Shapes of You? Investigating the Acceptance of Video-Based AAL Technologies Applying Different Visualization Modes

An aged population, increasing care needs, and a lack of (in)formal caregivers represent major challenges for our society today. Addressing these challenges fuels efforts and developments in innovative technologies leading to various existing AAL applications aiming at improving autonomy, independence, and security in older age. Here, the usage of video-based AAL technologies is promising as detailed information can be obtained and analyzed. Simultaneously, this type of technology is strongly connected with privacy concerns due to fears of unauthorized data access or inappropriate use of recorded data potentially resulting in rejection and non-use of the applications. As privacy-preserving visualizations of video data can diminish those concerns, this empirical study examines the acceptance and privacy perceptions of video-based AAL technology applying different visualization modes for privacy preservation (n = 161). These visualization modes differed in their degrees of visibility and identifiability, covering different levels of privacy preservation (low level: "Blurred" mode; medium level: "Pixel" and "Grey" modes; high level: "Avatar" mode) and are specifically evaluated based on realistic video sequences. The results of our study indicate a rather low acceptance of video-based AAL technology in general. From the diverse visualization modes, the "Avatar" mode is most preferred as it is perceived as best suitable to protect and preserve the users' privacy. Beyond that, distinct clusters of future users were identified differing in their technology evaluation as well as in individual characteristics (i.e., privacy perception, technology commitment). The findings support the understanding of potential users' needs for a successful future design, development, and implementation of video-based, but still privacy-preserving AAL technology.

Optical Correlators for Cryptosystems and Image Recognition: A Review

Optical correlators are efficient optical systems that have gained a wide range of applications both in image recognition and encryption, due to their special properties that benefit from the optoelectronic setup instead of an all-electronic one. This paper presents, to the best of our knowledge, the most extensive review of optical correlators to date. The main types are overviewed, together with their most frequent applications in the newest contributions, ranging from security uses in cryptosystems, to medical and space applications, femtosecond pulse detection and various other image recognition proposals. The paper also includes a comparison between various optical correlators developed recently, highlighting their advantages and weaknesses, to gain a better perspective towards finding the best solutions in any specific domain where these devices might prove highly efficient and useful.

Salp swarm and gray wolf optimizer for improving the efficiency of power supply network in radial distribution systems

The efficiency of distribution networks is hugely affected by active and reactive power flows in distribution electric power systems. Currently, distributed generators (DGs) of energy are extensively applied to minimize power loss and improve voltage deviancies on power distribution systems. The best position and volume of DGs produce better power outcomes. This work prepares a new hybrid SSA–GWO metaheuristic optimization algorithm that combines the salp swarm algorithm (SSA) and the gray wolf optimizer (GWO) algorithm. The SSA–GWO algorithm ensures generating the best size and site of one and multi-DGs on the radial distribution network to decrease real power losses (RPL) (kW) on lines and resolve voltage deviancies. Our novel algorithm is executed on IEEE 123-bus radial distribution test systems. The results confirm the success of the suggested hybrid SSA–GWO algorithm compared with implementing the SSA and GWO individually. Through the proposed SSA–GWO algorithm, the study decreases the RPL and improves the voltage profile on distribution networks with multiple DGs units.

Optimal feature selection using novel flamingo search algorithm for classification of COVID-19 patients from clinical text

Though several AI-based models have been established for COVID-19 diagnosis, the machine-based diagnostic gap is still ongoing, making further efforts to combat this epidemic imperative. So, we tried to create a new feature selection (FS) method because of the persistent need for a reliable system to choose features and to develop a model to predict the COVID-19 virus from clinical texts. This study employs a newly developed methodology inspired by the flamingo's behavior to find a near-ideal feature subset for accurate diagnosis of COVID-19 patients. The best features are selected using a two-stage. In the first stage, we implemented a term weighting technique, which that is RTF-C-IEF, to quantify the significance of the features extracted. The second stage involves using a newly developed feature selection approach called the improved binary flamingo search algorithm (IBFSA), which chooses the most important and relevant features for COVID-19 patients. The proposed multi-strategy improvement process is at the heart of this study to improve the search algorithm. The primary objective is to broaden the algorithm's capabilities by increasing diversity and support exploring the algorithm search space. Additionally, a binary mechanism was used to improve the performance of traditional FSA to make it appropriate for binary FS issues. Two datasets, totaling 3053 and 1446 cases, were used to evaluate the suggested model based on the Support Vector Machine (SVM) and other classifiers. The results showed that IBFSA has the best performance compared to numerous previous swarm algorithms. It was noted, that the number of feature subsets that were chosen was also drastically reduced by 88% and obtained the best global optimal features.

Topic Classification of Online News Articles Using Optimized Machine Learning Models

Much news is available online, and not all is categorized. A few researchers have carried out work on news classification in the past, and most of the work focused on fake news identification. Most of the work performed on news categorization is carried out on a benchmark dataset. The problem with the benchmark dataset is that model trained with it is not applicable in the real world as the data are pre-organized. This study used machine learning (ML) techniques to categorize online news articles as these techniques are cheaper in terms of computational needs and are less complex. This study proposed the hyperparameter-optimized support vector machines (SVM) to categorize news articles according to their respective category. Additionally, five other ML techniques, Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD), Random Forest (RF), Logistic Regression (LR), K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), and Naïve Bayes (NB), were optimized for comparison for the news categorization task. The results showed that the optimized SVM model performed better than other models, while without optimization, its performance was worse than other ML models.

Cuckoo Algorithm Based on Global Feedback

This article proposes a cuckoo algorithm (GFCS) based on the global feedback strategy and innovatively introduces a "re-fly" mechanism. In GFCS, the process of the algorithm is adjusted and controlled by a dynamic global variable, and the dynamic global parameter also serves as an indicator of whether the algorithm has fallen into a local optimum. According to the change of the global optimum value of the algorithm in each round, the dynamic global variable value is adjusted to optimize the algorithm. In addition, we set new formulas for the other main parameters, which are also adjusted by the dynamic global variable as the algorithm progresses. When the algorithm converges prematurely and falls into a local optimum, the current optimum is retained, and the algorithm is initialized and re-executed to find a better value. We define the previous process as "re-fly." To verify the effectiveness of GFCS, we conducted extensive experiments on the CEC2013 test suite. The experimental results show that the GFCS algorithm has better performance compared to other algorithms when considering the quality of the obtained solution.

