Estimation of end-of-outbreak probabilities in the presence of delayed and incomplete case reporting.

Towards the end of an infectious disease outbreak, when a period has elapsed without new case notifications, a key question for public health policymakers is whether the outbreak can be declared over. This requires the benefits of a declaration (e.g.

Random walk models in the life sciences: including births, deaths and local interactions.

Random walks and related spatial stochastic models have been used in a range of application areas, including animal and plant ecology, infectious disease epidemiology, developmental biology, wound healing and oncology. Classical random walk models assume that all individuals in a population behave independently, ignoring local physical and biological interactions. This assumption simplifies the mathematical description of the population considerably, enabling continuum-limit descriptions to be derived and used in model analysis and fitting.

Estimating the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection in New Zealand border arrivals.

Background: Travel restrictions and border controls were used extensively during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the processes for making robust evidence-based risk assessments of source countries to inform border control policies was in many cases very limited.

Methods: Between April 2020 and February 2022, all international arrivals to New Zealand were required to spend 14 days in government-managed quarantine facilities and were tested at least twice.

Printed Thin Magnetic Films via Ternary Hybrid Diblock Copolymer Films Containing Magnetic Iron Oxide and Nickel Nanoparticles.

Ternary hybrid thin films composed of a diblock copolymer templating two types of nanoparticles (NPs) expand the functionality of binary systems, which renders them interesting for magnetic sensing or magnetic data storage applications. Herein, one-pot slot-die printed hybrid polystyrene--poly(methyl methacrylate) (PS--PMMA) thin films are prepared with iron oxide (magnetite, FeO, = 20 nm) and nickel NPs (Ni, = 46 nm) in one step by the advanced slot-die coating technique, which facilitates upscaling of fabrication. The evolution of the hybrid film morphology is probed with in situ grazing-incidence small-angle X-ray scattering and compared to that of a PS--PMMA thin film without NPs.

Optimising Control Device Luring Strategies for Invasive Predator Control: A Modelling Approach.

Invasive predators pose a serious threat to native biodiversity, with trapping being one of several methods developed to manage and monitor their populations. Many individuals in these predator populations have been found to display trap-shyness, which hinders eradication and results in inaccurate estimates of population size. Lures are used to help overcome trap-shyness by increasing the probability of interaction with the device, but the extent of trap-shyness in wild populations, and the best timing for the introduction of a new lure or combination of lures, are uncertain.