Reviewerly/exHarmony huggingface dataset:
Attention Network Forecasts Time‐to‐Failure in Laboratory Shear Experiments

Abstract Rocks under stress deform by creep mechanisms that include formation and slip on small‐scale internal cracks. Intragranular cracks and slip along grain contacts release energy as elastic waves termed acoustic emissions (AE). AEs are thought to contain predictive information that can be used for fault failure forecasting. Here, we present a method using unsupervised classification and an attention network to forecast labquakes using AE waveform features. Our data were generated in a laboratory setting using a biaxial shearing device with granular fault gouge intended to mimic the conditions of tectonic faults. Here, we analyzed the temporal evolution of AEs generated throughout several hundred laboratory earthquake cycles. We used a Conscience Self‐Organizing Map (CSOM) to perform topologically ordered vector quantization based on waveform properties. The resulting map was used to interactively cluster AEs. We examined the clusters over time to identify those with predictive ability. Finally, we used a variety of LSTM and attention‐based networks to test the predictive power of the AE clusters. By tracking cumulative waveform features over the seismic cycle, the network is able to forecast the time‐to‐failure (TTF) of lab earthquakes. Our results show that analyzing the data to isolate predictive signals and using a more sophisticated network architecture are key to robustly forecasting labquakes. In the future, this method could be applied on tectonic faults to monitor earthquakes and augment early warning systems.
MedRetriever

The broad adoption of electronic health record (EHR) systems and the advances of deep learning technology have motivated the development of health risk prediction models, which mainly depend on the expressiveness and temporal modeling capacity of deep neural networks (DNNs) to improve prediction performance. Some further augment the prediction by using external knowledge, however, a great deal of EHR information inevitably loses during the knowledge mapping. In addition, prediction made by existing models usually lacks reliable interpretation, which undermines their reliability in guiding clinical decision-making. To solve these challenges, we propose MedRetriever, an effective and flexible framework that leverages unstructured medical text collected from authoritative websites to augment health risk prediction as well as to provide understandable interpretation. Besides, MedRetriever explicitly takes the target disease documents into consideration, which provide key guidance for the model to learn in a target-driven direction, i.e., from the target disease to the input EHR. To specify, MedRetriever can flexibly choose its backbone from major predictive models to learn the EHR embedding for each visit. After that, the EHR embedding and features of target disease documents are aggregated into a query by self-attention to retrieve highly relevant text segments from the medical text pool, which is stored in the dynamically updated text memory. Finally, the comprehensive EHR embedding and the text memory are used for prediction and interpretation. We evaluate MedRetriever against nine state-of-the-art approaches across three real-world EHR datasets, which consistently achieves the best performance in AUC and recall metrics and outperforms the best baseline by at least 4.8% in recall on three test datasets. Furthermore, we conduct case studies to show the easy-to-understand interpretation by MedRetriever.
A Deep Reinforcement Learning Method For Multimodal Data Fusion in Action Recognition

At present, in the research of multimodal human action recognition, the weighted fusion method with fixed weight is widely applied in the decision level fusion of most models. In this way, the weight is usually obtained from the original experience or traversal search, which is inaccurate or has a large amount of calculation, and ignores the different representation ability of various modal data for various classes of action information. With the help of the powerful decision-making ability of deep reinforcement learning, we propose a multimodal decision-making fusion weight allocation network based on deep reinforcement learning. This letter mainly discusses the design of the model, which involves the modeling of reinforcement learning problem in action recognition, the design of neural network and the selection of problem-solving scheme. Experimental results on NTU RGB + D and HMDB51 datasets show the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Data revolution, health status transformation and the role of artificial intelligence for health and pandemic preparedness in the African context

