Topic
Lethality
About: Lethality is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 216 publications have been published within this topic receiving 3377 citations.
Papers published on a yearly basis
1 / 2
Papers
TL;DR: A strain of the principal vector of the dengue and yellow fever viruses, Aedes aegypti, is constructed with the necessary properties of dominant, repressible, highly penetrant, late-acting lethality to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach for improved SIT for disease control.
Abstract: Reduction or elimination of vector populations will tend to reduce or eliminate transmission of vector-borne diseases. One potential method for environmentally-friendly, species-specific population control is the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT). SIT has not been widely used against insect disease vectors such as mosquitoes, in part because of various practical difficulties in rearing, sterilization and distribution. Additionally, vector populations with strong density-dependent effects will tend to be resistant to SIT-based control as the population-reducing effect of induced sterility will tend to be offset by reduced density-dependent mortality. We investigated by mathematical modeling the effect of manipulating the stage of development at which death occurs (lethal phase) in an SIT program against a density-dependence-limited insect population. We found late-acting lethality to be considerably more effective than early-acting lethality. No such strains of a vector insect have been described, so as a proof-of-principle we constructed a strain of the principal vector of the dengue and yellow fever viruses, Aedes (Stegomyia) aegypti, with the necessary properties of dominant, repressible, highly penetrant, late-acting lethality. Conventional SIT induces early-acting (embryonic) lethality, but genetic methods potentially allow the lethal phase to be tailored to the program. For insects with strong density-dependence, we show that lethality after the density-dependent phase would be a considerable improvement over conventional methods. For density-dependent parameters estimated from field data for Aedes aegypti, the critical release ratio for population elimination is modeled to be 27% to 540% greater for early-acting rather than late-acting lethality. Our success in developing a mosquito strain with the key features that the modeling indicated were desirable demonstrates the feasibility of this approach for improved SIT for disease control.
495 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined organizational characteristics such as ideology, size, age, state sponsorship, alliance connections, and control of territory while controlling for factors that may also influence lethality, including the political system and relative wealth of the country in which the organization is based.
Abstract: Why are some terrorist organizations so much more deadly then others? This article examines organizational characteristics such as ideology, size, age, state sponsorship, alliance connections, and control of territory while controlling for factors that may also influence lethality, including the political system and relative wealth of the country in which the organization is based. Using data from the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism's Terrorism Knowledge Base (TKB), we use a negative binomial model of organizational lethality, finding that organizational size, ideology, territorial control, and connectedness are important predictors of lethality while state sponsorship, organizational age, and host country characteristics are not.
492 citations
TL;DR: Major findings are consistent, highlighting the important contribution of PM2.5 and NO2 as triggering of the COVID-19 spread and lethality, and with a less extent also PM10, although the potential effect of airborne virus exposure it has not been still demonstrated.
387 citations
TL;DR: In the post-cold war era, economic sanctions have been widely used as an impressive method, if not exactly a weapon, of mass destruction as discussed by the authors, which may have contributed to more deaths during the post Cold War era than all the conventional or nuclear weapons throughout history.
Abstract: With the demise of the Cold War, virtually all the major problems that afflicted great power relations over the last half-century have been resolved. Many argue, however, that new dangers such as those posed by "rogue states" and terrorism have emerged to re place the old ones of conventional or nuclear war. As part of this shift in how threats are constructed and perceived, old worries about nuclear weapons have been subsumed under the new con cept of "weapons of mass destruction" (wmd), lumped together with arms that have killed relatively few people to date (biological weapons), arms of much lower potential lethality (chemical weapons), and dramatic but costly and often ineffective delivery vehicles (ballistic missiles). As these have become prominent bogeymen, the maturation of another impressive method, if not exactly a weapon, of mass destruction has been largely overlooked. The irony is that in contrast to the others, this device?economic sanctions?is deployed frequently, by large states rather than small ones, and may have contributed to more deaths during the post-Cold War era than all weapons of mass destruction throughout history. Comparing the record of these various threats to human well-being is an instructive exercise?and
199 citations
TL;DR: This paper found that the likelihood that an assault will result in death depends (among other things) on the lethality of the weapon and the relative vulnerability of the intended victim and the general availability of firearms.
Abstract: Over 30,000 deaths each year result from gunshot wounds. Two decades of systematic research on weapons and personal violence indicate a pervasive influence of weapon type on the patterns and outcomes of violent encounters. The likelihood that an assault will result in death depends (among other things) on the lethality of the weapon. The evidence that weapon lethality affects the likelihood of death in suicide is somewhat weaker. Assailants' weapon choice depends on a number of factors, including the relative vulnerability of the intended victim and the general availability of firearms. National Crime Survey data indicate that guns are used only about 80,000 times each year in self-defense.
179 citations
Related Topics (5)
Performance Metrics
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2026 | 3 |
| 2025 | 169 |
| 2024 | 198 |
| 2023 | 444 |
| 2022 | 149 |
| 2021 | 30 |