Reviewerly/exHarmony huggingface dataset:
Clinical data classification using an enhanced SMOTE and chaotic evolutionary feature selection

Class imbalance and the presence of irrelevant or redundant features in training data can pose serious challenges to the development of a classification framework. This paper proposes a framework for developing a Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) that addresses class imbalance and the feature selection problem. Under this framework, the dataset is balanced at the data level and a wrapper approach is used to perform feature selection. The following three clinical datasets from the University of California Irvine (UCI) machine learning repository were used for experimentation: the Indian Liver Patient Dataset (ILPD), the Thoracic Surgery Dataset (TSD) and the Pima Indian Diabetes (PID) dataset. The Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE), which was enhanced using Orchard's algorithm, was used to balance the datasets. A wrapper approach that uses Chaotic Multi-Verse Optimisation (CMVO) was proposed for feature subset selection. The arithmetic mean of the Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC) and F-score (F1), which was measured using a Random Forest (RF) classifier, was used as the fitness function. After selecting the relevant features, a RF, which comprises 100 estimators and uses the Information Gain Ratio as the split criteria, was used for classification. The classifier achieved a 0.65 MCC, a 0.84 F1 and 82.46% accuracy for the ILPD; a 0.74 MCC, a 0.87 F1 and 86.88% accuracy for the TSD; and a 0.78 MCC, a 0.89 F1and 89.04% accuracy for the PID dataset. The effects of balancing and feature selection on the classifier were investigated and the performance of the framework was compared with the existing works in the literature. The results showed that the proposed framework is competitive in terms of the three performance measures used. The results of a Wilcoxon test confirmed the statistical superiority of the proposed method.
A joint introduction to Gaussian Processes and Relevance Vector Machines with connections to Kalman filtering and other kernel smoothers

The expressive power of Bayesian kernel-based methods has led them to become an important tool across many different facets of artificial intelligence, and useful to a plethora of modern application domains, providing both power and interpretability via uncertainty analysis. This article introduces and discusses two methods which straddle the areas of probabilistic Bayesian schemes and kernel methods for regression: Gaussian Processes and Relevance Vector Machines. Our focus is on developing a common framework with which to view these methods, via intermediate methods a probabilistic version of the well-known kernel ridge regression, and drawing connections among them, via dual formulations, and discussion of their application in the context of major tasks: regression, smoothing, interpolation, and filtering. Overall, we provide understanding of the mathematical concepts behind these models, and we summarize and discuss in depth different interpretations and highlight the relationship to other methods, such as linear kernel smoothers, Kalman filtering and Fourier approximations. Throughout, we provide numerous figures to promote understanding, and we make numerous recommendations to practitioners. Benefits and drawbacks of the different techniques are highlighted. To our knowledge, this is the most in-depth study of its kind to date focused on these two methods, and will be relevant to theoretical understanding and practitioners throughout the domains of data-science, signal processing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence in general.
Gaussian-Adaptive Bilateral Filter

Recent studies have demonstrated that a bilateral filter can increase the quality of edge-preserving image smoothing significantly. Different strategies or mechanisms have been used to eliminate the brute-force computation in bilateral filters. However, blindly decreasing the processing time of the bilateral filter cannot further ameliorate the effectiveness of filter. In addition, even when the processing speed of the filter is increased, inherent problem occurred in the Gaussian range kernel when facing a noise filtering input and its effect on edge-preserving image smoothing operation are barely discussed. In this letter, we propose a novel Gaussian-adaptive bilateral filter (GABF) to resolve the aforementioned problem. The basic idea is to acquire a low-pass guidance for the range kernel by a Gaussian spatial kernel. Such low-pass guidance lead to a clean Gaussian range kernel for later bilateral composite. The results of experiments conducted on several test datasets indicate that the proposed GABF outperforms most existing bilateral-filter-based methods.
Enhancing Vendor Managed Inventory Supply Chain Operations Using Blockchain Smart Contracts

