See how that couch would look in your living room in AR with Ikea Place

Why it matters to you

Don’t want to buy that couch without seeing it in your living room first? Ikea Place can help.

Anticipating poor design choices before you ever make them can be key to ensuring that you never again bring an ugly couch into your home. With a new app with Ikea, you can use augmented reality to “see” potential pieces of furniture in your home before pulling out your credit card, and save yourself a whole lot of consternation when it comes to (re)decorating your home.

Thanks to Ikea Place, customers will be able to experience and experiment with furniture from the retailer. You can place chairs, desks, and just about anything else in your kitchen, backyard, or heck, on the street, just to see how it all looks.

“Ikea Place makes it easier to make buying decisions in your own place, to get inspired and try many different products, styles and colors in real-life settings with a swipe of your finger. Augmented reality and virtual reality will be a total game changer for retail in the same way as the internet. Only this time, much faster,” Michael Valdsgaard, Leader Digital Transformation at Inter Ikea Systems, said in a release.

All items available in the app promise to be true to scale so you can ensure that you’re seeing precisely how an armchair would look in that particular corner of your room. Ikea Place claims to automatically scale products based on a room’s dimensions with up to 98 percent accuracy. Moreover, Ikea claims that the AR technology is precise enough to allow customers to see the texture of a fabric, and even the interplay of light and shadows on potential furnishings.

To use the app, simply scan the floor of a room, browse the list of products available in the app, and select the product you’d like to place. At launch, Ikea will have more than 2,000 products available on the app, and moving forward, the company says that the app will “play a key role in the launch of new product lines.”

The app will be available in the Apple store beginning in late September, and will require iOS 11 to function.

“Now, technology has caught up with our ambition. AR lets us redefine the experience for furniture retail once more, in our restless quest to create a better everyday life for everyone, everywhere,” Valdsgaard concluded.

Television with built-in Fire TV makes better use of your voice

One of the Element Fire TV Edition set’s main hooks is clearly its Alexa voice control, so it stands to reason that the entire television stands to benefit the more you can use it, doesn’t it? Sure enough, Element is trotting out an update that makes better use of voice recognition. You can enter text into fields using your voice instead of the keyboard, which could take a lot of the pain out of filling out forms and certain search boxes. Also, you can rename inputs to more familiar terms and use Alexa to switch to them — you can specify that you’re jumping to your PS4 instead of “HDMI2.”

The upgrade isn’t all about verbal communication. Element went so far as to tweak the standard picture setting for higher contrast, particularly black levels, and adds customization for element like gamma and white balance. You can alter the image quality for individual inputs, too, and it’s possible to add individual channels to your favorites from the On Now row that shows what’s hot. These and the Alexa improvements won’t necessarily make you skip over a high-end set, but they could make Element’s unit a more tempting proposition if you’re on a budget.

Source: Amazon Fire TV Blog (Medium)

Robots learn to walk naturally by understanding their bodies

The challenge with bipedal robots isn’t so much getting them to walk at all (although that’s sometimes a problem) as it is getting them to walk naturally. They tend to either step cautiously or quickly run into trouble. Swiss researchers think they can do better, though: they’re working on COMAN (Compliant Humanoid), a headless robot designed to master walking. The automaton is more graceful through a combination of more flexible, elastic joints and a control algorithm that helps the bot understand its own body.

COMAN is aware of the symmetries in its dynamics and structure, which helps it not only walk with a natural gait but carry objects, navigate uneven surfaces like stairs, and react to surprises. If you push the robot, for instance, it knows exactly where to place its foot so that it doesn’t tip over like some of its peers. And thanks to that added flexibility, it’s more likely to survive that rudeness.

The technology is a long way from reaching robots you can interact with. For one thing, these machines would need ‘heads’ or some other way of exploring the world on their own. They may be particularly clever when they arrive, though. The team is also exploring the possibility of teaching bipedal robots t coordinate in shared actions, such as carrying a table. You could eventually see moving robots that have no problems hauling your couch down a flight of stairs.

