RESEARCHERS AT the Oxford Internet Institute have been exploring what geotagged tweets can reveal about the offline world. The research has led them to create a Twitter map to try and un­derstand the link between the club football fans support and the places where they live.

The data included all geocoded tweets men­tioning any of the Premier League football teams and their associated hashtags, (for exam­ple #MUFC) that were sent between 18th August and 19th December 2012. The tweets were then matched to postal codes in order to map a fairly detailed geography of results.

The data shows that contrary to popular be­lief Manchester City is not the “real” local team and that Mancunians support both the city team and Manchester United. Only a few parts of Greater Manchester showed significantly more tweets mentioning Manchester City over their local rivals.

The team at the Oxford Institute for Internet were also able to map the Merseyside rivalry be­tween Liverpool and Everton. The twitter map shows that while Liverpool is slightly more pop­ular in the postcode that is home to both team’s stadiums, there is no clear divide in the rest of the region.

Examining the map in more detail, and look­ing at specific postcodes, the researchers were able to see which teams are most mentioned there. Interestingly, Oxford academics men­tioned Manchester City more than any other team.

On the Oxford Internet Institute website the team of researchers commented, “There is no doubt that using Tweets as a proxy for fandom is messy and not always reliable. But, the data does give us a rough sense of who is interested in – or at least talking about – what, and where they are doing it from.” The authors added, “It allows to begin to counter myths, for example that Mancunians don’t support Manchester United, develop new insights about places that we don’t necessarily have good data about, and most importantly, have some guesses as to which team the Queen might support.”

Previously the research has focused on geo-located tweets about floods and earthquakes. They also tracked racist comments during Oba­ma’s election in order to see what mapping the data would reveal. Whilst the researchers were measuring tweets rather than people, it was es­tablished that there are some fairly strong clus­tering of hate tweets centred in southeastern US states. These states had a much higher rate than the national average.

In an article for the Guardian’s Data Blog, the authors of the research concluded, “the unfor­tunate fact is that most states are not immune from this kind of activity. Racist behaviour, par­ticularly directed at African Americans in the US, is all too easy to find both offline and in in­formation space.”

One of the researchers, Dr Mark Graham com­mented, “This method could be used for much wider purposes: possibly, in times of crisis we could see what was being said on the social me­dia site about hurricanes or riots to see what was actually happening ‘offline’ in certain areas of the country. This is exploratory work into the digital shadows we create, and the full poten­tial of its applications has yet to be realised.”

During a bop last Friday night, several students from Regent’s Park College ran naked through Oxford, wearing only their commoner’s gowns. Known as the Bodleian Quad Run, the objective is to run the half-mile from Regent’s Park into town, to complete a lap of Radcliffe Square, and then return to college.

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At about 9.45, after Formal Hall and once the bop had already started, it was announced that several students would be attempting the Bod Quad Run. Several students gathered in college – the boys wearing only commoner’s gowns, the girls only underwear – before setting off into town. While some only went as far as St Giles’ before returning, the rest completed the whole of the run and then returned to the bop.

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One Regent’s student said, “I thought it was pretty random, particularly at that time of night; I mean, it’s not like it’s part of a running joke or anything. All the same, they re-nude my enthusiasm for the bop.”

In a conversation about their university bucket lists, the two third-year students, Pascoe Foxell and Yves Weissenberger, decided they wanted to have written a novel before leaving Oxford. Foxell told Cherwell, “[the conversation] overlapped with a separate conversation on writing. Then we asked, ‘How long would it take to sit down and write a novel?’”

Foxell and Weissenberger agreed on some conditions for the 24 hour challenge. Each contestant had to devote 40 minutes of every hour to writing, and had to stay away from the internet in the first 12 hours. The two paid a 30 pound deposit each at the start, to be donated to a charity of choice in the event of a withdraw­al from the competition. The pair were relieved by friends for an hour.

After the challenge, Foxell commented “I couldn’t tell if I wrote a really long short story, or a really short novel. Right at the end, when I was tying it all up and making it conclude in a good way, I was saying ‘fuck you’ to my ear­lier self who had written all that unconnected bullshit.”

Weissenberger described the unexpected­ness of the writing process, “Sometimes the characters did something I didn’t know they were going to do. I had no idea how to move forward, and then a bartender uttered an un­expected command to my main character and I thought, ‘Oh, this is interesting.’”

