Related papers: Is there an infant mortality in bacteria?
Infant mortality, by which we understand the postnatal stage during which mortality is declining, is a manifestation and embodiment of congenital abnormalities. Severe defects will translate into death occurring shortly after birth whereas…
After birth setting up an effective immune system is a major challenge for all living organisms. In this paper we show that this process can be explored by using the age-specific infant death rate as a kind of sensor. This is made possible…
So fast is the growth of a culture of E. coli that it led researchers to overlook a possible death rate. As a matter of fact, the experiments done in the first half of the 20th century were unable to detect any mortality. It is only at the…
Biologically, for any organism life does not start at birth but at fertilization of the embryo. Embryonic development is of great importance because it determines congenital anomalies and influences their severity. Whereas there is detailed…
Genetic and environmental factors are traditionally seen as the sole causes of congenital anomalies. In this paper we introduce a third possible cause, namely random "manufacturing" discrepancies with respect to ``design'' values. A clear…
Analysis of child mortality is crucial as it pertains to the policy and programs of a country. The early assessment of patterns and trends in causes of child mortality help decision-makers assess needs, prioritize interventions, and monitor…
This paper is not (or at least not only) about human infant mortality. In line with reliability theory, "infant" will refer here to the time interval following birth during which the mortality (or failure) rate decreases. This definition…
Infant deaths and old age deaths are very different. The former are mostly due to severe congenital malformations of one or a small number of specific organs. On the contrary, old age deaths are largely the outcome of a long process of…
The Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) is the number of infants per 1000 that do not survive until their first birthday. It is an important metric providing information about infant health but it also measures the society's general health status.…
The aim of this paper is to study two models for a bacterial population subject to antibiotic treatments. It is known that some bacteria are sensitive to antibiotics. These bacteria are in a state called persistence and each bacterium can…
Adverse conditions in early life can have consequential impacts on individuals' health in older age. In one of the first papers on this topic, Barker and Osmond 1986 show a strong positive relationship between infant mortality rates in the…
Most studies on inequality in infant and child mortality compare average mortality rates between large groups of births, for example, comparing births from different countries, income groups, ethnicities, or different times. These studies…
One striking feature of bacterial motion is their ability to swim upstream along corners and crevices, by leveraging hydrodynamic interactions. This motion through anatomic ducts or medical devices might be at the origin of serious…
Motivated by recent research of aging in E. coli, we explore the effects of aging on bacterial fitness. The disposable soma theory of aging was developed to explain how differences in lifespans and aging rates could be linked to life…
We finely describe the "coming down from infinity" for birth and death processes which eventually become extinct. Our biological motivation is to study the decrease of regulated populations which are initially large. Under general…
This study examines the effect of fiscal austerity measures on infant mortality in Greece. Austerity measures were initiated by the tripartite committee and implemented between 2010 and 2017 to counteract deep fiscal deficit and large…
Various rod-shaped bacteria such as the canonical gram negative Escherichia coli or the well-studied gram positive Bacillus subtilis divide symmetrically after they approximately double their volume. Their size at division is not constant,…
Extreme mutation rates in microbes and cancer cells can result in error-induced extinction (EEX), where every descendant cell eventually acquires a lethal mutation. In this work, we investigate critical birth-death processes with $n$…
The intensive care unit (ICU) manages critically ill patients, many of whom face a high risk of mortality. Early and accurate prediction of in-hospital mortality within the first 24 hours of ICU admission is crucial for timely clinical…
{\it E. coli} bacteria swim in straight runs interrupted by sudden reorientation events called tumbles. The resulting random walks give rise to density fluctuations that can be derived analytically in the limit of non interacting particles…