Tag Archives: Oxford University

Economics of crowd-sourcing under spotlight

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A team headed by an economist at the University of Portsmouth has won £750,000 to establish why people give up their time to help scientists better understand some of the biggest mysteries, from searching for the cure for cancer to trying to understand the galaxies that fill our Universe.

Dr Joe Cox, of the Portsmouth Business School, will lead a team from Oxford, Manchester and Leeds Universities and colleagues from Portsmouth’s world-leading Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, to find out more about the people who volunteer to help online science projects.

The grant for the three-year project was awarded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) as part of the Research Councils UK digital economy theme.

Dr Cox said: “Hundreds of thousands of people all over the world are giving their time to help find a cure for cancer, or to better understand the nature of the Universe, or patterns of global warming, but we don’t yet have a detailed understanding of the processes that drive these initiatives, which are more complex than they may first appear.

“The growth of the digital economy has dramatically affected the ways people interact with each other and engage in different activities, but little is known about the changing nature of volunteering and crowd-sourcing in this context.

“This grant will allow us to formulate new economic models to explain the choices, motivations and behaviours of digital volunteers.”

The project will also investigate ways in which volunteering can be optimised and sustained through strategic interactions and interventions on the part of the managers of these resources.

Dr Cox will be working with Dr Karen Masters of the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at Portsmouth to study the Zooniverse (www.zooniverse.org), a highly successful and diverse cluster of online citizen science and crowd-sourcing projects inspired by the success of Galaxy Zoo and now includes more than 20 projects including  Cell Slider  and Seafloor Explorer. Volunteers on these initiatives give up their time to interpret and classify data of scientific interest, ranging from images of distant galaxies to weather patterns and cancer cells.

Dr Masters is project scientist for Galaxy Zoo.

She said: “We hope this grant win will help us to understand how to improve the volunteer experience on Zooniverse projects so that people can feel confident they are contributing to real science when they spend time on our sites, and also gain the maximum enjoyment from the experience.”

Dr Cox said: “Technology has made it possible for the average person on the street to make a real contribution towards our understanding of the universe, the modelling of climate change and the development of a cure for cancer.

“Our research will show how these initiatives can encourage more people to volunteer, as well as enhancing the depth of their engagement, which will help to push the boundaries of scientific knowledge and create significant social value.”

The findings will be of “considerable interest” to web communities and the broader voluntary sector, he said, and is likely to also have significant implications for commercial projects that make use of crowd-sourcing, such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

The research partners include Dr Chris Lintott, Oxford University, Dr Anita Greenhill, University of Manchester, and Dr Gary Graham, University of Leeds.

Is Xenophobia Ever Okay?

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On Friday (15/07/2012) I was reading the Evening Standard, I always read the Evening Standard. It’s London’s paper. I also read Sebastian Shakespeare’s column. He seemed smart and witty but what I read on Friday shocked me, not only because of its ignorance but also because of its xenophobia. It was pretty close, if not on the button, of inciting racial (xenophobic, whatever you want to call it) hatred. This is what Sebastian said in his column:

Now we have to cough up to send Scots to Oxford

This may turn out to be the last straw for the Barnett formula. Oxford University is offering up to £22,000 to Scottish students to encourage more applications. Given that Scots pay no fees at Scottish universities, they are unlikely to apply to an English university where fees are £9,000 a year, so the logic goes — hence the need for a subsidy to lure them south.

Excuse me, but why can’t Oxford spend its money subsidising impoverished English students rather than impecunious Scots, who already benefit from a free education? The Scots rely on a huge subsidy from the English taxpayer (the gap in public spending between Scotland and England has risen to a record £1,600 per person a year), which goes toward financing their education system. Now we’re being asked to cough up all over again so they can educate their offspring south of the border. And there was I thinking the whole point of our subsidy was to keep the Scots in Scotland.

I have highlighted the comment ‘keep the Scots in Scotland.’. This is particularly offensive. If you replace the word ‘Scots’ with anything else (Jew, African, etc) you realise just how wrong it is on every level. How the hell did that get past the Evening Standard’s editors?

I am Scottish although I also have English, Lithuanian and Italian blood. I grew up in Scotland and I also paid for my own college education. So did my friends. I didn’t go to University but if I had wanted to I would not have been able to afford to do so.

You have to ask yourself if Scotland really is a socialist paradise why there are so many poor people there who cannot afford to educate themselves out of their situation.

It is also one thing to go to University, but a complete other to go to Oxford.

As for Oxford University: congratulations. What a wonderful and stunning thing to do. I feel they believe in a truly United Kingdom and don’t judge people just because they were born North of the border. Let’s hope other people follow their example.

Emma Watson wants to explore self

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Emma Watson is ready to “figure out” who she really is.

The 21-year-old actress – who was cast as brainbox Hermione Granger in the ‘Harry Potter’ film series when she was just 11 years old – admits working on the franchise has ruled her life over the last decade and she is now looking forward to making her own decisions.

She said: “Not a single second of the day was in my power. I was told what time I’d get picked up, what time I could eat and when I could go to the bathroom.

“I have spent more of my life being someone else than I have being myself.

“I’ve always had a strong sense of who I am and what I want, but I do need to spend more time figuring that out.”

Among the ways the movies have affected her life was Emma’s decision to put her studies on hold last year.

The British beauty was two years into a liberal arts degree at America’s prestigious Brown University but left because it was too much of a struggle combining her school work with promoting the final two films in the series, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts 1 and 2’.

Emma – who will return to her degree at Oxford University in October – explained in an interview with the Daily Mirror newspaper: “I was commuting back and forth between the US and the UK trying to fulfil my commitment to this enormous ‘Harry Potter’ franchise and it just wasn’t feasible. I’m only human.

“I wasn’t getting the best out of either my studies or the filming, so I decided to give a proper goodbye to 10 years of work and resume my studies later.”