He described his 20,000 word opus as about “a person who wakes up somewhere else every time he falls asleep. He has no idea if it is the same universe, because there is no reliable way to know how far away things are.” According to Foxell, “my piece of writing is about conspiracy theories, quite a bit, with detective stories mixed in, and lots of people transforming into other things, physically.”

Rachel Evans, a 3rd year psychologist from St John’s commented, “I’m thinking of including Pascoe and Yves as a case study of the creative process in my dissertation. This morning I went on the BBC website and found a story about a student who mooned some hell’s angels, threw a puppy at them, and escaped on a bulldozer. I wondered if Pascoe had infiltrated BBC News.”

UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS hold the least stress­ful jobs, new research finds.

A recent study has found that university pro­fessors are amongst the least stressed employ­ees in the country. The research, completed by CareerCast.com, came to its conclusion after considering almost a dozen factors including deadlines, working in the public eye, physical demands and hazards encountered within the workplace.

The study found that the substantial sal­ary most professors enjoy contributes greatly to their low levels of stress: the Times Higher Education statistics for 2011 show that the aver­age annual salary for a full time professor was £75,790. Average annual earnings for UK work­ers overall are £26,500, meaning that university professors enjoy an income almost three times higher than that of the average worker.

As well as this, the research states that uni­versity professors are also lucky in that, unlike primary and secondary school teachers, they are educating people who have chosen to study the subject they teach and are in general more enjoyable and rewarding to work with.

First year physicist Danny Johnson, speaking of his tutor, quipped, “He obviously derived stress from first principles, and worked out that it wasn’t optimal.”

However there has been some protest from university professors at the findings of the re­search. A comment left on the Career Cast web­site said, “Hmmm…so what is it to lecture to 300 students? (or 30 or 70, for that matter)? And they say public speaking is ranked among the most feared, stressful things persons can imag­ine, not even preferable to threat of death…”

There have also been arguments raised about the fact that pressure is put on professors to continue to ensure their students perform aca­demically well, even if it would not necessar­ily reflect badly on them if their students did poorly.

PPEist Sean Thomas said, “I can see that hav­ing the ability to involve yourself in your sub­ject professionally must be a hugely rewarding prospect. But then at the same time it must be utterly soul-destroying to have to read the same garbage handed in every week by your fresher philosophy students each year, for the rest of your working life.”

A first year Keble student looked at the find­ings on a much more personal level, saying, “If this is true, it explains why our tutor has so much time to think up new ways to punish us.”

OXFORD CITY COUNCIL has approved plans for an Oxford University research facility on the site of an old hospital in Headington. The Park Hospital buildings were bought from the NHS last year. The University is planning to demolish them to create 48,000 square metres of research space.

According to an Oxford University spokesman, “world leading” research will take place in the new development. Professor Rodney Phillips of the University’s Medical Sciences Division said that “the site offers great prospects for expanding the University’s world leading medical research.”

Professor Phillips stressed that the plans will also benefit local residents: “Patients at the nearby hospitals will have first access to clinical trials and new drugs and they will be treated by world-leading medical researchers.”

It will take 20 to 25 years for the new plans take shape.

Campaigners gathered on Cornmarket last Saturday in solidarity with the Idle No More movement, a Canadian campaign created to protest a bill threatening the sovereignty of First Nations people over their lands and wa­ters.

The protest, organised by UK Tar Sands Network and Lush Oxford, saw campaigners make plac­ards and sign a petition to be delivered to the Canadian government at its London High Com­mission.

During the protest, campaigners were en­couraged to create their own signs, with result­ing slogans such as “Idle No More: No more de­struction of our Mother Earth and disrespect of her people.”

The petition signed by protestors is to be de­livered to the Canadian High Commission on Thursday 17th January by Clayton Thomas-Mul­ler, who belongs to the Mathais Colomb Cree First Nation in Manitoba and runs the tar sands campaign of the Indigenous Environment Net­work.

A spokesperson for Lush was enthusiastic about the protest’s success, telling Cherwell, “Lots of people passing by stopped and stayed for about an hour or so to show solidarity, and pretty much everyone that stopped signed the petition. Every single customer who came through the shop has been told about it.”

