Agata Asofroniei

First Pages of BRAIN. Broad Research in Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience

1

Hanefi M. Calp

Machine Learning is an important sub-field of the Artificial Intelligence and it has become a very critical task to train Machine Learning techniques via effective methods or techniques. Recently, researchers have tried to use alternative techniques to improve the ability of Machine Learning techniques. Moving from the explanations, the objective of this study is to introduce a novel SVM-CoDOA (Cognitive Development Optimization Algorithm trained Support Vector Machines) system for general medical diagnosis. In detail, the system consists of a SVM, which is trained by CoDOA, a newly developed optimization algorithm. As it is known, the use of optimization algorithms is an essential task in training and improving Machine Learning techniques. In this sense, the study has provided a medical diagnosis problem scope in order to show effectiveness of the SVM-CoDOA hybrid formation.

2

Asghar Ghorbani , Parastoo Rahimi , Marjan Amoo Khalili , Mojtaba Ebrahimi

Background: This study aimed to predict psychological well-being based on Islamic lifestyle and coping strategies in patients with thalassemia major in Tehran.  

Method: The present study was categorized as descriptive research (correlation type) as the research method. Because the aim of the research was to determine the contribution and role of each of the predictor variables in estimating and predicting the criterion variable. For this purpose, this study included all major thalassemia patients referring to Zafar Thalassemia Clinic and Thalassemia Department of Baharlo Hospital in Tehran.

Results:According to the results, coping strategies (coping focused on cognitive assessment, coping focused on problem solving, emotion-focused coping, social support, and coping focused on physical inhibition) have significantly improved psychological well-being in people with major thalassemia disease, as predicted, and also the Islamic lifestyle significantly predicted psychological well-being in people with major thalassemia.

Conclusion: Among coping strategies, coping focused on problem-solving, coping focused on positive cognitive assessment, coping focused on emotion and coping with physical inhibition for significant negative psychological well-being in patients with thalassemia major the study predicted and found that the Islamic lifestyle has a positive psychological well-being in patients with thalassemia major.

3

Dmytro Zubov

The World Health Organization pointed out that over 285 million people worldwide suffer from loss of vision and blindness, and that the number could drop drastically in just a few years. About 90 % of the blind and visually impaired (B&VI) live at a low income that means these people cannot buy the expensive assistive devices for the spatial cognition. In this work, the new concept of the smart city assistive infrastructure with distributed server-client architecture is presented for the B&VI using the inclusive smart assistive component that interacts with other subsystems of the smart city (smart buildings, smart mobility, smart energy, etc.) via IoT protocols such as MQTT. The main constituents of thin client are as follows: Raspberry Pi 3 B board with camera for the objects detection / recognition, ultrasonic sensor(s) HC-SR04 for the obstacles identification on the short-range distance up to 5 m, GPS module for the global navigation, iBeacon Bluetooth low energy proximity sensing software, MQTT IoT protocol for the mutual communication of clients, Python multithread application, Raspbian OS. The thin client hardware is of affordable price USD 70. The objects detection and recognition are implemented on the thin clients via the Histogram of Oriented Gradients with Euclidean distance classifier (HOG+EDC). The design of the recognition models, the file hosting of the training images and the knowledge base with the recognition rules are done on server(s). The modified Viola-Jones fast face detector with the combination of features "eye" and "nose" is proposed to speed up the image processing, but its detection rate is not 100 %. Hence, it can be applied only with the subsequent recognition using HOG+EDC.

