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Not the Euclid Consortium Meeting

Posted in Biographical, Euclid, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on May 4, 2020 by telescoper

It’s a bright sunny Bank Holiday Monday and I’m here in my flat in Maynooth taking a coffee break before resuming work from home.

Before the Covid-19 outbreak started I had imagined that I’d be spending this week (or at least most of it) in Sitges near Barcelona for the annual Euclid Consortium Meeting which was planned to take place there. That has understandably been cancelled and replaced with a virtual meeting. Yet more Zoom sessions beckon…

Over the past weeks my workload has increased enormously but I’ve tried to clear the decks a little so I can tune in to some of the sessions but I won’t be able to make them all or even most.

I hope the virtual meeting goes well. Euclid is due to be launched in 2022 so time is getting short and there is much preparatory work still to do.

Well, talking of work I better get back to it! The first plenary is not until this afternoon and I’ve lots to do before then.

I wonder if normality will have returned in time for there to be a Euclid Consortium Meeting next year?

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Testing YouTube

Posted in Biographical, mathematics, YouTube with tags , , on May 3, 2020 by telescoper

To do something a bit different during this Covid-19 lockdown I decided to set up my very own YouTube channel to which you may (or may not) wish to subscribe.

I’m new to this so I posted a short video to test how it works. It’s a little video explainer about Cramer’s Rule in linear algebra I made using Screencast-o-matic. I’ve done a lot of these over the past few weeks but they’re not what the channel is about: I posted this example is just to try out the system (mainly to see how long the upload would take).

I put this up yesterday and I’ve already amassed five subscribers so I’m well on the way to becoming a YouTube sensation. I may even become viral so please ensure that you practice social distancing while watching the videos.

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The 5km Limit

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19, Maynooth with tags , , , on May 2, 2020 by telescoper

Since the Covid-19 restrictions were imposed over a month ago I’ve been confined to within a 2km radius of my home.

Yesterday, however, the Taioseach Leo Varadkar announced that is being relaxed to a 5km limit. Eager to see what thrilling new horizons would unfold as a result of this announcement I checked on a phone app and found this:

Great. So now I can visit a little bit of Leixlip, a little bit of Celbridge, or an even smaller bit of Kilcock.

I can barely contain my excitement.

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Mayday!

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19, Maynooth with tags , , on May 1, 2020 by telescoper

Today, 1st May, Beltane (Bealtaine in Irish) is an old Celtic festival that marks the mid-point between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice. It’s one of the so-called Cross-Quarter Days that lie exactly halfway between the equinoxes and solstices. These ancient festivals have been moved so that they take place earlier in the modern calendar than the astronomical events that represent their origin: the halfway point between the Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice is actually next week…

Anyway, let me offer a hearty ‘Lá Bealtaine sona daoibh‘!

Today is also the day that the Irish Government decides whether to extend the restrictions arising from the Covid-19 outbreak due to end on May 5th (May 4th is a Bank Holiday). All the signs are that they will and indeed that they should.

We are told that the decision will be based on five measures.

The ‘criteria’ being quoted are:

  1. the progress of the disease;
  2. healthcare capacity & resilience;
  3. testing & contact tracing capacity;
  4. ability to shield & care for at-risk groups;
  5. the risk of secondary morbidity & mortality due to the restrictions themselves.

These aren’t really criteria of course as they don’t set a standard by which performance will be measured. My own amateurish attempts to keep track of the data show that while new cases are falling slowly (the value of the R-number is in the range 0.5-0.8) the rate of deaths remains roughly constant:

If you look at the world data on Covid-19 you will see that it’s a global phenomenon that the timescale for the spread to decrease is much longer than that for the initial increase. That means that loosening control too early will simply precipitate another rapid spread which in turn will require another lengthy lockdown.

The rate of hospital and ICU admissions is not falling significantly either. This may be because over the past weeks an increasing number of infections have occurred in care homes among elderly patients who are much more vulnerable to serious illness than the general population.

I can’t see any evidence from this that would support an argument for starting to end the lockdown anytime soon, and that’s before considering the other points. Testing, for example, is definitely not yet up to speed.

When it first started I told my colleagues that it wouldn’t start to unwind until June and I’m sticking with that.

It’s worrying though that there are signs that some individuals are taking it upon themselves to relax the restrictions. There is definitely more traffic (both vehicular and pedestrian) than there was a few weeks ago here in Maynooth. The question arises that if the lockdown is extended will it just become less effective as more people flout it? I think if it is going to be extended the Gardaí will have to get much tougher.

