Emergency vaccination of rabies under limited resources – combating or containing?

BACKGROUND: Rabies is the most important viral zoonosis from a global perspective. Worldwide efforts to combat the disease by oral vaccination of reservoirs have managed to eradicate wildlife rabies in large areas of central Europe and North-America. Thus, repeated vaccination has been discontinued recently on a geographical scale. However, as rabies has not yet been eradicated globally, a serious risk of re-introduction remains. What is the best spatial design for an emergency vaccination program – particularly if resources are limited? Either, we treat a circular area around the detected case and run the risk of infected hosts leaving the limited control area, because a sufficient immunisation level has not yet been built up. Or, initially concentrate the SAME resources in order to establish a protective ring which is more distant from the infected local area, and which then holds out against the challenge of the approaching epidemic. METHODS: We developed a simulation model to contrast the two strategies for emergency vaccination. The spatial-explicit model is based on fox group home-ranges, which facilitates the simulation of rabies spread to larger areas relevant to management. We used individual-based fox groups to follow up the effects of vaccination in a detailed manner. Thus, regionally – bait distribution orientates itself to standard schemes of oral immunisation programs and locally – baits are assigned to individual foxes. RESULTS: Surprisingly, putting the controlled area ring-like around the outbreak does not outperform the circular area of the same size centred on the outbreak. Only during the very first baitings, does the ring area result in fewer breakouts. But then as rabies is eliminated within the circle area, the respective ring area fails, due to the non-controlled inner part. We attempt to take advantage of the initially fewer breakouts beyond the ring when applying a mixed strategy. Therefore, after a certain number of baitings, the area under control was increased for both strategies towards the same larger circular area. The circle-circle strategy still outperforms the ring-circle strategy and analysis of the spatial-temporal disease spread reveals why: improving control efficacy by means of a mixed strategy is impossible in the field, due to the build-up time of population immunity. CONCLUSION: For practical emergency management of a new outbreak of rabies, the ring-like application of oral vaccination is not a favourable strategy at all. Even if initial resources are substantially low and there is a serious risk of rabies cases outside the limited control area, our results suggest circular application instead of ring vaccination

Mood and the Market: Can Press Reports of Investors’ Mood Predict Stock Prices?

We examined whether press reports on the collective mood of investors can predict changes in stock prices. We collected data on the use of emotion words in newspaper reports on traders’ affect, coded these emotion words according to their location on an affective circumplex in terms of pleasantness and activation level, and created indices of collective mood for each trading day. Then, by using time series analyses, we examined whether these mood indices, depicting investors’ emotion on a given trading day, could predict the next day’s opening price of the stock market. The strongest findings showed that activated pleasant mood predicted increases in NASDAQ prices, while activated unpleasant mood predicted decreases in NASDAQ prices. We conclude that both valence and activation levels of collective mood are important in predicting trend continuation in stock prices

Symbiont Diversity on Coral Reefs and Its Relationship to Bleaching Resistance and Resilience

Mass coral reef bleaching and mortality as a result of prolonged seawater warming following the 1997–1998 El Niño-Southern Oscillation forced a change in conservation priorities in assessing threats to the health of coral reefs worldwide. By some estimates, approximately one sixth of the world’s coral reefs was destroyed over a single 9-month period during the 1997–1998 bleaching event (Wilkinson 2000). Most of this destruction occurred in the Indian Ocean, where prolonged elevations of sea surface temperature were maintained by prevailing currents that pooled warm water in the western Indo-Pacific. In most cases, coral reef destruction equated to a dramatic reduction in live coral cover on these reefs (e.g., McClanahan 2000; Loch et al. 2002), but it is noteworthy that even the most severely affected reefs maintained significant pockets of live coral scattered throughout their original distributions. Moreover, many coral reef ecosystems that suffered extensive bleaching (e.g., parts of the Caribbean and Great Barrier Reef) did not experience significant eventual mortality (Wilkinson 2002). Consequently, coral reef recovery has in many places been more rapid than initially expected, particularly in the western Pacific. Although 1997–1998 clearly represents an annus horribilis for many coral reefs worldwide, the destruction it witnessed may not be as irreversible or as cumulative as originally thought. How resistant and/or resilient were reef corals (and coral reefs) to this event? How might resistance and resilience change over time in response to rising temperatures and recurrent bleaching episodes? To what extent can we expect the destruction and recovery patterns of 1997–1998 to be common features of reef bleaching and mortality in the years to come

Dendroecological Studies with Cedrela odorata L., Northeastern Brazil

Northeastern Brazil is home to the Caatinga Forest, characterized as a Tropical Dry Forest (TDF), and the Dense Ombrophilous Forest (the Atlantic Forest) predominates near the coast. In the Caatinga, the climate is semiarid, with <600 mm of mean annual precipitation and a mean annual air temperature of 27 °C ± 6 °C. The precipitation presents a seasonal pattern, with a rainy season concentrated in the first half of the year and at least 6 months of dry season, with volumes <50 mm/month. The climate in the Atlantic Forest has a milder air temperature and a mean rainfall of 1450 mm/year. In both regions the tree species, Cedrela odorata L., widely studied in dendrochronology, presents populations in farms, with several individuals per hectare. In recent decades, 10 chronologies of C. odorata have been produced and compared to precipitation and other environmental factors, and their competition with lianas and support of the herbivorous process has been noted. This chapter presents the potential of C. odorata for dendrochronology in Northeastern Brazil; the anatomy of true rings with marginal parenchyma associated with vessels differed from the false rings by the absence of vessels. Absent rings were also observed. Nine chronologies had correlations above the critical level of 0.51 (0.51?0.79) and sensitivity between 0.547 and 0.771. The correlation between all series (rbt) of all chronologies had values between 0.27 and 0.68 and expressed population signal (EPS) above 0.85 (between 0.88 and 0.98). In both biomes, several populations of C. odorata have resulted in climate-related chronologies that showed the seasonal rainfall from May to July induces metabolism and growth rings formation. We also presented the methodology used for tropical dendroecology studies and the relationship between plant growth and environmental conditions.Fil: Lisi, Claudio Sergio. Universidade Federal de Sergipe; BrasilFil: Alves Pagotto, Mariana. Universidade Federal de Sergipe; BrasilFil: Anholetto, Claudio Roberto. Universidade Federal de Sergipe; BrasilFil: Carvalho Nogueira, Francisco. Universidade Federal de Sergipe; BrasilFil: Lima Santos, Helberson . Universidade Federal de Sergipe; BrasilFil: Costa, Clayane Matos . Universidade Federal de Sergipe; BrasilFil: Romany Nunes Menezes, Ítallo  . Universidade Federal de Sergipe; BrasilFil: Roig Junent, Fidel Alejandro. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología y Ciencias Ambientales. Provincia de Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología y Ciencias Ambientales. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología y Ciencias Ambientales; ArgentinaFil: Filho, Mario Tommasiello . Universidade de Sao Paulo; Brasi