Search Results (1,805)

Large Language Models (LLMs) in Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning enable highly personalized learning, yet raise significant challenges related to pedagogical grounding, data privacy, and instructional validity. Although Knowledge Graphs (KGs) and Federated Learning (FL) can mitigate these issues in isolation, evidence on systematic FL–KG–LLM integration for educational language learning remains limited. This scoping review maps the FL–KG–LLM convergence landscape. Following PRISMA-ScR guidelines, we searched six databases and screened 51 papers (2019–2025) using automated extraction. Our findings indicate limited convergence: no papers integrate all three domains, and 58.8% of approaches remain confined to isolated technological silos. Reporting is also uneven across the corpus, with an average “Not Reported” (NR) rate of 84.5%, most notably for privacy mechanisms (92.2%), validation metrics (90.2%), and Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) alignment (88.2%). Domain-specific analysis reveals two distinct patterns: inter-domain gaps (disciplinary silos resulting in expected CEFR absence in single-domain papers) and intra-domain gaps (failure to report domain-critical variables, including 100% parameter NR in FL studies, 86.7% validation NR in KG studies, and 100% CEFR NR in convergence papers). Taken together, these gaps suggest that pedagogical grounding is treated as optional rather than structural. We therefore identify two pillars of pedagogical grounding: a Grounding Pillar, which constrains LLM outputs via Knowledge Graph rules, and a Validation Pillar, which concerns how authoritative frameworks (e.g., CEFR) are mapped onto Knowledge Graph schemas and evaluated. The near-universal absence of CEFR alignment and validation reporting suggests that this second pillar is currently missing, which we term the Integrity Gap—a systematic disconnection between technological innovation and pedagogical grounding inin Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning. By reframing the problem as upstream control and validation, this review informs the design of user-facing automated systems where trust, transparency, and human oversight are critical. Full article

Cross-domain data collaboration is a core requirement for the intelligent development of critical areas such as the Internet of Vehicles and intelligent transportation systems. In this scenario, vehicles and various sensors deployed roadside continuously generate massive amounts of time-series data, yet this data often forms “data silos” due to privacy regulations and a lack of trust between collaborating entities. Existing integrated schemes combining “Federated Learning + Blockchain” have achieved a certain degree of process traceability and automated payments, but risks of gradient-level privacy leakage persist, and inflexible and delayed incentive mechanisms result in low participation quality. To systematically address these bottlenecks, this paper proposes the Federated Learning with Assured Privacy and Reputation-Driven Incentives (FLARE) architecture, whose core innovation lies in the native integration of cryptographic security and mechanism design theory. It includes the Secure and Faithfully Executed Gradient aggregation (SafeGrad) protocol, which integrates partial homomorphic encryption and zero-knowledge proofs to provide verifiable privacy guarantees for gradient contributions while enabling efficient secure aggregation, defending against inversion attacks at the source; alongside this, it includes the Economy-on-Chain incentive (EconChain) mechanism, which designs an on-chain economic system based on blockchain, achieving precise measurement and sustainable incentivization of training process contributions through fine-grained instant micro-rewards and a dynamic reputation model. Experiments show that, compared to baseline schemes, FLARE can effectively enhance node participation enthusiasm and contribution quality without compromising model accuracy, providing a new paradigm with both strong security and high vitality for the trusted and efficient circulation of data. Full article

Benchmarking embodied carbon in residential building stock accurately would involve a high volume of data sharing and would pose serious privacy and competitive issues among building construction stakeholders. This study introduces a new federated learning-based building stock modeling system (FedCarbon) that can allow embodied carbon to be evaluated collaboratively without data aggregation at a central place. The architecture proposed enables construction firms, cities, and providers of construction materials to collectively train predictive models at the same time as data sovereignty is achieved via a hierarchical federated aggregation mechanism with attention-based client weighting. A differentiated privacy scheme that is adaptively calibrated on noise guarantees the privacy of individual projects and allows for statistically significant benchmarking based on heterogeneous building portfolios. The framework also includes a gradient compression scheme based on momentum, which incurs an 82.6% reduction in communication overhead over traditional federated averaging-based methods and still maintains model convergence. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated with the help of comprehensive validation with the UCI Energy Efficiency Dataset, which includes 768 residential building configurations, and the Embodied Carbon in European Buildings Database, which includes 2340 residential units in 12 European jurisdictions. It has been experimentally shown that FedCarbon has a 94.2% prediction accuracy (R2) on embodied carbon intensity, with a mean absolute error of 21.4 kgCO₂e/m², and that (ε, δ) differential privacy can be guaranteed with ε = 1.0 and −δ = 10⁻⁵. This structure opens up building stock knowledge and hastens industry-wide implementation of low-carbon building strategies. Full article

