Undesirable State Research Articles

Associations among Screen Time and Unhealthy Behaviors, Academic Performance, and Well-Being in Chinese Adolescents.

Screen time is negatively associated with markers of health in western youth, but very little is known about these relationships in Chinese youth. Middle-school and high-school students (n = 2625) in Wuhan, China, completed questionnaires assessing demographics, health behaviors, and self-perceptions in spring/summer 2016. Linear and logistic regression analyses were conducted to determine whether, after adjustment for covariates, screen time was associated with body mass index (BMI), eating behaviors, average nightly hours of sleep, physical activity (PA), academic performance, and psychological states. Watching television on school days was negatively associated with academic performance, PA, anxiety, and life satisfaction. Television viewing on non-school days was positively associated with sleep duration. Playing electronic games was positively associated with snacking at night and less frequently eating breakfast, and negatively associated with sleep duration and self-esteem. Receiving electronic news and study materials on non-school days was negatively associated with PA, but on school days, was positively associated with anxiety. Using social networking sites was negatively associated with academic performance, but positively associated with BMI z-score, PA and anxiety. Screen time in adolescents is associated with unhealthy behaviors and undesirable psychological states that can contribute to poor quality of life.

Computational Modeling and Comparative Tissue Damage Analysis of Angioplasty and Orbital Atherectomy Interventional Procedures

This research was directed toward quantitatively characterizing the effects of arterial mechanical treatment procedures on the stress and strain energy states of the artery wall. Finite element simulations of percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA) and orbital atherectomy (OA) were performed on arterial lesion models with various extents and types of plaque. Stress fields in the artery were calculated and strain energy density was used as an explicit description of potential damage to the artery. The research also included numerical simulations of changes in arterial compliance due to orbital atherectomy. The angioplasty simulations show that the damage energy fields in the media and adventitia are predominant in regions of the lesion that are not protected by a layer of calcification. In addition, it was observed that softening the plaque components leads to a lower peak stress and therefore lesser damage energy in the media and adventitia under the action of a semicompliant balloon. Orbital atherectomy simulations revealed that the major portion of strain energy dissipated is concentrated in the plaque components in contact with the spinning tool. The damage and peak stress fields in the media and adventitia components of the vessel were significantly less. This observation suggests less mechanically induced trauma during a localized procedure like orbital atherectomy. Artery compliance was calculated pre- and post-treatment and an increase was observed after the orbital atherectomy procedure. The localized plaque disruption produced in atherectomy suggests that the undesirable stress states in angioplasty can be mitigated by a combination of procedures such as atherectomy followed by angioplasty.

Reconfiguration of T-Type Inverter for Direct Torque Controlled Induction Motor Drives Under Open-Switch Faults

This paper identifies possible topological reconfigurability of a T-type inverter for direct torque controlled (DTC) induction motor drives when an open-switch fault occurs. In open-switch fault, inverter current path is different than normal path. This causes undesirable inverter switching states. Since DTC is based on a voltage vector selection criterion, open-switch fault causes ambiguous torque control. Analysis of DTC drive under two different inverter open-switch fault conditions viz. half-bridge and neutral-point switch fault are presented. The operation of the inverter in DTC mode against faults is achieved by simple topological reconfiguration.

Automation Surprise

Abstract. Automation surprise (AS) has often been associated with aviation safety incidents. Although numerous laboratory studies have been conducted, few data are available from routine flight operations. A survey among a representative sample of 200 Dutch airline pilots was used to determine the prevalence of AS and the severity of its consequences, and to test some of the factors leading to AS. Results show that AS is a relatively widespread phenomenon that occurs three times per year per pilot on average but rarely has serious consequences. In less than 10% of the AS cases that were reviewed, an undesired aircraft state was induced. Reportable occurrences are estimated to occur only once every 1–3 years per pilot. Factors leading to a higher prevalence of AS include less flying experience, increasing complexity of the flight control mode, and flight duty periods of over 8 hr. It is concluded that AS is a manifestation of system and interface complexity rather than cognitive errors.

