Electronics and computer science researchers have helped to develop a new app to share world-class research and to receive the latest research news through a phone or tablet.
One of the biggest problems facing researchers is the best way to share their research to as broad an audience as possible. In fact, it’s this important part of research impact, or how academic research makes a contribution to wider society, that is used as one of the yardsticks to judge the success of a research project.
The Software Sustainability Institute, a collaboration between the Universities of Southampton, Oxford, Edinburgh and Manchester, aims to spread the word about its work in promoting greater use of software in research.
The Institute’s site, http://www.software.ac.uk, features regular blogs written by researchers from across a wide range of disciplines, all of whom have used software to enhance and develop their work. To make all this fascinating material and the researchers’ output even more accessible, the Institute’s Software Consultant Devasena Inupakutika developed an Android phone app, which is available to download free from Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.ac.software.blogreader
The app displays the latest content from the site in an easy-to-read mobile and tablet-friendly format and lets users access the complete blog archives of the www.software.ac.uk site. It also allows offline functionality and opens the content in its own streamlined interface rather than through a browser.
Some of the content available through the app includes:
• Making Dinosaurs and ancient spiders walk again
• Google Glass in the operating theatre
• Tracking the spread of epidemics through social media
• Artificial intelligence and simulating the brains of bees
• Treating blindness in the developing world with a smartphone