Virtual time travel through pre-reformation Edinburgh

In “A View from a Hill”, a ghost story by M. R. James, an archaeologist’s binoculars allows them to see scenes from the past. The Edinburgh 1544 project enables visitors and residents of Edinburgh to see the city as it was just prior to the reformation.

We use mobile phones and the Google Daydream platform to deliver an onsite dual reality experience. As visitors explore the sites of Edinburgh, they can see into the past using their digital time travel binoculars. The app is mobile and orientation aware, automatically delivering the correct view. A map interface allows an engaging experience for remote virtual visitors as well.

Virtual Time Binoculars - Edinburgh 1544 from Smart History on Vimeo.

The binoculars app enables the user experience to be optimised for technology they already have in their pockets.

• It makes virtual time travel a reality and available to mass audiences. 
• It provides a new way of interacting with the past that both enriches the visitor experience and provides insights into the past not otherwise readily available.  

What is the research? 
The VTB design draws upon EPSRC-funded research at the University of St Andrews into dual reality systems where the virtual and real worlds occupy the same space. Position and orientation within the two worlds are synchronised enabling intuitive exploration of both worlds through movement in the real world. The Smart History team investigated dual reality systems through exploring inside (St Salvators Chapel) and outside (St Andrews Cathedral) using modified Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard VR headsets. This led them to observe that users tended to look around whilst using the headsets.

Observation of users led the researchers to a viewpoint-oriented approach, where high fidelity 360 photographs of a reconstruction were used and developed in the UNREAL4 Game Engine. This allowed the digital content to be hosted and displayed on mobile platforms and does not require the virtual reality viewer to be tethered to a bulky computer.

How is it applicable? 

Pre-reformation Edinburgh Netherbow

This research has been applied within The Virtual Time Binoculars (VTB) project and is a core component of the Smart History company founded by Dr Katie Stevenson from the School of History and Dr Alan Miller from the School of Computer Science. The VTB is a Edinburgh Digital Launchpad project funded by Innovate UK.

In VTB the team developed a digital reconstruction of pre-reformation Edinburgh. The Smart History team brings together a multi-disciplinary team of Computer Scientists, Digital Designers, Digital Media producers, Historians and Museum Professional. They have CAA-approved drone pilots, Google-approved 360 photographers and prize-winning historians working together to create engaging mobile onsite experiences.

The historical work has been conducted in consultation with Prof. Richard Fawcett of the School of Art History and John Lawson, a Edinburgh City Council Historian. They also worked with the National Trust for Scotland and the Timespan Museum and Gallery in developing the technology used in the app. They have worked with Edinburgh City Museum to provide a permanent showcase for the project.

The Medieval Edinburgh App was launched at the start of May 2017. It is expected that the VTB will become a ‘must have’ part of the experience of visiting Edinburgh.
View reconstructions
More information

The use of creative art for explaining organic semiconductors

Nedyalka Panova is an artist-in-residence inthe School of Physics & Astronomy. Her work explores the boundaries between art and science, organic and inorganic, natural, synthetic and manmade. Nedyalka works in collaboration with the Organic Semiconductor Centre led by Prof. Ifor Samuel on “The use of creative art for explaining organic semiconductors”. The purpose of the project was to give a higher visibility to the interesting phenomenon of organic semiconductors using their aesthetic values.

Interdisciplinary collaboration such as this, between artists and scientists, brings together experts from different fields. The result is art exhibitions which provide a different way for the public to access or connect with the science.

While the concept of the colours and shapes of natural materials have inspired artists in their studies of nature for centuries, progress by scientists in material science has created a new range of synthetic materials which are manufactured in entirely different ways. In this context, contemporary art and science start asking new questions, such as:

• How can art respond to the colours that are invisible to visible light? 
• How can invisible 2-D imprinted patterns be used as colours and structures? 

The line between the past and the future modern technological world is drawn with a nanoscale precision and the question is:

• Are these new technological tools also a new media for creative endeavours? 

Organic semiconductors combine properties of both metals and organic polymers with their capacity to conduct electricity. This opens new doors for applications in light communication, organic LED displays, healthcare and harvesting energy from abundant natural sources such as sunlight. Their general target is to offer an alternative solution to the existing inorganic electronic components or to combine the best of both worlds in a new generation of hybrid devices.

Arabidopsis Thaliana seed germination used for explosive sensing.
Image: Nedyalka Panova (2016)

Light Box - bringing together culture and science

Light Box celebrates light in all its aspects – solar, sacred, scientific, nourishing, and poetic. Produced as a result of meetings between Professor Crawford and McBeath and contemporary physicists whose work centres on light, the work juxtaposes a series of new haiku with specially taken photographs. The relation between poems and pictures is often teasingly oblique: neither simply illustrates the other. Instead, they ‘resonate’ together, each enhancing the other.

Exactly 150 years ago the great Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell published his most influential paper on electromagnetism (a paper crucial to Einstein). Maxwell had a scientific instrument called a ‘light box’. Nineteenth-century scientists sometimes wrote of light ‘resonating’. The new Light Box was produced after the poet and the photographer met leading physicists who work in optoelectronics.

 Robert Crawford and Norman McBeath discussing
using coumarin as part of a new photographic process.

'One of the physicists was the late Professor John W. Allen, who led a team that invented the world’s first practicable LEDs in 1961. Though his early scientific papers are now archived in the Science Museum in London, John Allen’s story is not well known. When Crawford and McBeath met Professor Allen, he showed them some of his early LEDs, which were then called ‘crystal lamps’. Norman McBeath’s remarkable portrait photograph of John W. Allen is part of Light Box, and the accompanying haiku sums up Robert Crawford’s sense of this modest, tenacious inventor who, more than fifty years after his innovative work on LEDs, was still in 2015 developing in St Andrews new ways of working with light.

Another pioneering scientist involved in Light Box is Professor Ifor Samuel, who leads the Organic Semiconductor Optoelectronics Research Group in the School of Physics & Atronomy, and whose work has involved perfecting new light-emitting materials. Several members of Professor Samuel’s group worked with the poet and photographer. One of the physicists, Vietnamese chemist Hien Nguyen who has synthesized for the first time a new form of the chemical coumarin, made her discovery available to Scottish PhD student Stuart Thomson who worked with Norman McBeath to use this chemical for the very first time in a photographic process. The result was juxtaposed with a haiku entitled ‘Aton’ (named after the Aton or Aten – the ancient Egyptian sun god) and features in Light Box.  

Light Box is available to view in the Special Collections Department of St Andrews University Library, but it is also published free online in a digital version:
https://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/digitalhumanities/node/195

More about Light Box: https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/stories/2015/light-box/

Commissioned by the University of St Andrews for the UNESCO 2015 International Year of Light and launched at the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 23 February 2015, Light Box is an artistic collaboration between poet Professor Robert Crawford, School of English, and photographer Norman McBeath, many of whose photographs are in the collections of the National Portrait Galleries in London and Edinburgh.

Following on, the 'Loch Computer' project brings together writers, artists, computer scientists, humanities scholars and digital curators to ponder the meaning of remoteness and connectedness in the digital age. It is funded by a Scottish Government Arts & Humanities Research Network Award from the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The project crosses traditional boundaries between arts and sciences, as well as between scholarship and creative practice.  

The project led to an exhibition at the Edinburgh College of Art, and an artists's box book by Robert Crawford, The Book of Iona, published by Birlinn Ltd.

Feeding the world

Half of all seafood consumed now comes from aquaculture. Aquaculture production has grown by 6.2% a year since 2000 and by 2012 it had reached 66.6 million tonnes worth U$144 billion. Less than 10% of production currently uses genetically selected strains which have the potential to dramatically improve yield, sustainability, and the welfare of farmed livestock. In the face of increasing environmental constraints, the use of genetic selection will need to become the norm in order to meet increasing demand for seafood as the human population grows to an estimated 9 billion by 2050.

Prof. Ian Johnston

Research carried out on fish physiology and genomics over several decades by Professor Ian Johnston and his group in the School of Biology led to an understanding of the genetic control of growth and fillet yield in Atlantic salmon, Scotland´s most important food export. The Biotechnological & Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) provided £883K funding in support of this research via Follow-on funding, two LINK grants and an Industrial Partnering Award. Marker assisted selection (MAS) is regarded by many as the future of aquaculture breeding. In MAS natural variations in gene sequence are identified which produce large gains in characteristics of commercial interest such as growth, yield and disease resistance. This enables improvements in a single generation compared with the decades required with conventional breeding programs. The Johnston group discovered natural variants of two genes which when selected together produced fish with 4% more fillet worth £600 per tonne. Last year global production of Atlantic salmon was £1.43 million tonnes.


The discovered genetic markers were patented and in Dec 2012 Professor Johnston and Dr Tom Ashton formed a university spin-out company, Xelect Ltd, to commercialise the research. The company licensed its patented genetic marker for enhanced fillet yield in Atlantic salmon to SalmoBreed A/S which is part of Benchmark Holdings, one of the world´s leading breeding and genetics companies. Xelect has since developed similar genetic selection markers for increased fillet yield in Nile tilapia which have been licensed license to Genomar A/S, the world’s leading Tilapia breeding operation with operations throughout SE Asia. Nile Tilapia is a tropical species with an annual production of 3 million tonnes – 15% of which is for the fillet market. Using Xelect´s genetic markers, broodstock can be identified that will produce offspring with 4% more meat worth U$124 tonne. The company has an active program of research to develop markers for other traits and species and has received funding from the EU H2020 programme, Innovate UK and Scottish Enterprise. Xelect is also sponsoring academic research, including a BBSRC Industrial CASE PhD studentship at Aberdeen University and a project to support a biosecure hatchery in the Shetlands for blue mussels co-funded by the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre.

Xelect also leverages its expertise in molecular biology and seafood to provide genetic and flesh quality analysis services to an expanding range of business in the aquaculture supply chain. Exports now make up 60% of the company´s turnover. Xelect is becoming a strong, well-recognised brand within the industry based on a reputation for scientific excellence and exceptional customer commitment. The BBSRC recently published an Impact Case study on Xelect providing an example of the successful translation of basic academic research into a commercial enterprise with widespread societal benefits.
Visit the BBSRC webpages to read more. 

The Light touch…

A red blood cell, 1/10 the width
of a human hair held with
gently with laser light

Optical tweezers, miniscule forces that light exerts on micron-size particles, developed by researchers in the School of Physics and Astronomy, have empowered scientists to perform important studies on single molecules, cells and colloids without inflicting damage. The technique of optical tweezing is difficult and multifaceted, involving lasers, microscopes, imaging systems, specialized software and complex opto-mechanical design. The St Andrews Optical Manipulation Group has developed a number of innovations in beam shaping and applications for the optical tweezing and sorting market. This has led to the development of a suite of products, particularly for the biomedical sector, based on the group’s technology, resulting in more than £1M worth of sales in over 10 countries for the licensing company. The systems are regularly used to study single cells and even single molecules to help understand the biological world.

The Seeing Light Through a New Light outreach program has currently reached approximately 25,000 people across the UK Scotland. The aim of the program is to enthuse and excite the public about light and its use in medical and biological applications. Interactive shows, lectures and workshops are delivered throughout Fife, Scotland and the UK to school, family and adult audiences to show how light is changing our life. If you would like to book/request an event or activity or would like more information about the project please contact Kishan Dholakia (kd1@st-andrews.ac.uk).

The research and outreach project are funded by a number of sources, including the Engineering and Physics Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), a Partnership for Public Engagement (PPE) Award, Cancer Research UK, the European Union Framework 7 programme and the Royal Society.

English poetry goes digital

The study of Medieval and Renaissance English poetry conjures up images of quiet libraries and beautiful volumes, but researchers in the School of English are endeavouring to change this image.

“Reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets” (Faber, 2010), by Professor Don Paterson, twice winner of the T. S. Eliot prize for poetry, and partly a result of discussions with Renaissance researcher Professor Neil Rhodes, is a full-length popular commentary written from the perspective of a practising poet. Through Paterson’s collaboration with World Book Night (WBN) new and diverse audiences were also found for Shakespeare’s Sonnets with the inclusion of a sonnet on the back cover one of each book that was distributed.
Since then, Paterson’s work has been reinterpreted for new audiences and is breaking new ground with the launch of a highly successful The Sonnets by William Shakespeare, a Faber/Touch Press iPad application which features a lightly re-written version of all of Paterson’s commentary, as well as him reading several sonnets.

