Researchers in ECS are among a team from the University of Southampton involved in a national project that is transforming the way gas, electric, water and telecommunications pipes and cables are laid, repaired and replaced in the UK.
Academics from the Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory, and Electronics and Electrical Engineering, join a team from the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR), to work with colleagues from the Universities of Birmingham, Bath, Leeds and Sheffield on the Mapping the Underworld project.
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council-funded scheme is looking to develop a multi-sensor platform that can locate, map in 3-D and record the position of all buried utility assets without excavation.
Currently it is estimated four million holes are dug each year to lay, repair or remove buried pipes and cables, however, if utility companies are not certain where they are, excavations can result in serious problems such as burst water mains and major disruption to services.
The Mapping the Underworld project aims to come up with new ways to accurately track the exact location of buried pipes and cables using ground penetrating radar, low frequency electro magnetics, vibro-acoustics and magnetic field technologies.
The multi-disciplinary research has already received interest from a number of utility companies and is coming to the end of its second four year phase. The team, led by Professor Chris Rogers from the University of Birmingham, now hopes to secure further funding to extend their work to assess the condition of buried pipes and cables so that utility companies will know which may need replacing without digging them up.
For more information on Mapping the Underworld go to www.mappingtheunderworld.ac.uk
Professor Dame Wendy Hall and Dame Helen Alexander head a list of luminaries from the University of Southampton to be named as part of the BBC Radio 4 Womanâs Hour âPower Listâ.
Dame Wendy, Dean of Physical and Applied Sciences, and Dame Helen, the Universityâs Chancellor, are joined on the list by Southampton alumni Justine Greening MP, Secretary of State for International Development; Clare Foges, Speechwriter to the Prime Minister; and Rosemary Squire OBE, Joint Chief-Executive of the Ambassador Theatre Group; and honorary graduate Shami Chakrabarti, Director of the human rights organisation Liberty.
The Womanâs Hour Power List celebrates the achievements of British women across public life, focusing on the top female politicians, business women and leaders in their field from areas as diverse as finance, education, health, engineering and the arts. A Womanâs Hour judging panel sought to name the women who have the biggest impact in society who also have the ability to inspire change as a role model or thinker.
Only last November, Dame Wendy was named to Computer Weeklyâs âUKtech50â list of top CIOs, industry executives, public servants and business leaders driving the role of technology in the UK economy. Earlier last year, she was also named as the second most influential woman in UK IT, also awarded by Computer Weekly.
Dame Wendy says: âI'm delighted to have made the list. I love the way it highlights the increasingly significant role women play in every walk of life in the UK and I'm flattered to have been included in such distinguished company.â?
This yearâs Engineering and Technology Careers Fair was a resounding success with more than 1,000 students attending to find out more about career options from 80 of the UKâs leading companies.
The Fair attracted major employers across the technology industries, transport, energy, media, finance, gaming, retail, security and communications.
The annual Careers Fair is the centrepiece of the careers and employability activity in Physical and Applied Sciences, and has been running since 2008. The first event attracted 23 companies and it has grown year on year â an excellent indication of the continuing strong demand for Southampton graduates.
Many companies attend every year, but new companies attending the Fair for the first time this year included industry leaders such as Amazon, Gazprom, Hawk-Eye, Huddle, Lockheed Martin, Meggitt, NVIDIA, and notonthehighstreet.com.
âThe Fair is a great endorsement of the high regard that the UKâs leading technology companies have for Southampton students,â? said Careers Fair Director Joyce Lewis. âWe had 80 companies attending this year â a significant increase from last year, and it was fantastic to hear the buzz in both venues and to see the great interactions taking place between the company representatives â many of whom were Southampton alumni â and students across all years and many subject areas.
âWeâve had excellent feedback from the companies, who are already looking forward to returning for next yearâs event.â?
Other careers and employability activities organised by FPAS throughout the year include the Careers Hub website ,conferences, employer presentations and mentoring programmes, designed to ensure students are aware of all the opportunities open to them and are best prepared to gain the position they want.
For further information about the ECS Careers Hub and 2014 Fair (11 February 2014), contact Joyce Lewis.
A new initiative is aiming to increase the well-being and physical activity of staff and students at the University of Southampton.
The GofIT challenge proposes to increase mobility and activity options on campus. The initiative is also planned for trials later this spring with both Imperial College and schools across the region.
Following a successful trial in October last year, the 12-week challenge starts from 5 February for teams to sign up and 18 February for the trial to start. Teams of five to eight people can sign up to a web-based challenge site, where the goal is simply to increase minutes of physical activity each week. Participants have weekly minute targets to increase physical activity and wellbeing, which can be as simple and as easy as taking the stairs instead of the lift or getting off at a further bus stop and walking a bit more into work. To make achieving those targets a little more fun, teams will easily be able to compete with each other over the weeks.
