As the global human population increases, animal agriculture must adapt to provide more animal products while also addressing concerns about animal welfare, environmental sustainability, and public health. The purpose of this review is to discuss the digitalization of animal farming with Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) technologies, specifically biosensors, big data, and block chain technology. Biosensors are noninvasive or invasive sensors that monitor an animal’s health and behavior in real time, allowing farmers to monitor individual animals and integrate this data for population-level analyses. The data from the sensors is processed using big data-processing techniques such as data modelling. These technologies use algorithms to sort through large, complex data sets to provide farmers with biologically relevant and usable data. Blockchain technology allows for traceability of animal products from farm to table, a key advantage in monitoring disease outbreaks and preventing related economic losses and food-related health pandemics. With these PLF technologies, animal agriculture can become more transparent and regain consumer trust. While the digitalization of animal farming has the potential to address a number of pressing concerns, these technologies are relatively new. The implementation of PLF technologies on farms will require increased collaboration between farmers, animal scientists, and engineers to ensure that technologies can be used in realistic, on-farm conditions. These technologies will call for data models that can sort through large amounts of data while accounting for specific variables and ensuring automation, accessibility, and accuracy of data. Issues with data privacy, security, and integration will need to be addressed before there can be multi-farm databases. Lastly, the usage of blockchain technology in animal agriculture is still in its infancy; blockchain technology has the potential to improve the traceability and transparency of animal products, but more research is needed to realize its full potential. The digitalization of animal farming can supply the necessary tools to provide sustainable animal products on a global scale.

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted health and wellbeing globally. To strengthen preventive and clinical care amid this pandemic, technological innovations like artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly used in different contexts. This bibliometric study aimed to assess the current scholarly development and prominent research domains in applications of AI technologies in COVID-19 research. A total of 105 articles were retrieved from MEDLINE database that emphasized on the use of AI in the context of COVID-19. Most articles had multiple authors with a collaboration index of 7.18. Moreover, most of the articles were produced from the USA (22.86%) and China (21.9%), whereas developing countries were underrepresented among the contributing nations. Furthermore, several research domains were identified, including prevention and control, diagnostics, epidemiological characteristics, therapeutics, psychological conditions, and different areas of data sciences related to COVID-19. The current bibliometric evidence shows the early stage of development in this field, which necessitates equitable applications of AI in COVID-19 research emphasizing on health disparities, socio-legal issues, vaccine development, and applied public health research in this pandemic.

Accurate detection of players and teams in ice hockey games is crucial to the tracking of individual players on court and team tactical decisions, which is therefore becoming an important task for coaches and other analysts. However, hockey is a fluid sport due to complex dynamics and frequent substitutions by both teams, resulting in various body positions of players. Few traditional player detection models from other team sports take these characteristics into account, especially for the detection of teams without prior annotations. Here, we design a two-phase cascaded Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model coupling between individual players position information and team uniform colors to hierarchically detect players in ice hockey games. Our model filters most of disturbing information, such as audience and sideline advertising bars, in Phase I, and refines the detection of targeted players in Phase II, which is efficient and accurate with a precision rate of 91.30% and a recall rate of 95.60% for individual players detection, and an average accuracy of 93.05% in team classification from a self-built dataset of collected images in the 2018 Winter Olympics. Meanwhile, we also present results based on the images and real-time detection from broadcasting videos of 2019-20 NHL regular games covering all 31 teams to show the robustness of our model.

The very first case of corona-virus illness was recorded on 30 January 2020, in India and the number of infected cases, including the death toll, continues to rise. In this paper, we present short-term forecasts of COVID-19 for 28 Indian states and five union territories using real-time data from 30 January to 20May 2020. Applying Holt’s second-order exponential smoothing method and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model, we generated 10-day ahead forecasts of the likely number of infected cases and deaths in India until 29 May2020. Our results show that the number of cumulative cases in India will rise to169109 [PI 95% (14426, 19455)], concurrently the number of deaths may increase to 4863 [PI 95% (4221, 5551)] by 29 May 2020.Further, we have marked the states (e.g. Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu) where outburst is expected by considering the cases above three standard deviations. Under the worst-case scenario, Maharashtra is likely to be the most affected state with around 62628 [PI 95% (52840, 73555)] cumulative cases by 29 May 2020. However, Kerala and Karnataka are likely to remain in the lesser affected region. The presented results mark the states where lockdown by 1 June2020, can be loosened.

Background: The world, now in an emergency of preventing the drastic spread of COVID-19. After the infection was first reported in December 2019, almost every country did not pay attention to this highly contaminated disease and failed to react swiftly. Now the whole universe is in an vulnerable state, loosing a great loss of lives and facing difficulties in all socio-economic aspects. That is why we have the urge to develop an efficient mathematical model (quarantine) based on social consciousness to control the epidemic. Methods: This is a quarantine mathematical model. The outcome of the system is dependent on social consciousness. We have calculated the awareness level by considering various socio-economic factor of each country. In our model, the parameters are Education Index, GDP per capita, population density, high literacy and stable economy. To maximize the efficiency of the model, it has to be implemented in initial stage. However, strict application of the method in vigorous stage of epidemic will also bring a satisfactory outcome. Results: Higher social consciousness will decrease the number of infected population dramatically while minimal or lower awareness will do a outburst. Conclusion: Outbreak will be in control of health care system, lower the death rate and will ensure social and economic stability.

Quality of Service (QoS) has a significant role in the provision of resources within service oriented distributed systems. In Quality of Service, cloud computing creates new challenges for improvements using the concept of virtualization. Currently, Cloud Computing is very emerging technology in every field of data storage and resource distribution over the network. Considering this new emerging technology, for the ease of data accessibility, price, resource use, restoration, response time and number of constraints the quality performance measures need to be upgraded. The paper highlights the research gap in providing a solution to achieve a Quality of Services in Cloud Computing. We also review the issues and challenges arising in cloud computing to guarantee quality.

Recent prolonged dry periods and lack of irrigation water have severely affected the productivity of coffee farms’ in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. This paper analyzes the efficiency of irrigation water use for Robusta coffee (Coffea canephora) in Lam Dong province, Highlands, Vietnam. A Cobb-Douglas production function was used to determine coffee productivity’s response to the application of irrigation water and other production factors using data collected from 194 farmers while the Technical Efficiency (TE) and Irrigation Water Use Efficiency (IWUE) were analyzed using a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model. The correlation of different factors to IWUE was determined using the Tobit model. The production function analysis using Cobb-Douglas shows that the volume of irrigation water, amount of working capital, labor and farm size significantly influence coffee productivity. It also shows that indigenous farmers are more efficient in utilizing irrigation water than the (mostly Kinh) migrant farmers. The Tobit result, on the other hand. indicates that farmers’ experience, education level, distance of farm to water source, security of access to water source, extension contact and credit access significantly affect IWUE. The study findings further suggest that mitigating water shortages in coffee farms require sub-regional and national policy support such as better access to credit and extension services, training, land management and household-level effort to improve farming practices, through the application of appropriate technologies and traditional knowledge.

Analyses of the Environmental Kuznet's Curve (EKC) hypothesis have largely focused on economy level data with occasional analyses exploring sector level data. This paper exploits a new data set which contains sector level data on greenhouse gas emissions from the US energy sector as well as subsector data from six disjoint subsectors which together comprise the entire energy sector. The data contained in this data set is annual data at the state level from 1990 through 2011. By using differenced data we specify an econometrically sound EKC model and compare it against a model containing only a linear GDP per capita term. We find that by using a subsector level modelling approach, evidence for the EKC hypothesis is virtually nonexistent. Moreover, we find that aggregated subsector level estimates outperform sector level estimate on in-sample accuracy. These estimated models are then used to forecast emissions for the energy sector. We find evidence that US greenhouse gas emissions from energy production are at or near a peak.

Limnologists often adhere to a discretized view of waterbodies—they classify them, divide them into zones, promote discrete management targets, and use research tools, experimental designs, and statistical analyses focused on discretization. This approach to limnology has profoundly benefited the way we understand, manage, and communicate about waterbodies. But the research questions and the research tools in limnology are changing rapidly with consequences for the relevance of our current discretization schemes. Here, I examine how and why we discretize and argue that selectively rethinking the extent to which we must discretize gives us an exceptional chance to advance limnology in new ways.

Hearing impairment (HI) is a common sensory disorder that is defined as the partial or complete inability to detect sound in one or both ears. This diverse pathology is associated with a myriad of phenotypic expressions and/or syndromes. HI can be caused by various intrinsic, environmental and/or unknown factors. Some ontologies capture some relevant HI forms, phenotypes and syndromes, but there is no comprehensive knowledge portal which includes aspects specific to the HI disease state. This hampers inter-study comparability, integration and interoperability within and across disciplines. This work describes the HI Ontology (HIO) that was developed based on the Sickle Cell Disease Ontology (SCDO) model. This is a collaboratively developed resource built around the 'Hearing Impairment' concept by a group of experts in different aspects of HI and ontologies. HIO is the first comprehensive, standardized, hierarchical and logical representation of existing HI knowledge. HIO allows researchers and clinicians alike to readily access standardized HI-related knowledge in a single location and promote collaborations and HI information sharing, including epidemiological, socio-environmental, biomedical, genetic and phenotypic information. Furthermore, this ontology illustrates the adaptability of the SCDO framework for use in developing a disease-specific ontology.

A systematic approach for model updating using the modal identification results is proposed. Modal identification provides mode shapes for physical quantities (acceleration strain, etc.) measured in specific directions at the location of the sensors. Besides, model updating involves the use of the mode shapes related to the nodal degrees-of-freedom of the finite element analytic model. Consequently, the mode shapes obtained by modal identification and the mode shapes of the model updating process do not coincide even for the same mode. Therefore, a method constructing transform matrices that distinguish the cases where measurement is done by acceleration, velocity and displacement sensors and the case where measurement is done by strain sensors is proposed to remedy such disagreement between the mode shapes. The so-constructed transform matrices are then applied when the mode shape residual is used as objective function or for mode pairing in the model updating process. The feasibility of the proposed approach is verified by means of a numerical example in which the strain or acceleration of a simple beam is measured and a numerical example in which the strain of a bridge is measured. Using the proposed approach, it is possible to model the structure regardless of the position of the sensors and to select the location of the sensors independently from the model.

Decision-makers are concerned with the inherent complexity of the modern world's markets. However, price fluctuations, environmental concerns, technological development, emerging markets, political challenges, and social expectations made the 21^st century's more dynamic and complex. From a policy-making perspective, it is vital to uncover future trends. This paper proposed that artificial intelligence can improve interpretations in complex markets, such as financial and energy markets. In a complex environment, it is critical to investigate maximum available input features to ensure no valuable informative feature is neglected. Some AI-based models are investigated and presented that AI-based models can successfully uncover future trends. From a scenario development perspective purified input features subset refer to driving forces which shape alternative futures. Results showed that using AI can improve our understanding of how input features influence future behaviors and simultaneously improves prediction accuracy and reliability.

Sleep postures monitoring systems in the hospital aim at transforming sensing signals into quantitative data to characterize the sleep behaviors of the patient. However, a home-care sleep posture monitoring system needs to be user friendly. In this paper, we present iSleePost - a user-friendly home-care intelligent sleep posture monitoring system. We address the labor-intensive labeling issue of traditional machine learning approaches in the training phase. Our proposed mobile health (mHealth) system leverages the communications and computation capabilities of mobile phones for provisioning a continuous sleep posture monitoring service. Our experiments show that iSleePost can achieve 90 percent accuracy in recognizing sleep postures. More importantly, iSleePost demonstrates that an easily-wear wrist sensor can accurately quantify sleep postures.

We proposed a deep learning based chemometric data analysis technique. We trained L2 regularized sparse autoencoder end-to-end for reducing the size of the feature vector to handle the classic problem of curse of dimensionality in chemometric data analysis. We introduce a novel technique of automatic selection of nodes inside hidden layer of an autoencoder through pareto optimization. Moreover, linear regression, ϵ-SVR , and Gaussian process regressor are applied on the reduced size feature vector for the regression. We evaluated our technique on orange juice and wine dataset and results are compared against state-of-the-art methods. Quantitative results are shown on Normalized Mean Square Error (NMSE) and the results show considerable improvement in the state-of- the-art.

A number of studies have shown that assimilation of satellite derived soil moisture using the ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) can improve soil moisture estimates, particularly for the surface zone. However, the EnKF is computationally expensive since an ensemble of model integrations have to be propagated forward in time. Here, assimilating satellite soil moisture data from the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission, we compare the EnKF with the computationally cheaper ensemble Optimal Interpolation (EnOI) method over the contiguous United States (CONUS). The background error-covariance in the EnOI is sampled in two ways: i) by using the stochastic spread from an ensemble open-loop run, and ii) sampling from the model spinup climatology. Our results indicate that the EnKF is only marginally superior to one version of the EnOI. Furthermore the assimilation of SMAP data using the EnKF and EnOI is found to improve the surface zone correlation with in-situ observations at a 95% significance level. The EnKF assimilation of SMAP data is also found to improve root-zone correlation with independent in-situ data at the same significance level; however this improvement is dependent on which in-situ network we are validating against. We evaluate how the quality of the atmospheric forcing affects the analysis results by prescribing the land surface data assimilation system with either observation corrected or model derived precipitation. Surface zone correlation skill increases for the analysis using both the corrected and model derived precipitation, but only the latter shows an improvement at the 95% significance level. The study also suggest that the EnOI can be used for bias-correction of the atmospheric fields where post-processed data are not available. Finally, we assimilate three different Level-2 satellite derived soil moisture products from ESA Climate Change Initiative (CCI), SMAP and SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) using the EnOI, and then compare the relative performance of the three resulting analyses against in-situ soil moisture observations. In this comparison, we find that all three analyses offer improvements over an open-loop run when comparing to in-situ observations. The assimilation of SMAP data is found to perform marginally better than the assimilation of SMOS data, while assimilation of the ESA CCI data shows the smallest improvement of the three analysis products.

The goal of the paper is to investigate the expected participation and mentality of smart citizens in smart cities. The key question is the role of the human factor in smart environments globally studied through a research corpus of the mainstream summaries, trend reports, white papers and visions of business – governmental – university research co- operations. Foremost, a short review of the changing scholarly trends is presented as a theoretical framework. Concerning its key ideas, the corpus based findings are recapped and analysed by content networks and the most referred city strategies. Besides, a critical approach reveal further required factors and risks to investigate. The ultimate goal is to understand how the smart city landscape is shaped by citizen-based strategies, open data, empowerment and responsibility. Accordingly, the paper closes with theoretical, practical and metaphor-based recommendations to support the business and political decision making, and also, the emerging scholarly trends in the context of upcoming technological-structural changes.

The road pavement condition affects safety and comfort, traffic and travel times, vehicles operating cost and emission levels. In order to optimize the road pavement management and guarantee satisfactory mobility conditions for all the road users, the Pavement Management System (PMS) is an effective tool for the road manager. An effective PMS requires the availability of pavement distress data, the possibility of data maintenance and updating, in order to evaluate the best maintenance program. In the last decade, many researches have been focused on pavement distress detection, using a huge variety of technological solutions for both data collection and information extraction and qualification. This paper presents a literature review of data collection systems and processing approach aimed at the pavement condition evaluation. Both commercial solutions and research approaches have been included. The main goal is to draw a framework of the actual existing solutions, considering them from a different point of view in order to identify the most suitable for further research and technical improvement, also considering the automated and semi-automated emerging technologies. An important attempt is to evaluate the aptness of the data collection and extraction to the type of distress, considering the distress detection, classification and quantification phases of the procedure.

Companies have been increasing the amount of data that they collect from their systems and processes, considering the decrease in the cost of memory and storage technologies in recent years. The emergence of technologies such as Big Data, Cloud Computing, E-Science, and the growing complexity of information systems made evident that traceability and provenance are promising approaches. Provenance has been successfully used in complex domains, like health sciences, chemical industries, and scientific computing, considering that these areas require a comprehensive semantic traceability mechanism. Based on these, we investigate the use of provenance in the context of Software Process (SP) and introduce a novel approach based on provenance concepts to model and represent SP data. It addresses SP provenance data capturing, storing, new information inferencing and visualization. The main contribution of our approach is PROV-SwProcess, a provenance model to deal with the specificities of SP and its ability in supporting process managers to deal with vast amounts of execution data during the process analysis and data-driven decision-making. A set of analysis possibilities were derived from this model, using SP goals and questions. A case study was conducted in collaboration with a software development company to instantiate the PROV-SwProcess model (using the proposed approach) with real-word process data. This study showed that 87.5% of the analysis possibilities using real data was correct and can assist in decision-making, while 62.5% of them are not possible to be performed by the process manager using his currently dashboard or process management tool.

Remanufacturing is a viable option to extend the useful life of an end-of-use product or its parts, ensuring sustainable competitive advantages under the current global economic climate. Challenges typical to remanufacturing still persist, despite its many benefits. According to the European Remanufacturing Network a key challenge is lack of accurate, timely and consistent product knowledge as highlighted in a 2015 survey of 188 European remanufacturers. With more data being produced by electric and hybrid vehicles, this adds to the information complexity challenge already experienced in remanufacturing. Therefore, it is difficult to implement real-time and accurate remanufacturing for the shop floor; there are no papers that focus on this within an electric and hybrid vehicle environment. To address this problem this paper attempts to (1) identify the required parameters/ variables needed for fuel cell remanufacturing by means of interviews (2) rank the variables by Pareto analysis (3) develop a casual loop diagram for the identified parameters/ variables to visualise its impact on remanufacturing (4) model a simple stock and flow diagram to simulate and understand data and information-driven schemes in remanufacturing.

The main aim of this paper is to explore the issue of big data and to propose a conceptual framework for big data, based on the temporal dimension. The Temporal Big Data Maturity Model (TBDMM) is a means for assessing organization’s readiness to fully profit from big data analysis. It allows the measurement of the current state of the organization’s big data assets and analytical tools, and to plan their future development. The framework explicitly incorporates a time dimension, providing a complete means for assessing also the readiness to process temporal data and/or knowledge that can be found in modern sources, such as big data ones. Temporality in the proposed framework extends and enhances the already existing maturity models for big data. This research paper is based on a critical analysis of literature, as well as creative thinking, and on the case-study approach involving multiple cases. The literature-based research has shown that the existing maturity models for big data do not treat the temporal dimension as the basic one. At the same time, dynamic analytics is crucial for a sustainable competitive advantage. This conceptual framework was well received among practitioners, to whom it has been presented during interviews. The participants in the consultations often expressed their need of temporal big data analytics, and hence the temporal approach of the maturity model was widely welcomed.

This study provides a unique procedure for validating and reconstructing temperature and precipitation data. Although developed from data in Middle Italy, the validation method is intended to be universal, subject to appropriate calibration according to the climate zones analysed. This~research is an attempt to create shared applicative procedures that are most of the time only theorized or included in some software without a clear definition of the methods. The purpose is to detect most types of errors according to the procedures for data validation prescribed by the World Meteorological Organization, defining practical operations for each of the five types of data controls: gross error checking, internal consistency check, tolerance test, temporal consistency, and~spatial consistency. Temperature and~precipitation data over the period 1931--2014 were investigated. The~outcomes of this process have led to the removal of 375 records (0.02%) of temperature data from 40 weather stations and 1286 records (1.67%) of precipitation data from 118 weather stations, and 171 data points reconstructed. In conclusion, this work contributes to the development of standardized methodologies to validate climate data and provides an innovative procedure to reconstruct missing data in the absence of reliable reference time series.

China’s transportation industry has made rapid progress, which has led to a mass of carbon emissions. However, it is still unclear how the carbon emission from transport sector is punctuated by shifts in underlying drivers. This paper aims to examine the process of China’s carbon emissions from transport sector as well as its major driving forces during the period of 2000 to 2015 at the provincial level. We firstly estimate the carbon emissions from transport sector at the provincial level based on the fuel and electricity consumption using a top-down method. We find that the carbon emission per capita is steadily increasing across the nation, especially in the provinces of Chongqing and Inner Mongolia. However, the carbon emission intensity is decreasing in most provinces of China, except in Yunnan, Qinghai, Chongqing, Zhejiang, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Inner Mongolia, Henan and Anhui. We then quantify the effect of socio-economic factors and their regional variations on the carbon emissions using panel data model. The results show that the development of secondary industry is the most significant variable in both the entire nation level and the regional level, while the effects of the other variables vary across regions. Among these factors, population density is the main motivator of the increasing carbon emissions per capita from transport sector for both the whole nation and the western region, whereas the consumption level per capita of residents and the development of tertiary industry are the primary drivers of per capita carbon emissions for the eastern and central region.

This paper relies on accounting-based measures of country risk to investigate U.S. global banks' exposure to foreign country risk over the 2017 fiscal year as measured by the sum of cross-border risk, foreign office risk, and derivative risk claims. We achieve this using panel linear modeling methods with country level heterogeneity and time fixed effects, along with a constructed panel data of 284 observations on 71 countries distributed across 6 world regional blocks, and observed over 4 consecutive quarters starting from 4th quarter 2016 and ending with 3rd quarter 2017. The results show that on average, over the four quarters, a 1% increase in foreign banking sector's claims significantly increases U.S. global banks cross border risk exposure by 0.34%, while reducing derivative risk exposure by 0.22%, but have no significant impact on foreign office risk exposure. Similar results are observed with public sector claims which significantly increase banks' exposure to cross border risk by 0.21%, while reducing derivative risk exposure by 0.19%. Conversely however, non-bank financial sector claims are found to have no significant affect on cross-border risk exposure, but significantly reduce foreign office risk exposure by 0.09%, while increasing derivative risk exposure by 0.06%. These results indicate the presence of sectoral heterogeneities in U.S. banks' exposure to foreign counterparties' risk, and also that overall, over the course of 2017 the level of U.S. global banks' cross-border risk exposure increased, while their level of derivative risk exposure decreased, and the level of foreign office risk exposure remained relatively unchanged.

Linear regression is a basic tool in mobile robotics, since it enables accurate estimation of straight lines from range-bearing scans or in digital images, which is a prerequisite for reliable data association and sensor fusing in the context of feature-based SLAM. This paper discusses, extends and compares existing algorithms for line fitting applicable also in case of strong covariances between the coordinates at each single data point, which must not be neglected if range-bearing sensors are used. Besides, particularly the determination of the covariance matrix is considered, which is required for stochastic modeling. The main contribution is a new error model of straight lines in closed form for calculating fast and reliably the covariance matrix dependent on just a few comprehensible and easily obtainable parameters. The model can be applied widely in any case when a line is fitted from a number of distinct points also without a-priori knowledge of the specific measurement noise. By means of extensive simulations the performance and robustness of the new model in comparison to existing approaches is shown.

Good data analysis is required for the optimal design of water resources projects. However, data are not regularly collected due to material or technical reasons, which results in incomplete-data problems. Available data and data length are of great importance to solve those problems. Various studies have been conducted on missing data treatment. This study used data from the flow observation stations on Yeşilırmak River in Turkey. In the first part of the study, models were generated and compared in order to complete missing data using ANFIS, multiple regression and Normal Ratio Method. In the second part of the study, the minimum number of data required for ANFIS models was determined using the optimum ANFIS model. Of all methods compared in this study, ANFIS models yielded the most accurate results. A 10-year training set was also found to be sufficient as a data set.

Nonlinear nonparametric statistics (NNS) algorithm offers new tools for curve fitting. A relationship between k-means clustering and NNS regression points is explored with graphics showing a perfect fit in the limit. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate NNS as a form of unsupervised learning, and supply a proof of its limit condition. The procedural similarity NNS shares with vector quantization is also documented, along with identical outputs for NNS and a k nearest neighbours classification algorithm under a specific NNS setting. Fisher's iris data and artificial data are used. Even though a perfect fit should obviously be reserved for instances of high signal to noise ratios, NNS permits greater flexibility by offering a large spectrum of possible fits from linear to perfect.

This paper presents a methodology to design sensor fusion parameters using real performance indicators of navigation in UAVs based on PixHawk flight controller and peripherals. This methodology and the selected performance indicators allows to find the best parameters for the fusion system of a determined configuration of sensors and a predefined real mission. The selected real platform is described with stress on available sensors and data processing software, and the experimental methodology is proposed to characterize sensor data fusion output and determine the best choice of parameters using quality measurements of tracking output with performance metrics not requiring ground truth.

Deck inclination and vertical displacements are among the most important technical parameters to evaluate the health status of a bridge and to verify its bearing capacity. Several methods, both conventional and innovative, are used for structural rotations and displacement monitoring; no one of these does allow, at the same time, precision, automation, static and dynamic monitoring without using high cost instrumentation. The proposed system uses a common laser pointer and image processing. The elastic line inclination is measured by analyzing the single frames of a HD video of the laser beam imprint projected on a flat target. For the image processing, a code was developed in Matlab® that provides instantaneous rotation and displacement of a bridge, charged by a mobile load. An important feature is the synchronization of the load positioning, obtained by a GNSS receiver or by a video. After the calibration procedures, a test was carried out during the movements of a heavy truck maneuvering on a bridge. Data acquisition synchronization allowed to relate the position of the truck on the deck to inclination and displacements. The inclination of elastic line was obtained with a precision of 0.01 mrad. The results demonstrate the suitability of the method for dynamic load tests, control and monitoring of bridges.

Solar radiation is the main energy source for mankind and an accurate data of solar radiation levels for a particular location is vital for the optimum operation of solar energy transducers such as photovoltaic cells and solar thermal collectors. In this work, we show that there is a linear relationship between recorded monthly average temperatures and solar radiation in Swaziland. The correlation can be utilized to develop two mathematical models for the estimation of solar radiation: one from the measured monthly average temperatures and the other based on the square-root of the difference between measured maximum and minimum monthly average temperatures. Both models fit the data well and can be applied to estimate solar radiation in other parts of the region.

Continuous object tracking in WSNs, such as monitoring of mud-rock flows, forest fires etc., is a challenging task due to characteristic nature of continuous objects. They can appear randomly in the network field, move continuously, and can change in size and shape. Monitoring such objects in real-time generally require tremendous amount of messaging between sensor nodes to synergistically estimate object’s movement and track its location. In this paper, we propose a novel twofold-sink mechanism, comprising of a mobile and a static sink node. Both sink nodes gather information about boundary sensor nodes, which is then used to uniformly distribute energy consumption across all network nodes, thus helping in saving residual energy of network nodes. Numerous object tracking schemes, using mobile sink, have been proposed in the literature. However, existing schemes employing mobile sink cannot be applied to track continuous objects, because of momentous variation of network topology. Therefore, we present in this paper a mechanism, transformed from K-means algorithm, to find the best sensing location of the mobile sink node. It helps to reduce transmission load on the intermediate network nodes situated between static sink node and the ordinary network sensing nodes. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme can distinctly improve life time of the network, compared to one-sink protocol employed in continuous object tracking.

Logistics plays an important role in globalized companies and contributes to the development of foreign trade. A large number of external conditions, such as recession and inflation, affect logistics. Therefore, managers should find ways to improve operational performance, enabling them to increase efficiency while considering environmental sustainability due to the industry’s large scale of energy consumption. Based on data collected from the financial reports of top global logistics companies, this study uses a DEA model to calculate corporate efficiency by implementing a Grey forecasting approach to forecast future sustainability values. Consequently, the study addresses the problem of how to enhance operational performance while accounting for the impact of external conditions. This research can help logistics companies develop operation strategies in the future that will enhance their competitiveness vis-à-vis rivals in a time of global economic volatility.

This paper examines the fundamental distinctions and complementary relationships between generative and descriptive methods in research and analysis. Through a systematic review of their applications across various fields, we explore how descriptive methods excel in capturing and characterizing existing phenomena, while generative methods enable the creation of new instances based on learned patterns. The analysis reveals that while these approaches serve different primary purposes, their integration often leads to more robust and comprehensive research outcomes. Our findings suggest that understanding the strengths and limitations of both methodologies is crucial for researchers and practitioners in choosing appropriate approaches for their specific contexts.

The article discusses the use of satellite data and drones for land monitoring in Kazakhstan, emphasising their importance in the context of population growth and increasing agricultural demand. Satellite technologies, such as Sentinel-2 and Landsat, provide essential data for analysing land resources, including soil erosion and the condition of agricultural lands. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) complement satellite data by offering detailed low-altitude imagery, enabling the detection of local issues such as irrigation system failures and soil compaction.The study demonstrates that integrating drone and satellite data allows for more efficient land resource management. For example, 35% of agricultural land in southern Kazakhstan is affected by soil degradation, while overgrazing issues were identified in the northern regions. These innovative monitoring methods enable early detection of threats, allowing timely measures to be taken to improve land management practices.The conclusion highlights that the use of these technologies requires not only infrastructure but also skilled professionals. The integration of satellites and drones creates opportunities for more precise and timely monitoring, which is essential for sustainable land resource management in Kazakhstan.

Despite significant advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs), detecting and mitigating bias remains a critical challenge, particularly within social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and in addressing cyberbullying present on them. This research investigates the effectiveness of leading LLMs in generating synthetic biased and cyberbullying data and evaluates the proficiency of Transformer AI models in detecting bias and cyberbullying within both authentic and synthetic contexts. The study involves semantic analysis and feature engineering on a dataset of over 48,000 sentences related to cyberbullying collected from Twitter (before it became X). Leveraging state-of-the-art LLMs such as ChatGPT-4o, Pi AI, Claude 3 Opus, and Gemini-1.5, synthetic biased, cyberbullying, and neutral data were generated to deepen the understanding of bias in human-generated data. AI models including DeBERTa, Longformer, BigBird, HateBERT, MobileBERT, DistilBERT, BERT, RoBERTa, ELECTRA, and XLNet were initially trained to classify Twitter cyberbullying data and subsequently fine-tuned, optimized, and quantized for multilabel classification (detecting both biases and cyberbullying). The study's outcomes include a prototype of a hybrid application that combines a Bias Data Detector and a Bias Data Generator, validated through extensive testing.

Enhanced food and nutrition security remains a primary goal for every community. Several interventions have been promoted in dry areas to improve issues on food and nutrition security. However, studies on the level of knowledge, cultural norms, perceptions and attitudes that are key drivers in adoption and uptake to highlight gaps and provide evidence for improvement are limited. This study investigated variables influencing the adoption and implementation of an integrated crop-dairy goat farming system in Elgeyo Marakwet. A descriptive cross-sectional survey entailing qualitative and quantitative approaches among farmers practicing integrated farming was undertaken. A thematic questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data, while key informant interviews and focus groups discussions were used in qualitative research. This study utilized the multi-stage sampling procedure to sample the farmers and sample size was calculated based on Krejcie and Morgan table. Data analysis for quantitative data was done using SPSS software while qualitative data utilized N-vivo software The findings show that farmers have knowledge on the integrated farming system. Age, level of education, land size, gender, perceptions and attitudes influence adoption. Small animals like dairy goats are associated to women in this community hence increasing their participation in access, control and decision making of agricultural resources. The key findings of this study provide baseline data that can form evidence to help inform policy on the indicators contributing to adoption of integrated crop-dairy goat systems to enhance food and nutrition security

E-commerce businesses employ recommender models to assist in identifying a personalized set of products for each visitor. To accurately assess the recommendations’ influence on customer clicks and buys, three target areas—customer behavior, data collection, user-interface —will be explored for possible sources of erroneous data. Varied customer behavior misrepresents the recommendations’ true influence on a customer due to the presence of B2B interactions and outlier customers. Non-parametric statistical procedures for outlier removal are delineated and other strategies are investigated to account for the effect of a large percentage of new customers or high bounce rates. Subsequently, in data collection we identify probable misleading interactions in the raw data, propose a robust method of tracking unique visitors, and accurately attributing the buy influence for combo products. Lastly, user-interface issues discuss the possible problems caused due to the recommendation widget’s positioning on the e-commerce website and the stringent conditions that should be imposed when utilizing data from the product listing page. This collective methodology results in an exact and valid estimation of the customer’s interactions influenced by the recommendation model in the context of standard industry metrics such as Click-through rates, Buy-through rates, and Conversion revenue.

Recently, the Integrated Air Defense System (IADS) has become vital for the defense system as the military defense system is vital for national security. Placing Integrated Air Defense System batteries among locations to protect locations assets is a crucial problem because optimal solutions are needed for interceptor missiles to intercept attacker missiles for maximizing protection of assets across locations or places. In this research, the procedures of using network algorithms along with developing several network algorithms are going to be demonstrated to develop a model for sequential development of seven network securing strategies of placing Surface to Air Missile (SAM) batteries to maximize the protection of assets across locations (based on given asset values) by generating optimal solutions through computation to destroy maximum attacker missiles by using minimum interceptor missiles with given intercept probability. This network securing strategies can be implemented not only for Integrated Air Defense System (IADS) planning but also Counter Air (CA) planning as Integrated Air Defense System (IADS) is conducted with defensive counter air supported by attack operations in offensive counter air.

Earthquakes are one of the most catastrophic natural phenomena. After an earthquake, earthquake reconnaissance enables effective recovery by collecting building damage data and other impacts. This paper aims to identify state-of-the-art data sources for building damage assessment and provide guidance for more efficient data collection. We have reviewed 38 articles that indicate the sources used by different authors to collect data related to damage and post-disaster recovery progress after earthquakes between 2014 and 2021. The current data collection methods have been grouped into seven categories: fieldwork or ground surveys, omnidirectional imagery (OD), terrestrial laser scanning (TLS), remote sensing (RS), crowdsourcing platforms, social media (SM) and closed-circuit television videos (CCTV). The selection of a particular data source or collection technique for earthquake reconnaissance includes different criteria depending on what questions are to be answered by this data. We conclude that modern reconnaissance missions can not rely on a single data source and that different data sources should complement each other, validate collected data, or systematically quantify the damage. The recent increase in the number of crowdsourcing and SM platforms used to source earthquake reconnaissance data demonstrates that this is likely to become an increasingly important source of data.

Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) support the harvesting, curating, storage, and sharing of data along with providing access to development, analytic, and visualization tools that enable the building of innovative applications to address broad or specific challenges. SDIs can be especially powerful in bringing together data and tools supporting a particular theme – and this paper discusses and demonstrates the value of an SDI focused on Health. Many potential benefits of a Health SDI are proposed, and the case of supporting emergency response efforts is developed in detail. Leveraging a Health SDI, a Health Risk Index was created that provides emergency response personnel (both Emergency Operations Managers and Emergency Medical Responders) key insights into the unique health risks the impacted population faces due to the disaster. In order to establish the Health Risk Index, datasets from multiple national and global sources representing health data and social data that influences health outcomes – typically called social determinants of health – are harvested, merged, and republished to support further efforts at advancing the Health Risk Index. Visualizations of the Health Risk Index at the global, national, and sub-national levels down to the address level are presented along with demonstrations of its use.

This paper identifies a criterion for choosing the largest set of rejected hypotheses in high-dimensional data analysis where Multiple Hypothesis testing is used in exploratory research to identify significant associations among many variables. The method neither requires predetermined thresholds for level of significance, nor uses presumed thresholds for false discovery rate. The upper limit for number of rejected hypotheses is determined by finding maximum difference between expected true hypotheses and false hypotheses among all possible sets of rejected hypotheses. Methods of choosing a reasonable number of rejected hypotheses and application to non-parametric analysis of ordinal survey data are presented.

