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
Extreme learning machines explore nonlinear random projections to perform computing tasks on high-dimensional output spaces. Since training only occurs at the output layer, the approach has the potential to speed up the training process and the capacity to turn any physical system into a computing platform. Yet, requiring strong nonlinear dynamics, optical solutions operating at fast processing rates and low power can be hard to achieve with conventional nonlinear optical materials. In this context, this manuscript explores the possibility of using atomic gases in near-resonant conditions to implement an optical extreme learning machine leveraging their enhanced nonlinear optical properties. Our results suggest that these systems have the potential not only to work as an optical extreme learning machine but also to perform these computations at the few-photon level, paving opportunities for energy-efficient computing solutions.

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
Modern hardware accelerators, such as FPGAs, allow offloading large regions of C/C++ code in order to improve the execution time and/or the energy consumption of software applications. An outstanding challenge with this approach, however, is solving the Hardware/Software (Hw/Sw) partitioning problem. Given the increasing complexity of both the accelerators and the potential code regions, one needs to adopt a holistic approach when selecting an offloading region by exploring the interplay between communication costs, data usage patterns, and target-specific optimizations. To this end, we propose representing a C application as an extended task graph (ETG) with flexible granularity, which can be manipulated through the merging and splitting of tasks. This approach involves generating a task graph overlay on the program’s Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) that maps tasks to functions and the flexible granularity operations onto inlining/outlining operations. This maintains the integrity and readability of the original source code, which is paramount for targeting different accelerators and enabling code optimizations, while allowing the offloading of code regions of arbitrary complexity based on the data patterns of their tasks. To evaluate the ETG representation and its compiler, we use the latter to generate ETGs for the programs in Rosetta and MachSuite benchmark suites, and extract several metrics regarding data communication, task-level parallelism, and dataflow patterns between pairs of tasks. These metrics provide important information that can be used by Hw/Sw partitioning methods. © 2024 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).

Abstract
As many automated algorithms find their way into the IT systems of the banking sector, having a way to validate and interpret the results from these algorithms can lead to a substantial reduction in the risks associated with automation. Usually, validating these pricing mechanisms requires human resources to manually analyze and validate large quantities of data. There is a lack of effective methods that analyze the time series and understand if what is currently happening is plausible based on previous data, without information about the variables used to calculate the price of the asset. This paper describes an implementation of a process that allows us to validate many data points automatically. We explore the K-Nearest Neighbors algorithm to find coincident patterns in financial time series, allowing us to detect anomalies, outliers, and data points that do not follow normal behavior. This system allows quicker detection of defective calculations that would otherwise result in the incorrect pricing of financial assets. Furthermore, our method does not require knowledge about the variables used to calculate the time series being analyzed. Our proposal uses pattern matching and can validate more than 58% of instances, substantially improving human risk analysts' efficiency. The proposal is completely transparent, allowing analysts to understand how the algorithm made its decision, increasing the trustworthiness of the method.

Abstract
Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) are seeing an increased introduction in distinct areas of daily life. Recently, their use has expanded to intralogistics, where forklift type AMR are applied in many situations handling pallets and loading/unloading them into trucks. One of the these vehicles requirements, is that they are able to correctly identify the location and status of pallets, so that the forklifts AMR can insert the forks in the right place. Recently, some commercial sensors have appeared in the market for this purpose. Given these considerations, this paper presents a comparison of the performance of two different approaches for pallet detection: using a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) sensor and a custom developed application based on Artificial Intelligence algorithms applied to an RGB-D camera, where both the RGB and depth data are used to estimate the position of the pallet pockets. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.