Predicting hospital outpatient volume using XGBoost: a machine learning approach

Globally, wind energy if properly harnessed, could serve as a source of energy generation in Africa. This study compared the performance of two Machine Learning (ML) algorithms (Linear regression and Random Forest) in predicting wind speed in five major cities in Africa (Yaoundé, Pretoria, Nairobi, Cairo and Abuja). Wind data were collected between January 1, 2000, and December 31, 2022, using the Solar Radiation Data Archive. The data preprocessing was carried out with 80% of the data used for training and 20% for validation. The performance of these ML algorithms was evaluated using Mean Square Error (MSE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) and coefficient of determination (R2). The result shows that Nairobi (3.814795 m/s) closely followed by Cairo (3.606453 m/s) has the highest mean wind speed while Yaoundé (1.090512 m/s) has the lowest. Based on the performance metrics used, the two Machine Learning algorithms were competitive. Still, the Linear Regression (LR) algorithm outperformed the Random Forest Algorithm in predicting wind speed in all the selected major African cities. In Yaoundé (RMSE = 0.3892, MAE= 0.3001, MAPE =0.5030), Pretoria (RMSE=1.2339, MAE=0.9480, MAPE=0.7450) Nairobi (RMSE= 0.4223, MAE =0.6499, MAPE =0.1872), Nairobi (RMSE=0.6499, MAE=0.5171, MAPE =0.1872), Cairo (RMSE =1.0909, MAE =0.8544, MAPE =0.3541) and Abuja (RMSE = 0.70245, MAE =0.5441, MAPE= 0.4515) the Linear regression algorithms was found to outperformed Random Forest Regression. Therefore, the Linear regression algorithm is more reliable in predicting wind speed compared with the Random Forest regression.

The nitrogen adsorption capacity is of great significance for the characterization of porous materials, carbon sequestration, and coalbed methane development. Essentially, this is a typical research scenario of solid-gas interface interaction in the broad field of interface science. Accurate prediction of adsorption volume had proven challenging due to the highly nonlinear relationship between coal rocks complex characteristics and adsorption behavior. This study investigated coal rocks of varying particle sizes. Based on low-temperature liquid nitrogen adsorption experimental data, the pore structure characteristics were systematically analyzed. Random Forest (RF) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) models were subsequently employed, in combination with four optimization algorithms (Sparrow Search Algorithm (SSA), Snake Optimization (SO), Chameleon Swarm Algorithm (CSA), and Northern Goshawk Optimization (NGO)), to predict nitrogen adsorption volume. The results demonstrated that optimized models, particularly those enhanced by NGO and CSA, outperformed alternative approaches. Compared with SVM, the RF model achieved superior prediction accuracy. Among optimization algorithms, the RF model enhanced by NGO/CSA exhibited the best performance, attaining a coefficient of determination (R2) value of 0.9804. Regarding validation set performance, the optimized RF model showed substantial improvements, with a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.1119, a mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 0.0545, a mean squared error (MSE) of 0.0389, and a root mean squared error (RMSE) of 0.1972. The R2 value of the optimal model on the validation set was improved by nearly 10% compared with the original RF model. Coal rock size constitutes a key predictive factor for nitrogen adsorption volume. 120 to 200 mesh exhibits the most significant influence. This research highlights the importance of particle size as a predictive factor and validates the effectiveness of integrating optimization algorithms with machine learning models for predicting nitrogen adsorption capacity in coal rocks. It also provides a novel quantitative method for the study of the interaction between solid and gas interfaces in interface science.

