5,438 research outputs found
Non-systemic transmission of tick-borne diseases: a network approach
Tick-Borne diseases can be transmitted via non-systemic (NS) transmission.
This occurs when tick gets the infection by co-feeding with infected ticks on
the same host resulting in a direct pathogen transmission between the vectors,
without infecting the host. This transmission is peculiar, as it does not
require any systemic infection of the host. The NS transmission is the main
efficient transmission for the persistence of the Tick-Borne Encephalitis virus
in nature. By describing the heterogeneous ticks aggregation on hosts through a
\hyphenation{dynamical} bipartite graphs representation, we are able to
mathematically define the NS transmission and to depict the epidemiological
conditions for the pathogen persistence. Despite the fact that the underlying
network is largely fragmented, analytical and computational results show that
the larger is the variability of the aggregation, and the easier is for the
pathogen to persist in the population.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, to be published in Communications in Nonlinear
Science and Numerical Simulatio
Optimizing surveillance for livestock disease spreading through animal movements
The spatial propagation of many livestock infectious diseases critically
depends on the animal movements among premises; so the knowledge of movement
data may help us to detect, manage and control an outbreak. The identification
of robust spreading features of the system is however hampered by the temporal
dimension characterizing population interactions through movements. Traditional
centrality measures do not provide relevant information as results strongly
fluctuate in time and outbreak properties heavily depend on geotemporal initial
conditions. By focusing on the case study of cattle displacements in Italy, we
aim at characterizing livestock epidemics in terms of robust features useful
for planning and control, to deal with temporal fluctuations, sensitivity to
initial conditions and missing information during an outbreak. Through spatial
disease simulations, we detect spreading paths that are stable across different
initial conditions, allowing the clustering of the seeds and reducing the
epidemic variability. Paths also allow us to identify premises, called
sentinels, having a large probability of being infected and providing critical
information on the outbreak origin, as encoded in the clusters. This novel
procedure provides a general framework that can be applied to specific
diseases, for aiding risk assessment analysis and informing the design of
optimal surveillance systems.Comment: Supplementary Information at
https://sites.google.com/site/paolobajardi/Home/archive/optimizing_surveillance_ESM_l.pdf?attredirects=
Complex network analysis and nonlinear dynamics
This chapter aims at reviewing complex network and nonlinear dynamical
models and methods that were either developed for or applied to socioeconomic
issues, and pertinent to the theme of New Economic Geography. After an introduction
to the foundations of the field of complex networks, the present summary
introduces some applications of complex networks to economics, finance, epidemic
spreading of innovations, and regional trade and developments. The chapter also
reviews results involving applications of complex networks to other relevant
socioeconomic issue
Graph Theory and Networks in Biology
In this paper, we present a survey of the use of graph theoretical techniques
in Biology. In particular, we discuss recent work on identifying and modelling
the structure of bio-molecular networks, as well as the application of
centrality measures to interaction networks and research on the hierarchical
structure of such networks and network motifs. Work on the link between
structural network properties and dynamics is also described, with emphasis on
synchronization and disease propagation.Comment: 52 pages, 5 figures, Survey Pape
Tuning the average path length of complex networks and its influence to the emergent dynamics of the majority-rule model
We show how appropriate rewiring with the aid of Metropolis Monte Carlo
computational experiments can be exploited to create network topologies
possessing prescribed values of the average path length (APL) while keeping the
same connectivity degree and clustering coefficient distributions. Using the
proposed rewiring rules we illustrate how the emergent dynamics of the
celebrated majority-rule model are shaped by the distinct impact of the APL
attesting the need for developing efficient algorithms for tuning such network
characteristics.Comment: 10 figure
Detecting the Influence of Spreading in Social Networks with Excitable Sensor Networks
Detecting spreading outbreaks in social networks with sensors is of great
significance in applications. Inspired by the formation mechanism of human's
physical sensations to external stimuli, we propose a new method to detect the
influence of spreading by constructing excitable sensor networks. Exploiting
the amplifying effect of excitable sensor networks, our method can better
detect small-scale spreading processes. At the same time, it can also
distinguish large-scale diffusion instances due to the self-inhibition effect
of excitable elements. Through simulations of diverse spreading dynamics on
typical real-world social networks (facebook, coauthor and email social
networks), we find that the excitable senor networks are capable of detecting
and ranking spreading processes in a much wider range of influence than other
commonly used sensor placement methods, such as random, targeted, acquaintance
and distance strategies. In addition, we validate the efficacy of our method
with diffusion data from a real-world online social system, Twitter. We find
that our method can detect more spreading topics in practice. Our approach
provides a new direction in spreading detection and should be useful for
designing effective detection methods
Early warning signs for saddle-escape transitions in complex networks
Many real world systems are at risk of undergoing critical transitions,
leading to sudden qualitative and sometimes irreversible regime shifts. The
development of early warning signals is recognized as a major challenge. Recent
progress builds on a mathematical framework in which a real-world system is
described by a low-dimensional equation system with a small number of key
variables, where the critical transition often corresponds to a bifurcation.
Here we show that in high-dimensional systems, containing many variables, we
frequently encounter an additional non-bifurcative saddle-type mechanism
leading to critical transitions. This generic class of transitions has been
missed in the search for early-warnings up to now. In fact, the saddle-type
mechanism also applies to low-dimensional systems with saddle-dynamics. Near a
saddle a system moves slowly and the state may be perceived as stable over
substantial time periods. We develop an early warning sign for the saddle-type
transition. We illustrate our results in two network models and epidemiological
data. This work thus establishes a connection from critical transitions to
networks and an early warning sign for a new type of critical transition. In
complex models and big data we anticipate that saddle-transitions will be
encountered frequently in the future.Comment: revised versio
- …