Mathematical Modeling of the Co-Infection Dynamics of HIV and Tuberculosis Incorporating Inconsistency in HIV Treatment

A non-linear HIV-TB co-infection has been formulated and analyzed. The positivity and invariant region has been established. The disease free equilibrium and its stability has been determined. The local stability was determined and found to be stable under given conditions. The basic reproduction number was obtained and according to findings, co-infection diminishes when this number is less than unity, and persists when the number is greater than unity. The global stability of the endemic equilibrium was calculated. The impact of HIV on TB was established as well as the impact of TB on HIV. Numerical solution was also done and the findings indicate that when the rate of HIV treatment increases the latent TB increases while the co-infected population decreases. When the rate of HIV treatment decreases the latent TB population decreases and the co-infected population increases. Encouraging communities to prioritize the consistent treatment of HIV infected individuals must be emphasized in order to reduce the scourge of HIV-TB co-infection.

Mathematical Modeling of HIV Investigating the Effect of Inconsistent Treatment

HIV is a retrovirus that infects and impairs the cells and functions of the immune system. It has caused a great challenge to global public health systems and leads to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), if not attended to in good time. Antiretroviral therapy is used for managing the virus in a patient’s lifetime. Some of the symptoms of the disease include lean body mass and many opportunistic infections. This study has developed a SIAT mathematical model to investigate the impact of inconsistency in treatment of the disease. The arising non-linear differential equations have been obtained and analyzed. The DFE and its stability have been obtained and the study found that it is locally asymptotically stable when the basic reproduction number is less than unity. The endemic equilibrium has been obtained and found to be globally asymptotically stable when the basic reproduction number is greater than unity. Numerical solutions have been obtained and analyzed to give the trends in the spread dynamics. The inconsistency in treatment uptake has been analyzed through the numerical solutions. The study found that when the treatment rate of those infected increases, it leads to an increase in treatment population, which slows down the spread of HIV and vice versa. An increase in the rate of treatment of those with AIDS leads to a decrease in the AIDS population, the reverse happens when this rate decreases. The study recommends that the community involvement in advocating for consistent treatment of HIV to curb the spread of the disease.

A Hybrid Approach for Predicting Probability of Default in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Lending Platforms Using Mixture-of-Experts Neural Network

Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending offers an alternative way to access credit. Unlike established lending institutions with proven credit risk management practices, P2P platforms rely on numerous independent variables to evaluate loan applicants’ creditworthiness. This study aims to estimate default probabilities using a mixture-of-experts neural network in P2P lending. The approach involves coupling unsupervised clustering to capture essential data properties with a classification algorithm based on the mixture-of-experts structure. This classic design enhances model capacity without significant computational overhead. The model was tested using P2P data from Lending Club, comparing it to other methods like Logistic Regression, AdaBoost, Gradient Boosting, Decision Tree, Support Vector Machine, and Random Forest. The hybrid model demonstrated superior performance, with a Mean Squared Error reduction of at least 25%.

Estimation of Aggregate Losses of Secondary Cancer Using PH-OPPL and PH-TPPL Distributions

Kenyan insurance firms have introduced insurance policies of chronic illnesses like cancer; however, they have faced a huge challenge in the pricing of these policies as cancer can transit into different stages, which consequently leads to variation in the cost of treatment. This has made the estimation of aggregate losses of diseases which have multiple stages of transitions such as cancer, an area of interest of many insurance firms. Mixture phase type distributions can be used to solve this setback as they can in-cooperate the transition in the estimation of claim frequency while also in-cooperating the heterogeneity aspect of claim data. In this paper, we estimate the aggregate losses of secondary cancer cases in Kenya using mixture phase type Poisson Lindley distributions. Phase type (PH) distributions for one and two parameter Poisson Lindley are developed as well their compound distributions. The matrix parameters of the PH distributions are estimated using continuous Chapman Kolmogorov equations as the disease process of cancer is continuous while severity is modeled using Pareto, Generalized Pareto and Weibull distributions. This study shows that aggregate losses for Kenyan data are best estimated using PH-OPPL-Weibull model in the case of PH-OPPL distribution models and PH-TPPL-Generalized Pareto model in the case of PH-TPPL distribution models. Comparing the two best models, PH-OPPL-Weibull model provided the best fit for secondary cancer cases in Kenya. This model is also recommended for different diseases which are dynamic in nature like cancer.

