Mobile technological tools are being used today to collect basic information in the health, world climate, geophysics, ecology, and other sectors to exchange information, and to access scientific computing among many services. The potentialities of this mobile technology need to be spread out on a larger scale in the academia in particular, and in the society as a whole so that its benefits can become widely accessible for further development. This is an issue that needs more attention and promotion, especially in less developed areas of the world.
We define in this book Mobile Science (or “m-Science” in short) as the term that comprises sensing, computing and dissemination of scientific knowledge by the use of mobile devices. This includes (i) data gathering, (ii) the analysis and process of data, and (iii) the access to on-line services and applications directed to nurture scientists and scholars (such as mobile access to ejournals, podcasts, web lectures, webinars, virtual conferences, mobile collaboration tools, m-Learning, etc).
Based on information extracted from the Web of Science (Thomson Reuters) database of scientific publications spanning from 1980 to 2009, the worldʼs scientific product ion has grown from about 400,000 to 1,200,000 publications in the last three decades. This increment of interest in science, together with the recent technological developments in mobile technologies, is making m-Science a completely new field of interest and research development. This book aims to engage the scientific community, engineers and scholars worldwide in the design, development and deployment of the newest mobile applications.
