Publications by authors named "K M Kuntz"
Article Synopsis
- The Lunar Environment heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI) is designed to capture x-ray images from solar wind interactions in Earth's magnetosheath, helping researchers understand energy transfer into Earth's magnetosphere.
- As part of a lunar lander mission landing in Mare Crisium, LEXI features a unique array of 48 neodymium magnets to protect against interference from charged particles while minimizing stray magnetic fields.
- A Runge-Kutta-based simulation model shows that LEXI's deflector array and other particle suppression methods effectively limit proton and electron contamination, ensuring the success of its imaging capabilities and offering insights for similar instruments.
Background: Mathematical models served a critical role in COVID-19 decision making throughout the pandemic. Model calibration is an essential, but often computationally burdensome, step in model development that provides estimates for difficult-to-measure parameters and establishes an up-to-date modeling platform for scenario analysis. In the evolving COVID-19 pandemic, frequent recalibration was necessary to provide ongoing support to decision makers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: To calibrate Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET)'s SimCRC, MISCAN-Colon, and CRC-SPIN simulation models of the natural history colorectal cancer (CRC) with an emulator-based Bayesian algorithm and internally validate the model-predicted outcomes to calibration targets.
Methods: We used Latin hypercube sampling to sample up to 50,000 parameter sets for each CISNET-CRC model and generated the corresponding outputs. We trained multilayer perceptron artificial neural networks (ANNs) as emulators using the input and output samples for each CISNET-CRC model.
Article Synopsis
- Blood-based biomarker tests could potentially transform colorectal cancer screening, but their effectiveness and cost-effectiveness compared to fecal testing and colonoscopy depend on specific sensitivities, costs, and testing intervals.
- A study using modeling techniques found that annual fecal immunochemical testing and colonoscopy provide more quality-adjusted life-years (QALY) at a lower cost than a blood test that meets minimum CMS standards.
- For blood tests to be recommended, they must achieve a higher sensitivity for advanced adenomas and be priced below $125; otherwise, they are less beneficial than current screening methods.
Background: Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) are the gold standard for assessing treatment effectiveness; however, they have been criticized for generalizability issues such as how well trial participants represent those who receive the treatments in clinical practice. We assessed the representativeness of participants from eight RCTs for chronic spine pain in the U.S.
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