Macs on the front lines tracking Influenza A(H1N1) virus

It's almost impossible to open a Web browser, RSS reader or Twitter without being bombarded with information about the outbreak and its spread worldwide.

There's an interesting technology story about the virus that caught my eye about how the outbreak is being tracked in the U.S. using Macs.

Researchers at The Ohio State University are using Macs to map the outbreak down to the street level, tracking cases overnight.

Ohio State's Dr. Daniel Janies, an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics, has been instrumental in developing SupraMap, a Web application for "integrating genetic, evolutionary, geospatial, and temporal data."

Pictured above is a screen shot of Google Earth tracking the H1N1 virus as it spreads globally.

When I asked about Dr. Janies' choice of Macs, he said "We use macs to produce SupraMap mostly because of the fact that they have both a nice user interface and a Unix based OS.  We work both with graphics (Google Earth) and command line applications (Poy)." Adding that "we could not live without BBEdit and the Grab utility."

Read more about it in Watching Infections Spread from Space.