The Golden Rule and its Consequences: A Practical and Effective Solution for World Peace

Peace is something desirable and requested by all nations in the world. What makes it necessary to address this issue is the critical, undesirable state of the current world that, despite statements by international organizations with the theme of peace, reveals growing conflict and war and irreversible damages caused by them. This article seeks to provide a practical and effective solution for achieving peace in the global community. To this end, it introduces the golden rule (treating others as you wish others to treat you) as a rule common to all nations. This rule which has a special place in moral philosophy and has been the common denominator of all religions and schools of thought from ancient times until the present provides peace throughout the world through its mechanism. With the use of analytical methods, this study examines and explains it. The results show that the most effective and powerful way to achieve world peace is the adherence to the golden rule.

Monitoring and evaluation of climate resilience for agricultural development – A review of currently available tools

Building climate resilience, defined as the ability to anticipate, absorb, accommodate, or recover from climate change in a timely and efficient manner, is becoming a major priority of development across multiple sectors. However, there is still no consensus on how resilience should be assessed despite the release of numerous theoretical papers on the topic. Various measurement frameworks and recommendations have emerged, but their applicability is yet to be critically assessed. Using a comprehensive review and a systematic selection approach, we review resilience assessment tools developed for the context of climate change and agricultural development, and their linkages to theoretical frameworks, with a particular focus on the choice of indicators and the scale and methods of measurement. Fifteen tools originating from diverse organizations were selected and evaluated according to a measurement framework. Our study finds that, while some of the tools remain embedded in classical approaches, by simply adding a resilience lens to previous tools and by recycling indicators, others demonstrate a true attempt to re-think in order to account for resilience dimensions. We conclude that for the use of resilience assessment tools, a major challenge is to ensure that simple and operational tools can address complexity. Full baseline should comprise both quantitative and qualitative data collection, and include more systemic indicators as well as indicators of stability and shocks. Changes should be tracked with regular monitoring and evaluation using simple tools based on key variables that capture short-term adaptive processes and changes in states, at the appropriate system level. Clear pathways to human well-being, including transformation, should be discussed through system-oriented approaches, to discard potential undesired resilient states. Finally, robust outcome and impact records from the use of these tools are needed to demonstrate whether the resilience concept is useful over time in driving development into more desirable paths.

Systematic Magnus-Based Approach for Suppressing Leakage and Nonadiabatic Errors in Quantum Dynamics

We present a systematic, perturbative method for correcting quantum gates to suppress errors that take the target system out of a chosen subspace. It addresses the generic problem of non-adiabatic errors in adiabatic evolution and state preparation, as well as general leakage errors due to spurious couplings to undesirable states. The method is based on the Magnus expansion: by correcting control pulses, we modify the Magnus expansion of an initially-given, imperfect unitary in such a way that the desired evolution is obtained. Applications to adiabatic quantum state transfer, superconducting qubits and generalized Landau-Zener problems are discussed.

Relevance research of threat/ error and undesired states in air traffic management based on Bayesian Network Model

We have realized that the quantitative analysis of safety data is an advanced technology of unsafely events research. Based on the analysis and statistical research on Air Traffic Control irregular events of 2011 using The Threat and Error Management (TEM) model, we have established the Bayesian network model to perform a precise quantitative analysis on the relevance between the threat, error and undesired states in Air Traffic Control operation. This analysis, based on the prior probability, obtained the relevance of the three kinds of safety information above through studying the respective posterior probabilities of threats or errors under undesired states. The result showed that the relevance of controller communication error and undesired states was 75%, and the relevance of Air Traffic Control threats as well as communication error with undesired states in Air Traffic Control was 13.3% and 25%, respectively. Therefore, this research method is of great significance for improving the mechanism of the Air Traffic Control operation risk management.

The servant that brings light

Isaiah 42:1–9 and 49:1–6 are prophecies that describe the servant of the Lord as an entity that will bring justice and salvation for all, including being “a light to the nations.” The implications of “light to the nations” imagery have tended to include a presumption that the nations are in darkness and that darkness is an undesirable state. This expository article will consider the identity, activity, and function of the servant of the Lord in both passages, and examine imperial and racial implications of “light to the nations” imagery. It will interpret the servant’s role as enacting justice, light, among all people. Further, it will deconstruct the negative implications of darkness and its exclusive equation with the nations, as both Israel and the servant, in addition to the nations, exhibit characteristics of and parallel constructions to darkness in the passage. Instead of understanding darkness negatively and as only associated with the nations, this article will interpret the passages to present darkness as a place in which the potential of God’s transformative activity is at its height.

The integration of expert-defined importance factors to enrich Bayesian Fault Tree Analysis

This paper proposes an analysis of a hybrid Bayesian-Importance model for system designers to improve the quality of services related to Active Assisted Living Systems. The proposed model is based on two factors: failure probability measure of different service components and, an expert defined degree of importance that each component holds for the success of the corresponding service. The proposed approach advocates the integration of expert-defined importance factors to enrich the Bayesian Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) approach. The evaluation of the proposed approach is conducted using the Fault Tree Analysis formalism where the undesired state of a system is analyzed using Boolean logic mechanisms to combine a series of lower-level events.

Epilepsy-associated alterations in hippocampal excitability.

The hippocampus exhibits a wide range of epilepsy-related abnormalities and is situated in the mesial temporal lobe, where limbic seizures begin. These abnormalities could affect membrane excitability and lead to overstimulation of neurons. Multiple overlapping processes refer to neural homeostatic responses develop in neurons that work together to restore neuronal firing rates to control levels. Nevertheless, homeostatic mechanisms are unable to restore normal neuronal excitability, and the epileptic hippocampus becomes hyperexcitable or hypoexcitable. Studies show that there is hyperexcitability even before starting recurrent spontaneous seizures, suggesting although hippocampal hyperexcitability may contribute to epileptogenesis, it alone is insufficient to produce epileptic seizures. This supports the concept that the hippocampus is not the only substrate for limbic seizure onset, and a broader hyperexcitable limbic structure may contribute to temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) seizures. Nevertheless, seizures also occur in conditions where the hippocampus shows a hypoexcitable phenotype. Since TLE seizures most often originate in the hippocampus, it could therefore be assumed that both hippocampal hypoexcitability and hyperexcitability are undesirable states that make the epileptic hippocampal network less stable and may, under certain conditions, trigger seizures.

Assessing atoll shoreline condition to guide community management

Resilience assessment allows targeted management, and many low Pacific island atolls have no baseline condition data or monitoring, and are threatened by sea-level rise. Ecological resilience is a useful management concept where an ecosystem risks losing its ability to recover, potentially driving itself to an undesirable state, which for atoll shorelines is beach erosion without recovery, and mangrove dieback. This study used spatial change analysis to assess resilience condition indicators for lagoon shore habitats of an atoll protected area, methods developed in the region to facilitate improved community based assessment and management decision making. The lagoon shore was the focus, being potentially more vulnerable to human impacts owing to higher population densities, and potentially more vulnerable to relative sea level rise owing low gradients and elevations. Results showed mangrove vegetation to be in healthy condition, and spatial analysis of coastal change found that the mangrove area expanded 1998–2013, increasing by 17%, at a rate of 604 m2 per year. Results from the southern beach coast showed littoral vegetation to be in poor condition, with profile evidence of recent erosion, confirmed by spatial analysis results of loss of a previous progradation trend. Spatial analysis results therefore confirmed the veracity of community methods for assessing mangrove and beach condition, allowing confidence in their use in assessment of resilience state and rehabilitation needs. Sediment supply is helpful to coastal resilience, and analysis of beach sand found it to be 99.9% carbonate, derived from foraminifera and fragmented shell and coral, and continued supply is essential to maintain resilience. Beach sediment from such biogenic sources is derived from offshore reefs, making resilience assessment and monitoring of those habitats a further priority. Suitable timeframes are needed for managers to assess resilience, necessitating a need for longer term monitoring projects in the region.

Environmental Impact of Shrimp Culture at Gwatr Culture Site in Chabahar, Sistan-Baluchestan Province

Present study carried out in Gwuatr shrimp culture Site and Gwatr Bay in east of Chabahar city, Sistan and Baluchestan province. In this project five stations including supply channel, drainage channel, valve outlet, estuary of Gwatr and the Gwatr Gulf were selected to determine physical and chemical factors such as temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, total phosphorus and total nitrogen and pH. Sampling conducted once during the shrimp culturing period and monthly at other times. The main objective of this study is surveying change in environmental condition because of biological and non-biological effluents of Gwatr shrimp culture site on coastal waters of Chabahar. We observed that there is a significant difference among chemical and physical factors between different stations (ANOVA, P ≤ 0.05). In conclusion although there was no thermal pollution in this site, but extending aquaculture activities increased the average of salinity and pH and pollutant in the drainage channels, so environmental health conditions needs to be controlled and monitored by the environmental experts, otherwise, present status may go to undesirable condition or state of emergency.

