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In this short response to the papers appearing in this special issue (Technology, AI Bots and Psychotherapy After Covid), psychotherapist and author Aaron Balick draws on the variety of themes that have arisen within the contributed papers to reflect on the wider issue of computer mediated human relations. In it he makes a distinction between the papers that focus on the therapeutic process mediated by technology and those that look more broadly at the paradigm of therapy practice in this context. Framing technology as a tool, the author pulls together both strands to explore what psychotherapy research may say about the broader issues of societies mediated by technology and how therapeutic research may contribute to these larger social issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been as unprecedented as unexpected, affecting more than 105 million people worldwide as of 8 February 2020 and causing more than 2.3 million deaths according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Not only affecting the lungs but also provoking acute respiratory distress, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is able to infect multiple cell types including cardiac and vascular cells. Hence a significant proportion of infected patients develop cardiac events, such as arrhythmias and heart failure. Patients with cardiovascular comorbidities are at highest risk of cardiac death. To face the pandemic and limit its burden, health authorities have launched several fast-track calls for research projects aiming to develop rapid strategies to combat the disease, as well as longer-term projects to prepare for the future. Biomarkers have the possibility to aid in clinical decision-making and tailoring healthcare in order to improve patient quality of life. The biomarker potential of circulating RNAs has been recognized in several disease conditions, including cardiovascular disease. RNA biomarkers may be useful in the current COVID-19 situation. The discovery, validation, and marketing of novel biomarkers, including RNA biomarkers, require multi-centre studies by large and interdisciplinary collaborative networks, involving both the academia and the industry. Here, members of the EU-CardioRNA COST Action CA17129 summarize the current knowledge about the strain that COVID-19 places on the cardiovascular system and discuss how RNA biomarkers can aid to limit this burden. They present the benefits and challenges of the discovery of novel RNA biomarkers, the need for networking efforts, and the added value of artificial intelligence to achieve reliable advances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, emerging technologies have gained popularity and being implemented in different fields. Thus, critical leading-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and other related technologies (blockchain, simulation, 3d printing, etc.) are transforming the operations and other traditional fields and proving their value in fighting against unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic outbreaks. However, due to this relation's novelty, little is known about the interplay between emerging technologies and COVID-19 and its implications to operations-related fields. In this vein, we mapped the extant literature on this integration by a structured literature review approach and found essential outcomes. In addition to the literature mapping, this paper's main contributions were identifying literature scarcity on this hot topic by operations-related fields; consequently, our paper emphasizes an urgent call to action. Also, we present a novel framework considering the primary emerging technologies and the operations processes concerning this pandemic outbreak. Also, we provided an exciting research agenda and four propositions derived from the framework, which are collated to operations processes angle. Thus, scholars and practitioners have the opportunity to adapt and advance the framework and empirically investigate and validate the propositions for this and other highly disruptive crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Coronavirus disease, i.e. (COVID-19) pandemic outbreaks has inevitably lead to a corresponding movement restrictive measure by the members of both central and state government leadership. The current limitation of healthcare systems cannot predict the COVID-19 outbreaks and vaccination drive. The need of the hour is to use Blockchain Technology for the construction of immutable ledger. In this paper a Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled COVID-19 vaccine tracking system has been proposed. The proposed system is designed using the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), decentralized storage by Inter Planetary File System (IPFS) and implemented using Truffle and Ganache Tool. The smart contract interaction among the entities is developed with Drizzle and the front-end using ReactJS. The performance of the proposed framework has been presented with Keccack 256 transaction hash, the total number of transactions, gas consumed by each contract. Additionally the performance parameters such as latency, throughput, traffic in, out, CPU, and memory utilization of the blockchain framework are also calculated. The artificial neural network (ANN) has been used to classify the vaccination group. Such an attempt is a worthwhile addition to the state of the art as evident from the results presented herein. The proposed framework provides a way for vaccinated members of the community to be tracked and indexed so as to avail the benefits, for example, less restrictive movements nationally, internationally, or simply in their own respective communities. This paper leverages the advantages of Blockchain Technology to obtain a reliable and accurate way to facilitate the entire tracking process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this position paper is to describe a historical timeline of science education. Using historical documents and current science education research, the authors create an evolutionary description of science education changes over time and how these shifts could influence how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used in science education. The focus is on how societal and educational catalyst events, spanning from the Industrial Revolution to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and the COVID-19 pandemic, influenced science education. Next, the authors suggest that teachers should meaningfully implement the use of AI in ways that focus on student-centered learning and restore the progress made by the K-12 Framework and NGSS. These include generating ideas about problems that students can solve in an interest area, analyzing large sets of real-world data, generating grade appropriate science readings to develop background knowledge, and using AI to grade unique student work to replace multiple-choice response exams. AI and science education may best be described by a Chat GPT response: "It's important to note that while AI can enhance science education, it should not replace human teachers. Instead, it should be used as a tool to augment and support their expertise, fostering a blended learning environment that combines the benefits of technology with human guidance and mentorship." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus first appeared in China in 2019, and the World Health Organization (WHO) named it COVID-19. Then WHO announced this illness as a worldwide pandemic in March 2020. The number of cases, infections, and fatalities varied considerably worldwide. Because the main characteristic of COVID-19 is its rapid spread, doctors and specialists generally use PCR tests to detect the COVID-19 virus. As an alternative to PCR, X-ray images can help diagnose illness using artificial intelligence (AI). In medicine, AI is commonly employed. Convolutional neural networks (CNN) and deep learning models make it simple to extract information from images. Several options exist when creating a deep CNN. The possibilities include network depth, layer count, layer type, and parameters. In this paper, a novel Xception-based neural network is discovered using the genetic algorithm (GA). GA finds better alternative networks and parameters during iterations. The best network discovered with GA is tested on a COVID-19 X-ray image dataset. The results are compared with other networks and the results of papers in the literature. The novel network of this paper gives more successful results. The accuracy results are 0.996, 0.989, and 0.924 for two-class, three-class, and four-class datasets, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2), surprised the world in December 2019 and has threatened the lives of millions of people. Countries all over the world closed worship places and shops, prevented gatherings, and implemented curfews to stand against the spread of COVID-19. Deep Learning (DL) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can have a great role in detecting and fighting this disease. Deep learning can be used to detect COVID-19 symptoms and signs from different imaging modalities, such as X-Ray, Computed Tomography (CT), and Ultrasound Images (US). This could help in identifying COVID-19 cases as a first step to curing them. In this paper, we reviewed the research studies conducted from January 2020 to September 2022 about deep learning models that were used in COVID-19 detection. This paper clarified the three most common imaging modalities (X-Ray, CT, and US) in addition to the DL approaches that are used in this detection and compared these approaches. This paper also provided the future directions of this field to fight COVID-19 disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence (AI) scholars and mediciners have reported AI systems that accurately detect medical imaging and COVID-19 in chest images. However, the robustness of these models remains unclear for the segmentation of images with nonuniform density distribution or the multiphase target. The most representative one is the Chan-Vese (CV) image segmentation model. In this paper, we demonstrate that the recent level set (LV) model has excellent performance on the detection of target characteristics from medical imaging relying on the filtering variational method based on the global medical pathology facture. We observe that the capability of the filtering variational method to obtain image feature quality is better than other LV models. This research reveals a far-reaching problem in medical-imaging AI knowledge detection. In addition, from the analysis of experimental results, the algorithm proposed in this paper has a good effect on detecting the lung region feature information of COVID-19 images and also proves that the algorithm has good adaptability in processing different images. These findings demonstrate that the proposed LV method should be seen as an effective clinically adjunctive method using machine-learning healthcare models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SARS-CoV-2 is a novel virus that has been affecting the global population by spreading rapidly and causing severe complications, which require prompt and elaborate emergency treatment. Automatic tools to diagnose COVID-19 could potentially be an important and useful aid. Radiologists and clinicians could potentially rely on interpretable AI technologies to address the diagnosis and monitoring of COVID-19 patients. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the state-of-the-art deep learning techniques for COVID-19 classification. The previous studies are methodically evaluated, and a summary of the proposed convolutional neural network (CNN)-based classification approaches is presented. The reviewed papers have presented a variety of CNN models and architectures that were developed to provide an accurate and quick automatic tool to diagnose the COVID-19 virus based on presented CT scan or X-ray images. In this systematic review, we focused on the critical components of the deep learning approach, such as network architecture, model complexity, parameter optimization, explainability, and dataset/code availability. The literature search yielded a large number of studies over the past period of the virus spread, and we summarized their past efforts. State-of-the-art CNN architectures, with their strengths and weaknesses, are discussed with respect to diverse technical and clinical evaluation metrics to safely implement current AI studies in medical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the problem of ensuring the political stability of a democratic social system with a shortage of a vital commodity (like vaccine against COVID-19). In such a system, members of society citizens assess the authorities. Thus, actions by the authorities to increase the supply of this commodity can contribute to citizens' approval and hence political stability. However, this supply is influenced by random factors, the actions of competitors, etc. Therefore, citizens do not have sufficient information about all the possibilities of supplying, and it is difficult for them to make the right decisions. Such citizen unawareness can be exploited by unscrupulous politicians to achieve personal targets. Therefore, it is necessary to organize public control to motivate politicians to use all available opportunities in supplying. The goal of the paper is to build such a digital mechanism of public control of the politicians by citizens, which would best assess and stimulate the activities of the authorities to improve the supply of a vital commodity. In the age of artificial intelligence, such digital public control in the face of uncertainty can be based on digital machine learning. In addition, it is necessary to take into account and model the activities of politicians associated with the presence of their own targets that do not coincide with public ones. Such politicians can use the learning of citizens for their own targets. The objective of the article is to build an optimal digital mechanism of public control in a two-level model of a democratic social system—a digital society. At its top level, there is the Citizen, who gives an assessment for the Politico located at the lower level. In turn, the Politico can influence the supplying of a vital commodity. Political stability is guaranteed if the Citizen regularly approves of the Politico's actions to increase this supply. However, the Politico may not use the opportunities available to him to offer a commodity to achieve a personal target. To avoid this, the Politico's control mechanism is proposed. It includes the procedure for digital learning of the Citizen, as well as a procedure for assessing the Politico activity. Sufficient conditions have been found for the synthesis of such the Politico's control mechanism, at which stochastic possibilities of increasing the supply of a vital commodity are used. The example of such the Politico's control mechanism is considered on the case of supply of the COVID-19 vaccine in England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, there is an increasing demand for remote monitoring technologies to reduce patient and provider exposure. One field that has an increasing potential is teleguided ultrasound, where telemedicine and point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) merge to create this new scope. Teleguided POCUS can minimize staff exposure while preserving patient safety and oversight during bedside procedures. In this paper, we propose the use of teleguided POCUS supported by AI technologies for the remote monitoring of COVID-19 patients by non-experienced personnel including self-monitoring by the patients themselves. Our hypothesis is that AI technologies can facilitate the remote monitoring of COVID-19 patients through the utilization of POCUS devices, even when operated by individuals without formal medical training. In pursuit of this goal, we performed a pilot analysis to evaluate the performance of users with different clinical backgrounds using a computer-based system for COVID-19 detection using lung ultrasound. The purpose of the analysis was to emphasize the potential of the proposed AI technology for improving diagnostic performance, especially for users with less experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a global public health concern since March 11, 2020. Healthcare systems struggled to meet patients' growing needs for diagnosis, treatment, and care. As healthcare industries struggled to cope with the overwhelming demands, advanced intelligence and computing technologies have become essential. Artificial intelligence techniques have become essential for identifying and triaging patients, predicting disease severity, and detecting outcomes. The aim of the paper is to propose a gradient boosting-based model to predict the mortality of COVID-19 patients and to improve the prediction accuracy by incorporating resampling strategies. A real COVID-19 data that includes patients' travel, health, geographical, and demographic information is obtained from a public repository. The dataset used in the study has the class imbalance problem, and several approaches are applied to solve the problem. In this study, a gradient boosting-based model for predicting the mortality of COVID-19 patients is proposed. This approach incorporates resampling strategies, such as synthetic minority oversampling technique (SMOTE), random under-sampling, and clustering-based under-sampling, to address the imbalanced class distribution problem in the dataset. Then, gradient boosting machines (GBM) such as extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), light gradient boosting machine (LightGBM), and categorical boosting (CatBoost) are analyzed in terms of accuracy and computational time. Random search method is used to find the optimal hyper-parameters for the algorithms. A stacking-based hybrid model that combines the XGBoost, LightGBM, and CatBoost algorithms was used for comparison in the experiments. In the experiments, the factors that can influence the mortality of COVID-19 patients are investigated. And, it is found that the age of the patient, whether the patient belonged to Wuhan, the difference between when they first noticed symptoms and when they visited the hospital (in days) affect the mortality. By utilizing over/under-sampling approaches, we ameliorated the concern of class imbalance. XGBoost, LightGBM, and CatBoost are effectively analyzed in terms of various performance metrics to determine the suitable GBM for the proposed system. The experimental results revealed that the stacking-based hybrid model performs well with the balanced dataset provided by SMOTE. CatBoost produces superior results for a balanced dataset with random under-sampling and clustering-based under-sampling. The main focus of the study is to propose a gradient boosting-based model for predicting the mortality of COVID-19 patients. This study also emphasizes the importance of addressing the imbalanced class distribution problem in the dataset and incorporates resampling strategies to improve the prediction accuracy. Our promising result confirms the success of the proposed system in predicting mortality of COVID-19 disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current COVID-19 pandemic has motivated the researchers to use artificial intelligence techniques for a potential alternative to reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction due to the limited scale of testing. The chest X-ray (CXR) is one of the alternatives to achieve fast diagnosis, but the unavailability of large-scale annotated data makes the clinical implementation of machine learning-based COVID detection difficult. Another issue is the usage of ImageNet pre-trained networks which does not extract reliable feature representations from medical images. In this paper, we propose the use of hierarchical convolutional network (HCN) architecture to naturally augment the data along with diversified features. The HCN uses the first convolution layer from COVIDNet followed by the convolutional layers from well-known pre-trained networks to extract the features. The use of the convolution layer from COVIDNet ensures the extraction of representations relevant to the CXR modality. We also propose the use of ECOC for encoding multiclass problems to binary classification for improving the recognition performance. Experimental results show that HCN architecture is capable of achieving better results in comparison with the existing studies. The proposed method can accurately triage potential COVID-19 patients through CXR images for sharing the testing load and increasing the testing capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this concept paper is the description of a new tool to support institutions in the implementation of targeted countermeasures, based on quantitative and multi-scale elements, for the fight and prevention of emergencies, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. The tool is a cloud-based centralized system; a multi-user platform that relies on artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms for the processing of heterogeneous data, which can produce as an output the level of risk. The model includes a specific neural network which is first trained to learn the correlations between selected inputs, related to the case of interest: environmental variables (chemical–physical, such as meteorological), human activity (such as traffic and crowding), level of pollution (in particular the concentration of particulate matter) and epidemiological variables related to the evolution of the contagion. The tool realized in the first phase of the project will serve later both as a decision support system (DSS) with predictive capacity, when fed by the actual measured data, and as a simulation bench performing the tuning of certain input values, to identify which of them led to a decrease in the degree of risk. In this way, we aimed to design different scenarios to compare different restrictive strategies and the actual expected benefits, to adopt measures sized to the actual needs, adapted to the specific areas of analysis and useful for safeguarding human health; and we compared the economic and social impacts of the choices. Although ours is a concept paper, some preliminary analyses have been shown, and two different case studies are presented, whose results have highlighted a correlation between NO 2 , mobility and COVID-19 data. However, given the complexity of the virus diffusion mechanism, linked to air pollutants but also to many other factors, these preliminary studies confirmed the need, on the one hand, to carry out more in-depth analyses, and on the other, to use AI algorithms to capture the hidden relationships among the huge amounts of data to process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• In this position paper, we provide a collection of views on the role of AI in the COVID-19 pandemic, from the clinical needs to the design of AI-based systems, to the translation of the developed tools to the clinic. • We highlight key factors in designing system solutions - per specific task; as well as design