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Preventing Epidemics with STEM
Anonymous Coward writes "IBM has released a Linux based technology enabling spatiotemporal modeling of infectious agents across the United States, providing scientists and public health officials with a powerful tool for understanding, and potentially preventing, the spread of infectious diseases. The new STEM technology provides Geographic Information System (GIS) data for every county in the United States supplied by TIGER files."
Anybody who understands 100% of the article should get an automatic 15 points.
it is not only immune from viruses, it stops them too!
Note: this technology is based on Java2. It should run on any Java-supported platform, although IBM only lists Win2000 and Linux as supported platforms.
I want first post, but I don't want to be modded down. Therefore I will give a halfass theory about this software. 1.> Software is used to track diseases 2.> Server is infected with a virus 3.> ??? 4.> Profit!
This type of tracking system is sorely needed in order to prevent little outbreaks from turning into pandemics. Knowing where the hotspots are and using that information to take measures to prevent the spread of a pathogen is of increasing importance as we become more and more mobile as a species.
However there isn't a way to track some problematic pathogens. For many diseases, there is a political aspect that prevents authorities from excercising their ability to contain the germ. HIV is the most obvious example of a virus that is so inherently related to a specific set of behaviors that it ought to be a simple matter of monitoring infected persons and preventing the disease from spreading. Unfortunately, the bearers of the virus claim that their right to these behaviors trumps the public health and safety risk posed by the virus.
If there were an outbreak of Capt. Tripps, would the government have the political will to actually put all those infected under quarantine, dooming them and essentially stripping them of all human rights, in order to prevent the spread of the disease? They have shown in the past that they are not willing to contain infected groups. What is to say that they will be in the future?
Ian
Now, the important question: Could this be used as a tool in combatting the spread of WINDOWS worms and viruses??
While the models (assumptions) hold true, they can provide some nice "what if" input, but they can never replace field data.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
For those that don't know, Tiger is a geographic information systems package that allows the management of geograpical information that can be based on a variety of different statistical data. I haven't done too much with it, but when I was in early HS, my uncle (Who is an imaging science person, and did mapping related stuff at the time for surrounding counties) had me work for him one summer updating address ranges and directions that would be used by various county functions including emergency dispatch services. I remember I used Tiger GIS software. Interesting how much of that stuff works for geographical information management.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Can it stop Zombie Infection?
Epidemics should not be prevented with the stem, they should be prevented from the ROOT! :)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
According to this image, there appears to be an infectious disease originating from the Redmond, Washington area! What could possibly be the source of such a rapid spread of a virus?
Starbucks. (Yes, Yes, they're Seattle, I know. But c'mon, there's more the one great evil in Washington)
You insensitive colds!
*sneeze*
*man is this joke getting old, sheesh*
Basically any thing that spreads over time can be modeled and viewed this way. Kinda neat.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Uh, maybe I'm missing something here, but how is this article news then?
"so inherently related to a specific set of behaviors" HIV is not currently restricted to any particular sub-section of sexual behaviour. The comment might, possibly, statistically, nearly, approach partial correctness in parts of the US, but not in the world. And ZA's governmental attitude to HIV and anti-HIV drugs has changed recently. (One of the drivers of it was rapacious capitalism and "intellectual property" pressures in the US)
I have no doubt that the backward muslim states are also in denial. "What? AIDS here? We don't even have homosexuals here! Allah Akbar!"
The plural of virus is viruses, see for more information the Wikipedia article or this article with references.
Excellent coffee and an excellent business model.
"Basically any thing that spreads over time can be modeled and viewed this way. Kinda neat."
Spread of Linux.
One thing must also be remembered when dealing with models (computer ones, not human ones). They're not real and more than often produce total garbage. Hence, any predictions by a model should be treated with sceptisism and compared carefully to the unfolding experimental data.
it's too bad the slashdot doesn't simply erase troll accounts.
Allah will be pleased with IBM (who, IIRC, were in league with the nazis, too).
"It's the type of thing we constantly see in movies and TV shows about people researching diseases and disease control."
CoughSniffleInfection:Deadly Diseases.