The swift progress in low-dimensional nanocarbons, specifically in the realm of the authentic one-dimensional carbon chain featuring sp¹ hybridization, has unveiled exciting prospects for integrating them into cutting-edge technologies across diverse industries. To fully harness their potential, precise control over the growth process is necessary to obtain desired nanostructure and functionality. However, optimizing properties through traditional approaches has been challenging due to complex interactions. To address this, we implement a focused data-driven strategy for nanocarbon inverse design by leveraging a state-of-the-art data-driven nanocarbon genome approach (NCGA). By uncovering relationships between growth parameters and resultant traits, this serves as an expedient catalyst in engineering nanostructures with tailored attributes. We introduce an extensive array of technological approaches aimed at precisely controlling the growth process. These methods encompass stimulating and precisely adjusting synergistic effects, coordinating atomic vibrations at a collective level through the implementation of multilayer nano-interfaces, harnessing the potential of active screen plasma surface engineering, utilizing nano-patterning and allotropic phase transformations, incorporating heteroatom doping, and effectively directing self-assembly. These aim to unlock nanomaterials' latent potential and reveal novel neural pathways within the data-driven NCGA, enhancing its predictive capabilities. Specifically, triggering self-organization during growth can potentially unlock previously unexplored neural pathways. The data-driven NCGA offers a paradigm shift, accelerating discovery and design of nanocarbons with optimized, application-specific properties.

Protecting sensitive data, such as data collected from sensors, is crucial for ensuring the accurate assessment of sensing devices and preventing unauthorized access. In this regard, Internet of Things (IoT) devices offer a promising alternative for in-situ monitoring. However, IoT sensing devices are often constrained by limited processing power and memory. Therefore, lightweight and efficient security algorithms are essential. This review paper assesses the implementation of lightweight cryptographic algorithms for power-constrained microcontrollers in IoT systems using symmetric cryptography. The implemented algorithms analyze the resource constraints of the IoT devices and compare their performance for efficient implementation of secure monitoring systems. Experimental results demonstrate the performance of various lightweight encryption algorithms on low-power microcontrollers. The analysis reveals the comparative performance of these algorithms in terms of average power and energy consumption, memory usage, latency, and throughput.

This paper presents four novel schemes for secure data encryption utilizing mathematical transformations. The first scheme employs matrix manipulations and partitioning of numerical values derived from plain text characters, constructing a cipher through matrix additions. The second scheme introduces division operations and additional transformation layers for enhanced data obscurity. The third scheme incorporates tridiagonal matrices, creating a structured encryption process. The fourth scheme refines this approach with quotient-remainder operations and symmetric keys to construct a tridiagonal matrix cipher. Detailed algorithms for encryption and decryption are provided, with examples illustrating practical applications. This work contributes to mathematical cryptography by offering enhanced security methods for digital communication.

Soil quality offers a holistic approach to understanding the relationships between soil’s biological, chemical, and physical properties, which is crucial for the sustainable land use and the management of non-renewable soil resources. This study evaluates the impact of land use on 23 physicals, chemicals, and biologicals soil quality indicators (SQIs) across five land uses of the Mediterranean agro-ecosystems: forest, olive groves, wheat fields, and a corn / wheat crop rotation system. Over two consecutive years, seasonal soil samplings were conducted across three conventionally farmed fields for each land use. Through multivariate analysis, five key soil quality factors—organic matter, microbial biomass, nutrients, the C/N ratio, and compaction—were identified as reflective alterations in soil quality due to land use change. Discriminant analysis revealed the soil properties of total nitrogen (Ntot) and the C/N ratio, which highlights the quantity and quality of soil organic matter, as particularly sensitive indicators of soil quality changes in Mediterranean agroecosystems incorporating most of the information derived from the entire set of initials SQIs. These proposed indicators offer a simplified yet effective means of assessing soil resource sustainability in the Mediterranean agroecosystems, providing practical tools for monitoring and managing soil quality.

This paper presents an approach to assess and improve the cybersecurity infras- tructure of developing countries. We have highlighted and addressed the critical gaps through a hybrid approach encompassing SWOT analysis, benchmarking using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and, Root Cause Analysis (RCA). This approach has provided a strong basis for evaluating cybersecurity performance by combining qualitative insights with quantitative metrics. As a case study, we have compared an underdeveloped country’s (Pakistan) cybersecurity pos- ture to five highly developed countries (Lithuania, Estonia, Singapore, Spain,and Norway). Our analysis has identified cybersecurity shortcomings and pro- vided actionable recommendations within a flexible framework, applicable for all developing countries to identify and address vulnerabilities, and align their cybersecurity infrastructure with international standards.

This study explores the application of the BPM lifecycle to optimize the Market Analysis process within the Market Intelligence department of a major energy company. The semi-structured, virtual nature of the process necessitated careful adaptation of BPM methodology, starting with process discovery through data collection, modeling, and validation. Qualitative analysis, including value-added and root-cause analysis, revealed inefficiencies. The redesign strategy focused on selective automation using Python scripts and Power BI dashboards, incorporating techniques such as linear programming and forecasting to improve process efficiency and quality while maintaining flexibility. Post-implementation, monitoring through a questionnaire showed positive results, though ongoing interviews were recommended for sustained performance evaluation. This study highlights the value of BPM methodology in enhancing decision-critical processes and offers a model for adaptable, value-driven process improvements in complex organizational environments.

Privacy protection is a fundamental guarantee for secure data flows and serve as a basic requirement for data security. A reasonable privacy protection system acts as a catalyst for unlocking the financial value of data. The current legislative framework for privacy protection in data flows in China, adhering to the principle of proportionality, establishes the “informed-consent” rule for data collection and processing, data classification and grading management measures, and remedies for data leakage and other risks. In addition, in judicial practice, typical disputes regarding personal information protection and privacy rights have promoted to clarify the scope of collecting user personal information and biometric data. Despite ongoing improvements needed in legislative, judicial and technical approaches to data privacy protection, China’s commitment and practice in privacy protection of data flows are noteworthy. The existing legislation, law enforcement and technical practices are playing an increasingly vital role in realizing the financial value of data and are essential for international cooperation on data privacy protection. Furthermore, it is crucial to actively explore cooperation mechanism for cross-border data flows under the principle of data sovereignty, participate in developing international rules for cross-border data flows, and formulate different management norms for cross-border circulation of data in different industries.

Based on our interest in properties of human movement, we investigated Japanese GPS data, and arrived at the following three observations: 1) there is a strong correlation between the area of polygons created by human movement trajectories and their perimeters; 2) short-distance movement trajectories less than 5 km tend to enclose a large area like a circle; 3) long-distance movement trajectories over 5 km tend to be straight. We also clarified the following four observations on individual attributes and external factors related to long-distance movements: 1) women tend to travel more linearly than men; 2) linearity is stronger on weekends and national holidays in areas with a large theme park; 3) linearity is weaker on weekends and holidays in areas with many historical tourist attractions; 4) these variations are created by people visiting such areas. These properties should be incorporated when modeling the movement trajectories of humans.

Background: Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS) is a neuropsychological tool used in clinical practice to measure executive function in clinical and non-clinical populations, in individuals aged 8-89 years, and consists of nine subtests that can be administered either as a single system or separately. Aims: In the present study, were established norms for the Verbal Fluency Test as well as the Design Fluency Test of the D-KEFS in a Greek population aged 20 to 49 years, since there is no previous study conducted in Greece for these age clusters. Methods: The study sample consisted of 100 healthy adults (44.4% male and 55.6% female), aged 20 to 49 years (M=32.81 SD=11.04) with education from 12 to 18 years (M=14.73, SD= .91). First, Spearman and Pearson tests explored the associations of gender, age and education with D-KEFS subtests’ performance. Afterwards, we calculated normative data using raw scores and transformed to percentile scores. Results: The present study is the first attempt to calculate norms for the two fluency subtests of the D-KEFS in Greek adult population stratified by age and educational level. Conclusion: Future research will promote the use of D-KEFS, in order to introduce a widely used tool which measures all basic executive functions subtypes for Greek adult population. Given that the majority of neuropsychological tools are adapted for older adult population, the current study aims at filling the gap in neuropsychological assessment of young adults as well as those who have co existing neurological or psychiatric disorders.

Ti-Al based alloys, particularly TiAl and Ti3Al two-phase alloys, have garnered significant attention as potential replacements for various high-temperature structural materials due to their exceptional properties, including low density, oxidation resistance, and high strength at elevated temperatures. Despite these advantages, experimental studies on the microstructure evolution of Ti-Al based alloys under complex conditions remain challenging to observe and characterize. This review article examines the current research on molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of Ti-Al based alloys, focusing on two-phase Ti-Al alloys, Ti-Al amorphous alloys, Ti-Al composite materials, and the welding and multi-layer/film applications of Ti-Al alloys. The review highlights the unique capabilities of MD simulations in predicting the behavior of Ti-Al based alloys and addresses existing scientific challenges. Furthermore, the article discusses future research directions and development prospects in this field.

Spatial auto-regressive (SAR) models are widely used in geosciences for spatial analyses; their main feature is the presence of weight (W) matrices, which define the neighboring relationships between the spatial units. The statistical properties of parameter and forecast estimates strongly depend on the structure of such matrices. The least squares (LS) method is the most flexible and can estimate systems of large dimensions; however, it is not consistent in the presence of multilateral (sparse) matrices. Instead, the unilateral specification of SAR models provides triangular weight matrices which allow good statistical properties to LS and enable the implementation of sequential prediction functions. In this paper we show the better performance in out-of-sample forecasting of unilateral SAR and LS with respect to multilateral and maximum likelihood (ML) methods. This conclusion is supported by extensive numerical simulations and applications to real geological data, both on regular lattice and irregular polygonal form.

Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) plays a vital role in increasing transparency and trust in machine learning models, particularly when applied to tabular data which is used in domains such as finance, healthcare, and marketing. This paper presents an extensive survey of XAI techniques used with tabular data and aims to analyze recent research developments since 2021. The survey classes and describes several XAI techniques pertinent to tabular data, it identifies challenges specific to this domain, and explores potential applications and emerging trends. Future research directions are outlined, concentrating on the need for clear definitions of terminology used, data security, user-centric explanations, enhanced interaction, robust evaluation metrics, and advancements in adversarial example-based analysis. The aim is to contribute to the evolving field of XAI, and provide insights for effective, trustworthy, and transparent decision-making using tabular data.

This paper proposes the GD (Geometric Distribution) algorithm, a novel approach to enhance the default Adaptive Data Rate (ADR) mechanism in the Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN). By leveraging the Probability Mass Function (PMF) of the GD model, the GD algorithm effectively addresses massive device distribution challenges in real-life scenarios. To evaluate the algorithm's performance, the LoRaWAN simulations were conducted using the fixed node pattern derived from actual locations of dairy farms in Ratchaburi province, Thailand. The research established scenarios for assessing the network's performance namely, DER (Data Extraction Rate) and SF (Spreading Factor) assignment. Comparative analyses were performed against the uniform random node pattern and established algorithms, including the default ADR scheme, EXPLoRa, Quantile Classification of Variance from the Mean (QCVM), and Standard Deviation (SD). The GD algorithm demonstrated significant improvements over existing methodologies for both fixed and uniform random patterns. The fixed pattern exhibited an enhancement of 14.3%, while the uniform random pattern showed 4.8% enhancement over the default ADR scheme. Further assessments covered the coverage area, payload size, and energy consumption. The GD algorithm consistently achieved the optimal DER values with a coverage area and payload size, albeit often at the expense of increased energy consumption.

Fractional cointegration in time series data has been explored by several authors, but panel data applications have been largely neglected. A previous study of ours discovered that the Chen and Hurvich fractional cointegration test for time series was fairly robust to a moderate degree of heterogeneity across sections, out of the six tests considered. Therefore, this paper advances a customized version of the Chen and Hurvich methodology to detect cointegrating connections in panels with unobserved fixed effects. Specifically, we develop a test statistic that accommodates variation in the long-term cointegrating vectors and fractional cointegration parameters across observational units. The behaviour of our proposed test is examined through extensive Monte Carlo experiments under various data generating processes and circumstances. The findings reveal that our modified test performs quite well comparatively and can successfully identify fractional cointegrating relationships in panels even in the presence of idiosyncratic disturbances unique to each cross-sectional unit. Furthermore, the proposed modified test procedure established the presence of long-run equilibrium between the exchange rate and labour wage of 36 countries agricultural markets.

