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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]

Stylometry has gained great popularity in digital humanities and social sciences. Many works on stylometry have recently been reported. However, there is a research gap regarding review studies in this field from a bibliometric and evolutionary perspective. Therefore, in this paper, a bibliometric analysis of publications from the Scopus database in the stylometric research field was proposed. Then, research articles published between 1968 and 2021 were collected and analyzed using the Bibliometrix R package for bibliometric analysis via the Biblioshiny web interface. Empirical results were also presented in terms of the performance analysis and the science mapping analysis. From these results, it is concluded that there has been a strong growth in stylometry research in recent years, while the USA, Poland, and the UK are the most productive countries, and this is due to many strong research partnerships. It was also concluded that the research topics of most articles, based on author keywords, focused on two broad thematic categories: (1) the main tasks in stylometry and (2) methodological approaches (statistics and machine learning methods). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Surgical waiting lists have risen dramatically across the UK as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The effective use of operating theatres by optimal scheduling could help mitigate this, but this requires accurate case duration predictions. Current standards for predicting the duration of surgery are inaccurate. Artificial intelligence (AI) offers the potential for greater accuracy in predicting surgical case duration. This study aimed to investigate whether there is evidence to support that AI is more accurate than current industry standards at predicting surgical case duration, with a secondary aim of analysing whether the implementation of the models used produced efficiency savings. Method: PubMed, Embase, and MEDLINE libraries were searched through to July 2023 to identify appropriate articles. PRISMA extension for scoping reviews and the Arksey and O'Malley framework were followed. Study quality was assessed using a modified version of the reporting guidelines for surgical AI papers by Farrow et al. Algorithm performance was reported using evaluation metrics. Results: The search identified 2593 articles: 14 were suitable for inclusion and 13 reported on the accuracy of AI algorithms against industry standards, with seven demonstrating a statistically significant improvement in prediction accuracy (P < 0.05). The larger studies demonstrated the superiority of neural networks over other machine learning techniques. Efficiency savings were identified in a RCT. Significant methodological limitations were identified across most studies. Conclusion: The studies suggest that machine learning and deep learning models are more accurate at predicting the duration of surgery; however, further research is required to determine the best way to implement this technology. Waiting lists for elective surgeries are rising in the UK. We conducted a scoping review with the aim to understand if artificial intelligence has the potential to improve the utilization of operating theatre resources through improved scheduling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

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]

For efficient operation, solar power operators often require generation forecasts for multiple sites with varying data availability. Many proposed methods for forecasting solar irradiance / solar power production formulate the problem as a time-series, using current observations to generate forecasts. This necessitates a real-time data stream and enough historical observations at every location for these methods to be deployed. In this paper, we propose the use of Global methods to train generalised models. Using data from 20 locations distributed throughout the UK, we show that it is possible to learn models without access to data for all locations, enabling them to generate forecasts for unseen locations. We show a single Global model trained on multiple locations can produce more consistent and accurate results across locations. Furthermore, by leveraging weather observations and measurements from other locations we show it is possible to create models capable of accurately forecasting irradiance at locations without any real-time data. We apply our approaches to both classical and state-of-the-art Machine Learning methods, including a Transformer architecture. We compare models using satellite imagery or point observations (temperature, pressure, etc.) as weather data. These methods could facilitate planning and optimisation for both newly deployed solar farms and domestic installations from the moment they come online. [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]

In this paper, we investigate the dynamics of the social media response on Reddit to the COVID-19 pandemic during its first year (February 2020–2021). The emergence of region-specific subreddits allows us to compare the reactions of individuals posting their opinions on social media about the global pandemic from two perspectives — the UK and the US. In particular, we look at the volume of posts and comments on these two subreddits, and at the sentiment expressed in these posts and comments over time as a measure of the public level of engagement and response. Whilst an analysis of volume allows us to quantify how interested people are about the pandemic as it unfolds, sentiment analysis goes beyond this and informs us about how people respond towards the pandemic based on the textual content in the posts and comments. The research looks to develop a framework for analyzing the social response on Reddit to a large-scale event in terms of the level of engagement measured through post and comment volumes, and opinion measured through an analysis of sentiment applied to the post content. In order to compare the subreddits, we show the trend in the time series through the application of moving average methods. We also show how to identify the lag between time series and align them using cross-correlation. Moreover, once aligned, we apply moving correlations to the time series to measure their degree of correspondence to see if there is a similar response to the pandemic across the two groups (UK and US). The results indicate that both subreddits were posting in high volumes at specific points during the pandemic, and that, despite the generally negative sentiment in the posts and comments, a gradual decrease in negativity leading up to the start of 2021 is observed as measures are put in place by governments and organizations to contain the virus and provide necessary support the affected populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting a large percentage of the adult population. A series of ongoing efforts has led to the development of a hybrid AI algorithm (a combination of a machine learningmodel and a knowledge-basedmodel) for assisting adult ADHDdiagnosis, and its clinical trial currently operating in the largest National Health Service (NHS) for adults with ADHD in the UK. Most recently, more data was made available that has lead to a total collection of 501 anonymized records as of 2022 July. This prompted the ongoing research to carefully examine the model by retraining and optimizing the machine learning algorithm in order to update the model with better generalization capability. Based on the large data collection so far, this paper also pilots a study to examine the effectiveness of variables other than the Diagnostic Interview for ADHD in adults (DIVA) assessment, which adds considerable cost in the screenining process as it relies on specially trained senior clinicians. Results reported in this paper demonstrate that the newly trained machine learning model reaches an accuracy of 75.03% when all features are used; the hybrid model obtains an accuracy of 93.61%. Exceeding what clinical experts expected in the absence of DIVA, achieving an accuracy of 65.27% using a rule-based machine learning model alone encourages the development of a cost effective model in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Allocation of scarce organs for transplantation is ethically challenging. Artificial intelligence (AI) has been proposed to assist in liver allocation, however the ethics of this remains unexplored and the view of the public unknown. The aim of this paper was to assess public attitudes on whether AI should be used in liver allocation and how it should be implemented. Methods: We first introduce some potential ethical issues concerning AI in liver allocation, before analysing a pilot survey including online responses from 172 UK laypeople, recruited through Prolific Academic. Findings: Most participants found AI in liver allocation acceptable (69.2%) and would not be less likely to donate their organs if AI was used in allocation (72.7%). Respondents thought AI was more likely to be consistent and less biased compared to humans, although were concerned about the "dehumanisation of healthcare" and whether AI could consider important nuances in allocation decisions. Participants valued accuracy, impartiality, and consistency in a decision-maker, more than interpretability and empathy. Respondents were split on whether AI should be trained