Oh my god! I don't know if you are trolling or just some ignorant redneck that really believes this crap.
:(
If it's out in the internet, do you really believe that this kind of registration is going to stop a real "terrorist"?
Terrorist: I am going to download this nifty tool an wreak havok on america. mwahahahaha!
IBM: Sorry you have to register first and since your IP is not in the USA we have to review your application
Terrorist: Ah bummer, I guess the USA is triumphant again
Terrorism is the new comunism.
The best cure for insomnia is realizing that it is already time to get up. EsteEncanto.com - Blog on technology, urban
Yes, maybe they were good at science but that was like hundreds of years or even a millenium ago. If they're such a great civilization, then why are they more concerned about stoning women, chopping off clits, hating jews and flying planes into skyscrapers than they're about the miserable state their socities?
Change to red level alert! IBM is developing a tool for terrorist to know the range of their biological attacks!
It could be an IBM-AlQaeda alliance or not, by this time...
It's more valuable to have a bird in your hands, than a hundred birds flying old spanish proverb
IBM made a huge mistake by posting the damn thing on the internet. I mean WTF? I can't understand why the homeland security or FBI didn't intervene. As you said, a real terrorist won't be stopped by registration. However, that's not an excuse to make it even easier for them by posting instructions on a public forum! How about exercising a little bit of operational security and common sense?
Regarding your last sentence, just remember that we brought down the communism as well and we all saw (well, maybe you left wing liberals are still in denial) how rotten it was. Mark my words, the same thing will happen to terrorism. We will win the war and anyone who is now supporting them (most of all the obnoxious French and Spain who cowardly withdrew their troops after one attack) will be shamed when the truth comes out.
As a member of CitizenCorps, I have already mailed the homeland security about this.
I urge everyone else to do the same.
"Let's crush all the small enterpreneurs and assimilate them" might be a good business model but a moral one it is not.
Please, someone tell me it's a hoax.
I guess you really believe what your government tells you, and I cannot but feel sorry. I will reply in a more civil manner.
That program released by IBM is a scientific tool. Everything you can think of can be used for good or evil by a sufficiently determined individual, especially in science. The day you allow your government or your military intelligence to dictate what is good science and what is bad science, the terrorist have already won. Never allow your fears, to take away your liberties. It seems that you are perfectly happy to trade your freedoms for a false sense of security.
I am an environmental engineer and find this tool incredibly useful. Science progress is for the good of mankind, and I applaud IBM for releasing this tool for free and to the general public.
The best cure for insomnia is realizing that it is already time to get up. EsteEncanto.com - Blog on technology, urban
You're not a patriot or a redneck. You're a moron.
Bwahahahahahaha! I bet you play CS all day, read Tom Clancy all night and think you're a God's gift to the US military when you grow old enough to enlist.
Or are you saying that we should have shared our nuclear bomb research with the nazis? No, I don't think you're. Well, then, how is this any different?
Laugh all you want. I will enlist in about a year so that I can do my share in protecting innocent people (that includes your ingrateful ass, too) all over the world.
"Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have more responsibility here than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And that my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. I know deep down in places you dont talk about at parties, you don't want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then question the manner in which I provide it. I prefer you said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand to post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to!"
'nuff said.
And if you're not in the U.S., don't expect to get a chance to. Though the site at first glance seems to allow you to download it, it first requires you to create an IBM user account, which requires that you provide a fair amount of information about you and your company (guess they can't imagine, nor care, that private individuals might perchance be interested in it).
Once you've done that, and you actually go to the download page for the product, it requires that you provide even more info on your company.
Finally, after providing all that information, it tells you that the software is subject to tight US export controls, and that your request is being reviewed.
Bah! What a fucking waste of my time. I guess I shouldn't have been honest and said I was in Canada.
The problem with Starbucks is that they're not Tim Hortons. Better coffee, cheaper prices.
rewriting history since 2109
So if this new "STEM" technology runs on IBM's CELL processors, will we get STEM CELLs?
