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Time for Phase 2 in Ireland

Posted in Covid-19, Maynooth with tags , , on June 7, 2020 by telescoper

Tomorrow (June 8th) sees the start of Phase 2 of Ireland’s Roadmap for Reopening. You can see that, as of yesterday, the number of confirmed cases per day is small and stable after three weeks of Phase 1, which has justified proceeding to Phase 2.

Incidentally, since the Covid-19 outbreak took hold in Ireland there have been daily press briefings by the Department of Health. Yesterday’s was the last of these: from now on the updates will be twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays. Data will still be released every day but there won’t be a press conference every time. I’ve been following these every day for three months so this will be quite a change to the routine!

Moving to Phase 2 means that most shops will be able to reopen (subject to social distancing measures being in place), people will be able to travel much further (anywhere within your own county and 20 km into another) and there will be a limited return to work (subject to the completion of various protocols, risk assessments, etc).

For us at Maynooth University there won’t be a sudden change. Staff who can will continue to work from home (which is basically everyone in the Department of Theoretical Physics) but labs will gradually reopen for research when the necessary arrangements are in place. Other than that Phase 2 will be very similar to Phase 1.

On Friday, however, the Taioseach announced that the Roadmap would be accelerated so that Phase 4, starting 20th July will, if all goes well, be the last, though measures will be in place for some time after that.

That’s good news of course but it’s all dependent on there being no second wave. As a cautionary tale, take a look at the numbers for Covid-19 Iran:

Iran has been experiencing a second wave of new cases for some time now, and this looks set to produce more cases than the first, but this has only recently resulted in an increase in daily mortality figures:

Note the lowest number of new cases per day in Iran was just under 1000. That’s far fewer than the United Kingdom, which has chosen to undo its restrictions far more rapidly in Ireland. The number of confirmed new cases in Ireland reported yesterday was just 24; in the United Kingdom the figure was 1557. In my opinion there is a strong possibility that the UK will follow a similar trajectory to Iran…

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Public Lectures?

Posted in Education, Maynooth on June 5, 2020 by telescoper

Taking a break from marking examinations and other assignments I was thinking about the next academic year. Although we’re planning to give as much teaching as possible in face-to-face form from September,  it is likely that we will have some material online. In fact I found the short video summaries I did last term were quite popular with students so I may well carry on doing them even if we were to return completely to normal as a supplement to the live experience.

Thinking about this a bit further I reckon I should put all such material on Youtube so that anyone who wants to access it can do so. I don’t think there will be a huge demand for them in the general public, but for me it’s more a point of principle. As my teaching is funded by the public purse, it seems reasonable to me that what I produce should all be in the public domain wherever possible. That obviously excludes some teaching activities (e.g. labs and tutorials) but I don’t see why I shouldn’t do it with lectures or other video content.

If you object on the grounds that students pay a €3000 `student contribution‘ to attend university in Ireland and would be annoyed if I gave away what they’re having to pay for, then I’d reply that that money is not supposed to cover tuition – just student services and examinations.

I know many of my colleagues disagree with this, so I thought I’d do another totally unscientific poll to see what others think. Not that it will change my mind….

 

 

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The Mains in Maynooth

Posted in Maynooth with tags , , on June 4, 2020 by telescoper

I don’t often post about local news but I thought for a change while I’m taking a break from examination marking I’d just mention a little local difficulty here in Maynooth.

When I woke up on Tuesday morning (2nd June) I was surprised by the amount of (stationary) traffic on the Straffan Road beside my flat. I later had to pop into the bank on Main Street and discovered that the reason was major roadworks reducing the traffic to one lane and necessitating the introduction of stop/go manual signals to replace the traffic lights. Unlike today, Tuesday was a hot day and the ensuing traffic jam caused a few frayed tempers among impatient drivers.

The roadworks are to do with the laying of a new water main, which is being done in phases. The job started down Parson Street a few weeks ago when construction work resumed (after a break for Covid-19 reasons) and gradually moved up towards the Castle. This was less disruptive than the current phase which is on Mill Street. This is the main thoroughfare from Maynooth both North to Moyglare and West to Kilcock. The works here have caused tailbacks all the way through the town. There are barriers along Main Street to enforce single line traffic which have turned the centre of town an obstacle course. This type of signal is very heavy on manpower: there must be at least 20 people standing at junctions operating the signs and signalling to each other. It’s working reasonably well, though, all things considered.

Here are a couple of snaps I took on Mill Street, first looking south towards Main Street and Leinster Street:

Here’s one looking North over the bridge towards Manor Mills shopping centre on the left:

The roadworks take up entire lane. There is no vehicle traffic visible because I took the picture just before traffic was allowed in from the bottom end of Mill Street.