Collaboration between Dr Chris Jones, researching the application of Old English in the work of modern poets, and Jacob Polley, a practising poet, resulted in several translations of, and new poems in dialogue with, Old English literature. “Livings”, several newly composed riddles in response to those in the Old English Exeter Book, followed by a several new poems published as part of the award-winning collection, “The Havocs” (Picador, 2012), which includes a poetic translation of the Old English “Ruin”, made in a manner that imaginatively restores the damaged, fragmentary nature of this poem.

In March 2013, the StAnza Poetry Festival developed an online Poetry Trail in conjunction with the School of Computer Science, which includes a recording of Polley reading his contemporary Ruin as well as Jones’s poem ‘Borges on the Wall’, a poetic reimagining of Old English in a modern context. The Poetry Trail, available as an App for iPhone and Android, guides literary tourists around the town of St Andrews by use of QR codes at several sites (including local museums, visitor centres, and independent cafes) where the user can listen to site-appropriate poems.

Tweetable riddles, dubbed ‘twiddles’, Jones and Polley’s latest collaboration, is a Twitter collection of the Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book riddles in 140 or fewer characters.
 
The Poetry Trail was funded by National Lottery and Creative Scotland and is promoted by Event Scotland.

Interfacing with historical reconstructions through Open Virtual Worlds

In a similar way as the PiXaR film Brave, set in an imaginary Scottish castle, introduced millions to Scottish landscapes or computer games such as Assassins Creed enable exploration of historic scenes, the Virtual Time Travel Platform (VTTP) of Open Virtual Worlds enables authentic recreations of community settings as they were in their heyday. The combined experience of Dr Alan Miller, Lisa Dow and Dr Colin Allison (School of Computer Science) in both systems research and technology-enhanced learning, and the domain expertise of Dr Rebecca Sweetman (School of Classics), Prof. Richard Fawcett (School of Art History) and Tom Dawson (School of History), has been instrumental in adapting and developing emerging 3D technologies to create digital interpretations of the past and connected them to local communities. Where Brave presents a single pathway through a fictional narrative, VTTP enables visitors to explore authentic scenes; and, where Assassins Creed delivers pre-defined scenarios to a global audience, VTTP enables community participation in the creation and exploration of scenes directly connected to actual historical communities. Some examples are the Time installation which features a pre-clearance Caen Highland Township, a reconstruction of the St Kilda world heritage site, and the virtual St Andrews Cathedral. The low equipment cost and support for content creation make embedding the VTTP available to small museums for the first time. The Timespan VTTP installation, for example, with a 300” wrap-around display, natural body movement control and visually powerful 3D graphics, forms a highly effective and interactive educational experience.

Additionally, the studies of S1 pupils at Madras College in St Andrews have been enriched as the history of the St Andrews Cathedral was "brought to life" for them with the interactive digital displays.
A new mobile app detailing the mediaeval roots of St Andrews has been launched which allows users to explore 22 key sites across the St Andrews via a range of interactive and media tools. The app is free to download via the Google Play store and is available now and features the 1580 Geddy map, generously donated for use by the National Library of Scotland, and special 'guest appearances' from honorary University of St Andrews alumni Sir Sean Connery and Joanna Lumley. Expansion packs to the app are planned for 2015.
The research was funded by the EPSRC, HEA, and the University of St Andrews.

Marine Mammal Conservation: from policy change to bycatch reduction

The research undertaken from 1996 to 2013 by researchers of the Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU) of the School of Biology focused on the accurate measurement of marine mammal populations and distributions in UK and EU waters. As a result of evidence that the research provided to government:

• effective conservation of marine mammals has been put in place in UK, EU and international waters
• UK and EU policy objectives have been defined for marine mammal conservation 
• UK obligations to EU legislation are being delivered
• marine mammal bycatch has been reduced by over 90% in key fisheries 

Marine mammals spend most of their lives under water and are typically highly mobile and difficult to study. This has necessitated the development within SMRU of new data collection technologies and statistical analysis methodologies to ensure that estimates of population abundance and mortality rates are robust. New techniques include:

• “sparse data sampling” from boats or aircraft, to give robust estimates of marine mammal population density and distribution 
• new telemetry technology which allow individual animals to be tagged and their behaviour and movements to be logged and recovered via satellite or mobile phone 

In 2011, SMRU was awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for excellence in applied research promoting best practice in the health and governance of the ocean environment.

