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In recent years, machine learning (ML) has become increasingly popular in various fields of activity. Cloud platforms have also grown in popularity, as they offer services that are more secure and accessible worldwide. In this context, cloud-based technologies emerged to support ML, giving rise to the machine learning as a service (MLaaS) concept. However, the clients accessing ML services in order to obtain classification results on private data may be reluctant to upload sensitive information to cloud. The model owners may also prefer not to outsource their models in order to prevent model inversion attacks and to protect intellectual property. The privacy-preserving evaluation of ML models is possible through multi-key homomorphic encryption (MKHE), that allows both the client data and the model to be encrypted under different keys. In this paper, we propose an MKHE evaluation method for decision trees and we extend the proposed method for random forests. Each decision tree is evaluated as a single lookup table, and voting is performed at the level of groups of decision trees in the random forest. We provide both theoretical and experimental evaluations for the proposed method. The aim is to minimize the performance degradation introduced by the encrypted model compared to a plaintext model while also obtaining practical classification times. In our experiments with the proposed MKHE random forest evaluation method, we obtained minimal (less than 0.6%) impact on the main ML performance metrics considered for each scenario, while also achieving reasonable classification times (of the order of seconds). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, explainability in machine and deep learning has become an important area in the field of research as well as interest, both due to the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) methods and understanding of the decisions made by models. The explainability of artificial intelligence (XAI) is due to the increasing consciousness in, among other things, data mining, error elimination, and learning performance by various AI algorithms. Moreover, XAI will allow the decisions made by models in problems to be more transparent as well as effective. In this study, models from the 'glass box' group of Decision Tree, among others, and the 'black box' group of Random Forest, among others, were proposed to understand the identification of selected types of currant powders. The learning process of these models was carried out to determine accuracy indicators such as accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. It was visualized using Local Interpretable Model Agnostic Explanations (LIMEs) to predict the effectiveness of identifying specific types of blackcurrant powders based on texture descriptors such as entropy, contrast, correlation, dissimilarity, and homogeneity. Bagging (Bagging_100), Decision Tree (DT0), and Random Forest (RF7_gini) proved to be the most effective models in the framework of currant powder interpretability. The measures of classifier performance in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score for Bagging_100, respectively, reached values of approximately 0.979. In comparison, DT0 reached values of 0.968, 0.972, 0.968, and 0.969, and RF7_gini reached values of 0.963, 0.964, 0.963, and 0.963. These models achieved classifier performance measures of greater than 96%. In the future, XAI using agnostic models can be an additional important tool to help analyze data, including food products, even online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, researchers have proven the effectiveness and speediness of machine learning-based cancer diagnosis models. However, it is difficult to explain the results generated by machine learning models, especially ones that utilized complex high-dimensional data like RNA sequencing data. In this study, we propose the binarilization technique as a novel way to treat RNA sequencing data and used it to construct explainable cancer prediction models. We tested our proposed data processing technique on five different models, namely neural network, random forest, xgboost, support vector machine, and decision tree, using four cancer datasets collected from the National Cancer Institute Genomic Data Commons. Since our datasets are imbalanced, we evaluated the performance of all models using metrics designed for imbalance performance like geometric mean, Matthews correlation coefficient, F-Measure, and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. Our approach showed comparative performance while relying on less features. Additionally, we demonstrated that data binarilization offers higher explainability by revealing how each feature affects the prediction. These results demonstrate the potential of data binarilization technique in improving the performance and explainability of RNA sequencing based cancer prediction models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the effectiveness of six prominent machine learning models—random forest, decision trees, K-nearest neighbor, logistic regression, support vector machines, and Naïve Bayes—for intrusion detection systems in industrial Internet of Things environments. The evaluation encompasses the effects of data preprocessing techniques, including feature engineering, data normalization, recoding, and missing data mitigation. Furthermore, the research delves into dataset balancing, examining the effects of six different techniques on model performance. The investigations are conducted using the domain-specific WUSTL-IIOT-2021 dataset, which captures the unique characteristics of IIoT data. The study also investigates multi-class attack identification utilizing an innovative SMOTE-based multi-class balancing approach to tackle dataset imbalances. The results indicate that data preprocessing and intelligent dataset balancing produce consistent enhancements in the classification performance of the selected models across binary and multi-classification tasks. Random forest emerges as the standout algorithm, delivering consistently high performance with computational efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In real-world classification problems, it is important to build accurate prediction models and provide information that can improve decision-making. Decision-support tools are often based on network models, and this article uses information encoded by social networks to solve the problem of employer turnover. However, understanding the factors behind black-box prediction models can be challenging. Our question was about the predictability of