All issues

Radiopharmaceuticals with iodine radioisotopes are now widely used in imaging and non-imaging methods of nuclear medicine. When evaluating the results of radionuclide studies of the structural and functional state of organs and tissues, parallel modeling of the kinetics of radiopharmaceuticals in the body plays an important role. The complexity of such modeling lies in two opposite aspects. On the one hand, excessive simplification of the anatomical and physiological characteristics of the organism when splitting it to the compartments that may result in the loss or distortion of important clinical diagnosis information, on the other – excessive, taking into account all possible interdependencies of the functioning of the organs and systems that, on the contrary, will lead to excess amount of absolutely useless for clinical interpretation of the data or the mathematical model becomes even more intractable. Our work develops a unified approach to the construction of mathematical models of the kinetics of radiopharmaceuticals with iodine isotopes in the human body during diagnostic and therapeutic procedures of nuclear medicine. Based on this approach, three- and four-compartment pharmacokinetic models were developed and corresponding calculation programs were created in the C⁺⁺ programming language for processing and evaluating the results of radionuclide diagnostics and therapy. Various methods for identifying model parameters based on quantitative data from radionuclide studies of the functional state of vital organs are proposed. The results of pharmacokinetic modeling for radionuclide diagnostics of the liver, kidney, and thyroid using iodine-containing radiopharmaceuticals are presented and analyzed. Using clinical and diagnostic data, individual pharmacokinetic parameters of transport of different radiopharmaceuticals in the body (transport constants, half-life periods, maximum activity in the organ and the time of its achievement) were determined. It is shown that the pharmacokinetic characteristics for each patient are strictly individual and cannot be described by averaged kinetic parameters. Within the framework of three pharmacokinetic models, “Activity–time” relationships were obtained and analyzed for different organs and tissues, including for tissues in which the activity of a radiopharmaceutical is impossible or difficult to measure by clinical methods. Also discussed are the features and the results of simulation and dosimetric planning of radioiodine therapy of the thyroid gland. It is shown that the values of absorbed radiation doses are very sensitive to the kinetic parameters of the compartment model. Therefore, special attention should be paid to obtaining accurate quantitative data from ultrasound and thyroid radiometry and identifying simulation parameters based on them. The work is based on the principles and methods of pharmacokinetics. For the numerical solution of systems of differential equations of the pharmacokinetic models we used Runge–Kutta methods and Rosenbrock method. The Hooke–Jeeves method was used to find the minimum of a function of several variables when identifying modeling parameters.

The paper provides a comparative analysis of the results obtained by various approaches to modeling the process of artillery shot. In this connection, the main problem of internal ballistics and its particular case of the Lagrange problem are formulated in averaged parameters, where, within the framework of the assumptions of the thermodynamic approach, the distribution of pressure and gas velocity over the projectile space for a channel of variable cross section is taken into account for the first time. The statement of the Lagrange problem is also presented in the framework of the gas-dynamic approach, taking into account the spatial (one-dimensional and two-dimensional axisymmetric) changes in the characteristics of the ballistic process. The control volume method is used to numerically solve the system of Euler gas-dynamic equations. Gas parameters at the boundaries of control volumes are determined using a selfsimilar solution to the Riemann problem. Based on the Godunov method, a modification of the Osher scheme is proposed, which allows to implement a numerical calculation algorithm with a second order of accuracy in coordinate and time. The solutions obtained in the framework of the thermodynamic and gas-dynamic approaches are compared for various loading parameters. The effect of projectile mass and chamber broadening on the distribution of the ballistic parameters of the shot and the dynamics of the projectile motion was studied. It is shown that the thermodynamic approach, in comparison with the gas-dynamic approach, leads to a systematic overestimation of the estimated muzzle velocity of the projectile in the entire range of parameters studied, while the difference in muzzle velocity can reach 35%. At the same time, the discrepancy between the results obtained in the framework of one-dimensional and two-dimensional gas-dynamic models of the shot in the same range of change in parameters is not more than 1.3%.

A spatial gas-dynamic formulation of the backpressure problem is given, which describes the change in pressure in front of an accelerating projectile as it moves along the barrel channel. It is shown that accounting the projectile’s front, considered in the two-dimensional axisymmetric formulation of the problem, leads to a significant difference in the pressure fields behind the front of the shock wave, compared with the solution in the framework of the onedimensional formulation of the problem, where the projectile’s front is not possible to account. It is concluded that this can significantly affect the results of modeling ballistics of a shot at high shooting velocities.

The article dwells upon investigating the issue of the most adequate tools developing and justifying to forecast the interregional migration flows value and structure. Migration processes have a significant impact on the size and demographic structure of the population of territories, the state and balance of regional and local labor markets.

To analyze the migration processes and to assess their impact an economic-mathematical tool is required which would be instrumental in modelling the migration processes and flows for different areas with the desired precision. The current methods and approaches to the migration processes modelling, including the analysis of their advantages and disadvantages, were considered. It is noted that to implement many of these methods mass aggregated statistical data is required which is not always available and doesn’t characterize the migrants behavior at the local level where the decision to move to a new dwelling place is made. This has a significant impact on the ability to apply appropriate migration processes modelling techniques and on the projection accuracy of the migration flows magnitude and structure.

