Arabic Document Classification: Performance Investigation of Preprocessing and Representation Techniques

With the increasing number of online social posts, review comments, and digital documentations, the Arabic text classification (ATC) task has been hugely required for many spontaneous natural language processing (NLP) applications, especially within the coronavirus pandemics. The variations in the meaning of the same Arabic words could directly affect the performance of any AI-based framework. This work aims to identify the effectiveness of machine learning (ML) algorithms through preprocessing and representation techniques. This effectiveness is measured via different AI-based classification techniques. Basically, the ATC process is influenced by several factors such as stemming in preprocessing, method of feature extraction and selection, nature of datasets, and classification algorithm. To improve the overall classification performance, preprocessing techniques are mainly used to convert each Arabic word into its root and decrease the representation dimension among the datasets. Feature extraction and selection always play crucial roles to represent the Arabic text in a meaningful way and improve the classification accuracy rate. The selected classifiers in this study are performed based on various feature selection algorithms. The overall classification evaluation results are compared using different classifiers such as multinomial Naive Bayes (MNB), Bernoulli Naive Bayes (BNB), Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD), Support Vector Classifier (SVC), Logistic Regression (LR), and Linear SVC. All of these AI classifiers are evaluated using five balanced and unbalanced benchmark datasets: BBC Arabic corpus, CNN Arabic corpus, Open-Source Arabic corpus (OSAc), ArCovidVac, and AlKhaleej. The evaluation results show that the classification performance strongly depends on the preprocessing technique, representation methods and classification technique, and the nature of datasets used. For the considered benchmark datasets, the linear SVC has outperformed other classifiers overall when prominent features are selected. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Mathematical Problems in Engineering is the property of Hindawi Limited 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 Decision-Making Framework Using q-Rung Orthopair Probabilistic Hesitant Fuzzy Rough Aggregation Information for the Drug Selection to Treat COVID-19

In our current era, a new rapidly spreading pandemic disease called coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by a virus identified as a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), is becoming a crucial threat for the whole world. Currently, the number of patients infected by the virus is expanding exponentially, but there is no commercially available COVID-19 medication for this pandemic. However, numerous antiviral drugs are utilized for the treatment of the COVID-19 disease. Identification of the appropriate antivirus medicine to treat the infection of COVID-19 is still a complicated and uncertain decision. This study’s key objective is to develop a novel approach called q-rung orthopair probabilistic hesitant fuzzy rough set (q-ROPHFRS), which incorporates the q-rung orthopair fuzzy set, probabilistic hesitant fuzzy set, and rough set structures. New q-ROPHFR aggregation operators have been established: the q-ROPHFR Einstein weighted averaging (q-ROPHFREWA) operator and the q-ROPHFR Einstein weighted geometric (q-ROPHFREWG) operator. In this study, we explored some basic features of the developed operators. Afterward, to demonstrate the viability and feasibility of the established decision-making approach in real-world applications, a case study related to selecting drugs for COVID-19 pandemic is addressed. Furthermore, a comprehensive comparison with the q-rung orthopair probabilistic hesitant fuzzy rough TOPSIS technique is also presented to illustrate the benefits of the new framework. The obtained results confirm the reliability and effectiveness of the proposed approach for finding uncertainty in real-world decision-making.

A Decision-Level Fusion Method for COVID-19 Patient Health Prediction

With the continuous attempts to develop effective machine learning methods, information fusion approaches play an important role in integrating data from multiple sources and improving these methods' performance. Among the different fusion techniques, decision-level fusion has unique advantages to fuse the decisions of various classifiers and getting an effective outcome. In this paper, we propose a decision-level fusion method that combines three well-calibrated ensemble classifiers, namely, a random forest (RF), gradient boosting (GB), and extreme gradient boosting (XGB) methods. It is used to predict the COVID-19 patient health for early monitoring and efficient treatment. A soft voting technique is used to generate the final decision result from the predictions of these calibrated classifiers. The method uses the COVID-19 patient's health information, travel demographic, and geographical data to predict the possible outcome of the COVID-19 case, recovered, or death. A different set of experiments is conducted on a public novel Corona Virus 2019 dataset using a different ratio of test sets. The experimental results show that the proposed fusion method achieved an accuracy of 97.24% and an F1-score of 0.97, which is higher than the current related work that has an accuracy of 94% and an F1-score 0.86, on 20% test set taken from the dataset.

Applying Deep Learning Methods on Time-Series Data for Forecasting COVID-19 in Egypt, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is regarded as one of the most imminent disease outbreaks which threaten public health on various levels worldwide. Because of the unpredictable outbreak nature and the virus’s pandemic intensity, people are experiencing depression, anxiety, and other strain reactions. The response to prevent and control the new coronavirus pneumonia has reached a crucial point. Therefore, it is essential—for safety and prevention purposes—to promptly predict and forecast the virus outbreak in the course of this troublesome time to have control over its mortality. Recently, deep learning models are playing essential roles in handling time-series data in different applications. This paper presents a comparative study of two deep learning methods to forecast the confirmed cases and death cases of COVID-19. Long short-term memory (LSTM) and gated recurrent unit (GRU) have been applied on time-series data in three countries: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, from 1/5/2020 to 6/12/2020. The results show that LSTM has achieved the best performance in confirmed cases in the three countries, and GRU has achieved the best performance in death cases in Egypt and Kuwait.

Conventional to online education during COVID-19 pandemic: Do develop and underdeveloped nations cope alike.

BACKGROUND: Educational institutes around the globe are facing challenges of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Online learning is being carried out to avoid face to face contact in emergency scenarios such as coronavirus infectious disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Students need to adapt to new roles of learning through information technology to succeed in academics amid COVID-19. OBJECTIVE: However, access and use of online learning resources and its link with satisfaction of students amid COVID-19 are critical to explore. Therefore, in this paper, we aimed to assess and compare the access & use of online learning of Bruneians and Pakistanis amid enforced lockdown using a five-items satisfaction scale underlying existing literature. METHOD: For this, a cross-sectional study was done in the first half of June 2020 after the pandemic situation among 320 students' across Pakistan and Brunei with a pre-defined questionnaire. Data were analyzed with statistical software package for social sciences (SPSS) 2.0. RESULTS: The finding showed that there is a relationship between students' satisfaction and access & use of online learning. Outcomes of the survey suggest that Bruneian are more satisfied (50%) with the use of online learning amid lockdown as compared to Pakistanis (35.9%). Living in the Urban area as compared to a rural area is also a major factor contributing to satisfaction with the access and use of online learning for both Bruneian and Pakistanis. Moreover, previous experience with the use of online learning is observed prevalent among Bruneians (P = .000), while among friends and family is using online learning (P = .000) were encouraging factors contributed to satisfaction with the use of online learning among Pakistanis amid COVID-19. Correlation results suggest that access and use factors of online learning amid COVID-19 were positively associated with satisfaction among both populations amid COVID-19 pandemic. However, Bruneian is more satisfied with internet access (r = 0.437, P < .000) and affordability of gadgets (r = 0.577, P < .000) as compare to Pakistanis (r = 0.176, P < .050) and (r = 0.152, P < .050). CONCLUSION: The study suggested that it is crucial for the government and other policymakers worldwide to address access and use of online learning resources of their populace amid pandemic.