All issues

We developed a model of honeybee colony foraging based on reaction – diffusion equations. Employed bees transmit information about their food sources using dance, and job seekers in the hive can choose any dance they like and thus join the exploitation of the corresponding source. We consider two strategies of dance selection: a targeted one, when bees analyze information on the dance floor and choose the most energetic and longest dance corresponding to the most profitable source, and a simple random choice of the first dance they encounter. Modelling showed that the greatest profit (food influx into the hive) is provided by the random choice of dance, as paradoxical as it may seem at first glance. Optimization of profit by each agent for itself (targeted choice of dances) is rather a disadvantage for the colony, and “non-optimality” in dance choice can be the result of useful evolutionary adaptation.

This paper investigates the effectiveness of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) combined with various Large Language Models (LLMs) for document retrieval and information access in corporate information systems. We survey typical use-cases of LLMs in enterprise environments, outline the RAG architecture, and discuss the major challenges that arise when integrating LLMs into a RAG pipeline. A system architecture is proposed that couples a text-vector encoder with an LLM. The encoder builds a vector database that indexes a library of corporate documents. For every user query, relevant contextual fragments are retrieved from this library via the FAISS engine and appended to the prompt given to the LLM. The LLM then generates an answer grounded in the supplied context. The overall structure and workflow of the proposed RAG solution are described in detail. To justify the choice of the generative component, we benchmark a set of widely used LLMs — ChatGPT, GigaChat, YandexGPT, Llama, Mistral, Qwen, and others — when employed as the answer-generation module. Using an expert-annotated test set of queries, we evaluate the accuracy, completeness, linguistic quality, and conciseness of the responses. Model-specific characteristics and average response latencies are analysed; the study highlights the significant influence of available GPU memory on the throughput of local LLM deployments. An overall ranking of the models is derived from an aggregated quality metric. The results confirm that the proposed RAG architecture provides efficient document retrieval and information delivery in corporate environments. Future research directions include richer context augmentation techniques and a transition toward agent-based LLM architectures. The paper concludes with practical recommendations on selecting an optimal RAG–LLM configuration to ensure fast and precise access to enterprise knowledge assets.

The article describes a mathematical model that simulates performance of a hierarchical organization during an early stage of a crisis. A distinguished feature of this stage of crisis is presence of so called early warning signals containing information on the approaching event. Employees are capable of catching the early warnings and of preparing the organization for the crisis based on the signals’ meaning. The efficiency of the preparation depends on both parameters of the organization and parameters of the crisis. The proposed simulation agentbased model is implemented on Java programming language and is used for conducting experiments via Monte- Carlo method. The goal of the experiments is to compare how centralized and decentralized organizational structures perform during sudden and smoldering crises. By centralized organizations we assume structures with high number of hierarchy levels and low number of direct reports of every manager, while decentralized organizations mean structures with low number of hierarchy levels and high number of direct reports of every manager. Sudden crises are distinguished by short early stage and low number of warning signals, while smoldering crises are defined as crises with long lasting early stage and high number of warning signals not necessary containing important information. Efficiency of the organizational performance during early stage of a crisis is measured by two parameters: percentage of early warnings which have been acted upon in order to prepare organization for the crisis, and time spent by top-manager on working with early warnings. As a result, we show that during early stage of smoldering crises centralized organizations process signals more efficiently than decentralized organizations, while decentralized organizations handle early warning signals more efficiently during early stage of sudden crises. However, occupation of top-managers during sudden crises is higher in decentralized organizations and it is higher in centralized organizations during smoldering crises. Thus, neither of the two classes of organizational structures is more efficient by the two parameters simultaneously. Finally, we conduct sensitivity analysis to verify the obtained results.

The paper investigates the features of group dynamics of individuals-agents in the computer model of the animal population interacting with each other and with a renewable resource. This type of dynamics was previously found in [Belotelov, Konovalenko, 2016]. The model population consists of a set of individuals. Each individual is characterized by its mass, which is identified with energy. It describes in detail the dynamics of the energy balance of the individual. The habitat of the simulated population is a rectangular area where the resource grows evenly (grass).

Various computer experiments carried out with the model under different parameter values and initial conditions are described. The main purpose of these computational experiments was to study the group (herd) dynamics of individuals. It was found that in a fairly wide range of parameter values and with the introduction of spatial inhomogeneities of the area, the group type of behavior is preserved. The values of the model population parameters under which the regime of spatial oscillations of the population occurs were found numerically. Namely, in the model population periodically group (herd) behavior of animals is replaced by a uniform distribution over space, which after a certain number of bars again becomes a group. Numerical experiments on the preliminary analysis of the factors influencing the period of these solutions are carried out. It turned out that the leading parameters affecting the frequency and amplitude, as well as the number of groups are the mobility of individuals and the rate of recovery of the resource. Numerical experiments are carried out to study the influence of parameters determining the nonlocal interaction between individuals of the population on the group behavior. It was found that the modes of group behavior persist for a long time with the exclusion of fertility factors of individuals. It is confirmed that the nonlocality of interaction between individuals is leading in the formation of group behavior.

As the population of cities grows, the need to plan for the development of transport infrastructure becomes more acute. For this purpose, transport modeling packages are created. These packages usually contain a set of convex optimization problems, the iterative solution of which leads to the desired equilibrium distribution of flows along the paths. One of the directions for the development of transport modeling is the construction of more accurate generalized models that take into account different types of passengers, their travel purposes, as well as the specifics of personal and public modes of transport that agents can use. Another important direction of transport models development is to improve the efficiency of the calculations performed. Since, due to the large dimension of modern transport networks, the search for a numerical solution to the problem of equilibrium distribution of flows along the paths is quite expensive. The iterative nature of the entire solution process only makes this worse. One of the approaches leading to a reduction in the number of calculations performed is the construction of consistent models that allow to combine the blocks of a 4-stage model into a single optimization problem. This makes it possible to eliminate the iterative running of blocks, moving from solving a separate optimization problem at each stage to some general problem. Early work has proven that such approaches provide equivalent solutions. However, it is worth considering the validity and interpretability of these methods. The purpose of this article is to substantiate a single problem, that combines both the calculation of the trip matrix and the modal choice, for the generalized case when there are different layers of demand, types of agents and classes of vehicles in the transport network. The article provides possible interpretations for the gauge parameters used in the problem, as well as for the dual factors associated with the balance constraints. The authors of the article also show the possibility of combining the considered problem with a block for determining network load into a single optimization problem.

We consider the hierarchical model of financial crashes introduced by A. Johansen and D. Sornette which reproduces the log-periodic power law behavior of the price before the critical point. In order to build the generalization of this model we introduce the dependence of an influence exponent on an ultrametric distance between agents. Much attention is being paid to a problem of critical point universality which is investigated by comparison of probability density functions of the crash times corresponding to systems with various total numbers of agents.

The number of papers addressing the forecasting of the infectious disease morbidity is rapidly growing due to accumulation of available statistical data. This article surveys the major approaches for the shortterm and the long-term morbidity forecasting. Their limitations and the practical application possibilities are pointed out. The paper presents the conventional time series analysis methods — regression and autoregressive models; machine learning-based approaches — Bayesian networks and artificial neural networks; case-based reasoning; filtration-based techniques. The most known mathematical models of infectious diseases are mentioned: classical equation-based models (deterministic and stochastic), modern simulation models (network and agent-based).

Financial mathematics is one of the most natural applications for the statistical analysis of time series. Financial time series reflect simultaneous activity of a large number of different economic agents. Consequently, one expects that methods of statistical physics and the theory of random processes can be applied to them.

In this paper, we provide a statistical analysis of time series of the FOREX currency market. Of particular interest is the comparison of the time series behavior depending on the way time is measured: physical time versus trading time measured in the number of elementary price changes (ticks). The experimentally observed statistics of the time series under consideration (euro–dollar for the first half of 2007 and for 2009 and British pound – dollar for 2007) radically differs depending on the choice of the method of time measurement. When measuring time in ticks, the distribution of price increments can be well described by the normal distribution already on a scale of the order of ten ticks. At the same time, when price increments are measured in real physical time, the distribution of increments continues to differ radically from the normal up to scales of the order of minutes and even hours.

To explain this phenomenon, we investigate the statistical properties of elementary increments in price and time. In particular, we show that the distribution of time between ticks for all three time series has a long (1-2 orders of magnitude) power-law tails with exponential cutoff at large times. We obtained approximate expressions for the distributions of waiting times for all three cases. Other statistical characteristics of the time series (the distribution of elementary price changes, pair correlation functions for price increments and for waiting times) demonstrate fairly simple behavior. Thus, it is the anomalously wide distribution of the waiting times that plays the most important role in the deviation of the distribution of increments from the normal. As a result, we discuss the possibility of applying a continuous time random walk (CTRW) model to describe the FOREX time series.

Inhibitors of histone deacetylases (HDACi) have considered as a promising class of drugs for the treatment of cancers because of their effects on cell growth, differentiation, and apoptosis. Angiogenesis play an important role in the growth of most solid tumors and the progression of metastasis. The vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is a key angiogenic agent, which is secreted by malignant tumors, which induces the proliferation and the migration of vascular endothelial cells. Currently, the most promising strategy in the fight against cancer is the creation of hybrid drugs that simultaneously act on several physiological targets. In this work, a series of hybrids bearing N-phenylquinazolin-4-amine and hydroxamic acid moieties were studied as dual VEGFR-2/HDAC inhibitors using simplex representation of the molecular structure and Support Vector Machine (SVM). The total sample of 42 compounds was divided into training and test sets. Five-fold cross-validation (5-fold) was used for internal validation. Satisfactory quantitative structure—activity relationship (QSAR) models were constructed (R²_test = 0.64–0.87) for inhibitors of HDAC, VEGFR-2 and human breast cancer cell line MCF-7. The interpretation of the obtained QSAR models was carried out. The coordinated effect of different molecular fragments on the increase of antitumor activity of the studied compounds was estimated. Among the substituents of the N-phenyl fragment, the positive contribution of para bromine for all three types of activity can be distinguished. The results of the interpretation were used for molecular design of potential dual VEGFR-2/HDAC inhibitors. For comparative QSAR research we used physicochemical descriptors calculated by the program HYBOT, the method of Random Forest (RF), and on-line version of the expert system OCHEM (https://ochem.eu). In the modeling of OCHEM PyDescriptor descriptors and extreme gradient boosting was chosen. In addition, the models obtained with the help of the expert system OCHEM were used for virtual screening of 300 compounds to select promising VEGFR-2/HDAC inhibitors for further synthesis and testing.

Migration has a significant impact on the shaping of the demographic structure of the territories population, the state of regional and local labour markets. As a rule, rapid change in the working-age population of any territory due to migration processes results in an imbalance in supply and demand on labour markets and a change in the demographic structure of the population. Migration is also to a large extent a reflection of socio-economic processes taking place in the society. Hence, the issues related to the study of migration factors, the direction, intensity and structure of migration flows, and the prediction of their magnitude are becoming topical issues these days.

Mathematical tools are often used to analyze, predict migration processes and assess their consequences, allowing for essentially accurate modelling of migration processes for different territories on the basis of the available statistical data. In recent years, quite a number of scientific papers on modelling internal and external migration flows using mathematical methods have appeared both in Russia and in foreign countries in recent years. Consequently, there has been a need to systematize the currently most commonly used methods and tools applied in migration modelling to form a coherent picture of the main trends and research directions in this field.

The presented review considers the main approaches to migration modelling and the main components of migration modelling methodology, i. e. stages, methods, models and model classification. Their comparative analysis was also conducted and general recommendations on the choice of mathematical tools for modelling were developed. The review contains two sections: migration modelling methods and migration models. The first section describes the main methods used in the model development process — econometric, cellular automata, system-dynamic, probabilistic, balance, optimization and cluster analysis. Based on the analysis of modern domestic and foreign publications on migration, the most common classes of models — regression, agent-based, simulation, optimization, probabilistic, balance, dynamic and combined — were identified and described. The features, advantages and disadvantages of different types of migration process models were considered.