Dual-Individual Genetic Algorithm: A Dual-Individual Approach for Efficient Training of Multi-Layer Neural Networks

This paper introduces an enhanced Genetic Algorithm technique called Dual-Individual Genetic Algorithm (Dual-Individual GA), which optimizes neural networks for binary image classification tasks, such as cat vs. non-cat classification. The proposed method employs only two individuals for crossover, represented by two parameter sets: Leader and Follower. The Leader focuses on exploitation, representing the primary optimal solution at even-indexed positions (0, 2, 4, ...), while the Follower promotes exploration by preserving diversity and avoiding premature convergence, operating at odd-indexed positions (1, 3, 5, ...). Leader and Follower are modeled as two phases or roles. The key contributions of this work are threefold: (1) a self-adaptive layer dimension mechanism that eliminates the need for manual tuning of layer architectures; (2) generates two parameter sets, leader and follower parameter sets, with 10 layer architecture configurations (5 for each set), ranked by Pareto dominance and cost. post-optimization; and (3) demonstrated superior performance compared to traditional gradient-based methods. Experimental results show that the Dual-Individual GA achieves 99.04% training accuracy and 80% testing accuracy (cost = 0.034) on a three-layer network with architecture [12288, 17, 4, 1], outperforming a gradient-based approach that achieves 98% training accuracy and 80% testing accuracy (cost = 0.092) on a four-layer network with architecture [12288, 20, 7, 5, 1]. These findings highlight the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed method in optimizing neural networks.

MSGCN: Multiplex Spatial Graph Convolution Network for Interlayer Link Weight Prediction

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have been widely used for various learning tasks, ranging from node classification to link prediction. They have demonstrated excellent performance in multiple domains involving graph-structured data. However, an important category of learning tasks, namely link weight prediction, has received less emphasis due to its increased complexity compared to binary link classification. Link weight prediction becomes even more challenging when considering multilayer networks, where nodes can be interconnected across multiple layers. To address these challenges, we propose a new method named Multiplex Spatial Graph Convolution Network (MSGCN), which spatially embeds information across multiple layers to predict interlayer link weights. The MSGCN model generalizes spatial graph convolution to multiplex networks and captures the geometric structure of nodes across multiple layers. Extensive experiments using data with known interlayer link information show that the MSGCN model has robust, accurate, and generalizable link weight prediction performance across a wide variety of multiplex network structures.

Bug Destiny Prediction in Large Open-Source Software Repositories through Sentiment Analysis and BERT Topic Modeling

This study explores a novel approach to predicting key bug-related outcomes, including the time to resolution, time to fix, and ultimate status of a bug, using data from the Bugzilla Eclipse Project. Specifically, we leverage features available before a bug is resolved to enhance predictive accuracy. Our methodology incorporates sentiment analysis to derive both an emotionality score and a sentiment classification (positive or negative). Additionally, we integrate the bug's priority level and its topic, extracted using a BERTopic model, as features for a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and a Multilayer Perceptron (MLP). Our findings indicate that the combination of BERTopic and sentiment analysis can improve certain model performance metrics. Furthermore, we observe that balancing model inputs enhances practical applicability, albeit at the cost of a significant reduction in accuracy in most cases. To address our primary objectives, predicting time-to-resolution, time-to-fix, and bug destiny, we employ both binary classification and exact time value predictions, allowing for a comparative evaluation of their predictive effectiveness. Results demonstrate that sentiment analysis serves as a valuable predictor of a bug's eventual outcome, particularly in determining whether it will be fixed. However, its utility is less pronounced when classifying bugs into more complex or unconventional outcome categories.

Integrating Non-Linear Radon Transformation for Diabetic Retinopathy Grading

Diabetic retinopathy is a serious ocular complication that poses a significant threat to patients' vision and overall health. Early detection and accurate grading are essential to prevent vision loss. Current automatic grading methods rely heavily on deep learning applied to retinal fundus images, but the complex, irregular patterns of lesions in these images, which vary in shape and distribution, make it difficult to capture subtle changes. This study introduces RadFuse, a multi-representation deep learning framework that integrates non-linear RadEx-transformed sinogram images with traditional fundus images to enhance diabetic retinopathy detection and grading. Our RadEx transformation, an optimized non-linear extension of the Radon transform, generates sinogram representations to capture complex retinal lesion patterns. By leveraging both spatial and transformed domain information, RadFuse enriches the feature set available to deep learning models, improving the differentiation of severity levels. We conducted extensive experiments on two benchmark datasets, APTOS-2019 and DDR, using three convolutional neural networks (CNNs): ResNeXt-50, MobileNetV2, and VGG19. RadFuse showed significant improvements over fundus-image-only models across all three CNN architectures and outperformed state-of-the-art methods on both datasets. For severity grading across five stages, RadFuse achieved a quadratic weighted kappa of 93.24%, an accuracy of 87.07%, and an F1-score of 87.17%. In binary classification between healthy and diabetic retinopathy cases, the method reached an accuracy of 99.09%, precision of 98.58%, and recall of 99.6%, surpassing previously established models. These results demonstrate RadFuse's capacity to capture complex non-linear features, advancing diabetic retinopathy classification and promoting the integration of advanced mathematical transforms in medical image analysis.

