Mining data, gathering variables and recombining information: the flexible architecture of epidemiological studies

Bauer, Susanne

doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2008.09.008

Cited by 25 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…the ability of a system to make future maintenance and adaptability easier, 7) Appropriate IT-security procedures that ensures correct data access only by appropriate parties. Correct data capture, organization, and processing make it productive beyond the context of their collection when a controlled flow of data is channeled though the appropriate devices (Bauer, 2008). …”

Section: Prospects For Malaria Eliminationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prospects for malaria elimination in non-Amazonian regions of Latin America

Herrera¹,

Quiñónes²,

Quintero³

et al. 2012

Acta Tropica

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Latin America contributes 1 to 1.2 million clinical malaria cases to the global malaria burden of about 300 million per year. In 21 malaria endemic countries, the population at risk in this region represents less than 10% of the total population exposed worldwide. Factors such as rapid deforestation, inadequate agricultural practices, climate change, political instability, and both increasing parasite drug resistance and vector resistance to insecticides contribute to malaria transmission. Recently, several malaria endemic countries have experienced a significant reduction in numbers of malaria cases. This is most likely due to actions taken by National Malaria Control Programs (NMCP) with the support from international funding agencies. We describe here the research strategies and activities to be undertaken by the Centro Latino Americano de Investigación en Malaria (CLAIM), a new research center established for the non-Amazonian region of Latin America by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Throughout a network of countries in the region, initially including Colombia, Guatemala, Panama, and Peru, CLAIM will address major gaps in our understanding of changing malaria epidemiology, vector biology and control, and clinical malaria mainly due to Plasmodium vivax. In close partnership with NMCPs, CLAIM seeks to conduct research on how and why malaria is decreasing in many countries of the region as a basis for developing and implementing new strategies that will accelerate malaria elimination.

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Section: Prospects For Malaria Eliminationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prospects for malaria elimination in non-Amazonian regions of Latin America

Herrera¹,

Quiñónes²,

Quintero³

et al. 2012

Acta Tropica

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“…Numbers' remarkable capacity to represent truth and objectivity (Porter, 1995;Hacking, 1990) has been scrutinized and amplified in the last years by various investigations in Science and Technology Studies, attending to the various work numbers do in different professional and mundane domains: from counting in classrooms (Verran, 2001) and supermarkets (Lave, 1988;Cochoy, 2008), to calculation practices and devices in economics (Callon and Muniesa, 2005) and financial markets (Zaloom, 2003), to governing practices in environmental politics (Asdal, 2008) and policy making (Ballestero, 2015) to epidemiological modelling based on enumerated entities (Bauer, 2008;Mackenzie, 2014), to mention some central fields of study. These studies have a particular interest in the ambiguity and performativity of numbers: how numbers are produced, how they circulate, legitimize authority, and constitute the realities they claim to represent.…”

Section: Figuring Out Numbers In Sts As/in Relations Of Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Calculating Therapeutic Compliance

Klausner

2018

S&TS

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This article discusses calculation practices in the development of a monitoring device, aimed at improving therapeutic compliance of children and teenagers suffering from a deformation of the spine. In managing the complexities of physical parameters, therapeutic measures and interventions in every day life, numbers are central participants in inferring from and interfering into bodies and behaviours. Numbers are input and output of such monitoring systems, translating, circulating and visualizing body conditions, therapeutic effects and suggesting action. At the core of this generative process of capturing and interpreting data are algorithms as common participants of managing the complexities of vast amounts of data and providing the basis for interference in people’s lives. They process data and provide seemingly unambiguous numerical outcome, based on mathematical-technological processing of information. Attending to the incremental process of “learning algorithms” as central part of the system’s development allows me to describe the robustness of certain modes of inference. Beyond using the specific case as an exemplary for computer-based numerical inference and interference, the article is an attempt to probe and complement two theoretical approaches to the numerical management of complexity: Helen Verran’s focus on numbers’ performative properties and the potential tensions arising from divergent numerical orderings; and Paul Kockelman’s sieving of inferential and indexical chains along the generation of meaning and ontological transformativities.

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“…Social scientists and other scholars such as Erika Mansnerus (2009; and Susanne Bauer (2008) emphasize the manifold social construction of the epidemiological numbers, facts, and models, especially in association with simulations and modelling of the effects of vaccination and other public health strategies. Social scientists and other scholars such as Erika Mansnerus (2009; and Susanne Bauer (2008) emphasize the manifold social construction of the epidemiological numbers, facts, and models, especially in association with simulations and modelling of the effects of vaccination and other public health strategies.…”

Section: A Mackenziementioning

confidence: 99%

Multiplying numbers differently: an epidemiology of contagious convolution

Mackenzie

2014

Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory

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Contemporary data flows in science, business, government, and media draw numbers from two kinds of places. In some places, numbers are assembled and assigned through observing, counting, and measuring. In other places, numbers are assembled in a different way. Such places are usually defined mathematically as functions and implemented algorithmically in software. The numbers that come from them are not necessarily assigned to anything in the world as facts, keys, or codes. They are functional numbers. The time-space signature of calculation that results from the convolution of these two different supply chains of numbers has textures and traits that directly affect the unfolding of events. This paper reconstructs a symptomatic crisis event, the 2009 A/H1N1 'swine flu' influenza pandemic, from the standpoint of number flow in and around epidemiological models. In their sometimes drastic reshaping of lived space-times, epidemics generate and attract a plethora of numbers relating to human/non-human populations, human/non-human biology, vectors of infection, patterns of urban mobility, media use, clinical practice, and laboratory tests. Examining some key mathematical functions, data sets, plots, and computer model code, the paper reconstructs how these different kinds of numbers mix or 'convolve'. It suggests that the convolution of numbers to predict and control epidemics, or to disentangle different aspects of events more generally, might provoke us to think of how numbers multiply in multiple ways.The first distinguishing characteristic of thinking then is facing the factsinquiry, minute and extensive scrutinizing, observation. (Dewey 1957, 140)

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Mining data, gathering variables and recombining information: the flexible architecture of epidemiological studies

Cited by 25 publications

References 53 publications

Prospects for malaria elimination in non-Amazonian regions of Latin America

Prospects for malaria elimination in non-Amazonian regions of Latin America

Calculating Therapeutic Compliance

Multiplying numbers differently: an epidemiology of contagious convolution

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