This article uses machine learning techniques as fuzzy and neuro-fuzzy ANFISs, to develop and compare prediction models capable of relating pregnant women’s exposure to air pollutants, such as Nitrogen Dioxide and Particulate Matter, the mother’s age, and the number of prenatal consultations to the incidence of premature birth. In the current literature, studies can be found that relate prematurity to the exposure of pregnant women to NO2, O3, and PM10; to Toluene and benzene, mainly in the window 5 to 10 days before birth; and to PM10 in the week before birth. Both models used logistic regression to quantify the effects of pollutants as a result of premature birth. Datasets from Brazil—Departamento de Informatica do Sistema Único de Saúde (DATASUS) and Companhia Ambiental do Estado de São Paulo (CETESB)—were used, covering the period from 2016 to 2018 and comprising women living in the city of São José dos Campos (SP), Brazil. In order to evaluate and compare the different techniques used, evaluation metrics were calculated, such as correlation (r), coefficient of determination (R2), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE), Mean Square Error (MSE), and Mean Absolute Error (MAE). These metrics are widely used in the literature due to their ability to evaluate the robustness and efficiency of prediction models. For the RMSE, MAPE, MSE, and MAE metrics, lower values indicate that prediction errors are smaller, demonstrating better model accuracy and confidence. In the case of (r) and R2, a positive and strong result indicates alignment and better performance between the real and predicted data. The neuro-fuzzy ANFIS model showed superior performance, with a correlation (r) of 0.59, R2 = 0.35, RMSE = 2.83, MAPE = 5.35%, MSE = 8.00, and MAE = 1.70, while the fuzzy model returned results of r = 0.20, R2 = 0.04, RMSE = 3.29, MSE = 10.81, MAPE = 6.67%, and MAE = 2.01. Therefore, the results from the ANFIS neuro-fuzzy system indicate greater prediction capacity and precision in relation to the fuzzy system. This superiority can be explained by integration with neural networks, allowing data learning and, consequently, more efficient modeling. In addition, the findings obtained in this study have potential for the formulation of public health policies aimed at reducing the number of premature births and promoting improvements in maternal and neonatal health.

As a link for energy transfer between the land and atmosphere in the terrestrial ecosystem, karst vegetation plays an important role. Karst vegetation is not only affected by environmental factors but also by intense human activities. The nonlinear characteristics of vegetation growth are induced by the interaction mechanism of these factors. Previous studies of this relationship were not comprehensive, and it is necessary to further explore it using a suitable method. In this study, we selected climate, human activities, topography, and soil texture as the response factors; a nonlinear relationship model between the karst normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and these factors was established by applying a back propagation neural network (BPNN), a radial basis function neural network (RBFNN), the random forest (RF) algorithm, and support vector regression (SVR); and then, the karst NDVI was predicted. The coefficient of determination (R2), mean square error (MSE), root mean square error (RMSE), and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of the obtained results were calculated, and the mean R2 values of the BPNN, RBFNN, RF, and SVR models were determined to be 0.77, 0.86, 0.89, and 0.91, respectively. Compared with the BPNN, RBFNN, and RF models, the SVR model had the lowest errors, with mean MSE, RMSE, and MAPE values of 0.001, 0.02, and 2.77, respectively. The results show that the BPNN, RBFNN, RF, and SVR models are within acceptable ranges for karst NDVI prediction, but the overall performance of the SVR model is the best, and it is more suitable for karst vegetation prediction.

Background:Syphilis remains a major public health concern in China. We aimed to construct an optimum model to forecast syphilis epidemic trends and provide effective precautionary measures for prevention and control.Methods:Data on the incidence of syphilis between 1982 and 2020 were obtained from the China Health Statistics Yearbook. An exponential smoothing model (ES model) and a BP neural network model were constructed, and on this basis, the ES-BP combination model was created. The prediction performance was assessed to compare the MAE (Mean Absolute Error), MSE (Mean Squared Error), MAPE (Mean Absolute Percentage Error), and RMSE (Root Mean Square Error).Results:The optimum ES model was Brown’s linear trend model, which had the lowest MAE and MAPE values, and its residual was a white noise sequence (P=0.359). The optimum BP neural network model had three layers with the number of nodes in the input, hidden, and output layers set to 5, 11, and 1, and the mean values of MAE, MSE, and RMSE by five-fold cross-validation were 1.519, 6.894, and 1.969, respectively. The ES-BP combination model had three layers, with model nodes 1, 4, and 1. The lowest mean values of MAE, MSE, and RMSE obtained by five-fold cross-validation were 1.265, 5.739, and 2.105, respectively.Conclusion:The ES, BP neural network, and ES-BP combination models can be used to predict syphilis incidence, but the prediction performance of the ES-BP combination model is better than that of a basic ES model and a basic BP neural network model.

