Brexit prospects for the UK digital market are none too rosy

Plugged into Europe, or UK unplugged? digital europe by silver tiger/shutterstock.com

There is a real prospect of Britain leaving the European Union following the proposed in-or-out referendum to be held by the end of 2017. This would have various repercussions, one of which might be that the UK would be shut off from operating in the European Single Digital Market, a European Commission priority.

Our recent digital marketing research found major differences in the attitudes of business and students in different European countries toward the use of digital and social media marketing. If the UK leaves the EU, these differences are likely to widen.

Cutting cost and complexity

The EU Digital Agenda for Europe is a strategic initiative for the long-term prosperity of European member states, which attempts to reduce the challenges faced by the digital economy. For example, companies face a VAT compliance cost of €5,000 per country it trades its digital products in. Costs associated with legal compliance across various member states can reach €9,000 according to some estimates.

These are burdens for small companies, so the ambition of the Digital Agenda is to harmonise these differences and simplify cross-border trading. Even if the UK were outside this harmonisation process it would still benefit from a simpler European market with which to trade.

This would come with restrictions: organisations trading within the market would be more likely to trust each other due to common understanding of tax and legal requirements, for example. The tax issue is also a major challenge – as can be seen by governments' efforts to try (and generally) fail to collect tax from global giants such as Amazon, Google and Facebook (to be fair, Amazon is now at least trying to regularise its tax payments).

In any case, the UK might find companies are more interested in access to the bigger, European-wide markets and so set up shop in European capitals rather than London.

UK compared to its peers

The performance of EU member states is tracked as part of the Digital Agenda, using five indicators: connectivity, human capital, use of internet, integration of digital technology and digital public services.

UK progress is not bad, but is still a long way from achieving the levels found in Denmark and Sweden, for example. Human capital, or skilled labour, is one of the indicators where the UK is performing well – yet, by leaving the EU, the movement of skilled labour would be reduced. It’s worth noting that Norway – which isn’t part of the EU – manages to maintain close links with European Free Trade Association members. For example, citizens of Norway can work in EU without needing a work permit – but this sort of arrangement would undermine one of the main reasons the UK wants to leave the EU.

In addition to the movement of skilled labour, the increasing reach of the internet means that organisations no longer need to be physically located in one country. New business models and ways of working mean that a flexible workforce can be found at the click of a button through crowdsourcing sites such as Fiver or Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

Digital economy and society index European Comission

A single digital market would bring benefits: better access to products and services at reduced costs, common data protection laws making cross-border communications easier, and a digital-by-default public sector that could make the use of public funds more efficient and transparent.

This would bring increased acceptance and adoption of digital services and bring European countries closer together. The example of Norway operating outside the EU but in association with it through trade agreements is often used by those who want the UK to exit the union. However, the major difference between the UK and Norway is that the population of Norway is just over 5m; the UK is nearly 13 times the size. There are far more businesses in the UK to trade and engage with Europe that would benefit from staying in the union.

Would London lose its status?

When it comes to innovation, the right environment combining academic research from universities, commercial interests and favourable innovation policies – known as the triple helix of innovation – is of fundamental importance.

The latest EU innovation scoreboard placed the UK among the top, but not a leader. Another report, the Atlas of ICT activities in Europe , suggests that – based on the volume and value of research and development, innovation, and number of businesses – Munich is the place to be followed by London and then Paris.

The Digital Agenda for Europe is a well-financed priority area – some €2.8 billion for research and development – allowing organisations to build knowledge collaboratively by working on joint research and development programmes. As funding is a key element, EU members will be at an advantage compared to the UK in the case of a Brexit. Organisations with access to tech hubs and funding are more likely to grow; if Britain exits the EU it will undoubtedly be a step away from the benefits this digital agenda offers.

Long lists are eroding the value of being a scientific author

Enough with the long author lists - we are running out of space! summonedbyfells/Flickr, CC BY-SA

This month, a scientific paper by teams working at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN set the record for the number of authors on a paper – with more than 5,000 contributors. In the same week, a genomics paper had more than 1,000 authors.

