81 research outputs found
Multi-Species Prey-Predator Dynamics During a Multi-Strain Pandemic
Small and large scale pandemics are a natural phenomenon repeatably appearing
throughout history, causing ecological and biological shifts in ecosystems and
a wide range of their habitats. These pandemics usually start with a single
strain but shortly become multi-strain due to a mutation process of the
pathogen causing the epidemic. In this study, we propose a novel
eco-epidemiological model that captures multi-species prey-predator dynamics
with a multi-strain pandemic. The proposed model extends and combines the
Lotka-Volterra prey-predator model and the Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered
(SIR) epidemiological model. We investigate the ecosystem's sensitivity and
stability during such a multi-strain pandemic through extensive simulation
relying on both synthetic cases as well as two real-world configurations. Our
results are aligned with known ecological and epidemiological findings, thus
supporting the adequacy of the proposed model in realistically capturing the
complex eco-epidemiological properties of the multi-species multi-strain
pandemic dynamics
The Scientometrics and Reciprocality Underlying Co-Authorship Panels in Google Scholar Profiles
Online academic profiles are used by scholars to reflect a desired image to
their online audience. In Google Scholar, scholars can select a subset of
co-authors for presentation in a central location on their profile using a
social feature called the Co-authroship panel. In this work, we examine whether
scientometrics and reciprocality can explain the observed selections. To this
end, we scrape and thoroughly analyze a novel set of 120,000 Google Scholar
profiles, ranging across four disciplines and various academic institutions.
Our results suggest that scholars tend to favor co-authors with higher
scientometrics over others for inclusion in their co-authorship panels.
Interestingly, as one's own scientometrics are higher, the tendency to include
co-authors with high scientometrics is diminishing. Furthermore, we find that
reciprocality is central to explaining scholars' selections
Publication Patterns' Changes due to the COVID-19 Pandemic: A longitudinal and short-term scientometric analysis
In recent months the COVID-19 (also known as SARS-CoV-2 and Coronavirus)
pandemic has spread throughout the world. In parallel, extensive scholarly
research regarding various aspects of the pandemic has been published. In this
work, we analyse the changes in biomedical publishing patterns due to the
pandemic. We study the changes in the volume of publications in both peer
reviewed journals and preprint servers, average time to acceptance of papers
submitted to biomedical journals, international (co-)authorship of these papers
(expressed by diversity and volume), and the possible association between
journal metrics and said changes. We study these possible changes using two
approaches: a short-term analysis through which changes during the first six
months of the outbreak are examined for both COVID-19 related papers and
non-COVID-19 related papers; and a longitudinal approach through which changes
are examined in comparison to the previous four years. Our results show that
the pandemic has so far had a tremendous effect on all examined accounts of
scholarly publications: A sharp increase in publication volume has been
witnessed and it can be almost entirely attributed to the pandemic; a
significantly faster mean time to acceptance for COVID-19 papers is apparent,
and it has (partially) come at the expense of non-COVID-19 papers; and a
significant reduction in international collaboration for COVID-19 papers has
also been identified. As the pandemic continues to spread, these changes may
cause a slow down in research in non-COVID-19 biomedical fields and bring about
a lower rate of international collaboration.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figures, 11 table
Mathematical Modeling of BCG-based Bladder Cancer Treatment Using Socio-Demographics
Cancer is one of the most widespread diseases around the world with millions
of new patients each year. Bladder cancer is one of the most prevalent types of
cancer affecting all individuals alike with no obvious prototypical patient.
The current standard treatment for BC follows a routine weekly Bacillus
Calmette-Guerin (BCG) immunotherapy-based therapy protocol which is applied to
all patients alike. The clinical outcomes associated with BCG treatment vary
significantly among patients due to the biological and clinical complexity of
the interaction between the immune system, treatments, and cancer cells. In
this study, we take advantage of the patient's socio-demographics to offer a
personalized mathematical model that describes the clinical dynamics associated
with BCG-based treatment. To this end, we adopt a well-established BCG
treatment model and integrate a machine learning component to temporally adjust
and reconfigure key parameters within the model thus promoting its
personalization. Using real clinical data, we show that our personalized model
favorably compares with the original one in predicting the number of cancer
cells at the end of the treatment, with 14.8% improvement, on average
Quaternary ice sheets and sea level regression drove divergence in a marine gastropod along Eastern and Western coasts of South America
The southern coastline of South America is a remarkable area to evaluate how Quaternary glacial processes impacted the demography of the near-shore marine biota. Here we present new phylogeographic analyses in the pulmonate Siphonaria lessonii across its distribution, from northern Chile in the Pacific to Uruguay in the Atlantic. Contrary to our expectations, populations from the southwestern Atlantic, an area that was less impacted by ice during glacial maxima, showed low genetic diversity and evidence of recent expansion, similar to the patterns recorded in this study across heavily ice-impacted areas in the Pacific Magellan margin. We propose that Atlantic and Pacific shallow marine hard-substrate benthic species were both affected during the Quaternary in South America, but by different processes. At higher latitudes of the southeast Pacific, ice-scouring drastically affected S. lessonii populations compared to non-glaciated areas along the Chile-Peru province where the species was resilient. In the southwest Atlantic, S. lessonii populations would have been dramatically impacted by the reduction of near-shore rocky habitat availability as a consequence of glacio-eustatic movements. The increase of gravelly and rocky shore substrates in the southwest Atlantic supports a hypothesis of glacial refugia from where the species recolonized lower latitudes across the Atlantic and Pacific margins. Our results suggest that current patterns of genetic diversity and structure in near-shore marine benthic species do not solely depend on the impact of Quaternary glacial ice expansions but also on the availability of suitable habitats and life-history traits, including developmental mode, bathymetry and the likelihood of dispersal by rafting.Fil: Fernandez Iriarte, Pedro Jose. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras; ArgentinaFil: González Wevar, C. A.. Universidad de Chile; Chile. Universidad Austral de Chile.Instituto de Ciencias Marinas y Limnológicas; ChileFil: Segovia, N. I.. Universidad Católica del Norte; Chile. Universidad de Chile; ChileFil: Rosenfeld, S.. Universidad de Magallanes; ChileFil: Hüne, M.. Universidad de Chile; ChileFil: Fainburg, Leandro Ariel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras; ArgentinaFil: Nuñez, Jesus Dario. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras; ArgentinaFil: Haye, P. A.. Universidad Católica del Norte; ChileFil: Poulin, E.. Universidad de Chile; Chil
- …