PRo-Pat: Probabilistic Root-Pattern Bi-gram data language model for Arabic based morphological analysis and distribution

Based on 29,192,662 html files obtained from the ClueWeb a bi-gram data language model for Arabic is constructed. The created dataset is considering standard types of bi-gram analysis, however with focus on the root-pattern paradigm in Arabic. Root-Pattern distributions in form of P(root|pattern), P(pattern|root) and P(pattern|pattern) are additionally estimated. The aspect of considering the Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) on the root-pattern level as a higher-level of abstraction, has been widely neglected in Arabic research community despite its advantage in reducing ambiguities within Arabic morphological analysis and its impact on cognitive aspect on Arabic word perception [1]. In the preprocessing phase, the html files were converted to 974 unfiltered raw text files with the size of about 180 GB. These files were morphologically analyzed towards extracting and counting frequencies of patterns, roots, particle, and stems and particularly root-pattern occurrences. Based on a resulting corpus containing around 18,482,719 raw words, a language data model is constructed containing 9,311,246 bi-grams of morphologically analyzed wordform, including around 3.49 million bi-directional P(root|pattern) and around 1.153 million P(patttern|pattern) bi-grams in form of conditional probabilities covering a subset of around 8086 roots with 20413 possible pattern-forms. As this data model is considering the root-pattern phenomenon in Arabic, the created data are useful for researchers working on cognitive aspect of Arabic such as visual word cognition, morpho-phonetic perception, morphological analysis, spell-checking, and resolving ambiguities in morphological parsing.

Random forests, sound symbolism and Pokémon evolution

This study constructs machine learning algorithms that are trained to classify samples using sound symbolism, and then it reports on an experiment designed to measure their understanding against human participants. Random forests are trained using the names of Pokémon, which are fictional video game characters, and their evolutionary status. Pokémon undergo evolution when certain in-game conditions are met. Evolution changes the appearance, abilities, and names of Pokémon. In the first experiment, we train three random forests using the sounds that make up the names of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean Pokémon to classify Pokémon into pre-evolution and post-evolution categories. We then train a fourth random forest using the results of an elicitation experiment whereby Japanese participants named previously unseen Pokémon. In Experiment 2, we reproduce those random forests with name length as a feature and compare the performance of the random forests against humans in a classification experiment whereby Japanese participants classified the names elicited in Experiment 1 into pre-and post-evolution categories. Experiment 2 reveals an issue pertaining to overfitting in Experiment 1 which we resolve using a novel cross-validation method. The results show that the random forests are efficient learners of systematic sound-meaning correspondence patterns and can classify samples with greater accuracy than the human participants.

Incorporating a Novel Dual Transfer Learning Approach for Medical Images

Recently, transfer learning approaches appeared to reduce the need for many classified medical images. However, these approaches still contain some limitations due to the mismatch of the domain between the source domain and the target domain. Therefore, this study aims to propose a novel approach, called Dual Transfer Learning (DTL), based on the convergence of patterns between the source and target domains. The proposed approach is applied to four pre-trained models (VGG16, Xception, ResNet50, MobileNetV2) using two datasets: ISIC2020 skin cancer images and ICIAR2018 breast cancer images, by fine-tuning the last layers on a sufficient number of unclassified images of the same disease and on a small number of classified images of the target task, in addition to using data augmentation techniques to balance classes and to increase the number of samples. According to the obtained results, it has been experimentally proven that the proposed approach has improved the performance of all models, where without data augmentation, the performance of the VGG16 model, Xception model, ResNet50 model, and MobileNetV2 model are improved by 0.28%, 10.96%, 15.73%, and 10.4%, respectively, while, with data augmentation, the VGG16 model, Xception model, ResNet50 model, and MobileNetV2 model are improved by 19.66%, 34.76%, 31.76%, and 33.03%, respectively. The Xception model obtained the highest performance compared to the rest of the models when classifying skin cancer images in the ISIC2020 dataset, as it obtained 96.83%, 96.919%, 96.826%, 96.825%, 99.07%, and 94.58% for accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, sensitivity, and specificity respectively. To classify the images of the ICIAR 2018 dataset for breast cancer, the Xception model obtained 99%, 99.003%, 98.995%, 99%, 98.55%, and 99.14% for accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, sensitivity, and specificity, respectively. Through these results, the proposed approach improved the models' performance when fine-tuning was performed on unclassified images of the same disease.

Human activity recognition from sensor data using spatial attention-aided CNN with genetic algorithm

Capturing time and frequency relationships of time series signals offers an inherent barrier for automatic human activity recognition (HAR) from wearable sensor data. Extracting spatiotemporal context from the feature space of the sensor reading sequence is challenging for the current recurrent, convolutional, or hybrid activity recognition models. The overall classification accuracy also gets affected by large size feature maps that these models generate. To this end, in this work, we have put forth a hybrid architecture for wearable sensor data-based HAR. We initially use Continuous Wavelet Transform to encode the time series of sensor data as multi-channel images. Then, we utilize a Spatial Attention-aided Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to extract higher-dimensional features. To find the most essential features for recognizing human activities, we develop a novel feature selection (FS) method. In order to identify the fitness of the features for the FS, we first employ three filter-based methods: Mutual Information (MI), Relief-F, and minimum redundancy maximum relevance (mRMR). The best set of features is then chosen by removing the lower-ranked features using a modified version of the Genetic Algorithm (GA). The K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) classifier is then used to categorize human activities. We conduct comprehensive experiments on five well-known, publicly accessible HAR datasets, namely UCI-HAR, WISDM, MHEALTH, PAMAP2, and HHAR. Our model significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art models in terms of classification performance. We also observe an improvement in overall recognition accuracy with the use of GA-based FS technique with a lower number of features. The source code of the paper is publicly available here https://github.com/apusarkar2195/HAR_WaveletTransform_SpatialAttention_FeatureSelection.