Although I’m very worried by the prospect of things dragging on I do at least get the impression that the Irish Government is doing its best not only to deal with Covid-19 but also to be honest about the situation, to the extent of owning up to its failures. The situation is very different on the other side of the Irish Sea, where the daily UK Government briefings are transparent only in their abject dishonesty.

UPDATE: to nobody’s great surprise the current restrictions will stay in place until 18th May, after which there will be a phased relaxation. For more details see here.

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Exceptional Moods?

Posted in Biographical, Mental Health with tags , , on April 20, 2020 by telescoper

The other day I came across the following excerpt from The War Of The Worlds by H. G. Wells:

Perhaps I am a man of exceptional moods. I do not know how far my experience is common. At times I suffer from the strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it all from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all.

This passage struck me very forcefully because it captures what it feels like to experience depersonalisation disorder. I wrote about my own experiences of this about three years ago.

In my own case the depersonalisation was, I think, a side-effect of medication I took to deal with an anxiety condition that has plagued me off and on for many years.

In recent weeks I have often felt strangely detached in the same way as before, but I haven’t been on medication for nearly three years now so that’s not the cause this time.

Perhaps it is just the social distancing and the general stress caused by the Covid-19 outbreak that is causing it?

If so there is probably quite a number of people out there feeling the same way.do maybe these moods aren’t really exceptional?

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Covid-19: the next steps

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19, Education, Maynooth with tags , on April 16, 2020 by telescoper

The Irish Government’s information booklet about Covid-19

Although we are currently in what is meant to be the Easter holiday the new normal continues in the form of a plethora video conferences and email exchanges punctuated by the occasional bit of rest and relaxation. We’ve even got a virtual seminar tomorrow and a virtual Open Day on Saturday 25th April to add to the fun.

One of the things making life stressful for academics these days is uncertainty about the future. Will the current lockdown actually end on May 5th? Will our plans for remote examinations work out OK? Will the Leaving Certificate actually go ahead this summer? When will the next academic year begin?

None of these issues is on the same scale as those confronting health workers and others on the front line fighting this pandemic, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t causing anxiety.

My own view is that we need to concentrate as far as possible on the next step and not get carried away by the ifs and buts about what comes after. There are too many imponderables on the horizon, so just focus on what you can control. We have three more weeks teaching here at Maynooth before the end of the Semester so let’s do that as well as we can. After that there is the exam period so let’s try to get through that with as few glitches as possible. We’ll just have to cross other bridges when we come to them.

For myself, I am sceptical that there will be any reduction of the current restrictions on May 5th and if there is, it will be slight at first. As the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said today relaxation of the lockdown will take places gradually over a number of months. As a physicist I see the change being rather like an adiabatic process, carried out in quasi-static fashion in a series of reversible steps…

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The Oldest Tree in Ireland

Posted in Biographical, History, Maynooth with tags , , , , , , on April 15, 2020 by telescoper

Regular readers of this blog – both of them – will know that I’ve developed a habit during the current lockdown of talking walks around the South Campus of Maynooth University in order to get a bit of exercise.

I’ve noticed a bit of a side effect of strolling around the environs of the old College, though, which is that I always return home sneezing. I’ve never really been susceptible to hay-fever before, but I reckon this is a reaction to tree pollen. It’s the right season for that, and there are many trees about.

Last night I was idly googling around in an attempt to identify the types of tree I would encounter on my wanderings and during the course of that I accidentally came across something fascinating.

This Yew tree stands near the main entrance to Maynooth University campus.

It’s not a particularly tall specimen and I’ve walked past it hundreds of times without paying attention to it. It is however generally believed to be the oldest tree in the Republic of Ireland (there is one tree, another Yew, possibly older, in County Fermanagh.) The tree in Maynooth germinated (or was planted) around the year 1267 ± 50, which makes it around 753 ± 50 years old.

The timing is interesting because it means that the tree is roughly the same age as Maynooth Castle and the old church. In this picture you can see the Yew tree on the left, with the church on the right and the remains of the Castle in the background:

Here’s a better picture of the Castle from another direction. Only a few bits of wall, the gatehouse and solar tower remain. The Castle was damaged and subsequently surrendered after a siege in 1535 (see below) then reoccupied only to be largely dismantled in 1647, whereafter it fell into ruin.