employee turnover, given information from the multilayer network that describes collaborations and perceptions that assess the performance of organizations that indicate the success of cooperation. Our goal was to develop an accurate prediction procedure, preserve the interpretability of the classification, and capture the wide variety of specific reasons that explain positive cases. After a feature engineering, we identified variables with the best predictive power using decision trees and ranked them based on their added value considering their frequent co-occurrence. We applied the Random Forest using the SMOTE balancing technique for prediction. We calculated the SHAP values to identify the variables that contribute the most to individual predictions. As a last step, we clustered the sample based on SHAP values to fine-tune the explanations for quitting due to different background factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many individual studies in the literature observed the superiority of tree-based machine learning (ML) algorithms. However, the current body of literature lacks statistical validation of this superiority. This study addresses this gap by employing five ML algorithms on 200 open-access datasets from a wide range of research contexts to statistically confirm the superiority of tree-based ML algorithms over their counterparts. Specifically, it examines two tree-based ML (Decision tree and Random forest) and three non-tree-based ML (Support vector machine, Logistic regression and k-nearest neighbour) algorithms. Results from paired-sample t-tests show that both tree-based ML algorithms reveal better performance than each non-tree-based ML algorithm for the four ML performance measures (accuracy, precision, recall and F1 score) considered in this study, each at p<0.001 significance level. This performance superiority is consistent across both the model development and test phases. This study also used paired-sample t-tests for the subsets of the research datasets from disease prediction (66) and university-ranking (50) research contexts for further validation. The observed superiority of the tree-based ML algorithms remains valid for these subsets. Tree-based ML algorithms significantly outperformed non-tree-based algorithms for these two research contexts for all four performance measures. We discuss the research implications of these findings in detail in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Price changes in construction materials have a significant impact on building construction projects. Such price variations occur at random and at varying rates over time. A system that can estimate the magnitude and quantity of the change in material prices with reasonable accuracy is required. The primary goal is to create a machine-learning model that can predict the type of building material chosen based on environmental factors. The compressive strength of concrete is critical in defining its mechanical qualities. Long laboratory testing is needed to determine the compressive strength of concrete. The capacity of powerful machine learning algorithms to forecast concrete compressive strength speeds up these lengthy experimental methods while also lowering expenses. This study provides abilities to precisely anticipate and categorize numerous qualities and traits of distinct materials. The framework includes a broad dataset that details materials, composition, and performance characteristics. Machine learning algorithms such as logistic regression (LR), decision trees (DT), and random forests (RF) train models on the training data. The models are hyper-parameter tweaked and feature developed to achieve the most outstanding performance. The k-fold method is used throughout the training and assessment phase to guarantee robustness and reduce bias. The F1 score and Receiver Operating Characteristic-Area Under Curve (ROC-AUC) curve are two performance measures used to measure how accurate and predictive the trained models are. The study findings provide insights into the qualities of the materials, facilitating improved material selection, quality assurance, and decision-making in the building sector. In the analyses, the best accuracy value was 99.92%, and the precision value was 88.83% using the LR algorithm. As a result, it was determined that the LR algorithm had the least execution 57.826 ms, and is thus the most suitable for use in concrete compressive strength estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uncertainty presents unfamiliar circumstances or incomplete information that may be difficult to handle with a single model of a traditional machine learning algorithm. They are possibly limited by inadequate data, an ambiguous model, and learning performance to make a prediction. Therefore, ensemble modeling is proposed as a powerful model for enhancing predictive capabilities and robustness. This study aims to apply Bayesian prediction to ensemble modeling because it can encode conditional dependencies between variables and present the reasoning model using the BMIC model. The BMIC has clarified knowledge in the model which is ready for learning. Then, it was selected as the base model to be integrated with well-known algorithms such as logistic regression, K-nearest neighbors, decision trees, random forests, support vector machines (SVMs), neural networks, naive Bayes, and XGBoost classifiers. Also, the Bayesian neural network (BNN) and the probabilistic Bayesian neural network (PBN) were considered to compare their performance as a single model. The findings of this study indicate that the ensemble model of the BMIC with some traditional algorithms, which are SVM, random forest, neural networks, and XGBoost classifiers, returns 96.3% model accuracy in prediction. It provides a more reliable model and a versatile approach to support decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of interior home design has witnessed a growing utilization of machine learning. However, the subjective nature of aesthetics poses a significant challenge due to its variability among individuals and cultures. This paper proposes an applied machine learning method to enhance manufactured custom doors in a proper and aesthetic home design environment. Since there are millions of possible custom door models based on door types, wood species, dyeing, paint, and glass types, it is impossible to foresee a home design model fitting every custom door. To generate the classification data, a home design expert has to label thousands of door/home design combinations with the different colors and shades utilized in home designs. These data train a random forest classifier