Science News

Modelling the spread of disease is a difficult business. Once upon a time diseases could spread only as fast as we could walk or ride a horse. But today our complicated travel patterns mean an epidemic can jump from country to country in a matter of hours when an infected person boards a plane. Epidemiologists use incredibly complex models involving huge amounts of transport, social contact and disease data to predict the spread of diseases. But Dirk Brockmann, a physicist from Northwestern University, thinks we can hide all this complexity and draw a simpler picture of how diseases spread, even in today's complex world.

Animation: A T4 Bacteriophage (virus) infects a bacteria.

The discovery of a virus with its own immune system. …