A Hybrid Ensemble Model for Corporate Bankruptcy Prediction Based on Feature Engineering Method

COVID-19 is a pandemic that causes a high rate of spread and Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). Severe pneumonia in infected individuals has resulted in too many patients being admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). This has placed unprecedented pressure on health systems by exceeding capacities. It is essential to detect the prognosis of this disease so that the health systems can remain active and the conditions of the patients who need to be hospitalized in the ICU do not become critical. In this study, COVID-19 prognosis was detected by using ICU admission (COVID-19 SEVERITY) and COVID-19 related death (COVID- 19 MORTALITY) datasets with Machine Learning (ML) methods. The missing data of the datasets were filled with K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), and Min-Max normalization was performed. Datasets were divided three times into training and test sets, and the data were balanced with the Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique (SMOTE). Then, classification was carried out using Ensemble Learning (EL) methods. For COVID-19 SEVERITY and COVID-19 MORTALITY, 89.54% and 97.25% accuracy were achieved with the Adaboost classifier, respectively. Successful and rapid COVID-19 prognosis detection with ML methods will help to use the ICU more efficiently and relieve the pressure on health systems.

Nowadays, information technology especially machine learning has been used to evaluate the feasibility of debtors. One of the challenges in this classification model is the occurrence of imbalanced datasets, especially in the German Credit Dataset. Another challenge is developing an optimal model for evaluating debtor eligibility. Based on these challenges, this study aims to develop an optimal model for evaluating debtor eligibility on the German Credit Dataset, using the decision trees, k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN) and Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique (SMOTE). SMOTE and k-NN is used to overcome challenges regarding imbalanced datasets. While the decision tree are applied to produce a debtor classification model. In general, the steps taken are preparing datasets, pre-processing data, dividing datasets, oversampling with SMOTE, and classification models using decision trees, and testing. Model performance evaluation is represented by accuracy values obtained from the confusion matrix and area under curve (AUC) values generated by the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC). Based on the tests that have been carried out, the best accuracy value in the test is obtained at 73.00% and the AUC value is 0.708, in parameters k = 3 and Max-Depth = 25. Based on the analysis produced, the proposed model can improve performance compared to if the dataset is not applied SMOTE.

Chronic kidney failure is a serious disease that can lead to death if not detected and treated early. This study aims to predict the risk of death in hospitalized chronic kidney failure patients using ensemble machine learning methods, specifically hard-voting and soft-voting. The voting classifier is used to combine predictions from several classification models, where hard-voting makes decisions based on the majority vote, and soft-voting considers the average prediction probability. However, with imbalanced data, classification models tend to be biased toward the majority class. To address this, the synthetic minority oversampling technique (SMOTE) is applied to balance the class distribution. The model's performance is evaluated using accuracy, precision, and specificity metrics. The results of the study show that the hard-voting classifier provided the best performance with an accuracy of 85,156%, precision of 86,726%, and specificity of 89,908%, outperforming the soft-voting classifier. The use of SMOTE proved to improve prediction for the minority class, which is crucial in detecting high-risk patients who may die during hospitalization. This approach is expected to aid in the early detection and better management of hospitalized chronic kidney failure patients, potentially reducing mortality rates from this disease.

