Education Commons^™

Pandemics & People: Designing A Virtual Epidemic Event For Immersive, Connected, And Playful Participation In An Infectious Disease Outbreak, Deborah Fields, Amanda Strawhacker, Michael Giang, Yasmin Kafai, Colby Tofel-Grehl, Tyler Hansen, Jen Sun, Mark Dinan

Teacher Education and Leadership Faculty Publications

Researchers and educators have identified an urgent need for more rigorous teaching and learning about epidemiology topics and practices, such as engaging in behaviors that prevent the spread of viral disease such as COVID-19. Responding to this need, we designed a virtual epidemic as a special event hosted in a virtual world. In this paper we share the strategic, tactical, and detailed design of the SPIKEY-20 virtual epidemic and data that reflects back on the design in terms of player participation. Reflecting on the design, we ask: What kinds of players participated in the SPIKEY-20 virtual epidemic? How did players …

Reinvigorating A Technical Countering Weapons Of Mass Destruction Distance Learning Graduate Certificate Program, James C. Petrosky, Gaiven Varshney, Jeremy Slagley, Sara Shaghaghi

Faculty Publications

Current Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (CWMD) demands can be divided broadly into policy and science. The science of chemical, biological, and radiological/nuclear weapons informs the limits of development, production, employment, operation, detection, risk characterization, human and material protection, and medical intervention. In short, the science of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) should precede and inform the development of policy. It is to this end that the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) CWMD program was re-established, providing a technical educational option for practitioners to understand the science behind a very technically challenging subject.

A Comparison Of Prospective Space-Time Scan Statistics And Spatiotemporal Event Sequence Based Clustering For Covid-19 Surveillance, Fuyu Xu, Kate Beard

Teaching, Learning & Research Documents

The outbreak of the COVID-19 disease was first reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. Cases in the United States began appearing in late January. On March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic. By mid-March COVID-19 cases were spreading across the US with several hotspots appearing by April. Health officials point to the importance of surveillance of COVID-19 to better inform decision makers at various levels and efficiently manage distribution of human and technical resources to areas of need. The prospective space-time scan statistic has been used to help identify emerging COVID-19 disease clusters, but results from …

Covid-19_Umaine News_Umaine Researchers Develop New Model For Predicting Superspreader Events In An Epidemic, University Of Maine Division Of Marketing And Communications

Division of Marketing & Communications

Screenshot of UMaine News press release regarding two researchers with the School of Biology and Ecology at the University of Maine developing a new model for quantifying the potential for the spread of disease across diverse environments and among varied population densities during an epidemic.

Connectivity, Reproduction Number, And Mobility Interact To Determine Communities’ Epidemiological Superspreader Potential In A Metapopulation Network, Brandon Lieberthal, Allison M. Gardner

School of Biology & Ecology

Disease epidemic outbreaks on human metapopulation networks are often driven by a small number of superspreader nodes, which are primarily responsible for spreading the disease throughout the network. Superspreader nodes typically are characterized either by their locations within the network, by their degree of connectivity and centrality, or by their habitat suitability for the disease, described by their reproduction number (R). Here we introduce a model that considers simultaneously the effects of network properties and R on superspreaders, as opposed to previous research which considered each factor separately. This type of model is applicable to diseases for which …

S2e16: What Can We Learn From Ums Experts About Coronavirus?, Ron Lisnet

The Maine Question

How does the University of Maine System stay up to date with breaking COVID-19 developments involving testing, treatments, transmission mitigation, contact tracing and vaccine development? It turns to its experts on the UMS Scientific Advisory Board.

S2e7: Why Do Viruses Go Viral?, Ron Lisnet, Melissa Maginnis

The Maine Question

The novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 has led to a pandemic that swept the globe, halted economies and upended life as we know it. How and why infections like this occur is something that Melissa Maginnis, an assistant professor of microbiology at UMaine, thinks about every day. How do viruses work? How and why do they go viral? What is the best way to stop their spread and how might scientists learn from this ordeal? That and more on this episode of The Maine Question

The Impact Of Socioeconomic Factors On Food Insecurity Among Syrian Refugees In Florida, Racha Sankar

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Syrian refugees settled in the United States may experience food insecurity due to different socioeconomic factors that may include nutrition knowledge, language proficiency, women’s education, and perceived stress. The structure and the type of households may also contribute to food insecurity in this population.

The objective of this study was to measure food security among Syrian refugees residing in Florida. It also aimed to determine the socioeconomic factors that may attribute to food insecurity at household level.

A comprehensive 228-item questionnaire was administered to N=80 households (n=43 in rural areas, n=37 in urban areas). Families with and without children were …

Rb56-178 Streak Mosaic Of Wheat In Nebraska And Its Control, R. Staples, W.B. Allington

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension: Historical Materials

A mosaic of wheat was first observed in Nebraska by Peltier in 1922. Peltier found diseased plants in a large number of winter and spring wheat varieties at Lincoln, and in some instances, he successfully inoculated wheat and corn from the juice of infected plants. The temperatures under which Peltier maintained his inoculated plants are unknown and other criteria now employed to characterize the viruses were not utilized. It is probable, however, that he was working with what is now known as wheat streak mosaic virus.

This bulletin reports the results of studies on the epidemiology of wheat streak mosaic …