All issues

The method of the stochastic matrix spectrum analysis is used to build an indicator that allows to determine the subject of scientific texts without keywords usage. This matrix is a matrix of conditional probabilities of bigrams, built on the statistics of the alphabet characters in the text without spaces, numbers and punctuation marks. Scientific texts are classified according to the mutual arrangement of invariant subspaces of the matrix of conditional probabilities of pairs of letter combinations. The separation indicator is the value of the cosine of the angle between the right and left eigenvectors corresponding to the maximum and minimum eigenvalues. The computational algorithm uses a special representation of the dichotomy parameter, which is the integral of the square norm of the resolvent of the stochastic matrix of bigrams along the circumference of a given radius in the complex plane. The tendency of the integral to infinity testifies to the approximation of the integration circuit to the eigenvalue of the matrix. The paper presents the typical distribution of the indicator of identification of specialties. For statistical analysis were analyzed dissertations on the main 19 specialties without taking into account the classification within the specialty, 20 texts for the specialty. It was found that the empirical distributions of the cosine of the angle for the mathematical and Humanities specialties do not have a common domain, so they can be formally divided by the value of this indicator without errors. Although the body of texts was not particularly large, nevertheless, in the case of arbitrary selection of dissertations, the identification error at the level of 2 % seems to be a very good result compared to the methods based on semantic analysis. It was also found that it is possible to make a text pattern for each of the specialties in the form of a reference matrix of bigrams, in the vicinity of which in the norm of summable functions it is possible to accurately identify the theme of the written scientific work, without using keywords. The proposed method can be used as a comparative indicator of greater or lesser severity of the scientific text or as an indicator of compliance of the text to a certain scientific level.

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.

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.

The article examines the impact of non-market actions of participants in oligopolistic markets on the market structure. The following actions of one of the market participants aimed at increasing its market share are analyzed: 1) price manipulation; 2) blocking investments of stronger oligopolists; 3) destruction of produced products and capacities of competitors. Linear dynamic games with a quadratic criterion are used to model the strategies of oligopolists. The expediency of their use is due to the possibility of both an adequate description of the evolution of markets and the implementation of two mutually complementary approaches to determining the strategies of oligopolists: 1) based on the representation of models in the state space and the solution of generalized Riccati equations; 2) based on the application of operational calculus methods (in the frequency domain) which owns the visibility necessary for economic analysis.

The article shows the equivalence of approaches to solving the problem with maximin criteria of oligopolists in the state space and in the frequency domain. The results of calculations are considered in relation to a duopoly, with indicators close to one of the duopolies in the microelectronic industry of the world. The second duopolist is less effective from the standpoint of costs, though more mobile. Its goal is to increase its market share by implementing the non-market methods listed above.

Calculations carried out with help of the game model, made it possible to construct dependencies that characterize the relationship between the relative increase in production volumes over a 25-year period of weak and strong duopolists under price manipulation. Constructed dependencies show that an increase in the price for the accepted linear demand function leads to a very small increase in the production of a strong duopolist, but, simultaneously, to a significant increase in this indicator for a weak one.

Calculations carried out with use of the other variants of the model, show that blocking investments, as well as destroying the products of a strong duopolist, leads to more significant increase in the production of marketable products for a weak duopolist than to a decrease in this indicator for a strong one.

The grid-characteristic method is successfully used for solving hyperbolic systems of partial differential equations (for example, transport / acoustic / elastic equations). It allows to construct correctly algorithms on contact boundaries and boundaries of the integration domain, to a certain extent to take into account the physics of the problem (propagation of discontinuities along characteristic curves), and has the property of monotonicity, which is important for considered problems. In the cases of two-dimensional and three-dimensional problems the method makes use of a coordinate splitting technique, which enables us to solve the original equations by solving several one-dimensional ones consecutively. It is common to use up to 3-rd order one-dimensional schemes with simple splitting techniques which do not allow for the convergence order to be higher than two (with respect to time). Significant achievements in the operator splitting theory were done, the existence of higher-order schemes was proved. Its peculiarity is the need to perform a step in the opposite direction in time, which gives rise to difficulties, for example, for parabolic problems.

