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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.
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
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
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."
"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)
The plural of virus is viruses, see for more information the Wikipedia article or this article with references.
Intriguingly, Muslim nations and peoples have always had a strong interest in the sciences, from astrology to zoology, as their religion forbade them from other professions, such as bankers (who charge interest) and religious artisans.
While there is undoubtedly a conservative social agenda in many Muslim nations, their affinity for the natural sciences would hopefully make it easier for moderate and liberal Muslims, and Muslims as a people, to take on AIDS as a problem, from the perspective of science.
North Korea aside, China isn't as closed or sensitive to medical information as it once was. The recent inquiries into the handling of SARS shows that it is at least willing to tackle its problems.
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
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
Their scientific achievements helped Europe, and consequently the rest of the modern world, move along in their scientific developments. Remember, for a long time, Europe was under the thumb of the Catholic Church, which dismissed science.
The number of Muslims who do all the things you mentioned are a small minority compared to the rest. But like the minority in the US who clamor for FCC protection, moral judges and Arab-hate, they are the most vocal. Yet, there are people who have "bleeding heart praise" for American achievements over the years.
Conservativism tends to hold people from progress, by definition. And religious conservativism can be the worst.
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.
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'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
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.
The method is so basic that I'm confident that anyone who set out to do a by-state demographic analysis would come up with the same or very similar results.
This isn't playing with numbers. It is quite basic statistical analysis -- so basic in fact that there really isn't any excuse for it not to have been replicated many times over already by people funded to research autism.
Seastead this.
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"