Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Software Tools Design Anti-Viral Cities
Is it possible to create a computer program that would allow the user to prevent the spread of a viral disease through proper design of cities and their infrastructure? Science fiction writer J.G. Ballard thought so.
In Super-Cannes: A Novel, published in 2000, he wrote about the idea. At one point the book's narrator is speaking with the corporate director of Eden-Olympia, a planned live/work community in southern France. The director refers to medical research that the narrator's own wife, a doctor, has been performing:
As it turns out, there has been work done on this idea. A demonstration project called Dynamical Network Design for Controlling Virus Spread shows the dynamics of the spread of the SARS virus in Hong Kong's eighteen districts if available resources are allocated in different ways:
As an example, epidemic control can be viewed as reducing the average number of secondary infections produced during an infected individual's infectious period. The spatially inhomogeneous dynamics for epidemic spread in a population network are often represented using a class of models known as multi-group models. Using the multi-group model, the authors have posed and solved the problem of inhomogeneously allocating local resources to minimize spread (i.e., secondary infection population).
"She's running a new computer model," the director says, "tracing the spread of nasal viruses across Eden-Olympia. She has a hunch that if people moved their chairs a further eighteen inches apart they'd stop the infectious vectors in their tracks."
Recently, problems of network management and design have become more and more important in such diverse areas as air traffic flow management and virus-spread control. Several problems of interest can be abstracted to the problems of allocating resources to a network based on its graph topology, so as to optimize its dynamic performance.
(From Dynamical Network Design for Controlling Virus Spread)
Another similar project is under way at Carnegie Mellon. Ph.D. student Sean Green is working on a set of tools to identify the best way to curb the spread of diarrheal illness in more than 192 countries worldwide. Infrastructure for sanitation is essential; but where do you get the biggest bang for your buck?
"We want to show where the money can be best spent in these communities where diarrheal illness kills more than two million people a year, and remains the third-leading cause of child mortality," said Green, a fourth year Ph.D. student in Carnegie Mellon's Engineering and Public Policy Department.In research supported by the National Science Foundation, the Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education and Research and the Heinz Foundation, Green along with Carnegie Mellon professors Mitchell J. Small and Elizabeth A. Casman developed a pattern matching computer tool that uses a set of variables describing information about a country to try to pinpoint which policies are most effective at preventing disease outbreaks.
The Carnegie Mellon researchers report that the most important variable for reducing deadly diarrheal outbreaks among the factors that they considered is improved sanitation in rural areas.
Note: J.G. Ballard died just a couple of weeks ago; he will be missed.
From This Diseased Utopia and Dynamical Network Design for Controlling Virus Spread; see also Carnegie Mellon's Sean Green Uses Combination of Computer Tools And Artificial Intelligence to Predict Diarrheal Illness Globally.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 5/3/2009)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Medical ")
Heart Patches Grown In The Lab Repair Hearts
I'm hoping that this procedure becomes a normal part of medical practice!
Pixel Watch 'Loss of Pulse Detection' And Philip K. Dick
'He carried on his person a triggering mechanism sensitive to his heartbeat.' - Philip K. Dick, 1965.
ErythroMer Artificial Blood
'My chemists are all working on the preparation of the artificial blood.' - Dr. David H. Keller, M.D.
MouthPad Supports Head And Tongue Tracking
'The operation that had transformed half his body... had located the control switchboard in his teeth.'- Alfred Bester, 1956.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Robotic Barber Programmed With a Number of Styles
'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
Humanoid Boxing Robot KO's Opponent - It's A Knockout!
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
Caterpillar Electric Mining Loader Not Yet Ready For Moon
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
Centipede Robots Down On The Farm
'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'
Anthropic's Claude AI Creates Legal Citation From Whole Cloth
'Here is a Clerk that would work incessantly, and neither eat, sleep, want payment, or grumble.'
Students Vie For Lunar Regolith Mining Robot Prize
'About time you got here,' the astronaut said.
'They Erased My Memory' Says Ariana Grande
'...using a neutralizing electronic impulse.'
Solitary Black Hole Wanders In Space
'...the Hole is something like a vortex or a whirlpool?'
Spaceplane From Virgin Atlantic
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
DARPA Wants 'Large Bio-Mechanical Space Structures'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
Robot Hand Creeps Along, Separate From It's Owner
'The crawling... object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...'
Taikonauts Exercise In China's Tiangong Space Station
'Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses...'
Korean Exoskeleton Suit F1 Helps You Put It On
'Better late than never.'
Have AI Researchers Given Up On 'Bio-Babies'?
'You couldn't have the capstone without the pyramid to hold it up.'
Bunker Busters and Bore-Pellets
'The first revelation of the new Soviet bore-pellets.'
'Spikeless' Brand Swizzle Stick Detects Spiked Drinks
'the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers...'
