Search

Chest radiography is climacteric in identifying different pulmonary diseases, yet radiologist workload and inefficiency can lead to misdiagnoses. Automatic, accurate, and efficient segmentation of lung from X-ray images of chest is paramount for early disease detection. This study develops a deep learning framework using a Pix2pix Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to segment pulmonary abnormalities from CXR images. This framework's image preprocessing and augmentation techniques were properly incorporated with a U-Net-inspired generator-discriminator architecture. Initially, it loaded the CXR images and manual masks from the Montgomery and Shenzhen datasets, after which preprocessing and resizing were performed. A U-Net generator is applied to the processed CXR images that yield segmented masks; then, a Discriminator Network differentiates between the generated and real masks. Montgomery dataset served as the model's training set in the study, and the Shenzhen dataset was used to test its robustness, which was used here for the first time. An adversarial loss and an L1 distance were used to optimize the model in training. All metrics, which assess precision, recall, F1 score, and Dice coefficient, prove the effectiveness of this framework in pulmonary abnormality segmentation. It, therefore, sets the basis for future studies to be performed shortly using diverse datasets that could further confirm its clinical applicability in medical imaging., Comment: 6 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables

Heart disease is a leading cause of premature death worldwide, particularly among middle-aged and older adults, with men experiencing a higher prevalence. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), non-communicable diseases, including heart disease, account for 25\% (17.9 million) of global deaths, with over 43,204 annual fatalities in Bangladesh. However, the development of heart disease detection (HDD) systems tailored to the Bangladeshi population remains underexplored due to the lack of benchmark datasets and reliance on manual or limited-data approaches. This study addresses these challenges by introducing new, ethically sourced HDD dataset, BIG-Dataset and CD dataset which incorporates comprehensive data on symptoms, examination techniques, and risk factors. Using advanced machine learning techniques, including Logistic Regression and Random Forest, we achieved a remarkable testing accuracy of up to 96.6\% with Random Forest. The proposed AI-driven system integrates these models and datasets to provide real-time, accurate diagnostics and personalized healthcare recommendations. By leveraging structured datasets and state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms, this research offers an innovative solution for scalable and effective heart disease detection, with the potential to reduce mortality rates and improve clinical outcomes.

Monitoring agricultural activities is important to ensure food security. Remote sensing plays a significant role for large-scale continuous monitoring of cultivation activities. Time series remote sensing data were used for the generation of the cropping pattern. Classification algorithms are used to classify crop patterns and mapped agriculture land used. Some conventional classification methods including support vector machine (SVM) and decision trees were applied for crop pattern recognition. However, in this paper, we are proposing Deep Neural Network (DNN) based classification to improve the performance of crop pattern recognition and make a comparative analysis with two (2) other machine learning approaches including Naive Bayes and Random Forest., Comment: Published in ICNTET2018: International Conference on New Trends in Engineering & Technology Tirupathi Highway, Tiruvallur Dist Chennai, India, September 7-8, 2018

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a non-invasive optical technique that measures brain activity by estimating blood oxygenation using near-infrared light. Traditionally, PsychoPy is used in many studies to send task-specific markers, requiring a separate device to interface with the fNIRS data collection system. In this work, we present a Python-based implementation to send markers directly, eliminating the need for an additional device. This approach allows researchers to run both marker transmission and fNIRS data collection on the same computer, simplifying the setup and enhancing accessibility. This streamlined solution reduces hardware requirements and makes fNIRS studies more efficient.