in a supervised learning context. The classifier predicts a home design according to a particular custom door. This method is applied in the following context: A web page displays a choice of doors to a customer. The customer selects the desired door properties, which are sent to a server that returns an aesthetic home design model for this door. This door configuration generates a series of images through the Unity 3D engine module, which are returned to the web client. The customer finally visualizes their door in an aesthetic home design context. The results show the random forest classifier's good performance, with an accuracy level of 86.8%, in predicting suitable home design, marking the way for future developments requiring subjective evaluations. The results are also explained using a feature importance graphic, a decision tree, a confusion matrix, and text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to predict the mid-span displacements of reinforced concrete (RC) columns exposed to blast loading with machine learning models. Machine learning models including the gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT) model and the random forest (RF) model are developed. The model hyperparameters in the machine learning models are globally optimized using Bayesian optimization method. The dataset used to train and test the models is constructed by collecting data from shock-tube-simulated experiments. Results show that the performance of the optimized models is significantly improved. By comparing the performance metrics of two models, it is evident that the GBDT model is superior to the RF model in predicting mid-span displacements. The optimized GBDT model is then used to predict the displacements of columns during field tests, and the experimental results and predictive results are relatively consistent, which verifies the effectiveness of GBDT model with Bayesian optimization in damage assessment for RC columns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Body mass index (BMI) is the primary criterion differentiating anorexia nervosa (AN) and atypical anorexia nervosa despite prior literature indicating few differences between disorders. Machine learning (ML) classification provides us an efficient means of accurately distinguishing between two meaningful classes given any number of features. The aim of the present study was to determine if ML algorithms can accurately distinguish AN and atypical AN given an ensemble of features excluding BMI, and if not, if the inclusion of BMI enables ML to accurately classify between the two. Methods: Using an aggregate sample from seven studies consisting of individuals with AN and atypical AN who completed baseline questionnaires (N = 448), we used logistic regression, decision tree, and random forest ML classification models each trained on two datasets, one containing demographic, eating disorder, and comorbid features without BMI, and one retaining all features and BMI. Results: Model performance for all algorithms trained with BMI as a feature was deemed acceptable (mean accuracy = 74.98%, mean area under the receiving operating characteristics curve [AUC] = 74.75%), whereas model performance diminished without BMI (mean accuracy = 59.37%, mean AUC = 59.98%). Discussion: Model performance was acceptable, but not strong, if BMI was included as a feature; no other features meaningfully improved classification. When BMI was excluded, ML algorithms performed poorly at classifying cases of AN and atypical AN when considering other demographic and clinical characteristics. Results suggest a reconceptualization of atypical AN should be considered. Public Significance: There is a growing debate about the differences between anorexia nervosa and atypical anorexia nervosa as their diagnostic differentiation relies on BMI despite being similar otherwise. We aimed to see if machine learning could distinguish between the two disorders and found accurate classification only if BMI was used as a feature. This finding calls into question the need to differentiate between the two disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pressure pipe failure is a common problem for water utilities worldwide and can result in high costs and disruption of customers. This study analyzed the failure rates of iron, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), asbestos cement (AC), and polyethylene (PE) mains in the water network of the Auckland, New Zealand, over a six-year period. Correlations between failure rates and a range of contributing factors were studied, and multilinear regression and machine learning (random forest, gradient boosted decision tree) models were then used to predict pipe failure rates and prioritize pipes for replacement. The study found the most important factors influencing failure rates to be diameter, age, and modeled pressure for all materials. The failure rates of all materials increased within a relatively narrow band up to a 30 year age. For pressure, failure rates were observed to increase linearly with pressure for iron and AC, while plastics (PVC and PE) displayed nonlinear trends with pressure having a greater relative impact at higher values. The pressure trends were observed for each material when considering all pipes, but also when grouping pipes by diameter or age. A focused investigation using scatterer interferometry data captured by the SENTINEL-1 satellite did not find any correlation between pipe failures and any identified ground movements from adjacent reflective surfaces. The gradient boosted decision tree model was able to include a high fraction of failing pipes in a prioritized pipe replacement list limited to 1% of the system length. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a comprehensive review of tree-based models and their application in condition assessment and prediction of water, wastewater, and sewer pipe failures. Tree-based models have gained significant attention in recent years due to their effectiveness in capturing complex relationships between parameters of systems and their ability in handling large data sets. This study explores a range of tree-based models, including decision trees and ensemble trees utilizing bagging, boosting, and stacking strategies. The paper thoroughly examines the strengths and limitations of these models, specifically in the context of assessing the pipes' condition and predicting their failures. In most cases, tree-based algorithms outperformed other prevalent models. Random forest was found to be the most frequently used approach in this field. Moreover, the models successfully predicted the failures when augmented with a richer failure data set. Finally, it was identified that existing evaluation metrics might not be necessarily suitable for assessing the prediction models in the water and sewer networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Chronic otitis media affects approximately 2% of the global population, causing significant hearing loss and diminishing the quality of life. However, there is a lack of studies focusing on outcome prediction for otitis media patients undergoing canal-wall-down mastoidectomy. Methods: This study proposes a recovery prediction model for chronic otitis media patients undergoing canal-wall-down mastoidectomy, utilizing data from 298 patients treated at Korea University Ansan Hospital between March 2007 and August 2020. Various machine learning techniques, including logistic regression, decision tree, random forest, support vector machine (SVM), extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), and light gradient boosting machine (light GBM), were employed. Results: The light GBM model achieved a predictive value (PPV) of 0.6945, the decision tree algorithm showed a sensitivity of 0.7574 and an F1 score of 0.6751, and the light GBM algorithm demonstrated the highest AUC-ROC values of 0.7749 for each model. XGBoost had the most efficient PR-AUC curve, with a value of 0.7196. Conclusions: This study presents the first predictive model for chronic otitis media patients undergoing canal-wall-down mastoidectomy. The findings underscore the potential of machine learning techniques in predicting hearing recovery outcomes in this population, offering valuable insights for personalized treatment strategies and improving patient care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to forecast New York and Los Angeles gasoline spot prices on a daily frequency. The dataset includes gasoline prices and a big set of 128 other relevant variables spanning the period from 17 February 2004 to 26 March 2022. These variables were fed to three tree-based machine learning algorithms: decision trees, random forest, and XGBoost. Furthermore, a variable importance measure (VIM) technique was applied to identify and rank the most important explanatory variables. The optimal model, a trained random forest, achieves a mean absolute percent error (MAPE) in the out-of-sample of 3.23% for the New York and 3.78% for the Los Angeles gasoline spot prices. The first lag, AR (1), of gasoline is the most important variable in both markets; the top five variables are all energy-related. This paper can strengthen the understanding of price determinants and has the potential to inform strategic decisions and policy directions within the energy sector, making it a valuable asset for both industry practitioners and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Privacy and security are the most essential barriers preventing widespread public cloud adaptation. The data that is distributed within the cloud requires privacy protection which can be achieved through the implementation of a data anonymization process. However, there is a lack of privacy for the user data. Even though the differential privacy model minimizes the efficiency, it also leads to generate data loss and privacy is not enhanced. Data securing in a cloud environment is a complex task. The data that are distributed within the cloud requires privacy protection which can be achieved through the implementation of a data anonymization process. So in order to improve the efficiency the novel hybrid ABRF-Stacked Bi-GRU is proposed to secure the medical data. This proposed method diminished the leakage of data and also effectively improve security and privacy. Therefore, in this paper, the privacy-preserving hybrid attention-based random forest (ABRF) with stacked bidirectional gated recurrent unit (stacked Bi-GRU) model named hybrid ABRF-Stacked Bi-GRU is proposed in the cloud environment. This proposed model is used to preserve medical data in the cloud from private data leakage. The attention weights along with the trainable parameters are assigned by the ABRF model to the decision trees. The privacy leakage is reduced by combining Jarratt butterfly optimization algorithm with the Ebola optimization search algorithm. However, in various existing methods, the differential privacy model is applied but it does not minimize the efficiency. In such cases it leads to generate data loss and privacy is not enhanced. Data securing in a cloud environment is a complex task. So in order to improve the efficiency the novel hybrid ABRF-Stacked Bi-GRU is proposed to secure the medical data. This proposed method diminished the leakage of data and also effectively improve security and privacy. The ensemble of the ABRF and stacked Bi-GRU model enhances the security of data in a cloud environment. The proposed model is evaluated using Diabetes UCI Dataset and Obesity UCI ML Dataset. The obtained outcomes compared with existing methods showed that the proposed method achieves a high anonymization degree with less Information Loss and takes less time for computation and minimizes the complexity during computation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary real-world datasets often suffer from the problem of class imbalance as well as high dimensionality. For combating class imbalance, data resampling is a commonly used approach whereas for tackling high dimensionality feature selection is used. The aforesaid problems have been studied extensively as independent problems in the literature but the possible synergy between them is still not clear. This paper studies the effects of addressing both the issues in conjunction by using a combination of resampling and feature selection techniques on binary-class imbalance classification. In particular, the primary goal of this study is to prioritize the sequence or pipeline of using these techniques and to analyze the performance of the two opposite pipelines that apply feature selection before or after resampling techniques i.e., F + S or S + F. For this, a comprehensive empirical study is carried out by conducting a total of 34,560 tests on 30 publicly available datasets using a combination of 12 resampling techniques for class imbalance and 12 feature selection methods, evaluating the performance on 4 different classifiers. Through the experiments we conclude that there is no specific pipeline that proves better than the other and both the pipelines should be considered for obtaining the best classification results on high dimensional imbalanced data. Additionally, while using Decision Tree (DT) or Random Forest (RF) as base learner the predominance of S + F over F + S is observed whereas in case of Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Logistic Regression (LR), F + S outperforms S + F in most cases. According to the mean ranking obtained from Friedman test the best combination of resampling and feature selection techniques for DT, SVM, LR and RF are SMOTE + RFE (Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique and Recursive Feature Elimination), Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) + SMOTE, SMOTE + Embedded feature selection using RF and SMOTE + RFE respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Severe and fatal crashes involving large trucks result in significant social and economic losses for human society. Unfortunately, the notably low proportion of severe and fatal injury crashes involving large trucks creates an imbalance in crash data. Models trained on imbalanced crash data are likely to produce erroneous results. Therefore, there is a need to explore novel sampling approaches for imbalanced crash data, and it is crucial to determine the appropriate combination of a machine learning model, sampling approach, and ratio. This study introduces a novel cluster-based under-sampling technique, utilizing the k-prototypes clustering algorithm. After initial cluster-based under-sampling, the consolidated cluster-based under-sampled data set was further resampled using three different sampling approaches (i.e., adaptive synthetic sampling (ADASYN), NearMiss-2, and the synthetic minority oversampling technique + Tomek links (SMOTETomek)). Later, four machine learning models (logistic regression (LR), random forest (RF), gradient-boosted decision trees (GBDT), and the multi-layer perceptron (MLP) neural network) were trained and evaluated using the geometric mean (G-Mean) and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) scores. The findings suggest that cluster-based under-sampling coupled with the investigated sampling approaches improve the performance of the machine learning models developed on crash data significantly. In addition, the GBDT model combined with ADASYN or SMOTETomek is likely to yield better predictions than any model combined with NearMiss-2. Regarding changes in sampling ratios, increasing the sampling ratio with ADASYN and SMOTETomek is likely to improve the performance of models up to a certain level, whereas with NearMiss-2, performance is likely to drop significantly beyond a specific point. These findings provide valuable insights for selecting optimal strategies for treating the class imbalance issue in crash data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Securing online financial transactions has become a critical concern in an era where financial services are becoming more and more digital. The transition to digital platforms for conducting daily transactions exposed customers to possible risks from cybercriminals. This study proposed a framework that combines multi-factor authentication and machine learning to increase the safety of online financial transactions. Our methodology is based on using two layers of security. The first layer incorporates two factors to authenticate users. The second layer utilizes a machine learning component, which is triggered when the system detects a potential fraud. This machine learning layer employs facial recognition as a decisive authentication factor for further protection. To build the machine learning model, four supervised classifiers were tested: logistic regression, decision trees, random forest, and naive Bayes. The results showed that the accuracy of each classifier was 97.938%, 97.881%, 96.717%, and 92.354%, respectively. This study's superiority is due to its methodology, which integrates machine learning as an embedded layer in a multi-factor authentication framework to address usability, efficacy, and the dynamic nature of various e-commerce platform features. With the evolving financial landscape, a continuous exploration of authentication factors and datasets to enhance and adapt security measures will be considered in future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research on lignocellulose pretreatments is generally performed through experiments that require substantial resources, are often time-consuming and are not always environmentally friendly. Therefore, researchers are developing computational methods which can minimize experimental procedures and save money. In this research, three machine learning methods, including Random Forest (RF), Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGB) and Support Vector Machine (SVM), as well as their ensembles were evaluated to predict acid-insoluble detergent lignin (AIDL) content in lignocellulose biomass. Three different types of harvest residue (maize stover, soybean straw and sunflower stalk) were first pretreated in a laboratory oven with hot air under two different temperatures (121 and 175 °C) at different duration (30 and 90 min) with the aim of disintegration of the lignocellulosic structure, i.e., delignification. Based on the leave-one-out cross-validation, the XGB resulted in the highest accuracy for all individual harvest residues, achieving the coefficient of determination (R2) in the range of 0.756–0.980. The relative variable importances for all individual harvest residues strongly suggested the dominant impact of pretreatment temperature in comparison to its duration. These findings proved the effectiveness of machine learning prediction in the optimization of lignocellulose pretreatment, leading to a more efficient lignin destabilization approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our aim was to evaluate biomarkers for organic anion transporting polypeptide 1B1 (OATP1B1) function using a hypothesis‐free metabolomics approach. We analyzed fasting plasma samples from 356 healthy volunteers using non‐targeted metabolite profiling by liquid chromatography high‐resolution mass spectrometry. Based on SLCO1B1 genotypes, we stratified the volunteers to poor, decreased, normal, increased, and highly increased OATP1B1 function groups. Linear regression analysis, and random forest (RF) and gradient boosted decision tree (GBDT) regressors were used to investigate associations of plasma metabolite features with OATP1B1 function. Of the 9152 molecular features found, 39 associated with OATP1B1 function either in the linear regression analysis (p < 10−5) or the RF or GBDT regressors (Gini impurity decrease > 0.01). Linear regression analysis showed the strongest associations with two features identified as glycodeoxycholate 3‐O‐glucuronide (GDCA‐3G; p = 1.2 × 10−20 for negative and p = 1.7 × 10−19 for positive electrospray ionization) and one identified as