The Official google.org blog

Energy R&D funding from "Lightbulbs to Lightbulbs"

2009-11-20T13:02:00.001-08:00

(Condensed Remarks from the 2009 California Cleantech Open)

There are still power plants operating today that Thomas Edison could have seen with his own eyes. If he were to tour our electrical grid, he would recognize that too. As former Secretary of State George Shultz says, in energy "the past must not be prologue." Can we reinvent our energy system in only ten years? I think we can -- but we need to have a clear mission, we need to aim high, and we need substantial and sustained R&D funding.

This funding, coupled with tax incentives, loan guarantees, and other market mechanisms, is needed to drive innovation across the entire R&D pipeline -- from research, to development, to demonstration, to deployment, to full-scale commercialization. At Google we like to say, “from lightbulbs to lightbulbs" -- from the initial idea to real products. However you phrase it, investment is needed across that entire pipeline, especially from the government in the early stages where the energy industry often does not invest the large amounts needed to generate technological breakthroughs.

Since 1980 U.S. federal investment in energy R&D has dropped by 58 percent. Back then, 10 percent of the total government R&D investment was in energy. Today, the percentage has shrunk to only two percent. Recent signs in Washington are definitely positive. Earlier this year, President Obama added over $5.7 billion in 2-year stimulus funding for energy research, development, and demonstration. But this isn't enough, and it's not sustained. We're still on a 2-lane innovation road, not a superhighway -- and the road we're currently on is headed for a big cliff. Unless something changes, we're going to lose this significant funding after next year.

President Obama has called for $150 billion over 10 years for energy R&D. Some experts go even further -- Professors Dan Kammen and Gregory Nemet at UC Berkeley propose that annual energy R&D levels on the order of $30 billion will be necessary to address the climate challenge. And I was delighted to see recently that ARPA-E -- the new Department of Energy agency chartered to fund breakthrough ideas -- has made its first set of grants of $151 million for 37 projects. This is a great start, but it is only a start. We all need do our part to help convince our leaders in Washington to follow up on this down payment with substantial and sustained investment.

Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Energy Czar

Finding flu vaccine information in one easy place

2009-11-10T09:46:00.000-08:00

(cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

This year, it's especially important to have clear information on what you can do to prepare for the flu season. With this in mind, we are happy to share a new feature for the U.S. which allows you to more easily find locations near you for getting both the seasonal and H1N1 flu vaccine. After expanding Google Flu Trends to a total of 20 countries and 38 languages, allowing more people to see near real-time estimates of flu activity, we began brainstorming with the U.S. Department for Health and Human Services (HHS), their flu.gov collaborators and the American Lung Association on the flu shot finder and other ways Google can be helpful to people this flu season.

You can check out the flu shot finder at www.google.com/flushot. The same tool will also be available shortly on www.flu.gov and the American Lung Association websites. It's important to note that this project is just beginning and we have not yet received information about flu shot clinics for many locations. In addition, many locations that are shown are currently out of stock. We launched this service now in order to help disseminate information about locations where vaccines are available, and also to make more vaccine providers aware of the project so that they can contribute.

Especially given slower than expected vaccine production, we think it's important to bring together flu shot information in a coherent manner. We've been working with HHS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state and local health agencies to gather information on flu vaccine locations across the country, particularly for the H1N1 flu vaccine (both the nasal-spray vaccine and the shot). At the moment we have data for locations of flu vaccine directly from 20 states and counting. We are also continuing to add information from chain pharmacies and other providers in all 50 states; today, you'll find results from chains such as Walgreens, CVS and PDX participants, such as Kmart, Duane Reade, WinnDixie and Giant Eagle.

Of course you should still call flu vaccine providers ahead of time to find out more about availability and eligibility for the two vaccines.

We hope to continue providing you with relevant information to help keep you and your loved ones healthy.

Posted by Roni Zeiger, M.D., Product Manager and Jennifer Haroon, Product Marketing Manager

Empowering the UK with Google PowerMeter

2009-10-27T20:08:00.000-07:00

Electricity consumers in the United Kingdom can now access Google PowerMeter, a free software tool that provides consumers with information on how much energy their home is using. The software receives information from utility smart meters and in-home energy management devices and visualizes this information on a personalized iGoogle homepage. Today we're announcing both our very first UK utility partnership and our very first UK device partner.

Our utility partner, first:utility, is the only energy supplier in the United Kingdom to provide free smart meters to its customers, and is currently in the process of rolling them out across the country. To date, first:utility has over 30,000 customers signed up to its service. Starting in early November, all first:utility customers with smart meters will be able to sign up to use Google PowerMeter, empowering them with greater information about their home electricity use. According to Mark Daeche, first:utility’s Chief Executive, "At the end of the day, if you can’t measure and view your energy use, it’s very difficult to make savings.”

Google is also partnering with AlertMe, a self-install consumer device manufacturer and our first partner with a product available in the United Kingdom. Starting today, AlertMe customers in the UK can access their home’s data through Google PowerMeter on their iGoogle homepage. In just a few minutes consumers can access their home energy data from anywhere they can access the Internet. Pilgrim Beart, founder and CEO of AlertMe noted, “Our partnership with Google PowerMeter puts your home energy consumption right in front of you every time you go online.” Check out this video to learn more about how you can start monitoring your home energy use today.

With today's announcement, we've now signed up two device partners and ten utility partners serving five countries!

Posted by Ka-Ping Yee, Software Engineer and Jens Redmer, Business Development

Will genomics help prevent the next pandemic?

