IBM to Help Track Spread of Bird Flu
The Mercury News
2006 May 15
Steve Johnson
IBM today is announcing a new cooperative effort with health authorities to stem the spread of bird flu and other infectious diseases using technology it developed partly at its Almaden Research Center in San Jose.
As part of the effort, IBM said it will donate software designed to enable health authorities to share data, track the geographic spread of diseases and predict how the bird flu virus might mutate into a form that is deadlier to people.
Giving health experts in different countries the ability to share computer and other data would be a major achievement, said David Spellmeyer, an IBM researcher in San Jose who is involved in the project. He said he doesn't know of any health agency in the world that can share all of its records with other agencies.
"That's what we're all working toward,'' Spellmeyer said
The Desert Sun
2006 May 16
Benjamin Spillman
The once-thriving Salton Sea will deteriorate into an algae-filled pool swarming with flies and swirling in dust if nothing is done to thwart its demise.
That's the assessment in a report released today that paints a grim future for the Coachella Valley if local, state and federal leaders fail to enact a plan to prevent an environmental catastrophe at the state's biggest lake.
The report from the Pacific Institute, an Oakland conservation group, predicts 11 years of a gradually deteriorating environment followed by a 30 percent increase in dust pollution and the deaths of millions of birds that depend on the troubled sea, crucial to hundreds of migrating birds and stinky to hundreds of Coachella Valley residents.
"It is getting worse and worse down here," said Vivian Perez of Holtville, describing air quality around the sea.
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