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On SciPost…

Posted in Maynooth, Open Access with tags , , , on April 24, 2023 by telescoper

On of my colleagues this morning passed on details of a recent publication to put on the Twitter feed of the Department of Theoretical Physics at Maynooth. As far as I’m aware this is the first paper authored by a member of the Department to be published on SciPost, a Diamond Open Access journal.

I’ve known about SciPost for quite a while, but have been preoccupied with the Open Journal of Astrophysics (OJAp) and have not tracked its progress very closely, but I’m glad to see it going well. Its business model is very different from the Open Journal of Astrophysics but its commitment to publishing high-quality scientific papers free of charge for authors and readers alike is most commendable. Looking at the physics section I see that there are quite a few highly-cited papers among them, over a wide spread of topics, including high-energy physics. There are only a few papers in Astronomy, however- only three when I looked.

I’ve heard it said that one of the advantages of SciPost is that, because it allows authors to keep the copyright on their publications, they can post articles freely on arXiv for wider distribution without embargo or other restriction. That is true and laudable. The logic of the Open Journal of Astrophysics, however, is that most astrophysicists use arXiv as their primary source of research literature, so if you’re going to read it on arXiv why not dispense with the separate journal and just use an overlay?

Not all research areas are so wedded to the arXiv, however, and it is great that there’s a free alternative. I’m a little surprised that nobody has set up a particle physics overlay journal (yet), as the HEP community seems to use arXiv a lot. When I asked a particle physicist about this they said it had been discussed, but they decided that they were happy enough with SciPost as an OA platform. Fair enough. The important thing to me is to avoid the excessive Article Processing Charges (APCs) imposed by mainstream journals for OA publishing.

I note that the HEP community has SCOAP3, which pays for articles to appear in Open Access form in traditional journals. In other words it hides the cost from the scientists and effectively subsidizes the academic publishing industry. It is important that there are alternatives to traditional journals so that authors to have a choice whether to adopt the SCOAP3 route.

One final comment. On the Finance page for SciPost it states that the estimated average cost per paper published is €400. That’s at 2019 rates. It’s probably higher now. That cost is a lot less than a typical APC but is still about a factor of ten higher than the cost per paper for OJAp. SciPost has a large network of sponsors so it can cover this cost. The overlay model used by arXiv is much cheaper to run.

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A Draft Strategic Plan for Maynooth (via ChatGPT)

Posted in Education, Maynooth with tags , , on April 23, 2023 by telescoper

Senior managers at Maynooth University are currently engaged in the expensive and time-consuming process of compiling a new “Strategic Plan“. All universities seem to feel the need to have one of these, although I’ve never understood what purpose is served by such a document. They are all remarkably similar to one another in any case. Anyway, this is what ChatGPT produced for free in a matter of seconds in response to the query “please write a first draft strategic plan for Maynooth University”:

Introduction:

Maynooth University is a leading university in Ireland founded in 1795. The University aims to provide high-quality education to its students and prepare them for successful careers and to contribute positively to society as a whole. As a forward-thinking institution, Maynooth University recognizes the need for strategic planning to continue its legacy of excellence and ensure that it remains at the forefront of education and research.to conduct innovative research that address the challenges of the 21st century. In order to achieve its goals, the university needs to develop a strategic plan that outlines its priorities and the steps it needs to take to achieve them.

Vision:

The vision for Maynooth University is to become a world-class institution of higher education that promotes excellence in teaching, research and community engagement. The university will strive to provide a stimulating and inclusive environment that inspires its students, faculty and staff to achieve their full potential.

Mission:

The mission of Maynooth University is to provide a transformative student experience that prepares graduates to be leaders in their fields. The university will contribute to the creation and dissemination of new knowledge through its research and scholarship. It will engage with local, national and international communities to promote social and economic development.

Goals:

The following are the key goals of Maynooth University:

1. To enhance the quality of teaching and learning:

Maynooth University will provide its students with a challenging and engaging learning experience that equips them with the knowledge and skills required to succeed in their chosen fields. The university will invest in innovative teaching methods, modern teaching equipment, and professional development opportunities for its faculty to enhance their teaching skills and delivery.

