Identification of self-care problem in children using machine learning.

Identification of self-care problems in children is a challenging task for medical professionals owing to its complexity and time consumption. Furthermore, the shortage of occupational therapists worldwide makes the task more challenging. Machine learning methods have come to the aid of reducing the complexity associated with problems in diverse fields. This paper employs machine learning based models to identify whether a child suffers from self-care problems using SCADI dataset. The dataset exhibited high dimensionality and imbalance. Initially, the dataset was converted into lower dimensionality. Imbalanced dataset is likely to affect the performance of machine learning models. To address this issue, SMOTE oversampling method was used to reduce the wide variations in the class distribution. The classification methods used were Naïve bayes, J48 and random forest. Random forest classifier which was operated on SMOTE balanced data obtained the best classification performance with balanced accuracy of 99%. The classification model outperformed the existing expert systems.

Breast cancer detection employing stacked ensemble model with convolutional features.

Breast cancer is a major cause of female deaths, especially in underdeveloped countries. It can be treated if diagnosed early and chances of survival are high if treated appropriately and timely. For timely and accurate automated diagnosis, machine learning approaches tend to show better results than traditional methods, however, accuracy lacks the desired level. This study proposes the use of an ensemble model to provide accurate detection of breast cancer. The proposed model uses the random forest and support vector classifier along with automatic feature extraction using an optimized convolutional neural network (CNN). Extensive experiments are performed using the original, as well as, CNN-based features to analyze the performance of the deployed models. Experimental results involving the use of the Wisconsin dataset reveal that CNN-based features provide better results than the original features. It is observed that the proposed model achieves an accuracy of 99.99% for breast cancer detection. Performance comparison with existing state-of-the-art models is also carried out showing the superior performance of the proposed model.

Female Saudi College students' e-learning experience amidst COVID-19 pandemic: An investigation and analysis.

Emergency remote teaching in the immediate wake of the COVID-19 pandemic has created a challenging situation for both students and teachers. The purpose of this research is to identify the perceptions and challenges that university students faced during online classes in a women only university in Saudi Arabia. Data was collected by circulating Google forms among students from different colleges, and a total of 542 students submitted their responses. Apart from gathering the personal information of participants, the survey also collected information on aspects such as educational, financial, internet connectivity and volunteering/donations. Chi-squared test was used to determine whether there was a significant difference in opinion between different groups of students on various questions. Stress was identified as the most prevalent issue among students. Students were found to be stressed regardless of their college of study or age. In comparison to others, younger students and students from financially disadvantaged families faced more difficulties. In terms of remote practical class satisfaction, health/medical stream students were the most dissatisfied group. They also faced more difficulties than students from other colleges. The analysis results show that problems such as stress, poor internet connectivity, the need for technical support, a lack of proper interaction with faculty, a lack of proper academic advising, a lack of proper study space at home etc. must be addressed in order to improve the effectiveness of online classes. This paper also includes recommendations for resolving the various issues that students face.

Advanced Deep Learning for Resource Allocation and Security Aware Data Offloading in Industrial Mobile Edge Computing.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is permeating our daily lives through continuous environmental monitoring and data collection. The promise of low latency communication, enhanced security, and efficient bandwidth utilization lead to the shift from mobile cloud computing to mobile edge computing. In this study, we propose an advanced deep reinforcement resource allocation and security-aware data offloading model that considers the constrained computation and radio resources of industrial IoT devices to guarantee efficient sharing of resources between multiple users. This model is formulated as an optimization problem with the goal of decreasing energy consumption and computation delay. This type of problem is non-deterministic polynomial time-hard due to the curse-of-dimensionality challenge, thus, a deep learning optimization approach is presented to find an optimal solution. In addition, a 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard-based cryptographic approach is proposed to satisfy the data security requirements. Experimental evaluation results show that the proposed model can reduce offloading overhead in terms of energy and time by up to 64.7% in comparison with the local execution approach. It also outperforms the full offloading scenario by up to 13.2%, where it can select some computation tasks to be offloaded while optimally rejecting others. Finally, it is adaptable and scalable for a large number of mobile devices.

Classification of Covid-19 Coronavirus, Pneumonia and Healthy Lungs in CT Scans Using Q-Deformed Entropy and Deep Learning Features.

Many health systems over the world have collapsed due to limited capacity and a dramatic increase of suspected COVID-19 cases. What has emerged is the need for finding an efficient, quick and accurate method to mitigate the overloading of radiologists' efforts to diagnose the suspected cases. This study presents the combination of deep learning of extracted features with the Q-deformed entropy handcrafted features for discriminating between COVID-19 coronavirus, pneumonia and healthy computed tomography (CT) lung scans. In this study, pre-processing is used to reduce the effect of intensity variations between CT slices. Then histogram thresholding is used to isolate the background of the CT lung scan. Each CT lung scan undergoes a feature extraction which involves deep learning and a Q-deformed entropy algorithm. The obtained features are classified using a long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network classifier. Subsequently, combining all extracted features significantly improves the performance of the LSTM network to precisely discriminate between COVID-19, pneumonia and healthy cases. The maximum achieved accuracy for classifying the collected dataset comprising 321 patients is 99.68%.

Main factors influencing recovery in MERS Co-V patients using machine learning.

BACKGROUND: Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is a major infectious disease which has affected the Middle Eastern countries, especially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) since 2012. The high mortality rate associated with this disease has been a major cause of concern. This paper aims at identifying the major factors influencing MERS recovery in KSA. METHODS: The data used for analysis was collected from the Ministry of Health website, KSA. The important factors impelling the recovery are found using machine learning. Machine learning models such as support vector machine, conditional inference tree, naïve Bayes and J48 are modelled to identify the important factors. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis is also carried out to identify the significant factors statistically. RESULT: The main factors influencing MERS recovery rate are identified as age, pre-existing diseases, severity of disease and whether the patient is a healthcare worker or not. In spite of MERS being a zoonotic disease, contact with camels is not a major factor influencing recovery. CONCLUSION: The methods used were able to determine the prime factors influencing MERS recovery. It can be comprehended that awareness about symptoms and seeking medical intervention at the onset of development of symptoms will make a long way in reducing the mortality rate.