4

Dorel Badea , Marin Marian Coman , Dumitru Iancu , Olga Bucovețchi

The linearity of processes is no longer valid only for strictly defined intervals, the decisionmakers being forced to explore and exploit other sources and options for imposing a predicted management order in accordance with standards, procedures, policies, etc. Given the socio-technical particularities of organizations that own or manage critical infrastructures with direct implications for risk management activities, it is necessary to conduct theoretical and practical actions for testing their sensitivity by taking in consideration the variation of external factors (geo-climacterics, politics, military, economic factors, etc.) for verifying and validating the decisional variants structured at the operational management level. No matter the level of organizational maturity, the possible solutions for achieving this goal must be optimal from the point of view of the cost-effectiveness ratio and, in the same time, they should converge to a paradigmatic potential for valorizing in a timely and judicious manner the most important component of the organizational capability - the human resource. In this context, the education for sustainability becomes the objective function that needs to be optimized. As a methodological framework for learning and internalizing the procedures that should become an operating standard, the conceptual modeling and simulation are very well suited and the serious games can be chosen as an implementation tool. Therefore, the military organization has been selected as a model of good practice where the training is conducted through simulation and wargaming. When we should analyze the acquisition process of knowledge, the military organization is the proper choice because it offers a series of advantages by the way of transforming the real situation into elements of simulation and by an easy transfer of the gained experience into the real context.

5

Faisal Riaz , Abdul Ghafoor , Yasir Mehmood , Naeem Ratyal , Iram Zamir , Ujala Siddique , Hina Iqbal , Anila Arbab

Distracted driving is a growing problem that leads to many deaths in the world. Causes of distraction are speeding, eating, texting, drinking, answering phone calls, reading billboards, adjusting vehicle equipment, and attending to passengers. These deaths could be prevented by a cognitive agent-based collision detection and auto collision avoidance (CABCD-CA) system. In order to reduce accidents caused by distraction, this paper presents a (CABCD-CA) system. The research is two-fold, first designed as a fuzzy inference system, which takes distraction, speed, and distance as input and produces the chances of an accident using fuzzy logic. Then, different probabilities of accidents are provided to the cognitive agent, which, in turn, performs appropriate collision avoidance manoeuvrers. The agent-based simulation of the CABCD-CA system is validated using VOMAS agent approach. Extensive testing has proved the success of the proposed system for avoiding collisions due to the distraction of the human driver.

6

Daniel Botez

Data analytics is the process of examining data sets in order to draw conclusions about the information they contain, increasingly with the aid of specialized systems and software.
Many organizations began using this process in their activities.
A particular domain is the audit of financial statements. The quality of this audit can be enhanced by the use of data analytics. the use of new technology and software solutions change fundamentally the attitude regarding this audit.
The use of data analytics in audit is at the beginning. But the near future requires that auditors respond to this provocation.

7

Carmen Ionela Boșoteanu , Adrian Netedu

Working with university students in social sciences often involves creative ideas, a wide documentation, field research abilities and so on. In this article we intend to present a specific didactic project put into practice with master students in Public Relations and Advertising during one semester of the module called Research techniques. We organised all the activities in order to make an action research with returning of inquiry findings. All the students were involved in each stage of the project starting from the initial questions and all the way to general reports. Finally, they participated in a public conference where they presented some of the important results.

8

Behcet Öznacar , Șebnem Güldal Kan , Seçil Besim , Șeniz Șensoy

This research was prepared to draw public attention to the effects of violence containing television programs on preschool period children, the views of parents regarding such effects and suggestions for their solution. Even though there are many researches in relation to this matter all over the world when reviewing literature, the scarcity of researches focusing on solution suggestions draws the attention. The problem phrase of the research was determined as "how the effect of violance containing television programs is observed in preschool children?". The study is a qualitative one and the research design is determined as case study. The study group consists of the parents of students participating in private preschool institutions. Semi-structured interview form was used as data collection tool, and the analyses were realized through descriptive analysis. The following findings were obtained from the study: It was detected that the rate of students to be affected by the violance in television depends much on the programs viewed and daily television watching hours. It was also seen that reflection of television violence to the children depends on the viewpoint of parents against the violence on that program. One of the outstanding findings is that it is frequently pointed out by parents that programs for children are focused on increasing the ratings rather than being instructive.  