issues in managing the disease on the national level. • We focus on three specific use-cases for which AI systems can be built: from the early disease detection, the management of the disease in a hospital setting, and building patient-specific predictive models that require the combination of imaging with additional clinical features. • Infrastructure considerations and population modeling in two European countries will be described. • This pandemic has made the practical and scientific challenges of making AI solutions very explicit. A discussion concludes this paper, with a list of challenges facing the community in the AI road ahead. In this position paper, we provide a collection of views on the role of AI in the COVID-19 pandemic, from clinical requirements to the design of AI-based systems, to the translation of the developed tools to the clinic. We highlight key factors in designing system solutions - per specific task; as well as design issues in managing the disease at the national level. We focus on three specific use-cases for which AI systems can be built: early disease detection, management in a hospital setting, and building patient-specific predictive models that require the combination of imaging with additional clinical data. Infrastructure considerations and population modeling in two European countries will be described. This pandemic has made the practical and scientific challenges of making AI solutions very explicit. A discussion concludes this paper, with a list of challenges facing the community in the AI road ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of 2020, Coronavirus Disease 19 (COVID-19) has attracted the attention of the World Health Organization (WHO). This paper looks into the infection mechanism, patient symptoms, and laboratory diagnosis, followed by an extensive assessment of different technologies and computerized models (based on Electrocardiographic signals (ECG), Voice, and X-ray techniques) proposed as a diagnostic tool for the accurate detection of COVID-19. The found papers showed high accuracy rate results, ranging between 85.70% and 100%, and F1-Scores from 89.52% to 100%. With this state-of-the-art, we concluded that the models proposed for the detection of COVID-19 already have significant results, but the area still has room for improvement, given the vast symptomatology and the better comprehension of individuals' evolution of the disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the role of the chromatic information in CT scans in COVID-19 detection and we aim to confirm the inclusion of the artificial intelligence findings in assisting COVID-19 diagnosis. This paper proposes a freezing-based convolutional neural network learning using a morphological transformation of CT images to classify COVID-19 cohorts to help in prognostication pneumonia disease monitoring. The experiments made on the collected CT images from previous works have proven to be a powerful aid to recognize the lesions in CT images which works at comprehensively greater accuracy and speed. The proposed CNN architecture has reflected the viral proliferation in infected patients and archives an accuracy of 87.56% with an improvement by 3% compared to the baseline method on the available database of CT images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted global energy markets and caused significant socio-economic impacts worldwide, including the energy sector due to lockdowns and restricted economic activity. This paper presents a comprehensive and analytical review of the impact of COVID-19 on the energy sector and explores the potential role of artificial intelligence (AI) in mitigating its effects. This review examines the changes in energy demand patterns during the pre-, mid-, and post-pandemic periods, analyzing their implications for the energy industries, including policymaking, communication, digital technology, energy conversion, the environment, energy markets, and power systems. Additionally, we explore how AI can enhance energy efficiency, optimize energy use, and reduce energy wastage. The potential of AI in developing sustainable energy systems is discussed, along with the challenges it poses in the energy sector's response to the pandemic. The recommendations for AI applications in the energy sector for the transition to a more sustainable energy future, with examples drawn from previous successful studies, are outlined. Information corroborated in this review is expected to provide important guidelines for crafting future research areas and directions in preparing the energy sector for any unforeseen circumstances or pandemic-like situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 outbreak has caused a devastating impact on the daily lives of people, public health, and economic progress of infected countries. It has become a leading cause of substantial mortality and morbidity around the world. The emergence of new variants of virus has posed severe challenges for humanitarian society. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has played a vital role in this pandemic and offered various promising innovations to control its dissemination. The current research study presents a scientometric analysis on the literature of ICT-assisted COVID-19 research. In this paper, ICT has been classified into six major categories; artificial intelligence and medical imaging, mobile technology, ubiquitous computing, big data analytics, social media platforms, and printing technology. It extensively examines the role of these technologies in COVID-19 by applying various empirical approaches such as co-citation analysis, publication and citation behavior analysis, participating nations, and knowledge mapping of scientific literature using visualization tool CiteSpace. Furthermore, it provides a visual approach to identify developing paths, evolution trends, research hotspots, cluster analysis, and potential future directions in medical informatics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spreading of Coronavirus (covid-19) is pushing the healthcare organizations under exceptional strain over the universe and increasing pressure concurring to the World Health Organization (WHO). With advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the discovery of this type of infection during the initial stage offers assistance in quick recuperation and in discharging the pressure on healthcare organizations. This paper presents the deep convolution network to detect the coronavirus in chest x-ray images. Due to the lack of benchmark datasets for covid-19 specifically in chest x-ray images, this work presents the framework that adopts the Generative Adversarial Network of Deep Convolution (DC-GAN). The proposed model of DC-GAN can generate a maximum of 30 different patterns for a single image and thus increases the size of dataset. It also offers assistance in overwhelming the overfitting issue and building the proposed framework more robust. The proposed model implements the transfer learning updated by the loss function using the ImageNet to attain the finest parameters from the pre-trained model. The publically available dataset is utilized to validate the proposed work. This work is validated by conducting the various experiments in various perspectives and also its performances are recorded using the measures namely accuracy, recall, precision and, F1score. These recorded results compared with the various existing methods.