Source: EPFL, PLOS One

Protect your credit card info with the free ‘Skimmer Scanner’ Android app

Why it matters to you

Your credit card data can be compromised at any time, and this free app will warn of potential threats.

The price we pay for convenience is sometimes vulnerability to unscrupulous people trying to steal valuable financial information. It’s not always an anonymous hacker on the internet, however — the biggest danger may be at your local convenience store. The next time you fill your tank and swipe your card, be aware that there could be a “skimmer” inside the pump, recording and storing your credit card data for later retrieval.

It turns out that it’s ridiculously easy to install a card skimmer at a point of sale terminal. Gas pumps are particularly vulnerable because they’re often unmanned and have a lot of traffic. Luckily, there’s a free Android app called Skimmer Scanner that can alert you if there are any of these devices nearby.

A gas pump skimmer can be installed in less than 30 seconds. It records your credit card data when you fill up, then when the perpetrator returns to the scene of the crime — hours or even days later — they can retrieve all the stolen credit card info remotely with a cell phone or laptop.

Nathan Seidle, CEO of the website SparkFun, has a detailed analysis of how these gas pump skimmers work at his blog. He was contacted by local law enforcement, who provided him with several of the skimmer devices they had found, and asked if he could retrieve the data that they had stored.

Most skimmers use a Bluetooth connection, which can be easily detected. Seidle was amazed at the ineptitude of the criminals who designed the skimmers. “Initially this blew my mind,” he wrote. “If I were to design a bluetooth skimmer I would program the module to NOT broadcast its ID.”

He went on to add, “The soldering of the ribbon (the gray cable that connects to the credit card reader) is horrendously bad indicating the perpetrator has very little experience with soldering and probably zero experience with electronics.” Don’t count on criminal incompetence to protect you, however. “The designers of this skimmer were smart, it’s better to make these devices easy to connect to than to add a layer of security. What’s the worst that could happen? The device is detected and removed from the pump. Meanwhile, 10 more have been deployed for a total cost of $100.”

The Skimmer Scanner app checks for nearby Bluetooth transmissions and alerts you when one is detected. “Many of these devices go undiscovered until they’re removed by the scammers,” Nathan Poole (who designed the app) told ZDNet. “I think what we’ll find as more and more people use the app is that there are more skimmers out there than anyone previously thought.”

Currently, the app is only available for Android and there are no plans for an iPhone version. The code is open-source, however, so feel free to tinker away.

Protect your credit card info with the free ‘Skimmer Scanner’ Android app

Why it matters to you

Your credit card data can be compromised at any time, and this free app will warn of potential threats.

The price we pay for convenience is sometimes vulnerability to unscrupulous people trying to steal valuable financial information. It’s not always an anonymous hacker on the internet, however — the biggest danger may be at your local convenience store. The next time you fill your tank and swipe your card, be aware that there could be a “skimmer” inside the pump, recording and storing your credit card data for later retrieval.

It turns out that it’s ridiculously easy to install a card skimmer at a point of sale terminal. Gas pumps are particularly vulnerable because they’re often unmanned and have a lot of traffic. Luckily, there’s a free Android app called Skimmer Scanner that can alert you if there are any of these devices nearby.

A gas pump skimmer can be installed in less than 30 seconds. It records your credit card data when you fill up, then when the perpetrator returns to the scene of the crime — hours or even days later — they can retrieve all the stolen credit card info remotely with a cell phone or laptop.

Nathan Seidle, CEO of the website SparkFun, has a detailed analysis of how these gas pump skimmers work at his blog. He was contacted by local law enforcement, who provided him with several of the skimmer devices they had found, and asked if he could retrieve the data that they had stored.

Most skimmers use a Bluetooth connection, which can be easily detected. Seidle was amazed at the ineptitude of the criminals who designed the skimmers. “Initially this blew my mind,” he wrote. “If I were to design a bluetooth skimmer I would program the module to NOT broadcast its ID.”