Fog computing extends cloud services to the network edge to support low-latency IoT applications. However, since fog environments are distributed and resource-constrained, intrusion detection systems must be adapted to defend against cyberattacks while keeping computation and communication overhead minimal. This systematic review presents research on intrusion detection systems (IDSs) for fog computing and synthesizes advances and research gaps. The study was guided by the “Preferred-Reporting-Items for-Systematic-Reviews-and-Meta-Analyses” (PRISMA) framework. Scopus and Web of Science were searched in the title field using TITLE/TI = (“intrusion detection” AND “fog computing”) for 2021–2025. The inclusion criteria were (i) 2021–2025 publications, (ii) journal or conference papers, (iii) English language, and (iv) open access availability; duplicates were removed programmatically using a DOI-first key with a title, year, and author alternative. The search identified 8560 records, of which 4905 were unique and included for qualitative grouping and bibliometric synthesis. Metadata (year, venue, authors, affiliations, keywords, and citations) were extracted and analyzed in Python to compute trends and collaboration. Intrusion detection systems in fog networks were categorized into traditional/signature-based, machine learning, deep learning, and hybrid/ensemble. Hybrid and DL approaches reported accuracy ranging from 95 to 99% on benchmark datasets (such as NSL-KDD, UNSW-NB15, CIC-IDS2017, KDD99, BoT-IoT). Notable bottlenecks included computational load relative to real-time latency on resource-constrained nodes, elevated false-positive rates for anomaly detection under concept drift, limited generalization to unseen attacks, privacy risks from centralizing data, and limited real-world validation. Bibliometric analyses highlighted the field’s concentration in fast-turnaround, open-access journals such as IEEE Access and Sensors, as well as a small number of highly collaborative author clusters, alongside dominant terms such as “learning,” “federated,” “ensemble,” “lightweight,” and “explainability.” Emerging directions include federated and distributed training to preserve privacy, as well as online/continual learning adaptation. Future work should consist of real-world evaluation of fog networks, ultra-lightweight yet adaptive hybrid IDS, self-learning, and secure cooperative frameworks. These insights help researchers select appropriate IDS models for fog networks. Full article

Artificial intelligence (AI), including machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL), is increasingly transforming the study, manufacturing, and clinical translation of adipose-derived stem/stromal cells (ADSCs). ADSC-based therapies face persistent challenges related to donor variability, heterogeneous cell populations, limited standardization of culture protocols, and the need for robust quality control (QC) and potency assessment under Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) conditions. This review discusses how AI-driven approaches can support the ADSC pipeline from donor and tissue pre-screening, through isolation and expansion, to differentiation and batch release decisions. We highlight major methodological advances in computer vision and label-free imaging for monitoring morphology, confluency, proliferation, senescence, and contamination, as well as AI-assisted optimization strategies for culture parameters and differentiation protocols. In addition, we examine the growing role of multi-omics integration (transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and secretomics) combined with ML to predict functional potency, stratify donors, and identify biomarkers associated with therapeutic efficacy. Finally, we address current limitations, including data scarcity, inter-laboratory variability, model interpretability, and regulatory requirements, and outline future perspectives such as closed-loop bioprocess control, foundation models, and federated learning frameworks. Overall, AI offers a powerful toolkit to improve the reproducibility, safety, and scalability of ADSC manufacturing and to accelerate the development of standardized, data-driven regenerative medicine products. Full article

