Information and communication technology considerably impacts students’ engagement with self-regulated learning (SRL) methodologies. However, there has been a lack of any comprehensive visualization of the SRL process, making it difficult to interpret student behaviors. To address this issue, the REXX platform is used in this study to visualize SRL outputs. While REXX has previously been used to present educational metrics more comprehensively and personally in the learning management system (LMS) framework, research on understanding student behavior through the learning analytics platform (LAP) remains unexplored. This study focused on transforming REXX from an LMS to an LAP to capture detailed features of individual student profiles, thereby reflecting specific SRL characteristics. We collected profile data from 215 high school students via an e-learning web application and used K-means clustering to categorize their behaviors. The method yielded a Davies–-Bouldin score of 0.9718, a silhouette score of 0.54, and a Calinski–Harabasz score of 124.1805. This study addresses both teaching and learning strategies for educators and students. It represents a considerable step toward understanding student behavior in the e-learning environment. However, we recommend integrating machine learning models to enhance automated learning strategies alongside this baseline framework.

Plant diseases and nutrient deficiencies pose significant challenges to food production, making it crucial to identify them accurately and quickly, as their symptoms can often be similar. Prompt and precise detection is essential to implement effective measures that prevent crop losses. While computer vision techniques have demonstrated effectiveness in classification, their high computational demands have limited their adoption by farmers in the field. In this study, a Corn leaf Nutrition Deficiency and Disease network (CNDD-net) is designed based on the ResNet framework, incorporating a depth-wise separable convolution and a convolutional block attention module for a lightweight, high-performance model. The models underwent training, validation, and testing using a corn leaf nutrition deficiencies and diseases data set with seven classes implementing five-fold cross-validation. The performance of the models is assessed using average accuracy, GFLOPs, number of parameters, and model size. Following experiments involving the manipulation of the position of the attention module, the number of feature maps, and the depth of the network, the model was finalised. The CNDD-net design has a model size of 0.24 MB with 48,041 parameters and a GFLOPs of 0.18, providing an average accuracy of 96.71%. Compared to conventional models, this research demonstrates optimal performance and computational complexity, offering an efficient, lightweight solution to identify nutritional deficiencies and diseases of corn leaf, thus supporting sustainable agriculture.

This study introduces a novel method for estimating floc conditions in sludge dewatering plants by employing image analysis and automatic control of polymer dosage. While previous research has focused on drinking water treatment plants, few reports address polymer dosage optimization using image analysis in sludge dewatering plants. The challenge lies in the high sludge dry solids hindering individual floc recognition due to overlap. The study aims to estimate floc conditions by focusing on gap areas between flocs and implementing automatic polymer dosage control accordingly. The proposed method uses images from an Internet Protocol camera and semantic segmentation to identify the floc gap area. For validation of the estimation method, variations of over and under polymer dosage scenarios were investigated and compared with commonly used floc area methods. The findings indicate that the gap area estimation effectively reproduces the theory of polymer cohesion. Automatic polymer dosage control based on this method demonstrates stable operation in both scenarios. Notably, automatic control outperformed manual operation during continuous operation, resulting in a significant reduction in polymer dosage and a notable increase in heating efficiency compared to manual control. This study presents an efficient approach to optimize polymer dosage in sludge dewatering plants, utilizing image analysis for real-time monitoring and control. By focusing on the gap area between flocs, the method enhances accuracy in estimating floc conditions, thereby improving overall dewatering efficiency. The findings highlight the practical benefits of implementing automatic control systems in sludge treatment plants, potentially reducing costs and environmental impact.

Accurately identifying individual wildlife is critical to effective species management and conservation efforts. However, it becomes particularly challenging when distinctive features, such as spot shape and size, serve as primary discriminators, as in the case of Sika deer. To address this challenge, we employed four different Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) base models (EfficientNetB7, VGG19, ResNet152, Inception_v3) within a Siamese Network Architecture that used triplet loss functions for the identification and re-identification of Sika deer. Subsequently, we then determined the best-performing model based on its ability to capture discriminative features. From this model, we extracted embeddings representing the learned features. We then applied a Support Vector Machine (SVM) to these embeddings to classify individual Sika deer. We analyzed 5169 image datasets consisting of images of seven individual Sika deers captured with three camera traps deployed on farmland in Hokkaido, Japan, for over 60 days. During our analysis, ResNet152 performed exceptionally well, achieving a training accuracy of 0.97, and a validation accuracy of 0.96, with mAP scores for the training and validation datasets of 0.97 and 0.96, respectively. We extracted 128 dimensional embeddings of ResNet152 and performed Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for dimensionality reduction. PCA1 and PCA2, which together accounted for over 80% of the variance collectively, were selected for subsequent SVM analysis. Utilizing the Radial Basis Function (RBF) kernel, which yielded a cross-validation score of 0.96, proved to be most suitable for our research. Hyperparameter optimization using the GridSearchCV library resulted in a gamma value of 10 and C value of 0.001. The OneVsRest SVM classifier achieved an impressive overall accuracy of 0.97 and 0.96, respectively, for the training and validation datasets. This study presents a precise model for identifying individual Sika deer using images and video frames, which can be replicated for other species with unique patterns, thereby assisting conservationists and researchers in effectively monitoring and protecting the species.

A multi-objective evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition (MOEA/D) serves as a robust framework for addressing multi-objective optimization problems (MOPs). However, it is widely recognized that the applicability of a fixed offspring-generating strategy in MOEA/D can be limited, despite its foundation in the MOEA/D methodology. Consequently, hybrid algorithms have gained popularity in recent years. This study proposes a novel hyper-heuristic approach that integrates the estimation of distribution (ED) and crossover (CX) strategies into the MOEA/D framework based on the view of successful replacement rate (SSR) and attempts to explain the potential reasons for the advantages of hybrid algorithms. The proposed approach dynamically switches from the differential evolution (DE) operator to the covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMA-ES) operator. Simultaneously, certain subproblems in the neighbourhood denoted as $B\left(i\right)$ employ the Improved Differential Evolution (IDE) operator to generate new individuals for balancing the high evaluation costs associated with CMA-ES. Numerical experiments unequivocally demonstrate that the suggested approach offers distinct advantages when applied to a three-objective test suite. These experiments also validate a significant enhancement in the efficiency (SRR) of the DE operator within this context. The perspectives and experimental findings, with a focus on the Success Rate Ratio (SRR), have the potential to provide valuable insights and inspire further research in related domains.

This study proposes practical methods for estimating the moisture content of sludge, represented by the cake moisture, in the filter press dewatering process. Because the cake moisture and filtrate volume are difficult to measure directly, the proposed approaches utilize indirectly measurable data, including drain outlet images and the differential pressure during the compression phase. By analyzing the correlations between these parameters and the cake moisture, estimation models were developed using mathematical approximations. In the image-based approach, image processing techniques were applied to isolate the dewatered region, and the relationship between the pixel count and actual filtrate volume was analyzed to estimate the cake moisture based on the calculated filtrate volume per minute. In the pressure-based approach, two models were proposed: one that directly estimates the cake moisture from the differential pressure, and another that models the relationship among the differential pressure, filtrate volume, and cake moisture. Unlike complex machine learning techniques, the proposed methods employ simple and interpretable mathematical functions, offering both practicality and reliability. Validation using real-world operational data confirmed the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed approaches.