scholarly journals Vaccination and Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions: When can the UK relax about COVID-19?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Moore ◽  
Edward M. Hill ◽  
Michael J. Tildesley ◽  
Louise Dyson ◽  
Matt J. Keeling
Keyword(s):  
Perceived Risk ◽  
Immunisation Programme ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Epidemiological Data ◽  
Vaccine Uptake ◽  
Severe Illness ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Pharmaceutical Interventions

AbstractThe announcement of efficacious vaccine candidates against SARS-CoV-2 has been met with worldwide acclaim and relief. Many countries already have detailed plans for vaccine targeting based on minimising severe illness, death and healthcare burdens. Normally, relatively simple relationships between epidemiological parameters, vaccine efficacy and vaccine uptake predict the success of any immunisation programme. However, the dynamics of vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 is made more complex by age-dependent factors, changing levels of infection and the potential relaxation of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) as the perceived risk declines. In this study we use an age-structured mathematical model, matched to a range of epidemiological data, to consider the interaction between the UK vaccination programme and future relaxation (or removal) of NPIs. Our predictions highlight the population-level risks of early relaxation leading to a pronounced wave of infections, and the individual-level risk relative to vaccine status. While the novel vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 offer a potential exit strategy for this outbreak, this is highly contingent on the transmission blocking action of the vaccine and the population uptake, both of which need to be carefully monitored as vaccine programmes are rolled out in the UK and other countries.

scholarly journals Migration, acculturation, and the maintenance of between-group cultural variation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Mesoudi
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Social Learning Processes

AbstractHow do migration and acculturation (i.e. psychological or behavioral change resulting from migration) affect within- and between-group cultural variation? Here I answer this question by drawing analogies between genetic and cultural evolution. Population genetic models show that migration rapidly breaks down between-group genetic structure. In cultural evolution, however, migrants or their descendants can acculturate to local behaviors via social learning processes such as conformity, potentially preventing migration from eliminating between-group cultural variation. An analysis of the empirical literature on migration suggests that acculturation is common, with second and subsequent migrant generations shifting, sometimes substantially, towards the cultural values of the adopted society. Yet there is little understanding of the individual-level dynamics that underlie these population-level shifts. To explore this formally, I present models quantifying the effect of migration and acculturation on between-group cultural variation, for both neutral and costly cooperative traits. In the models, between-group cultural variation, measured using F statistics, is eliminated by migration and maintained by conformist acculturation. The extent of acculturation is determined by the strength of conformist bias and the number of demonstrators from whom individuals learn. Acculturation is countered by assortation, the tendency for individuals to preferentially interact with culturally-similar others. Unlike neutral traits, cooperative traits can additionally be maintained by payoff-biased social learning, but only in the presence of strong sanctioning institutions. Overall, the models show that surprisingly little conformist acculturation is required to maintain realistic amounts of between-group cultural diversity. While these models provide insight into the potential dynamics of acculturation and migration in cultural evolution, they also highlight the need for more empirical research into the individual-level learning biases that underlie migrant acculturation.

scholarly journals General intelligence disentangled via a generality metric for natural and artificial intelligence

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
José Hernández-Orallo ◽  
Bao Sheng Loe ◽  
Lucy Cheke ◽  
Fernando Martínez-Plumed ◽  
Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh
Keyword(s):  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Limited Resources ◽  
General Intelligence ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Cognitive Efficiency ◽  
Comprehensive Performance ◽  
Individual Measure ◽  
Level Of Difficulty ◽  
The Individual

AbstractSuccess in all sorts of situations is the most classical interpretation of general intelligence. Under limited resources, however, the capability of an agent must necessarily be limited too, and generality needs to be understood as comprehensive performance up to a level of difficulty. The degree of generality then refers to the way an agent’s capability is distributed as a function of task difficulty. This dissects the notion of general intelligence into two non-populational measures, generality and capability, which we apply to individuals and groups of humans, other animals and AI systems, on several cognitive and perceptual tests. Our results indicate that generality and capability can decouple at the individual level: very specialised agents can show high capability and vice versa. The metrics also decouple at the population level, and we rarely see diminishing returns in generality for those groups of high capability. We relate the individual measure of generality to traditional notions of general intelligence and cognitive efficiency in humans, collectives, non-human animals and machines. The choice of the difficulty function now plays a prominent role in this new conception of generality, which brings a quantitative tool for shedding light on long-standing questions about the evolution of general intelligence and the evaluation of progress in Artificial General Intelligence.

scholarly journals Ecology and Prediction of Compensatory Growth: From Theory to Application in Forestry

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chao Li ◽  
Hugh Barclay ◽  
Bernard Roitberg ◽  
Robert Lalonde
Keyword(s):  
Compensatory Growth ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Common Phenomenon ◽  
Partial Mortality ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
State Dependent ◽  
Dependent Model ◽  
Accelerated Growth ◽  
The Individual

Compensatory growth has been observed in forests, and it also appears as a common phenomenon in biology. Though it sometimes takes different names, the essential meanings are the same, describing the accelerated growth of organisms when recovering from a period of unfavorable conditions such as tissue damage at the individual level and partial mortality at the population level. Diverse patterns of compensatory growth have been reported in the literature, ranging from under-, to compensation-induced-equality, and to over-compensation. In this review and synthesis, we provide examples of analogous compensatory growth from different fields, clarify different meanings of it, summarize its current understanding and modeling efforts, and argue that it is possible to develop a state-dependent model under the conceptual framework of compensatory growth, aimed at explaining and predicting diverse observations according to different disturbances and environmental conditions. When properly applied, compensatory growth can benefit different industries and human society in various forms.

An empirical test of an Antecedents – Privacy Concerns – Outcomes model

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 583-600 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Benamati ◽  
Zafer D. Ozdemir ◽  
H. Jeff Smith
Keyword(s):  
Perceived Risk ◽  
Empirical Test ◽  
Information Privacy ◽  
Demographic Variables ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Privacy Concerns ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Level Of Analysis

This study extends privacy concerns research by providing a test of a model inspired by the ‘Antecedents – Privacy Concerns – Outcomes’ (APCO) framework. Focusing at the individual level of analysis, the study examines the influences of privacy awareness (PA) and demographic variables (age, gender) on concern for information privacy (CFIP). It also considers CFIP’s relationship to privacy-protecting behaviours and incorporates trust and risk into the model. These relationships are tested in a specific, Facebook-related context. Results strongly support the overall model. PA and gender are important explanators for CFIP, which in turn explains privacy-protecting behaviours. We also find that perceived risk affects trust, which in turn affects behaviours in the studied context. The results yield several recommendations for future research as well as some implications for management.

scholarly journals Opposite outcomes of coinfection at individual and population scales

2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (29) ◽  
pp. 7545-7550 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin E. Gorsich ◽  
Rampal S. Etienne ◽  
Jan Medlock ◽  
Brianna R. Beechler ◽  
Johannie M. Spaan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Reproduction Number ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
African Buffalo ◽  
Global Public Health ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Secondary Infections ◽  
The Individual

Coinfecting parasites and pathogens remain a leading challenge for global public health due to their consequences for individual-level infection risk and disease progression. However, a clear understanding of the population-level consequences of coinfection is lacking. Here, we constructed a model that includes three individual-level effects of coinfection: mortality, fecundity, and transmission. We used the model to investigate how these individual-level consequences of coinfection scale up to produce population-level infection patterns. To parameterize this model, we conducted a 4-y cohort study in African buffalo to estimate the individual-level effects of coinfection with two bacterial pathogens, bovine tuberculosis (bTB) and brucellosis, across a range of demographic and environmental contexts. At the individual level, our empirical results identified bTB as a risk factor for acquiring brucellosis, but we found no association between brucellosis and the risk of acquiring bTB. Both infections were associated with reductions in survival and neither infection was associated with reductions in fecundity. The model reproduced coinfection patterns in the data and predicted opposite impacts of coinfection at individual and population scales: Whereas bTB facilitated brucellosis infection at the individual level, our model predicted the presence of brucellosis to have a strong negative impact on bTB at the population level. In modeled populations where brucellosis was present, the endemic prevalence and basic reproduction number (R0) of bTB were lower than in populations without brucellosis. Therefore, these results provide a data-driven example of competition between coinfecting pathogens that occurs when one pathogen facilitates secondary infections at the individual level.

scholarly journals Smart Sanitation—Biosensors as a Public Health Tool in Sanitation Infrastructure

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (14) ◽  
pp. 5146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Rary ◽  
Sarah M. Anderson ◽  
Brandon D. Philbrick ◽  
Tanvi Suresh ◽  
Jasmine Burton
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Monitoring ◽  
Disease Surveillance ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Emergent Technologies ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Sanitation Infrastructure

The health of individuals and communities is more interconnected than ever, and emergent technologies have the potential to improve public health monitoring at both the community and individual level. A systematic literature review of peer-reviewed and gray literature from 2000-present was conducted on the use of biosensors in sanitation infrastructure (such as toilets, sewage pipes and septic tanks) to assess individual and population health. 21 relevant papers were identified using PubMed, Embase, Global Health, CDC Stacks and NexisUni databases and a reflexive thematic analysis was conducted. Biosensors are being developed for a range of uses including monitoring illicit drug usage in communities, screening for viruses and diagnosing conditions such as diabetes. Most studies were nonrandomized, small-scale pilot or lab studies. Of the sanitation-related biosensors found in the literature, 11 gathered population-level data, seven provided real-time continuous data and 14 were noted to be more cost-effective than traditional surveillance methods. The most commonly discussed strength of these technologies was their ability to conduct rapid, on-site analysis. The findings demonstrate the potential of this emerging technology and the concept of Smart Sanitation to enhance health monitoring at the individual level (for diagnostics) as well as at the community level (for disease surveillance).

scholarly journals Individual-Level and Population-Level Lateralization: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Symmetry ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 739 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Frasnelli ◽  
Giorgio Vallortigara
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionarily Stable Strategy ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Theoretical Point ◽  
Evolutionarily Stable Strategies ◽  
Functional Roles ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Social Species ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Evolutionarily Stable

