An epidemic calculator for COVID infections

To a non-expert as most of us comprehending the numbers, the forecasts and the epidemiological parameters presented in the literature may be quite a challenge. I found online a very interesting calculator for COVID that addresses this gap in our understanding.

Figure 1. A calculator to be used to measure one’s risk of exposure to the disease for any given day of the epidemic

The variables for transmission dynamics that can be modified are:

• population inputs: size of population, number of initial infections
• basic reproduction number (measure of contagiousness) : the number of secondary infections each infected individual produces
• transmission times: length of incubation period, duration patient is infectious

The variables for clinical dynamics that can be modified are:

• mortality statistics: fatality rate, time from end of incubation to death
• recovery times : length of hospital stay, recovery time for mild cases
• case statistics: hospitalization rate, time to hospitalization

One may drag horizontally the line for the day of intervention in order to decrease the transmission and then the parameters for susceptible cases, exposed cases, infectious cases, population no longer infectious, fully recovered cases, number of active hospitalizations and fatality rate values will change accordingly.

The infectious disease is mathematically modelled using a compartmental model. The population is assigned to one of the four compartments: susceptible (S), exposed(E), infectious (I) and recovered(R). A mathematical set of equations is used to model the progress of people from one compartment to another. The model runs either on a set of ordinary differential equations (deterministic) or using a stochastic framework (more close to reality).

I attended many online meetings about various models for the clinical data available for COVID cases and I found this model as quite suitable. This epidemiologic calculator uses the SEIR model which assumes that S+E+I+R=N where N is constant as it is assumed that the birth and death rates are equal. I hope this calculator may be of assistance in better administrating the situation with this pandemic.

The situation for COVID-19 cases in countries in Europe - 7 April 2020

COVID-19 affects everyone’s life and routine. The meetings started to become virtual meetings. The streets are empty, the offices are empty but the virtual world is very busy. I didn’t see an open communication with the public about the real situation in any of the countries that I have an eye on, The Netherlands where I live, UK and most importantly Romania, my home country.

Yesterday, randomly, I had a virtual meeting with the data science team from a company in Rotterdam that promotes a visualisation tool that can provide predictive insights to the government of any country. The tool can estimate the effects of non pharmaceutical interventions based on the understanding of the outbreak hotspots all over the world.

This is how I had a closer look at the resources that people have as reliable source of information on the number of confirmed cases and deaths in each country. This main source of reliable information represents the list of situation reports provided by the World Health Organisation. Yesterday, April 7, another situation report was released.

The number of confirmed cases and the number of deaths reported for each country are sureal. This is how I started to look at the data in Excel. I had problems to understand how much is too much, how can I interpret these values. One would not find as fair to say that the same value for confirmed cases for a small country has the same weight as for a country with a larger population. This is why I added another column, that of confirmed population for that country in 2020.

Maybe not all have time to do this research and this is the reason why I decided to share with you my Excel sheet with the raw data in the link above. I personally wanted to see which is the percentage of the population for each European country that represents the confirmed cases. I was surprised to see, in figure 1, that in fact we discuss here about less than 1% of the population for that country.

Figure 1. The total number of confirmed cases until April 7 versus the total population of the reported country

Later on I had a look at the total number of deaths until April 7 versus the total population of the reported country. Figure 2 presents the situation for these cases. The greatest value, with a small anomaly in San Marino at 0.1%, represents 0.03% of the total population for that country.

Figure 2. The total number of deaths until April 7 versus the total population of the reported country

Last but not least, one can have the “barometer” of the immune system per country, which is the percentage from the total number of confirmed cases until April 7 that represents the total number of deaths. Figure 3 shows that a maximum of 13% of the confirmed cases actually end up with the death of the patient.