In this work coordinate splitting of the 3-rd and 4-th order were used for the two-dimensional hyperbolic problem of the linear elasticity. This made it possible to increase the final convergence order of the computational algorithm. The paper empirically estimates the convergence in L1 and L∞ norms using analytical solutions of the system with the sufficient degree of smoothness. To obtain objective results, we considered the cases of longitudinal and transverse plane waves propagating both along the diagonal of the computational cell and not along it. Numerical experiments demonstrated the improved accuracy and convergence order of constructed schemes. These improvements are achieved with the cost of three- or fourfold increase of the computational time (for the 3-rd and 4-th order respectively) and no additional memory requirements. The proposed improvement of the computational algorithm preserves the simplicity of its parallel implementation based on the spatial decomposition of the computational grid.

Muscle contraction is controlled by Ca2+ ions via regulatory proteins, troponin and tropomyosin, associated with thin actin filaments in sarcomeres. Depending on the Ca2+ concentration, the thin filament rearranges so that tropomyosin moves along its surface, opening or closing access to actin for the motor domains of myosin molecules, and causing contraction or relaxation, respectively. Numerous point amino acid substitutions in tropomyosin are known, leading to genetic pathologies — myo- and cardiomyopathies caused by changes in the structural and functional properties of the thin filament. The results of molecular dynamics modeling of a fragment of a thin filament of cardiac muscle sarcomeres formed by fibrillar actin and wildtype tropomyosin or with amino acid substitutions: the double stabilizing substitution D137L/G126R and the cardiomyopathic substitution S215L are presented. For numerical calculations, we used a new model of a thin filament fragment containing 26 actin monomers and 4 tropomyosin dimers, with a refined structure of the region of overlap of neighboring tropomyosin molecules in each of the two tropomyosin strands. The simulation results showed that tropomyosin significantly increases the bending stiffness of the thin filament, as previously found experimentally. The double stabilizing replacement D137L/G126R leads to a further increase in this rigidity, and the replacement S215L, on the contrary, leads to its decrease, which also corresponds to experimental data. At the same time, these substitutions have different effects on the angular mobility of the actin helix and only slightly modulate the angular mobility of tropomyosin cables relative to the actin helix and the population of hydrogen bonds between negatively charged tropomyosin residues and positively charged actin residues. The results of the verification of the new model demonstrate that its quality is sufficient for the numerical study of the effect of single amino acid substitutions on the structure and dynamics of thin filaments and study the effects leading to dysregulation of muscle contraction. This model can be used as a useful tool for elucidating the molecular mechanisms of some genetic diseases and assessing the pathogenicity of newly discovered genetic variants.

Most biomechanical tasks of interest to clinicians can be solved only using personalized mathematical models. Such models allow to formalize and relate key pathophysiological processes, basing on clinically available data evaluate non-measurable parameters that are important for the diagnosis of diseases, predict the result of a therapeutic or surgical intervention. The use of models in clinical practice imposes additional restrictions: clinicians require model validation on clinical cases, the speed and automation of the entire calculated technological chain, from processing input data to obtaining a result. Limitations on the simulation time, determined by the time of making a medical decision (of the order of several minutes), imply the use of reduction methods that correctly describe the processes under study within the framework of reduced models or machine learning tools.