on previous decisions or programmed with specific objectives. Whether allocation decisions were made by transplant committee or AI, participants valued consideration of urgency, survival likelihood, life years gained, age, future medication compliance, quality of life, future alcohol use and past alcohol use. On the other hand, the majority thought the following factors were not relevant to prioritisation: past crime, future crime, future societal contribution, social disadvantage, and gender. Conclusions: There are good reasons to use AI in liver allocation, and our sample of participants appeared to support its use. If confirmed, this support would give democratic legitimacy to the use of AI in this context and reduce the risk that donation rates could be affected negatively. Our findings on specific ethical concerns also identify potential expectations and reservations laypeople have regarding AI in this area, which can inform how AI in liver allocation could be best implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the knowledge and information needed for enabling high-quality clinical research is stored in free-text format. Natural language processing (NLP) has been used to extract information from these sources at scale for several decades. This paper aims to present a comprehensive review of clinical NLP for the past 15 years in the UK to identify the community, depict its evolution, analyse methodologies and applications, and identify the main barriers. We collect a dataset of clinical NLP projects (n = 94; £ = 41.97 m) funded by UK funders or the European Union's funding programmes. Additionally, we extract details on 9 funders, 137 organisations, 139 persons and 431 research papers. Networks are created from timestamped data interlinking all entities, and network analysis is subsequently applied to generate insights. 431 publications are identified as part of a literature review, of which 107 are eligible for final analysis. Results show, not surprisingly, clinical NLP in the UK has increased substantially in the last 15 years: the total budget in the period of 2019–2022 was 80 times that of 2007–2010. However, the effort is required to deepen areas such as disease (sub-)phenotyping and broaden application domains. There is also a need to improve links between academia and industry and enable deployments in real-world settings for the realisation of clinical NLP's great potential in care delivery. The major barriers include research and development access to hospital data, lack of capable computational resources in the right places, the scarcity of labelled data and barriers to sharing of pretrained models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Databases have become an important tool in understanding trends and correlations in health care by collecting demographic and clinical information. Analysis of data collected from large cohorts of patients can have the potential to generate insights into factors identifying treatments and the characteristics of subgroups of patients who respond to certain types of care. The Care Response (CR) database was designed to capture patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) for chiropractic patients internationally. Although several papers have been published analysing some of the data, its contents have not yet been comprehensively documented. The primary aim of this study was to describe the information in the CR database. The secondary aim was to determine whether there was suitable information available to better understand subgroups of chiropractic patients and responsiveness to care. This would be achieved by enabling correlations among patient demographics, diagnoses, and therapeutic interventions with machine learning approaches. Methods: Data in all available fields were requested with no date restriction. Data were collected on 12 April 2022. The output was manually scanned for scope and completeness. Tables were created with categories of information. Descriptive statistics were applied. Results: The CR database collects information from patients at the first clinical visit, 14, 30, and 90 days subsequently. There were 32,468 patient responses; 3210 patients completed all fields through the 90 day follow up period. 45% of respondents were male; 54% were female; the average age was 49. There was little demographic information, and no information on diagnoses or therapeutic interventions. We received StartBack, numerical pain scale, patient global impression of change, and Bournemouth questionnaire data, but no other PROMs. Conclusions: The CR database is a large set of PROMs for chiropractic patients internationally. We found it unsuitable for machine learning analysis for our purposes; its utility is limited by a lack of demographic information, diagnoses, and therapeutic interventions. However, it can offer information about chiropractic care in general and patient satisfaction. It could form the basis for a useful clinical tool in the future, if reformed to be more accessible to researchers and expanded with more information collected. [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]

The National COVID-19 Chest Imaging Database (NCCID) is a centralized UK database of thoracic imaging and corresponding clinical data. It is made available by the National Health Service Artificial Intelligence (NHS AI) Lab to support the development of machine learning tools focused on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). A bespoke cleaning pipeline for NCCID, developed by the NHSx, was introduced in 2021. We present an extension to the original cleaning pipeline for the clinical data of the database. It has been adjusted to correct additional systematic inconsistencies in the raw data such as patient sex, oxygen levels and date values. The most important changes will be discussed in this paper, whilst the code and further explanations are made publicly available on GitLab. The suggested cleaning will allow global users to work with more consistent data for the development of machine learning tools without being an expert. In addition, it highlights some of the challenges when working with clinical multi-center data and includes recommendations for similar future initiatives. [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]

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]

In this paper, we introduce a novel approach to address the dynamic prediction of customer activity in electronic payment transactions for individual clients. Our approach is founded on customer online payment transaction records from registered UK-based online retailers between 01/12/2009 and 09/12/2011. These retailers primarily specialize in unique gift items for various occasions, catering to a wide range of clients, including wholesalers. We used classification analysis based on the correlation coefficient to measure and describe a customer's electronic payment capability based on the quality of products they purchase. Furthermore, we trained multi-layered models (linear model, deep learning, random forest, and support vector machines (SVM)) to capture the dynamics of e-bank transaction reinforcement for retail customers using machine learning. Real transaction data from a UK online retailer was employed in our study. The experimental results consistently demonstrated the effectiveness of our proposed strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In order to leverage the potential benefits of technology to speech and language therapy language assessment processes, large samples of naturalistic language data must be collected and analysed. These samples enable the development and testing of novel software applications with data relevant to their intended clinical application. However, the collection and analysis of such data can be costly and time-consuming. This paper describes the development of a novel application designed to elicit and analyse young children’s story retell narratives to provide metrics regarding the child’s use of grammatical structures (micro-structure) and story grammar (macro-structure elements). Key aspects for development were (1) methods to collect story retells, ensure accurate transcription and segmentation of utterances; (2) testing the reliability of the application to analyse micro-structure elements in children’s story retells and (3) development of an algorithm to analyse narrative macro-structure elements. Methods: A co-design process was used to design an app which would be used to gather story retell samples from children using mobile technology. A citizen science approach using mainstream marketing via online channels, the media and billboard ads was used to encourage participation from children across the United Kingdom. A stratified sampling framework was used to ensure a representative sample was obtained across age, gender and five bands of socioeconomic disadvantage using partial postcodes and the relevant indices of deprivation. Trained Research Associates (RA) completed transcription and micro and macro-structure analysis of the language samples. Methods to improve transcriptions produced by automated speech recognition were developed to enable reliable analysis. RA micro-structure analyses were compared to those generated by the digital application to test its reliability using intra-class correlation (ICC). RA macro-structure analyses were used to train an algorithm to produce macro-structure metrics. Finally, results from the macro-structure algorithm were compared against a subset of RA macro-structure analyses not used in training to test its reliability using ICC. Results: A total of 4,517 profiles were made in the app used in data collection and from these participants a final set of 599 were drawn which fulfilled the stratified sampling criteria. The story retells ranged from 35.66 s to 251.4 s in length and had word counts ranging from 37 to 496, with a mean of 148.29 words. ICC between the RA and application micro-structure analyses ranged from 0.213 to 1.0 with 41 out of a total of 44 comparisons reaching ‘good’ (0.70–0.90) or ‘excellent’ (>0.90) levels of reliability. ICC between the RA and application macro-structure features were completed for 85 samples not used in training the algorithm. ICC ranged from 0.5577 to 0.939 with 5 out of 7 metrics being ‘good’ or better. Conclusion: Work to date has demonstrated the potential of semi-automated transcription and linguistic analyses to provide reliable, detailed and informative narrative language analysis for young children and for the use of citizen science based approaches using mobile technologies to collect representative and informative research data. Clinical evaluation of this new app is ongoing, so we do not yet have data documenting its developmental or clinical sensitivity and specificity. [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]

