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Web-Crawling Program Spots Disease Outbreaks
no1home writes "There is a story at Discovery Channel's site about a new utility for mapping disease. The premise is to have bots crawl the web looking for stories about disease outbreaks and log them onto a map. '"We were originally thinking about how we could expand disease surveillance and pick up outbreaks earlier than traditional methods," said John Brownstein of Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston, who created HealthMap in September of 2006 with Clark Friefeld, a software developer at Harvard Medical School.' But then it was noticed by Google.org and has since grown into its own website, HealthMap Global disease alert map, and claims to be able to identify 95% of all disease outbreaks, some of them before WHO or CDC."
Seems that the only outbreak in Iraq is rabies. Figures. Must be Al Qaeda.
> > Anyone familiar with the idea of trying to describe a machine the way
> > it works?
> > like where it's being a machine working the way of having a loop with
> > the problem of being in
> > the middle and then to the outside as how the machine can move? so
> > like if you were to make it a machine
> > that does math the way it works it has machine parts that actually
> > move like the way the calculation is done?
> > so it moves like if this were to try and move as a real machine:
> > for (i = 0; i > if (i == 3) next;
> > };
> > so as a real machine though, that works the way that would have to as
> > a machine? a machine that can't be anything really working like gears
> > because of how to be in the middle of the loop is to go outside but
> > sometimes not is a problem the way something has to move.
> > so if that's to look like a real machine, it's not a machine that
> > turns around and around mechanically though, because in the middle is
> > back to the beginning. but sometimes through and back around. But it
> > actually has to move like a real machine though.
> > I think I know a way there is to describe a machine that works this
> > way...
> > say on a checkers board you have checker pieces, and say each checker
> > piece is paired with another.
> > now all checker pieces are pairs.
> > the way said, try to make one piece able to move... but you have to
> > move the other it's a pair with at the same time.
> > the board is full, there's no free spaces to move to.
> > so to make a piece move with it's paired piece, find where it can go
> > where there's another pair that can move, that pair can move where
> > another pair can move, and so on... where the last pair to move goes
> > where the first pair left.
> > each time you move a pair, they are not the same pair anymore once
> > they've moved, each of the pair is now a pair with the piece that
> > left
> > where they went to make a new pair of them. this is key in figuring
> > out the only way it can work so a piece can move at all.
> > so knowing no first move you can make because there isn't any
> > specific
> > move to know, find the pair to be able to move the way where they
> > move
> > to another pair where each of the pair is now another pair with the
> > one they move to, they move to a pair that's together. now first pair
> > to move to another pair, is now not the same pair, but each a pair
> > with each of the other pair.
> > so move and do that, but at the same time when you get a piece of the
> > first pair where it goes and the other pair moved, as a new pair now
> > it can't stay there because it has to move again because of how at
> > the
> > same time something is making the other of the pair move. right?
> > maybe
> > that part is hard to see. It's the only way to figure it can move in
> > any way at all.
> > so it's like the last move has to be known before the first move can
> > be made, because the first move that can be made is where something
> > can move next, but what can move next is what carries on to the last
> > move that can move where the first pair moved from. it's a recursive
> > type of problem to figure out how to move a pair.
> > where a pair can move is where it goes to another pair that at the
> > same time is moving away making an occupancy, but when you get there
> > and you're a new pair with the piece that moves from where you get
> > to,
> > it's not to think staying can work because now something needs the
> > pair you are now to move.
> > it's