When scientists publish their research, they also make the underlying data available so the results can be verified by other scientists.

At least that is how the system is supposed to work. But lately social scientists have come up against an exception that is, true to its name, huge.

It is “big data,” the vast sets of information gathered by researchers at companies like Facebook, Google and Microsoft from patterns of cellphone calls, text messages and Internet clicks by millions of users around the world. Companies often refuse to make such information public, sometimes for competitive reasons and sometimes to protect customers’ privacy. But to many scientists, the practice is an invitation to bad science, secrecy and even potential fraud.

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It should not be too surprising that a Google-created entity should have this bent. Google, along with Web pioneers like Yahoo and Amazon, was crucial to the creation of the emerging Big Data industry. By tracking things like consumer clicks and the behavior of thousands of computer servers working together, they amassed large volumes of data at a time when collapsing prices for data storage made it attractive to analyze. They also captured information from nontraditional sources, like e-mail, leading them to create so-called “unstructured” database software like Hadoop and MapReduce. Versions of those are now used to store and analyze other kinds of data.

The ways in which Google analyzed Web traffic to predict patterns are increasingly applied to other fields, as that data moves online. Mr. Ghobarah believes that biology is an increasingly attractive area.

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Now, as we venture into big data (also known as business analytics), it is no surprise that the introspection angle is coming up. Here’s a nice little piece by Stephen Wolfram documenting what he’s done to analyze his personal big data of the past 23 years. Can anyone do it? Yes, says Wolfram.

Lack of knowledge of social infrastructure like schools and hospitals makes it more costly when natural disasters strike, setting back recovery efforts, sometimes by months. And lack of data, in general, makes it harder — both in government and in the community — to argue for improved services or increased funding.

The answer? A good start would be scaling up the use of modern mapping technology with crowdsourcing. It’s just this potential that’s been the driving force behind a new partnership between the World Bank and Google. Under the agreement, the bank and its development partners — developing country governments and U.N. agencies — will be able to access Google Map Maker’s global mapping platform, allowing the collection, viewing, search and free access to data of geoinformation in over 150 countries and 60 languages.

Simply put, it means that up-to-date maps of social infrastructure used by nearly a billion people around the globe can be created using crowdsourcing tools, partnering with volunteer mappers using GPS enabled phones and other devices.

Success will hinge on using local expertise to break new ground — finding an active community of passionate citizen cartographers from civil society organizations, local governments, public service providers and universities who can plug in the data that makes its way to publicly available online maps.

A mobile campaign by Blue Chip Marketing Worldwide, which is based in Chicago, places the ads for the thermometer within popular apps like Pandora that collect basic details about users, including their sex and whether they are parents, and can pinpoint specific demographics to receive ads.

But not all mothers will see the ad on their smartphones. Rather, the ads will be sent only to devices that, according to Google, are in regions experiencing a high incidence of flu. Also, the ads will only be delivered to mothers within two miles of retailers that carry the thermometer, including Walmart, Target and Babies “R” Us.

“Flu levels in your area are high,” says the banner ad within an app. “Be prepared with Vicks revolutionary Behind Ear Thermometer.”

Tapping the ad, which also notes the nearest store that sells the thermometer (“Buy at Rite Aid .3 miles away.”), brings users to a product page with items including an informational video and a list of nearby retailers. Tapping a retailer reveals directions there.

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In another foray into commerce, Google is working on a delivery service that would let people order items from local stores on the Web and receive them at their homes or offices within a day.

The service is in an early testing phase, and it was described by three people briefed on the project who were not authorized to speak about it publicly before it was announced. It is part of a bigger, strategic effort by Google to move beyond its core search business by helping people buy things, not just find them.

Other parts of this strategy include Google Wallet to make payments by cellphone, Google Offers for daily deals, apps that show location-based mobile ads and product search for local stores.

The idea behind the new delivery service is that people searching for products online or on their phones could buy something from a local retailer or the local branches of nationwide chains, and could then take the next step — delivery — through Google.

Mobile Internet fastest growing vertical, says Google India MD.

Listing a set of next big trends in the overall technology sector, Google India says mobile Internet is set to lead the way for the industry. As against 14 per cent in the US, 11 per cent in Russia, and 6 per cent in the UK, Google India sees about 40 per cent search queries from mobile phones in the country.

“Mobile phones are the future. More smartphones and tablets are being shipped in India than desktops and laptops. In fact, about 40 per cent of search queries for Google India comes from mobile phones as against US (14), UK (6) and Russia (11),” said Rajan Anandan, managing director of Google India during a speaker session at ‘Confluence 2011′ on Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) campus.

But most people, of course, never make that single click. Defaults win.

