Warren T. Jones

Association Rules and Data Mining in Hospital Infection Control and Public Health Surveillance

Objectives: The authors consider the problem of identifying new, unexpected, and interesting patterns in hospital infection control and public health surveillance data and present a new data analysis process and system based on association rules to address this problem. Design: The authors first illustrate the need for automated pattern discovery and data mining in hospital infection control and public health surveillance. Next, they define association rules, explain how those rules can be used in surveillance, and present a novel process and system—the Data Mining Surveillance System (DMSS)—that utilize association rules to identify new and interesting patterns in surveillance data. Results: Experimental results were obtained using DMSS to analyze Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection control data collected over one year (1996) at University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital. Experiments using one-, three-, and six-month time partitions yielded 34, 57, and 28 statistically significant events, respectively. Although not all statistically significant events are clinically significant, a subset of events generated in each analysis indicated potentially significant shifts in the occurrence of infection or antimicrobial resistance patterns of P. aeruginosa . Conclusion: The new process and system are efficient and effective in identifying new, unexpected, and interesting patterns in surveillance data. The clinical relevance and utility of this process await the results of prospective studies currently in progress.

Growth and survival of zebrafish (Danio rerio) fed different commercial and laboratory diets.

The need to develop standardized diets to support zebrafish (Danio rerio) research is supported by the knowledge that specific dietary ingredients, nutrients, or antinutritional factors in diets have been shown to affect development and growth of adult D. rerio and their offspring. In this study, there were seven dietary treatments consisting of five commercially available diets and two laboratory-prepared diets, three replicates per treatment. Fish were fed ad libitum twice daily for 9 weeks. At 9 weeks, both weight and length were recorded to determine condition indices. D. rerio fed one of the laboratory-prepared diets had significantly higher weights than individuals fed any of the other diets and exhibited significantly higher lengths than those fed five of the six remaining diets. Although there were significant differences in general growth demographics (length/weight) after the 9-week feeding trial, no significant differences in overall health of D. rerio were observed for the different dietary treatments as determined by statistical analysis of condition factor indices (K = [weight x 100]/length(3)). The success achieved with the laboratory-prepared diets represents the foundation for establishing an open-formulation nutritional standard to ensure that the D. rerio model for research does not generate confounding research results caused by nutritional vagaries.

Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis Outbreak among US-bound Hmong Refugees, Thailand, 2005

Enhanced pre-immigration screening and program expansion decreased TB importation.

Application of data mining to intensive care unit microbiologic data.

We describe refinements to and new experimental applications of the Data Mining Surveillance System (DMSS), which uses a large electronic health-care database for monitoring emerging infections and antimicrobial resistance. For example, information from DMSS can indicate potentially important shifts in infection and antimicrobial resistance patterns in the intensive care units of a single health-care facility.

Lead poisoning in United States-bound refugee children: Thailand-Burma border, 2009.

BACKGROUND: Elevated blood lead levels lead to permanent neurocognitive sequelae in children. Resettled refugee children in the United States are considered at high risk for elevated blood lead levels, but the prevalence of and risk factors for elevated blood lead levels before resettlement have not been described. METHODS: Blood samples from children aged 6 months to 14 years from refugee camps in Thailand were tested for lead and hemoglobin. Sixty-seven children with elevated blood lead levels (venous ≥10 µg/dL) or undetectable (capillary <3.3 µg/dL) blood lead levels participated in a case-control study. RESULTS: Of 642 children, 33 (5.1%) had elevated blood lead levels. Children aged <2 years had the highest prevalence (14.5%). Among children aged <2 years included in a case-control study, elevated blood lead levels risk factors included hemoglobin <10 g/dL, exposure to car batteries, and taking traditional medicines. CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of elevated blood lead levels among tested US-bound Burmese refugee children was higher than the current US prevalence, and was especially high among children <2 years old. Refugee children may arrive in the United States with elevated blood lead levels. A population-specific understanding of preexisting lead exposures can enhance postarrival lead-poisoning prevention efforts, based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations for resettled refugee children, and can lead to remediation efforts overseas.

A computer science undergraduate specialization in telecommunications and computer networking

It k important that university curricula appropriately reflect the rapid advances taking place in computer science ([ Fole88], [Hart92]). The area of telecommunications and computer networks is undergoing particularly rapid change. A conference sponsored by BellSouth Foundation [Jone90] called attention to the importance of telecommunications to the computer field and the need to emphasize this area in coursework and laborate ries at both the undergraduate and graduate levels (see also [Jone91]). Similarly, an NSF report [N CR192] on research priorities in networking and communications expressed an urgent need for educational programs to keep up with the rapid advances that have occurred in this area.

