News
dot.rural's Informed Rural Passenger Project's app GetThereBus has issued a press release concerning the app. The text is below and is featured on the University of Aberdeen website.
The effects of bus delays caused by bad weather or road accidents could soon be greatly reduced thanks to a new phone app powered by public transport users.
Researchers at the dot.rural Research Hub at the University of Aberdeen have released ‘GetThereBus’, an app that aims to improve bus travel for rural customers, particularly during disruptions.
dot.rural's Annie Robinson has been featured on BBC's Beechgrove Garden talking about BeeWatch, a collaboration between dot.rural and the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. The show is shown in Scotland on Thursday 23 May at 7.30pm and repeated across the whole network at 8.30am on Sunday 26 May. Annie is also featured in the trailer sneek peak on the BBC Beechgrove Garden website.
Information from the Beechgrove Garden factsheet is below.
dot.rural PhD student Gina Maffey is presenting a talk “How do you manage a landscape without losing the plot” at Facing the Future Symposium in Dundee, April 10th-12th hosted by Centre for Environmental Change and Human Resilience, The University of Dundee and The James Hutton Institute.
dot.rural PhD student Kevin McDonald presented his research British Colloquium for Theoretical Computing Science at the University of Bath on 26 March. His talk was called A Substructural Logic for Layered Graphs.
dot.rural PhD student JP Vargheese is presenting his PhD work as part of CHI 2013: Changing Perspectives conference in Paris, France 27 April - 3 May 2013. JP's work in progress poster: Persuasive Dialogue for Older Adults: Promoting and Encouraging Social Interaction Social computing (Poster 0909, wip629, social computing cluster) will be on display on the Monday and Tuesday of the conference.
dot.rural PhD student Fiona Heesen is speaking at a Community Broadband Scotland event in Aviemore on Wednesday 24th April 2013. The event is hosted by Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Fiona's talk s titled: "Broadband and Community Resilience: measuring impact" based on her PhD research.
During National Science and Engineering Week 2013 dot.rural carried out an interactive workshop title "Countryside, Digital, Life" at three Aberdeen City and Shire Primary Schools. The workshop featured dot.rural PhD students and Research Fellows. The workshop allowed pupils to discover how digital technology from mobile phones to satellite internet can help improve people's lives in the countryside. The innovations covered topics from buses to bumblebees and family history to first aid and more.
Prof John Nelson, dot.rural Co-Director spoke about the Informed Rural Passenger dot.rural project at the ITS UK Public Transport Interest Group joint meeting with Intellect in London on 28 February 2013. Prof Nelson's talk : "A User-Centric Passenger Information System for Rural Areas - Prof. John D Nelson, Professor of Transport Studies, University of Aberdeen" was part of the solutions section of the meeting which had the overall title "Cracking the Problem – Passenger Information in Transport".
Two dot.rural PhD students Ziaul Hossain and Eduard Grigorescu are presenting their work as part of the University of Aberdeen's 4th Engineering Postgraduate Research Symposium on Thursday 28th February.
Ziaul's work on "Exploring the interaction between BoD and QoS in a satellite broadband system" is being presented as a talk under the Digital Technologies theme. While Eduard wll present his work on “Reduced Internet Transport Latency” as a poster.
There are currently two Transport Research Fellow jobs being advertised to work at dot.rural, both 12 months long, one maternity cover and the other due to the Research Fellow gaining a permanent lectureship.
Details are below, closing date for both is 19th March 2013, to apply visit the reference numbers are RDH0060R and RDH0061R.
dot.rural's Informed Rural Passenger Project has launched the first version of it's android smartphone application. To find out more visit GetThereBus.com and see below.
Monitoring and evaluation of impact have been an important part of the Hub’s activities since it was established – with a dedicated postdoctoral fellow focussed on this role. Following a career move, we are now looking to appoint a postdoctoral research fellow to continue work in the area of user impact assessment and evaluation. The post holder will play a key role in formulating appropriate indicators to measure the impact of digital innovation on project participants and research users, including individuals, communities, businesses, other practitioners, and policy-makers. In addition, they will be expected to contribute to the enhancement of impact across Hub activities.
The doctoral project will be linked to the CURIOS project (part of the dot.rural Digital Economy Hub) which is working with community groups to develop cultural repositories of linked information that can be accessed by different user groups in an “intelligent” way.
dot.rural PhD student Konstantinos Papangelis, is presenting work related to his PhD research and the Informed Rural Passenger project at the Transportation Research Board (TRB) 92nd Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.
dot.rural was well represented at the Universities' Transport Study Group 45th Annual Conference held at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford 2-4 January 2013. Papers were presented by dot.rural PhD students Fiona Heesen and Konstantinos Papangelis, along with dot.rural Research Fellows Angela Marqui and Nagendra Velaga.
Details of the papers are below:
Professor John Nelson, dot.rural co-Investigator and Accessibility&Mobilities theme lead, will begin a three year term as chairman of the Universities’ Transport Study Group (UTSG) which promotes transport teaching and studies across universities in the UK and Ireland.
Professor Pete Edwards, dot.rural's Technical Director, is speaking at the Innovate to survive: how to change the future event organised by IPPR, Policy Exchange and Google in London on Thursday 22nd November 2012.
Prof Edwards is speaking in the session "Small is Beautiful" looking how the internet-collaborative world builds new possibilities for individuals, small & medium enterprises and community groups. He will outline some of the projects dot.rural is working on that aim to improve public services, help SMEs and involve communities.
Two dot.rural researchers: Drs David Beel and Leanne Townsend are attending the final seminar of the New Directions for Work in Digital Scotland which is being held at the Scottish Parliament on 19th November 2012.
The final seminar is the fourth in the series, a Knowledge Exchange Programme funded by the Scottish Universities Insight Institute which promotes collaboration and engagement between researchers and wider society. Prof Claire Wallace, a dot. rural Co-Investigator is on the steering committee for the project.
dot.rural PhD student Gillian Dowds is looking for participants for her research study, initially in the Balmedie and Belhelvie areas. See below for details and the recruitment poster.
Two dot.rural PhD students: Fiona Hessen and Andrew Millington are presenting a seminar as part of the Dundee School of Computing seminar series. These are open to the public and take place from 12:00-1:00 in the Wolfson Research Theatre, School of Computing, University of Dundee. Details of their talks are below.
dot.rural researchers will be presenting research at the 11th International Semantic Web Conference in Boston, USA 11-15 November 2012.
dot.rural PhD student Chris Baillie will present a long paper in the Doctoral Consortium on Monday 12 November entitled "Quality Reasoning in the Semantic Web".
A large dot.rural contingent will be in attendance at Digital Futures 2012, the 3rd Annual Digital Economy All Hands conference, 23 - 25 October 2012 at the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre. Below are dot.rural presentations.
Day One 23rd October 2012
The following press release about Digital Futures has been released by the University of Aberdeen.
Digital Futures in focus as UK experts gather in Aberdeen
The impact of advances in digital technology on many aspects of our lives tomorrow will be in the spotlight this week as 300 of the UK’s leading researchers and industry experts converge on Aberdeen to share challenges, opportunities, innovations and research.
Ziaul Hossain, dot.rural PhD student, featured in Strictly Engineering, he was a finalist with his poster appearing at the British Science Festival 2012.
Funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering, Strictly Engineering, is a scheme set up for UK based Engineers, challenging them to use their work to create an eye-catching poster pairing them with a designer.
Ziaul's poster can be downloaded as a pdf and is shown below.
dot.rural PhD student Chris Baillie is presenting work at the 11th International Semantic Web Conference in Boston, USA. Chris has had a long paper accepted (one of seven) for the Doctoral Consortium entitled "Quality Reasoning in the Semantic Web". The doctoral consortium takes place on Monday 12th November 2012.
Work from dot.rural's Informed Rural Passenger Project is featured in the recent edition of eurotransport magazine. In the ITS & Traffic Management supplement work from IRP is featured in an article: "Technologies and component for bus, metro and tram". ITS is an abbreviation for Intelligent Transport Systems. According to the magazine it is read by 35,000 people each issue, it is targeted at key decision makers around the world.
dot.rural PhD student Rob Craig is presenting a paper "Community Participation and Issues of Rural Accessibility in the UK" at the 13th International Conference on "Mobility and Transport for Elderly and Disabled Persons" TRANSED 2012 in New Delhi, India, the conference is from the 17th to 21st September 2012. Rob's paper is being presented in the Rural Access and Mobility Theme session on Thursday 20 September between 10 and 11.30am.
dot.rural researcher Leanne Townsend is seeking rural creative businesses with no/poor broadband access. As part of the Satellite Internet for Rural Access (SIRA) project, Leanne is investigating the value of broadband for the rural Creative Industries, through informal research interviews. If you fit this profile or know somebody who does, please get in touch with Leanne: 07810887930 or email l.townsend@abdn.ac.uk.
