A symposium which will reveal new methods for making future low-power, lighter, smarter and more economical computers and mobile phones will take place at the University of Southampton next week and has attracted almost 100 delegates.

Professor Hiroshi Mizuta, Head of the Nano Research Group at the University’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), whose research interest is in the development of novel nanoelectronic devices, will host the 2010 International Symposium on Atom-scale Silicon Hybrid Nanotechnologies for ‘More-than-Moore’ and ‘Beyond CMOS’ era on 1 and 2 March 2010 at the University.

The key themes that will be addressed at the conference include single-dopants, electron spins and nano-electro-mechanical systems (NEMS) hybrid technologies. A theme of particular interest to the future of working with silicon is silicon single-dopant and electron spin technology, for which six academics will present cutting-edge nanotechnologies for working with dopants (impurities) in silicon.

“This is a very important area as dopants and electron spins in a silicon device are not controlled yet,â€? said Professor Mizuta. “As devices get smaller, the position of the dopant will affect the performance of transistors, so, as there will always be dopants in silicon, it is crucial that we find ways to detect and control them in a manner which maximises the performance of smaller, low-power devices. Furthermore, electron spins associated with dopants in silicon may provide a new pathway to faster information processing devices and higher capacity storage.â€?

In the opening session entitled Top-down and bottom-up silicon nanodevice technologies, which takes place at 9:30am on Monday 1 March, Dr M. T. Björk, IBM Zurich, will describe the impact of dopant atoms on the operation of silicon nanowire devices.

This is followed by the afternoon session entitled Silicon single-dopant device technology, which takes place at 3.40pm, in which Professor Michiharu Tabe, Shizuoka University, will demonstrate Kelvin Force Microscopy at low temperature to observe the impurities embedded in silicon devices. In this session, Professor Sven Rogge from TU Delft and Dr Yukinori Ono, NTT Basic Research Labs, will also both illustrate electrical methods for detecting dopants and illustrate the effects of running a current through silicon which has very few impurities.

The theme will be discussed further in the session Silicon-based quantum information technology which takes place at 9am on Tuesday 2 March when Dr Andrew Ferguson, University of Cambridge and Dr John Morton, University of Oxford, will describe the donor nuclear spins and electron spins towards silicon spin-based quantum information processing.

In the following session entitled Silicon-based nanoelectromechanical (NEM) hybrid systems on Tuesday 2 March at 10.50am, Professor Mizuta will illustrate, jointly with Professor Oda of Tokyo Institute of Technology, how one electron interacts with mechanical vibration of silicon NEM structure and loses energy in silicon at nanoscale.

“This is an important breakthrough for us,â€? he said. “In order to reduce the power consumption of future silicon devices, we need to understand the processes in which single electrons dissipate energy and eventually control them. We now have a clue to do this.â€? 2010 International Symposium on Atom-scale Silicon Hybrid Nanotechnologies for ‘More-than-Moore’ and ‘Beyond CMOS’ will be held at Garden Court, University of Southampton on 1-2 March 2010, sponsored by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST).

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453.

A new Energy Harvesting Network to be launched next week could mean unlimited power supplies for industry.

The Network, which is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and will be managed by the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), will bring together UK academic and industrial researchers and end-users of energy harvesting (EH) technology.

It will be launched on Monday 1 March, at which point researchers and industrialists are invited to contribute to the Network website where news and events will be regularly posted.

EH is a means of powering wireless electronic devices by scavenging many low-grade ambient energy sources, such as environmental vibrations, human motion, thermal gradients and light so that they can be converted into usable electrical energy.

These devices are therefore potentially attractive as replacements for primary batteries in low power wireless sensor nodes. They also hold the possibility of one day enabling the powering of a range of devices not currently possible, including implantable and wearable medical devices. ECS and its spin-out company Perpetuum are global leaders in energy harvesting systems and ECS co-ordinated the European Union-funded VIBES project which developed miniature electromagnetic and piezoelectric vibration energy harvesters.

The Network will work to define new research challenges and stimulate collaborative research proposals. It will also ensure more effective dissemination on the current and future capabilities of energy harvesting technologies to all potential users in both industry and academia.

According to Dr Steve Beeby and Dr Geoff Merrett at ECS’ Electronic Systems and Devices Group, this is good news for industry as it will create a power supply that will last the lifetime of a device, and avoid downtime due to batteries failing.

“Batteries have to be recharged or replaced,â€? said Dr Beeby. “Energy harvesting is a potential alternative power supply that will outlast the application.â€?

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453.

A new report launched yesterday (25 February) and written by Dr Alma Swan of the University of Southampton shows how universities can work out how much they could save on their profit and loss accounts as well as increasing their contribution to UK plc when they share their research papers through Open Access.