Globalization is a basic feature of contemporary digital society related to increasing level of informatization, electroniztion and communications through the global network and share different information. Regardless of the many advantages of the digital age, related to the intellectualization of various activities and objects (e-governance, e-health, social computing, smart home, smart city, etc.), the need for secure protection of users' privacy should not be overlooked. In this reason, the goal of the article is to determine the specific features of the main components of the globalization and the impact on the privacy and data protection. Based on the analysis of possible impacts the main recommendation for adequate data security and privacy protection are determined.

In genomics analysis, with the development of sequencing technology and the rapid growth of data volume, how to effectively identify and analyze important information in genomic data from massive data has become an important challenge. Identify key patterns and features in genomic data through advanced community testing methods. First, genomic data often contains a lot of noise and redundant information that needs to be processed through steps such as normalization, filtering, and dimensionality reduction. Normalization makes data at different scales comparable, filtering out data points with low quality or missing values, and dimensionality reduction reduces data dimensions through principal component analysis (PCA) and retains the main information. The gene co-expression network establishes the connection relationship between genes by calculating the expression similarity matrix between genes, and applies the Louvain algorithm to maximize the modularity of the network, aggregate nodes layer by layer, form a community structure, and identify the complex relationship and potential structure between genes. Finally, we utilize the cancer dataset to evaluate the proposed model. From our extensive experimental results, we can observe that Louvain's algorithm indicates outperformances and accuracy in the recognition and analysis of genomic data.

This study investigates the trends and patterns of robotic-assisted total knee arthroplasty (RA-TKA) from 2016 to 2019. Using data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS), we analyzed demographics, prevalence of comorbidities, total cost, and length of stay (LOS) for 88,415 RA-TKA cases identified during this period. Our analysis revealed a significant increase in RA-TKA procedures, from 5,330 in 2016 to 39,495 in 2019. Patients undergoing RA-TKA were slightly younger, with an average age of 66.2 years. The average hospital stay was 1.89 days, and total charges averaged $65,891. We also examined various comorbidities and demographic factors, including race, median household income, and hospital teaching status. The results show that RA-TKA usage in the US has grown substantially, with specific demographic and clinical patterns. Further studies on the long-term outcomes of RA-TKA are needed to fully understand the benefits of this technology.

This study aims to find countries that differ in their development of the agricultural sector in terms of environmental care and to examine the relationship between renewable and non-renewable energy consumption and agricultural sector production in European Union countries. The classification of countries was conducted using the principal component method and biplot. Panel data for the period 2000-2022 and a VAR model, an impulse response function (IRF) and causality tests were used for the study. The results indicate two distinct groups of countries that significantly differ in adopting green agricultural practices. Only seven EU countries stand out for sustainable agriculture with low pesticide use, a significant share of organic farms and high use of renewable energy in agriculture. Energy consumption affects agricultural production differently in the two groups of countries studied: in countries with sustainable agriculture, an increase in renewable energy consumption translates into a positive increase in agricultural production. On the other hand, an increase in non-renewable energy consumption shows a dampening effect on agricultural production growth, especially in countries with less sustainable agriculture. The study results highlight the need to promote renewable energy development in agriculture and raise awareness about the adverse environmental effects of intensive agriculture while emphasising the positive impact of organic agriculture on agricultural production.

Background. Keyword co-occurrence analysis is a crucial tool for comprehending research trends, identifying relevant studies, and gaining insight into the connections between various concepts and topics. Objective. This study focuses on analyzing the co-occurrence of keywords using FP-growth algorithm and direct search methods. Materials and methods. The methodology involved extracting bibliometric data of Energies journal for 2023-2024 from MDPI publisher platform, keyword lemmatization and keyword co-occurrence estimation. Clustering and visualization were performed using Multidendrograms and Scimago Graphica software. Results. The results showed that the FP-growth algorithm can achieve a close match with the direct search results, which facilitates data preparation for clustering. In addition, finding the co-occurrence of three or more keywords significantly reduced the number of possible combinations, which allowed the identification of specific research topics. Conclusions. This study highlights the usefulness of the FP-growth algorithm in keyword analysis and provides insights into ways to refine search queries to abstract databases for the purpose of designing and writing literature and systematic reviews.

Multiple imputation by chained equations (MICE) is a popular and well-researched statistical approach to account for missing data in empirical research. However, applying the technique requires researchers to set dozens of smaller and larger parameters to build an adequate imputation model before estimating the analytical model of interest. It is somewhat unclear how severely small and potentially arbitrary decisions influence the quality of the produced findings. The current study tests this empirically using a simulation approach with datasets with low and high shares of missing data points that are missing at random (MAR). For each of the two specifications, 4,200 simulations are conducted where multiple parameters are randomly varied to create a diverse range of potential imputation models. The results demonstrate that even random imputation models can significantly reduce bias compared to listwise deletion since more than 90% of all simulations give less biased results. All minor decisions taken together explain between 11% and 21% of the variation in the statistics of interest. The most substantial influence on this variation is due to the selection of the imputation algorithm within MICE. These findings demonstrate that almost any imputation model, even those built with little care, will often result in a higher quality than applying listwise deletion, as long as critical assumptions, such as MAR and the avoidance of severe misspecifications, hold.

Efficiency serves as a crucial metric in assessing the advancement of scientific research for universities. Reasonable inputs of human resources, finances, materials, and other resources, along with high-quality research output, are important guarantees for the research efficiency of Chinese universities. This study delves into the patterns of changes of research efficiency among universities across the 31 provinces and municipalities of China from 2012 to 2022. By scrutinizing input-output perspectives and utilizing data sourced from the China Statistical Yearbook, the analysis unveils prevailing scenarios of input redundancy and output insufficiency in research efficiency across universities. The static and dynamic trends in research efficiency were further investigated by employing a static non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)-BCC model and a dynamic Malmquist index. Key findings from the analysis from 2012 to 2022 include: (1) notable growth in investments in teaching, research equipment assets, and research and development funds among nationwide universities; (2) a steady increase in the mean value of technical efficiency (TE) from 0.97 to 0.99, indicating continuous enhancement in overall efficiency in research input resource allocation across the provinces; (3) the mean Malmquist productivity index of 1.285, with an average annual increase of 28.5%, signifying a consistent improvement in university research efficiency throughout the study period; and (4) the provinces experiencing varying degrees of input redundancy or output insufficiency were selected to suggest the need for tailored strategies in resource allocation. The study underscores the importance of a holistic evaluation system involving stakeholders from government, universities, and society to optimize research efficiency and promote scientific innovation and social development.

NMR spectroscopy, which is based on the phenomenon of nuclear magnetic resonance, has been widely popularized by its application in medical imaging under the name of MRI. In the organic laboratory, the 13C NMR spectrum of a newly synthetized compound remains an essential step in elucidating its structure. For the chemist, the interpretation of such a spectrum, which is a set of chemical shift values, is made easier if he has a tool capable of predicting with sufficient accuracy the carbon shift values from the structure he intends to prepare. As there are few open source methods for accurately estimating this property, we applied our graph machine approach to build models capable of predicting the chemical shifts of carbons. For this study, we have focused on benzene compounds building an optimized model derived from training a database of 10577 chemical shifts originating from 2026 structures which contain up to ten types of atoms other than carbon, namely H, O, N, S, P, Si and halogens. It provides a training root mean squared relative error (RMSRE) of 0.5 %, i.e. a root mean squared error (RMSE) of 0.6 ppm, and a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.4 ppm for estimating the chemical shifts of the 10k carbons. The predictive capability of the graph machine model is also compared with that of three commercial software on a data set of 171 original benzenic structures (1012 chemical shifts). The graph machine model proves very efficient in predicting chemical shifts with an RMSE of 0.9 ppm, and compares favorably with the RMSEs of 3.4, 1.8 and 1.9 ppm computed with ChemDraw, ACD and MestReNova softwares respectively. Finally, a Docker-based tool is proposed to predict the carbon chemical shifts of benzenic compounds solely from their SMILES codes.

Due to the uniqueness of the underwater environment, traditional data aggregation schemes face many challenges. Most existing data aggregation solutions do not fully consider node trustworthiness, which may result in the inclusion of falsified data sent by malicious nodes during the aggregation process, thereby affecting the accuracy of the aggregated results. Additionally, because of the dynamically changing nature of the underwater environment, current solutions often lack sufficient flexibility to handle situations such as node movement and network topology changes, significantly impacting the stability and reliability of data transmission. To address the aforementioned issues, this paper proposes a secure data aggregation algorithm based on a trust mechanism. By dynamically adjusting the number and size of node slices based on node trust values and transmission distances, the proposed algorithm effectively reduces network communication overhead and improves the accuracy of data aggregation. Due to the variability in the number of node slices, even if attackers intercept some slices, it is difficult for them to reconstruct the complete data, thereby ensuring data security.

This work focuses on short-term forecasting of PV output power. The multilayer perception (MLP), convolutional neural networks (CNN), and k-nearest neighbour (kNN) neural networks have been used singly or in a hybrid (with other algorithms) to forecast solar PV power or global solar irradiance with good success. Their performances in forecasting PV power have been compared with other algorithms but not with themselves. The study aims to compare performance of a number of neural network algorithms in solar PV energy yield forecasting under different weather conditions. The performance of MLPNN, CNN and kNN are being compared using solar PV (hourly) energy yield data for Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, South Africa. The choice of location is part of the study parameters to provide insight into renewable energy power integration in specific areas in south Africa that may be prone to extreme weather conditions. The kNN algorithm was found to have RMSE value of 4.95% and MAE value of 2.74% at its worst performance, and RMSE value of 1.49% and MAE value of 0.85% at its best performance. It outperformed the others by a good margin and kNN could serve as a fast, easy, and accurate tool to forecast solar PV output power.

Breast cancer is the second most common cancer worldwide, primarily affecting women, while histopathological image analysis is one of the possibilities used to determine tumor malignancy. Regarding image analysis, the application of deep learning has become increasingly prevalent in recent years. However, a significant issue is the unbalanced nature of available datasets, with some classes having more images than others, which may impact the performance of the models due to poorer generalisability. A possible strategy to avoid this problem is downsampling the class with the most images to create a balanced dataset. Nevertheless, this approach is not recommended for small datasets as it can lead to poor model performance. Instead, techniques such as data augmentation are traditionally used to address this issue. These techniques apply simple transformations, such as translation or rotation, to the images to increase variability in the dataset. Recently, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have emerged, which can generate images from a relatively small training set. This work aims to enhance the model’s performance in classifying histopathological images by applying data augmentation using GANs instead of traditional techniques.

Based on big data and artificial intelligence technology, the judicial big data intelligent service platform provides users with efficient and accurate legal consulting services. It has many functions such as intelligent question and answer, case analysis, and law inquiry. It also analyzes the application value of the intelligent legal consulting service platform in the field of judicial big data. By building an intelligent service platform, the rapid processing and analysis of massive judicial data has been realized, and the efficiency and quality of judicial work have been significantly improved. In addition, it emphasizes the importance of data management and quality control in the application of judicial big data, and puts forward specific measures to strengthen data management and quality control. With the continuous advancement of technology and the expansion of application fields, the platform is expected to achieve deep integration with other legal services, expand new application fields, and provide users with more comprehensive and efficient legal services. At the same time, it points out the problems that need to be paid attention to in the future development, such as data security, privacy protection and so on. Through in-depth analysis and research on judicial big data, the platform can provide strong support for judicial decision-making and promote the improvement of judicial justice and efficiency.

