Impact of changes in protective behaviors and out-of-household activities by age on COVID-19 transmission and hospitalization in Chicago, Illinois.

Purpose: Even with an efficacious vaccine, protective behaviors (social distancing, masking) are essential for preventing COVID-19 transmission and could become even more important if current or future variants evade immunity from vaccines or prior infection.

Methods: We created an agent-based model representing the Chicago population and conducted experiments to determine the effects of varying adult out-of-household activities (OOHA), school reopening, and protective behaviors across age groups on COVID-19 transmission and hospitalizations.

Results: From September-November 2020, decreasing adult protective behaviors and increasing adult OOHA both substantially impacted COVID-19 outcomes; school reopening had relatively little impact when adult protective behaviors and OOHA were maintained.

ISCORS Catalog of References to Parameter Values and Distributions Used in Environmental Pathway Modeling for Cleanup of Sites Contaminated with Radioactivity.

Federal and state regulatory agencies that are concerned with issues of environmental management have adopted approaches toward policy-making that are dose- and risk-informed. To that end they (and others) have developed environmental models and computer codes to mimic the transport of contaminants along air, water, food-chain, and related pathways for estimating potential exposures, doses, and risks to individuals, populations, and ecosystems. Their calculations commonly find application in the planning of remediation, and thereafter in the demonstration of compliance with federal and state cleanup standards.

MILDOS uranium milling dose assessment code update.

The MILDOS-AREA code was developed to estimate radiological doses and risks from uranium milling activities. The code has been used for demonstrating radiological compliance regarding the U.S.