Why Study Web Science? Lessons from History
November 22, 2010
by Lisa Harris
William Dampier explored and mapped the coast of Western Australia fully 80 years before James Cook encountered Botany Bay. Largely forgotten today, Dampier landed in Shark Bay, Western Australia in 1699. He was a true pioneer with lasting influence upon such diverse fields as evolution, exploration, meteorology, navigation, commerce and travel writing. He was also a pirate who could have faced the same grisly fate as his contemporary Captain Kidd. But what does Dampier’s story have to do with Web Science in the 21stCentury? Please bear with me while I outline his achievements…
Dampier was the first man to sail three times around the world, and his best-selling accounts of his adventures inspired Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. The description of his travels and the potential he identified for trade with unknown lands helped to stimulate the South Sea Bubble.
Dampier’s maps of trade winds and ocean currents were relied upon by James Cook and even later by Horatio Nelson. Indeed, Dampier’s ‘Discourse’ of navigational detail was still in use by the British Navy well into the 20th Century. As the first naturalist to encounter all five continents, Dampier was able to compare and contrast animals and plants across the globe, introducing the world to theories of migration and likely relationships between species. The famous red notebook in which Darwin developed his theory of natural selection quotes extensively from Dampier’s observations of 150 years earlier.
Dampier is responsible for more than 1000 entries in the Oxford English Dictionary, giving the language such words as avocado, barbeque and chopsticks. His comparison of the flat ocean to a “millpond” is an expression that would have conjured up a rich image to contemporary readers who might themselves have never seen the sea, and it is still in popular use today.
These achievements in the early days of exploration and scientific discovery provide many parallels with the position of Web Science today. Under the umbrella of the newly created Royal Society, developments in such diverse subjects as chemistry, astronomy and mechanics were debated by the best minds of the day, and Dampier was invited to address the Fellows on several occasions. The full extent of his influence is apparent when a view is taken across disciplines – from the practical to the intellectual, and from the literary to the scientific. Dampier could see the big picture and think laterally to make comparisons and connections – a skill that was very opportune at a time when the boundaries of the physical world were being rolled back in so many directions. He was dismissive of traditional hierarchies of expertise and was not afraid to operate outside the “establishment” of his day.
William Dampier died (in debt) in 1715, and his final resting place is unknown. Today, he is largely forgotten in England. A small town has been named after him on the north west coast of Australia, but there is no mention of his exploits in Fremantle’s Maritime Museum. Thanks to the research of Diana and Michael Preston, detailed in their compelling book “A Pirate of Exquisite Mind”, Dampier’s legacy can continue to inspire a new generation of explorers and writers in the diverse fields of Web Science.
Originally published on www.lisaharrismarketing
Southampton Mathematics wins almost £1m in grants for underpinning research in Digital Economy and Energy
by Graeme Earl
Two teams led by mathematicians from Southampton’s School of Mathematics have been successful in the recent EPSRC call ‘Mathematics underpinning digital economy and energy’ with grant awards close to £1m.
New tools for data visualisation and analysis
Starting in April 2011, this research will study geometric and analytic structure of large data sets, which are ubiquitous in digital economy, and will develop new mathematical tools for efficient data visualisation and analysis. Among the main motivations and potential applications of this research are IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative, web science and the UK Government’s Open Data drive, giving the team the opportunity to influence these exciting developments. The project will last 3.5 years.
A further award of over £239,000 will fund 2.5 years of research from August 2011 into ‘Mathematical analysis of nanostructured electrochemical systems for lithium batteries and solar cells’ and is a joint research venture between Oxford University (who have received a separate grant) and the University of Southampton involving the companies Nexeon Ltd of Abingdon, and TIAX of Massachusetts.
Design of organic solar cells
The team includes Professor Colin Please from the School of Mathematics, working with Professor John Owen (School of Chemistry) and Dr Giles Richardson (School of Maths). It will develop novel mathematical model to guide development of enhanced charging and discharging rates of lithium batteries, and design issues in the manufacture and electrical efficiency of novel organic solar cells.
The research will develop mathematical ideas common to the two areas and is motivated by the need for efficient energy storage such as for vehicles and for creating inexpensive solar panels. The work draws on interaction previously funded by the Southampton based SYMBIOSIS grant. Both projects arise from the Southampton Initiative in Mathematical Modelling (SIMM) which was launched in January 2010 to build on the work carried out within the School and to foster new collaborations across the University.