He went on to add, “The soldering of the ribbon (the gray cable that connects to the credit card reader) is horrendously bad indicating the perpetrator has very little experience with soldering and probably zero experience with electronics.” Don’t count on criminal incompetence to protect you, however. “The designers of this skimmer were smart, it’s better to make these devices easy to connect to than to add a layer of security. What’s the worst that could happen? The device is detected and removed from the pump. Meanwhile, 10 more have been deployed for a total cost of $100.”

The Skimmer Scanner app checks for nearby Bluetooth transmissions and alerts you when one is detected. “Many of these devices go undiscovered until they’re removed by the scammers,” Nathan Poole (who designed the app) told ZDNet. “I think what we’ll find as more and more people use the app is that there are more skimmers out there than anyone previously thought.”

Currently, the app is only available for Android and there are no plans for an iPhone version. The code is open-source, however, so feel free to tinker away.

‘The Witness’ for iOS brings you soothing graphics to accompany tough puzzles

App Attack is a weekly series where we search the App Store and Google Play Store for the best apps of the week. Check out App Attack every Sunday for the latest.

Puzzles can be exciting for some, and frightening for others. When you’re young, those big, colorful pieces were always exciting to put together — mainly because there weren’t very many of them. As you become older, the pieces become smaller and far more numerous and confusing. This week, we have an app that still brings you bright visuals accompanied by intense puzzles.

The Witness is a single-player game with over 500 puzzles, and it has a few distinguishing qualities from other such apps. For starters, the plot begins with you waking up alone on a deserted island. You’re unable to remember how you got there, and so you spend the game discovering clues and regaining your memory. Most importantly, you’re also attempting to find your way back home.

The game originally launched on PC and PS4 back in 2016, following by XBox One and Mac later on. While it’s already been available for Android, the app now has a home on iOS as well. You’ll have to make sure you’re running on iOS 10 or iOS 11 in order to be able to play it on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. As far as price goes, it will cost you $10, which seems expensive, but is a bargain compared to the $40 price tag it has for gaming consoles and desktops.

When I say it’s a single-player game, I really mean it. You get little to no direction other than the ability to walk completely throughout the locations to try and spot a clue. If you’re looking for a game with guidance and barely any no effort, you might want to consider one that’s far more easy-going. I’m not the biggest fan of puzzles but when I downloaded The Witness, I figured they would be a bit challenging but more simple for the most part — I was really wrong.

In the beginning, you start off walking through a dark tunnel and up a staircase to what looks like a garden. You’re on your own to find where the puzzles are and then solve them, though. The puzzles look extremely similar to the ones you’ve probably seen in coloring books, where you have to find the direct path to the exit. With this game, the biggest hint you’ll get is where the actual exit which is signaled by a blinking circle. But it’s up to you to figure out how to get there. To try and solve them, simply run your finger across the path you think is correct.

While the puzzles themselves are a struggle to solve, the interface is super easy to navigate and follow along wit. In order to move around, all you have to do is tap the screen twice to start running and once to walk or stop. If you want to run further distances without having to continuously double tap, you can tap to where you want to end up. A beam of light will appear to mark where the end point is, so you know exactly where you’l stop. You can also zoom out and back in with two fingers, the way you normally would on your iPhone.

When it comes to graphics, I loved how bright and crisp they were. As a first-person game, The Witness takes every last detail into account to give you an immersive experience. From vivid colors to changes in scenery depending on which direction you walk in. I went from a rugged trail out in the open to an area filled with bright orange Fall leaves coating the grass.

The sound effects are also what makes the game even more enjoyable, with a notification in the beginning letting you know it will sound better with headphones. Walking through the outdoors, you’ll hear everything from the leaves crunching underneath your shoes to the body of water calmly flowing in the background. It can definitely also act as one of those ambient noise machines because before you know it, you’ll walking around to enjoy the view instead of attempting to solve puzzles.

