Mathematical model of Zika virus transmission and control measures

Zika virus (ZIKV) is an emerging mosquito-borne flavivirus capable of infecting humans through mosquito bites as well as through sexual contact between humans. ZIKV mitigation has traditionally focused on the reduction of the presence and abundance of mosquitoes. As the mosquitoes adapt to pesticides,  the use of personal preventive measures  will have to play a crucial role in controlling the spread of ZIKV. To evaluate different kinds of preventions, we consider a new mathematical model for ZIKV dynamics that incorporates four control measures, including two separate prevention measures, one for mosquito bite prevention and one for sexual transmission prevention. We study the model both analytically and numerically.  We show  that the mosquito bite control measure is more important for disease elimination and mitigation than the sexual transmission prevention

A Game-Theoretic Model of Monkeypox to Assess Vaccination Strategies

A Game-Theoretic Model of Monkeypox to Assess Vaccination Strategies Sri Vibhaav Bankaru, Depts. of Biomedical Engineering, Math, & Chemistry, Samuel Kossol, William Hou, & Parsa Mahmoudi, with Dr. Jan Rychtar, Dept. of Mathematics Monkeypox (MPX) is a zoonotic disease similar to smallpox. Its fatality rate is about 11% and it is endemic to the Central and West African countries. In this paper, we analyze a compartmental model of MPX dynamics. Our goal is to see whether MPX can be controlled and eradicated by voluntary vaccinations. We show that there are three equilibria - disease free, fully endemic and previously neglected semi-endemic (with disease existing only among humans). The existence of semi-endemic equilibrium has severe implications should the MPX virus mutate to increased viral fitness in humans. We find that MPX is controllable and can be eradicated in a semi-endemic equilibrium by vaccination. However, in a fully endemic equilibrium, MPX cannot be eradicated by vaccination alone.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/uresposters/1296/thumbnail.jp

Digital Analysis of Heartbeats from Remote Machines

The “Bring Out Your Exceptions” project is a robust online automated data collection and aggregation utility. Specifically designed to handle application to application communication so that system health analysis can be performed easily within minutes by both trained and untrained personnel. The utility, once set-up, receives relevant data (be it crash errors or current system health) from remote systems without human interaction being required. This will allow for faster turn-around on patch development and addressing future errors without reliance on a client requesting help. Created using a combination of tools and languages such as Javascript, GoLang, Node.JS, RabbitMQ, and MongoDB, the “Bring Out Your Exceptions” project successfully handles communications from remote systems and parses the necessary information before storing it for future retrieval and analysis. Combined further with the use of Kibana, an aesthetically pleasing interface is produced for the user in which statistics about the underlying data are readily presented with real-time analysis as it enters the system. The “Bring Out Your Exceptions” project is capable of future growth that allows it to generically accept data from any system rather than the current pre-defined system and also due to its use of Kibana is extremely user-friendly for data analysis. Line graphs, pie charts, and bar charts are all easily added and configured with a few clicks of the mouse and allows for accurate and quick representation of underlying data from remote systems which helps to streamline both the development process of future solutions as well as to enrich current knowledge of ongoing issues.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/capstone/1179/thumbnail.jp

The Swinburne Intermediate Latitude Pulsar Survey

We have conducted a survey of intermediate Galactic latitudes using the 13-beam 21-cm multibeam receiver of the Parkes 64-m radio telescope. The survey covered the region enclosed by 5 deg < |b| < 15 deg and -100 deg < l < 50 deg with 4,702 processed pointings of 265 s each, for a total of 14.5 days of integration time. Thirteen 2x96-channel filterbanks provided 288 MHz of bandwidth at a centre frequency of 1374 MHz, one-bit sampled every 125 microsec and incurring ~DM/13.4 cm^-3 pc samples of dispersion smearing. The system was sensitive to slow and most millisecond pulsars in the region with flux densities greater than approximately 0.3--1.1 mJy. Offline analysis on the 64-node Swinburne workstation cluster resulted in the detection of 170 pulsars of which 69 were new discoveries. Eight of the new pulsars, by virtue of their small spin periods and period derivatives, may be recycled and have been reported elsewhere. The slow pulsars discovered are typical of those already known in the volume searched, being of intermediate to old age. Several pulsars experience pulse nulling and two display very regular drifting sub-pulses. We discuss the new discoveries and provide timing parameters for the 48 slow pulsars for which we have a phase-connnected solution.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures, accepted to MNRA

Kleptoparasitic Hawk-Dove Games

The Hawk-Dove game is a classical game-theoretical model of potentially aggressive animal conflicts. In this paper, we apply game theory to a population of foraging animals that may engage in stealing food from one another. We assume that the population is composed of two types of individuals, Hawks and Doves. Hawks try to escalate encounters into aggressive contests while Doves engage in non-aggressive displays between themselves or concede to aggressive Hawks. The fitness of each type depends upon various natural parameters, such as food density, the mean handling time of a food item, as well as the mean times of conflicts over the food. We find the Evolutionarily Stable States (ESSs) for all parameter combinations and show that there are two possible ESSs, pure Hawks, or a mixed population of Hawks and Doves. We demonstrate that for any set of parameter values there is exactly one ESS

Neil Aaland WA State Association of Counties Local Governments

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Ambiguity as Grasp: The Reworking of Sense

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111788/1/jccm12080.pd

Transport and Photo-Conduction in Carbon Nanotube Fibers

We have characterized the conductivity of carbon nanotubes (CNT) fibers enriched in semiconducting species as a function of temperature and pulsed laser irradiation of 266 nm wavelength. While at high temperatures the response approaches an Arrhenius law behavior, from room temperature down to 4.2 K the response can be framed, quantitatively, within the predictions of the fluctuation induced tunneling which occurs between the inner fibrils (bundles) of the samples and/or the elementary CNTs constituting the fibers. Laser irradiation induces an enhancement of the conductivity, and analysis of the resulting data confirms the (exponential) dependence of the potential barrier upon temperature as expected from the fluctuation induced tunneling model. A thermal map of the experimental configuration consisting of laser-irradiated fibers is also obtained via COMSOL simulations in order to rule out bare heating phenomena as the background of our experiments. (*) AuthorComment: 13 pages and 7 figure