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The Returning and The Leaving

Posted in Biographical, Education, mathematics, Maynooth, Politics with tags , , on August 26, 2023 by telescoper

I got back to Maynooth last night after a pleasantly uneventful train journey. Just for the record both outward and return trips were perfectly on schedule. In fact it has been a very pleasant couple of days. Congratulations to the organizers for running the meeting so well and to all the speakers for delivering such an interesting programme. Next year’s INAM will be in Galway. I’m looking forward to it already!

Anyway, now I’m back I should mentioned that the 2023 Leaving Certificate results were released to students yesterday; the first round of CAO offers will go out on Wednesday 30th. Soon after that we will find out how many students we’ll have next year. Student enrolment begins on 11th September; Orientation Week for new students starts on Monday 18th September; and lectures start the following Monday (25th). I am on sabbatical for a year from next Friday (1st September) so I won’t be teaching the new students, but I know they’ll be in capable hands.

There’s a lot of discussion – much of it poorly informed – in the media about grade inflation in the Leaving Certificate (e.g. here). This happens every year (as it does with A-levels in the UK), and its very sad that people use this occasion to publicly disparage the accomplishments of students. The students can only take the examinations that are put in front of them. Any problems with the system are not their fault at all.

This year the problem stems from a decision by Minister for Education Norma Foley to impose a condition that overall grades this year would not be lower than last year. This has led to the deployment of scaling which has resulted in an uplift of around 8%. The Higher Mathematics Leaving Certificate results also benefitted from an alteration of the marking scheme because one of the papers was deemed to be too hard. Despite this, the number of students receiving the top grade of H1 fell this year from 18% to under 11%. One might argue that this disadvantages students applying to courses that actually require mathematics compared to those that don’t.

There seems to be a widespread misunderstanding that the CAO points required for a course is somehow a measure of the level of difficulty of that course. In most cases this is not the case: having a high points threshold is basically just a way of controlling the number of students allowed in. I find the connection that has been made between grade inflation and drop-out rates extremely unconvincing. High drop-out rates in recent years are probably dominated by the pandemic, housing crisis and cost of living increases, leading to many students struggling to study effectively.

During the pandemic years, grades were inflated by including coursework rather than examinations, a change enforced because of public health restrictions. The main argument for deliberate grade inflation this year was to prevent this year’s LC students being disadvantaged with respect to last year’s. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the Government that the same argument could be used next year, and indeed forever. Fairly typically for a politician, kicking the can down the road for the next government to deal with seems to be strategy.

As a final thought, I find myself wondering what will happen to admissions at Maynooth this year. Will the decision by The Management to scrap the promised Student Centre have a big effect? And what about the further reputational harm caused by the recent furore over the Governing Authority? I suppose we’ll find out next week!

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Open Access Publishing in Astrophysics

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access on August 25, 2023 by telescoper

I’ve got a short talk this afternoon here at INAM about Open Access Publishing in Astrophysics so I thought I’d share the slides here. Among other things, the talk contains some updates about the Open Journal of Astrophysics.

The month of August has been rather quiet in terms of publishing at the OJAp no doubt because authors and referees have been taking vacations. When I managed to reconnect to the internet last night, though, I saw that revised versions of two manuscripts have been accepted so, depending on when the final versions hit the arXiv, I expect to publish a couple of papers early next week. That will take us to 98…

Update: mine was the last talk of the meeting and I overran a bit but I think it was reasonably well received despite that. Now I’m on a train waiting to go home.

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The 2023 Irish National Astronomy Meeting

Posted in Biographical, History, mathematics with tags , , , , on August 24, 2023 by telescoper

It’s been a busy day at the Irish National Astronomy Meeting, culminating with a fascinating public lecture by journalist Seán Mac an tSíthigh – bonus marks for getting the pronunciation right – and a very enjoyable shindig involving pizza and beer. There was a strong Maynooth contribution today, with excellent talks by students Noah, Saoirse, Joe & Hannah and postdocs Lewis & John. My contribution was limited to chairing a session, though I will be giving a talk tomorrow.

The only problem today was that I couldn’t get eduroam to work on the UCC campus so have only just managed to connect after getting back to my hotel, so am a bit late posting this. Anyway, here are some snaps I took on the way this morning, on the campus including a bust of George Boole.

ps. I’m sure to blog again about the public talk, but that will have to wait until I get home at the weekend.

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Go Corcaigh!

Posted in Biographical with tags , , , on August 23, 2023 by telescoper

So here I am, on an intercity train to Cork from Dublin Heuston Station, en route to the 2023 Irish National Astronomy Meeting (INAM 2023).

I’ve never been to Cork before, so I’ve been looking forward to this trip. I’ve never even been in Heuston Station before, actually. A terminus that serves the West and South, it is rather like a smaller version of London Paddington. At any rate, it’s rather nicer than Connolly in that it is more spacious and has a far better selection of places to get something to eat and/or drink.

I got to Heuston on the 115 bus from Maynooth. It’s the first time I’ve been on that bus too. I’m sure to be using that service much more in the future as it’s very convenient. It’s also very quick – just 25 minutes – and the bus I got was brand new. It was full of kids when I got on, but they all got off at Liffey Valley.

Anyway, it’s not a long journey and the train, though full, is very comfortable, so I think I’ll chill and read my book and refrain from updating until we get to our destination.

UPDATE: I arrived in Cork on time and found my hotel without difficulty. It’s sunnier and warmer here than Maynooth was this morning, so I think I’ll take a walk before finding a bite to eat.

My hotel is not as awful as its name might suggest:

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Maynooth University Library Cat Update

Posted in Maynooth with tags , on August 23, 2023 by telescoper
Catatonic

A few people have asked me about Maynooth University Library Cat (or Séamus as some people call him). I paid said feline a visit just yesterday, actually, but I could see he was busy, so I didn’t disturb him.

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Deliverance at Maynooth

Posted in Maynooth with tags , on August 22, 2023 by telescoper
Photo by Element5 Digital on Pexels.com

Just time for a quick update about the saga of Maynooth University’s Governing Authority. Today the current Governing Authority met in an emergency session. An email went around to all staff just after 7pm this afternoon from its Chair. The message begins:

Following a meeting of the Maynooth University Governing Authority (GA) today, I am writing to let you know that GA has changed its decision on the formation of the next GA to a process by which all five of the internal members will be elected by MU staff.

Thank you to Maynooth IFUT for mobilizing the academic community in Maynooth so well. And thank you to everyone who signed the petition. It just shows what can happen when you get organized. To be honest, I didn’t think GA would back down, and feared instead a full-scale industrial dispute might be looming. Fortunately, GA has seen sense and we have been spared that. However, the famous words of Churchill

We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory.

The University can now move forward, at least until the next crisis…

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Two Views of the Ring Nebula

Posted in Cardiff, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , , , on August 22, 2023 by telescoper

It’s very nice to have an opportunity, courtesy of JWST, to congratulate astronomers from my current institution (Maynooth, Ireland) and my previous one (Cardiff, UK) – as well as many others – or their involvement in stunning new observations of the Ring Nebula (aka M57 and NGC 6720), a planetary nebula. There is a full story on the Maynooth University website here detailing the involvement of Dr Patrick Kavanagh in the processing of the images and another on the Cardiff University website here about Dr Roger Wesson, who led the programme. Not surprisingly there has been a lot of news coverage about these wonderful images obtained with the NIRCam and MIRI instruments on JWST here in Ireland and in Wales and elsewhere.

A particular excuse for reproducing the pictures here is to try out the fancy “image comparison” tool on WordPress, which allows the reader – that’s you – to slide one picture over the other. Have a go!

This groovy visual shows two images side by side of the Ring Nebula. The image on the left shows the NIRCam view and the image on the right shows the MIRI image. The left image shows the planetary nebula as a distorted doughnut with a rainbow of colours with a blue/green inner cavity and clear filamentary structure in the inner region. The right image shows the nebula with a red/orange central cavity with a ring structure that transitions from colours of yellow to purple/blue. Picture credits ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, M. Barlow, N. Cox, R. Wesson

The full paper describing these observations can be found on the arXiv here.

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A Dublin Metro?

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth with tags , , on August 21, 2023 by telescoper

I have to do a bit of travelling in the second half of this week so I spent a bit of time today planning the trip, the easiest and quickest route seeming to be a bus from Maynooth to Heuston Station in Dublin and then a train from there. The only alternative, given that I don’t have a car, would have been a train to Connolly and a coach from Busáras, which would be cheaper but far slower.

Thinking about travelling it occurred to me that if I’d still been living in Cardiff I would have qualified for a free bus pass by now. I’ll have to wait until I’m 66 to get one here.

Coincidentally, when I got home I saw a news item that a team had been assembled to oversee the construction of the Dublin Metrolink. There’s nothing to get too excited about this news, as the project hasn’t yet got planning permission, and will take “6-8 years” to complete if and when it does. I’d be surprised if it’s done by 2035, actually. The question is whether it will really be a useful complement to the Irish Rail, DART, LUAS and bus services that exist already.

However, this is what it will look like:

As you can see, it’s basically North-South. The one obvious advantage is that it will at last provide a proper public transport link from the city to the airport, the lack of which is a national embarrassment.