This scoping review analyzes the use of Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) in game-based learning (GBL) settings, providing a thorough examination of contemporary trends and approaches.Employing the PRISMA framework, an initial collection of 956 articles was methodically screened, resulting in 18 research papers that satisfied the inclusion criteria. Each chosen study was assessed based on many criteria, including measurable outcomes, equipment characteristics, and study design. The review categorizes fNIRS-based GBL research into two primary types: cognitive response studies, which analyze how the brain function during tasks and comparative studies, which evaluate finding across different study materials or methods based on neural activities. The analysis includes learning platforms, gaming devices, and various fNIRS devices that has been used. Additionally, study designs and data collection methodologies were reviewed to evaluate their impact on research results. A comprehensive analysis outlines the specifications of fNIRS devices used in diverse studies, including yearly publication trends categorized by learning type, gaming equipment, fNIRS study classification, and outcome measures such as learning improvements and cerebral pattern analysis. Furthermore, the study design and analysis techniques are detailed alongside the number of studies in each category, emphasizing methodological trends and analytical strategies., Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures

Matrix and tensor-guided parametrization for Natural Language Processing (NLP) models is fundamentally useful for the improvement of the model's systematic efficiency. However, the internal links between these two algebra structures and language model parametrization are poorly understood. Also, the existing matrix and tensor research is math-heavy and far away from machine learning (ML) and NLP research concepts. These two issues result in the recent progress on matrices and tensors for model parametrization being more like a loose collection of separate components from matrix/tensor and NLP studies, rather than a well-structured unified approach, further hindering algorithm design. To this end, we propose a unified taxonomy, which bridges the matrix/tensor compression approaches and model compression concepts in ML and NLP research. Namely, we adopt an elementary concept in linear algebra, that of a subspace, which is also the core concept in geometric algebra, to reformulate the matrix/tensor and ML/NLP concepts (e.g. attention mechanism) under one umbrella. In this way, based on our subspace formalization, typical matrix and tensor decomposition algorithms can be interpreted as geometric transformations. Finally, we revisit recent literature on matrix- or tensor-guided language model compression, rephrase and compare their core ideas, and then point out the current research gap and potential solutions.

The circular economy has the potential to increase resource efficiency and minimize waste through the 4R framework of reducing, reusing, recycling, and recovering. Blockchain technology is currently considered a valuable aid in the transition to a circular economy. Its decentralized and tamper-resistant nature enables the construction of transparent and secure supply chain management systems, thereby improving product accountability and traceability. However, the full potential of blockchain technology in circular economy models will not be realized until a number of concerns, including scalability, interoperability, data protection, and regulatory and legal issues, are addressed. More research and stakeholder participation are required to overcome these limitations and achieve the benefits of blockchain technology in promoting a circular economy. This article presents a systematic literature review (SLR) that identified industry use cases for blockchain-driven circular economy models and offered architectures to minimize resource consumption, prices, and inefficiencies while encouraging the reuse, recycling, and recovery of end-of-life products. Three main outcomes emerged from our review of 41 documents, which included scholarly publications, Twitter-linked information, and Google results. The relationship between blockchain and the 4R framework for circular economy; discussion the terminology and various forms of blockchain and circular economy; and identification of the challenges and obstacles that blockchain technology may face in enabling a circular economy. This research shows how blockchain technology can help with the transition to a circular economy. Yet, it emphasizes the importance of additional study and stakeholder participation to overcome potential hurdles and obstacles in implementing blockchain-driven circular economy models.

This study assesses landslide vulnerability in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), specifically focusing on Bandarban district in Southeast Bangladesh. By employing a multidisciplinary approach, thirteen factors influencing landslides were examined, including terrain features, land use, and environmental variables. Utilizing the FR model and integrating various datasets such as DEM, satellite images, and rainfall data, landslide susceptibility mapping was conducted. The analysis revealed that steep slopes, high elevations, specific aspects, and curvature contribute significantly to landslide susceptibility. Factors like erosion, soil saturation, drainage density, and human activities were also identified as key contributors. The study underscored the impact of land use changes and highlighted the stabilizing effect of vegetation cover. The resulting Landslide Susceptibility Map (LSM) categorized the area into five susceptibility zones. The model demonstrated a prediction accuracy of 76.47%, indicating its effectiveness in forecasting landslide occurrences. Additionally, the study identified significant changes in the study area over three decades, emphasizing the influence of human activities on slope instability. These findings offer valuable insights for policymakers and land-use planners, emphasizing the importance of proactive measures to mitigate landslide risks and ensure community safety. Incorporating these insights into policy frameworks, Comment: More than 15 pages

Twist engineering of magnetic van der Waals (vdW) moir\'e superlattices provides an attractive way to achieve precise nanoscale control over the spin degree of freedom on two-dimensional flatland. Despite the very recent demonstrations of moir\'e magnetism featuring exotic phases with noncollinear spin order in twisted vdW magnet chromium triiodide CrI3, the local magnetic interactions, spin dynamics, and magnetic phase transitions within and across individual moir\'e supercells remain elusive. Taking advantage of a scanning single-spin magnetometry platform, here we report observation of two distinct magnetic phase transitions with separate critical temperatures within a moir\'e supercell of small-angle twisted double trilayer CrI3. By measuring temperature dependent spin fluctuations at the coexisting ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic regions in twisted CrI3, we explicitly show that the Curie temperature of the ferromagnetic state is higher than the N\'eel temperature of the antiferromagnetic one by ~10 K. Our mean-field calculations attribute such a spatial and thermodynamic phase separation to the stacking order modulated interlayer exchange coupling at the twisted interface of the moir\'e superlattices. The presented results highlight twist engineering as a promising tuning knob to realize on-demand control of not only the nanoscale spin order of moir\'e quantum matter but also its dynamic magnetic responses, which may find relevant applications in developing transformative vdW electronic and magnetic devices.

The purpose of the Insect Detection System for Crop and Plant Health is to keep an eye out for and identify insect infestations in farming areas. By utilizing cutting-edge technology like computer vision and machine learning, the system seeks to identify hazardous insects early and accurately. This would enable prompt response to save crops and maintain optimal plant health. The Method of this study includes Data Acquisition, Preprocessing, Data splitting, Model Implementation and Model evaluation. Different models like MobileNetV2, ResNet152V2, Xecption, Custom CNN was used in this study. In order to categorize insect photos, a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) based on the ResNet152V2 architecture is constructed and evaluated in this work. Achieving 99% training accuracy and 97% testing accuracy, ResNet152V2 demonstrates superior performance among four implemented models. The results highlight its potential for real-world applications in insect classification and entomology studies, emphasizing efficiency and accuracy. To ensure food security and sustain agricultural output globally, finding insects is crucial. Cutting-edge technology, such as ResNet152V2 models, greatly influence automating and improving the accuracy of insect identification. Efficient insect detection not only minimizes crop losses but also enhances agricultural productivity, contributing to sustainable food production. This underscores the pivotal role of technology in addressing challenges related to global food security.

The incorporation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) models into various optimization systems is on the rise. Yet, addressing complex urban and environmental management problems normally requires in-depth domain science and informatics expertise. This expertise is essential for deriving data and simulation-driven for informed decision support. In this context, we investigate the potential of leveraging the pre-trained Large Language Models (LLMs). By adopting ChatGPT API as the reasoning core, we outline an integrated workflow that encompasses natural language processing, methontology-based prompt tuning, and transformers. This workflow automates the creation of scenario-based ontology using existing research articles and technical manuals of urban datasets and simulations. The outcomes of our methodology are knowledge graphs in widely adopted ontology languages (e.g., OWL, RDF, SPARQL). These facilitate the development of urban decision support systems by enhancing the data and metadata modeling, the integration of complex datasets, the coupling of multi-domain simulation models, and the formulation of decision-making metrics and workflow. The feasibility of our methodology is evaluated through a comparative analysis that juxtaposes our AI-generated ontology with the well-known Pizza Ontology employed in tutorials for popular ontology software (e.g., prot\'eg\'e). We close with a real-world case study of optimizing the complex urban system of multi-modal freight transportation by generating anthologies of various domain data and simulations to support informed decision-making.

A career is a crucial aspect for any person to fulfill their desires through hard work. During their studies, students cannot find the best career suggestions unless they receive meaningful guidance tailored to their skills. Therefore, we developed an AI-assisted model for early prediction to provide better career suggestions. Although the task is difficult, proper guidance can make it easier. Effective career guidance requires understanding a student's academic skills, interests, and skill-related activities. In this research, we collected essential information from Computer Science (CS) and Software Engineering (SWE) students to train a machine learning (ML) model that predicts career paths based on students' career-related information. To adequately train the models, we applied Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques and completed dataset pre-processing. For comparative analysis, we utilized multiple classification ML algorithms and deep learning (DL) algorithms. This study contributes valuable insights to educational advising by providing specific career suggestions based on the unique features of CS and SWE students. Additionally, the research helps individual CS and SWE students find suitable jobs that match their skills, interests, and skill-related activities.

