Twenty-five ThinkPads have been donated to ECS by IBM Hursley, as part of the company"s programme to promote greater use of the Linux operating system. Students at the School of Electronics and Computer Science can apply to take part in a year's exploration into the use of Linux and will win the use of a ThinkPad as part of the project. The aim is to develop a wireless networked community and investigate collaborative working. Head of School, Professor Wendy Hall, said: "This is a very exciting opportunity for the University to work closely with industry to provide and encourage students to use the latest software and mobile computing technologies." Graham Spittle, Lab Director at IBM Hursley, presented the ThinkPads at a ceremony at the School of Electronics and Computer Science. "We are delighted to be part of this innovative project," he said. "Linux is increasingly significant and we want to support creative ways of exploring its future potential. My message to the students is, tell us what you learn, but most of all, have fun.' More than 15 million ThinkPad notebook computers have been produced so far. They have been trusted for use in some of the world's most extreme settings, including space shuttle launches, at altitudes of more than 17,000 feet above sea level and on the open seas.

Currently President of the British Computer Society, one of the world"s leading professional IT bodies, Professor Hall has also recently been appointed to the Council for Science and Technology, the Government's top-level advisory body on science, engineering and technology policy. High on her agenda is the issue of encouraging more women to enter careers in science and IT; she is also keen to address the challenges faced by science education and training. She firmly believes that IT would benefit if a greater number of women were involved in the sector, and is committed to encouraging change. "But there is no easy answer," she says. "We have to tackle the problem at every level because there"s a deeply ingrained culture in the UK that computing is for boys." Only the second woman to hold the office of President in the BCS"s 46-year history, a major part of her presidential year will be devoted to establishing new networks for women and encouraging wider debates about some of the major advances in the world of IT. Professor Hall graduated from the University with a BSc in Mathematics and followed it up three years later with a Southampton PhD. She has been Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton since 1994. She was the founding Head of the Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia (IAM) Research Group in the School of Electronics and Computer Science and her research interests include the development of web technologies, open hypermedia systems and link services, advanced knowledge technologies, digital libraries, multimedia information management, agent-based systems and human computer interaction. Her group developed the open hypermedia system, Microcosm, and she is a director of Active Navigation Ltd, the company through which Microcosm was commercially exploited. The Microcosm software was an ITEA'95 award winner and a BCS IT award winner in 1996. The company now focusses on a commercial version of the dynamic link service for the Web based on IAM's Distributed Link Service project. The commercial product is known as Portal Maximiser. Professor Hall was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list in June 2000. She is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE). In 2002 she was made a Fellow of the City & Guilds of London Institute and was awarded an Honorary DSc by Oxford Brookes University.

Innos Ltd, the UK's leading research and development company for innovations in silicon technology, today announced the launch of its state-of-the-art operations, based at the world-class Silicon Fabrication Facility at the University of Southampton School of Electronics and Computer Science.

Steve Byars has been appointed as Chief Executive Officer at Innos joining from IQE, the world-leading merchant epiwafer supplier for the compound semiconductor industry. With over 20 years management expertise in the field of microelectronics he leads an expert team of engineers, technicians and scientists, providing UK industry with research and development partnerships for research into silicon-based technologies; strategies for exploitation of intellectual property rights generated by users of the Innos facility; a prototyping service for start-up companies requiring fabrication of silicon-based electronic devices, photonic devices, and power devices; and a foundry service offering individual process steps. CEO of Innos, Steve Byars explains: "Born out of many years of research experience at the University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science, Innos brings to the UK market unparalleled expertise and facilities that will enable UK businesses to conduct research and development into next generation technologies without having to look overseas." Professor Wendy Hall, Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science, comments: "This is a major announcement for the UK electronics industry. We are proud of the Silicon Fabrication Facility and are excited to be working with Innos to successfully deliver internationally-renowned research on a commercial basis." From its 1000m² purpose built cleanroom, Innos has a full processing line for all types of silicon-based devices and a lithography capability down to below 10nm using the latest in submicron electron beam lithography technology.

About Innos Innos is the UK's leading research and development company for innovations in silicon technology. From its state-of-the-art silicon fabrication facility in Southampton, Innos provides industry and academic institutions with a full processing capability for silicon-based devices including lithography capability to below 10nm, using the world's most powerful electron beam lithography system. It has an expert team of engineers, technicians and academics in addition to over 20 years experience of silicon processing expertise, applying nanomaterials concepts to silicon-based devices. Innos has the most comprehensive tool-set and expertise to serve the market with the diverse and complete processes that are required.

