Modelling timelines to elimination of sleeping sickness in the Democratic Republic of Congo, accounting for possible cryptic human and animal transmission.

Background: Sleeping sickness (gambiense human African trypanosomiasis, gHAT) is a vector-borne disease targeted for global elimination of transmission (EoT) by 2030. There are, however, unknowns that have the potential to hinder the achievement and measurement of this goal. These include asymptomatic gHAT infections (inclusive of the potential to self-cure or harbour skin-only infections) and whether gHAT infection in animals can contribute to the transmission cycle in humans.

Prioritising older individuals for COVID-19 booster vaccination leads to optimal public health outcomes in a range of socio-economic settings.

The rapid development of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 altered the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. In most countries, vaccinations were initially targeted at high-risk populations, including older individuals and healthcare workers. Now, despite substantial infection- and vaccine-induced immunity in host populations worldwide, waning immunity and the emergence of novel variants continue to cause significant waves of infection and disease.

A modified Tseng algorithm approach to restoring thoracic diseases' computerized tomography images.

It is well-known that the Tseng algorithm and its modifications have been successfully employed in approximating zeros of the sum of monotone operators. In this study, we restored various thoracic diseases' computerized tomography (CT) images, which were degraded with a known blur function and additive noise, using a modified Tseng algorithm. The test images used in the study depict calcification of the Aorta, Subcutaneous Emphysema, Tortuous Aorta, Pneumomediastinum, and Pneumoperitoneum.

Symptom propagation in respiratory pathogens of public health concern: a review of the evidence.

Symptom propagation occurs when the symptom set an individual experiences is correlated with the symptom set of the individual who infected them. Symptom propagation may dramatically affect epidemiological outcomes, potentially causing clusters of severe disease. Conversely, it could result in chains of mild infection, generating widespread immunity with minimal cost to public health.

When should lockdown be implemented? Devising cost-effective strategies for managing epidemics amid vaccine uncertainty.

During an infectious disease outbreak, public health policy makers are tasked with strategically implementing interventions whilst balancing competing objectives. To provide a quantitative framework that can be used to guide these decisions, it is helpful to devise a clear and specific objective function that can be evaluated to determine the optimal outbreak response. In this study, we have developed a mathematical modelling framework representing outbreaks of a novel emerging pathogen for which non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) are imposed or removed based on thresholds for hospital occupancy.

Phase Transition to Turbulence via Moving Fronts.

Directed percolation (DP), a universality class of continuous phase transitions, has recently been established as a possible route to turbulence in subcritical wall-bounded flows. In canonical straight pipe or planar flows, the transition occurs via discrete large-scale turbulent structures, known as puffs in pipe flow or bands in planar flows, which either self-replicate or laminarize. However, these processes might not be universal to all subcritical shear flows.

Optimizing the timing of an end-of-outbreak declaration: Ebola virus disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Following the apparent final case in an Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak, the decision to declare the outbreak over must balance societal benefits of relaxing interventions against the risk of resurgence. Estimates of the end-of-outbreak probability (the probability that no future cases will occur) provide quantitative evidence that can inform the timing of an end-of-outbreak declaration. An existing modeling approach for estimating the end-of-outbreak probability requires comprehensive contact tracing data describing who infected whom to be available, but such data are often unavailable or incomplete during outbreaks.

Steering opinion dynamics through control of social networks.

In this paper, we propose a novel control approach for opinion dynamics on evolving networks. The controls modify the strength of connections in the network, rather than influencing opinions directly, with the overall goal of steering the population toward a target opinion. This requires that the social network remains sufficiently connected, the population does not break into separate opinion clusters, and that the target opinion remains accessible.

The time-dependent Poisson-gamma model in practice: Recruitment forecasting in HIV trials.

Despite a growing body of literature in the area of recruitment modeling for multicenter studies, in practice, statistical models to predict enrollments are rarely used and when they are, they often rely on unrealistic assumptions. The time-dependent Poisson-Gamma model (tPG) is a recently developed flexible methodology which allows analysts to predict recruitments in an ongoing multicenter trial, and its performance has been validated on data from a cohort study. In this article, we illustrate and further validate the tPG model on recruitment data from randomized controlled trials.

Drop impact onto immiscible liquid films floating on pools.

The interface dynamics of a droplet impacting onto a liquid pool has been well studied, and the common interfacial velocity quantified for the cases when the pool is both the same and a different fluid to the impacting droplet. In this work we investigate, experimentally and computationally, the scenario of a droplet impacting onto a pool of the same fluid coated by a layer of another fluid with various thicknesses. The effect of the film thickness on the penetration velocity of the upper droplet-film interface is measured for experiments and simulations, and carefully compared to theoretical predictions for early-to-moderate timescales in the limiting cases of: (i) zero film thickness, in which the film has no effect and thus behaves like a fluid on same fluid impact, and (ii) infinite film thickness, in which the underlying pool has no effect.

Cross-border political competition.