Zero-day attacks pose a persistent threat to computing infrastructure by exploiting previously unknown software vulnerabilities that evade traditional signature-based network intrusion detection systems (NIDSs). To address this limitation, machine learning (ML) techniques offer a promising approach for enhancing anomaly detection in network traffic. This study evaluates several ML models on a labeled network traffic dataset, with a focus on zero-day attack detection. Ensemble learning methods, particularly eXtreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), achieved perfect classification, identifying all 6231 zero-day instances without false positives and maintaining efficient training and prediction times. While classical support vector machines (SVMs) performed modestly at 64% accuracy, their performance improved to 98% with the use of the borderline synthetic minority oversampling technique (SMOTE) and SMOTE + edited nearest neighbours (SMOTEENN). To explore quantum-enhanced alternatives, a quantum SVM (QSVM) is implemented using three-qubit and four-qubit quantum circuits simulated on the aer_simulator_statevector. The QSVM achieved high accuracy (99.89%) and strong F1-scores (98.95%), indicating that nonlinear quantum feature maps (QFMs) can increase sensitivity to zero-day exploit patterns. Unlike prior work that applies standard quantum kernels, this study introduces a parameterised quantum feature encoding scheme, where each classical feature is mapped using a nonlinear function tuned by a set of learnable parameters. Additionally, a sparse entanglement topology is derived from mutual information between features, ensuring a compact and data-adaptive quantum circuit that aligns with the resource constraints of noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices. Our contribution lies in formalising a quantum circuit design that enables scalable, expressive, and generalisable quantum architectures tailored for zero-day attack detection. This extends beyond conventional usage of QSVMs by offering a principled approach to quantum circuit construction for cybersecurity. While these findings are obtained via noiseless simulation, they provide a theoretical proof of concept for the viability of quantum ML (QML) in network security. Future work should target real quantum hardware execution and adaptive sampling techniques to assess robustness under decoherence, gate errors, and dynamic threat environments.

Extraction of insulators from power corridors is crucial for the construction of smart grids. Recent significant progress has been made in transmission line inspection through the application of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Light Detection and Ranging (UAV LiDAR) systems, which can efficiently capture three-dimensional structural information. However, accurately extracting insulator components from massive point clouds remains challenging due to their high similarity in shape with surrounding pylons and power lines, as well as the inherent data imbalance issues. After a series of preprocessing steps, numerous multi-scale geometric features are designed and fused to precisely characterize insulators. Considering the issue of data imbalance due to the limited number of insulator samples, an Anomaly-Guided Progressively Balanced Ensemble (APE) Learning method is presented, using anomaly scores to achieve a good balance. Finally, the initial results are refined by incorporating spatial context information. The proposed delicate features and ensemble learning method were verified to be suitable for small insulator target extraction (including tangent insulators and tension insulators of different pylon types), achieving average precision, recall, and F1 scores of up to 95%. The results can promote intelligent inspection and renovation of large-scale power corridors.

The endeavor to detect human activities and behaviors is targeted as a real-time detection mechanism that tends to predict the form of human motions and actions. Though sensors like accelerometer and gyroscopes are noticeable in human motion detection, categorizing unique and individual human gestures require software-based assistance. With the widespread implementation of machine learning algorithms, human actions can be distinguished into multiple classes. Several state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms can be applied to this specified field which will give suitable outcomes, yet due to the bulk of the dataset, complexity can be made apparent, which will reduce the efficiency of the model. In our proposed research, ensemble learning methods have been established by assembling several trained and tuned machine learning models. The adopted dataset for the model has been preprocessed through PCA (principal component analysis), SMOTE oversampling (synthetic minority oversampling technique), and K-means clustering, which reduced the dataset to essentials, keeping the weight of the features intact and reducing complexity. Maximum accuracy of 99.36% was achieved from both stacking and voting ensemble methods.

Material decomposition allows the reconstruction of material-specific images in spectral X-ray imaging, which requires efficient decomposition models. Due to the presence of nonideal effects in X-ray imaging systems, it is difficult to explicitly estimate the imaging systems for material decomposition tasks. As an alternative to previous empirical material decomposition methods, we investigated material decomposition using ensemble learning methods in this paper. Three ensemble methods with two decision trees as the base learning algorithms were investigated to perform material decomposition in both simulation and experiment. The results were quantitatively evaluated for comparison studies. In general, the results demonstrate that the proposed ensemble learning methods often outperform their base learning algorithms, and rarely reduce performance. Compared to the reference methods and its base learning algorithm, the performance of the Boosting method using REPTree with regularization is improved by over 42% and 13%, respectively, in the noiseless simulated scenario of the XCAT phantom with cardiac and respiratory motion, and over 36% and 17%, respectively, in the noisy scenario. Simultaneously, the performance is improved by over 9% and 8%, respectively, in the original torso phantom scenario, and over 13% and 12%, respectively, in the denoising scenario. The results indicate that ensemble learning with gradient descent optimization algorithms is more appropriate for material decomposition tasks. Further studies are encouraged to facilitate future efforts toward clinical applications.