Personalization of models requires patient-oriented parameters, personalized geometry of a computational domain and generation of a computational mesh. Model parameters are estimated by direct measurements, or methods of solving inverse problems, or methods of machine learning. The requirement of personalization imposes severe restrictions on the number of fitted parameters that can be measured under standard clinical conditions. In addition to parameters, the model operates with boundary conditions that must take into account the patient’s characteristics. Methods for setting personalized boundary conditions significantly depend on the clinical setting of the problem and clinical data. Building a personalized computational domain through segmentation of medical images and generation of the computational grid, as a rule, takes a lot of time and effort due to manual or semi-automatic operations. Development of automated methods for setting personalized boundary conditions and segmentation of medical images with the subsequent construction of a computational grid is the key to the widespread use of mathematical modeling in clinical practice.

The aim of this work is to review our solutions for personalization of mathematical models within the framework of three tasks of clinical cardiology: virtual assessment of hemodynamic significance of coronary artery stenosis, calculation of global blood flow after hemodynamic correction of complex heart defects, calculating characteristics of coaptation of reconstructed aortic valve.

Studies of the crisis socio-demographic situation in the Russian Far East require not only the use of traditional statistical methods, but also a conceptual analysis of possible development scenarios based on the synergy principles. The article is devoted to the analysis and modeling of the number of employed, unemployed and economically inactive population using nonlinear autonomous differential equations. We studied a basic mathematical model that takes into account the principle of pair interactions, which is a special case of the model for the struggle between conditional information of D. S. Chernavsky. The point estimates for the parameters are found using least squares method adapted for this model. The average approximation error was no more than 5.17%. The calculated parameter values correspond to the unstable focus and the oscillations with increasing amplitude of population number in the asymptotic case, which indicates a gradual increase in disparities between the employed, unemployed and economically inactive population and a collapse of their dynamics. We found that in the parametric space, not far from the inertial scenario, there are domains of blow-up and chaotic regimes complicating the ability to effectively manage. The numerical study showed that a change in only one model parameter (e.g. migration) without complex structural socio-economic changes can only delay the collapse of the dynamics in the long term or leads to the emergence of unpredictable chaotic regimes. We found an additional set of the model parameters corresponding to sustainable dynamics (stable focus) which approximates well the time series of the considered population groups. In the mathematical model, the bifurcation parameters are the outflow rate of the able-bodied population, the fertility (“rejuvenation of the population”), as well as the migration inflow rate of the unemployed. We found that the transition to stable regimes is possible with the simultaneous impact on several parameters which requires a comprehensive set of measures to consolidate the population in the Russian Far East and increase the level of income in terms of compensation for infrastructure sparseness. Further economic and sociological research is required to develop specific state policy measures.

Getting a qualified medical examination can be difficult for people in remote areas because medical staff available can either be inaccessible or it might lack expert knowledge at proper level. Telemedicine technologies can help in such situations. On one hand, such technologies allow highly qualified doctors to consult remotely, thereby increasing the quality of diagnosis and plan treatment. On the other hand, computer-aided analysis of the research results, anamnesis and information on similar cases assist medical staff in their routine activities and decision-making.

Creating telemedicine system for a particular domain is a laborious process. It’s not sufficient to pick proper medical experts and to fill the knowledge base of the analytical module. It’s also necessary to organize the entire infrastructure of the system to meet the requirements in terms of reliability, fault tolerance, protection of personal data and so on. Tools with reusable infrastructure elements, which are common to such systems, are able to decrease the amount of work needed for the development of telemedicine systems.

An interactive tool for creating distributed telemedicine systems is described in the article. A list of requirements for the systems is presented; structural solutions for meeting the requirements are suggested. A composition of such elements applicable for distributed systems is described in the article. A cardiac telemedicine system is described as a foundation of the tool

The use of service-oriented approach in scientific domains can increase research productivity by enabling sharing, publication and reuse of computing applications, as well as automation of scientific workflows. Everest is a cloud platform that enables researchers with minimal skills to publish and use scientific applications as services. In contrast to existing solutions, Everest executes applications on external resources attached by users, implements flexible binding of resources to applications and supports programmatic access to the platform's functionality. The paper presents current state of the platform, recent developments and remaining challenges.