Publications associées à How to detect and reduce potential sources of biases in studies of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19

Monitoring an Emergent Pathogen at Low Incidence in Wastewater Using qPCR: Mpox in Switzerland

Wastewater-based epidemiology offers a complementary approach to clinical case-based surveillance of emergent diseases and can help identify regions with infected people to prioritize clinical surveillance strategies. However, tracking emergent diseases in ...

2024

Biases in Information Selection and Processing: Survey Evidence from the Pandemic

Andreas Fuster

We conduct two survey experiments to study which information people choose to consume and how it affects their beliefs. In the first experiment, respondents choose between optimistic and pessimistic article headlines related to the COVID-19 pandemic and ar ...

2024

Verification of the Fourier-enhanced 3D finite element Poisson solver of the gyrokinetic full-f code PICLS

Stephan Brunner, Laurent Villard, Alberto Bottino, Moahan Murugappan

We introduce and derive the Fourier -enhanced 3D electrostatic field solver of the gyrokinetic full -f PIC code PICLS. The solver makes use of a Fourier representation in one periodic direction of the domain to make the solving of the system easily paralle ...

Elsevier2024

Exploiting the Signal-Leak Bias in Diffusion Models

Sabine Süsstrunk, Radhakrishna Achanta, Mahmut Sami Arpa, Athanasios Fitsios, Martin Nicolas Everaert

There is a bias in the inference pipeline of most diffusion models. This bias arises from a signal leak whose distribution deviates from the noise distribution, creating a discrepancy between training and inference processes. We demonstrate that this signa ...

2024

Using automated design appraisal to model building-specific devaluation risk due to land-use change

Adam Robert Swietek

Uncertainty of spillover effects – including property devaluation - from proposed land-use change elicits opposition to local development. This hinders cities’ ability to implement land-use policy aimed at housing affordability and environmental sustainabi ...

2024

It’s All Relative: Learning Interpretable Models for Scoring Subjective Bias in Documents from Pairwise Comparisons

Matthias Grossglauser, Aswin Suresh, Chi Hsuan Wu

We propose an interpretable model to score the subjective bias present in documents, based only on their textual content. Our model is trained on pairs of revisions of the same Wikipedia article, where one version is more biased than the other. Although pr ...

2024

Challenges of COVID-19 Case Forecasting in the US, 2020-2021

Joseph Chadi Benoit Lemaitre, Pan Xu, Myungjin Kim, Shan Yu, Lei Gao, Weitong Zhang, Wei Cao, Xinyi Li

During the COVID-19 pandemic, forecasting COVID-19 trends to support planning and response was a priority for scientists and decision makers alike. In the United States, COVID-19 forecasting was coordinated by a large group of universities, companies, and ...

Public Library Science2024

Osmosis-driven stiffening of structured hydrogels

Esther Amstad, Ran Zhao, Alexandra Thoma

Plant cells harness osmotic pressures to stiffen their leaves through strong turgor pressures. Key to this osmosisdriven stiffening is the confinement of liquids within semipermeable membranes that can regulate the transport of water molecules and ions. In ...

Elsevier2024

Waterborne Virus Transport and Risk Assessment in Lake Geneva Under Climate Change

Tamar Kohn, Chaojie Li

Climate changes influence lake hydrodynamics and radiation levels and thus may affect the fate and transport of waterborne pathogens in lakes. This study examines the impact of climate change on the fate, transport, and associated risks of four waterborne ...

2024

Using Negative Control Populations to Assess Unmeasured Confounding and Direct Effects

Mats Julius Stensrud

Sometimes treatment effects are absent in a subgroup of the population. For example, penicillin has no effect on severe symptoms in individuals infected by resistant Staphylococcus aureus, and codeine has no effect on pain in individuals with certain polym ...

Lippincott Williams & Wilkins2024

Epidemicity indices and reproduction numbers from infectious disease data in connected human populations

Andrea Rinaldo, Lorenzo Mari, Marino Gatto, Cristiano Trevisin

We focus on distinctive data-driven measures of the fate of ongoing epidemics. The relevance of our pursuit is suggested by recent results proving that the short-term temporal evolution of infection spread is described by an epidemicity index related to th ...

2024

A common NFKB1 variant detected through antibody analysis in UK Biobank predicts risk of infection and allergy

Jacques Fellay, Flavia Aurelia Shoko Hodel

Infectious agents contribute significantly to the global burden of diseases through both acute infection and their chronic sequelae. We leveraged the UK Biobank to identify genetic loci that influence humoral immune response to multiple infections. From 45 ...

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Dual-frame optimization for informationally complete quantum measurements

Ivano Tavernelli

Randomized measurement protocols such as classical shadows represent powerful resources for quantum technologies, with applications ranging from quantum state characterization and process tomography to machine learning and error mitigation. Recently, the n ...

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The role of spatial epidemiology to support public health policies : case studies applied to health promotion, noncommunicable and infectious diseases in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland

Anaïs Laurence Ladoy

In a context of escalating public health challenges, including the rise of chronic diseases, the impact of climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic, certain populations bear a disproportionate burden. As a result, there is an urgent need to develop public ...

EPFL2024

Near-Room-Temperature Detection of Aromatic Compounds with Inkjet-Printed Plasticized Polymer Composites

Thomas Maeder, Jürgen Brugger, Mohammadmahdi Kiaee

Chemiresistive gas sensors composed of a thermoplastic polymer matrix and conductive fillers offer various advantages for detecting volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including low power consumption due to near-room-temperature operation, high sensitivity, ...

Amer Chemical Soc2024

Inactivation of influenza A virus in expiratory droplets and aerosol particles and the associated physicochemical drivers

Aline Laetitia Schaub

Influenza is an infectious respiratory illness caused by influenza viruses. Every year, it causes up to one billion cases of disease worldwide. Despite its high disease burden, the transmission pathway of influenza remains subject to debate. There is incre ...

EPFL2024

Exploring High-Performance and Energy-Efficient Architectures for Edge AI-Enabled Applications

Joshua Alexander Harrison Klein

The desire and ability to place AI-enabled applications on the edge has grown significantly in recent years. However, the compute-, area-, and power-constrained nature of edge devices are stressed by the needs of the AI-enabled applications, due to a gener ...

EPFL2024

Serial Dependence in Human Visual Perception and Decision-Making

Gizay Ceylan

Decisions about a current visual stimulus are systematically biased by recently encountered stimuli, a phenomenon known as serial dependence. In human vision, for instance, we tend to report the features of current images as more similar â i.e., an attra ...

EPFL2024

Peptide-based virucidal drugs

Francesca Olgiati

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, viruses were not a major priority for the scientific community. Today, many events have changed the world and the importance of studying viruses, vaccines, and antiviral drugs is fully appreciated. The development of effective ...

EPFL2024

Quartiers rhodaniens en transition

Sara Sonia Formery Regazzoni

Over the course of history, the relationship between cities and their waters has shown different gradients of interweaving, marked by cycles of bonding and distancing. Following a period of complete neglect of urban watercourses, the versatile, multifacete ...

EPFL2024