Recent Advances in iPSC Disease Modeling, Volume One addresses how induced pluripotent stem cells can be used to model various diseases. This new volume teaches readers about current advances in the field, describing the use of induced pluripotent stem cells to model several diseases in vitro, and thus enabling us to study the cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in different pathologies. Further insights into these mechanisms will have important implications for our understanding of disease appearance, development and progression. The volume is written for researchers and scientists in stem cell therapy, cell biology, regenerative medicine and organ transplantation specialists. In recent years, remarkable progress has been made in the obtention of induced pluripotent stem cells and their differentiation into several cell types, tissues and organs using state-of-art techniques. Hence, these advantages have facilitated the identification of key targets and further defining on the molecular basis of several disorders.

This book provides concrete scientific basis that we can conceive the possibility of modifying or even completely canceling aging process, despite the fact that aging is commonly regarded as the result of the overall effects of many uncontrollable degenerative phenomena. The authors illustrate in detail the mechanisms by which cells and the whole organism age. Actions by which it is possible, or will be possible within a limited time, to operate for modifying aging are also debated. The discussion is conducted within the frame and the concepts of evolutionary medicine, which is also indispensable for distinguishing between the manifestations of aging and: (i) diseases that worsen with age, and (ii) acceleration of normal aging rates, caused by unhealthy lifestyle habits and other avoidable factors. The book also discusses the impact of aging on overall mortality and the strange situation that, according to official statistics, aging does not exist as cause of death. This book is a turning point between a gerontology and geriatrics conceived as the study and vain treatment of an incurable condition and one in which these disciplines examine the how and why of a physiological phenomenon that can be modified up to a possible total control. This means transforming the medical prevention and treatment of physiological aging from the greatest failure to the greatest success of medicine.

Pandemics are disruptive. Thus, there is a need to prepare and plan actions in advance for identifying, assessing, and responding to such events to manage uncertainty and support sustainable livelihood and wellbeing. A detailed assessment of a continuously evolving situation needs to take place, and several aspects must be brought together and examined before the declaration of a pandemic even happens. Various health organizations; crisis management bodies; and authorities at local, national, and international levels are involved in the management of pandemics. There is no better time to revisit current approaches to cope with these new and unforeseen threats. As countries must strike a fine balance between protecting health, minimizing economic and social disruption, and respecting human rights, there has been an emerging interest in lessons learned and specifically in revisiting past and current pandemic approaches. Such approaches involve strategies and practices from several disciplines and fields including healthcare, management, IT, mathematical modeling, and data science. Using data science to advance in-situ practices and prompt future directions could help alleviate or even prevent human, financial, and environmental compromise, and loss and social interruption via state-of-the-art technologies and frameworks. Data Science Advancements in Pandemic and Outbreak Management demonstrates how strategies and state-of-the-art IT have and/or could be applied to serve as the vehicle to advance pandemic and outbreak management. The chapters will introduce both technical and non-technical details of management strategies and advanced IT, data science, and mathematical modelling and demonstrate their applications and their potential utilization within the identification and management of pandemics and outbreaks. It also prompts revisiting and critically reviewing past and current approaches, identifying good and bad practices, and further developing the area for future adaptation. This book is ideal for data scientists, data analysts, infectious disease experts, researchers studying pandemics and outbreaks, IT, crisis and disaster management, academics, practitioners, government officials, and students interested in applicable theories and practices in data science to mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from future pandemics and outbreaks.

Bayesian analysis has developed rapidly in applications in the last two decades and research in Bayesian methods remains dynamic and fast-growing. Dramatic advances in modelling concepts and computational technologies now enable routine application of Bayesian analysis using increasingly realistic stochastic models, and this drives the adoption of Bayesian approaches in many areas of science, technology, commerce, and industry.
This Handbook explores contemporary Bayesian analysis across a variety of application areas. Chapters written by leading exponents of applied Bayesian analysis showcase the scientific ease and natural application of Bayesian modelling, and present solutions to real, engaging, societally important and demanding problems. The chapters are grouped into five general areas: Biomedical & Health Sciences; Industry, Economics & Finance; Environment & Ecology; Policy, Political & Social Sciences; and Natural & Engineering Sciences, and Appendix material in each touches on key concepts, models, and techniques of the chapter that are also of broader pedagogic and applied interest.

This book offers an overview of the statistical methods used in clinical and observational vaccine studies. Pursuing a practical rather than theoretical approach, it presents a range of real-world examples with SAS codes, making the application of the methods straightforward. This revised edition has been significantly expanded to reflect the current interest in this area. It opens with two introductory chapters on the immunology of vaccines to provide readers with the necessary background knowledge. It then continues with an in-depth exploration of the analysis of immunogenicity data. Discussed are, amongst others, maximum likelihood estimation for censored antibody titers, ANCOVA for antibody values, analysis of data of equivalence, and non-inferiority immunogenicity studies. Other topics covered include fitting protection curves to data from vaccine efficacy studies, and the analysis of vaccine safety data. In addition, the book features four new chapters on vaccine field studies: an introductory one, one on randomized vaccine efficacy studies, one on observational vaccine effectiveness studies, and one on the meta-analysis of vaccine efficacy studies. The book offers useful insights for statisticians and epidemiologists working in the pharmaceutical industry or at vaccines institutes, as well as graduate students interested in pharmaceutical statistics.

The social and behavioural aspects of HIV and AIDS have continued to defy explanation. Often, the complex dynamics of the condition are overlooked in the attempt to find a chemical answer. This book examines the quest for appropriate prevention programmes for HIV, based on an examination of its epidemiology. The transfer of HIV/AIDS among people in any society is complex, but the author argues that understanding how the virus moves socially can help in prevention. There is a widespread agreement that the HIV pandemic in southern Africa has reached catastrophic proportions. In providing an analysis of the movement of the virus at a local and regional level in southern Africa, Webb intends to make available techniques and conceptual models which will allow researchers and policy makers to understand the epidemic and respond effectively. He traces the complex relation between the virus, the movement of peoples and traditional sexual behaviour and examines HIV in the context of "development" and political and structural change in southern Africa.

The field of genetics is rapidly evolving and new medical breakthroughs are occuring as a result of advances in knowledge of genetics. This series continually publishes imporatnt reviews of the broadest interest to geneticists and their colleagues in affiliated disciplines.

With our highly connected and interdependent world, the growing threat of infectious diseases and public health crisis has shed light on the requirement for global efforts to manage and combat highly pathogenic infectious diseases and other public health crisis on an unprecedented level. Such disease threats transcend borders. Reducing global threats posed by infectious disease outbreaks - whether naturally caused or resulting from a deliberate or accidental release - requires efforts that cross the disaster management pillars: mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. This book addresses the issues of global health security along 4 themes: Emerging Threats; Mitigation, Preparedness, Response and Recovery; Exploring the Technology Landscape for Solutions; Leadership and Partnership. The authors of this volume highlight many of the challenges that confront our global security environment today. These range from politically induced disasters, to food insecurity, to zoonosis and terrorism. More optimistically, the authors also present some advances in technology that can help us combat these threats. Understanding the challenges that confront us and the tools we have to overcome them will allow us to face our future with confidence.

This book describes the variety of direct and indirect population size estimation (PSE) methods available along with their strengths and weaknesses. Direct estimation methods, such as enumeration and mapping, involve contact with members of hard-to-reach groups. Indirect methods have practical appeal because they require no contact with members of hard-to-reach groups. One indirect method in particular, network scale-up (NSU), has several strengths over other PSE methods: It can be applied at a province/country level, it can estimate size of several hard-to-reach population in a single study, and it is implemented with members of the general population rather than members of hard-to-reach groups. The book discusses methods to collect, analyze, and adjust results and presents methods to triangulate and finalize PSEs.

Incorporating many rare photographs--most never made public before--from the family albums of survivors who tell their stories in this volume, Harvard professor Julie Silver, M.D., and historian Daniel Wilson help readers understand the sheer terror that gripped parents of young children every spring and summer during the first half of the 20th century as polio epidemics ran rampant. Interviewed as part of the Polio Oral History Project directed by Silver and funded by Harvard, foundations, and private donors, the people featured in this book describe what is arguably the most feared scourge of modern times. Polio killed and maimed millions of Americans. Silver, Wilson, and their interviewees take us into homes and across time to understand the disease's effect on the family and the community. Testimonies are included from people who worked in polio wards, as well as from those involved in worldwide eradication efforts. The book also addresses the emergence of the polio and disability rights movement, the challenges of post-polio syndrome, and the state of polio research and developments today. And it explores the concern that polio could return in an even more vicious form as a result of bioterrorism. This work will be of interest to anyone intrigued by health and medical history; infectious disease and other epidemics; the psychological effects of disease on children, adults, and communities; politics in the Roosevelt era; and bioterrorism.

During the past twenty years there has been a dramatic increase in obesity in the United States. An estimated thirty percent of adults in the US are obese; in 1980, only fifteen percent were. The issue is gaining greater attention with the CDC and with the public health world in general. This book will offer practical information about the methodology of epidemiologic studies of obesity, suitable for graduate students and researchers in epidemiology, and public health practitioners with an interest in the issue.
The book will be structured in four main sections, with the majority of chapters authored by Dr. Hu, and some authored by specialists in specific areas. The first section will consider issues surrounding the definition of obesity, measurement techniques, and the designs of epidemiologic studies. The second section will address the consequences of obesity, looking at epidemiologic studies that focus on cardio-vascular disease, diabetes, and cancer The third section will look at determinants obesity, reviewing a wide range of risk factors for obesity including diet, physical activity and sedentary behaviors, sleep disorders, psychosocial factors, physical environment, biochemical and genetic predictors, and intrauterine exposures. In the final section, the author will discuss the analytical issues and challenges for epidemiologic studies of obesity.

This book seeks to better understand the meaning and implications of the UKs calamitous encounter with the COVID-19 global pandemic for the future of British neoliberalism. Construing COVID-19 as a political pandemic and mobilising a novel applied political philosophy approach, the authors cultivate fresh intellectual resources, both analytical and normative, to better understand why the UK failed the COVID-19 test and how it might 'fail forward' so as to strengthen its resilience. COVID-19 they argue, has intercepted the UK government's decades-long experimentation with neoliberalism at what appears to be a threshold moment in this model's life course. Neoliberalism has served as a key progenitor of the country's vulnerability: the pandemic has cruelly unveiled the failings of neoliberal logics and legacies which have placed the country at elevated risk and hampered its response. The pandemic in turn has attenuated underlying systemic maladies inherent in British neoliberalism and served as a great disruptor and potential accelerant of history; a consequential episode in the tumultuous life of this politico-economic model. To meaningfully 'build back better', a true renaissance of social democracy is needed. Drawing upon the neorepublican tradition of political philosophy, the authors confront neoliberalism's hegemonic but parochial concept of human freedom as non-interference and place the neorepublican idea of freedom as non-domination in the service of building a new UK social contract. This book will be of interest to political philosophers, political geographers, medical sociologists, public-health scholars, and epidemiologists, to stakeholders engaged in the public inquiry processes now gathering momentum globally and to architects of build back better programmes, especially in western advanced capitalist economies.

Ideal for high school and lower undergraduate readers, this book provides a holistic and multifaceted look at the state of health in the United States today by examining a wide variety of health indicators against necessary background and contextual information. Wellness by the Numbers: Understanding and Interpreting American Health Statistics presents the factual data that underlies health summaries-information that is not often readily available to readers. The statistical data regarding a variety of health indicators, accompanied by contextual information and analyses, serves to inform high school and lower undergraduate readers about the state of health in America today. Just as importantly, this book will document how scholars and health professionals analyze data to draw conclusions and sharpen readers' critical thinking skills. The book begins with an introductory essay that provides a conceptual framework for readers and a general overview of the topic of analyzing health across the nation. The "Locating Accurate and Current Data on Health-Related Information" section clearly explains the process of analyzing and interpreting statistical information, describes how to find authoritative sources of data, and defines the steps to reading and interpreting data and how to draw conclusions from the information. Each of the more than 40 key health topics includes an introduction of the particular health indicator being discussed, presents the data in tables, charts, or figures with concise analysis and interpretation, and concludes with discussion questions that challenge the reader to find additional meaning or patterns in the data. Provides up-to-date, easy-to-understand, and thematically organized information on many key health topics Covers a wide array of important and often controversial health topics, from cancer risk to depression to teen pregnancy Models data analysis and interpretation to demonstrate how scholars and health professionals analyze data to draw conclusions, thereby guiding readers through thinking critically about the information presented Presents thought-provoking discussion questions that invite readers to explore topics further and think more deeply about the information presented

New Edition of a Classic Guide to Statistical Applications in the Biomedical Sciences

In the last decade, there have been significant changes in the way statistics is incorporated into biostatistical, medical, and public health research. Addressing the need for a modernized treatment of these statistical applications, Basic Statistics, Fourth Edition presents relevant, up-to-date coverage of research methodology using careful explanations of basic statistics and how they are used to address practical problems that arise in the medical and public health settings. Through concise and easy-to-follow presentations, readers will learn to interpret and examine data by applying common statistical tools, such as sampling, random assignment, and survival analysis.

Continuing the tradition of its predecessor, this new edition outlines a thorough discussion of different kinds of studies and guides readers through the important, related decision-making processes such as determining what information is needed and planning the collections process. The book equips readers with the knowledge to carry out these practices by explaining the various types of studies that are commonly conducted in the fields of medical and public health, and how the level of evidence varies depending on the area of research. Data screening and data entry into statistical programs is explained and accompanied by illustrations of statistical analyses and graphs. Additional features of the Fourth Edition include: A new chapter on data collection that outlines the initial steps in planning biomedical and public health studiesA new chapter on nonparametric statistics that includes a discussion and application of the Sign test, the Wilcoxon Signed Rank test, and the Wilcoxon Rank Sum test and its relationship to the Mann-Whitney U testAn updated introduction to survival analysis that includes the Kaplan Meier method for graphing the survival function and a brief introduction to tests for comparing survival functionsIncorporation of modern statistical software, such as SAS, Stata, SPSS, and Minitab into the presented discussion of data analysisUpdated references at the end of each chapter

"Basic Statistics," Fourth Edition is an ideal book for courses on biostatistics, medicine, and public health at the upper-undergraduate and graduate levels. It is also appropriate as a reference for researchers and practitioners who would like to refresh their fundamental understanding of statistical techniques.

This timely edited collection presents a holistic and biopsychosocial analysis of LGBTQ People of Color well-being, focused on heart, brain, and mental health, and employs a unique incorporation of minority stress, intersectionality, and allostatic load frameworks. Bringing together established and emerging academics, its authors present a critical analysis of the latest research that encompasses the study of both risk and resilience factors in LGBTQ People of Color health. Across the book, they highlight the precise nature of the behavioral health disparities experienced by these communities, but further, they reveal the unique roles of intersectional discrimination and structural stigma as mechanisms for these disparities. With chapters also dedicated to federal policies and public health, this multidisciplinary work marks a seminal contribution that will pave the way for further advances in research, theory, and practice. It offers a valuable resource on an understudied population that will appeal to researchers, practitioners and policy makers in the fields of health psychology, public health, epidemiology, sociology, health sciences and medicine.

Digestive Diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa: Changes and Challenges provides an in-depth examination into the rise of western digestive diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). For those interested in the causes of the major diseases of the 'West', the patterns in Africa have always reflected on the emergence of western diseases and elucidated the pattern of these conditions and their clinical course. Coverage includes the present epidemiology of GI diseases in SSA, the trends that are occurring, and the context of other emerging diseases. Appropriate for researchers, gastroenterologists and internists, this book brings together the latest research in a single, complete volume.

This book provides an up-to-date review of fasciolosis, a disease caused by Fasciola hepatica and Fasciola gigantica, including its biology, transmission, epidemiology, host distribution, economic impact, and novel approaches for its diagnosis, treatment and prevention. It first offers a brief overview of the history of the disease, the genetic diversity of the parasite and its distribution, and the ecology of the vector snail, which belongs to the Lymnaeidae/Planorbidae family. It also examines the current strategies and novel approaches for controlling the parasite, diagnosing infections and vaccine development. Importantly, it highlights issues relating to the control of fasciolosis, including drug resistance, lack of effective diagnostics, and the parasite's long-term survival strategies based on regulation and modulation of the host immune system. Lastly, it discusses the novel control snail vectors using bait formulations, and synergetic and phototherapy treatment with chlorophyllin, which does not kill the vector.

This book is comprised of presentations delivered at the 5th Workshop on Biostatistics and Bioinformatics held in Atlanta on May 5-7, 2017. Featuring twenty-two selected papers from the workshop, this book showcases the most current advances in the field, presenting new methods, theories, and case applications at the frontiers of biostatistics, bioinformatics, and interdisciplinary areas. Biostatistics and bioinformatics have been playing a key role in statistics and other scientific research fields in recent years. The goal of the 5th Workshop on Biostatistics and Bioinformatics was to stimulate research, foster interaction among researchers in field, and offer opportunities for learning and facilitating research collaborations in the era of big data. The resulting volume offers timely insights for researchers, students, and industry practitioners.

This contributed book focuses on major aspects of statistical quality control, shares insights into important new developments in the field, and adapts established statistical quality control methods for use in e.g. big data, network analysis and medical applications. The content is divided into two parts, the first of which mainly addresses statistical process control, also known as statistical process monitoring. In turn, the second part explores selected topics in statistical quality control, including measurement uncertainty analysis and data quality. The peer-reviewed contributions gathered here were originally presented at the 13th International Workshop on Intelligent Statistical Quality Control, ISQC 2019, held in Hong Kong on August 12-14, 2019. Taken together, they bridge the gap between theory and practice, making the book of interest to both practitioners and researchers in the field of statistical quality control.