The use of machine learning as an input into decision-making is on the rise, owing to its ability to uncover hidden patterns in large data and improve prediction accuracy. Questions have been raised, however, about the potential distributional impacts of these technologies, with one concern being that they may perpetuate or even amplify human biases from the past. Exploiting detailed credit file data for 800,000 UK borrowers, we simulate a switch from a traditional (logit) credit scoring model to ensemble machine-learning methods. We confirm that machine-learning models are more accurate overall. We also find that they do as well as the simpler traditional model on relevant fairness criteria, where these criteria pertain to overall accuracy and error rates for population subgroups defined along protected or sensitive lines (gender, race, health status, and deprivation). We do observe some differences in the way credit-scoring models perform for different subgroups, but these manifest under a traditional modelling approach and switching to machine learning neither exacerbates nor eliminates these issues. The paper discusses some of the mechanical and data factors that may contribute to statistical fairness issues in the context of credit scoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rainfall-runoff (R-R) modelling is used to study the runoff generation of a catchment. The quantity or rate of change measure of the hydrological variable, called runoff, is important for environmental scientists to accomplish water-related planning and design. This paper proposes (i) an integrated model namely EO-ELM (an integration of equilibrium optimizer (EO) and extreme learning machine (ELM)) and (ii) a deep neural network (DNN) for one day-ahead R-R modelling. The proposed R-R models are validated at two different benchmark stations of the catchments, namely river Teifi at Glanteifi and river Fal at Tregony in the UK. Firstly, a partial autocorrelation function (PACF) is used for optimal number of lag inputs to deploy the proposed models. Six other well-known machine learning models, called ELM, kernel ELM (KELM), and particle swarm optimization-based ELM (PSO-ELM), support vector regression (SVR), artificial neural network (ANN) and gradient boosting machine (GBM) are utilized to validate the two proposed models in terms of prediction efficiency. Furthermore, to increase the performance of the proposed models, paper utilizes a discrete wavelet-based data pre-processing technique is applied in rainfall and runoff data. The performance of wavelet-based EO-ELM and DNN are compared with wavelet-based ELM (WELM), KELM (WKELM), PSO-ELM (WPSO-ELM), SVR (WSVR), ANN (WANN) and GBM (WGBM). An uncertainty analysis and two-tailed t-test are carried out to ensure the trustworthiness and efficacy of the proposed models. The experimental results for two different time series datasets show that the EO-ELM performs better in an optimal number of lags than the others. In the case of wavelet-based daily R-R modelling, proposed models performed better and showed robustness compared to other models used. Therefore, this paper shows the efficient applicability of EO-ELM and DNN in R-R modelling that may be used in the hydrological modelling field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ovarian cancers are curable by surgical resection when discovered early. Unfortunately, most ovarian cancers are diagnosed in the later stages. One strategy to identify early ovarian tumors is to screen women who have the highest risk. This opinion article summarizes the accuracy of different methods used to assess the risk of developing ovarian cancer, including family history, BRCA genetic tests, and polygenic risk scores. The accuracy of these is compared to the maximum theoretical accuracy, revealing a substantial gap. We suggest that this gap, or missing heritability, could be caused by epistatic interactions between genes. An alternative approach to computing genetic risk scores, using chromosomal-scale length variation should incorporate epistatic interactions. Future research in this area should focus on this and other alternative methods of characterizing genomes. [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]

Background: Traditional risk stratification tools do not describe the complex principle determinant relationships that exist amongst pre-operative and peri-operative factors and their influence on cardiac surgical outcomes. This paper reports on the use of Bayesian networks to investigate such outcomes. Methods: Data were prospectively collected from 4776 adult patients undergoing cardiac surgery at a single UK institute between April 2012 and May 2019. Machine learning techniques were used to construct Bayesian networks for four key short-term outcomes including death, stroke and renal failure. Results: Duration of operation was the most important determinant of death irrespective of EuroSCORE. Duration of cardiopulmonary bypass was the most important determinant of re-operation for bleeding. EuroSCORE was predictive of new renal replacement therapy but not mortality. Conclusions: Machine-learning algorithms have allowed us to analyse the significance of dynamic processes that occur between pre-operative and peri-operative elements. Length of procedure and duration of cardiopulmonary bypass predicted mortality and morbidity in patients undergoing cardiac surgery in the UK. Bayesian networks can be used to explore potential principle determinant mechanisms underlying outcomes and be used to help develop future risk models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep Learning (DL) has been broadly applied to solve big data problems in biomedical fields, which is most successful in image processing. Recently, many DL methods have been applied to analyze genomic studies. However, genomic data usually has too small a sample size to fit a complex network. They do not have common structural patterns like images to utilize pre-trained networks or take advantage of convolution layers. The concern of overusing DL methods motivates us to evaluate DL methods' performance versus popular non-deep Machine Learning (ML) methods for analyzing genomic data with a wide range of sample sizes. In this paper, we conduct a benchmark study using the UK Biobank data and its many random subsets with different sample sizes. The original UK Biobank data has about 500k participants. Each patient has comprehensive patient characteristics, disease histories, and genomic information, i.e., the genotypes of millions of Single-Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNPs). We are interested in predicting the risk of three lung diseases: asthma, COPD, and lung cancer. There are 205,238 participants have recorded disease outcomes for these three diseases. Five prediction models are investigated in this benchmark study, including three non-deep machine learning methods (Elastic Net, XGBoost, and SVM) and two deep learning methods (DNN and LSTM). Besides the most popular performance metrics, such as the F1-score, we promote the hit curve, a visual tool to describe the performance of predicting rare events. We discovered that DL methods frequently fail to outperform non-deep ML in analyzing genomic data, even in large datasets with over 200k samples. The experiment results suggest not overusing DL methods in genomic studies, even with biobank-level sample sizes. The performance differences between DL and non-deep ML decrease as the sample size of data increases. This suggests when the sample size of data is significant, further increasing sample sizes leads to more performance gain in DL methods. Hence, DL methods could be better if we analyze genomic data bigger than this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comprehensive dataset intended to evaluate passive Human Activity Recognition (HAR) and localization techniques with measurements obtained from synchronized Radio-Frequency (RF) devices and vision-based sensors. The dataset consists of RF data including Channel State