Reviewerly/exHarmony huggingface dataset:
Attention-guided Multi-modality Interaction Network for RGB-D Salient Object Detection

The past decade has witnessed great progress in RGB-D salient object detection (SOD). However, there are two bottlenecks that limit its further development. The first one is low-quality depth maps. Most existing methods directly use raw depth maps to perform detection, but low-quality depth images can bring negative impacts to the detection performance. Hence, it is not desirable to utilize depth maps indiscriminately. The other one is how to effectively predict salient maps with clear boundary and complete salient region. To address these problems, an Attention-Guided Multi-Modality Interaction Network (AMINet) is proposed. First, we propose a new quality enhancement strategy for unreliable depth images, named D epth E nhancement M odule ( DEM ). With respect to the second issue, we propose C ross- M odality A ttention M odule ( CMAM ) to rapidly locate salient region. The B oundary- A ware M odule ( BAM ) is designed to utilize high-level feature to guide the low-level feature generation in a top-down way to make up for the dilution of the boundary. To further improve the accuracy, we propose A trous R efined B lock ( ARB ) to adaptively compensate for the shortcoming of atrous convolution. By integrating these interactive modules, features from depth and RGB streams can be refined efficiently, which consequently boosts the detection performance. Experimental results demonstrate the proposed AMINet exceeds state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods on several public RGB-D datasets.
Are You Ready to Take Avatar in Virtual Classroom—Metaverse in Education from Student’s Perspective

The education sector has undergone momentous changes in the past few decades, focusing on integrating immersive technologies into academic settings to ensure that learning is fun and engaging. Educators are continuously striving towards adopting improved teaching methods that match the rapidly evolving technology. This view of educators has enabled a transition in teaching methodology from the traditional methods of using a whiteboard and blackboard to digital and smart classes. After the pandemic, blended learning and online learning have become mainstream, challenging immersive and engaged learning. Metaverse is one such focus for educationalists across the globe that allows for student involvement and participation in fun activities, ensuring learning with fun and entertainment. The present paper aims to understand students' opinions on awareness of virtual learning, its benefits, the level of adoption of learners, and the challenges faced by them in virtual learning. A combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods was adopted. A sample of 214 respondents from different colleges was chosen for the study. The study found that students were aware of a metaverse in learning but were not experienced in metaverse learning, and most of them were interested in metaverse learning.
A masked reverse knowledge distillation method incorporating global and local information for image anomaly detection

Knowledge distillation is an effective image anomaly detection and localization scheme. However, a major drawback of this scheme is its tendency to overly generalize, primarily due to the similarities between input and supervisory signals. In order to address this issue, this paper introduces a novel technique called masked reverse knowledge distillation (MRKD). By employing image-level masking (ILM) and feature-level masking (FLM), MRKD transforms the task of image reconstruction into image restoration. Specifically, ILM helps to capture global information by differentiating input signals from supervisory signals. On the other hand, FLM incorporates synthetic feature-level anomalies to ensure that the learned representations contain sufficient local information. With these two strategies, MRKD is endowed with stronger image context capture capacity and is less likely to be overgeneralized. Experiments on the widely-used MVTec anomaly detection dataset demonstrate that MRKD achieves impressive performance: image-level 98.9% AU-ROC, pixel-level 98.4% AU-ROC, and 95.3% AU-PRO. In addition, extensive ablation experiments have validated the superiority of MRKD in mitigating the overgeneralization problem.
A new chaotic jerk system with hidden heart-shaped attractor: dynamical analysis, multistability, connecting curves and its application in image encryption

Abstract Application of chaos in modeling natural phenomena and encryption encourages researchers to design new chaotic systems with exciting features. Here a chaotic jerk oscillator with different properties is proposed. Previous studies mainly used non-polynomial and piecewise linear terms to design the attractors’ shape. In the paper, the heart-shaped attractor is designed using just polynomial terms. This system is studied by considering its bifurcation diagram, Lyapunov exponent, and basin of attraction. These tools show that the proposed system has chaotic and periodic attractors that coexist in some parameter intervals. The oscillator does not have an equilibrium and has a heart-shaped attractor. Moreover, the connecting curves of the oscillator are considered to explore other structural properties. Numerical results confirm the analytical solutions for the system’s connecting curves. The interesting dynamics of the oscillator are used in an encryption and compression application.
AI Trainer: Autoencoder Based Approach for Squat Analysis and Correction

