Search

International students' mental health has become an increasing concern in recent years, as more students leave their country for better education. They experience a wide range of challenges while studying abroad that have an impact on their psychological well-being. These challenges can include language obstacles, cultural differences, homesickness, financial issues and other elements that could severely impact the mental health of international students. Given the limited research on the demographic, cultural, and psychosocial variables that influence international students' mental health, and the scarcity of studies on the use of machine learning algorithms in this area, this study aimed to analyse data to understand the demographic, cultural factors, and psychosocial factors that impact mental health of international students. Additionally, this paper aimed to build a machine learning-based model for predicting depression among international students in the United Kingdom. This study utilized both primary data gathered through an online survey questionnaire targeted at international students and secondary data was sourced from the 'A Dataset of Students' Mental Health and Help-Seeking Behaviors in a Multicultural Environment,' focusing exclusively on international student data within this dataset. We conducted data analysis on the primary data and constructed models using the secondary data for predicting depression among international students. The secondary dataset is divided into training (70%) and testing (30%) sets for analysis, employing four machine learning models: Logistic Regression, Decision Tree, Random Forest, and K Nearest Neighbor. To assess each algorithm's performance, we considered metrics such as Accuracy, Sensitivity, Specificity, Precision and AU-ROC curve. This study identifies significant demographic variables (e.g., loan status, gender, age, marital status) and psychosocial factors (financial difficulties, academic stress, homesickness, loneliness) contributing to international students' mental health. Among the machine learning models, the Random Forest model demonstrated the highest accuracy, achieving an 80% accuracy rate in predicting depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A variant of membrane computing models called Spiking Neural P systems (SNP systems) closely mimics the structure and behavior of biological neurons. As third-generation neural networks, SNP systems have flexible architectures allowing the design of bio-inspired machine learning algorithms. This paper proposes Modular Spiking Neural P (MSNP) systems to solve image classification problems, a novel SNP system to be applied in scenarios where hundreds or even thousands of different classes are considered. A main issue to face in such situations is related to the structural complexity of the network. MSNP systems devised in this work allow to approach the general classification problem by dividing it in smaller parts, that are then faced by single entities of the network. As a benchmark dataset, the Oxford Flowers 102 dataset is considered, consisting of more than 8000 pictures of flowers belonging to the 102 species commonly found in the UK. These classes sometimes present large variations within them, may be also very similar to one another, and different images of the same subject may differ a lot. The work describes the architecture of the MSNP system, based on modules focusing on a specific class, their training phase, and the evaluation of the model both concerning result accuracy as well as energy consumption. Experimental results on image classification problems show that the model achieves good results, but is strongly connected to image quality, mainly depending on the frequency of images, remarkable changes of pose, images not centered, and subject mostly not shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the penetration of renewable energy sources into a power system increases, the significance of precise short-term forecasts for wind power generation becomes paramount. However, the erratic and non-periodic nature of wind poses challenges in accurately predicting the output. This paper presents a comprehensive investigation into forecasting wind power generation for the following day, using three machine learning models: long short-term memory (LSTM), convolutional neural network-bidirectional LSTM (CNN-biLSTM), and light gradient boosting machine (LGBM). In addition, this paper proposes a method to improve the prediction performance of LGBM by separating data according to the distribution of features, and training and testing each separated dataset with a distinct model. This study includes a comparative analysis of the performance of the proposed models in predicting wind turbine output, offering valuable insights into their respective efficiencies. The results of this investigation were analyzed for two geographically distinct wind farms (Korea and the UK). The findings of this study are expected to facilitate the selection of efficient prediction models within the forecast accuracy auxiliary service market and assist grid operators in ensuring reliable power supply for the grid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: According to cancer research statistics, there are 7500 new ovarian cancer diagnoses in the UK each year. An earlier detection of ovarian cancer leads to a better prognosis; however, there is currently no screening programme for ovarian cancer, and detection using ultrasound examinations remains challenging. The use of artificial intelligence in gynaecological ultrasound examinations aims to improve the diagnostic accuracy of ultrasound for ovarian cancer and improve outcomes for patients. This review aims to collate current research on AI in the ultrasound diagnosis of ovarian cancer and suggests the usefulness of incorporating this into clinical care. Ovarian cancer is the sixth most common malignancy, with a 35% survival rate across all stages at 10 years. Ultrasound is widely used for ovarian tumour diagnosis, and accurate pre-operative diagnosis is essential for appropriate patient management. Artificial intelligence is an emerging field within gynaecology and has been shown to aid in the ultrasound diagnosis of ovarian cancers. For this study, Embase and MEDLINE databases were searched, and all original clinical studies that used artificial intelligence in ultrasound examinations for the diagnosis of ovarian malignancies were screened. Studies using histopathological findings as the standard were included. The diagnostic performance of each study was analysed, and all the diagnostic performances were pooled and assessed. The initial search identified 3726 papers, of which 63 were suitable for abstract screening. Fourteen studies that used artificial intelligence in ultrasound diagnoses of ovarian malignancies and had histopathological findings as a standard were included in the final analysis, each of which had different sample sizes and used different methods; these studies examined a combined total of 15,358 ultrasound images. The overall sensitivity was 81% (95% CI, 0.80–0.82), and specificity was 92% (95% CI, 0.92–0.93), indicating that artificial intelligence demonstrates good performance in ultrasound diagnoses of ovarian cancer. Further prospective work is required to further validate AI for its use in clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Right from the beginning, attendance has played an important role in the education systems, not only in student success but in the overall interest of the matter. Although all schools try to accentuate good attendance, still some schools find it hard to achieve the required level (96% in UK) of average attendance. The most productive way of increasing the pupils′ attendance rate is to predict when it is going to go down, understand the reasons—why it happened—and act on the affecting factors so as to prevent it. Artificial intelligence (AI) is an automated machine learning solution for different types of problems. Several machine learning (ML) models like logistic regression, decision trees, etc. are easy to understand; however, complicated (Neural Network, BART etc.) ML models are not transparent but are black-boxes for humans. It is not always evident how machine intelligence arrived at a decision. However, not always, but in critical applications it is important that humans can understand the reasons for such decisions. In this paper, we present a methodology on the application example of pupil attendance for constructing explanations for AI classification algorithms. The methodology includes building a model of the application in the Isabelle Insider and Infrastructure framework (IIIf) and an algorithm (PCR) that helps us to obtain a detailed logical rule to specify the performance of the black-box algorithm, hence allowing us to explain it. The explanation is provided within the logical model of the IIIf, thus is suitable for human audiences. It has been shown that the RR-cycle of IIIf can be adapted to provide a method for iteratively extracting an explanation by interleaving attack tree analysis with precondition refinement, which finally yields a general rule that describes the decision taken by a black-box algorithm produced by Artificial intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, 1,538 papers retrieved with the keywords "sports artificial intelligence (AI)" on the Web of Science database since 2007 were taken as the data source, and the Cite Space V software was used to visualize and analyze them. A visual knowledge graph was used to streamline the countries, institutions and authors conducting sports AI research, discipline distribution, research hotspots and development trends in the past 15 years. Subsequently, its development direction and research progress were discussed. Sports AI was widely distributed, with the US, China and the UK leading the way. The most prolific authors and teams in research on sports AI were concentrated in American universities. Their main research direction is to develop and improve smart wearable devices based on machine learning and deep learning technologies for different groups of people. Research on sports AI involved multiple disciplines, which mainly applied and referred to research methodologies and theories on engineering, computer science and sports science. It could be seen from the frequency and centrality of keywords that in the current field of sports AI, machine learning is the main direction, artificial neural networks is the main algorithm, and practical and empirical research based on data mining is the focus. The research hotspots were divided into three major clusters: physical health promotion, sports injury prevention and control, and athletic performance enhancement. How to introduce intelligent technology into sports for a perfect integration still has an arduous and long way to go. Future development requires joint efforts and participation of scientific researchers, professionals and common people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we characterize the performance of linear models trained via widely-used sparse machine learning algorithms. We build polygenic scores and examine performance as a function of training set size, genetic ancestral background, and training method. We show that predictor performance is most strongly dependent on size of training data, with smaller gains from algorithmic improvements. We find that LASSO generally performs as well as the best methods, judged by a variety of metrics. We also investigate performance characteristics of predictors trained on one genetic ancestry group when applied to another. Using LASSO, we develop a novel method for projecting AUC and correlation as a function of data size (i.e., for new biobanks) and characterize the asymptotic limit of performance. Additionally, for LASSO (compressed sensing) we show that performance metrics and predictor sparsity are in agreement with theoretical predictions from the Donoho-Tanner phase transition. Specifically, a future predictor trained in the Taiwan Precision Medicine Initiative for asthma can achieve an AUC of 0. 