide insights into illness progression and enable early detection, proactive intervention, and targeted preventive measures. This paper introduces Sybil, a framework that integrates machine learning and variant-aware compartmental models, leveraging a fusion of data-centric and analytic methodologies. To validate and evaluate Sybil's forecasts, we employed COVID-19 data from several European and U.S. states. The dataset included the number of new and recovered cases, fatalities, and variant presence over time. We evaluate the forecasting precision of Sybil in periods in which there is a change in the trend of the pandemic evolution or a new variant appears. Results demonstrate that Sybil outperforms conventional data-centric approaches, being able to forecast accurately the changes in the trend, the magnitude of these changes, and the future prevalence of new variants., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Objectives: Buprenorphine is an effective evidence-based medication for opioid use disorder (OUD). Yet premature discontinuation undermines treatment effectiveness, increasing the risk of mortality and overdose. We developed and evaluated a machine learning (ML) framework for predicting buprenorphine care discontinuity within 12 months following treatment initiation., Methods: This retrospective study used United States (US) 2018-2021 MarketScan commercial claims data of insured individuals aged 18-64 who initiated buprenorphine between July 2018 and December 2020 with no buprenorphine prescriptions in the previous six months. We measured buprenorphine prescription discontinuation gaps of ≥30 days within 12 months of initiating treatment. We developed predictive models employing logistic regression, decision tree classifier, random forest, extreme gradient boosting, Adaboost, and random forest-extreme gradient boosting ensemble. We applied recursive feature elimination with cross-validation to reduce dimensionality and identify the most predictive features while maintaining model robustness. For model validation, we used several statistics to evaluate performance, such as C-statistics and precision-recall curves. We focused on two distinct treatment stages: at the time of treatment initiation and one and three months after treatment initiation. We employed SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) analysis that helped us explain the contributions of different features in predicting buprenorphine discontinuation. We stratified patients into risk subgroups based on their predicted likelihood of treatment discontinuation, dividing them into decile subgroups. Additionally, we used a calibration plot to analyze the reliability of the models., Results: A total of 30,373 patients initiated buprenorphine and 14.98% (4551) discontinued treatment. C-statistic varied between 0.56 and 0.76 for the first-stage models including patient-level demographic and clinical variables. Inclusion of proportion of days covered (PDC) measured after one month and three months following treatment initiation significantly increased the models' discriminative power (C-statistics: 0.60 to 0.82). Random forest (C-statistics: 0.76, 0.79 and 0.82 with baseline predictors, one-month PDC and three-months PDC, respectively) outperformed other ML models in discriminative performance in all stages (C-statistics: 0.56 to 0.77). Most influential risk factors of discontinuation included early stage medication adherence, age, and initial days of supply., Conclusion: ML algorithms demonstrated a good discriminative power in identifying patients at higher risk of buprenorphine care discontinuity. The proposed framework may help healthcare providers optimize treatment strategies and deliver targeted interventions to improve buprenorphine care continuity., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

In this paper, we attempt to study the effectiveness of various simple machine learning methods in the prediction of bank failures. From a raw dataset of 10,938 US banks during the period of 2000–2020, we find that machine learning approaches do not really outperform the benchmark of conventional statistical method, logistic regression. However, using PCA to retain relevant variance in variables significantly improve the performance of machine learning methods and raise the out-of-sample accuracy of those method to over 70% to over 80%. Of all the machine learning methods used in this paper, the simple KNN seems to be the best model in forecasting bank failure in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study integrates advanced machine learning techniques, namely Artificial Neural Networks, Long Short-Term Memory, and Gated Recurrent Unit models, to forecast monkeypox outbreaks in Canada, Spain, the USA, and Portugal. The research focuses on the effectiveness of these models in predicting the spread and severity of cases using data from June 3 to December 31, 2022, and evaluates them against test data from January 1 to February 7, 2023. The study highlights the potential of neural networks in epidemiology, especially concerning recent monkeypox outbreaks. It provides a comparative analysis of the models, emphasizing their capabilities in public health strategies. The research identifies optimal model configurations and underscores the efficiency of the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm in training. The findings suggest that ANN models, particularly those with optimized Root Mean Squared Error, Mean Absolute Percentage Error, and the Coefficient of Determination values, are effective in infectious disease forecasting and can significantly enhance public health responses., Competing Interests: The author declares that there are no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper., (Copyright: © 2024 Lulah Alnaji. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted governments worldwide to implement a range of containment measures, including mass gathering restrictions, social distancing, and school closures. Despite these efforts, vaccines continue to be the safest and most effective means of combating such viruses. Yet, vaccine hesitancy persists, posing a significant public health concern, particularly with the emergence of new COVID-19 variants. To effectively address this issue, timely data is crucial for understanding the various factors contributing to vaccine hesitancy. While previous research has largely relied on traditional surveys for this information, recent sources of data, such as social media, have gained attention. However, the potential of social media data as a reliable proxy for information on population hesitancy, especially when compared with survey data, remains underexplored. This paper aims to bridge this gap. Our approach uses social, demographic, and economic data to predict vaccine hesitancy levels in the ten most populous US metropolitan areas. We employ machine learning algorithms to compare a set of baseline models that contain only these variables with models that incorporate survey data and social media data separately. Our results show that XGBoost algorithm consistently outperforms Random Forest and Linear Regression, with marginal differences between Random Forest and XGBoost. This was especially the case with models that incorporate survey or social media data, thus highlighting the promise of the latter data as a complementary information source. Results also reveal variations in influential variables across the five hesitancy classes, such as age, ethnicity, occupation, and political inclination. Further, the application of models to different MSAs yields mixed results, emphasizing the uniqueness of communities and the need for complementary data approaches. In summary, this study underscores social media data's potential for understanding vaccine hesitancy, emphasizes the importance of tailoring interventions to specific communities, and suggests the value of combining different data sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demand for skilled labor has increased dramatically in the current knowledge-based economy, which is characterized by the growing intensity in labor market competition between firms. Therefore, it would be of special interest to identify future labor market competitors. At present, with the vast amount of textual data, the existing study focuses on constructing the human capital overlap and product overlap metrics with the text data as predictors to predict the labor market competition in the United States. Based on these metrics, this paper experiments with machine learning methods to predict Chinese labor market competition with Chinese text data. Furthermore, sentiment analysis is becoming popular and it has been used in a wide variety of fields. However, due to lack of data, there are few existing studies using sentiment analysis approach of firms' online reviews. In response to this research gap, this paper constructs the sentiment analysis metric by mining the emotional content expressed in the firms' online reviews on Maimai's platform. The results show that our proposed metrics have superior predictive power over conventional measures and highlight the predictive utility of proposed sentiment analysis metric. Moreover, the nuanced two-dimensional competition analysis gives some interesting results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic growth, air pollution, and forest fires in some states in the United States have increased the concentration of particulate matter with a diameter less than or equal to 2.5 μm (PM2.5). Although previous studies have tried to observe PM2.5 both spatially and temporally using aerosol remote sensing and geostatistical estimation, they were limited in accuracy by coarse resolution. In this paper, the performance of machine learning models on predicting PM2.5 is assessed with linear regression (LR), decision tree (DT), gradient boosting regression (GBR), AdaBoost regression (ABR), XGBoost (XGB), k‐nearest neighbors (K‐NN), long short‐term memory (LSTM), random forest (RF), and support vector machine (SVM) using PM2.5 station data from 2017 to 2021. To compare the accuracy of all the nine machine learning models, the coefficient of determination (R2), root mean square error (RMSE), Nash‐Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE), root mean square error ratio (RSR), and percent bias (PBIAS) were evaluated. Among all nine models, the RF (100 decision trees with a max depth of 20) and support vector regression (SVR; nonlinear kernel, degree 3 polynomial) models were the best for predicting PM2.5 concentrations. Additionally, comparison of the PM2.5 performance metrics displayed that the models had better predictive behavior in the western United States than that in the eastern United States. Key Points: We present the prediction of PM2.5 concentrations over the United States using various machine learning (ML) algorithmsWe show ML as a new approach for analyzing large data sets due to the computational speed and easy implementation for massive amounts of dataThe study is important for improving our understanding of the differences among ML algorithms for Earth Science research [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sentiment analysis plays a vital role in understanding public opinions and sentiments toward various topics. In recent years, the rise of social media platforms (SMPs) has provided a rich source of data for analyzing public opinions, particularly in the context of election-related conversations. Nevertheless, sentiment analysis of electionrelated tweets presents unique challenges due to the complex language used, including figurative expressions, sarcasm, and the spread of misinformation. To address these challenges, this paper proposes Election-focused Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (ElecBERT), a new model for sentiment analysis in the context of election-related tweets. Election-related tweets pose unique challenges for sentiment analysis due to their complex language, sarcasm, andmisinformation. ElecBERT is based on the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) language model and is fine-tuned on two datasets: Election-Related Sentiment-Annotated Tweets (ElecSent)-Multi-Languages, containing 5.31 million labeled tweets in multiple languages, and ElecSent-English, containing 4.75 million labeled tweets in English. Themodel outperforms other machine learning models such as Support Vector Machines (SVM), Naïve Bayes (NB), and eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), with an accuracy of 0.9905 and F1-score of 0.9816 on ElecSent-Multi-Languages, and an accuracy of 0.9930 and F1-score of 0.9899 on ElecSent-English. The performance of differentmodels was compared using the 2020 United States (US) Presidential Election as a case study. The ElecBERT-English and ElecBERT-Multi-Languages models outperformed BERTweet, with the ElecBERT-English model achieving aMean Absolute Error (MAE) of 6.13. This paper presents a valuable contribution to