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Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:39:10 GMT
The Center on Social and Economic Dynamics at Brookings has released a comprehensive report on the economic impact of closing schools and day care centers to help mitigate the infection rate of the H1N1 virus. Center director Joshua Epstein highlights some of the study’s findings and notes that the cost for such closures could be substantial.
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Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT
Policymakers are looking at school closures to contain the spread of an H1N1 influenza outbreak. In the first comprehensive U.S. study of the economic cost of school and daycare center closures, the Center on Social and Economic Dynamics at Brookings finds that closing all schools in the United States for four weeks could cost up to $47 billion and lead to a reduction of up to 17% in key health care personnel.
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Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:35:02 GMT
Experts are bracing for an extremely high H1N1 flu infection rate this fall and winter. Joshua Epstein says computer modeling can help the medical community and policy-makers predict which populations are most susceptible to infection, how great the infection rate will be and how to stem the spread of the virus.
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Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT
Joshua M. Epstein explains that agent-based computational models can capture irrational behaviour, complex social networks and global scale — all essential in confronting H1N1.
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Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT
William Dickens gave the keynote lecture to the International Meetings of the Psychometrics Society. He spoke on what psychologists could learn about modeling psychological phenomena from the way economists use models and illustrated it with his own work on cognitive ability.
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Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT
Obesity has grown rapidly into a major public health challenge in the United States and worldwide. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that as many as one-third of Americans are obese. Ross Hammond explains how techniques from the field of complexity science can inform both scientific study of obesity and effective policies to combat it.
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Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:46:00 GMT
With cases of swine flu rising in the United States and around the world, health officials are taking action to contain the spread and severity of the disease. Brookings Fellow Ross Hammond discussed the artificial society models he has helped develop that can aid professionals in better understanding how to prepare for and react to epidemics.
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Mon, 22 Dec 2008 15:55:44 GMT
Brookings’s Center on Social and Economic Dynamics has pioneered a model that forecasts how infectious diseases like the flu spread. Center director Joshua Epstein says the Obama administration should use modeling to avert pandemic outbreaks and restore faith in the public health system.
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Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

In classical mathematical epidemiology, individuals do not adapt their contact behavior during epidemics. They do not endogenously engage, for example, in social distancing based on fear. Yet, adaptive behavior is well-documented in true epidemics. Joshua M. Epstein, Jon Parker, Derek Cummings, and Ross A. Hammond explore the effect of including such behavior in models of epidemic dynamics.
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Wed, 26 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT
Joshua Epstein gave a presentation on why model social behavior during a NIH conference, which explored the field of social behavior modeling, identifying opportunities, challenges, and gaps in our collective knowledge. Participants explored the scope and direction of the field through presentations and facilitated discussion.
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Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT
Based on a keynote address, Joshua M. Epstein discusses and challenges enduring misconceptions about modeling, offering sixteen reasons other than prediction to build a model.
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Sun, 13 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT
Peyton Young addresses his recent game theory and agent-based modeling work in the Presidential Address to the World Congress of the Game Theory Society at Northwestern University.
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Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT
In his latest working paper, CSED Fellow Ross A. Hammond says that obesity is a substantial and growing public health crisis worldwide. Many of its features—breadth of scale, diversity in actors, and multiplicity of mechanisms—are hallmarks of a complex adaptive system. Thus, according to Hammond, the lessons and tools of complexity science can help us better understand and combat the obesity epidemic.
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Tue, 15 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT
On April 15, 2008 CSED affilate Shubha Chakravarty presented a talk on agent-based modeling at the Gates Foundation Grand Challenge 9 Meeting in Kampala, Uganda. The meeting focused on new progress in developing bio-fortified staple crop species, yielding discussion of using agent-based modeling to study crop diseases and genetic drift of new plant varieties.
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Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT
With the possibility of a national or international emergency, people need to know how to best be prepared. Joshua M. Epstein discusses how agent-based computational modeling has the ability to create artificial societies to model human behavior in an emergency situation.
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Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT
CSED Director and Economic Studies Senior Fellow Joshua Epstein explains his breakthrough computational modeling work, with a focus on how agent-based modeling can help explain human behavior as well as make strides in the public health field.
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Thu, 27 Dec 2007 00:00:00 GMT
With Feng Yu, Brookings Senior Fellow Joshua M. Epstein and Nonresident Fellows Georgiy V. Bobashev and D. Michael Goedecke introduce a hybrid Agent-based and Equation-based model that can dramatically save time and can better describe epidemiological processes involving human behavioral response.
