Thursday, January 26, 2006

Internet game used to predict spread of epidemics

Using a popular Internet game that traces the travels of dollar bills, scientists have unveiled statistical laws of human travel in the United States, and developed a mathematical description that can be used to model the spread of infectious disease in this country.

In the game, participants can register a dollar bill, of any denomination, and monitor its geographic circulation. Using the game data, physicists developed a powerful mathematical theory that describes the observed movements of travelers amazingly well over distances from just a few kilometers to a few thousand. The study represents a major breakthrough for the mathematical modeling of the spread of epidemics.

References:

Nature news release

"The scaling laws of human travel," Nature, Jan. 26, 2006, p462, D. Brockmann, L. Hufnagel and T. Geisel, doi:10.1038/nature04292.

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