In this work we analyze the evolution of voluntary vaccination in networked populations by entangling the spreading dynamics of an influenza-like disease with an evolutionary framework taking place at the end of each influenza season so that individuals take or not the vaccine upon their previous experience. Our framework thus put in competition two well-known dynamical properties of scale-free networks: the fast propagation of diseases and the promotion of cooperative behaviors. Our results show that when vaccine is perfect scale-free networks enhance the vaccination behavior with respect to random graphs with homogeneous connectivity patterns. However, when imperfection appears we find a cross-over effect so that the number of infected (vaccinated) individuals increases (decreases) with respect to homogeneous networks, thus showing up the competition between the aforementioned properties of scale-free graphs.

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are wireless communication networks which support cooperative driving among vehicles on the road. The specific characteristics of VANETs favor the development of attractive and challenging services and applications which rely on message exchanging among vehicles. These communication capabilities depend directly on the existence of nearby vehicles able to exchange information. Therefore, higher vehicle densities favor the communication among vehicles. However, vehicular communications are also strongly affected by the topology of the map (i.e., wireless signal could be attenuated due to the distance between the sender and receiver, and obstacles usually block signal transmission). In this paper, we study the influence of the roadmap topology and the number of vehicles when accounting for the vehicular communications capabilities, especially in urban scenarios. Additionally, we consider the use of two parameters: the SJ Ratio (SJR) and the Total Distance (TD), as the topology-related factors that better correlate with communications performance. Finally, we propose the use of a new density metric based on the number of vehicles, the complexity of the roadmap, and its maximum capacity. Hence, researchers will be able to accurately characterize the different urban scenarios and better validate their proposals related to cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems based on vehicular communications.

We study the thermal escape problem in the low damping limit. We find that finiteness of the barrier is crucial for explaining the thermal activation results. In this regime, low barrier nonequilibrium corrections to the usual theories become necessary. We propose a simple theoretical extension accounting for these nonequilibrium processes which agrees numerical results. We apply our theory to the understanding of switching current curves in underdamped Josephson junctions.

We study the thermal depinning of single fluxons in rings made of Josephson junctions. Due to thermal fluctuations a fluxon can be excited from its energy minima and move through the array, causing a voltage across each junction. We find that for the initial depinning, the fluxon behaves as a single particle and follows a Kramers-type escape law. However, under some conditions this single particle description breaks down. At low values of the discreteness parameter and low values of the damping, the depinning rate is larger than the single particle result would suggest. In addition, for some values of the parameters the fluxon can undergo low-voltage diffusion before switching to the high-voltage whirling mode. This type of diffusion is similar to phase diffusion in a single junction, but occurs without frequency-dependent damping. We study the switching to the whirling state as well

a b s t r a c tNon-emergency Patient Transport Services (PTS) are provided by ambulance companies for patients who do not require urgent and emergency transport. These patients require transport to or from a health facility like a hospital, but due to clinical requirements are unable to use private or public transport. This task is performed nowadays mainly by human operators, spending a high amount of time and resources to obtain solutions that are suboptimal in most cases. To overcome this limitation, in this paper we present NURA (Non-Urgent transport Routing Algorithm), a novel algorithm aimed at ambulance route planning. In particular, NURA relies on a genetic algorithm to explore the solution space, and it includes a scheduling algorithm to generate detailed routes for ambulances. Experimental results show that NURA is able to outperform human experts in several real scenarios, reducing the time spent by patients in ambulances during non-emergency transportations, increasing ambulance usage, while saving time and money for ambulance companies.

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Neoplastic meningitis is a severe complication of both solid and haematological tumours. We stress the importance of maintaining a high level of suspicion to achieve early diagnosis, since the average survival probability for neoplastic meningitis patients is low.

We study numerically the thermal depinning of single fluxons in ratchet Josephson junction rings. Rings are made of 9 junctions with 3 different critical currents. We present results for a wide range of the main physical parameters of the system: damping, coupling and temperature. The computed results can be well understood in the framework of single particle thermal activation theories.