Search

Neural cellular automata have been proven effective in simulating morphogenetic processes. Developing such automata has been applied in 2D and 3D processes related to creating and regenerating complex structures and enabling their behaviors. However, neural cellular automata are inherently uncontrollable after the training process. Starting from a neural cellular automaton trained to generate a given shape from one living cell, this paper aims to gain insight into the behavior of the automaton, and to analyze the influence of the different image characteristics on the training and stabilization process and its shortcomings in different scenarios. For each considered shape, the automaton is trained on one RGB image of size $72 \times 72$ pixels containing the shape on an uniform white background, in which each pixel represents a cell. The evolution of the automaton starts from one living cell, employing a shallow neural network for the update rule, followed by backpropagation after a variable number of evolutionary steps. We studied the behavior of the automaton and the way in which different components like symmetry, orientation and colours of the shape influence its growth and alteration after a number of epochs and discussed this thoroughly in the experimental section of the paper. We further discuss a pooling strategy, used to stabilize the model and illustrate the influence of this pooling on the training process. The benefits of this strategy are compared to the original model and the behavior of the automaton during its evolution is studied in detail. Finally, we compare the results of models using different filters in the first stage of feature selection. The main results of our study are the insights gained into how the neural cellular automaton works, what it is actually learning, and what influence this learning, as there are observable result differences depending on the characteristics of the input images and the filters used in the model.

Over the years, artificial intelligence has demonstrated its ability to overcome many challenges in our day-to-day life. The evolution of it inquired more studies about Machine Learning possible solutions for different domains, including health care. The increasing demand for artificial intelligence solutions has brought accessibility to loads of data, including clinical data. The availability of medical records facilitates new opportunities to explore Machine Learning models and their abilities to process a significant amount of data and to identify patterns with the purpose of solving a medical problem. Understanding the applicability of artificial intelligence on this type of data has to be a compelling aim for emergency medicine clinicians. This paper focuses on the general clinical problem of the complex correlation between medical records and later diagnosis and, especially, on the process of emergency department triage which uses the Emergency Severity Index (ESI) as triage protocol. This study presents a comparison between three different Machine Learning models, such as Logistic Regression, Random Forest Tree and NN-Sequentail, with the purpose of classifying patients with an emergency code. We conducted four experiments because of imbalanced data. A web-based application was developed to improve the triage process after our theoretical and exploratory results. Overall, in all experiments, the NN-Sequential model had better results, having, in the first experiment, a ROC-AUC score for each ESI emergency code of: 0.59%, 0.76%, 0.71%, 0.78% 0.64%. After applying methods to balance the data, the model yielded a ROC-AUC score for each emergency code of 0.72%, 0.75%, 0.69%, 0.74%, 0.78%. In the last experiment consisting of a three-class classification problem, the NN-Sequential and Random Forest Tree models had similar metric outcomes, and the NN-Sequential algorithm had a ROC-AUC score for each emergency code of: 0.76%, 0.72%, 0.84%. Without any doubt, our research results presented in this paper endorse this tremendous curiosity in Machine Learning applications to enrich aspects of emergency medical care by applying specific methods for processing both medical data and medical records.

The term “big data” refers to the vast amount of structured and unstructured data generated by businesses, organizations, and individuals on a daily basis. The rapid growth of big data has led to the development of new technologies and techniques for storing, processing, and analyzing these data in order to extract valuable information. This study examines some of these technologies, compares their pros and cons, and provides solutions for handling specific types of reporting using big data tools. In addition, this paper discusses some of the challenges associated with big data and suggests approaches that could be used to manage and analyze these data. The findings demonstrate the benefits of efficiently managing the datasets and choosing the appropriate tools, as well as the efficiency of the proposed solution with hands-on examples.

The present paper concretizes the models proposed by S. Ri and N. Secelean. S. Ri proposed the construction of the fractal interpolation function (FIF) considering finite systems consisting of Rakotch contractions, but produced no concretization of the model. N. Secelean considered countable systems of Banach contractions to produce the fractal interpolation function. Based on the abovementioned results, in this paper, we propose two different algorithms to produce the fractal interpolation functions both in the affine and non-affine cases. The theoretical context we were working in suppose a countable set of starting points and a countable system of Rakotch contractions. Due to the computational restrictions, the algorithms constructed in the applications have the weakness that they use a finite set of starting points and a finite system of Rakotch contractions. In this respect, the attractor obtained is a two-step approximation. The large number of points used in the computations and the graphical results lead us to the conclusion that the attractor obtained is a good approximation of the fractal interpolation function in both cases, affine and non-affine FIFs. In this way, we also provide a concretization of the scheme presented by C.M. Păcurar.

Bug reports are generated in large numbers during the software development processes in the software industry. The manual processing of these issues is usually time consuming and prone to errors, consequently delaying the entire software development process. Thus, a properly designed bug triage and management process implies that essential operations, such as duplicate detection, bug assignments to proper developers, and determination of the importance level, are sustained by efficient algorithmic models and implementation approaches. Designing and implementing a proper bug triage and management process becomes an essential scientific research topic, as it may significantly optimize the software development and business process in the information technology industry. Consequently, this paper thoroughly surveys the most significant related scientific contributions analytically and constructively, distinguishing it from similar survey papers. The paper proposes optimal algorithmic and software solutions for particular real-world use cases that are analyzed. It concludes by presenting the most important open research questions and challenges. Additionally, the paper provides a valuable scientific literature survey for any researcher or practitioner in software bug triage and management systems based on artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques.