DC-CNN: Dual-channel Convolutional Neural Networks with attention-pooling for fake news detection.

Fake news detection mainly relies on the extraction of article content features with neural networks. However, it has brought some challenges to reduce the noisy data and redundant features, and learn the long-distance dependencies. To solve the above problems, Dual-channel Convolutional Neural Networks with Attention-pooling for Fake News Detection (abbreviated as DC-CNN) is proposed. This model benefits from Skip-Gram and Fasttext. It can effectively reduce noisy data and improve the learning ability of the model for non-derived words. A parallel dual-channel pooling layer was proposed to replace the traditional CNN pooling layer in DC-CNN. The Max-pooling layer, as one of the channels, maintains the advantages in learning local information between adjacent words. The Attention-pooling layer with multi-head attention mechanism serves as another pooling channel to enhance the learning of context semantics and global dependencies. This model benefits from the learning advantages of the two channels and solves the problem that pooling layer is easy to lose local-global feature correlation. This model is tested on two different COVID-19 fake news datasets, and the experimental results show that our model has the optimal performance in dealing with noisy data and balancing the correlation between local features and global features.

Long text feature extraction network with data augmentation.

The spread of COVID-19 has had a serious impact on either work or the lives of people. With the decrease in physical social contacts and the rise of anxiety on the pandemic, social media has become the primary approach for people to access information related to COVID-19. Social media is rife with rumors and fake news, causing great damage to the Society. Facing shortages, imbalance, and nosiness, the current Chinese data set related to the epidemic has not helped the detection of fake news. Besides, the accuracy of classification was also affected by the easy loss of edge characteristics in long text data. In this paper, long text feature extraction network with data augmentation (LTFE) was proposed, which improves the learning performance of the classifier by optimizing the data feature structure. In the stage of encoding, Twice-Masked Language Modeling for Fine-tuning (TMLM-F) and Data Alignment that Preserves Edge Characteristics (DA-PEC) was proposed to extract the classification features of the Chinese Dataset. Between the TMLM-F and DA-PEC processes, we use Attention to capture the dependencies between words and generate corresponding vector representations. The experimental results illustrate that this method is effective for the detection of Chinese fake news pertinent to the pandemic.

Kids' Emotion Recognition Using Various Deep-Learning Models with Explainable AI.

Human ideas and sentiments are mirrored in facial expressions. They give the spectator a plethora of social cues, such as the viewer's focus of attention, intention, motivation, and mood, which can help develop better interactive solutions in online platforms. This could be helpful for children while teaching them, which could help in cultivating a better interactive connect between teachers and students, since there is an increasing trend toward the online education platform due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To solve this, the authors proposed kids' emotion recognition based on visual cues in this research with a justified reasoning model of explainable AI. The authors used two datasets to work on this problem; the first is the LIRIS Children Spontaneous Facial Expression Video Database, and the second is an author-created novel dataset of emotions displayed by children aged 7 to 10. The authors identified that the LIRIS dataset has achieved only 75% accuracy, and no study has worked further on this dataset in which the authors have achieved the highest accuracy of 89.31% and, in the authors' dataset, an accuracy of 90.98%. The authors also realized that the face construction of children and adults is different, and the way children show emotions is very different and does not always follow the same way of facial expression for a specific emotion as compared with adults. Hence, the authors used 3D 468 landmark points and created two separate versions of the dataset from the original selected datasets, which are LIRIS-Mesh and Authors-Mesh. In total, all four types of datasets were used, namely LIRIS, the authors' dataset, LIRIS-Mesh, and Authors-Mesh, and a comparative analysis was performed by using seven different CNN models. The authors not only compared all dataset types used on different CNN models but also explained for every type of CNN used on every specific dataset type how test images are perceived by the deep-learning models by using explainable artificial intelligence (XAI), which helps in localizing features contributing to particular emotions. The authors used three methods of XAI, namely Grad-CAM, Grad-CAM++, and SoftGrad, which help users further establish the appropriate reason for emotion detection by knowing the contribution of its features in it.

A possibilistic-robust-fuzzy programming model for designing a game theory based blood supply chain network.

This paper presents a bi-level blood supply chain network under uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak using a Stackelberg game theory technique. A new two-phase bi-level mixed-integer linear programming model is developed in which the total costs are minimized and the utility of donors is maximized. To cope with the uncertain nature of some of the input parameters, a novel mixed possibilistic-robust-fuzzy programming approach is developed. The data from a real case study is utilized to show the applicability and efficiency of the proposed model. Finally, some sensitivity analyses are performed on the important parameters and some managerial insights are suggested.