Teams can sign up now at https://gofit.soton.ac.uk/auth/login
Professor mc schraefel from Electronics and Computer Science, who designed GofIT based on MITâs successful 12 week team challenge, says: âThere are sufficient studies now to show that more active, mobile knowledge workers like our students and staff perform better academically and professionally, and are ill less often. Therefore, helping our students and the whole University community get and stay more mobile is an important goal.â?
Another aspect of the GoFit13 Challenge says Professor schraefel will be building knowledge about health practices. âWorking with Sport and Wellbeing, we have experts contributing their knowledge to resources for participants. Being a place of science and learning, weâre also including âExperiments in a boxâ? where participants can â if they wish â test for themselves how certain healthy activities affect wellbeing. The green box experiment, for instance, is about exploring the effect of eating more greens; the black box experiment is about exploring sleep, and thereâs a white box experiment about the testing the effects of starchy carbs, like breads and pasta and potatoes. Weâre all a little different, so each of these two-week self-experiments is designed to self-test how these practices affect our weight, our daily energy, our sense of well being when combined with our movement minutes.â?
The GofIT challenge takes a dual physical and digital approach over a 24-month project with four phases, including capturing reusable health information about the area.
âWeâre keen to build a health map of the area, so that people who find a great place to run thatâs safe or super place to grab a healthy salad will be able to share these resources,â? adds Professor schraefel.
The final phase will look to develop physical fit stations on campus and integration of digital and physical infrastructure. Professor schraefel says:âImagine being at a pull up station on campus and simply by bringing up the GoFIT app, youâll see how many pull ups were last done at the station, what the daily record is, how often your team has been there, and of course, how many minutes youâve spent moving there.â?
Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) is throwing open its doors to potential postgraduate taught students at our MSc Open Day in March.
This is an opportunity for interested students to come and explore the campus, see the excellent facilities that ECS has to offer and find out about our range of one year postgraduate Master of Science courses.
This yearâs MSc Open Day takes place on Wednesday, 20 March, at the Highfield Campus, and visitors will get the chance to hear academics talk about the variety of MSc programmes in ECS, learn about what studying an MSc involves and find out about developing a research career. Current MSc students will also be on hand to chat about their experiences and there will be opportunities to ask questions of our world-leading academics at the cutting edge of their disciplines.
The day starts at 10.30am and runs until 4.30pm and includes tours of some of ECSâs outstanding facilities including the high voltage electrical labs, computing suites, award-winning clean rooms and electronics labs, as well as a look at the accommodation available for postgraduate students.
âDeciding to study for an MSc is a big step. By coming to our Open Day you can hear about all our programmes, talk to current students and get the information you need to make the right decision,â? said Head of ECS Professor Neil White.
To book a place on the ECS MSc Open Day go to www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/postgraduatetaught/openday_booking
To find out more about the postgraduate taught courses go to www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/postgraduatetaught
An academic from ECS was part of a team of researchers that developed a system for examining some of the worldâs most important historical documents in intricate detail.
Dr Kirk Martinez, from the Web and Internet Science Research Group, worked with Dr Graeme Earl, from the University of Southamptonâs Archaeological Computing Research Group, to develop the Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) System for Ancient Documentary Artefacts.
The system, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council in a collaboration with the University of Oxford, allows a researcher to move a virtual light source across the surface of a digital image of an artefact and use the difference between light and shadow to highlight never-seen-before details.
It comprises of a dome with 76 lights inside and a camera positioned at the top. A manuscript is placed in the centre of the dome and then 76 photos are taken each with one of the 76 light individually lit. In post-processing the images are joined and a light moved across the surface of the digital image to reveal the hidden details.
Kirk said: âWe aimed to make a modern, fast, but not too expensive version of this imaging system, and itâs great to see we succeeded in making something that is producing valuable data for humanities researchers.â?
The system was recently used on objects held in the vaults of the Louvre Museum in Paris and images have now been made available online for free public access on the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative website.
Among these documents are manuscripts written in the so-called proto-Elamite writing system used in ancient Iran from 3200 to 3000BC and is the oldest undeciphered writing system currently known.
By viewing the extremely high quality images of these documents and sharing them with a community of scholars worldwide, a team from the University of Oxford hope to crack the code once and for all.
Dr Jacob Dahl, co-leader of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative and a member of the University of Oxfordâs Faculty of Oriental Studies, said: âI have spent the last 10 years trying to decipher the proto-Elamite writing system and, with this new technology, I think we are finally on the point of making a breakthrough.
âThe quality of the images captured is incredible and it is important to remember that you cannot decipher a writing system without having reliable images because you will, for example, overlook differences barely visible to the naked eye that may have meaning.â?