The trend of increasingly long author lists on research papers is clearly getting out of hand. In addition to being impractical, it is also threatening to the entire system in which academic work is rewarded. Radical reform is needed. One way forward could be to completely remove authors on papers and replace them with project names.

Publications pay

Scientific publications have traditionally been the pinnacle of success in academia. Arguably, they are the main vehicle for academics to communicate their research to each other and, ideally, the world. Decisions about hiring – and academic career progression – are also still judged largely on an academic’s publication record.

However, these days research papers are increasingly collaborative and multiple authors are the norm in many fields. A big number of authors can boost the reach, readership and eventually citations of a paper. Many worry that long author lists can therefore be a strategy to “game” the impact of individual papers, or to exponentially increase the length of each author’s publication lists.

This will make it harder for universities and funding agencies to assess researchers based on those records. In addition, if the same rules for assessment are used across fields, this can leave fields where single authors or smaller teams are still the norm at a disadvantage. For this reason, we need to fundamentally rethink the concept of authorship, especially when it comes to large-scale collaborations.

The shift towards multiple authors has been going on for some time – especially for LHC research. Over the last decade, two published experiments from the LHC also had the highest number of authors in papers indexed by Thomson Reuters. In 2010, an ATLAS paper counted 3,221 authors, and a 2008 CMS paper listed 3,101 author names.

Scientists announce discovery of Higgs boson on 4 July 2012. The experimental feat included thousands of scientists. EPA

This rise of multiple authors in academic research papers has been dubbed “hyperauthorship”, and is seen in biomedicine as well as in high-energy physics. Information scientist Blaise Cronin, who coined the term, argued that while this is a common problem across many disciplines, attitudes to the trend vary across fields. For example, publishing in high-energy physics is mostly conducted by very large teams spanning several institutions and even countries. It does often make sense to have a large number of authors, and researchers are often comfortable with it.

In biomedicine, however, there is more concern about the possibility of fraudulent practice, especially the addition of people as authors who have done no work on the project. There is also concern about data integrity and quality control when so many hands have been at work in creating single paper. But both fields struggle with how best to provide credit when co-authorship is counted not only in the dozens, but the hundreds and the thousands.

Meanwhile, to a humanities scholar, the hyperauthorship at the scale seen in high-energy physics seems completely alien. But even in the humanities, an increasing reliance on data is leading to more collaboration and less work by lone scholars.

The fact that so many people are surprised every time a new paper breaks the record for number of authors just goes to show that the model we currently have might be outdated for some disciplines. Current systems for academic assessment (for example citation metrics) might give the misguided impression that the same mechanics and units of measurement can be used more-or-less uniformly across disciplines.

The alternatives

Even taking into consideration that, in some fields, thousands of authors for a single paper has been the norm for some time, it seems essential to change the way authorship is attributed. Listing students and other collaborators in the acknowledgements rather than in the author list is an alternative.

To truly leave the classical ideal of the lone scholar behind, authors involved in very large collaborations, as well as scholarly publishers, could consider leaving personal names behind to give credit instead to the collective, multi-institutional project’s name.

What is at stake is not merely a question of academic ego, but the system to reward academics based on their work. In fact, for the changes to work, the whole scholarly communications, dissemination and reward system needs to be radically renovated. As suggested by the signatories of the San Francisco Research Declaration on Research Assessment, funding bodies and universities cannot keep relying on publication lists and, in particular, citations as the main measures for academic success. Collaboration also needs to be more actively rewarded in its own right.

Hyperauthorship has transformed – and eroded – the concept of authorship having a unique value. This means that authorship cannot be taken to mean the same thing as it used to. There are no easy solutions to this problem, but embracing difference, rather than uniqueness, should be a start.

Logjam isn't the only reason your computer might be more vulnerable to internet threats

Cyber warning Shutterstock

There’s a hole in the protection surrounding some of the internet’s supposedly secure websites. A group of researchers has discovered that cyber criminals and other hackers can attack websites that use the “https” security encryption using a method known as “Logjam”. This attack, which is thought to work on around 8% of the top one million websites, allows hackers to see important information that should be protected, such as payment details or private communication.

