Exploiting powerful techniques from physics and mathematics, this book studies animal movement in ecology, with a focus on epidemic spread. Pulmonary syndrome is not only feared in epidemics of recent times, such as COVID-19, but is also characteristic of epidemics studied earlier such as Hantavirus. The Hantavirus is one of the book's central topics. Correlations between epidemic outbreaks and precipitation events like El Niño are analyzed and spatial reservoirs of infection in off-period of the epidemic, known as refugia, are studied. Predicted traveling waves of infection are successfully compared to field observations. Territoriality in scent-marking animals is presented, with parallels drawn with the theory of melting. The flocking and herding of birds and mammals are described in terms of collective excitations. For scientists interested in movement ecology and epidemic spread, this book provides effective solutions to long-standing problems.

Powerful analytical tools from statistical physics, guided by field observations are applied to spread of epidemics and movement ecology.

This book presents an in-depth study of the discrete nonlinear Schrödinger equation (DNLSE), with particular emphasis on spatially small systems that permit analytic solutions. In many quantum systems of contemporary interest, the DNLSE arises as a result of approximate descriptions despite the fundamental linearity of quantum mechanics. Such scenarios, exemplified by polaron physics and Bose-Einstein condensation, provide application areas for the theoretical tools developed in this text. The book begins with an introduction of the DNLSE illustrated with the dimer, development of fundamental analytic tools such as elliptic functions, and the resulting insights into experiment that they allow. Subsequently, the interplay of the initial quantum phase with nonlinearity is studied, leading to novel phenomena with observable implications in fields such as fluorescence depolarization of stick dimers, followed by analysis of more complex and/or larger systems. Specific examples analyzed in the book include the nondegenerate nonlinear dimer, nonlinear trapping, rotational polarons, and the nonadiabatic nonlinear dimer. Phenomena treated include strong carrier-phonon interactions and Bose-Einstein condensation. This book is aimed at researchers and advanced graduate students, with chapter summaries and problems to test the reader’s understanding, along with an extensive bibliography. The book will be essential reading for researchers in condensed matter and low-temperature atomic physics, as well as any scientist who wants fascinating insights into the role of nonlinearity in quantum physics.

This book provides a graduate-level introduction to three powerful and closely related techniques in condensed matter physics: memory functions, projection operators, and the defect technique. Memory functions appear in the formalism of the generalized master equations that express the time evolution of probabilities via equations non-local in time, projection operators allow the extraction of parts of quantities, such as the diagonal parts of density matrices in statistical mechanics, and the defect technique allows solution of transport equations in which the translational invariance is broken in small regions, such as when crystals are doped with impurities. These three methods combined form an immensely useful toolkit for investigations in such disparate areas of physics as excitation in molecular crystals, sensitized luminescence, charge transport, non-equilibrium statistical physics, vibrational relaxation, granular materials, NMR, and even theoretical ecology. This book explains the three techniques and their interrelated nature, along with plenty of illustrative examples. Graduate students beginning to embark on a research project in condensed matter physics will find this book to be a most fruitful source of theoretical training.

Introduces readers to key case studies that illustrate how theory and data can be integrated to understand wildlife disease ecology.

This fourth edition of the anthrax guidelines encompasses a systematic review of the extensive new scientific literature and relevant publications up to end 2007 including all the new information that emerged in the 3-4 years after the anthrax letter events. This updated edition provides information on the disease and its importance, its etiology and ecology, and offers guidance on the detection, diagnostic, epidemiology, disinfection and decontamination, treatment and prophylaxis procedures, as well as control and surveillance processes for anthrax in humans and animals. With two rounds of a rigorous peer-review process, it is a relevant source of information for the management of anthrax in humans and animals.

Social Ecology of Infectious Diseases explores how human activities enable microbes to disseminate and evolve, thereby creating favorable conditions for the diverse manifestations of communicable diseases. Today, infectious and parasitic diseases cause about one-third of deaths and are the second leading cause of morbidity and mortality. The speed that changes in human behavior can produce epidemics is well illustrated by AIDS, but this is only one of numerous microbial threats whose severity and spread are determined by human behaviors. In this book, forty experts in the fields of infectious diseases, the life sciences and public health explore how demography, geography, migration, travel, environmental change, natural disaster, sexual behavior, drug use, food production and distribution, medical technology, training and preparedness, as well as governance, human conflict and social dislocation influence current and likely future epidemics. - Provides essential understanding of current and future epidemics - Presents a crossover perspective for disciplines in the medical and social sciences and public policy, including public health, infectious diseases, population science, epidemiology, microbiology, food safety, defense preparedness and humanitarian relief - Creates a new perspective on ecology based on the interaction of microbes and human activities

Ask airline passengers what they see as they gaze out the window, and they will describe a fragmented landscape: a patchwork of desert, woodlands, farmlands, and developed neighborhoods. Once-contiguous forests are now subdivided; tallgrass prairies that extended for thousands of miles are now crisscrossed by highways and byways. Whether the result of naturally occurring environmental changes or the product of seemingly unchecked human development, fractured lands significantly impact the planet’s biological diversity. In Ecology of Fragmented Landscapes, Sharon K. Collinge defines fragmentation, explains its various causes, and suggests ways that we can put our lands back together. Researchers have been studying the ecological effects of dismantling nature for decades. In this book, Collinge evaluates this body of research, expertly synthesizing all that is known about the ecology of fragmented landscapes. Expanding on the traditional coverage of this topic, Collinge also discusses disease ecology, restoration, conservation, and planning. Not since Richard T. T. Forman's classic Land Mosaics has there been a more comprehensive examination of landscape fragmentation. Ecology of Fragmented Landscapes is critical reading for ecologists, conservation biologists, and students alike.

Since the dawn of medical science, people have recognized connections between a change in the weather and the appearance of epidemic disease. With today's technology, some hope that it will be possible to build models for predicting the emergence and spread of many infectious diseases based on climate and weather forecasts. However, separating the effects of climate from other effects presents a tremendous scientific challenge. Can we use climate and weather forecasts to predict infectious disease outbreaks? Can the field of public health advance from "surveillance and response" to "prediction and prevention?" And perhaps the most important question of all: Can we predict how global warming will affect the emergence and transmission of infectious disease agents around the world? Under the Weather evaluates our current understanding of the linkages among climate, ecosystems, and infectious disease; it then goes a step further and outlines the research needed to improve our understanding of these linkages. The book also examines the potential for using climate forecasts and ecological observations to help predict infectious disease outbreaks, identifies the necessary components for an epidemic early warning system, and reviews lessons learned from the use of climate forecasts in other realms of human activity.

Governments, businesses, and individuals around the world are thinking about what happens after the COVID-19 pandemic. Can we hope to not only ward off another COVID-like disaster but also eliminate all respiratory diseases, including the flu? Bill Gates, one of our greatest and most effective thinkers and activists, believes the answer is yes. The author of the #1 New York Times best seller How to Avoid a Climate Disaster lays out clearly and convincingly what the world should have learned from COVID-19 and what all of us can do to ward off another catastrophe like it. Relying on the shared knowledge of the world’s foremost experts and on his own experience of combating fatal diseases through the Gates Foundation, Gates first helps us understand the science of infectious diseases. Then he shows us how the nations of the world, working in conjunction with one another and with the private sector, how we can prevent a new pandemic from killing millions of people and devastating the global economy. Here is a clarion call—strong, comprehensive, and of the gravest importance.