See this post on the new blog

On Monday I went to Amsterdam for a very cool meeting called Mobile Monday. This was the 12th edition and my first.

Mobile Monday brings people together with an interest in mobile technologies. Anything that you can do from an SMS gateway to smartphone apps. But why was I interested in this particular one? Well it was about mobile opportunities in emerging economies.

This is really interesting because through UNAWE, I know that there is a lot of appetite for connected science education but that in developing countries the infrastructure is not quite there yet, at least not for your average rural primary school. I have also learnt through my travels and readings that the mobile phone is the way to go. Everywhere I travel, whether in India where mobile phone numbers are more important than email IDs, or in South Africa, where mxit and other mobile services are rocking the place, the mobile phone is the key to connectivity.

I remember in the mid-90’s there was one way to send free text message anywhere in the world from a website. That website was in South Africa. If anyone remembers what it was called, please let me know. How nostalgic!…

So this is why I turned up at a very cool event with great expectations.

At first, the classic unease of yet another ‘emerging economies-developing countries’-event organised in Europe with 99.5% Europeans made me suspicious. I was hoping this would not turn out to be a mutually congratulatory meeting of people who ‘help’ and pat each other on the back for that.

The good news is, it wasn’t. The audience was a bunch of techies who were curious and inspired and mostly there to learn. The speakers were doers. From Opera (check out this report) and their policies to respond to the massive demand in emerging countries, to mobile health information services (check out TextToChange), in 4 contributions we were given a picture of what is happening. If this was not exhaustive, it left us with an inspired urge to find out more. And that’s the best such a meeting can achieve.

The last speaker of the day, Mariéme Jamme from Senegal was very outspoken about aid to any developing region, but in particular Africa. Refreshing!

It would seem that an increasing number of voices are rising, that have strong opinions on the way aid should come to developing countries: it should not be seen as help but as collaboration (implying mutual learning), and local empowerment, although I’d prefer to talk about local ownership of development initiatives. But let’s get back to the subject at hand. The mobile, and what it can do for development.

One of the very good points that were raised was about ‘pilotitis’ a neologism meaning that most initiatives are piloted over and over again, and that there is not enough selection of successful projects and real investment into upscaling them. That is the only way such programmes can become real instruments of development rather than anecdotal, however laudable and successful. And that’s where I think Marieme Jamme’s business sense comes in. She sees development as a business with tangible returns. I got a general feeling of real potential and that there are people around to make it happen.

In that perspective, another impression I have is that people trying to ’sell’ their well-doing mobile-based initiative (mEducation, mHealth, mDevelopment, mEtc.) are perhaps formulating it in a confusing way. And understandably so, but if someone tries to promote a programme that facilitates education through the use of mobiles, it sounds odd to everyone but their collaborators to hear that they “do mobile education”. The mobile is a catalyst, a facilitator, a tool, the world-changing means to an end. The mobile is not education, nor is it health, or ‘the solution’.

This has to be made clear, otherwise it is like you’re sending text messages with maths formulae to the pupils instead of using books. Not useful, not innovative, not new.

All in all I’ll say that MoMo #12 reinforced my conviction that mobile technology has loads of potential development applications but that like any new-ish technology, it should not be used simply as something to do old stuff with new tech. It should not merely replace an existing system, simply because it’s new. And the true innovators who manage to make the most of it are the ones who are going to make the biggest contribution.

As a desert, here is some link love :)

• Voices of Africa Mobile reporting <– Ditch Youtube, this is awesome!
• Kubatana’s freedom fone
• Ushahidi
• MobileActive.org
• Kiwanja.net
• RapidSMS.org
• #momoams hashtag search on twitter

Please send me links that you think should feature here…
Thanks :)

This is simply amazing!!!

Here a view from a place I only visit nowadays but that I still call home :)

View Larger Map

..like fire

EDIT: The scare is now hopefully over and thankfully it was a scare!!! This last blog post from Sky and Telescope summarises what happened. All is well.

Read also this appeal from Mt Wilson director to rebuild and fortify the Observatory against future fires: Fire Recovery Appeal

Image: NASA Earth Observatory

When big news happens, it happens fast, but not as fast as reporters would have us believe. The 24-hour coverage of unfolding events often boils down to a constant repetition of a 15-minute chunk of images, comments, witness reports and the most dramatic images that could be found – and it’s the same on almost all news channels. Why would that still work? Because people want to know if there is anything new. At any moment, as soon as it happens.

