The Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) was an iconic species of bird in eastern North America that comprised 25-40% of North American avifauna. Passenger Pigeons went extinct in 1914 due to excessive hunting over the previous 50 years. Current research aims to de-extinct the Passenger Pigeon and someday release the species into its historic range. To determine under which conditions a Pa...

Synthetic populations attempt to capture population dynamics of a geographic region and hence are widely used in large-scale multiagent applications simulating real-world phenomena. However, current synthetic populations are mostly static — individuals are assumed to perform same daily routine every day. My thesis aims at taking the first step towards making it a “live” synthetic population tha...

Presently, there are many population models in existence, but these are often case specific, function at a single spatial scale and fail to tackle the complexity arising from individual actions and interactions that exist in the real-world. A spatially explicit agent-based simulation model has been developed to represent aphid population dynamics in agricultural landscapes. Over time, the aphid...

Background: Smoking is one of the major modifiable non-communicable disease risk factors. Our aim was to report the pattern of active and passive smoking using the data collected through a population base household survey in Kerman, Iran. Methods: Given a cluster random sampling design, we recruited 5900 adult populations (15-75 years old) into a survey. After consenting, every participant was ...

This paper proposes a novel particle filtering strategy by combining population Monte Carlo Markov chain methods with sequential Monte Carlo chain particle which we call evolving population Monte Carlo Markov Chain (EP MCMC) filtering. Iterative convergence on groups of particles (populations) is obtained using a specified kernel moving particles toward more likely regions. The proposed techniq...

Plasma obtained and frozen in 1972-1974 from 1,009 white men (40-79 years old) who have been followed for 12 years was examined for endogenous sex hormone levels according to prevalent or subsequent cardiovascular disease. In these older men, no sex hormone measured (testosterone, androstenedione, estrone, or estradiol) was significantly associated with known cardiovascular disease at baseline ...

Growth stunting, defined as height for age below the fifth percentile on a reference growth curve, is traditionally used as an indicator of nutritional status in children. Growth stunting is a population-based indicator and can indicate the prevalence of malnutrition or nutrition-related disorders among an identified population of children. Among certain segments of the U.S. child population, m...

Background and Purpose—Dizziness, vertigo, and imbalance are common presenting symptoms in the emergency department. Stroke is a leading concern even when these symptoms occur in isolation. The objective of the present study was to determine the “real-world” proportion of stroke among patients presenting to the emergency department with these dizziness symptoms (DS). Methods—From a population-b...