2. To advance research and scholarship:

Maynooth University aims to become a leading research institution known for its excellence in research, innovation, and scholarship. The university will prioritize research funding and support for its faculty, students, and research teams. It will also invest in research infrastructure, facilities and equipment to support cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines.

3. To foster community engagement:

Maynooth University will strive to promote social and economic development through community engagement, public service, and outreach. The university will work with communities, government, and other stakeholders to address societal challenges and create positive social impact. Maynooth University will also prioritize outreach and engagement with schools, businesses, and cultural organizations in the region.

Strategies:

The following are the strategies that Maynooth University will use to achieve its goals:

  1. Develop innovative and relevant degree programs that meet the needs of employers and society.
  2. Support faculty development, recruitment, and retention to ensure that Maynooth University maintains its position as a leading research institution.
  3. Expand research partnerships, collaborations and funding through strategic alliances with other universities, government and industry.
  4. Foster a culture of interdisciplinary research, linking research with teaching and learning, and research with community engagement.
  5. Promote a sense of community and belonging among the Maynooth University community through effective communication and engagement strategies.

Conclusion:

Maynooth University is committed to providing a world-class education, conducting innovative research, and contributing to the social and economic development of communities. The strategic plan outlines the goals and strategies that the university will undertake to achieve its vision and mission. The university will continually review and update its strategies to ensure they are aligned with changes in the higher education landscape to maintain its standing as a leading institution of higher learning.

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Maynooth Open Day Admissions

Posted in Education, Maynooth with tags , , on April 22, 2023 by telescoper
The Day Before The Open Day

Well, it’s Saturday 22nd April and it’s another Open Day at Maynooth University. I was there for the similar event at this time last year, and many others before that, but others are doing it this year so I’m sitting at home drinking coffee and writing this blog. I hope it’s going well (though it is raining quite heavily as I write this).

This year’s event is in the new TSI building on the North Campus, a change of venue since last year when it was in the Iontas building. I went in there last night on my way home to have a look at the setup. Our stand was pretty bare then but it will be a bit more exciting now (I hope).

In previous years I taught the first-year module in Mathematical Physics taken by new students, some of whom recognized me from an Open Day. I won’t be teaching the first-years this September, though. I won’t be teaching anyone else this September, either, as I’ll be away on sabbatical for the whole academic year.

The real problem facing first-years, however, is that it seems that yet again this year’s Leaving Certificate results will be late. Last year, new students started a week later than returning students, meaning their teaching term was truncated. The shift from August release to September was excusable during the Covid-19 pandemic, but its continuation is a farcical and is causing huge stress for new students, arising from difficulties in finding accommodation and no time for proper induction events on top of the delayed start to lectures. Well have to wait until June to see how much all this has affected progression rates.

There was an opinion piece about this in the Irish Times last week, from an academic at Trinity, which I agree with and I think is well worth reading. Here’s a quote:

This may all have once felt like an inevitable consequence of the pandemic, but the novelty has long since worn off. Students and universities alike have been left frustrated and hugely discommoded.

The word “discommoded” is a considerable understatement. Let’s just hope that the start of next year is less chaotic than the last three. The academic year at Maynooth starts and ends a bit later than other Irish third-level institutions, so our students have only lost a week at the beginning. Elsewhere more time has been lost: two weeks at Trinity, for example. I wonder if this particular selling-point will be mentioned to prospective students at the Open Day?

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Teaching those who want to learn

Posted in Biographical, Education, mathematics, Maynooth with tags , , , on April 21, 2023 by telescoper

Yesterday afternoon I ran the last formal Computational Physics laboratory of the term. As is often the case with these sessions, the students were given a Python task to work through, with assistance available from myself and a demonstrator (and indeed other students). We have 25 students registered on this module, who are split into two groups, so about a dozen students were in yesterday’s session. That’s a comfortable number to make sure everyone can get some help.

