Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series Commons^™

Lstm-Based Recurrent Neural Network Predicts Influenza-Like-Illness In Variable Climate Zones, Alfred Amendolara, Christopher Gowans, Joshua Barton, David Sant, Andrew Payne

Annual Research Symposium

Purpose: Influenza virus is responsible for a recurrent, yearly epidemic in most temperate regions of the world. For the 2021-2022 season the CDC reports 5000 deaths and 100,000 hospitalizations, a significant number despite the confounding presence of SARS-CoV-2. The mechanisms behind seasonal variance in flu burden are not well understood. Based on a previously validated model, this study seeks to expand understanding of the impact of variable climate regions on seasonal flu trends. To that end, three climate regions have been selected. Each region represents a different ecological region and provides different weather patterns showing how the climate variables impact …

Reducing Food Scarcity: The Benefits Of Urban Farming, S.A. Claudell, Emilio Mejia

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Urban farming can enhance the lives of communities and help reduce food scarcity. This paper presents a conceptual prototype of an efficient urban farming community that can be scaled for a single apartment building or an entire community across all global geoeconomics regions, including densely populated cities and rural, developing towns and communities. When deployed in coordination with smart crop choices, local farm support, and efficient transportation then the result isn’t just sustainability, but also increasing fresh produce accessibility, optimizing nutritional value, eliminating the use of ‘forever chemicals’, reducing transportation costs, and fostering global environmental benefits.

Imagine Doris, who is …

Forecasting Covid-19 With Temporal Hierarchies And Ensemble Methods, Li Shandross

Masters Theses

Infectious disease forecasting efforts underwent rapid growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, providing guidance for pandemic response and about potential future trends. Yet despite their importance, short-term forecasting models often struggled to produce accurate real-time predictions of this complex and rapidly changing system. This gap in accuracy persisted into the pandemic and warrants the exploration and testing of new methods to glean fresh insights.

In this work, we examined the application of the temporal hierarchical forecasting (THieF) methodology to probabilistic forecasts of COVID-19 incident hospital admissions in the United States. THieF is an innovative forecasting technique that aggregates time-series data into …

Drug Ideologies Of The United States, Macy Montgomery

Helm's School of Government Conference - American Revival: Citizenship & Virtue

The United States has been increasingly creating lenient drug policies. Seventeen states and Washington, the District of Columbia, legalized marijuana, and Oregon decriminalized certain drugs, including methamphetamine, heroin, and cocaine. The medical community has proven that drugs, including marijuana, have myriad adverse health side effects. This leads to two questions: Why does the United States government continue to create lenient drug policies, and what reasons do citizens give for legalizing drugs when the medical community has proven them harmful? The paper hypothesizes that the disadvantages of drug legalization outweigh its benefits because of the numerous harms it causes, such as …

Prevalence Of Sars-Cov-2 Antibodies In Liberty University Student Population, Emily Bonus

Senior Honors Theses

In 2020, the virus SARS-CoV-2 gained attention as it spread around the world. Its antibodies are poorly understood, and little research focuses on those with few COVID-19 complications yet large numbers of close contacts: university students. This longitudinal study recorded SARS-CoV-2 antibody presence in 107 undergraduate Liberty University students twice during early 2021. After extensive data cleaning and the application of various statistical tests and ANOVAs, the data seems to show that in the case of COVID-19 infections, SARS-CoV-2 IgM antibodies are immediately produced, and then IgG antibodies follow later. However, the COVID-19 vaccine causes the production of both IgM …

Examining The Effects Of Individual And Neighborhood Factors On Hiv Transmission Risk Potential Among People With Hiv, Semiu Olatunde Gbadamosi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

HIV transmission risk significantly increases in late-diagnosed HIV and at HIV viral load (VL) >1500 copies/mL. The objective of this dissertation was to examine factors associated with HIV transmission risk potential for persons with HIV (PWH) using measures of time from HIV infection to diagnosis and trajectories of VL suppression. Additionally, we sought to determine whether a single yearly VL measure—the current standard to track the HIV epidemic in the United States—is reliable in assessing viral suppression for PWH. The first study estimated the distribution of time from HIV infection to diagnosis in Florida using a CD4 depletion model and …

Time Series Forecasting Of Covid-19 Deaths In Massachusetts, Andrew Disher

Honors Program Theses and Projects

The aim of this study was to use data provided by the Department of Public Health in the state of Massachusetts on its online dashboard to produce a time series model to accurately forecast the number of new confirmed deaths that have resulted from the spread of CoViD-19. Multiple different time series models were created, which can be classified as either an Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model or a Regression Model with ARIMA Errors. Two ARIMA models were created to provide a baseline forecasting performance for comparison with the Regression Model with ARIMA Errors, which used the number of …

Regression Analyses Assessing The Impact Of Environmental Factors On Covid-19 Transmission And Mortality, El Hussain Shamsa, Kezhong Zhang

Medical Student Research Symposium

No abstract provided.

Three Essays On Health Economics And Policy Evaluation, Shishir Shakya

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This dissertation consists of three essays on the U.S. Health care policy. Each paragraph below refers to the three abstracts for the three chapters in this dissertation, respectively. I provide quantitative evidence on how much Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) affects the retail opioid prescribing behaviors. Using the American Community Survey (ACS), I retrieve county-level high dimensional panel data set from 2010 to 2017. I employ three separate identification strategies: difference-in-difference, double selection post-LASSO, and spatial difference-in-difference. I compare how the retail opioid prescribing behaviors of counties, that are mandatory for prescribers to check the PDMP before prescribing controlled substances …

Investigating The Role Of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs In Reducing Rates Of Opioid-Related Poisonings, Nathan James Pauly

Theses and Dissertations--Pharmacy

The United States is in the midst of an opioid epidemic. In addition to other system level interventions, almost all states have responded to the crisis by implementing prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs). PDMPs are state-level interventions that track the dispensing of Controlled Substances. Data generated at the time of medication dispensing is uploaded to a central data server that may be used to assist in identifying drug diversion, medication misuse, or potentially aberrant prescribing practices.

Prior studies assessing the impact of PDMPs on trends in opioid-related morbidity have often failed to take into account the wide heterogeneity of program …

Penalized Mixed-Effects Ordinal Response Models For High-Dimensional Genomic Data In Twins And Families, Amanda E. Gentry

Theses and Dissertations

The Brisbane Longitudinal Twin Study (BLTS) was being conducted in Australia and was funded by the US National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Adolescent twins were sampled as a part of this study and surveyed about their substance use as part of the Pathways to Cannabis Use, Abuse and Dependence project. The methods developed in this dissertation were designed for the purpose of analyzing a subset of the Pathways data that includes demographics, cannabis use metrics, personality measures, and imputed genotypes (SNPs) for 493 complete twin pairs (986 subjects.) The primary goal was to determine what combination of SNPs and …

Using Prescription Drug Monitoring Data To Inform Population Level Analysis Of Opioid Analgesic Utilization, Huong T. T. Luu

Theses and Dissertations--Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Increased opioid analgesic (OA) prescribing has been associated with increased risk of prescription opioid diversion, misuse, and abuse. States established prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) to collect and analyze electronic records for dispensed controlled substances to reduce prescription drug abuse and diversion. PDMP data can be used by prescribers for tracking patient’s history of controlled substance prescribing to inform clinical decisions.

The studies in this dissertation are focused on the less utilized potential of the PDMP data to enhance public health surveillance to monitor OA prescribing and co-prescribing and association with opioid overdose mortality and morbidity. Longitudinal analysis of OA …

Socioeconomic Status, Air Quality And Geographic Variation In Emergency Room Visits For Acute Bronchitis On The California Central Coast, Sean Lang-Brown, Heather W. Starnes, Gary B. Hughes

Symposium

IMPORTANCE: Analysis of geospatial variation in acute bronchitis due to socioeconomic and environmental factors can allow the efficient delivery of resources to populations most at risk.