Information (CSI) extracted from a WiFi Network Interface Card (NIC), Passive WiFi Radar (PWR) built upon a Software Defined Radio (SDR) platform, and Ultra-Wideband (UWB) signals acquired via commercial off-the-shelf hardware. It also consists of vision/Infra-red based data acquired from Kinect sensors. Approximately 8 hours of annotated measurements are provided, which are collected across two rooms from 6 participants performing 6 daily activities. This dataset can be exploited to advance WiFi and vision-based HAR, for example, using pattern recognition, skeletal representation, deep learning algorithms or other novel approaches to accurately recognize human activities. Furthermore, it can potentially be used to passively track a human in an indoor environment. Such datasets are key tools required for the development of new algorithms and methods in the context of smart homes, elderly care, and surveillance applications. Measurement(s) Human physical activity • Human location Technology Type(s) WiFi sensing device • ultra-wideband impulse radar • passive WiFi radar • Kinect motion sensor Factor Type(s) Human location • Human physical activity • Room geometry • Participant demographics • Contactless sensing devices Sample Characteristic - Organism Homo sapiens Sample Characteristic - Environment Office building Sample Characteristic - Location United Kingdom [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Risk-based screening for lung cancer is currently being considered in several countries; however, the optimal approach to determine eligibility remains unclear. Ensemble machine learning could support the development of highly parsimonious prediction models that maintain the performance of more complex models while maximising simplicity and generalisability, supporting the widespread adoption of personalised screening. In this work, we aimed to develop and validate ensemble machine learning models to determine eligibility for risk-based lung cancer screening. Methods and findings: For model development, we used data from 216,714 ever-smokers recruited between 2006 and 2010 to the UK Biobank prospective cohort and 26,616 high-risk ever-smokers recruited between 2002 and 2004 to the control arm of the US National Lung Screening (NLST) randomised controlled trial. The NLST trial randomised high-risk smokers from 33 US centres with at least a 30 pack-year smoking history and fewer than 15 quit-years to annual CT or chest radiography screening for lung cancer. We externally validated our models among 49,593 participants in the chest radiography arm and all 80,659 ever-smoking participants in the US Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian (PLCO) Screening Trial. The PLCO trial, recruiting from 1993 to 2001, analysed the impact of chest radiography or no chest radiography for lung cancer screening. We primarily validated in the PLCO chest radiography arm such that we could benchmark against comparator models developed within the PLCO control arm. Models were developed to predict the risk of 2 outcomes within 5 years from baseline: diagnosis of lung cancer and death from lung cancer. We assessed model discrimination (area under the receiver operating curve, AUC), calibration (calibration curves and expected/observed ratio), overall performance (Brier scores), and net benefit with decision curve analysis. Models predicting lung cancer death (UCL-D) and incidence (UCL-I) using 3 variables—age, smoking duration, and pack-years—achieved or exceeded parity in discrimination, overall performance, and net benefit with comparators currently in use, despite requiring only one-quarter of the predictors. In external validation in the PLCO trial, UCL-D had an AUC of 0.803 (95% CI: 0.783, 0.824) and was well calibrated with an expected/observed (E/O) ratio of 1.05 (95% CI: 0.95, 1.19). UCL-I had an AUC of 0.787 (95% CI: 0.771, 0.802), an E/O ratio of 1.0 (95% CI: 0.92, 1.07). The sensitivity of UCL-D was 85.5% and UCL-I was 83.9%, at 5-year risk thresholds of 0.68% and 1.17%, respectively, 7.9% and 6.2% higher than the USPSTF-2021 criteria at the same specificity. The main limitation of this study is that the models have not been validated outside of UK and US cohorts. Conclusions: We present parsimonious ensemble machine learning models to predict the risk of lung cancer in ever-smokers, demonstrating a novel approach that could simplify the implementation of risk-based lung cancer screening in multiple settings. Thomas Callender and colleagues present a development and validation study using parsimonious ensemble machine learning models to assess eligibility for lung cancer screening. Author summary: Why was this study done?: Screening and disease prevention programmes are increasingly bespoke; however, their simultaneous delivery at a population-scale presents considerable challenges. Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death worldwide, with poor survival in the absence of early detection. Screening for lung cancer among those at high-risk could reduce lung cancer-specific mortality by 20% to 24% among those screened, but the ideal way to determine if someone is high-risk remains uncertain and existing approaches are resource intensive. What did the researchers do and find?: We used data from the UK Biobank and US National Lung Screening Trial to develop novel, parsimonious models, to simplify the prediction of lung cancer risk and selection to lung cancer screening programmes. Using ensemble machine learning and 3 predictors—age, smoking duration, and pack-years—we found our models achieved or exceeded parity in performance with leading comparators despite requiring one-third of the variables. Our models were externally validated in the US Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial and benchmarked against models that are either in use or have performed strongly in previous analyses. What do these findings mean?: Risk assessment for lung cancer screening can be simplified without reducing performance, potentially improving the uptake and effectiveness of national lung cancer screening programmes, and therefore contributing to reducing deaths from lung cancer. Future research should focus on the application of this modelling approach to other conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease to support the implementation at scale of multiple concurrent risk-stratified prevention and early detection programmes for major causes of morbidity and mortality. This study has key limitations as it is based on past data from the US and UK, so prospective evaluation in different countries and regions should be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many developed countries, the usage of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) has become important in paving the future path in how data is managed and secured in the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) sector. SMEs in these developed countries have created their own cyber regimes around AI and ML. This knowledge is tested daily in how these countries' SMEs run their businesses and identify threats and attacks, based on the support structure of the individual country. Based on recent changes to the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Brexit, and ISO standards requirements, machine learning cybersecurity (MLCS) adoption in the UK SME market has become prevalent and a good example to lean on, amongst other developed nations. Whilst MLCS has been successfully applied in many applications, including network intrusion detection systems (NIDs) worldwide, there is still a gap in the rate of adoption of MLCS techniques for UK SMEs. Other developed countries such as Spain and Australia also fall into this category, and similarities and differences to MLCS adoptions are discussed. Applications of how MLCS is applied within these SME industries are also explored. The paper investigates, using quantitative and qualitative methods, the challenges to adopting MLCS in the SME ecosystem, and how operations are managed to promote business growth. Much like security guards and policing in the real world, the virtual world is now calling on MLCS techniques to be embedded like secret service covert operations to protect data being distributed by the millions into cyberspace. This paper will use existing global research from multiple disciplines to identify gaps and opportunities for UK SME small business cyber security. This paper will also highlight barriers and reasons for low adoption rates of MLCS in SMEs and compare success stories of larger companies implementing MLCS. The methodology uses structured quantitative and qualitative survey questionnaires, distributed across an extensive participation pool directed to the SMEs' management and technical and non-technical professionals using stratify methods. Based on the analysis and findings, this study reveals that from the primary data obtained, SMEs have the appropriate cybersecurity packages in place but are not fully aware of their potential. Secondary data collection was run in parallel to better understand how these barriers and challenges emerged, and why the rate of adoption of MLCS was very low. The paper draws the conclusion that help through government policies and processes coupled together with collaboration could minimize cyber threats in combatting hackers and malicious actors in trying to stay ahead of the game. These aspirations can be reached by ensuring that those involved have been well trained and understand the importance of communication when applying appropriate safety processes and procedures. This paper also highlights important funding gaps that could help raise cyber security awareness in the form of grants, subsidies, and financial assistance through various public sector policies and training. Lastly, SMEs' lack of understanding of risks and impacts of cybercrime could lead to conflicting messages between cross-company IT and cybersecurity rules. Trying to find the right balance between this risk and impact, versus productivity impact and costs, could lead to UK SMES getting over these hurdles in this cyberspace in the quest for promoting the usage of MLCS. UK and Wales governments can use the research conducted in this paper to inform and adapt their policies to help UK SMEs become more secure from cyber-attacks and compare them to other developed countries also on the same future path. [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]

