Abstract
Mild is a smart stress relief solution created by DSTRS, an European Project Semester student team enrolled at the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto in the spring of 2022. This paper details the research performed, concerning ethics, marketing, sustainability and state-of-the-art, the ideas, concept and design pursued, and the prototype assembled and tested by DSTRS. The designed kit comprises a bracelet, pair of earphones with case, and a mobile app. The bracelet reads the user heart beat and temperature to automatically detect early stress signs. The case and mobile app command the earphones to play sounds based on the user readings or on user demand. Moreover, the case includes a tactile distractor, a scent diffuser and vibrates. This innovative multi-sensory output, combining auditory, olfactory, tactile and vestibular stimulus, intends to sooth the user. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.

Abstract
Web 2.0 platforms, like wikis and social networks, rely on crowdsourced data and, as such, are prone to data manipulation by ill-intended contributors. This research proposes the transparent identification of wiki manipulators through the classification of contributors as benevolent or malevolent humans or bots, together with the explanation of the attributed class labels. The system comprises: (i) stream-based data pre-processing; (ii) incremental profiling; and (iii) online classification, evaluation and explanation. Particularly, the system profiles contributors and contributions by combining features directly collected with content- and side-based engineered features. The experimental results obtained with a real data set collected from Wikivoyage – a popular travel wiki – attained a 98.52% classification accuracy and 91.34% macro F-measure. In the end, this work seeks to address data reliability to prevent information detrimental and manipulation. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.

Abstract
The latest technological advances drive the emergence of countless real-time data streams fed by users, sensors, and devices. These data sources can be mined with the help of predictive and classification techniques to support decision-making in fields like e-commerce, industry or health. In particular, stream-based classification is widely used to categorise incoming samples on the fly. However, the distribution of samples per class is often imbalanced, affecting the performance and fairness of machine learning models. To overcome this drawback, this paper proposes Bplug, a balancing plug-in for stream-based classification, to minimise the bias introduced by data imbalance. First, the plug-in determines the class imbalance degree and then synthesises data statistically through non-parametric kernel density estimation. The experiments, performed with real data from Wikivoyage and Metro of Porto, show that Bplug maintains inter-feature correlation and improves classification accuracy. Moreover, it works both online and offline. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.

Abstract
This work applies Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, specifically transformer models, for the emotional evaluation of open-ended responses. Today’s powerful advances in transformer architecture, such as ChatGPT, make it possible to capture complex emotional patterns in language. The proposed transformer-based system identifies the emotional features of various texts. The research employs an innovative approach, using prompt engineering and existing context, to enhance the emotional expressiveness of the model. It also investigates spaCy’s capabilities for linguistic analysis and the synergy between transformer models and this technology. The results show a significant improvement in emotional detection compared to traditional methods and tools, highlighting the potential of transformer models in this domain. The method can be implemented in various areas, such as emotional research or mental health monitoring, creating a much richer and complete user profile. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.

Abstract
Social media platforms enable the rapid dissemination and consumption of information. However, users instantly consume such content regardless of the reliability of the shared data. Consequently, the latter crowdsourcing model is exposed to manipulation. This work contributes with an explainable and online classification method to recognize fake news in real-time. The proposed method combines both unsupervised and supervised Machine Learning approaches with online created lexica. The profiling is built using creator-, content- and context-based features using Natural Language Processing techniques. The explainable classification mechanism displays in a dashboard the features selected for classification and the prediction confidence. The performance of the proposed solution has been validated with real data sets from Twitter and the results attain 80% accuracy and macro F-measure. This proposal is the first to jointly provide data stream processing, profiling, classification and explainability. Ultimately, the proposed early detection, isolation and explanation of fake news contribute to increase the quality and trustworthiness of social media contents.