DePaul University

About: DePaul University is a education organization based out in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 5658 authors who have published 11562 publications receiving 295257 citations.

Classifying political regimes

Abstract: This study presents a classification of political regimes as democracies and dictatorships for a set of 141 countries between 1950 or the year of independence and 1990. It improves existing classifications by a better grounding in political theory, an exclusive reliance on observables rather than on subjective judgements, an explicit distinction between systematic and random errors, and a more extensive coverage.

Agent-based Simulation Platforms: Review and Development Recommendations

Abstract: Five software platforms for scientific agent-based models (ABMs) were reviewed by implementing example models in each. NetLogo is the highest-level platform, providing a simple yet powerful programming language, built-in graphical interfaces, and comprehensive documentation. It is designed primarily for ABMs of mobile individuals with local interactions in a grid space, but not necessarily clumsy for others. NetLogo is highly recommended, even for prototyping complex models. MASON, Repast, and Swarm are "framework and library" platforms, providing a conceptual framework for organizing and designing ABMs and corresponding software libraries. MASON is least mature and designed with execution speed a high priority. The Objective-C version of Swarm is the most mature library platform and is stable and well organized. Objective-C seems more natural than Java for ABMs but weak error-handling and the lack of developer tools are drawbacks. Java Swarm allows Swarm's Objective-C libraries to be called from Java; it does not seem to combine the advantages of the two languages well. Repast provides Swarm-like functions in a Java library and is a good choice for many, but parts of its organization and design could be improved. A rough comparison of execution speed found MASON and Repast usually fastest (MASON 1-35% faster than Repast), Swarm (including Objective-C) fastest for simple models but slowest for complex ones, and NetLogo intermediate. Recommendations include completing the documentation (for all platforms except NetLogo), strengthening conceptual frameworks, providing better tools for statistical output and automating simulation experiments, simplifying common tasks, and researching technologies for understanding how simulation results arise.

A community-based study of chronic fatigue syndrome.

Abstract: Background: Most previous estimates of the prevalence of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) have derived largely from treated populations, and have been biased by differential access to health care treatment linked with sex, ethnic identification, and socioeconomic status. Objective: To assess the point prevalence of CFS in an ethnically diverse random community sample. Design and Participants: A sample of 28 673 adults in Chicago, Ill, was screened by telephone, and those with CFS-like symptoms were medically evaluated. Main Outcome Measures and Analyses: Selfreport questionnaires, psychiatric evaluations, and complete medical examinations with laboratory testing were used to diagnose patients with CFS. Univariate and multivariate statistical techniques were used to delineate the overall rate of CFS in this population, and its relative prevalence was subcategorized by sex, ethnic identification, age, and socioeconomic status. Results: There was a 65.1% completion rate for the telephone interviews during the first phase of the study. Findings indicated that CFS occurs in about 0.42% (95% confidence interval, 0.29%-0.56%) of this random community-based sample. The highest levels of CFS were consistently found among women, minority groups, and persons with lower levels of education and occupational status.