glycochenodeoxycholate 3‐O‐glucuronide (GCDCA‐3G; p = 2.7 × 10−16). In both the RF and GBDT models, the GCDCA‐3G feature showed the strongest association with OATP1B1 function, with Gini impurity decreases of 0.40 and 0.17. In RF, this was followed by one GDCA‐3G feature, an unidentified feature with a molecular weight of 809.3521, and the second GDCA‐3G feature. In GBDT, the second and third strongest associations were observed with the GDCA‐3G features. Of the other associated features, we identified with confidence two representing lysophosphatidylethanolamine 22:5. In addition, one feature was putatively identified as pregnanolone sulfate and one as pregnenolone sulfate. These results confirm GCDCA‐3G and GDCA‐3G as robust OATP1B1 biomarkers in human plasma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sorghum is an important crop, and the quality of sorghum of the same variety from different geographic origins varies greatly. This study focuses on HongYingZi sorghum from five distinct origins, employing a combination of hyperspectral imaging (HSI) technology and machine learning algorithms to investigate methods for classifying sorghum origin. Multiplicative scatter correction and the Savizkg‐Golay algorithms were used to preprocess HSI data, and the characteristic wavelengths were screened by the successive projections algorithm (SPA). Based on AdaBoost, ExtraTreesClassifier, Gradient Boosting, Decision Tree, and Random Forest algorithms, classification models based hyperspectral data were established respectively, and validation experiments were conducted. The results show that for the full‐band spectra, the ExtraTreesClassifier algorithm has the highest accuracy; the average accuracy on the training set and test set were 0.9925 and 0.9854, respectively. The classification results were visualized and analyzed using Python. The results highlight the effectiveness of HSI combined with machine learning algorithms in achieving nondestructive detection of sorghum origin within the same variety. This study provides a precise method for rapid and nondestructive determination of sorghum origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the advancement of engineering techniques, underground shield tunneling projects have also started incorporating emerging technologies to monitor the forces and displacements during the construction and operation phases of shield tunnels. Monitoring devices installed on the tunnel segment components generate a large amount of data. However, due to various factors, data may be missing. Hence, the completion of the incomplete data is imperative to ensure the utmost safety of the engineering project. In this research, a missing data imputation technique utilizing Random Forest (RF) is introduced. The optimal combination of the number of decision trees, maximum depth, and number of features in the RF is determined by minimizing the Mean Squared Error (MSE). Subsequently, complete soil pressure data are artificially manipulated to create incomplete datasets with missing rates of 20%, 40%, and 60%. A comparative analysis of the imputation results using three methods—median, mean, and RF—reveals that this proposed method has the smallest imputation error. As the missing rate increases, the mean squared error of the Random Forest method and the other two methods also increases, with a maximum difference of about 70%. This indicates that the random forest method is suitable for imputing monitoring data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows that decision trees constructed with Classification and Regression Trees (CART) and C4.5 methodology are consistent for regression and classification tasks, even when the number of predictor variables grows sub-exponentially with the sample size, under natural 0-norm and 1-norm sparsity constraints. The theory applies to a wide range of models, including (ordinary or logistic) additive regression models with component functions that are continuous, of bounded variation, or, more generally, Borel measurable. Consistency holds for arbitrary joint distributions of the predictor variables, thereby accommodating continuous, discrete, and/or dependent data. Finally, we show that these qualitative properties of individual trees are inherited by Breiman's random forests. A key step in the analysis is the establishment of an oracle inequality, which allows for a precise characterization of the goodness of fit and complexity tradeoff for a mis-specified model. for this article are available online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detecting building rooftops with very high-resolution (VHR) images is an important issue in many fields, including disaster management, urban planning, and climate change research. Buildings with varying geometrical features are challenging to detect accurately from VHR image due to complicated image scenes containing spectrally similar objects, illumination, occlusions, viewing angles, and shadows. This study aims to detect building rooftops with high accuracy using a new framework that includes VHR image, visible band difference vegetation index, digital surface and elevation models, the terrain ruggedness and the topographic position index. Five distinct feature sets were generated in order of importance by exposing the ten related stacking features to a feature selection procedure using the maximum relevance minimum redundancy method. Then, Auto-Encoder, k-NN, decision tree, RUSBoost, and random forest machine learning algorithms were utilized for binary classification. Random forest yielded the highest accuracy (97.2% F-score, 98.72% accuracy) when all features (F10) were used, while decision tree was the least successful (59.16% F-score, 83.56% accuracy) for RGB feature set (FRGB). It was revealed that classification of F10 with random forest increased F-score by about 23% compared to classification with FRGB. Additionally, McNemar's tests showed no statistically significant difference between random forest vs k-NN and decision tree vs RUSBoost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Machine learning and emergency evacuation prediction share a meaningful association in the context of the Industrial Revolution 4.0 era, given that machine learning can potentially enhance emergency evacuation prediction processes. Machine learning has the potential to revolutionise emergency evacuation prediction by providing a data-driven approach that aids decision-making and response time in emergencies. The complexity of emergency situations can lead to tragic accidents, as individual behaviour heavily influences evacuation time. While some researchers have explored emergency