Drought is a complex and frequently occurring natural hazard in many parts of the world. Therefore, accurate drought forecasting is essential to mitigate its adverse impacts. This research has inferred the implication and the appropriateness of the extreme learning machine (ELM) algorithm for drought forecasting. For numerical evaluation, time series data of the Standardized Precipitating Temperature Index (SPTI) are used for nine meteorological stations located in various climatological zones of Pakistan. To assess the performance of ELM, this research includes parallel inferences of multilayer perceptron (MLP) and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models. The performance of each model is assessed using root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), mean absolute percent error (MAPE), Kling‐Gupta efficiency (KGE), Willmott index (WI), and Karl Pearson’s correlation coefficient. Generally, graphical results illustrated an excellent performance of the ELM algorithm over MLP and ARIMA models. For training data of SPTI‐1, ELM’s best performance has observed at Chitral station (RMSE = 0.374, KGE = 0.838, WI = 0.960, MAE = 0.272, MAPE = 259.59, R = 0.93). For SPTI‐1 at Astore station, the numerical results are (RMSE = 0.688, KGE = 0.988, WI = 0.997, MAE = 0.798, MAPE = 247.35). The overall results indicate that the ELM outperformed by producing the smallest RMSE, MAE, and MAPE values and maximum values for KGE, WI, and correlation coefficient values at almost all the selected meteorological stations for (1, 3, 6, 9, and 12) month time scales. In summary, this research endorses the use of ELM for accurate drought forecasting.

Evaluation of artificial neurocomputing algorithms and their metacognitive robustness in predictive modeling of fuel consumption rates during tillage

Advances in industrial digital technologies have led to an increasing volume of data generated from industrial bioprocesses, which can be utilised within data-driven models (DDM). However, data volume and variability complications make developing models that captures the underlying biological nature of the bioprocesses challenging. In this study, a framework for developing data-driven models of bioprocesses is proposed and evaluated by modelling an industrial bioprocess, which treats industrial or agrifood wastewaters whilst simultaneously generating bioenergy. Six models were developed to predict the reduction in chemical oxygen demand from the wastewater by the bioprocess and statistically evaluated using both testing data (randomly partitioned data from the model development) and unseen data (new data not used during the model development). The statistical error metrics employed were the coefficient of determination (R2), root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE). The stacked neural network model was best able to model the bioprocess, having the highest accuracy on the testing data (R2: 0.98; RMSE: 1.29; MAE: 2.27; MAPE: 4.08) and the unseen data (R2: 0.82; RMSE: 2.57; MAE: 1.75; MAPE: 3.68). Data visualisation is used to observe (or confirm) whether new data points are within the model boundaries, helping to increase confidence in the model’s predictions on future data.

Tomatoes are among the world’s most significant vegetables, both in terms of production and consumption. Harvesting takes place in tomato production when the important quality attribute of total soluble solids content reaches its maximum possible level. Tomato total soluble solids content (TSS) is among the most crucial attribute parameters for assessing tomato quality and for tomato commercialization. Determination of total soluble solids content by conventional measurement methods is both destructive and time-consuming. Therefore, the tomato processing industry needs a rapid identification method to measure total soluble solids content (TSS). In this study, we aimed to estimate how much soluble solids there are in beef tomato fruit by Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) methods. The models were assessed using the Coefficient of Determination (R2), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) metrics. The training data set results of the MLR model established to estimate the amount of brix in tomato fruit, calculated as MAE: 0.2349, RMSE: 0.3048, R2: 0.8441, and MAPE: 5.5368, while, according to the ANN model, MAE: 0.0250, RMSE: 0.031, R2: 0.9982 and MAPE: 0.5814. According to the metric outcomes, the ANN-based model performed better in both the training and testing parts.

