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technology Ahuge wealth of information is produced by academics, government agencies, NGOs, think tanks and other similar bodies, but these reports and papers are often difficult to trace because they are not published commercially. Based at the Swinburne Institute for Social Research, Australian Policy Online (APO) is a research database that provides free access to this material, known as grey literature, which can be an important source of information for researchers. “The key aim is to bring together high-quality research, which is otherwise uncollected, and make it widely available to people to help make public policy a more informed place,” says Amanda Lawrence, who until late last year was the site’s managing editor and is now APO’s research manager. by virginia millen Informing the debate Lawrence and her small team actively monitor more than 500 organisations, and source from about 1500 in total. Research is published based on its relevance to the Australian public policy landscape, and made available to the public online. Although much of what APO collects is available on the web, it is often very difficult to find, making the database a valuable resource. “We’re told all the time by people in government, NGOs, academia and the media that Policy Online is an absolutely essential service, which alerts them to what sort of research is going on, and allows them to access it. It really is one of the key bridges between policy and research,” says Lawrence. Now Lawrence is looking at how she can take the information published and catalogued on Thought leaders A Swinburne team is undertaking a project to change the way research is accessed online in Australia. APO in another direction to make it more accessible to the public. In November last year a team from the Swinburne Institute for Social Research led by Professor Julian Thomas, Professor Sandy Gifford and Amanda Lawrence were awarded a grant from the Australian Research Council to develop APO’s capacity as a linked database that can connect with other systems. The project is titled Linked Data Policy Hub: Connected Resources for Social Research. Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the worldwide web, has pioneered linked data. The idea behind it is to create a richer network of information by linking raw open data with other digital resources including reports, articles and data. “The project will connect APO’s collection of grey literature resources with other major research databases, including RMIT Publishing’s Informit database of journal articles and the National Library of Australia’s Trove catalogue,” says Lawrence. “I’m really interested in looking at what we can do with our database of publications and what can we do with the technology to bring related content together in more useful ways.” The linked data project will see Policy Online enter a new frontier of online research. “It’s an exciting time,” says Lawrence. “We’ve had a long period where we can get a flow of catalogue information and centralise that, but the new area of linked data offers a lot of potential for being able to pull together related resources from a lot of different places on different topics. We’re looking to be part of that new world.” l apo.org.au/about/linked-data-project The key aim is to bring together high-quality research ... and make it widely available to people to help make public policy a more informed place. Amanda Lawrence, Australian Policy Online research manager The Swinburne team is undeRTAking a PROJeCT on linked DATA, a concept pioneered by Tim berners-Lee, inveNTOR of the WORLDWIDe web. Bridging the gap Also based at the Swinburne Institute for Social Research, Inside Story is dedicated to publishing longform, high-quality analysis and reportage by university researchers and journalists. Peter Browne, one of the founders of Australian Policy Online, launched Inside Story four years ago and has been editing the site ever since. “The concept was to run longer pieces than the newspapers, while trying to bridge the gap between academia and journalism,” he says. The site publishes pieces on Australian politics, society and culture as well as world news, drawing on articles filed by correspondents from around the world and averages around 65,000 page views per month. www.inside.org.au 14 | swinburne | venture | issue ONE 2013
astronomy Shooting stars The world’s largest screens will give moviegoers a deeper view into space than ever before, with the help of Swinburne astronomers. by jessica gadd The final frontier of human exploration is being breached by cinema audiences across the world as they witness a taste of Swinburne’s astronomical expertise on display in the IMAX film, Hidden Universe. The movie provides a rare opportunity for viewers to see high-resolution real footage of the universe, paired with highly accurate models of deep space developed by staff from Swinburne’s Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing. “It’s a case of the truth is stranger than fiction,” says Hidden Universe producer, December Media’s Stephen Amezdroz. “Space is the new frontier and it’s exciting to see real images of it displayed on an eight-storey-high IMAX screen.” The team filmed at Kakadu in the Northern Territory, and the world’s highest and driest desert, the Atacama Desert in Chile where they had access to the Very Large Telescope, as well as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). ALMA is the largest astronomical partnership in existence and is tipped to revolutionise what is known about space. A unique insight The film uses images gathered from a number of telescopes around the world and reconstructs the 2D observations into 3D structure. The film also includes footage from probes, such as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). “This never-before-seen footage of Mars is accurate to within 30 centimetres,” says Hidden Universe director Russell Scott, from the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing. “This means you can look at the footage of a rock on Mars and know that it’s a real rock on Mars: that rock really exists,” Scott says. “Not only that, it’s a colour you’ve never seen before. As for the footage of the sun – the detail, the colour – it’s incredible. That’s the real sun, not computer-generated imagery. It’s jaw-dropping to see this on screen. There is no make-believe in this film. This is really special footage.” Swinburne’s G-Star supercomputer The accuracy of the footage is one of the film’s hallmarks: every image, every graphic, is taken from real data sourced by Swinburne’s team of researchers and astrophysicists. The film uses a number of the latest astrophysics simulations, with the 2D to 3D conversions of the space images based on research provided by Swinburne astronomers. Creating these images for the massive IMAX screen and the fact that the film is in 3D, meant that Hidden Universe needed a huge amount of computing power. By the time the film was complete the team had churned through millions of computing hours and used over 100 terabytes of data. This is where Swinburne’s ‘Green Machine’ and G-Star supercomputer stepped in. “This could only have been done at Swinburne,” Scott says. “It’s one thing to have a supercomputer; it’s another thing to have expertise in astronomy, simulations, supercomputing and 10 years’ experience in making 3D content. Only Swinburne could provide the broad range of skills we needed for this project.” One of the simulations reproduced in the film is thought to be the largest single astronomy simulation ever created in Australia. GiggleZ is a large simulation suite assembled by Swinburne postdoctoral lecturer Dr Greg Poole to measure the universe (among other things). A new lens on the cosmos Amezdroz agrees that the information supplied by the Swinburne researchers is a key driver of the film. A huge amount of work has been invested in ensuring the film’s accuracy, so that family audiences will be inspired by a new – and highly accurate – perspective of the universe. “Hopefully viewers will leave the film with a different and clearer understanding of the universe,” he says. “One of the key points of the film is understanding that the earth is a part of this great cosmos, and we are connected to all of it.” The film, which has backing from Film Victoria, will be shown at IMAX cinemas worldwide. l www.hiddenuniversemovie.com issue ONE 2013 | venture | swinburne | 15
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Page 5 and 6: upfront quest for a genuine win-win
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power to the people - Swinburne University of Technology

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