He believes the writing system he is examining may be even more interesting than previously thought.
âLooking at contemporary and later writing systems, we would expect to see proto-Elamite use only symbols to represent things, but we think they also used a syllabary â for example âcatâ would not be represented by a symbol depicting the animal but by symbols for the otherwise unrelated words âcaâ and âatâ.
âHalf of the signs used in this way seem to have been invented ex novo for the sounds they represent. If this turns out to be the case it would transform fundamentally how we understand early writing where phoneticism is believed to have been developed through the so-called rebus principle (a modern example would be for example âI see youâ, written with the three signs âeyeâ, the âseaâ, and a âeweâ).â?
To find out more about the Archaeological Computing Research Group go to their website, the Web and Internet Science Group go to and the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford go to their website
Three current ECS students and one graduate gave inspiring accounts of their experience of internships at a conference held yesterday (27 February) for first- and second-year students in ECS and Physics and Astronomy.
The event was part of the ECS Careers Hub annual programme and was held for the first time this session. âSummer internships are a really great way for our students to experience the working environment and to help inform their future career choice,â said Joyce Lewis, ECS Senior Fellow. âIt's really valuable for them to hear from fellow students and recent graduates about internships in different companies, and to learn what they might expect in these roles, as well as how to handle some of the logistical issues, such as accommodation.â
Keynote speaker Ash Browning, who joined FactSet after graduating with an MEng Computer Science degree last summer, talked about the value of the internship experience, particularly in providing the opportunity to be part of a company ethos and to experience the working environment. Ash did a summer internship with FactSet, working in the City of London, after his third year at ECS, and was offered a permanent position with the company before he returned to ECS for his final year.
Emily Rigby, who graduates this summer with a BSc Computer Science, did internships with Ericsson Television and with Bloomberg, and will be joining Bloombergâs graduate training programme this year. Alex Forward did a 12-month placement with Thales Security between his second and third years, as well as doing an internship last summer with STI. He is joining Halma when he completes his MEng Electronic Engineering degree this year. Thomas Scarsbrook, who is also in the final year of the MEng Electronic Engineering course, gained an internship with Imagination Technologies as part of his UK Electronic Skills Foundation Scholarship, and will join the company in the summer. All the students spoke of the benefits of being able to experience project roles that were very different from their student activities and of the confidence they were able to bring back to their studies and project work through successfully tackling new challenges.
Diana Fitch of University Career Destinations also gave a valuable session on how to prepare and apply for internships, including CVs, applications, and interviews.
All ECS students are encouraged to apply for summer internships during their degree programmes and there are many opportunities offered by the companies which support the ECS Careers Hub activities and the Careers Fair.
"Use the summer break to prepare yourself for your future career,â says Ash Browning. âYou can use that time to gain more experience, either through an internship or another project that will stand you in good stead in the future. Building up your experience will make finding the right full-time job a lot easier at the end of your degree."
The global influence and quality of the University of Southamptonâs online repository of research is recognised in the latest world rankings.
Southamptonâs EPrints repository of over 65,000 research records â and growing - is ranked first in the UK, fourth in Europe and fifth in the world according to the "The Ranking Web of World repositories". As an institution, the rankings place the University fifth in the UK, 16th in Europe and 92nd in the world.
Dr Leslie Carr, Director of the Universityâs EPrints Repository Software Team, praised the Universityâs continued recognition amongst the top institutions in the world for creating and maintaining open access to its world-leading research.
âAs a University we are clearly at the forefront of the open access ârevolutionâ,â? said Dr Carr. âOur world ranking is an excellent achievement which underlines the success of our policies and practices which ensure that the world can access our scientific research via the World Wide Web for the benefit of all.â?
The rankings are an initiative of the Cybermetrics Lab, a research group belonging to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones CientÃficas (CSIC), the largest public research body in Spain. The rankings have been published since 2006. The Ranking Web provides a list of mainly research-oriented repositories arranged according to web presence and the web impact (link visibility) of their contents with data obtained from major commercial search engines.
The University of Southampton is a recognised pioneer of both the open access and open data ârevolutionsâ.
The University, through its expertise in Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), is a world-leader in the technology and design of open access repositories as well as the introduction of institutional open access policy and strategy. Southampton was the first University in the UK to adopt a formal mandate requiring that academic staff make all of their published research available online through the institutional repository which now carries more than 65,000 records.
Southampton created the free repository software EPrints in 2000, which is now used by universities all over the world for Open Access self-archiving - known as âGreen OAâ. (The same Southampton doctoral student who created EPrints also went on to create MITâs DSpace, the other free repository software being used worldwide.) Southampton had one of the first Green OA Repositories in 2001 and the world's first Green OA mandate in 2003. Southamptonâs mandate recommendation was also followed by the 2004 UK Select Committee, which led to the RCUK Green OA mandate as well as Green OA mandates by over 250 universities and research funders worldwide. Ten years after it was made in 2003 Southamptonâs recommendation to make Green OA self-archiving in institutional repositories mandatory for all submissions to the RAE has now been proposed by HEFCE for all submissions to REF after 2014.