It makes sense that a game with such difficult puzzles would need nature to help balance out your sanity. When I started the puzzles in the beginning, I was on a roll, zooming through each one. But soon enough, you’ll start to realize they’re not easy at all. Even though the game does tell you the end point, the paths become more complex and what seems like unsolvable. Another aspect of this game I really appreciated was the fact that you don’t have to solve the puzzle right in front of you in order to move on to the next one. If you find one of them is too difficult, you can abandon it and come back to it later.

The game may seem intimidating after a while — I wasn’t able to play for more than an hour at a time — but it will keep you coming back. Sometimes, when you don’t overthink the puzzle too much, you’ll realize the answer is actually right in front of you. Other times, it’s best to simply move on and come back to it later. It’s not like there aren’t tons of places to see and discover within the game — don’t forget to give your brain a break. With over 500 puzzles to solve, it’s one of those games you’ll most likely always have available to play.

How to stream on YouTube Gaming, a quick and easy guide

Sharing some of your gameplay exploits with friends, family and perhaps one day, adoring fans is a great way to show off your in-game skills and entertainment chops in one smooth move. But in order to kick off your professional streaming career, you need to know how to stream on YouTube Gaming. Fortunately, we’ve got a handy guide for teaching you just how to do that.

There are plenty of streaming video platforms out there, with Twitch being one of the most famous for gaming. But as the most prominent video viewing platform in the world, YouTube still draws in huge numbers of viewers, and YouTube Gaming and its feature set is always growing.

To get you started, here is our guide on how to stream on YouTube Gaming, broken down into several easy steps.

Setting up your stream

Step 1: Sign in to your Youtube account using the “Sign In” button in the top right-hand corner of YouTube’s homepage.

Step 2: To live stream video on YouTube you need to have a verified account. Go to youtube.com/verify and give up your mobile number, to which YouTube will send a code. Input that and your account is ready to begin setting up your stream.

Step 3: Go to your account’s Creator Studio  page and under the “Live Streaming” drop-down menu on the left-hand side, select “Stream Now.” You’ll be presented with a lot of different options for your stream. You can input a name and description in “Basic Info,” and choose a category and game title. You can also decide whether you want the video to be “Public”, “Unlisted,” or “Private.”

It’s worthwhile getting at least these basic settings right before proceeding.

Other options you might want to go over include what sort of stream you want — one designed for viewer interaction, or better visual playback — whether you want to monetize the video or not, and you can change the thumbnail if you want something more specific to the game you’re playing.

For additional stream set up information, you can view the “Live Streaming Checklist” on the right-hand side of your Stream Now page.

If you want to learn how to change your YouTube name to help draw in more viewers, we have a guide for that too.

Setting up your encoder

Once the stream itself is set up, you need to set up the encoder software you’re going to use to actually record and send the in-game footage to YouTube Gaming. To do that, you need to pick from the list of supported encoders. Our preference, because of its strong feature set for free users and expanded feature set for subscribers, is XSplit Gamecaster.

Step 1: Download XSplit Gamecaster from its official site and install it as you would any other software.

Step 2: Verify your YouTube Live account through XSplit. If an automated popup doesn’t give you the option, head to the “Accounts” tab in the XSplit Window and “Authorize” your account for live streaming to YouTube Live.

Much like verifying your YouTube account, it will involve sending a code to your mobile device. Input that into the pop-up window and then click “Allow” on the following screen to give XSplit access to your YouTube account.

Step 3: In the “Settings” menu, tweak any aspects of your stream that you consider important. Link your social media accounts, customize your “BRB Graphics” if you step away from the stream, and decide whether you want viewers to see things like your mouse pointer.

Two important options to configure are your microphone and camera. If you want your viewers to see and hear you correctly, make sure your headset microphone is selected, and that your camera works properly. You can test it looking at the video in the top left-hand corner.

Bringing it all together

With your YouTube live stream set up and your encoder software organized properly, it’s time to actually start streaming.

Step 1: Boot up the game you want to play.

Step 2: Press “Ctrl” and “Tab” keys together to bring up the XSplit Gamecaster overlay.

Step 3: Click “Stream”.

Step 4: One final window gives you a few choices before your stream officially begins. It lets you preview elements such as your title and description, as well as whether the stream will be public or not. You can adjust other settings from the overlay during play, and view your own livestream through the Creator Studio, or via its live link, to confirm it looks as intended.

When you’re finally ready to begin, hit “Start Broadcast.”

Step 5: Stream away!

Step 6: When you’re finished streaming, you can shut down the game itself, at which point you’ll be prompted whether you want to end the stream, or use the XSplit Gamescaster overlay to shut down the stream manually.

Although any live streams you do will be automatically saved as recorded streams by YouTube, you can download them, or others, using these simple methods.

CRISPR gene-editing technology could lower risk of miscarriages

Why it matters to you

This information could help us to determine why some women have more miscarriages than others.

British scientists offered some new insight into the early stages of human development recently. For the first time, scientists in the U.K. have employed gene-editing techniques on human embryos. They’ve identified a key gene that controls how embryos are formed during the first few days of development. The gene-editing technology is called CRISPR Cas9.

CRISPR allows for the permanent modification of genes within organisms. It can also cut out genetic defects that are believed to contribute to miscarriages. There’s a human genetic marker known as OTC4 has an important role to play in the early stages of embryonic development. By using CRISPR, these scientists have discovered that human embryos that don’t have this gene will not grow properly. This information could help us to determine why some women have more miscarriages than others.

“Our research is the first time that genome editing has been used to understand the role of a gene in early embryonic development,” says Kathy Niakan, who led the work at the Francis Crick Institute in London. “This knowledge can be used to improve IVF treatment and improve our understanding of how some pregnancies fail.”

41 human embryos were donated by couples after in-vitro fertilization (IVF). The research found in this study could also potentially increase the amount of successful IVF procedures. Sometimes, IVF is the only option a couple has to having a baby using their own genes. Even with all of the technological advancements, however, there are still a low number of successes. According to the Centers for Disease Control, nearly 36 percent of all IVF cycles are going to result in a successful pregnancy.

It is possible that lower than normal OCT4 activity is the reason why embryos fail to implant successfully, which leads to miscarriages. In order to treat this, scientists could just change the way embryos are cultured in the IVF process.

“Many embryos arrest in culture, or fail to continue developing after implantation,” said Kay Elder, study co-author. “This research will significantly help treatment for infertile couples, by helping us to identify the factors that are essential for ensuring that human embryos can develop into healthy babies.”

The first attempt at genetically modifying human embryos in the U.S. was done earlier this year in July. Scientists in the U.K. were first given the green light to edit DNA in human embryos in early 2016.

Ford is using Microsoft’s HoloLens to change the way cars are designed

Why it matters to you

If carmakers can reduce the time and cost of designing cars, the savings could be passed on to the consumers.

Microsoft’s HoloLens celebrated had its first birthday earlier this year, and the company believes it can change all sorts of everyday activities through the power of augmented reality. That includes potential applications in the car world.

Virtual car design has gotten one step closer to reality, though some industry traditions are being kept around. Thus clay models are being used alongside virtual media to create mixed media. Microsoft calls this “mixed reality” and defines it as “the result of blending the physical world with the digital world.”

Lorraine Bardeen, General Manager, Microsoft HoloLens and Windows Experiences, shared news of the company’s latest collaboration with automaker Ford, which is “embracing the digital transformation of the modern workplace across the company to make people’s lives better in vehicles today while exploring evolving mobility solutions such as autonomous vehicles of tomorrow.”

One cited example is grille design — designers were able to speed the process of development from days with multiple physical models to just hours with a HoloLens and just one physical model. Designers can use the system to view their work in three dimensions without engaging in the time-consuming process of making a physical model.