Studies on the prediction of student success in distance learning have explored mainly demographics factors and student interactions with the virtual learning environments. However, it is remarkable that a very limited number of studies use information about the assignments submitted by students as influential factor to predict their academic achievement. This paper aims to explore the real importance of assignment information for solving students' performance prediction in distance learning and evaluate the beneficial effect of including this information. We investigate and compare this factor and its potential from two information representation approaches: the traditional representation based on single instances and a more flexible representation based on Multiple Instance Learning (MIL), focus on handle weakly labeled data. A comparative study is carried out using the Open University Learning Analytics dataset, one of the most important public datasets in education provided by one of the greatest online universities of United Kingdom. The study includes a wide set of different types of machine learning algorithms addressed from the two data representation commented, showing that algorithms using only information about assignments with a representation based on MIL can outperform more than 20% the accuracy with respect to a representation based on single instance learning. Thus, it is concluded that applying an appropriate representation that eliminates the sparseness of data allows to show the relevance of a factor, such as the assignments submitted, not widely used to date to predict students' academic performance. Moreover, a comparison with previous works on the same dataset and problem shows that predictive models based on MIL using only assignments information obtain competitive results compared to previous studies that include other factors to predict students performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Machine learning is an increasingly key influence on the financial services industry. In this paper, we review the roles and impact of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) on the UK financial services industry. We survey the current AI/ML landscape in the UK. ML has had a considerable impact in the areas of fraud and compliance, credit scoring, financial distress prediction, robo-advising and algorithmic trading. We examine these applications using UK examples. We also review the importance of regulation and governance in ML applications to financial services. Finally, we assess the performance of ML during the Covid-19 pandemic and conclude with directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is 50 years since Sieveking et al. published their pioneering research in Nature on the geochemical analysis of artefacts from Neolithic flint mines in southern Britain. In the decades since, geochemical techniques to source stone artefacts have flourished globally, with a renaissance in recent years from new instrumentation, data analysis, and machine learning techniques. Despite the interest over these latter approaches, there has been variation in the quality with which these methods have been applied. Using the case study of flint artefacts and geological samples from England, we present a robust and objective evaluation of three popular techniques, Random Forest, K-Nearest-Neighbour, and Support Vector Machines, and present a pipeline for their appropriate use. When evaluated correctly, the results establish high model classification performance, with Random Forest leading with an average accuracy of 85% (measured through F1 Scores), and with Support Vector Machines following closely. The methodology developed in this paper demonstrates the potential to significantly improve on previous approaches, particularly in removing bias, and providing greater means of evaluation than previously utilised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting social information disclosure can develop sustainable banking. This paper aims to evaluate the social sustainability of banks by constructing a new interval-based composite indicator using the Thomson Reuters database. In this paper, to measure the social sustainability of European banks, we propose an approach to construct interval-based composite indicators that usefully extends the construction of the composite indicator and allows us to measure the uncertainty generated by the choices made in the construction of the composite indicator. The methodological approach is based on Monte Carlo simulation and allows us to improve the information provided by the composite indicators. Thus, we measure the value of the social indicator and its subcomponents and the uncertainty of the value due to the different possible weightings. The results show that the best international ESG practices in European banks are found in French and British banks, especially in Italian ones. Finally, we analyze innovative perspectives and propose policy recommendations to support sustainable banking ecosystems in light of the increasing attention to ESG indicator disclosure and its correspondence to reality. • The best practices are found in French and U.K. banks. • Skandinavian banks face non-excellent results. • The work is a first attempt to elaborate on a specific social disclosure index. • Results are a valuable baseline to understand the actions to take. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In order to leverage the potential benefits of technology to speech and language therapy language assessment processes, large samples of naturalistic language data must be collected and analysed. These samples enable the development and testing of novel software applications with data relevant to their intended clinical application. However, the collection and analysis of such data can be costly and time-consuming. This paper describes the development of a novel application designed to elicit and analyse young children’s story retell narratives to provide metrics regarding the child’s use of grammatical structures (micro-structure) and story grammar (macro-structure elements). Key aspects for development were (1) methods to collect story retells, ensure accurate transcription and segmentation of utterances; (2) testing the reliability of the application to analyse micro-structure elements in children’s story retells and (3) development of an algorithm to analyse narrative macro-structure elements. Methods: A co-design process was used to design an app which would be used to gather story retell samples from children using mobile technology. A citizen science approach using mainstream marketing via online channels, the media and billboard ads was used to encourage participation from children across the United Kingdom. A stratified sampling framework was used to ensure a representative sample was obtained across age, gender and five bands of socioeconomic disadvantage using partial postcodes and the relevant indices of deprivation. Trained Research Associates (RA) completed transcription and micro and macro-structure analysis of the language samples. Methods to improve transcriptions produced by automated speech recognition were developed to enable reliable analysis. RA micro-structure analyses were compared to those generated by the digital application to test its reliability using intra-class correlation (ICC). RA macro-structure analyses were used to train an algorithm to produce macro-structure metrics. Finally, results from the macro-structure algorithm were compared against a subset of RA macro-structure analyses not used in training to test its reliability using ICC. Results: A total of 4,517 profiles were made in the app used in data collection and from these participants a final set of 599 were drawn which fulfilled the stratified sampling criteria. The story retells ranged from 35.66 s to 251.4 s in length and had word counts ranging from 37 to 496, with a mean of 148.29 words. ICC between the RA and application micro-structure analyses ranged from 0.213 to 1.0 with 41 out of a total of 44 comparisons reaching ‘good’ (0.70–0.90) or ‘excellent’ (>0.90) levels of reliability. ICC between the RA and application macro-structure features were completed for 85 samples not used in training the algorithm. ICC ranged from 0.5577 to 0.939 with 5 out of 7 metrics being ‘good’ or better. Conclusion: Work to date has demonstrated the potential of semi-automated transcription and linguistic analyses to