"Disease Detectives: Using Mathematics to Forecast the Spread of Infectious Diseases"

Our article for teens and preteens about modeling the spread of infectious diseases just came out in final form. Here are some details.

Title: Disease Detectives: Using Mathematics to Forecast the Spread of Infectious Diseases

Authors: Heather Z. Brooks, Unchitta Kanjanasaratool, Yacoub H. Kureh, and Mason A. Porter

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to significant changes in how people are currently living their lives. To determine how to best reduce the effects of the pandemic and start reopening communities, governments have used mathematical models of the spread of infectious diseases. In this article, we introduce a popular type of mathematical model of disease spread. We discuss how the results of analyzing mathematical models can influence government policies and human behavior, such as encouraging mask wearing and physical distancing to help slow the spread of a disease.

The COVID-19 Graduating Class

I bought one of these for each graduating member of my research group. pic.twitter.com/H8W7Dxg2aF

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) June 7, 2020

A Physical Hand-Washing Mnemonic

My favorite is "grant offering"! ;)

An easy way to remember hand-washing procedure. pic.twitter.com/zjwnEZIq5D

— Chris Ferrie (@csferrie) March 5, 2020

(Tip of the cap to Eva Miranda.)

Attention, Reuters: Proper Use of Colons is Important

Gosh, I hope the governor recovers soon. 🙄

(Reuters needs to make sure everyone on staff takes an English class.) https://t.co/Kh6KtDlUej

— Dr. Jonathan Foley (@GlobalEcoGuy) March 2, 2020

(Tip of the cap to Calling Bullshit.)

Update: Well, from the link (below) that Gregg Schneider just sent me, it appears that Reuters may have a writer who does not understand how to use colons properly.

Just one American with coronavirus still in hospital: Vice President Pence https://t.co/0aM9djXlEx pic.twitter.com/Zha44JLUmb

— Reuters (@Reuters) February 28, 2020

"A Two-Patch Epidemic Model with Nonlinear Relapse"

Another of my papers came out in final form today. Here are some details.

Title: A Two-Patch Epidemic Model with Nonlinear Relapse

Authors: Juan G. Calvo, Alberto Hernández, Mason A. Porter, and Fabio Sanchez

Abstract (English version): The propagation of infectious diseases and its impact on individuals play a major role in disease dynamics, and it is important to incorporate population heterogeneity into efforts to study diseases. As a simplistic but illustrative example, we examine interactions between urban and rural populations on the dynamics of disease spreading. Using a compartmental framework of susceptible–infected–susceptible (SIŜ) dynamics with some level of immunity, we formulate a model that allows nonlinear reinfection. We investigate the effects of population movement in a simple scenario: a case with two patches, which allows us to model population movement between urban and rural areas. To study the dynamics of the system, we compute a basic reproduction number for each population (urban and rural). We also compute steady states, determine the local stability of the disease-free steady state, and identify conditions for the existence of endemic steady states. From our analysis and computational experiments, we illustrate that population movement plays an important role in disease dynamics. In some cases, it can be rather beneficial, as it can enlarge the region of stability of a disease-free steady state.

Note: The published paper also has a Spanish version of the abstract.

What Happens in San José Stays in San José (2019 Edition)

I'll soon be going to San José, Costa Rica for the third time to work on a collaboration on dengue dynamics and control. I'll also be participating in a spiffy panel discussion, where I'll get to meet one of my coauthors in person for the first time.

"Parasitic Disease Scientists Win Nobel"

CNN.com's tagline to their article about today's Nobel Prize doesn't distinguish between "parasitic disease-scientists" and "parasitic-disease scientists".

The power of the hyphen. :)

Krukow and Kuiper

Giants broadcasters and former Major Leaguers Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper are the second-best broadcasting team in Baseball right now. (The only one better is Vin Scully, who is only the best sports broadcaster ever.) I often make it a point to listen to them, and I have frequently chosen to watch Giants games over other non-Dodgers games in order to listen to them. They are excellent, and here is an interesting article about their friendship and about the significant physical challenges that Mike Krukow is facing because of a rare disease.