Figure 3. The total number of deaths from the total number of confirmed cases until April 7

I know that people are not statistics but the fear that is in the air nowadays is a little bit pushed too far. People start to need a psychologist in order to handle the current lifestyle in isolation in the privacy of your own home. This doesn’t mean that we should not be cautious as before with the hygiene but I think that we also deserve to enjoy ourselves a little bit more now that Easter is coming.

STRP – The Conference for The Curious

The man and the machine are more and more connected though new apps and new devices. The behaviour and the way of thinking of a biological system needs to be translated in lines of code so that the quality of life of people is further increased. More and more biological data needs to be collected, processed, analysed and interpreted. This provides ample reason for STRP to focus on Senses & Sensors in the Biennial of 2017, where both scientists and local people are invited to indulge in their own sense of curiosity.

Video 1. Conference for The Curious – the presentation video created by OddOne for STRP and distributed on Vimeo

During the STRP Conference for The Curious : Senses & Sensors on 28 March 2017, high profile international speakers explored this theme from different perspectives. Artists and designers, writers and scientists, and nonetheless coders are gathered to show a glimpse on how are interpreted the complex processes through which the world around us is perceived both by human and machine. Together they outlined the contours of new developments in today’s sensory systems, and shared their thoughts on how this could influence us. The talk for each presenter was recorded and posted online through YouTube and it is accessible through the link attached to their individual name.

The moderator of the first part of the day is Isolde Hallensleben (NL), who is a main contributor to the development of the TU/e Innovation Space, a place for challenged-based, interdisciplinary and hands-on education.

Photo 1. Conference for The Curious – curiosity

The first presenter, Claire L. Evans (US), a musician and a writer, brings us to our attention that in science fiction music is shown as the universal language of communication, and it is a way to quantify and transmit the emotional and cultural impact of life.

Photo 2. Conference for The Curious – the presentations

The second presenter, Tobias Revell (UK) is an internationally-exhibited artist, designer and programme director for Graphic Design Communication at London College of Communication. He focuses on the interplay between mythology and contemporary technology.

Photo 3. Conference for The Curious – the human and the cup of tea

The third presenter, Tom Pursey (UK) is the co-founder and creative director of Flying Object, a London-based creative agency that developed the prize winning exhibition Tate Sensorium in 2015.

Photo 4. Conference for the Curious – let’s make sense of the future now

To Sissel Tolaas (NO), the fourth presenter, the nose knows a lot more than most of us know. After studying and working at the universities in Oslo, Warsaw, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Oxford and Princeton, Sissel works actively and focuses on the topic of smell, smell and language communication since 1990, within different sciences, fields of art and other disciplines. Sissel believes that smell is a crucial component to define, understand and move within a specific environment and now creates in the lab “the alphabet for the nose”.

Photo 5. Conference for The Curious – the workshops

The moderator for the second part of the day is Koert van Mensvoort, an artist and philosopher best known for his work on the philosophical concept of Next Nature. He introduces and moderates the highlight of the Conference for the Curious - the keynote by Kevin Kelly (US), the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, and the author of bestsellers such as What Technology Wants (2010) and The Inevitable(2016).

Video 2. Conference for The Curious – the program

The Conference for The Curious was the meeting place for 2 days with in-depth talks and interviews for creators and thinkers, do-ers and experts, who are shifting every day the borders of current knowledge within their field of expertise through novel techniques and devices.

STRP - ways to visualise biological data

STRP Biënnale, one of world's ten leading festivals on creative technology, incited the curiosity of 30 000 visitors over a period of 10 days this year. Both well recognised scientists and talented young makers present their work at this event. It offers the audience the chance to experiment various scientific themes and see the result immediately. I was part of the crew team this year.

Figure 1. Let's make sense of the future now

Man and machine are connected more and more by systems that translate the sensory information into digital command lines. The key to a successful connection between man and machine is the interaction method. Physics and engineering play an important role to design new and more efficient ways to translate for the machine what the body understands through biological pathways what the environment input states. The future of technology depends upon discovering new forms of interaction.