I am a bit surprised that the new water main is being laid in a trench running right along the middle of one lane, rather than to the side, but I’m told that isn’t unusual in Ireland. When I asked someone the other day what the works were for he said “they’re replacing the old lead pipes”. I didn’t actually believe that there could still be lead water mains, but I’m told it is true. There has been so little public investment here that much of Ireland’s infrastructure is Victorian.

Anyway, although the constant traffic jams are a bit annoying (and noisy) it’s good that they’re doing this work. At the moment Ireland is experiencing something approaching a drought and is estimated that over 25% of the water in the system is being lost through leaky pipes.

I think that if there are no delays they should be finished by tomorrow evening (5th June) but as of this evening it seems that they still have a lot to do!

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Lá Saoire i mí Mheitheamh

Posted in Maynooth with tags , , , on June 1, 2020 by telescoper

So here I am in Maynooth where it is a lovely sunny day and a Bank Holiday. Looking back through this blog I realise that this is my third June Bank Holiday in Ireland. Tempus fugit!

To celebrate the occasion here is a picture of Maynooth University Library Cat which I took when he was on post waiting for food a couple of days ago.

The June Bank Holiday (Lá Saoire i mí Mheitheamh) in Ireland is actually the equivalent of last week’s late May Bank Holiday in the UK, in that both have their origin in the old festival of Whitsuntide (or Pentecost) which falls on the 7th Sunday after Easter. I understand Pentecost is when the Holy Spirit went down on the Disciples.

Anyway, because the date of Easter moves around in the calendar so does Whit Sunday, but it is usually in late May or early June. When the authorities decided to fix a statutory holiday at this time of year, presumably to reduce administrative difficulties, the UK went for late May and Ireland for early June. Whit Sunday was actually yesterday (31st May) so this year Lá Saoire i mí Mheitheamh coincides with Whit Monday.

Incidentally, when I was a lad, ‘Whit Week’ was always referred to as ‘Race Week’. Geordie Ridley’s famous music hall song The Blaydon Races begins “I went to Blaydon Races, ’twas on the 9th of June, Eighteen Hundred and Sixty Two on a summer’s afternoon…”. Easter Sunday fell on 20th April in 1862, so Whit Sunday was on 8th June. After raucous scenes at the Blaydon Races, they were scrapped and replaced with a Temperance Festival on the Town Moor in Newcastle which evolved into one of the largest open-air funfairs in Europe, The Hoppings, although I suppose there was any of that this year.

This year the Bank Holiday is a bit strange, what with the Covid-19 restrictions, and I still have exam marking to do, but I have decided to put the autoreply on for my work email and take the day off.

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Covid-19 in Ireland: the Pandemic’s Progress

Posted in Covid-19, Maynooth on May 29, 2020 by telescoper

I noticed last night when I was updated the numbers and graphs on my Covid-19 page that it is now 90 days since I started counting on 28th February. By way of an update here are the latest graphs (as of last night):

Mindful of a study that suggests that the general public do not understand log plots – I have had some angry messages on Twitter accusing me of deliberately misleading people by using a log axis – here are the daily updates on linear plots, first the record of new cases:

And second the recorded new deaths:

The latter appears rather noisy because of low numbers.

You may notice that these plots look a little different from those presented elsewhere (e.g. here). That is because I have treated the various retrospective corrections that have been made in a different way from others, generally by adjusting the cumulative totals but not the daily figure. For a full explanation of what I’ve done see the notes here. I also haven’t smoothed the data at all. Other representations tend to use a 7-day moving average to get rid of weekly artifacts of reporting, especially the “weekend effect” by which there appear to be fewer deaths on Saturday and Sunday.

If you don’t like log plots then you really won’t like this one, which is a plot of daily cases against the cumulative number on log-log axes:

I like this plot because I think the message is clear: it would give a straight line if the cases were growing exponentially, which was the case initially. You can see that both cases and deaths are well past this stage. In Ireland it seems the Covid-19 pandemic is under reasonably good control. According to the experts the value of the reproductive number R in Ireland is in the range 0.4 to 0.5, and it seems community transmission of the disease has almost stopped.

I haven’t left Maynooth since February so I’ve been here all through the lockdown. The overwhelming majority of people I’ve seen have been observing the restrictions. I can just think of just one occasion that was an exception, on the way into the local supermarket, when someone failed to observe the 2m social distancing when he pushed past me while I was washing my hands with the gel provided. When told by an assistant that he had to wait in line and wash his hands before coming in he refused and was then told to leave, which he eventually did after unleashing some foul language. He was obviously drunk, but probably a twat even when sober. Maynooth is a small and rather quiet place (especially when there are no students around, like now) and there may be worse issues elsewhere, but it does seem that Irish folk are behaving very sensibly.