OBJECTIVE: We sought to determine if small scale variation in socioeconomic factors and emergency room (ER) visits for acute bronchitis are associated in small cities or rural communities. We also modeled the effects of air quality on daily rates of ER visits for acute bronchitis in the context of socioeconomic factors to investigate modifying relationships.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: We examined ER visits for acute bronchitis in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties …

A Comparison Of Techniques For Handling Missing Data In Longitudinal Studies, Alexander R. Bogdan

Masters Theses

Missing data are a common problem in virtually all epidemiological research, especially when conducting longitudinal studies. In these settings, clinicians may collect biological samples to analyze changes in biomarkers, which often do not conform to parametric distributions and may be censored due to limits of detection. Using complete data from the BioCycle Study (2005-2007), which followed 259 premenopausal women over two menstrual cycles, we compared four techniques for handling missing biomarker data with non-Normal distributions. We imposed increasing degrees of missing data on two non-Normally distributed biomarkers under conditions of missing completely at random, missing at random, and missing not …

Models For Hsv Shedding Must Account For Two Levels Of Overdispersion, Amalia Magaret

UW Biostatistics Working Paper Series

We have frequently implemented crossover studies to evaluate new therapeutic interventions for genital herpes simplex virus infection. The outcome measured to assess the efficacy of interventions on herpes disease severity is the viral shedding rate, defined as the frequency of detection of HSV on the genital skin and mucosa. We performed a simulation study to ascertain whether our standard model, which we have used previously, was appropriately considering all the necessary features of the shedding data to provide correct inference. We simulated shedding data under our standard, validated assumptions and assessed the ability of 5 different models to reproduce the …

Provision Of Hospital-Based Palliative Care And The Impact On Organizational And Patient Outcomes, Marisa L. Roczen

Theses and Dissertations

Hospital-based palliative care services aim to streamline medical care for patients with chronic and potentially life-limiting illnesses by focusing on individual patient needs, efficient use of hospital resources, and providing guidance for patients, patients’ families and clinical providers toward making optimal decisions concerning a patient’s care. This study examined the nature of palliative care provision in U.S. hospitals and its impact on selected organizational and patient outcomes, including hospital costs, length of stay, in-hospital mortality, and transfer to hospice. Hospital costs and length of stay are viewed as important economic indicators. Specifically, lower hospital costs may increase a hospital’s profit …

Space-Time Modelling Of Emerging Infectious Diseases: Assessing Leptospirosis Risk In Sri Lanka, Cameron C F Plouffe

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In this research, models were developed to analyze leptospirosis incidence in Sri Lanka and its relation to rainfall. Before any leptospirosis risk models were developed, rainfall data were evaluated from an agro-ecological monitoring network for producing maps of total monthly rainfall in Sri Lanka. Four spatial interpolation techniques were compared: inverse distance weighting, thin-plate splines, ordinary kriging, and Bayesian kriging. Error metrics were used to validate interpolations against independent data. Satellite data were used to assess the spatial pattern of rainfall. Results indicated that Bayesian kriging and splines performed best in low and high rainfall, respectively. Rainfall maps generated from …

Dynapenic Obesity And The Effect On Long-Term Physical Function And Quality Of Life: Data From The Osteoarthritis Initiative, John A. Batsis, Alicia J. Zbehlik, Dawna Pidgeon, Stephen J. Bartels

Dartmouth Scholarship

Obesity is associated with functional impairment, institutionalization, and increased mortality risk in elders. Dynapenia is defined as reduced muscle strength and is a known independent predictor of adverse events and disability. The synergy between dynapenia and obesity leads to worse outcomes than either independently. We identified the impact of dynapenic obesity in a cohort at risk for and with knee osteoarthritis on function.