This is the sixth year I’ve done this module, and I decided a long time ago that the best way to ensure that students learn the necessary skills is to give them things to do and let them work things out for themselves (with help where necessary). A couple of years ago, on my module feedback questionnaire, a student wrote an intended criticism along the lines of – “It’s like he expects us to learn to code by doing it ourselves, rather than him teaching us”. That is, of course, exactly what I intended, though we do give plenty of help during the labs.

Just as the best way to learn a foreign language is by speaking it, the best way to learn coding is by writing programs. Some of the students on this module have done any before, so for them the early stages of the module are rather straightforward. At least half the class, however, haven’t done any programming, so for them it’s a fairly steep learning curve.

Anyway, it being the last formal session of term this week’s task was a rather challenging one, involving the solution of a boundary value problem via the shooting method. It’s a good exercise because it brings together methods for solving ordinary differential equations with root-finding, as well as requiring some thought as to the general construction of a code that combines these two.

As expected, given the difference in background of the students, some finished this in good time, but others went more slowly. Some very excellent things happened, though, which made me very happy with the the whole experience.

One was that instead of leaving as soon as they had finished, a few of the students who had completed the task early stayed behind to help their friends. I encourage this, but it doesn’t always happen as much as yesterday. It’s called teamwork, and it’s essential not only in physics but also in everyday life.

The lab session was supposed to finish at 4pm, but not all students were done by then. Another excellent thing though was they didn’t just quit when they had run out of time. I stayed well past 4pm to help those who were determined to finish. In one case it was just a ‘0’ that should have been a ‘1’ in the index of an array that stopped it working. I don’t know why it took me so long to spot this, but we got there in the end.

One student, however, had another class at 4pm so left, only to return at five to continue. The student finally left, having completed the exercise, at about 6.45. The persistence shown by the students in refusing to be defeated was truly admirable. This harks back to a piece of advice I gave some time ago:

If you really want to develop as a physicist, don’t just solve a lot of easy problems; challenge yourself by tackling difficult ones too. Don’t be afraid to get “stuck” or make a mistake, as those are both necessary parts of the learning process. Above all, develop the confidence in your ability to take on a problem and back yourself to solve it and don’t be deterred if the answer doesn’t come quickly!

You may say that if it took some students much longer than the allocated time to finish then the problem was too difficult. That may be the case, but do you ever really learn if you’re not stretched? There is a place for straightforward formulaic tasks in higher education, but there’s much more to a university education than doing things like that.

Obviously the lab took up much more of my time as I had originally planned – more than double, in fact – but I went home pleased with a good day’s work. As I’ve said on this blog many times before, there are few things more rewarding than teaching students who want to learn.

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Student Feedback and Lecture Recordings

Posted in Cardiff, Education, Maynooth with tags , , on April 19, 2023 by telescoper

This afternoon we had a very interesting meeting about teaching in the Department of Theoretical Physics at Maynooth University, involving teaching faculty and student representatives from each year of each of the courses we offer.

It was nice that most of the feedback gathered by the student reps from their peer groups was positive. For one thing, they really like the blackboard-based teaching we use to deliver most of our modules. Most of the negative comments, however, related directly to lack of resources.

A particular concern, expressed unanimously by all the student reps at the meeting, was the lack of lecture recordings. I don’t think I am alone among the teaching staff in the Department in saying that I wish we could offer lecture recordings as routine. Unfortunately, however, and much to my disappointment, the Senior Management at Maynooth University has discouraged lecture recording as a matter of policy and has not invested in the technology required to make this possible so it is not practicable anyway.

My two previous employers – the University of Sussex and Cardiff University – both had systems in place long before the Covid-19 pandemic and all lectures were recorded as standard . I blogged about this 8 years ago, in fact. In my view the benefits of lecture capture far outweigh the disadvantages, and we should incorporate recordings of lectures as part of our standard teaching provision, as a supplement to learning rather than to replace face-to-face sessions. Every student learns in a different way and we should therefore be doing as much as we possibly can to provide a diverse range of teaching resources so that each can find the combination that suits them best. Technology allows us to do this far better now than in the past.

