MATHEMATICAL APPROACHES TO MODELING,UNDERSTANDING, AND CONTROLLING THEACUTE INFLAMMATORY RESPONSE TOPATHOGEN AND ENDOTOXIN

This thesis includes work dealing with topics related to the modeling, understanding, andcontrolling the acute inflammatory response. After the introductory chapter, the secondchapter discusses a small (four equation) ordinary differential equation (ODE) model of theacute inflammatory response to endotoxin stimuli. Many scenarios of endotoxin toleranceare reproduced and explained in the context of inflammation. The third chapter explores thenumerical aspects of coding an algorithm produced by Bernd Krauskopf and Hinke Osinga[63] for generating 2D (un)stable manifolds for 3D ordinary differential equation systems.The fourth chapter returns to the topic of endotoxin tolerance, but now in an abstractmathematical setting. The fifth chapter presents an exposition regarding the applicationof nonlinear model predictive control to the four equation ODE model (now with pathogeninstead of endotoxin) to explore strategies to modulate the inflammatory response duringsevere infection

The Changing News Paradigm of South Mississippi’s Sun Herald as Seen Through the Eyes of its Journalists: 1968-2018

From the earliest days of the American democracy, one of the key tenets of the new government was rule by an informed electorate. This notion of rule of the people, by the people, for the people was established in the first article of the United States Constitution when the houses of Congress were carefully designed, and the idea of a knowledgeable constituency was emphasized in the first amendment when among such basic freedoms as speech, religion and assembly was freedom of the press. Newspapers in America have changed significantly since the writing of that constitution, but most particularly in the last five decades through concentrated ownership, economic pressures, and encroaching media competition, spurring an imperative question of whether these changes have been for the betterment of the profession and its function in a democratic society. Under the current corporate business model in journalism, content has continued to change in a desperate bid to seek larger audiences and boost plummeting media stock values. Based on this behavior, many scholars claim that business interests are completely overwhelming the public interest. Looking at modern industry research, it’s easy to overlook the community level impact of media behavior within the national data. By selecting and evaluating a community newspaper that mirrors the industry trends in ownership and operation, parallels can be drawn between the community newspaper and the industry while also closely assessing the impact of changes in the newsgathering process, the journalists who seek out and write the news and ultimately the news product itself. This study provides a rare look into the perspectives of current and former journalists from one south Mississippi newsroom from 1986 to 2018, a time when some of the most accelerated changes have occurred in their industry. Following 34 interviews with reporters, photographers, editors, and publishers from the current and past days of The Sun Herald newspaper in Biloxi, Mississippi, this project unveils the learned opinions and observations of journalists regarding their profession. Clearly identifying the mistaken goals of modern news enterprises, this set of journalists calls for a return to responsible reporting over corporate profits

PaPaS: A Portable, Lightweight, and Generic Framework for Parallel Parameter Studies

The current landscape of scientific research is widely based on modeling and simulation, typically with complexity in the simulation's flow of execution and parameterization properties. Execution flows are not necessarily straightforward since they may need multiple processing tasks and iterations. Furthermore, parameter and performance studies are common approaches used to characterize a simulation, often requiring traversal of a large parameter space. High-performance computers offer practical resources at the expense of users handling the setup, submission, and management of jobs. This work presents the design of PaPaS, a portable, lightweight, and generic workflow framework for conducting parallel parameter and performance studies. Workflows are defined using parameter files based on keyword-value pairs syntax, thus removing from the user the overhead of creating complex scripts to manage the workflow. A parameter set consists of any combination of environment variables, files, partial file contents, and command line arguments. PaPaS is being developed in Python 3 with support for distributed parallelization using SSH, batch systems, and C++ MPI. The PaPaS framework will run as user processes, and can be used in single/multi-node and multi-tenant computing systems. An example simulation using the BehaviorSpace tool from NetLogo and a matrix multiply using OpenMP are presented as parameter and performance studies, respectively. The results demonstrate that the PaPaS framework offers a simple method for defining and managing parameter studies, while increasing resource utilization.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, PEARC '18: Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing, July 22--26, 2018, Pittsburgh, PA, US

Self-harm to preferentially harm the pathogens within: non-specific stressors in innate immunity

Therapies with increasing specificity against pathogens follow the immune system\u27s evolutionary course in maximizing host defence while minimizing self-harm. Nevertheless, even completely non-specific stressors, such as reactive molecular species, heat, nutrient and oxygen deprivation, and acidity can be used to preferentially harm pathogens. Strategic use of non-specific stressors requires exploiting differences in stress vulnerability between pathogens and hosts. Two basic vulnerabilities of pathogens are: (i) the inherent vulnerability to stress of growth and replication (more immediately crucial for pathogens than for host cells) and (ii) the degree of pathogen localization, permitting the host\u27s use of locally and regionally intense stress. Each of the various types of non-specific stressors is present during severe infections at all levels of localization: (i) ultra-locally within phagolysosomes, (ii) locally at the infected site, (iii) regionally around the infected site and (iv) systemically as part of the acute-phase response. We propose that hosts strategically use a coordinated system of non-specific stressors at local, regional and systemic levels to preferentially harm the pathogens within. With the rising concern over emergence of resistance to specific therapies, we suggest more scrutiny of strategies using less specific therapies in pathogen control. Hosts\u27 active use of multiple non-specific stressors is likely an evolutionarily basic defence whose retention underlies and supplements the well-recognized immune defences that directly target pathogens

Still Too Fat to Fight

The problem of junk food sold in schools is not just a national health issue. It is a national security issue.Over the past 40 years, obesity rates have more than tripled for children and teens. About 1 in 4 young American adults is now too overweight to join the military. Being overweight or obese is the number one medical reason why young adults cannot enlist. When weight problems are combined with poor education, criminal backgrounds, and other disqualifiers, an estimated 75 percent of young Americans could not serve in the military if they wanted to

Model-free immune therapy: A control approach to acute inflammation

International audienceControl of an inflammatory immune response is still an ongoing research. Here, a strategy consisting of manipulating a pro and anti-inflammatory mediator is considered. Already existing and promising model-based techniques suffer unfortunately from a most difficult calibration. This is due to the different types of inflammations and to the strong parameter variation between patients. This communication explores another route via the new model-free control and its corresponding "intelligent" controllers. A "virtual" patient, i.e., a mathematical model, is only employed for digital simulations. A most interesting feature of our control strategy is the fact that the two outputs which must be driven are sensorless. This difficulty is overcome by assigning suitable reference trajectories to two other outputs with sensors. Several most encouraging computer simulations, corresponding to different drug treatment strategies, are displayed and discussed.