Corrigendum to ‘Deep learning improves taphonomic resolution: high accuracy in differentiating tooth marks made by lions and jaguars'

With the booming development of sports events, the demand for athlete performance evaluation has begun to increase. The visualization analysis of basketball player data is significant for the analysis of individual value and potential of athletes. However, existing data analysis methods have problems such as insufficient efficiency, low accuracy, and insufficient attention to the inherent attributes of sports events. Therefore, to better analyze the composition data of basketball team members, the study combines Synthetic Minority Over-Sampling Technique (SMOTE) and Random under-sampling techniques to handle the imbalance in the athlete dataset, and then uses Random Forest (RF) to extract data features. Based on this data processing, a ensemble learning method based on SMOTE, Random under-sampling, and RF (SRR)-Voting is proposed to predict athlete performance. The results demonstrated that in the player dataset analysis, the Precision, Recall, and F1 of the research method were 0.9486, 0.9588, and 0.9752, which were superior to comparative methods. The proposed method had a ROC value of 0.94 and a fitting value of 0.17, indicating better fitting performance. This indicates that the designed player composition data visualization analysis method based on ensemble learning can effectively analyze the various attribute data of competitive players and ordinary players, providing effective data support for the comprehensive quality analysis of competitive players.

This study considers the significance of drones in various civilian applications, emphasizing battery-operated drones and their advantages and limitations, and highlights the importance of energy consumption, battery capacity, and the state of health of batteries in ensuring efficient drone operation and endurance. It also describes a robust testing methodology used to determine battery SoH accurately, considering discharge rates and using machine learning algorithms for analysis. Machine learning techniques, including classical regression models and Ensemble Learning methods, were developed and calibrated using experimental UAV data to predict SoH accurately. Evaluation metrics such as Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) and Mean Absolute Error (MAE) assess model performance, highlighting the balance between model complexity and generalization. The results demonstrated improved SoH predictions with machine learning models, though complexities may lead to overfitting challenges. The transition from simpler regression models to intricate Ensemble Learning methods is meticulously described, including an assessment of each model’s strengths and limitations. Among the Ensemble Learning methods, Bagging, GBR, XGBoost, LightGBM, and stacking were studied. The stacking technique demonstrated promising results: for Flight 92 an RMSE of 0.03% and an MAE of 1.64% were observed, while for Flight 129 the RMSE was 0.66% and the MAE stood at 1.46%.

The area of corporate bankruptcy prediction attains high economic importance, as it affects many stakeholders. The prediction of corporate bankruptcy has been extensively studied in economics, accounting and decision sciences over the past two decades. The corporate bankruptcy prediction has been a matter of talk among academic literature and professional researchers throughout the world. Different traditional approaches were suggested based on hypothesis testing and statistical modeling. Therefore, the primary purpose of the research is to come up with a model that can estimate the probability of corporate bankruptcy by evaluating its occurrence of failure using different machine learning models. As the dataset was not well prepared and contains missing values, various data mining and data pre-processing techniques were utilized for data preparation. Within this research, the task of resolving the issues induced by the imbalance between the two classes is approached by applying different data balancing techniques. We address the problem of imbalanced data with the random undersampling and Synthetic Minority Over Sampling Technique (SMOTE). We used five machine learning models (support vector machine, J48 decision tree, Logistic model tree, random forest and decision forest) to predict corporate bankruptcy earlier to the occurrence. We use data from 2009 to 2013 on Poland manufacturing corporates and selected the 64 financial indicators to be broken down. The main finding of the study is a significant improvement in predictive accuracy using machine learning techniques. We also include other economic indicators ratios, along with Altman’s Z-score variables related to profitability, liquidity, leverage and solvency (short/long term) to propose an efficient model. Machine learning models give better results while balancing the data through SMOTE as compared to random undersampling. The machine learning technique related to decision forest led to 99% accuracy, whereas support vector machine (SVM), J48 decision tree, Logistic Model Tree (LMT) and Random Forest (RF) led to 92%, 92.3%, 93.8% and 98.7% accuracy, respectively, with all predictive financial indicators. We find that the decision forest outperforms the other techniques and previous techniques discussed in the literature. The proposed method is also deployed on the web to assist regulators, investors, creditors and scholars to predict corporate bankruptcy.

