To estimate infection rates of viruses like SARS-CoV-2, immunologists use a basic reproduction number, known as R0 (pronounced “R naught”) - an expression of the number of people likely to catch a disease from one contagious person - and a Susceptible-Infected-Removed (SIR) model.

Yet as we have seen, those are only telling part of the science story. Coronavirus is in the same family as the common cold and for many COVID-19 will be just like the cold, and can spread like the cold. But when it comes to successful transmission, viruses only win they can optimize their aptitude to survive and reproduce in given conditions - which means they lose if we can optimize disease control measures.

In large systems of interacting particles in quantum mechanics, groups of particles can begin to behave like single particles.

Physicists refer to such groups of particles as quasiparticles and while they live, they are useful in helping us understand superconductivity and superfluidity. But many quasiparticles die after less than one second. 

What kills them? How do quasiparticles die?

A new paper goes beyond the usual suspect - quasiparticle decay into lower energy states - and identifies a new culprit: many-body dephasing.

Humans each have 23 pairs of chromosomes, the 23rd of which determines sex. Females carry two X sex chromosomes, males carry one X and one Y chromosome. Yet this male chromosome carries genes that females lack and those male genes are expressed in all cells of the body, but their only confirmed role has been limited determining male or female.

Yaws is a childhood disease causing highly infectious skin lesions. It is spread by touch and, in advanced cases, can leave sufferers with severe bone disfigurement.

While it is easily curable in its early stages today, and is almost eradicated, the bone disfigurements are irreversible. Yet 4,000 years ago there was no treatment and a new study looked at skeletal remains from the Man Bac archaeological site,  excavated in 2005 and 2007, in the Ninh Bình Province of Vietnam. After seeing what might be yaws on a photograph of Man Bac remains, a team of experts confirmed it - and University of Otago graduate student Melandri Vlok found a second example of the disease. 

A new study shows there is even more reason to worry about the Zika and chikungunya viruses and the pests that spread them; increased risk of neurological diseases like stroke.

A new mathematical model seeks to predict economic performance of crops, which will allow breeders to obtain the plants with the highest possible quality. 

Using even the most advanced legacy tools, it is very difficult to create a new variety of plants and it usually takes 10-12 years. Using genomic selection models, this process can be accelerated several times, finds the new study, using a new mathematical model for predicting crop phenotypic traits as a function genotype.