Data Science: hot links

This is what I'm looking at for now:

Why an MIT PhD Says Big-Data Education Is Now 'Fundamentally Important'


TOP 10 BIG DATA AND DATA SCIENCE CONFERENCES IN 2016

Where do college graduates work?

New KDnuggets Tutorials Page: Learn R, Python, Data Visualization, Data Science, and more

Introducing the Chief Data Scientist

Does Open Data Build Trust?
A story of Demond, police data, and his grandmother’s recycling bin

The Definitive Guide to Do Data Science for Good

The Data Science Industry: Who Does What (Infographic)

Data and Medicine by Code.org

Predict Winds to Come with a Climate Data Visualization Tool

Gov't Open Data: Food Deserts

This online post from the American Nutrition Assoc. cites the USDA's definition of a "food desert": "[P]arts of the country vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas. This is largely due to a lack of grocery stores, farmers’ markets, and healthy food providers."

Above is the map they provide generated from data provided by the Dept. of Agriculture, Centers for Disease Control. 

This is a very important topic that is ideally portrayed by data visualization (dataviz) in map form.

The USDA Economic Research Service provides a Food Access Research Atlas where you can:

• Create maps showing food access indicators by census tract using different measures and indicators of supermarket accessibility;
• View indicators of food access for selected subpopulations; and
• Download census-tract-level data on food access measures.

They also have created a Food Environment Atlas with the following objectives:

• to assemble statistics on food environment indicators to stimulate research on the determinants of food choices and diet quality, and
• to provide a spatial overview of a community's ability to access healthy food and its success in doing so.

 Here in Omaha, the local news station reported on the plans of the Omaha Economic Development Corp. to bring fresh produce to North Omaha by constructing a grocery store using recycled shipping containers and starting a farmer's market. 

I was able to use the Food Access Research Atlas to do a quick map of the areas considered to be a food desert in North Omaha.

With this map, the green area corresponds to low income and low access at 1 and 10 miles. (Original Food Desert measure)

Ejection fraction (EF) measurements from MRI: Data Science Bowl 2015

I was eagerly anticipating this next competition in the Booz Allen Hamilton Data Science Bowl series on Kaggle, in association with the NIH's National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

I have just finished a refresher course in statistics, and am now moving onto more serious analytics tools. I'm looking forward to this practical application of data science that utilizes my domain knowledge and experience in medicine, as well as my work in producing medical media.


Here's the task:

4-chamber Cine MRI

"The 2015 Data Science Bowl challenges you to create an algorithm to automatically measure end-systolic and end-diastolic volumes in cardiac MRIs."

The purpose of these measurements is to determine cardiac output (volume of blood pumped per minute) by way of the ejection fraction (EF). "EF is the percentage of blood ejected from the left ventricle with each heartbeat." The end-systolic and end-diastolic volumes are used to derive the EF, which quantifies the heart's ability to pump blood.

Cardiac Output and Ejection Fraction

When the competition was started yesterday morning, what immediately came to mind was my experience as a surgery resident. Patients were scheduled for elective procedures and it was my job to ensure that they were prep'ed and cleared for surgery.

A patient's primary care physician might note that he or she had a cardiac history that needed to be addressed given the stresses of general anesthesia. EF was necessary to be determined.

This required a cardiac consult, which would involve a MUGA (multigated acquistion) scan (now MRI video is used), for the cardiologist to determine the EF. It was the number the anesthesiologist would look for on the chart before the patient was brought to the OR.

The Cleveland Clinic Web site provides an excellent discussion of the role of ejection fraction in determining cardiac health.

Frank-Starling Mechanism and a rubber band (a closer look why cardiac output and ejection fraction are important)

I remember reading my physiology text in medical school seeing this rubber band analogy to explain the Frank-Starling mechanism for heart function.

The heart muscle, specifically the left ventricle that has the major task of pumping throughout the entire body, stretches as venous blood is returned to the heart. Think of this as a rubber band stretching. Then the muscle contracts. This is the rubber band being allowed to apply a force as it contracts.

In this way, the heart can produce more forceful contractions if more blood is being returned from its trip through the body's circulatory system.

Systole is when the heart chamber (in this case we're looking at the left ventricle) is completely contracted, and diastole is when the the chamber is stretched and about to apply the force of contraction. As you can see in the photos, diastole 1 is moderate filling of the chamber, and diastole 2 is a greater filling. With diastole 2 in this example, you see how the rubber band (representing the heart muscle fibers) is stretched more and will apply a greater force when it contracts then with diastole 1. In the heart, the more the filling, the greater to force of contraction and therefore greater cardiac output.

"It's the heart's intrinsic way of synchronizing cardiac output with an increased venous return," says the author of this YouTube video.

With a diseased heart, this mechanism breaks down and the blood returning to the heart is not being adequately pumped to supply the oxygen needs of the body.



Good luck to all those teams participating. I'll be participating under the team name "Heartland Data."

(#datascibowl on Twitter)

Make / Happen: A Conference for Doers in Omaha

I was attracted to this conference when I noticed the inclusion of Seth Godin as the keynoter. I've read a number of his books on marketing and personal branding strategy, and even spoke to him on the phone once about the mathematics of blackjack. (I think it was in the context of the book about the MIT students who were counting cards at the casinos around the country.)

He has a new book out "Poke the Box," and you can read and listen to it for free with Amazon's Kindle Unlimtied program.

This conference is hosted by the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce and will be held locally here in Omaha at the Holland Center on Oct. 8.

http://www.make-happen.com/

From their "About" page:

No offense to the "sit-back-and-watch-er," but we're really looking for doers

Business and community leaders ready to reach beyond the status quo, stir something up and create real plans of action to positively impact themselves, their business and the community. Together, we’ll explore new paths toward personal development, learn how to ignite innovation and practice taking intentional risks. 

Make / Happen is an unanswered question, an incomplete phrase, a _____ that you must fill in for yourself. Make "what" happen? That’s entirely up to you.

 Speaker list:

KEYNOTE: Seth Godin
Best-Selling Author and Entrepreneur

• GO – Make Something Happen!

Nicole M. Bianchi
Founder & President, Resolution Partners

• Big Problems = Big Opportunities
  Issues need courageous and inspired business leaders to build scalable solutions...build something you are passionate about! 

Fergus Hoban
CEO, Think Whole Person Healthcare

Kim Hoogeveen, Ph.D. 
CEO and Psychologist, MindSet LLC

• It's the Culture, Stupid!

Steve Martin
CEO, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska

Othello Meadows
Executive Director, Seventy Five North Revitalization Corp.

• Risking Comfort for Excellence

Doug Lipp
CEO & President, G. Douglas Lipp & Associates, International Consultant and Best-Selling Author

• Creating Cultures of Significance – The Magic of Imagine: Unleashing Your Creativity. Innovation lessons from Disney U.
   
• Budgets are Tight, Creativity is Free. Prescription for a No Excuses Culture

Jorge M. Zuniga, Ph.D.
Creighton University

• Giving a Hand to Innovation and Creativity: The 3D Printing Prosthetics Revolution

Joseph Plumeri
Vice Chairman, First Data Board of Directors

• The Power of Being Yourself: A game plan for success by putting passion into your life and work.

W. Todd  Johnson
Global Channel Leader, Entrepreneurship and Job Creation, Gallup

• Intrapreneurship: Finding the Right Intrapreneurs to Execute Ideas

The Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Tech in now over 20 years old

 http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2819918

 Here's their update from last year (click to enlarge):

The more reports that I write, the more I come back to this curve. But there's a dimension missing here, namely geographic location. Maybe you could include the level of disruption tolerance.

Of all new technologies, the cell phone probably had the easiest path to acceptance because folks could grok that "it's a phone." Even as calls were dropped, expectations never seemed to run high.

Now it's used less like a phone (who likes receiving the random disruption of their day? Texting, social media and even video streaming has taken over, ensuring the cell phone never dropped into the trough of disillusionment.

What lessons are to be learned from this for streamlining the acceptance of new tech?

CNBC ranks Nebraska 7th in best for business poll

Nebraska scored high marks in friendliness and cost of living.

Nebraska's Internet Speed Metrics - Bingeing on Bits

Especially important for viewing a binge-watchable series (Netflix's Bloodline being worthy of the famous quote by Tolstoy about families) is adequate and reliable Internet bandwidth.

I picked this up from Gizmodo:

See How Fast Your State's Broadband Is With This Interactive Map

On this interactive map, it looks like Nebraska is below the national average for Internet speed as measured by Speedtest.net. (27.2 vs. 33.9). This makes Nebraska 34th out of 50 States and Wash. DC. (Reported in Mbps = megabits per second)

(Click on all graphics for a larger view. Then click "X" in the upper righthand corner to return to blog.)

A more nuanced view is seen in the Net Index Explorer Web page. Here you see Omaha (32.6 Mbps) as being just below the national average. The town of Bennington tops it at 46.8 Mbps. This merits some investigation. I can't vouch for these numbers, so I'll have to take them as a starting point to find the meaning of this and other reports. I'm skeptical by nature, and don't accept numbers at face value, especially at 4 significant digits. Time to start digging.

This prompted me to check my own connection. A download speed of 9 Mbps is quite a drop from when I last tested it. Have to look into this.