Some really enjoy live in-person lecture sessions, especially the ability to interact with the lecturer and the shared experience with other students, but others don’t like them as much. Others have reasons (such as disability) for not being able to attend in-person lectures, so providing recordings can help them. Others still have difficulty attending all lectures because of a dratic shortage of student accommodation. Why not in any case provide recordings for everyone? That seems to me to be a more inclusive approach.

The problem with lecture capture in Maynooth is that we will need to improve the cameras and recording equipment in the large lecture rooms to make it possible for lectures with a significant mathematical content. The existing setups in teaching rooms do not easily allow the lecturer to record material on a whiteboard or blackboard. In Cardiff, for example, the larger rooms have more than one camera, usually one on the lectern and one on the screen or whiteboard (which has to be placed further away and therefore needs to be of higher resolution). In Maynooth we only have small podium cameras in the teaching rooms. In fact I have far better facilities in my study at home – provided at my own expense – than my employer is prepared to provide on campus.

My home teaching room

I’m baffled and frustrated by Maynooth’s decision in this matter, which is generating a great deal of negativity amongst faculty and students alike. I hope The Management can be persuaded to change its mind. Persisting with the current policy would send a clear message that teaching and learning are not valued at Maynooth. Maybe they just aren’t?

P.S. The single most common inquiry I have received about the new MSc course announced recently has been whether it is possible to take it remotely. Given our lack of recording facilities, regrettably the answer to this is “no”.

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Maynooth Astronomy Picture of the Week!

Posted in Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on April 17, 2023 by telescoper
“A Stellar Sprinkler”

I think for the first time, Maynooth astronomers have been featured in the European Space Agency’s Picture of the Week. Here is the blurb from ESO:

–o–

This Picture of the Week shows the young stellar object 244-440 in the Orion Nebula observed with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) –– the sharpest image ever taken of this object. That wiggly magenta structure is a jet of matter launched close to the star, but why does it have that shape?

Very young stars are often surrounded by discs of material falling towards the star. Some of this material can be expelled into powerful jets perpendicularly to the disc. The S-shaped jet of 244-440 suggests that what lurks at the center of this object isn’t one but two stars orbiting each other. This orbital motion periodically changes the orientation of the jet, similar to a water sprinkler. Another possibility is that the strong radiation from the other stars in the Orion cloud could be altering the shape of the jet.

These observations, presented in a new paper led by Andrew Kirwan at Maynooth University in Ireland, were taken with the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument at ESO’s VLT in Chile. Red, green and blue colours show the distribution of iron, nitrogen and oxygen respectively. But this is just a small fraction of all the data gathered by MUSE, which actually takes thousands of images at different colours or wavelengths simultaneously. This allows astronomers to study not only the distribution of many different chemical elements but also how they move. 

Moreover, MUSE is installed at the VLT’s Unit Telescope 4, which is equipped with an advanced adaptive optics facility that corrects atmospheric turbulence, delivering images sharper than Hubble’s. These new observations will therefore allow astronomers to study with unprecedented detail how stars are born in massive clouds like Orion.

–o–

There’s also a little video showing how the picture was made using MUSE:

Congratulations to Andrew Hirwan and supervisor Emma Whelan from the Department of Experimental Physics for this coup!

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The Other Side of Easter

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth with tags , on April 16, 2023 by telescoper

I haven’t been reading my work email for a few days as I’ve been working from home during the recent Easter mini-break and wanted to catch up on a few things without too many distractions. Having to return to campus tomorrow, however, I decided with some trepidation to see what had accumulated in my inbox while I wasn’t looking and got a rather pleasant surprise.

Just before Easter I mentioned that I had been granted a half-year sabbatical for next academic year. Well, reading my email this morning I found a letter saying that it had been decided to change that to a full year, which is what I originally requested:

The period of sabbatical leave granted is from 1st September 2023 to 31st August 2024.

So having spent a bit of time thinking about how to spend the reduced period, I’m now back to square one (but in a good way). I’m not sure why the powers that be changed their mind on this. Perhaps they’re even keener to get me out of the way than I thought?

The revised schedule means that I will still be around in Maynooth for the August repeat examinations (and marking thereof), but I hope to leave shortly after that is all done and dusted. I’m sure I will miss the teaching next year, but I’m looking forward to being able to concentrate on research and to working in a different environment for a time.

All this means that we will shortly have an advertisement for a sabbatical replacement lecturer in the Department of Theoretical Physics at Maynooth University to cover my teaching while I’m absent. Watch this space. Obviously I will help advertise the position, but I can’t play any further role in the recruitment process.

Anyway, the immediate focus of my attention will be the remaining three weeks of teaching for this Semester. I have a couple more Computational Physics laboratory sessions to organize, as well as the final batch of lectures for Advanced Electromagnetism. That will be followed by an intense period of grading project work, revision lectures, and finally correcting examination scripts. The Examination Period in Maynooth starts on Friday 12th May, but the two with which I am directly involved take place on Thursday 18th and Saturday 20th.

But for now, back to my inbox…

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Why Are Universities So International?

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth on April 15, 2023 by telescoper

This is an interesting post about internationalization in universities. The Faculty in the Department of Theoretical Physics at Maynooth provides a good illustration. It includes seven people, only two of whom were born in Ireland. The others were born in the Netherlands, Norway, Czech Republic, USA and UK. The blog post says there are two reasons why universities are so international: specialization and diversification. Both of these do apply, but there is a third reason, which concerns personal life, love, the pursuit of happiness, politics, and so on. I gave my reasons for moving to Ireland here.

The personal dimension shouldn’t be ignored, though it is much more complex than the others. Academics are people after all.

4gravitons's avatar4 gravitons

Worldwide, only about one in thirty people live in a different country from where they were born. Wander onto a university campus, though, and you may get a different impression. The bigger the university and the stronger its research, the more international its employees become. You’ll see international PhD students, international professors, and especially international temporary researchers like postdocs.

I’ve met quite a few people who are surprised by this. I hear the same question again and again, from curious Danes at outreach events to a tired border guard in the pre-clearance area of the Toronto airport: why are you, an American, working here?

It’s not, on the face of it, an unreasonable question. Moving internationally is hard and expensive. You may have to take your possessions across the ocean, learn new languages and customs, and navigate an unfamiliar bureaucracy. You begin as a temporary resident, not…

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Newsflash – New MSc Course at Maynooth!

Posted in Education, mathematics, Maynooth with tags , , on April 8, 2023 by telescoper

I know it’s the Easter holiday weekend but I couldn’t resist sharing the exciting news that we have just received approval for a brand new Masters course at Maynooth University in Theoretical Physics & Mathematics. The new postgraduate course will be run jointly between the Departments of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics & Statistics, with each contributing about half the material. The duration is one calendar year (full-time) or two years (part-time) and consists of 90 credits in the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS). This will be split into 60 credits of taught material (split roughly 50-50 between Theoretical Physics and Mathematics) and a research project of 30 credits, supervised by a member of staff in a relevant area from either Department.

This new course is a kind of follow-up to the existing undergraduate BSc Theoretical Physics & Mathematics at Maynooth, also run jointly . We think the postgraduate course will appeal to many of the students on that programme who wish to continue their education to postgraduate level, though applications are very welcome from suitably qualified candidates elsewhere.

Although the idea of this course has been on the cards for quite a while, the pandemic and other issues delayed it until now. This has so recently been agreed that it doesn’t yet exist on the University admissions webpages. This blog post is therefore nothing more than a sneak preview. There isn’t much time between now and September, when the course runs for the first time, which is why I decided to put this advanced notice on here! I will give fuller details on how to apply when they are available. You will also find further information on the Department’s Twitter feed, so if you’re interested I suggest you give them a follow.

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Ceci n’est pas un tapis de souris

Posted in Art, Education, Maynooth on April 7, 2023 by telescoper
It is now…

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