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A hymn confirms that the FA Cup final is a matter of life and death

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By Barry Richards, Professor of Public Communication, The Media School

Every year before the FA Cup Final at Wembley Stadium, the pre-match programme includes the hymn Abide with Me. This is one of the oldest rituals in the British football calendar, having been introduced at the 1927 final.

Led in recent decades by a soloist on the Wembley pitch, the performance of this 19th-century hymn is more than just empty tradition – it is a moment of great pathos. The partisan passions of the day are suspended and the stadium is more or less united in a celebration of the occasion.

The massive global television audience is also part of this emotional drama, and lots of viewers feel a lump in the throat as the cameras pan the crowd. Many of those captured briefly on screen over the years are seen mumbling half-known lines; some look slightly baffled, while others are barely restraining themselves until the moment when they can shout and wave their arms again. But the music prevails, and people either acquiesce or immerse themselves in this spectacle of shared sentiment.

A Victorian relic

It is an impressive ritual, a revered part of the Cup Final, and an expected ingredient of this annual televised narrative of British football. The cameras focus on the crowd, zoning in on their palpable emotion, and briefly the audience, rather than either team, or the match itself, is at the centre of attention.

It is odd, once you think about it, that 21st-century crowds and audiences in all their post-modern diversity find this moment so compelling – that a Christian hymn written by a Victorian clergyman has acquired a key place in the build up to a national sporting event. It is especially interesting that the game is so clearly an affirmation of the life of the body, whilst the hymn in question is a sustained meditation on death.

Tearing up yet?

The Anglican vicar Henry Lyte wrote the poem Abide with Me in 1847 when seriously ill with tuberculosis. Within months of completing it he had died. The tune to which his words have been most famously set was supplied by the composer William Monk, whose three-year old daughter had recently died.

Abide with Me became a popular choice at funerals especially amongst the working class. So by the time it was introduced at the Cup Final – as part of a short-lived, media-led enthusiasm for “community singing” – it would have been well-established in popular consciousness as music of death and mourning.

From grave to pitch

The literal message of the verses of the hymn is a mournful mastery of death. In Henry Lyte’s hymnal poetry it is God who gives succour to the dying. But for today’s secular crowds and audiences, God is not available. So where is the Thee of the hymn?

I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless;
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness;
Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.

For the singers of today, looking down on a football pitch instead of a grave or an altar, it is the experience of being part of a unified social group, rather than the presence of God, which draws “death’s sting” for the not-yet-dying. The audience in the stadium take part in an affirmation of human community, and the television audience joins in.

The identities of the opposing teams, and all of life’s other rivalries and tensions, are temporarily subordinated to an assertion of a shared humanity. There are many ways of making such assertions – and all sporting occasions are potential expressions of the coherence and success of human society. But there is something especially intense and meaningful about invoking an experience of inclusive community in this explicit confrontation with death and mourning, however transient or archaic it may seem.

So although this short ritual has its detractors, let’s hope that – unlike the individual human life – its day is not “swift to its close”, and that it outlives all those who will enjoy it this Saturday.

The Conversation

Barry Richards does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Cyberparks will be intelligent spaces embedded with sensors and computers

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By Sue Thomas, Visiting Fellow, The Media School

Virtually healthy.
Ed Yourdon, CC BY-NC-SA

Visit any urban park on a sunny day and you’ll see people relaxing with newspapers, books and, of course, phones and tablets. The digital has become part of our outdoor lives and that trend is set to continue. But there is another trend to take into consideration – the fact that many of us really prefer to stay inside.

In 2009, the Monitor of Engagement with the Natural Environment survey began collecting detailed information on the public’s use and enjoyment of the outdoors. It found that while half (54%) of the adult population normally visited open spaces in and around towns and cities, such as parks, canals and nature areas, coasts and beaches; or countryside areas such as farm and woodland, hills and rivers at least once a week, 10% of respondents stated they had not visited the great outdoors in the previous 12 months and 8% had made only one or two visits. The figures could be better. There is plenty of evidence to show that being out in nature is good for our physical and mental health.