Abstract Background Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms, increasingly deployed in public health, utilize robust data systems as a critical component for health emergency preparedness. Yet, Africa faces numerous challenges in the availability, analyses, and use of data to inform health decision-making. Countries have limited access to their population data. Those with access, struggle to utilize these data for program improvements. Owing to the rapid growth of mobile phone ownership and use in the region, Africa is poised to leverage AI technologies to increase the adoption, access and use of data for health. To discuss and propose solutions for responsible development and adoption of innovations like AI in Africa, a virtual workshop was organized from the 21st to 24th June, 2021. This report highlights critical policy dimensions of strengthening digital health ecosystems by high-level policymakers, technical experts, academia, public and private sector partners. Method The four days’ workshop focused on nine sessions, with each session focusing on three themes. Discussions during the sessions concentrated on public and private sectors, the academia and multilateral organizations’ deployment of AI. These discussions expanded participants’ understanding of AI, the opportunities and challenges that exist during adoption, including the future of AI for health in the African region. Approximately 250 participants attended the workshop, including countries representatives from ministries of Health, Information and Technology, Developmental Organizations, Private Sector, Academia and Research Institutions among others. Results The workshop resolved that governments and relevant stakeholders should collaborate to ensure that AI and digital health receive critical attention. Government ownership and leadership were identified as critical for sustainable financing and effective scale-up of AI-enabled applications in Africa. Thus, government is to ensure that key recommendations from the workshop are implemented to improve health sector development in Africa. Conclusions The AI workshop was a good forum to deliberate important issues regarding AI for health in the African context. It was concluded that there is a need to focus on vital priorities in deploying AI in Africa: Data protection, privacy and sharing protocols; training and creating platforms for researchers; funding and business models; developing frameworks for assessing and implementing AI; organizing forums and conferences on AI; and instituting regulations, governance and ethical guidelines for AI. There is a need to adopt a health systems approach in planning for AI to reduce inefficiencies, redundancies while increasing effectiveness in the use of AI. Thus, robust collaborations and partnerships among governments and various stakeholders were identified as key.
Imageability- and Length-Controllable Image Captioning

Image captioning can show great performance for generating captions for general purposes, but it remains difficult to adjust the generated captions for different applications.In this paper, we propose an image captioning method which can generate both imageability-and length-controllable captions.The imageability parameter adjusts the level of visual descriptiveness of the caption, making it either more abstract or more concrete.In contrast, the length parameter only adjusts the length of the caption while keeping the visual descriptiveness on a similar degree.Based on a transformer architecture, our model is trained using an augmented dataset with diversified captions across different degrees of descriptiveness.The resulting model can control both imageability and length, making it possible to tailor output towards various applications.Experiments show that we can maintain a captioning performance similar to comparison methods, while being able to control the visual descriptiveness and the length of the generated captions.A subjective evaluation with human participants also shows a significant correlation of the target imageability in terms of human expectations.Thus, we confirmed that the proposed method provides a promising step towards tailoring image captions closer to certain applications.
Entropic Uncertainty for Two Coupled Dipole Spins Using Quantum Memory under the Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya Interaction

In the thermodynamic equilibrium of dipolar-coupled spin systems under the influence of a Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya (D–M) interaction along the z-axis, the current study explores the quantum-memory-assisted entropic uncertainty relation (QMA-EUR), entropy mixedness and the concurrence two-spin entanglement. Quantum entanglement is reduced at increased temperature values, but inflation uncertainty and mixedness are enhanced. The considered quantum effects are stabilized to their stationary values at high temperatures. The two-spin entanglement is entirely repressed if the D–M interaction is disregarded, and the entropic uncertainty and entropy mixedness reach their maximum values for equal coupling rates. Rather than the concurrence, the entropy mixedness can be a proper indicator of the nature of the entropic uncertainty. The effect of model parameters (D–M coupling and dipole–dipole spin) on the quantum dynamic effects in thermal environment temperature is explored. The results reveal that the model parameters cause significant variations in the predicted QMA-EUR.
Evaluation of several initialization methods on arithmetic optimization algorithm performance

Abstract Arithmetic optimization algorithm (AOA) is one of the recently proposed population-based metaheuristic algorithms. The algorithmic design concept of the AOA is based on the distributive behavior of arithmetic operators, namely, multiplication (M), division (D), subtraction (S), and addition (A). Being a new metaheuristic algorithm, the need for a performance evaluation of AOA is significant to the global optimization research community and specifically to nature-inspired metaheuristic enthusiasts. This article aims to evaluate the influence of the algorithm control parameters, namely, population size and the number of iterations, on the performance of the newly proposed AOA. In addition, we also investigated and validated the influence of different initialization schemes available in the literature on the performance of the AOA. Experiments were conducted using different initialization scenarios and the first is where the population size is large and the number of iterations is low. The second scenario is when the number of iterations is high, and the population size is small. Finally, when the population size and the number of iterations are similar. The numerical results from the conducted experiments showed that AOA is sensitive to the population size and requires a large population size for optimal performance. Afterward, we initialized AOA with six initialization schemes, and their performances were tested on the classical functions and the functions defined in the CEC 2020 suite. The results were presented, and their implications were discussed. Our results showed that the performance of AOA could be influenced when the solution is initialized with schemes other than default random numbers. The Beta distribution outperformed the random number distribution in all cases for both the classical and CEC 2020 functions. The performance of uniform distribution, Rayleigh distribution, Latin hypercube sampling, and Sobol low discrepancy sequence are relatively competitive with the Random number. On the basis of our experiments’ results, we recommend that a solution size of 6,000, the number of iterations of 100, and initializing the solutions with Beta distribution will lead to AOA performing optimally for scenarios considered in our experiments.
Possibilistic keys