Graph method for evaluation of process safety in railway facilities

Aim. Industrial safety (OS) is the state of protection of operating personnel from harmful effects of manufacturing processes, energy, equipment, objects, conditions and schedule of work [1]. The most efficient evaluation of OS in railway transportation is ensured by composite indicators, one of which is the risk assessment indicator. That is also reflected in the Russian legislation that stipulates the requirement to evaluate fire, occupational and other types of risks that affect industrial safety. According to the definition set forth in GOST 33433-2015 [2] risk is a combination of the probability and consequences of an event. The most complicated task related to risk assessment is the choice of the evaluation model for the probability of an undesired event. The model must enable practical applicability of evaluation results for planning of risk compensation measures. Currently, there are a large number of probability evaluation methods that can be divided into two large groups, i.e. expert and quantitative. Expert methods have several well-known shortcomings. The quantitative methods require the construction of a system of equations or an analytical model. In the context of railway facilities the construction of analytical models of probability evaluation is of principal interest due to the possibility of demonstration of the factors that are taken into consideration by the model. The aim of the article is to formalize the analytical method for evaluation of the probability of railway facility transfer into a hazardous state (in the context of industrial safety). Methods . Undesirable events that cause industrial safety incidents in railway facilities are random; they can be represented as a random process. A random system development process, including objects transition from a safe state into hazardous (undesirable) states, i.e. system state change in time, can under some assumptions be described with a semi-Markov process. In general, the construction and solution of semi-Markov models comes down to building a system of homogenous differential equations. This procedure always involves mathematical difficulties. [3] shows the possibility of representation and solution of semi-Markov models with a coupled graph model. Such models are highly visual, and allow formalizing the wanted system states, as well as paths of transition from safe into hazardous states. The main problem of modelling random processes of industrial safety state changes is the requirement to identify the complete list of hazardous states and preceding non-hazardous or pre-hazardous states. The processes typical to railway facilities are characterized by a multitude of states that cause various events. The concept of “state” usually characterizes an instantaneous image, a “cross-section” of a system. Thus, at the first stage of construction and solution of a model of random process of a system’s industrial safety state change, the finite sets of safe and hazardous states of the railway facility under consideration are identified in accordance with the known hazardous state criterion [4]. As the process of state change of a system’s industrial safety in railway transportation is random in time, in this article system operation is described with a semi-Markov process with the assumption that the discrete process is described with an embedded Markov chain. The set of system states and their connections are represented with a directed state graph with defined topological concepts [3]. For a constructed model, the article provides the proof of the theorem identifying the probability of system transition from an initial non-hazardous into a hazardous state, as well as the formula for calculation of such probability. Results . The graph method for evaluation of industrial safety in railway facilities developed in this article includes both the rules of construction of a system’s safety states graph and the tool for evaluation of the probability of system transition into a specific hazardous state. The graph is the basis of the practical method for calculation and forecasting of industrial safety incidents. The article provides the proof of the theorem identifying the probability of system transition from an initial non-hazardous into a hazardous state, as well as an example of application of graph method for evaluation of probability of fire in a fixed facility. The proposed probability evaluation method can be used in planning of industrial safety measures in terms of specification of new states or rules of transition into associated states.

Domain control of nonlinear networked systems and applications to complex disease networks

The control of complex nonlinear dynamical networks is an ongoing challenge in diverse contexts ranging from biology to social sciences. To explore a practical framework for controlling nonlinear dynamical networks based on meaningful physical and experimental considerations, we propose a new concept of the domain control for nonlinear dynamical networks, i.e., the control of a nonlinear network in transition from the domain of attraction of an undesired state (attractor) to the domain of attraction of a desired state. We theoretically prove the existence of a domain control. In particular, we offer an approach for identifying the driver nodes that need to be controlled and design a general form of control functions for realizing domain controllability. In addition, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our theory and approaches in three realistic disease-related networks: the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) core network, the T helper (Th) differentiation cellular network and the cancer network. Moreover, we reveal certain genes that are critical to phenotype transitions of these systems. Therefore, the approach described here not only offers a practical control scheme for nonlinear dynamical networks but also helps the development of new strategies for the prevention and treatment of complex diseases.