In the car industry, full-size clay mockups of new designs are typically built and shown to executives for approval, but doing it all digitally could allow designers to incorporate any changes more easily. It would also save a lot of clay.

Ford already uses full-on virtual reality headsets to allow groups of designers to go over new cars — even when they’re not on the same continent. Teams can share their findings and notes in confidentiality with a lowered risk of leaking prototype designs.

The advantage of HoloLens is that it allows users to view virtual projections overlaid onto the actual environment. That makes it potentially easier to use in the real world.

Don’t be surprised to see automotive applications if it ever goes mainstream, though, if for no other reason than so automakers can feel good about being swept up in the technological zeitgeist.

Update: Included information on Microsoft’s collaboration with Ford to make mixed media car design a reality.

How the CDC uses Google, AI, and even Twitter to forecast flu outbreaks

As summer gives way to fall, flu season is about to be upon us. Proper preparation is essential if there’s to be enough medical professionals and vaccinations to go around. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention play a huge role in making sure practices and hospitals around the country know what to expect.

The CDC needs all the information that it can get to do this important work. Now, machine learning is bringing together a staggering amount of data — comprising everything from retail sales of flu medication to Google searches about symptoms — to create the best possible picture of the spread of the virus, as it happens. If it works, it could make predicting the spread of disease as commonplace as forecasting tomorrow’s thunderstorms.

Forecast face-off

Over the last four years, the CDC has run a forecasting research initiative intended to build better methods of predicting what flu season will bring.

Participants are invited to submit their own forecasting systems, which are judged stringently based on their accuracy. Each system needs to forecast when the season will start, when it’s going to peak, how bad it will be at its peak, and how bad it will be in one week’s time, two weeks’ time, three weeks’ time, or four weeks’ time.

The scope of this research goes well beyond the flu.

After that, participants are asked to submit a new forecast for each of these seven criteria every week through flu season, using new data that has been collected. Forecasts need to be made for each of ten regions comprising the U.S.

Once the flu season comes to an end, the forecasts are compared with the actual data that was collected. A total of 28 different systems were submitted to the CDC this year. Two of them were developed by Carnegie Mellon University’s Delphi research group, led by Roni Rosenfeld — and those two projects took both the number one and number two spots in the final ranking.

The CDC currently tracks the flu using a surveillance system. The key difference is that surveillance only looks at what’s happening right now, while forecasting can make a probabilistic statement about what’s going to happen in the future. The work being done by the Delphi group, among others, is poised to make a huge impact on the organization’s ability to plan for flu season – and the scope of this research goes well beyond the flu.

Sources of infection

There’s two main strands to the work the Delphi group is doing in conjunction with the CDC. The first is an improvement to the organization’s current surveillance techniques, which Rosenfeld refers to as ‘nowcasting.’ The aim is to make this data available in as close to real-time as possible, without sacrificing any accuracy.

“It takes a while to collate all these numbers, compile them, check them, and publish them,” Rosenfeld explained in a phone call with Digital Trends. “So as a result, when the CDC publishes their surveillance numbers online, they actually refer to the previous week, not the week that we’re in. So, they’re already between one and two weeks old.”

Vladimir Gerdo/Getty Images

The researchers are supplementing the data that the CDC collects with various other sources. They’re taking information from Google Trends, statistics regarding how many people access the organization’s online resources pertaining to the flu, and Wikipedia access logs. They’re even starting to take tweets about the flu into account, as well as retail sales of flu medication.

However, some of these sources don’t always measure how many people are getting the flu. They might instead indicate the level of flu awareness.

“If there’s unusual news coverage of flu — maybe because a celebrity got the flu, or something — you would expect to see that influencing how many people search for flu on Wikipedia, or on Google,” said Rosenfeld. “But it would not influence how many people are hospitalized for flu.” The system is being refined so that fake peaks, like the surge of web searches described above, aren’t considered.

They’re even starting to take tweets about the flu into account.