sentiment analysis in the context of election-related tweets, with potential applications in political analysis, social media management, and policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shale gas reservoirs are contributing a major role in overall hydrocarbon production, especially in the United States, and due to the intense development of such reservoirs, it is a must thing to learn the productive methods for modeling production and performance evaluation. Consequently, one of the most adopted techniques these days for the sake of production performance analysis is the utilization of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Hydrocarbon exploration and production is a continuous process that brings a lot of data from sub-surface as well as from the surface facilities. Availability of such a huge data set that keeps on increasing over time enhances the computational capabilities and performance accuracy through AI and ML applications using a data-driven approach. The ML approach can be utilized through supervised and unsupervised methods in addition to artificial neural networks (ANN). Other ML approaches include random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), boosting technique, clustering methods, and artificial network-based architecture, etc. In this paper, a systematic literature review is presented focused on the AI and ML applications for the shale gas production performance evaluation and their modeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. automotive industry is instrumental to the economy and contributes significantly to the American GDP, employment, and global trade. The principal objective of this research paper is to examine the implications of Generative AI and ML in advancing the automotive industry from the U.S. economic perspective. Generative AI is the latest frontier in artificial intelligence software development, where algorithmic generation can be achieved across various types of content: text, images, audio, and video. The generative AI in the Automotive market at the global level had witnessed boisterous growth and commanded a value of approximately $389.47 million by 2023. The analysis exposed that North American regions are dominating the market, which was attributed to high technological infrastructure, along with partnerships among automotive companies with research institutes and universities to foster AI innovations. Application analysis exposed that Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) had the biggest market share, indicating a strong focus on developing and implementing Generative AI technologies to enhance driver safety and vehicle autonomy. Followed by, Connected Car Technologies, representing growing efforts towards implementing generative AI solutions that will improve vehicle connectivity, infotainment, and user experience. The impact of Generative AI and Machine Learning can be witnessed in terms of virtual prototyping, generative automotive designs, consolidation with the CAD system, supply chain optimization, Sensor Fusion and Perception Enhancement as well as automotive manufacturing process optimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strategic employee performance assessment assists organizations in steering productivity, affirming employee satisfaction, and accomplishing strategic organizational goals. Machine learning algorithms provide several benefits over mainstream techniques in assessing employee performance. This research paper aimed to explore the deployment of machine learning algorithms in assessing employee performance. The prime objective of employee performance analysis is to assess an employee's achievement during a specific time frame. The dataset for this research revolved around the leadership team of a global retailer's specific store level in the USA, extending over 18 months. The dataset for this study was subjected to Python programming software for intensive and comprehensive data analysis as well as for visualization purposes. From the experiment design, it was evident that XG-Boost seems to be the best-performing model overall. In particular, it had the greatest AUC for both holdout and training data (0.86 and 0.88, respectively), and it has a relatively low runtime (16 minutes) and maximum memory utilization (12%). By contrast, Random Forest displayed an average AUC for training data (0.79) but a lesser AUC for holdout data (0.51), which indicates that it may be overfitting the training data; besides, it had a longer runtime than XG-Boost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research utilizes the Long-Term Pavement Performance database, focusing on devel-oping a predictive model for flexible pavement performance in the Southern United States. Analyzing 367 pavement sections, this study investigates crucial factors influencing asphaltic concrete (AC) pavement deterioration, such as structural and material components, air voids, compaction density, temperature at laydown, traffic load, precipitation, and freeze–thaw cycles. The objective of this study is to develop a predictive machine learning model for AC pavement wheel path cracking (WpCrAr) and the age at which cracking initiates (WpCrAr) as performance indicators. This study thoroughly investigated three ensemble machine learning models, including random forest, extremely randomized trees (ETR), and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost). It was observed that XGBoost, optimized using Bayesian methods, emerged as the most effective among the evaluated models, demonstrating good predictive accuracy, with an R2 of 0.79 for WpCrAr and 0.92 for AgeCrack and mean absolute errors of 1.07 and 0.74, respectively. The most important features influencing crack initiation and progression were identified, including equivalent single axle load (ESAL), pavement age, number of layers, precipitation, and freeze–thaw cycles. This paper also showed the impact of pavement material combinations for base and subgrade layers on the delay of crack initiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modeling environmental sound levels over continental scales is difficult due to the variety of geospatial environments. Moreover, current continental-scale models depend upon machine learning and therefore face additional challenges due to limited acoustic training data. In previous work, an ensemble of machine learning models was used to predict environmental sound levels in the contiguous United States using a training set composed