Developing sequentially trained robust Punjabi speech recognition system under matched and mismatched conditions

Development of a native language robust ASR framework is very challenging as well as an active area of research. Although an urge for investigation of effective front-end as well as back-end approaches are required for tackling environment differences, large training complexity and inter-speaker variability in achieving success of a recognition system. In this paper, four front-end approaches: mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC), Gammatone frequency cepstral coefficients (GFCC), relative spectral-perceptual linear prediction (RASTA-PLP) and power-normalized cepstral coefficients (PNCC) have been investigated to generate unique and robust feature vectors at different SNR values. Furthermore, to handle the large training data complexity, parameter optimization has been performed with sequence-discriminative training techniques: maximum mutual information (MMI), minimum phone error (MPE), boosted-MMI (bMMI), and state-level minimum Bayes risk (sMBR). It has been demonstrated by selection of an optimal value of parameters using lattice generation, and adjustments of learning rates. In proposed framework, four different systems have been tested by analyzing various feature extraction approaches (with or without speaker normalization through Vocal Tract Length Normalization (VTLN) approach in test set) and classification strategy on with or without artificial extension of train dataset. To compare each system performance, true matched (adult train and test-S1, child train and test-S2) and mismatched (adult train and child test-S3, adult + child train and child test-S4) systems on large adult and very small Punjabi clean speech corpus have been demonstrated. Consequently, gender-based in-domain data augmented is used to moderate acoustic and phonetic variations throughout adult and children's speech under mismatched conditions. The experiment result shows that an effective framework developed on PNCC + VTLN front-end approach using TDNN-sMBR-based model through parameter optimization technique yields a relative improvement (RI) of 40.18%, 47.51%, and 49.87% in matched, mismatched and gender-based in-domain augmented system under typical clean and noisy conditions, respectively.

Segmentation of Brain Tissues from MRI Images Using Multitask Fuzzy Clustering Algorithm

In recent years, brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) image segmentation has drawn considerable attention. MRI image segmentation result provides a basis for medical diagnosis. The segmentation result influences the clinical treatment directly. Nevertheless, MRI images have shortcomings such as noise and the inhomogeneity of grayscale. The performance of traditional segmentation algorithms still needs further improvement. In this paper, we propose a novel brain MRI image segmentation algorithm based on fuzzy C-means (FCM) clustering algorithm to improve the segmentation accuracy. First, we introduce multitask learning strategy into FCM to extract public information among different segmentation tasks. It combines the advantages of the two algorithms. The algorithm enables to utilize both public information among different tasks and individual information within tasks. Then, we design an adaptive task weight learning mechanism, and a weighted multitask fuzzy C-means (WMT-FCM) clustering algorithm is proposed. Under the adaptive task weight learning mechanism, each task obtains the optimal weight and achieves better clustering performance. Simulated MRI images from McConnell BrainWeb have been used to evaluate the proposed algorithm. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method provides more accurate and stable segmentation results than its competitors on the MRI images with various noise and intensity inhomogeneity.

Intuitionistic Fuzzy Modulus Similarity Measure

The concept of intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IFSs) is an expected explanation for finding the appropriate information. It originated from concept of fuzzy set (FS) theory, which extends the classical conception of a fuzzy set. This paper examines a number of widely employed similarity measures then proposes an IFSs modulus similarity measure and a weight similarity measure. Initially, the authors have discussed numerous existing similarity measures, some of which are unable to justify the axioms of being a similarity measure. Furthermore, some numerical examples are presented to compare the existing similarity measures with the proposed similarity measure. The proposed similarity measure is a practical and effective method for determining the qualitative similarity between IFSs, which do not have any paradoxical nature. In addition, the proposed similarity measure has been demonstrated practically in pattern recognition and medical diagnosis problem. Suggestions for future research comprise the conclusions of the paper.

Test case prioritization for changed code using nature inspired optimizer

The software development and maintenance phase succeeded with significant regression testing activity. The software must be re-tested every time it upgrades to preserve its quality. Software testing as a whole is an expensive and tedious task due to resource constraints. Using the prioritization technique implies regression testing to re-test software after it has been modified. In this situation, the prioritization technique can use information acquired about earlier test case executions to generate test case orderings. The approaches for test case prioritization arrange them all in such a sequence that maximizes their efficacy in accomplishing specific goals. This paper presents a hybrid technique for change-testing or regression testing through test case prioritization. The suggested method first generates the test cases, then clustered in untested and unimportant groups using kernel-based fuzzy c-means clustering technique. The appropriate test cases are then considered for prioritization using the grey wolf optimizer. The results compared with the approaches such as ant colony, particle swarm, and genetic algorithm optimization method, and it is observed that the proposed approach efficiency increased by 91% of fault detection rate.

An effective ontology-based query response model for risk assessment in urban flood disaster management

The drastic advancements in the field of Information Technology make it possible to analyze, manage and handle large-scale environment data and spatial information acquired from diverse sources. Nevertheless, this process is a more challenging task where the data accessibility has been performed in an unstructured, varied, and incomplete manner. The appropriate extraction of information from diverse data sources is crucial for evaluating natural disaster management. Therefore, an effective framework is required to acquire essential information in a structured and accessible manner. This research concentrates on modeling an efficient ontology-based evaluation framework to facilitate the queries based on the flood disaster location. It offers a reasoning framework with spatial and feature patterns to respond to the generated query. To be specific, the data is acquired from the urban flood disaster environmental condition to perform data analysis hierarchically and semantically. Finally, data evaluation can be accomplished by data visualization and correlation patterns to respond to higher-level queries. The proposed ontology-based evaluation framework has been simulated using the MATLAB environment. The result exposes that the proposed framework obtains superior significance over the existing frameworks with a lesser average query response time of 7 seconds.