evacuation, existing computer evacuation models lack detailed analysis. To address this gap, this study focuses on reviewing the Random Forest algorithm, an advanced machine learning algorithm based on Decision Trees, in the application of forecasting emergency evacuation time. Through a qualitative research approach using the innovative Hand-searching technique, we conducted a systematic review employing Content Analysis Theory. Multiple sources were examined, including Google Scholar, Science Direct, Scopus, and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia e-Journal System. The study's findings shed light on the performance, prediction factors, advantages, and limitations of Random Forest in identifying impacts during an emergency evacuation. These insights hold significant implications for emergency responders, building designers, and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conventional method for the color-matching process involves the compounding of polymers with pigments and then preparing plaques by using injection molding before measuring the color by an offline spectrophotometer. If the color fails to meet the L*, a*, and b* standards, the color-matching process must be repeated. In this study, the aim is to develop a machine learning model that is capable of predicting offline color using data from inline color measurements, thereby significantly reducing the time that is required for the color-matching process. The inline color data were measured using an inline process spectrophotometer, while the offline color data were measured using a bench-top spectrophotometer. The results showed that the Bagging with Decision Tree Regression and Random Forest Regression can predict the offline color data with aggregated color differences (dE) of 10.87 and 10.75. Compared to other machine learning methods, Bagging with Decision Tree Regression and Random Forest Regression excel due to their robustness, ability to handle nonlinear relationships, and provision of insights into feature importance. This study offers valuable guidance for achieving Bagging with Decision Tree Regression and Random Forest Regression to correlate inline and offline color data, potentially reducing time and material waste in color matching. Furthermore, it facilitates timely corrections in the event of color discrepancies being observed via inline measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This study aimed to investigate the value of nonenhanced computed tomography (CT)‐based radiomics in determining disease progression in breast cancer patients with bone marrow metastases and to develop a model for assessing treatment efficacy. Methods: A total of 134 breast cancer patients with bone metastases were enrolled from three hospitals. Nonenhanced CT was performed after two cycles of drug treatment. The images were categorized into an invalid and a valid group according to disease progression status. The largest osteolytic lesions' maximum cross‐sections in the CT images were selected as regions of interest (ROIs) for feature extraction. Variance threshold, SelectKBest, and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) were used to reduce feature dimensionality. K‐nearest neighbor algorithm (KNN), support vector machine (SVM), extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), random forest (RF), logistic regression (LR), and decision tree (DT) algorithms were trained to establish radiomics models. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were generated to evaluate the diagnostic performance of the models. Results: The KNN classifier demonstrated the best performance compared to the random grouping method. In the validation group, the area under the ROC curve (AUC) was 0.810. In the cross‐validation method, the RF classifier showed the best performance with an AUC of 0.84. Conclusion: Nonenhanced CT‐based radiomics provides a promising method for evaluating the efficacy of systemic drug therapy in breast cancer patients with osteolytic bone metastases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heart disease is one of the most dangerous diseases in the world. People with these diseases, most of them end up losing their lives. Therefore, machine learning algorithms have proven to be useful in this sense to help decision-making and prediction from the large amount of data generated by the healthcare sector. In this work, we have proposed a novel method that allows increasing the performance of the classical random forest technique so that this technique can be used for the prediction of heart disease with its better performance. We used in this study other classifiers such as classical random forest, support vector machine, decision tree, Naïve Bayes, and XGBoost. This work was done in the heart dataset Cleveland. According to the experimental results, the accuracy of the proposed model is better than that of other classifiers with 83.5%.This study contributed to the optimization of the random forest technique as well as gave solid knowledge of the formation of this technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sports effect evaluation is the main module of modern information construction. To improve the accuracy of sports effect evaluation and enhance the training level of athletes, this paper aims to conduct in-depth research on sports effect evaluation based on feature selection under the background of big data. Firstly, a sports evaluation system is designed based on the Window Presentation Foundation (WPF) that adopts a Client–Server (C/S) mode. The overall architecture of the system is proposed by expounding the functional modules and the schema of information tables in the database. To assess the impact of sports, the data mining algorithm and big data analytics technique called Random Forest (RF) is used as the core evaluation system. With the help of information gain, feature selection is performed, based on which decision trees are constructed by generating branch nodes. The random forest is created by combining all the decision trees, which helps in improving the generalization. The proposed method is experimentally verified and it is found that the overall stability of the effect evaluation system is good and it effectively improves the efficiency and accuracy of sports effect evaluation, thus enhancing the level of athletes' training. The proposed sports effect evaluation method performs excellently in the experimental validation, as seen by the remarkable F1 Score of 85.32%, average accuracy of 84.28%, precision of 86%, and recall of 82.28%. In comparison, this performs noticeably better than current approaches, proving its improved