Species subject to predation and environmental threats commonly exhibit variable periods of population boom and bust over long timescales. Understanding and predicting such behaviour, especially given the inherent heterogeneity and stochasticity of exogenous driving factors over short timescales, is an ongoing challenge. A modelling paradigm gaining popularity in the ecological sciences for such multi-scale effects is to couple short-term continuous dynamics to long-term discrete updates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAim: Incisional herniation (IH) is a frequent complication following midline abdominal closure with significant associated morbidity. Randomized controlled trials have demonstrated that the small bites technique (SBT) and prophylactic mesh augmentation (PMA) may reduce IH compared to mass closure techniques, but data are lacking on their implementation in contemporary surgical practice. This survey aimed to evaluate the use of the SBT and PMA and to identify factors associated with their adoption.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWeak form equation learning and surrogate modeling has proven to be computationally efficient and robust to measurement noise in a wide range of applications including ODE, PDE, and SDE discovery, as well as in coarse-graining applications, such as homogenization and mean-field descriptions of interacting particle systems. In this work we extend this coarse-graining capability to the setting of Hamiltonian dynamics which possess approximate symmetries associated with timescale separation. A smooth -dependent Hamiltonian vector field possesses an approximate symmetry if the limiting vector field possesses an exact symmetry.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEicosanoids are a family of bioactive lipids, including derivatives of the ubiquitous fatty acid arachidonic acid (AA). The intimate involvement of eicosanoids in inflammation motivates the development of predictive models for a systems-level exploration of disease mechanisms, drug development and replacement of animal models. Using an ensemble modelling strategy, we developed a computational model of the AA cascade.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAim: To assess this risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection among Ontario physicians by specialty and in comparison with non-physician controls during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: In this retrospective cohort study, the primary outcome was incident SARS-CoV-2 infection confirmed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Secondary outcomes were hospitalization, use of critical care, and mortality.