1,721,092 research outputs found
Agent based simulations in disease modeling Comment on “Towards a unified approach in the modeling of fibrosis: A review with research perspectives” by Martine Ben Amar and Carlo Bianca
No full text
A class of weighted Hardy inequalities and applications to evolution problems
No full textWe state a weighted Hardy inequality in the context of the study of the Kolmogorov operators perturbed by inverse square potentials and of the related evolution problems.
The weight function in the drift term is a probability density on .
We prove the optimality of the constant in the estimate and state existence and nonexistence results following the Cabr'e-Martel's approach extended to Kolmogorov operators
Weighted Hardy inequalities and Ornstein-Uhlenbeck type operators perturbed by multipolar inverse square potentials
No full textIn this paper our main results are the multipolar weighted Hardy inequality for functions belonging to weighted Sobolev spaces and the proof of the optimality of the constant in the estimate.
The Gaussian probablity measure is the unique invariant measure for Ornstein-Uhlenbeck type operators.
This estimate allows us to get necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of positive solutions to a parabolic problem corresponding to the Kolmogorov operators defined on smooth functions and perturbed by a multipolar inverse square potential
OntoFast: Construct ontology rapidly
No full textOntology construction is a time consuming and labor intensive task. It may take many months to construct an ontology as according to standard practices each concept must have synonyms, domain specific definition, unique identifier and references. Current practices of ontology construction require manual data input to feed this data via programs such as Protégé etc. We designed a small application that speeds up the development of new ontologies. It provides an easy to use and convenient interface that allows to theoretically build an ontology within few days. The output of our program can be easily opened and then used into a standard ontology editor like Protégé. Availability: The software is freely available visiting this link: http://www. francescopappalardo.net/ontofast.zi
Predicting long-term vaccine efficacy against metastases using agents
No full textTo move faster from preclinical studies (experiments in mice) towards clinical phase I trials (experiments in advanced cancer patients), the chance to predict the outcome of longer experiments represents a key step. We use the MetastaSim model to predict the long-term effects of the Triplex vaccine against metastases. To this end we simulate follow-ups of two and three of three months (equivalent approximately to 5.83 and 8.75 years in humans) to compare the long-term efficacy of the best protocol used “in vivo” against the one found by the MetastaSim model. We also check the efficacy of these two protocols by delaying the time of the first administration, in order to catch up the maximum time delay between the appearing of metastases and the administration of the vaccine needed to guarantee reasonable treatment efficacy
Agent based modeling of the effects of potential treatments over the blood-brain barrier in multiple sclerosis
No full textMultiple sclerosis is a disease of the central nervous systemthat involves the destruction of the insulating sheath
of axons, causing severe disabilities. Since the etiology of the disease is not yet fully understood, the use of novel
techniques that may help to understand the disease, to suggest potential therapies and to test the effects of candidate
treatments is highly advisable.
To this endwe developed an agent based model that demonstrated its ability to reproduce the typical oscillatory
behavior observed in the most common form of multiple sclerosis, relapsing–remitting multiple sclerosis. The
model has then been used to test the potential beneficial effects of vitamin D over the disease.
Many scientific studies underlined the importance of the blood–brain barrier and of the mechanisms that influence
its permeability on the development of the disease. In the present paper we further extend our previously
developedmodel with amechanism that mimics the blood–brain barrier behavior. The goal of ourwork is to suggest
the best strategies to follow for developing new potential treatments that intervene in the blood–brain
barrier.
Results suggest that the best treatments should potentially prevent the opening of the blood–brain barrier, as
treatments that help in recovering the blood–brain barrier functionality could be less effective
A genetic algorithm for shortest path motion problem in three dimensions
No full textWe present an evolutionary approach to search for near-optimal solutions for the shortest path motion problem in three dimensions (between a starting and an ending point) in the presence of obstacles. The proposed genetic algorithm makes use of newly defined concepts of crossover and mutation and effective, problem optimized, methods for candidate solution generation. We test the performances of the algorithm on several test cases
Vaccine protocols optimization: in silico experiences
No full textVaccines represent a special class of drugs, capable of stimulating immune system responses against pathogens and tumors. Vaccine development is a lengthy process that includes expensive laboratory experiments in order to assess safety and effectiveness. As the efficacy of a vaccine was demonstrated by biological/chemical investigations and pre-clinical studies, then a major problem is represented by the search for an optimal vaccination dosage. Optimality here assumes the meaning of assuring a high degree of efficacy and safety (lack of toxic or side effects). In lack of quantitative methods, this is usually achieved by a consensus technique, a public statement on a particular aspect of medical knowledge available at the time it was written, and that is generally agreed upon as the evidence-based, state-of-the-art (or state-of-science) knowledge by a representative group of experts in that area. In this article, we focus on the difficult problem of the search for an optimal vaccination dosage in the field of tumor immunology, that is a major issue in biomedical research. This, indeed, represents a first step toward a personalized medicine approach
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