Professor Stevan Harnad, one of the leading proponents of the OA movement, both as a Professor in ECS and one of the most respected members of the worldwide OA community, explains the importance of the UK's role in OA leadership at this crucial time, in an article published today (4 March): Worldwide open access: UK Leadership?
In December 2012, Southamptonâs Open Data Service was awarded the Times Higher Education award for Outstanding ICT Initiative of the Year. The initiative provides open access to University data to help improve the life of the University and local communities whilst increasing the transparency of institutional operations.
Also in December, Southampton Professors Nigel Shadbolt and Sir Tim Berners-Lee took part in the formal opening of the UK governmentâs new Open Data Institute (ODI) which they jointly lead. Based in Shoreditch in East London's Tech City, the world-leading ODI will become the 'go to' venue for those seeking to create new products, entrepreneurial opportunities and economic growth from open data. The ODI will promote innovation driven by the Governmentâs Open Data Policy, helping the public sector use its own data more effectively and developing the capability of UK businesses to exploit the commercial value of open data.
A research expedition to Edinburgh was recently completed by Dr Jack Hunter of the Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory (TDHVL) with the aim of verifying the performance of a cable location rig using an operational cable circuit. The objective of the trip was to record the magnetic field produced by a buried 275 kV cable circuit at road surface level using a portable sensor array. The data acquisition system was developed as part of the EPSRC funded, "Mapping the Underworld" project. The system consists of 24 search coils on a portable frame, multiplexer, multi-channel sampling unit and a Laptop. The coils are distributed in a range of orientations such that a 3-D estimation of the magnetic field generated by the cable can be recorded over a period of 10 power cycles (0.2 s). A number of data sets were generated from several locations on the road in order to comprehensively map the magnetic field. The concept of the system is such that, if the geometry and configuration of the cables are known, an estimation of the cable location can be calculated from the recorded magnetic field distribution by solving a minimum fitting error problem. The next stage of the project involves developing a model for the cable configuration and finding if the estimated circuit depth is accurate.
The double circuit used in this study was laid in 2006/2007, energised in 2012 and is operated by Scottish Power; they consist of two sets of single-phase cables with extruded polymeric insulation and were manufactured by Prysmian. The double cable circuit connects Kaimes primary substation on the outskirts of the city to Dewer Place substation in the city centre (a distance of around 7.7 km). The cables are generally installed in trefoil formation at a depth of 825 mm. Several sections of the cable length had to be buried at a shallower depth due to local conditions â at these locations, steel plates were used to provide additional protection. Due to the varying layout of the cable circuits, it was identified as a useful test case to validate the operation of the cable mapping system.
Trials are also being carried out at test sites near Bristol and Wigan
âThe mapping the underworld project has had several successful outcomes and at Southampton we have developed a sensing tool that allows accurate estimation of buried power cable depthâ?. Said by Prof. P. L. Lewin â head of the TDHVL.
The University of Southamptonâs Head of the Web and Internet Science Group (WAIS) and co-founder of the Open Data Institute, Professor Nigel Shadbolt, will be a key speaker at the British Libraryâs Inspiring Science events.
Nigel will lead a lively TalkScience discussion entitled Open Data: Whatâs the Use? exploring the potential of open data and looking at what the open data revolution means for todayâs society.
With the UK government, research councils, businesses and private individuals all releasing their data into the public domain he will highlight what the key drivers and enablers of open data are, and what barriers must be overcome to make the most of this new wealth of information.
At the talk on 19 March he will also discuss:
⢠What is open data and what is its potential for scientific research and innovation?
⢠What are the economic, social and legal considerations for open data and do they matter?
⢠What will motivate organisations and individuals to make their data available for all to use?
⢠What are the areas where open data is already making an impact?
Nigel is Professor of Artificial Intelligence in Electronics and Computer Science. He is an advisor to the Prime Minister, helping to transform public access to UK government information resulting in the widely acclaimed data.gov.uk website that allows people to view public information, with the ability to combine different threads of data and analyse them in innovative ways. He is also co-founder and Chairman of the Open Data Institute that was launched last year to help the public sector use its own data more effectively and develop the capability of UK businesses to exploit the commercial value of open data.
His debate is part of the Inspiring Science event organised by the British Library. Running from 11-24 March, Inspiring Science is a series of events and activities that celebrates science and scientists. The programme is aimed at anyone with an interest in science and visitors can explore the Libraryâs collections and spaces to share the excitement surrounding scientific discovery, ideas and information.