A University of Southampton scientist has just identified ears as a potential biometric signature but the fact that they can be concealed by hair means further research is needed.

Professor Mark Nixon of the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton, one of the UK's earliest researchers in this field, has just published a paper entitled Force field feature extraction for ear biometrics in the publication Computer Vision and Image Understanding in which he presents the case for the use of ears as a biometric.

According to Professor Nixon, ears have certain advantages over the more established biometrics as they have a rich and stable structure that is preserved from birth to old age and instead of aging they just get bigger. The ear also does not suffer from changes in facial expression and it is firmly fixed in the middle of the side of the head against a predictable background, unlike face recognition which usually requires the face to be captured against a controlled background.

Taking into account all of these properties, Professor Nixon and his team decided to assess the ear as a potential biometric. They developed a new computerised force field transformation which allowed them to capture the ear image in a smooth dome- shaped surface whose special shape enabled them to identify the features more clearly.

They applied this technique to a small database of ears and initial results show promising results in ear recognition. Professor Nixon comments: 'This research proves that ears work as a biometric. However, there are drawbacks and one of them is that ears can be concealed by hair. We need devices that can integrate multiple biometrics. We are working on some of these at the moment and will be reporting on them soon.'

Professor Nixon is currently working on a paper on 'How does gait change with age?' which he will be presenting at the Fifth International Conference on Audio- and Video-based Biometric Person Authentication 2005, July 20 - 22, 2005, Hilton Rye Town, Rye Brook, NY 10573 on 22 July.

This week pupils from the south of England, armed with the latest handheld gadgets, brought history to life in stories they wrote in the grounds of Chawton House, the Elizabethan manor house that once belonged to Jane Austen's brother, Edward. Jane lived on the Chawton estate from 1809 to 1817, her most prolific writing period.

A group of Year 5 students from Whiteley Primary School in Hampshire was the first to trial new technology developed by the University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS).

As a result of a hypothetical experience constructed by their teachers, the pupils were guided on the art of storytelling by information which appeared on their PDA (Personal Digital Assistant).

Teachers left instructions which flashed up on the PDAs at various places in the grounds of the house, such as the walled garden or on the main drive up to the house, to record a dialogue between two people arriving at the house for the first time. The pupils could also play audio clips describing parts of the grounds and record all of their own annotations. All of this information could be replayed in the classroom at a later date.

Professor David De Roure of ECS commented: 'The main emphasis of this first study has been on using the landscape as a writing aide. This is the first time that scientists at ECS have worked on deploying such advanced technology to improve literacy rather than science. This is an on-going process and we are planning to work with Whiteley School to develop some of these concepts further. We are also working on other projects with Chawton House.'

Mrs Pat Bradley, Headteacher from Whiteley Primary School. commented: 'This is a good example of using new technology to improve our children's learning. The ICT tools have allowed adults to help develop the children's literacy skills and the children have been highly motivated by the approach.'

The system was designed by an interdisciplinary team across four universities. Special navigation technology developed by the University of Bristol 'pinged' location information to the PDAs, and researchers from the University of Sussex were responsible for designing and analysing the experience. The system incorporated state-of-the-art software from the University of Nottingham and next-generation Web technologies developed in ECS.

The project is part of the Equator Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Professor Wendy Hall, Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science, at the University of Southampton, was today named by the European Commission as one of the 22 eminent founding members of the new Scientific Council of the European Research Council (ERC).

The European Research Council is a new funding organization for frontier research across Europe, including science and technology, social sciences, and the humanities, which will be part of the Seventh Research Framework Programme (2007-13). The Scientific Council, an independent body representing the interests of science and research at the very highest level, will determine the ERC's scientific strategy.

The 22 scientist who make up the membership of the new ERC Scientific Council were chosen by an independent panel of high-level scientists, chaired by Lord Patten.

'It is a great honour to be chosen as a founding member of the Scientific Council,' said Professor Hall. 'This is an enormously important and timely initiative, and one that is strategically very significant for the future of European science and technology.

