Recent work showed that the temporal growth of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) follows a sub-exponential power-law scaling whenever effective control interventions are in place. Taking this into consideration, we present a new phenomenological logistic model that is well-suited for such power-law epidemic growth. We empirically develop the logistic growth model using simple scaling arguments, known boundary conditions and a comparison with available data from four countries, Belgium, China, Denmark and Germany, where (arguably) effective containment measures were put in place during the first wave of the pandemic. A non-linear least-squares minimization algorithm is used to map the parameter space and make optimal predictions. Unlike other logistic growth models, our presented model is shown to consistently make accurate predictions of peak heights, peak locations and cumulative saturation values for incomplete epidemic growth curves. We further show that the power-law growth model also works reasonably well when containment and lock down strategies are not as stringent as they were during the first wave of infections in 2020. On the basis of this agreement, the model was used to forecast COVID-19 fatalities for the third wave in South Africa, which was in progress during the time of this work. We anticipate that our presented model will be useful for a similar forecasting of COVID-19 induced infections/deaths in other regions as well as other cases of infectious disease outbreaks, particularly when power-law scaling is observed.

Background: In highly deformed nuclei, there is a noticeable coupling of the isoscalar giant monopole resonance (ISGMR) and the $K=0$ component of the isoscalar giant quadrupole resonance (ISGQR), which results in a double peak structure of the isoscalar monopole (IS0) strength (a narrow low-energy deformation-induced peak and a main broad ISGMR part). The energy of the narrow low-lying IS0 peak is sensitive to both the incompressibility modulus $K_{\infty }$ and the coupling between IS0 and isoscalar quadrupole (IS2) strength.

The nuclear structure of ${}^{124}\mathrm{Xe}$ has been investigated via measurements of the ${\beta }^{+}$/EC decay of ${}^{124}\mathrm{Cs}$ with the $8\pi \gamma$-ray spectrometer at the TRIUMF-ISAC facility. The data collected have enabled branching ratio measurements of weak, low-energy transitions from highly excited states, and the $2^{+}\to 0^{+}$ in-band transitions have been observed. Combining these results with those from a previous Coulomb excitation study, $B(E2;2_3^{+}\to 0_2^{+})=78\left(13\right)$ W.u. and $B(E2;2_4^{+}\to 0_3^{+})=53\left(12\right)$ W.u. were determined. The $0_3^{+}$ state, in particular, is interpreted as the main fragment of the proton-pairing vibrational band identified in a previous ${}^{122}\mathrm{Te}$(${}^3\mathrm{He},n$)${}^{124}\mathrm{Xe}$ measurement, and has quadrupole collectivity equal to, within uncertainty, that of the ground-state band.

The combination of a magnetic spectrometer and ancillary detectors such as silicon detectors is a powerful tool for the study of nuclear reactions and nuclear structure. This paper discusses the recently commissioned silicon array called the "CAKE" which is designed for use with the K600 magnetic spectrometer at iThemba LABS.

Background: A previous measurement of the $\beta \text{−}\gamma$ directional coefficient in ${}^{22}\mathrm{Na}\beta$ decay was used to extract recoil-order form factors. The data indicate the requirement of a significant induced-tensor matrix element for the decay. This conclusion largely relies on a standard-model-allowed weak magnetism form factor which was determined using an unpublished value of the analog $2_1^{+}\to 3_1^{+}$ $\gamma$ branch in ${}^{22}\mathrm{Na}$, with the further assumption that the transition is dominated by its isovector $M1$ component.