Alessandro Vespignani, one of Dr Song’s colleagues at Northeastern, discussed what might be done with such knowledge. Dr Vespignani, another moonlighting physicist, studies epidemiology. He and his team have created a program called GLEAM (Global Epidemic and Mobility Model) that divides the world into hundreds of thousands of squares. It models travel patterns between these squares (busy roads, flight paths and so on) using equations based on data as various as international air links and school holidays.
The result is impressive. In 2009, for example, there was an outbreak of a strain of influenza called H1N1. GLEAM mimicked what actually happened with great fidelity. In most countries it calculated to within a week when the number of new infections peaked. In no case was the calculation out by more than a fortnight
Kevin Makice on 26 Aug 11Much has been written about employee motivation and retention. It's written by folks who actively use words like motivation and retention and generally don't have a clue about the daily necessity of keeping your team professionally content because they've either never done the work or have forgotten how it's done. These are the people who show up when your single best engineer casually and unexpectedly announces, "I'm quitting. I'm joining my good friend to found a start-up. This is my two weeks' notice." You call on the motivation and retention police because you believe they can perform the legendary "diving save". Whether it's HR or a well-intentioned manager with a distinguished title, these people scurry impressively. Meetings that go long into the evening are instantly scheduled with the disenfranchised employee. It's an impressive show of force, and it sometimes works, but even if they stay, the damage has been done. They've quit, and when someone quits they are effectively saying, "I no longer believe in this company". What's worse is that what they were originally thinking was, "I'm bored". Boredom is easier to fix than an absence of belief.
