July 2008 Popular Science features BMI research on mapping avian influenza in Google Earth
Thursday 06/19/2008
Popular Science magazine features Dan Janies of BMI and his colleagues in its July 2008 issue which is now on newsstands. The article, written by Michael Behar, details five projects that are using Google Earth to better understand large diverse sets of 3-D data in a geospatial context. Dan Janies’ research, which tracks key mutations that may allow the avian influenza virus to jump to humans, makes up the fifth project covered by the article. His use of Google Earth is highlighted in detail, as are the various ways it is helping to track the evolution and spread of pathogens. Dr. Janies and his colleagues are now tracking well over 1, 500 strains of avian influenza based on public sources of genomic sequence data such as NIH's genbank and gisaid.org. They are also building Google Earth enabled phylogenies for seasonal influenza , SARS, and Schistosomiasis.
The above article, along with Dr. Janies and his work with Google Earth, have recently become a feature of the Chronicle's Wired Campus.
[The entire google earth map can be found here]
Online text version of the article: http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2008-06/google-earth-environment-guide?page=4 [edit this news item]