Encryption is a way of turning information into a secret code in order to stop others from eavesdropping on your internet conversations. Every time you see a padlock or then letters “https” in the address bar of your web browser, everything being sent between your computer and the remote web server where the website you are viewing is stored is encrypted and should be secret. The discovery of the Logjam attack, which is possible because of a flaw in the security software, means this may not always be the case.

Logjam works by attacking a part of the security process called the “Diffie-Hellman key exchange”. This is a way of creating and securely sending the key that unlocks the encryption and allows you to read the information. This key is formed using two very large, complex and random prime numbers (numbers that can only be divided by themselves or the number one), which cannot easily be predicted. The larger the key, the stronger the encryption.

Older keys are saved with 1024 bits of computer memory, meaning each one has 2¹⁰²⁴ possible combinations. But computers are now powerful enough to work out what the right combination is. The Logjam attack involves capturing the key data and then using computational power to crack its code. As a result, security experts are advising web sites that still use these keys to move to much longer versions that are harder to predict.

Hackers can also use something called a rainbow table to look up pre-cracked codes and use their computer to match the key against them. The more power a computer has, the faster it can work through the database of pre-cracked codes. There are still multiple combinations to check, but the work has in part already been done for them.

Looking for the key. Shutterstock

The growing power of computers means many existing security measures are increasingly likely to become obsolete and need replacing. However, it’s not just companies failing to keep up with the latest advances that could leave internet users more vulnerable. Most technology companies are trying to create stronger security for their products because we (their customers) demand it. But there is also a trade-off between national security and personal security they have to be aware of.

Agencies such as the FBI have stated that some methods of encryption are now too strong, meaning they want to be able to peek at people’s communications. They want encryption to be strong but not impenetrable. This has become a frustrating dilemma and, as Logjam proves by exploiting weaker Diffe-Hellman keys, there are weaker servers at the lower end that may fall foul of this demand to balance the security expectations of their organisation with the policing demands of governmental bodies.

There is already a flurry of activity across the internet as server administrators are attempting to patch the Logjam problem and increase their security level for key exchanges. We’ll just have to hope that they can accomplish this before someone compromises their servers. While only a proportional minority of websites are affected by Logjam, you can also check your web browser and see if it needs updating.

Ultrasound-activated bubbles could help make cancer drugs more effective and less nasty

Nanoparticles: small but deadly... to cancer Shutterstock

Despite extraordinary advances in new drugs and biotechnology, cancer is still one of the leading causes of death worldwide.

In many cases, the problem lies not with the drugs but rather the difficulty in successfully delivering them to the site of a tumour. In healthy tissue there is a regular structure of blood vessels supplying oxygen and nutrients to cells, which divide and grow at a steady rate. In cancerous tumours, however, cells divide and grow in an unregulated way, producing a chaotic vessel structure and regions of tissue with little or no blood supply.

This means when drugs are ingested or injected into the blood stream, they don’t reach all parts of the tumour and there is a high risk of cancer recurring after treatment. On top of this, the pressure inside many tumours prevents a drug from being absorbed from the blood, meaning only a very small fraction of it is actually delivered. The rest of the drug circulates around the body and is eventually absorbed by healthy tissue, often leading to intolerable side effects.

One of the major goals of the research being carried out in the Oxford Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBME) is to develop new methods for delivering anti-cancer drugs that overcome these barriers. While engineers are perhaps more commonly thought of in the context of large construction projects, we are using precisely the same combination of applied science and problem solving.

Building nanoparticles

There is a formidable series of challenges to address to solve this problem. First, we need to encapsulate the drug to prevent it from interacting with healthy tissue and/or deactivating before reaching the tumour. Second, we need a way to deliver the drug to the tumour to maximise the concentration it receives.

Third, we need a mechanism for releasing the drug on demand once it has built up within the tumour. Fourth, we need to ensure the released drug is evenly spread throughout the tumour. And finally, we need to be able to monitor the treatment from outside the body.

Taking the fight to cancer Shutterstock

Our team at the IBME has developed a range of new techniques for creating tiny particles into which we can insert drugs with a high degree of precision. And we have tried a variety of methods to make the particles release the drug. These include using materials that are sensitive to the pH change within a tumour and materials that break down upon heating or undergo a phase change (from a solid to a liquid or liquid to a gas).