In terms of forecasting, the team is using a combination of three methods that have been developed over the past few years, bringing together models of flu dynamics with time series analysis methodology that’s commonly used by economists.

The results speak for themselves. Information released by the CDC gave Delphi’s Epicast system a “skill score” of 0.451, and its Stat project scored 0.438 — where perfect predictions would have earned 1.00. For comparison, assumptions of what was going to happen based on a simple average of previous data would have only scored 0.237.

That score might not seem like much compared to an ideal of 1.00, but it’s easier to see the strength of the Delphi team’s work when its compared to that of other groups taking part in the initiative. Typically, when different systems are averaged together, they cover for one another’s weaknesses and score better. However, even when all 28 submissions were combined to create an ensemble forecast, the system could only score 0.430 – a hair below Delphi Stat on its own, and well below Delphi Epicast.

Trickle Down

For the purposes of the CDC’s initiative, the Delphi group is working with the organization’s needs in mind. Its primary interest in a new forecasting platform is its capacity to improve its ability to time its response to the flu season.

“Flu can be very deadly for older people.”

The CDC needs to make public announcements about the flu season, and commence its vaccination campaigns at just the right time. If they’re too early or too late, they’re not going to be as effective as they could be.

For now, the CDC is the “main driver” behind the project, according to Rosenfeld. Going forward, he says that he can see the platform being used at state and county levels. Hospitals could even use its forecasting capabilities to help determine what their staffing and equipment needs might be.

Rosenfeld is excited about the prospect of individuals being able to use the forecasts to inform their own behavior. “If you have a mother or a mother-in-law who is 90 years old and wants to go visit their sister in Cleveland, if you know that flu is going to peak in Cleveland two weeks from now, it would be useful to be able to advise her not to go,” he explained. “Because flu can be very deadly for older people.”

It’s important to note that the forecasting isn’t exact — you’re not going to be told, definitively, whether you will or will not contract the flu virus by stepping foot in Cleveland. Rosenfeld compares it a weather station’s precipitation reports, in that it offers a general idea of where it will rain, and how much, over the coming days and weeks.

The Delphi group is working on influenza forecasting because the need is imminent, and data is plentiful, but its platform is capable of much more. The team is already using its technology to look at dengue fever, which kills thousands of people every year, and there are plans to apply the same tools to diseases and conditions including HIV, Ebola, and Zika.

This is a field known as epidemiological forecasting — and it’s blossoming.

Under the Weather

To put the current state of epidemiological forecasting into context, Rosenfeld compares it to weather forecasting, which entered its infancy in the U.S. in the 1860s.

“At the time that it started, people didn’t realize how useful it would be economically and socially, and how much it could progress,” he said of weather forecasting’s early years. “It took many, many years — many, many decades — of development across multiple dimensions.”

Meteorologists had to put infrastructure in place to collect measurements and readings, first around the country, and then around the world. They had to develop new statistical models, and do other mathematical work to put this data to use. New technology was needed to analyze their findings. Weather forecasting was among the first applications for early supercomputers.

“If you compare that to epidemiological forecasting, we’re at the very beginning,” Rosenfeld said. “We do have the computing power, we have a head start in that regard. But we need to develop the theory, and we need to develop the measurements.”

Rosenfeld hopes that the research that’s being done as part of this CDC initiative will demonstrate the broader potential for epidemiological forecasting. “It will take quite a few years to grow, and a significant investment,” he acknowledged. “We’re trying to make the case for it. We’re trying to start the work and show the vital benefits of forecasting.”

Rosenberg and his team have no small task ahead of them. Just as the benefits of weather forecasting weren’t immediately obvious, it’s difficult to accrue the necessary infrastructure and theoretical frameworks without the proper backing.

Working with the CDC has helped the Delphia group make some major advances in terms of influenza. The next step is to look at more infectious diseases, and continue to improve upon the forecasting being done. With any luck, the results will help medical practitioners see the thunderhead of an outbreak before it occurs.