Energy-saving design is becoming a trending topic and top-priority over the past decades due to high energy costs, limited available resources and growing urban development. Buildings are alluded to as the major contributors of energy consumption and environmental emissions across the globe. This calls for the development of precise forecasting models of energy consumption and carbon emissions. Hence, this research paper harnesses the implementation of several contemporary metaheuristics to accurately project heating and cooling energy (HEN and CEN) in residential buildings. In this respect, black widow optimization, dandelion optimization, dingo optimization, sparrow search, and red-tailed hawk optimization are among the studied metaheuristics in this research study. The prediction accuracies of the developed models are assessed stepping on the measures of i) relative absolute error (RAE), ii) mean absolute error (MAE), iii) mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), iv) root mean squared error (RMSE) and v) Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE). It is shown that the developed red-tailed hawk optimization-based model succeeded in accomplishing the most precise results of HEN and CEN. In this context, it predicted HEN with RAE (0.201), MAE (1.838), MAPE (7.626%), RMSE (2.826), and NSE (0.921). Besides, it anticipated CEN with RAE (0.234), MAE (2.009), MAPE (7.519%), RMSE (3.246), and NSE (0.883). It can be argued that this research study could benefit architects and designers in creating more energy-efficient buildings at an early stage.

Compressive strength is an important mechanical property of high-strength concrete (HSC), but testing methods are usually uneconomical, time-consuming, and labor-intensive. To this end, in this paper, a long short-term memory (LSTM) model was proposed to predict the HSC compressive strength using 324 data sets with five input independent variables, namely water, cement, fine aggregate, coarse aggregate, and superplasticizer. The prediction results were compared with those of the conventional support vector regression (SVR) model using four metrics, root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), and correlation coefficient (R2). The results showed that the prediction accuracy and reliability of LSTM were higher with R2 = 0.997, RMSE = 0.508, MAE = 0.08, and MAPE = 0.653 compared to the evaluation metrics R2 = 0.973, RMSE = 1.595, MAE = 0.312, MAPE = 2.469 of the SVR model. The LSTM model is recommended for the pre-estimation of HSC compressive strength under a given mix ratio before the laboratory compression test. Additionally, the Shapley additive explanations (SHAP)-based approach was performed to analyze the relative importance and contribution of the input variables to the output compressive strength.

Nowadays , nonlinear time series and artificial neural networks (ANN) models are used for forecasting in the field of business, agriculture and soon. Recent studies have shown, ANN have been successfully used for forecasting of financial and agriculture data series The classical methods used for time series prediction like Box-Jenkins or ARIMA assumes that there is a linear relationship between inputs and outputs. ANN have more advantages that can approximate to model both linear and nonlinear structures in time series, they are not able to handling both structures equally well. The autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model and two ANN models namely, Radial basis function neural networks (RBFNN), and Elman recurrent neural networks (ERNN) methods were applied to Hyderabad airport traffic data. The data obtained for 15 years from 2002–2003 to 2016–2017 about domestic and international passenger of International Airport of Hyderabad, India. In this research paper, we compared the performances of ARIMA, RBFNN and ERNN were based on three measures: mean absolute error (MAE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), and root mean square error (RMSE). The results showed that RBFNN obtained the smallest MAE, MAPE and RMSE in both the modeling and forecasting processes. The performances of the three models ranked in ascending order were: ARIMA, ERNN and the RBFNN model. Keywords: T ime series, forecasting, artificial neural networks, ARIMA models, radial basis function neural networks, and Elman recurrent neural networks Cite this Article R. Ramakrishna, Berhe Aregay, Tewodros Gebregergs. The Comparison in Time Series Forecasting of Air Traffic Data by Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average Model, Radial Basis Function and Elman Recurrent Neural Networks. Research & Reviews: Journal of Statistics . 2018; 7(3): 75–90p.

