Energy poverty: Manchester leads in EU-wide project investigation

ITRealms:

An innovative project aimed at examining the energy poverty in Europe, and measurement to combat it, has been launched at an event in Brussels, reports ITRealms.

Energy poverty, ITRealms gathered, is the inability to secure adequate levels of energy services which include heating, cooling, lighting and information technology; and is estimated to affect over 50 million people in the European Union. 

The EU Energy Poverty Observatory, funded by the European Commission and chaired by Professor Stefan Bouzarovski from The University of Manchester, is a vast effort involving 13 organisations including universities, advocacy groups, think tanks, and the business sector. Dr Harriet Thomson, a Honorary Reearch Fellow at The University of Manchester, is the Observatory’s Project Manager.

Through them, about 100 internationally-renowned experts will collect and publish Europe-wide energy poverty data while serving as the focal point of an emergent network of policy-makers, research scientists, advocacy groups and community activists interested in the issue.

The observatory is geared at improving the transparency of information and policy by bringing together the disparate sources of data and knowledge that exist in varying degrees across the whole of the EU. It also provides a user-friendly and open-access resource that promotes public engagement as well as informed decision making by local, national and EU-level decision makers. 

ITRealms further gagthered that project will aim to improve energy poverty detection, measurement and reporting by creating a public forum for the exchange of knowledge on the issue.

The observatory benefits from the research environment provided by the Collaboratory for Urban Resilience and Energy within the Manchester Urban Institute.

“The EU energy poverty observatory will revolutionise government policy and academic scholarship on energy justice and equity across the world. For the first time in history, it will render a condition that affects millions of Europeans visible and measurable,” said Professor Stefan Bouzarovski. 

“Thanks to the observatory, the University of Manchester is now at the vanguard of a European and global effort to understand how changing energy prices and efforts to combat climate change – as well as climate change itself – affect vulnerable people.” 

Ayo Midele/GEE

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Breaking News: The robots are coming ... with secret engineers!

ITRealms:

The organisers of Robot Orchestra initiative have opened up the interactive project launched at Manchester and aimed at creating an environmentally-friendly orchestra made up of ‘robots’ playing instruments and recycled materials, reports ITRealms.

Enjoining people to get involved, the organisers hinted public participation would salvage the event, especially by way of donating of unused technology, building the robots and the instruments, writing computer codes, hosting events or sharing their musical expertise.
ITRealms reports that Manchester has been lately a hotbed of innovation; from the very first computer to the splitting of the atom, the city has a proud history of brilliant discoveries. In 2016, it has stepped into the global scientific spotlight as European City of Science – the first time this has been awarded to a British city.

This effort, industry watcher told ITRealms, offers a chance to showcase the groundbreaking science and cutting-edge industry of today.

“People across the city are being encouraged to take part in an array of exciting experiments and activities, bringing science, technology and engineering to life – and the Robot Orchestra is an important part of this,” an official press statement made available to ITRealms read.

The orchestra, ITRealms gathered would consist of ‘electronic brains’ which create music by playing real instruments including violins, glockenspiels and xylophones, as well as redundant technology such as computer floppy disk drives and old desk fans which will make sounds themselves. These will all be conducted by a robot designed by Siemens.

Professor Danielle George, who devised the project pointed out that the organisers hope to showcase work by everyone - from 5-year old primary school children to pensioners who have been tinkering away in their garages - to demonstrate that everyone can discover the secret engineer inside themselves.

The Hallé Orchestra has composed a piece of music for the robots to play, and lots of independent composers are also writing pieces. The organisers are also hoping to bring Manchester-based artists on board, enabling the orchestra to have a truly local feel.

“I want to show how everyone can discover the secret engineer inside themselves - and build an amazing machine from their imagination,” said Professor Danielle George, who devised the project. “A new musical engineering revolution has begun. I want to showcase the ingenuity, creativity and revolutionary spirit of the people of Manchester, and to explore how a city might creatively re-engineer and spread environmental and creative practices through performance.”

+Remmy @EngineerDG

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University of Manchester set to delight children, adults

ITRealms:

The University of Manchester is set to delight both the young and old come Saturday, October 31, with its Spectacular Science event offering a dazzling display, ITRealms reports.

At least 25 science buckers will be lining the Oxford Road dishing out dazzling displays of scientific wizardry. It’s all part of the Manchester Science Festival and the Manchester European City of Science celebrations.

In the same vein, ITRealms gathered, The University of Manchester’s Science Spectacular takes place in Whitworth Hall and, with more than 40 interactive stalls, there's something for everyone at this family fun day. Help create a mini-tornado, crack secret DNA and computer codes, and snuggle up to some creepy crawlies. Play the imitation brain game, build a world of fungus, work with mini robots, and much, much more.

This extravaganza of sound and vision will definitely catch attention and generate enthusiasm. Enjoy an introduction to the world of atoms, molecules, solids, liquids and gases, with exciting experiments featuring sudden colour changes, chemical clocks, fizzes, whizzes, fireworks, flashes, welding, melding, crashes and bangs.

University of Manchester Lead, Public Engagement with Research, Sheena Cruickshank, said, “This fantastic event showcases some of the best research at The University of Manchester and enables people to discover more about our science and gets hands on with fun activities.”

Manchester Science Festival is produced by the Museum of Science and Industry and runs from 22 October to 1 November.

Manchester has a proud history of scientific discovery and by coming to the Science Spectacular you’ll be able to make some discoveries of your own!

Cyriacus Nnaji/ED,OPs

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Science revolutionises the world says Georghiou

 ITRealms:

Professor Luke Georghiou, Vice President, Research and Innovation, The University of Manchester and co-champion of EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF), has said that science revolutionises the world we live in, reports ITRealms.

“Today Manchester is a living laboratory. Science revolutionises the world we live in – we are constantly coming across new materials, new ways of understanding our own bodies and new approaches to the grand societal challenges relating to sustainability, energy, food and water resources. Science is driving revolutions all around us, every day. 
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“All these changes, of course, bring with them significant implications and challenges for society and government; and it is this impact of science and technology, upon all areas of public policy, that Policy Week 2015 will probe and progress,” he said.


He noted that given that Manchester is a city of firsts “from Rutherford splitting the atom to Geim and Novoselov isolating graphene – it seems appropriate that we should have the honour of being the first UK city to host Europe’s foremost scientific meeting in 2016.” 


He explained that the ESOF next July meeting will be the culmination of an 18 month celebration of science in this city “and I’m delighted that this year’s Manchester Policy Week will form a key part of those rich festivities.”


The University of Manchester, ITRealms gathered, will bring together leading minds in science, technology and public policy for a week of events that will shine the spotlight on Manchester as a living laboratory.


From November 2-6, big names in public policy and academia will come together for panel discussions, open lectures and a programme of films, to be launched by David Willetts, former Minister for Universities and Science, who will deliver the keynote address, examining the impact that technology is set to have on higher education, ITRealms learnt.

Cyriacus Nnaji/GEE

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Pix:Professor Luke Georghiou,

iSPEX-EU project to measure air pollution

 ITRealms

 

The iSPEX-EU project which involves the University of Manchester is designed to get a clearer picture of the atmosphere and the level of air pollution that people breathe in every day, ITRealms reports.

It is one of the biggest ever citizen science projects which needs volunteers from Manchester to help measure air pollution in the environment with the smart phone.
Nearly 10,000 people across Europe will be taking part, from cities including Athens, Barcelona Belgrade, Berlin, Copenhagen, London, Milan and Rome as well as Manchester. 

The results will be used to map out just how dirty our air is and hopefully track how pollution spreads through the continent. Such air pollution and the impact it has on our health and the environment, ITRealms learnt, is still poorly understood and it is not clear what impact such pollution will have on climate change.

Access is by adding a simple piece of equipment to the phone and taking just a couple of minutes out of the day, volunteers can turn their phones into optical sensors which take measurements and upload them automatically for the researchers to study.

The add-on equipment, ITRealms gathered, is called a ‘spectropolarimeter’, and it is powerful enough to measure tiny particles in the air. It works with iPhone 4, 4S, 5 or 5S models. All volunteers have to do is scan the cloud free sky during daylight hours, while the phone’s camera takes pictures through the spectropolarimeter.

The Dutch group at Leiden Observatory that is leading the ISPEX-EU project, trialed a similar project in the Netherlands two years ago and proved to be extremely successful.
The Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry, The University of Manchester,  Carl Percival, said,  
 “This is a really exciting project to be a part of, both for the way we are going about doing it and for the results it could produce. This is a project that means anyone with the right phone can take part in a real life science experiment, that will produce real data and help us know more about our environment,” ITRealms reports.

Cyriacus Nnaji/GEE
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Prof. Falko joins University of Manchester as Research Director

ITRealms

Professor Vladimir Falko, one of the United Kingdom (UK) leading condensed matter theorists has joined The University of Manchester as Research Director for the National Graphene Institute (NGI), ITRealms reports

Falko who resumes on October 1, 2015will be responsible for developing the research strategy for the NGI, has made substantial contributions towards the understanding of electronic and optical properties of graphene, including the discovery of bilayergraphene. 

Graphene, is a thin layer of pure carbon; it is a single, tightly packed layer of carbon atoms that are bonded together in a hexagonal honeycomb lattice. In more complex terms, it is an allotrope of carbon in the structure of a plane of sp2 bonded atoms with a molecule bond length of 0.142 nanometres.

ITRealms gathered that Professor Falko began his career by studying for his PhD at the Institute for Solid State Physics RAS, and gained postdoctoral experience at Max-Planck-Institut in Stuttgart and Oxford University, followed by 20 years of service at Lancaster University where he was Distinguished Professor and Head of Theory Division. 

A fellow of the Institute of Physics, he has previously held an ERC Advanced Investigator Grant and in 2010 won the prestigious Royal Society Wolfson Foundation Research Merit Award.

Professor Falko said: ‘I am looking forward to working in the outstanding intellectual environment of The University of Manchester, where the research facilities of the NGI will form the platform for interdisciplinary collaborations between academics and for engagement with industry”. 

The University of Manchester, ITRealms learnt, has more than 230 researchers in graphene and 2D materials, led by Nobel laureates Sir Andre Geim and Sir KostyaNovoselov. The appointment of another world-class graphene academic, who has collaborated with the Nobel laureates for the recent decade, reinforces the University as the leading institution for graphene research in the world.  

CyriacusNnaji/GEE

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Pix:Professor Vladimir Falko

Winners emerge in Orange Data for Development Challenge 2014/2015

ITRealms:

 

Orange has announced the winners of this year’s Data for Development (D4D) Challenge in Senegal which ran from 2014 to April 2015 in conjunction with Sonatel and Orange under the patronage of the Senegalese Ministry of Higher Education and Research, ITRealms reports.

The winners of the challenge, University of Manchester and the Santa Fe Institute, ITRealms learnt clinched the first prize of US$5000.00 (approximately 995,000.00 Naira), for using mobile phone data for electrification planning, with support from the Université Cheikh Anta Diop.

The challenge as gathered by ITRealms was organised around five core questions and themes relating to health, agriculture, transportation/urban planning, energy and national statistics; identified with the Senegalese Ministries or partner institutions, and designed specifically to challenge organisations to produce solutions for the purpose of societal development and the welfare of the population in Senegal.

Special consideration was also awarded for progress made in data sciences, anonymisation, big data ethics and to foster greater involvement with local organisations and promote education in this growing field.