The ‘Modelling scholarly communication options: Costs and benefits for universities’ report, is based on different types of university. It shows how universities might reduce costs, how they can calculate these saving and their greater contribution to society by following an Open Access route.

Neil Jacobs, programme manager at JISC says: “This is the first time that universities will have a method and practical examples from which to build a business case for Open Access and to calculate the cost to them of the scholarly communications process; for example, working out the value of researchers carrying out peer-reviewing duties or the comparative costs of the library handling of journals subscribed to in print, electronically, or in both formats.

“As universities such as Edinburgh, Salford and UCL lead the world to mandate self-archiving and adopt Open Access policies, this report gives evidence to help universities make informed decisions about how their research is disseminated. There are still issues to overcome and the benefits of adopting an Open Access route can be seen through economies of scale, the more researchers disseminate their work through this route the greater the benefits.â€?

The key findings from the report show:

• The annual savings in research and library costs of a university repository model combined with subscription publishing could range from £100,000 to £1,320,000

• Moving from Open Access journals and subscription-funding to per-article Open Access journal funding has the potential to achieve savings for universities between £620,000 per year and £1,700,000 per year if the article-processing charge is set at £500 or less

• Savings from a change away from subscription-funding to per-article Open Access journal funding were estimated to be between £170,000 and £1,365,000 per year for three out of the four universities studied when the article-processing charge is £1000 per article or less

• For the remaining university in the study a move from subscription-funding to the per-article Open Access journal funding saw the university having to pay £1.86m more in this scenario

Jacobs adds: “While some research intensive universities may pay more for the subscription-funding to per-article Open Access journal scenario, it should be noted that many research funders, including the Research Councils and Wellcome Trust, may contribute article-processing charges as a part of normal research grant, so that all universities have a potential source of income to cover the majority of such costs.

“JISC is working with partners in the sector to overcome the barriers which exist to adopting Open Access.â€?

The University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science was the first in the world to mandate OA (2003) and the provider of the world's first OA repository software (EPrints, 2000). Dr Swan, a graduate of the University of Southampton, works closely with the EPrints team advising on many aspects of OA. Earlier this month a major article in Information Today highlighted the work of ECS Professor Stevan Harnad in the worldwide Open Access movement.

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453.

Students from a whole range of disciplines are being invited to go along to the Royal Society in London next week to hear why they should study the World Wide Web.

At a discussion entitled Why Study the Web? at the Royal Society on Monday 8 March at 6.30pm chaired by Dr Aleks Krotoski, presenter of the BBC's Virtual Revolution, Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web, and Professor Nigel Shadbolt, Government Information Advisor, will discuss the future of the Web with JP Rangaswami of BT, Professor Helen Margetts of the Oxford Internet Institute, and Professor Noshir Contractor from Northwestern University in the USA. The panel discussion will be streamed live on the Web at http://webscience.org/event/48.html

"People think that you need to be a computer scientist to study the Web, but that is not the case," said Professor Dame Wendy Hall, Director of the Web Science Doctoral Training Centre at the University of Southampton. "We need economists, sociologists, political scientists, linguists and people with backgrounds in many other disciplines to take up our PhDs so that we can fully understand the impact the Web is having on our lives." The Centre has 50 fully-funded studentships for graduates from a whole range of disciplines to study four-year PhDs in Web Science.

After the panel session, there will be presentations from Professor Hall, Professor Bill Dutton of the Oxford Internet Institute, and Professor Jim Hendler of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the USA about the nature of the Web Science courses at their particular institutions.

“We are very encouraged to see an increasing number of courses and degree programmes in Web Science emerging at various institutions around the world,â€? said Professor Hall. “Each one has a different focus but all seek to enable students to study the development of the Web, the way it is shaping our lives and the socio-technical dynamics that will determine its future. We believe that career prospects for Web Scientists will be very bright indeed as companies increasingly become aware of the need for highly-qualified people with this range of interdisciplinary skills.â€?

'Why study the Web' will take place at the Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AG on Monday 8 March 2010 at 6.30pm GMT. The event will be broadcast live on the Web and will be available for subsequent video download.

Find out more about this free event and register (free).

The panel will be streamed live on the Web and available for subsequent video download at http://webscience.org/event/48.html

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel. +44(0)23 8059 5453.

The School of Electronics and Computer Science and University of Southampton were very well represented at Dev8D, a JISC-sponsored event to train developers and to germinate new ideas and techniques.

Southampton staff won a total of three of the ten contests held during the event. Dave Tarrant, ECS PhD student, achieved joint first place for the "mobile challenge", building an open source iPhone app which could control a plug socket - enabling a light to be turned on and off from anywhere in the world.

