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The ability to produce timely and accurate flu forecasts in the United States can significantly impact public health. Augmenting forecasts with internet data has shown promise for improving forecast accuracy and timeliness in controlled settings, but results in practice are less convincing, as models augmented with internet data have not consistently outperformed models without internet data. In this paper, we perform a controlled experiment, taking into account data backfill, to improve clarity on the benefits and limitations of augmenting an already good flu forecasting model with internet-based nowcasts. Our results show that a good flu forecasting model can benefit from the augmentation of internet-based nowcasts in practice for all considered public health-relevant forecasting targets. The degree of forecast improvement due to nowcasting, however, is uneven across forecasting targets, with short-term forecasting targets seeing the largest improvements and seasonal targets such as the peak timing and intensity seeing relatively marginal improvements. The uneven forecasting improvements across targets hold even when “perfect” nowcasts are used. These findings suggest that further improvements to flu forecasting, particularly seasonal targets, will need to derive from other, non-nowcasting approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on coupled networks, taking node load, capacity and load redistribution between two networks into consideration, we propose functionally identical coupled networks, which consist of two networks connected by interlinks. Functionally identical coupled networks are derived from the power grid of the United States, which consists of many independent grids. Many power transmission lines are planned to interconnect those grids and, therefore, the study of the robustness of functionally identical coupled networks becomes important. In this paper, we find that functionally identical coupled networks are more robust than single networks under random attack. By studying the effect of the broadness and average degree of the degree distribution on the robustness of the network, we find that a broader degree distribution and a higher average degree increase the robustness of functionally identical coupled networks under random failure. And SF-SF (two coupled scale-free networks) is more robust than ER-ER (two coupled random networks) or SF-ER (coupled random network and scale-free network). This research is useful to construct robust functionally identical coupled networks such as two cooperative power grids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies with a focus on the interrelationships among health information seeking behavior (HISB), and health status or use of preventive health measures for U.S. adults both with and without a high school diploma. Key results of ordinal and binary logistic regression analyses indicated that, after controlling for demographic factors, (1) adults with a high school diploma use more text-based health information sources while adults without a high school diploma use more oral sources, (2) using the Internet as a source of health information is more strongly related to reporting excellent/very good health status than having a high school diploma, (3) those without a high school diploma who use the Internet report the largest increase in health status over any other health information source, and (4) for those with learning disability or vision problem, a high facility in reading English is an important predictor of whether the Internet is used as a health information source. The Internet appears to play a key role in both enhancing health status and enabling use of preventive measures for those with and without a high school diploma; although, individuals without a high school diploma who use the Internet for health information derive substantial benefit in health status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]