This chapter introduces ensemble learning and provides an overview of ensemble methods for class imbalance learning (CIL). Ensemble methods use a set of classifiers to make predictions. The generalization ability of an ensemble is usually much stronger than that of the individual ensemble members. In CIL, ensemble methods are broadly used to further improve the existing methods or help design brand new ones. According to how the base learners are generated, ensemble methods can be roughly categorized into two paradigms: parallel ensemble methods and sequential ensemble methods. According to what ensemble method is involved, ensemble methods for CIL can be roughly categorized into Bagging-style methods, boosting-based methods, hybrid ensemble methods, and other methods. Most of the ensemble methods for CIL deal with binary class problems. How to use ensemble learning to help multiclass problems is an interesting direction.

Estimation of time dependent scour depth around circular bridge piers: Application of ensemble machine learning methods

BackgroundPiriform aperture is an anatomical region that has been very little studied in terms of sex estimation. Ensemble learning is similarly an unstudied area in sex estimation from human skeletal remains. In this study, it was aimed to perform sex estimation by using the anthropometric measurements of piriform aperture obtained by computed tomography and 3D reconstruction techniques, discriminant function analysis, machine learning algorithms, and ensemble learning method. A total of 442 cases, 226 male and 216 female, aged between 21 and 89 were included in the study. After sex estimation was performed using discriminant analysis, K-nearest neighbor, Gaussian Naive Bayes, multilayer perceptron neural networks, decision trees, support vector machines, and random forest algorithms, a random forest model that accepted the results of these seven methods as predictors was created, and sex estimation was performed again with ensemble learning.ResultsSex prediction results were obtained with a maximum accuracy of 76.5% with discriminant analysis, 84.2% with machine learning algorithms, and 85.7% with the ensemble learning method.ConclusionsIn conclusion, it was seen that piriform aperture showed moderate sexual dimorphism. Sex estimation results could be further improved with machine learning algorithms and especially with the ensemble learning method.

The evolution of Electronic Health Records (EHR) has facilitated comprehensive patient record-keeping, enhancing healthcare delivery and decision-making processes. Despite these advancements, analyzing EHR data using ensemble machine learning methods poses unique challenges. These challenges include data dimensionality, imbalanced class distributions, and the need for effective hyperparameter tuning to optimize model performance. The study conducted a thorough comparative analysis of various ensemble machine learning (EML) models using Electronic Health Record (EHR) datasets. After addressing data imbalance and reducing dimensionality, the accuracy of the EML models showed significant improvement. Notably, the Gradient Boosting Machine (GBM) and CatBoost models exhibited superior performance with an accuracy of 73%, achieved through experiments involving dimensionality reduction and handling of imbalanced data. Furthermore, optimization techniques such as Grid Search and Random Search were employed to enhance the EML models. The results of model optimization revealed that the GBM + Random Search model performed the best, achieving an accuracy of 74%, followed by the XGBoost + Grid Search model with an accuracy of 73%. The GBM model also excelled in distinguishing between positive and negative classes, boasting the highest Area under Curve (AUC) value of 0.78, indicative of its superior classification capabilities compared to other models. This study emphasizes the significance of incorporating cutting-edge EML techniques into clinical workflows and emphasizes the revolutionary potential of GBM in classification modeling for patient severity conditions. Future research should focus on deep learning (DL) applications and the integration of these models.