Other prizes as learnt by ITRealms went as follows; Agriculture Prize for Genesis of millet prices in Senegal; Health Prize for Uncovering the impact of human mobility on schistosomias; National Statistics Prize for Virtual Networks and Poverty Analysis in Senegal; Transport Prize for National and Regional Road Network Optimisation for Senegal; Scientific and Ethics Mention price for Construction of socio-demographic indicators with digital breadcrumbs; Data Crossing Prize for Using mobile phone data for Spatial Planning simulation and Optimisation Technologies (SPOT); Data Visualisation Prize for O05, Data for Development Reloaded: Visual Matrix Techniques for the Exploration and Analysis of Massive Mobile Phone Data, and Practical Application Prize for Mobile Data as Public-Health Decision Enabler.

The competition as gathered by ITRealms was overseen by an External Ethics Panel comprising twelve members from across academia, business, public and non-profit organisations and the final winning entries were selected by the D4D Committee.

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Why slimy cheats don’t win - Scientists

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"Darwin’s evolutionary theory predicts survival of the fittest. So why do different survival tactics co-exist, if evolution should always favour the winning strategy?"

To answer that question scientists at the Universities of Bath and Manchester have been studying a single-celled amoeba, also known as slime mould, which displays certain behaviours that have been labelled  as “cheating” or “cooperating”. 

In a study, published in the prestigious journal Current Biology, the team found that cheaters don’t necessarily win in terms of overall survival, suggesting that biologists should re-evaluate how they define and measure social cooperation.

ITRealms gathered from the Public Relations Officer at University of Bath, Dr. Vicky Just, that their research has medical implications when it comes to developing therapies that use socially successful bacteria to fight diseases such as lung infections.

Professor Chris Thompson from Manchester’s Faculty of Life Sciences explains: “If the cheats always win, then according to Darwin, altruism shouldn’t exist. To study this we looked at why the single fittest strategy in the amoeba community doesn’t dominate.”

The team looked at how amoebae compete against each other during cooperative encounters. These strange microbes generally live in the soil as single cells, eating bacteria, but when food is limited, they clump together to form a ‘slug’ that moves to a different location before transforming into a fruiting body which eventually releases spores to produce the next generation of amoebae.

Development into a fruiting body requires cooperation, with some of the amoebae forming the stalk part of the fruiting body, effectively sacrificing themselves for the benefit of the ones that become spores. Therefore biologists have labelled the individuals that become the stalk as ‘altruists’, with the individuals that tend to form lots of spores being identified as ‘cheats’ because they benefit disproportionately.

However, the scientists from Bath and Manchester found that these assumptions don’t necessarily tell the whole story. Those labelled as cheats don’t end up having higher success than those that appear to lose since the cheats pay a price for their apparent success by producing larger numbers of lower quality spores. These inferior spores have lower survival rates, so overall the number of spores that survive is similar to those amoebae who ‘cooperate’.

According to Professor Jason Wolf from the University of Bath’s Department of Biology & Biochemistry, their study showed that there are definitely winners and losers in social coorporation.

“Our study shows that whilst there are definitely winners and losers in social 

cooperation, you can’t measure social success just by counting the number of spores these moulds produce. Those that produce lots of spores often make inferior ones that don’t have any overall advantage over their competitors," he said.

Stressing that scientists require to take a second look at the bigger picture when measuring social success, rather than making assumptions based on measuring the wrong things.

For Professor Chris Thompson what the study says was that when scientists look at systems through just one aspect then that system could appear to be unbalanced and shouldn’t work, but in reality they are a collection of many features that together determine success, and so variety helps to make man more equal.

“Our study threw up quite a big surprise because the way we measure fitness in a system is currently misleading. By focussing on the number of offspring (in this case spores) rather than the quality, we’re using an incorrect measurement of success. “What we thought of as socially successful needs to be re-evaluated,” Thompson said.

+Remmy Nweke (ITRealms) @www.twitter.com/UniofBath

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