efficacy in assessing the effects of sports and confirming its ability to improve athlete training proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Breast cancer (BC) treatment decreases fertility capacity, but unnecessary fertility preservation procedures in women who would not be infertile after treatment would be a waste of time and resources and could cause the unwarranted exposure of cancer cells to exogenous sex hormones. It has been largely shown that post-treatment ovarian reserve is directly associated with pre-treatment anti-mullerian hormone levels (AMH0). A threshold for AMH0, or a model including AMH0 and patient characteristics that could distinguish the patients who will be infertile after treatments, still needs to be defined. Accordingly, this study was performed to specifically target this high-priority concern. Methods: Women ≤ 45 years old with newly diagnosed non-metastatic BC were entered in this multicenter prospective cohort study. AMH0 and two-year post-treatment AMH (AMH2) were measured, and hormonal patient features were recorded as well. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, decision tree (DT), and random forest analyses were performed to find a cut-off point for AMH0 and define a model involving related features for the prediction of AMH2. Results: The data from 84 patients were analyzed. ROC curve analysis revealed that AMH0 > 3 ng/mL (Area under the curve = 0.69, 95% CI: 0.54-0.84) was the best indicator for predicting AMH2 ≥ 0.7 (sensitivity = 79%, specificity = 60%). The best model detected by DT and random forest for predicting an AMH2 > 0.7 with a probability of 93% consisted of a combination of AMH0 > 3.3, menarche age < 14, and age < 31. Conclusion: This combination model can be used to withhold fertility preservation procedures in BC patients. Performing larger studies is suggested to further test this model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study develops statistical learning models to assess the probability of undergraduate students graduating within a predetermined period, utilizing admission, performance, and demographic data. The urgency of addressing student attrition is highlighted by recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), indicating a 59% completion rate by full-time undergraduates within six years. This research leverages institutional data from a Saudi University, focusing on freshmen enrolled in the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 academic years, to identify students at risk of dropping out, thereby enabling timely interventions. Ten algorithms, including decision trees, ensemble models, SVM, and ANN, were built and evaluated on a test set representing 33.3% of the entire dataset using precision, recall, accuracy, and Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC). The findings show that SVM and Random Forest models were the most reliable, achieving accuracies of 0.830 and 0.831 respectively, and maintaining balance in precision, recall, and MCC. Conversely, the naïve Bayes model recorded the worst performance. The comparative analysis revealed the superior performance of ensemble models over decision tree models in predicting student attrition, emphasizing the importance of model selection in developing effective early intervention strategies. In addition, our analysis revealed that academic data is a better predictor of ontime graduation than admission data, emphasizing the need for institutions to focus on continuous academic assessment data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intensity modulation/direct detection (IM/DD) optical interconnect systems are susceptible to waveform distortion caused by complex nonlinearities. To reduce the effect of waveform distortion on signal transmission accuracy, in this paper, a random forest (RF) equalization algorithm based on decision tree (DT) integration is proposed for cost-sensitive IM/DD systems, which has the characteristics of nonlinear classification and regression. The performance of the RF equalizer is verified by simulation experiments on a 120 Gbps 8-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM8) transmission system using an electro-absorption-modulated laser (EML). Simulation studies show that whether it is a back-to-back (B2B) transmission system or a 10 km optical fiber transmission system, the RF equalization scheme can achieve much better bit error rate (BER) performance than the traditional equalization scheme. In addition, in both transmission cases, the RF equalization scheme enables efficient classification of signals and is much less simpler than the artificial neural network (ANN) equalization scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Well-trained staff is needed to interpret cardiopulmonary exercise tests (CPET). We aimed to examine the accuracy of machine learning–based algorithms to classify exercise limitations and their severity in clinical practice compared with expert consensus using patients presenting at a pulmonary clinic. Methods: This study included 200 historical CPET data sets (48.5% female) of patients older than 40 yr referred for CPET because of unexplained dyspnea, preoperative examination, and evaluation of therapy progress. Data sets were independently rated by experts according to the severity of pulmonary–vascular, mechanical–ventilatory, cardiocirculatory, and muscular limitations using a visual analog scale. Decision trees and random forests analyses were calculated. Results: Mean deviations between experts in the respective limitation categories ranged from 1.0 to 1.1 points (SD, 1.2) before consensus. Random forests identified parameters of particular importance for detecting specific constraints. Central parameters were nadir ventilatory efficiency for CO2, ventilatory efficiency slope for CO2 (pulmonary–vascular limitations); breathing reserve, forced expiratory volume in 1 s, and forced vital capacity (mechanical–ventilatory limitations); and peak oxygen uptake, O2 uptake/work rate slope, and % change of the latter (cardiocirculatory limitations). Thresholds differentiating between different limitation severities were reported. The accuracy of the most accurate decision tree of each category was comparable to expert ratings. Finally, a combined decision tree was created quantifying combined system limitations within one patient. Conclusions: Machine learning–based algorithms may be a viable option to facilitate the interpretation of CPET and identify exercise limitations. Our findings may further support clinical decision making and aid the development of standardized rating instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]