An emergent challenge in geriatric care is improving the quality of care, which requires insight from stakeholders. Qualitative methods offer detailed insights, but they can be biased and have limited generalizability, while quantitative methods may miss nuances. Network-based approaches, such as quantitative ethnography (QE), can bridge this methodological gap. By leveraging the strengths of both methods, QE provides profound insights into need-finding interviews. In this paper, to better understand geriatric care attitudes, we interviewed ten nursing assistants, used QE to analyze the data, and compared their daily activities in real life with training experiences. A two-sample t-test with a large effect size (Cohen's d=1.63) indicated a significant difference between real-life and training activities. The findings suggested incorporating more empathetic training scenarios into the future design of our geriatric care simulation. The results have implications for human-computer interaction and human factors. This is illustrated by presenting an example of using QE to analyze expert interviews with nursing assistants as caregivers to inform subsequent design processes., Comment: B. Kiafar, S. Daher, S. Sharmin, A. Ahmmed, L. Thiamwong, and R. L. Barmaki, ''Analyzing Nursing Assistant Attitudes Towards Geriatric Caregiving Using Epistemic Network Analysis'', International Conference in Quantitative Ethnography (ICQE 24), Philadelphia, PA, USA, Nov 3 - 5, 2024 (Accepted)

Touchscreens are becoming increasingly widespread in educational games, enhancing the quality of learner experience. Traditional metrics are often used to evaluate various input modalities, including hand and stylus. However, there exists a gap in understanding the cognitive impacts of these modalities during educational gameplay, which can be addressed through brain signal analysis to gain deeper insights into the underlying cognitive function and necessary brain resources for each condition. This facilitates a more precise comparison between conditions. In this study, we compared the brain signal and user experience of using hands and stylus on touchscreens while playing an educational game by analyzing hemodynamic response and self-reported measures. Participants engaged in a Unity-based educational quiz game using both hand and stylus on a touchscreen in a counterbalanced within-subject design. Oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin data were collected using fNIRS, alongside quiz performance scores and standardized and customized user experience questionnaire ratings. Our findings show almost the same performance level with both input modalities, however, the hand requires less oxygen flow which suggests a lower cognitive effort than using a stylus while playing the educational game. Although the result shows that the stylus condition required more neural involvement than the hand condition, there is no significant difference between the use of both input modalities. However, there is a statistically significant difference in self-reported measures that support the findings mentioned above, favoring the hand that enhances understanding of modality effects in interactive educational environments.

Hybrid languages like the Quantum Intermediate Representation (QIR) are essential for programming systems that mix quantum and conventional computing models, while execution of these programs is often deferred to a system-specific implementation. Here, we describe and demonstrate the QIR Execution Engine (QIR-EE) for parsing, interpreting, and executing QIR across multiple hardware platforms. QIR-EE uses LLVM to execute hybrid instructions specifying quantum programs and, by design, presents extension points that support customized runtime and hardware environments. We demonstrate an implementation that uses the XACC quantum hardware-accelerator library to dispatch prototypical quantum programs on different commercial quantum platforms and numerical simulators, and we validate execution of QIR-EE on the IonQ Harmony and Quantinuum H1-1 hardware. Our results highlight the efficiency of hybrid executable architectures for handling mixed instructions, managing mixed data, and integrating with quantum computing frameworks to realize cross-platform execution.

Sugarcane, a key crop for the world's sugar industry, is prone to several diseases that have a substantial negative influence on both its yield and quality. To effectively manage and implement preventative initiatives, diseases must be detected promptly and accurately. In this study, we present a unique model called sugarcaneNet2024 that outperforms previous methods for automatically and quickly detecting sugarcane disease through leaf image processing. Our proposed model consolidates an optimized weighted average ensemble of seven customized and LASSO-regularized pre-trained models, particularly InceptionV3, InceptionResNetV2, DenseNet201, DenseNet169, Xception, and ResNet152V2. Initially, we added three more dense layers with 0.0001 LASSO regularization, three 30% dropout layers, and three batch normalizations with renorm enabled at the bottom of these pre-trained models to improve the performance. The accuracy of sugarcane leaf disease classification was greatly increased by this addition. Following this, several comparative studies between the average ensemble and individual models were carried out, indicating that the ensemble technique performed better. The average ensemble of all modified pre-trained models produced outstanding outcomes: 100%, 99%, 99%, and 99.45% for f1 score, precision, recall, and accuracy, respectively. Performance was further enhanced by the implementation of an optimized weighted average ensemble technique incorporated with grid search. This optimized sugarcaneNet2024 model performed the best for detecting sugarcane diseases, having achieved accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score of 99.67%, 100%, 100%, and 100% , respectively., Comment: 32 pages, 11 Figures, 13 Tables

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) play a pivotal role as infrastructures, encompassing both stationary and mobile sensors. These sensors self-organize and establish multi-hop connections for communication, collectively sensing, gathering, processing, and transmitting data about their surroundings. Despite their significance, WSNs face rapid and detrimental attacks that can disrupt functionality. Existing intrusion detection methods for WSNs encounter challenges such as low detection rates, computational overhead, and false alarms. These issues stem from sensor node resource constraints, data redundancy, and high correlation within the network. To address these challenges, we propose an innovative intrusion detection approach that integrates Machine Learning (ML) techniques with the Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique Tomek Link (SMOTE-TomekLink) algorithm. This blend synthesizes minority instances and eliminates Tomek links, resulting in a balanced dataset that significantly enhances detection accuracy in WSNs. Additionally, we incorporate feature scaling through standardization to render input features consistent and scalable, facilitating more precise training and detection. To counteract imbalanced WSN datasets, we employ the SMOTE-Tomek resampling technique, mitigating overfitting and underfitting issues. Our comprehensive evaluation, using the WSN Dataset (WSN-DS) containing 374,661 records, identifies the optimal model for intrusion detection in WSNs. The standout outcome of our research is the remarkable performance of our model. In binary, it achieves an accuracy rate of 99.78% and in multiclass, it attains an exceptional accuracy rate of 99.92%. These findings underscore the efficiency and superiority of our proposal in the context of WSN intrusion detection, showcasing its effectiveness in detecting and mitigating intrusions in WSNs., Comment: International Journal of Information Security, Springer Journal - Q1, Scopus, ISI, SCIE, IF: 3.2 - Accepted on Jan 17, 2024

The development of intrusion detection systems (IDS) for the in-vehicle Controller Area Network (CAN) bus is one of the main efforts being taken to secure the in-vehicle network against various cyberattacks, which have the potential to cause vehicles to malfunction and result in dangerous accidents. These CAN IDS are evaluated in disparate experimental conditions that vary in terms of the workload used, the features used, the metrics reported, etc., which makes direct comparison difficult. Therefore, there have been several benchmarking frameworks and comparative studies designed to evaluate CAN IDS in similar experimental conditions to understand their relative performance and facilitate the selection of the best CAN IDS for implementation in automotive networks. This work provides a comprehensive survey of CAN IDS benchmarking frameworks and comparative studies in the current literature. A CAN IDS evaluation design space is also proposed in this work, which draws from the wider CAN IDS literature. This is not only expected to serve as a guide for designing CAN IDS evaluation experiments but is also used for categorizing current benchmarking efforts. The surveyed works have been discussed on the basis of the five aspects in the design space-namely IDS type, attack model, evaluation type, workload generation, and evaluation metrics-and recommendations for future work have been identified., Comment: Under Review at Journal of Computer Security

Cybersecurity has emerged as a critical global concern. Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) play a critical role in protecting interconnected networks by detecting malicious actors and activities. Machine Learning (ML)-based behavior analysis within the IDS has considerable potential for detecting dynamic cyber threats, identifying abnormalities, and identifying malicious conduct within the network. However, as the number of data grows, dimension reduction becomes an increasingly difficult task when training ML models. Addressing this, our paper introduces a novel ML-based network intrusion detection model that uses Random Oversampling (RO) to address data imbalance and Stacking Feature Embedding based on clustering results, as well as Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for dimension reduction and is specifically designed for large and imbalanced datasets. This model's performance is carefully evaluated using three cutting-edge benchmark datasets: UNSW-NB15, CIC-IDS-2017, and CIC-IDS-2018. On the UNSW-NB15 dataset, our trials show that the RF and ET models achieve accuracy rates of 99.59% and 99.95%, respectively. Furthermore, using the CIC-IDS2017 dataset, DT, RF, and ET models reach 99.99% accuracy, while DT and RF models obtain 99.94% accuracy on CIC-IDS2018. These performance results continuously outperform the state-of-art, indicating significant progress in the field of network intrusion detection. This achievement demonstrates the efficacy of the suggested methodology, which can be used practically to accurately monitor and identify network traffic intrusions, thereby blocking possible threats., Comment: Accepted in Journal of Big Data (Q1, IF: 8.1, SCIE) on Jan 19, 2024

Deep learning vulnerability detection tools are increasing in popularity and have been shown to be effective. These tools rely on large volume of high quality training data, which are very hard to get. Most of the currently available datasets provide function-level labels, reporting whether a function is vulnerable or not vulnerable. However, for a vulnerability detection to be useful, we need to also know the lines that are relevant to the vulnerability. This paper makes efforts towards developing systematic tools and proposes. ActiveClean to generate the large volume of line-level vulnerability data from commits. That is, in addition to function-level labels, it also reports which lines in the function are likely responsible for vulnerability detection. In the past, static analysis has been applied to clean commits to generate line-level data. Our approach based on active learning, which is easy to use and scalable, provide a complementary approach to static analysis. We designed semantic and syntactic properties from commit lines and use them to train the model. We evaluated our approach on both Java and C datasets processing more than 4.3K commits and 119K commit lines. AcitveClean achieved an F1 score between 70-74. Further, we also show that active learning is effective by using just 400 training data to reach F1 score of 70.23. Using ActiveClean, we generate the line-level labels for the entire FFMpeg project in the Devign dataset, including 5K functions, and also detected incorrect function-level labels. We demonstrated that using our cleaned data, LineVul, a SOTA line-level vulnerability detection tool, detected 70 more vulnerable lines and 18 more vulnerable functions, and improved Top 10 accuracy from 66% to 73%.

Recently, pretrained language models have shown state-of-the-art performance on the vulnerability detection task. These models are pretrained on a large corpus of source code, then fine-tuned on a smaller supervised vulnerability dataset. Due to the different training objectives and the performance of the models, it is interesting to consider whether the models have learned the semantics of code relevant to vulnerability detection, namely bug semantics, and if so, how the alignment to bug semantics relates to model performance. In this paper, we analyze the models using three distinct methods: interpretability tools, attention analysis, and interaction matrix analysis. We compare the models' influential feature sets with the bug semantic features which define the causes of bugs, including buggy paths and Potentially Vulnerable Statements (PVS). We find that (1) better-performing models also aligned better with PVS, (2) the models failed to align strongly to PVS, and (3) the models failed to align at all to buggy paths. Based on our analysis, we developed two annotation methods which highlight the bug semantics inside the model's inputs. We evaluated our approach on four distinct transformer models and four vulnerability datasets and found that our annotations improved the models' performance in the majority of settings - 11 out of 16, with up to 9.57 points improvement in F1 score compared to conventional fine-tuning. We further found that with our annotations, the models aligned up to 232% better to potentially vulnerable statements. Our findings indicate that it is helpful to provide the model with information of the bug semantics, that the model can attend to it, and motivate future work in learning more complex path-based bug semantics. Our code and data are available at https://figshare.com/s/4a16a528d6874aad51a0.