Analyzing Public Opinions Regarding Virtual Tourism in the Context of COVID-19: Unidirectional vs. 360-Degree Videos

Over the last few years, more and more people have been using YouTube videos to experience virtual reality travel. Many individuals utilize comments to voice their ideas or criticize a subject on YouTube. The number of replies to 360-degree and unidirectional videos is enormous and might differ between the two kinds of videos. This presents the problem of efficiently evaluating user opinions with respect to which type of video will be more appealing to viewers, positive comments, or interest. This paper aims to study SentiStrength-SE and SenticNet7 techniques for sentiment analysis. The findings demonstrate that the sentiment analysis obtained from SenticNet7 outperforms that from SentiStrength-SE. It is revealed through the sentiment analysis that sentiment disparity among the viewers of 360-degree and unidirectional videos is low and insignificant. Furthermore, the study shows that unidirectional videos garnered the most traffic during COVID-19 induced global travel bans. The study elaborates on the capacity of unidirectional videos on travel and the implications for industry and academia. The second aim of this paper also employs a Convolutional Neural Network and Random Forest for sentiment analysis of YouTube viewers’ comments, where the sentiment analysis output by SenticNet7 is used as actual values. Cross-validation with 10-folds is employed in the proposed models. The findings demonstrate that the max-voting technique outperforms compared with an individual fold.

Acceptance and Privacy Perceptions Toward Video-based Active and Assisted Living technologies: Scoping Review (Preprint)

BACKGROUND

The aging society posits new socioeconomic challenges to which a potential solution is active and assisted living (AAL) technologies. Visual-based sensing systems are technologically among the most advantageous forms of AAL technologies in providing health and social care; however, they come at the risk of violating rights to privacy. With the immersion of video-based technologies, privacy-preserving smart solutions are being developed; however, the user acceptance research about these developments is not yet being systematized.

OBJECTIVE

With this scoping review, we aimed to gain an overview of existing studies examining the viewpoints of older adults and/or their caregivers on technology acceptance and privacy perceptions, specifically toward video-based AAL technology.

METHODS

A total of 22 studies were identified with a primary focus on user acceptance and privacy attitudes during a literature search of major databases. Methodological quality assessment and thematic analysis of the selected studies were executed and principal findings are summarized. The PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews) guidelines were followed at every step of this scoping review.

RESULTS

Acceptance attitudes toward video-based AAL technologies are rather conditional, and are summarized into five main themes seen from the two end-user perspectives: caregiver and care receiver. With privacy being a major barrier to video-based AAL technologies, security and medical safety were identified as the major benefits across the studies.

CONCLUSIONS

This review reveals a very low methodological quality of the empirical studies assessing user acceptance of video-based AAL technologies. We propose that more specific and more end user- and real life-targeting research is needed to assess the acceptance of proposed solutions.

Event-Specific Transmission Forecasting of SARS-CoV-2 in a Mixed-Mode Ventilated Office Room Using an ANN

The emerging novel variants and re-merging old variants of SARS-CoV-2 make it critical to study the transmission probability in mixed-mode ventilated office environments. Artificial neural network (ANN) and curve fitting (CF) models were created to forecast the R-Event. The R-Event is defined as the anticipated number of new infections that develop in particular events occurring over the course of time in any defined space. In the spring and summer of 2022, real-time data for an office environment were collected in India in a mixed-mode ventilated office space in a composite climate. The performances of the proposed CF and ANN models were compared with respect to traditional statistical indicators, such as the correlation coefficient, RMSE, MAE, MAPE, NS index, and a20-index, in order to determine the merit of the two approaches. Thirteen input features, namely the indoor temperature (TIn), indoor relative humidity (RHIn), area of opening (AO), number of occupants (O), area per person (AP), volume per person (VP), CO2 concentration (CO2), air quality index (AQI), outer wind speed (WS), outdoor temperature (TOut), outdoor humidity (RHOut), fan air speed (FS), and air conditioning (AC), were selected to forecast the R-Event as the target. The main objective was to determine the relationship between the CO2 level and R-Event, ultimately producing a model for forecasting infections in office building environments. The correlation coefficients for the CF and ANN models in this case study were 0.7439 and 0.9999, respectively. This demonstrates that the ANN model is more accurate in R-Event prediction than the curve fitting model. The results show that the proposed ANN model is reliable and significantly accurate in forecasting the R-Event values for mixed-mode ventilated offices.

Confidence Levels Complex q-Rung Orthopair Fuzzy Aggregation Operators and Its Application in Decision Making Problem

The theory investigated in this analysis is substantially more suitable for evaluating the dilemmas in real life to manage complicated, risk-illustrating, and asymmetric information. The complex Pythagorean fuzzy set is expanded upon by the complex q-rung orthopair fuzzy set (Cq-ROFS). They stand out by having a qth power of the real part of the complex-valued membership degree and a qth power of the real part and imaginary part of the complex-valued non-membership degree that is equal to or less than 1. We define the comparison method for two complex q-rung orthopair fuzzy numbers as well as the score and accuracy functions (Cq-ROFNs). Some averaging and geometric aggregation operators are examined using the Cq-ROFSs operational rules. Additionally, their main characteristics have been fully illustrated. Based on the suggested operators, we give a novel approach to solve the multi-attribute group decision-making issues that arise in environmental contexts. Making the best choice when there are asymmetric types of information offered by different specialists is the major goal of this work. Finally, we used real data to choose an ideal extinguisher from a variety of options in order to show the effectiveness of our decision-making technique. The effectiveness of the experimental outcomes compared to earlier research efforts is then shown by comparing them to other methods.

