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We propose a newstochastic model of infectious disease propagation. This model tracks individual outcomes, but does so without needing to create connectivity graphs for all members of the population. This makes the model scalable to much larger populations than traditional agent-based models have been able to cope with, while preserving the impact of variability during the critical early stages of...
Dengue is a febrile disease whose main vector transmitter is the Aedes Aegypti mosquito. This disease has an annual register of 50 million infections worldwide. Simulations are an important tool in helping to combat and prevent the epidemic and, consequently, save lives and resources. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an Agent-Based Model for assessment of the pupal productivity of the Aedes Aegypti...
P-values of null hypothesis significance testing have long been the standard and decisive measure of deductive statistics. However, for decades, top statistical methodologists have argued that focusing on p-values is not conducive to science, and that these tests are regularly misunderstood. The standard replacement or at least complement proposed for p-values by those critics are confidence intervals...
Dynamic models are used to describe the spatio-temporal evolution of complex systems. It is frequently difficult to construct a useful model, especially for emerging situations such as the 2003 SARS outbreak. Here we describe the application of a modern predictor-corrector method - particle filtering - that could enable relatively quick model construction and support on-the-fly correction as empirical...
One of the most important ecological interactions that occurs in shallow tropical habitats worldwide involves trophic (feeding) interactions between symbiotic dinoflagellate algae and a variety of invertebrate and protistan hosts, such as sponges and coral. The algal symbionts, known as Symbiodinium, reside within the host cells, and have long been recognized to be of vital energetic importance to...
Zambia has over 1.9 million HIV-infected people and is one of the countries hardest hit by the HIV pandemic. Limited information exists on the long-term survival and economic costs of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in the country. The study we describe here has two aims: 1. Provide better estimates for the long-term survival of people on ART; 2. Forecast the number of people on ART and the cost of providing...
Heart attacks and strokes are the leading causes of death in Los Angeles County (LAC). Dietary sodium reduction policies may reduce the risk for heart disease and stroke. To determine the value of population-level sodium reduction policies in LAC in terms of averted morbidity, mortality, and total medical spending, we modeled a modest sodium consumption reduction scenario of 400 mg/day using the Future...
Modeling and simulation have been widely used in health economics and health technology assessment for estimating long-term costs and benefits of health interventions. However, the implementation of simulation in the organizational planning of healthcare delivery is still limited and has not yet received the same level of engagement as it has in other industries. The purpose of this paper is to propose...
The continued popularity of social media in the dissemination of ideas and the unique features of that channel create important research opportunities in the study of rumor contagion. Using an agent-based modeling framework, we study agent behavior in the spread of competing rumors through an endogenous costly exercise of measured networked interactions whereby agents update their position, opinion...
This paper deals with the problem of simulating crowd evacuations in multicore architectures. Manage evacuations is an important issue that involves lives, and in the case of crowds, thousands of lives. We present our model, able to hold thousands of agents walking through the scenario avoiding dynamic and static obstacles. We test how the model behaves with agents falling down, becoming an obstacle...
Men who have sex with men (MSM) experience over half of new HIV infections annually in Baltimore city. Oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and antiretroviral therapy (ART) are likely to play central roles in reducing the risk of HIV transmission. However, the likely combined impact of these interventions remains uncertain. We propose an individual-based simulation approach to project the population-level...
Social network platforms are a useful source of information on preferences of citizens. However, population exposed on social network platform is non representative and in result preferences collected through such platforms are biased. The goal of the public administration is to utilize the data that can be collected through such online platforms in order to understand preferences and its structure...
Epidemic modeling is dominated by systems models—so-called SIR models—that describe the spatio-temporal and network dynamics of disease outbreaks. Reed-Frost, discrete-time, stochastic transmission-chain models have also been important; but, increasingly, epidemiological modelers are turning to agent-based (ABM) approaches that permit the inclusion of individual-specific characters, which may relate...
We created a cognition-focused system dynamics model to simulate the dynamics of smoking tendencies based on media influences and communication of opinions. We based this model on the premise that the dynamics of attitudes about smoking can be more deeply understood by combining opinion dynamics with more in-depth psychological models that explicitly explore the root causes of behaviors of interest...
Colleges worldwide have identified racial diversity as a vital dimension of their educational experience. Institutions might increase their level of diversity by addressing the problem of perceived social estrangement among minorities: studies have shown that this is an important factor in minority retention. One approach is to deliberately construct integrated social groups for students at the beginning...
The continued popularity of social media in the dissemination of ideas and the unique features of that channel create important research opportunities in the study of rumor contagion. Using an agent-based modeling framework, we study agent behavior in the spread of competing rumors through an endogenous costly exercise of measured networked interactions whereby agents update their position, opinion...
Aiming at producing more realistic and informed agent-based simulations of social systems, one often need to build realistic synthetic populations. Apart of this synthetic population generation, the question of generating realistic social networks is an important phase. We examined the articles published in the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS) in between 1998 and 2015...
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