Dr Rene van der Wal, dot.rural Principle Investigator and Theme for Natural Resource Conservation, presented work from the Digital Conservation project at the 3rd European Congress on Conservation Biology. The presentation "Tell me a story about the birds and the bees: Using computer-generated personalised feedback to foster public engagement in nature conservation projects" was part of the Oral Session: Oral Session: From values and attitudes to policy on Thursday 30th August 2012.
The University of Aberdeen Press Office have released a Press Release about dot.rural's involvement in the British Science Festival 2012.
A team from dot.rural (RCUK Digital Economy Research Centre), which looks at new ways to enhance rural life and services through the improvement of technology, will host events at the British Science Festival when it returns to Aberdeen for the first time in almost 50 years.
dot.rural PhD student Alice Toniolo is presenting results of her PhD research as a paper at ECAI 2012 20th Biennial European Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Session 5A (1240-1430) on Thursday, 30th August 2012 in Montpelier, France.
dot.rural will be exhibiting at the Digital Showcase in Nairn Arts Centre on 22nd August 2012. Organised by Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Business Gatway,the showcase will provide businesses and individuals with the opportunity to discuss what Next Generation Broadband (NGB) and Information Technology (IT) can do for them.
Gina Maffey, dot.rural PhD students is featured in a press release issued by RCUK today. The text is reproduced below.
dot.rural Research Fellow Dr Leanne Townsend is presenting at the Seventh International Conference on Interdiscplinary Social Sciences in Barcelona Spain. Her presentation is based on work on the dot.rural ASSURE project is titled Online Networking for Rural Businesses: Understanding the Social Context is being presented in the Technology and Applied Sciences Stream on Monday 25 June at 1635 in Room 10.
The first workshop of the Rural Connective begins Monday 11 June 2012 in St Agnes, Cornwall. In attendance from dot.rural will be Prof John Farrington and research fellows Drs David Beel, Elizabeth Tait and Leanne Townsend. You can watch the proceedings online.
Dr Angela C. Marqui dot.rural Research Fellow, will be presenting research associated with the SMiLE project at the eFreight 2012 conference in Delft, the Netherlands, 9-10 May 2012. Angela's paper is "Freight logistics services for rural economies: user needs and future challenges" .
Details of dot.rural's Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) funding is available on the Knowledge Transfer Partnerships website. As part of the hub award from RCUK, dot.rural have funds to co-sponsor KTPs but would consider single funding where the potential partnership fully meets the criteria and no other joint funding organisations are available.
Gina Maffey, dot.rural PhD student, has been selected as a finalist in the British Science Association's Prove It in 30 competition.
Gina Maffey,dot.rural PhD student, will be presenting at the International Conference on Hunting for Sustainability: Ecology, Economics and Society in Ciudad Real, Spain 27-29 March 2012. Gina's presentation "Digital solutions in traditional landscapes" will take place at 1720 on Wednesday 28 March as part of the session on Hunting in a Changing Environment.
Dr Nagendra Velaga, dot.rural Research Fellow, will be presenting research at the Position Location and Navigation Symposium 2012 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, USA 24-26 April 2012.
Milan Marković, dot.rural PhD student will present at the AAAI Wisdom of the Crowd (27-29 March), one of the six symposia that make up the 2012 Spring Symposium Series of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence taking place in Stanford, California, USA . Milan's presentation "The Crowd and the Web of Linked Data: A Provenance Perspective" is co-authored with other dot.rural researchers: Peter Edwards, David Corsar and Jeff Z. Pan and will be presented at 9:05-9:25am on Tuesday 27th March.
dot.rural featured on BBC’s Out of Doors radio programme in relation to the digital divide in the UK between remote rural areas and the rest of the country. Dr Arjuna Sathiaseelan and Dr Leanne Townsend, who work on alternative high speed technologies such as satellite broadband were interviewed. You can listen again until 22 January. To find out more about this project visit the SIRA project pages.
Dr David Corsar, dot.rural Research Fellow, presented a paper entitled "Development of a Map-matching Algorithm for Rural Passenger Information Systems via Mobile Phones and Crowd-Sourcing" at the 2012 TRB Annual Meeting. The paper is co-authored with dot.rural researchers: Nagendra Velaga, John Nelson, Yaji Sripada,Pete Edwards, Nirwan Sharma and Mark Beecroft. The presentation was at Monday 23 January during at 10:15am - 12:00pm session at the Hilton Hotel.
