Author Archives: Eann Patterson

Personale mappa mundi

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I wrote a few weeks ago about appreciating a good infographic [see ‘Inconvenient data about electricity generation‘ on October 11th, 2023].  I realised recently that I had enjoyed another one vacation without appreciating it as an infographic.  During our vacation, we stopped for a few days in Hereford and visited the cathedral where they have a map of the world made around 1300, known as the Hereford Mappa Mundi.  The map is roughly circular with a diameter of about 1.5 m and is drawn on vellum made from calf skin.  It shows the history, geography and destiny of humanity from the perspective of Christian Europe seven hundred years ago with 500 drawings depicting towns, plants, animals and Biblical events – so more of an infographic than a map though of course the word ‘infographic’ had not been invented when it was produced more than 700 years ago.   The perspective is unusual to the modern eye and was described to us by a curator as the view that a fly would have of the surface of an apple as it crawled around on it.  It is arranged using an O and T motif, in which the T is inside the O creating three sectors.  Jerusalem is at the centre with Asia above it, and Africa and Europe to the bottom right and left respectively.  The idea of a fly crawling around on an apple set me thinking about what my map of the world would like from the perspective of the regions I have explored at ground level.  Most of the oceans would be very small because I have crossed them at about 500 mph in an aircraft, except for the seas around Europe which I visited by ship in the Royal Navy.  Liverpool would replace Jerusalem at the centre and North America would replace Africa in the bottom right because I have never been to Africa but I spent several years in North America. Asia at the top would feature images of universities and conference venues in China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan squashed together because I have visited all of them several times but always by plane.  Europe would be shown in some detail with pictures of research laboratories though somewhat distorted due an emphasis on a few places that I have visited frequently when participating in research collaborations, such as Milan, Toulouse, Ulm and Zurich.  When we lived in the US, we made a number of road trips to both the east and west coasts as well as northwards into Canada, so North America would be shown in more detail than either Europe or Asia and would include family photographs.

Image: Philip Capper, Mappa Mundi (c.1290) Hereford Cathedral. CC BY 2.0.  https://www.flickr.com/photos/flissphil/1385520222

Opportunities lost in knowledge management using digital technology

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Decorative imageRegular readers of this blog will know that I occasionally feature publications from my research group.  The most recent was ‘Predicting release rates of hydrogen from stainless steel’ on September 13th, 2023 and before that ‘Label-free real-tracking of individual bacterium’ on January 25th 2023 and ‘A thermal emissions-based real-time monitoring system for in situ detection of cracks’ in ‘Seeing small changes is a big achievement’ on October 26th 2023.  The subject of these publications might seem a long way apart but they are linked by my interest in trying to measure events in the real-world and use the data to develop and validate high-fidelity digital models.  Recently, I have stretched my research interests still further through supervising a clutch of PhD students with a relatively new collaborator working in the social sciences.  Two of the students have had their first papers published by the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) and the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers).  Their papers are not directly connected but they both explore the use of published information to gain new insights on a topic.  In the first one [1], we have explored the similarities and differences between safety cases for three nuclear reactors: a pair of research reactors – one fission and one fusion reactor; and a commercial fission reactor.  We have developed a graphical representation of the safety features in the reactors and their relationships to the fundamental safety principles set out by the nuclear regulators. This has allowed us to gain a better understanding of the hazard profiles of fission and fusion reactors that could be used to create the safety case for a commercial fusion reactor.  Fundamentally, this paper is about exploiting existing knowledge and looking at it in a new way to gain fresh insights, which we did manually rather than automating the process using digital technology.  In the second paper [2], we have explored the extent to which digital technologies are being used to create, collate and curate knowledge during and beyond the life-cycle of an engineering product.  We found that these processes were happening but generally not in a holistic manner.  Consequently, opportunities were being lost through not deploying digital technology in knowledge management to undertake multiple roles simultaneously, e.g., acting as repositories, transactive memory systems (group-level knowledge sharing), communication spaces, boundary objects (contact points between multiple disciplines, systems or worlds) and non-human actors.  There are significant challenges, as well as competitive advantages and organisational value to be gained, in deploying digital technology in holistic approaches to knowledge management.  However, despite the rapid advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence [see ‘Update on position of AI on hype curve: it cannot dream’ on July 26th 2023] that will certainly accelerate and enhance knowledge management in a digital environment, a human is still required to realise the value of the knowledge and use it creatively.

References

  1. Nguyen, T., Patterson, E.A., Taylor, R.J., Tseng, Y.S. and Waldon, C., 2023. Comparative maps of safety features for fission and fusion reactors. Journal of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Science, pp.1-24
  2. Yao, Y., Patterson, E.A. and Taylor, R.J., 2023. The Influence of Digital Technologies on Knowledge Management in Engineering: A Systematic Literature Review. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.

Aeonian cycles of creation and destruction

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Many years ago I read Stephen Hawking’s book, A Brief History of Time.  I remember being captivated by the idea that the universe might be oscillating between phases of expansion and contraction.  The current expansion from the Big Bang might have been preceded, and could be followed, by a contraction to a Big Bang or Crunch.  A contracting universe would be governed by a different set of laws of physics; for example, the second law of thermodynamics would be reversed with every natural process leading to a reduction in entropy.  This idea might seem fanciful; however, it is not original because I recently discovered that the Sanskrit epic, Makabharata describes time as a giant wheel rotating through cycles of creation and destruction leading, over aeons, to the birth and death of entire worlds.

Sources:

Nilanjana Rana, Our time-poor lives, lived against a ticking clock, FT Weekend, May 26th 2023.

Stephen Hawking, A brief history of time, London: Random House, 1998.

Inconvenient data about electricity generation

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Decorative infographicI like a good infographic and this one showing annual energy flows for a country  is one of my favourites [see ‘Energy blending’ on May 22nd 2013].  Some governments produce them annually.  The image shows the latest one for the UK [2021]. It makes interesting but perhaps depressing reading.  Transportation using fossil fuels accounts for 31% (41.6/134.1 million tonnes oil equivalent) of the UK energy consumption while electricity output accounts for only 21% (28.6/134.1 million tonnes oil equivalent).  This implies that if all vehicles were powered by electricity then the output of our power stations would need to increase to 70.2 million tonnes oil equivalent or between two- and three-fold (excluding conversion & transmission losses).  You can perform a similar analysis for the USA [see 2021 Energy flow chart from LLNL].  Fossil-fuelled transportation accounted for 25%  (24.3/97.3 Quads) and electricity output 13% (12.9/97.3 Quads) so converting all transportation to be electrically powered requires a three-fold increase in electrical output from power stations. It is more difficult to find equivalent data for Japan; however, in 2014 [see Energy flow chart from I2CNER Kyushu University] fossil-fuelled transportation accounted for 32% (3.03/9.52 EJ) and electricity output 38% (3.66/9.52 EJ) so converting all transportation to be electrically powered requires a two-fold increase in electrical output from power stations.  None of the above takes account of space heating mainly via fossil fuel or that many existing power stations are fossil-fuelled and need to be replaced in order to achieve net zero carbon emissions.  Hence, the required scale of construction of power stations using renewable sources, including nuclear, solar and wind, is enormous and in most countries it is barely discussed let alone planned or started; leading to the conclusion that there is little chance of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 as called for by the Paris agreement.