For the record, as of last night there were 24,481 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Ireland and 1,639 people have died. That means that the number of deaths per million of population is approximately 332. That’s a lot fewer per capita than the UK (officially 553, but probably more like 900) a lot larger than, say, Denmark (which is of a similar size) which is on 98 Covid-19 deaths per million population or Norway which is on 44. The reason for the large number despite the stricter lockdown than the United Kingdom, seems to have been the number of deaths in care homes.

On this basis I’d summarise the situation by saying that Ireland hasn’t done all that well when you look at it in the cold light of day, but it could have been a lot worse. Credit is due to the medical experts for their leadership.

Another thing worth mentioning is that according to the experts the fraction of the population that has been infected with Covid-19 is probably around one per cent and is very unlikely to exceed five percent. That means that if the infection begins to spread again then it will do so with very little resistance and the exponential phase we saw in March will recur.

So what next?

Ireland is currently in Phase 1 of a the Roadmap, a programme of gradual and justifiably reduction of the restrictions imposed to halt the spead of Covid-19. Phase 2 is supposed to begin on June 8th. However, next Monday (1st June) is a bank holiday and we have very good weather at the moment – it’s about 27 °C outside as I write this. That, together with the good news from the Covid-19 data may well convince some people to forget about the restrictions and start having barbecues, go to the beach, etc. There must be some concern that this may trigger a second wave, which will at best cause delays on the Roadmap and may require a second total shutdown.

There is a thoroughly reprehensible opinion piece in the Irish Times today by Stephen Collins that on the one hand deliberately encourages mass disobedience if the government “doesn’t move to ease the lockdown measures”. Bu the government has moved to ease the lockdown measures. Quite rightly, though, the movement is slow and cautious. People need to be patient and continue listening to the experts, not people like Stephen Collins.

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From May to September

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , , , , on May 28, 2020 by telescoper

So here we are, then. The final pair of examinations online timed assessments for students in the Department of Theoretical Physics at Maynooth University have just started and the students’ submissions will come in later this afternoon. By a curious coincidence the last two comprise a 3rd Year module on Special Relativity and a 4th year module on General Relativity, both of which happen at the same time (in the reference frame of the students).

I don’t want to jinx this afternoon’s proceedings but the switch to online assessments has gone much more smoothly than I imagined it would. I’ve been keeping an eye on all of them and there have been very few problems, and those that did arise were sorted out relatively easily. I’m immensely relieved by this, as I think I’ve been more nervous during these examinations than most of the students!

After this afternoon we will have to knuckle down and get these assessments marked in time for the round of Exam Board meetings. We have been allowed an extra week to do this because grading will be a slower process than usual, especially for the kind of mathematical work we do in the Department of Theoretical Physics. We’ll have to see how it goes but I’m confident we can get the results ready by 18th June, which is the date of our (virtual) Exam Board.

After the Exam Boards we would normally be thinking of relaxing a bit for the summer, and doing a bit of research, but there’s no sign of that being possible this year.

Among the urgent things to deal with are managing the `return to work’ of staff during the various phases of the Irish Government’s Roadmap. This document does not give much detail and there are serious issues to be solved before we can even start Phase 2 (due to commence June 8th) never mind finish Phase 5 and return to some semblance of normal working.

Iontas Lecture Theatre, Maynooth University

Slightly further off, but no less urgent is the matter of how to deal with the start of the next academic year, assuming the progress of the pandemic allows this to happen at all. One of the big uncertainties is how many potential students will defer their university study until next year, which makes it difficult to predict how many students we will have to cater for.

I have to say I’m very annoyed by recent reporting of this issue in the Irish Times, which includes this:

The fact that most lectures will take place online, along with changed economic conditions facing families and inability of students to secure summer work, may make it less attractive for many students to go to college in the coming year.

The second word fact (my emphasis) is the problem, as it describes something that is not a fact at all. A lot can happen between May and September, but we are currently planning on the basis that most of our lectures in Theoretical Physics will go ahead pretty much as normal. That may in the end turn out to be impossible, e.g. if there is a second wave of infection, but at the moment it is a reasonable scenario. And even if we do have to move some or all lectures online we will still have face-to-face teaching in the form of tutorials, exercise classes and computer laboratories.

A slightly less misleading article can be found in the same newspaper here.

A couple of weeks ago, Cambridge University announced that there would be no face-to-face lectures at all next academic year. I was amused to hear a representative of that institution on the radio sounding as if he was saying that “at Cambridge, lectures have very little to do with teaching”. I think what he meant was that tutorials and other teaching sessions would still go ahead so the loss of in-person lectures was not as important as it sounded. That may very well be true of Arts and Humanities subjects, but I was an undergraduate in Natural Sciences at Cambridge (many years ago) and I can tell you the vast majority of my tuition there was in the lecture theatre.

