Scientists track money to help predict disease
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Scientists track money to help predict disease
 
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Yet another fine example of creative thinking wherein a good idea in one
discipline is morphed into an unintended application in another. (Something all-too-rare in the practice of journalism.) The journal Nature http://tinyurl.com/7tnp7 reports: Another day another dollar ------------------------------ The website wheresgeorge.com <http://www.wheresgeorge.com/> invites its users to enter the serial numbers of their US dollar bills and track them across America and beyond. Why? "For fun and because it had not been done yet", they say. But the dataset accumulated since December 1998 has provided the ideal raw material to test the mathematical laws underlying human travel, and that has important implications for the epidemiology of infectious diseases. Analysis of the trajectories of over half a million dollar bills shows that human dispersal is described by a 'two-parameter continuous-time random walk' model: our travel habits conform to a type of random proliferation known as 'superdiffusion'. And with that much established, it should soon be possible to develop a new class of models to account for the spread of human disease. Letter: The scaling laws of human travel D. Brockmann, L. Hufnagel and T. Geisel ------------------------------ -- ============================================== J. T. Johnson Institute for Analytic Journalism www.analyticjournalism.com 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h) http://www.jtjohnson.com tom at jtjohnson.com "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." -- Buckminster Fuller ============================================== -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20060126/8d5c604a/attachment.htm |
Scientists track money to help predict disease
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Googling the transcription (Scheide Muniz) on an 1881 coin, I came across this article. Then I read the tracking money post. Hmmm...a random walk from Germany to the gold fields of Mariposa, CA. It also happens that I happened to have lived near that ranch in 1979-80.
Louis Macovsky Dynamic BioSystems Wilsonville, OR http://www.mariposaresearch.net/pwashworth.html Merced Express, May 21, 1926 MARIPOSA ITEMS FROM THE GAZETTE P.W. ASHWORTH While plowing his garden a few days ago P. W. (Winnie) Ashworth uncovered a German coin bearing the date of 1726. The coin, which is known as a Pfennig, is in almost perfect condition. It is made of copper. The coin bears, in addition to the date, the words Pfennig, Scheide and Muniz. Evidently the coin was lost many years ago by an early miner who was prospecting on the Chowchilla, near where Ashworth's ranch is located. transcribed by Tom Hilk ----- Original Message ----- From: J T Johnson To: Friam at redfish. com Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2006 10:35 AM Subject: [FRIAM] Scientists track money to help predict disease *** FRIAM is meeting at Cloud Cliff this Friday 1/27/2005 *** ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yet another fine example of creative thinking wherein a good idea in one discipline is morphed into an unintended application in another. (Something all-too-rare in the practice of journalism.) The journal Nature http://tinyurl.com/7tnp7 reports: Another day another dollar ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The website wheresgeorge.com invites its users to enter the serial numbers of their US dollar bills and track them across America and beyond. Why? "For fun and because it had not been done yet", they say. But the dataset accumulated since December 1998 has provided the ideal raw material to test the mathematical laws underlying human travel, and that has important implications for the epidemiology of infectious diseases. Analysis of the trajectories of over half a million dollar bills shows that human dispersal is described by a 'two-parameter continuous-time random walk' model: our travel habits conform to a type of random proliferation known as 'superdiffusion'. And with that much established, it should soon be possible to develop a new class of models to account for the spread of human disease. Letter : The scaling laws of human travel D. Brockmann, L. Hufnagel and T. Geisel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- ============================================== J. T. Johnson Institute for Analytic Journalism www.analyticjournalism.com 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h) http://www.jtjohnson.com tom at jtjohnson.com "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." -- Buckminster Fuller ============================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Cloud Cliff lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20060128/62e8fbe2/attachment.htm |
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