Possibility theory is applied to introduce and reason about the fundamental notion of a key for uncertain data. Uncertainty is modeled qualitatively by assigning to tuples of data a degree of possibility with which they occur in a relation, and assigning to keys a degree of certainty which says to which tuples the key applies. The associated implication problem is characterized axiomatically and algorithmically. Using extremal combinatorics, we then characterize the families of non-redundant possibilistic keys that attain maximum cardinality. In addition, we show how to compute for any given set of possibilistic keys a possibilistic Armstrong relation, that is, a possibilistic relation that satisfies every key in the given set and violates every possibilistic key not implied by the given set. We also establish an algorithm for the discovery of all possibilistic keys that are satisfied by a given possibilistic relation. It is shown that the computational complexity of computing possibilistic Armstrong relations is precisely exponential in the input, and the decision variant of the discovery problem is NP-complete as well as W[2]-complete in the size of the possibilistic key. Further applications of possibilistic keys in constraint maintenance, data cleaning, and query processing are illustrated by examples. The computation of possibilistic Armstrong relations and discovery of possibilistic keys from possibilistic relations have been implemented as prototypes. Extensive experiments with these prototypes provide insight into the size of possibilistic Armstrong relations and the time to compute them, as well as the time it takes to compute a cover of the possibilistic keys that hold on a possibilistic relation, and the time it takes to remove any redundant possibilistic keys from this cover.
Automatic modulation classification using techniques from image classification

Automatic Modulation Classification (AMC) is a rapidly evolving technology, which can be employed in software defined radio structures, especially in 5G and 6G technology. Machine Learning (ML) can provide novel and efficient technology for modulation classification, especially for systems working in low signal to noise ratio (SNR). In this article, two dynamic systems not reliant on received signal phase lock and frequency lock are presented, with both employing ML to classify the modulation types for different received SNR. The first model is developed from the previous existing literatures, which utilises constellation images (CI) and image classification technology. Here, modulation types can be detected in a dynamic way without phase lock and frequency lock. In the second model, a new method named Graphic Representation of Features (GRF) is proposed, which represents the statistical features as a spider graph for ML. The concepts are tested and verified using simulations and RF data using a lab software defined radio (SDR). The results from the two models are compared. With the GRF techniques an overall classification accuracy of 59% is observed for 0 dB SNR and 86% at 10 dB SNR, compared to a random guess accuracy of 25%.
Light Field Reconstruction Using Residual Networks on Raw Images

Although Light-Field (LF) technology attracts attention due to its large number of applications, especially with the introduction of consumer LF cameras and its frequent use, reconstructing densely sampled LF images represents a great challenge to the use and development of LF technology. Our paper proposes a learning-based method to reconstruct densely sampled LF images from a sparse set of input images. We trained our model with raw LF images rather than using multiple images of the same scene. Raw LF can represent the two-dimensional array of images captured in a single image. Therefore, it enables the network to understand and model the relationship between different images of the same scene well and thus restore more texture details and provide better quality. Using raw images has transformed the task from image reconstruction into image-to-image translation. The feature of small-baseline LF was used to define the images to be reconstructed using the nearest input view to initialize input images. Our network was trained end-to-end to minimize the sum of absolute errors between the reconstructed and ground-truth images. Experimental results on three challenging real-world datasets demonstrate the high performance of our proposed method and its outperformance over the state-of-the-art methods.
Attention Map-Guided Visual Explanations for Deep Neural Networks

Deep neural network models perform well in a variety of domains, such as computer vision, recommender systems, natural language processing, and defect detection. In contrast, in areas such as healthcare, finance, and defense, deep neural network models, due to their lack of explainability, are not trusted by users. In this paper, we focus on attention-map-guided visual explanations for deep neural networks. We employ an attention mechanism to find the most important region of an input image. The Grad-CAM method is used to extract the feature map for deep neural networks, and then the attention mechanism is used to extract the high-level attention maps. The attention map, which highlights the important region in the image for the target class, can be seen as a visual explanation of a deep neural network. We evaluate our method using two common metrics: average drop and percentage increase. For a more effective experiment, we also propose a new metric to evaluate our method. The experiments were carried out to show that the proposed method works better than the state-of-the-art explainable artificial intelligence method. Our approach can provide a lower average drop and higher percent increase when compared to other methods and find a more explanatory region, especially in the first twenty percent region of the input image.
An IoT-Enabled Platform for the Assessment of Physical and Mental Activities Utilizing Augmented Reality Exergaming

Augmented reality (AR) and Internet of Things (IoT) are among the core technological elements of modern information systems and applications in which advanced features for user interactivity and monitoring are required. These technologies are continuously improving and are available nowadays in all popular programming environments and platforms, allowing for their wide adoption in many different business and research applications. In the fields of healthcare and assisted living, AR is extensively applied in the development of exergames, facilitating the implementation of innovative gamification techniques, while IoT can effectively support the users' health monitoring aspects. In this work, we present a prototype platform for exergames that combines AR and IoT on commodity mobile devices for the development of serious games in the healthcare domain. The main objective of the solution was to promote the utilization of gamification techniques to boost the users' physical activities and to assist the regular assessment of their health and cognitive statuses through challenges and quests in the virtual and real world. With the integration of sensors and wearable devices by design, the platform has the capability of real-time monitoring the users' biosignals and activities during the game, collecting data for each session, which can be analyzed afterwards by healthcare professionals. The solution was validated in real world scenarios and the results were analyzed in order to further improve the performance and usability of the prototype.
GPS: A New TSP Formulation for Its Generalizations Type QUBO

We propose a new Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) formulation of the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP), with which we overcame the best formulation of the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) in terms of the minimum number of necessary variables. After, we will present a detailed study of the constraints subject to the new TSP model and benchmark it with MTZ and native formulations. Finally, we will test whether the correctness of the formulation by entering it into a QUBO problem solver. The solver chosen is a D-Wave_2000Q6 quantum computer simulator due to the connection between Quantum Annealing and QUBO formulations.
Electronic learning benefits and challenges in Malawi’s higher education: A literature review

Electronic learning (e-learning) has become inevitable for higher education institutions during the Corona Virus pandemic. This paper presents a systematic literature review on e-learning in Malawi's higher education institutions with comparable analysis from findings in other developing countries across the globe. The aim was to highlight some benefits and challenges of implementing a sustainable e-learning programme in higher education institutions. Methods for the review included a qualitative analysis of literature and employed the Bandara et al. (2011) framework and NVIVO 10.0 for windows for data analysis and management and incorporated the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses to help define the question, the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and the proposed methods, including a comprehensive search strategy. Sources for the review included research articles from databases such as Sage, Emerald, Science Direct and Elsevier. The paper has unearthed several benefits of online learning especially during the coronavirus pandemic. Despite the few publications and sustainable e-learning research in Malawi, the review has found that technological, individual, financial and managerial challenges, impede the development of best practice standards for e-learning implementation. The review has suggested recommendations of a sustainable e-learning programme to provide quality learning through technology. The paper provides further ideas for developing and implementing a sustainable e-learning program to provide quality learning through technology.
Deep learning segmentation of glomeruli on kidney donor frozen sections

Purpose: Recent advances in computational image analysis offer the opportunity to develop automatic quantification of histologic parameters as aid tools for practicing pathologists. We aim to develop deep learning (DL) models to quantify nonsclerotic and sclerotic glomeruli on frozen sections from donor kidney biopsies. Approach: A total of 258 whole slide images (WSI) from cadaveric donor kidney biopsies performed at our institution ( n=123 ) and at external institutions ( n=135 ) were used in this study. WSIs from our institution were divided at the patient level into training and validation datasets (ratio: 0.8:0.2), and external WSIs were used as an independent testing dataset. Nonsclerotic ( n=22767 ) and sclerotic ( n=1366 ) glomeruli were manually annotated by study pathologists on all WSIs. A nine-layer convolutional neural network based on the common U-Net architecture was developed and tested for the segmentation of nonsclerotic and sclerotic glomeruli. DL-derived, manual segmentation, and reported glomerular count (standard of care) were compared. Results: The average Dice similarity coefficient testing was 0.90 and 0.83. And the F1 , recall, and precision scores were 0.93, 0.96, and 0.90, and 0.87, 0.93, and 0.81, for nonsclerotic and sclerotic glomeruli, respectively. DL-derived and manual segmentation-derived glomerular counts were comparable, but statistically different from reported glomerular count. Conclusions: DL segmentation is a feasible and robust approach for automatic quantification of glomeruli. We represent the first step toward new protocols for the evaluation of donor kidney biopsies.