^_^
I'm stunned. This is great! Very similar to my PhD work using GIS to help create predictive models to use agroecological zones to predict and track plant disease development across large areas in row crops. I'm using Kansas wheat production as my system currently, hopefully it will be something possible to deploy in any cropping system any where that you can get the necessary GIS layers and other data. I'm only in my second year of working on this, but things are starting to come together and more stuff like this is showing up. This gives me just more reasons to use Linux. ;)
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
... and anyone who has USED Tiger files know how terribly innacurate they are. Greeeeat. Glad to know we're using free, lowest-common-denominator geodata for our public safety.
of why IP laws should be returned to what our founders originally concieved.
The TIGER files is produced by the gov. on our dollars and has help numerous projects. In addition, it has helped launch numerous companies that used these files for data.
Likewise, the Weather data from the gov. has helped citizens all over the world, and created numerous companies including accuweather.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I worked at CDC in 1981 as a Tech.. At that time, Reagan was running around speaking out about Morality and Herpes. Great. So he is showing care about others. But another CDC branch was busy researching this mystery virus that was found in the gay community, and they determined that this was going to be a killer. So they went to Reagan for money and he shut them down. At that point, the other group approached my boss to appeal to Reagan. We had won for several years in row, the top lab in the USA (back then it was competitive). In addition, he was a Mormon Bishop. I never asked him his politics, but
- you did not get more conservative that a mormon bishop.
- He has never come forward to explain the history.
so I think it is safe to say that he was republican. With that, he called reagan and asked for several million for this mystery virus to start tracking it down. He was predicting that this would jump from homo to hetro (and this was in 1981). When reagan turned him down, he flew out to D.C. and saw reagan directly. And yet, reagan would not do a damn thing. Interestingly, My boss was the first person asked to take on this virus and he turned it down, even though we were a good choice for it. He mentioned in the lab later that this because it would already a politically charged distaster. In the mean time, CDC went into SF, and convinced the gay community that there was an issue, but of course, it was history at that point. This was not an issue of the gay community fighting it, but a person with no real leadership.As to would the gov start quantines? Well prior to the advent of anti-biotics and vaccines, it was done all the time. Now the question is, does current leader have the guts to do the right things. That last 2 president I saw do the right things, cost them their elections, was the first Bush and Carter.
I've done some modeling of the autism epidemic at the state level and found that the most promising explanation is some interaction between recent immigrants from India and people of Finnish ancestry.
When you look at the scatter plot it is quite graphic with a correlation of 60% at 49 degrees of freedom for a very high statistical significance (p Indeed, you can take hundreds of biologically relevant variables, including vaccination rates and mercury pollution (which are hypothesized to be possible causes of the autism epidemic) and combine them any way you like and you still can't find a better explanation than that something is being imported from India to which genotypes indigenous to Finland are particularly susceptible.
This doesn't mean close down the Indian restaurants tommorrow, but what it does mean is that some research money should be allocated to find out if this correlation holds at the county spatiotemporal level.
Seastead this.
Your post reminded me of "And The Band Played On", I recalled some controversy over that. I googled "Reagan Aids" and found this:
w w.deanesmay.com/archives/007691.html+reagan+aids&h l=en&client=firefox-a
"Reagan had an excellent record on gay rights issues--to the extent that anyone at that level of office in that day and age could be said to have such a record, anyway, since he had publicly supported gay rights measures and, while he did ally with some conservative Christian forces, never once backed any anti-gay legislation and was always personally gay-friendly. While it's true that there were things his administration could have done better about the early AIDS crisis, this is true for just about everyone in the 1980s--gay rights activists, local and national elected officials of both parties and at all levels of government--responded poorly. If any of you saw that execrable HBO movie And The Band Played On, you should be aware that it gave a horribly politically slanted accounting, but the book it was based on, And The Band Played On by Randy Shilts, was a much fairer and more damning book. Shilts would never have approved that attrocious movie. The book is must-reading, for Shilts (who was gay, lived in San Francisco, and himself eventually died of AIDS) documents in excruciating detail how local government officials, gay rights activists, judges, and career civil servants in many cases conspired to keep the plague from being recognized and to prevent government from even getting involved. Shilts was unsparing in his indictment of everyone at all levels and in both parties, and if he was sometimes harsh on the Reagan administration, he was usually even harsher with others, including gay rights activists he personally knew and who were responsible for preventing government from taking direct action to stop the plague in its tracks." http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:gVxB7ITK_7UJ:w
Give me a break about being a patriot.
Idiots like you tend to it in the first day or 2. Guts will not cut it if you do not have any logic. And you seem to be lacking in all areas.
Of course, the army can always use a little bit of gun fodder.
I looked it up but now I remember reading about it, with theoak trees. bummer. I remember dutch elm disease when I lived in new england, within one decade all those old huge trees were mostly gone. Pity.
hey, jeeps! way cool! We have an 80 cj7 here now (needs a carb that works, need it *badly*, currently have a carter bbd which sucks rubber donkey...whatevers, can't get it right no matter how many times I rebuild it, tweak it, curse at it, love on it, it just won't cooperate) and I've had a 59 window wagon (40 mph top speed no matter what) and a 69 wagoneer and an 80 full size cherokee before.
Its written in Java for christ sakes - they list windows2000 as a supported os.
As the cause(s) for autism are unknown at this time, your guess is as good as any other; though the word 'epidemic' is usually reserved for diseases spread between infected and uninfected individuals when the rate of infection is exponential.
I am not aware of any evidence, that autism 'spreads' from one person to another at all; neither through social, physical or sexual contact. Indeed there are people who don't consider autism to be an illness. Thus imo the term 'epidemic' is not appropriate.
After looking at the graphics/stats you provide (on your own website; what a grand name you have chosen) I suggest you polish your presentation a little more (with maybe a flash animation). Forget that you don't mention anywhere what input data you use, how you transform it or the totally unimportant reasoning behind your idea. The results are all clear:
something from India causes autism in people formerly indigenous to Finland.
What you do is playing_with_numbers, not science.
This "worthless ass" already protected your moron ass.
Get your head out of the holywood hero-machine, and pay attention to the real world, and you may just manage to survive your rotation.
Umm, there are many ways to get HIV: irresponsible orgies, making love to your committed gay partner of the last nineteen years, being born with it, providing emergency medical aid without proper precautions, or even having it cross a species divide from your pet monkey. The incubation period is long, so you may not recognise the people who are carriers.
Now, sure... you could lock up all those people who you consider a threat. But then... what about smokers? Aren't they a threat to themselves, and people who are irresponsible enough to passive smoke around them? What about the young AIDS sufferers who will die soon? Do we lock them up because of our (mostly unfounded) fears of infection, denying them any chance to a life before they die?
You cannot treat the sick like second class citizens, much less rabid animals. Just as a society is judged by how it treats it prisoners, it is judged by how it treats its sick.
Yes, this was my first thought too.
Even if a disease starts in the US, it seems to me that people from the area where an outbreak starts will be travelling abroad long before the infection is detected.So, while it is cured in one place, it may develop and spread in parallel elsewhere.
So then, the problem is that worldwide flights and other forms of human travel must be taken into account, not to mention trade of food, materials, animals, etc.
This software is probably a great help, and I welcome it.
I also welcome the fact that it's available on Linux. On the other hand, Free Software fan as I am, I hope it's not limited solely to Linux, since everyone who can use this should have access to it. Actually, that makes me feel better about the KDE port to Windows, too.
Overall though, I think we have a long way to go with this technology, and hopefully others will contribute to this tool.
Of course, we have models inside our heads anyway. That's how we work out any problem. Computer modelling just makes complexity easier to cope with, and more accessible to people who don't grasp the entirety of the model. I agree that they can be dangerous. However, when done well, with a well understood problem -- I think pandemics are well understood, just hard to control --, they are enormously useful. Even if incomplete, they can be used well when the flaws are kept in mind. Just think weather ;)
Oops. This was the first release and we didn't have quick access to a MAC....and...well...we forgot. Ok, I forgot. Sorry. Next release. Basically, the system needs to find its "home" directory as the value of "user.dir"
"java -Xmx768M -Duser.dir=$STEM_HOME -jar $STEM_HOME\bin\stem.jar"