Headlines and the Name Game

Sometimes, somebody has a last name that makes a headline awesome. No umlaut, but this headline from today's Beverly Hills Weekly is still pretty damn good.

Update: This of course reminds me of a certain scene in a certain Mel Brooks movie. (And while I'm thinking of that movie, don't forget this scene.)

Oink.

It looks like I was oinking.

I started having severe muscle aches on Thursday night while I was playing Okami, and I went to bed not long after that. (I stayed up just long enough to turn on the Dodger game so I could listen to it while I tried to go to sleep.) I woke up Friday morning and felt like total crap---easily the worst I've felt in over 3 years, but actually nowhere near as bad as that day that Lemming might remember. That was the one in which I slept 18 hours and bowed out of going to a play with him. That day, I somehow had walked to campus and had to be driven home by the condensed matter physics secretary after she saw me lying prostrate on the floor of my office. Then I slept for most of the next 3/4 of a day, went to campus the next day feeling not too horrible, and had the guy at the Red Door Cafe tell me that I looked horrible. (My response: "You should have seen me yesterday.")

Anyway, having learned my lesson, I cancelled all my meetings on Friday and I stayed home except for a brief walk to get fresh air and coffee + pastry. On the way, I also dropped off a form I absolutely had to submit on Friday, and I tried to avoid everybody as much as I could and just slide the form under the right door. (I probably shouldn't have stepped out of the apartment at all, but being cooped up was driving me nuts, even though I was lying down most of the time and occasionally drifting in and out of sleep.) At first, I couldn't even sit up for 5 minutes without feeling extremely nauseous, but things were already getting better by mid to late afternoon. Then I looked up the symptoms of both flu and swine flu, and it looks like I had just about every one of them. I went to bed at 9pm on Friday (and I was exhausted by that point) and except for getting up briefly a couple of times in the middle of the night, I slept until 9am. I dealt with e-mails on Friday, but that was the only work I could handle. So much for the page proof corrections I was supposed to finish by then. By the way, just to give you an idea of how cushy my job is, one of my colleagues brought me fruit and tea to my flat.

I already felt much better yesterday. In particular, I felt well enough to type up my page proof corrections (that I had finished scribbling on paper on Thursday), but that and some e-mails are about all of the work I did. I again got coffee and otherwise stayed in my flat (aside from a brief venture to the SCR to return the stuff from Friday and take a couple of apples). For the second day in a row, I ate only fruit, nuts, coffee, and pastry (finishing the one I started the day before). I also started a new game of Civ IV, because I think that getting swine flu is the FSM's way of saying that I should be playing Civ IV.

I'm pretty much recovered now, except that I am pretty heavily weakened from this and have eaten very little during the past couple of days. I am going to have to continue taking it easy for several days---I just don't think I'll have the strength to go back to my normal work schedule (which I suppose most people would consider an insane schedule) for a few days. Naturally, I haven't done the work this weekend that I initially intended to do, though perhaps I'll do a small bit of it today. Everything else will be delayed in turn, but my collaborators and I will just have to deal with it. It's better to get this over with and have this happen after classes start when it would be much harder for me to slow my pace this drastically. (It still annoys me to need to do this, but I don't have the strength to go at my normal pace right now. I guess there are a few things that are capable of slowing me down. :) )

I guess I get all of the hip diseases.

Life imitates "Pandemic"

Unless you're living in a vacuum, you've probably heard about the recent swine flu outbreak. I was playing the board game Pandemic when I was visiting Pasadena, and I can't help thinking about the various abstractions in that game as I read some of the current CNN articles. There is also an xkcd comic strip about it, and I think somehow that making light of such things is necessary as a mechanism for some people (like me) to cope with serious things like this. I am traveling to Salt Lake City in about 3 weeks, so we'll see where things stand then.

Sometimes I wish the world were less "interesting". At least there's escapism.

Tracking Diseases Using Web Search Engines

Courtesy Nick Jones, here is a commentary on a very cool new article on using web search engine data to see trends such as influenza outbreaks before other indicators (such as the stuff from the CDC) can catch it. This is a sweet application of network science!