The hallmark of skilled reading is the ability to read individual words accurately and quickly in isolation as well as in text, referred to as “context free” word reading skill (Stanovich, 1980). For a skilled reader, even a quick glance at a word activates its pronunciation and meaning. Being able to read words from memory by sight is valuable because it allows readers to focus their attention...

BACKGROUND Dengue is the most common arboviral disease of humans, with more than one third of the world's population at risk. Accurate prediction of dengue outbreaks may lead to public health interventions that mitigate the effect of the disease. Predicting infectious disease outbreaks is a challenging task; truly predictive methods are still in their infancy. METHODS We describe a novel pred...

Introduction Production animal health syndromic surveillance (PAHSyS) data are varied: there may be standardized ratios, proportions, counts of adverse events, categorical data and even qualitative ‘intelligence’ that may need to be aggregated up a hierarchy. PAHSyS provides some unique challenges for event detection. Livestock populations are made up of many subpopulations which are constantly...

Artificial neural network is considered one of the most efficient methods in processing huge data sets that can be analyzed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, prediction, forecasting etc. It has a great prospective in engineering as well as in medical applications. The present work employs artificial neural network-based curve fitting techniques in prediction and forecasting of the Cov...

El Niño/Southern Oscillation related climate anomalies were analyzed by using a combination of satellite measurements of elevated sea-surface temperatures and subsequent elevated rainfall and satellite-derived normalized difference vegetation index data. A Rift Valley fever (RVF) risk mapping model using these climate data predicted areas where outbreaks of RVF in humans and animals were expect...

OBJECTIVES Nosocomial outbreaks involve only a small number of cases and limited baseline data. The present study proposes a method to detect the nosocomial outbreaks caused by rare pathogens, exploiting score prediction interval of a Poisson distribution. METHODS THE PROPOSED METHOD WAS APPLIED TO THREE EMPIRICAL DATASETS OF NOSOCOMIAL OUTBREAKS IN JAPAN: outbreaks of (1) multidrug-resistant...