<p>Accurate water level (WL) forecasting is important for water resources management and planning purposes in the Great Lakes. The objectives of this research are two-fold.  The first objective is to apply machine learning (ML) (i.e., random forest (RF) and support vector regression (SVR)) and hybrid convolutional neural network(CNN)-long-short term memory (LSTM) deep learning (DL) models for multi-step (i.e., one-, two- and three-monthly step ahead) WL forecasting in the Great Lakes (Michigan and Ontario). The second objective is to integrate the boundary corrected (BC) maximal overlap discrete wavelet transform (MODWT) with SVR, RF, and CNN-LSTM models to improve the performance of the individual models. By employing a BC-wavelet decomposition method, the ‘future data’ issue (i.e., data from the future that is not available), often overlooked in the literature and a major barrier to achieving realistic forecasting performance is overcome. </p><p>For Lakes Michigan and Ontario, 1212 monthly WL (m) records (spanning Jan 1918–Dec 2018) were used to develop the models. For the non-wavelet-based models (SVR, RF, and CNN-LSTM), candidate model inputs included the WL recorded over the previous 12 months.  For the BC-MODWT-based models (BC-MODWT-SVR, BC-MODWT-RF, and BC-MODWT-CNN-LSTM), the lagged input time series were decomposed into BC-wavelet and scaling coefficients by using different mother wavelets (Haar, Daubechies, Symlets, Fejer-Korovkin and Coiflets), filter lengths (from two up to 12) and decomposition levels (from one up to seven).  For each method (SVR, RF, and CNN-LSTM), mother wavelet, and decomposition level a model was generated.  For both wavelet- and non-wavelet-based models, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) method was used to select the most appropriate inputs to include in the proposed multi-step WL forecasting models.</p><p>The datasets were partitioned into calibration and validation subsets. After calibrating the models, various performance evaluation metrics, e.g., coefficient of determination (R<sup>2</sup>), root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square percentage error (RMSPE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient (NSC) were used to assess model accuracy.</p><p>Of the ML models, the SVR outperformed RF while the DL models outperformed the ML models for each forecast lead time (one-, two-, and three-step(s) ahead). Results from this case study indicate that not all wavelet families and decomposition levels perform equally and in some cases, the wavelet-based models do not improve performance over the non-wavelet-based models. However, the BC-MODWT-CNN-LSTM using suitable mother wavelets (e.g., Haar) outperforms the individual ML and BC-MODWT-ML-based models. More accurate forecasts were obtained for Lake Michigan although the performance in both Great Lakes was accurate. The outcomes of this research indicate that the BC-MODWT-CNN-LSTM model is a promising tool for generating accurate WL forecasts.</p>

Backbreak is a rock fracture problem that exceeds the limits of the last row of holes in an explosion operation. Excessive backbreak increases operational costs and also poses a threat to mine safety. In this regard, a new hybrid intelligence approach based on random forest (RF) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) is proposed for predicting backbreak with high accuracy to reduce the unsolicited phenomenon induced by backbreak in open-pit blasting. A data set of 234 samples with six input parameters including special drilling (SD), spacing (S), burden (B), hole length (L), stemming (T) and powder factor (PF) and one output parameter backbreak (BB) is set up in this study. Seven input combinations (one with six parameters, six with five parameters) are built to generate the optimal prediction model. The PSO algorithm is integrated with the RF algorithm to find the optimal hyper-parameters of each model and the fitness function, which is the mean absolute error (MAE) of ten cross-validations. The performance capacities of the optimal models are assessed using MAE, root-mean-square error (RMSE), Pearson correlation coefficient (R2) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE). Findings demonstrated that the PSO–RF model combining L–S–B–T–PF with MAE of 0.0132 and 0.0568, RMSE of 0.0811 and 0.1686, R2 of 0.9990 and 0.9961 and MAPE of 0.0027 and 0.0116 in training and testing phases, respectively, has optimal prediction performance. The optimal PSO–RF models were compared with the classical artificial neural network, RF, genetic programming, support vector machine and convolutional neural network models and show that the PSO–RF model has superiority in predicting backbreak. The Gini index of each input variable has also been calculated in the RF model, which was 31.2 (L), 23.1 (S), 27.4 (B), 36.6 (T), 23.4 (PF) and 16.9 (SD), respectively.

Evaluation of large language models for carbohydrate counting in type 1 diabetes mellitus: a comparative study with patient estimations.