Idle No More is a grassroots campaign found­ed in late 2012 by Saskatchewan residents Sylvia McAdam, Jess Gordo, Nina Wilson and Sheelah Mclean, established as the passing of Bill C-45 by the Conservative Harper government be­came imminent. The bill contains alterations to, amongst others, the Indian Act, the Naviga­tion Protection Act and the Environmental As­sessment Act, which campaigners argue will threaten indigenous sovereignty and environ­mental protection in their native lands.

Campaigners stress the potential impact on waterways, many of which pass through First Nations territories. The new bill means pipeline and power line projects will no longer be re­quired to prove their project is not destructive if it does pass through a listed waterway.

On the 4th December 2012, First Nations lead­ers were denied entry to the House of Com­mons in order to discuss the bill, which passed on 14th December.

Though not affiliated with the Idle No More movement, Chief Theresa Spence of Attawap­iskat First Nation is also protesting the govern­ment’s treatment of the First Nations, starting a hunger strike on 11th December which she has vowed to maintain until Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Governor General David Johnston arrange a treaty meeting with First Nations leaders.

Trinity student Ibaad ur Rehman Alvi com­mented, “It’s great to see the Idle No More cam­paign supported here in Oxford. The treatment of First Nations people by the Canadian govern­ment has been shocking and I hope steps are taken to address these issues soon.”

REGENT’S PARK COLLEGE has received almost £500,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Baptist Union Newington Court Fund to dig­itise and improve access to its collection of rare Baptist books.

The grant of £488,000 comes after a highly competitive application process lasting over two years. Part of the money will be used to con­vert the contents of the college’s Angus Library into digital form and place them online in a searchable catalogue. This will involve the dig­itisation of over 70,000 books, pamphlets, jour­nals, church records and letters dating from the late 15th century which document the history of British Baptism.

It is hoped that the money will improve awareness of non-conformist history by allow­ing much greater ease of access to the collection. As such the college aims to provide significant learning opportunities for History students, both nationally and in the local area. This will involve working with Oxford area schools to produce teaching resources which will be made available online to secondary schools across the country.

Reverend Emma Walsh, the college librarian, commented, “This grant will help us realise the dream of helping more people discover and en­gage with the unique riches that are held in the Angus.”

Walsh added, “It provides fascinating oppor­tunities for people to engage with a collection that has been unknown for such a long time, but is so important when it comes to looking at how non-conformists have impacted the shap­ing of the history of the nation.”

“We intend for the educational materials to be used to supplement the national curriculum in areas as diverse as slavery, the role of women, and the British Empire,” Walsh continued.

As part of its attempts to promote knowledge of the collection, the college will also be using the funds to arrange taster sessions for school children from disadvantaged backgrounds to visit the library and experience the collection first hand.

Walsh told Cherwell, “We are particularly excited to be expanding our partnership with IntoUniversity – who work with disadvantaged children in the London area – by running these sessions, which will attempt to de-mystify the use of archive materials and raise aspirations amongst school leavers to study History at Uni­versity.”

In the future there are also plans to make use of the easy availability of the collection by run­ning biennial lectures and exhibitions on Bap­tist history.

Dr Robert Ellis, the Principal of Regent’s Park, said, “We are privileged to have the Angus Library and Archive at Regent’s Park College where it can be accessed alongside the unri­valled resources of the University of Oxford. The college’s governing body is delighted at this grant which will enable us to further improve accessibility and awareness of the collection’s unique content.”

Stuart McLeod, Head of the Heritage Lottery Fund South East, added, “Saving our historic archives is so important – they are a valuable resource for anyone wanting to explore their past. The Angus is bursting with stories and facts that give us clues as to what Baptist life was like and how that has shaped us into what we are today.”

AN OXFORD RESEARCH team led by Dr Grant Churchill has discovered a possible alternative to lithium to treat bipolar disorder.

The researchers have discovered that an existing chemical compound called ebselen may work just as ef­fectively as lithium, but without the harmful side effects.

For the last 60 years, lithium has been used to treat the condition, but has harmful side effects includ­ing weight gain, difficulty produc­ing urine, and possible mutations during pregnancy. It is also toxic in overdose.

So far, ebselen has been tested on mice, although a study on human volunteers is planned to see whether ebselen will be just as an effec­tive treat­ment as lithium.