9

Roberto Paiano , Stefania Pasanisi

The use of advanced data analysis techniques is now of considerable importance in order to allow the complex extraction of previously unknown and potentially useful implicit information on the data. Interest in this area has grown appreciably since these techniques had to meet the challenges introduced by the enormous proliferation of data triggered by the big data era. This implied, in the last few years, on developing advanced analysis techniques or improving existing ones by constantly introducing new techniques. The selection of an appropriate algorithm for a specific problem is very difficult and often the only solution is to proceed by trial and error. This paper intends to investigate which analysis technique should be used on a particular data set, based on the characteristics of this data set. We present three case studies, each of them concerns a very specific domain (Educational, Health and Safety) that is represented by a particular type of data set. The results establish a possible relationship between the analysis techniques implemented, that is Clustering analysis, Association Rule and Neural Network and the data set type analyzed.

 

10

Aslanbek Naziev

This author already published one paper about semantic reading in mathematics teaching (Naziev, 2014). The paper contained short instructions on what semantic reading is and several more or less simple examples of the application of semantic reading in school algebra, geometry, probability, and calculus. In this paper, we will give a more instructive definition of semantic reading and several more complicated and, we hope, more interesting examples.
Our work is connected with the results in artificial intelligence (Garrido, 2017). An important subject in the artificial intelligence is the automated (or mechanical) theorem proving, and, in particular, mechanical geometry theorem proving (Chou, 1988). The development of this last area has showed the evidence that in order to carry out proofs of geometry theorems mechanically, we have to strictly follow some rules and axioms (Chou, 1988). This is the main goal of our article, to show how important it is in mathematics, not only in artificial intelligence, to strictly follow axioms, definitions and theorems, that is, to read them semantically.

11

Ramona Lacurezeanu , Liana Stanca , Adriana Tiron Tudor , Sergiu Zagan

The web 2.0.-era education is in a continuous reformation and evolution. Nowadays, information technologies are developed and widespread impetuously. Thus, digital mind maps are becoming more and more popular but little is known about the use of this subject and its application in the economic academic field. This paper aims to offer some results in mind mapping applied to a course from the higher education in the economic area by using a mixed research methodology. Thus, we combined a survey and a participant observation, aimed to illustrate the way in which we projected, implemented and used the Web2 instruments with mind mapping. On the one hand, this framework is useful for measuring the students' attitude towards traditional teaching with WEB 2.0 instruments with mind mapping. On the other hand, we want to check if the engagement of the students will increase. So, our study will provide conclusions in the field of research related to the measurement of students' attitudes and engagement in teaching-learning in the economic field, in a period in which all those involved are working to increase the degree of digitization of the university education. The outcome of this study can be considered favorable on "our framework" implementation to the digitalization area of the economic academic field.

12

Muhammet Üsame Öziç , Ahmet Hakan Ekmekci , Seral Özşen

Three dimensional structural MR imaging is a high-resolution imaging technique used in the
detection and follow up of neurological disorders. Rigid changes in the brain are usually interpreted and
reported manually by radiologists using MR images. The results of manual interpretation may vary with
respect to the experts. At the same time, measurement and segmentation of the brain regions and the
manual evaluation of the volume changes are a difficult process. With the increase of numerical
methods, automated and semi-automated package programs have been developed for the analysis of
brain measurements. These programs use electronic brain atlases or tissue probability maps. However,
since the package programs have a lot of analysis time and give only certain outputs, they may be
disadvantaged in the use of segmentation and measurement of brain regions. Hence, special pipelines
are needed especially to obtain valuable features for artificial intelligence and classification studies. In
this study, we propose pipelines to segment 3D certain brain regions, which will help to find the basic
features such as volume changes, intensity variations, symmetry deteriorations, and tissue changes. With
these pipelines, 3D segmentation of the brain regions defined in the atlas can be performed and
normalized. It is aimed to use these studies as a preliminary study in order to quantitatively determine
the basic changes in the brain by performing the volume of interest methods and to formulate a decision
support system.

