Text Size
- Home
-
News
Advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, other ACM resources, and from around the Web.
- Blogs
- Opinion
-
Browse by Subject
Recent articles from Communications organized into categories that encompass the broad scope of computing.
-
Magazine Archive
-
Careers
Jump-start your career with information on trends, opportunities and jobs – in both industry and academia.
- ACM Resources
-
Subscribe
Receive the benefits of ACM membership with a subscription to its flagship publication, Communications of the ACM.
This Article
ACM News
How Twitter Could Better Predict Disease Outbreaks
A growing body of literature suggests that the data people make public on the Web can be used to track epidemics, predict box office hits and foretell other aspects of the future. Adding to this evidence, Vasileios Lampos, Tijl De Bie and Nello Cristianini of the Intelligent Systems Laboratory at the University of Bristol (UK) have released a paper about the utility of Twitter for tracking flu outbreaks.
The work builds on research pioneered in 2008 by scientists at Google that resulted in Google.org's Flu Trends. (To see it in action, check out today's elevated Flu incidence in South Africa.)
What's different about tapping social media instead of search queries, says senior author Nello Cristianini, is that individual tweets are qualitatively different from search strings, which tend to be quite short.
From Technology Review
View Full Article
Post a comment...
Tools For Readers
Related ACM Resources
Conferences:
- ICCNEIMT 2012: International Conference on Communication Networks, Engineering & Information Management Technology - May 24 – 25, 2012; Bratislava, Slovakia
Courses:
- Security Awareness (Second Edition) (Part 3): Promoting Email Security and Proper Responses to Security Incidents - For students who will apply the techniques needed to secure computers, networks, Internet connections, and files. Students will also identify ways of determining potential security …
About Communications |
Join ACM 
|
Renew |
Subscribe |
Sign In |
For Authors |
For Advertisers |
Privacy |
Site Map |
Help |
Contact Us |
Mobile Site
Copyright © 2012 by the ACM. All rights reserved.