Harbour seal decline 
SMRU scientists have accurately quantified the decline in populations of harbour seals in UK waters in the period 2000-07 [research article: DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7998.2007.00311.x], demonstrating that populations were dropping significantly in diverse locations from Shetland to the Wash, but were stable or increasing in the Hebrides. SMRU’s research has been instrumental in the development of policy on marine mammal conservation at an EU level, such as the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) (2010) which, together with the EU Habitats Directive (1992), places legal obligations on Member States to assess and report on the conservation status of their marine mammal populations. The large majority of the information on cetacean distribution and abundance used by the UK to report under Article 17 of the Habitats Directive was generated by SMRU-led surveys. Other EU countries bordering the Atlantic Ocean have also made extensive use of this information.

Rogue seals in the Moray Firth 
In the Moray Firth seals had been shot due to the perception that they that they impacted on salmon stocks, and thus the local economy. Research in the period 2005-08, using photo sampling of seals combined with analysis of their diets, suggested that only a small number of rogue seals specialising in river feeding were responsible. Research showed that targeting individual seals in rivers is a more effective management option [research article: DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-1795.2011.00469.x]. This resulted in the Moray Firth Seal Management Plan (MFSMP), which saw a dramatic reduction (~60%) in seal shooting in the area. This led to the development, successful drafting and progression to legislation of the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010, which introduced a new system for licensing the removal and disturbance of seals and for placing protective measures on seals when that is deemed necessary.

Quantifying and assessing the importance of marine mammal bycatch 

In 2006, a global analysis by SMRU scientists and collaborators highlighted the bycatch of marine mammals in fisheries as the main threat to their conservation status [research article: DOI: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2006.00338.x]. Under the EU Habitats Directive, MSFD, Council regulation 812/2004, the UK is required to reduce marine mammal bycatch to levels that are sustainable. To address these obligations, SMRU has implemented an observer scheme on UK fishing boats to quantify bycatch. SMRU has identified and helped to implement specific acoustic deterrent devices (Pingers) that have been effective in reducing cetacean bycatch by over 90% from over 400 animals in 2004/5 to just a handful in 2010-12 in the pair-trawl bass fishery in the English Channel. SMRU research has also shown that acoustic deterrent devices, known as a ‘pingers’, deployed in the Cornish Offshore Gillnet fishery in the period 2009-12 can reduce porpoise bycatch by over 90%. Since July 2013, the UK Marine Management Organisation is enforcing the use of ‘pingers’ in certain areas.

The Head of Science at the International Whaling Commission has said, “the work of SMRU on matters related to cetacean conservation and management has been of immeasurable value to our work and to cetacean conservation. The theoretical and practical developments that have arisen from SMRU scientists represent a remarkable degree of innovation from a single group. The impact on the conservation and management has been profound.”

CIRCA: Conversation support for people with dementia and their carers

CIRCA, Computer Interactive Reminiscence and Conversation Aid, is a novel touchscreen computer system designed to support conversation between people with dementia and their caregivers. CIRCA was based on research into the memory and communicative problems of people with dementia conducted by Prof. Arlene Astell, Dr Barbara Dritschell and Dr Maggie Ellis of the School of Psychology and Neuroscience.

Typically, people with dementia experience impairments in short-term memory, whilst retaining relatively well-spared long-term autobiographical memory. As such, it is often easier for people with dementia to talk about the past rather than recent events.
In collaboration with the University of Dundee and a major care home provider, the researchers developed CIRCA as a means of presenting multimedia reminiscence material – photographs, videos and music – to people with dementia and their caregivers. It was found that people with dementia were more likely to initiate conversations about the material and were more equal partners in the conversations when using CIRCA as compared to traditional reminiscence methods (Astell et al., 2010; doi: 10.1016/j.intcom.2010.03.003). The CIRCA system allows individuals with dementia to choose from a range of subjects from the past, thereby facilitating their retained long-term memory and providing prompts for successful conversations. CIRCA has been installed in numerous residential or day-care settings around the UK, including NHS and Council run residential care centres, Age Concern and Alzheimer’s Scotland Centres and private care homes.

The project has been funded by: Engineering and Physics Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Alzheimer’s Association and the Technology Strategy Board.