Deep Learning applications for COVID-19

Application of Deep Learning Techniques in Diagnosis of Covid-19 (Coronavirus): A Systematic Review

Covid-19 is now one of the most incredibly intense and severe illnesses of the twentieth century. Covid-19 has already endangered the lives of millions of people worldwide due to its acute pulmonary effects. Image-based diagnostic techniques like X-ray, CT, and ultrasound are commonly employed to get a quick and reliable clinical condition. Covid-19 identification out of such clinical scans is exceedingly time-consuming, labor-intensive, and susceptible to silly intervention. As a result, radiography imaging approaches using Deep Learning (DL) are consistently employed to achieve great results. Various artificial intelligence-based systems have been developed for the early prediction of coronavirus using radiography pictures. Specific DL methods such as CNN and RNN noticeably extract extremely critical characteristics, primarily in diagnostic imaging. Recent coronavirus studies have used these techniques to utilize radiography image scans significantly. The disease, as well as the present pandemic, was studied using public and private data. A total of 64 pre-trained and custom DL models concerning imaging modality as taxonomies are selected from the studied articles. The constraints relevant to DL-based techniques are the sample selection, network architecture, training with minimal annotated database, and security issues. This includes evaluating causal agents, pathophysiology, immunological reactions, and epidemiological illness. DL-based Covid-19 detection systems are the key focus of this review article. Covid-19 work is intended to be accelerated as a result of this study.

AI bot to detect fake COVID-19 vaccine certificate

As the world is now fighting against rampant virus COVID-19, the development of vaccines on a large scale and making it reach millions of people to be immunised has become quintessential. So far 40.9% of the world got vaccinated. Still, there are more to get vaccinated. Those who got vaccinated have the chance of getting the vaccine certificate as proof to move, work, etc., based on their daily requirements. But others create their own forged vaccine certificate using advanced software and digital tools which will create complex problems where we cannot distinguish between real and fake vaccine certificates. Also, it will create immense pressure on the government and as well as healthcare workers as they have been trying to save people from day 1, but parallelly people who have fake vaccine certificates roam around even if they are COVID/Non-COVID patients. So, to avoid this huge problem, this paper focuses on detecting fake vaccine certificates using a bot powered by Artificial Intelligence and neurologically powered by Deep Learning in which the following are the stages: a) Data Collection, b) Preprocessing to remove noise from the data, and convert to grayscale and normalised, c) Error level analysis, d) Texture-based feature extraction for extracting logo, symbol and for the signature we extract Crest-Trough parameter, and e) Classification using DenseNet201 and thereby giving the results as fake/real certificate. The evaluation of the model is taken over performance measures like accuracy, specificity, sensitivity, detection rate, recall, f1-score, and computation time over state-of-art models such as SVM, RNN, VGG16, Alexnet, and CNN in which the proposed model (D201-LBP) outperforms with an accuracy of 0.94.

The Acceptability of Traditional Culture under the Background of Deep Learning

The cultural values of a country impact its national psychology and identity. Citizens' values and public opinions are conveyed to state leaders over the media and other information channels, both directly and indirectly influencing decisions on foreign policy. The traditional cultural values that affect the psyche of the Chinese people are harmony, generosity, morality, courtesy, wisdom, honesty, loyalty, and filial piety. This study aims to analyze the attitudes of Chinese college students toward traditional culture. The reliability and effect factors of the traditional culture acceptability questionnaire are set in the context of deep learning. A questionnaire on traditional culture education of college students is compiled using the indicator evaluation methods, and the current situation of traditional culture education is investigated for college students. A total of 300 valid respondents are returned from five universities including Shanghai Jiaotong University, Fudan University, Yunnan University, Kunming University of Science and Technology, and Yunnan Normal University. Results show that 28% of college students believe that practical activities including visiting and learning and traditional festival commemoration are the most effective ways to educate traditional culture for them, which accounts for the largest percentage. Similarly, 19% of students suggest online publicity, while 16% believe that lecture reports are particularly important, and 12% of students advocate the teaching courses. In addition, about 23% of the students choose other methods, such as seminars, setting up Chinese culture festivals, and building cultural associations. The outcomes of this study provide data support for identifying the shortcomings in traditional cultural education and formulating strategies.

Unreferenced English articles’ translation quality-oriented automatic evaluation technology using sparse autoencoder under the background of deep learning

Currently, both manual and automatic evaluation technology can evaluate the translation quality of unreferenced English articles, playing a particular role in detecting translation results. Still, their deficiency is the lack of a close or noticeable relationship between evaluation time and evaluation theory. Thereupon, to realize the automatic Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) of unreferenced English articles, this paper proposes an automatic TQA model based on Sparse AutoEncoder (SAE) under the background of Deep Learning (DL). Meanwhile, the DL-based information extraction method employs AutoEncoder (AE) in the bilingual words’ unsupervised learning stage to reconstruct the translation language vector features. Then, it imports the translation information of unreferenced English articles into Bilingual words and optimizes the extraction effect of language vector features. Meantime, the translation language vector feature is introduced into the automatic DL-based TQA. The experimental findings corroborate that when the number of sentences increases, the number of actual translation errors and the evaluation scores of the proposed model increase, but the Bilingual Evaluation Understudy (BLEU) score is not significantly affected. When the number of sentences increases from 1,000 to 6,000, the BLEU increases from 96 to 98, which shows that the proposed model has good performance. Finally, the proposed model can realize the high-precision TQA of unreferenced English articles.

Individual Factors Associated With COVID-19 Infection: A Machine Learning Study

The fast, exponential increase of COVID-19 infections and their catastrophic effects on patients' health have required the development of tools that support health systems in the quick and efficient diagnosis and prognosis of this disease. In this context, the present study aims to identify the potential factors associated with COVID-19 infections, applying machine learning techniques, particularly random forest, chi-squared, xgboost, and rpart for feature selection; ROSE and SMOTE were used as resampling methods due to the existence of class imbalance. Similarly, machine and deep learning algorithms such as support vector machines, C4.5, random forest, rpart, and deep neural networks were explored during the train/test phase to select the best prediction model. The dataset used in this study contains clinical data, anthropometric measurements, and other health parameters related to smoking habits, alcohol consumption, quality of sleep, physical activity, and health status during confinement due to the pandemic associated with COVID-19. The results showed that the XGBoost model got the best features associated with COVID-19 infection, and random forest approximated the best predictive model with a balanced accuracy of 90.41% using SMOTE as a resampling technique. The model with the best performance provides a tool to help prevent contracting SARS-CoV-2 since the variables with the highest risk factor are detected, and some of them are, to a certain extent controllable.

Prediction of the risk of cancer and the grade of dysplasia in leukoplakia lesions using deep learning

OBJECTIVES

To estimate the probability of malignancy of an oral leukoplakia lesion using Deep Learning, in terms of evolution to cancer and high-risk dysplasia.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A total of 261 oral leukoplakia lesions with a mean of 5.5 years follow-up were analysed from standard digital photographs. A deep learning pipeline composed by a U-Net based segmentation of the lesion followed by a multi-task CNN classifier was used to predict the malignant transformation and the risk of dysplasia of the lesion. An explainability heatmap is constructed using LIME in order to interpret the decision of the model for each output.

RESULTS

A Dice coefficient of 0.561 was achieved on the segmentation task. For the prediction of a malignant transformation, the model provided a sensitivity of 1 with a specificity of 0.692. For the prediction of high-risk dysplasia, the model achieved a specificity of 0.740 and a sensitivity of 0.928.

CONCLUSION

The proposed model using deep learning can be a helpful tool for predicting the possible malignant evolution of oral leukoplakias. The generated heatmap provides a high confidence on the output of the model and enables its interpretability.

Security Evaluation of Financial and Insurance and Ruin Probability Analysis Integrating Deep Learning Models

To ensure safe development of the financial and insurance industry and promote the continuous growth of the social economy, the theory and its role of deep learning are firstly analyzed. Secondly, the security of financial and insurance and bankruptcy probability are discussed. Finally, an analytical model of the security bankruptcy probability of financial and insurance is designed through a deep learning model, and the model is evaluated comprehensively. The research results manifest that first, the designed security evaluation of the financial and insurance industry based on the deep learning and bankruptcy probability analysis model not only has strong learning ability but also can effectively reduce its own calculation error through short-time learning. Then, by comparing with other models, it is found that the designed model has a stronger ability to control various errors than other models, and the overall error rate of the model can be reduced to about 20%. At last, the data training indicates that the model designed by the deep learning method can accurately and effectively predict the basic situation of the financial and insurance industry, the minimum error can reach 0, and the highest is only about 3. The research provides a technical reference for the development of the financial and insurance industry and contributes to the prosperity of the social economy.

A multilevel approach for screening natural compounds as an antiviral agent for COVID-19

The COVID-19 has a worldwide spread, which has prompted concerted efforts to find successful drug treatments. Drug design focused on finding antiviral therapeutic agents from plant-derived compounds which may disrupt the attachment of SARS-CoV-2 to host cells is with a pivotal need and role in the last year. Herein, we provide an approach based on drug design methods combined with machine learning approaches to classify and discover inhibitors for COVID-19 from natural products. The spike receptor-binding domain (RBD) was docked with database of 125 ligands. The docking protocol based on several steps was performed within Autodock Vina to identify the high-affinity binding mode and to reveal more insights into interaction between the phytochemicals and the RBD domain. A protein-ligand interaction analyzer has been developed. The drug-likeness properties of explored inhibitors are analyzed in the frame of exploratory data analyses. The developed computational protocol yielded a comprehensive pipeline for predicting the inhibitors to prevent the entry RBD region.

COVID-19 Isolation Control Proposal via UAV and UGV for Crowded Indoor Environments: Assistive Robots in the Shopping Malls

Artificial intelligence researchers conducted different studies to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Unlike other studies, this paper isn't for early infection diagnosis, but for preventing the transmission of COVID-19 in social environments. Among the studies on this is regarding social distancing, as this method is proven to prevent COVID-19 to be transmitted from one to another. In the study, Robot Operating System (ROS) simulates a shopping mall using Gazebo, and customers are monitored by Turtlebot and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV, DJI Tello). Through frames analysis captured by Turtlebot, a particular person is identified and followed at the shopping mall. Turtlebot is a wheeled robot that follows people without contact and is used as a shopping cart. Therefore, a customer doesn't touch the shopping cart that someone else comes into contact with, and also makes his/her shopping easier. The UAV detects people from above and determines the distance between people. In this way, a warning system can be created by detecting places where social distance is neglected. Histogram of Oriented-Gradients (HOG)-Support Vector Machine (SVM) is applied by Turtlebot to detect humans, and Kalman-Filter is used for human tracking. SegNet is performed for semantically detecting people and measuring distance via UAV. This paper proposes a new robotic study to prevent the infection and proved that this system is feasible.

Exploration of consumer preference based on deep learning neural network model in the immersive marketing environment

The study intends to increase the marketing quantity of various commodities and promote the comprehensive development of the market. The study first discusses the principle and current situation of the emerging Immersive Marketing. Then, it analyzes the Deep Learning (DL) Neural Network (NN) model. Finally, a Personalized Recommendation System (PRS) is designed based on the Immersive Marketing environment using the Graph Neural Network (GNN) model. The proposed PRS based on the Immersive Graph Neural Network (IGNN) model has reflected higher advantages over other recommendation systems. The experiment results suggest that Immersive Marketing can fully reflect commodities' essential attributes and characteristics, improve users' shopping experience, and promote sales. Meanwhile, the IGNN-based PRS reported here gives users an elevated and immersive shopping experience and entertainment process. Lastly, the model comparison finds that the proposed IGNN outperforms other models. The optimal model parameters are verified as P@20 and R@20 to gain the highest composite index values. In particular, parameter R@20 gives the model a better performance over P@20. The study provides technical references for improving the marketing process of various commodities and entertainment products and contributes to marketing technology development.

An efficient hardware architecture based on an ensemble of deep learning models for COVID -19 prediction

Deep learning models demonstrate superior performance in image classification problems. COVID-19 image classification is developed using single deep learning models. In this paper, an efficient hardware architecture based on an ensemble deep learning model is built to identify the COVID-19 using chest X-ray (CXR) records. Five deep learning models namely ResNet, fitness, IRCNN (Inception Recurrent Convolutional Neural Network), effectiveness, and Fitnet are ensembled for fine-tuning and enhancing the performance of the COVID-19 identification; these models are chosen as they individually perform better in other applications. Experimental analysis shows that the accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 for COVID-19 detection are 0.99,0.98,0.98, and 0.98 respectively. An application-specific hardware architecture incorporates the pipeline, parallel processing, reusability of computational resources by carefully exploiting the data flow and resource availability. The processing element (PE) and the CNN architecture are modeled using Verilog, simulated, and synthesized using cadence with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) 90 nm tech file. The simulated results show a 40% reduction in the latency and number of clock cycles. The computations and power consumptions are minimized by designing the PE as a data-aware unit. Thus, the proposed architecture is best suited for Covid-19 prediction and diagnosis.