Improved Dwarf Mongoose Optimization for Constrained Engineering Design Problems

This paper proposes a modified version of the Dwarf Mongoose Optimization Algorithm (IDMO) for constrained engineering design problems. This optimization technique modifies the base algorithm (DMO) in three simple but effective ways. First, the alpha selection in IDMO differs from the DMO, where evaluating the probability value of each fitness is just a computational overhead and contributes nothing to the quality of the alpha or other group members. The fittest dwarf mongoose is selected as the alpha, and a new operator ω is introduced, which controls the alpha movement, thereby enhancing the exploration ability and exploitability of the IDMO. Second, the scout group movements are modified by randomization to introduce diversity in the search process and explore unvisited areas. Finally, the babysitter's exchange criterium is modified such that once the criterium is met, the babysitters that are exchanged interact with the dwarf mongoose exchanging them to gain information about food sources and sleeping mounds, which could result in better-fitted mongooses instead of initializing them afresh as done in DMO, then the counter is reset to zero. The proposed IDMO was used to solve the classical and CEC 2020 benchmark functions and 12 continuous/discrete engineering optimization problems. The performance of the IDMO, using different performance metrics and statistical analysis, is compared with the DMO and eight other existing algorithms. In most cases, the results show that solutions achieved by the IDMO are better than those obtained by the existing algorithms.

Interdisciplinary perspectives on privacy awareness in lifelogging technology development

Population aging resulting from demographic changes requires some challenging decisions and necessary steps to be taken by different stakeholders to manage current and future demand for assistance and support. The consequences of population aging can be mitigated to some extent by assisting technologies that can support the autonomous living of older individuals and persons in need of care in their private environments as long as possible. A variety of technical solutions are already available on the market, but privacy protection is a serious, often neglected, issue when using such (assisting) technology. Thus, privacy needs to be thoroughly taken under consideration in this context. In a three-year project PAAL ('Privacy-Aware and Acceptable Lifelogging Services for Older and Frail People'), researchers from different disciplines, such as law, rehabilitation, human-computer interaction, and computer science, investigated the phenomenon of privacy when using assistive lifelogging technologies. In concrete terms, the concept of Privacy by Design was realized using two exemplary lifelogging applications in private and professional environments. A user-centered empirical approach was applied to the lifelogging technologies, investigating the perceptions and attitudes of (older) users with different health-related and biographical profiles. The knowledge gained through the interdisciplinary collaboration can improve the implementation and optimization of assistive applications. In this paper, partners of the PAAL project present insights gained from their cross-national, interdisciplinary work regarding privacy-aware and acceptable lifelogging technologies.

Dynamic Load Balancing Techniques in the IoT: A Review

The Internet of things (IoT) extends the Internet space by allowing smart things to sense and/or interact with the physical environment and communicate with other physical objects (or things) around us. In IoT, sensors, actuators, smart devices, cameras, protocols, and cloud services are used to support many intelligent applications such as environmental monitoring, traffic monitoring, remote monitoring of patients, security surveillance, and smart home automation. To optimize the usage of an IoT network, certain challenges must be addressed such as energy constraints, scalability, reliability, heterogeneity, security, privacy, routing, quality of service (QoS), and congestion. To avoid congestion in IoT, efficient load balancing (LB) is needed for distributing traffic loads among different routes. To this end, this survey presents the IoT architectures and the networking paradigms (i.e., edge–fog–cloud paradigms) adopted in these architectures. Then, it analyzes and compares previous related surveys on LB in the IoT. It reviews and classifies dynamic LB techniques in the IoT for cloud and edge/fog networks. Lastly, it presents some lessons learned and open research issues.

FMG: An observable DNA storage coding method based on frequency matrix game graphs

Using complex biomolecules for storage is a new carbon-based storage method. For example, DNA has the potential to be a good method for archival long-term data storage. Reasonable and efficient coding is the first and most important step in DNA storage. However, current coding methods, such as altruism algorithm, have the problem of low coding efficiency and high complexity, and coding constraints and sets make it difficult to see the coding results visually. In this study, a new DNA storage coding method based on frequency matrix game graph (FMG) is proposed to generate DNA storage coding satisfying combinatorial constraints. Compared with the randomness of the heuristic algorithm that satisfies the constraints, the coding method based on the FMG is deterministic and can clearly explain the coding process. In addition, the constraints and coding results have observable characteristics and are better than the previously published results for the size of the coding set. For example, when length of the code n = 10, hamming distance d = 4, the results obtained by proposed approach combining chaos game and graph are 24% better than the previous results. The proposed coding scheme successfully constructs high-quality coding sets with less complexity, which effectively promotes the development of carbon-based storage coding.

Another view on tolerance based multigranulation q-rung orthopair fuzzy rough sets with applications

The q-rung orthopair fuzzy sets accommodate more uncertainties than the Pythagorean fuzzy sets and hence their applications are much extensive. Under the q-rung orthopair fuzzy set, the objective of this paper is to develop new types of q-rung orthopair fuzzy lower and upper approximations by applying the tolerance degree on the similarity between two objects. After employing tolerance degree based q-rung orthopair fuzzy rough set approach to it any times, we can get only the six different sets at most. That is to say, every rough set in a universe can be approximated by only six sets, where the lower and upper approximations of each set in the six sets are still lying among these six sets. The relationships among these six sets are established. Furthermore, we propose tolerance degree based multi granulation optimistic/pessimistic q-rung orthopair fuzzy rough sets and investigate some of their properties. Another main contribution of this paper is to disclose the ideas of different kinds of approximations called approximate precision, rough degree, approximate quality and their mutual relationship. Finally a technique is devloped to rank the alternatives in a q-rung orthopair fuzzy information system based on similarity relation. We find that the proposed method/technique is more efficient when compared with other existing techniques.

