49 research outputs found
Biochemical reaction network topology defines dose-dependent Drug–Drug interactions
No full textDrug combination therapy is a promising strategy to enhance the desired therapeutic effect, while reducing side
effects. High-throughput pairwise drug combination screening is a commonly used method for discovering
favorable drug interactions, but is time-consuming and costly. Here, we investigate the use of reaction network
topology-guided design of combination therapy as a predictive in silico drug-drug interaction screening
approach. We focused on three-node enzymatic networks, with general Michaelis–Menten kinetics. The results
revealed that drug-drug interactions critically depend on the choice of target arrangement in a given topology,
the nature of the drug, and the desired level of change in the network output. The results showed a negative
correlation between antagonistic interactions and the dosage of drugs. Overall, the negative feedback loops
showed the highest synergistic interactions (the lowest average combination index) and, intriguingly, required
the highest drug doses compared to other topologies under the same condition
Hydrophilic solvents Correspondence to Author:
No full textadministration possesses many advantages including decreased or loss of first-pass drug metabolism, no gastro-intestinal degradation, long time delivery (especially for transdermal patches)
Trade Liberty Policy Despite Shocks and Fluctuations Affecting in Periods of Boom and Bust on Women's Employment
No full textThe present study explores the mechanism of trade effects despite the foreign exchange fluctuations and oil shocks on women's job opportunities in the periods of the recession and prosperity in the country using the Markov-switching Regime ARCH Model during 1984-2016. According to the results of the model estimation, Commercial freedom has a negative impact on women's job opportunities during the recession, which means that government spending in this period is mostly spent on imports. Foreign exchange rate fluctuations have a negative impact on women's job opportunities during the recession and with negative oil shocks, foreign exchange earnings are declined, and government spending is dedicated to import to cope up with inflation and this leads to the reduction of job opportunities and women’s employment. This has led to reduced job opportunities and reduced employment for women. Also, the impact of international trade variables, economic growth rate and positive oil shock on women's employment during the prosperity period is significant, which means that in a country with high trade openness, women's employment will also improve and there will be more job opportunities for women, which can help the country's employment. Therefore, government and private support for women's employment, self-employment, women's entrepreneurship and international trade opportunities can be a positive driver of women's employment growth
Unmasking the Power of Trigger Intensity in Federated Learning: Exploring Trigger Intensities in Backdoor Attacks
No full textFederated learning allows a multitude of contributors to collaboratively build a deep learning model, all while keeping their individual training data private from one another. However, it is not immune to security flaws such as backdoor attacks in which malevolent adversaries manipulate the global model to trigger specific behaviors. In this paper, we investigate the impact of trigger intensity in backdoor attacks within the federated learning setting. We challenge the conventional requirement of training and testing on the same trigger intensity and propose a novel approach of training on a weak trigger and testing on a stronger trigger. Our experiments demonstrate that this technique proves capable of enhancing backdoor attack performance and robustness and might open the possibility for invisible backdoors during the testing phase. The ability to customize trigger visibility empowers attackers to craft stealthier and more potent attacks, making trigger detection challenging. Our findings complement existing state-of-the-art attacks, providing attackers with greater options to tailor their attack to their intended target. We discuss the implications of our research and highlight the importance of developing effective defense mechanisms to counter backdoor vulnerabilities in federated learning systems. Overall, our study contributes to the advancement of backdoor attack understanding in FL and provides valuable insights into trigger intensity as a critical factor for attack customization and resilience. By exploring new avenues for stronger and more stealthy attacks, we contribute to the ongoing efforts to safeguard AI systems’ privacy and reliability in real-world applications.Computer Science | Software Technolog
Multi-Population Aggregative Games: Equilibrium Seeking via Mean-Field Control and Consensus
No full textIn this article, we extend the theory of deterministic mean-field/aggregative games to multipopulation games. We consider a set of populations, each managed by a population coordinator (PC), of selfish agents playing a global noncooperative game, whose cost functions are affected by an aggregate term across all agents from all populations. In particular, we impose that the agents cannot exchange information between themselves directly; instead, only a PC can gather information on its own population and exchange local aggregate information with the neighboring PCs. To seek an equilibrium of the resulting (partial-information) game, we propose an iterative algorithm where each PC broadcasts a mean-field signal, namely, an estimate of the overall aggregative term, to its own population only. In turn, we let the local agents react with the best response and the PCs cooperate for estimating the aggregative term. Our main technical contributions are to cast the proposed scheme as a fixed-point iteration with errors, namely, the interconnection of a Krasnoselskij–Mann iteration and a linear consensus protocol, and, under a nonexpansiveness condition, to show convergence towards an ε -Nash equilibrium, where ε is inversely proportional to the population size.Accepted Author ManuscriptTeam Bart De Schutte
To Bid or not to Bid: that is the Question: Relating Contractor Bid Decisions to Tender Design Related Attributes
No full textThe construction industry has always been an important driver of the economy. An important part of the projects in this industry is commissioned by public entities. However, recently a trend can be observed in which the procurement process fails more often than before. Due to the current times of economic expansion in the Netherlands contractors are more selective in project selection. Failed procurement processes are however undesirable since the transaction costs and time invested in such a process can mount up. Many scholars have investigated the bid decision of contractors (Bagies & Fortune, 2006; Shokri-Ghasabeh & Chileshe, 2016). Yet, in order to contribute to solving the issue mentioned above not all considerations of contractors are relevant. Therefore, this research specifically focused on those considerations, or decision attributes, that a client can influence during the tender design phase. Resulting in the following research question: “What tender design related attributes are key decision drivers in the contractor’s bid decision and how do these key decision drivers influence the bid decision in economic times of expansion for publicly procured non-residential construction projects in the Netherlands?”Civil Engineering | Construction Management and Engineerin
Green implementation of Lean Six Sigma projects in the manufacturing sector
No full textPurpose – Historically, Lean Six Sigma (LSS) implementation has demonstrated a great deal of enhancement to process efficiency, profitability and customer satisfaction. The emerging market pressure for developing better quality, cheaper and greener products invokes a change of view in LSS economical
effectiveness. The purpose of this study is to identify under which condition the final output of LSS projects with traditional strategic benefits are more environmentally friendly.
Design/methodology/approach – To investigate the choice of different types of LSS projects, the environmental impact under different conditions and the comparison of those conditions, the author developed an analytical mathematical model and analysed four different propositions.
Findings – The final price and production volume were recommended as mediating factors to leverage an LSS project to achieve a greener, customised and finance-oriented outputs.
Research limitations/implications – This research contributes to existing LSS research and knowledge development via promoting the different perspectives of LSS and environmental sustainability integration.
Practical implications – This study further enables managers to identify the cut-off point in relation to the production volume and finished prices to leverage the expected financial outputs and environmental impact of the LSS project. This would potentially promote a green LSS project in both implementation and output, alongside its traditional values.
Originality/value – This study uses a modelling approach to identify the conditions under which the actual methodology of the LSS project could be green via less energy consumption with consideration of expected LSS values and outcomes
Prevalence of Hemiplegic Shoulder Pain in Iran: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
No full textContext: Hemiplegic shoulder pain (HSP) is one of the complications of a stroke. Objectives: This study aimed to determine shoulder pain prevalence in cerebrovascular accident (CVA) patients. Methods: This meta-analysis study searched English and Persian descriptive or descriptive-analytical full-text studies on CVA pa-tients. The search was carried out in all databases by two researchers using keywords such as stroke, pain, CVA, hemiplegic, and shoulder pain. Data analysis was done with the software CMA3. Results: In the initial search, 109 articles were found, and finally, the data from four articles were analyzed. The prevalence of HSP was 23 (confidence interval (CI) = 10.3-43.5). Conclusions: Considering the HSP prevalence (28.1) among CVA patients, it is necessary to carry out rehabilitation interventions to prevent such pain in these patients. It is also suggested that rehabilitation interventions be included in the patient education of the healthcare system. © 2023, Author(s)