Supply chain networks have grown in complexity and size due to increased globalization leading to a variety of challenges and opportunities for improvement. Optimizing inventory levels and adjusting replenishment policies have significant effects on the operational performance and profitability of supply chains. Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) is a mutually beneficial arrangement between supplier and buyer, where the supplier is responsible for making inventory and replenishment decisions based on buyers' inventory status. Potential benefits of VMI include reducing inventories, enabling information sharing, eliminating safety stock, and reducing purchasing related costs across the supply chain. In today's supply chains, VMI operations face critical challenges related to data integrity, transparency, traceability, and single point of failure due to its centralized architecture. Blockchain technology is a distributed ledger that ensures a transparent, safe, and secure exchange of data among supply chain stakeholders. The advantages of adopting blockchain technology for VMI operations in a supply chain include decentralized control, security, traceability, and auditable time-stamped transactions. In this paper, we present a blockchain-based approach using smart contracts to transform VMI supply chain operations. We propose a generic framework using Ethereum smart contracts and decentralized storage systems to automate the processes and information exchange and detailed algorithms that capture the interactions among supply chain stakeholders. The smart contract code was developed and tested in Remix environment. We present cost and security analysis incurred by the stakeholders in the supply chain. Adopting a blockchain-based solution to VMI operations in supply chains is economically viable and provides a streamlined, secure, trusted, and transparent mode of communication among various stakeholders.
Pixelhop++: A Small Successive-Subspace-Learning-Based (Ssl-Based) Model For Image Classification

The successive subspace learning (SSL) principle was developed and used to design an interpretable learning model, known as the PixelHop method, for image classification in our prior work. Here, we propose an improved PixelHop method and call it Pixel-Hop++. First, to make the PixelHop model size smaller, we decouple a joint spatial-spectral input tensor to multiple spatial tensors (one for each spectral component) under the spatial-spectral separability assumption and perform the Saab transform in a channel-wise manner, called the channel-wise (c/w) Saab transform. Second, by performing this operation from one hop to another successively, we construct a channel-decomposed feature tree whose leaf nodes contain features of one dimension (1D). Third, these 1D features are ranked according to their cross-entropy values, which allows us to select a subset of discriminant features for image classification. In Pixel-Hop++, one can control the learning model size of fine-granularity, offering a flexible tradeoff between the model size and the classification performance. We demonstrate the flexibility of Pixel-Hop++ on MNIST, Fashion MNIST, and CIFAR-10 three datasets.
Phishing Attacks Detection using Machine Learning Approach

Evolving digital transformation has exacerbated cybersecurity threats globally. Digitization expands the doors wider to cybercriminals. Initially cyberthreats approach in the form of phishing to steal the confidential user credentials. Usually, Hackers will influence the users through phishing in order to gain access to the organizatlou's digital assets and networks. With security breaches, cybercriminals execute ransomware attack, get unauthorized access, and shut down systems and even demand a ransom for releasing the access. Anti-phishing software and techniques are circumvented by the phishers for dodging tactics. Though threat intelligence and behavioural analytics systems support organizations to spot the unusual traffic patterns, still the best practice to prevent phishing attacks is defended in depth. In this perspective, the proposed research work has developed a model to detect the phishing attacks using machine learning (ML) algorithms like random forest (RF) and decision tree (DT). A standard legitimate dataset of phishing attacks from Kaggle was aided for ML processing. To analyze the attributes of the dataset, the proposed model has used feature selection algorithms like principal component analysis (PCA). Finally, a maximum accuracy of 97% was achieved through the random forest algorithm.
Shuffle and Attend: Video Domain Adaptation

We address the problem of domain adaptation in videos for the task of human action recognition. Inspired by image-based domain adaptation, we can perform video adaptation by aligning the features of frames or clips of source and target videos. However, equally aligning all clips is sub-optimal as not all clips are informative for the task. As the first novelty, we propose an attention mechanism which focuses on more discriminative clips and directly optimizes for video-level (cf. clip-level) alignment. As the backgrounds are often very different between source and target, the source background-corrupted model adapts poorly to target domain videos. To alleviate this, as a second novelty, we propose to use the clip order prediction as an auxiliary task. The clip order prediction loss, when combined with domain adversarial loss, encourages learning of representations which focus on the humans and objects involved in the actions, rather than the uninformative and widely differing (between source and target) backgrounds. We empirically show that both components contribute positively towards adaptation performance. We report state-of-the-art performances on two out of three challenging public benchmarks, two based on the UCF and HMDB datasets, and one on Kinetics to NEC-Drone datasets. We also support the intuitions and the results with qualitative results.
Adversarial Uni- and Multi-modal Stream Networks for Multimodal Image Registration

