Archive for July, 2013

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Open Journal of Astrophysics Revived

Posted in Open Access with tags , , , , , on July 8, 2013 by telescoper

Regular readers of this blog (Sid and Doris Bonkers) may recall that  while ago  I posted an item in which I suggested setting up The Open Journal of Astrophysics. The motivation behind this was to demonstrate that it is possible to run an academic journal which is freely available to anyone who wants to read it, as well as at minimal cost to authors. Basically, I want to show that it is possible to “cut out the middle man” in the process of publishing scientific research and that by doing it ourselves we can actually do it better. As people interested in this project will be aware, progress on this has been slower than I’d anticipated, largely because I changed job recently and have had so many administrative responsibilities that I haven’t had time to get too involved with it. The other folk who offered help have also been similarly preoccupied and some technical issues remain to be solved. However, the project has not been abandoned. Far from it. In fact, I’ve just received an update that strongly suggests we can get this idea off the ground over the course of the summer, so that it is in place in time for the new academic year.

We have a (good) website design with ample space and other resources to run it, and a significant number of persons of suitable eminence have agreed to serve on the Editorial Board. It will basically be a front-end for the Arxiv, but will have a number of interesting additional features which make it a lot  more than that.  I’d prefer to save further details to the official launch, which is now planned to take place in January (as it would probably get buried in the pre-Xmas rush if we tried to launch before then). I can also confirm that the service we will provide will be free at the start, although if the volume of submissions grows we may have to charge a small fee for refereeing. And when I say “small” I mean small, not the hundreds or thousands of pounds charged by the rip-off merchants.

There are, however, a couple of things I’d like to ask of my readers.

The first concerns the Editorial Board. I plan to contact those who offered help with this, but I’m still open to more volunteers. So, would anyone interested in getting involved – or at least thinking about getting involved please contact me via email. Also if you previously agreed please feel free to email to confirm your continued interest or, if you’ve changed your mind please let me know too.

The other thing  I would still like some ideas about is the name. I have asked about this before, but still haven’t settled on a compelling selection so I’m repeating the request here.

My working title for this project is The Open Journal of Astrophysics, which I think is OK but what I’d really like to do is break away from the old language of academic publishing as much as possible. I did think of the People’s Revolutionary Journal of Astrophysics, but feared that it might then split into Trotskyite and Marxist-Leninist factions. In any case the very name “journal” suggests something published periodically, whereas my idea is to have something that is updated continuously whenever papers are accepted. I’m therefore having second thoughts about having the word “Journal” in the title at all. Open Astrophysics might suffice, but I’m sure someone out there can come up with a better name. I know that Shakespeare said that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I think a good title might make the difference between success and failure for this initiative…

That gives me the idea of enlisting the help of the denizens of the internet for some help in coming up with a better title; given the nature of the project, this seems an entirely appropriate way of proceeding. So please engage in collective or individual brainstorming sessions and let me have your suggestions through the comments box!

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Germany Calling…

Posted in Biographical, Books, Talks and Reviews, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on July 7, 2013 by telescoper

Just a quick post to break radio silence and announce my arrival in the picturesque town of Bad Honnef, spa town in Germany near Bonn in the Rhein-Sieg district of North Rhine-Westphalia. We’re right on the banks of the Rhine actually, and there are some fine views of castles and hills to be had all round.

To get here I took my life in my hands and flew with a German budget airline called Germanwings from Heathrow to nearby Bonn-Cologne airport. I mean it’s near to Bad Honnef, not to Heathrow. Apart from the fact that I had to queue for an hour at check-in because the staff apparently didn’t know how to operate the computer system, and the flight was delayed leaving because it was delayed on the way in, it wasn’t actually too bad; we arrived only about 25 minutes late and I was able to have a few beers and some food when I arrived at my destination.

The reason for this expedition is that I’m giving two lectures at the Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft (henceforth DPG) Summer School on Inflation and the CMB. The list of other speakers is very impressive so I assume that some form of administrative error is responsible for my invitation, and especially for the fact that I’ve got to give two lectures while everyone else is just giving one…

Anyway, it’s lovely weather here – although a little on the toasty side for my cold English blood – and I hope to get the chance to take a few pictures as well as some updates from the meeting. I also hope to find out why this place is called Bad Honnef. I know I’ve only been here a few hours, but it seems to me that, as Honnefs go, it’s really not bad at all…

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Can a University be Democratic?

Posted in Education, Politics with tags , , , on July 6, 2013 by telescoper

Today I thought I’d pick up on a topic I mentioned in last week’s post about Simon Fanshawe, about University governance.

The Royal Charter which formed the University of Sussex way back in 1961 includes the following clauses:

1.         By this Charter there shall be constituted and founded a University by the name of ‘The University of Sussex’ (‘the University’).

2.         In this Charter: ‘Council’ means the Council of the University; ‘Regulations’ except when otherwise required by the context, means Regulations made pursuant to this Charter or the Statutes. ‘Statutes’ means the Statutes of the University set out in the Schedule.

3.         The objects of the University shall be to advance learning and knowledge by teaching and research to the benefit of the wider community.

…

7.         There shall be a Council of the University which shall be the governing body of the University and shall have the custody and use of the Common Seal and shall be responsible for the revenue and property of the University, its conduct and activities, and shall exercise all the University’s powers.

8          There shall be a Senate of the University which shall, subject to the general control and approval of the Council, be responsible for academic standards and the direction and regulation of academic matters.

9.         There shall be a Students’ Union of the University.

This makes it quite clear that  the Senate (on which I happen to sit) is specifically meant to focus on academic matters; see below for a comment on this.  The role of the Student’s Union is not specified at all in this document, although it should be said that there are student members of Senate and Council too.

The reason for including this in a blog post is that it demonstrates an organization formed in this way has to strike a difficult balance between, on the one hand, listening to staff and students when it comes to forming policy and, on the other, having an efficient and effective executive that can implement those policies. There are about 16,000 people working and studying at the University of Sussex (c. 13,000 students and c. 3,000 staff), most of whom are highly intelligent and independent-minded so there’s bound to be a divergence of opinion on almost any topic under discussion. Even if it were possible for everyone to get involved in the University’s governance, it’s inevitable that decisions will be made that run counter to some of the input.

Difficult balances that have to be struck in the governance of any organization, whether religious, administrative, commercial or educational. The Council of the University of Sussex is its supreme governing body and everyone who works here is in some way accountable to it. In turn, Council is accountable to its “stakeholders”, not just funding authorities and students, but the wider world; its Charter states that

The objects of the University shall be to advance learning and knowledge by teaching and research to the benefit of the wider community.

In a nutshell, a University is not a democracy. It can’t be, not unless “democracy” is defined in a very limited way. A university can employ some democratic structures, and may (for many reasons) desire to include as many people as possible in its governance, but in the end this is limited by the need for effective and efficient management. We can – and do – debate where this balance should lie, but anyone who has ever worked in a University will agree that if it were allowed to be run “democratically” by some of academic collective then the result would be a complete shambles. Democracy has to be balanced by the rule of law.

Similar issues apply further down the pecking order. Since I took over as Head of Mathematical and Physical Sciences here earlier this year, I have had a wide range of responsibilities for the School, including its finances, academic matters, and even health and safety. I’m not an autocrat, so I try to do things as democratically as possible within the constraints I have to work, but this democracy is necessarily limited. I like to keep staff informed about and involved in decisions, but I sometimes have to make decisions without any consultation at all. This can be because such a quick decision is required that there is no time to consult widely, or because there is some issue to do with confidentiality which means that it can’t be discussed in an open forum (including, e.g., email). More often, though, it is just because they pay me to be Head of School and its my job to take responsibility so staff working in the School can get on with what they are supposed to do without being inundated with requests for input from me on trivial things.

On the other hand there are things in  MPS that are extremely  democratic compared with other places I’ve worked. We have a  Joint Committee which gives students direct input into various aspects of School life. In particular, the School has ceded part of its building to form Student Spaces and given students a budget to manage them (i.e. choose furniture, equipment, etc). These are extremely popular and no doubt contribute a great deal to our healthy position in the National Student Satisfaction (NSS) Survey. I think it’s great to have students involved in this way, but we have to remember that students are not the only stakeholders in a University; we also have obligations to other bodies whose requirements may run counter to the wishes of the student body.

Anyway, these ramblings are given a bit of topicality by an item in the Times Higher recently about two student representatives on the University of Sussex Senate who resigned in protest against alleged lack of consultation by the University management. I was at the Senate meeting when they resigned, as well as the previous one where there was a lengthy discussion at which they and others were given an extremely good hearing despite the fact that the matter concerned was not to do with academic so wasn’t strictly speaking in the remit of Senate anyway.

Eventually Senate voted and the two students concerned were on the losing side. I’m sad that they subsequently decided to resign from Senate, although to be absolutely factual both were due to be replaced next academic year anyway so it was a pretty empty gesture.

The point is that democracy isn’t just about being given the chance to express your own views. It’s also about acknowledging that others might feel very differently and accepting the decision when it turns out that you lost the argument.

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Tuesday’s Child

Posted in Bad Statistics, Cute Problems with tags on July 5, 2013 by telescoper

I came across this little teaser this morning and thought I’d share it here.

I have two children, one of whom is a son born on a Tuesday. What is the probability that I have two boys?

Please select an answer from the possibilities listed in the poll below.

This is not a new problem and you can probably find the answer on the internet very quickly, but please try to work it out yourself before doing so. In other words, try thinking before you google! I’ll add a link to a discussion of this puzzle in due course..

UPDATE: Here’s the discussion that triggered this post. As you can see from the poll, most of you got it wrong!

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Prudential Negligence

Posted in Biographical, Finance with tags , , on July 4, 2013 by telescoper

It’s been a long day, but before heading home I thought I’d do a quick post to update what looks like turning into quite a saga. Not long ago I blogged about a surprise letter of condolence I received about my father’s death. It was a surprise because my Dad died nearly six years ago…

The letter I referred to above actually came from the Annuities Department of the Prudential. I didn’t name them in my previous post because I didn’t want to rock the boat, and in any case I couldn’t remember the Pru being among the list of companies I wrote to after the funeral all that time ago. In between my previous post and now I had the chance to go through my old correspondence and establish that I did, in fact, write to the Prudential soon after my father passed away. To confirm this, a few days ago I received another letter from them admitting that they received my letter in 2007 and failed to act on it. I hadn’t pursued the matter at the time, probably because I thought they would just stop the small annuity he was apparently receiving from them and that would be that. In fact it turns out some money is owed (and has been owing all this time) to my Dad’s estate and nobody at Prudential bothered to do anything about it until now. I’m not impressed.

Naturally I’m a bit cheesed off with this, as I now have to do a number of things (like getting a copy of my father’s death certificate) in order to claim the residual funds. I’ll also be expecting quite substantial compensation for the gross negligence Prudential have shown too.

However, the main reason for posting about this episode is that it doesn’t exactly inspire me with confidence about the workings of the Prudential. That’s worth bearing in mind by any academics who have taken out Additional Voluntary Contributions (AVCs) to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) in order to plan for early retirement or to make up for missing years’ contributions. You see, the USS voluntary contribution scheme is in fact managed by Prudential…

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Vanitas Vanitatum

Posted in Poetry with tags , , , on July 4, 2013 by telescoper

All the flowers of the spring
Meet to perfume our burying;
These have but their growing prime,
And man does flourish but his time:
Survey our progress from our birth;
We are set, we grow, we turn to earth.
Courts adieu, and all delights,
All bewitching appetites!
Sweetest breath and clearest eye,
Like perfumes, go out and die;
And consequently this is done
As shadows wait upon the sun.
Vain ambition of kings
Who seek by trophies and dead things
To leave a living name behind,
And weave but nets to catch the wind.

by John Webster (c. 1580- c. 1634)

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Some Day My Prince Will Come..

Posted in Jazz with tags , , on July 3, 2013 by telescoper

I’m currently sitting in my office eating a sandwich and girding my loins for three hours of appraisal training this afternoon. Just time, therefore, to post this musical gem I recently discovered on Youtube. It’s Bill Evans recorded in 1965

Miles Davis said of Bill Evans “He plays the piano the way it should be played”. I’m not going to disagree with that, because I think Bill Evans was wonderful, but keep an ear out for Chuck Israels fantastic work on bass too!

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Physics Proverbs

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , on July 2, 2013 by telescoper

I was a bit bored on the bus this morning, as it got stuck in a traffic jam, so decided to amuse myself (and probably nobody else) by thinking up physics-related versions of traditional proverbs and tweeting them (hashtag #physicsproverbs). I thought it might be fun to use them to indulge in a bit of audience participation, by asking the blogosphere to contribute their own through  the comments box below.