of 51 geospatial layers (downselected from 120) and acoustic data from 496 geographic sites from Pedersen, Transtrum, Gee, Lympany, James, and Salton [JASA Express Lett. 1(12), 122401 (2021)]. In this paper, the downselection process, which is based on factors such as data quality and inter-feature correlations, is described in further detail. To investigate additional dimensionality reduction, four different feature selection methods are applied to the 51 layers. Leave-one-out median absolute deviation cross-validation errors suggest that the number of geospatial features can be reduced to 15 without significant degradation of the model's predictive error. However, ensemble predictions demonstrate that feature selection results are sensitive to variations in details of the problem formulation and, therefore, should elicit some skepticism. These results suggest that more sophisticated dimensionality reduction techniques are necessary for problems with limited training data and different training and testing distributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Teachers often rely on the use of open‐ended questions to assess students' conceptual understanding of assigned content. Particularly in the context of mathematics; teachers use these types of questions to gain insight into the processes and strategies adopted by students in solving mathematical problems beyond what is possible through more close‐ended problem types. While these types of problems are valuable to teachers, the variation in student responses to these questions makes it difficult, and time‐consuming, to evaluate and provide directed feedback. It is a well‐studied concept that feedback, both in terms of a numeric score but more importantly in the form of teacher‐authored comments, can help guide students as to how to improve, leading to increased learning. It is for this reason that teachers need better support not only for assessing students' work but also in providing meaningful and directed feedback to students. Objectives: In this paper, we seek to develop, evaluate, and examine machine learning models that support automated open response assessment and feedback. Methods: We build upon the prior research in the automatic assessment of student responses to open‐ended problems and introduce a novel approach that leverages student log data combined with machine learning and natural language processing methods. Utilizing sentence‐level semantic representations of student responses to open‐ended questions, we propose a collaborative filtering‐based approach to both predict student scores as well as recommend appropriate feedback messages for teachers to send to their students. Results and Conclusion: We find that our method outperforms previously published benchmarks across three different metrics for the task of predicting student performance. Through an error analysis, we identify several areas where future works may be able to improve upon our approach. Lay Description: What is already known about this topic: Open‐ended questions are used by teachers in the domain of mathematics to assess their students understanding but automated support for these types of questions are limited in online learning platforms. Recent advancements in areas of machine learning and natural language processing have led to promising results in a range of domains and applications. What this paper adds: Emulating how teachers identify similar student answers can be used to build tools that support teachers in assessing and providing feedback to student open‐ended work. Implications for practice: Developing better automated supports can increase the amount of direct feedback students receive to guide their learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) represent significant advancements in computing, building on technologies that humanity has developed over millions of years-from the abacus to quantum computers. These tools have reached a pivotal moment in their development. In 2021 alone, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) received over 100 product registration submissions that heavily relied on AI/ML for applications such as monitoring and improving human performance in compiling dossiers. To ensure the safe and effective use of AI/ML in drug discovery and manufacturing, the FDA and numerous other U.S. federal agencies have issued continuously updated, stringent guidelines. Intriguingly, these guidelines are often generated or updated with the aid of AI/ML tools themselves. The overarching goal is to expedite drug discovery, enhance the safety profiles of existing drugs, introduce novel treatment modalities, and improve manufacturing compliance and robustness. Recent FDA publications offer an encouraging outlook on the potential of these tools, emphasizing the need for their careful deployment. This has expanded market opportunities for retraining personnel handling these technologies and enabled innovative applications in emerging therapies such as gene editing, CRISPR-Cas9, CAR-T cells, mRNA-based treatments, and personalized medicine. In summary, the maturation of AI/ML technologies is a testament to human ingenuity. Far from being autonomous entities, these are tools created by and for humans designed to solve complex problems now and in the future. This paper aims to present the status of these technologies, along with examples of their present and future applications., Competing Interests: The author reports no conflicts of interest in this work., (© 2023 Niazi.)

This paper aims at determining the various economic and non-economic factors that can influence the voting behaviour in the forthcoming United States Presidential Election using Lasso regression, a Machine learning algorithm. Even though contemporary discussions on the subject of the United States Presidential Election suggest that the level of unemployment in the economy will be a significant factor in determining the result of the election, in our study, it has been found that the rate of unemployment will not be the only significant factor in forecasting the election. However, various other economic factors such as the inflation rate, rate of economic growth, and exchange rates will not have a significant influence on the election result. The June Gallup Rating, is not the only significant factor for determining the result of the forthcoming presidential election. In addition to the June Gallup Rating, various other non-economic factors such as the performance of the contesting