2009-10-26T09:11:00.000-07:00

The first outbreak of the new "swine flu" strain, now known as H1N1, earlier this year in Mexico caught the world by surprise. Public health officials around the world tried to stop the virus at the borders but were largely helpless. Shortly after, on the other side of the world from Mexico, I saw the health check posts in Cambodia at the airport and at a borderpost with Vietnam, right when the country found its first H1N1 cases which were flown in by US exchange students. The weapons used by the health officials to combat the spread of the virus were primarily paper survey forms and thermometers; the virus won, very quickly. Genomics is rapidly changing both the way diseases are diagnosed and the way medications and vaccines are developed - but will it give us the tools to prevent the next pandemic?

What if countries where emerging infections originate, from Cameroon to Cambodia, could rapidly sequence suspect samples and discover new pathogens when only a few people have become sick?
What if all such sequence data were immediately shared in a single global open access database?
What if you could search for a string of sequence data and all associated data, annotations or publications as easily and effectively as a Google search?
What if markers discovered for a new disease would quickly be incorporated into affordable hand held multi-pathogen diagnostic tests widely available at the point of care?
What if the results of those tests were uploaded to a database where surveillance tools like Google Flu Trends could discover outbreaks?

Today the Public Library of Science, a mission driven, non-profit and open access publisher, presents "The Genomics of Infectious Disease" a collection of essays, perspectives and reviews that explores how genomics—with all its associated tools and techniques—can provide insights into our understanding of emerging infectious disease. This collection was produced with financial support from Google.org with the editorial independence and rigor of PLoS and the expert opinion of leading researchers.

In one piece Rajesh Gupta, Mark Michalski (of Stanford, but at Google.org last year) and I provide Google.org’s perspective and vision for how systematic application of genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics to infectious diseases could predict and prevent the next pandemic. To realize this vision, however, we feel that a focused, coordinated and scaled-up effort would be required. We urge the community to unite under an “Infectious Disease Genomics Project,” analogous to the Human Genome Project, to accelerate today's impressive progress as reviewed by this cross-journal open access collection.

You can read more in this blog from PLoS and listen to a fascinating audio interview debate with with Jonathan Eisen, Siv Andersson, and Raj Gupta, led by Kirsten Sanford.

Posted by Frank Rijsberman, Google.org

Pouncing on the iCat opportunity

2009-10-15T16:36:00.000-07:00

As a relatively new philanthropy ourselves, Google.org continues to explore innovative and sustainable solutions to improving the lives and livelihoods of people in the developing world. This exploration often brings us into dialogue with many start-up social enterprises and other philanthropies trying to overcome challenges working directly with less advantaged populations. One such group, LGT Venture Philanthropy, has articulated a recurring theme: organizations with effective and innovative solutions to social and environmental problems often lack the manpower and expertise to implement these solutions in the most effective way, especially during the growth phase. They have come up with a creative solution: the iCats Program.

The iCats Program was designed to bridge the gap between philanthropic organizations or social enterprises in need of professional know-how and resources, and business professionals with the desire to apply their knowledge and experience to benefit the social sector, thus acting as “impact catalysts.” This is how the name iCats was inspired.

iCats are professionals from all over the world with diverse professional backgrounds who are willing to share their business expertise with carefully selected philanthropic organizations and social enterprises. LGT Venture Philanthropy created a web-based platform to match experienced professionals with specific needs in trusted partner programs.

In 2009, eight fellows are working in organizations in Africa, India, and Latin America. Peter Shrimpton, CEO of Heart in Capetown notes of the iCAT program, “Your funds may have mobilized us, but it is your fellows who are optimizing our performance. If your funds are the vehicle, your fellows are the fuel.”

I wanted to share with you that applications for the 2010 iCat Program are now underway. A fellow works 11 months on-site with a portfolio organization from February to December 2010 and receives regular mentoring from the LGT Venture Philanthropy team. In addition, a 4-day induction workshop brings all fellows together in the Swiss mountains.

The fellow positions for 2010 are now online on www.icatsprogram.com. Application deadline is 26th October 2009.

Posted by Mark Smolinski, Google.org

Google Flu Trends expands to 16 additional countries

2009-10-08T00:35:00.000-07:00

If you're like us, you're probably thinking a lot about how this year's flu season might affect you and your community. To help you out, we at Google.org are excited to announce the expansion of Google Flu Trends to 16 additional countries, including much of Europe. We've also made the site available in 37 languages. Flu is a global threat, affecting millions worldwide each year, so we're pleased to make this tool available in more regions and languages.

Last November, we launched Google Flu Trends in the United States after finding a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. By tracking the popularity of certain Google search queries, we are able to estimate the level of flu, in near real-time. While some traditional flu surveillance systems may take days or weeks to collect and release data, Google search queries can be counted immediately. Google Flu Trends provides an additional surveillance tool that may help public health officials and the public make more informed decisions about preparing for the flu season.

In the past year, we've expanded our coverage to include Mexico, New Zealand and Australia and have continued to see a good correspondence between our estimates and official flu activity data. In fact, our analysis of last season shows that Google Flu Trends had a close 0.92 correlation with official U.S. flu data.

An important aspect of Google Flu Trends is that we filter out terms that may be popular because people hear about them in the news. What we do not use in the models is a term like [swine flu] since people are more likely to type that into Google because they want to know more information about it, given the news headlines, and not because they actually have H1N1 or swine flu. For more information about how we built this model, take a peek at this video:

If you visit Google Flu Trends for the U.S., you'll notice that the flu season is starting early this year. For tips on how to stay healthy this season, please visit our friends at the U.S. CDC and the ECDC.

Posted by Matt Mohebbi and Dan Vanderkam, Software Engineers

Open enrollment for Google PowerMeter partners

2009-10-07T17:09:00.000-07:00

The Google PowerMeter team is pleased to announce an important milestone for our product -- open enrollment. This means that utilities can enable self-serve sign-up for customers to use the Google PowerMeter gadget. More users means improved feedback on our product and this will translate into an improved product experience. Here's how it works: If your utility has open enrollment enabled for your account, with just two simple steps you can have your usage data transmitted to Google and visible online via Google PowerMeter.

Yello Strom, a German utility and our first partner in Europe, is fully up and running with open enrollment. All of the customers who use Yello's smart electricity meter - the Sparzähler - can now also view their individual electricity consumption online using Google PowerMeter. With over 1.4 million customers, Yello is among Germany's top ten electricity companies and the very first company to offer commercial smart meters nationwide in Germany since 2008. Yello’s smart meter interacts with a PC to make energy consumption visible for the customer – both in real-time within their own household and online at fifteen-minute intervals. Expanding the number of customers who can sign up for Google PowerMeter is just one more way this forward-thinking utility is improving access to energy information. As Executive Director Martin Vesper put it, "We are now offering our customers even more ways to maintain an overview of their electricity consumption with the help of the internet. And when people know exactly what is going on with their energy usage, they can use energy efficiently without sacrificing convenience."

Other Google PowerMeter partners are also working towards open enrollment capabilities. Florida's JEA has built an open enrollment system and is actively rolling it out within their customer base. And National Information Solutions Cooperative (NISC), the latest addition to our strategic partners, is actively integrating Google PowerMeter into their offerings for all Utility Co-ops that they service.

Open enrollment and our recent device announcement mean that even more users can now see their electricity data to save energy and money!

Posted by Srikanth Rajagopalan, Product Manager

Google PowerMeter's first device partner

2009-10-05T15:43:00.000-07:00

Cross-posted to the Official Google Blog.

Today, we're very excited to announce we have secured our first official device partner. (That means having a smart meter installed by your utility is no longer a prerequisite for using Google PowerMeter!) For the last several months, a few hundred Google employees have been testing a number of in-home electricity monitoring devices. Those of us lucky enough to have one of these devices installed in our homes experienced first-hand how access to high-resolution energy use information drives meaningful behavior change. So we set out to make that data easier for everyone to access and understand by sending the collected data to our Google PowerMeter software.

The TED 5000 from Energy Inc. is an energy monitor that measures electricity usage in real-time (TED stands for "The Energy Detective"). As of today, we're pleased to announce that anyone in North America can purchase and install the TED 5000 and see personal home energy data using our free software tool, Google PowerMeter, from anywhere you can access the web including through iGoogle for mobile phones. (If you already have a TED 5000, you can download a free firmware upgrade to enable this functionality.)

Combined with Google PowerMeter, the TED 5000 device can help you understand your electricity usage to save energy and money. Energy Inc. is just our first device partner and if you are working for a company that manufactures energy monitors, we'd like to hear from you. Stay tuned for more!

Posted by Tom Sly, New Business Development & Charles Spirakis, Software Engineer

Swine flu near you?

2009-09-01T14:47:00.000-07:00

Well, there's now an app for that.

Today Google.org grantee HealthMap launched a new iPhone application called "Outbreaks Near Me" available for free download.

Curious about what disease outbreaks have been reported in your neighborhood? Or maybe in that city you're headed to for work or vacation? "Outbreaks Near Me" empowers users to track and report outbreaks of infectious disease near them in real-time. In addition to following the reports near you with an automatic alerting function, you can even become a disease detective yourself by reporting on outbreaks happening around you. It's the latest and greatest in grassroots disease surveillance.

Outbreaks Near Me pinpoints a user’s location and maps local outbreak reports.

HealthMap co-founder Clark Freifeld explains, "In releasing this app we aim to empower citizens in the cause of public health, not only by providing ready access to real-time information, but also by encouraging them to contribute their own knowledge, expertise and observations. In enabling participation in surveillance, we also expect to increase global coverage and identify outbreaks earlier."

HealthMap is based at Children's Hospital Boston. They launched this new application in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab. Please read HealthMap's press release for more information.

Posted by Corrie Conrad, Google.org

Announcing 14 Geo Challenge Grant Recipients

2009-08-12T14:03:00.000-07:00

When we launched our Geo Challenge Grants project last fall, we hoped our small grants program would provide nonprofits with the impetus and resources they need to take advantage of powerful online mapping tools like Google Earth and Google Maps. We were, without a doubt, not disappointed. In fact, we were overwhelmed by the hundreds of exciting and innovative geospatial applications that poured in from around the world, addressing diverse issues from renewable energy resources to education.

We are excited to announce that we have awarded grants to fourteen organizations with creative geo applications. These projects address important problems through creative and scalable geospatial applications. Grants are awarded either through the Google.org Fund at Tides Foundation or directly from Google.org.

Over the next six months to one year, these Geo Challenge Grant recipients will launch their projects and open-source all of the data, making both the projects and the data accessible to people all over the world. We hope these projects will inspire others to use geospatial platforms to address global problems:

Grantee	Project Name	Project Description	Amount
Academy for Educational Development	Data Visualization for Global Education	Using the Education Policy & Data Center's existing data system, AED will develop new visual tools for better communication of education patterns, inequality, and trends to policy makers and program developers	$21,600
Appalshop, Inc.	Wise Energy Forums	Mapping the renewable energy resources in Wise County Virginia to show the opportunity of a sustainable energy future locally	$5,000
Asha for Education	Interactive geospatial web-based portal for dissemination of information related to the education of underprivileged children in India	Developing an interactive geospatial web based portal for dissemination of information related to the education of underprivileged children in India	$6,000
CartONG	REDD Pilot – Elaboration and displaying of forest gains and losses in two target communities in Vietnam	Designing a pilot system for monitoring deforestation rates for Central Highlands of Vietnam. The project will carry out forest inventories and calculate carbon stocks using models	$25,000
e-Geopolis	e-Geopolis Data Dissemination Project: Urban Growth in Africa and India, 1950-2020	Enhancing the quality and quantity of urbanization data for communities of 10,000 people in India and Africa	$50,000
Esperanza del Barrio	Street Vendor Mobile Mapping	Developing a mapping application and website that will accept multi-user texts to map and update street vendor locations, integrating data into websites like Yelp and Urbanspoon, and providing information about access to healthy foods to the community	$21,600
Green Belt Movement	The Green Belt Movement Tree Planting Project Mapping in Kenya	Creating a web-based system to visualize and monitor the Green Belt Movement supported community tree nurseries and associated tree planting sites in Kenya	$50,000
International Snow Leopard Trust	Climate Change Impacts on Snow Leopard Range: Prioritizing Conservation Efforts to Mitigate Human-Wildlife Conflict	Displaying different climate change scenarios in regions of China where the snow leopard lives to prevent human-snow leopard conflict	$5,000
King's College London	Mapping the potential of global hydropower to sustain renewable energy demands, the risks imposed by climate change and strategies for adaptation through land cover management	Mapping the global distribution of dams, contributing watersheds and the role of protected areas and community reserves in providing water-based environmental services to these dams	$25,000
Marine Conservation Biology Institute	Renewable Energy at Sea: Best Places for Wind, Wave & Current Generation in US Waters	Creating a map of offshore wind, wave and current renewable resources as well as shipping lanes, marine sanctuaries, and aquaculture that will highlight the most favorable areas for development	$5,000
Point Reyes Bird Observatory	Biodiversity Futures: Mapping Biological Responses to Climate Change	Building a dynamic and user-driven online modeling application using existing avian, climate, vegetation, and land use change data to show deviation of avian migration based on climate change scenarios	$25,000
Royal University of Phnom Penh	Mapping Healthcare Centres in Cambodia	Mapping the health centers in the country's capital city (clinics, services, contact info, languages, etc) and using this as the foundation for a Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) emergency system	$5,000
Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society	To develop a dynamic Geo Portal interfaced with Google Earth and climate change data to provide a “one stop shop” Internet database for Asian elephant conservation and to identify individual elephants through an automated identification program	Developing a dynamic Geo Portal with climate change data to provide a “one stop shop” Internet database for Asian elephant conservation and to identify individual elephants through an automated identification program	$15,000
UK Consortium on AIDS & International Development	Mapping availability of HIV, AIDS and TB services in Africa	Using the Ushahidi platform, it will map organizations providing HIV, AIDS and TB related services in Kenya and create a tool that enables organizations without experience of mapping to publish data on HIV, AIDS and TB services in their own countries	$40,800

Posted by Adam Borelli, Associate, Google.org

Cash for a clunker

2009-08-07T12:09:00.000-07:00

Ever since college, I've been driving the same car: a 2000 Nissan XTerra. It's been a great car and, after more than 100,000 miles, it has a lot of memories: a ski trip to Lake Tahoe through a blizzard, driving down the I5 to Los Angeles, driving across the entire country and then back! However, over the last few years I started to feel guilty about the how much gas my car managed to guzzle. The official stats claimed 19 miles-per-gallon on the highway, but they must have been driving slower than I do because I never saw that sort of mileage. So, I was excited when the government approved the "Cash for Clunkers" program!

I talked it over with my wife, and we decided it was time to upgrade to a more environmentally friendly car. We looked around, and decided to get a Toyota Prius. After checking out the Cash for Clunkers website, I figured out that because the Prius is rated at 50 mpg, well more than 10 mpg more than the 16 mpg my XTerra currently rates, we were eligible for a $4,500 trade-in value through the program. That made the Prius not only a environmentally friendly choice, but an economically attractive one as well. We found a participating dealer nearby and headed over to trade in our clunker.

After a quick test drive and some effective negotiations, we struck a deal and bought the new car. As always, there was quite a bit of paperwork involved, including a few extra pages for the "Cash for Clunkers" program. (Then again, $4,500 is certainly worth a couple of pages of paperwork.) After signing on the dotted line, the car was ours.

Just today President Barack Obama signed a bill extending funding for this incredibly popular program, which burned through its $1 billion budget in just one week. It's not often you can get something you want, feel like you're doing something good for the planet, and get $4,500 for doing it. So consider trading in your clunker for a more fuel-efficient model this weekend!

Posted by Jeff Keltner, Business Development Manager

Turning on the Solar Power Tower

2009-08-06T13:23:00.001-07:00

In 2007 Google.org launched our Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal initiative and announced a $10 million investment in the early-stage clean power company eSolar, Inc. Yesterday in Southern California, eSolar flipped the switch on what is to be the first solar power tower facility in the U.S. that will enter full commercial operation.

Success here could signal the emergence of a clean energy technology by which we might -- for the first time -- economically harness the sun to produce large quantities of electricity. And we would be harnessing a massive and, for all practical purposes, inexhaustible energy supply.

In many respects eSolar has turned conventional thinking about solar power tower technology on its head in order to drastically reduce the capital and operating cost of solar thermal power plants. Instead of employing a small number of large and expensive specialty mirrors eSolar takes the opposite approach – incorporating thousands of small mirrors that can be made cheaply in massive quantities. And instead of having to reinforce large mirrors to stand up to high winds, eSolar’s small mirrors have a low profile, reducing material costs including steel and concrete for the mounting structures.

Of course this massive number of mirrors requires more sophisticated software so they accurately track the sun leading to high heat output and system efficiency. At Google we’re particularly intrigued with this aspect of the eSolar product -- that is, how the performance of energy technology can be enhanced by information technology. Call it ET meets IT.

The eSolar team has taken a giant step toward cracking the code on solar power tower technology. I’m hopeful that just a few years from now we will see this facility – and many more like it – focusing the sun’s energy to produce a brighter future for our children and the planet they will inherit.

Posted by Dan Reicher, Director of Climate Change & Energy Initaitives

The vast potential of energy efficiency

2009-08-06T09:10:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from the Public Policy Blog)

It's no surprise that the cheapest and most available solution to the climate problem is simply to use energy more efficiently. But a recent study issued by McKinsey & Co. details just how compelling an opportunity we are missing. McKinsey predicts that an annual investment of roughly $50 billion over the next 10 years would cut energy demand by 23% and yield savings to the U.S. economy worth $1.2 trillion! The energy savings would be equal to taking the entire U.S. passenger fleet of cars and trucks off the road.

Such efficiency gains are possible only if we overcome some major hurdles. For instance, most people have no idea how much energy we use in our homes on a daily basis or which of our appliances or devices are consuming the most energy. That's one of the reasons that we created Google PowerMeter, a software gadget that shows users detailed information on their home electricity consumption. Studies show that when people have access to this kind information they reduce their energy use by up to 15%. Greater savings are possible if people use the information to buy a more efficient refrigerator or air conditioner, insulate their home, or take advantage of off-peak electricity rates.

The McKinsey report acknowledges that energy efficiency alone won't solve our energy and climate challenges. We must continue to put major resources into low-carbon sources of energy like renewable energy, and the federal economic stimulus, with its tens of billions of targeted dollars and incentives, is a good start. But the McKinsey findings are a wake up call. As we enact more comprehensive energy policies, energy efficiency -- and giving people the information, tools and incentives to take advantage of it -- should be front and center.

Posted by Michael Terrell, Program Manager, Google.org

Malaria origins revealed

2009-08-03T15:25:00.000-07:00

An international group of scientists, including Dr. Nathan Wolfe and the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative (GVFI), announced today their discovery of the origins of the deadliest form of human malaria - Plasmodium falciparim. The falciparim parasite is responsible for more than one million deaths each year. GVFI, a 2008 Google.org grantee, monitors the spread of disease from animals to humans by analyzing blood and tissue samples collected from high-risk humans (bushmeat hunters, live-market workers, and more) and the animals they are in contact with.

The finding, documented in today's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), disproves the long-held belief that malaria is an ancient disease that has evolved along with its human hosts for over 5 million years. Instead, analysis of several new blood samples from chimpanzees in Cameroon and Côte d'Ivoire, has shown that human malaria began as a chimpanzee disease that jumped species (presumably when a human sustained a bite from a mosquito carrying chimpanzee malaria) as recently as 10,000 years ago.

Why do we care about the origins of the disease? Firstly, it demonstrates that interspecies disease transfer has been occurring for millennia, and is not a modern phenomenon confined to our more recent experience with HIV, SARS and swine flu. We must monitor this important mechanism of disease emergence if we want to catch the next pandemic, for the sake of our health and the health of generations to come. Secondly, the study has demonstrated that chimpanzees carry a greater diversity of close relatives to human malaria than previously understood. These could be the source of lifesaving new vaccines or treatments for human malaria.

Dibamba is a chimpanzee in the Mfou National Park in Cameroon. This individual and other chimpanzees in Cameroon and Ivory Coast were found infected with parasites that show that human malaria originated in chimpanzees.
(Photo by Matthew LeBreton, Global Viral Forecasting Initiative)

Posted by Joanne Stevens, Google.org

Inaugural class of Global Health Corps

2009-07-30T16:17:00.000-07:00

Global Health Corps (GHC) places recent university graduates to year-long assignments with public health organizations. Last night members of the Google.org team were delighted to celebrate the inaugural class of Global Health Corps Fellows as they assembled at the Stanford University School of Medicine before embarking on their year-long placements in Malawi, Tanzania, Rwanda, New Jersey, and Boston. The Fellows met for the first time during a two-week course to prepare them for their upcoming assignments.

The Global Health Corps concept was a product of some exciting brainstorming during the aids2031 conference hosted by Google.org in March 2008. GHC's 6-person leadership team includes Barbara Bush as President, and two Googlers, Charlie Hale and Andrew Bentley. "This has been an amazing collaborative effort. We've had an incredible amount of support from a number of partners, and are confident this first class of fellows will have a tremendous impact," says Charlie Hale.

The organization strives to improve the quality of health services for the poor by matching talented pairs of recent university graduates from Africa and America with health-focused non-profit organizations.

Angie Bengtson from Minnesota and Mweya Clement from Tanzania are a duo that will begin their one year assignment with SACIDs (Southern African Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance) in August. As Research Analysts, they will develop and improve early warning systems of infectious disease. Angie and Clement are among 22 promising young fellows chosen from a pool of 1,200 applicants. The fellows will promote cultural awareness while improving healthcare systems in need.

We salute the new class of fellows and wish them luck in their exciting new adventure!

Posted by Kataneh Sarvian, Google.org

Bugs we get from the animals we live with, or eat.

2009-07-28T21:00:00.000-07:00

Recently I was in Cambodia with a group of Googlers for "Gcamp" at the Royal University of Phnom Penh when the country's first H1N1 (swine flu) case was discovered - a 16-year old American girl on an exchange student visit. The pandemic had traveled the globe and reached South-East Asia. All visitors to the country are now greeted by quarantine unit officers, equipped with paper forms and a fishbowl-like isolation room for suspected carriers, trying to keep the bug out. For years the world feared a possible flu pandemic not traveling to, but coming from Cambodia or one of its neighbors - an H5N1 (bird flu) pandemic that has not happened yet. So far we have been lucky - bird flu is quite deadly but has not yet been very contagious. Swine flu has quickly become a pandemic but is not yet very virulent.

We get many new infectious diseases from the animals we eat or live with - poultry, livestock, wildlife, or insects such as mosquitoes. Some diseases have been around for a long time but we know surprisingly little about them. Rift Valley Fever, for example, periodically kills people and livestock in east Africa, most recently in early 2007 when 300 people died in Kenya, Tanzania and Somalia. But we don't know where the disease hides between outbreaks, how it gets transmitted, or whether people are getting sick because they get infected by mosquitoes or by handling, or eating, sick animals. Late last year Google.org made a $5 million grant to icipe (African Insect Science for Food and Health) and partners to improve the discovery and surveillance of insect-carried infectious diseases, particularly Rift Valley Fever in East Africa. The project will collect an estimated 25,000 insect, wildlife, livestock and human samples and hunt for bugs using state-of-the-art biotech methods. Roche, the health care company, has now donated a 454 Genome Sequencer FLX system to the project to strengthen the labs of one of the project's partners, ILRI-BecA, biotech center of excellence for East Africa. This is the first second generation sequencing platform to be installed in the region and will significantly increase the project capacity to discover new pathogens.

The project will screen the samples with multiplex PCR and/or sequence on the Roche 454 platform and will meet its goals if it finds, within 3 years:

* 5 novel Rift Valley Fever variants
* 5 new disease vectors (e.g. insects)
* 20 known viruses that are identified in Kenya for the first time, and
* 5 novel potential pathogen variants (i.e. 5 new diseases).

If those goals are met then we will be one step closer to predicting and preventing the next pandemic that may come out of East Africa.

Posted by Frank Rijsberman, Google.org

The Final Inch DVD - captioned for 19 languages

2009-07-22T09:03:00.000-07:00

Google.org is pleased to announce that The Final Inch, a film produced with support from and in collaboration with Google.org, is now available on DVD. The Final Inch received a 2008 Oscar nomination in the category of Best Documentary (Short Film).

To facilitate wide global distribution, the DVD has been priced inexpensively and captioned with subtitles for 19 languages. You may order a copy of the film at Amazon.com. Purchasers of the DVD are welcome to show the film at educational events and not-for-profit fundraising events targeted at polio eradication.

Google.org plans to donate $2 from the purchase of each DVD, though at least December 31, 2009, to polio eradication partners such as Rotary International and UNICEF. In February of this year, UNICEF issued press release about The Final Inch that effectively outlines what a crucial moment it is for the polio eradication effort in India.

Posted by Gregory Miller, Director, Google.org

German utility partners with Google PowerMeter - willkommen!

2009-06-30T02:28:00.000-07:00

Earlier today we announced on the Google Germany Blog that Yello Strom is our first Google PowerMeter partner in Europe. With over 1.4 million customers, Yello is among Germany's ten largest electricity companies and the very first company to offer commercial smart meters nationwide in Germany.

When Yello Executive Director Martin Vesper gave us a demo of the Sparzähler meter a few months ago, it felt like fate -- Yello's solution for making energy information easy-to-access and easy-to-act-upon aligns perfectly with our vision for Google PowerMeter. The Sparzähler meter's broadband connectivity makes it possible for Google PowerMeter users to see 15 minute interval data nearly in real time. (Its design is also pretty sleek, we think.)

Google PowerMeter now has nine utility partners around the world, large and small -- and each partner shares our goal of giving customers easy access to their own home energy usage information.

We hear from utilities around the world that are interested in enabling their customers to use Google PowerMeter. At the moment, we're focused on working with those utilities that can collect a minimum of hourly data (that's 24 reads a day) and deliver it to Google within one day. If you work for a utility with these kind of capabilities and are interested in getting your customers Google PowerMeter, please let us know!

Posted by Tom Sly, New Business Development

Google SMS to serve needs of poor in Uganda

2009-06-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from Official Google Africa Blog)

Today is a big day for the Google Africa team for several reasons. We're announcing an exciting partnership between MTN Uganda, the Grameen Foundation and Google, along with the launch of Google SMS in Uganda. This launch makes available the first suite of applications resulting from an endeavor initiated by Grameen Foundation called "AppLab" (Application Laboratory) which began over a year ago. AppLab is designed to develop mobile applications that serve the needs of poor and other vulnerable individuals and communities, most of whom have limited access to information and communications technology.

At Google we seek to serve a broad base of people — not only those who can afford to access the Internet from the convenience of their workplace or with a computer at home. It's important to reach users wherever they are, with the information they need, in areas with the greatest information poverty. Hence the launch of Google SMS, a bundle of mobile services for users to access content on a range of topics. This not only includes traditional services such as sports scores and local news, but for the first time, also includes services such as health and agriculture tips.

We are also releasing Google Trader, an SMS-based "marketplace" application that helps buyers and sellers find each other, enabling greater access to markets and trade, especially for those who are most excluded today. With these services, we hope to help alleviate some of the information and access to markets barriers for the poor, especially those in rural areas. So when farmers in Iganga want to sell their maize, they can list it on Google Trader and a miller in another trading center can find and contact them to buy their goods (see picture below). If a pregnant woman has a question about prenatal services, she can text her question to 6001 and get a response right away. Now people in any part of Uganda can easily find the information that is most critical to them.

Miller in trading center calling women's farming group in Iganga to obtain maize.

These activities also represent an important milestone: our first major initiative in Uganda, one of the newest locations where Google is setting up operations. Earlier this year, I joined the Google Africa team to lead our efforts in Uganda, where we want to offer valuable services that address real needs. As East African fiber optic cables begin to connect Uganda to the global Internet community, it is vital that the foundation for a thriving Internet economy also be established. Many impressive organizations are focused on this goal, and we hope to enhance these efforts.

Finally, this launch represents the team efforts of many local partners, communities and individuals, each of whom played a role in bringing this vision to life. The Village Phone Operators represent our very first set of focus group participants and product development advisors. And the participation of farmers in more distant villages was fundamental in creating the highly local content — created by them, for them, through our local partner BROSDI (Busoga Rural Open Source and Development Initiative), in collaboration with AppLab. While developing the health tips service, students, health workers, doctors and school nurses stepped forward as leaders in their respective areas and turned this humble mission into a reality. Our partners, Straight Talk Foundation and Marie Stopes International, not only created the content with AppLab based on the input of these many constituents, but forged deep and strong links with the communities where these services are in greatest demand.

When we return to these villages with a product that will be developed through their insights, we want to understand if the service truly is having an impact. To this end, we are conducting a social impact assessment with Innovations for Poverty Action, with support from Google.org, to build from the knowledge of what users need most, to understand what works best.

We hope these services will help a variety of organizations already doing impressive work to reach a broader audience and those with the greatest need, in new and innovative ways, through the mobile phone. This is the first of many exciting collaborative efforts we will be working on to support access to information in Uganda and more broadly, across Africa. So to everyone who participated in this effort, we say Webale Nyo!

Posted by Rachel Payne, Country Manager, Uganda

All for Good: Bringing search, scale and openness to community service

2009-06-22T08:19:00.000-07:00

(cross-posted with Official Google Blog)

While many organizations are doing great work to enable community service locally, it's not simple to search across opportunities from a variety of places to find what's right for you. We have some experience finding relevant information from among many scattered sources, and when we learned that President Obama and the First Lady were making community service a top priority even before taking office, we thought we could help make a difference.

With our mission in mind, a group of "20%" engineers, designers, and program managers from Google and other tech companies began work on All for Good, a new service to help you find volunteer events in your community, and share those events with your friends.

All for Good provides a single search interface for volunteer activities across many major volunteering sites and organizations like United Way, VolunteerMatch, HandsOn Network and Reach Out and Read. By building on top of the amazing efforts of existing volunteer organizations like these, we hope to amplify their efforts.

And in the spirit of open data, All for Good has a data API that anyone can use to search the same data displayed on the All for Good site. All for Good was developed entirely using App Engine and Google Base, with the full code repository hosted on Google Code Hosting. We'll be inviting developers to contribute to the open source application soon, so stay tuned.

Just as releasing the Maps API led to an surge of independent and creative uses of geographic information, we've built All for Good as a platform to encourage innovation in volunteerism, as much as an end product in itself. We hope software developers will use the API or code to build their own volunteering applications, some even better than the All for Good site!

And if you want to volunteer your video-creating skills to make a difference, check out YouTube Video Volunteers, a new platform designed to make connections between non-profits with video needs and skilled video makers who can help broadcast their causes through video.

All for Good is a new kind of collaboration between the private, public, and nonprofits sectors to build free and open technology to empower citizens. Similar to the Open Social Foundation, we helped create a new organization called Our Good Works to make sure that the API, the platform, and social innovation that they inspire are supported for the long term. The leadership includes Reid Hoffman, Chris DiBona, Arianna Huffington and Craig Newmark on the board, and the organization aims to build support volunteerism services like All for Good.

Today the First Lady is in San Francisco calling on Americans to improve our communities by rolling up our sleeves and putting our time and talent towards doing good. You can learn more at serve.gov, where we're proud to power search.

Posted by Paul Rademacher and Adam Sah, Engineering Tech Leads, Google

Happy World Environment Day

2009-06-05T11:24:00.000-07:00

Today is World Environment Day and I wanted to point your attention to a major initiative that just launched and is supported by Google: The Prince of Wales' Prince's Rainforest Project, dedicated to protecting the Amazon rainforest. Check out this video featuring supporters from around the world, including Google's very own CEO, Eric Schmidt - and some adorable frogs. Prince Charles spoke about the destruction of the rainforest and other challenges of the 21st century at our recent European Zeitgeist. As he has said, "If we lose the battle against tropical deforestation, we lose the battle against climate change."

Posted by Amit Sood, Sr. Product Marketing Manager

Google Flu Trends for Australia and New Zealand

2009-06-03T07:01:00.000-07:00

As the flu season begins in the southern hemisphere, we're excited to announce the expansion of Google Flu Trends to Australia and New Zealand.

By using aggregated search data, we've been able to produce estimates of flu activity for these countries in the same manner as in the United States and Mexico. We continue to see a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms.

While some existing flu tracking systems may take days or weeks to collect and release data, Google search queries can be counted immediately. Google Flu Trends is updated daily and may provide early detection of flu outbreaks. We hope that this information complements existing flu surveillance efforts in Australia and New Zealand, and proves useful for individuals and public health responders.

We're keenly aware of the trust our users place in us and our responsibility to protect their privacy. Google Flu Trends cannot be used to identify individual users. The patterns we observe are only meaningful across large populations of Google searchers.

For those Kiwis and Aussies out there, avoid becoming part of our statistics and get a flu shot! And keep an eye on those graphs if you're curious to see how the flu season unfolds.

Posted by Dan Vanderkam, Software Engineer, and Corrie Conrad, Senior Associate, Google.org

Energized about our first Google PowerMeter partners

2009-05-20T00:01:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

Earlier this year I blogged about energy information and a tool our engineers developed called Google PowerMeter, a Google gadget that can show consumers their personal electricity consumption right on a home computer. Our software relies on "smart meters" (or other metering devices) as a data source. Over the past several months we've been looking to partner with utilities that are installing (or have already installed) this equipment in their customers' homes. We're energized by our very first Google PowerMeter partners:

San Diego Gas & Electric® (California)
TXU Energy (Texas)
JEA (Florida)
Reliance Energy (India)
Wisconsin Public Service Corporation (Wisconsin)
White River Valley Electric Cooperative (Missouri)
Toronto Hydro–Electric System Limited (Canada)
Glasgow EPB (Kentucky)

Our initial partners include utilities with millions of customers as well as smaller ones. They are rural and urban, privately held and municipally run. Some are in the United States, others in Canada and India. They all have one thing in common — a desire to serve their customers by providing access to detailed information that helps save energy and money. For now, Google PowerMeter is only available to a limited group of customers, but we plan to expand our roll out later this year. Our utility partners are leading the charge to make the electricity grid smarter and we look forward to working with them and others.

In addition to utilities, we're also seeking partnerships with companies that can enable the implementation of our software. Our first such partner is Itron, a leading meter and data management company that serves over 8,000 utilities and is helping some of their customers, including San Diego Gas & Electric, integrate with Google PowerMeter. If you're a utility or company with a smart meter project that might be interested in plugging in to our efforts, visit our website for more information.

Posted by Ed Lu, Engineering Team

Understanding health-related searches

2009-05-13T15:00:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from Official Google Blog)

As we blogged last summer, there are lots of experiments running on Google web search all over the world. Today we've started a temporary experiment that some people might find interesting: we're researching how Google users search the Internet when they or someone they know is feeling sick.

Understanding how people search when they're feeling sick is an important problem to solve, as it can help improve projects like Google Flu Trends, which uses aggregated search data to detect influenza epidemics. Statistics gathered in this experiment may also help Google deliver more relevant search results in the future. For example, someone who searches for [arthritis pain] to understand why an aging parent is experiencing joint pain might want to learn about nearby health facilities and potential treatments, whereas somebody who searches for [arthritis pain] because she is doing a research project might want results about how common arthritis is and what its risk factors are. Rather than make educated guesses about how many users are searching because they're sick, we're running this experiment to collect real statistics. This is not a permanent change, but a short-term experiment. A small percentage of random health-related searches will trigger the poll question.

For example, at the bottom of the search results for [headache], some users will see a survey which asks whether they were searching because they or someone they know has a headache:

Similarly, if you happen to search for [ibuprofen], a common anti-inflammatory drug, you might see a survey which asks whether you were searching because you or somebody you know is taking ibuprofen:

Data collected in this survey will be aggregated across thousands of users. Survey responses will be stored together with the original search query, but will not be associated with email addresses or other personally identifiable information. Survey data will not be used for advertising — it will only be used to help Google improve health-related search results and to help refine public health trends based on aggregated search queries, much like Google Flu Trends. You can learn more about how Google protects users' privacy at our Privacy Center.

For more information, please take a look at our FAQ.

Posted by Roni Zeiger, MD, Product Manager and Jeremy Ginsberg, Software Engineer

New resources for non-profit and humanitarian mapping

2009-05-07T12:39:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from Lat Long Blog)

Our friends at MapAction have created a great new publication. Their Field Guide to Humanitarian Mapping was produced "to help humanitarian organisations to make use of mapping methods using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and related technologies". You can download the first edition for free (3.2MB PDF).

While the free field guide is designed to help organizations doing emergency work, it is relevant to many other organizations, and anyone looking to take advantage of geospatial tools and methods like GPS technologies for collecting data, free & open-source GIS software such as MapWindow for processing and analyzing data, and Google Earth and Google Maps for visualization and display.

Early last year, MapAction published a briefing paper (1MB PDF) on the use of Google Earth in the humanitarian sector. Since then, we've added several new features, like imagery acquisition dates and historical imagery, touring, ocean, and free GPS data import, all of which help users to visualize, share and explore their places and data in new and exciting ways.

Another great new resource is A Nonprofit's Introduction to Google's Online Mapping Tools, recently posted on TechSoup by Chris Peters and Mano Marks. It provides excellent advice on how organizations that have data to display can effectively use Google Maps and Google Earth for outreach and advocacy.

Some more handy Google Earth and Google Maps resources include:

* Google Earth Outreach (website with examples and tutorials)
* Maps 2.0 Resources from Humaninet
* A Rough Google Earth Guide (872kB PDF) form Mercy Corps

Finally, Google has a full suite of free tools available to non-profits on the Google for Non-Profits page.

Posted by Christiaan Adams, Google Earth Outreach