Good Form: The Ethical Experience of the Victorian Novel by Jesse Rosenthal

Reviewed by: Good Form: The Ethical Experience of the Victorian Novel by Jesse Rosenthal Katherine Voyles (bio) Good Form: The Ethical Experience of the Victorian Novel by Jesse Rosenthal; pp. 272. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2017. $56.95 cloth. Jesse rosenthal’s Good Form: The Ethical Experience of the Victorian Novel all but guarantees that from now on, scholars of Victorian literature will be talking and writing about form in relation to ethics and ethics in relationship to form. Rosenthal enlivens our sense of the possibilities and powers of narrative by arguing that the temporal unfolding of a novel is a moral, philosophical, and ethical matter. The arc of a story bends as it carries characters from undesirable states of being to ones that, in a phrase that resonates throughout Rosenthal’s writing, “feels right” (1). The unfurling of a character’s fate links the world of fiction to the reader’s own internal state. Mary Barton (1848) is an early example in Good Form that Rosenthal uses to show “the pull of narrative: its compulsion to change” (23). Rosenthal reorients Raymond Williams’s well-known argument that Gaskell lost her nerve as Mary Barton’s romance plot supplanted its political plot. In Good Form, Gaskell’s novel is about an “internally founded ethics” (24). As Rosenthal argues, “Gaskell does seem to be committed to contrasting Mary’s private and deeply felt drive—one that does not even need much in the way of an object—with the story of false understandings of others that doom her father” (27). Rosenthal’s account of Victorian form throws light onto fiction’s traffic between a narrative that “feels right” to the reader and the world of narrative itself. Sympathy, he is clear, is not what Good Form is about; nor is this a book about sentiment. In moving to the internal, the diachronic pull through a story instead of synchronic description, Rosenthal emphasizes how “formal procedures are used to produce a readerly affect which, even though it is literally a response to tropes, is understood in ethical terms” (31). Much of Good Form is devoted to chapters about how winding down a narrative is coterminous with characters taking their place in society. A reader’s right feeling, the right ending for a character, and the end of narrative come together. In the chapter on Daniel Deronda (1876), “The Large Novel and the Law of Large Numbers: Daniel Deronda and the Counterintuitive,” Rosenthal charts Gwendolyn’s isolation, and the monotony of that isolation, to underscore how Eliot’s novel defers, instead of aligning with, a reader’s right feeling and the right outcome of a character. The Deronda chapter is pivotal because tracking this deferral process recasts the alignment that came before: there is a gap between a world made of words and the world of the reader. The process of measuring this gap, and measuring how closely it is narrowed, becomes part of the narrative and ethical work, not just of the book’s overall argument but also of how it inhabits and plays out its own argument. A special virtue of Good Form is Rosenthal’s contribution to current thought influenced by scholars affiliated with the V21 collective. The book is infused [End Page 147] with thinking about Victorian narrative in the present moment and with the ways in which our moment is constructed by Victorian narrative. “Start” is the final word of Good Form, and Rosenthal’s is a book about pulling readers through fiction that tends to its “Afterward” with a beginning (191). Rosenthal’s finale makes a presentist commitment, never buried earlier in the book, especially explicit. “To the extent that nineteenth-century realism becomes a key site for formal narrative analysis,” Rosenthal claims, “it does so because it most fits the model of a story that makes sense, that works according to a narrative grammar that we understand” (193). There is a crucial looping quality to Rosenthal’s argument; our ideas about form are shaped by narrative theory, a theory that is shaped by its understandings of the nineteenth-century novel, and that same realism shapes the theories that elucidate its form. The looping quality to...

Driving Cells to the Desired State in a Bimodal Distribution through Manipulation of Internal Noise with Biologically Practicable Approaches.

