In this thesis two variants of the fast variable elimination method are developed. They are intuitive, simple to implement and give results which are in very good agreement with those found from numerical simulations. The relative simplicity of the techniques makes them ideal for applying to problems featuring demographic stochasticity, for experts and non-experts alike. Within the context of mathematical modelling, fast variable elimination is one of the central tools with which one can simplify a multivariate problem. When used in the context of of deterministic systems, the theory is quite standard, but when stochastic effects are present, it becomes less straightforward to apply. While the introductory and background chapters form an excellent primer to the theory of stochastic population dynamics, the techniques developed can be applied to systems exhibiting a separation of timescales in a variety of fields including population genetics, ecology and epidemiology.

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to computational epidemiology, highlighting its major methodological paradigms throughout the development of the field while emphasizing the needs for a new paradigm shift in order to most effectively address the increasingly complex real-world challenges in disease control and prevention. Specifically, the book presents the basic concepts, related computational models, and tools that are useful for characterizing disease transmission dynamics with respect to a heterogeneous host population. In addition, it shows how to develop and apply computational methods to tackle the challenges involved in population-level intervention, such as prioritized vaccine allocation. A unique feature of this book is that its examination on the issues of vaccination decision-making is not confined only to the question of how to develop strategic policies on prioritized interventions, as it further approaches the issues from the perspective of individuals, offering a well integrated cost-benefit and social-influence account for voluntary vaccination decisions. One of the most important contributions of this book lies in it offers a blueprint on a novel methodological paradigm in epidemiology, namely, systems epidemiology, with detailed systems modeling principles, as well as practical steps and real-world examples, which can readily be applied in addressing future systems epidemiological challenges. The book is intended to serve as a reference book for researchers and practitioners in the fields of computer science and epidemiology. Together with the provided references on the key concepts, methods, and examples being introduced, the book can also readily be adopted as an introductory text for undergraduate and graduate courses in computational epidemiology as well as systems epidemiology, and as training materials for practitioners and field workers.

*Includes new chapters on Fellowship Grants and Career Development Awards designed for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and early-career faculty *Provides strategies to highlight the "overall impact" of the grant, one of the most important aspects determining NIH funding in a new chapter on Significance and Innovation *Provides step-by-step guidelines for grant structure and style alongside broader strategies for developing a research funding portfolio *Explains how to avoid common errors and pitfalls, supplying critical dos and don'ts that aid in writing solid grant proposals *Illustrates key concepts with extensive examples from successfully funded proposals

Description of basic ROC methodology; R and STATA code Example Datasets Not too technical Many topics not included in other books

Pulmonary embolism is a common but vexing illness. This book provides a contemporary overview of the most important issues from a Western and a Japanese perspective, providing the reader with state-of-the-art knowledge of the epidemiology and molecular biology of the disease. In the Diagnosis section, the relationship between venous thrombosis and pulmonary embolism is explored, and exciting new findings are presented in the fields of echocardiography and magnetic resonance imaging. The Management section focuses on surgical intervention with acute embolectomy as well as updating thromboendarterectomy for chronic pulmonary embolism. The importance of primary and secondary prevention is emphasized in chapters addressing low molecular weight heparin and the inferior vena cava filter. This cutting-edge book is a valuable resource for practicing physicians, researchers, and students in internal medicine, hematology, pulmonary critical care, and vascular medicine.

Russia and a few other Eurasian countries have been home to the fastest-growing epidemics of HIV in the world over the last several years. A study published by the U.S. National Intelligence Council in 2002 identified Russia among five "second wave" countries likely to experience explosive further increases in HIV/AIDS over the next decade if appropriate measures are not taken. It is widely acknowledged that HIV/AIDS is evolving as a serious epidemiological, social, political, and national security problem throughout the Eurasian region. Yet each of these countries confronts a unique set of challenges and strategies for facing those challenges. This volume offers country-specific accounts, authored by the leading players in the analysis of the situation and the fight against the virus.

This textbook addresses postgraduate students in applied mathematics, probability, and statistics, as well as computer scientists, biologists, physicists and economists, who are seeking a rigorous introduction to applied stochastic processes. Pursuing a pedagogic approach, the content follows a path of increasing complexity, from the simplest random sequences to the advanced stochastic processes. Illustrations are provided from many applied fields, together with connections to ergodic theory, information theory, reliability and insurance. The main content is also complemented by a wealth of examples and exercises with solutions.

This book comprehensively reviews the disease dynamics, distribution, surveillance, epidemiology, diagnosis, control strategies, and management of the desert malaria. It highlights the potential risks of unstable but often exacerbated malaria conflagration as epidemics in the middle of duned desert, a desert oasis, and desert-fringe regions. Further, it reveals the factors inveigled into desert environments due to extensive anthropogenic activities such as canalized irrigation projects, high-yielding new agriculture practices, human concentration, and increased trade. It addresses the impact of irrigation on the malarial dynamics and its coupling to the climate forcing. The book also offers a model for desert transformation into malaria heaven under the changed climatic conditions including high rainfall, humidity, and depletion in temperature. Lastly, it offers insight into malaria epidemiology and disease control in the desert's arid environments. This book is an essential resource for medical entomologists, parasitologists, epidemiologists, and public health researchers.

This edited volume presents current research in biostatistics with emphasis on biopharmaceutical applications. Featuring contributions presented at the 2017 ICSA Applied Statistics Symposium held in Chicago, IL on June 25 to 28, 2017, this book explores timely topics that have a high potential impact on statistical methodology and future research in biostatistics and biopharmaceuticals. The theme of this conference was Statistics for a New Generation: Challenges and Opportunities, in recognition of the advent of a new generation of statisticians. The conference attracted statisticians working in academia, government, and industry; domestic and international statisticians. From the conference, the editors selected 28 high-quality presentations and invited the speakers to prepare full chapters for this book. These contributions are divided into four parts: Part I Biostatistical Methodology, Part II Statistical Genetics and Bioinformatics, Part III Regulatory Statistics, and Part IV Biopharmaceutical Research and Applications.Featuring contributions on topics such as statistics in genetics, bioinformatics, biostatistical methodology, and statistical computing, this book is beneficial to researchers, academics, practitioners and policy makers in biostatistics and biopharmaceuticals.

What is the prevalence of insomnia in a particular age group, in men and women, or in Caucasians and African Americans? What is the average total sleep time among normal sleepers among these groups? How does the sleep of Caucasians and African Americans differ? These are just some of the questions addressed in The Epidemiology of Sleep. This new book presents the most detailed and comprehensive archive of normal and abnormal sleep patterns. Based on a landmark study supported by the National Institute on Aging, 772 subjects from a host of populations including men, women, and various age and ethnic groups, prepared detailed sleep diaries for a two-week period. The use of these sleep diaries yielded a plethora of data on such characteristics as normal sleep patterns, various forms of insomnia, fatigue, depression, anxiety, and daytime sleepiness differentiated by age, sex, and ethnicity. The results generated by these data, charted in the book's numerous tables and graphs, provide a critical methodological advance in the sleep literature. The Epidemiology of Sleep opens with an overview of the rationale and unique characteristics of the study. This is followed by a comprehensive review of the existing epidemiological literature on sleep. Chapter three presents a detailed description of the methods used in the survey followed by meticulous information on the epidemiology of normal and insomnia sleep, that is unparalleled in the literature. Chapter six provides an archive of sleep patterns among African Americans. The book concludes with a discussion and interpretation of the most interesting findings. This insightful study, coupled with the comprehensive review of the existing literature on the epidemiology of sleep, make this volume an invaluable resource for sleep researchers, clinicians, health and clinical psychologists, gerontologists, epidemiologists, and advanced students.

This book is useful for administrators of different levels involved in counteracting COVID-19, surveillance professionals, clinicians, researchers specializing in epidemiology, microbiology, and infectious diseases, and politicians / legislators engaged in public health sector. We use an innovative approach of combining both epidemiological and sociological analyses, as the very problem is mainly an issue of correct governance. A team of authors from Europe, Russia and China summarizes their experience and knowledge useful for containing SARS-CoV-2 and overcoming social and managerial consequences of the pandemic. The editors are sure that sharing our different experience would help to elaborate necessary strategies, protocols, and principles that may be effectively applied in the future to avoid dramatic consequences of not only COVID-19 but also any possible epidemiological hazards for people and medicine.

Our understanding, prevention, and treatment of HIV have made remarkable strides in the past two decades, but the way has not been smooth or straight. Part history, part narrative, and mainly "scientific autopsy," this book is an insider's account of the errors, controversies, and corrections that have marked the first 25 years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States. The author discusses the sources of these errors and controversies and provides many examples. These range from the scientifically contentious and protracted-- such as laboratory contaminations that lead to identifying HTLV-III and HTLV-IV, or arguments that there were HIV patients who were "silently infected," and not detectable by standard HIV tests--to controversies that the scientific community quickly evaluated and discarded--such as the belief that HIV is spread by mosquitoes, or that one AIDS-associated cancer is caused by "poppers," nitrates inhaled for sexual stimulation. This book describes how these many scientific errors occurred, how they got propagated, how they distracted researchers and the public, and how they got corrected. Holmberg, a longtime past Chief of Epidemiology in the CDC's Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, shows us how scientific errors and controversies inevitably occur in the absence, ignorance, or dismissal of good data, and the promotion of bad data or analyses. He suggests reforms of governmental processes, medical and scientific journal review, and in graduate education that may help scientists recognize and correct errors faster, and so deal with future epidemics more efficiently.

From the President of the Research Society on Alcoholism In the last decade research concerning the causes and consequences of alcohol abuse and alcoholism has come of age. We have witnessed a plethora of sci entific findings that have shed light on some of the actions of alcohol at the molecular level. Interesting new data have been forthcoming on the complexi ties of the development of tolerance to alcohol. It is becoming increasingly appropriate to consider that tolerance to alcohol involves biological as well as psychological factors. New scientific insights have been gained concerning the treatment of with drawal as well as the presence of persistent withdrawal signs that may possibly be involved with relapse. More recently, new and compelling data indicating that alcoholism is a common familial disorder have appeared. Clinical studies indicate that alcoholism is a heterogeneous disorder with multiformity in clin ical symptomatology and genetic heterogeneity. The heterogeneity of the clin ical features and the heritability of the predisposing factors of alcoholism are currently under vigorous scientific investigation. In the past several years sophisticated psychosocial studies have provided fundamental information on subjects at high risk for alcoholism. Psychosocial and biological studies of families including alcoholics and subjects at high risk are likely to bring new insights to our understanding of etiological factors. Moreover, as a result of these studies we stand to develop better prevention initiatives and treatment approaches."

This book focuses on the meaning of statistical inference and estimation. Statistical inference is concerned with the problems of estimation of population parameters and testing hypotheses. Primarily aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students of statistics, the book is also useful to professionals and researchers in statistical, medical, social and other disciplines. It discusses current methodological techniques used in statistics and related interdisciplinary areas. Every concept is supported with relevant research examples to help readers to find the most suitable application. Statistical tools have been presented by using real-life examples, removing the "fear factor" usually associated with this complex subject. The book will help readers to discover diverse perspectives of statistical theory followed by relevant worked-out examples. Keeping in mind the needs of readers, as well as constantly changing scenarios, the material is presented in an easy-to-understand form.

Sample Sizes for Clinical Trials, Second Edition is a practical book that assists researchers in their estimation of the sample size for clinical trials. Throughout the book there are detailed worked examples to illustrate both how to do the calculations and how to present them to colleagues or in protocols. The book also highlights some of the pitfalls in calculations as well as the key steps that lead to the final sample size calculation. Features: Comprehensive coverage of sample size calculations, including Normal, binary, ordinal, and survival outcome data Covers superiority, equivalence, non-inferiority, bioequivalence and precision objectives for both parallel group and crossover designs Highlights how trial objectives impact the study design with respect to both the derivation of sample formulae and the size of the study Motivated with examples of real-life clinical trials showing how the calculations can be applied New edition is extended with all chapters revised, some substantially, and four completely new chapters on multiplicity, cluster trials, pilot studies, and single arm trials The book is primarily aimed at researchers and practitioners of clinical trials and biostatistics, and could be used to teach a course on sample size calculations. The importance of a sample size calculation when designing a clinical trial is highlighted in the book. It enables readers to quickly find an appropriate sample size formula, with an associated worked example, complemented by tables to assist in the calculations.

Serious congenital malformations are a major contributor to the infant death rate worldwide. Their nonhereditary causes are multiple and complex, and include infectious and metabolic dangers, disease medication, nutritional inadequacy, medicinal products, environmental agents and pollutants, among them. The cause of many however is still unknown. The wide range of these causes makes the defects of interest to those of a wide range of medical and investigatory backgrounds, especialy clinicians, fundamental scientists, and environmentalists.

