Publications by authors named "Karen A Holbrook"

In light of new transparency in budgeting and expenditures expected of central research administration and reductions in the amount of indirect cost revenues distributed to colleges, departments, and faculty, universities must present a more accurate perspective on the "real costs" of research, costs that extend well beyond support for the central research office. The purpose of this article is to illuminate the significant gap between the real costs of research within universities and the funding that is available to support them.

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Background: Previous smallpox ring vaccination models based on contact tracing over a network suggest that ring vaccination would be effective, but have not explicitly included response logistics and limited numbers of vaccinators.

Methods: We developed a continuous-time stochastic simulation of smallpox transmission, including network structure, post-exposure vaccination, vaccination of contacts of contacts, limited response capacity, heterogeneity in symptoms and infectiousness, vaccination prior to the discontinuation of routine vaccination, more rapid diagnosis due to public awareness, surveillance of asymptomatic contacts, and isolation of cases.

Results: We found that even in cases of very rapidly spreading smallpox, ring vaccination (when coupled with surveillance) is sufficient in most cases to eliminate smallpox quickly, assuming that 95% of household contacts are traced, 80% of workplace or social contacts are traced, and no casual contacts are traced, and that in most cases the ability to trace 1-5 individuals per day per index case is sufficient.

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