A Finite Mixture of Generalised Inverse Gaussian with Indexes -1/2 and -3/2 as Mixing Distribution for Normal Variance Mean Mixture with Application

Mixture models have become more popular in modelling compared to standard distributions. The mixing distributions play a role in capturing the variability of the random variable in the conditional distribution. Studies have lately focused on finite mixture models as mixing distributions in the mixing mechanism. In the present work, we consider a Normal Variance Mean mixture model. The mixing distribution is a finite mixture of two special cases of Generalised Inverse Gaussian distribution with indexes -1/2 and -3/2. The parameters of the mixed model are obtained via the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm. The iterative scheme is based on a presentation of the normal equations. An application to some financial data has been done.

Construction of Non-Symmetric Balanced Incomplete Block Design through Combination of Symmetric Disjoint Balanced Incomplete Block Designs

The existence of several non-symmetric balanced incomplete block designs (BIBDs) is still unknown. This is because the non-existence property for non-symmetric BIBDs is still not known and also the existing construction methods have not been able to construct these designs despite their design parameters satisfying the necessary conditions for the existence of BIBD. The study aimed to bridge this gap by introducing a new class of non-symmetric BIBDs. The proposed class of BIBDs is constructed through the combination of disjoint symmetric BIBDs. The study was able to determine that the total number of disjoint symmetric BIBDs (n) with parameters (v = b, r = k, λ) that can be obtained from an un-reduced BIBD with parameters (v, k) is given by n = r - λ. When the n symmetric disjoint BIBDs are combined, then a new class of symmetric BIBDs is formed with parameters v* = v, b* = nb, r* = nr, k* = k, λ* = λ, where 2≤ n ≤ r - λ. The study established that the non-existence property of this class of BIBD was that when is not a perfect square then v should be even and when v* is odd then the equation should not have a solution in integers x, y, z which are not all simultaneously zero. In conclusion, the study showed that this construction technique can be used to construct some non-symmetric BIBDs. However, one must first construct the disjoint symmetric BIBDs before one can construct the non-symmetric BIBD. Thus, the disjoint symmetric BIBDs must exist first before the non-symmetric BIBDs exist.

A Lightweight Convolutional Neural Network with Hierarchical Multi-Scale Feature Fusion for Image Classification

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are widely used in image classification tasks, but their increasing model size and computation make them challenging to implement on embedded systems with constrained hardware resources. To address this issue, the MobileNetV1 network was developed, which employs depthwise convolution to reduce network complexity. MobileNetV1 employs a stride of 2 in several convolutional layers to decrease the spatial resolution of feature maps, thereby lowering computational costs. However, this stride setting can lead to a loss of spatial information, particularly affecting the detection and representation of smaller objects or finer details in images. To maintain the trade-off between complexity and model performance, a lightweight convolutional neural network with hierarchical multi-scale feature fusion based on the MobileNetV1 network is proposed. The network consists of two main subnetworks. The first subnetwork uses a depthwise dilated separable convolution (DDSC) layer to learn imaging features with fewer parameters, which results in a lightweight and computationally inexpensive network. Furthermore, depthwise dilated convolution in DDSC layer effectively expands the field of view of filters, allowing them to incorporate a larger context. The second subnetwork is a hierarchical multi-scale feature fusion (HMFF) module that uses parallel multi-resolution branches architecture to process the input feature map in order to extract the multi-scale feature information of the input image. Experimental results on the CIFAR-10, Malaria, and KvasirV1 datasets demonstrate that the proposed method is efficient, reducing the network parameters and computational cost by 65.02% and 39.78%, respectively, while maintaining the network performance compared to the MobileNetV1 baseline.

Market efficiency of gold exchange-traded funds in India

Background:Gold exchange-traded funds,since introduction,are primarily aimed at tracking the price of physical gold in the financial market.This,a category of exchange-traded funds,whose units represent physical gold,is traded on exchanges like any other financial instrument.In the Indian financial market,gold exchange traded funds were introduced a decade ago to facilitate ordinary households'participation in the bullion market.They were also designed to assist in the price discovery mechanism of the bullion market.Presentation of the hypothesis:In this paper,it is attempted to check if one of the constituents of price discovery mechanism,informational efficiency,has been achieved in gold exchange-traded funds’market.Information efficiency becomes evident only when all available information is reflected in the market price of the instrument.Testing the hypothesis:Therefore,in order to assess the weak-form efficiency of the gold exchange-traded funds market,the daily returns of five gold exchangetraded funds traded on the Indian Stock Exchange over the period March 22,2010,to August 28,2015,were used.The non-parametric runs test,the parametric serial correlation test,and the augmented Dickey-Fuller unit root test are employed.Implications of the hypothesis:The test results provide evidence that the efficient market hypothesis does not hold for the gold exchange-traded funds’market in India.Further,the test results address several underlying issues with respect to price discovery in the market under study and suggest that the Indian market for this derivative is not weak-form efficient.Hence,the factors affecting gold exchange traded-funds’market warrant the attention of the country’s regulatory bodies,as appropriate legislation in support of market efficiency is needed.