provide reliable, detailed and informative narrative language analysis for young children and for the use of citizen science based approaches using mobile technologies to collect representative and informative research data. Clinical evaluation of this new app is ongoing, so we do not yet have data documenting its developmental or clinical sensitivity and specificity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In order to leverage the potential benefits of technology to speech and language therapy language assessment processes, large samples of naturalistic language data must be collected and analysed. These samples enable the development and testing of novel software applications with data relevant to their intended clinical application. However, the collection and analysis of such data can be costly and time-consuming. This paper describes the development of a novel application designed to elicit and analyse young children’s story retell narratives to provide metrics regarding the child’s use of grammatical structures (micro-structure) and story grammar (macro-structure elements). Key aspects for development were (1) methods to collect story retells, ensure accurate transcription and segmentation of utterances; (2) testing the reliability of the application to analyse micro-structure elements in children’s story retells and (3) development of an algorithm to analyse narrative macro-structure elements. Methods: A co-design process was used to design an app which would be used to gather story retell samples from children using mobile technology. A citizen science approach using mainstream marketing via online channels, the media and billboard ads was used to encourage participation from children across the United Kingdom. A stratified sampling framework was used to ensure a representative sample was obtained across age, gender and five bands of socioeconomic disadvantage using partial postcodes and the relevant indices of deprivation. Trained Research Associates (RA) completed transcription and micro and macro-structure analysis of the language samples. Methods to improve transcriptions produced by automated speech recognition were developed to enable reliable analysis. RA micro-structure analyses were compared to those generated by the digital application to test its reliability using intra-class correlation (ICC). RA macro-structure analyses were used to train an algorithm to produce macro-structure metrics. Finally, results from the macro-structure algorithm were compared against a subset of RA macro-structure analyses not used in training to test its reliability using ICC. Results: A total of 4,517 profiles were made in the app used in data collection and from these participants a final set of 599 were drawn which fulfilled the stratified sampling criteria. The story retells ranged from 35.66 s to 251.4 s in length and had word counts ranging from 37 to 496, with a mean of 148.29 words. ICC between the RA and application micro-structure analyses ranged from 0.213 to 1.0 with 41 out of a total of 44 comparisons reaching ‘good’ (0.70–0.90) or ‘excellent’ (>0.90) levels of reliability. ICC between the RA and application macro-structure features were completed for 85 samples not used in training the algorithm. ICC ranged from 0.5577 to 0.939 with 5 out of 7 metrics being ‘good’ or better. Conclusion: Work to date has demonstrated the potential of semi-automated transcription and linguistic analyses to provide reliable, detailed and informative narrative language analysis for young children and for the use of citizen science based approaches using mobile technologies to collect representative and informative research data. Clinical evaluation of this new app is ongoing, so we do not yet have data documenting its developmental or clinical sensitivity and specificity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic safety has always been an important issue in sustainable transportation development, and the prediction of traffic accident severity remains a crucial challenging issue in the domain of traffic safety. A huge variety of forecasting models have been proposed to meet this challenge. These models gradually evolved from linear to nonlinear forms and from traditional statistical regression models to current popular machine learning models. Recently, a machine learning algorithm called Deep Forests based on the decision tree ensemble has aroused widespread concern, which was proposed for the first time by a research team of Nanjing University. This algorithm was proved to be more accurate and robust in comparison with other machine learning algorithms. Motivated by this benefit, this study employs the UK road safety dataset to propose a novel method for predicting the severity of traffic accidents based on the Deep Forests algorithm. To verify the superiority of our proposed method, several other machine learning algorithm-based perdition models were implemented to predict traffic accident severity with the same dataset, and the prediction results show that the Deep Forests algorithm present good stability, fewer hyper-parameters, and the highest accuracy under different level of training data volume. It is expected that the findings from this study would be helpful for the establishment or improvement of effective traffic safety system within a sustainable transportation system, which is of great significance for helping government managers to establish timely proactive strategies in traffic accident prevention and effectively improve road traffic safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) explain only a small fraction of heritability for most complex human phenotypes. Genomic heritability estimates the variance explained by the SNPs on the whole genome using mixed models and accounts for the many small contributions of SNPs in the explanation of a phenotype. This paper approaches heritability from a machine learning perspective, and examines the close link between mixed models and ridge regression. Our contribution is two-fold. First, we propose estimating genomic heritability using a predictive approach via ridge regression and Generalized Cross Validation (GCV). We show that this is consistent with classical mixed model based estimation. Second, we derive simple formulae that express prediction accuracy as a function of the ratio n p , where n is the population size and p the total number of SNPs. These formulae clearly show that a high heritability does not imply an accurate prediction when p > n. Both the estimation of heritability via GCV and the prediction accuracy formulae are validated using simulated data and real data from UK Biobank. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National Mapping agencies (NMA) are frequently tasked with providing highly accurate geospatial data for a range of customers. Traditionally, this challenge has been met by combining the collection of remote sensing data with extensive field work, and the manual interpretation and processing of the combined data. Consequently, this task is a significant logistical undertaking which benefits the production of high quality output, but which is extremely expensive to deliver. Therefore, novel approaches that can automate feature extraction and classification from remotely sensed data, are of great potential interest to NMAs across the entire sector. Using research undertaken at Great Britain's NMA; Ordnance Survey (OS) as an example, this paper provides an overview of the recent advances at an NMA in the use of artificial intelligence (AI), including machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) based applications. Examples of these approaches are in automating the process of feature extraction and classification from remotely sensed aerial imagery. In addition, recent OS research in applying deep (convolutional) neural network architectures to image classification are also described. This overview is intended to be useful to other NMAs who may be considering the adoption of similar approaches within their workflows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automatic grading is not a new approach but the need to adapt the latest technology to automatic grading has become very important. As the technology has rapidly became more powerful on scoring exams and essays, especially from the 1990s onwards, partially or wholly automated grading systems using computational methods have evolved and have become a major area of research. In particular, the demand of scoring of natural language responses has created a need for tools that can be applied to automatically grade these responses. In this paper, we focus on the concept of automatic grading of short answer questions such as are typical in the UK GCSE system, and providing useful feedback on their answers to students. We present experimental results on a dataset provided from the introductory computer science class in the University of North Texas. We first apply standard data mining techniques to the corpus of student answers for the purpose of measuring similarity between the student answers and the model answer. This is based on the number of common words. We then evaluate the relation between these similarities and marks awarded by scorers. We consider an approach that groups student answers into clusters. Each cluster would be awarded the same mark, and the same feedback given to each answer in a cluster. In this manner, we demonstrate that clusters indicate the groups of students who are awarded the same or the similar scores. Words in each cluster are compared to show that clusters are constructed based on how many and which words of the model answer have been used. The main novelty in this paper is that we design a model to predict marks based on the similarities between the student answers and the model answer. We argue that computational methods be used to enhance the reliability of human scoring, and not replace it. Humans are required to calibrate the system, and to deal with situations that are challenging. Computational methods can provide insight into which student answers will be found challenging and thus be a place human judgement is required. [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]

