Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Bill-Tracking Website Leads to Epidemic Tracing Breakthrough

Epidemics can be better traced now due to the analysis of data from a bill-tracking website, www.wheresgeorge.com . An article can be found here.

Quick Summary:

  • Historical epidemics, such as the plague during the Middle Ages, were only able to move slowly since people could only travel a few kilometers a day.
  • People today travel at much faster rates, so the rate disease spreads has to be faster.
  • Three physicists used the bill movement data at www.wheresgeorge.com to simulate the movement of people.
  • The data will drastically improve the predictions about the movement of disease during an epidemic.

My $0.02: With a pandemic looming on the horizon, a discovery like this can improve our ability to predict the disease's movement on a macroscopic scale. This discovery also helps to show how much power a thriving online community can have in the real world.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

YO NICOLE!ITS ELLIOTT!i just found ur blog and decided to check it out and it's pretty cool.i like the energy drink reviews lol.well ima go now but keep bloggin it up.c ya