He sees the day when his simulations could be modified to
model disease transmission through casual contact, shopping on a crowded street, or pedestrian safety at a traffic intersection.
When the scientists
modeled disease transmission, they found that while an «infected person's 11 nearest neighbors faced a greater than 80 percent chance of infection,» Wired reports, «all the remaining passengers, however, had a lower than 3 percent risk.»
Mathematicians are addressing some of our world's most urgent challenges — including tackling climate change,
modelling disease transmission and solving the human genome sequence.
Not exact matches
«It started to become quite evident to me that a research career in infectious
disease epidemiology and mathematical
modeling would be a fairly perfect combination of my longstanding interests in math and biology and medicine, as well as my emerging interest in infectious
disease transmission and public health more generally,» she says.
Thomas is a wildlife biologist by training, but he now uses technology such as satellite remote sensing and software applications such as geographic information systems to
model vector
disease transmission.
While the mouse study does not prove a direct connection between Zika infection and microcephaly, Rossi said, it does underscore the urgent need for effective animal
models to further study the course of
disease and its
transmission.
Their data were used to create a
model that shows the potential effects of temperatures and temperature change on the
transmission of dengue, chikungunya and Zika around the world, three
diseases that are mosquito - vectored and increasing in the United States.
«Given that the predominant thinking was that
transmission was most likely to peak at very hot temperatures, which would mostly limit the
diseases to the tropics, we were certainly surprised that the
model and the field data suggested that high rates of
transmission could occur at lower temperatures, possibly impacting more northern regions in the future,» Cohen said.
Climate
models such as the one by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict that with rising temperatures, the conditions that favor insect vectors such as the mosquito will allow
disease transmission to become more prevalent.
The map at the left depicts the number of months where there is a greater than 97.5 percent chance of
disease transmission by the mosquito Aedes albopictus, based on the
model.
The researchers hope their study leads to better measures for
modeling and predicting infectious
disease transmission, but there are still open questions about the human - wildlife interface of
disease.
The authors developed a mathematical
model accounting for
disease progression, mortality, morbidity and the heterosexual
transmission of HIV to help forecast future trends in the
disease.
However, the
modelling work also offers some encouraging news: the airborne
transmission of the
disease from East African countries directly to South Asia is highly unlikely, with
transmission events possible only on less than one day a year.
For the paper, «
Transmission dynamics and control of Ebola Virus
Disease (EVD) outbreak in Nigeria, July - September, 2014,» published today in Eurosurveillance, researchers used epidemic
modeling to project the size of the outbreak in Nigeria if control interventions had been implemented during various time periods after the initial case and estimated how many cases had thus been prevented by early initiation of interventions.
Researchers developed a random
transmission model to determine how
disease progression and case fatality affect
transmission and how patient isolation could achieve
disease elimination.
My research combines the use of mathematical
models and statistical methods to understand the
transmission dynamics and control of a range of infectious
diseases of humans and animals.
IDOBRU has been used to
model different aspects of brucellosis, including host infection, zoonotic
disease transmission, symptoms, virulence factors and pathogenesis, diagnosis, intentional release, vaccine prevention, and treatment.
At this scope the group focuses mainly on
models as mother - to - child
transmission of HIV and
disease progression in children and adults.
The unit focuses its attention on selected
models as mother - to - child
transmission of HIV - 1 or HIV infected patients controlling the
disease or the virus, called Elite and Virus controller.
«Because the
disease is highly virulent, our
model results support the hypothesis that
transmission occurs in all contact areas,» write the paper's authors, Tom Hallam and Gary McCracken, both of the University of Tennessee.
Infectious
disease epidemiologist specializing in the intersection between mathematical
models of
disease transmission and observational methods.
Models project the conditions conducive to
disease transmission.
To better understand those results, the team fit their data to a standard
disease transmission model, but one in which flooding could affect rotavirus
transmission rates.
The multifactorial
model of
disease transmission: III.