Improved particle swarm optimization and gravitational search algorithm for parameter estimation in aspartate pathways

One of the main issues in biological system is to characterize the dynamic behaviour of the complex biological processes. Usually, metabolic pathway models are used to describe the complex processes that involve many parameters. It is important to have an accurate and complete set of parameters that describe the characteristics of a given model. Therefore, the parameter values are estimated by fitting the model with experimental data. However, the estimation on these parameters is typically difficult and even impossible in some cases. Furthermore, the experimental data are often incomplete and also suffer from experimental noise. These shortcomings make it challenging to identify the best-fit parameters that can represent the actual biological processes involved in biological systems. Previously, a computational approach namely optimization algorithms are used to estimate the measurement of the model parameters. Most of these algorithms previously often suffered bad estimation for the biological system models, which resulted in bad fitting (error) the model with the experimental data. This research proposes a parameter estimation algorithm that can reduce the fitting error between the models and the experimental data. The proposed algorithm is an Improved Particle Swarm Optimization and Gravitational Search Algorithm (IPSOGSA) to obtain the near-optimal kinetic parameter values from experimental data. The improvement in this algorithm is a local search, which aims to increase the chances to obtain the global solution. The outcome of this research is that IPSOGSA can outperform other comparison algorithms in terms of root mean squared error (RMSE) and predictive residual error sum of squares (PRESS) for the estimated results. IPSOGSA manages to score the smallest RMSE with 12.2125 and 0.0304 for Ile and HSP metabolite respectively. The predicted results are benefits for the estimation of optimal kinetic parameters to improve the production of desired metabolites

Pemikiran al-Ghazali tentang hubungan antara Muslim dengan Muslim dan Muslim dengan non Muslim

Keharmonian dan keamanan merupakan tonggak kepada terbentuknya sebuah tamadun yang unggul dan lestari. Keharmonian dan keamanan ini akan kekal selagi mana persefahaman dan kesepaduan dapat dilaksanakan secara konsisten dengan menjaga hubungan dan keadilan semua pihak. Hubungan dan keadilan ini boleh dipelihara selagi mana kita mematuhi prinsip-prinsip asas kemanusiaan seperti yang telah digariskan dalam syariat Islam. Antara tokoh pemikir Islam yang membicarakan hal ini adalah al-Ghazali (405-505H/1058-1111M). Beliau terkenal sebagai pakar dalam pelbagai disiplin termasuk ilmu fiqh, ilmu akidah, falsafah dan tasawuf. Artikel ini membahaskan pemikiran beliau mengenai aspek penting dalam hal ini dengan memberi tumpuan kepada pemikiran beliau terhadap hubungan antara muslim dengan muslim dan hubungan antara muslim dengan non muslim. Artikel ini adalah hasil dapatan kajian yang menggunakan analisis kandungan sebagai medium pengumpulan data. Selain itu, temu bual turut digunakan bagi mendapatkan maklumat yang berkaitan khususnya dalam konteks Malaysia. Dapatan kajian menujukkan, ada dua bentuk hubungan yang mesti dirai dan dilaksanakan oleh umat Islam. Pertama, hubungan berasakan akidah dan kedua, hubungan berasaskan hak, kehormatan dan kemanusiaan. Pemikiran al-Ghazali mengenai hal ini juga tidak dibahaskan dalam satu bab khusus dalam mana-mana karya beliau, sebaliknya ia telah dibicarakan dalam bab-bab yang berasingan seperti dalam bab muamalat, jinayah dan jihad sesuai dengan topik-topik yang dibahaskan. Jelasnya, apa pun kaedah yang yang kita laksanakan, hak dan tanggungjawab memelihara hubungan dan keadilan sesama manusia itu mesti berlaku dalam batasan yang dibenarkan syarak

The impact of beta (ß) value in measuring social learning influence on the behaviour of Muslim adolescents

Social learning factor is a reflection of the numerous existing social environment factors. It exists in the environment together with human’s internal natural process and it may significantly affect human’s behavioural development. The impact can occur directly or indirectly. A human being will be found different based on the environment in which he or she is. Whoever finds himself in an environment and education that helps him towards goodness, then he is more likely to be a good group and vice versa. Therefore, a good environment is necessary to produce good morals. Now the development of the industrial revolution 4.0 dominates everything and also affects Muslim children in their social environment. This study focuses on the dominant factors in social learning which influence the behaviour of Malaysian adolescents. Five social environment factors are identified as being significant in the development of the adolescents’ behaviour; they are: parents, peers, teachers, artistes and school culture. This study which employs both quantitative method and survey involves 16-year-old respondents totalling 1504 from all over peninsula Malaysia. Data from this study are analysed both descriptively and statistically with the mean, standard deviation and double regression at (p<0.05). Results from the double regression analysis showed that the most dominant factor in moulding the behaviour of the adolescents is peers followed by school culture, parents, teachers and artistes. Even though the artistes’ factor is the least dominant, based on the Beta value, it may negatively affect the behavioural development compared to other social environment factors