Astronomers are not at bay from this urge to know. Mount Wilson is threatened by the fires raging in the Californian mountains and on top of Mount Wilson is Mont Wilson Observatory, where many chapters in the history of astronomy have been written. Many world-view changing discoveries were made at Mount Wilson but I’m not here to list them, it would sound too much like an obituary and we’re not there (yet and hopefully it won’t get to that!).

So what are our news outlets for this ongoing yet specific new item? Most of us turn to twitter for the last minute news and many astronomy bloggers have posted news and thought about Mount Wilson. I am just going to do what the news channels who cannot be on site do: repeat what others say. Below you’ll find link to the latest blog entries about Mount Wilson from the Astronomy blogosphere.

• Astroengine.com update
• Palomar Skies: Good news
• Animation as seen from the Spitzer Science Center
• Universe Today
• LA Times blog
• Spaceports
• Spacewriter.com watching from space
• AstroEngine.com update
• Franck Marchis – Some positive news?
• Patricia Philips on Space News Examiner
• Bad Astronomy – Fires reach Mt Wilson
• Palomar Skies
• Discovery channel – Space blog
• Sky and Telescope
• JPL Nasa Photojournal
• Mark Henderson (Times Online)
• Gerard van Belle’s Cosmic Diary
• Astroengine.com
• The Planetary Society
• Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy
• Daniel Holz in Cosmic Variance
• Franck Marchis’ Cosmic Diary
• Mike Brown’s blog
• A man with a PhD (Richard Gayle)
• Tom’s Astronomy blog
• Where the Sun hits the Sky
• UCLA Today (more newsletter than blog)

On Twitter, follow:

• @elakdawalla
• @plutokiller
• @PEP010

For updates and the latest news go to the update page on the Mount Wilson Observatory website, which in case of loss of power on Mount Wilson (where the web server is located) will be relocated to here, and the Tower cam, the onsite webcam showing the progression of the fire.

We are all hoping hard that the fate of Mount Wilson is not sealed like that of Mount Stromlo was in 2003 and in the meantime, we keep updated wherever we can.

If you find another blog entry about Mount Wilson, let me know and I’ll add it to the list above.

Image: Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, ESA, NASA

Mike Brown, a famous astronomer (partially because he was instrumental in Pluto acquiring ‘Dwarf’ planetary status 3 years ago), has found fog on Titan with his students Alex Smith and Clare Chen.

This is a very cool discovery (cool enough to make fog) and he has submitted a paper describing the findings for publication in a scientific journal. In his blog entry, he also talk about one of the biggest limitations of the peer reviewing system: usually one or two scientists read the paper and decide whether it is worthy of publication or not.

So he invites whoever is willing to review his paper to submit comments for improvements.

The novelty lies in his commitment to take into account the feedback that improves the paper. If Nature has tried Open Peer Review before, this is rather different because it’s controlled by the author, not by the journal.

If this works, there is a fair chance that the journal will receive an edited version with more and different modifications than suggested by their “in-house” (= outsourced to their group of reviewers) referees. How will the editor and referee(s) react to that?

I find it bold to do on such a significant paper, not one that will go unnoticed. Very cool.

In fact, if this system grows to become institutionalised and an increasing number of scientific papers get reviewed openly like that, presumably the number of volunteer reviewers for each paper itself will be interesting to monitor. It would reflect a complicated chemistry of importance of discovery, popularity of topics and authors, etc.

Moreover, if crowdsourcing theory holds and if the crowd is big enough, factors like misunderstandings, individual bias, conflict of interest, etc. are likely to cancel each other out. Certainly a positive evolution.

I see another great potential in this system. Imagine what you could learn as a student – and what talent you could discover as professor, if you involved your students in reviewing papers? It is a useful skill to learn and the number of brains that could contribute ideas is multiplied. As this is ‘real’, it might be a motivation for students who get glued in their speciality to learn what is going on in other fields?

OK I’ll stop my speculations here. All the information is available on his blog ‘Mike Brown’s Planets‘ and in true Web2.0 fashion, the first appeal to Open Peer Review appeared in RSS feeds and twitter (see @plutokiller)

:)

Concrete recommendations to develop astronomy in an emerging country. Fellowships and lots of outreach.

Bottom-line: invest in people

Source: I. Ramírez, The impact of IAU educational programs on Peruvian astronomy, SpS4

3 groups of people were asked to rate predictions on astronomical discoveries:
Science Journalists, Professional Astronomers, and Amateur Astronomers.

Here are some snippets of people’s predictions

Unlikely: discovery of a new planet in our solar system

Next few years (likelihood in brackets): astronomy on the curriculum 81%, samples of soil returned to earth from mars 100%

Late 2020s: nature of gamma Ray bursts understood

2030s: detected gravitational waves, regular commercial space flight, nature of dark matter unraveled

Late 2040s: Permanent observatory on the moon, Dark energy understood

2060s: space tourism industry, Saturn atmosphere sample collected and brought back to Earth, use of extraterrestrial raw materials

End of XXIst century: 50% solar energy, public transportation Earth-Moon

2170: contact with extraterrestrial life forms :)

The difficulty of each question evaluated by the number of experts replying ‘i don’t know’

Amateurs’ predictions are more pessimistic than experts’ predictions

According to amateurs a Tunguska event will happen before we have an Earth collision protection system. Oops :)

Malkov’s final comment: this is very subjective but it is the best we can propose today…

Note to self: I must read Martin Harwit’s work on astronomical discoveries

When you are looking for something you either look elsewhere or you look harder. Extremely large telescopes are of the look harder kind.

Most exciting prospects of the ELTs?
- Study of exoplanets
- Tests of fundamental physics (varying fundamental constants?)

Limitations:
- Price tag (approaching the order of magnitude of space missions)
- Availability (less observing time)
- Versatility (fewer instruments on each instrument)

Open question: should time be given as small chunks of time?

Small projects allow more diversity, risk, opportunity… Big projects needed to address big questions. How to balance the two?

About observing time allocation: there could be annual deadlines for big projects & continuous open observing proposals for small projects? (like HST)

Another tradeoff: multipurpose vs specialised instruments

The price tag is an additional factors in balancing the various tradeoffs. Therefore we need to rethink our operating modes.

Personal comment: It looks like big telescope management needs a Think different approach :)

He had a cool slide putting the E-ELT in front of the great pyramids in Egypt. His comment was to show that we have built bigger things with lower technology before :)

An entertaining talk pushing the limits of the foreseeable & making conjectures on astronomy in 2035.

With shameless Star Trek references. Who can blame him? :)

Hopkins begins by showing a ship called Entreprise discovering a beautiful star-forming nebula instantly analysed by a computer with a suave voice.

Hopkins takes us to 2035 it’s awesome sci-fi, but all based on proposed scientific experiments.

In 2035 99% of research is based on archived data.

Hopkins quotes xkcd on string theory :)

State of astronomy in 2035:
- facilities have solved today’s fundamental questions
- so much data and archives!
- hard to recruit students to work on instruments because they disappear in consortia of thousands and don’t get science publications out of it
- the community is split into data miners, data takers and theorists
- What are the rewards for the instrumentalists? Beware of breaking the instrument building cycle
- Cross matching between archived data and tools for data access and analysis are needed
- We need to train students to devise clever archival infrastructure (soft- and hardware) & tools (software)(*)

(*) This reminds me of an open question that was brought up at the general discussion on the Astronet plan at JENAM this year: How do you train and reward good software programming skills? Not all astronomers make good programmers and good programmers are increasingly needed.

Markus Poessel comments that emerging astronomy communities (eg in developing countries) often start with being data miners.

Patricia Whitelock comments that a deep understanding of instruments and data will remain crucial to understand data and therefore the science that data contain. We won’t create virtual discoverers

There is another comment on how simulations are also a growing data generation process. No time to expand on that comment but it’s a good point!

A hugely entertaining talk, well put together, comparing the advantages of big science and small science in terms of discoveries.

The notes below are in telegraphic style (twitter is the new telegram) but there was no wifi in the room so this is the twitter spam you avoided in one big post…

:)

The rate of growth of science is usually exponential (moore’s law is just one example)

There is something underlying these exponentials.

Fields which have not maintained an exponential growth have died out,

To maintain exponential growth technology must change at some point.

How little science becomes big science: individual, laboratory, national facility then international facility

Value of international facilities: global linkages, scientific cross fertilization, networking, wealth creation through industry involvement – often the main motivator for investors

Value of small science: cheaper, more agile, less specialised, educational value, less bureaucracy, tractable team sizes

Compromise between big & small science is desirable eg for choice & versatility of instrument designers.

Ekers on Harwit (1981) discoveries follow soon after technological innovation

New phenomena are more frequently found by researchers outside the field.

Reasonably complete list of Nobel prizes in astronomy (mostly physics prizes)

The Pierre Auger observatory in an observatory but it’s run like a physics lab (smiles)

Penzias’ & Wilson’s antenna is not really small science more like medium science

Ekers on serendipity in science: it’s cyclic and the serendipitous discoverers are all the cleverest

cleverest meaning openminded, open to exception, know their instruments well

Discovery rate as a function of how a facility is run: predicted discoveries dominated by inhouse experts

But serendipitous discoveries are dominted by non experts.

Dilemma on instrument design: specialised with predicted outcomes or more general purpose with fewer predictable discoveries but more open to serendipity?

Ekers has an interesting comparative list of astronomy vs physics cultures. #IAU

Cultures can play a role when looking for jobs

We need big science and it’s advantageous for many reasons

Small science plays a critical role opening new areas and for education

Question: is there an identifiable setting in which discovery gets delayed?

Question: what is of the most value to astronomy? Nobel prizes or the consolidation work?

Ekers: both have their value!

Astronomers should engage the public more often. It’s tremendous fun, and it’s useful. We sometimes have the illusion that it’s something we do in isolation; a public lecture here, a school visit there; or something better left to those who have an interest in it. Wrong answer. There is much more to it than that.

The first thing to realise is that we are not alone. There are journalists and teachers out there who would love to carry the astronomy message beyond the guest lecture. It’s their profession and they do a great job of it.

So here are some thoughts for the reluctant astronomer-communicator.

Note: In the text below, feel free to swap journalists/teachers and news story/knowledge. Both are the what gets your science to the public of all ages.

Astronomy is a science with pop stars. Famous astronomers and scientists (Einstein, Carl Sagan, Jocelyn Bell, etc.) have a presence to be reckoned with in pop culture(1). New media and social networking brings people closer and the success of astronomers’ blogs(2) or twitter feeds(3) sometimes has nothing to envy some celebrities’ online presence. This does not mean that every astronomer should have a blog or a facebook fan page, but it does demonstrate the interest in astronomy of the general public.

In fact, to young astronomers, I would say: It is not because they are related to you that your family wants to know what you are doing, it is also because it is a fascinating subject for everyone and you have one of the coolest jobs in the world.

The best messenger makes the best news

The science is one thing, but the scientist who communicates it, the face and voice of a discovery is possibly equally important. Be human, be approachable, be relaxed. There is a risk that showing discomfort when talking to journalists/teachers is misread as attitude. Attitude that sends a message saying ‘we are different from ordinary people’ is not what you want. People feel closer to the science when they feel close to the scientist who talks about it. And it goes even deeper than that. In the words of Jameson Wetmore (4)

If scientists are going to be citizens, they need practice in not just communicating their ideas, but having a two-way dialogue with policy-makers and the public.

…and the media is one of the most important gateways to the public.

It’s a dialogue, not a lecture

Take the time to engage journalists and science writers. Try to establish a collaborative relationship with them so that you are working together on getting each science story out to the public in its best form. Volunteer additional explanations when a piece of news is reported from elsewhere. Your openness will be highly appreciated and a huge asset for you.

Approximation is OK. Yes it is.

Remember how sin(x) ~ x when x is small is useful sometimes?…
Sometimes scientists are reluctant to deal with journalists because of the potential inaccuracies in the subsequent coverage. My message to the scientists is “be tolerant“.

Three tricks to remember:
1) The most important is not to be accurate but to transmit the idea.

Incompleteness is not the same as misinformation and sometimes even a little approximation is perfectly tolerable if it does a better job of telling the astronomy news story.

2) Talk about one scientific concept at a time, not one subject at a time!

Your role is to communicate so that people don’t need to know everything on this topic to understand why your piece of astronomical research is newsworthy.

3) Work on metaphors or simplified explanations together with the journalist/media professional.

This will avoid misunderstandings, misconceptions and both will be happier for finding a suitable description of the science. If you need three sentences to clarify something the journalist has misunderstood, they might be able to find the one word that expresses exactly what you mean. That is their area of expertise.

Believe it or not, engaging lay people in communicating science will make you a better communicator and teacher. You will have a better grasp of what people understand and it is sometimes a refreshing reminder that you were also like that before you acquired all that specialist education!

References:
(1) Nice links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein_in_popular_culture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking_in_popular_culture
(2) If you haven’t got these in your favourite RSS feeds, you’re missing out!
Quantum Diaries
Cosmic Diary
(3) Twitter hosts a vast number of astro and space tweeps. Follow one and you’ll find many more to follow:
@Astro_Mike
@BadAstronomer
(4)“Scientists: Listen up!”, Jameson M. Wetmore, Letter, Science 17 April 2009. Vol. 324. no. 5925, p. 334

A Chinese legend says that a very beautiful princess was to be married and had only one requirement: that the one she would marry make and give her a necklace of drops of water.

A million candidates came along, none succeeding to make her give up the requirement.

The eventual winner was an ugly old man who simply asked her to go and pick up the drops herself to make sure she picked the most beautiful ones, his eyes not being what they used to be….

This is a necklace of drops of water, on a national scale! :)