political parties in the midterm elections, Campaign spending by the contesting parties and scandals of the Incumbent President will also play a significant role in determining the result of the forthcoming United States Presidential Election. The paper explores the influence of all the aforementioned economic and noneconomic factors on the voting behaviour of the voters in the forthcoming United States Presidential Election. The proposed Lasso Regression model forecasts that the vote share for the incumbent Republican Party to be 41.63% in the 2020 US presidential election. This means that the incumbent party is most likely to lose the upcoming election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the market for medium- and heavy-duty battery-electric vehicles (MHD EVs) is still nascent, a growing number of these vehicles are being deployed across the U.S. This study used over 2.3 million miles of operational data from multiple types of MHD EVs across various regions and operating conditions to address knowledge gaps in total cost of ownership and operational range. First, real-world energy cost savings were determined: MHD fleets should experience energy cost savings each year from 2021 to 2035, regardless of vehicle platform, with the greatest savings seen in transit buses (up to USD 4459 annually) and HD trucks (up to USD 3284 annually). Second, to help fleets across various geographies throughout the U.S. assess the suitability of EVs for their year-round operating needs, operational range was modeled using the XGBoost algorithm (R2: 70%) given 22 input features relevant to vehicle efficiency. Finally, this paper recommends (1) that MHD fleets apply energy-saving practices to minimize the impacts of cold temperatures and high congestion levels on vehicle efficiency and range, and (2) that local hauling fleets select trucks with a nominal range nearly double the expected maximum daily range to account for range losses under local, urban driving conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Many electricity consumers around the world are billed electric peak load charges. In the United States, these demand charges can contribute up to 70% of a consumer's electricity bill. Research has shown that the financial impact of these charges to the consumers can be reduced by acting on the intelligence provided by peak electric load day (PELD) forecasts. Unfortunately, published research detailing PELDs forecasting methodologies for facilities adopting behind the meter renewable electricity generation (BTMREG) is non‐existent. This paper contributes: (a) a PELD forecasting methodology applicable to consumers with BTMREG. A case study demonstrates the methodology's ability to achieve 93% of the potential savings in kW, translating to demand charge reductions of approximately US$ 142 129 per year. (b) The first side‐by‐side performance comparisons of electric load and PELD forecasting models for scenarios with and without BTMREG. (c) The first PELD forecasting model savings comparison for scenarios with and without BTMREG. Experimental results suggest that counterintuitively, BTMREG adoption can translate into higher peak load savings for electricity consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every year, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clears approximately 3,000 medical devices for marketing via the 510(k) pathway. These constitute 99% of all devices approved for human use and includes the premarket review of many devices incorporating newer technology such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and other software. As the complexity of these novel technologies and the number of applications is expected to increase in the coming years, statutory changes such as the 2016 21 st Century Cures Act, regulations, and guidance documents have increased both the volume and complexity of device review. Thus, the ability to streamline the review of less complex, low-to-moderate risk devices through the 510(k) pathway will maximize the FDA's capability to address other important, future-oriented regulatory questions. For over twenty five years, third party review organizations have served a defined function to assist with the review of 510(k) applications for a set of enumerated device classes. This paper reviews the history of FDA device regulation, the evolution of the 510(k) review pathway, and the recent history of the 510(k) third party review program. Finally, the paper addresses policy concerns from all stakeholders - including the FDA - along with policy suggestions to improve the third party review program and FDA device regulation writ large., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Toxic gases can be fatal as they damage many living tissues, especially the nervous and respiratory systems. They can cause permanent damage for many years by harming environmental tissue and living organisms. They can also cause mass deaths when used as chemical weapons. These chemical agents consist of organophosphates, namely ester, amide, or thiol derivatives of phosphorus, phosphonic or phosphinic acids, or can be synthesized independently. In this study, machine learning models were used to predict the toxicity of chemical gases. Toxic and non-toxic gases, consisting of 144 gases, were identified according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Six machine-learning models were used to predict the toxicity of these chemical gases. The performance of the models was verified through internal and external validation. The results showed that the model's internal validation accuracy was 86.96% with the Relief-J48 algorithm. The accuracy value of the model was 89.65% with the Bayes Net algorithm for external validation. Our results reveal that identifying the toxicity of existing and potential chemicals is essential for the early detection of these chemicals in nature., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the concept of distrust of traditional banking institutions as a factor that can explain the choice to remain unbanked in a marketplace that is designed to be financially inclusive. Design/methodology/approach: Earning, spending, saving and borrowing data collected between May 2021 and February 2022 from 17,819 consumers living in the United States were used to examine the factors associated with distrust of banks. Using a conceptual framework borrowed from the health services profession, the study was conducted in two stages. At the first stage, distrust among the