The role of defaults in steering decisions is by no means confined to the online world. For behavioral economists, psychologists and marketers, defaults are part of a rich field of study that explores “decision architecture” — how a choice is presented or framed. The field has been popularized by the 2008 book “Nudge,” by Richard H. Thaler, an economist at the University of Chicago and a frequent contributor to the Sunday Business section, and Cass R. Sunstein, a Harvard Law School professor who is now on leave and is working for the Obama administration. Nudges are default choices.

In decision-making, examples of the default preference abound: Workers are far more likely to save in retirement plans if enrollment is the automatic option. And the percentage of pregnant women tested for H.I.V. in some African nations where AIDS is widespread has surged since the test became a regular prenatal procedure and women had to opt out if they didn’t want it.

A bus branded with the Google logo will be traveling across 10 governorates in Egypt starting this week, including stops at universities in Cairo and Alexandria, scouting for the next generation of technology entrepreneurs with homegrown ideas on the scale of Facebook or LinkedIn.

“We will put someone’s dream through a seven-month crash course that will help turn it into a commercially viable business,” said Wael Fakharany, Google’s manager in Egypt. “We have been working on this concept for nine months. We had signed a contract with the Egyptian government in 2009 to invest in the country’s Internet ecosystem and this is part of that commitment.”

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Google’s story: The company is zealously dedicated to helping people find the most useful information on the Internet, and Google’s prosperity and the economic opportunity it has created for many thousands of American businesses all flow from that high-minded mission.

The rivals’ rebuttal: Google increasingly tilts search results in favor of its own online commerce offerings like travel and shopping as it bundles those services into its industry-dominant search engine, limiting choice and stifling competition.

I’ve had little time for people who criticize energy use of web search. Earlier writing was without too much data, because data was not available. Here are the data.

Every time a person runs a Google search, watches a YouTube video or sends a message through Gmail, the company’s data centers full of computers use electricity. Those data centers around the world continuously draw almost 260 million watts — about a quarter of the output of a nuclear power plant.

Up to now, the company has kept statistics about its energy use secret. Industry analysts speculate it was because the information was embarrassing and would also give competitors a clue to how Google runs its operations.

While the electricity figures may seem large, the company asserts that the world is a greener place because people use less energy as a result of the billions of operations carried out in Google data centers. Google says people should consider things like the amount of gasoline saved when someone conducts a Google search rather than, say, drives to the library. “They look big in the small context,” Urs Hoelzle, Google’s senior vice president for technical infrastructure, said in an interview.

One link led to another and then to a very nice piece that not only tells about Martin Cooper, but also locates the equipment that made the first mobile call possible.

Now the debate has shifted. We know what world we live in. Now the debate is about the denizens of the new world. Appears Microsoft is still among the contenders.

“It changes Google from being just the company they turn to for search,” he said referring to consumers. “It makes them the company delivering their mobile experience in a post-PC world.”

The deal will only add to the flux in the market for mobile telephone software, where Android has surged recently. It had a 43.4 percent global share in the second quarter of this year, up from 17.2 percent a year ago, according to Gartner. Apple’s iOS devices captured an 18.2 percent share, up from 14.1 last year, while the former heavyweight Research in Motion, which makes BlackBerry devices, slipped to 11.7 percent from 18.7 percent.

The acquisition may lead some hardware makers to cast their lot with Microsoft, which is pouring resources into becoming a serious mobile competitor. Nokia has already done just that, betting on Microsoft and abandoning its own mobile operating system.

While the carriers do not openly talk about the threat of Apple and Google, analysts say the two companies have fostered a system that could make carriers slow-growing utilities selling little more than generic network access. The revenue from apps, which provide entertainment, news and other services, do not flow to the carriers.

In an apparent bid to exploit those concerns, RIM has repeatedly told carriers that, unlike Apple, it believes that they deserve a portion of revenues from its apps store and as well as future services. Although given the relative paucity of BlackBerry apps, the offer has relatively little financial value as of now.

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I don’t think the world’s leaders have begun to grasp the implications of unstoppable connectivity. Some people are calling this the Age of Behavior: What I do affects what you do, more directly than ever before.

Usama Hasan, a physicist at Middlesex University, will be at the conference. He grew up a British Muslim with a sense of marginalization at home and anger at what he saw overseas — particularly the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. A gifted student, he attended Cambridge University, but during a winter break went to fight with jihadists in Afghanistan in 1990. He felt sympathy with Al Qaeda after 9/11.

Then began his reversal. A spell in Pakistan in 2003 convinced him that religious leaders there were “narrow-minded and fanatical.” The last straw was the 2005 bombings in London — “I knew then I had to be more outspoken in fighting back.”

The most vulnerable groups, he believes, are young men with strong feelings of isolation and a need to right wrongs. They need charismatic mentors with simple messages: “It’s wrong to kill people, it’s wrong to hate.” Usama sees a big role for technology in spreading the word. But he insists the human is critical to stop radicalization.