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The replication of biological systems by mechanical and electronic devices is referred to as bionics. The bionics industry has grown along four primary application areas, in addition to hearing, vision, orthopedics, and a small, dispersed group of implants that enhance cardiac and neurological functions. The SARS‐CoV‐2 virus is the infectious disease known as coronavirus disease (COVID‐19). The virus‐infected people require assistance to better understand the situation caused by COVID‐19 and to bring some easy, efficient, and effective solutions. One of the solutions mentioned for the early stages involves wearable sensors with temperature sensors for early Covid‐19 identification and photos delivered to an AI‐enabled smartphone, robotic sensor, or robot itself. In severe situations, lung X‐ray images are captured by robotic and remote sensors, and the lungs are given the right medication to finish off the virus. The paper presents the study on the overview, applications of artificial intelligence, and deep learning from the bionics point of view. Deep learning and machine learning will be used for reducing the Covid‐19 outbreak. Wearable sensors provide important data by having temperature‐embedded sensors in several physical devices that reveal details about the environment and body that are connected. Covid‐19 probability prediction is aided by smartphones with artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities. Case history, doctor notes, chest X‐ray reports, details on the sites of breakouts, and other criteria can help forecast the severity of Covid‐19 when it is in its severe phases and direct the administration of medication to a specific area of the lungs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since December 2019, a novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has infected millions of individuals. This paper conducts a thorough study of the use of deep learning (DL) and federated learning (FL) approaches to COVID-19 screening. To begin, an evaluation of research articles published between 1 January 2020 and 28 June 2023 is presented, considering the preferred reporting items of systematic reviews and meta-analysis (PRISMA) guidelines. The review compares various datasets on medical imaging, including X-ray, computed tomography (CT) scans, and ultrasound images, in terms of the number of images, COVID-19 samples, and classes in the datasets. Following that, a description of existing DL algorithms applied to various datasets is offered. Additionally, a summary of recent work on FL for COVID-19 screening is provided. Efforts to improve the quality of FL models are comprehensively reviewed and objectively evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spread of the COVID-19 started back in 2019; and so far, more than 4 million people around the world have lost their lives to this deadly virus and its variants. In view of the high transmissibility of the Corona virus, which has turned this disease into a global pandemic, artificial intelligence can be employed as an effective tool for an earlier detection and treatment of this illness. In this review paper, we evaluate the performance of the deep learning models in processing the X-Ray and CT-Scan images of the Corona patients' lungs and describe the changes made to these models in order to enhance their Corona detection accuracy. To this end, we introduce the famous deep learning models such as VGGNet, GoogleNet and ResNet and after reviewing the research works in which these models have been used for the detection of COVID-19, we compare the performances of the newer models such as DenseNet, CapsNet, MobileNet and EfficientNet. We then present the deep learning techniques of GAN, transfer learning, and data augmentation and examine the statistics of using these techniques. Here, we also describe the datasets introduced since the onset of the COVID-19. These datasets contain the lung images of Corona patients, healthy individuals, and the patients with non-Corona pulmonary diseases. Lastly, we elaborate on the existing challenges in the use of artificial intelligence for COVID-19 detection and the prospective trends of using this method in similar situations and conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The purpose of this paper was to systematically evaluate the application value of artificial intelligence in predicting mortality among COVID-19 patients. Methods: The PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, CNKI, Wanfang, China Biomedical Literature, and VIP databases were systematically searched from inception to October 2022 to identify studies that evaluated the predictive effects of artificial intelligence on mortality among COVID-19 patients. The retrieved literature was screened according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The quality of the included studies was assessed using the QUADAS-2 tools. Statistical analysis of the included studies was performed using Review Manager 5.3, Stata 16.0, and Meta-DiSc 1.4 statistical software. This meta-analysis was registered in PROSPERO (CRD42022315158). Findings: Of 2193 studies, 23 studies involving a total of 25 AI models met the inclusion criteria. Among them, 18 studies explicitly mentioned training and test sets, and 5 studies did not explicitly mention grouping. In the training set, the pooled sensitivity was 0.93 [0.87, 0.96], the pooled specificity was 0.94 [0.87, 0.97], and the area under the ROC curve was 0.98 [0.96, 0.99]. In the validation set, the pooled sensitivity was 0.84 [0.78, 0.88], the pooled specificity was 0.89 [0.85, 0.92], and the area under the ROC curve was 0.93 [1.00, 0.00]. In the subgroup analysis, the areas under the summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curves of the artificial intelligence models KNN, SVM, ANN, RF and XGBoost were 0.98, 0.98, 0.94, 0.92, and 0.91, respectively. The Deeks funnel plot indicated that there was no significant publication bias in this study (P > 0.05). Interpretation: Artificial intelligence models have high accuracy in predicting mortality among COVID-19 patients and have high prognostic value. Among them, the KNN, SVM, ANN, RF, XGBoost, and other models have the highest levels of accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers and scientists can use computational-based models to turn linked data into useful information, aiding in disease diagnosis, examination, and viral containment due to recent artificial intelligence and machine learning breakthroughs. In this paper, we extensively study the role of artificial intelligence and machine learning in delivering efficient responses to the COVID-19 pandemic almost four years after its start. In this regard, we examine a large number of critical studies conducted by various academic and research communities from multiple disciplines, as well as practical implementations of artificial intelligence algorithms that suggest potential solutions in investigating different COVID-19 decision-making scenarios. We identify numerous areas where artificial intelligence and machine learning can impact this context, including diagnosis (using chest X-ray imaging and CT imaging), severity, tracking, treatment, and the drug industry. Furthermore, we analyse the dilemma's limits, restrictions, and hazards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Healthcare sensors represent a valid and non-invasive instrument to capture and analyse physiological data. Several vital signals, such as voice signals, can be acquired anytime and anywhere, achieved with the least possible discomfort to the patient thanks to the development of increasingly advanced devices. The integration of sensors with artificial intelligence techniques contributes to the realization of faster and easier solutions aimed at improving early diagnosis, personalized treatment, remote patient monitoring and better decision making, all tasks vital in a critical situation such as that of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper presents a study about the possibility to support the early and non-invasive detection of COVID-19 through the analysis of voice signals by means of the main machine learning algorithms. If demonstrated, this detection capacity could be embedded in a powerful mobile screening application. To perform this important study, the Coswara dataset is considered. The aim of this investigation is not only to evaluate which machine learning technique best distinguishes a healthy voice from a pathological one, but also to identify which vowel sound is most seriously affected by COVID-19 and is, therefore, most reliable in detecting the pathology. The results show that Random Forest is the technique that classifies most accurately healthy and pathological voices. Moreover, the evaluation of the vowel /e/ allows the detection of the effects of COVID-19 on voice quality with a better accuracy than the other vowels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coronavirus (COVID-19) is an epidemic that is rapidly spreading and causing a severe healthcare crisis resulting in more than 40 million confirmed cases across the globe. There are many intensive studies on AI-based technique, which is time consuming and troublesome by considering heavyweight models in terms of more training parameters and memory cost, which leads to higher time complexity. To improve diagnosis, this paper is aimed to design and establish a unique lightweight deep learning-based approach to perform multi-class classification (normal, COVID-19, and pneumonia) and binary class classification (normal and COVID-19) on X-ray radiographs of chest. This proposed CNN scheme includes the combination of three CBR blocks (convolutional batch normalization ReLu) with learnable parameters and one global average pooling (GP) layer and fully connected layer. The overall accuracy of the proposed model achieved 98.33% and finally compared with the pre-trained transfer learning model (DenseNet-121, ResNet-101, VGG-19, and XceptionNet) and recent state-of-the-art model. For validation of the proposed model, several parameters are considered such as learning rate, batch size, number of epochs, and different optimizers. Apart from this, several other performance measures like tenfold cross-validation, confusion matrix, evaluation metrics, sarea under the receiver operating characteristics, kappa score and Mathew's correlation, and Grad-CAM heat map have been used to assess the efficacy of the proposed model. The outcome of this proposed model is more robust, and it may be useful for radiologists for faster diagnostics of COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The documentation and management of the cultural heritage of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the heritage of the digital age are emerging discourses in cultural heritage management. The enthusiastic uptake of a generative artificial intelligence application (ChatGPT) by the general public and academics alike has provided an opportunity to explore (i) whether, and to what extent, generative AI can conceptualize an emergent, not well-described field of cultural heritage (the heritage of COVID-19), (ii), whether it can design an exhibition on the topic, and (iii) whether it can identify sites associated with the pandemic that may become significant heritage. Drawing on an extended 'conversation' with ChatGPT, this paper shows that generative AI is capable of not only developing a concept for an exhibition of the heritage of COVID-19 but also that it can provide a defensible array of exhibition topics as well as a relevant selection of exhibition objects. ChatGPT is also capable of making suggestions on the selection of cultural heritage sites associated with the pandemic, but these lack specificity. The discrepancy between ChatGPT's responses to the exhibition concept and its responses regarding potential heritage sites suggests differential selection and access to the data that were used to train the model, with a seemingly heavy reliance on Wikipedia. The 'conversation' has shown that ChatGPT can serve as a brainstorming tool, but that a curator's considered interpretation of the responses is still essential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In medical practice, all decisions, as for example the diagnosis based on the classification of images, must be made reliably and effectively. The possibility of having automatic tools helping doctors in performing these important decisions is highly welcome. Artificial Intelligence techniques, and in particular Deep Learning methods, have proven very effective on these tasks, with excellent performance in terms of classification accuracy. The problem with such methods is that they represent black boxes, so they do not provide users with an explanation of the reasons for their decisions. Confidence from medical experts in clinical decisions can increase if they receive from Artificial Intelligence tools interpretable output under the form of, e.g., explanations in natural language or visualized information. This way, the system outcome can be critically assessed by them, and they can evaluate the trustworthiness of the results. In this paper, we propose a new general-purpose method that relies on interpretability ideas. The approach is based on two successive steps, the former being a filtering scheme typically used in Content-Based Image Retrieval, whereas the latter is an evolutionary algorithm able to classify and, at the same time, automatically extract explicit knowledge under the form of a set of IF-THEN rules. This approach is tested on a set of chest X-ray images aiming at assessing the presence of COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 is a dangerous disease that directly damages human health, with the properties of severely contagious and highly variable. It is endangering the health and safety of people all around the world. Thus, it compels governments to seek rapid detection, diagnosis and treatment, and epidemic forecasting approaches under the consumption of considerable human resources, material, and financial resources, for the purpose of curbing its development. In view of diverse merits, such as flexibility, rapidity, and non-intrusion, artificial intelligence (AI) techniques have unparalleled advantages in the rapid, non-contact auxiliary diagnosis and epidemic prediction of COVID-19. This paper reviews the AI's technical advances and clinical applications in the COVID-19 epidemic, including computer-aided diagnosis and epidemic prediction, especially the pipelines of medical imaging and analytical techniques. The survey aims to comprehensively investigate the application of AI technologies in the fight against the epidemic and attempt to organize related works in a globally understandable way. This survey also summarizes current challenging issues in the diagnosis and prediction of COVID-19 with AI technologies and puts forward some suggestions for future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID‐19) has led to a global pandemic in the year 2020 and the cases are dynamically increasing and active all over the world. COVID‐19 is caused due to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2). It is a human‐to‐human transmissible disease which has severely affected people especially with weaker immunity, and is detected through Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT‐PCR). RT‐PCR is a lethargic process and therefore intelligent systems are proposed which uses chest images for early detection of COVID‐19. This paper proposes a regularized and attentive intelligent system called 'Mixed Attention & Regularized COVID‐19 Network (MARCOV19‐Net)' for detection of COVID‐19 using chest X‐Ray images. The