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) transforms healthcare through interconnected medical devices but faces significant cybersecurity threats, particularly intrusion and exfiltration attacks. Centralized intrusion detection systems (IDSs) require data aggregation, presenting privacy and scalability risks. This paper proposes FedEnsemble-DP, a privacy-aware Federated Learning (FL) framework for decentralized intrusion detection in IoMT networks. The framework integrates three data balancing scenarios (Raw Imbalanced, Local SMOTE, Centralized SMOTE) with Differential Privacy (DP) and Secure Aggregation mechanisms. Extensive experiments on WUSTL-EHMS-2020 and CIC-IoMT-2024 datasets under non-IID settings (Dirichlet $\alpha$ = 0.3) demonstrate that models with strong privacy guarantees ($\epsilon$ = 3.0) frequently match or exceed non-private baselines. Key findings show Local SMOTE with $\epsilon$ = 3.0 achieved 94.60% accuracy and 0.9598 AUC, while Raw Imbalanced with $\epsilon$ = 3.0 attained 94.50% accuracy and 0.9494 AUC. Even with strict privacy ($\epsilon$ = 3.0), these results surpassed the non-private baseline (93.20% accuracy) in the raw scenario. Centralized SMOTE showed effectiveness but introduced training instability. These results indicate that local data balancing combined with calibrated DP noise can yield high detection performance while preserving privacy, effectively bridging security-performance and data confidentiality requirements in distributed healthcare networks. Full article

Fifth generation (5G) networks have significantly enhanced connectivity, speed, and reliability, transforming industries with faster and more efficient communication. The Internet of Things (IoT) has introduced unprecedented convenience and automation, revolutionizing sectors such as healthcare, finance, and smart infrastructure. However, both 5G networks and IoT environments are experiencing a high frequency of attacks. Intrusion detection systems (IDSs) built on federated learning (FL) are being proposed to boost data privacy and security. However, these IDSs are related with the inherent drawbacks of FL, namely the existence of non-independently and identically (non-IID) distributed features and the machine learning model complexity. To address these limitations, we present a study that integrates a Mixture of Experts (MoE) into an FL setting in the task of intrusion detection. Specifically, to mitigate the issues of model complexity within the FL setting, we use a sparsely gated MoE layer consisting of a router/gating network and a set of experts. Only a subset of experts is selected via applying noisy top-k gating. To alleviate the issue of non-IID data, we adopt the Label-based Dirichlet Partition method, utilizing Dirichlet sampling with a hyperparameter $\alpha$ to simulate a label-based non-IID data distribution. Four FL strategies are employed. We perform our experiments on the 5G-NIDD and BoT-IoT datasets. Findings show that the proposed approach achieves competitive performance across both datasets under heterogeneous federated settings. Full article

As a privacy-preserving distributed machine learning paradigm, federated learning (FL) faces serious communication bottlenecks in practical deployment. In this paper, we propose FedLayerPrune, a communication-efficient federated learning method that integrates three synergistic components: (i) a layer-adaptive pruning strategy that dynamically allocates pruning rates based on layer sensitivity and network depth; (ii) a heterogeneity-aware aggregation mechanism that combines sample-size weighted averaging with mask consensus voting to enhance robustness under non-IID data distributions; and (iii) a dynamic pruning rate scheduler that progressively increases compression intensity across training rounds. Unlike existing approaches that apply uniform pruning or consider these techniques in isolation, FedLayerPrune achieves a principled coordination among layer-wise importance evaluation, temporal pruning scheduling, and heterogeneous model aggregation. Extensive experiments on CIFAR-10, MNIST, and Fashion-MNIST demonstrate that FedLayerPrune reduces communication costs by up to 68.3% compared with standard FedAvg, while maintaining model accuracy within a 2% margin. Moreover, our method exhibits stronger robustness and faster convergence under severe non-IID data distributions. These results suggest that FedLayerPrune provides a practical and effective solution for deploying federated learning in resource-constrained edge computing environments. Full article

This article presents an adaptive neural network method for the automated detection, reconstruction, and prioritisation of multi-stage criminal operations in the digital environment, aiming to protect human rights and ensure the legal security of digital evidence. The developed method combines multimodal temporal encoders, a graph module based on GNN for entity correlation, and a correlation head with a link-prediction mechanism and differentiable path recovery. Sliding time windows, logarithmic transformation of volumetric features, and pseudonymization of identifiers with the ability to utilise privacy-preserving procedures (federated learning, differential privacy) are used for data aggregation and normalisation. Unique features of the developed method include an integrated risk function combining an anomaly component and graph significance, a module for automated forensic packet generation with chain of custody recording, and a mechanism for incremental model updates. Experimental results demonstrate high diagnostic metric values (AUC ≈ 0.97, F1 ≈ 0.99 on the test dataset after balancing), robust recovery of priority paths (“path_probability” > 0.7 for top operations), and pipeline performance in PII leak prioritisation and human trafficking reconstruction scenarios. The study’s contribution lies in a practice-oriented neural network method that integrates detection, correlation, and the collection of legally applicable evidence. Full article

