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Continuous cardiac monitoring has been increasingly adopted to prevent heart diseases, especially the case of Chagas disease, a chronic condition that can degrade the heart condition, leading to sudden cardiac death. Unfortunately, a common challenge for these systems is the low-quality and high level of noise in ECG signal collection. Also, generic techniques to assess the ECG quality can discard useful information in these so-called chagasic ECG signals. To mitigate this issue, this work proposes a 1D CNN network to assess the quality of the ECG signal for chagasic patients and compare it to the state of art techniques. Segments of 10 s were extracted from 200 1-lead ECG Holter signals. Different feature extractions were considered such as morphological fiducial points, interval duration, and statistical features, aiming to classify 400 segments into four signal quality types: Acceptable ECG, Non-ECG, Wandering Baseline (WB), and AC Interference (ACI) segments. The proposed CNN architecture achieves a $$0.90 \pm 0.02$$accuracy in the multi-classification experiment and also $$0.94 \pm 0.01$$when considering only acceptable ECG against the other three classes. Also, we presented a complementary experiment showing that, after removing noisy segments, we improved morphological recognition (based on QRS wave) by 33% of the entire ECG data. The proposed noise detector may be applied as a useful tool for pre-processing chagasic ECG signals.

Following the World Health Organization proclaims a pandemic due to a disease that originated in China and advances rapidly across the globe, studies to predict the behavior of epidemics have become increasingly popular, mainly related to COVID-19. The critical point of these studies is to discuss the disease's behavior and the progression of the virus's natural course. However, the prediction of the actual number of infected people has proved to be a difficult task, due to a wide range of factors, such as mass testing, social isolation, underreporting of cases, among others. Therefore, the objective of this work is to understand the behavior of COVID-19 in the state of Ceará to forecast the total number of infected people and to aid in government decisions to control the outbreak of the virus and minimize social impacts and economics caused by the pandemic. So, to understand the behavior of COVID-19, this work discusses some forecast techniques using machine learning, logistic regression, filters, and epidemiologic models. Also, this work brings a new approach to the problem, bringing together data from Ceará with those from China, generating a hybrid dataset, and providing promising results. Finally, this work still compares the different approaches and techniques presented, opening opportunities for future discussions on the topic. The study obtains predictions with R2 score of 0.99 to short-term predictions and 0.93 to long-term predictions.

There are several techniques to support simulation of time series behavior. In this chapter, the approach will be based on the Composite Monte Carlo (CMC) simulation method. This method is able to model future outcomes of time series under analysis from the available data. The establishment of multiple correlations and causality between the data allows modeling the variables and probabilistic distributions and subsequently obtaining also probabilistic results for time series forecasting. To improve the predictor efficiency, computational intelligence techniques are proposed, including a fuzzy inference system and an Artificial Neural Network architecture. This type of model is suitable to be considered not only for the disease monitoring and compartmental classes, but also for managerial data such as clinical resources, medical and health team allocation, and bed management, which are data related to complex decision-making challenges.

This chapter explores Quality of Work Life (QWL) in Macau. We investigate the meanings and importance of QWL and its implications in terms of happiness and business performance. Although QWL is central to people’s lives, research on this topic is still in its infancy in Macau. Our interviews revealed three salient themes of QWL: Work context, the perceived benefits and demands of the job; Organization, mainly work environment and factors within the organizational context mediating QWL; and the implications of QWL on overall living and happiness.

At the beginning of 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) started a coordinated global effort to counterattack the potential exponential spread of the SARS-Cov2 virus, responsible for the coronavirus disease, officially named COVID-19. This comprehensive initiative included a research roadmap published in March 2020, including nine dimensions, from epidemiological research to diagnostic tools and vaccine development. With an unprecedented case, the areas of study related to the pandemic received funds and strong attention from different research communities (universities, government, industry, etc.), resulting in an exponential increase in the number of publications and results achieved in such a small window of time. Outstanding research cooperation projects were implemented during the outbreak, and innovative technologies were developed and improved significantly. Clinical and laboratory processes were improved, while managerial personnel were supported by a countless number of models and computational tools for the decision-making process. This chapter aims to introduce an overview of this favorable scenario and highlight a necessary discussion about ethical issues in research related to the COVID-19 and the challenge of low-quality research, focusing only on the publication of techniques and approaches with limited scientific evidence or even practical application. A legacy of lessons learned from this unique period of human history should influence and guide the scientific and industrial communities for the future.

The use of computational tools for medical image processing are promising tools to effectively detect COVID-19 as an alternative to expensive and time-consuming RT-PCR tests. For this specific task, CXR (Chest X-Ray) and CCT (Chest CT Scans) are the most common examinations to support diagnosis through radiology analysis. With these images, it is possible to support diagnosis and determine the disease’s severity stage. Computerized COVID-19 quantification and evaluation require an efficient segmentation process. Essential tasks for automatic segmentation tools are precisely identifying the lungs, lobes, bronchopulmonary segments, and infected regions or lesions. Segmented areas can provide handcrafted or self-learned diagnostic criteria for various applications. This Chapter presents different techniques applied for Chest CT Scans segmentation, considering the state of the art of UNet networks to segment COVID-19 CT scans and a segmentation experiment for network evaluation. Along 200 epochs, a dice coefficient of 0.83 was obtained.

The global pandemic triggered by the Corona Virus Disease firstly detected in 2019 (COVID-19), entered the fourth year with many unknown aspects that need to be continuously studied by the medical and academic communities. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), until January 2023, more than 650 million cases were officially accounted (with probably much more non tested cases) with 6,656,601 deaths officially linked to the COVID-19 as plausible root cause. In this Chapter, an overview of some relevant technical aspects related to the COVID-19 pandemic is presented, divided in three parts. First, the advances are highlighted, including the development of new technologies in different areas such as medical devices, vaccines, and computerized system for medical support. Second, the focus is on relevant challenges, including the discussion on how computerized diagnostic supporting systems based on Artificial Intelligence are in fact ready to effectively help on clinical processes, from the perspective of the model proposed by NASA, Technology Readiness Levels (TRL). Finally, two trends are presented with increased necessity of computerized systems to deal with the Long Covid and the interest on Precision Medicine digital tools. Analyzing these three aspects (advances, challenges, and trends) may provide a broader understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the development of Computerized Diagnostic Support Systems.

The application of different tools for predicting COVID19 cases spreading has been widely considered during the pandemic. Comparing different approaches is essential to analyze performance and the practical support they can provide for the current pandemic management. This work proposes using the susceptible-exposed-asymptomatic but infectious-symptomatic and infectious-recovered-deceased (SEAIRD) model for different learning models. The first analysis considers an unsupervised prediction, based directly on the epidemiologic compartmental model. After that, two supervised learning models are considered integrating computational intelligence techniques and control engineering: the fuzzy-PID and the wavelet-ANN-PID models. The purpose is to compare different predictor strategies to validate a viable predictive control system for the COVID19 relevant epidemiologic time series. For each model, after setting the initial conditions for each parameter, the prediction performance is calculated based on the presented data. The use of PID controllers is justified to avoid divergence in the system when the learning process is conducted. The wavelet neural network solution is considered here because of its rapid convergence rate. The proposed solutions are dynamic and can be adjusted and corrected in real time, according to the output error. The results are presented in each subsection of the chapter.

The COVID-19 pandemic spread generated an urgent need for computational systems to model its behavior and support governments and healthcare teams to make proper decisions. There are not many cases of global pandemics in history, and the most recent one has unique characteristics, which are tightly connected to the current society’s lifestyle and beliefs, creating an environment of uncertainty. Because of that, the development of mathematical/computational models to forecast the pandemic behavior since its beginning, i.e., with a restricted amount of data collected, is necessary. This chapter focuses on the analysis of different data mining techniques to allow the pandemic prediction with a small amount of data. A case study is presented considering the data from Wuhan, the Chinese city where the virus was first detected, and the place where the major outbreak occurred. The PNN + CF method (Polynomial Neural Network with Corrective Feedback) is presented as the technique with the best prediction performance. This is a promising method that might be considered in future eventual waves of the current pandemic or event to have a suitable model for future epidemic outbreaks around the world.

This book offers an objective and dispassionate analysis of modern educational architecture allowing us to notice gaps. The fundamental question addressed is whether our education system will embrace knowledge-based society and have the foresight to better prepare future generations. If educators around the world step back for a moment, it is not difficult to notice that unanswered questions about education are looming everywhere. The existent academic literature on education is abundant and embracing. In consequence, one can ask why is this book necessary? Indeed, this book is the result of senior university professors sharing their learnings and anticipating the pivotal issues facing all education professionals. According to the United Nations, by 2050, 68% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas. This fact cannot be ignored as it is one of the drivers of the profile of the future students. The reasons to organize this publication are many, but among them three stand out which also function as the driving forces behind this project: (1) University professors teach future generations based on models grounded on knowledge advanced by past experiences; (2) The decisive requirement to understand the needs of the new generations of university millennial students; and (3) What are the critical challenges of global societies? "This book problematizes the issues concerning education, and its main contribution is to answer the need to rethink education, face contemporary challenges, and reorganize the way public policies address education. It critically analyses the challenges of global societies in a decentralized perspective, not only reflecting a western perspective of education and knowledge production. The project's originality comes from the contemporaneity of the topics covered, from the interdisciplinary perspective, and from the specific attention given to trends around education." —Cátia Miriam Costa, Researcher and Invited Assistant Professor, Centre for International Studies, Perfil Ciência

This book is a compilation of the best papers presented at the APEF 2019 conference which was held on 25th and 26th July 2019 at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront in Singapore. With a great number of submissions, it presents the latest research findings in economics and finance and discusses relevant issues in today's world. The book is a useful resource for readers who want access to economics, finance and business research focusing on the Asia-Pacific region.

This chapter describes an AUTO-ML strategy to detect COVID on chest X-rays utilizing Transfer Learning feature extraction and the AutoML TPOT framework in order to identify lung illnesses (such as COVID or pneumonia). MobileNet is a lightweight network that uses depthwise separable convolution to deepen the network while decreasing parameters and computation. AutoML is a revolutionary concept of automated machine learning (AML) that automates the process of building an ML pipeline inside a constrained computing framework. The term “AutoML” can mean a number of different things depending on context. AutoML has risen to prominence in both the business world and the academic community thanks to the ever-increasing capabilities of modern computers. Python Optimised ML Pipeline (TPOT) is a Python-based ML tool that optimizes pipeline efficiency via genetic programming. We use TPOT builds models for extracted MobileNet network features from COVID-19 image data. The f1-score of 0.79 classifies Normal, Viral Pneumonia, and Lung Opacity.