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Classical Chanter–Thornley model of mushroom growth has been modified and implemented in AnyLogic simulation environment by means of system dynamics, discrete-event and agent-based approaches. A numerical case study of the model is presented and the problem of optimum age at harvest, providing the maximum integral yield for all fruiting “waves” is solved.

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).

Data hiding in digital images is a promising direction of cybersecurity. Digital steganography methods provide imperceptible transmission of secret data over an open communication channel. The information embedding efficiency depends on the embedding imperceptibility, capacity, and robustness. These quality criteria are mutually inverse, and the improvement of one indicator usually leads to the deterioration of the others. A balance between them can be achieved using metaheuristic optimization. Metaheuristics are a class of optimization algorithms that find an optimal, or close to an optimal solution for a variety of problems, including those that are difficult to formalize, by simulating various natural processes, for example, the evolution of species or the behavior of animals. In this study, we propose an approach to data hiding in the hybrid spatial-frequency domain of digital images based on metaheuristic optimization. Changing a block of image pixels according to some change matrix is considered as an embedding operation. We select the change matrix adaptively for each block using metaheuristic optimization algorithms. In this study, we compare the performance of three metaheuristics such as genetic algorithm, particle swarm optimization, and differential evolution to find the best change matrix. Experimental results showed that the proposed approach provides high imperceptibility of embedding, high capacity, and error-free extraction of embedded information. At the same time, storage of change matrices for each block is not required for further data extraction. This improves user experience and reduces the chance of an attacker discovering the steganographic attachment. Metaheuristics provided an increase in imperceptibility indicator, estimated by the PSNR metric, and the capacity of the previous algorithm for embedding information into the coefficients of the discrete cosine transform using the QIM method [Evsutin, Melman, Meshcheryakov, 2021] by 26.02% and 30.18%, respectively, for the genetic algorithm, 26.01% and 19.39% for particle swarm optimization, 27.30% and 28.73% for differential evolution.

Algorithms of wireless sensor networks operation based on modified ZigBee/IEEE 802.15.4 protocol stack and problems of energy saving with simultaneous decrease of network latency are studied. Theoretical computations are given. Roles distribution and routers schedule assignment algorithms are described. Both results of experiments carried out with real devices and results of simulations with ns-2 (open-source network simulator) are given and analyzed.

The nonlinear restrictive (with restrictions of the inequalities type) dynamic mathematical model of the committed competition vacant market of many goods in conditions of the goods deliveries time-lag and of the linear dependency of the demand vector from the prices vector is offered. The problem of finding of prices and deliveries of goods into the market which are optimal (from seller’s profit standpoint) is formulated. It is shown the seller’s total profit maximum is expressing by the continuous piecewise smooth function of vector of volumes of deliveries with breakup of the derivative on borders of zones of the goods deficit, of the overstocking and of the dynamic balance of demand and offer of each of goods. With use of the predicate functions technique the computing algorithm of optimization of the goods deliveries into the market is built.

We propose a four-component model of a plankton community with discrete time. The model considers the competitive relationships of phytoplankton groups exhibited between each other and the trophic characteristics zooplankton displays: it considers the division of zooplankton into predatory and non-predatory components. The model explicitly represents the consumption of non-predatory zooplankton by predatory. Non-predatory zooplankton feeds on phytoplankton, which includes two competing components: toxic and non-toxic types, with the latter being suitable for zooplankton food. A model of two coupled Ricker equations, focused on describing the dynamics of a competitive community, describes the interaction of two phytoplanktons and allows implicitly taking into account the limitation of each of the competing components of biomass growth by the availability of external resources. The model describes the prey consumption by their predators using a Holling type II trophic function, considering predator saturation.

