Computer advances predicted to have radical effect on science
Advances in computing are going to transform science over the next 15 years in ways that few researchers have begun to appreciate, according to a report drawn up for Microsoft Research by a panel of 34 senior scientists from around the world.
The report, released in London yesterday, says the life sciences will experience the biggest impact, as new computing techniques make it possible for the first time to model biological systems as complex as the human brain and immune system, or to predict accurately the spread of epidemics.
Stephen Emmott, head of Microsoft's European research programmes, said: "Surprisingly - or perhaps not given the effort involved in producing it - this report is to our knowledge the first to articulate a comprehensive vision of science towards 2020."
"The impact of computer science is going to be far greater than is currently assumed," said Prof Emmott, who is based at Cambridge University. "We do not simply mean that computers will become much faster and more powerful but that computer science will bring about a fundamental transformation of the fabric of science and what kinds of science are possible."
Neil Ferguson, professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College London, said a hint of what would be possible emerged at a World Health Organisation technical meeting in Geneva earlier this month, when experts used computer modelling to plan ways of containing a flu pandemic at source, before it could spread around the world.
At present, computer modelling of disease is impracticable beyond the national scale, Prof Ferguson said. Future developments would lead to "a truly global simulator that would capture population movements and contacts at all scales, from within each household to intercontinental travel, and could revolutionise our ability to understand, visualise and potentially predict patterns of spread of both novel and emerging pathogens and the impact of possible control measures".
As well as advanced computers, a global disease simulator would need ways of feeding in reliable information in real time - for example using transport system and mobile phone tracking data. But, once completed, it would enable the world to respond quickly to epidemics.
Alexander Szalay, professor of astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, said the sciences could learn a lot from the way businesses use computers, particularly for online analysis. For example, the financial community is a more sophisticated user of the "data cube", a type of multidimensional matrix that lets users explore a collection of data from many different perspectives, while considering several factors (dimensions) at a time.
But Andrew Parker, professor of high energy physics at Cambridge University, said there would have to be big changes in science education to achieve the vision in the report. "Scientists will need not only to be completely mathematically and computationally literate," he said, "but also to know how to handle huge amounts of data. That sort of education does not exist today."
“电脑进步将彻底改观科学研究”
由世界各地的34名高级科学家组成的小组为微软研究院(Microsoft Research)草拟了一份报告，报告称，计算机的进步将在未来15年内使科学改头换面，而意识到了这一点的研究人员却不多。
昨天在伦敦发表的这份报告称，随着新计算机技术的发展，为像人脑和免疫系统那样复杂的生物系统建模，或精确预测流行病的传播将首次成为可能，生命科学将因此受到最大的冲击。
微软欧洲研究项目负责人斯蒂芬?埃莫特(Stephen Emmott)表示：“据我们所知，这份报告是对2020年科学远景的首次详细描述，这令人感到惊讶，但鉴于为撰写这份报告而付出的努力，或许也不令人感到惊讶。”
“计算机科学的影响将远远超过目前的想象，”驻剑桥大学(Cambridge University)的埃莫特教授表示。“我们的意思不仅是说电脑将变得更快，计算能力更强大，而是说计算机科学将带来科学结构的根本性转变，并指出哪种科学是可能的。”
英国伦敦帝国理工学院(Imperial College London)数学生物学教授尼尔?福格森(Neil Ferguson)表示，本月早些时候，在日内瓦召开的世界卫生组织(WHO)技术会议上，就出现了些许未来可能发生的情况：专家运用计算机建模，可以在流感传播全球之前计划好控制流感的途径。
福格森教授称，目前，超越国家范围对疾病进行计算机建模是不现实的。未来的发展将导致“一个真正的全球模拟器的产生，它可以在各种规模基础上捕捉人口的流动和保持接触，不论是在每一个家庭内部还是在洲际旅行之中。它还可能革命性提升我们的能力，使我们能理解新出现的异常病原体，将之变成可视化图像，并可能对它的传播模式进行预测，以及评估可采取的控制措施将产生的影响。