Multimedia resources, such as instructional videos, are currently enjoying a certain popularity in training programmes for medical and dental students. The major challenge is to create such resources that have quality content and are acceptable to students. We investigated the opinions of a sample of 551 students from 4 medical universities in Romania in order to identify the characteristics of the instructional videos that students prefer and we comparatively analysed these characteristics according to gender, age group, but also according to their general preferences for using Internet services. We used univariate (hypothesis testing) and multivariate (Two-Step Clustering) data analysis techniques and revealed three clusters of students, primarily determined by perceptions of the visual appearance of instructional videos. The structure of the clusters by gender and age group is relatively similar, but we recorded differences between them associated with students' expressed preferences for certain Internet services compared to others. Students who prefer instructional videos to contain images used only for aesthetic purposes, to fill in breaks, use Internet services mainly for communication, while students who prefer in videos the use of already drawn explanatory diagrams are slightly younger than the others and use Internet services mainly for information and communication.

The implementation of sustainable practices, such as the use of renewable sources and efficient technologies, is crucial for reducing climate change. Energy efficiency is highly important on a global scale due to its relationship with climate change, aiming to minimize environmental impact. In Spain, renewable energy policies have increased self-sufficiency and reduced the use of fossil fuels. Optimizing energy consumption in residences, buildings, and industries is essential for improving efficiency. This was taken into consideration for conducting this study, focusing on the residential sector. The desire to understand the level of energy efficiency in Extremadura drove this project, which focuses on collecting and analyzing data on a set of homes located in the au-tonomous community of Extremadura, with the purpose of evaluating their energy efficiency. To achieve this, a computer tool will be employed to provide a detailed view of the different levels of energy efficiency present in the community. In addition to data collection and analysis, research will be conducted to identify areas for improvement. This will allow proposing a series of specific measures that users can implement to optimize energy efficiency in their homes, adapting them to the particular characteristics of each residence.

Newborn screening (NBS) is hailed as a public health success, but little is known about long-term outcomes following a positive newborn screen. There has been difficulty gathering long-term follow-up (LTFU) data consistently, reliably, and with minimal effort. Six programs developed and tested a core set of minimal LTFU data elements. After an iterative data collection process and the development of a data collection tool, the group agreed on minimal LTFU data elements. The denominator captured all infants with an NBS diagnosis, accounting for children who moved or died prior to the follow-up year. They also agreed on three LTFU outcomes: if the child was still alive, had contact with a specialist, and received appropriate care specific to their diagnosis within the year. The six programs representing NBS public health programs, clinical providers, and research programs provided data across multiple NBS disorders. In 2022, 83.8% (563/672) of the children identified by the LTFU programs were alive and living in the jurisdiction; of those, 92.0% (518/563) saw a specialist, and 87.7% (494/563) received appropriate care. The core LTFU data elements can be applied as a foundation to address the impact of early diagnosis by NBS within and across jurisdictions.

With recent advancements in network technology and spread of Internet, use of social network services and Internet of Things devices has flourished, leading to a continuous generation of large volumes of graph stream data, where changes, such as additions or deletions of vertices and edges occur over time. Additionally, owing to the need for efficient use of storage space and security requirements, graph stream data compression has become essential in various applications. Even though various studies on graph compression methods have been conducted, most of them do not fully reflect the dynamic characteristics of graph streams and complexity of large graphs. In this paper, we propose a compression scheme using provenance data to efficiently process and analyze large graph stream data. It obtains provenance data by analyzing graph stream data and builds a pattern dictionary based on this to perform dictionary-based compression. By improving the existing dictionary-based graph compression methods, it enables more efficient dictionary management through tracking pattern changes and evaluating their importance using provenance. Furthermore, it considers the relationships among sub-patterns using an FP-tree and performs pattern dictionary management that updates pattern scores based on time. Our experiments show that the proposed scheme outperforms existing graph compression methods in key performance metrics, such as compression rate and processing time.

In reinforced concrete (RC) structures, splicing is required owing to the length limitations of rebars, insufficient lengths, and transportation issues. In particular, splices connect the rebar of RC structures such as walls, columns, beams, slabs, and joints. Lap splices are the most commonly used method worldwide because they do not require specific equipment or skilled workers. However, lap splices incur high construction costs because of the long splice lengths required for large-diameter rebars in megastructures, as well as issues pertaining to material supply, labor costs, constructability, and project duration. Additionally, approximately 15% more rebar is required because of the overlap. Energy saving for a sustainable built environment is possible if the disadvantage of lap splices, which generate high CO2 emissions due to the excessive use of rebar, are resolved. Hence, mechanical rebar couplers (MRCs) have been developed. However, despite their advantages, they have not been widely applied in construction sites owing to concerns regarding safety, quality, and constructability. Although various MRCs have been developed, most studies focus only on their structural performance. Therefore, a data-driven approach for selecting MRCs based on the reinforcing bar shape and structural characteristics is proposed in this study. Using a data-driven MRC selection algorithm, using the T-threaded coupler for one rebar over two floors resulted in 56% more efficient labor productivity, 15% shorter assembly time, 17% lower costs, and 26% lower CO2 emission. Using a developed algorithm, the appropriate MRC can easily and rapidly be selected for frequent design changes.

The current paper provides a cutting-edge information data length- theoretic approach to human emotions. This is a revolutionary breakthrough that unifies information data length and the dynamics of emotions. The significant impact of both time and its mean value associate on both the upper and lower bounds of the obtained information data length is observed and noted. The paper concludes with some challenging open problems, combined with concluding remarks and future research pathways.

The 2020 revision of South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) updated procedures for the use of medical data for research. The PIPA provision allowing “pseudonymized information” to be used without the consent of the data subject for scientific research introduced ambiguity regarding the applicability of the PIPA versus the Bioethics and Safety Act (BSA), which allows “anonymized information” to be used for research only after data-subject consent and IRB approval for human-subject research are obtained. The main points requiring clarification include the distinction between “human-subject” and “scientific” research, the definition of anonymization and pseudonymization, the requirements for data-subject consent, and the procedures for institutional review boards (IRBs) and data review boards (DRBs). After reviewing the legal concepts and processes, this article recommends clarification of the guidelines for the use of medical data in research by distinguishing the concept and, in the long run, categorizing medical data based on the degree of risk.

Landsat and Sentinel-2 acquisitions are among the most widely used medium-resolution optical data adopted for terrestrial vegetation applications, such as land cover and land use mapping, vegetation condition and phenology monitoring, and disturbance and change mapping. When combined, both data archives provide over 40 years, and counting, of continuous and consistent observations. Although the spatio-temporal availability of both data archives is well-known at the scene level, information on the actual availability of cloud-, snow-, and shade-free observations at the pixel level is lacking and should be explored individually for each study to correctly parametrize subsequent analyses. However, data exploration is time and resource consuming, thus is rarely performed a-priori. Consequently, the spatio-temporal heterogeneity of usable data is often inadequately accounted for in the analysis design, risking ill-advised selection of algorithms and hypotheses, and thus inferior quality of final results. Here we present precomputed data on the daily 1982‑2023 availability of usable Landsat and Sentinel-2 acquisitions across the globe, sampled at a pixel-level in a regular 0.18°-point grid. The dataset comprises separate Landsat- and Sentinel‑2‑specific data records, and is accompanied by a pixel-specific growing season information to facilitate data exploration. The dataset was derived based on freely available 1982-2023 Landsat surface reflectance (Collection 2) and Sentinel-2 top-of-the-atmosphere reflectance (pre‑Collection-1 and Collection-1) scenes from 2015 through 2023, following the methodology developed in the recent study on data availability over Europe [1]. Growing season information was derived based on 2001‑2019 time series of the yearly 500 m MODIS land cover dynamics product (MCD12Q2; Collection 6) [1]. As such, the dataset presents a unique overview of the spatio-temporal availability of usable daily Landsat and Sentinel-2 data at the global scale, hence offering much needed a-priori information aiding identification of appropriate methods and challenges for terrestrial vegetation analyses at local to global scale.

Heavy metal pollution poses a significant threat to ecosystems and human health worldwide. In response to this pressing issue, bioremediation has emerged as a promising approach for mitigating contamination. This paper adopts a bibliographic method to explore the key techniques and applications of bioremediation. Furthermore, we delve into the most prominent threats to human environmental health and the corresponding remediation methods. Additionally, we discuss the future trajectory of bioremediation research, with a particular focus on the integration of big data and machine learning technologies. These advanced methodologies hold great potential for enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of environmental remediation efforts in the face of escalating pollution challenges.

A compositional data vector is a special type of multivariate observation in which the elements of the vector are non-negative and sum to a constant, usually taken to be unity. A compositional data does not have zero and only retains relative information. Furthermore, comparisons can only be made between compositional data of the same component. The relevant sample space is the standard simplex. A simplex space is a space that is a generalized form of a triangle. For compositional data, many of the operations defined in Euclidean space are meaningless. Microbiome analyzes have become popular in recent years. Operational Taxonomic Units (OTU) and Amplicon Sequence Variants (ASVs) used in microbiome analysis are one type of compositional data. The microbiome data are counts of different species within a sample and it is compositional. Although there is an order of bacterial abundance within a sample, there is no order of bacterial abundance between samples. Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes, the major phyla in the colon, have been observed in humans worldwide. Gut microbiome analyses often use the Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes ratio and principal coordinates analysis (PCoA). Alpha and beta diversities are used as indicators of bacterial flora diversity. However, misinformation is pervasive in the human microbiome literature and analysis. There is a lot of misunderstanding regarding compositional data and its analysis. An attempt was made to demonstrate how to analyze using the “National Institutes of Biomedical Innovation, Health and Nutrition (NIBIOHN JMD) (Public Data).” The results showed that PCoA did not work, and principal component analysis (PCA) was useful for analyzing the gut microbiome relative diversity.

In the past few decades, the transmission of data over an unsecure channel resulted in an increased rate of hacking. Therefore, the requirement to make multimedia data more secure is increasing day by day. Numerous algorithms are developed to improve efficiency and robustness. In this article, a novel and secure image encryption algorithm is presented. It is based on a modified chaotic logistic map (CLM) that provides the advantage of having less computational time to encrypt an input image. The encryption algorithm is based on Shannon’s idea of using substitution-permutation and one-time-pad network to achieve ideal secrecy. The CLM is used for substitution and permutation to improve randomness and increase dependency on the encryption key. Various statistical tests are conducted, such as Key Space Analysis, Complexity Analysis, Sensitivity Analysis, Strict Avalanche Criteria (SAC), Histogram Analysis, Entropy Analysis, Mean of Absolute Deviation (MAD) Analysis, Correlation Analysis, Contrast Analysis, and Homogeneity to give a comparative analysis of the proposed algorithm and verify its security. As a result of various statistical tests, it is evident that the proposed algorithm is more efficient and robust as compared to previous ones.

Background: Advancement of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies provides opportunities for large-scale Pharmacogenetic (PGx) studies and pre-emptive PGx testing to cover a wide range of genotypes present in diverse populations. However, NGS-based PGx testing is limited by the lack of comprehensive computational tools to support genetic data analysis and clinical decisions. Methods: Bioinformatics utilities specialized for human genomics and the latest cloud-based technologies are used for developing a bioinformatics pipeline for analyzing the genomic sequence data and reporting PGx genotypes. A database was created and integrated in the pipeline for filtering the actionable PGx variants and clinical interpretations. Strict quality verification procedures were conducted on variant calls with whole genome sequencing (WGS) dataset of the 1000 Genomes Project (G1K). The accuracy of PGx allele identification was validated using the whole genome sequencing dataset of the Pharmacogenetics Reference Materials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Results: The newly created bioinformatics pipeline, Pgxtools, can analyze genomic sequence data, identify actionable variants in 13 PGx relevant genes, and generate reports annotated with specific interpretations and recommendations based on clinical practice guidelines. Verified with two independent methods, we have found that Pgxtools consistently identifies variants more accurately than the results in the G1K dataset on GRCh37 and GRCh38. Conclusions: Pgxtools provides an integrated workflow for large-scale genomic data analysis and PGx clinical decision support. Implemented with cloud-native technologies, it is highly portable in a wide variety of environments from a single laptop to high performance computing clusters and cloud platforms for different production scales and requirements.