Joint first-place with Dave Tarrant was a team of Christopher Gutteridge (ECS Web Projects Manager) and Sam Easterby-Smith who built an iPhone conference visualiser enabling users to 'see' what was currently on in each room, and what people were saying on Twitter.

Mark Borkum (School of Chemistry and ECS Alumnus)won the linked data challenge for creating 'Shredded Tweet', an example of a Web service that enhances Twitter search results to include RDF triples for 'hashtags', 'mentions', URLs and any user-defined regular expression!

Dave Challis (ECS webmaster) and Dr Mike Jewell (ECS Alumnus) won the 'Internet Archive' challenge for creating a way to graph and compare the history of websites.

"This event was a collision between an academic conference and a musicians' jam session,' said Chris Gutteridge. 'You see two or three delegates having a conversation and it results in a new tool or technique so blindingly simple and elegant that it seems odd nobody thought of it before! Too many people underestimate the huge value of motivated and imaginative developers to our growing information economy. Kudos to JISC for finding ways to strengthen the developer community.'

The UK's first Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) is being established with a grant of £4.2M from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

A team of academics and software engineers based at the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science, the School of Computer Science at the University of Manchester and led by EPCC at the University of Edinburgh, will work in partnership with the research community to manage software beyond the lifetime of its original funding, so that it is strengthened, adapted and customised to maximise its value to future generations of researchers.

“The issue at the moment is that there are no co-ordinated ways of sustaining important research software once it comes to the end of its funding,â€? said Neil Chue Hong, Director of the SSI and OMII-UK. “Some software gets abandoned when the project ends. Some systems are maintained in pockets on very much a best-effort basis rather than on the basis of any longer term strategy.â€?

Mr Chue Hong and his collaborators will work with 30-40 groups across the UK, providing the expertise needed to create self-sustaining communities of researchers around important software. It is these communities that will ensure the software’s future by keeping it up-to-date and developing it to meet new requirements. A wide range of disciplines are set to benefit from the SSI’s work, with early projects encompassing climate change, nuclear fusion and medical imaging.

The SSI will collaborate with key researchers to identify and shape the software which is considered by its community to be the most important for research. Strategies for sustaining software will be optimised, and the best methods will be communicated to researchers through SSI consultancy. This work will help to stop the decay of software.

“The creation of the SSI will ensure that important software is sustained so that it can continue to contribute towards high quality researchâ€? said Mr Chue Hong.

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453.

A murder has taken place in the Library – Who did it? How? and Why? – In an exciting and creative event for National Science and Engineering Week, schoolchildren from Southampton and the local region will be invited to solve the mystery.

Blood on the Library Floor takes place at the University of Southampton’s Science and Engineering Day on Saturday 13 March, and has been devised by Dr Reena Pau of the School of Electronics and Computer Science following the success of last year's award-winning ‘Blood on the Kitchen Floor’.

Actors from the Nuffield Theatre and graduate students will be working alongside Reena to create a unique event which allows children to identify the murderer by solving ‘clues’ using technologies such as robotics, solar power, codebreaking, audio technology and echo-location sound mazes.

The event will begin with a reconstruction of the events that led up to the murder intended to draw the children into the story and giving them the motivation and context to solve each of the clues. The inspiration for the event came from Reena’s work in schools as well as her passion for getting girls enthusiastic about science and technology. While interviewing schoolchildren for her PhD project she found that many didn’t understand how technology can be used in the real world. This suggested to her that merging theatre and technology would provide a narrative showing the real-world context in which science can be used.

‘The narrative is really funny,’ said Reena, ‘but has the serious purpose of drawing the children into the story. As they work their way round the different technologies, driving solar-powered boats or using robots to retrieve objects from forbidden places, they will be able to understand the importance of these important technologies and hopefully be excited by their potential.’

Blood on the Library Floor takes place on Saturday 13th March at the University of Southampton’s Highfield Campus. Blood on the Library Floor website; to book a place on the event, which runs three times during the day, email bloodonthelibraryfloor@googlemail.com

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel. +44(0)023 8059 5453.

Research on the development of the World Wide Web in the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) is featured in a new BBC season of programmes, Superpower, which began on Monday 8 March and runs for two weeks.

The SuperPower season will feature programmes on radio, television and the Web, considering the impact of Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee's invention of the Web 20 years ago and the way it has transformed our lives.

In addition to the wide selection of programmes, there is also the opportunity to become part of the action and commentary on the development of the Web by contributing blogs and videos to the Superpower web site. Tim Berners-Lee, who is a Professor of Computer Science in ECS, recently appeared in Virtual Revolution, a four-part television series on the Web, shown on BBC2, which is part of the SuperPower series. Professor Nigel Shadbolt of ECS also appeared in the series and acted as Series Consultant.

