Abstract
Although once seen as a revolutionary technology, blockchain has struggled to fi nd its place. A team of researchers explores why.
Once touted as a transformative panacea for governmental and organisational ills alike, blockchain's adoption has, in reality, turned out to be slow and rare. Research from the University of Surrey explores why the technology has failed to live up to its initial expectations, urges a narrative reset about digital ledgers and, ultimately, points to a positive future for blockchain.
DIGITAL LEDGER
Blockchain is a secure digital ledger that records transactions across multiple computers, making it hard to alter. It's a shared notebook where entries are unchangeable. Initially hyped for secure, transparent transactions without a middleman like a bank, blockchain is the backbone of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.
To understand more about attitudes to blockchain, PhD candidate Ying Zhang led a comprehensive review that analysed 880 factors. The work, carried out in collaboration with researchers from Surrey Business School and Cardiff Business School, explored attitudes influencing blockchain adoption by organisations across various industries.
Senior Lecturer in Strategy and Digital Transformation Dr Mahdi Tavalaei, PhD supervisor and co-author of the study at the University of Surrey, said: ‘Organisations are understandably cautious. While blockchain has been touted as a revolutionary technology, our research suggests that its adoption is hampered by overpromised benefits, under-delivered business value and the complex interdependence between adoption drivers and barriers.’
BARRIERS AND DECISIONS
On the positive side, researchers found that blockchain's unique capabilities, such as enhanced transparency, security and operational efficiency, are strong motivators for adoption. However, barriers often overshadow these drivers, which complicate adoption efforts. The analysis found that adoption barriers, such as regulatory uncertainty and scalability issues, are more definitive. In contrast, the benefits of adoption are conditional and longterm, creating a mismatch that slows organisational decision making for adoption.
Dr Tavalaei said: ‘Organisations are not just dragging their feet; they are making informed decisions based on the current limitations and overhyped promises of blockchain. We hope this study will shift the conversation towards more practical and achievable goals for blockchain technology.’
Read more: https://tinyurl.com/ae8y5daj
Sharing Health Data
Research from Brunel University of London sheds new light on attitudes towards sharing their health data and information and why words are so important.
The team of researchers, led by Brunel marketing expert Professor Dorothy Yen, conducted an online survey of over 2,000 adults in England with a mean age of 50. Participants were asked about the acceptability of the NHS sharing their health records with specifi c organisations, including hospitals and GPs.
Professor Yen said: ‘The results suggest that people evaluate the acceptability of sharing health records based on how doing so could increase the quality of the healthcare they expect to receive…making the benefits clearer could encourage the public to allow their health information or data to be shared effectively and completely.’
Image source: Adobe stock (generated by AI)
Elsewhere in the research, participants were also asked whether the use of the words ‘data’ or ‘information’ impacted their decision to disclose details about their health.
The words ‘data’ and ‘information’ are often used interchangeably, but they may be perceived differently regarding health details. ‘The terminology had a clear impact when the organisation asking for the data was a hospital or GP surgery, and participants were more likely to view sharing details with hospitals and GPs as acceptable or very acceptable when the term “information” was used rather than the term “data”’, explained Prof Yen.
In essence, terminology affects perceptions and influences decision making — and using ‘information’ could foster better cooperation in healthcare. Prof Yen recommends using ‘information’ in future communications to encourage people to share their health records.
Read more: https://tinyurl.com/2cwaknrn
Cosmology Needs You and AI
Gravitational lenses are very rare and also highly important to science because they let us see great distances across space. A new project hopes to combine the power of artificial intelligence and human volunteers to spot them in telescope data.
By pairing AI with humans, a team of University of Portsmouth experts hope to investigate young galaxies more than halfway across the universe as they form stars and start to take on the familiar shapes we see from Earth.
Working on image data captured by the Euclid space telescope, the new Space Warps project hopes to spot rare gravitational lenses. These can magnify distant galaxies that conventional telescopes can't reach.
PhD student Natalie Lines, from the University's Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, said: ‘Currently the best tool for detecting gravitational lenses is the human brain, but we cannot get humans to inspect over one million objects, so colleagues and I have developed machine learning models able to pick out “candidates” that are most likely to be lenses to pass on to citizens to visually inspect.’
Humans have a remarkable ability to recognise patterns and detect the unusual with only minimal training.
With a basic understanding of what the distorted images of galaxies that have passed through a gravitational lens look like, participants in the Space Warps project can help discover new examples of this amazing phenomenon, and enable survey scientists to carry out new investigations of stars and dark matter in the universe.
TWO HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE
Without being taught what to look for by humans, AI algorithms struggle to detect lenses, but together, humans and AI can accurately spot thousands of lenses.
The European Space Agency's (ESA) Euclid space telescope launched in July 2023 and has begun surveying the sky.
Splitting the sky up into chunks, Euclid aims to take an image of each chunk and mosaic them together to produce the most detailed map of the universe ever obtained.
Find our more about cosmic lenses and volunteer to become a lens hunter yourself: https://tinyurl.com/5n6evyr8
Image source: Adobe stock (generated by AI)
