Google “supermap” shows global spread of avian influenza

This map has been the talk of the bird flu town! Created by a team of biomedical experts from Ohio State University, University of Colorado, and the American Museum of Natural History, the Google Earth map incorporates “genetic, geographic and evolutionary information” to project an ‘evolutionary tree of the virus’s mutations” across both time and geography.

"We found the visualization of multiple layers of information very helpful in generating hypotheses we could test through statistical analysis of the mutation data we organized in the evolutionary tree….The findings helped us understand whether mutations that appear to be associated with certain hosts or geographic regions appeared by chance, or whether they were true adaptations of the virus as it spread." Daniel Janies, an assistant professor in the department of biomedical informatics at Ohio State University.

Please see this website for the clear instructions to view the Google Earth avian influenza map: http://declanbutler.info/blog/?p=58

(Note: Once you have downloaded Google Earth make sure you click on the hyperlinked sentence “new link for the time-enabled maps is this one” within the Decan Bulter’s website. This will automatically stream the avian flu time series within your opened Google Earth program).

For a short video introducing the supermap please see: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/flumap.mov
(Be warned, it can take a while to load!)

Source: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/flumap.htm