An agent-based model of tsetse fly response to seasonal climatic drivers: Assessing the impact on sleeping sickness transmission rates.

Background: This paper presents the development of an agent-based model (ABM) to incorporate climatic drivers which affect tsetse fly (G. m. morsitans) population dynamics, and ultimately disease transmission.

Measurement of strains experienced by viscerofugal nerve cell bodies during mechanosensitive firing using digital image correlation.

Mechanosensory neurons detect physical events in the local environments of the tissues that they innervate. Studies of mechanosensitivity of neurons or nerve endings in the gut have related their firing to strain, wall tension, or pressure. Digital image correlation (DIC) is a technique from materials engineering that can be adapted to measure the local physical environments of afferent neurons at high resolution.