IRIS Institutional Research Information System

Quantifying infectious disease epidemic risks: A practical approach for seasonal pathogens

For many infectious diseases, the risk of outbreaks varies seasonally. If a pathogen is usually absent from a host population, a key public health policy question is whether the pathogen's arrival will initiate local transmission, which depends on the season in which arrival occurs. This question can be addressed by estimating the "probability of a major outbreak" (the probability that introduced cases will initiate sustained local transmission). A standard approach for inferring this probabi...

First-Principles Calculation of ortho–para Effects in the Second Virial Coefficients of H2 and D2 at Low Temperatures

We report ab initio calculations of the second virial coefficient B(T) of molecular hydrogen isotopologues in the rigid-rotor approximation using the path-integral Monte Carlo method. We present a novel method for efficient sampling of rotational degrees of freedom based on Doob’s h-transform that can be used with any spin isomer, including those for which the quantum mechanical propagator in imaginary time is negative, e.g., ortho-H2. Additionally, we extend the theory to evaluate the contri...

Reliable fabrication of buried microchannels via polymer trench passivation

The goal of lowering the material budget in microfluidics is often reached by fabrication of buried microchannels, typically achieved by deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) to create trenches, followed by sidewall passivation, and finally formation of hollow microchannels with isotropic etching. To avoid high temperatures, mask material or cleanroom restrictions, trench sidewalls can be passivated in the same DRIE tool with a fluorocarbon polymer layer using C4F8 as the source gas. Since the ent...

Food Culture in the Society of Jesus: Sources, Practices, Perspectives