performance of MARCOV19‐Net is compared with VGG‐16, Regularized COVID‐19 Deep Convolutional Network (RCOV19‐DCNet) and Mixed Attention and unregularized COVID‐19 Network (MACOV19‐Net), and with other state‐of‐the‐art models. MARCOV19‐Net has achieved the highest F‐score, ROC and AUC of 98.76%, 99.4% and 99.6%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fighting against the pandemic diseases with unique characters requires new sophisticated approaches like the artificial intelligence. This paper develops an artificial intelligence algorithm to produce multi-dimensional policies for controlling and minimizing the pandemic casualties under the limited pharmacological resources. In this respect, a comprehensive parametric model with a priority and age-specific vaccination policy and a variety of non-pharmacological policies are introduced. This parametric model is utilized for constructing an artificial intelligence algorithm by following the exact analogy of the model-based solution. Also, this parametric model is manipulated by the artificial intelligence algorithm to seek for the best multi-dimensional non-pharmacological policies that minimize the future pandemic casualties as desired. The role of the pharmacological and non-pharmacological policies on the uncertain future casualties are extensively addressed on the real data. It is shown that the developed artificial intelligence algorithm is able to produce efficient policies which satisfy the particular optimization targets such as focusing on minimization of the death casualties more than the infected casualties or considering the curfews on the people age over 65 rather than the other non-pharmacological policies. The paper finally analyses a variety of the mutant virus cases and the corresponding non-pharmacological policies aiming to reduce the morbidity and mortality rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Consumer and advanced consumption culture in modern society is an era that focuses on individual personality and value, and "my own customized products", or customized marketing strategies, are actively being developed throughout the industry. Recently, IT technologies that can support personalized services such as artificial intelligence, ubiquitous systems, and marketing automation have been recognized for their potential, directly or indirectly affecting distribution industries affected by personal consumption culture. Accordingly, customized products or services, i.e., customization, are attracting attention as an effective methodology to cope with such market changes. Objectives: Among the necessities used by modern women, cosmetics account for an endless interest in beauty and maintaining physical and mental health, and as the cosmetics market expands, it is considered that the cosmetics industry needs a clearer and in‐depth study on the cosmetics submarket to satisfy consumers' diverse needs. Methods: This review paper is a literature review, and a narrative review approach has been used for this study. A total of 300 to 400 references were selected using representative journal search websites such as PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus, ResearchGate, LitCovid, DBPia, and RISS, of which a total of 42 papers were selected in the final stage based on 2013 to 2022 using PRISMA flow diagram. Results: This study suggested to indicate the changes in the cosmetics market due to the emergence of cosmetics curation services after the coronavirus disease‐19 pandemic, advanced changes in consumer purchase patterns following the 4th Industrial Revolution, and significant future prospects of cosmetics curation services. Conclusion: As the beauty and cosmetology industry is expected to develop in the future, it will grow as a centerpiece of the beauty industry and symbolizes nationalized cultural pride. Therefore, this review article will be continuing to promote customization as a premium beauty service for dermatological condition in Republic of Korea through corporate analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fighting against the pandemic diseases with unique characters requires new sophisticated approaches like the artificial intelligence. This paper develops an artificial intelligence algorithm to produce multi-dimensional policies for controlling and minimizing the pandemic casualties under the limited pharmacological resources. In this respect, a comprehensive parametric model with a priority and age-specific vaccination policy and a variety of non-pharmacological policies are introduced. This parametric model is utilized for constructing an artificial intelligence algorithm by following the exact analogy of the model-based solution. Also, this parametric model is manipulated by the artificial intelligence algorithm to seek for the best multi-dimensional non-pharmacological policies that minimize the future pandemic casualties as desired. The role of the pharmacological and non-pharmacological policies on the uncertain future casualties are extensively addressed on the real data. It is shown that the developed artificial intelligence algorithm is able to produce efficient policies which satisfy the particular optimization targets such as focusing on minimization of the death casualties more than the infected casualties or considering the curfews on the people age over 65 rather than the other non-pharmacological policies. The paper finally analyses a variety of the mutant virus cases and the corresponding non-pharmacological policies aiming to reduce the morbidity and mortality rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sudden outbreak of the novel Coronavirus (nCoV-19, COVID-19) and its rampant spread led to a significant number of people being infected worldwide and disrupted several businesses. With most of the countries imposing serious lockdowns due to the increasing number of fatalities, the social lives of millions of people were affected. Although the lockdown led to an increase in network activities, online shopping, and social network usage, it also raised questions On the mental wellness of society. Interestingly, excessive usage of social networks also witnessed humor traveling across the Internet in the form of Internet Memes during the lockdown period. Humor is known to affect our well-being, decision-making, and psychological systems. In this paper, we have analyzed the Internet Meme activity in Social Networks during the COVID-19 Lockdown period. As humor is known to relieve individuals from psychological stress, it is necessary to understand how human beings adopted Internet Memes for coping up with the lockdown stress and stress-relieving mechanism during the lockdown period. In this paper, we have considered thirty popular memes and the increase in the number of their captions within the period (September 2017 to August 2020). An increase in Internet Meme activity since the lockdown period (March 2020) depicts an increase in online social behavior. We analyze the internet meme activity in social networks during the COVID-19 lockdown period using random forest, multi-layer perceptron, and instance-based learning algorithms followed by data visualization using line graph and Heat Map (8 & 15 clustered). We also compared the performance of the models using evaluation parameters like mean absolute error, root-mean-squared error & Kappa statistics and observed that random forest and instance-based learning algorithms perform better than multi-layer perceptrons. The result indicates that random forest and instance-based learning classifiers are having near perfect classification tendencies whereas multi-layer perceptrons showed around 97% classification accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Worldwide, COVID-19 is a highly contagious epidemic that has affected various fields. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and particular feature selection approaches, this study evaluates the aspects affecting the health of students throughout the COVID-19 lockdown time. The research presented in this paper plays a vital role in indicating the factor affecting the health of students during the lockdown in the COVID-19 pandemic. The research presented in this article investigates COVID-19's impact on student health using feature selections. The Filter feature selection technique is used in the presented work to statistically analyze all the features in the dataset, and for better accuracy. ReliefF (TuRF) filter feature selection is tuned and utilized in such a way that it helps to identify the factors affecting students' health from a benchmark dataset of students studying during COVID-19. Random Forest (RF), Gradient Boosted Decision Trees (GBDT), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and 2- layer Neural Network (NN), helps in identifying the most critical indicators for rapid intervention. Results of the approach presented in the paper identified that the students who maintained their weight and kept themselves busy in health activities in the pandemic, such student's remained healthy through this pandemic and study from home in a positive manner. The results suggest that the 2- layer NN machine-learning algorithm showed better accuracy (90%) to predict the factors affecting on health issues of students during COVID-19 lockdown time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a sharp increase in the interest in artificial intelligence (AI) as a tool supporting the work of doctors in difficult conditions and providing early detection of the implications of the disease. Recent studies have shown that AI has been successfully applied in the healthcare sector. The objective of this paper is to perform a systematic review to summarize the electroencephalogram (EEG) findings in patients with coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and databases and tools used in artificial intelligence algorithms, supporting the diagnosis and correlation between lung disease and brain damage, and lung damage. Available search tools containing scientific publications, such as PubMed and Google Scholar, were comprehensively evaluated and searched with open databases and tools used in AI algorithms. This work aimed to collect papers from the period of January 2019–May 2022 including in their resources the database from which data necessary for further development of algorithms supporting the diagnosis of the respiratory system can be downloaded and the correlation between lung disease and brain damage can be evaluated. The 10 articles which show the most interesting AI algorithms, trained by using open databases and associated with lung diseases, were included for review with 12 articles related to EEGs, which have/or may be related with lung diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic is rapidly spreading across the globe and infected millions of people that take hundreds of thousands of lives. Over the years, the role of Artificial intelligence (AI) has been on the rise as its algorithms are getting more and more accurate and it is thought that its role in strengthening the existing healthcare system will be the most profound. Moreover, the pandemic brought an opportunity to showcase AI and healthcare integration potentials as the current infrastructure worldwide is overwhelmed and crumbling. Due to AI's flexibility and adaptability, it can be used as a tool to tackle COVID-19. Motivated by these facts, in this paper, we surveyed how the AI techniques can handle the COVID-19 pandemic situation and present the merits and demerits of these techniques. This paper presents a comprehensive end-to-end review of all the AI-techniques that can be used to tackle all areas of the pandemic. Further, we systematically discuss the issues of the COVID-19, and based on the literature review, we suggest their potential countermeasures using AI techniques. In the end, we analyze various open research issues and challenges associated with integrating the AI techniques in the COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, has raised a serious situation across world human population and has become serious threat as contagious outbreak. This paper aims to overview the recently intelligent systems based on Artificial Intelligence using different medical imaging modalities like Computer Tomography (CT) and X-ray. This paper specifically discusses the machine learning techniques developed for COVID-19 diagnosis and provides insights on well-known data sets used to train these AI based networks. It also highlights the use of AI in COVID detection and classification at faster process where normal COVID testing takes couple of days to produce. Finally, we conclude by addressing the challenges associated with the use of Machine Leaming methods for COVID-19 detection and probable future trends in this research area. This paper is intended to provide experts (medical or otherwise) and technicians with new insights into the ways machine learning techniques are used and how they potentially further work in com batting the outbreak of CO VID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies across the health care spectrum have evolved as the biggest instrument for managing catastrophically spread (COVID-19) pandemic. The outbreak of novel coronavirus has posed numerous arduous challenges such as well-being, Financial, ecological, social, and ethical challenges to the entire world populace and disrupted global economy. This paper aims to thoroughly explore and analyze the role of AI coupled with radiological imaging as one important tool for covid-19 screening, prediction, forecasting, and contact tracing using chest X-ray images and Computer Tomography scan over the conventional RT-PCR (Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction) technique, which is the conventional technique used in the prognosis of the novel corona. This paper further accentuates Al's role in the fight to curb this pandemic and suggestsan innovative solution for COVID-19 health management by minimizing human contact and protecting front-line healthcare personnel, administrative staff, and the public at large. A systematic approach for literature review is carried out on the reputed database. This research makes a seminal contribution by compiling the most upto-date state-of-the-art scientific approaches to the COVID-19 assessment., using real-world datasets and the ethical perspective of AI-powered solutions for COVID-19 health management. The findings are reviewed and concluded in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sophia is the first social Humanoid to be entitled to a passport and citizenship of Saudi Arabia. This paradigm shifts in artificial intelligence from artificial machine learning to a socially personified humanoid is technologically a quantum leap that can, by several means, help the society. AI-powered robotics technology has proved its worth to fight against Covid19. This paper analyzes such cases where AI and Robotics have made the difference to facilitate the treatment process and has provided safe platforms and portals for public health management. Further, it emphasizes the ethical efficacy of AI-powered based humanoids systems which can save humans from the infection on the one hand and can offer medical services to treat the patients from Covid-19 pandemic like diseases in future. The paper makes a seminal contribution to developing medical ethics for AI-powered Robotics and Humanoids systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]