13

Tomáš Vodička , Martin Zvonař , Jiří Pačes , Jiří Zháněl , Gheorghe Balint

Tennis game is typical for high intensity, sudden changes of directions, rapid slow down, acceleration and running for the ball. These movements lead to intensive strain to lower extremities, which is connected with selective activation of muscle groups and their further adaptation. During the muscle adaptation, muscular dysbalances might occur, which can result in an increased incidence of injuries and can be the cause for the reduced ability to maintain a balanced body posture during the game. With regard to this fact, the aim of this study was to establish, the strength level of knee extensors and flexors and assessment of their unilateral and bilateral differences, further to examine the strength level in tennis players group - boys (TEN_M, n=10, aged 13.23 ± 0.51), girls (TEN_F, n=10, aged 13.34 ± 0.69) in comparison with groups of boys (CS_M, n=10, aged 13.04 ± 0.61) and girls (CS_F, n=10, aged 13.21 ± 0.55 let) who do not perform any sport activity. Diagnostics of knee joints strength was carried out by isokinetic dynamometry (Humac Norm CSMI, Stoughton, USA) under two angular velocities (180 °/s and 300 °/s). Significance of differences in mean values was assessed by using Cohen ´s d. Data analysis proved that differences between TEN and CS groups concerning age, body height and weight were insignificant. Comparison of isokinetic strength level (180 °/s) between TEN_M and CS_M group proved significantly higher strength level of knee extensors (d=0.75) and flexors (d=1.27) in tennis players dominant extremity. Also for non-dominant leg in TEN_M group, was found significantly higher strength level of extensors (d=0.68) and flexors (d=1.05). Assessment of bilateral differences in strength of knee extensors (d=0.11) and flexors (d=0.05) of dominant and non-dominant extremity in TEN_M group did not prove their significance. Neither in CS_M group was found significant bilateral strength differences between knee extensors (d=0.07) and flexors (d=0.15) of dominant and non-dominant extremity. Comparison of isokinetic strength level (300 °/s) between TEN_M and CS_M groups proved significantly higher strength level of knee extensors (d=0.91) and flexors (d=1.48) of dominant extremity in tennis players group. Also in knee extensors (d=0.85) and flexors (d=1.05) of non-dominant extremity, was proved significantly higher strength level in tennis players group.
Assessment of bilateral differences in strength of knee extensors (d=0.11) and flexors (d=0.01) of dominant and non-dominant extremity in TEN_M group did not prove their significance. Neither in CS_M group was found significant bilateral strength differences between knee extensors (d=0.10) and flexors (d=0.21) of dominant and non-dominant extremity. Comparison of isokinetic strength level (180 °/s) of dominant extremity between TEN_F and CS_F groups did not prove significant differences in the strength of extensors (d=0.46) and flexors (d=0.45). Significant lateral differences in strength level in favour of TEN_F group were however proved in knee extensors (d=0.56) and flexors (d=0.73) on non-dominant extremity.
Assessment of bilateral differences in strength of knee extensors (d=0.04) and flexors (d=0.24) of dominant and non-dominant extremity in TEN_F group did not prove their significance. Neither in CS_F group was found significant bilateral strength differences between knee extensors (d=0.12) and flexors (d=0.05) of dominant and non-dominant extremity. Comparison of isokinetic strength level (300 °/s) between TEN_F and CS_F group proved significantly higher strength level of knee extensors (d=0.63) of dominant extremity in tennis players group, while the significance of difference was not proved in flexors (d=0.48). Neither in knee extensors (d=0.46) of non-dominant extremity was proved significance of the difference, while in flexors (d=0.89) there was proved significantly higher strength level in TEN_F group. Assessment of bilateral differences in extensors (d=0.01) of dominant and non-dominant extremity in TEN_F group did not prove its significance, flexors (d=0.56) of dominant and non-dominant extremity proved significant difference. In CS_F group was not proved significant bilateral difference in extensors (d=0.30) and flexors (d=0.25) of dominant and non-dominant extremity.

14

Saleem Ahmed , Naveed Ali Khan , Dost Muhammad Saqib Bhatti , Kainat Ali , Mona Sahar

Health related issues have been regarded as one of the major problems which directly impact quality of life of an individual and development of the nation. Healthy population is attractive in all countries and healthcare is the one of the most widely concerned topic in research. The objective of study is to introduce a system through which people can diagnose and treat their minor illness such as cold or diarrhea. In this paper, a virtual general physician system approach is proposed using artificial intelligence. K-Nearest neighbor algorithm which is a part of artificial intelligence is used for disease diagnosing. This virtual general physician system can diagnose the diseases based on symptoms. It collects the symptoms from patient in the form of Yes or No. Four categories can be diagnosed by the systems which include Respiratory Tract/Viral infections, Gastrointestinal Tract/Stomach infections, Fever, Headache. Each category include some diseases which the system can detect or diagnose like in Viral infections (Flu, Tonsillitis, Cold and Pneumonia), Respiratory infections (Acute Diarrhea, Dysentery, Food Poisoning and Gastroenteritis), Fevers (Dengue, Malaria, Viral and Chikungunya) and Headaches (Migraine and Cluster Headache). The goal of this system is to assist patients get their treatment without going to the clinic and to reduce the doctor's effort, time and working.

15

Ionela Maniu , George Maniu , Gabriela Visa , Raluca Costea , Bogdan Neamtu

This study aims to present a possible approach to identify the most common combinations of possible risk factors for the outcomes following neonatal seizures. First, we extract important predictor variables from the published studies featuring aspects regarding neurological outcomes in the context of neonatal seizure. Then, we used association rules to build prediction models to determine associations of risk factors which are frequently identified in real-data / evidence based researches. A total of 15 studies and 14 variables were included to identify frequent patterns and generating association rules processe. We searched for accurate and valuable interrelationships between various risk factors. The FP-Growth algorithm generated different itemsets with the largest including four parameters: electroencephalography (EEG), seizures semiology (SO), aetiology (ET), birthweight (BW), with support 0.200. The insights regarding our results may help in creating evidence-based prevention programmes enhancing existing algorithms for diagnosis and treatment of neonatal seizure outcomes.

16

Zehra Altinay , Fahriye Altinay , Ebba Ossianilsson , Cengiz Hakan Aydin

Transition from traditional learning to open up education, the equality, openness and access has been reached for all learners without any time and distance limitations. Although this transition happens all around to world to underline equality in learning, the principles of online pedagogy and restructure on pedagogical and organizational levels come into the consideration. Access, openness and the equality for learning confirm the essence of active dialogue and engagement of learners to enrich transferable skills within the life. Higher education institutions turn attention on massive open online courses (MOOCs) as part of the transformation in education by focusing on innovation and strategic opportunity in education. The literature has pointed out that MOOCs are providing educational opportunities for lifelong learners and become solution for inclusion in learning. While engaging online learning process, student support is the crucial element to provide active participation and match learners' needs and expectations during the process. Within a framework of online pedagogy, learner development is challenging pattern and heart of the online practices which mainly three components have been underlined: (1) student support, (2) institutional support, and (3) teaching learning process including assessment as learning procedure in higher education. This study aims to provide an example of open resources education course for orthopedically disabled learners which online training course supports learners and their families for their professional development within a frame of counseling and guidance. The study is significant to underline the principles of online pedagogy within the process and enrich abilities of learners including family members in particular contents. Furthermore, the study shows how open education resources could be motivation for social learning within the life as part of the life-long learning philosophy.   In addition to that, it contributes to underline the success of effective pedagogy in online context for learners with disabilities.

17

Ercan Özen , N. Serap Vurur , Simon Grima

There are many factors that influence investor behaviour. One of them is interest rates applied by commercial banks. The aim of this study is to investigate whether changes in interest rates have an impact on the Turkish deposit investor's behaviour and to determine whether interest rates are the cause of deposit volume changes or not. For this purpose, deposit interest rates and monthly deposit volume data in the Turkish banking system for the period 2012 and 2018 was used. The data was tested using time series analysis. The Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) test was used to determine if the series is stationary and the Toda-Yamamoto Causality test was used to reveal the causality between the two data streams. Findings show that there is a causality between interest rates and deposit volume. This is in the line with McKinnon-Shaw's Theory, suggesting that the investors increase their deposit investments when interest rates rise. These findings offer important implications for policy makers.