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Background The COVID-19 pandemic has caused more than 25 million cases and 800 thousand deaths worldwide to date. In early days of the pandemic, neither vaccines nor therapeutic drugs were available for this novel coronavirus. All measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 are thus based on reducing contact between infected and susceptible individuals. Most of these measures such as quarantine and self-isolation require voluntary compliance by the population. However, humans may act in their (perceived) self-interest only. Methods We construct a mathematical model of COVID-19 transmission with quarantine and hospitalization coupled with a dynamic game model of adaptive human behavior. Susceptible and infected individuals adopt various behavioral strategies based on perceived prevalence and burden of the disease and sensitivity to isolation measures, and they evolve their strategies using a social learning algorithm (imitation dynamics). Results This results in complex interplay between the epidemiological model, which affects success of different strategies, and the game-theoretic behavioral model, which in turn affects the spread of the disease. We found that the second wave of the pandemic, which has been observed in the US, can be attributed to rational behavior of susceptible individuals, and that multiple waves of the pandemic are possible if the rate of social learning of infected individuals is sufficiently high. Conclusions To reduce the burden of the disease on the society, it is necessary to incentivize such altruistic behavior by infected individuals as voluntary self-isolation.

Ehrlichiosis is a nationally notifiable disease in the United States and the prevalence of this disease, as with other tick-borne diseases, has been increasing since at least the year 2000. One aspect that has likely contributed to the increase in the prevalence of this disease is rising temperatures due to climate change. A promising method for control of tick populations is prescribed burning. In this study we develop a detailed mathematical model of ordinary differential equations to investigate the effect of rising temperatures on Amblyomma americanum populations in endemic and invasion scenarios. We used an impulsive system of ordinary differential equations to investigate the effects of prescribed burning on infectious ticks to determine if prescribed fire remains effective as temperatures increase under endemic and invasion scenarios. We found the following in the absence of prescribed burning: (1) as temperature increases, there are significant increases in the number of infectious questing nymphs and adults. (2) Ehrlichiosis becomes established in the questing nymph and adult tick populations quicker in an invasion scenario as temperature increases. In the presence of prescribed burning, we observed a reduction in the prevalence of infectious questing nymphs and adults. These results with prescribed burning hold regardless of increases in temperature, indicating that that prescribed burning remains an effective control method for Amblyomma americanum even in the case of a significant increase in temperature such as 2 0C and 4 0C.

The emergence of COVID-19 in the United States resulted in a series of federal and state-level lock-downs and COVID-19 related health mandates to manage the spread of the virus. These policies may negatively impact the mental health state of the population. This study focused on the trends in mental health indicators following the COVID-19 pandemic amongst four United States geographical regions, and political party preferences. Indicators of interest included feeling anxious, feeling depressed, and worried about finances. Survey data from Delphi Group in Carnegie Mellon University were analyzed using clustering algorithms and dynamic connectome obtained from sliding window analysis. United States maps were generated to observe spatial trends and identify communities with similar mental health and COVID-19 trends. Between March 3rd, 2021 and January 10th, 2022, states in the south geographic region showed similar trends for reported values of feeling anxious and worried about finances. There were no identifiable communities resembling geographical regions or political party affiliation for the feeling depressed indicator. We observed a high degree of correlation among southern states as well as within republican states, where the highest correlation values from the dynamic connectome analysis for feeling anxious and feeling depressed variables seemingly overlapped with an increase in COVID-19 related cases, deaths, hospitalizations, and rapid spread of the COVID-19 Delta variant.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on the world at large with over 500 million cases and over 6 million deaths reported thus far. Of those, over 85 million cases and 1 million deaths have occurred in the United States of America. The mental health of the general population has been impacted by several aspects of the pandemic including lockdowns, media sensationalism, social isolation, and spread of the disease. In this paper, we examine the effect that social isolation and COVID-19 infection and related death had on the prevalence of anxiety and depression in the general population of the USA in a state-by-state multiple time-series analysis. Vector Error Correction Models are estimated and we subsequently evaluated the coefficients of the estimated models and calculated their impulse response functions for further interpretation. We found that variables related to COVID-19 overall led to increase in both anxiety and depression across the studied period, while variables related to social isolation had a varied effect depending on the state being considered.

