[Pollinator] Fwd: Golden Goose Award Goes to Researchers Who Turned Honey Bee Foraging Patterns into Powerful Web-Hosting Tool

Fri Sep 16 11:23:54 PDT 2016

Victoria Wojcik, Ph.D.
Research Director
Pollinator Partnership

Toronto, ON
e. vw at pollinator.org
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kozak, Paul (OMAFRA) <Paul.Kozak at ontario.ca>
Date: Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 10:01 AM
Subject: Golden Goose Award Goes to Researchers Who Turned Honey Bee
Foraging Patterns into Powerful Web-Hosting Tool
To: CAPA-L at listserv.uoguelph.ca

FYI

This is interesting.

I am sure I’m not alone in considering Tom’s work on honey bees as
extremely important (honey bee biology, social biology, animal behavior,
etc.) well before search engines on the internet.

*Paul Kozak*

*Provincial Apiarist*

*Ministry of Agriculture Food and Rural Affairs*

Animal Health and Welfare Branch

1 Stone Road West, 5th Floor NW

Guelph ON N1G 4Y2

Tel:  519 826-3595 or 1-888-466-2372 Ext. 519-826-3595

Fax:  519 826-4375

Email:  Paul.Kozak at ontario.ca

*Golden Goose Award Goes to Researchers Who Turned Honey Bee Foraging
Patterns into Powerful Web-Hosting Tool*

*[image:
https://gallery.mailchimp.com/5fd2b1aa990e63193af2a573d/images/63584e5e-b617-4007-96fa-4c4f5e7c9049.jpg]*

* Five interdisciplinary researchers who developed a Honey Bee Algorithm
used by webhosting companies will be saluted at an award ceremony next week
at Library of Congress*

