Tag Archives: Harvard Medical School

HealthMap Co-Founder Dr. John Brownstein on the Value of Crowdsourced Forecasting in Public Health

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John Brownstein, Ph.DWe recently spoke with John Brownstein, Ph.D., co-creator of HealthMap (www.healthmap.org), a global leader in utilizing online informal sources for disease outbreak monitoring and real-time surveillance of emerging public health threats. SciCast partnered with Healthmap and the Discovery Analytics Center at Virginia Tech on a series of questions about the 2014-2105 flu season in the United States. Predict now: https://scicast.org/flu.

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Start Your Engines… The Dicty World Race is Tomorrow!

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We’re pleased to announce an exciting event taking place tomorrow that intersects science and sports: The Dicty World Race.

It’s basically a race of slime molds, which have been doctored up by the competing labs.

Per Daniel Irimia, a molecular machinist at Harvard Medical School who conceived the idea, “Dirty molecular tricks, genetic manipulation and doping are not only allowed but are strongly encouraged.” (Quoted from Wall Street Journal article.)
SciCast will be covering the race live tomorrow, here: https://scicast.org/dicty. Scientists and hobbyists from around the world are invited to make predictions on who will win the race. 
This race is intended to explore new ways of changing the behavior of white blood cells (which protect us from infections) through new interventions. SciCast forecasters – leading experts in their respective fields - are making predictions on who will win the race, based on the unique approach of each competitor.
Read more in Nature.
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