In case you hadn't noticed, sharing is all the rage on the Internet these days. There are web sites where you can share your bookmarks, your Internet search results and your music playlists. Just last week, Yahoo introduced its new instant messaging program that allows users to automatically share with buddies the titles of the songs playing on their desktops. Now comes Audioscrobbler (www.audioscrobbler.com). Created by a British online radio station employee, the new service automatically monitors what music you're listening to on your computer and builds an online musical profile for you. With this information, and the profiles collected from other users, Audioscrobbler builds a list of recommended songs for you. Richard Jones, who created the service while earning a computer science degree at University of Southampton in England, likened the recommendations to those that Amazon.com offers users when they hunt for books. "My main motivation was to create a tool for the discovery of music," Jones said. The service is easy to set up and run. Simply download a relatively small plug-in from the Audioscrobbler Web site. Then whenever you play music with your favorite player, it automatically sends the information to the Audioscrobbler database and builds a profile of your musical tastes. The Audioscrabbler Web site says the service is essentially anonymous because users can only see each other's user names (which they choose) and their song lists. Unfortunately, the service has become too popular too quickly. High demand is straining its servers, and Jones is scrambling to buy more equipment to keep up. For now, parts of the service don't work. But Jones is working on a fix, and has high hopes for Audioscrobbler. "Hopefully, we can make it grow to something much bigger," Jones said. "Maybe to where one day you just hit a button and say, `Play music I like.'"

The University of Southampton has signed a multi-million pound research agreement with BAE Systems and one of its joint venture companies, AMS Limited, marking the start of an important new strategic partnership.

The partnership, which is also supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), centres on a planned £3.5million integrated research programme into information fusion and automated decision making in complex environments. The Distributed Data and Information Systems programme, which involves a network of leading academic groups across the globe, will be led by a team in the University"s School of Electronics and Computer Science.

The partnership, which runs for a minimum of five years, will also evolve to deliver linked education and training courses, providing graduates with the skills needed for the future.

The agreement, signed by the University"s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Bill Wakeham; Dr Robert Johnston, Head of Systems at AMS; and Lambert Dopping-Hepenstal, Advanced Technology Director at BAE Systems, is the fifth BAE Systems Strategic Partnership in the academic sector.

Professor Nick Jennings, head of the Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group in the School of Electronics and Computer Science, is the strategic partnership"s academic director. "This is an exciting initiative bringing together a number of leading academic and industrial research groups to do both fundamental and application-inspired research in this highly challenging area," he commented. "It is a great opportunity to make a significant leap forward in developing large-scale, robust and agile data and information systems. Industry needs increasingly sophisticated information systems that meet the requirements of the people using them. Through this partnership we are bringing together the necessary research expertise to develop the systems of the future," added Professor Jennings.

Professor John Murphy, Head of University Partnerships in BAE Systems said: "This is a strategic area where we must sow seeds for our future capabilities. We recognize Southampton as having in-depth skills in this area and the breadth of knowledge to pull together a global academic network to address our needs."

Dr Robert Johnston, who will chair the Strategic Partnership on behalf of BAE Systems and AMS Limited, said: "We are looking to Southampton and their network to deliver world-class technologies and put research into distributed data and information into network enabled and human centric systems."

The 2004 Open Source Award from UKUUG (the UK"s Unix and Open Systems User Group) recognises the development of free and open source software in the UK.

MailScanner is a complete e-mail security system designed for use on UNIX/Linux e-mail gateways, which protects against viruses and can detect almost all spam. Now the front line of defence at more than 20,000 sites in 60 countries, MailScanner protects over 5 billion emails every week, and has been downloaded a quarter of a million times.

The system is distributed free under the GNU General Public License so Julian can maintain direct contact with users and work with them to make improvements.

Julian wins a £500 cash prize and an expenses-paid trip to the Open Source Convention in Portland, Oregon.

Sensor technology comes in from the cold

The response of glaciers to global warming is an important element in understanding climate change, involving sea-level change and changes to the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic. To predict changes in the future it is vital to understand the behaviour of the sub-glacial bed. But reliable data is a prerequisite.

In the first investigation of its kind in the world the University of Southampton"s interdisciplinary GLACSWEB team is recording glacier behaviour through a network of sensor probes installed directly into the glacier.

The GLACSWEB project is aiming to understand glacier dynamics and climatic change, as well as making advances in pervasive sensor networks. The GLACSWEB team, led by Dr Jane Hart, Dr Kirk Martinez and Dr Royan Ong, installed the sensor network last summer at the Briksdalsbreen glacier in Norway. This glacier advanced dramatically in the 1990s as a result of climate change, and the team will return to Briksdalsbreen this summer to deploy a second type of probe which is based on new research developments. "The aim of the Glacsweb project is to study climate change through its effects on glaciers," said Kirk Martinez of the School of Electronics and Computer Science. "We are using `Subglacial Probes' beneath a glacier, communicating to the surface via radio links. They contain various sensors and their position and orientation is sensed by the surface system. This is the first time wireless probes have been put inside glaciers and it involves many challenges. The systems must feed data back to a server in the UK and contend with communication loss, power loss, noise and bad weather!" The probes are installed in the sedimentary base of the glacier, about 60 metres under the surface through the use of a powerful hot water drill. They record temperature, pressure, speed and movement of the ice, and more importantly of the sediments at its base.

The probes emit signals carrying the data, which are relayed back to a base station on the glacier surface by radio communications, and then transmitted to Southampton by mobile phone. The data is available to researchers at http://envisense.org/glacsweb.html. The project is part of the DTI-funded Next Wave Technologies and Markets programme. It aims to ensure that UK business is structured and equipped to exploit new information and communications technologies and products that enable intelligent functionality to be embedded into devices that will eventually become an integral part of life. The ENVISENSE centre at Southampton hosts projects in the areas of larger-scale reconfigurable pervasive computing, such as environmental projects. "A combination of technologies has made sensor webs possible," says Kirk Martinez. "These will eventually be spread around the world and will give us a clearer picture of exactly how we are changing our environment. In order to make successful sensor webs issues such as: communications, low-power, robustness and adaptability have to be solved through a combination of mechanical engineering, electronics, computer science and environmental science. "Our sensors are housed in "electronic pebbles" which will behave as part of the glacier, enabling us to get the clearest picture possible of what is happening deep below the surface." The project is funded by the Royal Society and the Department of Trade and Industry, and the GLACSWEB team includes Sue Way, Dr Joe Stefanov, Al Riddoch, and Chris Havill.

Software developed by second-year computer scientists in the School of Electronics and Computer Science was last week demonstrated to representatives of Southampton International Airport and IBM Hursley, who were the project sponsors. The demonstration was the culmination of a semester's hard work by students on the second-year group software engineering project.

The project, set up by the ECS course team (Mike Poppleton, Bob Walters and Rowland Watkins) in collaboration with Airside Operations managers John Hamshare (photo, on the left) and Mark Gibb, is a Stand Allocation System for the Airport. The system allows manual as well as automated management of the allocation of arriving and departing planes to stands. John Hamshare said that he was impressed as usual with the quality and enthusiasm on display, particularly by the group showing a 3-D version of the airport.

The leading project group from the whole ECS second year - this year electronic engineers - also demonstrated their work, and were awarded a prize of £50 each by James McGowan of IBM Hursley. The group will go forward to IBM's national Thinkpad Challenge competition between undergraduate project groups in September.

Mike Poppleton commented: "Thanks to all involved, mostly the students, discussions are now under way on further project collaborations between ECS and Southampton Airport."

With Mars now high on the agenda for future space exploration, researchers around the world are building and testing systems that could support long and complex scientific missions to the red planet.

Inter-planetary expeditions will take place over many years and require robust communication systems between the astronauts on Mars and scientists on Earth. Remote Science Teams (RSTs), who specialise in fields such as geology, will be formed from experts around the globe to collaborate on analysing results and providing advice and guidance to the astronauts throughout their time on the planet.

Communication delays between Earth and Mars mean that the usual ways of working together at a distance, such as real-time conversations and the sharing of computer screens, are impractical. This is further complicated by the international composition of the RST, who will be collaborating across many time zones.

To tackle these issues, researchers from the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton are collaborating with NASA"s Work Systems Design and Evaluation group. Under the auspices of the e-Science-funded CoAKTinG project (part of the Southampton-coordinated Advanced Knowledge Technologies consortium) meeting replay software has been developed to support RST activities.

The meeting replay tool combines video of astronauts" analysis and planning meetings with other materials and results, building an easy-to-use interface that lets the RST review the meeting back on Earth. This enables them to make maximum use of the data available by allowing them to quickly navigate to critical moments in the meeting record.

Researchers from the Open University, who are also part of the CoAKTinG project, have provided software that the Mars crew uses to structure scientific data and information during meetings. This is a valuable source of knowledge that feeds into the meeting replay tool.

The meeting replay tool has been put to the test as part of a wider trial of NASA technologies in the Utah desert. At the Mars Society"s Desert Research Station (MDRS) a team of geologists, programmers, engineers, and social scientists has been experiencing life and work, as MDRS Crew 29, in a simulation of the habitat in which they would be working on the surface of Mars. An RST was convened to work in parallel with the MDRS crew 29.

"During the mission we are recording the MDRS Crew's daily planning meetings and delivering a replay of the meeting to the RST within a few hours. By experimenting with these techniques we hope to see if the RST can gain a better understanding - not only of what a Crew is deciding, but why, and how - in order to provide the best kind of feedback," said Professor David De Roure.

Looking ahead 20 years, this research will prototype and evaluate tools to support scientific teamworking under such challenging circumstance.

"This is an ambitious project on which to test the viability of key aspects of our new technology," said Professor Nigel Shadbolt, Director of the AKT consortium, "but AKT has been designed and funded to support collaborative science initiatives of the future. This is a prime example of a mission that depends on detailed planning using future technologies to manage and orchestrate complex behaviour and information."

The Southampton ECS team comprises Dr Danius Michaelides, Kevin Page, Professor David De Roure and Professor Nigel Shadbolt).