National Institute of Oceanography, India

About: National Institute of Oceanography, India is a facility organization based out in Panjim, Goa, India. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Monsoon & Population. The organization has 4713 authors who have published 6927 publications receiving 174272 citations.

Trace metal distribution in sediments and benthic fauna of Haifa Bay, Israel

Abstract: Haifa Bay, although adjacent to major chemical and other industries, showed no significant contamination of Cu, Cd, Pb and Zn in the sediments or benthic biota except for one station opposite the polluted Kishon river estuary. There was moderate to low Hg contamination throughout the bay, derived from the outfall of a chlor-alkali plant. The levels of Hg in the surficial sediment and biota have not changed significantly over the last 7 years, a period when effluent treatment was operating at the chlor-alkali plant. Using pollutant laden particles from recognized point sources as tracers for sediment transport, it was concluded that the southern part of Haifa Bay is an area of net sedimentation. No sediment from this area was detected further north in the bay. Sediments introduced at the north of the bay spread both north and south. Within most of the bay there has been no major sediment accumulation or erosion over the past 7 years.

A simulation of a COVID-19 epidemic based on a deterministic SEIR model

Abstract: An epidemic disease caused by a new coronavirus has spread in Northern Italy with a strong contagion rate. We implement an SEIR model to compute the infected population and number of casualties of this epidemic. The example may ideally regard the situation in the Italian Region of Lombardy, where the epidemic started on February 25. We calibrate the model with the number of dead individuals to date (May 5, 2020) and constraint the parameters on the basis of values reported in the literature. The peak occurs at day 37 (March 31) approximately, when there is a rapid decrease, with a reproduction ratio R0 = 3 initially, 1.36 at day 22 and 0.8 after day 35, indicating different degrees of lockdown. The predicted death toll is approximately 15600 casualties, with 2.7 million infected individuals at the end of the epidemic. The incubation period providing a better fit of the dead individuals is 4.25 days and the infection period is 4 days, with a fatality rate of 0.00144/day [values based on the reported (official) number of casualties]. The infection fatality rate (IFR) is 0.57 %, and 2.36 % if twice the reported number of casualties is assumed. However, these rates depend on the initially exposed individuals. If approximately nine times more individuals are exposed, there are three times more infected people at the end of the epidemic and IFR = 0.47 %. If we relax these constraints and use a wider range of lower and upper bounds for the incubation and infection periods, we observe that a higher incubation period (13 versus 4.25 days) gives the same IFR (0.6 versus 0.57 %), but nine times more exposed individuals in the first case. Therefore, a precise determination of the fatality rate is subject to the knowledge of the characteristics of the epidemic.