unbanked and banked was estimated using a Boruta-random forest algorithm. At the second stage of the analysis, a logit regression model was estimated to validate the variables identified in the Boruta-random forest analysis. Findings: Results from the analyses show that distrust of banks is multi-layered where being older, believing the country is heading in the wrong direction and being less confident in one's ability to obtain a personal loan in the amount of $1 to $999 are important factors related to distrust of banks among the unbanked. Research limitations/implications: This study shows how an ensemble machine learning technique based on a decision-tree methodology can be used to obtain unique insights into complicated data and large datasets within the bank marketing field. Originality/value: The paper provides a discussion about ways domains of trust and specific variables can be utilized to address the persistent problem of financial exclusion in the United States. Implications for bankers, researchers, educators and policymakers are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Lyme disease is one of the most commonly reported infectious diseases in the United States (US), accounting for more than 90 % of all vector-borne diseases in North America. Objective: In this paper, self-reported tweets on Twitter were analyzed in order to predict potential Lyme disease cases and accurately assess incidence rates in the US. Methods: The study was done in three stages: (1) Approximately 1.3 million tweets were collected and pre-processed to extract the most relevant Lyme disease tweets with geolocations. A subset of tweets were semi-automatically labelled as relevant or irrelevant to Lyme disease using a set of precise keywords, and the remaining portion were manually labelled, yielding a curated labelled dataset of 77, 500 tweets. (2) This labelled data set was used to train, validate, and test various combinations of NLP word embedding methods and prominent ML classification models, such as TF-IDF and logistic regression, Word2vec and XGboost, and BERTweet, among others, to identify potential Lyme disease tweets. (3) Lastly, the presence of spatio-temporal patterns in the US over a 10-year period were studied. Results: Preliminary results showed that BERTweet outperformed all tested NLP classifiers for identifying Lyme disease tweets, achieving the highest classification accuracy and F1-score of 90 % . There was also a consistent pattern indicating that the West and Northeast regions of the US had a higher tweet rate over time. Conclusions: We focused on the less-studied problem of using Twitter data as a surveillance tool for Lyme disease in the US. Several crucial findings have emerged from the study. First, there is a fairly strong correlation between classified tweet counts and Lyme disease counts, with both following similar trends. Second, in 2015 and early 2016, the social media network like Twitter was essential in raising popular awareness of Lyme disease. Third, counties with a high incidence rate were not necessarily related with a high tweet rate, and vice versa. Fourth, BERTweet can be used as a reliable NLP classifier for detecting relevant Lyme disease tweets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cancer, the second largest human disease, has become a major public health problem. The prediction of chemicals' carcinogenicity before their synthesis is crucial. In this paper, seven machine learning algorithms (i.e., Random Forest (RF), Logistic Regression (LR), Support Vector Machines (SVM), Complement Naive Bayes (CNB), K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), XGBoost, and Multilayer Perceptron (MLP)) were used to construct the carcinogenicity triple classification prediction (TCP) model (i.e., 1A, 1B, Category 2). A total of 1444 descriptors of 118 hazardous organic chemicals were calculated by Discovery Studio 2020, Sybyl X-2.0 and PaDEL-Descriptor software. The constructed carcinogenicity TCP model was evaluated through five model evaluation indicators (i.e., Accuracy, Precision, Recall, F1 Score and AUC). The model evaluation results show that Accuracy, Precision, Recall, F1 Score and AUC evaluation indicators meet requirements (greater than 0.6). The accuracy of RF, LR, XGBoost, and MLP models for predicting carcinogenicity of Category 2 is 91.67%, 79.17%, 100%, and 100%, respectively. In addition, the constructed machine learning model in this study has potential for error correction. Taking XGBoost model as an example, the predicted carcinogenicity level of 1,2,3-Trichloropropane (96-18-4) is Category 2, but the actual carcinogenicity level is 1B. But the difference between Category 2 and 1B is only 0.004, indicating that the XGBoost is one optimum model of the seven constructed machine learning models. Besides, results showed that functional groups like chlorine and benzene ring might influence the prediction of carcinogenic classification. Therefore, considering functional group characteristics of chemicals before constructing the carcinogenicity prediction model of organic chemicals is recommended. The predicted carcinogenicity of the organic chemicals using the optimum machine leaning model (i.e., XGBoost) was also evaluated and verified by the toxicokinetics. The RF and XGBoost TCP models constructed in this paper can be used for carcinogenicity detection before synthesizing new organic substances. It also provides technical support for the subsequent management of organic chemicals., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