Investigating seasonality,policy intervention and forecasting in the Indian gold futures market:a comparison based on modeling non‑constant variance using two different methods

This study focuses on the Indian gold futures market where primary participants hold sentimental value for the underlying asset and are globally ranked number two in terms of the largest private holdings in the physical form.The trade of gold futures relates to seasons,festivity,and government policy.So,the paper will discuss seasonality and intervention in the analysis.Due to non-constant variance,we will also use the standard variance stabilization transformation method and the ARIMA/GARCH modelling method to compare the forecast performance on the gold futures prices.The results from the analysis show that while the standard variance transformation method may provide better point forecast values,the ARIMA/GARCH modelling method provides much shorter forecast intervals.The empirical results of this study which rationalise the effect of seasonality in the Indian bullion derivative market have not been reported in literature.

A Normal Weighted Inverse Gaussian Distribution for Skewed and Heavy-Tailed Data

High frequency financial data is characterized by non-normality: asymmetric, leptokurtic and fat-tailed behaviour. The normal distribution is therefore inadequate in capturing these characteristics. To this end, various flexible distributions have been proposed. It is well known that mixture distributions produce flexible models with good statistical and probabilistic properties. In this work, a finite mixture of two special cases of Generalized Inverse Gaussian distribution has been constructed. Using this finite mixture as a mixing distribution to the Normal Variance Mean Mixture we get a Normal Weighted Inverse Gaussian (NWIG) distribution. The second objective, therefore, is to construct and obtain properties of the NWIG distribution. The maximum likelihood parameter estimates of the proposed model are estimated via EM algorithm and three data sets are used for application. The result shows that the proposed model is flexible and fits the data well.

A Modified Regression Estimator for Single Phase Sampling in the Presence of Observational Errors

In this paper, a regression method of estimation has been used to derive the mean estimate of the survey variable using simple random sampling without replacement in the presence of observational errors. Two covariates were used and a case where the observational errors were in both the survey variable and the covariates was considered. The inclusion of observational errors was due to the fact that data collected through surveys are often not free from errors that occur during observation. These errors can occur due to over-reporting, under-reporting, memory failure by the respondents or use of imprecise tools of data collection. The expression of mean squared error (MSE) based on the obtained estimator has been derived to the first degree of approximation. The results of a simulation study show that the derived modified regression mean estimator under observational errors is more efficient than the mean per unit estimator and some other existing estimators. The proposed estimator can therefore be used in estimating a finite population mean, while considering observational errors that may occur during a study.

Positive Stable Frailty Approach in the Construction of Dependence Life-Tables

Dependence may arise in insurance when the insureds are clustered into groups e.g. joint-life annuities. This dependence may be produced by sharing a common risk acting on mortality of members of the group. Various dependence models have been considered in literature; however, the focus has been on either the lower-tail dependence alone or upper-tail dependence alone. This article implements the frailty dependence approach to life insurance problems where most applications have been within medical setting. Our strategy is to use the conditional independence assumption given an observed association measure in a positive stable frailty approach to account for both lower and upper-tail dependence. The model is calibrated on the association of Kenyan insurers 2010 male and female published rates. The positive stable model is then proposed to construct dependence life-tables and generate life annuity payment streams in the competitive Kenyan market.

Machine Learning Approaches for Classifying the Distribution of Covid-19 Sentiments

Previously, rapid disease detection and prevention was difficult. This is because disease modeling and prediction was dependent on a manually obtained dataset that includes use of survey. With the increased use of social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc., data mining and sentiment analysis can help avoid diseases. Sentiment analysis is a powerful tool for analyzing people’s perceptions, emotions, value assessments, attitudes, and feelings as expressed in texts. The purpose of this research is to use machine learning techniques to classify and predict the spatial distribution of positive and negative sentiments of Covid-19 pandemic. This study research has employed machine learning to classify spatial distribution of Covid-19 twitter sentiments as positive or negative. The data for this study were geo-tagged tweets concerning COVID-19 which were live streamed using streamR package. The key terms used for streaming the data were: Corona, Covid-19, sanitizer, virus, lockdown, quarantine, and social distance. The classification used Naive Bayes algorithms with ngram approaches. N-Gram model is a probabilistic language model used to predict next item in a sequence in the form (n - 1) order Markov. It relies on the Markov assumption—the probability of a word depends only on the previous word without looking too far into the past. The steps followed in this research include: cleaning and preprocessing the data, text tokenization using n-gram i.e. 1-gram, 2-gram, and 3-gram, tweets were converted or weighted into a matrix of numeric vectors using Term Frequency Inverse-Document. Also, data were divided 80:20 between train and test data. A confusion matrix was utilized to evaluate the classification accuracy, precision, and recall performance of the various algorithms tested. Prediction was done using the best performing Naive Bayes algorithm. The results of this research showed that under Multinomial Naive Bayes, unigram accuracy was 92.02%, bigram accuracy was 97.37%, and trigram accuracy was 94.40%. Unigram had 89.34% accuracy, bigram had 96.80%, and trigram had 94.90% accuracy using Bernoulli Naive Bayes. Unigram accuracy was 90.43%, bigram accuracy was 95.67%, and trigram accuracy was 92.89% using Gaussian Naive Bayes. Bigram tokenization outperformed unigram and trigram tokenization. Bigram Multinomial Naive Bayes was used to predict test data since it was the most accurate in classifying train data. Prediction accuracy was 84.92%, precision 85.50%, recall 81.02%, and F1 measure 83.20%. TF-IDF was employed to increase prediction accuracy, obtaining 87.06%. These were then plotted on a globe map. The study indicates that machine learning can identify patterns and emotions in public tweets, which may then be used to steer targeted intervention programs aimed at limiting disease spread.

The Modi Exponentiated Exponential Distribution

In this study, a new four-parameter distribution called the Modi Exponentiated Exponential distribution was proposed and studied. The new distribution has three shape and one scale parameters. Its mathematical and statistical properties were investigated. The parameters of the new model were estimated using the method of Maximum Likelihood Estimation. Monte Carlo simulation was used to evaluate the performance of the MLEs through average bias and RMSE. The flexibility and goodness-of-fit of the proposed distribution were demonstrated by applying it to two real data sets and comparing it with some existing distributions.

Marshall-Olkin Exponentiated Fréchet Distribution

In this paper, a new distribution called Marshall-Olkin Exponentiated Fréchet distribution (MOEFr) is proposed. The goal is to increase the flexibility of the existing Exponentiated Fréchet distribution by including an extra shape parameter, resulting into a more flexible distribution that can provide a better fit to various data sets than the baseline distribution. A generator method introduced by Marshall and Olkin is used to develop the new distribution. Some properties of the new distribution such as hazard rate function, survival function, reversed hazard rate function, cumulative hazard function, odds function, quantile function, moments and order statistics are derived. The maximum likelihood estimation is used to estimate the model parameters. Monte Carlo simulation is used to evaluate the behavior of the estimators through the average bias and root mean squared error. The new distribution is fitted and compared with some existing distributions such as the Exponentiated Fréchet (EFr), Marshall-Olkin Fréchet (MOFr), Beta Exponential Fréchet (BEFr), Beta Fréchet (BFr) and Fréchet (Fr) distributions, on three data sets, namely Bladder cancer, Carbone and Wheaton River data sets. Based on the goodness-of-fit statistics and information criteria values, it is demonstrated that the new distribution provides a better fit for the three data sets than the other distributions considered in the study.

Gaining-Sharing Knowledge Based Algorithm for Solving Stochastic Programming Problems

This paper presents a novel application of metaheuristic algorithmsfor solving stochastic programming problems using a recently developed gaining sharing knowledge based optimization (GSK) algorithm. The algorithmis based on human behavior in which people gain and share their knowledgewith others. Different types of stochastic fractional programming problemsare considered in this study. The augmented Lagrangian method (ALM)is used to handle these constrained optimization problems by convertingthem into unconstrained optimization problems. Three examples from theliterature are considered and transformed into their deterministic form usingthe chance-constrained technique. The transformed problems are solved usingGSK algorithm and the results are compared with eight other state-of-the-artmetaheuristic algorithms. The obtained results are also compared with theoptimal global solution and the results quoted in the literature. To investigatethe performance of the GSK algorithm on a real-world problem, a solidstochastic fixed charge transportation problem is examined, in which theparameters of the problem are considered as random variables. The obtainedresults show that the GSK algorithm outperforms other algorithms in termsof convergence, robustness, computational time, and quality of obtainedsolutions.

UAV-Aided Data Acquisition Using Gaining-Sharing Knowledge Optimization Algorithm

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAVs)provide a reliable and energyefficient solution for data collection from the Narrowband Internet of Things(NB-IoT)devices.However,the UAV’s deployment optimization,including locations of the UAV’s stop points,is a necessity to minimize the energy consumption of the UAV and the NB-IoT devices and also to conduct the data collection efficiently.In this regard,this paper proposes GainingSharing Knowledge(GSK)algorithm for optimizing the UAV’s deployment.In GSK,the number of UAV’s stop points in the three-dimensional space is encapsulated into a single individual with a fixed length representing an entire deployment.The superiority of using GSK in the tackled problem is verified by simulation in seven scenarios.It provides significant results in all seven scenarios compared with other four optimization algorithms used before with the same problem.Besides,the NB-IoT is proposed as the wireless communication technology between the UAV and IoT devices.

Re-Testing in Batch Testing Model Based on Quality Control Process for Proportion Estimation

The quality of products manufactured or procured by organizations is an important aspect of their survival in the global market. The quality control processes put in place by organizations can be resource-intensive but substantial savings can be realized by using acceptance sampling in conjunction with batch testing. This paper considers the batch testing model based on the quality control process where batches that test positive are re-tested. The results show that re-testing greatly improves the efficiency over one stage batch testing based on quality control. This is observed using Asymptotic Relative Efficiency (ARE), where for values of p computed ARE > 1 implying that our estimator has a smaller variance than the one-stage batch testing. Also, it was found that the model is more efficient than the classical two-stage batch testing for relatively high values of proportion.

New Decision-Making Technique Based on Hurwicz Criteria for Fuzzy Ranking

Efficient decision-making remains an open challenge in the research community,and many researchers are working to improve accuracy through the use of various computational techniques.In this case,the fuzzification and defuzzification processes can be very useful.Defuzzification is an effective process to get a single number from the output of a fuzzy set.Considering defuzzification as a center point of this research paper,to analyze and understand the effect of different types of vehicles according to their performance.In this paper,the multi-criteria decision-making(MCDM)process under uncertainty and defuzzification is discussed by using the center of the area(COA)or centroidmethod.Further,to find the best solution,Hurwicz criteria are used on the defuzzified data.Anewdecision-making technique is proposed using Hurwicz criteria for triangular and trapezoidal fuzzy numbers.The proposed technique considers all types of decision makers’perspectives such as optimistic,neutral,and pessimistic which is crucial in solving decisionmaking problems.A simple case study is used to demonstrate and discuss the Centroid Method and Hurwicz Criteria for measuring risk attitudes among decision-makers.The significance of the proposed defuzzification method is demonstrated by comparing it to previous defuzzification procedures with its application.

A Special Weight for Inverse Gaussian Mixing Distribution in Normal Variance Mean Mixture with Application

Normal Variance-Mean Mixture (NVMM) provides a general framework for deriving models with desirable properties for modelling financial market variables such as exchange rates, equity prices, and interest rates measured over short time intervals, i.e. daily or weekly. Such data sets are characterized by non-normality and are usually skewed, fat-tailed and exhibit excess kurtosis. The Generalised Hyperbolic distribution (GHD) introduced by Barndorff-Nielsen (1977) which act as Normal variance-mean mixtures with Generalised Inverse Gaussian (GIG) mixing distribution nest a number of special and limiting case distributions. The Normal Inverse Gaussian (NIG) distribution is obtained when the Inverse Gaussian is the mixing distribution, i.e., the index parameter of the GIG is . The NIG is very popular because of its analytical tractability. In the mixing mechanism, the mixing distribution characterizes the prior information of the random variable of the conditional distribution. Therefore, considering finite mixture models is one way of extending the work. The GIG is a three parameter distribution denoted by and nest several special and limiting cases. When , we have which is called an Inverse Gaussian (IG) distribution. When , , , we have , and distributions respectively. These distributions are related to and are called weighted inverse Gaussian distributions. In this work, we consider a finite mixture of and and show that the mixture is also a weighted Inverse Gaussian distribution and use it to construct a NVMM. Due to the complexity of the likelihood, direct maximization is difficult. An EM type algorithm is provided for the Maximum Likelihood estimation of the parameters of the proposed model. We adopt an iterative scheme which is not based on explicit solution to the normal equations. This subtle approach reduces the computational difficulty of solving the complicated quantities involved directly to designing an iterative scheme based on a representation of the normal equation. The algorithm is easily programmable and we obtained a monotonic convergence for the data sets used.