Transferring and replicating predictive algorithms across healthcare systems constitutes a unique yet crucial challenge that needs to be addressed to enable the widespread adoption of machine learning in healthcare. In this study, we explored the impact of important differences across healthcare systems and the associated Electronic Health Records (EHRs) on machine-learning algorithms to predict mental health crises, up to 28 days in advance. We evaluated both the transferability and replicability of such machine learning models, and for this purpose, we trained six models using features and methods developed on EHR data from the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust in the UK. These machine learning models were then used to predict the mental health crises of 2907 patients seen at the Rush University System for Health in the US between 2018 and 2020. The best one was trained on a combination of US-specific structured features and frequency features from anonymized patient notes and achieved an AUROC of 0.837. A model with comparable performance, originally trained using UK structured data, was transferred and then tuned using US data, achieving an AUROC of 0.826. Our findings establish the feasibility of transferring and replicating machine learning models to predict mental health crises across diverse hospital systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By September 2022, more than 600 million cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection have been reported globally, resulting in over 6.5 million deaths. COVID-19 mortality risk estimators are often, however, developed with small unrepresentative samples and with methodological limitations. It is highly important to develop predictive tools for pulmonary embolism (PE) in COVID-19 patients as one of the most severe preventable complications of COVID-19. Early recognition can help provide life-saving targeted anti-coagulation therapy right at admission. Using a dataset of more than 800,000 COVID-19 patients from an international cohort, we propose a cost-sensitive gradient-boosted machine learning model that predicts occurrence of PE and death at admission. Logistic regression, Cox proportional hazards models, and Shapley values were used to identify key predictors for PE and death. Our prediction model had a test AUROC of 75.9% and 74.2%, and sensitivities of 67.5% and 72.7% for PE and all-cause mortality respectively on a highly diverse and held-out test set. The PE prediction model was also evaluated on patients in UK and Spain separately with test results of 74.5% AUROC, 63.5% sensitivity and 78.9% AUROC, 95.7% sensitivity. Age, sex, region of admission, comorbidities (chronic cardiac and pulmonary disease, dementia, diabetes, hypertension, cancer, obesity, smoking), and symptoms (any, confusion, chest pain, fatigue, headache, fever, muscle or joint pain, shortness of breath) were the most important clinical predictors at admission. Age, overall presence of symptoms, shortness of breath, and hypertension were found to be key predictors for PE using our extreme gradient boosted model. This analysis based on the, until now, largest global dataset for this set of problems can inform hospital prioritisation policy and guide long term clinical research and decision-making for COVID-19 patients globally. Our machine learning model developed from an international cohort can serve to better regulate hospital risk prioritisation of at-risk patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Longitudinal data sources offer new opportunities for the evaluation of sequential interventions. To adjust for time-dependent confounding in these settings, longitudinal targeted maximum likelihood based estimation (TMLE), a doubly robust method that can be coupled with machine learning, has been proposed. This paper provides a tutorial in applying longitudinal TMLE, in contrast to inverse probability of treatment weighting and g-computation based on iterative conditional expectations. We apply these methods to estimate the causal effect of nutritional interventions on clinical outcomes among critically ill children in a United Kingdom study (Control of Hyperglycemia in Paediatric Intensive Care, 2008-2011). We estimate the probability of a child's being discharged alive from the pediatric intensive care unit by a given day, under a range of static and dynamic feeding regimes. We find that before adjustment, patients who follow the static regime "never feed" are discharged by the end of the fifth day with a probability of 0.88 (95% confidence interval: 0.87, 0.90), while for the patients who follow the regime "feed from day 3," the probability of discharge is 0.64 (95% confidence interval: 0.62, 0.66). After adjustment for time-dependent confounding, most of this difference disappears, and the statistical methods produce similar results. TMLE offers a flexible estimation approach; hence, we provide practical guidance on implementation to encourage its wider use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we aimed to compare imaging-based features of brain function, measured by resting-state fMRI (rsfMRI), with individual characteristics such as age, gender, and total intracranial volume to predict behavioral measures. We developed a machine learning framework based on rsfMRI features in a dataset of 20,000 healthy individuals from the UK Biobank, focusing on temporal complexity and functional connectivity measures. Our analysis across four behavioral phenotypes revealed that both temporal complexity and functional connectivity measures provide comparable predictive performance. However, individual characteristics consistently outperformed rsfMRI features in predictive accuracy, particularly in analyses involving smaller sample sizes. Integrating rsfMRI features with demographic data sometimes enhanced predictive outcomes. The efficacy of different predictive modeling techniques and the choice of brain parcellation atlas were also examined, showing no significant influence on the results. To summarize, while individual characteristics are superior to rsfMRI in predicting behavioral phenotypes, rsfMRI still conveys additional predictive value in the context of machine learning, such as investigating the role of specific brain regions in behavioral phenotypes. Individual characteristics tend to over-perform fMRI-based metrics in the prediction of behavioral measures. However, the combination of both metrics can increase predictive accuracy, suggesting that fMRI-based metrics can successfully complement individual characteristics, mainly in large datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The early identification of patients at high-risk for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) is essential for providing optimal care and implementing targeted prevention strategies. While the Kidney Failure Risk Equation (KFRE) offers a more accurate prediction of ESRD risk compared to static eGFR-based thresholds, it does not provide insights into the patient-specific biological mechanisms that drive ESRD. This study focused on evaluating the effectiveness of KFRE in a UK-based advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) cohort and investigating whether the integration of a proteomic signature could enhance 5-year ESRD prediction. Methods: Using the Salford Kidney Study biobank, a UK-based prospective cohort of over 3000 non-dialysis CKD patients, 433 patients met our inclusion criteria: a minimum of four eGFR measurements over a two-year period and a linear eGFR trajectory. Plasma samples were obtained and analysed for novel proteomic signals using SWATH-Mass-Spectrometry. The 4-variable UK-calibrated KFRE was calculated for each patient based on their baseline clinical characteristics. Boruta machine learning algorithm was used for the selection of proteins most contributing to differentiation between patient groups. Logistic regression was employed for estimation of ESRD prediction by (1) proteomic features; (2) KFRE; and (3) proteomic features alongside KFRE. Results: SWATH maps with 943 quantified proteins were generated and investigated in tandem with available clinical data to identify potential progression biomarkers. We identified a set of proteins (SPTA1, MYL6 and C6) that, when used alongside the 4-variable UK-KFRE, improved the prediction of 5-year risk of ESRD (AUC = 0.75 vs AUC = 0.70). Functional enrichment analysis revealed Rho GTPases and regulation of the actin cytoskeleton pathways to be statistically significant, inferring their role in kidney function and the pathogenesis of renal disease. Conclusions: Proteins SPTA1, MYL6 and C6, when used alongside the 4-variable UK-KFRE achieve