• The PAWS AI system, developed out of Harvard University, uses data about past poaching and game theory to predict where rangers are most likely to find poaching activity next.
• PAWS has been field tested in Cambodia and Uganda, and will soon roll out worldwide, available with the next update of a global data tool called SMART.
• Subsequent versions of the system will also feature a tool that recommends the best route for rangers to travel in their patrols.

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For months, the call for coronavirus testing has been led by one resounding refrain: To keep outbreaks under control, doctors and researchers need to deploy the most accurate tests available — ones reliable enough to root out as many infections as possible, even in the absence of symptoms.

That’s long been the dogma of infectious disease diagnostics, experts say, since it helps ensure that cases won’t be missed. During this pandemic, that has meant relying heavily on PCR testing, an extremely accurate but time- and labor-intensive method that requires samples to be...

ven as the United States ramped up coronavirus testing from about 100,000 per week in mid-March to more than 5 million per week in late July, the country fell further behind in stemming the spread of the virus. Now, diagnostics experts, public health officials, and epidemiologists are calling for a radical shift in testing strategy: away from diagnosing people who have symptoms or were exposed and toward screening whole populations using faster, cheaper, sometimes less accurate tests. By making it possible to identify and isolate infected individuals more quickly, proponents say, the...

We made a mistake at first with how we talked about masks. We’re making the same mistake now with tests.

The discussion on these issues highlights the different ways clinicians and public health experts think. Clinicians — doctors, like me — treat patients one at a time. Our responsibility is to that individual. This is the thinking that led many of us to focus on only the most effective N95 masks at first. We knew we didn’t have enough for health care workers, and we knew that homemade masks wouldn’t work as well in the office or hospital. So we told people not to use them....