Using Twitter to Track the Flu (Originally aired May 25, 2017)

Using Twitter to Track the Flu (Originally aired May 25, 2017)

Top of Mind with Julie Rose - Radio Archive, Episode 639 , Segment 5

Episode: Trump Deals With Dems, Track Flu Using Twitter, Racial Violence

  • Sep 14, 2017 11:00 pm
  • 8:24 mins

Guest: Alessandro Vespignani, PhD, Professor of Physics, Computer Science and Health Sciences, Northeastern University Have you ever been so miserable with the flu, complete with fever, stuffy nose, body aches, coughs that keep you up at night, that you felt like you had to tweet about it? Well if you ever have, someone may have used your tweet to track the flu in real time. And that someone could be Alessandro Vespignani, a professor of physics, computer science and health sciences at Northeastern University. He has successfully answered the CDC’s 2013 challenge to figure out how to predict the influenza season and his method involves social media, not doctors’ reports.

Other Segments

Thanks A Million

16m

Guest: Jacqui Shine, Historian and Writer Some people called Percy Ross “America’s Rich Uncle.” He had a rags-to-riches story and spent more than a decade giving his money away in small increments to people who bothered to ask. He purchased a space heater for a family living in an unheated basement, paid a $300 light bill for a woman supporting her disabled brother, bought dance lessons for an elderly woman trying to impress her new beau. Percy Ross did all of this in public style through a newspaper column that ran for more than a decade in papers across the country until 1999 when he stopped writing because he said he’d given away the whole wad. Ross did have his critics who found his particular style of charity a bit too vulgar.

Guest: Jacqui Shine, Historian and Writer Some people called Percy Ross “America’s Rich Uncle.” He had a rags-to-riches story and spent more than a decade giving his money away in small increments to people who bothered to ask. He purchased a space heater for a family living in an unheated basement, paid a $300 light bill for a woman supporting her disabled brother, bought dance lessons for an elderly woman trying to impress her new beau. Percy Ross did all of this in public style through a newspaper column that ran for more than a decade in papers across the country until 1999 when he stopped writing because he said he’d given away the whole wad. Ross did have his critics who found his particular style of charity a bit too vulgar.