Role of Vaccination Strategies to Host-Pathogen Dynamics in Social Interactions.

This study presents extended Immunity Agent-Based Model (IABM) simulations to evaluate vaccination strategies in controlling the spread of infectious diseases. The application of IABM in the analysis of vaccination configurations is innovative, as a vaccinated individual can be infected depending on how their immune system acts against the invading pathogen, without a pre-established infection rate. Analysis at the microscopic level demonstrates the impact of vaccination on individual immune responses and infection outcomes, providing a more realistic representation of how the humoral response caused by vaccination affects the individual's immune defense.

Large-deviation quantification of boundary conditions on the Brazil nut effect.

We present a discrete element method study of the uprising of an intruder immersed in a granular media under vibration, also known as the Brazil Nut Effect. Besides confirming granular ratcheting and convection as leading mechanisms to this odd behavior, we evince the role of the resonance on the rising of the intruder by using periodic boundary conditions (pbc) in the horizontal direction to avoid wall-induced convection. As a result, we obtain a resonance-qualitylike curve of the intruder ascent rate as a function of the external frequency, which is verified for different values of the inverse normalized gravity Γ, as well as the system size.

Experimental Validation of a Nonextensive Scaling Law in Confined Granular Media.

In this Letter, we address the relationship between the statistical fluctuations of grain displacements for a full quasistatic plane shear experiment, and the corresponding anomalous diffusion exponent α. We experimentally validate a particular case of the Tsallis-Bukman scaling law, α=2/(3-q), where q is obtained by fitting the probability density function (PDF) of the displacement fluctuations with a q-Gaussian distribution, and the diffusion exponent is measured independently during the experiment. Applying an original technique, we are able to evince a transition from an anomalous diffusion regime to a Brownian behavior as a function of the length of the strain window used to calculate the displacements of the grains.

Durability of composite repair using different surface treatments.

Objective: To evaluate the surface treatment and hydrophilicity of the bonding agent on the composite repair strength (RS), silver nitrate uptake (SNU), surface roughness (SR) and estimation of surface area (SA).

Methods: Fifty resin blocks (Opallis, FGM) were polished and divided in 5 groups: no treatment (NT); roughening with a fine (FDB); medium (MDB); coarse-grit (CDB) and 50-μm aluminium oxide sandblasting (AO). A hydrophobic (Adhesive, Scotchbond Multi-Purpose Plus, 3M ESPE) or hydrophilic (Adper Single Bond 2, 3M ESPE) adhesive was applied, followed by composite placement (Opallis, FGM).