So can we capitalise on our new-found love of the wired life to encourage more people to go outside? A new European research project called CyberPark aims to foster greater knowledge about the relationship between technology, communication and public spaces. Its main objective is to strengthen the dialogue between those already involved in creating public spaces and developing technology, and create new conversations designed to share knowledge, spark new ideas, and trigger new projects which capitalise on bringing nature and the digital closer together.

Hylozoic Ground.

It has great ambitions: a world of intelligent environments where sensors and computers are seamlessly embedded to enhance ordinary park activities, places where the landscape itself might respond to people moving through it. An indoors example of this might be Canadian architect Philip Beesley’s installation Hylozoic Ground, an immersive, interactive environment that moves and breathes around its viewers in which Beesley uses next-generation artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and interactive technology create an environment that is nearly alive.

Blended environments

In the past, the natural environment and digital domains were seen as distinctly different. But the growth of social media, wearable tech such as smartwatches, mobile connectivity – and that we now carry the internet in our pockets – are profoundly influencing the way we experience time, space, and other people. Soon, the rise of Google Glass and Oculus Rift, the virtual reality gaming headsets, will lead to even more blended environments.

The CyberParks idea grew from a project which started in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 1984, when landscape architect Ina Šuklje and her colleagues won a competition to design a new park on brownfield land close to the city centre. Bureaucratic hold-ups meant that the project proceeded slowly, but they did create a series of popular outdoor multimedia reading portals under the theme “United Books of the World”. However, financial support dwindled and the portals could not be maintained. They fell into disrepair.

But when Lisbon-based landscape architect Carlos Smaniotto Costa visited the city in 2010, Šuklje’s experience ignited a new idea. The futuristic concept had been built before its time and was poorly supported by its funders. But now, in the second decade of the 21st century, the time was right to marshall the resources of the European community and learn how it might be done on a bigger scale. And so the idea of CyberParks was born.

Smaniotto Costa co-ordinated an application to the European Co-operation in Science and Technology(COST) fund, one of the longest-running European instruments supporting co-operation among scientists and researchers across Europe. It saw CyberPark as a promising transdisciplinary idea, and agreed to fund it. In April 2014 the team met for the first time at COST’s towering offices in Brussels. I was there too, invited to contribute my technobiophilia research to the discussions.

Digital breaks

A number of projects related to the CyberPark ethos have already appeared. In Paris, for example, Escale Numérique (which translates as Digital Break), was designed by Mathieu Lehanneur to stand at the Rond Point des Champs-Elysées. Inspired by the city’s 19th-century network of drinking fountains, it taps into an underground fibre optic network to provide a fountain of free wifi in a haven of quiet on a busy city street. Comprising a large touch screen protected by a sustainable green roof covered with plants and concrete swivel seats with mini tables and an electricity supply, it heralds the kind of thing that could be achieved on a larger scale.

Green wifi.
Mathieu Lehanneur

The CyberPark team want to go further. Researchers from 21 countries gathered round the table at our first meeting in Brussels. There were urban planners, anthropologists, digital media specialists, landscape architects and architects, engineers, computer scientists, geographers, interaction designers and psychologists. At break time, I asked around. Did anyone have a clear idea of what a cyberpark might actually be? Nobody did, but that was the point. We were there to find out, to embark together on a four-year adventure to discover the future of urban parks. But we all agreed on one thing – however digital it might get, the essence of the park is all about being outdoors, experiencing nature, and encountering other people.

“I just want to know,” said Thanos Vlastos, a professor of urban and transport planning at the National Technical University of Athens and self-confessed utopian, “how we get people to go outside?” It’s something that we plan to find out.

The Conversation

Sue Thomas does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

On Everest, climbers pay to take risks while Sherpas take risks to get paid

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By Yeganeh Morakabati, Senior Lecturer in Tourism Management, School of Tourism and John Fletcher, Pro Vice Chancellor, Research and Innovation

Climbing season on Mount Everest was due to enter its busiest time of year: the May “weather window”. But all has come to a halt on the world’s highest mountain following the worst-ever accident – an avalanche that took the lives of 16 Sherpas.

The tragedy highlights how the difference between the wealth of the climbers, who pay to take the risks, and the Sherpas, who risk to earn their pay, is as yawning as the chasms in the region.

Thrill seeking

Adventure tourism has grown significantly over the years. Those looking for extreme sports, such as white water rafting, bungee jumping, sky diving or climbing often see risk as one of the prime motivators. Indeed, the thrill of risk taking is often seen as an integral component of extreme sports.

Mountaineering as a tourism activity has push and pull factors that draw people in. The excitement associated with its inherent risks may be as much a push factor (with 21st century life bringing its share of boredom to those in search of a thrill), as it may be a pull, when challenges such as the Himalayas beckon. The Sherpas, however, live a quite different life and it is not boredom that drives them to the icefall, but the possibility of earning the greater income offered by taking on the risk that attracts them.

But travel to remote areas like Nepal can have a devastating effect on both the environment and the culture. The recent tragedy on Everest’s Khumbu icefall highlights how dangerous mountaineering is as a sport, not just to the climbers (30 have met their deaths on the Khumbu icefall since 1963) but to the Sherpas (35 have met their deaths on the Khumbu icefall since 1963) who make it all happen.

Paying the price

Climbers pay between US$30,000 and US$90,000 to climb Everest. This constitutes a significant injection into the Nepalese economy – it is estimated to be worth between US$10m and US$20m to the economy annually, of which the government directly receives US$10,000 per licence issued. The average Sherpa earns just US$5,000 a year during the three months of the season. Though a small percentage of the tourist costs, it is still seven times more than the national average income.

It is the Sherpas who allow visiting climbers, often inexperienced, to ascend the world’s tallest mountain. Of the 250 of all nationalities who have died on Everest, more than a third of them have been Nepalese Sherpas. These harrowing statistics do not take into account the many more who are disabled due to altitude-related illness or injuries.

For every climber that braves Everest there is a Sherpa in support. But Sherpas are there to make a living, making multiple trips up and down the mountain – they don’t do it for the thrill.

There are few opportunities to earn US$5,000 a year in Nepal and, if Sherpas didn’t take these risks, then many would not be able to support their families. One of the financially lucrative alternatives is the sex industry and so it seems there may be a stark choice for parents, to risk their lives on Everest, or risk the lives of their children in Kathmandu.

Clearly there is a stark difference between the approach of thrill-seeking tourists to Everest to that of the Sherpas who make it all possible. The recent tragedy highlights the huge risks that Sherpas do take and the need for things to change in terms of the protection and compensation they receive for doing so.

The Conversation

John Fletcher does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

Yeganeh Morakabati does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Explainer: how do cyclists reach super fast speeds?

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By Bryce Dyer, Senior Lecturer in Product Design, Faculty of Science & Technology

Even though spoked wheels and pneumatic tyres were invented in the 1880s, bicycle design hasn’t really changed a great deal in the time since – at least, at face value. However, look closer and around a hundred years of research or development has taken the humble bicycle from boneshaker to a speed machine.

The basics

Karl von Drais in the days before lycra.

A modern bicycle is still made up of a double diamond shaped frame, two wheels with air-inflated tyres and a chain-based drivetrain – the mechanism through which the whole system runs. Though we’ve stuck to the basics, man and his machine have increased in speed from the 14.5 km per hour reportedly achieved by Karl von Drais in 1817 to a mind-blowing 55km in a Tour de France time trial nearly 200 years later.

The ability to improve speed on a bicycle comes down to two fundamental factors: you either increase the power that propels the rider forwards or you decrease the resistant forces that are holding that rider back.

