Fighting Food Poisoning In Las Vegas With Machine Learning

aarondubrow writes: Computer science researchers from the University of Rochester developed an app for health departments that uses natural language processing and artificial intelligence to identify likely food poisoning hot spots. Las Vegas health officials recently used the app, called nEmesis, to improve the city's inspection protocols and found it was 63% more effective at identifying problematic venues than the current state of the art. The researchers estimate that if every inspection in Las Vegas became adaptive, it could prevent over 9,000 cases of foodborne illness and 557 hospitalizations annually. The team presented the results at the 30th Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence conference in February.

Re:Free Sea Food Buffet

[FatdogHaiku]

Do we really need an artificially intelligent app to tell us not to eat the comp'd seafood?

Next you'll be saying I should avoid the gas station sushi that I got free with a fill up!

Re:Free Sea Food Buffet

[Ichijo]

And why are so many ethnic restaurants located right next to animal clinics?

Re:

[Locke2005]

My father used to say that Mexican or Chinese restaurants are usually located next door to animal hospitals... the scary thing is how often it turns out to be true once you start looking for it!

Re:

[Shawn Willden]

Confirmation bias, plus a common third factor: both Chinese restaurants and animal hospitals seek low-cost commercial real estate, so they end up in strip malls.

Re: Free Sea Food Buffet

[Type44Q]

No, but you might want to avoid that egg salad sandwich from the vending machine in the spaceport men's room...

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[FatdogHaiku]

Nice Philip J. Fry ref., but it was an interstellar truck stop...
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/c47926/futurama-wormy-discovery [cc.com]

Gus' Galaxy Grill diner

[Lead Butthead]

You want to avoid the "Space Special" [wikia.com] too.

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[Ol Olsoc]

No, but you might want to avoid that egg salad sandwich from the vending machine in the spaceport men's room...

Especially with the homemade mayo on it.

Re:

[TWX]

Hell, the cheap surf-n-turf used to be one of the best reasons to vacation in Las Vegas.

I never vomit without tweeting about it

[Anonymous Coward]

It ruins the experience if I can't let the world know.

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[Locke2005]

So, you're a twitter shitter, then?

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[Anonymous Coward]

Can you tell us the name of your tin-foil supplier?

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[Locke2005]

Wow, next you're going to tell me that the police have a vested interest in not eliminating crime... although John Oliver did mention a certain Fire Special District that spent a lot of money on Fireworks... hmmm...

Re:

[plover]

The health department doesn't profit from food poisoning. Responding to suspected food poisoning is an expensive use of their scarce resources; they'd much rather be on the enforcement side doing inspections, preventing outbreaks so they don't have to react to them.

But you're right, an "I'm Sick" app might be a great way to help researchers pinpoint food-borne illness vectors. I've read that they've been data mining various social media sites to try to track back some of the previous infections at places

Anti-Regulation reaction

[gurps_npc]

How dare they use complaints to find and shut down the business of hard working food poisoners!

Didn't know Las Vegas had a problem

[fustakrakich]

The cruise ships [news.com.au] should get some benefits from this though.

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[bws111]

I am not aware of any norovirus outbreak on a cruise ship that was tied to the food. Norovirus is spread by two groups of idiots: those who don't wash their hands after using the bathroom, and those who don't wash their hands prior to eating. You would not believe the number of people who not only pass by the hand sanitizer they offer at the entry to dining rooms, but also REFUSE to use it even when requested by a crew member.

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[fustakrakich]

Anti-bacterial hand sanitizers are not the way to go. You just get more resistant bacteria. And I believe it goes much deeper than just washing your hands. These ships are floating cesspools and fire hazards. Even the ventilation system is suspect.

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[ArchieBunker]

Hand sanitizers are alcohol based and have nothing to do with the anti bacterial chemicals added to soap.

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[fustakrakich]

Then it would be more friendly to leave out a bottle of gin

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[Ol Olsoc]

Then it would be more friendly to leave out a bottle of gin

And it is ethanol in the hand cleaners. The gas station across the street sold a lot of small unscented hand cleaning gel. I think that some college kids did shots of it. Ick

Re: Didn't know Las Vegas had a problem

[Type44Q]

Clearly spoken as somebody who's never actually looked into the toxic solvents (*besides* ethyl alcohol) and bio-acumulative carcinogens that typically get put into hand sanitizers...

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[bws111]

Such as?

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[ArchieBunker]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

Contains NO triclosan or any known carcinogen. Type44Q must have heavy metal poisoning from prolonged exposure to his tinfoil hat.

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[bws111]

If you use the hand sanitizer/hand washing, you MIGHT not get ALL the germs. If you DON'T use it, you DEFINITELY won't get ANY of them. See the difference?

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[KGIII]

It's not perfect, can't have it as an option! There are a lot of idiots who think in binary. They're not limited to just being geeks.

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[Ol Olsoc]

I'm tired of this shit (see what I did there?) where everyone thinks that hand sanitizer is some magical device that sterilizes everything within a 5 mile radius. Hand washing is of limited use as well. Helpful... but limited.

And they are of no use against hard gamma either. That's sarcasm, or irony,or something.

No, they aren't perfect. But for a lot of things like e coli, they aren't all that shabby.

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[TheCarp]

Dude, I had norovirus within the past month. There is no way hand washing prevents its spread.

Noro happens in ANY environment where lots of people share space. Hell one investigation found that a person puking in one section of a resteraunt was responsible for another person across the room to get sick. It is, effectively, and airborn disease the moment someone vomits; which, in my experience, is often quite sudden and violent.

Additionally, it comes on so fast, its nearly impossible to self isolate unless y

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[umghhh]

Human norovirus is special in that minimum necessary number of these things needed for infection is 10-100. It is also quite long living - in carpet it can survive up to two weeks.
They obviously did a good job in this lab where it was developed...

Must fight this.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

9000 cases of food poisoning probably generates about 4.5 million dollars worth of direct economic activity. Employers would probably spend a few million more for hiring the temps. If this is not stopped they will go and find every thing that creates economic activity in the name of improving efficiency, quality of life and other touchy feely metrics.

We must all unite and fight this.

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[Locke2005]

Couldn't you create a lot more of the same kind of "direct economic activity" just by going around breaking people's legs? (Ok, you're being sarcastic)

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[plover]

In other words, if you take away the sources of food poisoning, you're taking away my opportunity to enjoy projectile vomiting.

They call that the "ruptured intestine fallacy [wikipedia.org]"

Good to see AI Research in practical use

[evolutionary]

I remember the University of Rochester was known for having one of the leading AI and optics research departments in the US . Kudos to them here.

Emesis

[Jonah Hex]

called nEmesis

emesis /emsis/ noun technical the action or process of vomiting.

Someone has a sense of humor at the University of Rochester!

Re:

[Archangel Michael]

I learned it as "Reverse Peristalsis"

Re:

[Jonah Hex]

Crap slashdot stripped the pronunciation special symbols, oh well you get the point.

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[bws111]

In what way are 'tea leafs' better than random chance? In a blind, controlled study, this performed 63% better than random. What is the increase for your 'tea leafs'? Do you have any idea what you are talking about?

But las vegas is about beating the odds!

[BarbaraHudson]

It's las vegas. Everyone there believes they can beat the odds. Come on, try the suchi. What are the odds you'll get sick? Are you chicken, Colonel Sanders?

Oh you've got to be kidding me...

[the_skywise]

>The most important distinction, however, is between
restaurants with minor violations (grades A and B) and those
posing considerable health risks (grade C and worse). nEme-
sis uncovers 11 venues in the latter category, whereas control
finds only 7, a 64% improvement.

They found 4 (count 'em FOUR) more restaurants than the control and conclude

>Given the ambiguity of online data, it may appear hope-
less to identify problematic restaurants fully automatically.
However, we demonstrate that nEmesis u

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Not needed

[nospam007]

"...uses natural language processing and artificial intelligence to identify likely food poisoning hot spots."

I don't need an app for that. It's the free buffets in casinos and strip clubs where people touch the serving utensils with their (unwashed after bathroom use) hands and where droplets of sniffles, coughs and sneezes are spread over the food.