The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 emerged in 2019 and subsequently spread throughout the world, causing over 600 million cases and 6 million deaths as of September 7th, 2022. Superspreading events (SSEs), defined here as public or social events that result in multiple infections over a short time span, have contributed to SARS-CoV-2 spread. In this work, we compare the dynamics of SSE-dominated SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks, defined here as outbreaks with relatively higher SSE rates, to the dynamics of non-SSE-dominated SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks. To accomplish this, we derive a continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC) SARS-CoV-2 model from an ordinary differential equation (ODE) SARS-CoV-2 model and incorporate SSEs using an events-based framework. We simulate our model under multiple scenarios using Gillespie's direct algorithm. The first scenario excludes hospitalization and quarantine; the second scenario includes hospitalization, quarantine, premature hospital discharge, and quarantine violation; and the third scenario includes hospitalization and quarantine but excludes premature hospital discharge and quarantine violation. We also vary quarantine violation rates. Results indicate that, with either no control or imperfect control, SSE-dominated outbreaks are more variable but less severe than non-SSE-dominated outbreaks, though the most severe SSE-dominated outbreaks are more severe than the most severe non-SSE-dominated outbreaks. We measure severity by the time it takes for 50 active infections to be achieved; more severe outbreaks do so more quickly. SSE-dominated outbreaks are also more sensitive to control measures, with premature hospital discharge and quarantine violation substantially reducing control measure effectiveness.

Lyme disease is one of the most prominent tick-borne diseases in the United States and prevalence of the disease has been steadily increasing over the past several decades due to a number of factors, including climate change. Methods for control of the disease have been considered, one of which is prescribed burning. In this paper the effects of prescribed burns on the abundance of ticks present in a spatial domain are assessed. A spatial stage-structured tick-host model with an impulsive differential equation system is developed to simulate the effect that controlled burning has on tick populations. Subsequently, a global sensitivity analysis is performed to evaluate the effect of various model parameters on the prevalence of infectious nymphs. Results indicate that while ticks can recover relatively quickly following a burn, yearly, high-intensity prescribed burns can reduce the prevalence of ticks in and around the area that is burned. The use of prescribed burns in preventing the establishment of ticks into new areas is also explored and it is observed that frequent burning can slow establishment considerably.

This article examines economic and narrative crises through the lens of Dieter Kühn’s 1979 novel Und der Sultan von Oman. It argues that the oil crisis of 1973 set in motion an exploration of neo-liberal capitalism together with its inherent neo-colonial traits. More specifically, this essay contends that this moment of economic, epistemological, and representational crisis discloses both the fictionalization and mediatization of economics and post-colonial depictions of Other worlds in the West German novel. In this way, literature not only becomes complicit in the narrative structures of the neo-liberal economy but is also capable of making economic crises representable and understandable because of this very culpability.

This article argues that literature in general and science fiction in particular is able to construct alternative spaces beyond the hegemony of Western liberalism espoused by Francis Fukuyama's declaration of the end of history. It examines the little-known novel Weltgeist Superstar (1980) by the anonymous cult author P.M. that was published a decade before Fukuyama's prediction. As a novel about time travel and temporal paradoxes, it proclaims the death of Marxism both through a repetitive and teleological temporality dooming Marxism to a Hegelian fate that foresees the final victory of capitalism. In this way, the novel performs a Derridean hauntology of the various specters of Marx–here, the specter of Hegel that continues to haunt and dictate Marxism. Whereas Fukuyama pronounced the end of all ideological and theoretical alternatives and Derrida sought to revive Marxism through the repetitive temporality of its specters, this novel reasserts the primacy of literature as a utopian space beyond theory.

Jon Berndt Olsen, Tailoring Truth: Politicizing the Past and Negotiating Memory in East Germany, 1945-1990 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015) Reviewed by Jonathan BachMicahel Krüger, Christian Becker, and Stefan Nielsen, German Sports, Doping, and Politics: A History of Performance Enhancement (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015) Reviewed by Heather L. DichterSusanne Rinner. The German Student Movement and the Literary Imagination: Transnational Memories of Protest and Dissent (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013) Reviewed by Kirkland Alexander FulkKristen Kopp, Germany’s Wild East: Constructing Poland as Colonial Space (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2012) Reviewed by Alexander WochnikSean Ireton and Caroline Schaumann, eds., Heights of Reflection: Mountains in the German Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century, Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture (Rochester: Camden House, 2012). Reviewed by Wilko Graf von HardenbergFrank Uekötter, The Greenest Nation? A New History of German Environmentalism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014). Reviewed by Carol Hager