Further details: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/research/projects/756
The ‘Climategate’ emails: controversy and consequences 01.09.2010
DE USRG members will be interested in a Tyndall Centre public discussion of the issues raised by the ‘Climategate’ emails for the science and climate change community. The event will be chaired by Professor John Shepherd FRS CBE (University of Southampton) http://jgshepherd.com/ with a panel of leading contributors:
- Professor Alan Thorpe (Chief Executive, Natural Environment Research Council)
- Professor Mike Hulme (University of East Anglia and author of ‘Why We Disagree About Climate Change’)
- Fred Pearce (Writer and author of the ‘Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth About Global Warming’)
- Dr Lorraine Whitmarsh (Lecturer in Environmental Psychology, University of Cardiff)
Women in Industrial Research and Development – School of Management Evening Seminar
by Graeme Earl
It is almost universally recognised that scientific innovation and discoveries are the main driving forces behind a technological advanced economy and a highly skilled labour market. This area has received even greater attention in recent years due to factors such as the increasing competition from emerging economies such as India and China, the opportunities and challenges brought about by globalisation of markets, collaboration in a new form of open innovation, and the service sector’s increasingly technology-intensive activities Innovation is considered to be the key to some of the biggest challenges currently facing the world in terms of global warming and climate change. As a result, there is intense international, inter-regional and inter-firm rivalry to capture the high ground in terms of invention and innovation and their rapid deployment for commercial or social gain (Edquist, 1997; Wynarczyk, 2006; DIUS, 2008).
The importance of infrastructure –hard and soft elements– to support innovation activity at the national, regional or firm level is acknowledged but creativity remains a human activity, whether as an individual working alone or in a team, whether in the public or private sectors. As stated in the UK government’s Innovation Nation White Paper (2008), ‘government can foster innovation but it is people who can create an Innovation Nation (p1)’. While the lone inventor remains an important player in the technological process, in today’s world it increasingly means the highly qualified and trained professional employee, working in R&D/lab teams within private corporations or public sector establishments (Freeman 1982). On the surface there does not appear to be any fundamental reasons why women should not be equal with men in the inventive, innovative processes and R&D activities that result essentially from ‘brain work’. However, limited data that exists clearly demonstrates that Europe, in general, has not been successful in attracting women into industrial research. In 2003, women constituted less than 15% of industrial researchers in the EU (EC, 2003).
Based on a survey of 84 innovative SMEs, carried out as part of the ESRC (Science in Society Programme and Impact Grant), aims to address the ‘gender gap’ in industrial R&D within the context of the ‘open innovation’ in the UK.
Speaker Bio: Professor Pooran Wynarczyk
Professor Pooran Wynarczyk is the Director of the Small Enterprise Research Unit (SERU) at Newcastle University Business School. She is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce (FRSA) and a judge of the F1 in Schools Challenge, North East Regional and National Finals. She is the Founder and Director of the North East of England Role Model Platform for Innovative Women, the Chair of the Diversity Consultative Group at Newcastle University and a Board Director of the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE). Her Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) sponsored research, publications and engagement activities include entrepreneurship, SMEs, innovation, R&D, and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) pipeline (policy, initiatives, education and employment) with a special focus on gender and young people.
£1.7m for Multi-disciplinary Design of Effective Research Spaces
by Graeme Earl
University of Southampton researchers from Electronics and Computer Science and Archaeology form part of a multi-disciplinary team from six institutions awarded a grant of £1.7m. The project aiming to revolutionise the design of technologies for supporting research has been awarded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) through the RCUK Digital Economy programme. The University of Southampton library will provide one of the test environments and also direct input from the Academic Liaison Librarian for Archaeology.
The project, entitled PATINA (Personal Architectonics of Interfaces to Artefacts) will be led by the University of Bristol in collaboration with the Universities of Brighton, Greenwich, Newcastle, Southampton and Swansea. The project includes involvement from Microsoft Research, Nokia Research and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Dr Graeme Earl of the Archaeological Computing Research Group in the School of Humanities said: “The project is designed to be transformative in terms of research practice. In archaeological terms it will break down the divide between the physical interactions between researchers and objects, and digital information. The technologies used will be trialled ‘in the wild’ on a series of extremely important archaeological sites, and in our labs and libraries. This project further builds on the strong research links between the School of Humanities and School of Electronics and Computer Science.”
Professor Luc Moreau of the Intelligence, Agent, Multimedia group in the School of Electronics and Computer Science said: “Being able to relate your discoveries and their provenance with the ones of famous researchers will offer tremendous opportunities to the research community and beyond”.
Current digital research support systems take attention away from the material that they describe. PATINA will provide researchers with new opportunities to create research spaces that emphasise the primacy of research material, and support the sharing of research activities as well as results.
The consortium will build wearable prototypes that can enhance research objects by projecting related information back into their research space. These technologies will also provide the means to capture, record, and replay the researcher’s activities to support intuitive archiving, sharing and publication of interactions with research objects. The design of the technologies will draw on theoretical frameworks of space developed from studies of research spaces as diverse as libraries, museums, homes and archaeological fieldwork sites.
Dr. Mike Fraser of the Bristol Interaction and Graphics group in the Department of Computer Science said: “Imagine walking in the footsteps of famous researchers and seeing how the provenance of your developing ideas links with theirs through shared objects that exist both online and in the real world. This grant demonstrates just how important it is to explore substantive design dialogues between arts and engineering disciplines to our mutual benefit. We expect this project to have immediate and lasting impact on the ways in which research is conducted.”
The project begins in June 2010 and will run for three years.
Further details: http://www.patina.ac.uk/
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