Video 1. STRP project documentation from Milan van Belle on Vimeo.

This subject is not easy for the audience to embrace. For this, a simple and very popular app (The Particle Party) was designed to track in real time, with dots, the movement of a person in front of a screen. The time allocated was short, and the trace is saved by the user as a photograph.

Figure 2. Celebrate our senses at the Particle Party

"We will keep adding new sensors and senses to the things we make. Of course, everything will get eyes (vision is almost free), and hearing, but one by one we can add superhuman senses such as GPS location sensing, heat detection, X-ray vision, diverse molecule sensitivity, or smell. These permit our creations to respond to us, to interact with us, and to adapt themselves to our uses. Interactivity, by definition, is two way, so this sensing elevates our interactions with technology."

( Kevin Kelly, 2016 )

Design your world

In October of each year, Dutch Design Week takes place in Eindhoven. The biggest design event in Northern Europe presents work and ideas of more than 2500 designers to more than 275 000 visitors from home and abroad. In more than a hundred locations across the city, Dutch Design Week organises and facilitates exhibitions, lectures, prize ceremonies, networking events, debates and festivities. Last year I was part of the organising crew for the event.

Figure 1. My participation at the training for the new crew members

An average family owns at least 200 000 objects, from a paper clip to a toaster. Rarely we ask ourselves where these items came from, how they are made, or how we can make them more suitable for our needs, or more presentable. This event organises a series of interviews and presentations from top designers and new talents in the field that answer some of these questions.

Video 1. Presentation of Martijn Paulen, director of Dutch Design Week

In the past, the designer created new products and then various marketing techniques were used to sell the product to the customer. This method doesn't work anymore. Nowadays the customer's needs are put in the center of attention of the designer from the beginning of the creative process.

Video 2. Presentation of Martijn Paulen, director of Dutch Design Week

As consumers, we are losing sight of the complex world behind the products and services that we use every day. One of the main organisers of this exhibition, designer Bas van Abel, researched the market of smartphones that we all possess nowadays. He asked himself what should be the balance between the financial and the other values when it comes to product development. He asked himself also which is the role of a designer: to simply design the final product without thinking of the costs for the materials and for the production process, or to consider all the aspects before applying for a patent. He chose to develop a sustainable telephone of his own, the Fairphone, that takes into account all aspects, from human, to material costs, and production pipeline.

Video 3. Presentation of Bas van Abel, ambassador for Dutch Design Week

Technology develops more and more nowadays, quicker as the time passes by, and the automatization process of everything around us increases in use each day. We rely more and more on technology for more and more of our daily tasks. With the use of improved technology, one may complete more daily tasks nowadays, and the things around us adapt better to our needs with the use of technology. Nevertheless, there is always a balance between the human factor and the use of technology, a balance that is harder and harder to keep in mind with the increase of speed in our lives.

Video 4. Presentation of Maarten Baas, ambassador for Dutch Design Week

Each one of us can make time to better understand the products and services that we use every day. Increased knowledge of these details makes us more capable to make responsible decisions in our lives. A responsible consumer, if not even a designer, can make this world a better place to live.

Smarter lifestyle with Philips

During The Dutch Technology Week in 2016 I attended a very interesting event about how technology improves the quality of life of the ageing population.

The demand for healthcare that provides high quality at affordable costs is continuously growing. People when they are getting older they want to be self-sufficient for as long as possible, without having to leave the security of their own homes.

These technological innovations represent the target of the Slimmer Leven 2020 cooperative, a partnership within the Southeast of Netherlands with Brainport Eindhoven region at its core. With a good cooperation between the members of the cooperative, significant breakthroughs were achieved in care, living and well-being with the use of eHealth applications.