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Fri, 21 Dec 2007 00:00:00 GMT
Jon Parker describes a distributed agent-based epidemic model that is capable of easily simulating several hundred million agents and discusses the overall design of the model.
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Fri, 07 Dec 2007 12:00:00 GMT
Event Information:
- December 07, 2007, 12:00 PM to 05:00 PM
The Brookings Center on Social and Economic Dynamics and the Metropolitan Policy Program jointly hosted an NICHD funded Agent Based Modeling and Spatial Population Dynamics Workshop at the Brookings Institution. Researchers from across the country attended the workshop to discuss current projects, to gain insight into agent-based modeling, and to unearth issues for future research collaboration.
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Thu, 08 Nov 2007 00:00:00 GMT
An event brought together top international obesity experts—from academia, government, industry, and non-profit—to work toward a comprehensive approach to the worldwide obesity pandemic. Brookings’s Ross Hammond discussed how insights and techniques pioneered at CSED can play a key role in facilitating an integrated approach.
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Wed, 31 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMT
H. Peyton Young analyzes the effect of incorporating heterogeneity into three broad classes of models -- contagion, social influence, and social learning.
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Mon, 10 Sep 2007 00:00:00 GMT
CSED Working Paper # 49 by Ben Klemens (September 2007)
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Thu, 30 Aug 2007 00:00:00 GMT
CSED Working Paper #48 by Ross A. Hammond and Joshua M. Epstein (August 2007)
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Fri, 13 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT
Presentation by Joshua M. Epstein (07/13/07)
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Wed, 30 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT
Brookings' Senior Fellow Joshua M. Epstein joined scholars from across the country at the University of Michigan to explore how complex systems approaches can be used to understand the broad problems of population health.
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Tue, 08 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT
Using high-throughput genotyping methods, CSED scholar Ben Klemens and a team of researchers helped identify genes linked to bipolar disorder.
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Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMT
Peyton H. Young surveys work on learning in games and delineates the boundary between forms of learning that lead to Nash equilibrium and forms that lead to weaker notions of equilibrium (or none at all).
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Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:00:00 GMT
Article on Ross A. Hammond (03/17/07)
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Fri, 01 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT
CSED Working Paper #46 by Joshua M. Epstein, D. Michael Goedecke, Feng Yu, Robert J. Morris, Diane K. Wagener, and Georgiy V. Bobashev (December 2006)
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Fri, 01 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT
People may realize different benefits and costs from the innovation, or have different beliefs about its benefits and costs, hear about it at different times, or delay in acting on their information. Peyton H. Young analyzes the dynamics arising from different sources of heterogeneity in a completely general setting without placing parametric restrictions on the distribution of the relevant characteristics.
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Fri, 10 Feb 2006 00:00:00 GMT
The objectives of this project were to conduct a comprehensive study of social influences on smoking behavior using an agent-based modeling approach.
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Wed, 01 Feb 2006 00:00:00 GMT
CSED Working Paper No.44 by Robert Axtell (February 2006)
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Thu, 01 Dec 2005 00:00:00 GMT
CSED Working Paper #43 by Peyton H. Young (December 2005)
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Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 GMT
In this CSED Working Paper, Brookings Senior Fellow, Joshua Epstein, treats a variety of epistemological issues surrounding generative explanation in the social sciences, and discusses the role of agent-based computational models in generative social science.
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Sun, 01 May 2005 00:00:00 GMT
CSED Working Paper No. 40 by Mary A. Burk and Frank Heiland entitled "Social Dynamics of Obesity"
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Fri, 01 Apr 2005 00:00:00 GMT
CSED Working Paper No. 39, by H. Peyton Young (April 2005)
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Mon, 01 Nov 2004 00:00:00 GMT
CSED Working Paper No. 37 by Gary Burtless (November 2004)
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Tue, 01 Jul 2003 00:00:00 GMT
CSED Working Paper No. 33: Physician Social Networks and Geographic Variation in Medical Care
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Sun, 01 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT
CSED Working Paper No. 31: Toward a Containment Strategy for Smallpox Bioterror: An Individual-Based Computational Approach
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Sat, 01 May 1999 00:00:00 GMT
Coordination in Transient Social Networks: