Stochasticity in pandemic spread over the World Airline Network explained by local flight connections

Massive growth in human mobility has dramatically increased the risk and rate of pandemic spread. Macro-level descriptors of the topology of the World Airline Network (WAN) explains middle and late stage dynamics of pandemic spread mediated by this network, but necessarily regard early stage variation as stochastic. We propose that much of early stage variation can be explained by appropriately characterizing the local topology surrounding the debut location of an outbreak. We measure for each airport the expected force of infection (AEF) which a pandemic originating at that airport would generate. We observe, for a subset of world airports, the minimum transmission rate at which a disease becomes pandemically competent at each airport. We also observe, for a larger subset, the time until a pandemically competent outbreak achieves pandemic status given its debut location. Observations are generated using a highly sophisticated metapopulation reaction-diffusion simulator under a disease model known to well replicate the 2009 influenza pandemic. The robustness of the AEF measure to model misspecification is examined by degrading the network model. AEF powerfully explains pandemic risk, showing correlation of 0.90 to the transmission level needed to give a disease pandemic competence, and correlation of 0.85 to the delay until an outbreak becomes a pandemic. The AEF is robust to model misspecification. For 97% of airports, removing 15% of airports from the model changes their AEF metric by less than 1%. Appropriately summarizing the size, shape, and diversity of an airport's local neighborhood in the WAN accurately explains much of the macro-level stochasticity in pandemic outcomes.Comment: article text: 6 pages, 5 figures, 28 reference

Understanding the spreading power of all nodes in a network: a continuous-time perspective

Centrality measures such as the degree, k-shell, or eigenvalue centrality can identify a network's most influential nodes, but are rarely usefully accurate in quantifying the spreading power of the vast majority of nodes which are not highly influential. The spreading power of all network nodes is better explained by considering, from a continuous-time epidemiological perspective, the distribution of the force of infection each node generates. The resulting metric, the \textit{expected force}, accurately quantifies node spreading power under all primary epidemiological models across a wide range of archetypical human contact networks. When node power is low, influence is a function of neighbor degree. As power increases, a node's own degree becomes more important. The strength of this relationship is modulated by network structure, being more pronounced in narrow, dense networks typical of social networking and weakening in broader, looser association networks such as the Internet. The expected force can be computed independently for individual nodes, making it applicable for networks whose adjacency matrix is dynamic, not well specified, or overwhelmingly large

Lightening the Load: A Look at Four Ways That Community Schools Can Support Effective Teaching

Describes how healthcare, family involvement, and expanded food assistance programs at high-poverty community schools enhance teacher effectiveness by enabling them to focus on instruction in stable environments. Recommends policies to maximize benefits

ELIMINATING ROADBLOCKS TO GREATER PRODUCTIVITY: CONSUMERS

Emphasizes the importance of understanding the consumer's role in helping to improve productivity.Consumer/Household Economics, Productivity Analysis,

Robinson Everett: The Citizen Lawyer Ideal Lives On

In this tribute to Professor Robinson O. Everett, Dean David Levi questions the view that the citizen-lawyer or lawyer-statesmen models are in decline. Tracing Professor Everett’s varied career, accomplishments, and commitments to individuals and institutions; Levi contends that Everett combined the lawyer\u27s traditional focus on the individual with an overall dedication to the larger community. Everett was not just a model citizen; he was a lawyer-citizen. Levi contends that the survival of the lawyer-citizen and lawyer-statesmen models is a matter of choice and character. Nothing in the current structure of the legal economy places these models out of reach for those who would follow in Robinson Everett\u27s footsteps

Navigating Troubled Waters: Dealing with Personal Values When Representing Others

Legal academics have long struggled to define the appropriate role a lawyer\u27s moral judgment ought to play in client representation. In its simplest terms, the question is: Must a lawyer be a hired gun, seeking all lawful objectives sought by a client, or may a lawyer act independently to avoid the harm a client\u27s actions will cause innocent parties? Following disclosure of lawyer involvement in the Savings and Loan, Enron and WorldCom failures, many in society joined those scholars calling for greater moral responsibility. In this article, I provide an analytical approach consistent with existing law and practice that seeks to find a place for an individual lawyer\u27s moral principles. Lawyers, particularly new lawyers, need to know just how much discretion they will have to follow their consciences. Understanding the limits on one\u27s moral discretion will affect the way a lawyer practices and should influence her choice of practice environment. Prior to accepting a position, a lawyer should know whether she will be comfortable with the prevailing standards of practice

Practice Style and Successful Legal Mobilization

Bloom talks about the making of a great cause lawyer. Perhaps not surprisingly, dedication, strong political ties, and superb legal skills all play a role in the making of a great cause lawyer, but so does a somewhat less obvious quality, which Marc Galanter described several years ago as practice style. However, in these case studies, it suggests that the making of a great cause lawyer depends, in part, on practice style. Put differently, how a lawyer approaches legal practice seems to matter for purposes of legal mobilization. In these cases, cause lawyers were more effective at using the law to advance a political agenda when they adopted a more flexible practice style that may more closely resemble that of an ordinary lawyer