On solving textual ambiguities and semantic vagueness in MRC based question answering using generative pre-trained transformers.

Machine reading comprehension (MRC) is one of the most challenging tasks and active fields in natural language processing (NLP). MRC systems aim to enable a machine to understand a given context in natural language and to answer a series of questions about it. With the advent of bi-directional deep learning algorithms and large-scale datasets, MRC achieved improved results. However, these models are still suffering from two research issues: textual ambiguities and semantic vagueness to comprehend the long passages and generate answers for abstractive MRC systems. To address these issues, this paper proposes a novel Extended Generative Pretrained Transformers-based Question Answering (ExtGPT-QA) model to generate precise and relevant answers to questions about a given context. The proposed architecture comprises two modified forms of encoder and decoder as compared to GPT. The encoder uses a positional encoder to assign a unique representation with each word in the sentence for reference to address the textual ambiguities. Subsequently, the decoder module involves a multi-head attention mechanism along with affine and aggregation layers to mitigate semantic vagueness with MRC systems. Additionally, we applied syntax and semantic feature engineering techniques to enhance the effectiveness of the proposed model. To validate the proposed model's effectiveness, a comprehensive empirical analysis is carried out using three benchmark datasets including SQuAD, Wiki-QA, and News-QA. The results of the proposed ExtGPT-QA outperformed state of art MRC techniques and obtained 93.25% and 90.52% F1-score and exact match, respectively. The results confirm the effectiveness of the ExtGPT-QA model to address textual ambiguities and semantic vagueness issues in MRC systems.

Sensing and Artificial Intelligent Maternal-Infant Health Care Systems: A Review.

Currently, information and communication technology (ICT) allows health institutions to reach disadvantaged groups in rural areas using sensing and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Applications of these technologies are even more essential for maternal and infant health, since maternal and infant health is vital for a healthy society. Over the last few years, researchers have delved into sensing and artificially intelligent healthcare systems for maternal and infant health. Sensors are exploited to gauge health parameters, and machine learning techniques are investigated to predict the health conditions of patients to assist medical practitioners. Since these healthcare systems deal with large amounts of data, significant development is also noted in the computing platforms. The relevant literature reports the potential impact of ICT-enabled systems for improving maternal and infant health. This article reviews wearable sensors and AI algorithms based on existing systems designed to predict the risk factors during and after pregnancy for both mothers and infants. This review covers sensors and AI algorithms used in these systems and analyzes each approach with its features, outcomes, and novel aspects in chronological order. It also includes discussion on datasets used and extends challenges as well as future work directions for researchers.

Fighting adult illiteracy with the help of the environmental print material.

Adult illiteracy is a major problem worldwide especially in developing countries. Adult Basic Education (ABE) programs working in this context are not very effective due to lack of motivation for the people who are not literate. The reason is inadequate learning content and content delivery methods. This situation calls for developing novel learning content and a learner-directed content delivery approach. This paper presents an exploratory study investigating the use of the Environmental Print Material (EPM) as learning content for the non-literate population of Pakistan. The EPM content is presented to the adult non-literate population in two ethnographic studies. The most frequently recognized content is selected and utilized as learning content in a Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) application. An empirical study is conducted upon two groups with 107 participants to compare the EPM-based learning content with Traditional Learning Content (TLC). As many as 54 participants participated in the experimental group (presented with EPM-based learning content), whereas 53 participants took part in the control group (presented with TLC content). The results reveal that the experimental group performed significantly better compared to the control group in recognition, pronunciation, and recall of the presented content. The meta-analysis of the results shows a large effect size of (1.05) with confidence interval in the range (0.798-1.315). The results claim that the EPM has potential to be considered as learning content in the ABE programs.

An improved strategy for skin lesion detection and classification using uniform segmentation and feature selection based approach.

Melanoma is the deadliest type of skin cancer with highest mortality rate. However, the annihilation in early stage implies a high survival rate therefore, it demands early diagnosis. The accustomed diagnosis methods are costly and cumbersome due to the involvement of experienced experts as well as the requirements for highly equipped environment. The recent advancements in computerized solutions for these diagnoses are highly promising with improved accuracy and efficiency. In this article, we proposed a method for the classification of melanoma and benign skin lesions. Our approach integrates preprocessing, lesion segmentation, features extraction, features selection, and classification. Preprocessing is executed in the context of hair removal by DullRazor, whereas lesion texture and color information are utilized to enhance the lesion contrast. In lesion segmentation, a hybrid technique has been implemented and results are fused using additive law of probability. Serial based method is applied subsequently that extracts and fuses the traits such as color, texture, and HOG (shape). The fused features are selected afterwards by implementing a novel Boltzman Entropy method. Finally, the selected features are classified by Support Vector Machine. The proposed method is evaluated on publically available data set PH2. Our approach has provided promising results of sensitivity 97.7%, specificity 96.7%, accuracy 97.5%, and F-score 97.5%, which are significantly better than the results of existing methods available on the same data set. The proposed method detects and classifies melanoma significantly good as compared to existing methods.