Global disease monitoring and forecasting with Wikipedia

Infectious disease is a leading threat to public health, economic stability, and other key social structures. Efforts to mitigate these impacts depend on accurate and timely monitoring to measure the risk and progress of disease. Traditional, biologically-focused monitoring techniques are accurate but costly and slow; in response, new techniques based on social internet data such as social media and search queries are emerging. These efforts are promising, but important challenges in the areas of scientific peer review, breadth of diseases and countries, and forecasting hamper their operational usefulness. We examine a freely available, open data source for this use: access logs from the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Using linear models, language as a proxy for location, and a systematic yet simple article selection procedure, we tested 14 location-disease combinations and demonstrate that these data feasibly support an approach that overcomes these challenges. Specifically, our proof-of-concept yields models with $r^2$ up to 0.92, forecasting value up to the 28 days tested, and several pairs of models similar enough to suggest that transferring models from one location to another without re-training is feasible. Based on these preliminary results, we close with a research agenda designed to overcome these challenges and produce a disease monitoring and forecasting system that is significantly more effective, robust, and globally comprehensive than the current state of the art.Comment: 27 pages; 4 figures; 4 tables. Version 2: Cite McIver & Brownstein and adjust novelty claims accordingly; revise title; various revisions for clarit

Electrostatic control of quantum dot entanglement induced by coupling to external reservoirs

We propose a quantum transport experiment to prepare and measure charge-entanglement between two electrostatically defined quantum dots. Coherent population trapping, as realized in cavity quantum electrodynamics, can be carried out by using a third quantum dot to play the role of the optical cavity. In our proposal, a pumping which is quantum mechanically indistinguishable for the quantum dots drives the system into a state with a high degree of entanglement. The whole effect can be switched on and off by means of a gate potential allowing both state preparation and entanglement detection by simply measuring the total current.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, Latex2e with EPL macros, to appear in Europhysics Letter

Estimating the reproductive number, total outbreak size, and reporting rates for Zika epidemics in South and Central America

As South and Central American countries prepare for increased birth defects from Zika virus outbreaks and plan for mitigation strategies to minimize ongoing and future outbreaks, understanding important characteristics of Zika outbreaks and how they vary across regions is a challenging and important problem. We developed a mathematical model for the 2015 Zika virus outbreak dynamics in Colombia, El Salvador, and Suriname. We fit the model to publicly available data provided by the Pan American Health Organization, using Approximate Bayesian Computation to estimate parameter distributions and provide uncertainty quantification. An important model input is the at-risk susceptible population, which can vary with a number of factors including climate, elevation, population density, and socio-economic status. We informed this initial condition using the highest historically reported dengue incidence modified by the probable dengue reporting rates in the chosen countries. The model indicated that a country-level analysis was not appropriate for Colombia. We then estimated the basic reproduction number, or the expected number of new human infections arising from a single infected human, to range between 4 and 6 for El Salvador and Suriname with a median of 4.3 and 5.3, respectively. We estimated the reporting rate to be around 16% in El Salvador and 18% in Suriname with estimated total outbreak sizes of 73,395 and 21,647 people, respectively. The uncertainty in parameter estimates highlights a need for research and data collection that will better constrain parameter ranges.Comment: 35 pages, 16 figure

On the spectroscopy of quantum dots in microcavities

At the occasion of the OECS conference in Madrid, we give a succinct account of some recent predictions in the spectroscopy of a quantum dot in a microcavity that remain to be observed experimentally, sometimes within the reach of the current state of the art.Comment: OECS11 Conference proceedings, in editor style. 4 pages, 1 figure. Animations provided separatel

Molecular basis of sweet taste in dipeptide taste ligands

Abstract In this presentation, we describe an integrated approach for the molecular basis for sweet taste among dipeptide-based ligands. By comparing the results obtained from X-ray diffraction studies with the conformations from NMR analysis and molecular modeling, we have observed recurring topochemical motifs that agree with previous models for sweet taste. In our examination of the unexplored D zone of the Tinti­Nofre model, we have uncovered a sweet potency enhancing effect of a new set of aralkyl-substitutions on dipeptide ligands, which reveals the importance of aromatic­aromatic interactions in maintaining high potency