While the concept of rurality has been debated in academic and professional literature for decades, less research has been done on a practical typology that can guide localized economic development strategies. This paper adds to the growing body of literature in search of a more nuanced definition of rural by applying unsupervised machine learning (ML) to the abundance of existing county-level data in the United States. The authors illustrate how this method can lead to a new county typology, named after economic development strategies, that accounts for idiosyncrasies in resources, opportunities, and challenges. This research serves as a practical step toward tractable, heterogeneous classifications that can inform the work of federal, state, and local policy makers, economic development practitioners, and many others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 3D body scan technology has recently innovated the way of measuring human bodies and generated a large volume of body measurements. However, one inherent issue that plagues the use of the resultant database is the missing data usually caused by using automatic data extractions from the 3D body scans. Tedious extra efforts have to be made to manually fill the missing data for various applications. To tackle this problem, this paper proposes a machine learning (ML)-based approach for 3D body measurement estimation while considering the measurement (feature) importance. The proposed approach selects the most critical features to reduce the algorithm input and to improve the ML method performance. In addition, a Bayesian search is further used in fine-tuning the hyperparameters to minimize the mean square error. Two distinct ML methods, i.e., Random Forest and XGBoost, are used and tested on a real-world dataset that contains 3D body scans of 212 participants in the Kansas-Missouri area of the United States. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed methods with roughly 3% of Mean Absolute Percentage Errors in estimating the missing data. The two ML methods with the proposed hybrid feature selection and the Baysian search are comprehensively compared. The comparative results suggest that the Random Forest method performs better than the XGBoost counterpart in filling missing 3D body measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Timely, accurate, and precise demographic estimates at various levels of geography are crucial for planning, policymaking, and analysis. In the United States, data from the decennial census and annual American Community Survey (ACS) serve as the main sources for subnational demographic estimates. While estimates derived from these sources are widely regarded as accurate, their timeliness is limited and variability sizable for small geographic units like towns and neighborhoods. OBJECTIVE This paper investigates the potential for using nonrepresentative consumer trace data assembled by commercial vendors to produce valid and timely estimates. We focus on data purchased from Data Axle, which contains the names and addresses of over 150 million Americans annually. METHODS We identify the predictors of over- and undercounts of households as measured with consumer trace data and compare a range of calibration approaches to assess the extent to which systematic errors in the data can be adjusted for over time. We also demonstrate the utility of the data for predicting contemporaneous (nowcasting) tract-level household counts in the 2020 Decennial Census. RESULTS We find that adjusted counts at the county, ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTA), and tract levels deviate from ACS survey-based estimates by an amount roughly equivalent to the ACS margins of error. Machine-learning methods perform best for calibration of countyand tract-level data. The estimates are stable over time and across regions of the country. We also find that when doing nowcasts, incorporating Data Axle estimates improved prediction bias relative to using the most recent ACS five-year estimates alone. CONTRIBUTION Despite its affordability and timeliness compared to survey-based measures, consumer trace data remains underexplored by demographers. This paper examines one consumer trace data source and demonstrates that challenges with representativeness can be overcome to produce household estimates that align with survey-based estimates and improve demographic forecasts. At the same time, the analysis also underscores the need for researchers to examine the limits of the data carefully before using them for specific applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the author argues that the conflict between the copious amount of digital data processed by public organisations and the need for policy-relevant insights to aid public participation constitutes a 'public information paradox'. Machine learning (ML) approaches may offer one solution to this paradox through algorithms that transparently collect and use statistical modelling to provide insights for policymakers. Such an approach is tested in this paper. The test involves applying an unsupervised machine learning approach with latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) analysis of thousands of public comments submitted to the United States Transport Security Administration (TSA) on a 2013 proposed regulation for the use of new full body imaging scanners in airport security terminals. The analysis results in salient topic clusters that could be used by policymakers to understand large amounts of text such as in an open public comments process. The results are compared with the actual final proposed TSA rule, and the author reflects on new questions raised for transparency by the implementation of ML in open rule-making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water resource managers require accurate estimates of the 7-day, 10-year low flow (7Q10) of streams for many reasons, including protecting aquatic species, designing wastewater treatment plants, and calculating municipal water availability. StreamStats, a publicly available web application developed by the United States Geologic Survey that is commonly used by resource managers for estimating the 7Q10 in states where it is available, utilizes state-by-state, locally calibrated regression equations for estimation. This paper expands StreamStats' methodology and improves 7Q10 estimation by developing a more regionally applicable and generalized methodology for 7Q10 estimation. In addition to classical methodologies, namely multiple linear regression (MLR) and multiple linear regression in log space (LTLR), three promising machine learning algorithms, random forest (RF) decision trees, neural networks (NN), and generalized additive models (GAM), are tested to determine if more advanced statistical methods offer improved estimation. For illustrative purposes, this methodology is applied to and verified for the full range of unimpaired, gaged basins in both the northeast and mid-Atlantic hydrologic regions of the United States (with basin sizes ranging from 2–1419 mi2) using leave-one-out cross-validation (LOOCV). Pearson's correlation coefficient (R2), root mean square error (RMSE), Kling–Gupta Efficiency (KGE), and Nash–Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) are used to evaluate the performance of each method. Results suggest that each method provides varying results based on basin size, with RF displaying the smallest average RMSE (5.85) across all ranges of basin sizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Characterizing the electric energy curve can improve the energy efficiency of existing buildings without any structural change and is the basis for controlling and optimizing building performance. Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques show much potential due to their accuracy and malleability in the field of pattern recognition, and using these models it is possible to adjust the building services in real time. Thus, the objective of this paper is to determine the AI technique that best forecasts electrical loads. The suggested techniques are random forest (RF), support vector regression (SVR), extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), multilayer perceptron (MLP), long short-term memory (LSTM), and temporal convolutional network (Conv-1D). The conducted research applies a methodology that considers the bias and variance of the models, enhancing the robustness of the most suitable AI techniques for modeling and forecasting the electricity consumption in buildings. These techniques are evaluated in a single-family dwelling located in the United States. The performance comparison is obtained by analyzing their bias and variance by using a 10-fold cross-validation technique. By means of the evaluation of the models in different sets, i.e., validation and test sets, their capacity to reproduce the results and the ability to properly forecast on future occasions is also evaluated. The results show that the model with less dispersion, both in the validation set and test set, is LSTM. It presents errors of −0.02% of nMBE and 2.76% of nRMSE in the validation set and −0.54% of nMBE and 4.74% of nRMSE in the test set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the creation of the Longitudinal, Intergenerational Family Electronic Micro-Database (LIFE-M), a new data resource linking vital records and decennial censuses for millions of individuals and families living in the late 19th and 20th centuries in the United States. This combination of records provides a life-course and intergenerational perspective on the evolution of health and economic outcomes. Vital records also enable the linkage of women, because they contain a crosswalk between women's birth (i.e., "maiden") and married names. We describe (1) the data sources, coverage, and linking sequence; (2) the process and supervised machine-learning methods used to link records longitudinally and across generations; and (3) the resulting linked samples, including linking rates, representativeness, and weights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a new algorithm for exploiting time-series predictability-based patterns to obtain an abnormal return, or alpha, with respect to a given benchmark asset pricing model. The algorithm proposes a deterministic daily market timing strategy that decides between being fully invested in a risky asset or in a risk-free asset, with the trading rule represented by a parametric perceptron. The optimal parameters are sought in-sample via differential evolution to directly maximize the alpha. Successively using two modern asset pricing models and two different portfolio weighting schemes, the algorithm was able to discover an undocumented anomaly in the United States stock market cross-section, both out-of-sample and using small transaction costs. The new algorithm represents a simple and flexible alternative to technical analysis and forecast-based trading rules, neither of which necessarily maximizes the alpha. This new algorithm was inspired by recent insights into representing reinforcement learning as evolutionary computation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a probabilistic method of record linkage, developed using the U.S. full count censuses of 1900 and 1910 but applicable to many sources of digitized historical records. The method links records using a two-step approach, first establishing high confidence matches among men by exploiting a comprehensive set of individual and contextual characteristics. The method then proceeds to link both men and women by leveraging links between households established in the first step. While only the first stage links can be directly comparable to other popular methods in research on the U.S., our method yields both considerably higher linkage rates and greater accuracy while only performing negligibly worse than other algorithms in resembling the target population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Major changes to the operation of local newsrooms--ownership restructuring, layoffs, and a reorientation away from print advertising--have become commonplace in the last few decades. However, there have been few systematic attempts to characterize the impact of these changes on the types of reporting that local newsrooms produce. In this paper, we propose a method to measure the investigative content of news articles based on article text and influence on subsequent articles. We use our method to examine over-time and cross-sectional patterns in news production by local newspapers in the United States over the past decade. We find surprising stability in the quantity of investigative articles produced over most of the time period examined, but a notable decline in the last 2 y of the decade, corresponding to a recent wave of newsroom layoffs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A bibliometric analysis was performed using a machine learning bibliometric methodology in order to evaluate the research trends in locally advanced rectal cancer treatment between 2000 and 2020. Information regarding publication outputs, countries, institutions, journals, keywords, funding, and citation counts was retrieved from Scopus database. During the search process, a total of 2370 publications were identified. The vast majority of papers originated from the United States of America, reflecting also its research drive in the collaboration network. Neoadjuvant treatment was the topic most studied in the highly cited studies. New keywords, including neoadjuvant chemotherapy, multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging, circulating tumor DNA, and genetic heterogeneity, appeared in the last 2 years. The quantity of publications on locally advanced rectal cancer treatment since 2000 showed an evolving research field. The 'new' keywords explain where research is presently heading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]