Here are some of my offerings:

  • Never mind the Q-factor, feel the FWHM
  • Don’t throw stones if there are periodic boundary conditions
  • A stitch in time may violate causality
  • A thing of beauty is now generally known as a bottom
  • No amplifier, no gain
  • Nothing is certain, except death and deterministic processes
  • Blood is thicker than dark matter
  • May the Devil take the Hindmarsh
  • Don’t change potentials in mid streamline
  • Angular momentum makes the world go round
  • Many a micro makes a mega
  • When the cat’s away the mice will annoy Dr Schrödinger
  • Ask a silly question, and you might well get a research grant
  • Discreteness is the greater part of granularity
  • There’s no time like t=0
  • The course of a random walk never did run smooth
  • Many hadrons make very few Higgs Bosons at CERN
  • Actions speak louder than differential equations
  • Radiation pressure makes light work
  • Don’t cast your PRLs before swine
  • Nature abhors most of the papers submitted there
  • Photons should be seen and not heard. As opposed to phonons.
  • Power corrupts. Absolute power has exactly the same effect because power is always positive.

You can see all the tweets resulting from the Twitter version of this game here.

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The Local Universe

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on July 2, 2013 by telescoper

I just stumbled across this on Amanda Bauer’s blog  and thought I’d post it here because it’s so nice. The film is by Hélène Courtois, Daniel Pomarède, R. Brent Tully, Yehuda Hoffman, and Denis Courtois and it describes the Cosmography – like geography, only more cosmic – of the Local Universe. I’m not sure there’s a consensus among cosmologists about what exactly “local” means, but I’d say it probably means out to a few hundred Megaparsecs from the observer (say up to about a billion light years) or, alternatively, with redshifts much less than unity.  That may not sound very nearby at all, but even on such scales the look-back time is sufficiently short that the effect of cosmic evolution and/or the expansion of the Universe is negligible, so when we look at objects at such distances we’re seeing them as they are “now” rather than as they were in the past, which is the case when we study extremely distant objects.

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Slow Progress for Female Physics Professors

Posted in Biographical, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on July 1, 2013 by telescoper

One of the more pleasant jobs I have to do these days is to congratulate staff in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Sussex when they get promoted, whether it be to Senior Lecturer, Reader or Professor. There has been quite a crop of promotions at all levels in the School recently, owing to the excellent contributions made by so many people to teaching, research and other aspects of the work we do.

One of the successful promotion candidates in the latest round was the Head of our Experimental Particle Physics group, Antonella de Santo, whose promotion to Professor of Physics makes her the first ever female Professor of Physics at the University of Sussex. I’m rather embarrassed to admit that, actually, as the University has existed for 51 years, but at least I can say better late then never!

Anyway, Antonella’s well-deserved success prompted me to look into the statistics of female physics & astronomy professors. I’ve already posted about how the proportion of female undergraduates studying physics as been stuck at around the 20% mark for a decade despite strenuous efforts to widen participation. A recent (2012) study by the Institute of Physics contains a wealth of statistical information about staff in Physics departments, which I encourage people to read if they’re interested in the overall issue with equality and diversity in physics. Here I’ll just pull out the figure (based on a 2010 survey) that out of a total of 650 Professors of Physics (and/or Astronomy) in the UK, just 5.5% were female. At that date about 20 physics departments had no female professors at all; that would have included Sussex, of course.

Another University, Liverpool, also recently appointed its first female Professor of Physics in the person of Tara Shears, another particle physicist. The current  Head of the  Department of Physics at Imperial Collge is Joanna Haigh, (who I thought was the first to occupy such a position until corrected by the comment below) so there are signs that career prospects are improving for female physicists, but progress is painfully slow. The first ever female Professor of Physics in the United Kingdom was Daphne Jackson, a nuclear physicist, who took up her Chair at the University of Surrey way back in 1971. It’s interesting to note that when Daphne Jackson studied physics as an undergraduate at Imperial College she was one of only two women among the 88 undergraduates in her year.

I don’t personally think that there’s a significant gender bias when it comes to the consideration of promotion cases at the University of Sussex (or at any other institution I’ve worked at), but there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that women are much more reluctant than men to put themselves forward for consideration at any level. I hope that recent successes in MPS, such as Antonella’s Professorship and Readerships for astronomer Kathy Romer and mathematician Vanessa Styles, will provide the necessary encouragement.

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