Artificial intelligence and computer vision have widespread applications in workout analysis. It has been extensively used in sports and the athlete industry to identify errors and improve performance. Furthermore, these methods prevent injuries caused by a lack of instructors or costly infrastructure. One such exercise is the squat, which is a movement in which a standing person descends to a posture with their torso vertical and their knees firmly bent, then returns to their original upright position. Each person’s squat is distinct, with varying limb lengths causing their form to change when observed. It has been observed that the mobility of various joints and muscular strength have a role in this. A squat improves the user by increasing overall leg strength, strengthening knee and hip joints, and lowering the risk of heart disease due to cardiovascular development. This paper presents a method for classifying squat types and recommending the right squat version. This study uses MediaPipe and a deep learning-based technique to decide if squatting is good or bad. A stacked Bidirectional Gated Recurrent Unit (Bi-GRU) model with an attention layer is proposed to consistently and fairly assess each user, categorizing squats into seven classes. This stacked Bi-GRU model with an attention unit is then compared to other cutting-edge models, both with and without the attention layer. The model outperforms other models by attaining an accuracy of 94% and is demonstrated to work the best and most consistently for our dataset. Furthermore, the individual executing the incorrect squat is corrected to the best of their ability, depending on their performance and body proportions, by providing the correct form.
Quantum Transfer Learning for Real-World, Small, and High-Dimensional Remotely Sensed Datasets

Quantum Machine Learning (QML) models promise to have some computational (or quantum) advantage for classifying supervised datasets (e.g., satellite images) over some conventional Deep Learning (DL) techniques due to their expressive power via their local effective dimension. There are, however, two main challenges regardless of the promised quantum advantage: 1) Currently available quantum bits (qubits) are very small in number, while real-world datasets are characterized by hundreds of high-dimensional elements ( <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">i.e.</i> features). Additionally, there is not a single unified approach for embedding real-world high-dimensional datasets in a limited number of qubits. 2) Some real-world datasets are too small for training intricate QML networks. Hence, to tackle these two challenges for benchmarking and validating QML networks on real-world, small, and high-dimensional datasets in one-go, we employ quantum transfer learning comprising a classical VGG16 layer and a multi-qubit QML layer. We use real-amplitude and strongly-entangling N-layer QML networks with and without data re-uploading layers as a multi-qubit QML layer, and evaluate their expressive power quantified by using their local effective dimension; the lower the local effective dimension of a QML network, the better its performance on unseen data. As datasets, we utilize Eurosat and synthetic datasets ( <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">i.e.</i> easy-to-classify datasets), and an UC Merced Land Use dataset ( <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">i.e.</i> a hard-to-classify dataset). Our numerical results show that the strongly-entangling N-layer QML network has a lower local effective dimension than the real-amplitude QML network and outperforms it on the hard-to-classify datasets. In addition, quantum transfer learning helps tackle the two challenges mentioned above for benchmarking and validating QML networks on real-world, small, and high-dimensional datasets.
A Quantum-Resistant Blockchain System: A Comparative Analysis

Blockchain transactions are decentralized, secure, and transparent, and they have altered industries. However, the emergence of quantum computing presents a severe security risk to the traditional encryption algorithms used in blockchain. Post-quantum signatures are required to preserve integrity and reliability. Furthermore, combining the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) with blockchain provides a long-term strategy for data storage and sharing. This study investigates the integration of post-quantum signatures with the IPFS in a blockchain system, which can considerably enhance blockchain system efficiency. We increase security and efficiency by recording hash values of signatures and public keys within the blockchain and storing their actual content using the IPFS. The study compares NIST-recommended post-quantum signatures with the ECDSA in a Bitcoin exchange scheme to show how effective the system is in countering quantum threats while maintaining optimal performance. This research makes an important addition to the long-term viability and dependability of blockchain technology in the face of the growing landscape of quantum computing breakthroughs.
An Efficient and Effective Framework for Intestinal Parasite Egg Detection Using YOLOv5

Intestinal parasitic infections pose a grave threat to human health, particularly in tropical and subtropical regions. The traditional manual microscopy system of intestinal parasite detection remains the gold standard procedure for diagnosing parasite cysts or eggs. This approach is costly, time-consuming (30 min per sample), highly tedious, and requires a specialist. However, computer vision, based on deep learning, has made great strides in recent years. Despite the significant advances in deep convolutional neural network-based architectures, little research has been conducted to explore these techniques' potential in parasitology, specifically for intestinal parasites. This research presents a novel proposal for state-of-the-art transfer learning architecture for the detection and classification of intestinal parasite eggs from images. The ultimate goal is to ensure prompt treatment for patients while also alleviating the burden on experts. Our approach comprised two main stages: image pre-processing and augmentation in the first stage, and YOLOv5 algorithms for detection and classification in the second stage, followed by performance comparison based on different parameters. Remarkably, our algorithms achieved a mean average precision of approximately 97% and a detection time of only 8.5 ms per sample for a dataset of 5393 intestinal parasite images. This innovative approach holds tremendous potential to form a solid theoretical basis for real-time detection and classification in routine clinical examinations, addressing the increasing demand and accelerating the diagnostic process. Our research contributes to the development of cutting-edge technologies for the efficient and accurate detection of intestinal parasite eggs, advancing the field of medical imaging and diagnosis.
Predicting unplanned readmissions in the intensive care unit: a multimodality evaluation

