The Quest for Psychiatric Advancement through Theory, Beyond Serendipity

Over the past century, advancements in psychiatric treatments have freed countless individuals from the burden of life-long, incapacitating mental illness. These treatments have largely been discovered by chance. Theory has driven advancement in the natural sciences and other branches of medicine, but psychiatry remains a field in its “infancy”. The targets for healing in psychiatry lie within the realm of the mind’s subjective experience and thought, which we cannot yet describe in terms of their biological underpinnings in the brain. Our technology is sufficiently advanced to study brain neurons and their interactions on an electrophysiological and molecular level, but we cannot say how these form a single feeling or thought. While psychiatry waits for its “Copernican Revolution”, we continue the work in developing theories and associated experiments based on our existing diagnostic systems, for example, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), International Classification of Diseases (ICD), or the more newly introduced Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework. Understanding the subjective reality of the mind in biological terms would doubtless lead to huge advances in psychiatry, as well as to ethical dilemmas, from which we are spared for the time being.

On the Shortest Path Problem of Uncertain Random Digraphs

In the field of graph theory, the shortest path problem is one of the most significant problems. However, since varieties of indeterminated factors appear in complex networks, determining of the shortest path from one vertex to another in complex networks may be a lot more complicated than the cases in deterministic networks. To illustrate this problem, the model of uncertain random digraph will be proposed via chance theory, in which some arcs exist with degrees in probability measure and others exist with degrees in uncertain measure. The main focus of this paper is to investigate the main properties of the shortest path in uncetain random digraph. Methods and algorithms are designed to calculate the distribution of shortest path more efficiently. Besides, some numerical examples are presented to show the efficiency of these methods and algorithms.

On Some Laws of Large Numbers for Uncertain Random Variables

Baoding Liu created uncertainty theory to describe the information represented by human language. In turn, Yuhan Liu founded chance theory for modelling phenomena where both uncertainty and randomness are present. The first theory involves an uncertain measure and variable, whereas the second one introduces the notions of a chance measure and an uncertain random variable. Laws of large numbers (LLNs) are important theorems within both theories. In this paper, we prove a law of large numbers (LLN) for uncertain random variables being continuous functions of pairwise independent, identically distributed random variables and regular, independent, identically distributed uncertain variables, which is a generalisation of a previously proved version of LLN, where the independence of random variables was assumed. Moreover, we prove the Marcinkiewicz–Zygmund type LLN in the case of uncertain random variables. The proved version of the Marcinkiewicz–Zygmund type theorem reflects the difference between probability and chance theory. Furthermore, we obtain the Chow type LLN for delayed sums of uncertain random variables and formulate counterparts of the last two theorems for uncertain variables. Finally, we provide illustrative examples of applications of the proved theorems. All the proved theorems can be applied for uncertain random variables being functions of symmetrically or asymmetrically distributed random variables, and symmetrical or asymmetrical uncertain variables. Furthermore, in some special cases, under the assumption of symmetry of the random and uncertain variables, the limits in the first and the third theorem have forms of symmetrical uncertain variables.

Tsallis Entropy of Uncertain Random Variables and Its Application

Tsallis entropy ia a flexible extension of Shanon (logarithm) entropy. Since, entropy measures indeterminacy of an uncertain random variable, this paper proposes the concept of partial Tsallis entropy for uncertain random variables as a flexible devise in chance theory. An approach for calculating partial Tsallis entropy for uncertain random variables, based on Monte-Carlo simulation, is provided. As an application in finance, partial Tsallis entropy is invoked to optimize portfolio selection of uncertain random returns via crow search algorithm.

Uncertain Random Data Envelopment Analysis: Efficiency Estimation of Returns to Scale

Evaluating efficiency according to the different states of returns to scale (RTS) is crucial to resource allocation and scientific decision for decision-making units (DMUs), but this kind of evaluation will become very difficult when the DMUs are in an uncertain random environment. In this paper, we attempt to explore the uncertain random data envelopment analysis approach so as to solve the problem that the inputs and outputs of DMUs are uncertain random variables. Chance theory is applied to handling the uncertain random variables, and hence, two evaluating models, one for increasing returns to scale (IRS) and the other for decreasing returns to scale (DRS), are proposed, respectively. Along with converting the two uncertain random models into corresponding equivalent forms, we also provide a numerical example to illustrate the evaluation results of these models.

Uncertainty propagation in structural reliability with implicit limit state functions under aleatory and epistemic uncertainties

Uncertainty propagation plays a pivotal role in structural reliability assessment. This paper introduces a novel uncertainty propagation method for structural reliability under different knowledge stages based on probability theory, uncertainty theory and chance theory. Firstly, a surrogate model combining the uniform design and least-squares method is presented to simulate the implicit limit state function with random and uncertain variables. Then, a novel quantification method based on chance theory is derived herein, to calculate the structural reliability under mixed aleatory and epistemic uncertainties. The concepts of chance reliability and chance reliability index (CRI) are defined to show the reliable degree of structure. Besides, the selection principles of uncertainty propagation types and the corresponding reliability estimation methods are given according to the different knowledge stages. The proposed methods are finally applied in a practical structural reliability problem, which illustrates the effectiveness and advantages of the techniques presented in this work.

A SOLUTION ALGORITHM FOR p-MEDIAN LOCATION PROBLEM ON UNCERTAIN RANDOM NETWORKS

This paper investigatesthe classical $p$-median location problem in a network in which some of the vertex weights and the distances between vertices are uncertain and while others are random. For solving the $p$-median problem in an uncertain random network, an optimization model based on the chance theory is proposed first and then an algorithm is presented to find the $p$-median. Finally, a numerical example is given to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed method