News

NR's annual report for 2009 is here

www.photos.com

Statistics for Innovation (sfi)² is leader of first Networks of Excellence (NoE)

The first projects in the Nordic Top-level Research Initiative (TFI) have been chosen. 10 projects will be funded within the first call of the sub-programme Effect studies and adaptation to climate change. The various projects shall contribute to improving our knowledge about the effects of climate change, with a focus on possible solutions to how we best can adapt to these changes in the future.

About (sfi)²'s project Statistical Approaches to Regional Climate Models for Adaptation

Uncertainty is an unavoidable aspect of climate modeling. There are uncertainties resulting from insufficient detail, from incomplete data, from numerical instability, from approximations and from measurement errors. The climate community is well aware of these uncertainties but the statistical community is not sufficiently involved this area. Increased interactions between the communities will enhance both statistical and climate science and allow for better decisions on adaptation to regional climate change effects.

The TFI Network on Statistical Approaches to Regional Climate Models for Adaptation will start building robust and lasting interactions between statistics and climate researcher communities in the Nordic countries. Five different approaches will be used to achieve this:

Organize a series of workshops relevant to data, climate models and determination and display of uncertainty.
Organize a Nordic Conference on Statistical Climatology in 2012.
Organize a sequence of summer schools for climate scientists in statistics and for statisticians in climate science.
Fund travel between nodes for doctoral students.
Small groups of researchers will develop innovative plans of attack for focused problems.

Project leader: Professor Peter Guttorp. Co-ordinators: Professor Arnoldo Frigessi and Senior research scientist Ola Haug.

New and valuable guidelines for inclusive ICT

www.clipart.com

Norsk Regnesentral and Karde AS have jointly developed a design guide on how to make inclusive content and technical solutions for the Web.

As such, the design guide addresses a previously unmet demand of all who produce web content, such as journalists, editors, bloggers, homepage maintainers, etc. The guide is in particular meant as a means for developers and designers of technical solutions. The guidelines show in a hands-on manner how to develop and design electronic services which are accessible for individuals with a cognitive challenges. Examples for those are memory capability decline, reading and writing difficulties, and impairments concerning attention and orientation ability.

Various topics are considered, ranging from planning to development and testing. The guide comes with a number of concrete design recommendations, each including solutions and implementation examples. It can also be used for look-up purposes concerning universal design, cognition, legal matters, technical specifications, links and tools, and definitions and technical terms.

Design guide Cognitive Accessibility of Web Pages and Sites (In Norwegian)

Paper with NR contributions highlighted in Nature

In volume 462-2009 of Nature, a paper with NR's Chief Research Scientist Marit Holden as co-author, was highlighted. The paper Gene Dosage, Expression, and Ontology Analysis Identifies Driver Genes in the Carcinogenesis and Chemoradioresistance of Cervical Cancer gives contributions for better understanding the processes involved in cervical cancer. The paper was published in PLoS Genetics

A large-scale survey of gene loss or gain in cervical cancer has flagged more than 50 potential genetic drivers of the disease. Heidi Lyng and her colleagues at the Norwegian Radium Hospital in Oslo screened tumours from 102 patients with cervical cancer to look for changes in gene-copy numbers and expression profiles. They found 57 candidate genes that were frequently gained or lost and which were linked to various well-known tumour-promoting processes, such as carbohydrate metabolism and avoiding cell suicide. They also discovered some novel genes tied to resistance to chemoradiotherapy.

Read the article

The first NR prizes for best master thesis in mathematics and ICT at NTNU

Managing director Lars Holden and the NR's master prize winner 2009 at NTNU: Eivind Fonn. (Photo: Kai T. Dragland, NTNU)

Managing director Lars Holden and the NR's master prize winner 2009 at NTNU: Rune E. Jensen. (Photo: Kai T. Dragland, NTNU)

The first NR prizes for best master thesis in mathematics and ICT at NTNU were awarded at Faculty of Information Technology, Mathematics and Electrical Engineering's annual celebration October 28, 2009.

Rune Erlend Jensen for his thesis Techniquues and Tools for Optimizing Codes on Modern Architectures. A Low Level Approch and Eivind Fonn for his thesis Computing Metrics on Riemannian Shape Manifolds. Geometric shape analysis made practical shared the prize. The prize winners received the prize and diploma from NR's Managing director Lars Holden.

The first NR prize for best master thesis in mathematics and ICT at University of Oslo

From left: Managing director Lars Holden and the NR's master prize winners 2009 at UoO: Evgenij Thorstensen and John Christian Ottem

The first NR prize for best master thesis in mathematics and ICT at University of Oslo were awarded at dagen@ifi October 29, 2009.

Evgenij Thorstensen for his thesis Instance-Based Hyper-Tableaux for Coherent Logic and John Christian Ottem for his thesis Cox Rings of Projective Varieties shared the prize. The prize winners received the prize and diploma from NR's Managing director Lars Holden and Assoc. professor Dag Langmyhr, Institute of Informatics, UoO.

Read the interview with the prize winnners from UoO. (In Norwegian)

NR award for best master thesis in mathematics and ICT

NR has established an annual award for best master thesis in mathematics and ICT, one award at The University of Oslo (UoO) and one award at NTNU. The first awards were given for the period 2008/2009. The prize is NOK 25 000.

NR recruits most of our employees from UoO and NTNU and hopes that an award will strengthen the recruitment in these subjects and stimulate the students during their study.

The statutes for the awards has been finished together with the two departments at each of the two universities. All the members in the jury are recruited from the scientific staff at the universities and there will be no NR representatives.

Read the award's statutes. (In Norwegian)

New book about Digital Rights Management

NR's senior research scientist Habtamu Abie has written the book Distributed Digital Rights Management: Frameworks, Processes, Procedures and Algorithms

In the digital world the management and protection of digital assets and the rights associated with them from unauthorized access, use and dissemination has for a long time been a matter of concern for many rights holders, and the protection of privacy a matter of concern for many users. A distributed Digital Rights Management (DRM) system is ideally suited to providing the necessary protection and management.

This book investigates and describes a distributed DRM model, which fulfills this purpose. This analysis should be especially useful to professionals in e-Government, e-Business, e-Entertainment, e-Learning, and e-Health, to all stakeholders in the Intellectual Property (IP) value chain, content producers, owners, distributors, consumers, technology providers, etc., and to anyone who is planning to protect and manage rights in connection with any form of digital information in a free, balanced, equitable and commercially viable society.

Historisk avkastning for garanterte spareprodukter

NR har fra Finansnæringens Hovedorganisasjon (FNH) fått i oppdrag å utarbeide en uavhengig undersøkelse av historisk avkastning for såkalte sammensatte produkter i det norske markedet for et utvalg norske banker.

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The Monty Hall problem at Forskningstorget i Oslo September 18 and 19

NR presented the Monty Hall problem at Forskningstorget i Oslo, September 18 and 19.

In the Monty Hall problem, a game show contestant chooses one of three doors covering two goats and one car. The game show host knows what is covered behind which door, and she opens one of the doors hiding a goat. The contestant now has to choose if he wants to open the door he has chosen, or change such that he opens the last door. By simple calculation, it can be shown that the probability of winning the car by changing door is 2/3, while the winning probability is 1/3 is he opens the door he chose first.

During the two days of Forskningstorget, 824 contestants, being 50% girls and 50% boys, tried the game show. Of these, 40% chose to change the door, while 60% stuck to the first choice. From statistics collected at the stand, it was shown that age and sex were not significant when it came to the probability of changing doors.

"Sannsynlighet er gøy!" NR at Forskningstorget i Oslo September 18 and 19

NR is represented at Forskningstorget i Oslo with the stand Sannsynlighet er gøy!. At the stand you can try the game-show Monty Hall, where mathematical and statistical knowledge might help you improve the probability of winning. You find us at Universitetsplassen, Karl Johans gate. Opening hours: Friday September 18: 9-16 and Saturday September 19: 10-17. Read more about our stand and the festival at www.forskningsdagene.no

Forskningstorget i Oslo is a part of the science festival Forskningsdagene, which the Research Council of Norway arranges for the 15th time since 1994.

From left: George Casella, Henry Wynn, Sylvia Richardson, and Paul Embrechts

The scientific advisory committee (SAC) of (sfi)² meets in Oslo

The SAC is composed by

Professor Henry Wynn, London School of Economics, UK, chairman
Professor George Casella, University of Florida, USA
Professor Paul Embrechts, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Professor Sylvia Richardson, Imperial College, London, UK

The role of the scientific committee is to support the activities of (sfi)², advise in strategic decisions, help improve projects and evaluate the science produced by the staff and its impact on innovation, motivating (sfi)² staff to do even better work. The scientific advisory committee (SAC) of (sfi)² had four challenging days from August 23 to August 26, 2009.

SAC expressed that they were very impressed by the work and stated that this is how statistical research should be performed. They did not know of any similar center of this size with same variety and close collaboration with experts in different applications. They also gave a lot of detailed comments on most of the (sfi)² projects. Their next meeting is in spring 2011.

From left: Arnoldo Frigessi, (sfi)²'s center director, Tore Lie, NHO, Janica Ylikarjula, Finish NHO, Mads Eriksen, Dansk Industri, David Ludviksson, Icelandic NHO, André Teigland, NR, and Lars Holden, NR.

Visit from Nordic Confederations of Enterprises

The Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO) and their Nordic sister organizations visited NR and (sfi)² August 26, 2009.

They where given presentations about NR, the Norwegian Association of Research Institutes, the Centre of Research-based Innovation scheme, and (sfi)². They expressed that they found the presentation exciting and were very impressed by the work.

NR researchers wins an ECOOP 2009 best paper prize

The paper "Debugging Method Names" by PhD student at NR, Einar W. Høst and NR's senior research scientist Bjarte M. Østvold was presented at the 23rd European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming ( ECOOP 2009) July 6-10, 2009, Genova, Italy. It received one of two best paper prizes at the conference. The work is about automatically discovering problematic method names in Java programs and proposing fixes to such names.

Published: August 14, 2009

NR researcher wins best-paper award for ICT security research

NR's senior research scientist Habtamu Abie and Reijo M. Savola (from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland) were awarded with the best paper award for their article on "Identification of Basic Measurable Security Components for a Distributed Messaging System" at the The Third International Conference on Emerging Security Information, Systems and Technologies (SECURWARE 2009) June 18-23, 2009, Athens/Glyfada, Greece. The article presents results from the EU project GEMOM (Genetic Message Oriented Secure Middleware).

DART researchers win best-paper award for VoIP security research

Lothar Fritsch, Arne-Kristian Groven and Lars Strand, researchers in DART, were awarded with the best paper award for their article on "A holistic approach to Open-Source VoIP security" at the ICN 2009 conference in Cancun, Mexico. The article presents results from the EUX2010Sec project on the security of voice-over-IP communication systems.

Published: April 14, 2009

NR coordinates NORKLIMA project: Insuring Future Climate Change

Together with the Meteorological Institute of Norway and Gjensidige Forsikring, NR and Statistics for Innovation (sfi)2 have been granted NOK 6.5 million over the next four years from the NORKLIMA programme of the Research Council of Norway. Also, international partners like London School of Economics are involved.

Through cross-disciplinary work by statisticians, meteorologists and insurance experts, the project will study the effects of climate change on the insurance industry and adaptation to these changes. Our research will be from an applied point of view, clearly reflecting problems and challenges posed by the insurance business itself.

Projections of increased occurrence and intensity of harmful weather events in the future may amplify payouts and administrative costs for the insurance sector considerably. Not only the insurance companies themselves, but also their private and public clients, will be affected, and eventually, society as a whole must bear the costs of climate change. Knowledge of these effects will enable precautionary measures to be invoked and bring important economic opportunities.

The project fits neatly with NR's ongoing EU Marie Curie 'Climate Change and the Insurance Industry' project and is a well-timed follow-up of a two-day international conference organised in November 2008 raising similar questions.

Published: March 27, 2009

NR's annual report for 2008 is here

Read the report (pdf)

Published: March 6, 2009

NR award for best master thesis in mathematics and ICT

NR will establish an annual award for best master thesis in mathematics and ICT. There will be one award at The University of Oslo (UoO) and one award at NTNU. We expect the first award to be given for the period 2008/2009.

NR recruits most of our employees from UoO and NTNU and hopes that an award will strengthen the recruitment in these subjects and stimulate the students during their study.

NR has given this offer in a letter dated December 1, 2008 to the two rectors and received very positive feedback. We are now working with the statutes for the awards together with the two departments at each of the two universities. All the members in the jury will be recruited from the scientific staff at the university and there will be no NR representatives.

Best-paper award winners

November 6, 2008: Research scientist Truls Fretland and chief research scientist Wolfgang Leister, were awarded with a prize for best paper for their contribution at the conference ICSNC 2008 in Sliema, Malta.

The article presents results from the SAMPOS project.

INSURING FUTURE CLIMATE CHANGE - Preparing and acting today. European conference for the insurance sector

Norsk Regnesentral, Gjensidige forsikring, and the centre Statistics for Innovation (sfi)² arranged the European conference INSURING FUTURE CLIMATE CHANGE - Preparing and acting today in Oslo, November 3-4, 2008.

Archaeology from space

In order to detect more cultural heritage sites in advance of construction work, the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage (Riksantikvaren) took an initiative to develop tools for early detection of potential cultural heritage sites in very high resolution satellite images.

NR has been responsible for developing automatic detection methodology and implementing this into a prototype software system, CultSearcher. Article from Norsk Romsenter. See also Cultural Heritage project page.

Hear about the project on Radio Norge's Vitenskapsprogram 117 (in Norwegian).

Report on ICT barriers for visually impaired

A new report on ICT-barriers for the blind and partially sigheted in Norway documents that many technologies are still inaccessible for the visually impaired. The report addresses digital exclusion/inclusion, and is an important contribution to the discussion of the Norwegian ICT-policy. Read the report.

GEMOM - Genetic Message Oriented Secure Middleware

NR participates in the GEMOM project funded by the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). Its focus is the significant and measurable increase in the end-to-end intelligence, security and resilience of complex, distributed information systems. The primary objective of GEMOM is to be able to rectify vulnerability to faults through researching, developing and deployment of a prototype of a messaging platform that is evolutionary, self-organising, self-healing, scalable and secure.

Data retention directive (Datalagringsdirektivet)

Data retention plans in Norway cause a wide discussion about the implications of data retention for the Norwegian society. NR provides technical background information for the debate:

Presentation on "Data Retention in Norway: Technical Security Investments, Electronic Evidence, and the PET challenge", presented at the IT-Sikkerhetsforum (ISF) in Oslo February 13, 2008.

Interview with NR's security researchers by Teknisk Ukeblad (TU) in Norway concerning information security issues with telecommunications data retention. Printed edition.

DART's research director Dr. Åsmund Skomedal interview on digital traces in Ronald Bye's and Finn Sjue's book "Overvåket" (published in March 2008).

The Minister of Research visited NR May 5, 2008

visit The Minister of Research Tora Aasland, State Secretary Jens Revold, and Egil Eike, Dag Kavlie and Gudmund Høst from the Research Council of Norway visited Norsk Regnesentral May 5, 2008. The topic for the visit was the action Centres for Research Based Innovation (SFI). Two SFIs, inGap, working with natural-gas processes located at University of Oslo and Statistics for innovation located at Norsk Regnesentral, was presented.

The main objective for the Centres for Research-based Innovation, funded by The Research Council of Norway, is to enhance the capability of the business sector to innovate by focusing on long-term research based on forging close alliances between research-intensive enterprises and prominent research groups.

Published: May 6, 2008

NR's annual report for 2007 is here

Read the report (pdf)

Published: April 1, 2008

Invitation to NR's information security workshops on Electronc Evidence and On-line Privacy

The Norwegian Computing Center cordially invites you to discuss current topics in information security research. Two free-of-charge workshops targeting specialists, journalists and public administration will focus on:

Electronic traces and tracing is a challenge for the ICT security, its users and the court system. The workshop will be reflecting the result from the research project "Desdifor" and a study on behalf of Datatilsynet regarding electronic traces. Begin: 09:30 on 5. Dec. 2007.
Privacy in ICT, a concern for the individual and a challenge for the evolution of information technology. We will present the research projects PETweb ("Privacy Enhancing Technology (PET) for Web based Services") and the strategic research project "Personalized internet-based services and privacy protection". Begin: 09:30 on 11.Dec. 2007.

Venue, and a list of speakers can be found at the invitation letter (pdf).

Published: November 30, 2007

NR to predict climate change impacts for the insurance industry

Over the past few years, on behalf of Gjensidige Forsikring, NR has carried out innovative research on the coherence between water damage caused by external factors and different weather conditions. Now, the two continue their fruitful cooperation through the signing of a contract that will contribute to Gjensidige’s understanding of a new everyday life for the insurance industry forced by climate change.

Local vulnerability models will be established for the coherence between claims and certain weather elements. Along with current and revised climate scenarios for the future, these models will provide estimates of the number of claims, claim size and total payment to be expected in the future. Figures will be worked out for buildings insured through private, agriculture and business sector policies separately.

Published: October 26, 2007

NR is invited to negotiation as the coordinator of a project on climate change

The project will be a part of EU's 7th Framework Programme with an action that promotes research partnership between universities, research institutes and business. The project is denoted CCII - Climate Change and the Insurance Industry.

Climate and weather forecasting hosts a wide range of scientific and mathematical methods with a heavy computational base. This project will bring statisticians, insurance and climate experts together to build a methodological basis for the emerging field of climate change insurance risk so that the insurance industry can adapt in response to weather and climate risks. CCII will access insurance data from partners and agencies as well as the huge amount of actual and simulated weather and climate data to build models and methods of real relevance to decision making in the insurance industry and inform government and regulators.

The project is a natural extension of NRs research project for several insurance companies the last years. The project is a part of Centre for Research based-innovation, Statistics for Innovation. The project is announced on the EU site.

Duration: 48 months
Estimated EU contribution: 1.16 million Euro
Co-ordinator: Dr. Lars Holden of Norsk Regnesentral, Norway,
Partners from: UK (London School of Economics and Political Sciences; Lloyd's), Norway (Gjensidige Forsikring)

Published: October 11, 2007

Successful international risk aggregation seminar in Oslo

DnBNOR and NR hosted an international risk aggregation seminar August 30 in Oslo, focusing on banks and financial institutions.

The Basel II international capital framework, implemented in 2007, demands a close synergy between finance and statistics. The seminar concentrated on risk aggregation challenges and methods, followed by specific case studies from leading European banks. Top international capacities were invited as speakers, and the 150 participants got a thorough overview of the risk aggregation field. Detailed program.

The seminar is part of the activity made possible by the Research Council of Norway's funding of NR's center Statistics for Innovation.

Published: August 31, 2007

'Centre for Research-based Innovation' contract signed

The CRI contract was signed by the managing director of the Research Council of Norway, Arvid Hallén and the chairman of the board of directors of Norsk Regnesentral, Hans Erik Horn. The contract was signed Monday 19. March in a ceremony with the presents of the minister of trade and industry and the minister of education and research.

The leader of the centre, professor Arnoldo Frigessi gave a presentation of the activity in the centre. The CRI, Statistics for Innovation started the activity January 1st. 19 projects are defined and in all projects there are several partners.

Read the press release in Norwegian (pdf)

Published: March 19, 2007

NR receives EU funding for the research project Delivering Inclusive Access for Disabled or Elderly Members of the community

Norsk Regnesentral (NR) and Karde AS initiated the application for the project DIADEM - Delivering Inclusive Access for Disabled or Elderly Members of the community. The project duration is three years, with a total funding of 2 mill. Euro by the EU Commision within the 6th Framework Programme - Information Society Technologies - eInclusion. Read press release (in Norwegian)

Published: November, 2006

Networked and Eletronic Media Seminar

Du som har interesse for din bedrifts FoU-aktivitet, eller du som er nysgjerrig på europeisk FoU innen denne tematikken inviteres til å delta på vårt NEM-arbeidsmøte 21. september. Arbeidsmøtet er aktuelt både for bedrifter som ønsker en aktiv rolle i europeisk forskning og utvikling innen multimedialt innhold, og bedrifter som bare ønsker å følge med på det som skjer i NEM. Les mer

Published: September 11, 2006

NR participates in project on antibiotics resistance

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a global problem and is an increasing public health threat. This has resulted in a joint research project between three Norwegian hospitals; Aker universitetssykehus, Sykehuset Asker og Bærum, and Rikshospitalet. NR will provide statistical support in the project, where the main goal is to identify risk factors for developing resistance to antibiotics. An intervention study will also be carried out.

Infections and diseases that were successfully treated by antibiotics are now becoming an increasing problem due to bacteria that are resistant to one or more antibiotics. Thus, it is important to investigate the relation between antibiotics use and resistance in order to prevent and control the development of bacterial resistance.

Published: June 6, 2006

Three-year agreement signed with Roxar

Roxar has signed a three-year agreement with Norsk Regnesentral to further develop stochastic reservoir modeling, reduce uncertainty and maximize reservoir performance.
Roxar is a leading technology solutions provider to the upstream oil and gas industry.
With this agreement, NR will use Roxar as an exclusive commercialization partner for reservoir modeling software and, in return, Roxar will commit to a certain volume of purchased research projects.
Roxar and NR have cooperated on developing the modeling software Irap RMS for many years. NR has been responsible for development of all methods and algorithms currently used for 3D property modeling in Irap RMS.
Read Roxar's press release

Published: March 13, 2006

"Can you imagine...?" NR at Forskningstorget i Oslo September 23 and 24

NR's stand this year at Forskningstorget i Oslo is called "Can you imagine....?" There you can try virtual shopping, take a virtual tour at the Kon-Tiki Museum, check out how a reservoir model for oil and gas works, and find out which celebrity is your look-alike.

You will find us at Universitetsplassen, Karl Johans gate. Opening hours: Friday 23: 9-21 and Saturday 24: 11-16. Read more about Forskningsdagene at www.forskningsdagene.no/

Maybe you want to take a virtual tour at the Kon-Tiki Museum now?
Go to: www.kon-tiki.no

Published: September 23, 2005

Largest European Meeting of Statisticians ever in Oslo

The 25th European Meeting of Statisticians will take place at University of Oslo 24-28 July, 2005, organized by the Department of Mathematics of the University of Oslo and the Norwegian Computing Center (NR).

The European Meeting of Statisticians (EMS) is a biannual conference of the Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability, a section of the International Statistical Institute. This is the largest and most important conference in statistical sciences that is organized in Europe. Hosting the 25th EMS is a honor for the Oslo statisticians. The last EMS in Norway was in 1978 in Oslo.

Largest EMS conference ever

This 25th EMS is the largest EMS conference ever. The scientific programme is exceptionally broad and exciting, covering all areas of methodological, applied and computational statistics and probability theory, bridging between theory and practice. There are about 90 invited lectures, 400 contributed papers and in total 650 participants from more than 50 countries. Usually the participants at the EMS are around 350.

This conference projects Norway in the centre of the international statistics community and will help present Norway as an attractive place for master and doctoral studies in statistics for students from Europe and America.

European Young Statisticians Training Camp

The week preceding the 25th EMS, 17- 23 July 2005, the European Young Statisticians Training Camp to the EMS will take place. This training event is part of a larger series of summer schools in mathematics, which has been funded by the EU – Marie Curie series of events. The umbrella organization is the European Mathematical Society.

The camp for young statisticians is a completely new training idea, its goal being to prepare young researchers by mini-courses to the major conference that follows immediately. The camp will promote direct contacts between young scientists and invited senior statisticians. A further aim is to build a network of young statisticians, which will be certainly useful in the building of their research career. It is the first time such a construction is proposed and tried out. There are 100 participants to the camp, PhD students and young post-docs. Most of them are funded by the EU.

Read more about EMS 2005: www.ems2005.no

Published: July 5, 2005

The Kon-Tiki Museum launches "VR Kon-Tiki", a virtual museum developed by NR

Computer gaming technology has become very popular. The VR Kon-Tiki is developed by using this kind of technology for the purpose of attracting visitors to the museum. According to market research more and more of the potential visitors are using the Internet to search for information and to choose what to do.

Read more about the VR Kon-Tiki and the feedback from the first users of this new application (In Norwegian).

Published: June 20, 2005

Contract signed for oil spill detection

The Danish company OSIS International develops an Oil Spill Identification System (OSIS) providing "round the clock" online surveillance of oil spilled into the marine environment. NR has long experience in automatic detection of oil spills in radar satellite images, and OSIS has hired NR to help in the development of methods for automatic detection of oil spills in the images resulting from their sensors.

Published: June 15, 2005

Release of NR's report "Elektroniske spor"

By commision of Datatilsynet and Ministry of Justice, NR has produced a report on electronic traces and their use in society. The report is a survey of what type electronic traces are generated, processed, and stored in different systems.

Read more about the report (in Norwegian)

The report "Elektroniske spor": http//publications.nr.no/elektroniske_spor.pdf

Published: June 14, 2005

NR has received funding for developing a model for turbidite reservoirs

NR, in cooperation with the University of Bergen, has received funding from the Research Council of Norway, Hydro and ConocoPhillips for developing a model for turbidite reservoirs. Turbidite reservoirs are sandstone reservoirs created from large undersea 'landslides' of sediments.

In this project we combine physical laws for sediment transport with stochastic methods (Monte Carlo) to obtain realistic geological shapes.

The project duration is three years, with a total funding of 5.5 MNOK, of which NR's part is 3.4 MNOK. A PhD grant at the University of Bergen is included in the project. In addition, we will cooperate with Complex Flow Design, who have a project on modelling turbidite flows, also partially funded by the Research Council of Norway.

Published: January 25, 2005

Åsmund Skomedal new research director at NR

Åsmund Skomedal is employed as research director within the ICT area. He has a BSc from University of Newcastle (1987) and a Dr.ing. from NTH (1994). He has previously worked for Alcatel and Telenor. From 2003, he was chief technical officer in Zebsign. He will start as research director January 1, 2005.

Published: December 23, 2004

Hydro and NR sign large energy market contract

Hydro is a leading European oil and energy company. During the last 10 years Hydro has cooperated with NR on developing statistical models for price forecasting and risk analysis within the energy market. Today a new contract is signed, which ensures extensive cooperation for the period 2005–2007.

Advanced models will be developed and implemented. Additional to the applied research, Hydro also makes available some funding for basic research at NR. NR is very grateful for this additional support and will use the funding to further strengthen our competence.

Published: December 9, 2004

NR's course "Statistical analysis of financial time series" very popular

NR's course "Statistical analysis of financial time series" has been very popular with 80 participants in total during the three times the course has been held in 2004. The participants have come from the energy, finance, banking and insurance sectors. There has been a very positive respons to the course content and presentation. For more information about the content of the course

Published: November 25, 2004

NR has received funding from Finansmarkedsfondet also in 2005

As one of very few applicants, NR received a funding from Finansmarkedsfondet also in 2005, to the project "Methodological developments in the analysis of financial risk called for by the industry needs".

Published: November 12, 2004

Three new contracts signed with the Institute of Marine Research

NR has over several years worked in close cooperation with the Institute of Marine Research (IMR) in Bergen on statistical methods for abundance estimation. One important use of NR’s competence has been to describe the uncertainty of the estimates. This is essential when determining fishing quotas within safe biological limits.

NR experiences the cooperation with the highly skilled researchers at IMR as very challenging and fruitful, and finds this to be an excellent way of mixing two different institutions competence. Three recently signed contracts ensure a continuation of the cooperation, which has partly been funded by the Research Council of Norway.

Published: October 29, 2004

NR at Forskningstorget i Oslo September 17-18

As in previous years NR participated in Forskningstorget i Oslo 2004 at Universitetsplassen. This year, the theme of our stand was "Statistics and satellites helping the environment".

Forskningstorget i Oslo is a part of the science festival Forskningsdagene, which the Research Council of Norway, arranged for the 10th time since 1994. Read more about Forskningsdagene 2004

Published: August 27, 2004

E-voting system is off course

A Norwegian system for E-voting was tested in three counties during the 2003 regional election. Although an evaluation of the test showed that the system was well accepted by the electorate and local election officers, the Norwegian government has stopped further use of the system until a working group appointed by the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development (KRD) delivers its views on the question of whether, and in case how, electronic voting should be introduced.

In a newspaper article NR's senior research scientist Håvard Hegna argues against introducing an e-voting system like the one tested, which does not leave a paper trail. A trail in the form of paper ballots will give the voter a confirmation of her vote and the election officials the necessary means for checking the validity of the electronic voting process.

Read the article in Dagsavisen

Published: August 16, 2004

Who wins the European Football Championship?

During the European Football Championship 2004 NR will daily consider the chances of every team participating in the cup, based on a probability model. All calculations will be updated daily, and be available for the public on em.nr.no. Aftenposten will give daily comments on some of our calculations.

The probability calculations are done by simulating ("playing" on a computer) all remaining games numerous times. The remaining part of the European Championship is "played" 2000 times. From these simulations we calculate all teams chances to win the cup, to win in their group, to reach the Quarter finals etc.

Published: June 14, 2004

NR has received funding from Finansmarkedsfondet

NR received a funding of 0.4 MNOK to the research project “Methodological developments in the analysis of financial risk called for by the industry needs” from the newly established Finansmarkedsfondet. Finansmarkedsfondet received 76 applications of which 17 were granted funding. For more information go to Finansmarkedsfondet.

Published: June 1, 2004

NR develops total risk model in collaboration with DnB NOR

In an ongoing project NR collaborates with DnB NOR in further developing the total risk model of the financial institution. DnB and NR developed the first version together in 2000. The new total risk model will identify and measure risk elements in the Group and subsidiaries more accurately than earlier.

Published: June 1, 2004

StarMatch – Success on VG NETT

During the first week StarMatch was on the web pages of VG NETT 150,500 persons uploaded an image of themselves to see which celebrity was their look-alike. NR has developed the programs that do the mathematics on the faces.

Published: May 28, 2004

International recognition for developing and studying a new mobile phone application

ESOMAR, the World Association of Opinion and Marketing Research Professionals, hosted the conference Technovate 2 in Barcelona in February 2004. The theme of this conference was Market Research Technology and Innovation. The best papers from the ESOMAR conferences during a year are published in the book "Excellence in International Research" and one of these papers wins "the John and Mary Goodyear Award of Best International Paper".

Three researchers at NR together with the director of Telecom at TNS Gallup in Norway were nominated for this award at Technovate 2 for the paper: "Are mobile phone users ready for MCASI - mobile computer-assisted self interviewing?" Down-load the presentation.

Published: March 24, 2004