Botnet attacks in Internet of Things (IoT) environments often occur as multi-stage campaigns, making early and reliable detection difficult across distributed and privacy-sensitive networks. Centralized detection approaches are often limited by heterogeneous traffic characteristics, severe data imbalance, and the need to aggregate large volumes of raw network data, raising scalability and privacy concerns. To address these challenges, this paper proposes FDA, a federated learning-based and data mining-driven framework for stage-aware botnet attack detection in IoT networks. FDA operates at network gateways, where anomalous traffic is first detected and then abstracted into compact and interpretable patterns using Frequent Itemset Mining (FIM). This pattern-based representation reduces noise and local traffic bias, enabling more robust learning across different IoT networks. Lightweight neural network models are trained locally at gateways, and a global model is learned through federated aggregation of model parameters, avoiding direct sharing of raw network data while enabling gateways to collaboratively learn evolving attack patterns across different IoT networks. Experimental results show that FDA achieves anomaly detection F1-scores above 99% across all gateways and multi-stage botnet attack classification F1-scores in the range of 48–49%, which are comparable to centralized machine-learning baselines while operating under decentralized and privacy-preserving constraints. Overall, FDA provides a practical, privacy-preserving, and effective solution for distributed botnet attack stage detection in real-world IoT deployments. Full article

Federated learning (FL) has emerged as a transformative distributed learning paradigm that enables collaborative model training without sharing raw data, thereby preserving privacy across large, diverse, and geographically dispersed clients. Despite its rapid adoption in mobile networks, Internet of Things (IoT) systems, healthcare, finance, and edge intelligence, FL continues to face several persistent and interdependent challenges that hinder its scalability, efficiency, and real-world deployment. In this survey, we present a systematic examination of six core challenges in federated learning: heterogeneity, computation overhead, communication bottlenecks, client selection, aggregation and optimization, and privacy preservation. We analyze how these challenges manifest across the full FL pipeline, from local training and client participation to global model aggregation and distribution, and examine their impact on model performance, convergence behavior, fairness, and system reliability. Furthermore, we synthesize representative state-of-the-art approaches proposed to address each challenge and discuss their underlying assumptions, trade-offs, and limitations in practical deployments. Finally, we identify open research problems and outline promising directions for developing more robust, scalable, and efficient federated learning systems. This survey aims to serve as a comprehensive reference for researchers and practitioners seeking a unified understanding of the fundamental challenges shaping modern federated learning. Full article

As federated learning scales up in distributed scenarios, training instability and performance degradation caused by data quality issues—such as statistical heterogeneity and noise—have become major bottlenecks for practical deployment. Existing aggregation algorithms have been shown to not adequately account for differences in data importance. This can exacerbate client selection bias and incentive misalignment. As a result, global convergence can slow down and performance can deteriorate. To address this issue, this paper proposes a robust federated learning framework based on data heterogeneity grading and marginal contribution calculation. The objective of this study is to enhance the overall performance of federated learning systems in heterogeneous environments by quantifying data importance. The framework first grades and quantifies the heterogeneity of client data distributions, precisely characterizing data importance while reducing the computational space for Shapley value calculations, effectively lowering its exponential complexity. Subsequently, it integrates client marginal contributions with data distribution heterogeneity to establish a dynamic weighted aggregation mechanism that balances fairness, robustness, and differentiated data quality requirements. Multi-dataset comparative experiments demonstrate that the proposed method achieves consistent gains in model accuracy and convergence under non-IID splits and noisy-label settings. Full article