'The ERC will fund the best of European science and scholarship, and the opportunity to help shape Europe's research strategy through collaboration at such a high level is very exciting.'

The other UK member of the Scientific Council is Lord May of Oxford, former Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government.

Notes to Editors

1.The full announcement (embargoed 13.30 18 July 2005) from the European Commission is available at http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/05/90&format=HTML&aged=1&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

2.Wendy Hall, CBE, FREng, is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, UK and is currently Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS). She was the founding Head of the Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia (IAM) Research Group in ECS. She has published over 300 papers in areas such as hypermedia, multimedia, digital libraries, multi-agent systems and knowledge technologies. She is currently senior Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Immediate Past President of the British Computer Society, a member of the Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology, a member of the ACM Council, a member of IW3C2, a member of the Executive Committee of UKCRC and a non-executive Director of several companies and charitable trusts. She was awarded a CBE in 2000, and is a Fellow of the BCS, the IEE, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the City and Guilds of London Institute. A longer biography is available at http://www.ecs.soton.a! c.uk/~wh/

As computers become capable of storing a lifetime's worth of memories and researchers explore prosthetic memories for humans, scientists at the University of Southampton have set up a network to develop a better understanding of how memory works and how it might be augmented by technological developments.

The network, supported by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Memories for Life project, includes around 30 UK academics from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, computer science, information science and sociology, who will come together over a two-year period, in the hope that cross-fertilisation of ideas across the disciplines can lead to a more effective use of human and computerised memory.

As Professor Nigel Shadbolt from the University's School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS), one of the principal investigators, explains: 'People are-quite literally-their memories. Exploring opportunities for collaboration between scientists and engineers could have a real impact both on our understanding of human memory, and on associated technologies for memory management.'

Dr Kieron O'Hara, Senior Research Fellow in ECS and communications officer of the project, commented: 'There are many challenges ahead when it comes to memory. Humans are very good at linking memories about the same things; it is much harder for computers to do this. Some of the challenges which lie ahead could be in the development of prosthetic memories and the storing and retrieval of 70 years' worth of memories and all the aspects of trust and privacy that will this entail.'

According to Dr O'Hara, the network is seeking more psychologists, neurosciences and sociologists willing to share their knowledge of short-term and long-term memory and brain function so that it can be used to improve efficiency, recall and information management in an integrated way across various levels of human, personal, social and work domains.

Dr Hugh Davis and Su White (right), who along with Dr David Millard and Dr Mark Weal, have been awarded a Vice-Chancellor’s Teaching Award 2005 for their innovative Multimedia Systems final-year course in Computer Science on both the BSc and MEng programmes. The prize was formally awarded by the Vice-Chancellor at the ECS Graduation Ceremony on Thursday 28 July.

The Vice-Chancellor’s Teaching Awards have been established to recognize innovative teaching which embodies the University’s commitment to research, and which make a real difference to student learning. The Awards are also intended to showcase good teaching practice which can be translated to other subject disciplines, and will now become an annual feature at the University's Graduation ceremonies.

The Multimedia Systems course involves an ambitious project for the students: they have to choose a topic to research, produce a paper on their subject, and then present it at an authentic day-long conference, which they have to organize and manage themselves. The process involves anonymous peer review of the papers and the incorporate of feedback into the final presentations, which are then made to an audience which includes fellow students, staff, and invited participants from business and industry which has sponsored prizes.

Hugh Davis and Su White first conceived and designed this course for delivery in 2000, and the format has been enormously successful. It is now taught by David Millard and Mark Weal, and the innovative approach has already been embedded into teaching in other areas of the School, including the MEng individual research projects presentation.

It has been very popular with students, who not only have a real introduction to research methods and presentation, but who also develop other valuable skills in organizing the conference. ‘Research-led teaching is about more than researchers doing the teaching,’ said Hugh Davis. ‘We wanted to inspire our students with the same essence of curiosity and desire to communicate their understandings that drives researchers, and we wanted to make the experience as authentic as possible.’