Preparedness Of Hospitals In The Republic Of Ireland For An Influenza Pandemic, An Infection Control Perspective, Mary Reidy, Fiona Ryan, Dervla Hogan, Seán Lacey, Claire Buckley

Department of Mathematics Publications

When an influenza pandemic occurs most of the population is susceptible and attack rates can range as high as 40–50 %. The most important failure in pandemic planning is the lack of standards or guidelines regarding what it means to be ‘prepared’. The aim of this study was to assess the preparedness of acute hospitals in the Republic of Ireland for an influenza pandemic from an infection control perspective.

Nonlinear Hierarchical Models For Longitudinal Experimental Infection Studies, Michael David Singleton

Theses and Dissertations--Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Experimental infection (EI) studies, involving the intentional inoculation of animal or human subjects with an infectious agent under controlled conditions, have a long history in infectious disease research. Longitudinal infection response data often arise in EI studies designed to demonstrate vaccine efficacy, explore disease etiology, pathogenesis and transmission, or understand the host immune response to infection. Viral loads, antibody titers, symptom scores and body temperature are a few of the outcome variables commonly studied. Longitudinal EI data are inherently nonlinear, often with single-peaked response trajectories with a common pre- and post-infection baseline. Such data are frequently analyzed with statistical methods …

Case Studies In Evaluating Time Series Prediction Models Using The Relative Mean Absolute Error, Nicholas G. Reich, Justin Lessler, Krzysztof Sakrejda, Stephen A. Lauer, Sopon Iamsirithaworn, Derek A T Cummings

Nicholas G Reich

Statistical prediction models inform decision-making processes in many real-world settings. Prior to using predictions in practice, one must rigorously test and validate candidate models to ensure that the proposed predictions have sufficient accuracy to be used in practice. In this paper, we present a framework for evaluating time series predictions that emphasizes computational simplicity and an intuitive interpretation using the relative mean absolute error metric. For a single time series, this metric enables comparisons of candidate model predictions against naive reference models, a method that can provide useful and standardized performance benchmarks. Additionally, in applications with multiple time series, this …

Genetic Predictors Of Metabolic Side Effects Of Diuretic Therapy, Jorge L. Del Aguila

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Thiazide diuretics are a recommended first-line monotherapy for hypertension (i.e.SBP>140 mmHg or DBP>90 mmHg). Even so, diuretics are associated with adverse metabolic side effects, such as hyperlipidemia, hyperglycemia and hypokalemia which increase the risk of developing type II diabetes. This thesis used three analytical strategies to identify and quantify genetic factors that contribute to the development of adverse metabolic effects due to thiazide diuretic treatment. I performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) and meta-analysis of the change in fasting plasma glucose and triglycerides in response to HCTZ from two different clinical trials: the Pharmacogenomic Evaluation of Antihypertensive Responses …

Time Trends And Predictors Of Initiation For Cigarette And Waterpipe Smoking Among Jordanian School Children: Irbid, 2008-2011, Karma L. Mckelvey Phd

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Smoking prevalence among adolescents in the Middle East remains high while rates of smoking have been declining among adolescents elsewhere. The aims of this research were to (1) describe patterns of cigarette and waterpipe (WP) smoking, (2) identify determinants of WP smoking initiation, and (3) identify determinants of cigarette smoking initiation in a cohort of Jordanian school children.

Among this cohort of school children in Irbid, Jordan, (age ≈ 12.6 at baseline) the first aim (N=1,781) described time trends in smoking behavior, age at initiation, and changes in frequency of smoking from 2008-2011 (grades 7 – 10). The second aim …

Geographic And Temporal Epidemiology Of Campylobacteriosis, Jennifer Weisent

Doctoral Dissertations

Campylobacteriosis is a leading cause of gastroenteritis in the United States. The focus of this research was to (i) analyze and predict spatial and temporal patterns and associations for campylobacteriosis risk and (ii) compare the utility of advanced modeling methods. Laboratory-confirmed Campylobacter case data, obtained from the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network were used in all investigations.

