Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) are student-led, school-based clubs that aim to provide a safe environment in the school context for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students, as well as their straight allies. The present study examines the potential for GSAs to support positive youth development and to reduce associations among LGBT-specific school victimization and negative young ...

We review and apply quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) and global sensitivity analysis (GSA) techniques to pricing and risk management (Greeks) of representative financial instruments of increasing complexity. We compare QMC vs. standard Monte Carlo (MC) results in great detail, using high-dimensional Sobol’ low-discrepancy sequences, different discretization methods, and specific analyses of convergence,...

In this study an effective method for nonlinear constrained optimization of shallow foundation is presented. A newly developed heuristic global optimization algorithm called Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA) is introduced and applied for the optimization of foundation. The algorithm is classified as random search algorithm and does not require initial values and uses a random search instead ...

The Global Alliance for TB Drug Development (TB Alliance) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the discovery and development of faster-acting and affordable drugs to fight TB. TB kills nearly 2 million people each year, partly due to the inadequacy of the current treatment. There have been no new drugs registered for TB in more than 40 years, but new partnership models over the past de...

In this paper, a Problem of simultaneous and coordinated tuning of the PID type Power System Stabilizer (PSS) and Automatic Voltage Regulators (AVR) gains in a Single-Machine connected to InfiniteBus (SMIB) power system is invastigated. The problem of robustly stabilizer parameters and AVR gain tunning is formulated as a nonlinear optimization problem according to the time domain-based objectiv...

We address two critical choices in Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA): the choice of the sample size and of the threshold for the identification of insensitive input factors. Guidance to assist users with those two choices is still insufficient. We aim at filling this gap. Firstly, we define criteria to quantify the convergence of sensitivity indices, of ranking and of screening, based on a boot...

Physically-based radiative transfer models (RTMs) help understand the interactions of radiation with vegetation and atmosphere. However, advanced RTMs can be computationally burdensome, which makes them impractical in many real applications, especially when many state conditions and model couplings need to be studied. To overcome this problem, it is proposed to substitute RTMs through surrogate...

Abstract The prediction of river runoff is crucial for flood forecasting, agricultural irrigation and hydroelectric power generation. A coupled model based on the Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA) Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) proposed to address non-linear seasonal features data. GSA has a significant local optimisation capability, while SARIMA allows real-time ...

Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) methods are useful tools to rank input parameters uncertainties regarding their impact on result variability. In practice, such type of approach is still at an exploratory level for studies relying on 2D Shallow Water Equations (SWE) codes as GSA requires specific tools and deals with important computational capacity. The aim of this paper is to provide both a ...

Wheat is a commodity of great social and economic importance, equal to rice as a global food security crop. The proposal for CRP 3.1, WHEAT, argues convincingly for a collaborative international research effort to achieve sustainable wheat production systems and improve access to and affordability of wheat as a major food for poor consumers while reversing environmental degradation. To this end...