Mitigating the Spread of Measles under Constrained Health Care Resources in Tanzania using Social Contact Network Models

Tanzania revaccinates individuals during measles outbreaks, despite having scant healthcare resources. We construct epidemiological models of measles spread by employing a hybrid of existing social contact networks models to develop SEIR simulation model. Using demographic and measles surveillance data from three rural villages in Tanzania, we simulate the spread of measles and examine which vaccination strategies can effectively control outbreaks. Results strongly indicate the spread of measles largely depends on contact rates among infected individuals within a population. Findings indicate a need for targeted vaccination for children of 6 months to 15 years of age, but equally for unvaccinated older age groups who were born before 1957 or missed the second dose. This work contributes theoretically and methodologically to existing applications of social contact network models for airborne infectious diseases in areas with health system constraints. It sets out implications for the design of effective vaccination programs for control of measles in Tanzania and in other developing countries. Keywords: Vaccination strategies, Control strategies, Social contact network models, Airborne infectious diseases, Measles

Conceptual System Dynamics and Agent-Based Modelling Simulation of Interorganisational Fairness in Food Value Chains: Research Agenda and Case Studies

© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)System dynamics and agent-based simulation modelling approaches have a potential as tools to evaluate the impact of policy related decision making in food value chains. The context is that a food value chain involves flows of multiple products, financial flows and decision making among the food value chain players. Each decision may be viewed from the level of independent actors, each with their own motivations and agenda, but responding to externalities and to the behaviours of other actors. The focus is to show how simulation modelling can be applied to problems such as fairness and power asymmetries in European food value chains by evaluating the outcome of interventions in terms of relevant operational indicators of interorganisational fairness (e.g., profit distribution, market power, bargaining power). The main concepts of system dynamics and agent-based modelling are introduced and the applicability of a hybrid of these methods to food value chains is justified. This approach is outlined as a research agenda, and it is demonstrated how cognitive maps can help in the initial conceptual model building when implemented for specific food value chains studied in the EU Horizon 2020 VALUMICS project. The French wheat to bread chain has many characteristics of food value chains in general and is applied as an example to formulate a model that can be extended to capture the functioning of European FVCs. This work is to be further progressed in a subsequent stream of research for the other food value chain case studies with different governance modes and market organisation, in particular, farmed salmon to fillet, dairy cows to milk and raw tomato to processed tomato.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Symmetric Powers of Symmetric Bilinear Forms

We study symmetric powers of classes of symmetric bilinear forms in the Witt-Grothendieck ring of a field of characteristic not equal to 2, and derive their basic properties and compute their classical invariants. We relate these to earlier results on exterior powers of such forms. 1991 AMS Subject Classification: 11E04, 11E81 Keywords: exterior power, symmetric power, pre-#-ring, #-ring, #-ring-augmentation, symmetric bilinear form, Witt ring, Witt-Grothendieck ring. 1

SYMMETRIC POWERS OF SYMMETRIC BILINEAR FORMS

Abstract. We study symmetric powers of classes of symmetric bilinear forms in the Witt-Grothendieck ring of a field of characteristic not equal to 2, and derive their basic properties and compute their classical invariants. We relate these to earlier results on exterior powers of such forms

Exterior Powers of Symmetric Bilinear Forms

We study exterior powers of classes of symmetric bilinear forms in the Witt-Grothendieck ring of a field of characteristic not equal to 2, and derive their basic properties. The exterior powers are used to obtain annihilating polynomials for quadratic forms in the Witt ring

Exterior powers of symmetric bilinear forms. Algebra Colloquium

Abstract. We study exterior powers of classes of symmetric bilinear forms in the Witt-Grothendieck ring of a field of characteristic not equal to 2, and derive their basic properties. The exterior powers are used to obtain annihilating polynomials for quadratic forms in the Witt ring

Improved formulations for the ring spur assignment problem

SCOPUS: cp.kInternational audienceWe present two complete integer programming formulations for the ring spur assignment problem. This problem arises in the design of next generation telecommunications networks. We analyse and compare the formulations in terms of compactness, the resulting LP bound and results from a branch and cut implementation. We present our conclusions with computational results. © 2011 Springer-Verlag

Improved Formulations for the Ring Spur Assignment Problem

We present two complete integer programming formulations for the ring spur assignment problem. This problem arises in the design of next generation telecommunications networks. We analyse and compare the formulations in terms of compactness, the resulting LP bound and results from a branch and cut implementation. We present our conclusions with computational results.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Conceptual System Dynamics and Agent-Based Modelling Simulation of Interorganisational Fairness in Food Value Chains: Research Agenda and Case Studies

System dynamics and agent-based simulation modelling approaches have a potential as tools to evaluate the impact of policy related decision making in food value chains. The context is that a food value chain involves flows of multiple products, financial flows and decision making among the food value chain players. Each decision may be viewed from the level of independent actors, each with their own motivations and agenda, but responding to externalities and to the behaviours of other actors. The focus is to show how simulation modelling can be applied to problems such as fairness and power asymmetries in European food value chains by evaluating the outcome of interventions in terms of relevant operational indicators of interorganisational fairness (e.g., profit distribution, market power, bargaining power). The main concepts of system dynamics and agent-based modelling are introduced and the applicability of a hybrid of these methods to food value chains is justified. This approach is outlined as a research agenda, and it is demonstrated how cognitive maps can help in the initial conceptual model building when implemented for specific food value chains studied in the EU Horizon 2020 VALUMICS project. The French wheat to bread chain has many characteristics of food value chains in general and is applied as an example to formulate a model that can be extended to capture the functioning of European FVCs. This work is to be further progressed in a subsequent stream of research for the other food value chain case studies with different governance modes and market organisation, in particular, farmed salmon to fillet, dairy cows to milk and raw tomato to processed tomato