A Novel Dynamic Bit Rate Analysis Technique for Adaptive Video Streaming over HTTP Support

Recently, there has been an increase in research interest in the seamless streaming of video on top of Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) in cellular networks (3G/4G). The main challenges involved are the variation in available bit rates on the Internet caused by resource sharing and the dynamic nature of wireless communication channels. State-of-the-art techniques, such as Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH), support the streaming of stored video, but they suffer from the challenge of live video content due to fluctuating bit rate in the network. In this work, a novel dynamic bit rate analysis technique is proposed to model client-server architecture using attention-based long short-term memory (A-LSTM) networks for solving the problem of smooth video streaming over HTTP networks. The proposed client system analyzes the bit rate dynamically, and a status report is sent to the server to adjust the ongoing session parameter. The server assesses the dynamics of the bit rate on the fly and calculates the status for each video sequence. The bit rate and buffer length are given as sequential inputs to LSTM to produce feature vectors. These feature vectors are given different weights to produce updated feature vectors. These updated feature vectors are given to multi-layer feed forward neural networks to predict six output class labels (144p, 240p, 360p, 480p, 720p, and 1080p). Finally, the proposed A-LSTM work is evaluated in real-time using a code division multiple access evolution-data optimized network (CDMA20001xEVDO Rev-A) with the help of an Internet dongle. Furthermore, the performance is analyzed with the full reference quality metric of streaming video to validate our proposed work. Experimental results also show an average improvement of 37.53% in peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and 5.7% in structural similarity (SSIM) index over the commonly used buffer-filling technique during the live streaming of video.

Decision support system for the selection of students for Erasmus+ short-term mobility

Purpose

The current student selection process for short-term mobility actions under the Erasmus + program (i.e. intensive programs and blended intensive programs) is based exclusively on the students' order of enrolment and their grades. This study offers an alternative approach using the analytic hierarchy process based on a four-layer model that collects information about the specificities of each project and the profile of the students and also promotes greater inclusion and homogenization of the project teams.

Design/methodology/approach

A decision support system was built by decomposing it into three stages: the predesign stage, in which the problem is characterized, and the user requirements are identified; the design stage, in which the models, the database and the interfaces are formulated; and the field stage, in which six test scenarios were built to validate the proposed solution.

Findings

The results show that this model can be applied with various selection criteria among students and consider both their hard and soft skills. It can also be applied to help build teams in which the students' knowledge is aligned with the technical skills required by the projects.

Originality/value

The proposed approach is innovative in that it responds to the emerging challenge of short-term European mobility programs that aim to involve students with multidisciplinary competencies. The solution considers both hard and soft skills in the selection of students, which allows changing the student selection paradigm and obtaining potentially more homogeneous multicultural teams with greater learning potential.

Development of an effective clustering algorithm for older fallers

Falls are common and often lead to serious physical and psychological consequences for older persons. The occurrence of falls are usually attributed to the interaction between multiple risk factors. The clinical evaluation of falls risks is time-consuming as a result, hence limiting its availability. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to develop a clustering-based algorithm to determine falls risk. Data from the Malaysian Elders Longitudinal Research (MELoR), comprising 1411 subjects aged ≥55 years, were utilized. The proposed algorithm was developed through the stages of: data pre-processing, feature identification and extraction with either t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbour Embedding (t-SNE) or principal component analysis (PCA)), clustering (K-means clustering, Hierarchical clustering, and Fuzzy C-means clustering) and characteristics interpretation with statistical analysis. A total of 1279 subjects and 9 variables were selected for clustering after the data pre-possessing stage. Using feature extraction with the t-SNE and the K-means clustering algorithm, subjects were clustered into low, intermediate A, intermediate B and high fall risk groups which corresponded with fall occurrence of 13%, 19%, 21% and 31% respectively. Slower gait, poorer balance, weaker muscle strength, presence of cardiovascular disorder, poorer cognitive performance, and advancing age were the key variables identified. The proposed fall risk clustering algorithm grouped the subjects according to features. Such a tool could serve as a case identification or clinical decision support tool for clinical practice to enhance access to falls prevention efforts.

Bioinformatic Exploration of Hub Genes and Potential Therapeutic Drugs for Endothelial Dysfunction in Hypoxic Pulmonary Hypertension

Hypoxic pulmonary hypertension (HPH) is a fatal chronic pulmonary circulatory disease, characterized by hypoxic pulmonary vascular constriction and remodeling. Studies performed to date have confirmed that endothelial dysfunction plays crucial roles in HPH, while the underlying mechanisms have not been fully revealed. The microarray dataset GSE11341 was downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between hypoxic and normoxic microvascular endothelial cell, followed by Gene Ontology (GO) annotation/Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) pathway enrichment analysis, and protein-protein interaction (PPI) network construction. Next, GSE160255 and RT-qPCR were used to validate hub genes. Meanwhile, GO/KEGG and GSEA were performed for each hub gene to uncover the potential mechanism. A nomogram based on hub genes was established. Furthermore, mRNA-miRNA network was predicted by miRNet, and the Connectivity Map (CMAP) database was in use to identify similarly acting therapeutic candidates. A total of 148 DEGs were screened in GSE11341, and three hub genes (VEGFA, CDC25A, and LOX) were determined and validated via GSE160255 and RT-qPCR. Abnormalities in the pathway of vascular smooth muscle contraction, lysosome, and glycolysis might play important roles in HPH pathogenesis. The hub gene-miRNA network showed that hsa-mir-24-3p, hsa-mir-124-3p, hsa-mir-195-5p, hsa-mir-146a-5p, hsa-mir-155-5p, and hsa-mir-23b-3p were associated with HPH. And on the basis of the identified hub genes, a practical nomogram is developed. To repurpose known and therapeutic drugs, three candidate compounds (procaterol, avanafil, and lestaurtinib) with a high level of confidence were obtained from the CMAP database. Taken together, the identification of these three hub genes, enrichment pathways, and potential therapeutic drugs might have important clinical implications for HPH diagnosis and treatment.

