wisfarmer : declared in 'Stepped Up' Biosecurity limited spread of Avian flu

it was very highly pathogenic, I think even when it was coming from the wild birds, McGraw said. "We had never faced a situation like this before, so there was a steep learning curve," Kean said about the 2015 outbreak. BiosecurityFollowing the 2015 outbreak, commercial poultry flocks were required to implement a biosecurity plan in order to have future losses from depopulation covered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. While a handful of isolated cases made headlines in early 2017, the threat they posed was mitigated by lessons learned from the 2015 outbreak. Even at indoor facilities, workers and equipment may transmit pathogens from wild birds or other facilities that can infect an otherwise isolated flock.

Twitter can track spread of flu in real time

Your tweets could help track the spread of seasonal flu in real time, say scientists who have developed a new model that uses Twitter posts to predict how the infection may affect a population. They applied forecasting and other algorithms to the key parameters informed by the Twitter data. Researchers then tested the model against official influenza surveillance systems. They found that it accurately forecast the disease's evolution up to six weeks in advance - significantly earlier than other models. They analysed the evolving dynamics revealed in the past data, and were able to select the model that would most likely forecast the future.


Using posts on Twitter in combination with key parameters of each season's epidemic, researchers have developed a computational model to project the spread of the seasonal flu in real time. While the paper reports result using Twitter data, the researchers said that the model could work with data from many other digital sources, too. To ascertain those conditions, the researchers incorporated Twitter into their parameter-driven model. Over those time periods, they applied forecasting and other algorithms week by week to the key parameters informed by the Twitter data. Twitter, which includes GPS locations, is a proxy for that," Vespignani said in a statement released by the university.


collected by :Lucy William
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