The cellular automata model for interregional migration flows modelling, implementing the integration of the households migration behavior model under the conditions of the Bounded Rationality into the general model of the area migration flow was developed and tested based on the Primorye Territory data. To implement the households migration behavior model under the conditions of the Bounded Rationality the integral attractiveness index of the regions with economic, social and ecological components was proposed in the work.

To evaluate the prognostic capacity of the developed model, it was compared with the available cellular automata models used to predict interregional migration flows. The out of sample prediction method which showed statistically significant superiority of the proposed model was applied for this purpose. The model allows obtaining the forecasts and quantitative characteristics of the areas migration flows based on the households real migration behaviour at the local level taking into consideration their living conditions and behavioural motives.

The technology of creating patterns from natural language words (concepts) based on text data in the bag of words model is considered. Patterns are used to reduce the dimension of the original space in the description of documents and search for semantically related words by topic. The process of dimensionality reduction is implemented through the formation of patterns of latent features. The variety of structures of document relations is investigated in order to divide them into themes in the latent space.

It is considered that a given set of documents (objects) is divided into two non-overlapping classes, for the analysis of which it is necessary to use a common dictionary. The belonging of words to a common vocabulary is initially unknown. Class objects are considered as opposition to each other. Quantitative parameters of oppositionality are determined through the values of the stability of each feature and generalized assessments of objects according to non-overlapping sets of features.

To calculate the stability, the feature values are divided into non-intersecting intervals, the optimal boundaries of which are determined by a special criterion. The maximum stability is achieved under the condition that the boundaries of each interval contain values of one of the two classes.

The composition of features in sets (patterns of words) is formed from a sequence ordered by stability values. The process of formation of patterns and latent features based on them is implemented according to the rules of hierarchical agglomerative grouping.

A set of latent features is used for cluster analysis of documents using metric grouping algorithms. The analysis applies the coefficient of content authenticity based on the data on the belonging of documents to classes. The coefficient is a numerical characteristic of the dominance of class representatives in groups.

To divide documents into topics, it is proposed to use the union of groups in relation to their centers. As patterns for each topic, a sequence of words ordered by frequency of occurrence from a common dictionary is considered.

The results of a computational experiment on collections of abstracts of scientific dissertations are presented. Sequences of words from the general dictionary on 4 topics are formed.

The gas-dynamics approach to the calculation of the aerodynamic characteristics of modern aircraft makes it necessary to consider the complex and extensive set of tasks requiring the development of new methods for their solution. Drag coefficient for two bodies in subsonic and transonic flow regimes was calculated using ANSYS Fluent software. Numeric solution and results of the experiment are in good agreement; calculation error does not exceed 3 %.

Modeling the fight against terrorist, pirate and robbery acts at sea is an urgent scientific task due to the prevalence of force acts and the insufficient number of works on this issue. The actions of pirates and terrorists are diverse. Using a base ship, they can attack ships up to 450–500 miles from the coast. Having chosen the target, they pursue it and use the weapons to board the ship. Actions to free a ship captured by pirates or terrorists include: blocking the ship, predicting where pirates might be on the ship, penetrating (from board to board, by air or from under water) and cleaning up the ship’s premises. An analysis of the special literature on the actions of pirates and terrorists showed that the act of force (and actions to neutralize it) consists of two stages: firstly, blocking the vessel, which consists in forcing it to stop, and secondly, neutralizing the team (terrorist groups, pirates), including penetration of a ship (ship) and its cleaning. The stages of the cycle are matched by indicators — the probability of blocking and the probability of neutralization. The variables of the act of force model are the number of ships (ships, boats) of the attackers and defenders, as well as the strength of the capture group of the attackers and the crew of the ship - the victim of the attack. Model parameters (indicators of naval and combat superiority) were estimated using the maximum likelihood method using an international database of incidents at sea. The values of these parameters are 7.6–8.5. Such high values of superiority parameters reflect the parties' ability to act in force acts. An analytical method for calculating excellence parameters is proposed and statistically substantiated. The following indicators are taken into account in the model: the ability of the parties to detect the enemy, the speed and maneuverability characteristics of the vessels, the height of the vessel and the characteristics of the boarding equipment, the characteristics of weapons and protective equipment, etc. Using the Becker model and the theory of discrete choice, the probability of failure of the force act is estimated. The significance of the obtained models for combating acts of force in the sea space lies in the possibility of quantitative substantiation of measures to protect the ship from pirate and terrorist attacks and deterrence measures aimed at preventing attacks (the presence of armed guards on board the ship, assistance from warships and helicopters).