This year’s conference was held at New College, University of Southampton. Siobhain Dales, a member of the Conference Committee, commended the hands-on, student-centered approach to learning: ‘It allowed me to get really involved in how a conference is organized and run, which was fascinating, immensely fun, and really challenging. Having worked through the Multimedia Systems course equipped me to produce a high-quality, well-referenced report.’

Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, Deputy Head of School (Education), commented: ‘This course is an excellent example of the really high-quality, innovative teaching which is one of the hallmarks of our degree programmes in ECS. The course is also very much enjoyed by our students, and so added to the highly positive outcomes of higher-level learning, we also see a great deal of enthusiasm and commitment generated from the students’ opportunity to showcase their work.’

A final-year computer science student has come up with a proposal to tag football players in an effort to improve the accuracy of offside decisions. While watching a football match, Jonathan Dunne, who has just completed his MEng in Computer Science at the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton, grew increasingly frustrated with rulings made by the Referee's Assistant and decided to base his final-year research project on how technology could be used to improve the accuracy of offside decisions.

He found that through using Radio Frequency Identification Technology (RFID), tags could be embedded on each player's kit and within the match ball. Each of the tags could then pass position data for each of the players and the ball to a central server which would perform the business logic of determining whether an offside infringement had taken place.

Jonathan compared this technology with other possibilities such as Satellite Tracking Technology and Video Content Analysis Technology and found that it was more accurate and affordable.

He commented: 'The offside rule in Association Football is complex and often Referee's Assistants make incorrect decisions which can cost a club not only a game, but potentially millions of pounds in lost revenue.

'There are many hurdles to overcome in order to employ technology to assist in the making of offside decisions, but as it stands at the moment, a solution based on RFID technology offers the best accuracy for position determination and therefore would provide the most accurate system.'

Professor Judith Bishop, graduate of the School of Electronics and Computer Science, has been named Distinguished Woman Scientist of the Year in South Africa.

Professor Bishop is both a graduate of ECS, having received her PhD in the 1970s, and a former member of staff, who taught in the School in the 1980s and 1990s. She is now based in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Pretoria, and works on frameworks for distributed systems that prolong the lifetime of highly expensive software by enabling machine-dependent components to be monitored, identified and exchanged. Her innovative re-targeting methodology, pioneered on the Views system, has made possible the re-targetting of GUI software from Windows to Linux without rewriting. She is now working with Microsoft Research and a local company on the Nomad system, which will enable closed groups of collaborators to exchange information effectively in today’s mobile world when connectivity is essential, but not always there.

Judith Bishop began her career as a computer scientist at Rhodes University in 1970, and published her first paper before she was 21. She has always been at the front of her field of programming languages for distributed systems. She wrote the first BASIC compiler for ICL1900 computers in 1972, and was involved in the first Pascal compiler for 2900 computers while working on her PhD under David Barron in 1976. She joined the staff of ECS in 1988, and worked with Tony Hey’s group on the design of distribution models for Ada on transputers. She wrote the first Java textbook to become widely used and translated in 1997, and most recently one of the first C# textbooks in 2004.

Professor Bishop is the top NRF-rated woman computer scientist in South Africa and has published over 70 journal and conference papers. Her 15 books are available in six languages, and read worldwide. She is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, a Founding Fellow of the SA Institute of Computer Scientists, was awarded the prestigious IFIP Silver Core Medal for her services to the international IT community, and has been involved in grant-awarding and conference reviewing panels internationally for 20 years. She has active inter-government collaborations with Italy, German, Canada and Scotland. She has organized numerous conferences and workshops in South Africa, aimed at keeping postgraduates involved in cutting-edge research. She is keenly interested in computer science at schools and was chosen as the university expert involved in setting the new curriculum and assessment guidelines.