63 (0.02) and for height a correlation of 0. 648 (0.009) for a Taiwanese population. This is above the measured values of 0. 61 (0.01) and 0. 631 (0.008) , respectively, for UK Biobank trained predictors applied to a European population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aerial image data are becoming more widely available, and analysis techniques based on supervised learning are advancing their use in a wide variety of remote sensing contexts. However, supervised learning requires training datasets which are not always available or easy to construct with aerial imagery. In this respect, unsupervised machine learning techniques present important advantages. This work presents a novel pipeline to demonstrate how available aerial imagery can be used to better the provision of services related to the built environment, using the case study of road traffic collisions (RTCs) across three cities in the UK. In this paper, we show how aerial imagery can be leveraged to extract latent features of the built environment from the purely visual representation of top-down images. With these latent image features in hand to represent the urban structure, this work then demonstrates how hazardous road segments can be clustered to provide a data-augmented aid for road safety experts to enhance their nuanced understanding of how and where different types of RTCs occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Machine learning tools have proven useful across biological disciplines, allowing researchers to draw conclusions from large datasets, and opening up new opportunities for interpreting complex and heterogeneous biological data. Alongside the rapid growth of machine learning, there have also been growing pains: some models that appear to perform well have later been revealed to rely on features of the data that are artifactual or biased; this feeds into the general criticism that machine learning models are designed to optimize model performance over the creation of new biological insights. A natural question arises: how do we develop machine learning models that are inherently interpretable or explainable? In this manuscript, we describe the SWIF(r) reliability score (SRS), a method building on the SWIF(r) generative framework that reflects the trustworthiness of the classification of a specific instance. The concept of the reliability score has the potential to generalize to other machine learning methods. We demonstrate the utility of the SRS when faced with common challenges in machine learning including: 1) an unknown class present in testing data that was not present in training data, 2) systemic mismatch between training and testing data, and 3) instances of testing data that have missing values for some attributes. We explore these applications of the SRS using a range of biological datasets, from agricultural data on seed morphology, to 22 quantitative traits in the UK Biobank, and population genetic simulations and 1000 Genomes Project data. With each of these examples, we demonstrate how the SRS can allow researchers to interrogate their data and training approach thoroughly, and to pair their domain-specific knowledge with powerful machine-learning frameworks. We also compare the SRS to related tools for outlier and novelty detection, and find that it has comparable performance, with the advantage of being able to operate when some data are missing. The SRS, and the broader discussion of interpretable scientific machine learning, will aid researchers in the biological machine learning space as they seek to harness the power of machine learning without sacrificing rigor and biological insight. Author summary: Machine learning methods are incredibly powerful at performing tasks such as classification and clustering, but they also pose unique problems that can limit new insights. Complex machine learning models may reach conclusions that are difficult or impossible for researchers to understand after-the-fact, sometimes producing biased or meaningless results. It is therefore essential that researchers have tools that allow them to understand how machine learning tools reach their conclusions, so that they can effectively design models. This paper builds on the machine learning method SWIF(r), originally designed to detect regions in the genome targeted by natural selection. Our new method, the SWIF(r) Reliability Score (SRS), can help researchers evaluate how trustworthy the prediction of a SWIF(r) model is when classifying a specific instance of data. We also show how SWIF(r) and the SRS can be used for biological problems outside the original scope of SWIF(r). We show that the SRS is helpful in situations where the data used to train the machine learning model fails to represent the testing data in some way. The SRS can be used across many different disciplines, and has unique properties for scientific machine learning research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research is devoted to the determination of hidden dependencies between the flow of particles that come from the Sun and precipitation-induced floods in the United Kingdom (UK). The analysis covers 20 flood events during the period from October 2001 to December 2019. The parameters of solar activity were used as model input data, while precipitations data in the period 10 days before and during each flood event were used as model output. The time lag of 0–9 days was taken into account in the research. Correlation analysis was conducted to determine the degree of randomness for the time series of input and output parameters. For establishing a potential causative