Anthrax Propagation in the Human Body

(contact Kenneth De Jong kdejong —at— cs.gmu.edu

The interaction between pathogens and infected hosts is usually investigated using laboratory and live studies. But for some diseases, like inhalation anthrax, live studies are not possible due to their deadly effects. After examining laboratory studies, the spread of anthrax in human organs was modeled as a series of discrete events that map out a time course for infection in the human body. Different systems in the human body which play a role in inhalation anthrax were modeled as spatial entities to show how the anthrax disease flows through the body. The dynamics of these interactions were implemented using 2D sparse grids, one per system. The model also displayed statistics on the interactions of the systems and on the patient's health and disease state.

The Anthrax model was developed originally using SWARM in Objective-C, but was rewritten in its entirety in MASON in order to take advantage of MASON's speed and its control and inspection features. The individual performing the port had no previous knowledge of MASON at all, but reported that the port was fairly easy as MASON has a similar scheduling mechanism to SWARM.

Below we show screenshots of various windows in the Anthrax system. Note the Console's management of large numbers of windows.