Another thing of personal interest is the proposed new Glasnevin Station:

The Glasnevin MetroLink station is one of the most significant stations on the route. It is situated beside Cross Gunns Bridge and the Royal Canal, with a new Irish Rail station serving the Maynooth, Sligo and Kildare lines and BusConnects will also have stops close by.The complexity of the construction of this station is formidable as the aim will be to minimise the impact on Irish Rail services which is a vital part of the national rail network.

Oh dear. I sense years of rail replacement bus services and/or other disruptions if it goes ahead, and that there will be many planning objections before it even starts. If it does come to construction work, I suppose it will be easier for me to get the bus into Dublin while all that is going on. On the other hand, a link from the Maynooth line via MetroLink to St Stephen’s Green will be handy for concerts at the National Concert Hall. All of which assumes that I’m still around when this is finished, of course.

This reminds me of my trip to Copenhagen earlier this year, where I found their much more complex Metro system finished. I don’t remember how long I’ve been visiting that city and see extensive building work to do with the Metro, especially at Kongens Nytorv.

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The Women’s World Cup

Posted in Football with tags , , , on August 20, 2023 by telescoper

I couldn’t resist a short post wrapping up the 2023 Women’s Soccer World Cup after today’s victory by Spain over England. I don’t think there can be any arguments about the final: England are a good side and played pretty well, but Spain had the edge tactically and in terms of skill levels. They had a penalty saved and a shot by the excellent Paralluelo hit the post near the end of the first half. In short, the better team won.

Although Spain lost heavily to Japan in the Group stage, I think they were worthy winners of the competition overall playing some superb football on the way. The other team that I thought played particularly great football to watch was France. I felt sad when they lost on penalties to Australia in the quarter-finals, as France-England semi-final would have been a great match. I particularly admire Wendie Renard, who at 33 may have played in her last World Cup.

Although I didn’t see that many games because of the timing, I thought it was a very good competition. A particular thing struck me, that in the past there really haven’t been that many teams who had a realistic chance of winning, so many of the games were very one-sided. This time it was quite different, and there were many upsets. I never thought Germany, Canada, Italy and Brazil would fail to progress beyond the Group stage. Nor did I think USA would be out before the quarter-finals, losing on penalties to Sweden in the round of 16. I think this is an indication of a generally increase in quality and a positive sign for the women’s game.

I think a word is due for Ireland, who qualified for the finals this year for the very first time. They didn’t get beyond the group stage but in no way did they disgrace themselves. It was always going to be difficult for them to progress from a tough group with Australia, Canada and Nigeria. In the end they lost narrowly to the first two and drew with the latter. They’ll be back.

But the day belongs to Spain’s women, as does the trophy. Felicidades a Ellas!

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Defend Democracy at Maynooth!

Posted in Education, Maynooth, Pedantry with tags , , on August 20, 2023 by telescoper
Photo by Element5 Digital on Pexels.com

A few weeks ago I blogged about the decision by the Management of Maynooth University  to scrap elections to the Governing Authority of the University. This was a shock to me and many other members of the Faculty at Maynooth and elsewhere. Coming out of the pandemic, during which we all undertook countless hours of unpaid overtime to keep the University going, I think we have the right to expect more from the Management than this expression of outright contempt. If the proposal is accepted, I fear much worse things are in store.

In response, the union IFUT, of which I am a member, started a petition protesting against this decision which now has over a thousand signatures.

We call on Maynooth University to reverse their decision to instigate selection and to restore the democratic election process for all five staff representatives on the Governing Authority.

The decision by MU’s Governing Authority and senior management to replace democratic elections with a selection process, whereby they assume, with the assistance of a private recruitment firm, the responsibility of handpicking staff representatives, is an attack on basic principles of democracy and good governance.

I agree with this wholeheartedly, and have signed the petition. If you agree please consider signing the petition too. You don’t have to be at Maynooth to sign it, nor even in Ireland. The issue faced here is far wider than one institution. It’s about the fundamental issue how a public university should be governed. Maynooth needs to learn that the institution should be run by consent and not coercion. A deliberate policy of alienating the academic, administrative and other support staff that make a university what it is is not the way forward.

The current Governing Authority is holding an emergency meeting on Tuesday 22nd August, to consider the mess created by University leadership. It has a simple way out. Scrap the current plan and allow all five internal representatives to be elected. What can be controversial about that? The Management has failed to articulate any argument against elections other than, apparently, that it considers them “old-fashioned”. Insisting on selection versus election they have also refused to explain how the selection process would work. What is to stop the President loading the GA with Vice-Presidents that she herself appointed?

There’s a an article in today’s Sunday Independent that reports on the outcome of an IFUT meeting held last Friday in which members were unanimous in supporting elections for all staff representatives on the GA. It’s now up to the Governing Authority to decide whether it wants a functioning university or not.

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