The analysis of scenarios for the transition from stationary dynamics to fluctuations in the population size of community members showed that the community loses the stability of the non-trivial equilibrium corresponding to the coexistence of the complete community both through a cascade of period-doubling bifurcations and through a Neimark – Sacker bifurcation leading to the emergence of quasi-periodic oscillations. Although quite simple, the model proposed in this work demonstrates dynamics of comunity similar to that natural systems and experiments observe: with a lag of predator oscillations relative to the prey by about a quarter of the period, long-period antiphase cycles of predator and prey, as well as hidden cycles in which the prey density remains almost constant, and the predator density fluctuates, demonstrating the influence fast evolution exhibits that masks the trophic interaction. At the same time, the variation of intra-population parameters of phytoplankton or zooplankton can lead to pronounced changes the community experiences in the dynamic mode: sharp transitions from regular to quasi-periodic dynamics and further to exact cycles with a small period or even stationary dynamics. Quasi-periodic dynamics can arise at sufficiently small phytoplankton growth rates corresponding to stable or regular community dynamics. The change of the dynamic mode in this area (the transition from stable dynamics to quasi-periodic and vice versa) can occur due to the variation of initial conditions or external influence that changes the current abundances of components and shifts the system to the basin of attraction of another dynamic mode.

The paper is devoted to the study of relationships between discrete and continuous models financial processes and their probabilistic characteristics. First, a connection is established between the price processes of stocks, hedging portfolio and options in the models conditioned by binomial perturbations and their limit perturbations of the Brownian motion type. Secondly, analogues in the coefficients of stochastic equations with various random processes, continuous and jumpwise, and in the coefficients corresponding deterministic equations for their probabilistic characteristics. Statement of the results on the connections and finding analogies, obtained in this paper, led to the need for an adequate presentation of preliminary information and results from financial mathematics, as well as descriptions of related objects of stochastic analysis. In this paper, partially new and known results are presented in an accessible form for those who are not specialists in financial mathematics and stochastic analysis, and for whom these results are important from the point of view of applications. Specifically, the following sections are presented.

• In one- and n-period binomial models, it is proposed a unified approach to determining on the probability space a risk-neutral measure with which the discounted option price becomes a martingale. The resulting martingale formula for the option price is suitable for numerical simulation. In the following sections, the risk-neutral measures approach is applied to study financial processes in continuous-time models.

• In continuous time, models of the price of shares, hedging portfolios and options are considered in the form of stochastic equations with the Ito integral over Brownian motion and over a compensated Poisson process. The study of the properties of these processes in this section is based on one of the central objects of stochastic analysis — the Ito formula. Special attention is given to the methods of its application.

• The famous Black – Scholes formula is presented, which gives a solution to the partial differential equation for the function $v(t, x)$, which, when $x = S (t)$ is substituted, where $S(t)$ is the stock price at the moment time $t$, gives the price of the option in the model with continuous perturbation by Brownian motion.

• The analogue of the Black – Scholes formula for the case of the model with a jump-like perturbation by the Poisson process is suggested. The derivation of this formula is based on the technique of risk-neutral measures and the independence lemma.

The paper presents a software system aimed at finding best (in some sense) parameters of an algorithm. The system handles both discrete and continuous parameters and employs massive parallelism offered by public clouds. The paper presents an overview of the system, a method to measure algorithm's performance in the cloud and numerical results of system's use on several problem sets.

The decomposition algorithms provide approaches to deal with NP-hardness in solving discrete optimization problems (DOPs). In this article one of the promising ways to exploit sparse matrices — local elimination algorithm in parallel interpretation (LEAP) are demonstrated. That is a graph-based structural decomposition algorithm, which allows to compute a solution in stages such that each of them uses results from previous stages. At the same time LEAP heavily depends on elimination ordering which actually provides solving stages. Also paper considers tree- and block-parallel for LEAP and required realization process of it comparison of a several heuristics for obtaining a better elimination order and shows how is related graph structure, elimination ordering and solving time.

The paper presents an implementation of branch and bound algorithm employing coarse grained parallelism. The system is based on CBC (COIN-OR branch and cut) open-source MIP solver and inter-process communication capabilities of Erlang. Numerical results show noticeable speedup in comparison to single-threaded CBC instance.