Visceral leishmaniasis (VL), (also known as black fever or Kala-azar) is a life-threatening disease first reported from the Indian subcontinent. VL ranks as the world's second largest parasitic disease killer and is a neglected tropical disease. Most of those infected by this life-threatening disease are uneducated daily wagers working to support their families, and vectors easily disseminate the disease to their neighbors. Owing to recent involvement of stakeholders, the number of patients is decreasing, but eradication remains a distant goal. This second edition presents latest reports of visceral Leishmaniasis by specialists working at the forefront of the endemic areas in Indian subcontinent. It also introduces vaccine development and inhibitors to Trypanosomatidae; some of them describing feasibility studies in visceral Leishmaniasis for the first time. Recent progress of the Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development (SATREPS) is also reviewed and the contents share this collaborative research from the forefront of endemic sites in Bangladesh. Widely covering basic, clinical, epidemiological and entomological aspects, this volume will be of great interest to dedicated researchers interested inLeishmaniasis and to experts of NTDs in global health. There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of disease control is bound in shallows and in miseries. ~modified from Shakespeare ~

This book describes appropriate statistical models that are commonly utilized in neuropsychology. The book discusses such issues as developing normative data for neuropsychological measures, assessing the validity of neuropsychological tests, and quantifying change "over time" through longitudinal analyses. The rationale for and allure of the volume is the fact that there are no publications that dovetail the two subdisciplines of applied statistics and neuropsychology. The overall objective of this book is to provide a pragmatic and concrete source for applying methodological and statistical techniques in research studies whose emphasis includes neuropsychology. Since there are a plethora of technique to arrive at similar answers, each method with its strengths and weaknesses will be delineated. The beauty of the book will be that it will hopefully demystify commonly encountered issues faced with researchers. More specifically, it will provide a "how to do it" approach.

HIV/AIDS is but one of a number of new and deadly diseases which threaten communities throughout the world. Together with the resurgence of diseases once thought to have been 'conquered', the human costs and social implications have begun to engage a diverse range of practitioners and scholars. The premise behind this collection of distinguished essays in that the causal relations, impacts and consequences of this disturbing trend are as much political as medical or scientific. This book is an excellent introduction to a field of growing importance.

This volume investigates the links between the incidence of diet-related cancers and dietary patterns within Europe. It presents current understanding of the major cancers thought to be caused by diet alongside detailed data on regional variations in dietary composition, and collates these sets of information to illustrate associations between foods and nutrients and the risk of cancer at specific sites. There is particular discussion of the role of fat, meat, fibre, cereals and fresh vegetables. The importance of the "Mediterranean diet", and regional variance in this diet within Europe, is examined. Japanese and US dietary evidence is also considered. This book highlights the debate on cancer and diet, and points the way ahead for important new research.

This book provides an overview of the theories and applications on subgroups in the biopharmaceutical industry. Drawing from a range of expert perspectives in academia and industry, this collection offers an overarching dialogue about recent advances in biopharmaceutical applications, novel statistical and methodological developments, and potential future directions. The volume covers topics in subgroups in clinical trial design; subgroup identification and personalized medicine; and general issues in subgroup analyses, including regulatory ones. Included chapters present current methods, theories, and case applications in the diverse field of subgroup application and analysis. Offering timely perspectives from a range of authoritative sources, the volume is designed to have wide appeal to professionals in the pharmaceutical industry and to graduate students and researchers in academe and government.

Arising from firm foundations laid by mathematical population genetics, clinical genetics, and statistical epidemiology, genetic epidemiology attempts to identify the many components of risk

attributable to genes, environments, and interactions, and the course of its research can follow many diverse paths. In "Genetic Epidemiology," the success of genome-wide association studies in their identification of hundreds of disease susceptibility loci has inspired renowned experts to contribute thorough methodologies, which aim to bring together bioinformaticians, geneticists, clinicians, statisticians, and epidemiologists in the study of this vital field. The volume opens with chapters covering the basics; however, it quickly moves on to coverage of more specialist topics such as twin studies, Mendelian randomization, genetic association studies, more advanced areas, as well as case studies. As a part of the highly successful "Methods in Molecular Biology " series, this work provides the detailed description of the application and analysis of the most commonly employed methods that are necessary for a firm grounding in the field.

Authoritative and cutting-edge, "Genetic Epidemiology" aims to provide a basic framework for crucial interdisciplinary communication and understanding suited to newcomers to the field as well as experienced researchers and graduate level students."