Lateralization, i.e., the different functional roles played by the left and right sides of the brain, is expressed in two main ways: (1) in single individuals, regardless of a common direction (bias) in the population (aka individual-level lateralization); or (2) in single individuals and in the same direction in most of them, so that the population is biased (aka population-level lateralization). Indeed, lateralization often occurs at the population-level, with 60–90% of individuals showing the same direction (right or left) of bias, depending on species and tasks. It is usually maintained that lateralization can increase the brain’s efficiency. However, this may explain individual-level lateralization, but not population-level lateralization, for individual brain efficiency is unrelated to the direction of the asymmetry in other individuals. From a theoretical point of view, a possible explanation for population-level lateralization is that it may reflect an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) that can develop when individually asymmetrical organisms are under specific selective pressures to coordinate their behavior with that of other asymmetrical organisms. This prediction has been sometimes misunderstood as it is equated with the idea that population-level lateralization should only be present in social species. However, population-level asymmetries have been observed in aggressive and mating displays in so-called “solitary” insects, suggesting that engagement in specific inter-individual interactions rather than “sociality” per se may promote population-level lateralization. Here, we clarify that the nature of inter-individuals interaction can generate evolutionarily stable strategies of lateralization at the individual- or population-level, depending on ecological contexts, showing that individual-level and population-level lateralization should be considered as two aspects of the same continuum.

scholarly journals Academic neurosurgery in the UK: present and future directions

2019 ◽  
Vol 95 (1128) ◽  
pp. 524-530
Author(s):  
Mueez Waqar ◽  
Benjamin M Davies ◽  
Rasheed Zakaria ◽  
Damiano G Barone ◽  
Angelos G Kolias ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Research ◽  
Basic Science ◽  
Academic Training ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
International Standing ◽  
Personal Accounts ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Uk

Academic neurosurgery encompasses basic science and clinical research efforts to better understand and treat diseases of relevance to neurosurgical practice, with the overall aim of improving treatment and outcome for patients. In this article, we provide an overview of the current and future directions of British academic neurosurgery. Training pathways are considered together with personal accounts of experiences of structured integrated clinical academic training and unstructured academic training. Life as an academic consultant is also described. Funding is explored, for the specialty as a whole and at the individual level. UK academic neurosurgical organisations are highlighted. Finally, the UK’s international standing is considered.

Changes in wild red squirrel personality across ontogeny: activity and aggression regress towards the mean

Behaviour ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 152 (10) ◽  
pp. 1291-1306 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.D. Kelley ◽  
M.M. Humphries ◽  
A.G. McAdam ◽  
Stan Boutin
Keyword(s):  
Structural Stability ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Behavioural Syndrome ◽  
Red Squirrels ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Personality Changes ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Differential Stability ◽  
The Individual

Both juvenile and adult animals display stable behavioural differences (personality), but lifestyles and niches may change as animals mature, raising the question of whether personality changes across ontogeny. Here, we use a wild population of red squirrels to examine changes in activity and aggression from juvenile to yearling life stages. Personality may change at the individual level (individual stability), population level (mean level stability), and relative to other individuals (differential stability). We calculated all three types of stability, as well as the structural stability of the activity–aggression behavioural syndrome. Within individuals, both activity and aggression scores regressed towards the mean. Differential stability was maintained for activity, but not aggression. Structural stability was maintained; however, the activity–aggression correlation increased in squirrels that gained territories later in the season. These results suggest that personality undergoes some changes as animals mature, and that the ontogeny of personality can be linked to environmental changes.

scholarly journals Achieving radical change

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 428-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noel Hyndman ◽  
Mariannunziata Liguori
Keyword(s):  
Performance Management ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Practice Variation ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Incremental Change ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Perceived Outcomes

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to focus on strategies and “spoken discourses” used to construct legitimation around change at the individual level. Comparing changes in financial accounting, budgeting and performance management at two government levels (Westminster and Scotland), it explores the use of legitimation strategies in the implementation of accounting change and its perceived outcomes. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on semi-structured interviews, six legitimation/delegitimation strategies are used to code the transcribed data. Patterns with the perceived outcomes of change are explored. Findings Changes introduced to enhance “rational” decision making are often received as pushed by some source of authority. Regardless of the interviewees’ background and level, the results suggest that for radical accounting change to embed, it is necessary for it to be perceived as rational, rather than merely driven by authorisation-based pressures. Conversely, incremental change is associated with modest legitimation via rationalisation and delegitimation based on pathos and rationalisation. Research limitations/implications The study deals with actors’ legitimation strategies and perceptions of change. These may not correspond to actual substantial change. Taken-for-granted ideas often remain “under the radar”, therefore care must be taken in interpreting the results. The focus of the empirical study is on the UK, therefore conclusions are restricted to this context. Originality/value Existing studies struggle to explain organisations’ heterogeneity and practice variation; this study sheds light on how individual legitimation, which may lead to different organisational results, occurs. Differences in how actors interpret changes may be based on their position (central vs devolved administration) and on their ownership of the changes.

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