Jun 26, 2009

Timely research

I'm reading a nature paper that was published yesterday, Origins and evolutionary genomics of the 2009 swine-origin H1N1 influenza A epidemic.

This is a 4-page letter paper. According to the Nature authors' guide, this means the paper provides an outstanding finding whose importance means that it will be of interest to scientists in other fields. Regular articles in Nature is 5 page long and needs to make a substantial advance in understanding of an important problem.

As the title says, the paper is about the recent 2009 swine flu. I'm amazed that scientists put together good work in such a short period of time. Well, informally, I've heard of a couple of immediate rejections on the Swine flu to Nature. This says, there are *lots* of scientists who are quick and good.

What can social network researchers do with the abundance of data and the recent Iran election? This could turn into another great Nature letter paper in a few months.



No comments: