Miguel Ponce de Leon

Is the face of research and innovation changing in Europe?

Picked up a post recently via ENN Scotland Experts call for new approach to European research and innovation policy and from this a link to a joint statement [pdf] on behalf of the European Research Area Board, Business Panel on Future EU Innovation Policy, Expert Group on the Role of Community Research Policy in the Knowledge‐Based Economy, European Technology Platforms – Expert Group and Science | Business Innovation Board, were they have a number of recommendations for a new approach for research and innovation in Europe. To quote the major recommendations that statement highlights

1) Focus on our greatest societal challenges
Such as climate change, alternative energy, healthcare for an aging population, security and social cohesion

2) Encourage new networks, institutions and policies for open innovation
The statements make it clear that the dominant mode of research and innovation is through open collaboration – among small and large companies, university and industry, public and private sector, clusters and trading blocs. This requires an open environment for knowledge, talent and services to flow, and for critical mass to build where needed. Yet the EU policy
focus has not yet adapted to this reality.

3) Spend more on research, education and innovation, in part through bolder co-investment schemes
Access to finance remains the number one obstacle to innovation; there is less risk‐capital around, and it’s harder to get at. At the same time, there’s also less public money available for research, education and innovation in the EU on average than in the US or Japan. The suggested solution is to through enlightened fiscal policies and bold experimentation in public private co‐financing, making it easier for researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs to find
the cash needed to get their ideas to market.

4) Coordinate and plan RDI programmes better – within Brussels and among the member-states
EC and national programmes for research, development and innovation, are strong to a fault. All too often, there are unnecessary duplications, needless contests over administrative territory, and confusing bureaucracy. Greater coordination among all the EU capitals, a reduction in paperwork, and synchronization of all aspects of RDI funding, regulation, and standard‐setting to achieve our aim of solving society’s Grand Challenges.

5) Open competition should be standard in EU programmes
Excellence must be the watchword of EU research, development and innovation programmes.

When I look at these recommendations I do wonder will EU policy fall into the innovation dynamics top 40, that is to say humantific’s top forty reasons why most large group meetings, work sessions, working conferences produce little other than feel good vibes.

Or will I stand corrected and find that a recipe for innovation can be cultivated?

Maire Geoghegan-Quinn you have your work cut out for you.

Update on Irish Future Internet Forum

I've wanted to catch up on my writings in the past few weeks, but before moving on into the new year I would like to take a minute to reflect on what has just passed, and in particular the Irish Future Internet Forum.

I was worried about the running of the event, I knew it was slightly more security focused than I really wanted it to be, but I shouldn't have worried! As I mentioned in the lead up to the event the TSSG team around me were just fantastic and were always pushing to ensure that the event ran smoothly and man did the workshop run smoothly.

On the prep day, the day before the event was due to kick-off there was a ton of things happening all at once, international speakers were starting to arrive, audio/ visuals were quickly getting into place and sure enough the IT infrastrure folks in the Digital Hub were stress testing the wireless network. I must say I was delighted to see this testing, while I would hope an audience are 100% focused on every single minute of the workshop, well really you have to be realistic and ensure to offer a couple of amiable services, one of which has to be immediate internet access for a tech savy audience.

And prep days are great for pushing you to the limits, highlighting all the little things you've forgotten to bring with you to the 'foreign' workshop venue, from power cords, to print outs, and that one poster you really should have brought! After a few quick sharpe phonecalls and everything seemed to fall in to shape. Well maybe that's a bit naive, things don't just fall into place, I must admit there was a very specific plan in place with some weeks which Deirdre, Zeta and myself tried our hardest to stick to and once we did I really did see things starting to fall into place.
Before closing out the prep-day, there was a late call and interview with Newstalk which lasted about 20 mins, and I think it got airtime the following day for about 30 secs. Oh well so much for the 15 mins of fame, looks like I'd have to do 100 hrs of yapping and really I'm not that bothered.

So the big day arrives and before the crack of dawn I was ready of the early start, but I don't think the lads will ever forgive me for such an early start and given that the first 45 mins were slow going I wondered myself whether it was worth it, but it turned out it was. There were some small items to sort out but I found that once attendees started to arrive, that was it, there was next to no time to concerntrate on anything for more that 30 secs, as there's the meet, the greet, the make sure we have all the speakers and their up-to-date slides, the press media, the ATTENDEES. In this supercharged time I can highly recommend code whispers, yes those guys with the walkie talkies were a life saver, and ensured that we were never out of sync between the goings on of the ground floor entrance, the arrival of the Minister and the 1st floor workshop room where everyone had gathered.
We had anticipated some delay in the ministers arrival, but to my surprise he was bang on time and after a few press photos we got the event underway.
I'll leave to the fine detail of the wokshop outcomes to the official report, although nearly all the slides, including outcome results can seen on Slideshare.
And finally hopefully the photo gallery captures the mood of the event.\

Irish Future Internet Forum 2009

This years running of the Irish Future Internet Forum is nearly upon us (December 3rd 2009), although it has been looming large on my horizon for some time now as I've been charged with the workshop chair.

As with any event, the pace of organisation directly from myself was quite slow over the summer months but with the drive into autumn and with significant help of Zeta, Jim, Brian, Kieran, Deirdre, Edel and others over the past few months I think we've pulled together an engaging agenda for the day.
So my biggest fear now other than, the days weather, the venue, the speakers, the audio visuals, the catering, and a multitude of other small items .. but no the fear is for the attendees!

I keep wondering, is the programme engaging or is this another one of these same-oh events, packed with presentations, but with little take home ideas and no interaction with the audience?

The team here have been pushing me hard not to let it happen, brainstorming ideas on how to layout the break out sessions, helping with putting things in place that hopefully will entice people to raise questions and even suggest ways forward on the Future Internet and what it may mean for Ireland.

I tell you what, it's not easy "thinking" about what the audience would appreciate, so as I head into the final week of preparation it might be an idea for me to ask, what would you like to see at the Irish Future Internet Forum?
The comment line is open on this blog post.
On twitter I'll watch out @IFIForum, or hashtag your comments #ifif

Future Internet Assembly Q4 2009

Busy and interesting couple of weeks coming up in regards to Future Internet activities.

This week sees the running of the 4th European Future Internet Assembly in Stockholm (Kista), with a large contingent from the TSSG in attendance, running & participating in sessions, demonstrating TSSG wares on our stand, and hosting a number of posters on TSSG Future Internet research.

FP6 has MORE than come to a close

My first encounter of the FP6 IST programme was in Dublin Castle July 12th 2002 at its Irish launch event in Dublin castle. I remember the day well funnily enough as the there were unexpected roadworks in South Kilkenny that morning so once I made it (late) to the conference room in the Castle, it was packed with people and I got moved into one of those language translation booths, which was great, I had a higher viewing vantage point, a table and a very comfortable chair!
Well 7 years, and eight FP6 projects later and the FP6 IST programme has come to a final chapter for me, as the IST MORE project is now technically complete.

Although in fairness my involvement in the research and developments of IST MORE was peripheral as really Chris, Gemma, Chen, Kristian, Niall D., and a whole host of others helped bring the project from a grand vision for a "Network-centric Middleware for GrOup communication and Resource Sharing across Heterogeneous Embedded Systems" to a neatly designed software based middleware that hides the complexity of the underlying heterogeneity of embedded systems and provided a MORE simplified API and management mechanism.

And to prove the it is neat the MORE middleware helped integrate the management of a medical process in Hungry (for doctors and patients). It helped create a virtual organisation, allowing for chronic patients to be monitored continuously by sensors and accessed via mobile devices. The middleware in turn allowed for easy access to an on-line service for the doctors, diabetes patients and patients family to react to emergency situations, but of most benefit it was found that the implement system significantly decreased the number of necessary personal encounters between the doctor and the patient.

Watch the video below for further details

The project, just like any other framework programme project has tons of deliverables, but the one I want to point you towards is the document D5.1 Test Protocol [pdf], which details the building blocks for the MORE testing framework giving third-party developers a frame to test for correctness and compatibility. It also explicitly shows the test bed infrastructure for all the end user scenarios tested during the project, which is broken down into the laboratory environment test bed and the live field testing environment. The laboratory environment is complemented by an intensive test bed for performance evaluation, consisting of real world testing as well as simulation.

Finally the project source is available for your viewing, either head over to the MORESS SourceForge page or just use svn directly

svn co https://mores.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/mores mores

Digitising health records is it really going to be helpful?

I hear again and again all the positives about eHealthcare, it's seems to be the only way to go, which is why I've found this OA paper asking a very interesting question "Do Electronic Health Records Help or Hinder Medical Education?" and I wonder in the same way will electronic health records help or hinder (my) medical anaylsis in the future?

It is becoming clear that hospitals are implementing, and in some ways are being forced to implement massive electronic health record (EHR) systems, but in this implementation are they considering the end user .... sorry I should say patients needs, wants and cares in its implementation? And what about the people entrying the data from admin staff to nurses to doctors, are their needs being considered?
On similar massive projects it simply hasn't been the case and I do wonder!

So to the powers that be, please note the authors conclusion when it comes to the educational side of using EHR

that the mere presence of the EHR will not improve practice quality, and will not make education better or more efficient .........
.......... if the EHR is used as a tool rather than an end unto itself, it will improve our education of young physicians as well as the care of our patients.

The Internet of Thingemebobs

So over the coffee break chat leads to a discussion about "The Internet of Things" and how it might pan out .... little radio tags on everything, everything connected to the net, you can interact with everything and you can ... you can ... build in SECURITY!

Now hang on a second, am I wrong but is there a contradiction going on there, everything in the first case is open as we discuss the possibilities but it always seems to lead to a closed, wall gardened system, which for me may indicate that the vision for an Internet of Things may not be realised.

So do I BELIEVE. I've been trying, I have on my desk TikiTags ....... sorry correction in 2008 they were TikiTags, in 2009 they're TouchTags.

Its a small RFID enabled system in which RFID tags (stickers) once read connects with the touchatag Application Correlation Server (ACS) which manages the link between an RFID tag and a corresponding action to be initiated. The ACS then directs the internet-enabled device to access the appropriate online content and applications. The price point is responsible.

Now I have the device so what to tag ..... hmmm what to tag indeed, what exactly shall I tag, its driving me mad!!!!
The first tag was rather easy I placed it on my WIT card (a card based purchasing system for cafeteria food). The top up system has a related website so when I need to add funds to the card online I just place my wallet over the TouchTag reader and off we go ...... and immediately there lays the problem, I have a laptop, the TouchTag reader is USB based, so I have to make sure I have it plugged into the laptop everytime, which after a month just doesn't happen. Is the solution that the RFID reader has Bluetooth connectivity so the laptop can connect to it wirelessly? But then how do we power the RFID reader?
Also I cannot put any more TouchTags in my wallet, as the reader will pick up all of them and carry out the related action, (I was thinking of 3 tags for 3 cards) but really there can only be one tag per 10cm area.

Okay the next tag ..... I was going for one on the coffee cup, one wipe close the TouchTag reader and a Twitter or IM message pops out "miguelpdl is going for coffee" and then I thought "So What" after 20 message like that and people are just not going to be interested and so all this really does is mark the exact time I go for coffee everyday. Also clean the cup a couple of times and the tag is gone. Is the possible solution that the tags are fabricated into the product?

So right now I'm not a believer .... yet, but I have 16 tags left, if you have some ideas as to where I should place them on things, let me know and I'll give it a go.

Bumper FP7 Call Open Day

What a day for open calls on the FP7 site Transport, Space, Socio-economic sciences and Humanities, Energy, Nanosciences, Nanotechnologies, Materials and new Production Technologies, Research Infrastructures, Environment, Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, and Biotechnology Health and my very own favourite Information and Communication Technologies.

So EU FP7 ICT Call 5 is finally open today with a deadline of 26 October 2009 at 17.00.00 (Brussels local time) and an indicative budget: EUR 732 million

FP7- ICT -2009-5 is going to cover

Challenge 1: Pervasive and Trusted Network and Service Infrastructures
ICT 2009.1.1 The Network of the Future
ICT 2009.1.2 Internet of Services, Software & virtualisation
ICT 2009.1.3 Internet of Things and enterprise environments
ICT 2009.1.4 Trustworthy ICT
ICT 2009.1.6 Future Internet Experimental Facility and Experimentally-driven Research

Challenge 3: Components, systems, engineering
ICT 2009.3.1 Nanoelectronics Technology
ICT 2009.3.5 Engineering of Networked Monitoring and Control Systems
ICT 2009.3.7 Photonics
ICT 2009.3.9 Microsystems and Smart Miniaturised Systems

Challenge 4: Digital Libraries and Content
ICT 2009.4.2 Technology- Enhanced Learning
ICT 2009.4.3 Intelligent information management