The tree is often called the “Silken Thomas Tree” after Thomas Fitzgerald, the 10th Earl of Kildare, who led a rebellion against the English authorities during the time of Henry VIII. He acquired the nickname “Silken Thomas” because of the ribbons of silk worn by his supporters. Needless to say, the rebellion failed and his family castle was destroyed. Thomas surrendered, throwing himself on the mercy of the King. That went exactly as well as you might have expected: Thomas was executed, along with several members of his family, in 1537.

The tree, of course, pre-dates Silken Thomas by three centuries, but legend has it that he played a lute under the boughs of the tree the night before he surrendered to King Henry VIII.

All that is quite interesting but doesn’t answer the question of which trees make me sneeze…

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R. I. P. John Conway (1937-2020)

Posted in Biographical, mathematics with tags , , , on April 12, 2020 by telescoper

I’ve just heard the sad news that that mathematician John Horton Conway has passed away at the age of 82.

John Conway made very distinguished contributions to many areas of mathematics, especially topology and knot theory, but to many of us he’ll be remembered as the inventor of the Game Of Life. I’ll remember him for that because one of the very first computer programs I ever wrote (in BASIC) was an implementation of that game.

It’s a great illustration of how simple rules can lead to complex structures and it paved the way to a huge increase in interest in cellular automata.

I think he got a bit fed up with people just associating him with a computer game and neglecting his deeper work, but he deserves great credit for directly or indirectly inspiring future scientists.

Rest in peace John Conway (1937-2020).

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Testing Times

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19 with tags , , on April 12, 2020 by telescoper

Today is April 12th which means, astonishingly, that it’s just one month since Ireland went into the first stage of its current lockdown. I say “astonishingly” because it seems much longer ago than that!

I know I’m not the only person who is finding it difficult these days to keep track of the passage of time. The lack of a regular routine seems to be the reason. The solution, I imagine, is to try to impose a timetable on yourself rather than have it imposed upon you by someone else. I’ve only been partially successful in that, probably because I lack the necessary self-discipline. Still, somewhat to my surprise, I am not having any significant problems sleeping.

Anyway talking about testing times, I wanted to make a quick comment on the Covid-19 situation in Ireland. I’ve been keeping track of the statistics on my page here, which I shall continue to update as things develop. The latest plot is as follows.

The last two points in the orange curve show a bit of a spike. That is because they include the results from a batch of about 6000 swabs sent for testing to Germany. These should be apportioned to earlier dates but lacking the information needed to do this in a sensible way I’ve just plotted them when the results were received (Friday and Saturday). This also means that the slight inflection in the blue curve is not real, but it doesn’t change the general picture significantly.

This is a manifestation of a major difficulty that the authorities in Ireland are facing, which is the capacity to do coronavirus testing in sufficient numbers and sufficiently rapidly to enable contact tracing in real time which is needed to further control the spread of this disease. At present only around two thousand tests per day are being done, which is inadequate.

Although the recent upward blip is an artefact, the fact remains that there is no evidence that the number of new cases is reducing sufficiently quickly for the relaxation of the rules to be considered feasible. There is a real danger that if the number of new cases does not stop falling soon, the number of patients needing intensive care will exceed the resources available.

Anyway, I reckon things will stay as they are until June at the earliest, so we’ll just have to get used to it!

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Winging IT

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19, Education with tags , , , , , on April 2, 2020 by telescoper

The current restrictions resulting from the Covid-19 outbreak have forced many of us academics to adapt to using IT in ways we hadn’t even imagined just a month ago. It’s not only remote teaching via virtual learning environments with live and/or prerecorded video lectures, but also meetings held by videoconferencing platforms such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams.

Few of us have had much training in the use of these things, so when it comes to Information Technology we’re all winging it. Still, necessity is the mother of invention and we just have to get on with it.

I’m gradually getting used to Microsoft Teams, for example. I’ve even got proper kit to wear.

Incidentally, yesterday I learned that the expression ‘to wing it’ actually comes from the Theatre, where it alludes to an actor studying their lines in the wings (at the side of the stage) because they haven’t had time to learn their part before the performance (usually because they are replacing another actor at short notice).

Nowadays ‘winging it’ means generally improvising or making it up as you go along. I’m finding winging it to be rather hard work but quite fun, actually. While we’ve been trying to flatten the Covid-19 curve the learning curve has definitely been getting steeper.

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