Data clustering: application and trends

Clustering has primarily been used as an analytical technique to group unlabeled data for extracting meaningful information. The fact that no clustering algorithm can solve all clustering problems has resulted in the development of several clustering algorithms with diverse applications. We review data clustering, intending to underscore recent applications in selected industrial sectors and other notable concepts. In this paper, we begin by highlighting clustering components and discussing classification terminologies. Furthermore, specific, and general applications of clustering are discussed. Notable concepts on clustering algorithms, emerging variants, measures of similarities/dissimilarities, issues surrounding clustering optimization, validation and data types are outlined. Suggestions are made to emphasize the continued interest in clustering techniques both by scholars and Industry practitioners. Key findings in this review show the size of data as a classification criterion and as data sizes for clustering become larger and varied, the determination of the optimal number of clusters will require new feature extracting methods, validation indices and clustering techniques. In addition, clustering techniques have found growing use in key industry sectors linked to the sustainable development goals such as manufacturing, transportation and logistics, energy, and healthcare, where the use of clustering is more integrated with other analytical techniques than a stand-alone clustering technique.

Hadoop framework integrated hybrid optimization algorithm for privacy preserved clustering mechanism

Big data analysis has gained immense attention throughout classical techniques, which connect in mining the hidden samples from huge data. To relieve computational complexity, the clustering technique is adapted as an imperative part. A novel model is devised for privacy preserved clustering of data with MapReduce framework. The aim is to devise an optimization technique for privacy preservation. The input data is acquired from various distributed sources. The data is further partitioned and fed to MapReduce framework, which consist of mapper and reducer. The mappers perform privacy preservation by encrypting the data with several functionalities, like encryption, Kronecker product and secret key. Here, the secret key generation is performed using proposed Chimp Grey Wolf Optimization (ChGWO) algorithm. The proposed ChGWO is developed by combining Chimp Optimization algorithm (ChOA), and Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO). The fitness is newly developed considering utility and privacy. The privacy is Jaro Winkler similarity and utility is accuracy. Finally, the data clustering is carried out with the Deep Fuzzy Clustering (DFC). The proposed ChGWO offered enhanced efficiency with highest utility of 92.5%, highest privacy of 91.5% and highest random coefficient 65.9%.

Impact of the Soundscape on the Physical Health and the Perception of Senior Adults in Senior Care Facilities

Purpose:

To explore the impact of different acoustic stimuli of varying sound pressure levels on physical responses and the perception of senior adults.

Background:

Noise-related health problems have been gaining increased attention as studies have shown an association with negative impacts on physiological parameters resulting in cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. However, a gap in knowledge exists in exploring the impact of exposure to sound recordings in the actual environment on physiological measurements.

Methods:

Five acoustic stimuli were recorded in real life and 120 senior adults listened to them in a sound treated room to analyze the impacts of low-, middle-, and high-decibel sounds on their heart rate, blood pressure, and perception. The physical responses, heart rate, and blood pressure were measured during the sound exposure, and questionnaires were administered afterward.

Results:

Exposure to different sounds resulted in fluctuations and an inconsistent trend in heart rate, systolic pressure, and diastolic pressure. According to the physical measures and subjective evaluations, sport sounds and traffic noise were given the lowest rating for preference, while music was perceived as the most comfortable.

Conclusions:

A sound pressure level below 55–65 dB(A) correlates with increased comfort and less increase in heart rate and blood pressure. Senior adults with normal hearing preferred and were most comfortable with music, while those with severe hearing impairment preferred entertainment sounds the most.

A hybrid discriminant fuzzy DNN with enhanced modularity bat algorithm for speech recognition

In recent years, speech processing resides a major application in the domain of signal processing. Due to the audibility loss of some speech signals, people with hearing impairment have difficulty in understanding speech, which reintroduces a crucial role in speech recognition. Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) development is a major challenge in research in the case of noise, domain, vocabulary size, and language and speaker variability. Speech recognition system design needs careful attention to challenges or issues like performance and database evaluation, feature extraction methods, speech representations and speech classes. In this paper, HDF-DNN model has been proposed with the hybridization of discriminant fuzzy function and deep neural network for speech recognition. Initially, the speech signals are pre-processed to eliminate the unwanted noise and the features are extracted using Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient (MFCC). A hybrid Deep Neural Network and Discriminant Fuzzy Logic is used for assisting hearing-impaired listeners with enhanced speech intelligibility. Both DNN and DF have some problems with parameters to address this problem, Enhanced Modularity function-based Bat Algorithm (EMBA) is used as a powerful optimization tool. The experimental results show that the proposed automatic speech recognition-based hybrid deep learning model is effectively-identifies speech recognition more than the MFCC-CNN, CSVM and Deep auto encoder techniques. The proposed method improves the overall accuracy of 8.31%, 9.71% and 10.25% better than, MFCC-CNN, CSVM and Deep auto encoder respectively.

Prediction of Work-Related Risk Factors among Bus Drivers Using Machine Learning

A recent development in ergonomics research is using machine learning techniques for risk assessment and injury prevention. Bus drivers are more likely than other workers to suffer musculoskeletal diseases because of the nature of their jobs and their working conditions (WMSDs). The basic idea of this study is to forecast important work-related risk variables linked to WMSDs in bus drivers using machine learning approaches. A total of 400 full-time male bus drivers from the east and west zone depots of Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC), which is based in Bengaluru, south India, took part in this study. In total, 92.5% of participants responded to the questionnaire. The Modified Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire was used to gather data on symptoms of WMSD during the past 12 months (MNMQ). Machine learning techniques including decision tree, random forest, and naïve Bayes were used to forecast the important risk factors related to WMSDs. It was discovered that WMSDs and work-related characteristics were statistically significant. In total, 66.75% of subjects reported having WMSDs. Various classifiers were used to derive the simulation results for the frequency of pain in the musculoskeletal systems throughout the last 12 months with the important risk variables. With 100% accuracy, decision tree and random forest algorithms produce the same results. Naïve Bayes yields 93.28% accuracy. In this study, through a questionnaire survey and data analysis, several health and work-related risk factors were identified among the bus drivers. Risk factors such as involvement in physical activities, frequent posture change, exposure to vibration, egress ingress, on-duty breaks, and seat adaptability issues have the highest influence on the frequency of pain due to WMSDs among bus drivers. From this study, it is recommended that drivers get involved in physical activities, adopt a healthy lifestyle, and maintain proper posture while driving. For any transport organization/company, it is recommended to design driver cabins ergonomically to mitigate the WMSDs among bus drivers.