link, machine learning classification predictive modeling was applied. Two approaches, the decision tree, and the random forest were used. We analyzed the accuracy of classification models forecast from 0 to 9 days in advance. It was found that the most important factors for flood forecasting are proton density with a time lag of 9, differential proton flux in the range of 310–580 keV, and ion temperature. Research in this paper has shown that the decision tree model is more accurate and adequate in predicting the appearance of precipitation-induced floods up to 9 days ahead with an accuracy of 91%. The results of this study confirmed that by increasing technical capabilities, using improved machine learning techniques and large data sets, it is possible to improve the understanding of the physical link between the solar wind and tropospheric weather and help improve severe weather forecasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the introduction of a new model of digital teaching and resource provision for the University of Law (ULaw) Library Service, during the Covid-19 pandemic. It details the processes and steps we took to achieve the three core aims of: a new mode of online skills delivery, the creation of self-directed, independent learners in the various student cohorts at the university and the creation of a flexible self-assessment platform to provide an incremental learning journey for both students and staff. This paper also highlights some of the challenges and difficulties we faced, arising from a project of this size and nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accident severity prediction is a hot topic of research aimed at ensuring road safety as well as taking precautionary measures for anticipated future road crashes. In the past decades, both classical statistical methods and machine learning algorithms have been used to predict traffic crash severity. However, most of these models suffer from several drawbacks including low accuracy, and lack of interpretability for people. To address these issues, this paper proposed a hybrid of Balanced Bagging Classification (BBC) and Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LGBM) to improve the accuracy of crash severity prediction and eliminate the issues of bias and variance. To the best of the author's knowledge, this is one of the pioneer studies which explores the application of BBC-LGBM to predict traffic crash severity. On the accident dataset of Great Britain (UK) from 2013 to 2019, the proposed model has demonstrated better performance when compared with other models such as Gaussian Naïve Bayes (GNB), Support vector machines (SVM), and Random Forest (RF). More specifically, the proposed model managed to achieve better performance among all metrics for the testing dataset (accuracy = 77.7%, precision = 75%, recall = 73%, F1-Score = 68%). Moreover, permutation importance is used to interpret the results and analyze the importance of each factor influencing crash severity. The accuracy-enhanced model is significant to several stakeholders including drivers for early alarm and government departments, insurance companies, and even hospitals for the services concerned about human lives and property damage in road crashes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to introduce an artificial intelligence approach to enhance short-term daily streamflow forecasts through the integration of machine learning (ML) techniques with meta -heuristic (MH) algorithms. To maximize performance, a comprehensive analysis involving the autocorrelation and partial autocorrelation functions of the observed streamflow was conducted to derive ten distinct input combinations, from which the most suitable set was selected for investigation. Subsequently, six distinct ML methods, namely, decision trees, support vector regression, long short-term memory, gated recurrent unit, multi-layer perceptron, and radial basis function (as the optimal input combination), were leveraged to predict one-day-ahead streamflow. The most promising outcomes from these six explored methods were synergistically amalgamated to enhance predictive precision. This amalgamation was then optimized by utilizing parameter values hyper-tuned by four different MH algorithms. The algorithms included the shuffled frog leaping algorithm, particle swarm optimization, ant colony optimization (ACO), and gray wolf optimization (GWO). In culmination, a case study centered around the "Wick" river in the UK was conducted to rigorously evaluate the performance of the proposed method, utilizing a range of statistical evaluation indices. The results underscored the efficacy of the proposed combined method in substantially refining streamflow predictions, exhibiting an impressive level of accuracy. Additionally, the outcomes emphasized that ACO and GWO stand out as the optimal algorithms for calibrating the parameters of the amalgamated model. For instance, the R2 values attained by the combined models optimized through the ACO and GWO algorithms were 0.69422 and 0.69444, respectively. These values notably surpass those observed in the initial models, substantiating the superiority of the applied optimization approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that includes symptoms such as inattentiveness, hyperactivity and impulsiveness. It is considered as an important public health issue, and prevalence of diagnosis has increased as awareness of the disease grew over the past years. Supply of specialist medical experts has not kept pace with the increasing demand for assessment, both due to financial pressures on health systems and the difficulty to train new experts, resulting in growing waiting lists. Patients are not being treated quickly enough causing problems in other areas of health systems (e.g. increased GP visits, increased risk of self-harm and accidents) and more broadly (e.g. time off work, relationship problems). Advances in machine learning make it possible to attempt to diagnose ADHD based on the analysis of relevant data, and this could inform clinical practice. This paper reports on findings related to the mental health services of a specialist Trust within the UK's National Health Service (NHS). The analysis studied data of adult patients who underwent diagnosis over the past few years, and developed a diagnostic model for ADHD in adults. The results demonstrate that it is indeed possible to correctly diagnose ADHD patients with promising statistical accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Causal machine learning (ML) algorithms recover graphical structures that tell us something about cause-and-effect relationships. The causal representation provided by these algorithms enables transparency and explainability, which is necessary for decision making in critical real-world problems. Yet, causal ML has had limited impact in practice compared to associational ML. This paper investigates the challenges of causal ML with application to COVID-19 UK pandemic data. We collate data from various public sources and investigate what the various structure learning algorithms learn from these data. We explore the impact of different data formats on algorithms spanning different classes of learning, and assess the results produced by each algorithm, and groups of algorithms, in terms of graphical structure, model dimensionality, sensitivity analysis, confounding variables, predictive and interventional inference. We use these results to highlight open problems in causal structure learning and directions for future research. To facilitate future work, we make all graphs, models, data sets, and source code publicly available online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We studied 72,363 cyclist crashes that occurred in Great Britain in the period 2016–2018. • We investigated factors contributing to higher proportion of severe and fatal crashes. • We used both a machine learning method as well as an econometric model. • We found unobserved heterogeneity in the data. • The models resulted complementary in identifying factors associated with higher crash severity. Cycling provides numerous benefits to individuals and to society but the burden of road traffic injuries and fatalities is disproportionately sustained by cyclists. Without awareness of the contributory factors of cyclist death and injury, the capability to implement context-specific and appropriate measures is severely limited. In this paper, we investigated the effects of the characteristics related to the road, the environment, the vehicle involved, the driver, and the cyclist on severity of crashes involving cyclists analysing 72,363 crashes that occurred in Great Britain in the period 2016–2018. Both a machine learning method, as the Random Forest (RF), and an econometric model, as the Random Parameters Logit Model (RPLM), were implemented. Three different RF algorithms were performed, namely the traditional RF, the Weighted Subspace RF, and the Random Survival Forest. The latter demonstrated superior predictive performances both in terms of F-measure and G-mean. The main result of the Random Survival Forest is the variable importance that provides a ranked list of the predictors associated with the fatal and severe cyclist crashes. For fatal classification, 19 variables showed a normalized importance higher than 5% with the second involved vehicle manoeuvring and the gender of the driver of the second vehicle having the greatest predictive ability. For serious injury classification, 13 variables showed a normalized importance higher than 5% with the bike leaving the carriageway having the greatest normalized importance. Furthermore, each path from the root node to the leaf nodes has been retraced the way back generating 361 if-then rules with fatal crash as consequent and 349 if-then rules with serious injury crash as consequent. The RPLM showed significant unobserved heterogeneity in the data finding four normal distributed indicator variables with random parameters: cyclist age ≥ 75 (fatal prediction), cyclist gender male (fatal and serious prediction), and driver aged 55–64 (serious prediction). The model's McFadden Pseudo R2 is equal to 0.21, indicating a very good fit. Furthermore, to understand the magnitude of the effects and the contribution of each variable to injury severity probabilities the pseudo-elasticity was assessed, gaining valuable insights into the relative importance and influence of the variables. The RF and the RPLM resulted complementary in identifying several roadways, environmental, vehicle, driver, and cyclist-related factors associated with higher crash severity. Based on the identified contributory factors, safety countermeasures useful to develop strategies for making bike a safer and more friendly form of transport were recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Injury severity in single-bicycle crashes (SBCs) is analyzed. • A machine learning-based method termed Ordered Forest is employed. • ORF performs better than the traditional random forest in terms of predictions. • Factors associated with the injury severity in SBCs are investigated. • Practical guidance for the implementation of ORF is presented. This paper investigates the injury severity of cyclists in single-bicycle crashes (SBCs) in the UK. The data for analysis is constructed from the STATS19 road traffic casualty database, covering the period of 2016–2019. A machine learning-based ordered choice model termed Ordered Forest (ORF) is used. In our empirical analysis, ORF is found to produce more accurate class predictions of the SBC injury severity than the traditional random forest algorithm. Moreover, the factors associated with the injury severity are revealed, including the time and location of occurrence, the age of cyclists, roadway conditions, and crash-related factors. Specifically, old