Deformable image registration between Computed Tomography (CT) images and Magnetic Resonance (MR) imaging is essential for many image-guided therapies. In this paper, we propose a novel translation-based unsupervised deformable image registration method. Distinct from other translation-based methods that attempt to convert the multimodal problem (e.g., CT-to-MR) into a unimodal problem (e.g., MR-to-MR) via image-to-image translation, our method leverages the deformation fields estimated from both: (i) the translated MR image and (ii) the original CT image in a dual-stream fashion, and automatically learns how to fuse them to achieve better registration performance. The multimodal registration network can be effectively trained by computationally efficient similarity metrics without any ground-truth deformation. Our method has been evaluated on two clinical datasets and demonstrates promising results compared to state-of-the-art traditional and learning-based methods.
Analysis of direct citation, co-citation and bibliographic coupling in scientific topic identification

In our study, we examine the impact of citation network structures on the ability to discern valuable research topics in Computer Science literature. We use the bibliographic information available in the DBLP database to extract candidate phrases from scientific paper abstracts. Following that, we construct citation networks based on direct citation, co-citation and bibliographic coupling relationships between the papers. The candidate research topics, in the form of keyphrases and n-grammes, are subsequently ranked and filtered by a graph-text ranking algorithm. This selection of the highest ranked potential topics is further evaluated by domain experts and through the Wikipedia knowledge base. The results obtained from these citation networks are complementary, returning valid but non-overlapping output phrases between some pairs of networks. In particular, bibliographic coupling appears to capture more unique information than either direct citation or co-citation. These findings point towards the possible added value in combining bibliographic coupling analysis with other structures. At the same time, combining direct citation and co-citation is put into question. We expect our findings to be utilised in method design for research topic identification.
Framework for decentralised architectural design BIM and Blockchain integration

The paper introduces a framework for decentralised architectural design in the context of the fourth industrial revolution. We examine first the constraints of building information modelling in regard to collaboration and trust. We then introduce Blockchain infrastructure as a means for creating new operational and business models for architectural design, through project governance, scaling collaboration nominally to thousands of agents, and shifting trust to the infrastructure rather than the architectural design team. Through a wider consideration of Blockchains in construction projects we focus on the design process and validate our framework with a prototype of BIM design optimisation integrated with a Blockchain mechanism. The paper concludes by outlining the contributions our framework can enhance in the building information modelling processes, within the context of the fourth industrial revolution.
Blind Natural Video Quality Prediction via Statistical Temporal Features and Deep Spatial Features

Due to the wide range of different natural temporal and spatial distortions appearing in user generated video content, blind assessment of natural video quality is a challenging research problem. In this study, we combine the hand-crafted statistical temporal features used in a state-of-the-art video quality model and spatial features obtained from convolutional neural network trained for image quality assessment via transfer learning. Experimental results on two recently published natural video quality databases show that the proposed model can predict subjective video quality more accurately than the publicly available video quality models representing the state-of-the-art. The proposed model is also competitive in terms of computational complexity.
Action Space Shaping in Deep Reinforcement Learning

Reinforcement learning (RL) has been successful in training agents in various learning environments, including video games. However, such work modifies and shrinks the action space from the game's original. This is to avoid trying "pointless" actions and to ease the implementation. Currently, this is mostly done based on intuition, with little systematic research supporting the design decisions. In this work, we aim to gain insight on these action space modifications by conducting extensive experiments in video game environments. Our results show how domain-specific removal of actions and discretization of continuous actions can be crucial for successful learning. With these insights, we hope to ease the use of RL in new environments, by clarifying what action-spaces are easy to learn.
An Empirical Study of Usages, Updates and Risks of Third-Party Libraries in Java Projects

Third-party libraries play a key role in software development as they can relieve developers of the heavy burden of re-implementing common functionalities. However, third-party libraries and client projects evolve asynchronously. As a result, out-dated third-party libraries might be used in client projects while developers are not aware of the potential risk (e.g., security bug). Outdated third-party libraries may be updated in client projects in a delayed way, and developers may be less aware of the potential risk (e.g., API incompatibility) in updates. Developers of third-party libraries may be unaware of how their third-party libraries are used or updated in client projects. Therefore, a quantitative and holistic study on usages, updates and risks of third-party libraries in open-source projects can provide concrete evidences on these problems, and practical insights to improve the ecosystem. In this paper, we contribute such a study in Java ecosystem. In particular, we conduct a library usage analysis (e.g., usage intensity and outdatedness) and library update analysis (e.g., update intensity and delay) on 806 open-source projects and 13,565 third- party libraries. Then, we carry out a library risk analysis (e.g., usage risk and update risk) on 806 open-source projects and 544 security bugs. These analyses aim to quantify the usage and update practices and the potential risk of using and updating outdated third-party libraries with respect to security bugs from two holistic perspectives (i.e., open-source projects and third-party libraries). Our findings suggest practical implications to developers and researchers on problems and potential solutions in maintaining third-party libraries (e.g., smart alerting and automated updating of outdated third-party libraries). To indicate the usefulness of our findings, we design a smart alerting system for assisting developers to make confident decisions when updating third-party libraries. 33 and 24 open-source projects have confirmed and updated third-party libraries after receiving our alerts.
Contextual Diversity for Active Learning