Deep Learning for Covid-19 Screening Using Chest X-Rays in 2020: A Systematic Review

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has promoted countless contributions in the field of healthcare and medical imaging. In this paper, we thoroughly analyze peer-reviewed research findings/articles on AI-guided tools for Covid-19 analysis/screening using chest X-ray images in the year 2020. We discuss on how far deep learning algorithms help in decision-making. We identify/address data collections, methodical contributions, promising methods, and challenges. However, a fair comparison is not trivial as dataset sizes vary over time, throughout the year 2020. Even though their unprecedented efforts in building AI-guided tools to detect, localize, and segment Covid-19 cases are limited to education and training, we elaborate on their strengths and possible weaknesses when we consider the need of cross-population train/test models. In total, with search keywords: (Covid-19 OR Coronavirus) AND chest x-ray AND deep learning AND artificial intelligence AND medical imaging in both PubMed Central Repository and Web of Science, we systematically reviewed 58 research articles and performed meta-analysis.

An Automated Glowworm Swarm Optimization with an Inception-Based Deep Convolutional Neural Network for COVID-19 Diagnosis and Classification

Recently, the COVID-19 epidemic has had a major impact on day-to-day life of people all over the globe, and it demands various kinds of screening tests to detect the coronavirus. Conversely, the development of deep learning (DL) models combined with radiological images is useful for accurate detection and classification. DL models are full of hyperparameters, and identifying the optimal parameter configuration in such a high dimensional space is not a trivial challenge. Since the procedure of setting the hyperparameters requires expertise and extensive trial and error, metaheuristic algorithms can be employed. With this motivation, this paper presents an automated glowworm swarm optimization (GSO) with an inception-based deep convolutional neural network (IDCNN) for COVID-19 diagnosis and classification, called the GSO-IDCNN model. The presented model involves a Gaussian smoothening filter (GSF) to eradicate the noise that exists from the radiological images. Additionally, the IDCNN-based feature extractor is utilized, which makes use of the Inception v4 model. To further enhance the performance of the IDCNN technique, the hyperparameters are optimally tuned using the GSO algorithm. Lastly, an adaptive neuro-fuzzy classifier (ANFC) is used for classifying the existence of COVID-19. The design of the GSO algorithm with the ANFC model for COVID-19 diagnosis shows the novelty of the work. For experimental validation, a series of simulations were performed on benchmark radiological imaging databases to highlight the superior outcome of the GSO-IDCNN technique. The experimental values pointed out that the GSO-IDCNN methodology has demonstrated a proficient outcome by offering a maximal sensy of 0.9422, specy of 0.9466, precn of 0.9494, accy of 0.9429, and F1score of 0.9394.

Contribution of Deep-Learning Techniques Toward Fighting COVID-19: A Bibliometric Analysis of Scholarly Production During 2020

COVID-19 has dramatically affected various aspects of human society with worldwide repercussions. Firstly, a serious public health issue has been generated, resulting in millions of deaths. Also, the global economy, social coexistence, psychological status, mental health, and the human-environment relationship/dynamics have been seriously affected. Indeed, abrupt changes in our daily lives have been enforced, starting with a mandatory quarantine and the application of biosafety measures. Due to the magnitude of these effects, research efforts from different fields were rapidly concentrated around the current pandemic to mitigate its impact. Among these fields, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deep Learning (DL) have supported many research papers to help combat COVID-19. The present work addresses a bibliometric analysis of this scholarly production during 2020. Specifically, we analyse quantitative and qualitative indicators that give us insights into the factors that have allowed papers to reach a significant impact on traditional metrics and alternative ones registered in social networks, digital mainstream media, and public policy documents. In this regard, we study the correlations between these different metrics and attributes. Finally, we analyze how the last DL advances have been exploited in the context of the COVID-19 situation.

An Artificial Neural Network-Based Approach for Predicting the COVID-19 Daily Effective Reproduction Number Rt in Italy

Since December 2019, the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has had a considerable impact on the health and socio-economic fabric of Italy. The effective reproduction number Rt is one of the most representative indicators of the contagion status as it reports the number of new infections caused by an infected subject in a partially immunized population. The task of predicting Rt values forward in time is challenging and, historically, it has been addressed by exploiting compartmental models or statistical frameworks. The present study proposes an Artificial Neural Networks-based approach to predict the Rt temporal trend at a daily resolution. For each Italian region and autonomous province, 21 daily COVID-19 indicators were exploited for the 7-day ahead prediction of the Rt trend by means of different neural network architectures, i.e., Feed Forward, Mono-Dimensional Convolutional, and Long Short-Term Memory. Focusing on Lombardy, which is one of the most affected regions, the predictions proved to be very accurate, with a minimum Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) ranging from 0.035 at day t + 1 to 0.106 at day t + 7. Overall, the results show that it is possible to obtain accurate forecasts in Italy at a daily temporal resolution instead of the weekly resolution characterizing the official Rt data.

Radiological Analysis of COVID-19 Using Computational Intelligence: A Broad Gauge Study

Pulmonary medical image analysis using image processing and deep learning approaches has made remarkable achievements in the diagnosis, prognosis, and severity check of lung diseases. The epidemic of COVID-19 brought out by the novel coronavirus has triggered a critical need for artificial intelligence assistance in diagnosing and controlling the disease to reduce its effects on people and global economies. This study aimed at identifying the various COVID-19 medical imaging analysis models proposed by different researchers and featured their merits and demerits. It gives a detailed discussion on the existing COVID-19 detection methodologies (diagnosis, prognosis, and severity/risk detection) and the challenges encountered for the same. It also highlights the various preprocessing and post-processing methods involved to enhance the detection mechanism. This work also tries to bring out the different unexplored research areas that are available for medical image analysis and how the vast research done for COVID-19 can advance the field. Despite deep learning methods presenting high levels of efficiency, some limitations have been briefly described in the study. Hence, this review can help understand the utilization and pros and cons of deep learning in analyzing medical images.

A Review of Deep Learning Algorithms and Their Applications in Healthcare

Deep learning uses artificial neural networks to recognize patterns and learn from them to make decisions. Deep learning is a type of machine learning that uses artificial neural networks to mimic the human brain. It uses machine learning methods such as supervised, semi-supervised, or unsupervised learning strategies to learn automatically in deep architectures and has gained much popularity due to its superior ability to learn from huge amounts of data. It was found that deep learning approaches can be used for big data analysis successfully. Applications include virtual assistants such as Alexa and Siri, facial recognition, personalization, natural language processing, autonomous cars, automatic handwriting generation, news aggregation, the colorization of black and white images, the addition of sound to silent films, pixel restoration, and deep dreaming. As a review, this paper aims to categorically cover several widely used deep learning algorithms along with their architectures and their practical applications: backpropagation, autoencoders, variational autoencoders, restricted Boltzmann machines, deep belief networks, convolutional neural networks, recurrent neural networks, generative adversarial networks, capsnets, transformer, embeddings from language models, bidirectional encoder representations from transformers, and attention in natural language processing. In addition, challenges of deep learning are also presented in this paper, such as AutoML-Zero, neural architecture search, evolutionary deep learning, and others. The pros and cons of these algorithms and their applications in healthcare are explored, alongside the future direction of this domain. This paper presents a review and a checkpoint to systemize the popular algorithms and to encourage further innovation regarding their applications. For new researchers in the field of deep learning, this review can help them to obtain many details about the advantages, disadvantages, applications, and working mechanisms of a number of deep learning algorithms. In addition, we introduce detailed information on how to apply several deep learning algorithms in healthcare, such as in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. By presenting many challenges of deep learning in one section, we hope to increase awareness of these challenges, and how they can be dealt with. This could also motivate researchers to find solutions for these challenges.

Public Attitudes During the Second Lockdown: Sentiment and Topic Analyses Using Tweets From Ontario, Canada

Objective: This study aimed to explore topics and sentiments using tweets from Ontario, Canada, during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: Tweets were collected from December 5, 2020, to March 6, 2021, excluding non-individual accounts. Dates of vaccine-related events and policy changes were collected from public health units in Ontario. The daily number of COVID-19 cases was retrieved from the Ontario provincial government’s public health database. Latent Dirichlet Allocation was used for unsupervised topic modelling. VADER was used to calculate daily and average sentiment compound scores for topics identified.

Results: Vaccine, pandemic, business, lockdown, mask, and Ontario were six topics identified from the unsupervised topic modelling. The average sentiment compound score for each topic appeared to be slightly positive, yet the daily sentiment compound scores varied greatly between positive and negative emotions for each topic.

Conclusion: Our study results have shown a slightly positive sentiment on average during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario, along with six topics. Our research has also demonstrated a social listening approach to identify what the public sentiments and opinions are in a timely manner.

Final Year Undergraduate Students’ Representation of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Lockdown: Adaptability and Responsibility

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a new reality worldwide and reconfigured identities, behaviors and interests. It has called for heroic representations and highlighted the role of social media in efficient communication. All of the above considered, the current article focuses on the representation of the COVID-19 pandemic generated by the undergraduate students enrolled in the Social Work study program in Transilvania University of Brașov (Romania) by indicating the main connotations of the pandemic and drawing a comparison between students’ representation and the early representations of the same pandemic produced by specialized literature on the topic. The thematic analysis of the essays produced by students highlights their frustration with the havoc brought about by the pandemic to their graduation plans and with the lack of interaction with colleagues and academic staff, as well as their gratitude for the efforts undertaken by their professors to make online education functional, their availability to adapt and support the restrictive measures imposed by authorities, and their optimism about the evolution of the pandemic. The content analysis of 60 bibliographic sources on the topic of COVID-19, indicated by the Anelis+ network as the most relevant in the spring of 2020, highlights a thematic convergence between the aforementioned sources and students’ representation of COVID-19, and thus their responsible attitude toward meeting the challenges of the pandemic.

A Hybrid Protocol for Identifying Comorbidity-Based Potential Drugs for COVID-19 Using Biomedical Literature Mining, Network Analysis, and Deep Learning

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) has spread on an unprecedented scale around the globe. Despite of 141,975 published papers on COVID-19 and several hundreds of new studies carried out every day, this pandemic remains as a global challenge. Biomedical literature mining helps the researchers to understand the etiology of the disease and to gain an in-depth knowledge of the disease, potential drugs, vaccines developed and novel therapies. In addition to the available treatments, there is a huge need to address the comorbidity-based disease mortality in case of COVID-19 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D), hypertension and cardiovascular disease (CVD). In this chapter, we provide a hybrid protocol based on biomedical literature mining, network analysis of omics data, and deep learning for the identification of most potential drugs for COVID-19.

Predictive Machine Learning Models and Survival Analysis for COVID-19 Prognosis Based on Hematochemical Parameters

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has affected hundreds of millions of individuals and caused millions of deaths worldwide. Predicting the clinical course of the disease is of pivotal importance to manage patients. Several studies have found hematochemical alterations in COVID-19 patients, such as inflammatory markers. We retrospectively analyzed the anamnestic data and laboratory parameters of 303 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 who were admitted to the Polyclinic Hospital of Bari during the first phase of the COVID-19 global pandemic. After the pre-processing phase, we performed a survival analysis with Kaplan–Meier curves and Cox Regression, with the aim to discover the most unfavorable predictors. The target outcomes were mortality or admission to the intensive care unit (ICU). Different machine learning models were also compared to realize a robust classifier relying on a low number of strongly significant factors to estimate the risk of death or admission to ICU. From the survival analysis, it emerged that the most significant laboratory parameters for both outcomes was C-reactive protein min; HR=17.963 (95% CI 6.548–49.277, p < 0.001) for death, HR=1.789 (95% CI 1.000–3.200, p = 0.050) for admission to ICU. The second most important parameter was Erythrocytes max; HR=1.765 (95% CI 1.141–2.729, p < 0.05) for death, HR=1.481 (95% CI 0.895–2.452, p = 0.127) for admission to ICU. The best model for predicting the risk of death was the decision tree, which resulted in ROC-AUC of 89.66%, whereas the best model for predicting the admission to ICU was support vector machine, which had ROC-AUC of 95.07%. The hematochemical predictors identified in this study can be utilized as a strong prognostic signature to characterize the severity of the disease in COVID-19 patients.

Estimating the impact of interventions against COVID-19: From lockdown to vaccination

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease of humans caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Since the first case was identified in China in December 2019 the disease has spread worldwide, leading to an ongoing pandemic. In this article, we present an agent-based model of COVID-19 in Luxembourg, and use it to estimate the impact, on cases and deaths, of interventions including testing, contact tracing, lockdown, curfew and vaccination. Our model is based on collation, with agents performing activities and moving between locations accordingly. The model is highly heterogeneous, featuring spatial clustering, over 2000 behavioural types and a 10 minute time resolution. The model is validated against COVID-19 clinical monitoring data collected in Luxembourg in 2020. Our model predicts far fewer cases and deaths than the equivalent equation-based SEIR model. In particular, with R0 = 2.45, the SEIR model infects 87% of the resident population while our agent-based model infects only around 23% of the resident population. Our simulations suggest that testing and contract tracing reduce cases substantially, but are less effective at reducing deaths. Lockdowns are very effective although costly, while the impact of an 11pm-6am curfew is relatively small. When vaccinating against a future outbreak, our results suggest that herd immunity can be achieved at relatively low coverage, with substantial levels of protection achieved with only 30% of the population fully immune. When vaccinating in the midst of an outbreak, the challenge is more difficult. In this context, we investigate the impact of vaccine efficacy, capacity, hesitancy and strategy. We conclude that, short of a permanent lockdown, vaccination is by far the most effective way to suppress and ultimately control the spread of COVID-19.

The COVID-19 epidemic analysis and diagnosis using deep learning: A systematic literature review and future directions

Since December 2019, the COVID-19 outbreak has resulted in countless deaths and has harmed all facets of human existence. COVID-19 has been designated an epidemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), which has placed a tremendous burden on nearly all countries, especially those with weak health systems. However, Deep Learning (DL) has been applied in several applications and many types of detection applications in the medical field, including thyroid diagnosis, lung nodule recognition, fetal localization, and detection of diabetic retinopathy. Furthermore, various clinical imaging sources, like Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), X-ray, and Computed Tomography (CT), make DL a perfect technique to tackle the epidemic of COVID-19. Inspired by this fact, a considerable amount of research has been done. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) has been used in this study to discover, assess, and integrate findings from relevant studies. DL techniques used in COVID-19 have also been categorized into seven main distinct categories as Long Short Term Memory Networks (LSTM), Self-Organizing Maps (SOMs), Conventional Neural Networks (CNNs), Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), Autoencoders, and hybrid approaches. Then, the state-of-the-art studies connected to DL techniques and applications for health problems with COVID-19 have been highlighted. Moreover, many issues and problems associated with DL implementation for COVID-19 have been addressed, which are anticipated to stimulate more investigations to control the prevalence and disaster control in the future. According to the findings, most papers are assessed using characteristics such as accuracy, delay, robustness, and scalability. Meanwhile, other features are underutilized, such as security and convergence time. Python is also the most commonly used language in papers, accounting for 75% of the time. According to the investigation, 37.83% of applications have identified chest CT/chest X-ray images for patients.

Recent omics-based computational methods for COVID-19 drug discovery and repurposing

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is the main reason for the increasing number of deaths worldwide. Although strict quarantine measures were followed in many countries, the disease situation is still intractable. Thus, it is needed to utilize all possible means to confront this pandemic. Therefore, researchers are in a race against the time to produce potential treatments to cure or reduce the increasing infections of COVID-19. Computational methods are widely proving rapid successes in biological related problems, including diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Many efforts in recent months utilized Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques in the context of fighting the spread of COVID-19. Providing periodic reviews and discussions of recent efforts saves the time of researchers and helps to link their endeavors for a faster and efficient confrontation of the pandemic. In this review, we discuss the recent promising studies that used Omics-based data and utilized AI algorithms and other computational tools to achieve this goal. We review the established datasets and the developed methods that were basically directed to new or repurposed drugs, vaccinations and diagnosis. The tools and methods varied depending on the level of details in the available information such as structures, sequences or metabolic data.

New Insights Into Drug Repurposing for COVID-19 Using Deep Learning

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has continued to spread worldwide since late 2019. To expedite the process of providing treatment to those who have contracted the disease and to ensure the accessibility of effective drugs, numerous strategies have been implemented to find potential anti-COVID-19 drugs in a short span of time. Motivated by this critical global challenge, in this review, we detail approaches that have been used for drug repurposing for COVID-19 and suggest improvements to the existing deep learning (DL) approach to identify and repurpose drugs to treat this complex disease. By optimizing hyperparameter settings, deploying suitable activation functions, and designing optimization algorithms, the improved DL approach will be able to perform feature extraction from quality big data, turning the traditional DL approach, referred to as a "black box," which generalizes and learns the transmitted data, into a "glass box" that will have the interpretability of its rationale while maintaining a high level of prediction accuracy. When adopted for drug repurposing for COVID-19, this improved approach will create a new generation of DL approaches that can establish a cause and effect relationship as to why the repurposed drugs are suitable for treating COVID-19. Its ability can also be extended to repurpose drugs for other complex diseases, develop appropriate treatment strategies for new diseases, and provide precision medical treatment to patients, thus paving the way to discover new drugs that can potentially be effective for treating COVID-19.

A Novel Smart City-Based Framework on Perspectives for Application of Machine Learning in Combating COVID-19

The spread of COVID-19 worldwide continues despite multidimensional efforts to curtail its spread and provide treatment. Efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic have triggered partial or full lockdowns across the globe. This paper presents a novel framework that intelligently combines machine learning models and the Internet of Things (IoT) technology specifically to combat COVID-19 in smart cities. The purpose of the study is to promote the interoperability of machine learning algorithms with IoT technology by interacting with a population and its environment to curtail the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the study also investigates and discusses some solution frameworks, which can generate, capture, store, and analyze data using machine learning algorithms. These algorithms can detect, prevent, and trace the spread of COVID-19 and provide a better understanding of the disease in smart cities. Similarly, the study outlined case studies on the application of machine learning to help fight against COVID-19 in hospitals worldwide. The framework proposed in the study is a comprehensive presentation on the major components needed to integrate the machine learning approach with other AI-based solutions. Finally, the machine learning framework presented in this study has the potential to help national healthcare systems in curtailing the COVID-19 pandemic in smart cities. In addition, the proposed framework is poised as a pointer for generating research interests that would yield outcomes capable of been integrated to form an improved framework.

Auto informing COVID-19 detection result from x-ray/CT images based on deep learning

It is no secret to all that the corona pandemic has caused a decline in all aspects of the world. Therefore, offering an accurate automatic diagnostic system is very important. This paper proposed an accurate COVID-19 system by testing various deep learning models for x-ray/computed tomography (CT) medical images. A deep preprocessing procedure was done with two filters and segmentation to increase classification results. According to the results obtained, 99.94% of accuracy, 98.70% of sensitivity, and 100% of specificity scores were obtained by the Xception model in the x-ray dataset and the InceptionV3 model for CT scan images. The compared results have demonstrated that the proposed model is proven to be more successful than the deep learning algorithms in previous studies. Moreover, it has the ability to automatically notify the examination results to the patients, the health authority, and the community after taking any x-ray or CT images.

Analyzing Predictors of Control Measures and Psychosocial Problems Associated with COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Eight Countries

COVID-19 has harshly impacted communities globally. This study provides relevant information for creating equitable policy interventions to combat the spread of COVID-19. This study aims to predict the knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) of the COVID-19 pandemic at a global level to determine control measures and psychosocial problems. A cross-sectional survey was conducted from July to October 2020 using an online questionnaire. Questionnaires were initially distributed to academicians worldwide. These participants distributed the survey among their social, professional, and personal groups. Responses were collected and analyzed from 67 countries, with a sample size of 3031. Finally, based on the number of respondents, eight countries, including Bangladesh, China, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, the United States, and Zambia were rigorously analyzed. Specifically, questionnaire responses related to COVID-19 accessibility, behavior, knowledge, opinion, psychological health, and susceptibility were collected and analyzed. As per our analysis, age groups were found to be a primary determinant of behavior, knowledge, opinion, psychological health, and susceptibility scores. Gender was the second most influential determinant for all metrics except information about COVID-19 accessibility, for which education was the second most important determinant. Respondent profession was the third most important metric for all scores. Our findings suggest that health authorities must promote health educations, implement related policies to disseminate COVID-19-awareness that can prevent and control the spread of COVID-19 infection.

Text Data Augmentation for Deep Learning

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is one of the most captivating applications of Deep Learning. In this survey, we consider how the Data Augmentation training strategy can aid in its development. We begin with the major motifs of Data Augmentation summarized into strengthening local decision boundaries, brute force training, causality and counterfactual examples, and the distinction between meaning and form. We follow these motifs with a concrete list of augmentation frameworks that have been developed for text data. Deep Learning generally struggles with the measurement of generalization and characterization of overfitting. We highlight studies that cover how augmentations can construct test sets for generalization. NLP is at an early stage in applying Data Augmentation compared to Computer Vision. We highlight the key differences and promising ideas that have yet to be tested in NLP. For the sake of practical implementation, we describe tools that facilitate Data Augmentation such as the use of consistency regularization, controllers, and offline and online augmentation pipelines, to preview a few. Finally, we discuss interesting topics around Data Augmentation in NLP such as task-specific augmentations, the use of prior knowledge in self-supervised learning versus Data Augmentation, intersections with transfer and multi-task learning, and ideas for AI-GAs (AI-Generating Algorithms). We hope this paper inspires further research interest in Text Data Augmentation.

Big Data Research in Fighting COVID-19: Contributions and Techniques

The COVID-19 pandemic has induced many problems in various sectors of human life. After more than one year of the pandemic, many studies have been conducted to discover various technological innovations and applications to combat the virus that has claimed many lives. The use of Big Data technology to mitigate the threats of the pandemic has been accelerated. Therefore, this survey aims to explore Big Data technology research in fighting the pandemic. Furthermore, the relevance of Big Data technology was analyzed while technological contributions to five main areas were highlighted. These include healthcare, social life, government policy, business and management, and the environment. The analytical techniques of machine learning, deep learning, statistics, and mathematics were discussed to solve issues regarding the pandemic. The data sources used in previous studies were also presented and they consist of government officials, institutional service, IoT generated, online media, and open data. Therefore, this study presents the role of Big Data technologies in enhancing the research relative to COVID-19 and provides insights into the current state of knowledge within the domain and references for further development or starting new studies are provided.

The forecast of COVID-19 spread risk at the county level

The early detection of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak is important to save people's lives and restart the economy quickly and safely. People's social behavior, reflected in their mobility data, plays a major role in spreading the disease. Therefore, we used the daily mobility data aggregated at the county level beside COVID-19 statistics and demographic information for short-term forecasting of COVID-19 outbreaks in the United States. The daily data are fed to a deep learning model based on Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) to predict the accumulated number of COVID-19 cases in the next two weeks. A significant average correlation was achieved (r=0.83 (p = 0.005)) between the model predicted and actual accumulated cases in the interval from August 1, 2020 until January 22, 2021. The model predictions had r > 0.7 for 87% of the counties across the United States. A lower correlation was reported for the counties with total cases of <1000 during the test interval. The average mean absolute error (MAE) was 605.4 and decreased with a decrease in the total number of cases during the testing interval. The model was able to capture the effect of government responses on COVID-19 cases. Also, it was able to capture the effect of age demographics on the COVID-19 spread. It showed that the average daily cases decreased with a decrease in the retiree percentage and increased with an increase in the young percentage. Lessons learned from this study not only can help with managing the COVID-19 pandemic but also can help with early and effective management of possible future pandemics. The code used for this study was made publicly available on https://github.com/Murtadha44/covid-19-spread-risk.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40537-021-00491-1.

Artificial Intelligence and COVID-19: A Systematic umbrella review and roads ahead

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has played a substantial role in the response to the challenges posed by the current pandemic. The growing interest in using AI to handle Covid-19 issues has accelerated the pace of AI research and resulted in an exponential increase in articles and review studies within a very short period of time. Hence, it is becoming challenging to explore the large corpus of academic publications dedicated to the global health crisis. Even with the presence of systematic review studies, given their number and diversity, identifying trends and research avenues beyond the pandemic should be an arduous task. We conclude therefore that after the one-year mark of the declaration of Covid-19 as a pandemic, the accumulated scientific contribution lacks two fundamental aspects: Knowledge synthesis and Future projections.

In contribution to fill this void, this paper is a (i) synthesis study and (ii) foresight exercise. The synthesis study aims to provide the scholars a consolidation of findings and a knowledge synthesis through a systematic review of the reviews (umbrella review) studying AI applications against Covid-19. Following the PRISMA guidelines, we systematically searched PubMed, Scopus, and other preprint sources from 1st December 2019 to 1st June 2021 for eligible reviews. The literature search and screening process resulted in 45 included reviews. Our findings reveal patterns, relationships, and trends in the AI research community response to the pandemic. We found that in the space of few months, the research objectives of the literature have developed rapidly from identifying potential AI applications to evaluating current uses of intelligent systems. Only few reviews have adopted the meta-analysis as a study design. Moreover, a clear dominance of the medical theme and the DNN methods has been observed in the reported AI applications.

Based on its constructive systematic umbrella review, this work conducts a foresight exercise that tries to envision the post-Covid-19 research landscape of the AI field. We see seven key themes of research that may be an outcome of the present crisis and which advocate a more sustainable and responsible form of intelligent systems. We set accordingly a post-pandemic research agenda articulated around these seven drivers.

The results of this study can be useful for the AI research community to obtain a holistic view of the current literature and to help prioritize research needs as we are heading toward the new normal.

The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Fighting the COVID-19 Pandemic

The first few months of 2020 have profoundly changed the way we live our lives and carry out our daily activities. Although the widespread use of futuristic robotaxis and self-driving commercial vehicles has not yet become a reality, the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically accelerated the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in different fields. We have witnessed the equivalent of two years of digital transformation compressed into just a few months. Whether it is in tracing epidemiological peaks or in transacting contactless payments, the impact of these developments has been almost immediate, and a window has opened up on what is to come. Here we analyze and discuss how AI can support us in facing the ongoing pandemic. Despite the numerous and undeniable contributions of AI, clinical trials and human skills are still required. Even if different strategies have been developed in different states worldwide, the fight against the pandemic seems to have found everywhere a valuable ally in AI, a global and open-source tool capable of providing assistance in this health emergency. A careful AI application would enable us to operate within this complex scenario involving healthcare, society and research.

Framework for Real-Time Detection and Identification of possible patients of COVID-19 at public places

The novel Corona Virus (COVID-19) has become the reason for the world to declare it as a global pandemic, which has already taken many lives from all around the world. This pandemic has become a disaster since the spreading rate from person to person is incredibly high and many techniques have come forth to aid in stopping the infection. Although various types of methods have been put into implementation, the search and suggestions of new approaches to reduce the increasing rate of infection will never come to an end until a vaccine terminates this pandemic. This study focuses on proposing a new framework that is based on Deep Learning algorithms for recognizing the COVID-19 cases, mostly in public places. The algorithms include Background Subtraction for extracting the foreground of thermal images from thermal videos generated by Thermal Cameras through the Thermal Imaging process and the Convolutional Neural Network for detecting people infected with the virus. This automated prototype works in a real-time scenario that helps identify people with the disease and will try to trace it while separating them from having any other contact. This proposal intends to achieve a satisfying growth in determining the real cases of COVID-19 and minimize the spreading rate of this virus to the max, ultimately avoiding more deaths.

Review of deep learning: concepts, CNN architectures, challenges, applications, future directions

In the last few years, the deep learning (DL) computing paradigm has been deemed the Gold Standard in the machine learning (ML) community. Moreover, it has gradually become the most widely used computational approach in the field of ML, thus achieving outstanding results on several complex cognitive tasks, matching or even beating those provided by human performance. One of the benefits of DL is the ability to learn massive amounts of data. The DL field has grown fast in the last few years and it has been extensively used to successfully address a wide range of traditional applications. More importantly, DL has outperformed well-known ML techniques in many domains, e.g., cybersecurity, natural language processing, bioinformatics, robotics and control, and medical information processing, among many others. Despite it has been contributed several works reviewing the State-of-the-Art on DL, all of them only tackled one aspect of the DL, which leads to an overall lack of knowledge about it. Therefore, in this contribution, we propose using a more holistic approach in order to provide a more suitable starting point from which to develop a full understanding of DL. Specifically, this review attempts to provide a more comprehensive survey of the most important aspects of DL and including those enhancements recently added to the field. In particular, this paper outlines the importance of DL, presents the types of DL techniques and networks. It then presents convolutional neural networks (CNNs) which the most utilized DL network type and describes the development of CNNs architectures together with their main features, e.g., starting with the AlexNet network and closing with the High-Resolution network (HR.Net). Finally, we further present the challenges and suggested solutions to help researchers understand the existing research gaps. It is followed by a list of the major DL applications. Computational tools including FPGA, GPU, and CPU are summarized along with a description of their influence on DL. The paper ends with the evolution matrix, benchmark datasets, and summary and conclusion.

Novel Transfer Learning Approach for Medical Imaging with Limited Labeled Data

Deep learning requires a large amount of data to perform well. However, the field of medical image analysis suffers from a lack of sufficient data for training deep learning models. Moreover, medical images require manual labeling, usually provided by human annotators coming from various backgrounds. More importantly, the annotation process is time-consuming, expensive, and prone to errors. Transfer learning was introduced to reduce the need for the annotation process by transferring the deep learning models with knowledge from a previous task and then by fine-tuning them on a relatively small dataset of the current task. Most of the methods of medical image classification employ transfer learning from pretrained models, e.g., ImageNet, which has been proven to be ineffective. This is due to the mismatch in learned features between the natural image, e.g., ImageNet, and medical images. Additionally, it results in the utilization of deeply elaborated models. In this paper, we propose a novel transfer learning approach to overcome the previous drawbacks by means of training the deep learning model on large unlabeled medical image datasets and by next transferring the knowledge to train the deep learning model on the small amount of labeled medical images. Additionally, we propose a new deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) model that combines recent advancements in the field. We conducted several experiments on two challenging medical imaging scenarios dealing with skin and breast cancer classification tasks. According to the reported results, it has been empirically proven that the proposed approach can significantly improve the performance of both classification scenarios. In terms of skin cancer, the proposed model achieved an F1-score value of 89.09% when trained from scratch and 98.53% with the proposed approach. Secondly, it achieved an accuracy value of 85.29% and 97.51%, respectively, when trained from scratch and using the proposed approach in the case of the breast cancer scenario. Finally, we concluded that our method can possibly be applied to many medical imaging problems in which a substantial amount of unlabeled image data is available and the labeled image data is limited. Moreover, it can be utilized to improve the performance of medical imaging tasks in the same domain. To do so, we used the pretrained skin cancer model to train on feet skin to classify them into two classes-either normal or abnormal (diabetic foot ulcer (DFU)). It achieved an F1-score value of 86.0% when trained from scratch, 96.25% using transfer learning, and 99.25% using double-transfer learning.