Quantum neural networks facilitating quantum state classification

The classification of quantum states into distinct classes poses a significant challenge. In this study, we address this problem using quantum neural networks in combination with a problem-inspired circuit and customised as well as predefined ans\"{a}tz. To facilitate the resource-efficient quantum state classification, we construct the dataset of quantum states using the proposed problem-inspired circuit. The problem-inspired circuit incorporates two-qubit parameterised unitary gates of varying entangling power, which is further integrated with the ans\"{a}tz, developing an entire quantum neural network. To demonstrate the capability of the selected ans\"{a}tz, we visualise the mitigated barren plateaus. The designed quantum neural network demonstrates the efficiency in binary and multi-class classification tasks. This work establishes a foundation for the classification of multi-qubit quantum states and offers the potential for generalisation to multi-qubit pure quantum states.

Adiabatic Encoding of Pre-trained MPS Classifiers into Quantum Circuits

Although Quantum Neural Networks (QNNs) offer powerful methods for classification tasks, the training of QNNs faces two major training obstacles: barren plateaus and local minima. A promising solution is to first train a tensor-network (TN) model classically and then embed it into a QNN.\ However, embedding TN-classifiers into quantum circuits generally requires postselection whose success probability may decay exponentially with the system size. We propose an \emph{adiabatic encoding} framework that encodes pre-trained MPS-classifiers into quantum MPS (qMPS) circuits with postselection, and gradually removes the postselection while retaining performance. We prove that training qMPS-classifiers from scratch on a certain artificial dataset is exponentially hard due to barren plateaus, but our adiabatic encoding circumvents this issue. Additional numerical experiments on binary MNIST also confirm its robustness.

Diabetic Retinopathy Detection Based on Convolutional Neural Networks with SMOTE and CLAHE Techniques Applied to Fundus Images

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is one of the major complications in diabetic patients' eyes, potentially leading to permanent blindness if not detected timely. This study aims to evaluate the accuracy of artificial intelligence (AI) in diagnosing DR. The method employed is the Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE) algorithm, applied to identify DR and its severity stages from fundus images using the public dataset "APTOS 2019 Blindness Detection." Literature was reviewed via ScienceDirect, ResearchGate, Google Scholar, and IEEE Xplore. Classification results using Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) showed the best performance for the binary classes normal (0) and DR (1) with an accuracy of 99.55%, precision of 99.54%, recall of 99.54%, and F1-score of 99.54%. For the multiclass classification No_DR (0), Mild (1), Moderate (2), Severe (3), Proliferate_DR (4), the accuracy was 95.26%, precision 95.26%, recall 95.17%, and F1-score 95.23%. Evaluation using the confusion matrix yielded results of 99.68% for binary classification and 96.65% for multiclass. This study highlights the significant potential in enhancing the accuracy of DR diagnosis compared to traditional human analysis

Detecting AI-generated Artwork

The high efficiency and quality of artwork generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) has created new concerns and challenges for human artists. In particular, recent improvements in generative AI have made it difficult for people to distinguish between human-generated and AI-generated art. In this research, we consider the potential utility of various types of Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) models in distinguishing AI-generated artwork from human-generated artwork. We focus on three challenging artistic styles, namely, baroque, cubism, and expressionism. The learning models we test are Logistic Regression (LR), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). Our best experimental results yield a multiclass accuracy of 0.8208 over six classes, and an impressive accuracy of 0.9758 for the binary classification problem of distinguishing AI-generated from human-generated art.

A Survey of Machine Learning Models and Datasets for the Multi-label Classification of Textual Hate Speech in English

The dissemination of online hate speech can have serious negative consequences for individuals, online communities, and entire societies. This and the large volume of hateful online content prompted both practitioners', i.e., in content moderation or law enforcement, and researchers' interest in machine learning models to automatically classify instances of hate speech. Whereas most scientific works address hate speech classification as a binary task, practice often requires a differentiation into sub-types, e.g., according to target, severity, or legality, which may overlap for individual content. Hence, researchers created datasets and machine learning models that approach hate speech classification in textual data as a multi-label problem. This work presents the first systematic and comprehensive survey of scientific literature on this emerging research landscape in English (N=46). We contribute with a concise overview of 28 datasets suited for training multi-label classification models that reveals significant heterogeneity regarding label-set, size, meta-concept, annotation process, and inter-annotator agreement. Our analysis of 24 publications proposing suitable classification models further establishes inconsistency in evaluation and a preference for architectures based on Bidirectional Encoder Representation from Transformers (BERT) and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs). We identify imbalanced training data, reliance on crowdsourcing platforms, small and sparse datasets, and missing methodological alignment as critical open issues and formulate ten recommendations for research.

Enhancing Downstream Analysis in Genome Sequencing: Species Classification While Basecalling

The ability to quickly and accurately identify microbial species in a sample, known as metagenomic profiling, is critical across various fields, from healthcare to environmental science. This paper introduces a novel method to profile signals coming from sequencing devices in parallel with determining their nucleotide sequences, a process known as basecalling, via a multi-objective deep neural network for simultaneous basecalling and multi-class genome classification. We introduce a new loss strategy where losses for basecalling and classification are back-propagated separately, with model weights combined for the shared layers, and a pre-configured ranking strategy allowing top-K species accuracy, giving users flexibility to choose between higher accuracy or higher speed at identifying the species. We achieve state-of-the-art basecalling accuracies, while classification accuracies meet and exceed the results of state-of-the-art binary classifiers, attaining an average of 92.5%/98.9% accuracy at identifying the top-1/3 species among a total of 17 genomes in the Wick bacterial dataset. The work presented here has implications for future studies in metagenomic profiling by accelerating the bottleneck step of matching the DNA sequence to the correct genome.