Individuals are increasingly exposed to news and opinion from beyond national borders. This news and opinion are often concentrated in clusters of ideological homophily, such as political parties, factions, or interest groups. But how does exposure to cross-border information affect the diffusion of ideas across national and ideological borders? Here, we develop a non-linear mathematical model for the cross-border spread of two ideologies.

Unraveling the Regimes of Interfacial Thermal Conductance at a Solid/Liquid Interface.

The interfacial thermal conductance at a solid/liquid interface () exhibits an exponential-to-linear crossover with increasing solid/liquid interaction strength, previously attributed to the relative strength of solid/liquid to liquid/liquid interactions. Instead, using a simple Lennard-Jones setup, our molecular simulations reveal that this crossover occurs due to the onset of solidification in the interfacial liquid at high solid/liquid interaction strengths. This solidification subsequently influences interfacial energy transport, leading to the crossover in .

A simulation-based approach for estimating the time-dependent reproduction number from temporally aggregated disease incidence time series data.

Tracking pathogen transmissibility during infectious disease outbreaks is essential for assessing the effectiveness of public health measures and planning future control strategies. A key measure of transmissibility is the time-dependent reproduction number, which has been estimated in real-time during outbreaks of a range of pathogens from disease incidence time series data. While commonly used approaches for estimating the time-dependent reproduction number can be reliable when disease incidence is recorded frequently, such incidence data are often aggregated temporally (for example, numbers of cases may be reported weekly rather than daily).

Evaluating human landing catches as a measure of mosquito biting and the importance of considering additional modes of action.

Entomological evaluations of vector control tools often use human landing catches (HLCs) as a standard measure of a direct human-vector contact. However, some tools have additional characteristics, such as mortality, and HLCS are not sensitive for measuring other effects beyond landing inhibition. Therefore, additional measures may need to be considered when evaluating these tools for public health use.

Extreme mortality during a historical measles outbreak on Rotuma is consistent with measles immunosuppression.

Until the early twentieth century, populations on many Pacific Islands had never experienced measles. As travel to the Pacific Islands by Europeans became more common, the arrival of measles and other pathogens had devastating consequences. In 1911, Rotuma in Fiji was hit by a measles epidemic, which killed 13% of the island population.

Classification of 2-node excitatory-inhibitory networks.

We classify connected 2-node excitatory-inhibitory networks under various conditions. We assume that, as well as for connections, there are two distinct node-types, excitatory and inhibitory. In our classification we consider four different types of excitatory-inhibitory networks: restricted, partially restricted, unrestricted and completely unrestricted.

Epidemiological and health economic implications of symptom propagation in respiratory pathogens: A mathematical modelling investigation.

Background: Respiratory pathogens inflict a substantial burden on public health and the economy. Although the severity of symptoms caused by these pathogens can vary from asymptomatic to fatal, the factors that determine symptom severity are not fully understood. Correlations in symptoms between infector-infectee pairs, for which evidence is accumulating, can generate large-scale clusters of severe infections that could be devastating to those most at risk, whilst also conceivably leading to chains of mild or asymptomatic infections that generate widespread immunity with minimal cost to public health.

Sequencing and Analysis of Lumpy Skin Disease Virus Whole Genomes Reveals a New Viral Subgroup in West and Central Africa.

Lumpy skin disease virus (LSDV) is a member of the capripoxvirus (CPPV) genus of the family. LSDV is a rapidly emerging, high-consequence pathogen of cattle, recently spreading from Africa and the Middle East into Europe and Asia. We have sequenced the whole genome of historical LSDV isolates from the Pirbright Institute virus archive, and field isolates from recent disease outbreaks in Sri Lanka, Mongolia, Nigeria and Ethiopia.

Accelerating Progress Towards the 2030 Neglected Tropical Diseases Targets: How Can Quantitative Modeling Support Programmatic Decisions?

Over the past decade, considerable progress has been made in the control, elimination, and eradication of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). Despite these advances, most NTD programs have recently experienced important setbacks; for example, NTD interventions were some of the most frequently and severely impacted by service disruptions due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Mathematical modeling can help inform selection of interventions to meet the targets set out in the NTD road map 2021-2030, and such studies should prioritize questions that are relevant for decision-makers, especially those designing, implementing, and evaluating national and subnational programs.

Comparison of stochastic and deterministic models for gambiense sleeping sickness at different spatial scales: A health area analysis in the DRC.

The intensification of intervention activities against the fatal vector-borne disease gambiense human African trypanosomiasis (gHAT, sleeping sickness) in the last two decades has led to a large decline in the number of annually reported cases. However, while we move closer to achieving the ambitious target of elimination of transmission (EoT) to humans, pockets of infection remain, and it becomes increasingly important to quantitatively assess if different regions are on track for elimination, and where intervention efforts should be focused. We present a previously developed stochastic mathematical model for gHAT in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and show that this same formulation is able to capture the dynamics of gHAT observed at the health area level (approximately 10,000 people).