Unraveling within-host signatures of dengue infection at the population level Dengue virus causes worldwide concern with nearly 100 million infected cases reported annually. The within-host dynamics differ between primary and secondary infections, where secondary infections with a different virus serotype typically produce higher viral loads and induce more severe disease. We build upon the variable …

Intracellular transport: Inferring properties of molecular motors through rigor motor experiments and Bayesian inference. Part 1. Bayes’s Theorem yields the conditional probability of an event A given event B based on prior knowledge about related events.  When considering distributions, Bayes’s Theorem can be used to describe the distribution of model parameters given observed data.  In …

Antibodies: friend or foe? A mathematical investigation Antibodies that bind viral surface proteins can limit the spread of an infection through neutralizing and non-neutralizing functions. During both acute and chronic virus infections, antibody–virion immune complexes are formed, but do not always ensure protection. Moreover, cross-reactive antibody responses may contribute to increased disease severity in a phenomenon …

Intracellular transport: Inferring properties of molecular motors through rigor motor experiments and Bayesian inference. Part 2. Bayes’s Theorem yields the conditional probability of an event A given event B based on prior knowledge about related events.  When considering distributions, Bayes’s Theorem can be used to describe the distribution of model parameters given observed data.  In …

Examining the probability of silent circulation of polio using the endemic potential statistic Polio is a fecal-oral disease that can cause fever and flu-like symptoms, and, in more rare instances, acute flaccid paralysis (AFP). One characteristic of poliovirus is asymptomatic transmission amongst individuals who have already had a poliovirus infection. This allows the virus to …

Linking Resilience and Robustness and Uncovering their Trade-offs in Coupled Natural-Human Systems Robustness and resilience are concepts in systems thinking that have grown in importance and popularity.  For many complex social-ecological systems, however, robustness and resilience are difficult to quantify and the connections and trade-offs between them difficult to study.  Most studies have either focused …