Using mathematical model to understand the impact of various preventive and control measures on the dynamics of visceral leishmaniasis in Brazil Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is a zoonosis with global distribution. Its incidence has increased in Brazil in recent years, thus coming to represent a serious public and animal health problem. The strategies applied in Brazil, …
Calculating Human to Human Avian Influenza R0Â via Likelihood and Jacobian Approach The transmission of avian influenza between humans is extremely rare, and it mostly affects individuals who are in contact with infected poultry. Although this scenario is uncommon, there have been multiple outbreaks that occur in small infection clusters in Asia with relatively low transmissibility, …
Measuring the Electrostatic Drag of Dyaction Dynactin, an activator of dynein, connects intracellular cargo to dynein motors. Â Linear stochastic models are developed to describe the interaction of intracellular cargo, an anchor, and a functionalized motor. Â These models use known parameters and available data for dynactin to produce an estimate of electrostatic drag. Â Using available data …
Persistence and dynamics in a metapopulation model of infection We consider a metapopulation model of an Infectious Salmon Anemia virus (ISAv) infection on a network of patches connected via diffusion of the virus.  In addition  to previous results, we give analytical proof of oscillatory solutions in a system of 2 patches. We introduce a variety of network structures …
Epidemic Models Structured by Immunological Variables We develop a differential-integral equation model of epidemics in an animal population structured by immunological variables such as mean viral load and mean T-cell density. The population is subdivided into susceptible individuals whose dynamics is modeled by an ordinary differential equation, and infected/infectious individuals structured by immunological state summarized …
Quantifying the Burden of Somatic Evolution in the Context of Cancer and Aging Somatic tissue evolves over a vertebrate’s lifetime due to the accumulation of mutations in stem cell populations. Mutations may alter cellular fitness and contribute to tumorigenesis or aging. The distribution of mutational effects within somatic cells is not known. Given the unique …
Cancer Epidemiology and Modeling, Carcinogenesis In this talk we will examine the link between two commonly used functions in cancer epidemiology (the incidence function and the relative risk function) and the study of carcinogenesis modeling. Specifically, we will look at some variations of the multistage model of carcinogenesis proposed by Armitage and Doll in the …
Effect of Phosphorous on West Nile Virus Replication: Combining Experiments with Modeling A recent study (Crowder at al., 2013) found that prevalence of WNV was increased in mosquitoes and birds near agricultural activity relative to natural environment. Â We believe that the excessive use of fertilizers, whose main component is , may have influenced the global …
The effect of climate variation on shrimp reproductive strategies Reproductive strategies comprise the timing and frequency of reproductive events and the number of offspring per reproductive event, depending on factors such as climate conditions. Studying how the reproductive strategy of species varies along the latitudinal gradient can help us understand and predict how they will …