Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

2011

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Mathematics

Committee Chair

Kenneth Showalter.

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on three interdisciplinary areas of applied mathematics, mathematical biology/epidemiology, economic epidemiology and mathematical physics, interconnected by the concepts and applications of dynamical systems.;In mathematical biology/epidemiology, a new deterministic SIS modeling framework for the dynamics of malaria transmission in which the malaria vector population is accounted for at each of its developmental stages is proposed. Rigorous qualitative and quantitative techniques are applied to acquire insights into the dynamics of the model and to identify and study two epidemiological threshold parameters reals* and R0 that characterize disease transmission and prevalence, and that can be used for disease control. It is shown that nontrivial disease-free and endemic equilibrium solutions, which can become unstable via a Hopf bifurcation exist. By incorporating vector demography; that is, by interpreting an aspect of the life cycle of the malaria vector, natural fluctuations known to exist in malaria prevalence are captured without recourse to external seasonal forcing and delays. Hence, an understanding of vector demography is necessary to explain the observed patterns in malaria prevalence. Additionally, the model exhibits a backward bifurcation. This implies that simply reducing R0 below unity may not be enough to eradicate the malaria disease. Since, only the female adult mosquitoes involved in disease transmission are identified and fully accounted for, the basic reproduction number (R0) for this model is smaller than that for previous SIS models for malaria. This, and the occurrence of both oscillatory dynamics and a backward bifurcation provide a novel and plausible framework for developing and implementing optimal malaria control strategies, especially those strategies that are associated with vector control.;In economic epidemiology, a deterministic and a stochastic model are used to investigate the effects of determinism, stochasticity, and safety nets on disease-driven poverty traps; that is, traps of low per capita income and high infectious disease prevalence. It is shown that economic development in deterministic models require significant external changes to the initial economic and health care conditions or a change in the parametric structure of the system. Therefore, poverty traps arising from deterministic models lead to more limited policy options. In contrast, there is always some probability that a population will escape or fall into a poverty trap in stochastic models. It is demonstrated that in stochastic models, a safety net can guarantee ultimate escape from the poverty trap, even when it is set within the basin of attraction of the poverty trap or when it is implemented only as an economic or health care intervention. It is also shown that the benefits of safety nets for populations that are close to the poverty trap equilibrium are highest for the stochastic model and lowest for the deterministic model. Based on the analysis of the stochastic model, the following optimal economic development and public health intervention questions are answered: (i) Is it preferable to provide health care, income/income generating resources, or both health care and income/income generating resources to enable populations to break cycles of poverty and disease; that is, escape from poverty traps? (ii) How long will it take a population that is caught in a poverty trap to attain economic development when the initial health and economic conditions are reinforced by safety nets?;In mathematical physics, an unusual form of multistability involving the coexistence of an infinite number of attractors that is exhibited by specially coupled chaotic systems is explored. It is shown that this behavior is associated with generalized synchronization and the emergence of a conserved quantity. The robustness of the phenomenon in relation to a mismatch of parameters of the coupled systems is studied, and it is shown that the special coupling scheme yields a new class of dynamical systems that manifests characteristics of dissipative and conservative systems.

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