*John J. Bartholdi III, Sunil Nakrani, Thomas D. Seeley, Craig A. Tovey,
and John Hagood Vande Vate will receive the Golden Goose Award on Sept. 22
for their study of honey bee foraging behavior and the development of the
“Honey Bee Algorithm
<http://americanbeejournal.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5fd2b1aa990e63193af2a573d&id=744cd0cc01&e=eb5c04b656>”
to allocate shared web servers to internet traffic. The original honey bee
research, funded by the National Science Foundation and Office of Naval
Research, unexpectedly led to the algorithm that major webhosting companies
now use to streamline internet services and increase revenues in a global
market worth more than $50 billion. The Golden Goose Award
<http://americanbeejournal.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5fd2b1aa990e63193af2a573d&id=5244abd8be&e=eb5c04b656>
honors scientists whose federally funded work may have been considered
silly, odd, or obscure when first conducted, but has resulted in
significant benefits to society. Bartholdi, Tovey, and Vande Vate, all
engineers at Georgia Institute of Technology, and Seeley, a Cornell
University biologist, are being cited for their curiosity-driven research
on how honey bee foragers are able to maximize nectar collection in
ever-changing environments. A decade-plus later, Tovey and Nakrani, also an
engineer, adapted the basic research to develop the “Honey Bee Algorithm”
for allocating shared web servers to changing internet traffic. The
algorithm performs up to 20 percent more efficiently than others and
distributes web transactions to servers more smoothly and quickly for
users. “The internet is one of mankind’s greatest accomplishments, and
these scientists studied one of the smallest parts of nature to make it
better,” said Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN), who had the original idea to create
the Golden Goose Award. “Their ingenuity is the kind of talent that makes
America’s scientific and research community the best in the world.” The
Georgia Institute of Technology engineers and Cornell University biologist
will be honored along with two other teams at the fifth annual Golden Goose
Award Ceremony at the Library of Congress on Sept. 22. Descriptions of this
year’s other winners, as well as those from previous years, can be found at
the Golden Goose Award website
<http://americanbeejournal.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5fd2b1aa990e63193af2a573d&id=8b53eeb0ed&e=eb5c04b656>.
“The idea that honeybees and assigning computer servers have anything in
common would have previously sounded preposterous to most, and yet, through
the work of these men, we now know that honeybees are ingrained with a
superior set of engineering skills,” said Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA), a
supporter of the Golden Goose Award since its founding in 2012. “These
distinguished gentlemen understood that scientific innovation requires
creativity, patience, and a determination to get results. I applaud their
work on the ‘Honey Bee Algorithm’ to demonstrate that seemingly unrelated
ideas can work together and to help make our ever-increasingly networked
society run better and more efficiently.” Bartholdi, Tovey, and Vande Vate
were inspired to study honey bee foraging after Vande Vate heard Seeley
describing his own honey bee research on National Public Radio. “I wonder
if the bees would do any better if they hired us as consultants?” Vande
Vate mused to his colleagues after hearing the program. The tongue-in-cheek
question led to a years-long examination of the honey bees’ decentralized
foraging patterns from a systems engineering perspective. “Investing in
research and development leads to new discoveries that improve our lives,
and also creates jobs and helps to keep our country competitive,” said Rep.
Bonamici (D-OR), a member of the House Science, Space, and Technology
Committee and co-founder of the Congressional STEAM Caucus. “Just as we
shouldn’t judge books by their covers, we shouldn’t judge research projects
by their titles. The Honey Bee Algorithm is an excellent example of how
federally funded research can lead to creative approaches to solving
problems.” After three years of developing a mathematical model based on
honey bee foraging behavior, Tovey joined Seeley for an empirical test of
their model at the Cranberry Lake Biological Station in upstate New York.
There, the scientists set up a controlled experiment where they were able
to track 4,000 individually labeled forager bees as they moved to and from
artificial nectar sources. The experiment beautifully confirmed the model,
showing that the bees had evolved to distribute themselves in such a way
that each forager bee gathers nectar at roughly the same rate over time and
ensures the hive can adapt to changing nectar resources. The biological
research motivated Bartholdi, Tovey, and Vande Vate to continue exploring
beyond honey bee foraging, looking for ways that nature’s self-organizing
systems could be applied to human problems. Since they published their work
on honey bees in 1993, the engineers have brought nature’s lessons to bear
on problems ranging from managing online retail orders from distribution
centers to dispatching transit buses efficiently to avoid the bunching
familiar to public transit users. Tovey, in particular, sought to apply the
work on honey bee foraging to a variety of problems, but it wasn’t until
then graduate student Nakrani walked into his office in 2002 talking about
web-hosting computer servers that he settled on a perfect application. In
web-hosting, servers perform like nectar foraging bees. Clients asking to
use the servers – internet shoppers for example – mimic the changing
landscape of flower patches. The clients put up money, earning revenue for
the web host, while the flowers provide nectar. Shared webhosting servers
operate by switching from one application to the next based on demand for
any given application. Each server, for security reasons, can run only one
application at a time, so switching applications – like a honey bee finding
a new flower patch – requires down time and incurs a revenue penalty as the
server shifts and loads a new application. The ideal algorithm adjusts to
rapidly changing internet demand and delivers the maximum total revenue –
just like honey bee colonies foraging for nectar. Today, major web-hosting
companies are using Tovey and Nakrani’s Honey Bee Algorithm and other
similar biologically-inspired methods to boost revenues and more
efficiently allocate their servers. Every internet user benefits when
servers are ready in the right place and in the shortest time. **About the
Golden Goose Award*
* In 2012, a coalition of business, university, and scientific
organizations created the Golden Goose Award, conceived by Rep. Jim Cooper
(D-TN) as a strong counterpoint to criticisms of basic research as wasteful
federal spending such as the late Sen. William Proxmire’s (D-WI) Golden
Fleece Award. Learn more at http://www.goldengooseaward.org/history/
<http://americanbeejournal.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5fd2b1aa990e63193af2a573d&id=2a82f245e2&e=eb5c04b656>.*
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