A scaling investigation of urban form features in Latin America cities.

This paper examines scaling behaviors of urban landscape and street design metrics with respect to city population in Latin America. We used data from the SALURBAL project, which has compiled and harmonized data on health, social, and built environment for 371 Latin American cities above 100,000 inhabitants. These metrics included total urbanized area, effective mesh size, area in km2 and number of streets. We obtained scaling relations by regressing log(metric) on log (city population). The results show an overall sub-linear scaling behavior of most variables, indicating a relatively lower value of each variable in larger cities. We also explored the potential influence of colonization on the current built environment, by analyzing cities colonized by Portuguese (Brazilian cities) or Spaniards (Other cities in Latin America) separately. We found that the scaling behaviors are similar for both sets of cities.

Scaling of mortality in 742 metropolitan areas of the Americas.

We explored how mortality scales with city population size using vital registration and population data from 742 cities in 10 Latin American countries and the United States. We found that more populated cities had lower mortality (sublinear scaling), driven by a sublinear pattern in U.S. cities, while Latin American cities had similar mortality across city sizes. Sexually transmitted infections and homicides showed higher rates in larger cities (superlinear scaling). Tuberculosis mortality behaved sublinearly in U.S. and Mexican cities and superlinearly in other Latin American cities. Other communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional deaths, and deaths due to noncommunicable diseases were generally sublinear in the United States and linear or superlinear in Latin America. Our findings reveal distinct patterns across the Americas, suggesting no universal relation between city size and mortality, pointing to the importance of understanding the processes that explain heterogeneity in scaling behavior or mortality to further advance urban health policies.

Mathematical modeling of COVID-19 in 14.8 million individuals in Bahia, Brazil.

COVID-19 is affecting healthcare resources worldwide, with lower and middle-income countries being particularly disadvantaged to mitigate the challenges imposed by the disease, including the availability of a sufficient number of infirmary/ICU hospital beds, ventilators, and medical supplies. Here, we use mathematical modelling to study the dynamics of COVID-19 in Bahia, a state in northeastern Brazil, considering the influences of asymptomatic/non-detected cases, hospitalizations, and mortality. The impacts of policies on the transmission rate were also examined. Our results underscore the difficulties in maintaining a fully operational health infrastructure amidst the pandemic. Lowering the transmission rate is paramount to this objective, but current local efforts, leading to a 36% decrease, remain insufficient to prevent systemic collapse at peak demand, which could be accomplished using periodic interventions. Non-detected cases contribute to a ∽55% increase in R0. Finally, we discuss our results in light of epidemiological data that became available after the initial analyses.

Modeling the Field Emission Enhancement Factor for Capped Carbon Nanotubes Using the Induced Electron Density.

In many field electron emission experiments on single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs), the SWCNT stands on one of two well-separated parallel plane plates, with a macroscopic field FM applied between them. For any given location "L" on the SWCNT surface, a field enhancement factor (FEF) is defined as FL/FM, where FL is a local field defined at "L". The best emission measurements from small-radii capped SWCNTs exhibit characteristic FEFs that are constant (i.e., independent of FM). This paper discusses how to retrieve this result in quantum-mechanical (as opposed to classical electrostatic) calculations. Density functional theory (DFT) is used to analyze the properties of two short, floating SWCNTs, capped at both ends, namely, a (6,6) and a (10,0) structure. Both have effectively the same height (∼5.46 nm) and radius (∼0.42 nm). It is found that apex values of local induced FEF are similar for the two SWCNTs, are independent of FM, and are similar to FEF values found from classical conductor models. It is suggested that these induced-FEF values are related to the SWCNT longitudinal system polarizabilities, which are presumed similar. The DFT calculations also generate "real", as opposed to "induced", potential-energy (PE) barriers for the two SWCNTs, for FM values from 3 V/µm to 2 V/nm. PE profiles along the SWCNT axis and along a parallel "observation line" through one of the topmost atoms are similar. At low macroscopic fields, the details of barrier shape differ for the two SWCNT types. Even for FM = 0, there are distinct PE structures present at the emitter apex (different for the two SWCNTs); this suggests the presence of structure-specific chemically induced charge transfers and related patch-field distributions.