Machine Learning: Algorithms, Real-World Applications and Research Directions

In the current age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR or Industry 4.0), the digital world has a wealth of data, such as Internet of Things (IoT) data, cybersecurity data, mobile data, business data, social media data, health data, etc. To intelligently analyze these data and develop the corresponding smart and automated applications, the knowledge of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly, machine learning (ML) is the key. Various types of machine learning algorithms such as supervised, unsupervised, semi-supervised, and reinforcement learning exist in the area. Besides, the deep learning, which is part of a broader family of machine learning methods, can intelligently analyze the data on a large scale. In this paper, we present a comprehensive view on these machine learning algorithms that can be applied to enhance the intelligence and the capabilities of an application. Thus, this study’s key contribution is explaining the principles of different machine learning techniques and their applicability in various real-world application domains, such as cybersecurity systems, smart cities, healthcare, e-commerce, agriculture, and many more. We also highlight the challenges and potential research directions based on our study. Overall, this paper aims to serve as a reference point for both academia and industry professionals as well as for decision-makers in various real-world situations and application areas, particularly from the technical point of view.

Reliability Evaluation of the Factors That Influenced COVID-19 Patients’ Condition

Health and safety is a problem that is intensively discussed nowadays. The failures in healthcare are called medical errors: if the patient’s condition worsens or he/she contracts an illness, then the actions that led to this are interpreted as medical errors. Medical errors can be the result of new procedures, extremes of age, complex or urgent care, improper documentation, illegible hand-writing, or patient actions. One of the ways to reduce medical error is an evaluation of its possibility, and then using the result of this evaluation to improve the medical organization units and processes in patient diagnosis, treatment, and care. This evaluation is possible based on methods of reliability engineering. The reliability engineering methods allow evaluating of different systems’ reliability and the influence of external and internal factors on system reliability. These methods’ application needs the system to be investigated or objective interpretation in terms of reliability engineering. Therefore, such a system in healthcare, for the diagnosis of disease, a patient’s treatment, the influence of different factors on a patient’s condition, and others, should be presented according to the rules and demands of reliability engineering. The first step is development of the mathematical representation of the investigated system or object according to the demands of the reliability analysis. One of the often-used mathematical representations in the reliability analysis of a system is the structure function. However, this mathematical representation needs completely specified initial data. The initial data from the healthcare domain for medical error analysis is uncertain and incompletely specified. Therefore, the development of this mathematical representation needs special methods. In this paper, a new method for the mathematical representation of system development based on uncertain and incompletely specified data is proposed. The system evaluation based on the structure function allows computing of many reliability indices and measures used in reliability engineering. The approbation of this method is considered based on an example of COVID-19 patients.

Estimating the impact of interventions against COVID-19: From lockdown to vaccination

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease of humans caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Since the first case was identified in China in December 2019 the disease has spread worldwide, leading to an ongoing pandemic. In this article, we present an agent-based model of COVID-19 in Luxembourg, and use it to estimate the impact, on cases and deaths, of interventions including testing, contact tracing, lockdown, curfew and vaccination. Our model is based on collation, with agents performing activities and moving between locations accordingly. The model is highly heterogeneous, featuring spatial clustering, over 2000 behavioural types and a 10 minute time resolution. The model is validated against COVID-19 clinical monitoring data collected in Luxembourg in 2020. Our model predicts far fewer cases and deaths than the equivalent equation-based SEIR model. In particular, with R0 = 2.45, the SEIR model infects 87% of the resident population while our agent-based model infects only around 23% of the resident population. Our simulations suggest that testing and contract tracing reduce cases substantially, but are less effective at reducing deaths. Lockdowns are very effective although costly, while the impact of an 11pm-6am curfew is relatively small. When vaccinating against a future outbreak, our results suggest that herd immunity can be achieved at relatively low coverage, with substantial levels of protection achieved with only 30% of the population fully immune. When vaccinating in the midst of an outbreak, the challenge is more difficult. In this context, we investigate the impact of vaccine efficacy, capacity, hesitancy and strategy. We conclude that, short of a permanent lockdown, vaccination is by far the most effective way to suppress and ultimately control the spread of COVID-19.

Text Data Augmentation for Deep Learning

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is one of the most captivating applications of Deep Learning. In this survey, we consider how the Data Augmentation training strategy can aid in its development. We begin with the major motifs of Data Augmentation summarized into strengthening local decision boundaries, brute force training, causality and counterfactual examples, and the distinction between meaning and form. We follow these motifs with a concrete list of augmentation frameworks that have been developed for text data. Deep Learning generally struggles with the measurement of generalization and characterization of overfitting. We highlight studies that cover how augmentations can construct test sets for generalization. NLP is at an early stage in applying Data Augmentation compared to Computer Vision. We highlight the key differences and promising ideas that have yet to be tested in NLP. For the sake of practical implementation, we describe tools that facilitate Data Augmentation such as the use of consistency regularization, controllers, and offline and online augmentation pipelines, to preview a few. Finally, we discuss interesting topics around Data Augmentation in NLP such as task-specific augmentations, the use of prior knowledge in self-supervised learning versus Data Augmentation, intersections with transfer and multi-task learning, and ideas for AI-GAs (AI-Generating Algorithms). We hope this paper inspires further research interest in Text Data Augmentation.

Approach to COVID-19 time series data using deep learning and spectral analysis methods

<abstract> <p>This article focuses on the application of deep learning and spectral analysis to epidemiology time series data, which has recently piqued the interest of some researchers. The COVID-19 virus is still mutating, particularly the delta and omicron variants, which are known for their high level of contagiousness, but policymakers and governments are resolute in combating the pandemic's spread through a recent massive vaccination campaign of their population. We used extreme machine learning (ELM), multilayer perceptron (MLP), long short-term neural network (LSTM), gated recurrent unit (GRU), convolution neural network (CNN) and deep neural network (DNN) methods on time series data from the start of the pandemic in France, Russia, Turkey, India, United states of America (USA), Brazil and United Kingdom (UK) until September 3, 2021 to predict the daily new cases and daily deaths at different waves of the pandemic in countries considered while using root mean square error (RMSE) and relative root mean square error (rRMSE) to measure the performance of these methods. We used the spectral analysis method to convert time (days) to frequency in order to analyze the peaks of frequency and periodicity of the time series data. We also forecasted the future pandemic evolution by using ELM, MLP, and spectral analysis. Moreover, MLP achieved best performance for both daily new cases and deaths based on the evaluation metrics used. Furthermore, we discovered that errors for daily deaths are much lower than those for daily new cases. While the performance of models varies, prediction and forecasting during the period of vaccination and recent cases confirm the pandemic's prevalence level in the countries under consideration. Finally, some of the peaks observed in the time series data correspond with the proven pattern of weekly peaks that is unique to the COVID-19 time series data.</p> </abstract>