The rider’s ability to produce power is generally down to their physiology and biomechanics. The resistant forces that slow a cyclist are mainly air resistance, total mass and any frictional losses, such as the drivetrain or the rolling resistance of the wheels against the ground. If every athlete has an equal chance of winning the challenge for engineers and scientists then is to focus on the technology the cyclist uses to obtain a competitive advantage.

The trouble with air

It has been demonstrated that once a cyclist travelling outdoors gets past speeds of 25 miles per hour, around 90% of the force holding them back will be air resistance. But the relationship between speed and air resistance is not a linear one. It can, for example, take twice as much human power to ride a bicycle at 30 miles an hour as it does at 20 miles an hour.

As a result, reducing air resistance has become a top priority in professional cycling technology in recent times. At the London 2012 Olympic Games, Team GB’s track riders were using bikes, helmets and clothing solely designed to help contribute to the optimisation of each rider’s aerodynamics. Team principal, David Brailsford, has referred to this process as the “aggregation of marginal gains”.

To achieve this, wind tunnels are now used by both professional and amateur athletes to analyse the aerodynamic drag, then work out how to get the rider and machine working together optimally. There is a complication in this process, though, in that the best aerodynamic solution is typically specific to every rider, so each needs to make individual choices about their helmet and bicycle and especially their riding position.

The second problem is that wind tunnels are few and far between and are by no means cheap to access. Thankfully, alternatives for those without an Olympic-sized budget are emerging. You can now use computational fluid dynamic software which can be, in essence, a virtual wind tunnel. This software allows an engineer to simulate a variety of air flow conditions on a new bicycle design, therefore cutting down the time and costs of prototyping and testing. There is now also published research which allows riders to assess their aerodynamics out in the field rather than in a wind tunnel.

Ermargerd! I love this helmet!
EPA/Ian Langsdon

Mark Cavendish famously won his Tour de France stages and world title in 2011 wearing a skin suit and an aerodynamic helmet while the majority of his competitors were still wearing baggier jerseys and heavily vented helmets. Team GB had realised that even though a rider may be sheltered by 200 others during a road stage, when Cavendish sprints for the finish line, he is alone in undisturbed air for around 200 metres at speeds well above 40 miles an hour. Every small advantage at this point converts into winning millimetres.

Tinkering with the tech

Racing bicycles themselves have been subject to a tremendous amount of aerodynamic refinement over the last five years. Braking systems have been positioned so as to be sheltered from the main airflow and gear cables are now run on the inside of the frame. Wheel designs have not only improved in reducing aerodynamic drag, but are now being optimised to provide benefits such as increased rider stability from crosswinds. Innovations like these have traditionally been directed towards making better bikes for either time trials or triathlons but is now spreading towards the road bikes used in mass start racing.

The mechanical properties of the racing bicycle have also evolved. Like computational fluid dynamic software, finite element analysis allows us to optimise the design of bike components to simulate the stresses and strains that they will face when in use. This has allowed us to develop composite frames that weigh as little as 800g but are still stiff enough to sprint for a stage win and comfortable enough to be ridden for five hours or more, day after day.

Even the humble gear derailleur, relatively unchanged in principle since its original invention in 1951 has lately begun to shape shift. The most advanced systems are now electronically powered and triggered. This has allowed for smooth gear changes requiring only thin wires and a small battery as opposed to having a frame design compromised by the limitations of needing cable runs for mechanically actuated gears.

All these improvements have enabled us to morph the humble bicycle into a speed machine without tampering with its basic design. So where does this all lead next? In competitive sport, the technology is typically regulated by its governing body. In the case of cycling, this means that the equipment is currently limited in both its size, nature and weight, so we are more likely to see more incremental improvements than a radical shift away from the bikes we use now.

The average leisure cyclist is not limited by such constraints allowing us to benefit from any level of innovation. For example, if you look at bicycle land-speed records, recumbent cycles – which are unique in the way they position the rider lying down – can move at far higher speeds than a conventional bicycle. And for enthusiastic amateurs, new bicycle designs are continuing to become lighter, faster and ultimately more efficient. Anything could happen.

The Conversation

Bryce Dyer does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.