Optimal risk computation on precious metal’s assets diversification

Optimization is the selection of a best element with regards to certain criterion from set of available alternatives. This paper investigates the effects of assets in optimizing risk using diversification strategy and also examines gold quality of hedging and safe haven. The reduction strength of assets is estimated. Hence, it is observed that gold exhibits highest risk reduction strength. Also it is noticed that gold acts as hedge and safe haven for investors during economic recession

Artificial Bee Colony algorithm in estimating kinetic parameters for yeast fermentation pathway

Analyzing metabolic pathways in systems biology requires accurate kinetic parameters that represent the simulated in vivo processes. Simulation of the fermentation pathway in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae kinetic model help saves much time in the optimization process. Fitting the simulated model into the experimental data is categorized under the parameter estimation problem. Parameter estimation is conducted to obtain the optimal values for parameters related to the fermentation process. This step is essential because insufficient identification of model parameters can cause erroneous conclusions. The kinetic parameters cannot be measured directly. Therefore, they must be estimated from the experimental data either in vitro or in vivo. Parameter estimation is a challenging task in the biological process due to the complexity and nonlinearity of the model. Therefore, we propose the Artificial Bee Colony algorithm (ABC) to estimate the parameters in the fermentation pathway of S. cerevisiae to obtain more accurate values. A metabolite with a total of six parameters is involved in this article. The experimental results show that ABC outperforms other estimation algorithms and gives more accurate kinetic parameter values for the simulated model. Most of the estimated kinetic parameter values obtained from the proposed algorithm are the closest to the experimental data

Design and analysis of wheelchair in term of daily usage

Manual wheelchair propulsion in daily life is increasing day to day. So, preliminary study of human factors engineering is important in designing the wheelchair to be more ergonomics for them in doing daily activities. The main objective of this project is to improve the existing wheelchair in term of daily usage. It is focus on the use of simulation in analyzing the critical parts of the wheelchair model and evaluates it in term of daily usage. Evaluate the critical part of stress on the wheelchair which consists of seating support and wheel caster. In this steps, applying the knowledge gathered from the questionnaire is use to make a design refers to case data that suitable for the project. Several sketches were made and only three were selected based on suitability of the design. Three sketches being draw into SolidWorks software and then go through to simulation process by using FEA tools that is ALGOR software, the three designs was analyzed using constant force with three different materials. From the analysis, the Stress Von Misses was used to calculated safety factor. The result showed that, design 3 have highest value of safety factor with material E-Glass fiber which is 2.77, followed by Steel ASTM A36 is 2.44 on design 3 and 1.95 on design 2 with material E-Glass fiber. The highest number of safety factor is E-glass Fiber on design 3. So, the best selection of material is E-Glass Fiber for the Design 3

Mengenal pasti perwatakan ekstremis melalui disiplin fiqh taayush

Perwatakan manusia normal biasanya boleh dilihat daripada beberapa aspek termasuk sifat, pemikiran, kepercayaan, pertuturan dan tindakan. Walau bagaimanapun, kepada ekstremis, perwatakan mereka sukar dikenal pasti dan hanya boleh dikenali setelah seseorang itu ditahan sebagai pesalah ekstrem. Oleh sebab itu, kehadiran kumpulan ini sering kali mengejutkan persekitaran. Situasi ini berlaku kerana kegagalan kita mengenal pasti elemen-elemen ekstrem yang ada pada individu terbabit walaupun sering kali dinyatakan oleh pihak berkuasa. Justeru, perbahasan artikel ini akan memberi tumpuan kepada proses mengenal pasti perwatakan ekstremis melalui disiplin fiqh al-ta‘ayush, iaitu satu disiplin yang membahaskan hukum-hukum yang bersifat praktikal yang disusun berdasarkan sumber autentik Islam berkaitan hubungan manusia dengan manusia. Disiplin ini dibentuk melalui satu kajian yang menggunakan beberapa reka bentuk termasuk analisa kandungan, analisa dokumen dan temu bual separa berstruktur. Hasil analisa kajian menunjukkan disiplin fiqh al-ta‘ayush yang telah disusun dengan betul dan dalam bentuk yang berstruktur berupaya membentuk disiplin yang membolehkan perwatakan ekstrem yang ada pada seseorang individu itu mudah dan boleh untuk dikenal pasti. Pengesanan watak melalui disiplin fiqh al-ta‘ayush ini penting sebagai usaha awal untuk mencegah gerakan ini daripada terus merebak atau sekurang-kurangnya mampu mencegah diri kita, ahli keluarga kita dan masyarakat secara keseluruhan daripada terpengaruh dengan ideologi seperti ini. Pencegahan ini juga penting bagi membersihkan imej masyarakat Islam yang sering disalah faham dan dianggap sebagai fundamentalis, ekstremisme, radikalisme, dan keganasan yang memberi kesan Islamofobia dalam kalangan masyarakat antarabangsa