Future and emerging technologies
ICT 2009.8.4 Human-Computer Confluence
ICT 2009.8.5 Self-Awareness in Autonomic Systems
ICT 2009.8.6 Towards Zero- Power ICT
ICT 2009.8.9 Coordinating Communities, Plans and Actions in FET Proactive Initiatives
ICT 2009.8.10 Identifying new research topics, Assessing emerging global S&T trends in ICT for future FET Proactive initiatives

Horizontal support actions
ICT 2009.9.2 Supplements to support International Cooperation between ongoing projects
ICT 2009.9.5: Supplements to Strengthen Cooperation in ICT R&D in an Enlarged Europe

The competition in this call is going to be massive, you have on avaerage a 16% chance of being successfully from the call and when looking at the stats from EU FP7 Call 4 getting scored above the threshold will not be an easy task!

Interactive data visualisation

While compiling my last entry on the map of science it did make me think that in this day and age data visualisation in the ICT world should be more interactive, like this visualisation of the Linux kernel.

What caught my eye was this work by Tony Hirst on visualising the lap time data from Australian F1 grand-prix in 2009 using ManyEyes, which has led onto some very interesting social commentary on the visualisation of UK MP's expenses.

But is all these cases of visualisation research an after the fact activity with steady data sets and results.

But I wonder can macro architectural network patterns married with micro network component specifications and fused in a data visualisation tool, be a way to address future Internet design, pre-deployment?

And to make this happen, what exact "steady" data would I need to realise such a wonder?

Map of Science

I've always had an interest in data visualisation, one of my most viewed blog entries is on a data visualisation of the relationships between different scientific disciplines, which is currently framed and hanging on my home office wall (the only one!), so this recently published map of a journal network that outlines the relationships between various scientific domains has had me interested again.

This time the data visualisation is based on the collection

of nearly 1 billion user interactions recorded by the scholarly web portals of some of the most significant publishers, aggregators and institutional consortia. The resulting reference data set covers a significant part of world-wide use of scholarly web portals in 2006, and provides a balanced coverage of the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. A journal clickstream model, i.e. a first-order Markov chain, was extracted from the sequences of user interactions in the logs. The clickstream model was validated by comparing it to the Getty Research Institute's Architecture and Art Thesaurus. The resulting model was visualized as a journal network that outlines the relationships between various scientific domains ....

and is full recorded in a paper by Johan Bollen, Herbert Van de Sompel, Aric Hagberg, Luis Bettencourt, Ryan Chute, Marko A. Rodriguez, Lyudmila Balakireva, "Clickstream Data Yields High-Resolution Maps of Science"

What results is a map that

represents the structure of scholarly activity from an observational perspective, not from a prescriptive or motivational one. User interactions with scholarly web portals are shaped by many constraints, including citation links, search engine results, and user interface features. In this paper we do not attempt to explain or motivate these interactions, but merely to demonstrate how their overall structure can be charted and described from clickstream maps of science.

The PLoS site related to this paper has some interesting comments and the related article from the NY Times: Map of Knowledge offers some further insight from the authors.

Innovation, research & innovation what's the formula for a smart economy?

There's a debate raging at the moment in Ireland about the smart economy and it appears in these undoubtly tough times we are struggling with the innovation idea.

But I wonder is this debate about the right balance between industry collaboration and academic research or is the pursuit of IP a distraction.

Can it be that shearing Ireland's science budget would be a mistake of monumental proportions because the figures are only coming to light now, or are these really all the facts and figures.

Maybe this new Innovation Taskforce will get to the bottom of it and set us on the right track, that's of course assuming that Ireland cares!

At least the science parks are in place, which maybe the key.

I leave these thoughts with a quote via @Leslie Lamport

Jean Renoir wrote in his autobiography that someone once asked his father, the painter Auguste, why he painted from nature. Renoir père answered that if he were to try painting a tree in the studio, he would be able to draw four or five different kinds of leaves, and the rest would all look like them. But nature creates millions [his count] of different kinds of trees.

The pencil so simple, so ubiquitous and so much history

I recently finished an intriguing book with the history of the pencil ... yes the pencil.

Maybe it doesn't sound too exciting but really the story touches on the pencil as it emerges as a new writing technology, to the over-mining of plumbago and over-cutting of cedar trees its base components.
The need for research, development and innovation in the creation of new writing lead, the centuries of secrecy around that combination of graphite & clay mixture in the lead (Conte).
How the industrial revolution created a situation were there was 10 pencils for everyone on earth, the subsequent price fixing, international trade wars, standardisation (of lead grading), regulations and industrial consolidation.
To the threat of the mechanical pencil and ink pens, then typewriters, computers and many others and yet 4 centuries later I look at my desk at work and see 5 pencils, I've no idea were they have come from, who made them or how, but I know why they are there, I'll continue to use them for scribbling transient notes and now at least I have a little more insight on the pencils history.

The greatest scientific impact from Ireland in the past 5 years is in.....

.... Agricultural Sciences.

And that's according to Thomson Reuters National Science Indicators, 1981-2007.

This is were Thomson Reuters have taken

Ireland's world share of science and social-science papers over a recent five-year period, expressed as a percentage of papers in each of 21 fields in the Thomson Reuters database.

Ireland's citation impact compared to the world average in each field, is also highlighted were

Ireland exceeded the world average by 15% (3.38 citations per paper for Ireland versus a world mark of 2.93 citations) [in Agricultural Sciences]. Ireland also scored well in relative impact in immunology (26% above the world mark), physics (23% above), materials science (+22%), and chemistry (+15%).

Looks like Ireland will have to pull its socks up when it comes to Computer Science and Mathematics and when it comes to Economics & Business, well it looks like this report came too late!

But when I look at this topic of impact factors, citations and the h-index a little closer, things are not so clear cut, to a point of being fairly questionable.

Which has lead me to this very interesting paper by Allen L, Jones C, Dolby K, Lynn D, Walport M (2009) Looking for Landmarks: The Role of Expert Review and Bibliometric Analysis in Evaluating Scientific Publication Outputs. PLoS ONE 4(6): e5910. were the authors were looking

To compare expert assessment with bibliometric indicators as tools to assess the quality and importance of scientific research papers.

And they found that

When attempting to assess the quality and importance of research papers, we found that sole reliance on bibliometric indicators would have led us to miss papers containing important results as judged by expert review. In particular, some papers that were highly rated by experts were not highly cited during the first three years after publication. Tools that link expert peer reviews of research paper quality and importance to more quantitative indicators, such as citation analysis would be valuable additions to the field of research assessment and evaluation.

After all of that I'm left wondering, have you got the h-Factor?

The Internet of things, but where do they go?

The Chumby, an interactive mediaplayer that streams content from the Internet into chumby widgets. They're not offically shipped to my home location so I picked one up from ebay and I must admit it got here quick flash (excuse the pun Chumby uses FlashLite for the widgets).
Now you can read the hype over and over, and I did and starting to believe it, until I got my hands one.
Now don't get me wrong, it looks great, and you can connect it to accounts on flickr, twitter, facebook, picasa, urban quotes of the day and you can stream internet radio and I thought all these features would be great ..... but the first problem I found is that it is really a glorified alarm clock, and with the fact that there is some distance between my wifi router and the bedroom the Chumby just wouldn't connect to the network and when the Chumby cannot connect to the network its just unusable ..... even as an alarm clock.
I moved things around, got a signal in the bedroom and after a week I realised the Chumby was getting no eye time ...... I go to sleep in the bedroom, read books/magazines if I get the chance but sitting beside my bed waiting for the Chumby channels to change just isn't compelling enough, so I decided to move it to the living area.
First to the living room .... after 1 week nope, no good the TV already takes all the attention.
Second to the hall beside the phone ... after 2 weeks nope, very passing glances but no eyeball time
In a corner in the Kitchen .... after 2 days nope too far away to read anything on the screen, to see what's worth reading
On top of the microwave in the Kitchen ..... perfect it's lasted 2 months and gets more passing glances morning, evening and late at night.

And for me the best widgets on Chumby, are the FaceBook photo feature, which displays friends pictures once they push them out and the Yo Mama is So Fat jokes widget.

There are no communication research topics in J, Y or Z

At the start of each year (usually the January issue) I have a little look at the full subject index page for the previous years articles in the IEEE Communcations magazine, just in case I missed an article I was interested in, and something pops out at me. In carrying out this task recently I noticed for 2008 there were no communication research topics under the alphabet heading of J, Y or Z. So I've checked the 2007 index and the same again, no topics under J, Y or Z.

Shouldn't there be a paper on "Jitterless yobibyte service bus for a ZSL" or "Zoning of jumbo frame networks: Yobibyting more than you can chew". Hey I might trademark that last one!