an improved performance when predicting a 5-year risk of ESRD. Specific pathways implicated in the pathogenesis of podocyte dysfunction were also identified, which could serve as potential therapeutic targets. The findings of our study carry implications for comprehending the involvement of the Rho family GTPases in the pathophysiology of kidney disease, advancing our understanding of the proteomic factors influencing susceptibility to renal damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are global efforts to deploy Electric Vehicles (EVs) because of the role they promise to play in energy transition. These efforts underscore the e-mobility paradigm, representing an interplay between renewable energy resources, smart technologies, and networked transportation. However, there are concerns that these initiatives could burden the electricity grid due to increased demand. Hence, the need for accurate short-term load forecasting is pivotal for the efficient planning, operation, and control of the grid and associated power systems. This study presents robust models for forecasting half-hourly and hourly loads in the UK's power system. The work leverages machine learning techniques such as Support Vector Regression (SVR), Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), and Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) to develop robust prediction models using the net imports dataset from 2010 to 2020. The models were evaluated based on metrics like Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Prediction Error (MAPE), Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD), and the Correlation of Determination (R2). For half-hourly forecasts, SVR performed best with an R-value of 99.85%, followed closely by GPR and ANN. But, for hourly forecasts, ANN led with an R-value of 99.71%. The findings affirm the reliability and precision of machine learning methods in short-term load forecasting, particularly highlighting the superior accuracy of the SVR model for half-hourly forecasts and the ANN model for hourly forecasts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification of metabolic biomarkers for aging-related diseases and mortality is of significant interest in the field of longevity. In this study, we investigated the associations between nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) metabolomics biomarkers and aging-related diseases as well as mortality using the UK Biobank dataset. We analyzed NMR samples from approximately 110,000 participants and used multi-head machine learning classification models to predict the incidence of aging-related diseases. Cox regression models were then applied to assess the relevance of NMR biomarkers to the risk of death due to aging-related diseases. Additionally, we conducted survival analyses to evaluate the potential improvements of NMR in predicting survival and identify the biomarkers most strongly associated with negative health outcomes by dividing participants into health, disease, and death groups for all age groups. Our analysis revealed specific metabolomics profiles that were associated with the incidence of age-related diseases, and the most significant biomarker was intermediate density lipoprotein cholesteryl (IDL-CE). In addition, NMR biomarkers could provide additional contributions to relevant mortality risk prediction when combined with conventional risk factors, by improving the C-index from 0.813 to 0.833, with 17 NMR biomarkers significantly contributing to disease-related death, such as monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA), linoleic acid (LA), glycoprotein acetyls (GlycA), and omega-3. Moreover, the value of free cholesterol in very large HDL particles (XL-HDL-FC) in the healthy control group demonstrated significantly higher values than the disease and death group across all age groups. This study highlights the potential of NMR metabolomics profiling as a valuable tool for identifying metabolic biomarkers associated with aging-related diseases and mortality risk, which could have practical implications for aging-related disease risk and mortality prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Osteoarthritis (OA) is increasing in prevalence and has a severe impact on patients' lives. However, our understanding of biomarkers driving OA risk remains limited. We developed a model predicting the five-year risk of OA diagnosis, integrating retrospective clinical, lifestyle and biomarker data from the UK Biobank (19,120 patients with OA, ROC-AUC: 0.72, 95%CI (0.71–0.73)). Higher age, BMI and prescription of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs contributed most to increased OA risk prediction ahead of diagnosis. We identified 14 subgroups of OA risk profiles. These subgroups were validated in an independent set of patients evaluating the 11-year OA risk, with 88% of patients being uniquely assigned to one of the 14 subgroups. Individual OA risk profiles were characterised by personalised biomarkers. Omics integration demonstrated the predictive importance of key OA genes and pathways (e.g., GDF5 and TGF-β signalling) and OA-specific biomarkers (e.g., CRTAC1 and COL9A1). In summary, this work identifies opportunities for personalised OA prevention and insights into its underlying pathogenesis. Osteoarthritis can be caused by multiple biological mechanisms but the drivers of disease risk are not well understood. Here, the authors use data from UK Biobank in machine learning models to identify clinical and biological markers associated with development of osteoarthritis and identify sub-groups with different risk profiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atrial fibrillation (AF) and ventricular arrhythmia (Arr) are among the most common and fatal cardiac arrhythmias in the world. Electrocardiogram (ECG) data, collected as part of the UK Biobank, represents an opportunity for analysis and classification of these two diseases in the UK. The main objective of our study is to investigate a two-stage model for the classification of individuals with AF and Arr in the UK Biobank dataset. The current literature addresses heart arrhythmia classification very extensively. However, the data used by most researchers lack enough instances of these common diseases. Moreover, by proposing the two-stage model and separation of normal and abnormal cases, we have improved the performance of the classifiers in detection of each specific disease. Our approach consists of two stages of classification. In the first stage, features of the ECG input are classified into two main classes: normal and abnormal. At the second stage, the features of the ECG are further categorised as abnormal and further classified into two diseases of AF and Arr. A diverse set of ECG features such as the QRS duration, PR interval and RR interval, as well as covariates such as sex, BMI, age and other factors, are used in the modelling process. For both stages, we use the XGBoost Classifier algorithm. The healthy population present in the data, has been undersampled to tackle the class imbalance present in the data. This technique has been applied and evaluated using an ECG dataset from the UKBioBank ECG taken at rest repository. The main results of our paper are as follows: The classification performance for the proposed approach has been measured using F1 score, Sensitivity (Recall) and Specificity (Precision). The results of the proposed system are 87.22%, 88.55% and 85.95%, for average F1 Score, average sensitivity and average specificity, respectively. Contribution and significance: The performance level indicates that automatic detection of AF and Arr in participants present in the UK Biobank is more precise and efficient if done in a two-stage manner. Automatic detection and classification of AF and Arr individuals this way would mean early diagnosis and prevention of more serious consequences later in their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power distribution networks are increasingly challenged by ageing plant, environmental extremes and previously unforeseen operational factors. The combination of high loading and weather conditions is responsible for large numbers of recurring faults in legacy plants which have an impact on service quality. Owing to their scale and dispersed nature, it is prohibitively expensive to intensively monitor distribution networks to capture the electrical context these disruptions occur in, making it difficult to forestall recurring faults. In this paper, localised weather data are shown to support fault prediction on distribution networks. Operational data are temporally aligned with meteorological observations to identify recurring fault causes with the potentially complex relation between them learned from historical fault records. Five years of data from a UK Distribution Network Operator is used to demonstrate the approach at both HV and LV distribution network levels with results showing the ability to predict the occurrence of a weather related fault at a given substation considering only meteorological observations. Unifying a diverse range of previously identified fault relations in a single ensemble model and accompanying the predicted network conditions with an uncertainty measure would allow a network operator to manage their network more effectively in the long term and take evasive action for imminent events over shorter timescales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]