Writing on the BBC web site, Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC Technology Correspondent, previews a specially-recorded episode of Discovery to be broadcast on Wednesday 10 March, which includes interviews with both Professor Shadbolt and Professor Dame Wendy Hall of ECS. In the programme Professor Shadbolt discusses his recent work with Tim Berners-Lee on providing access to public data, which can be used in new applications by developers enabling UK citizens to gain new information. The programme explores the success of the Web and its future development, with a warning from Professor Hall that we need to be vigilant about the way the Web develops: "There are no guarantees that it will carry on to evolve the way it is now - open, free and with universal standards," says Professor Wendy Hall. "If you lose that or the standards are taken over by a commercial concern, then the Web will change dramatically." Professor Hall is taking part in the next episode of The Forum, to be broadcast on Sunday 14 March, at 9.00 am GMT on the BBC's World Service. She will be discussing the future of the Web with Bruce Damer and Evgeny Morozov.

Professors Berners-Lee, Hall, and Shadbolt are all Directors of the Web Science Trust, which advances the discipline of Web Science, which can now be studied at PhD level in universities across the world. In London last night (Monday 8 March), the three professors took part in an event held at the Royal Society, entitled 'Why Study the Web: Social Machines and Virtual Revolution', which focused on the need for Web scientists, and the challenges facing the Web in the future. The event was chaired by Dr Aleks Krotoski, and included experts from business and academic research, including JP Rangaswami of BT, Professor Noshir Contractor of Northwestern University, and Professor Helen Margetts of the Oxford Internet Institute. A video of the live stream of the event will be available to download from the web site in a few days.

Further information about PhDs in Web Science at the University of Southampton.

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel. 44(0)23 8059 5453.

ECS will be making a strong contribution to this year's Science & Engineering Day which takes place on Saturday 13 March.

Dr Denis Nicole will be leading a team of ECS students who will be based in the Technology Zone in Garden Court, providing a whole range of exciting activities including games writing, electronic construction, race solar-powered boats, play scratch, compose electronic music, experience enhanced reality, and chase robots around the arena. There are plenty of activities for children of all ages taking place throughout the day.

The Murder Mystery returns again this year with a new scenario: Blood on the Library Floor! The event is devised by Dr Reena Pau of ECS, and brings together actors from the Nuffield Theatre and graduate students to create a unique event. It begins with a reconstruction of the events that led up to a murder, intended to draw children into the story and giving them the motivation and context to solve a set of clues using technologies such as robotics, solar power, codebreaking, audio technology and echo-location sound mazes. Bookings for the event (numbers are limited) can be made in advance, but it is also possible to book on the day at the Nuffield Theatre. The shows run at 11 am, 12.30 pm and 2 pm.

We look forward to seeing you there!!

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453.

After last year's successful first attempt by a UK entrant at the World Championship of Inter-Collegiate Solar Boating, Team Tarka II are now preparing for their second visit to Arkansas.

This year's Solar Splash event takes place from 9 to 13 June in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and the University of Southampton will again be the only UK entrant. At last year's event Team Tarka put up a spirited challenge, coming away with a string of awards and a very creditable 10th place.

Taking place over five days, the event comprises different water-based competitions which test speed, manoeuvrability, endurance, design, and innovation. Last year Tarka ended the event in 10th place (guaranteeing their competitor number this year), and won the Teamwork Award, the Sportsmanship Award, and achieved ‘Best Score for a Rookie Team’. The boat was placed third in the qualifying event and came joint first in the Silver Medal race. With a Union Jack flying from the boat and emblazoned on its prow, it wasn’t hard to spot Tarka amongst the other competitors.

This year, there are a number of new developments. Dr Reuben Wilcock of the School of Electronics and Computer Science is managing the project. 'A really exciting development this year is that we have four Ship Science students at the core of the Tarka II team,' he says, 'and they have been working extremely hard on the new hull.

'Because of their knowledge and experience they have been able to perform more theoretical simulations on the hull during the design stage. They even built a scale model of the design and tank-tested it to confirm the performance increase over the Tarka I boat.'

A carbon fibre composite is being used for the hull material to make it as light and stiff as possible. Another important change this year is that Tarka's drive power has been more than doubled, with a maximum of 25kW possible from the dual motor engines. Custom propellers will also help achieve the best possible performance with this engine.

The team are aiming for a podium position but still have a long way to go before the new boat is ready. Interested sponsors are needed to help support the team's work over the next few months, and the shipping of the boat to Arkansas. If you are interested in sponsoring Team Tarka II and having your company logo emblazoned on the new hull contact Valentin Muenzel.

Team Tarka II are pictured here at the University Boathard at Wood Mill, with last year's boat. The project is led by Dr Peter Wilson of the ECS Electronics Systems and Devices research group.

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453.