A hospital readmission is when a patient who was discharged from the hospital is admitted again for the same or related care within a certain period. Hospital readmissions are a significant problem in the healthcare domain, as they lead to increased hospitalization costs, decreased patient satisfaction, and increased risk of adverse outcomes such as infections, medication errors, and even death. The problem of hospital readmissions is particularly acute in intensive care units (ICUs), due to the severity of the patients' conditions, and the substantial risk of complications. Predicting Unplanned Readmissions in ICUs is a challenging task, as it involves analyzing different data modalities, such as static data, unstructured free text, sequences of diagnoses and procedures, and multivariate time-series. Here, we investigate the effectiveness of each data modality separately, then alongside with others, using state-of-the-art machine learning approaches in time-series analysis and natural language processing. Using our evaluation process, we are able to determine the contribution of each data modality, and for the first time in the context of readmission, establish a hierarchy of their predictive value. Additionally, we demonstrate the impact of Temporal Abstractions in enhancing the performance of time-series approaches to readmission prediction. Due to conflicting definitions in the literature, we also provide a clear definition of the term Unplanned Readmission to enhance reproducibility and consistency of future research and to prevent any potential misunderstandings that could result from diverse interpretations of the term. Our experimental results on a large benchmark clinical data set show that Discharge Notes written by physicians, have better capabilities for readmission prediction than all other modalities.
SMFF-YOLO: A Scale-Adaptive YOLO Algorithm with Multi-Level Feature Fusion for Object Detection in UAV Scenes

Object detection in images captured by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) holds great potential in various domains, including civilian applications, urban planning, and disaster response. However, it faces several challenges, such as multi-scale variations, dense scenes, complex backgrounds, and tiny-sized objects. In this paper, we present a novel scale-adaptive YOLO framework called SMFF-YOLO, which addresses these challenges through a multi-level feature fusion approach. To improve the detection accuracy of small objects, our framework incorporates the ELAN-SW object detection prediction head. This newly designed head effectively utilizes both global contextual information and local features, enhancing the detection accuracy of tiny objects. Additionally, the proposed bidirectional feature fusion pyramid (BFFP) module tackles the issue of scale variations in object sizes by aggregating multi-scale features. To handle complex backgrounds, we introduce the adaptive atrous spatial pyramid pooling (AASPP) module, which enables adaptive feature fusion and alleviates the negative impact of cluttered scenes. Moreover, we adopt the Wise-IoU(WIoU) bounding box regression loss to enhance the competitiveness of different quality anchor boxes, which offers the framework a more informed gradient allocation strategy. We validate the effectiveness of SMFF-YOLO using the VisDrone and UAVDT datasets. Experimental results demonstrate that our model achieves higher detection accuracy, with AP50 reaching 54.3% for VisDrone and 42.4% for UAVDT datasets. Visual comparative experiments with other YOLO-based methods further illustrate the robustness and adaptability of our approach.
Computing matching statistics on Wheeler DFAs

Matching statistics were introduced to solve the approximate string matching problem, which is a recurrent subroutine in bioinformatics applications. In 2010, Ohlebusch et al. [SPIRE 2010] proposed a time and space efficient algorithm for computing matching statistics which relies on some components of a compressed suffix tree-notably, the longest common prefix (LCP) array. In this paper, we show how their algorithm can be generalized from strings to Wheeler deterministic finite automata. Most importantly, we introduce a notion of LCP array for Wheeler automata, thus establishing a first clear step towards extending (compressed) suffix tree functionalities to labeled graphs.
Exploring Blockchain Implementation Challenges for Sustainable Supply Chains: An Integrated Fuzzy TOPSIS–ISM Approach

This study investigates the challenges in implementing blockchain technology (BT) in sustainable supply chain management (SSC). The study thoroughly analyzes the literature and expert opinions on BT, SCM, and sustainability. A total of 24 barriers are identified, categorized into the Internet of Things, strategic, supply chain, legislation, and external factors. The findings are evaluated using the Integrated Fuzzy TOPSIS–ISM tool. The results indicate that barriers related to the supply chain have the most significant impact on the adoption of BT in SSC. The study also reveals the interrelation among sub-barriers within the supply chain, providing valuable insights to improve adoption. Finally, a strategic action plan based on a fishbone diagram is provided to reduce the effects of supply chain barriers. This study provides a theoretical foundation for using BT to achieve long-term supply chain goals.
Unexpected Expansion of Rare-Earth Element Mining Activities in the Myanmar–China Border Region

Mining for rare earth elements is rapidly increasing, driven by current and projected demands for information and energy technologies. Following China’s Central Government’s 2012 strategy to shift away from mining in favor of value-added processing, primary extraction has increased outside of China. Accordingly, changes in mineral exploitation in China and Myanmar have garnered considerable attention in the past decade. The prevailing assumption is that mining in China has decreased while mining in Myanmar has increased, but the dynamic in border regions is more complex. Our empirical study used Google Earth Engine (GEE) to characterize changes in mining surface footprints between 2005 and 2020 in two rare earth mines located on either side of the Myanmar–China border, within Kachin State in northern Myanmar and Nujiang Prefecture in Yunnan Province in China. Our results show that the extent of the mining activities increased by 130% on China’s side and 327% on Myanmar’s side during the study period. We extracted surface reflectance images from 2005 and 2010 from Landsat 5 TM and 2015 and 2020 images from Landsat 8 OLI. The Normalized Vegetation Index (NDVI) was applied to dense time-series imagery to enhance landcover categories. Random Forest was used to categorize landcover into mine and non-mine classes with an overall accuracy of 98% and a Kappa Coefficient of 0.98, revealing an increase in mining extent of 2.56 km2, covering the spatial mining footprint from 1.22 km2 to 3.78 km2 in 2005 and 2020, respectively, within the study area. We found a continuous decrease in non-mine cover, including vegetation. Both mines are located in areas important to ethnic minority groups, agrarian livelihoods, biodiversity conservation, and regional watersheds. The finding that mining surface areas increased on both sides of the border is significant because it shows that national-level generalizations do not align with local realities, particularly in socially and environmentally sensitive border regions. The quantification of such changes over time can help researchers and policymakers to better understand the shifting geographies and geopolitics of rare earth mining, the environmental dynamics in mining areas, and the particularities of mineral extraction in border regions.
A Blockchain-Enabled IoT Logistics System for Efficient Tracking and Management of High-Price Shipments: A Resilient, Scalable and Sustainable Approach to Smart Cities

The concept of a smart city is aimed at enhancing the quality of life for urban residents, and logistic services are a crucial component of this effort. Despite this, the logistics industry has encountered issues due to the exponential growth of logistics volumes, as well as the complexity of processes and lack of transparency. Consequently, it is necessary to develop an efficient management system that offers traceability and condition monitoring capabilities to ensure the safe and high-quality delivery of goods. Moreover, it is crucial to guarantee the accuracy and dependability of distribution data. In this context, this paper proposes a blockchain-enabled IoT logistics system for the efficient tracking and management of high-price shipments. A smart contract based on blockchain technology has been designed for automatic approval and payment, with the aim of distributing shipping information exclusively among legitimate logistics parties. To ensure authentication, a zero-knowledge proof is used to conceal the blockchain address. Moreover, an intelligent parcel (iParcel) containing piezoresistive sensors is developed to pack delivered goods during the shipping process for violation detection such as severe falls or theft. The iParcels are automatically tracked and traced, and if a violation occurs, the contract is cancelled, and payment is refunded. The transaction fee per party is reasonable, particularly for high-price products that guarantee successful shipment.
The proof of the translation process is in the reading of the target text: An eyetracking reception study

This article is an attempt to bridge the divide between translation process research (TPR) which has investigated how translators as specialised bilingual professionals use their expertise to translate texts and translation reception which explores how the texts are read and received by the target language readers. Over the last thirty years, TPR has provided empirically grounded findings to demonstrate the complexity of the cognitive processes in the translator's mind but much less empirical interest has been paid to how translated texts are read and processed by the readers. To redress this imbalance, we hypothesise that the cognitive effort invested in reading a translated text can be taken as proof of how successful the translation process has been. We report on an exploratory study in which two groups of participants read a high-quality and a low-quality translation of the same text while their eye movements were recorded by an eyetracker. We compare the readers' cognitive effort indexed by character-adjusted dwell time, number of runs and re-reading in the second and third run with the translators' character-adjusted cognitive effort invested in producing the target texts. The results show that the relationship between the translation process and the reading experience is not straightforward and depends on the quality of the target text.