Medical. Tracking flu trends. Like many Googlers, we're fascinated by trends in online search queries.
Whether you're interested in U.S. elections, today's hot trends, or each year's Zeitgeist, patterns in Google search queries can be very informative. Last year, a small team of software engineers began to explore if we could go beyond simple trends and accurately model real-world phenomena using patterns in search queries. After meeting with the public health gurus on Google.org's Predict and Prevent team, we decided to focus on outbreaks of infectious disease, which are responsible for millions of deaths around the world each year. You've probably heard of one such disease: influenza, commonly known as "the flu," which is responsible for up to 500,000 deaths worldwide each year. If you or your kids have ever caught the flu, you know just how awful it can be. Our team found that certain aggregated search queries tend to be very common during flu season each year. Academic Search - Google Scholar Blog: Top Web 2.0 Services in M.
Published February 26th, 2009 Uncategorized 0 Comments UBC Office for Learning Technology has suggested I go to the shorter URL (without the Google scholar extension): This is where you’ll find me….from now on. ~Dean Published February 24th, 2009 Uncategorized 3 Comments Welcome to The Search Principle blog . It’ll take a while (for me and you) to get used to this new space. Last week, I spoke to a group of librarians about Google scholar . That said, I do see Google scholar as an important browsing tool – and part of what might be called an ideal ‘pre-search’ tool. Use pre-search tools to orient yourself, to browse, ask questions and get acquainted with topics. Both Google scholar and Wikipedia can confidently be called ‘pre-search’ tools. There’s only one problem: recently, Wikipedia has gotten very technical on us (mentioned by Joho ) and – gadzooks – removed its web 3.0 entry. 1.
In the meantime, I hope users find their way to our entry on web 3.0 at the UBC Health Library wiki . Science News / Florence Nightingale: The Passionate Statistician. When Florence Nightingale arrived at a British hospital in Turkey during the Crimean War, she found a nightmare of misery and chaos.
Men lay crowded next to each other in endless corridors. The air reeked from the cesspool that lay just beneath the hospital floor. There was little food and fewer basic supplies. COXCOMB Nightingale created many novel graphics to present statistics that would persuade Queen Victoria of the need to improve sanitary conditions in military hospitals. The area of each region shows the number of soldiers who died of wounds, disease, or other causes, during each month of the Crimean War. By the time Nightingale left Turkey after the war ended in July 1856, the hospitals were well-run and efficient, with mortality rates no greater than civilian hospitals in England, and Nightingale had earned a reputation as an icon of Victorian women.
When Nightingale returned from the war, she was obsessed with a sense of failure, even though the public adored her.