Among the many partners in the cooperative, Philips gave a general presentation during The Dutch Technology Week. Philips supports the HealthSuite digital platform that represents the link between the healthcare providers and the patients. The data is collected with well-established security protocols and stored in a cloud-based platform. The data is collected from various devices and sources, stored on the platform, correlated and analysed by professionals and a diagnostic of the current health status of the patient is released. The patients may have an online appointment with the doctor, via a videophone, in the comfort of their home, to update the progress done and for future tasks to be achieved. The Personal Health File provides directly to the patient all the medical data, which gives the opportunity for the people to understand better the diagnostic received, and to better manage their health in the future. While living at home independently, one can be included in an online community with other people that have similar health problems, and receive support.

Video 1 . One of the presentations of Philips about smarter living during The Dutch Technology Week 2016

Philips celebrated 125 years of innovation up to 15 May 2016. Philips doesn't innovate just for the sake of it, but it provides personalised technological solutions. I enjoyed watching, at the Philips Museum in Eindhoven, a small video that presents in a compact way so many years of technological design in medical imaging.

Video 2 . Philips has come a long way in developing new technology in healthcare during time, as the Philips Museum in Eindhoven nicely depicts in a short historic video

In the next ten years the demand for healthcare that provides a good trade-off between quality and affordability is rising, while the number of people working in healthcare is likely to be reduced. Making use of reliable technological innovations becomes a necessity for self-empowerment at an older age.

Innovation - from ideas to reality

During The Dutch Technology Week I attended a very interesting event. Innovation in technology, in 100 years, doubled the lifespan, tripled the income, reduced the food cost by 13 times, reduced the energy cost by 20 times, reduced the transportantion cost by 100 times, and reduced the communication cost by 1000 times. All these were possible when knowing how to get the maximum outcome from a technical innovation.

The first presentation talks about the industrial evolution. Ray Kurzweil's graph, "the most important graph in all the technology business", or even better said "the most important graph ever graphed" is on one of the slides. In 1965 the co-founder of Intel, Gordon Moore, observed that the number of transistors doubles every two years in the integrated circuits. Nowadays the components get cheaper, computers transform and get smaller, and Moore's law is still valid.

From the year 1784 we passed through four industrial revolutions, with an increased technical complexity with time. Nowadays machines do amazing things. An interesting statement presented was that there is a 93.5% chance that the job for accountants and auditors may be done in full automatic mode by a machine in the future.

Video 1 . The importance of innovation

The second presentation outlines the updates from 19 May 2016 for the taxation of the Dutch innovation box. The profit for the innovation box is taxed at an incredibly reduced rate of 5%, in comparison to the rate of 25% for the normal Dutch corporate income. The new innovation box proposal states that all the intangible assets developed after 30 June continue to benefit from the current regulations until 1 July 2021. The presentation discusses about the criteria for access to the innovation box, methods to determine the profit, methods to continue the development of intangible assets (the innovation), and administrative details.

Video 2 . The innovation box

The third presentation continues the discussion for the research and development tax credit scheme with details from the WBSO manual for the year 2016. It helps the entrepreneurs to continue the development of their technical innovation with low or lower costs, in order to remain competitive in the field.

Video 3 . Make the best use of innovation grants

The event had a fourth presentation, about technology and smart mobility. Unfortunately my telephone ran out of battery, and it is anyway outside the range of my research interests.

The event had two breaks when the entrepreneurs that attended the event could have had professional advice from the speakers regarding specific details for their own business. The atmosphere was relaxed and with a good exchange of information.

The fascinating world of innovation

One of the most important annual events in Eindhoven, The Dutch Technology Week, filled the area Strijp-S with people in May. The second event that I attended was [Night] <of> <the> nerds. It was organised by Future Bites. More than 55 different activities were prepared for anyone between 14 and 19 years old. Young people match their subject of passion and interest with the presentations prepared. The emphasis raised at this event is on the impact of enthusiasm and creativity over technology. The activities were organised in 5 sections: <challenge>, <clinics/workshops>, <tech talks>, <professions with a future> and <experiences>.

I kept reading about the awesome RoboCup competition but I didn't have the chance to see one of the teams with my own eyes until this event. It is a mid size league competition of autonomous football playing robots. I had the pleasure to see the Falcon robot football team and I enjoyed watching the game.

Video 1 . Robots playing football

An inspiring Tech Talk from Ineke Scheffers caught my attention. She outlined in Dutch most of her achievements that are described in further detail on her page. Girl power in coding can produce great results. I am not sure about the statement that women are better coders, but I know that women can be good coders. I think that one is either good or not good at the job done. If that one finishes the task at the deadline then the work is a success. I am a woman scientist who needs coding from time to time in order to complete the work needed. I liked listening to her presentation.

Video 2 . The presentation for the women coders

A challenging activity was the one about 3D printing. As most of the young people participating at the event may not have extended knowledge for creating the 3D structures of their dreams using CAD software, another software was presented step by step at the event.

Video 3 . The overall presentation for the elements of the event

It is very difficult to summarise the experience had at the event. Up to date technology was presented in a fun way. Although there were so many stands in such a small place the feeling was not that it might be crowded. Each activity presented challenged the mind to innovate. If one was interested in a particular subject then one can find out every single detail about it at this event. One can find out the science behind the technology, and also how "future proof" are the career opportunities in that direction. I wish I had more time to spend at this event.

Look with your hands

The young and the old were invited at an interesting event in Strijp-S Eindhoven during The Dutch Technology Week. This event was organised by The Modelling Association in Eindhoven, Architecture Lessons, and Permanent Future Lab. It presented the 3 months work of 150 children from primary schools (10-12 year old) in Best.

Video 1 . The overall presentation for the elements of the event

Trains are a good theme for a starting point in understanding the science behind this project. It is not as easy as it may seem at the first glance. The oval circuit was split into four sections. Each section was split itself again into four work areas. Each work area was given for setting up to a group of children with an adult supervisor. The work time per week was fixed during school time.

Video 2 . The presentation of a section of the train circuit

They managed to:

• do computer design in 2D and 3D for the scenery;
• find the suitable materials for the scenery and then perform laser cutting;
• design and implement the electronics behind it, using also a microcontroller.

Video 3. The presentation of another section of the train circuit

Personally I wouldn't have been able to participate at such a project at an age of 10-12 years. The children need to comprehend the electronics behind the scenery and the train track. The electronic elements are connected like in a LEGO game with Little Bits. They are color coded, magnetic and reusable. The DIY project also uses the computer of the size of a swipe card, version 2.0, from The Raspberry Pi Foundation The behaviour of each electronic building block in the circuit is checked firstly in the software environment.

Video 4. The hardware has a solid software behind it

The presentation during The Dutch Technology Week showed also a small video with how different hardware parts are put together by children, under supervision.

Video 5. The hardware requires focus on every small detail

The scenery has walking paths with one material, the water with a glassy one, the houses have different material for roof and the walls, and the trees are carefully designed. There are also people featured, in such a small size that one can barely keep the figurines in one's hand. It was a pleasure attending this event.

The recovery heart rate time

It is time for vacation . An idea for doing science , while having a good time , is to study the recovery time of the heart rate . One may have the chance of being an athlete for a day .

The science project that I have in mind requires little effort from the volunteers . A few minutes are needed to fill in information regarding the physical activity . Then an e - mail is received with the location and time when the science project takes place . On the day of the event the person jogs on a park route for a few minutes . The heart rate is measured immediately after the exercise has finished , and after one and two minutes . The event is finished with refreshments .

From the technical point of view , the data is processed based on two equations :

• The maximum heart rate is 220 ( beats per minute ) minus percentage the age of the runner ;
• The target heart rate zone is 50 - 85 % of the maximum heart rate .

The variation with age and gender is analysed for both non - athletes and athletes .

Would you like to participate in this activity , then fill in the form .