We compared the accuracy of forecasting techniques for campylobacteriosis risk in Minnesota, Oregon and Georgia and found that time series regression, decomposition, and Box-Jenkins Autoregressive Integrated Moving Averages reliably predict monthly risk of infection for campylobacteriosis. Decomposition provided the fastest, most accurate, user-friendly …

Is Obesity Socially Contagious?, Ciani Jean Sparks

Statistics

The main objective of this paper is to analyze three different articles that discuss whether obesity could be socially contagious. According to the World Health Organization in 2013, obesity is the fifth leading risk for deaths around the world. This disease has dramatically increased in the last decade, which has led scientists to believe there are other factors contributing to the epidemic besides genetics. The first article I analyzed, written by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, provided a logistic regression model to estimate the odds of a person becoming obese. The model included the explanatory variables: age, sex, education, smoking …

Interactions Between Serotypes Of Dengue Highlight Epidemiological Impact Of Cross-Immunity, Nicholas Reich, Sourya Shrestha, Aaron King, Pejman Rohani, Justin Lessler, Siripen Kalayanarooj, In-Kyu Yoon, Robert Gibbons, Donald Burke, Derek Cummings

Nicholas G Reich

Dengue, a mosquito-borne virus of humans, infects over 50 million people annually. Infection with any of the four dengue serotypes induces protective immunity to that serotype, but does not confer long-term protection against infection by other serotypes. The immunological interactions between sero- types are of central importance in understanding epidemiological dynamics and anticipating the impact of dengue vaccines. We analysed a 38-year time series with 12 197 serotyped dengue infections from a hospital in Bangkok, Thailand. Using novel mechanistic models to represent different hypothesized immune interactions between serotypes, we found strong evidence that infec- tion with dengue provides substantial short-term …

The Psychological Impacts Of False Positive Ovarian Cancer Screening: Assessment Via Mixed And Trajectory Modeling, Amanda T. Wiggins

Theses and Dissertations--Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Ovarian cancer (OC) is the fifth most common cancer among women and has the highest mortality of any cancer of the female reproductive system. The majority (61%) of OC cases are diagnosed at a distant stage. Because diagnoses occur most commonly at a late-stage and prognosis for advanced disease is poor, research focusing on the development of effective OC screening methods to facilitate early detection in high-risk, asymptomatic women is fundamental in reducing OC-specific mortality. Presently, there is no screening modality proven efficacious in reducing OC-mortality. However, transvaginal ultrasonography (TVS) has shown value in early detection of OC. TVS presents …

Analysis Of Dietary Patterns Over Freshman Year Of College, Chelsea Lofland

Statistics

This analysis is an investigation of changes in Cal Poly students’ eating habits over freshman year. The motivation behind this was an interest in college students’ lifestyles; college is the first time most students live on their own and it can be an important maturation period. College is stressful, exciting, liberating, and terrifying all at the same time. This distinctive life experience, along with my desire to handle big and messy data, led me to this research question.

The response variable analyzed was food consumption and the explanatory variables were: sex, race, quarter, food group, stress, exercise, BMI, sleep quality …

Social Networks Enabled Coordination Model For Cost Management Of Patient Hospital Admissions, Shahadat Uddin, Liaquat Hossain

Shahadat Uddin

In this study, we introduce a social networks enabled coordination model for exploring the effect of network position of “patient,” “physician,” and “hospital” actors in a patient-centered care network that evolves during patient hospitalization period on the total cost of coordination. An actor is a node, which represents an entity such as individual and organization in a social network. In our analysis of actor networks and coordination in the healthcare literature, we identified that there is significant gap where a number of promising hospital coordination model have been developed (e.g., Guided Care Model, Chronic Care Model) for the current healthcare …

Static Versus Dynamic Topology Of Complex Communications Network During Organizational Crisis, Shahadat Uddin

Shahadat Uddin

No abstract provided.