Neither is it the case that Oxford and Cambridge are the only UK universities to have tutorials or small group tuition, but I digress…

My point is that, while I can’t promise that it will be business as usual from September 2020, it’s quite wrong to give potential students the impression that it would be a waste of their time starting this academic year. I can assure any students reading this of the fact that we’re doing everything we can to give them as good an experience as possible.

You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the newspapers!

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Educating Rita in Maynooth

Posted in Film, Maynooth with tags , , on May 24, 2020 by telescoper

Not a lot of people know that the 1983 film Educating Rita, starring Julie Walters and Michael Caine, though mostly set in Northern England, was entirely shot in Ireland.

For example, the scenes at the University in which Caine’s character Frank works were filmed at Trinity College Dublin. Here’s the facade from an early scene:

A list of many of the outdoor scenes and their actual locations can be found here.

One thing I hadn’t realised until yesterday involves the short part of the film in which Frank is on holiday in France. Here is a still from that sequence.

The setting is St Patrick’s College Maynooth!

Other scenes supposed to be in France were filmed just down the road from Maynooth, in Celbridge.

I never thought Maynooth looked particularly French, but there you go. You live and learn…

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Job Alert!

Posted in mathematics, Maynooth on May 21, 2020 by telescoper

It occurred to me that there might be among the readers of this blog people interested in a job opportunity just announced at the Hamilton Institute at Maynooth University, which exists to promote interdisciplinary research spanning applied mathematics, computer science, engineering, and statistics. Applicants from any of those areas are welcome.

There is a lot more detail including instructions on how to apply here. The deadline is at the end of September 2020.

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One down, Thirteen to go..

Posted in Education, Maynooth with tags , , on May 17, 2020 by telescoper

As I mentioned in a recent post, Saturday saw the first of our new-fangled examinations online timed assessments in the Department of Theoretical Physics at Maynooth University. Despite all the planning I was quite nervous as the time for that test approached and it wasn’t even one of my examinations on that occasion!

Happily the event went ahead without any significant technical hitches and all students who took the paper managed to upload answers.

The type of mathematical problems we set in the Department of Theoretical Physics means that students will work out their answers by hand on paper which then requires scanning and converting to a PDF. That’s not very hard to do but it’s not as easy as writing an essay on a laptop then uploading a document file which is what some subjects involve.

In this sense, I think we ask a bit more of our students than many other Departments, and I very much appreciate the effort they have made to master an unfamiliar system. That goes for the staff too – this is all new for all of us!

I thought that anything significant was going to go wrong it would do so in the first one, so the fact that nothing broke not only brings relief but also builds confidence for the thirteen further examinations we have over the next two weeks.

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Phase 1 Approaches

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

Yesterday (Friday 15th May) the Government of Ireland announced that Phase 1 of the Roadmap for relaxation of its Covid-19 restrictions would commence as planned on Monday 18th May.

This won’t make a huge difference to those people working in third level institutions because it means that anyone who can work from home should continue to do so. As you can see in the graphic above, though, some (limited) access to buildings will be available to allow staff access “to facilitate remote learning”.

Here at Maynooth University our teaching term is over and we’re into the examination period, so there is no actual teaching going on. There are exams, however, and some staff (including myself) will be going onto campus to oversee these, including sitting by their office phones in case of emergency. It is a great relief that we can do this during the examination period as things would have been far more complicated otherwise, especially for those of us who don’t have full internet access at home.

Access for this purpose will be strictly limited and in general the campus is not open. The rules for those coming into campus are quite strict. These are excerpts from the instructions sent out by the University last night:

  • Everyone who can work effectively from home should continue to do so, and non-essential travel should not be undertaken.
  • The campus is not open, and there is no general access, but you may access your office in limited circumstances if you cannot otherwise prepare for or deliver remote teaching and assessment. Approval from your Head of Department is required in all instances.
  • Always observe physical distancing of 2m and ensure thorough hand hygiene. These are key individual responsibilities to minimise the spread of the virus.
  • Employees should wash their hands when they arrive and leave.
  • Essential access will be limited to an individual’s office, provided it is not shared. If you work in a shared office, you should co-ordinate with your colleagues to make sure that you are not there at the same time.
  • There will be no general access to any shared facilities, except toilets. Toilets will be cleaned every evening, but it is the responsibility of every individual to ensure personal hand hygiene on leaving the toilets.
  • Anyone who does require access to their office should make their way directly to their office and avoid congregating in groups. Once the essential work is complete, you should leave the campus directly.

A more general ‘return-to-work’ will start in Phase 2 (in three weeks’ time) but several things related to health and safety will need to be organised before that. In the meantime I expect the Department of Theoretical Physics will continue to be empty apart from occasional visits by myself and one or two other members of staff.

Anyway, we need to take life one phase at a time. My main priority on Monday will be trying to remember where my office is, as I haven’t been there for nine weeks!

P. S. Schools in Ireland will not reopen until the start of the new school year, in August.

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