But one of the most versatile means of triggering drug release is by firing a beam of ultrasonic vibrations at the particles. Widely used as an imaging method, ultrasound can be used from outside the body and, unlike light or heat, can be tightly focused to produce highly localised effects.

In order to produce particles that respond to ultrasound, we have to include in them a gas or a liquid that easily vaporises. When exposed to the ultrasound, the gas/liquid will undergo a rapid expansion and force the drug out of the particle.

Ultrasound activated bubbles

This process generates a pulsating gas or vapour bubble that has several other significant benefits for drug delivery. The motion of the bubble produced by the ultrasound field helps to drive the drug out of the blood vessels and deep into the surrounding tumour. We have shown that bubbles can push drugs up to four times deeper into tissue than they would normally diffuse, sufficient to achieve a uniform spread throughout a tumour.

There is also a growing body of research that shows microbubbles and ultrasound make cancer cells more permeable to drugs, speeding up the rate at which they work and ultimately cell death. The microbubbles' motion produces a secondary ultrasound signal that can be detected outside the body. This means the location and activity of the particles can be continuously monitored, providing real-time feedback on the progress of the treatment.

Our aim over the next five years is to translate these developments into clinical use. The work will focus on improving the delivery of four classes of drug that have shown enormous potential but that currently struggle to get inside a tumour and/or have unacceptable side effects. By combining our expertise in encapsulation with the use of ultrasound and shockwaves, we hope to create more effective drugs that can be delivered straight to the location of a tumour and monitored with advanced imaging techniques.

Paralysed patient makes natural movements using robotics and the power of thought

Erik Sorto can make intuitive movments for first time in 13 years. Lance Hayashida, Caltech

Erik Sorto, 34, has been paralysed from the neck down for the past 13 years. However, thanks to a ground-breaking clinical trial, he has been able to smoothly drink a bottle of beer using a robotic arm controlled with his mind. He is the first patient to have had a neural prosthetic device implanted in a region of the brain thought to control intentions. The technology created surprisingly natural movements and has the potential to work for multiple robotic limbs.

Tragically, through illness or injury, millions of individuals have lost the ability to sense and move their bodies. In recent years, a handful of studies have shown that it is possible to record brain activity from such individuals and use this information to restore movement capabilities. Signals recorded from primary motor cortex – a part of the brain that is necessary for the control of movement – have been used to control external devices such as a cursor on a computer screen, and even different kinds of robotic arms.

However, these kinds of devices often result in delayed, shaky movement, which could mean that these brain signals may not be the best ones to use. As research in this area continues to move forward, new possibilities are being explored. The latest study’s measurement of neurons – brain cells – in a part of the brain called the posterior parietal cortex, which is believed to represent action intentions, has resulted in more intuitive movement – even enabling Sorto to play rock, paper, scissors.

Sorto drinks a beer on his own for the first time in over a decade. Credit: Keck Medicine of USC

Reading intentions

Before we choose to act, we must first intend to act. For routine actions of everyday life, such as grasping our favourite coffee mug or flicking on a light switch, our action intentions unfold so effortlessly, and within fractions of a second, they typically go unnoticed.

Despite these fleeting and effortless qualities, a wealth of evidence from basic psychology and neuroscience suggests that our action intentions constitute an incredibly rich source of information, including desired outcomes, and predicted sensory and movements. While it is generally well accepted that this information is useful for the control of actions, this hypothesis is inherently difficult to evaluate.

In the new study, the information recorded from the neurons in the posterior parietal cortex was used to control the operations of a computer interface and visual display. The researchers first used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify brain areas in Sorto, who had suffered a spinal cord injury due to a gun shot 10 years prior to the study, and as a result is unable to move or feel his arms, legs, and torso. In that way they could see which areas of his brain were active for imagined reaching and grasping movements.

With recording instruments in place, the results showed that the patient could voluntarily control the activity of single neurons. Some of these cells responded in a remarkably specific way. For example, a cell could show increasing or decreasing activity when Sorto imagined moving his hand to his mouth, but not when he imagined moving his hand to his chin, or to his ear.

Key to an entire robotic body?

The activity of some cells were shown to be specifically related to either intended arm or eye movements, and of those that were selective for arm movements, some responded for intended movements with either arm while others responded only for intended right but not left arm movements, or vice-versa. The authors say that the information from cells representing either hand may be important for controlling actions involving both hands. This also means that these signals might be capable of controlling a robotic interface with multiple appendages.

Could the research open the door to more complex tasks, such as writing? Caleb Roenigk/Flickr, CC BY-SA

These signals may also be flexible. Consider the different ways that we are able to use hand-held tools of various shapes and sizes – even ones that move and are therefore controlled differently – to perform essentially the very same actions to achieve the same goals. For example, we are able to write our name on paper using a pencil or in the sand using a stick. The goals of the action are the same, but the tools used to achieve those goals differ.

In order to accomplish this, the control system must be able to accommodate changing qualities of tools and the environment. Perhaps by recording from cells that appear to reflect action intentions, the information that is captured is similarly malleable. This may prove essential for the potential to use the same brain signals to control a wide range of devices in order to perform a variety of actions.

Fans of the Star Wars films will recall the scene from Empire Strikes Back when Luke Skywalker feels his new cybernetic hand for the first time. While still a long way away from this, for those patients who are unable to move most of their body, this new progress is a tremendous step forward. And it certainly has the potential to revolutionise research in the field.

The seashell-inspired material inspiring a new wave of safety gear in sport

One shell of an idea. David Eickhoff, CC BY

The risk of injury in professional sport has been a central feature in recent debates about how well protected our stars are. Only recently, Argentine football player Emanuel Ortega died of a fatal head injury after hitting a concrete wall during a game.

One solution is to increase the use of protective wear and to improve existing designs. The Australian Cricket Board inquiry into the death of cricketer Phillip Hughes, two days after he was struck on the neck where his helmet offered no protection, could result in newly-designed safety helmets being made mandatory.

At Sheffield Hallam University we’ve been developing improved materials for impact protection in sports. The materials have the fascinating and unusual “auxetic” property that can be used in helmets, pads, guards, gloves, mats and barriers.

Tributes paid to Phillip Hughes. EPA

What are auxetic materials?

Put simply, instead of becoming thinner when stretched (how we usually expect materials to behave), an auxetic material actually gets fatter. When compressed, the material becomes thinner.

At first glance this fascinating property to auxetic materials may appear highly unusual, but is actually being discovered to be a key feature of a growing number of natural materials. Examples include certain forms of skin and other soft biomaterials, and inorganic silicates such as quartz and cristobalite. Man-made auxetics now include honeycombs and foams, fibres and fabrics, carbon fibre-reinforced composites, microporous polymers, metals and ceramics. Auxetic foams. Andy Alderson, Author provided

The inspiration for the current work on auxetic materials for improved impact protection equipment in sports comes from the ultimate natural armour protection system: the humble seashell.

The inner layer of the two-tier armour protection system found in seashells – nacre, also known as mother of pearl – provides high stiffness, strength and toughness, properties to withstand a predator bite or rock impact on the shell surface. This exceptional combination of properties enables the seashell to avoid catastrophic failure and maintains the integrity of the shell in the event that the hard and brittle outer layer becomes cracked. Nacre is also known to be auxetic.

Reducing peak acceleration

So why has nature evolved armour protection systems that operate this way? We think a number of factors may be at play, all linked to the basic premise that the auxetic property is a route to achieving extreme or optimal values of other useful properties that are not easily achieved by “conventional” materials.

Unlike conventional materials which adopt a “saddle” shape when bent out of plane, an auxetic material naturally adopts a convex “dome” type curvature similar to the overall shape of the seashell. This characteristic dome-like double curvature for auxetic materials is ideal for sports protective equipment such as helmets, and shoulder or elbow pads, in ensuring close fit of the equipment to the body for maximum comfort and performance.

‘Dome’ curvature. Andy Alderson, Author provided

In terms of response to impact, the tendency of an auxetic material to contract width-wise under compression leads to a dense localised area that provides increased resistance to impact where and when it is required (below).