Dental conditions, including caries, periodontal disease, plaque accumulation, malocclusion, and oral mucosal abnormalities, remain highly prevalent worldwide. Early detection is crucial for preventing disease progression, simplifying treatment, and improving patient outcomes. Conventional diagnostic methods rely on subjective visual and tactile examinations, which are often inconsistent. Recent advances in deep learning (DL), particularly convolutional neural networks and vision transformers, enable automated, accurate detection of dental diseases from intraoral images captured via smartphones or dedicated imaging devices. DL-driven systems facilitate cost-effective virtual consultations, community screenings, and remote oral health monitoring. This narrative review was conducted following a structured search of PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Embase, and Google Scholar (October 2020–October 2025), which identified 74 eligible studies on intraoral photographic imaging-based DL systems, encompassing caries, gingival inflammation, plaque, malocclusion, and soft-tissue lesions. Most studies focused on caries, plaque, and periodontal disease using CNN and U-Net-based models, often reporting accuracies above 85% but with substantial performance drops in external validation. Despite promising results, clinical integration remains limited by challenges such as class imbalance, limited external validation, heterogeneous imaging protocols, and insufficient model interpretability. Emerging approaches, including self-supervised and federated learning, explainable artificial intelligence, multimodal data fusion, and smartphone-based diagnostics, offer potential solutions. Standardized imaging workflows, high-quality annotations, and robust clinical trials are essential to translate DL-based dental diagnostic systems into real-world practice. This narrative review aims to guide the development of reliable, equitable, and clinically deployable DL solutions for oral health assessment. Full article

Blockchain technology is redefining the foundations of cybersecurity by introducing decentralized, tamper-resistant mechanisms for data integrity, trust management, and malware intelligence sharing. Traditional detection systems, which are dependent on centralized control and opaque validation, remain vulnerable to data manipulation and systemic compromise. The integration of blockchain transforms these paradigms because it provides verifiable provenance, distributed consensus, and autonomous enforcement through smart contracts. This review synthesizes fifteen years of progress (2010–2025) at the intersection of blockchain and malware detection and discusses core architectures, consensus protocols, and cryptographic properties that underpin decentralized defenses. The review follows a structured literature review methodology, which focuses on blockchain architectures, consensus protocols, and malware-detection pipelines reported in the cybersecurity literature. It also analyzes blockchain detection pipelines, performance tradeoffs, and data protection mechanisms in distributed learning systems and artificial intelligence models. Special attention is given to scalability constraints, regulatory compliance, and interoperability challenges that shape adoption. The review identifies three dominant design patterns: (i) decentralized threat-intelligence sharing with provenance guarantees, (ii) consensus-driven validation of malware artifacts, and (iii) on-chain trust and reputation mechanisms for detector accountability. Through the union of blockchain, artificial intelligence, edge computation, and federated learning, cybersecurity attains an auditable and adaptive architecture resilient to adversarial threats. The study concludes that blockchain provides a verifiable trust infrastructure for malware detection, but its practical deployment requires faster transaction validation and stronger protection of sensitive data; future research should address performance optimization and regulatory compliance. Full article

Reinforcement learning for robotic manipulation is often limited by poor sample efficiency and unstable training dynamics, challenges that are further amplified in federated settings due to data privacy constraints and task heterogeneity. To address these issues, we propose F-DRL, a federated dynamics-aware representation learning framework that enables multiple robotic tasks to collaboratively learn structured latent representations without sharing raw trajectories or policy parameters. The framework combines robotics priors with an action-conditioned latent dynamics model to learn low-dimensional state and state–action embeddings that explicitly capture task-relevant geometric and transition structure. Representation learning is performed locally at each client, while a central server aggregates encoder parameters using a similarity-weighted scheme based on second-order latent geometry. The learned representations are then used as frozen auxiliary inputs for downstream model-free reinforcement learning. We evaluate F-DRL on seven heterogeneous robotic manipulation tasks from the MetaWorld benchmark. While achieving performance comparable to centralized training and standard federated baseline, F-DRL substantially improves training stability relative to FedAvg on heterogeneous manipulation tasks with partially shared dynamics (e.g., Drawer-Open and Window-Open), reducing the mean across-seed standard deviation and the AUC of this deviation by over 60%. The method remains neutral on simple tasks and performs less consistently on contact-rich manipulation tasks with task-specific dynamics, indicating both the benefits and the practical limits of representation-level knowledge sharing in federated robotic learning. Full article