Epidemic models are widely used to mimic social activity, such as spreading of rumors or panic. Simultaneously, models of excitable media are traditionally used to simulate the propagation of activity. Spreading of activity in the virtual community was simulated within two models: the SIRS epidemic model and the Wiener – Rosenblut model of the excitable media. We used network versions of these models. The network was assumed to be heterogeneous, namely, each element of the network has an individual set of characteristics, which corresponds to different psychological types of community members. The structure of a virtual network relies on an appropriate scale-free network. Modeling was carried out on scale-free networks with various values of the average degree of vertices. Additionally, a special case was considered, namely, a complete graph corresponding to a close professional group, when each member of the group interacts with each. Participants in a virtual community can be in one of three states: 1) potential readiness to accept certain information; 2) active interest to this information; 3) complete indifference to this information. These states correspond to the conditions that are usually used in epidemic models: 1) susceptible to infection, 2) infected, 3) refractory (immune or death due to disease). A comparison of the two models showed their similarity both at the level of main assumptions and at the level of possible modes. Distribution of activity over the network is similar to the spread of infectious diseases. It is shown that activity in virtual networks may experience fluctuations or decay.

The paper proposes a set of fairly simple analysis algorithms that can be used to analyze a wide range of protein-protein interactions. In this work, we jointly use the methods of Brownian and molecular dynamics to describe the process of formation of a complex of plastocyanin and cytochrome f proteins in higher plants. In the diffusion-collision complex, two clusters of structures were revealed, the transition between which is possible with the preservation of the position of the center of mass of the molecules and is accompanied only by a rotation of plastocyanin by 134 degrees. The first and second clusters of structures of collisional complexes differ in that in the first cluster with a positively charged region near the small domain of cytochrome f, only the “lower” plastocyanin region contacts, while in the second cluster, both negatively charged regions. The “upper” negatively charged region of plastocyanin in the first cluster is in contact with the amino acid residue of lysine K122. When the final complex is formed, the plastocyanin molecule rotates by 69 degrees around an axis passing through both areas of electrostatic contact. With this rotation, water is displaced from the regions located near the cofactors of the molecules and formed by hydrophobic amino acid residues. This leads to the appearance of hydrophobic contacts, a decrease in the distance between the cofactors to a distance of less than 1.5 nm, and further stabilization of the complex in a position suitable for electron transfer. Characteristics such as contact matrices, rotation axes during the transition between states, and graphs of changes in the number of contacts during the modeling process make it possible to determine the key amino acid residues involved in the formation of the complex and to reveal the physicochemical mechanisms underlying this process.

A numerical simulation of fluid flow in a blood pump was performed using the FlowVision software package. This test problem, provided by the Center for Devices and Radiological Health of the US. Food and Drug Administration, involved considering fluid flow according to several design modes. At the same time for each case of calculation a certain value of liquid flow rate and rotor speed was set. Necessary data for calculations in the form of exact geometry, flow conditions and fluid characteristics were provided to all research participants, who used different software packages for modeling. Numerical simulations were performed in FlowVision for six calculation modes with the Newtonian fluid and standard $k-\varepsilon$ turbulence model, in addition, the fifth mode with the $k-\omega$ SST turbulence model and with the Caro rheological fluid model were performed. In the first stage of the numerical simulation, the convergence over the mesh was investigated, on the basis of which a final mesh with a number of cells of the order of 6 million was chosen. Due to the large number of cells, in order to accelerate the study, part of the calculations was performed on the Lomonosov-2 cluster. As a result of numerical simulation, we obtained and analyzed values of pressure difference between inlet and outlet of the pump, velocity between rotor blades and in the area of diffuser, and also, we carried out visualization of velocity distribution in certain cross-sections. For all design modes there was compared the pressure difference received numerically with the experimental data, and for the fifth calculation mode there was also compared with the experiment by speed distribution between rotor blades and in the area of diffuser. Data analysis has shown good correlation of calculation results in FlowVision with experimental results and numerical simulation in other software packages. The results obtained in FlowVision for solving the US FDA test suggest that FlowVision software package can be used for solving a wide range of hemodynamic problems.

The theoretical study of consensus makes it possible to analyze the various situations that social groups that make decisions in this way have to face in real life, abstracting from the specific characteristics of the groups. It is relevant for practice to study the dynamics of a social group consisting of loyal experts who, in the process of seeking consensus, yield to each other. In this case, psychological “traps” such as false consensus or groupthink are possible, which can sometimes lead to managerial decisions with dire consequences.

The article builds a mathematical consensus model for a group of loyal experts based on modeling using regular Markov chains. Analysis of the model showed that with an increase in the loyalty (decrease in authoritarianism) of group members, the time to reach consensus increases exponentially (the number of agreements increases), which is apparently due to the lack of desire among experts to take part of the responsibility for the decision being made. An increase in the size of such a group leads (ceteris paribus):

– to reduce the number of approvals to consensus in the conditions of striving for absolute loyalty of members, i. e. each additional loyal member adds less and less “strength” to the group;

– to a logarithmic increase in the number of approvals in the context of an increase in the average authoritarianism of members. It is shown that in a small group (two people), the time for reaching consensus can increase by more than 10 times compared to a group of 5 or more members), in the group there is a transfer of responsibility for making decisions.

It is proved that in the case of a group of two absolutely loyal members, consensus is unattainable.

A reasonable conclusion is made that consensus in a group of loyal experts is a special (special) case of consensus, since the dependence of the time until consensus is reached on the authoritarianism of experts and their number in the group is described by different curves than in the case of a regular group of experts.