New Technology and Old Books to Combat Insect-Borne Diseases Says Google

Google is developing a new technology to combat such diseases using decades-old datasets mined by Google Books as insect-borne diseases are affecting the lives of hundreds of millions of people every year. "A team at Google Brain is using decades-old datasets mined by Google Books -- along with a newly developed sensory map for odor -- to combat this major global health issue," Google said in a blog post.

"This is possible because the team recently discovered that a mosquito’s sense of smell is not so different from ours," it added.

The tech giant mentioned that climate change has led to an expansion of insects, including ticks and mosquitoes, which can lead to dengue fever, Lyme disease, and malaria outbreaks.

"My team is focused on giving computers a sense of smell. As we reviewed predictions of the neural networks we trained to predict what molecules smell like to people, we found that they were also useful to predict how the ’smell parts’ of the brains of insects respond to the same molecules," explains Alex Wiltschko, Former Google Brain researcher, and now Entrepreneur in Residence at Google Ventures.

Odor Technology to Repel Insects

Researchers at Google Brain realized that if they could train computers to recognize the odors that repel mosquitoes, those computers could help predict safe, inexpensive, and effective repellents to halt the spread of the insect-borne disease.

To develop this technology, the team identified relevant research completed by the US Department of Agriculture during World War II.

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"We learned about a dataset where they tested thousands of repellents -- much more than the 20 we had," said Alex.

Source-IANS