NGA Ge0-Hack for Humanity Student Team Wins 2nd Place

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and T-REX sponsored the NGA Geo-Hack for Humanity held at the T-REX center in downtown St. Louis September 8-10, 2023. The MU-IDSI and DSA Program sent a team to compete. The hackathon was focused on Food Security. Students were asked to analyze key indicators related to food availability in a region of the world. Analysis included a wide variety of approaches, including the prediction of food availability based on crop yields, soil moisture, regional impacts/conflicts, and human population. The student teams were asked to conduct their problem solving and data analysis based on a real-world prompt.  The prompt was developed by…

Relationships Between Mortality and Respiratory Health, Medication Usage, Water Disappearance, and Climatic Conditions in Commercial Weaning-To-Finishing Pigs

Mortality in pigs is of paramount economic importance to United States pig producers.  According to data compiled by MetaFarms SMS and Pork Checkoff in 2022, 21.2% of pigs die before reaching slaughter, and this statistic has increased, in general, over the last 5 years. Although only 6.8% of these losses are attributed to pigs in the wean-to-finish production phase, these pigs are more valuable due to added daily feed expenditure.  Thus, reduction of weaning-to-finishing pig mortality is necessary to improve sustainability and profitability of current pig production operations.  The objective of the current study was to identify health and climatic variables that are…

Enhancing Single Cell RNA-seq Analysis and Annotation for Understanding the Impact of CD137 Agonist on Cancer Immunoprevention through Advanced Informatics Algorithms

SA-4-1BBL, a novel CD137 receptor agonist, has been generated by our group and selected as a promising candidate for preventing cancer progression in research. The SA-4-1BBL demonstrates notable immunoprevention efficacy in diverse tumor models when utilized as a treatment in research subjects. Nevertheless, this efficacy stands in contrast to 3H3, another CD137-targeting antibody, which appears failing in generating cancer prevention outcomes in research subjects. The differing results obtained with SA-4-1BBL and 3H3 have raised questions about the reasons behind this disparity even though SA-4-1BBL and 3H3 target the same CD137 receptor. To uncover the underlying differences between SA-4-1BBL, 3H3, and…

Relationships between mortality and respiratory health, medication usage, water disappearance, and climatic conditions in commercial weaning-to-finishing pigs

Mortality in pigs is of paramount economic importance to United States pig producers.  According to data compiled by MetaFarms SMS and Pork Checkoff in 2022, 21.2% of pigs die before reaching slaughter, and this statistic has increased, in general, over the last 5 years. Although only 6.8% of these losses are attributed to pigs in the wean-to-finish production phase, these pigs are more valuable due to added daily feed expenditure.  Thus, reduction of weaning-to-finishing pig mortality is necessary to improve sustainability and profitability of current pig production operations.  The objective of the current study was to identify health and climatic variables that…

Enhancing Single Cell RNA-seq Analysis and Annotation for Understanding the Impact of CD137 Agonist on Cancer Immunoprevention through Advanced Informatics Algorithms

SA-4-1BBL, a novel CD137 receptor agonist, has been generated by our group and selected as a promising candidate for preventing cancer progression in research. The SA-4-1BBL demonstrates notable immunoprevention efficacy in diverse tumor models when utilized as a treatment in research subjects. Nevertheless, this efficacy stands in contrast to 3H3, another CD137-targeting antibody, which appears failing in generating cancer prevention outcomes in research subjects. The differing results obtained with SA-4-1BBL and 3H3 have raised questions about the reasons behind this disparity even though SA-4-1BBL and 3H3 target the same CD137 receptor. To uncover the underlying differences between SA-4-1BBL, 3H3,…

Exploration of Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (AI) Using Remote Sensing to Discover Climate, Environment, and Anthropogenic Features Related to Population Health 

Computational modeling of geospatial data can bring valuable insight into communicable diseases, noncommunicable diseases, and vector-borne diseases. However, each of these disease classes has its own challenges in terms of geospatial data analysis. Complex dynamics of environmental and social risk factors can determine the distribution of some diseases such as COVID-19, obesity and malaria, respectively. Environmental factors such as humidity, precipitation, rainfall, temperature, land use and land coverage, vegetation, and elevation play key roles in predicting prevalence or outbreaks. Measuring these features is time-consuming, costly, and biased since they are subject to human judgment. Remote sensing data, environmental and imagery,…

Data Science Innovation to Advance Journalism 

COLUMBIA, Mo. (July 24, 2023) — Damon Kiesow is now the Knight Chair in Journalism Innovation at the Missouri School of Journalism, an update from his previous title of Knight Chair in Digital Editing and Producing. The new title reflects the evolution of the endowed chair position and Kiesow’s research and service as he finishes his fifth year at the School. Read more…

Productive Summer Curriculum Retreat at the MU Institute for Data Science and Informatics

The faculty members at the MU Institute for Data Science and Informatics recently concluded a highly successful curriculum retreat this summer. The primary focus of the retreat was to meticulously review the curriculum, spanning from bootcamps to capstone projects, with the ultimate goal of providing an unparalleled learning experience for our students. Throughout the retreat, our dedicated faculty engaged in rigorous discussions and collaborative sessions to ensure the continuous refinement of our curriculum. By doing so, we aim to maintain the utmost coherence in our courses, while simultaneously delivering cutting-edge AI/ML tools and techniques in our data science training. This…

Deer spread COVID to humans multiple times, new research suggests

Americans have transmitted COVID-19 to wild deer hundreds of times, an analysis of thousands of samples collected from the animals suggests, and people have also caught and spread mutated variants from deer at least three times. The analysis published Monday stems from the first year of a multiyear federal effort to study the virus as it has spread into American wildlife, spearheaded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS.  Read More……