Optimal risk computation on precious metal's assets diversification

Optimization is the selection of a best element with regards to certain criterion from set of available alternatives. This paper investigates the effects of assets in optimizing risk using diversification strategy and also examines gold quality of hedging and safe haven. The re-duction strength of assets is estimated. Hence, it is observed that gold exhibits highest risk reduction strength. Also it is noticed that gold acts as hedge and safe haven for investors during economic recession

An Improved Hybrid of Particle Swarm Optimization and the Gravitational Search Algorithm to Produce a Kinetic Parameter Estimation of Aspartate Biochemical Pathways

Mathematical modelling is fundamental to understand the dynamic behavior and regulation of the biochemical metabolisms and pathways that are found in biological systems. Pathways are used to describe complex processes that involve many parameters. It is important to have an accurate and complete set of parameters that describe the characteristics of a given model. However, measuring these parameters is typically difficult and even impossible in some cases. Furthermore, the experimental data are often incomplete and also suffer from experimental noise. These shortcomings make it challenging to identify the best-fit parameters that can represent the actual biological processes involved in biological systems. Computational approaches are required to estimate these parameters. The estimation is converted into multimodal optimization problems that require a global optimization algorithm that can avoid local solutions. These local solutions can lead to a bad fit when calibrating with a model. Although the model itself can potentially match a set of experimental data, a high-performance estimation algorithm is required to improve the quality of the solutions. This paper describes an improved hybrid of particle swarm optimization and the gravitational search algorithm (IPSOGSA) to improve the efficiency of a global optimum (the best set of kinetic parameter values) search. The findings suggest that the proposed algorithm is capable of narrowing down the search space by exploiting the feasible solution areas. Hence, the proposed algorithm is able to achieve a near-optimal set of parameters at a fast convergence speed. The proposed algorithm was tested and evaluated based on two aspartate pathways that were obtained from the BioModels Database. The results show that the proposed algorithm outperformed other standard optimization algorithms in terms of accuracy and near-optimal kinetic parameter estimation. Nevertheless, the proposed algorithm is only expected to work well in small scale systems. In addition, the results of this study can be used to estimate kinetic parameter values in the stage of model selection for different experimental conditions

Development of an indoor air quality checklist for risk assessment of indoor air pollutants by semiquantitative score in nonindustrial workplaces

Background: To meet the current diversified health needs in workplaces, especially in nonindustrial workplaces in developing countries, an indoor air quality (IAQ) component of a participatory occupational safety and health survey should be included. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to evaluate and suggest a multidisciplinary, integrated IAQ checklist for evaluating the health risk of building occupants. This IAQ checklist proposed to support employers, workers, and assessors in understanding a wide range of important elements in the indoor air environment to promote awareness in nonindustrial workplaces. Methods: The general structure of and specific items in the IAQ checklist were discussed in a focus group meeting with IAQ assessors based upon the result of a literature review, previous industrial code of practice, and previous interviews with company employers and workers. Results: For practicality and validity, several sessions were held to elicit the opinions of company members, and, as a result, modifications were made. The newly developed IAQ checklist was finally formulated, consisting of seven core areas, nine technical areas, and 71 essential items. Each item was linked to a suitable section in the Industry Code of Practice on Indoor Air Quality published by the Department of Occupational Safety and Health. Conclusion: Combined usage of an IAQ checklist with the information from the Industry Code of Practice on Indoor Air Quality would provide easily comprehensible information and practical support. Intervention and evaluation studies using this newly developed IAQ checklist will clarify the effectiveness of a new approach in evaluating the risk of indoor air pollutants in the workplace