This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science.

I'm Karen Hopkins.

If you've got the flu, your focus is on getting better,

not on how you caught it.

But from a public health standpoint, tracking how flu spreads can help keep the virus contained.

In the past, models predicting the path of epidemics have focused on travel by plane,

in some cases combining data on population density with airport locations.

And when studies showed that influenza transmission is modulated by humidity,

scientists injected information on climate into the mix.

Now, a new study combines data on a variety of factors,

from doctor's visits and vaccination coverage,

to weather patterns in the movement of individuals as recorded by Twitter.

The finding, in the U.S. influenza typically arises in the warm humid conditions of the South

and spreads quickly thanks to the high degree of social connectivity in the region. of the

research quickly, the high degree of social connectivity in the region. The finding is in the journal E-Life.

The researcher started by pouring over health care records

from more than 40 million families, looking for reports of flu-like symptoms.

The analysis covered nine seasons worth of data from 2003 to 2011.

And it pointed toward outbreak starting near the Gulf of Mexico or the southern Atlantic,

a surge that seemed to coincide with the southward migration of ducks.

We did our first analysis and indeed looked like ducks could be possible carriers of the virus,

starting spark of the influenza epidemic.

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