Google's philanthropic arm Google.org announced Tuesday it issued grants of $14.8 million aimed at combating diseases in Southeast Asia and Africa, as part of its Predict and Prevent initiative.
The grants that were awarded to universities and research centers will be applied toward identifying hot spots where diseases may arise, identify new pathogens affecting humans and animals, and halting pandemics before they circulate.
Researchers have found that 75 percent of new diseases are transmitted from animals to humans and that as deforestation and climate change occurs, the frequency of contact between the two increases.
"The holy grail is to predict disease outbreaks before they happen. For Rift Valley fever and malaria, long-term weather forecasts and deforestation maps can show us where to look for outbreaks, up to six months in advance," Frank Rijsberman, Google.org program director, said in a statement.
Here's a look at the grant recipients and their plans:
The Woods Hole Research Center - $2 million multi-year grant to support high-resolution satellite mapping of forests to enhance monitoring of forest loss and settlement expansion in tropical countries. WHRC will create information to share with environmental and human experts so they can better anticipate the emergence of infectious diseases.Columbia University International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) - $900,000 multi-year grant to improve the use of forecasts, rainfall data and other climate information in East Africa, and link weather and climate experts to health specialists so they can better predict outbreaks of infectious diseases.
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research - $900,000 multi-year grant to build and implement a system that will use weather projections to inform and target response to disease threats in West Africa..
Global Viral Forecasting Initiative (GVFI) - $5.5 million multi-year grant (with equal funding from the Skoll Foundation) to support the collection and analysis of blood samples of humans and animals in hot spots within Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, China, Malaysia, Lao PDR and Madagascar. The GVFI team, headed by Dr. Nathan Wolfe, has demonstrated that potentially pathogenic animal viruses jump more frequently to humans than previously believed and will work to detect early evidence of future pandemics.
Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health - $2.5 million multi-year grant to support research to accelerate the discovery of new pathogens, and to enable rapid, regional response to outbreaks by establishing molecular diagnostics in hot spot countries including Sierra Leone and Bangladesh. Dr. Ian Lipkin and colleagues have discovered more than 75 viruses to date, established critical links between infection and the development of acute and chronic diseases, including pneumonia, meningitis/encephalitis, cancer, and mental illness.
Children's Hospital Corporation supporting Healthmap and ProMED-mail - $3M multi-year grant to combine HealthMap's digital detection efforts with ProMED-mail's global network of human, animal, and ecosystem health specialists. Together, these programs will assess current emerging disease reporting systems, expand regional networks in Africa and Southeast Asia, and develop new tools to improve the detection and reporting of outbreaks.
Celebrating its recent anniversary, Google has published a guided tour of its ten years in business and launched its Project 10 to the 100th to try to improve the world.
Google launched its Project 10 to the 100th to find ideas for helping people.
(Credit: Google)The anniversary site offers a timeline that spotlights historical moments such as Andy Bechtolsheim's $100,000 spur-of-the-moment investment in 1998, the date in 2000 when it reached 1 billion pages in its index of the Web, the 2002 adoption of a pay-per-click model for AdWords advertisers using the search engine for ads, the 2004 filing for an initial public offering, iGoogle and Mobile Web Search in 2005, Google Finance and Google Docs in 2006, and Universal Search and Gears in 2007.
Project 10 to the 100th--which refers to a googol, the number of 1 followed by 100 zeros--aims to let people help each other, part of the company's do-good ethos. People can submit their ideas by October 20, and Google will fund the best with $10 million. An advisory board will select up to five winning ideas.
"Beyond a certain very basic level of material wealth, the only thing that increases individual happiness over time is helping other people," Google said. "If you have an idea that you believe would help somebody, we want to hear about it. We're looking for ideas that help as many people as possible, in any way, and we're committing the funding to launch them. You can submit your ideas and help vote on ideas from others."
The top 100 ideas will be announced January 27, 2009, at which point people may vote on the top 20, Google said.
(Via Search Engine Land.)
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