Novel Square Error Minimization-Based Multilevel Thresholding Method for COVID-19 X-Ray Image Analysis Using Fast Cuckoo Search

Coronavirus outbreaks in 2019 (COVID-19) have been a huge disaster in the fields of health, economics, education, and tourism in the last two years. For diagnosis, a quick interpretation of the COVID-19 chest X-ray image is required. There is also a strong need to find an efficient multiclass segmentation technique for the analysis of COVID-19 X-ray images. Most of the threshold selection techniques are entropy-based. Nevertheless, these techniques suffer from their dependencies on the spatial distribution of grey values. To tackle these issues, a novel non-entropic threshold selection method is proposed, which is the primary key contribution having found a new source of information to the biomedical image processing field. The firsthand Square Error (SE)-based objective function is suggested. The second key contribution is the new optimizer called Fast Cuckoo Search (FCS), which is useful and brings novel ideas into the subject, used to optimize the suggested objective functions for computing the optimal thresholds. To ensure a faster convergence with a quality optimal solution, we include extra exploitation together with a chance factor. The FCS is validated using the well-known classical and CEC 2014 benchmark test functions, which shows a significant improvement over its predecessors—Adaptive Cuckoo Search (ACS) and other state-of-the-art optimizers. Further, the SE minimization-based optimal multilevel thresholding method using the FCS, coined as SE-FCS, is proposed. To experiment, images are considered from the Kaggle Radiography database. We have compared its performances with Tsallis, Kapur’s, and Masi entropy-based techniques using well-known segmentation metrics and achieved a performance increase of 2.95%, 5.51% and 10.50%, respectively. The proposed method shows superiority using Friedman’s mean rank statistical test and ranked first. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of International Journal of Image & Graphics is the property of World Scientific Publishing Company and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

A sustainable-resilience healthcare network for handling COVID-19 pandemic.

In this paper, a new production, allocation, location, inventory holding, distribution, and flow problems for a new sustainable-resilient health care network related to the COVID-19 pandemic under uncertainty is developed that also integrated sustainability aspects and resiliency concepts. Then, a multi-period, multi-product, multi-objective, and multi-echelon mixed-integer linear programming model for the current network is formulated and designed. Formulating a new MILP model to design a sustainable-resilience healthcare network during the COVID-19 pandemic and developing three hybrid meta-heuristic algorithms are among the most important contributions of this research. In order to estimate the values of the required demand for medicines, the simulation approach is employed. To cope with uncertain parameters, stochastic chance-constraint programming is proposed. This paper also proposed three meta-heuristic methods including Multi-Objective Teaching-learning-based optimization (TLBO), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), and Genetic Algorithm (GA) to find Pareto solutions. Since heuristic approaches are sensitive to input parameters, the Taguchi approach is suggested to control and tune the parameters. A comparison is performed by using eight assessment metrics to validate the quality of the obtained Pareto frontier by the heuristic methods on the experiment problems. To validate the current model, a set of sensitivity analysis on important parameters and a real case study in the United States are provided. Based on the empirical experimental results, computational time and eight assessment metrics proposed methodology seems to work well for the considered problems. The results show that by raising the transportation costs, the total cost and the environmental impacts of sustainability increased steadily and the trend of the social responsibility of staff rose gradually between - 20 and 0%, but, dropped suddenly from 0 to + 20%. Also in terms of the on-resiliency of the proposed network, the trends climbed slightly and steadily. Applications of this paper can be useful for hospitals, pharmacies, distributors, medicine manufacturers and the Ministry of Health. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10479-021-04238-2.

Country transition index based on hierarchical clustering to predict next COVID-19 waves.

COVID-19 has widely spread around the world, impacting the health systems of several countries in addition to the collateral damage that societies will face in the next years. Although the comparison between countries is essential for controlling this disease, the main challenge is the fact of countries are not simultaneously affected by the virus. Therefore, from the COVID-19 dataset by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, we present a temporal analysis on the number of new cases and deaths among countries using artificial intelligence. Our approach incrementally models the cases using a hierarchical clustering that emphasizes country transitions between infection groups over time. Then, one can compare the current situation of a country against others that have already faced previous waves. By using our approach, we designed a transition index to estimate the most probable countries' movements between infectious groups to predict next wave trends. We draw two important conclusions: (1) we show the historical infection path taken by specific countries and emphasize changing points that occur when countries move between clusters with small, medium, or large number of cases; (2) we estimate new waves for specific countries using the transition index.