The current paper provides a cutting-edge information data length- theoretic approach to the transient M/M/Infinity queueing system. This is a first time ever investigation that unifies information data length and queueing theories. The significant impact of both time and the number of states for the transient M/M/ Infinity queue on both the upper and lower bounds of the obtained information data length is observed and noted. The paper concludes with some challenging open problems, combined with concluding remarks and future research pathways.

In the broader landscape of cryptocurrency risk management, this study delves into the nuanced estimation of Value at Risk (VaR) for a uniformly weighted portfolio of cryptocurrencies, employing the bivariate Normal Inverse Gaussian distribution renowned for its semi-heavy tails. Utilizing high-frequency data spanning from January 1st, 2017, to October 25th, 2022, with a primary focus on Bitcoin and Ethereum, our research seeks to accentuate the resilience of VaR methodology as a paramount risk assessment tool. The essence of our investigation lies in advancing the comprehension of VaR accuracy by quantitatively comparing observed returns of both cryptocurrencies with their corresponding estimated values, with a central theme being the endorsement of the Normal Inverse Gaussian distribution as a potent model for risk measurement, particularly in the domain of high-frequency data. To bolster the statistical reliability of our results, we adopt a forward test methodology, showcasing not only a contribution to the evolution of risk assessment techniques in Finance but also underscoring the practicality of sophisticated distributional models in econometrics. Our findings not only contribute to the refinement of risk assessment methods but also highlight the applicability of such models in precisely modeling and forecasting financial risk within the dynamic realm of cryptocurrencies, epitomized by the case study of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

In this study, the distribution patterns of southern horse mackerel are examined using commercial fine-scale resolution data. Using landings by size category and VMS data from the Portuguese commercial bottom trawl fishery, which consistently targets horse mackerel, this study provides a comprehensive analysis of horse mackerel age distributions spanning a decade (2010-2020). Importantly, the study addresses potential biases in commercial effort data and establishes the usefulness of commercial bottom-trawl gear as a suitable method for sampling and evaluate southern horse mackerel stock dynamics. Ordered regression models were applied to allow for the modelling of the distribution of multiple age categories and investigate spatio-temporal migrations off the Portuguese coast. Southern horse mackerel shows a widespread age distribution range and stable abundance with indications of seasonal and spatial patterns in the distribution of specific age groups. The insights derived from this research contribute valuable knowledge for understanding the dynamics and distribution patterns of fish populations.

The purpose of this study is to ​​explore the use of a custom Transformer model in brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) that translate the neural activity present when an individual with limited verbal and fine-motor skills attempts to handwrite. As found in previous studies, Transformers have performed better than recurrent neural networks (RNNs) in translation tasks which are similar to its usage here in decoding neural signals into intended handwritten text. Due to the known benefits of a Transformer, the hypothesis was that the Transformer would show promise in the context of a BCI through the recorded metrics. The neural signals of a tetraplegic individual, when they attempted to handwrite, were provided by existing research. Four trials were conducted using data with or without augmentation which the model used when training to separately minimize training loss and validation loss. When comparing the results of a BCI with the implementation of a Transformer model with the original RNN BCI (the original data source), the Transformer model performed less favorably across all four trials. Although the results do not indicate that the Transformer model currently outperforms an RNN BCI, it is important to note that further testing of the model's capabilities (such as training it with a larger and more preferable dataset and/or for longer, comparing training times between the RNN and Transformer, and/or seeing how the Transformer is improved with an offline autocorrect feature) is necessary before determining whether Transformers can enhance communication in this manner.

The Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN) is a Swiss research infrastructure initiative that aims to facilitate the exchange of health-related data in a FAIR manner. The SPHN Dataset and SPHN RDF Schema form an essential part of the SPHN Semantic Interoperability Framework, which currently covers mostly clinical routine data. To facilitate the integration of omics data produced by the SPHN National Data Streams, a genomics extension was developed. This was done in close collaboration with clinicians, researchers, bioinformaticians, and data managers, from Swiss university hospitals, academic research groups and the omics platforms. Here, we present the genomics extension of the SPHN RDF Schema, which can be used to semantically describe genomics experiments and covers both clinical and research domains. The schema centers around the general omics process flow, with concepts that denote the individual steps, such as sample processing, assay, and data processing. Genomics-specific specializations are provided, such as library preparation, sequencing assay, and sequencing analysis. The schema also facilitates in capturing other important omics metadata, such as information about the sequencing instrument, standard operating procedure, and quality control metrics. The extension aligns with existing semantic data models and reuses common biomedical vocabularies, such as EDAM, OBI and FAIR genomes, as value sets, thereby facilitating semantic interoperability. It will be used to FAIRify data that is produced within the Swiss network and to facilitate sharing this data as one knowledge graph for reuse among its participants.

While considering the sensitivity over the parameter optimization, it is essential to determine which parameters have the most significant implications on model performance. This study focuses on the baseflow recession constant as one of the independent basin parameters to forecast low flows, perform hydrograph analysis, and calibrate rainfall-runoff models for significant improvement. Prior studies examined that the optimization of data adjustment parameters can improve the hydrological model performance and determine the minimum acceptable data length for data scarce regions using the Xinanjaing model. However, it is essential to pay special attention to the sensitivity of the recession constant, which can also impact the model performance during the data scarcity. Therefore, this study extends the research to comprehend the recession constant sensitivity over data adjustment parameters in the shorter datasets leading to more reliable parameter estimation. In terms of that, this study explores how recession constant affects hydrological parameter estimation on annual scale while keeping data adjustment parameters constant in continuous hydrological modeling, employing the Xinanjiang (XAJ) model as a case study. This study considered two approaches of recession constant (cg); (i) assessing the relationship between cg and the data adjustment parameter (Cep), for the 28-year datasets, (ii) investigating the significant impacts of the sensitivity of cg over Cep in shorter datasets which can affect the estimation of the acceptable minimum data length in the data scarce basins. The study underscores the importance of the recession constant sensitivity for reliable continuous hydrological model predictions, especially in data-scared areas. The study’s outcomes enhance the understanding of the importance of parameter sensitivity and its relationship in conceptual hydrological modeling during the data limitations.

The biological conservation measures factor (B) in the Chinese Soil loss Equation (CSLE) model is one of the main components in evaluating soil erosion, and the accurate calculation of B factor at the regional scale is fundamental in predicting regional soil erosion and the dynamic changes. In this study, we developed an optimal computational procedure for estimating and mapping the B factor in the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud computing environment using multiple data sources through data suitability assessment and image fusion. Taking the Yanhe River Basin in the Loess Plateau of China as an example, we evaluated the availability of daily precipitation data (CHIRPS, ERA5, and PERSIANN-CDR data) against the data at national meteorological stations. We estimated the B factor from Sentinel-2 data and proposed a new method, namely trend migration method, to patch the missing values in Sentinel-2 data using three other remote sensing data (MOD09GA, Landsat-7, Landsat-8). We then calculated and mapped the B-factor in Yanhe River Basin based on rainfall erosivity, vegetation coverage, and land use types. The results show that the ERA5 precipitation dataset outperforms the CHIRPS and PERSIANN-CDR data in estimating rainfall erosivity and rainfall, and it can be utilized as an alternative data source for meteorological stations in soil erosion modeling. Compared to the harmonic analysis of time series (HANTS), the trend migration method proposed in this study is more suitable for patching the missing parts of Sentinel-2 data. The restored high-resolution Sentinel-2 data fit nicely with the 10-m resolution land use data, enhancing the B factor calculation accuracy from the region to the spot level. The B factor computation procedure developed in this study is applicable to various river basin and regional scales for regional soil erosion monitoring.

The agricultural sector is currently confronting multifaceted challenges such as an increased food demand, a slow adoption of sustainable farming, a need for climate-resilient food systems, resource inequity, and protection of the small-scale farmers’ practices, all issues integral to food security and environmental health. Remote sensing technologies can assist precision agriculture to effectively address these complex problems, by providing farmers with a high-resolution lens. The use of vegetation indices (VIs) is an essential component of remote sensing, which combine the variability of spectral reflectance value (derived from remote sensing data) with the growth stage of crops. Currently a wide array of VIs is available that could be used to provide a classification and an evaluation of the state and health of crops. However precisely this high number leads to difficulties in selecting the best VI and combination of VIs for a specific objective. Without a thorough documentation and analysis of appropriate VIs, users might be confronted with difficulties in using remote sensing data or even with a very low accuracy of the results. Thus, the objective of this review is to conduct a critical analysis of the existing state of the art on the most important features related to the effective use of VIs for the discrimination and monitoring of the most important agricultural crops (wheat, corn, sunflower, soybean, rape, potatoes, and forage crops), grasslands and meadows. This data could be highly useful for all the stakeholders involved in agricultural activities (from farmers, researchers up to institutions dealing with the centralization and monitoring of agricultural crops).

We present an any-to-one voice conversion (VC) system, using an autoregressive model and LPCNet vocoder, aimed to enhance the converted speech in terms of naturalness, intelligibility, and speaker similarity. As the name implies, non-parallel any-to-one voice conversion does not require paired source and target speeches and can be employed for arbitrary speech conversion tasks. Recent advancements in neural-based vocoders, such as WaveNet, have improved the efficiency of speech synthesis. However, in practice, we find that the trajectory of some generated waveforms is not consistently smooth, leading to occasional voice errors. To address this issue, we propose to use an autoregressive (AR) conversion model along with the high-fidelity LPCNet vocoder. This combination not only solves the problems of waveform fluidity but also produces more natural and clear speech, with the added capability of real-time speech generation. To precisely represent the linguistic content of a given utterance, we use speaker-independent PPG features (SI-PPG) computed from an automatic speech recognition (ASR) model trained on a multi-speaker corpus. Next, a conversion model maps the SI-PPG to the acoustic representations used as input features for the LPCNet. The proposed autoregressive structure enables our system to produce the following prediction step outputs from the acoustic features predicted in the previous step. We evaluate the effectiveness of our system by performing any-to-one conversion pairs between native English speakers. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art systems, producing higher speech quality and greater speaker similarity.

Personal Information Management Systems (PIMS) are acquiring a prominent role in the data economy by promoting services that help individuals to have more control over the processing of their personal data, in line with the European data protection law. One of the highlighted solutions in this area is Solid, a new protocol that is decentralizing the storage of data, through the usage of interoperable Web standards and semantic vocabularies, to empower its users to have more control over the processing of data by agents and applications. However, to fulfill this vision and gather widespread adoption, Solid needs to be aligned with the law governing the processing of personal data in Europe, the main piece of legislation being the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). To assist with this process, we analyze the current efforts to introduce a policy layer in the Solid ecosystem, in particular, related to the challenge of obtaining consent for processing personal data, focusing on the GDPR. Furthermore, we investigate if, in the context of using personal data for biomedical research, consent can be expressed in advance, discuss the conditions for valid consent and how it can be obtained in this decentralized setting, namely through the matching of privacy preferences, set by the user, with requests for data and whether this can signify informed consent. Finally, we discuss the technical challenges of an implementation that caters to the previously-identified legal requirements.

In the current situation, the world is busy with technological advances, including Indonesia. Since its arrival, many business fields have competed with each other to take part as technology users. One business sector that cannot be separated from technological support is cooperatives. On the other hand, some cooperatives in the developing phase experience technological lag. At the same time, East Kutai Regency, which is the agricultural center in East Kalimantan Province, tends to rely on the cooperative sector to encourage small and medium-scale economies. This research aims to investigate the causality between access to computers (AC), internet networks (IN), digital administration skills (DAS), and financial literacy (FL) on profits (PFT). The objectivity of the study compares agricultural cooperatives that adopt technology with adopt non-technology. Using panel data regression from eighteen sub-districts in East Kutai, it is proven that technology adopting agricultural cooperatives were more prominent than non-technology adopting agricultural cooperatives during 2017–2022. However, there is a harmony in the statistical findings from both observations, where access to computers and financial literacy both have a significant effect on profits. Other analysis results show that internet networks and digital administration skills have an insignificant impact on profits. The study's implications provide valuable output for the future sustainability of agricultural cooperatives. The success of agricultural cooperatives depends greatly on the effectiveness of the application of technology.

Nowadays, the demand of agricultural production increase, Moreover, the rapid increase of the population in Egypt led to an increase in the demand for food, prompting the government to reclaim more desert lands. Such a study contributes to providing information that contributes to the promising optimization of land resources. This study carried out in an area south Egypt covering 386,171.04 hectares (ha). Remote sensed data were manipulated for defining the land cover/use features. Setting up DEM configures the network of natural drainage flows via the descending slopes. It was a guide for allocating micro dams as water harvesting sites as well as minimizing the runoff hazards and managing the priority of land use suitability versus flood hazards. Land cover/use units were defined as terrestrial irrigated areas of sequentially herbacous crops and permanent trees covering 1387.83 ha in levees; 1608.82 ha in point bar; 718.89 ha in bow bar and 23938.29 ha in alluvial plain. Terrestrial natural vegetation is dominated by xerophytes herbaceous in wadis (123533.56 ha). Terrestrial non-vegetated areas includes bare areas of rock land (98102.59 ha) and 67201.57 in bajada. Artificial non linear surfaces include buildings (5403.59 ha) and linear features include roads and railways (875.78 ha). Aquatic areas include artificial irrigation and drainage canals (1062.15 ha) and natural water body of River Nile course (2785.92 ha). Current land suitability for specific Land Utilization Types (LUTs) was assessed by matching soil attributes with the growth requirement of each LUT. Current land suitability can be improved by decreasing of salinity and framing practices. Accordingly, the land units can be potentially more profitable for increasing the ability of extra crops to be more productive. Old cultivated areas are the most profitable land cover/use units highly suitable (S1) for all LUTs comparing with other land cover categories.

Machinery degradation assessment can offer meaningful prognosis and health management in-formation. Although numerous machine prediction models based on artificial intelligence have emerged in recent years, they still face a series of challenges: (1) Many models continue to rely on manual feature extraction. (2) Deep learning models still struggle with long sequence prediction tasks. (3) Health indicators are inefficient for remaining useful life (RUL) prediction with cross-operational environments when dealing with high-dimensional datasets as inputs. This research proposes a health indicator construction methodology based on a transformer self-attention transfer network (TSTN). This methodology can directly deal with the high-dimensional raw dataset and keep all the information without missing when the signals are taken as the input of the diagnosis and prognosis model. First, we design an encoder with a long-term and short-term self-attention mechanism to capture crucial time-varying information from a high-dimensional dataset. Second, we propose an estimator that can map the embedding from the encoder output to the estimated degradation trends. Then, we present a domain dis-criminator to extract invariant features from different machine operating conditions. The case studies with the FEMTO-ST bearing dataset and the Monte Carlo method for RUL prediction during the degradation process are conducted. The experiment results fully exhibited the signif-icant advantages of the proposed method compared to other state-of-the-art techniques.

OpenToolFlux is an open-source software to estimate soil gas fluxes from gas concentration time-series data generated by automatic chamber systems. This paper describes the physical equipment used as well as software design and workflow. The software is a command-line application that imports tabular time-series data from the analyzer following the instructions specified in a configuration file by the user, performs configurable data-cleaning operations, and outputs a data file with volumetric flux estimates as well as diagnostic plots. The software can be configured according to the specifics of physical equipment and experimental setup and is therefore applicable in a wide range of studies.

To handle the huge amount of data generated by IoT devices, Big Data processing tools make it easier. This paper discusses the Big Data concept and its main V’s characteristics. It further describes IoT-enabling technologies; nominally cloud computing such as SaaS and PaaS. The centralization and infrastructure of Big Data systems, and how Cloud Computing gives a platform access to the data from anywhere. The paper explores IoT with big data architectural solutions for various use cases across the healthcare and transportation sectors.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is still a relatively new field of research, and its potential for use in the healthcare and medical sectors is enormous. In the last five years, IoT has been a go-to option for various applications such as using sensors for different features, machine-to-machine communication, etc., but precisely, in the medical sector, it is still lagging far behind compared to other sectors. Hence, this study emphasizes the IoT applications in medical fields, Medical IoT sensors and devices, IoT platforms for data visualization, and artificial intelligence in medical applica-tions. A systematic review considering PRISMA guidelines on research articles as well as the websites on IoMT sensors and devices have been carried out. A total of 986 articles after the year 2001 have been initially selected, and by applying the inclusion-exclusion criterion, a total of 597 articles have been identified. From these, 23 studies have been finally selected for this systematic review. This review analyzes different sensor monitoring circuits in detail, considering an Inten-sive Care Unit (ICU) scenario, device applications, and the data management system, including IoT platforms for the patients. Lastly, detailed discussion and challenges have been outlined, and possible prospects have been presented.

Rapid climate change requires more powerful and precise modeling methods to forecast future climate variability. The GSTARIMA Model is efficient, combining space-time analysis with the Autoregressive Moving Average (ARIMA) Model. The integration of heteroscedasticity error and the Kriging method can strengthen the Model's ability to handle the problem of non-constant error variance in the GSTARIMA Model and forecast at unobserved locations of climate observations. This paper's Systematics Literature Review (SLR) is presented comprehensively with the principal aim of developing a thorough understanding of applying the GSTARIMA Model with heteroskedasticity error and the Kriging Method in climate forecasting following the Data Analytics Lifecycle methodology. The Systematic Literature Review (SLR) process consists of three main stages. We sourced the articles from databases such as Scopus, Dimensions, and EBSCO-Host The subsequent stage involved conducting a comprehensive literature review using the PRISMA method to ensure rigor and depth. Additionally, we performed bibliometric analysis to enhance rigor. Lastly, we conducted a gap analysis session to scrutinize existing research on the GSTARIMA Model and identify new opportunities. This literature review reveals that integrating GSTARIMA Model with heteroscedasticity errors and the Kriging method is suitable for climate forecasting. This research inspires researchers to contribute to the improvement and refinement of the Model, making it a more potent and valuable tool in climate forecasting.

Issues of fairness and consistency in Taekwondo poomsae evaluation have emerged owing to the lack of an objective evaluation method. This study proposes a three-dimensional (3D) convolutional neural network (CNN)-based action recognition model for the objective evaluation of Taekwondo poomsae. The model exhibits robust recognition performance regardless of variation in perspective by reducing the discrepancies between training and test images. The model uses 3D skeletons of the poomsae unit action collected using a full-body motion-capture suit to generate synthesized two-dimensional (2D) skeletons from the desired perspective. This approach aids in obtaining 2D skeletons from diverse perspectives as part of the training dataset and ensures consistent recognition performance regardless of the viewpoint. The model was trained using 2D skeletons projected from diverse viewpoints, and its performance was evaluated using various test datasets, including projected 2D skeletons and RGB images captured from various viewpoints. Comparison of the performance of the proposed model with that of previously reported action recognition models demonstrated the superiority of the model, underscoring its effectiveness in recognizing and classifying Taekwondo poomsae actions.

Land surface temperature (LST) is a critical parameter for the dynamic simulation of land surface processes and for analyzing variations on regional or global scales. Obtaining LST with high spatiotemporal resolution is a subject of intensive and ongoing research. This study proposes a pixel-wise temporal alignment iterative linear regression model for downscaling based on MODIS LST products. This approach allows us to address the problem of high temporal resolution but low spatial resolution of the ERA5 reanalysis LST product, while remaining immune to pixel loss caused by clouds. The hourly ERA5 LST of the study area for 2012–2021 was downscaled to 1000 m resolution, and its accuracy was verified by comparison with measured data from meteorological stations. The downscaled LST offers intricate details and is faithful to the LST characteristics of distinct land-cover categories. In comparison with other downscaling techniques, the proposed technique is more stable and preserves the spatial distribution of ERA5 LST with minimal missing pixels. The pixel-wise average R-squared and mean absolute error for MODIS view times are 0.87 and 2.7 K, respectively, for cloud-free conditions at a 1000 m scale. Accuracy verification using data from meteorological stations indicates that the overall error is lower during cloudless periods rather than during overcast periods, during the night rather than during the day, and at MODIS view times rather than at non-view times. The maximum and minimum mean errors are 0.13 K for cloud-free periods and −0.98 K for cloudy periods, indicating a slight underestimation and overestimation, respectively. Conversely, the maximum and minimum mean absolute errors are 2.01 K for the daytime and 0.85 K for the nighttime. Therefore, the model ensures higher accuracy during cloudy periods with only clear sky LST as input data, making it suitable for long-term, all-weather ERA5 LST downscaling.

(1) Background: Surgical phases form the basic building blocks for surgical skill assessment, feedback and teaching. Phase duration itself and its correlation to clinical parameters has not yet been investigated. Novel commercial platforms provide phase indications but have not been assessed for accuracy yet. (2) Methods: We assess 100 robot-assisted partial nephrectomy videos for phase duration based on previously defined proficiency metrics. We develop an annotation framework and subsequently compare our annotations to an existing commercial solution (Touch Surgery, Medtronic™). We subsequently explore clinical correlations between phase durations and peri-operative parameters. (3) Results: Objective and uniform phase assessment requires precise definitions derived from an iterative revision process. Comparison to a commercial solution shows large differences in definitions across phases. BMI and duration of renal tumor identification correlate positively, as well as tumor complexity and both tumor excision and renorraphy duration. (4) Conclusions: Surgical phase duration can be correlated with certain clinical outcomes. Further research should investigate if retrieved correlations are also clinically meaningful. This requires increasing dataset sizes and facilitation through intelligent computer vision algorithms. Commercial platforms can facilitate this dataset expansion and help unlock the full potential, provided the disclosure of phase annotation details.

Soil texture is a key property influencing most soil physical, chemical, and biological processes and its catchment-scale spatial variation may yields insights for soil management. Texture data are generally available only at a few locations, since sampling and laboratory analyses are time consuming. Therefore, it is essential to predict soil size particles texture variability using appropriate methods. Moreover, soil texture distribution across a catchment is influenced by erosion and sedimentation processes controlled by hillslope morphology, which can be quantified through some topographic attributes. The study was aimed to evaluate the ability of a multivariate approach based on non-stationary geostatistics to merge remotely sensed high-resolution LiDAR-derived topographic attributes with Vis-NIR diffuse reflectance spectroscopy and laboratory analysis to produce high-resolution maps of soil sand content and estimation uncertainty in a forested catchment in southern Italy. Moreover, the proposed approach was compared with the commonly used univariate approach of ordinary kriging. Soil samples were collected at 135 locations within a 139 ha-forest catchment with granitic parent material and subordinately alluvial deposits, where soils classified as Typic Xerumbrepts and Ultic Haploxeralf crop out. A number of linear trend models coupled with different auxiliary variables were compared and the best one resulted the model using clay content as auxiliary variable. The improvement of estimation from using only LiDAR data (elevation) compared to the univariate (no trend) model was rather marginal.

The rapid development of technology has led to the implementation of data-driven systems whose performance heavily relies on the amount and type of the data itself. In the latest decades, in the fields of bioengineering data management, among others, eye-tracking data has become one of the most interesting and essential components for many medical, psychological, and engineering research applications. However, despite the large usage of eye-tracking data in many studies and applications, a strong gap is still present in the literature regarding real-time data collection and management, which led to strong constraints for the reliability and accuracy of on-time results. To address this gap, this study aims to introduce a system that enables the collection, processing, real-time streaming, and storage of eye-tracking data. The system is developed by using Java programming language, WebSocket protocol, and Representational State Transfer (REST), improving the efficiency in transferring and managing eye-tracking data. Results were computed in two test conditions, i.e., local and online scenarios, within a time window of 100 seconds. The experiments conducted for this study were carried out by comparing the time delay between two different scenarios. Even if preliminary, results showed a significantly improved performance of data management systems in managing real-time data transfer. Overall, this system can significantly benefit the research community by providing real-time data transfer and storing the data, enabling more extensive studies using eye-tracking data.