YWiC (59)/Interim Report

Interim Report
http://mode.lanl.k12.nm.us/get_interim1112.php?team_id=59

Overview
When the World Trade Centers were attacked on September 11, 2001, many people risked their lives to save victims in the burning, collapsing building. The toxins have taken a toll on the health of survivors. These toxins (asbestos, benzene, particulate glass and many others) have been shown to cause lung disease, cancer, and numerous health problems.

Problem Definition
We are interested in studying this problem because the 9/11 attacks changed our nation and forever scarred victims and their families. We will use computer modeling to demonstrate how toxins in the dust have caused diseases to occur in a higher rate among first responders as opposed to diseases occurring in responders not directly exposed to the 9/11 attacks.

Problem Solution
We hope to show a clear correlation between the event and the health effects observed. We plan to use NetLogo to model a control population with normal rates of diseases and compare those to the rates of lung disease and cancer in first responders. We will be able to adjust variables to better understand the simulation and the simulated effects. Some examples of variables will include: whether they responded to the 9/11 crisis and inhaled dust, if they worked as search and rescue during the days that followed, and whether or not they wore a mask while digging through the rubble or while working during the collapse.

Progress to Date
We have successfully established two variables in the program -- first responders and the 9/11 date The 9/11 variable consists of an on and off button; the first responders button consists of first responders being at the site of the buildings collapsing. Once a first responder is infected by a harmful toxin, the variable objects turns to a red color; this represents the percentage of sick people, however this portrays the time of the infection. In the beginning the first responders slowly become infected, due to the dormancy of some infections, such as cancer.

Expected Results
The health problems that the first responders are being afflicted with are not going away; on the contrary, as time progresses more first responders are being diagnosed.

Interim Comments
My name is Jeff Grantham and I am a graduate student in the Computer Science Department at New Mexico Tech and I'll be providing some feedback on your interim report.

It looks like you have made some good progress on your project although it isn't clear how much more work needs to be done before the due date. Part of this is that the model you are using isn't clearly detailed in the interim report or the proposal and so the scope of the work being done isn't clear. Clearly conveying the details of your project will allow others to get a good idea of where you are, how far from completion you are and will allow us to help offer meaningful and useful advice to improve your project. It may be useful to look at the rubrics that will be used to evaluate your project so you can know what details will looked for (you can find them at and ).

Your interim report also didn't mention any mentors or provide any references, so it isn't clear if you have any. If you do need a mentor or need help finding references you can contact the supercomputing challenge to help you with that. Finally, I'm supposed to remind you that you will also have a face to face evaluation in February.

Good luck on your project and I look forward to seeing the final conclusions.

Hi Team 59, my name is Christopher Morrison. I am a challenge alumni from the years between 2003-2007. I am currently an senior at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, AZ studying aerospace engineering. I've just been accepted into a PhD program where I will either be involved in nuclear powered rockets or light propulsion (shining lasers at shiny discs to propel them into space). The Supercomputing Challenge really helped me and I know it will help you too. Knowing how to program and problem solve is a great trait that has helped me immensely.

I understand the idea behind your project. You want to see if inhaling 9/11 first responders have a higher rate of getting sick than non first responders.

I get the feeling that you are having trouble trying to figure out exactly how to model the problem.

My advice is that before you do any more programming, sit down and figure out the rules you want to put in your program. I see you are using an agent based modelling program, NetLogo. What agents are there? How will they interact? What are your metrics (the number you are keeping track of)? Be sure to have this figured out in time for your evaluations.

I have a few ideas about how you can use this to model your system.

Perhaps you can model the 9/11 scene. You can create a square area for the building and model human agents attempting to do something (perhaps leave the scene). You can then have other agents or blocks that represent disease causing things. Each time a human agent encounters a disease agent two things happen:

the chance for that human to get a disease increases the time that it takes for the human to get the disease decreases

So once the simulation is over (perhaps after all the humans have got away from the scene) you can have a predicted number of people who are going to get sick and when they get sick. You can modify parameters such as making human agents have a varying resistance to the disease, or making different disease agents.Perhaps these diseases can weaken over the time of the simulation.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions for me. My email is chris [ at ]chriseiffel.com.

Good luck on your project and I look forward to seeing the final conclusions.