M-Science Book Launched

ICTP's Science Dissemination Unit (SDU) has released an open book on "m-Science: Sensing, Computing and Dissemination". The book, which was released under a Creative Commons license, and was written by experts in an effort to engage the scientific community, engineers and scholars worldwide in the design, development and deployment of the newest mobile applications. The goal is to create awareness on the huge possibilities of Mobile Science (or "m-Science" in short), as well as to motivate a new generation of learners, scholars and scientists to participate in the challenges of the rapidly developing new field of m-Science.

As the examples in this open book demonstrate, people are using mobile technology in powerful new ways to carry out scientific research, to share results and to disseminate knowledge in affordable ways. This includes data gathering, analysis and processing, and access to on-line services and applications directed to nurture scientists and scholars using mobile phones, tablets, netbooks and other devices.

The book gives a balanced mix of technical detail, general overview, societal impact and a sense of the possible. It underlies creative ways that people are finding to use mobile devices for doing m-Science. The book also aims to give concrete, hands on, practical information about how to get started with mobile science yourself, ranging from spectroscopy, sensing and supercomputing to programming and education. It also gives interesting background and statistics.

The book can be read on-line, or can be freely downloaded from the website http://m-science.net/book.