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Under constant selection, each trait has a fixed fitness, and small mutation rates allow populations to efficiently exploit the optimal trait. Therefore it is reasonable to expect mutation rates will evolve downwards. However, we find this…

We introduce a new tuberculosis (TB) mathematical model, with $25$ state-space variables where $15$ are evolution disease states (EDSs), which generalises previous models and takes into account the (seasonal) flux of populations between a…

Viral zoonoses have emerged as the key drivers of recent pandemics. Human infection by zoonotic viruses are either spillover events -- isolated infections that fail to cause a widespread contagion -- or species jumps, where successful…

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infectivity is a major concern in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) prevention and economic reopening. However, rigorous determination of SARS-COV-2 infectivity is essentially…

In tropical regions, populations continue to suffer morbidity and mortality from malaria and arboviral diseases. In Kedougou (Senegal), these illnesses are all endemic due to the climate and its geographical position. The co-circulation of…

Vector-transmitted diseases such as dengue fever and chikungunya have been spreading rapidly in many parts of the world. The Zika virus has been known since 1947 and invaded South America in 2013. It can be transmitted not only by…

High-throughput molecular screening is required to investigate the origin and diffusion of antimicrobial resistance in pathogen outbreaks. The most frequent cause of human infection is Escherichia coli, which is dominated by sequence type…

Influenza has been circulating in the human population and has caused three pandemics in the last century (1918 H1N1, 1957 H2N2, 1968 H3N2). The 2009 A(H1N1) was classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the fourth pandemic.…

Epidemic disease spreading is conventionally often modelled and analyzed by means of rate and diffusion equations, following the paradigms of well-controlled chemical reactions and diffusive dynamics in a test tube. Yet, serious worries…

Influenza virus contains two highly variable envelope glycoproteins, hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA). The structure and properties of HA, which is responsible for binding the virus to the cell that is being infected, change…

We consider an epidemic model of SIR type set on a homogeneous tree and investigate the spreading properties of the epidemic as a function of the degree of the tree, the intrinsic basic reproduction number and the strength of the…

The emergence or adaptation of pathogens may lead to epidemics, highlighting the need for a thorough understanding of pathogen evolution. The tradeoff hypothesis suggests that virulence evolves to reach an optimal transmission intensity…

The Omicron variant of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has rapidly replaced the Delta variant as a dominating SARS-CoV-2 variant because of natural selection, which favors the variant with higher infectivity and…

How to prevent the spread of human diseases is a great challenge for the scientific community and so far there are many studies in which immunization strategies have been developed. However, these kind of strategies usually do not consider…

Hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA) are highly variable envelope glycoproteins. Here hydropathic analysis, previously applied to quantify common flu (H1N1) evolution (1934-), is applied to the evolution of less common but more…

Applying a ML approach to the temporal variability of the Spike protein sequence enables us to identify, classify and track emerging virus variants. Our analysis is unbiased, in the sense that it does not require any prior knowledge of the…

Antibodies, an essential part of our immune system, develop through an intricate process to bind a wide array of pathogens. This process involves randomly mutating DNA sequences encoding these antibodies to find variants with improved…

How is climate change altering the global patterns, frequency, and intensity of drought? To investigate this, we analyzed global drought events from 2000-2020 using a composite of hydrological indices ($\Sigma$(ET-P), SSMI, and GRACE-DSI).…

Background: Approximately 40% of adults in Botswana are HIV-infected. The Botswana antiretroviral program began in 2002 and currently treats 34,000 patients with a goal of treating 85,000 patients (~30% of HIV-infected adults) by 2009. We…

We report on a search for electronic recoil event rate modulation signatures in the XENON100 data accumulated over a period of 4 years, from January 2010 to January 2014. A profile likelihood method, which incorporates the stability of the…