Requirement of large annotated datasets restrict the use of deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for many practical applications. The problem can be mitigated by using active learning (AL) techniques which, under a given annotation budget, allow to select a subset of data that yields maximum accuracy upon fine tuning. State of the art AL approaches typically rely on measures of visual diversity or prediction uncertainty, which are unable to effectively capture the variations in spatial context. On the other hand, modern CNN architectures make heavy use of spatial context for achieving highly accurate predictions. Since the context is difficult to evaluate in the absence of ground-truth labels, we introduce the notion of contextual diversity that captures the confusion associated with spatially co-occurring classes. Contextual Diversity (CD) hinges on a crucial observation that the probability vector predicted by a CNN for a region of interest typically contains information from a larger receptive field. Exploiting this observation, we use the proposed CD measure within two AL frameworks: (1) a core-set based strategy and (2) a reinforcement learning based policy, for active frame selection. Our extensive empirical evaluation establish state of the art results for active learning on benchmark datasets of Semantic Segmentation, Object Detection and Image classification. Our ablation studies show clear advantages of using contextual diversity for active learning. The source code and additional results are available at https://github.com/sharat29ag/CDAL.
Teaching with and teaching about technology – Evidence for professional development of in-service teachers

The digital transformation has implications for how and what to teach. For the purpose of professional development, the paper at hand presents a conceptual framework for predicting the use of technology as a means and as a content of instruction. It is informed by the TPACK framework and the ‘will, skill, tool’ model. The predictors are Technological Knowledge (TK), Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK), Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK), Technological Collaboration Knowledge (TCoK), and Attitudes. These constructs are measured by newly developed self-assessment instruments. Structural equation modeling using a sample of 212 in-service teachers from commercial schools in German-speaking Switzerland lend support to the soundness of the measurement instrument and the conceptual framework. Overall, 36% of the variance of the use of technology as a means and 45% of the variance for the use as the content of instruction can be explained. Mediation and multigroup analyses, a finite-mixture segmentation, comparisons of competing models, and factor score regression yielded evidence for the robustness of the conceptual framework.
Visual saliency detection by integrating spatial position prior of object with background cues

In this paper, we propose an effective visual saliency-detection model based on spatial position prior of attractive objects and sparse background features. Firstly, since multi-orientation features are among the key visual stimuli in the human visual system (HVS) to perceive object spatial information, discrete wavelet frame transform (DWDT) is applied to extract directionality characteristics for calculating the centoid of remarkable objects in the original image. Then, the color contrast feature is used to represent the physical characteristics of salient objects. Thirdly, in order to explore and utilize the background features of an input image, sparse dictionary learning is performed to statistically analyze and estimate the background feature map. Finally, three distinctive cues of the directional feature including the color contrast feature and the background feature are combined to generate a final robust saliency map. Experimental results on three widely used image datasets show that our proposed method is effective and efficient, and is superior to other state-of-the-art saliency-detection models.
NEXT: a neural network framework for next POI recommendation

The task of next POI recommendations has been studied extensively in recent years. However, developing a unified recommendation framework to incorporate multiple factors associated with both POIs and users remains challenging, because of the heterogeneity nature of these information. Further, effective mechanisms to smoothly handle cold-start cases are also a difficult topic. Inspired by the recent success of neural networks in many areas, in this paper, we propose a simple yet effective neural network framework, named NEXT, for next POI recommendations. NEXT is a unified framework to learn the hidden intent regarding user's next move, by incorporating different factors in a unified manner. Specifically, in NEXT, we incorporate meta-data information, e.g., user friendship and textual descriptions of POIs, and two kinds of temporal contexts (i.e., time interval and visit time). To leverage sequential relations and geographical influence, we propose to adopt DeepWalk, a network representation learning technique, to encode such knowledge. We evaluate the effectiveness of NEXT against other state-of-the-art alternatives and neural networks based solutions. Experimental results on three publicly available datasets demonstrate that NEXT significantly outperforms baselines in real-time next POI recommendations. Further experiments show inherent ability of NEXT in handling cold-start.