cyclists are more likely to be seriously injured in SBCs. Rural areas, higher speed limits, run-off crashes, and hitting objects are also related to an increased probability of serious injuries. While SBCs occurring at junctions, and/or during peak hours (i.e., 6:30–9:30 and 16:00–19:00) are less severe. To achieve the ambition of a step change in cycling and walking put forward by the UK Department for Transport, SBCs deserve more public attention. Lastly, regarding the implementation of ORF in crash injury severity analysis, we provide some practical guidance based on a series of simulation experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outbreaks of the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 infection that started in Wuhan, China, have quickly spread worldwide. The current situation has contributed to a dynamic rate of hospital admissions. Global efforts by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) communities to develop solutions to assist COVID-19-related research have escalated ever since. However, despite overwhelming efforts from the AI and ML community, many machine learning-based AI systems have been designed as black boxes. This paper proposes a model that utilizes Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) to explain a machine learning technique called Long-short Term Memory (LSTM) on a dataset of hospital admissions due to COVID-19 in the United Kingdom. This paper intends to increase the transparency of decision-making in the era of ML by using the proposed LSTM-FCA explainable model. Both LSTM and FCA are able to evaluate the data and explain the model to make the results more understandable and interpretable. The results and discussions are helpful and may lead to new research to optimize the use of ML in various real-world applications and to contain the disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution towards Smart Grids (SGs) represents an important opportunity for modernization of the energy industry. It is characterized by a bidirectional flow of information and energy between consumers and suppliers. However, the rapid increase of energy demands in residential areas is becoming a challenging problem. In order to address this issue, Demand-Side Management (DSM) has proven to be an effective solution. In this paper, we propose LOSISH, a price-based Demand Response (DR) system for load scheduling in residential Smart Homes (SHs) that achieves a trade-off between electricity payments and consumer's discomfort. Our proposed system considers Renewable Energy Sources (RESs), Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) and Plug-in Electric Vehicle (PEV). We formulate our scheduling as a constrained optimization problem and we propose a new hybrid algorithm to solve it. The latter combines two well known heuristic algorithms: Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Binary Particle Swarm Optimization (BPSO). Moreover, we propose a new clustering algorithm based on Machine Learning (ML) to extract consumer's preferences from a real dataset that contains the historical consumption patterns of his smart appliances. We test our approach on real data traces obtained from a SH and we set up an experiment to evaluate our algorithm on a Raspberry Pi and measure its energy consumption. To prove the effectiveness of our approach, we compare our results with another approach from the literature in terms of electricity bill, Peak-to-Average Ratio (PAR), energy consumption, and execution time. Numerical results show that LOSISH outperforms the other approach in terms of electricity bill (up to 52.92% cheaper), PAR (up to 44% decrease in peak demands), energy consumption (up to 69.44% less consumption), and execution time (up to 63.15% faster). • The load scheduling problem in residential smart homes is studied. • A constrained problem is formulated to make a trade-off between costs and comfort. • A hybrid heuristic algorithm and a Machine Learning clustering model are proposed. • Real data collected from a smart home in the UK was used to validate our approach. • Simulation and experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Figure. Graphical abstract (LCS = low-cost sensors; Ref = reference; AQ = air quality; Met = meteorology; GAM = generalised additive model; RF = random forest; QRM = quantile regression model; NO 2 = nitrogen dioxide). Air quality is monitored before intervention, then the intervention is implemented, and finally air quality is monitored again, which is analysed and modelled employing different machine learning approaches. [Display omitted] In this paper, the impact of smart traffic interventions on air quality was assessed in Thatcham, West Berkshire, UK. The intervention linked NO 2 levels with the cycle time of the traffic lights. When NO 2 levels exceeded a certain threshold, the strategy was triggered, which reduced the traffic congestion by turning the traffic lights green. Eight Earthsense Zephyrs air quality sensors and nine inductive-loop traffic detectors were installed in Thatcham to simultaneously monitor the air quality and traffic flows, respectively. Compared to the pre-intervention period, the observed NO 2 concentrations decreased in June, July and August and increased in September 2021, however, this does not reveal the true effect of smart traffic intervention. Using the observed data on the days with- and without-exceedances, we developed two machine learning models to predict the Business-as-usual (BAU) air quality level, i.e., a generalised additive model for average concentration and a quantile regression model for peak concentration. Our results demonstrated that average predicted concentrations (BAU) were lower than the observed concentrations (with intervention) by 12.45 %. However, we found that peak concentrations decreased by 20.54 %. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Both spatial and temporal transferability of real-time crash risk models are assessed. • Wasserstein Generative Adversarial Network (WGAN) is introduced to address the extreme data imbalance issue. • Deep Neural Networks (DNN) and Transfer Learning (TL) are applied for predicting crashes. • Transfer learning improves transferability where direct transfer is not feasible. Real-time crash prediction is a heavily studied area given their potential applications in proactive traffic safety management in which a plethora of statistical and machine learning (ML) models have been developed to predict traffic crashes in real-time. However, one of the fundamental issues relating to the application of these models is spatio-temporal transferability. The present paper attempts to address this gap of knowledge by combining Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) and transfer learning to examine the transferability of real-time crash prediction models under an extremely imbalanced data setting. Initially, a baseline model was developed using Deep Neural Network (DNN) with crash and microscopic traffic data collected from M1 Motorway in the UK in 2017. The dataset utilised in the baseline model is naturally imbalanced with 257 crash cases and 16,359,163 non-crash cases. To overcome data imbalance issue, Wasserstein GAN (WGAN) was utilised to generate synthetic crash data. Non-crash data were randomly undersampled due to computational limitations. The calibrated model was then applied to predict traffic crashes for five other datasets obtained from M1 (2018), M4 (2017 & 2018 separately) and M6 Motorway (2017 & 2018 separately) by using transfer learning. Model transferability was compared with standalone models and direct transfer from the baseline model. The study revealed that direct transfer is not feasible. However, models become transferable temporally, spatially, and spatio-temporally if transfer learning is applied. The predictability of the transferred models outperformed existing studies by achieving high Area Under Curve (AUC) values ranging between 0.69 and 0.95. The best transferred model can predict nearly 95% crashes with only a 5% false alarm rate by tuning thresholds. Furthermore, the performances of transferred models are on par with or better than the standalone model. The findings of this study proves that transfer learning can improve model transferability under extremely imbalanced settings which helps traffic engineers in developing highly transferable models in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By constructing digital twins (DT) of an integrated energy system (IES), one can benefit from DT's predictive capabilities to improve coordinations among various energy converters, hence enhancing energy efficiency, cost savings and carbon emission reduction. This paper is motivated by the fact that practical IESs suffer from multiple uncertainty sources, and complicated surrounding environment. To address this problem, a novel DT-based day-ahead scheduling method is proposed. The physical IES is modelled as a multi-vector energy system in its virtual space that interacts with the physical IES to manipulate its operations. A deep neural network is trained to make statistical cost-saving scheduling by learning from both historical forecasting errors and day-ahead forecasts. Case studies of IESs show that the proposed DT-based method is able to reduce the operating cost of IES by 63.5%, comparing to the existing forecast-based scheduling methods. It is also found that both electric vehicles and thermal energy storages play proactive roles in the proposed method, highlighting their importance in future energy system integration and decarbonisation. • A deep learning and digital twins (DT) based scheduling method is proposed. • Physical IES performance is addressed by its virtual replica's predictive capability. • A machine learning method is proposed to address multiple uncertainty challenges. • Historical U.K. datasets are used for performance evaluations. • Results demonstrate the Digital Twin model reduces the extra operating cost by 63.5%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided psych challenges for many in society. One such challenge is the anxiety that is created in many people faced with the risk of death from the disease. Another issue is understanding how individuals cope psychologically with the threat of death from the disease. In this study we examine the manifestation of death anxiety and various coping mechanisms through the lens of terror management theory (TMT) and online platforms. We take a novel approach to testing the theory using big data analytics and machine learning, focusing on the user-generated content of Twitter users. Based on a sample of all tweets in the UK mentioning COVID-19 terms over a 5-month period, we evaluate dictionary mentions of anxiety and death, and various TMT defense mechanisms, and calculate the pattern of latent death anxiety or 'terror' states of Twitter users via Hidden Markov Models. The research identifies four online 'terror' states, with high death and anxiety mentions during the peak of the pandemic. Further we examine various TMT defense mechanisms that have been proposed in the literature for coping with death anxiety and find that online social connection, achievement and religion all play important roles in improving the model and explaining movement between states. The paper concludes with various implications of the study for future research and practice. • Extends terror management theory in an online social media context during the pandemic. • Examines death anxiety and online coping mechanisms from terror management theory. • Combines text analytics and hidden Markov models using a big data set. • Results support online social connection, achievement and religion coping mechanisms. • Contributes to the understanding of online individual behavior during pandemics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]