Creating resistance. Andy Alderson, Author provided

Auxetics have also been found to provide increased fracture toughness and energy absorption. In the case of nacre, these properties increase the energy that is dissipated by a change in the volume of the material by an astonishing 1100%.

Another key function of sports protective equipment is to reduce peak acceleration under impact. In work just published , we reported auxetic foams covered by a rigid outer shell (mimicking the two-layer seashell structure) display an average of six times the reduction in peak acceleration under impact typical of many sporting applications. We expect that further peak acceleration reduction is possible through further optimisation of the foam production process.

So auxetics have excellent acceleration management properties and have significant potential to act as the energy absorbing material in crash barriers and mats. In rigid dome-shaped helmets and protective pads, auxetics offer lightweight, stiff and strong materials solutions. In flexible protectors, the ability to conform to convex surfaces, such as are found in many places on the human body, means that auxetics should provide and maintain better fit, and be less restrictive to player movement, throughout dynamic sporting activity.

Explainer: how to solve a jewel heist (and why it takes so long)

Scene of the crime. Metropolitan Police/PA

The Hatton Garden heist was a burglary that to all intents and purposes appeared to be taken from a work of fiction. A daring raid that involved climbing down lift shafts, drilling through a reinforced concrete wall, gaining entry to a secure vault and breaking numerous secure metal safe boxes before making away with valuables, right under the noses of security and police.

The Metropolitan Police has come under some considerable pressure in this investigation, not least because it allegedly didn’t investigate an alarm activated at the premises. But now the investigation seems to have moved from snail’s pace over the Easter period, to making several charges in 48 hours. So what goes on and why is it all so slow?

Unfortunately, as members of the public, we are fed a diet rich in fictional crime investigations that are done and dusted within a matter of hours. People are so used to having things communicated, answered and solved almost instantly in this technological age that it is hard to comprehend why, with vast improvements in technology and know-how, real criminal investigations are not following suit.

The answer is that justice is a slow beast. Time and care need to be taken to ensure each and every i is dotted and t is crossed before a case can even get to court. Our justice system is hundreds of years old and the police have to work within the confines of laws, which may themselves be centuries old. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 gives the police the powers of search and arrest and also covers questioning and court proceedings. It is a lengthy document and just understanding the finer details of this would make most people appreciate why processes take so long.

Assembling the evidence

In the Hatton Garden enquiry the police would have needed a team of crime scene examiners to begin the painstaking process of recording the scene and searching and locating evidence, which will not just match to suspects but also help prove the offence. This evidence must be fully documented, as it may end up in court where a judge and jury will need to understand where it is from and how it relates to the crime and to the suspects.

CSI: Holborn. Andy Rain/EPA

The evidence is not just forensic, as in DNA and fingerprints, there is the circumstantial and intelligence evidence which the investigators have to collect from witnesses. This is in the form of statements, and hours of CCTV footage collected from varying locations and examined – and each piece of this evidence has the ability to link to other people and cameras (for example from the road network to follow the van). Each of these needs to be examined by an expert in the field under the constraints of the law.

An appointed senior investigating officer has the job of piecing each of the bits of the jigsaw together with a team and at each point there will be more tasks created for that team to follow up to ensure as much information is gathered before even considering an arrest strategy.

Making the arrest

In this case the arrests need warrants, which have to be granted by the Magistrates Court, in order to search each suspect’s home, work and vehicles. Each of these searches must be undertaken under constraints of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, dictating how searches are managed and how long persons can be held in custody before being charged.

As the suspects are being interviewed, the investigating teams will be liaising with crime scene examiners who will be working at the various sites relating to suspects. Scientists and other experts will be examining some of the evidence and officers will be conducting further interviews with other people close to the suspects. Samples from the suspects will also be collected to check against evidence from the scene, including DNA and fingerprints.

Once the investigating officer is satisfied there is enough evidence, then a suspect is formally charged and in these types of cases they are usually remanded in custody rather than bailed. The work for the police won’t end there, as they begin to look at possible defence propositions and confirm that their case is strong enough to go to the Crown Prosecution Service.

In this crime, as in many, it really is like the tortoise and the hare – slow and steady is best. It may be frustrating for those who like their answers quick, but it’s absolutely necessary in terms of the law.