Global Research Trends on Smart Homes for Older Adults: Bibliometric and Scientometric Analyses

A growing aging population across the world signifies the importance of smart homes equipped with appropriate technology for the safety and health of older adults. Well-designed smart homes can increase the desire of older adults' aging-in-place and bring economic benefits to the country by reducing budgets for care providers. To obtain a structural overview and provide significant insights into the characteristics of smart homes for older adults, this study conducted bibliometric and scientometric analyses. We used the Web of Science Core Collection database, searching for keywords "smart home*", "home automation", or "domotics" with terms related to older adults, resulting in a total of 1408 documents. VOSviewer software was used to map and visualize the documents. The results showed that research on smart homes for older adults began appearing from 1997 and increased steadily, peaking from 2015. The main research areas were technical engineering fields, such as computer science and engineering, telecommunications with minimal research in humanities, social sciences, and design, indicating the necessity to expand research toward a human-centered perspective, age-friendly technology, and convergence study.

Next-Day Medical Activities Recommendation Model with Double Attention Mechanism Using Generative Adversarial Network

Medical activities recommendation is a key aspect of an intelligent healthcare system, which can assist doctors with little clinical experience in clinical decision making. Medical activities recommendation can be seen as a kind of temporal set prediction. Previous studies about them are based on Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), which does not incorporate personalized medical history or differentiate between the impact of medical activities. To address the above-given issues, this paper proposes a Next-Day Medical Activities Recommendation (NDMARec) model. Specifically, our model firstly proposes an inpatient day embedding method based on soft-attention which balances the impact of different medical activities to get a joint representation of medical activities that occurred within the same day. Then, a fusion module is designed to combine features of inpatient day and medical history to achieve personalization. These features are learned by the self-attention mechanism that solves the long-term dependency problem of RNNs. Last, adversarial training is introduced to improve the generalization ability of our model. Extensive experiments on a real dataset from a hospital are conducted to show that NDMARec outperformed both classical and state-of-the-art methods.

Advanced dwarf mongoose optimization for solving CEC 2011 and CEC 2017 benchmark problems

This paper proposes an improvement to the dwarf mongoose optimization (DMO) algorithm called the advanced dwarf mongoose optimization (ADMO) algorithm. The improvement goal is to solve the low convergence rate limitation of the DMO. This situation arises when the initial solutions are close to the optimal global solution; the subsequent value of the alpha must be small for the DMO to converge towards a better solution. The proposed improvement incorporates other social behavior of the dwarf mongoose, namely, the predation and mound protection and the reproductive and group splitting behavior to enhance the exploration and exploitation ability of the DMO. The ADMO also modifies the lifestyle of the alpha and subordinate group and the foraging and seminomadic behavior of the DMO. The proposed ADMO was used to solve the congress on evolutionary computation (CEC) 2011 and 2017 benchmark functions, consisting of 30 classical and hybrid composite problems and 22 real-world optimization problems. The performance of the ADMO, using different performance metrics and statistical analysis, is compared with the DMO and seven other existing algorithms. In most cases, the results show that solutions achieved by the ADMO are better than the solution obtained by the existing algorithms.

Z-Transform-Based Profile Matching to Develop a Learning-Free Keyword Spotting Method for Handwritten Document Images

For easy accessibility of the information from the digitized document images, optical character recognition (OCR)-based software can be used. But in the case of handwritten documents, the performance of the state-of-the-art OCR systems is not satisfactory owing to the complexity of the unconstrained handwriting. Hence, research affinity comes up with an alternative solution for this problem called keyword spotting (KWS) which is much more practical than an OCR-based solution. This work proposes a novel learning-free KWS method that can be applied to a heterogeneous collection of handwritten documents. In this work, we introduce a new way of profile matching to compare the query word profiles (i.e., both upper and lower) with the target words’ profiles. At first, both query and target words are binarized, and then two profiles from each such word are generated. Next, we formulate rules to filter out the irrelevant words concerning the query word and obtain the probable candidate query (i.e., target) words. Then we compare the profiles of the query and candidate query words in the Z-transform domain using the condition of resonance for the damped oscillator. However, before the match, we perform an affine transformation on the Bezier curve representation of the profiles of the candidate query words to reduce the effects like scaling, rotation, and shearing which might occur due to the variant writing styles of individuals. The proposed method achieves satisfactory performance compared to state-of-the-art learning-free methods when applied to four publicly available standard datasets namely ICFHR 2014 H-KWS competition Modern, IAM, ICFHR 2016 H-KWS competition Botany and ICFHR 2016 H-KWS competition Konzilsprotokolle datasets.

The role of artificial intelligence in enhancing clinical nursing care: A scoping review

AIM

To present an overview of how artificial intelligence has been used to improve clinical nursing care.

BACKGROUND

Artificial intelligence has been reshaping the healthcare industry but little is known about its applicability in enhancing nursing care.

EVALUATION

A scoping review was conducted. Seven electronic databases (CINAHL, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, IEEE Xplore, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science) were searched from 1 January 2010 till 20 December 2020. Grey literature and reference lists of included articles were also searched.

KEY ISSUES

Thirty-seven studies encapsulating the use of artificial intelligence in improving clinical nursing care were included in this review. Six use cases were identified - documentation, formulating nursing diagnoses, formulating nursing care plans, patient monitoring, patient care prediction such as falls prediction (most common) and wound management. Various techniques of machine learning and classification were used for predictive analyses and to improve nurses' preparedness and management of patients' conditions CONCLUSION: This review highlighted the potential of artificial intelligence in improving the quality of nursing care. However, more randomized controlled trials in real-life healthcare settings should be conducted to enhance the rigor of evidence.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT

Education in the application of artificial intelligence should be promoted to empower nurses to lead technological transformations and not passively trail behind others.