Global sensitivity analysis (GSA) is a valuable tool to support the use of mathematical models for environmental systems. During the last years the water quality modelling field has embraced the use of GSA. Environmental water quality modellers have tried to transfer the knowledge and experience acquired in other disciplines. The main objective of this paper is to provide an informed problem st...

Let G be a graph with vertex set V (G) and edge set E(G). A defensive alliance in G is a subset S of V (G) such that for every vertex v ∈ S, |N [v] ∩ S| ≥ |(V (G)−N [v]) ∩ S|. A global defensive alliance is an alliance that is also a dominating set. We define the alliance partition number, ψa(G) (global alliance partition number, ψg(G)), to be the maximum number of sets in a partition of V (G) ...

In this article, a newly hybrid nature-inspired approach (MGBPSO-GSA) is developed with a combination of Mean Gbest Particle Swarm Optimization (MGBPSO) and Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA). The basic inspiration is to integrate the ability of exploitation in MGBPSO with the ability of exploration in GSA to synthesize the strength of both approaches. As a result, the presented approach has ...

In this paper, stochastic leader gravitational search algorithm (SL-GSA) based on randomized k is proposed. Standard GSA (SGSA) utilizes the best agents without any randomization, thus it is more prone to converge at suboptimal results. Initially, the new approach randomly choses k agents from the set of all agents to improve the global search ability. Gradually, the set of agents is reduced by...

Background: Endostatin is a potent endogenous anti-angiogenic agent which inhibits tumour growth. A non-synonymous coding polymorphism in the Endostatin gene is thought to affect Endostatin activity. We aimed to determine the role of this Endostatin polymorphism in breast cancer pathogenesis and any influence on serum Endostatin levels in healthy volunteers. Endostatin protein expression on a b...

World Sepsis Day (WSD) was established by the Global Sepsis Alliance in 2012 and is held every 13 of September. One of the objectives is to raise global awareness of sepsis. Despite its high mortality rate [1], an international survey reported that 80–90% of the public in western countries are unfamiliar with sepsis [2]. Anno 2018, public knowledge is no longer solely obtained via television an...

The Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA) is a novel heuristic optimization method based on the law of gravity and mass interactions. It has been proven that this algorithm has good ability to search for the global optimum, but it suffers from slow searching speed in the last iterations. This work proposes a hybrid of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and GSA to resolve the aforementioned proble...

The importance of sensitivity analysis in engineering design cannot be over-emphasized. In design under uncertainty, sensitivity analysis is performed with respect to the probabilistic characteristics. Global sensitivity analysis (GSA), in particular, is used to study the impact of variations in input variables on the variation of a model output. One of the most challenging issues for GSA is th...

The new AASHTO Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG) performance predictions for the anticipated climatic and traffic conditions depend on the values of the numerous input parameters that characterize the pavement materials, layers, design features, and condition. This paper proposes comprehensive local sensitivity analyses (LSA) and global sensitivity analyses (GSA) methodologies...