Scientific Uncertainty in Media Content: Some Reflections on This Special Issue

It was an honor to be called upon to be the anchor reviewer for this special issue of Public Understanding of Science devoted to new perspectives on media presentations of scientific uncertainty. But more than that, it was for me a pleasure and an education. It is always rewarding when, as one of the reviewers of submitted manuscripts, you get so engaged by the content and quality of the research in the articles before you that you have to remind yourself that your task is that of the critic. That happened repeatedly with all of the research articles in this issue. Rather than summarize each of the articles, which Peters and Dunwoody (2016) have done so well in their introduction, and rather than repeat all the valuable roadmaps for further research already contained in the articles, please allow me to share a handful of sometimes oblique observations inspired, directly or indirectly, by all of the articles in this special issue. The following reflections may refer to some articles more than others, but that should not signal any differences in the high-quality and valuable contributions of each

Visualizing Sensor Network Coverage with Location Uncertainty

We present an interactive visualization system for exploring the coverage in sensor networks with uncertain sensor locations. We consider a simple case of uncertainty where the location of each sensor is confined to a discrete number of points sampled uniformly at random from a region with a fixed radius. Employing techniques from topological data analysis, we model and visualize network coverage by quantifying the uncertainty defined on its simplicial complex representations. We demonstrate the capabilities and effectiveness of our tool via the exploration of randomly distributed sensor networks

Developing a quick guide on presenting data and uncertainty

This paper describes the rationale, development and testing of a quick guide leaflet on the presentation of data and uncertainty. While tools for capturing, analysing and presenting data become more advanced, the fundamentals of presenting data with adequate context and clarity remain unchanged. The leaflet, aimed at scientists generating and presenting data, was created as part of an interdisciplinary collaboration (meteorologists, information designers, psychologists) working within the PURE Network project RACER, funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council. A copy of the leaflet is included in this article

Family Health Monitoring System Based on the Four Sessions Internet of Things

The accelerating pace of modern life results in the lack of effective care of people’s health status. Nowadays, resorting to the technology of the Internet of Things, we can provide home health monitoring services to minimize the impact of the disease brought to people. In this article, we proposed the realization method for the architecture of the four sections of the Internet of Things oriented to home health monitoring service, furthermore, the secondary the smoothness index method is applied to the monitoring of human health index, data from body temperature detection experiments verified the feasibility of the four sessions system, which laid firm foundations for the requirement of real-time and accuracy of the Internet of Things based home health monitoring system with a common reference significance and value in use

Blockchain in construction industry: challenges and opportunities.

Construction Industry is currently evolving around the world. On the other hand, despite the technological advancement across most sectors, construction industry remains amongst laggards in digitalization. Currently, engineering business is facing technological disruption ahead of the fourth industrial revolution; one of which is the blockchain technology! Blockchain is new to construction industry, its challenges and opportunities are yet to be fully realized. This study explores the challenges and potential opportunities of blockchain in the construction industry through extensive review of literature within the blockchain domain vis-à-vis construction business domain. The study presents challenges under three categories (technical, regulation and social), and the potential opportunities in to improving efficiency and reducing conflict through transparency and trust. That will ultimately create value for money in the procurement of construction works. Recommendations are made based on the study finding to advance the research on blockchain applications in to the construction industry

Toward Technology Transfer Evaluation Criteria

Technology transfer is often focused on how to get novel technology transferred into an industrial using group or company. We focus in this paper on the target of the process and present guidelines which can help assess the likelihood of a successful transfer

Emoto - visualising the online response to London 2012.

In recent years we have moved from data scarcity to data abundance. As a response, a variety of methods have been adopted in art, design, business, science and government to understand and communicate meaning in data through visual form. emoto (emoto2012.org) is one such project, it visualised the online audience response to a major global event, the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. emoto set out to both give expression to and augment online social phenomena, that are emergent and only recently made possible by access to huge real-time data streams. This report charts the development and release of the project, and positions it in relation to current debates on data and visualisation, for example, around the bias and accessibility of the data, and how knowledge practices are changing in an era of so-called 'big data.