The stochastic nature of gene regulatory networks described by Chemical Master Equation (CME) leads to the distribution of proteins. A deterministic bistability is usually reflected as a bimodal distribution in stochastic simulations. Within a certain range of the parameter space, a bistable system exhibits two stable steady states, one at the low end and the other at the high end. Consequently, it appears to have a bimodal distribution with one sub-population (mode) around the low end and the other around the high end. In most cases, only one mode is favorable, and guiding cells to the desired state is valuable. Traditionally, the population was redistributed simply by adjusting the concentration of the inducer or the stimulator. However, this method has limitations; for example, the addition of stimulator cannot drive cells to the desired state in a common bistable system studied in this work. In fact, it pushes cells only to the undesired state. In addition, it causes a position shift of the modes, and this shift could be as large as the value of the mode itself. Such a side effect might damage coordination, and this problem can be avoided by applying a new method presented in this work. We illustrated how to manipulate the intensity of internal noise by using biologically practicable methods and utilized it to prompt the population to the desired mode. As we kept the deterministic behavior untouched, the aforementioned drawback was overcome. Remarkably, more than 96% of cells has been driven to the desired state. This method is genetically applicable to biological systems exhibiting a bimodal distribution resulting from bistability. Moreover, the reaction network studied in this work can easily be extended and applied to many other systems.

Fisheries regulatory regimes and resilience to climate change

Climate change is already producing ecological, social, and economic impacts on fisheries, and these effects are expected to increase in frequency and magnitude in the future. Fisheries governance and regulations can alter socio-ecological resilience to climate change impacts via harvest control rules and incentives driving fisher behavior, yet there are no syntheses or conceptual frameworks for examining how institutions and their regulatory approaches can alter fisheries resilience to climate change. We identify nine key climate resilience criteria for fisheries socio-ecological systems (SES), defining resilience as the ability of the coupled system of interacting social and ecological components (i.e., the SES) to absorb change while avoiding transformation into a different undesirable state. We then evaluate the capacity of four fisheries regulatory systems that vary in their degree of property rights, including open access, limited entry, and two types of rights-based management, to increase or inhibit resilience. Our exploratory assessment of evidence in the literature suggests that these regulatory regimes vary widely in their ability to promote resilient fisheries, with rights-based approaches appearing to offer more resilience benefits in many cases, but detailed characteristics of the regulatory instruments are fundamental.

Overcome procrastination: Enhancing emotion regulation skills reduce procrastination

Procrastination is a widespread phenomenon that affects performance in various life domains including academic performance. Recently, it has been argued that procrastination can be conceptualized as a dysfunctional response to undesired affective states. Thus, we aimed to test the hypothesis that the availability of adaptive emotion regulation (ER) skills prevents procrastination.In a first study, cross-sectional analyses indicated that ER skills and procrastination were associated and that these connections were mediated by the ability to tolerate aversive emotions. In a second study, cross lagged panel analyses showed that (1) the ability to modify aversive emotions reduced subsequent procrastination and that (2) procrastination affected the subsequent ability to tolerate aversive emotions. Finally, in a third study, a two-arm randomized control trial (RCT) was conducted. Results indicated that systematic training of the ER skills tolerate and modify aversive emotions reduced procrastination. Thus, in order to overcome procrastination, emotion-focused strategies should be considered.

Identification of control targets in Boolean molecular network models via computational algebra.

BackgroundMany problems in biomedicine and other areas of the life sciences can be characterized as control problems, with the goal of finding strategies to change a disease or otherwise undesirable state of a biological system into another, more desirable, state through an intervention, such as a drug or other therapeutic treatment. The identification of such strategies is typically based on a mathematical model of the process to be altered through targeted control inputs. This paper focuses on processes at the molecular level that determine the state of an individual cell, involving signaling or gene regulation. The mathematical model type considered is that of Boolean networks. The potential control targets can be represented by a set of nodes and edges that can be manipulated to produce a desired effect on the system.ResultsThis paper presents a method for the identification of potential intervention targets in Boolean molecular network models using algebraic techniques. The approach exploits an algebraic representation of Boolean networks to encode the control candidates in the network wiring diagram as the solutions of a system of polynomials equations, and then uses computational algebra techniques to find such controllers. The control methods in this paper are validated through the identification of combinatorial interventions in the signaling pathways of previously reported control targets in two well studied systems, a p53-mdm2 network and a blood T cell lymphocyte granular leukemia survival signaling network. Supplementary data is available online and our code in Macaulay2 and Matlab are available via http://www.ms.uky.edu/~dmu228/ControlAlg.ConclusionsThis paper presents a novel method for the identification of intervention targets in Boolean network models. The results in this paper show that the proposed methods are useful and efficient for moderately large networks.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12918-016-0332-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.