Growth rates are related to production efficiencies in juveniles of the sea urchin Lytechinus variegatus.

Growth rates of newly-metamorphosed urchins from a single spawning event (three males and three females) were highly variable, despite being held en masse under identical environmental and nutritional conditions. As individuals reached ~5 mm diameter (0.07-0.10 g wet weight), they were placed in growth trials (23 dietary treatments containing various nutrient profiles). Elapsed time from the first individual entering the growth trials to the last individual entering was 121 days (N = 170 individuals). During the five-week growth trials, urchins were held individually and proffered a limiting ration to evaluate growth rate and production efficiency. Growth rates among individuals within each dietary treatment remained highly variable. Across all dietary treatments, individuals with an initially high growth rate (entering the study first) continued to grow at a faster rate than those with an initially low growth rate (entering the study at a later date), regardless of feed intake. Wet weight gain (ranging from 0.13 -3.19 g, P < 0.0001, R2 = 0.5801) and dry matter production efficiency (ranging from 25.2-180.5%, P = 0.0003, R2 = 0.6162) were negatively correlated with stocking date, regardless of dietary treatment. Although canalization of growth rate during en masse early post-metamorphic growth is possible, we hypothesize that intrinsic differences in growth rates are, in part, the result of differences (possibly genetic) in production efficiencies of individual Lytechinus variegatus. That is, some sea urchins are more efficient in converting feed to biomass. We further hypothesize that this variation may have evolved as an adaptive response to selective pressure related to food availability.

A Strategy for Geomedical Surveillance Using the Hawkeye Knowledge Discovery System

An approach for the coordination of epidemiologic surveillance within local hospitals as well as across multiple hospital sites, which use the Hawkeye knowledge discovery system, is presented. It is proposed that this coordination be supported by agent-based collaboration technology. This framework meets important criteria recommended by ProMED such as a strongly horizontal decentralized structure.

Dietary Copper Affects Survival, Growth, and Reproduction in the Sea Urchin Lytechinus variegatus

ABSTRACT Copper is an essential micronutrient in the diets of animals. It is a component of many enzymes involved in energy production, participates in immune function, and protects cells from free radicals. However, excessive levels in the diet can be toxic. Small (∼13 g wet weight) Lytechinus variegatus were fed formulated feeds with 12, 36, or 114 mg Cu/kg for 12 wk (levels based on established dietary levels for other marine invertebrates, supplemented as CuSO4·5H2O). Under these experimental conditions, wet weights of individuals fed a 36-mg Cu/kg diet were slightly higher (43.2 ± 1.2 g (SEM); P = 0.069) than those fed a 12mg Cu/kg and 114-mg Cu/kg diet (39.9 ± 1.2 and 40.3 ± 1.7 g wet weight, respectively). Ovary and gut wet weights were significantly lower (P < 0.003) in the 114-mg Cu/kg diet than the 12-mg Cu/kg and 36-mg Cu/kg diets (7.24 ± 0.75 g, 8.11 ± 0.55 g, and 4.99 ± 0.32 g ovary wet weight and 0.97 ± 0.04 g, 1.07 ± 0.06 g, and 0.83 ± 0.04 g gut wet weight for the 12-, 36-, and 114-mg Cu/kg diets, respectively). Mature gamete formation in ovary and testis was inversely correlated with dietary copper level. Acini from the ovaries and testis of urchins in the 36-mg Cu/kg and 114-mg Cu/kg diet treatments had a greater area occupied by nutrient phagocytes than urchins on the 12-mg Cu/kg diet. In diets containing low dietary copper (12 mg Cu/kg), survivorship decreased from 100% to 87%. These data suggest that dietary copper is essential for normal physiological function but can be detrimental for certain physiological processes at high levels. This information will help in the development of formulated feeds for sea urchin aquaculture.

Retrospective case base browsing: a data mining process enhancement

Knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) is defined as the overall process of discovering useful knowledge in data and also as “the nontrivial extraction of implicit, previously unknown and potentially useful information from data”. KDD combines techniques from machine learning, statistics, databases and visualization. The basic tools to extract patterns from data are called Data Mining Methods. The data mining process is an iterative process involving several steps, beginning with the understanding and definition of a problem and ending with the analysis and interpretation of the results. A multidisciplinary group, consisting of researchers from computer science, biostatistics and pathology, has been organized at UAB to carry out knowledge discovery research in applied healthcare applications with a focus on hospital infection surveillance problems [1,2]. (See http://www.cis.uab.edu/info/kdrg/kdrg.htm.)