Fusion of intelligent learning for COVID-19: A state-of-the-art review and analysis on real medical data.

The unprecedented surge of a novel coronavirus in the month of December 2019, named as COVID-19 by the World Health organization has caused a serious impact on the health and socioeconomic activities of the public all over the world. Since its origin, the number of infected and deceased cases has been growing exponentially in almost all the affected countries of the world. The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus across the world results in the scarcity of medical resources and overburdened hospitals. As a result, the researchers and technocrats are continuously working across the world for the inculcation of efficient strategies which may assist the government and healthcare system in controlling and managing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this study provides an extensive review of the ongoing strategies such as diagnosis, prediction, drug and vaccine development and preventive measures used in combating the COVID-19 along with technologies used and limitations. Moreover, this review also provides a comparative analysis of the distinct type of data, emerging technologies, approaches used in diagnosis and prediction of COVID-19, statistics of contact tracing apps, vaccine production platforms used in the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the study highlights some challenges and pitfalls observed in the systematic review which may assist the researchers to develop more efficient strategies used in controlling and managing the spread of COVID-19.

An integrated sustainable medical supply chain network during COVID-19.

Nowadays, in the pharmaceutical industry, a growing concern with sustainability has become a strict consideration during the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a lack of good mathematical models in the field. In this research, a production-distribution-inventory-allocation-location problem in the sustainable medical supply chain network is designed to fill this gap. Also, the distribution of medicines related to COVID-19 patients and the periods of production and delivery of medicine according to the perishability of some medicines are considered. In the model, a multi-objective, multi-level, multi-product, and multi-period problem for a sustainable medical supply chain network is designed. Three hybrid meta-heuristic algorithms, namely, ant colony optimization, fish swarm algorithm, and firefly algorithm are suggested, hybridized with variable neighborhood search to solve the sustainable medical supply chain network model. Response surface method is used to tune the parameters since meta-heuristic algorithms are sensitive to input parameters. Six assessment metrics were used to assess the quality of the obtained Pareto frontier by the meta-heuristic algorithms on the considered problems. A real case study is used and empirical results indicate the superiority of the hybrid fish swarm algorithm with variable neighborhood search.

Diurnal emotions, valence and the coronavirus lockdown analysis in public spaces

A large-scale analysis of diurnal and seasonal mood cycles in global social networks has been performed successfully over the past ten years using Twitter, Facebook and blogs. This study describes the application of remote biometric technologies to such investigations on a large scale for the first time. The performance of this research was under real conditions producing results that conform to natural human diurnal and seasonal rhythm patterns. The derived results of this, 208 million data research on diurnal emotions, valence and facial temperature correlate with the results of an analogical Twitter research performed worldwide (UK, Australia, US, Canada, Latin America, North America, Europe, Oceania, and Asia). It is established that diurnal valence and sadness were correlated with one another both prior to and during the period of the coronavirus crisis, and that there are statistically significant relationships between the values of diurnal happiness, sadness, valence and facial temperature and the numbers of their data. Results from the simulation and formal comparisons appear in this article. Additionally the analyses on the COVID-19 screening, diagnosing, monitoring and analyzing by applying biometric and AI technologies are described in Housing COVID-19 Video Neuroanalytics.

Emerging Standards and the Hybrid Model for Organizing Scientific Events During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Since the beginning of 2020, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has dramatically influenced almost every aspect of human life. Activities requiring human gatherings have either been postponed, canceled, or held completely virtually. To supplement lack of in-person contact, people have increasingly turned to virtual settings online, advantages of which include increased inclusivity and accessibility and a reduced carbon footprint. However, emerging online technologies cannot fully replace in-person scientific events. In-person meetings are not susceptible to poor Internet connectivity problems, and they provide novel opportunities for socialization, creating new collaborations and sharing ideas. To continue such activities, a hybrid model for scientific events could be a solution offering both in-person and virtual components. While participants can freely choose the mode of their participation, virtual meetings would most benefit those who cannot attend in-person due to the limitations. In-person portions of meetings should be organized with full consideration of prevention and safety strategies, including risk assessment and mitigation, venue and environmental sanitation, participant protection and disease prevention, and promoting the hybrid model. This new way of interaction between scholars can be considered as a part of a resilience system, which was neglected previously and should become a part of routine practice in the scientific community.