Professor Bishop lives in Brooklyn, Pretoria, and has two sons who both studied at the University of Pretoria. While in Southampton, she was an Akela of the Brookvale Cubs in Highfield, and has had a lifelong association with the Scouts. See http://www.cs.up.ac.za/~jbishop for more information.

The Women in Science Awards of South Africa recognize the contribution of outstanding women in scientific research, as well as the role of women in the development and sharing of knowledge that contributes to improvement in people's economic status and quality of life.

The University of Southampton has announced details of an intelligent fuse box which could manage domestic energy needs and result in significant daily savings.

The announcement comes in the wake of energy minister Malcolm Wicks' consultation paper on how to boost "micro generation" by homes, businesses and public buildings, on the basis of generating their own power and selling the surplus.

According to Dr Peter Wilson from the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton, such schemes do not always allow domestic users to be self-sufficient and to control their own energy requirements and can be problematic in terms of ensuring adequate power quality, reliability and safety of the generator.

Dr Wilson and his team have been funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to research renewable energy further and have come up with an intelligent fuse box which could be installed in homes in parallel with existing domestic wiring and allow users to configure it to suit their needs.

A test project has begun locally where wireless sensors are being installed to monitor energy usage and collate this information centrally. The idea is that the fuse box will begin to adapt to the outside environment and become predictive; the researchers are also applying evolutionary algorithms so that the box begins to learn and respond to different scenarios, so that it makes the best use of energy. For example, the system would provide emergency power in the event of a local power outage enabling essential appliances to continue to be operated (telephones, refrigerators).

Energy will be generated through solar panels which are soon to be installed and a wind turbine which will be fitted on the research site. The plan is to analyse performance and results over a 12-month period; early predictions indicate that daily energy savings of 20 per cent will be made.

Dr Wilson commented: 'We have set out to keep this initiative as simple as possible so that it is accessible to the end-user. Ordinary people don't want to get involved in huge micro-grids; they just want to be self-sufficient and have a reliable supply. The intelligent fuse box will enable this - this is technology that is intended to be obtained and used by average domestic electricity users.'

Academics from some of the UK’s top universities are giving public support to the UK Research Councils’ (RCUK) proposed self-archiving policy.

The academics, who include inventor of the World Wide Web, Southampton Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, have co-signed a document refuting claims made by the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) that the RCUK policy would have ‘disastrous consequences’ for journals.

The claims were made in a letter from ALPSP to RCUK in response to the RCUK’s position statement on Access to Research Outputs issued in June.

The rebuttal document, which has been signed by representatives from the universities of Southampton, Cambridge, Loughborough, Sheffield and Strathclyde and will be sent to RCUK by the end of the month, details the reasons why ALPSP’s claims are unsubstantiated, not least because evidence has shown that not only can journals co-exist and thrive alongside author self-archiving, they can actually benefit from it.

Authors, institutions, funders and publishers benefit from the increased visibility, use and impact of research articles that are self-archived and freely available to all.

In a covering letter to Professor Ian Diamond, Chair of the RCUK Executive Group, the academics state: ‘We believe that RCUK should go ahead and implement its immediate self-archiving mandate, without further delay. That done, RCUK can meet ALPSP and other interested parties to discuss and plan how the UK Institutional Repositories can collaborate with journals and their publishers in sharing the new-found benefits of maximising UK research access and impact.’

Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee is featured in the Defying Distance exhibition currently on show at the National Portrait Gallery, London. The exhibition of photographs by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin focuses on the profound impact that telecommunications have had on the way we live and think. The series of portraits profiles the range of initiatives, and the visionary drive that have contributed to the development of the telecommunications industry in the United Kingdom. Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who is a member of the ECS faculty, was named Greatest Briton 2004 for the invention of the World Wide Web. The Defying Distance exhibition runs until 25 September at the National Portrait Gallery in Trafalgar Square, and is sponsored by Deloitte.