Words about Higher Education in Ireland

Posted in Education, Maynooth, Politics on May 5, 2022 by telescoper

Yesterday the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science”, Simon Harris announced a “funding and reform framework” for Ireland which you can find here (PDF).

It’s a typical neoliberal trick to tie “funding” to “reform” because that immediately sends a message that Ireland’s universities are somehow underperforming in some way other than the fact that they are grossly underfunded. The document however admits that there is a huge funding shortfall caused by lack of Government investment over many years, leading among other things to huge student-staff ratios. Perhaps it’s primarily the Government that need reform rather than universities?

That said, I do agree that if extra money is going to be sent to universities, there should be some guarantee that it is spent on the right things: not only academic staff but also, where appropriate, laboratory facilities and so on. Based on my experience in several institutions, typically over half of  university’s budget is spent on central services, some of which are excellent but others of which are expensive and not fit for any purpose at all other than wasting money and causing frustration.

As for the proposals themselves, I’d just say that it is good to have a Minister who recognizes at least some of the problems and is prepared to make positive noises about addressing them. However, the document itself is extremely vague. Look at this, for example, from the
Government’s Press Release announcing the new “landmark policy on funding higher education and reducing the cost of education for families”:

That’s it.

Since the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union, Ireland’s fees for undergraduate study are the highest in the EU and with the current cost of living crisis (including exorbitant rents) this is in need of reform.  The response however is that the Minister is “committed” only to reviewing (i.e. not necessarily reducing) the fee over some unspecified but probably lengthy timescale.

As with the other items in the “framework” there is no commitment to anything that will halt the immediate crisis currently afflicting students who are struggling to engage and academic staff whose workloads are skyrocketing. In fact I don’t foresee any prospect of material changes before I retire.

Another thing I’ll mention with deep frustration is that there is nothing in the policy about postgraduate education for which there is no framework at all in Ireland and very little funding. It seems Irish Governments just don’t think this is important aspect of what universities do.

Anyway, back to the “policy”, I know that what will actually happen depends on Mr Harris’s success in winning over cabinet colleagues so at this stage he can’t be very specific, but the media somehow dress all this nebulosity up as a policy, which it isn’t: it’s a collection of aspirations.

Warm words, perhaps, but just words nevertheless. We won’t find our for a while whether they actually mean anything.

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A Road to Living Documents?

Posted in Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags on May 4, 2022 by telescoper

A few weeks ago I posted an item arguing that the scientific paper is an outdated concept and the whole business of research publishing should change to reflect more accurately how science is actually done. I’d argued previously that

the future for many fields will be defined not in terms of “papers” which purport to represent “final” research outcomes, but by living documents continuously updated in response to open scrutiny by the community of researchers. I’ve long argued that the modern academic publishing industry is not facilitating but hindering the communication of research. The arXiv has already made academic journals virtually redundant in many of branches of  physics and astronomy; other disciplines will inevitably follow.

I thought I would explain how the Open Journal of Astrophysics represents a small move in the direction of the “living document” idea.

Recently the author of a paper we published in 2019 contacted me to explain that readers had pointed some errors in that publication and he wished to amend it to correct the mistakes, which were typographical in nature but did propagate through a number of equations though they did not affect the main results. We had dealt with one post-publication amendment in the past and we handled this one in the same way:

  1. The author sent us a new version containing the proposed revisions;
  2. The Editor checked that they were reasonable (i.e. minor and without any significant changes to the scientific content);
  3. After getting the green light the author placed a revised version on arXiv with a comment explanation the revisions (in this case v3);
  4. We changed our overlay to point at the new version.

Here is the new overlay updated this morning.

You will see that there is a note on the overlay after the abstract. There is also a comment alongside the arXiv submission and another in the acknowledgements section of the revised paper. Owing to the separation between the overlay and the arXiv it is not necessary to change the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) or any of the article metadata.

This is a lot easier than the old-fashioned method of publishing an erratum. It may not represent the idea of a living document exactly, but it does demonstrate a way of feeding back to the publication after the “open scrutiny by the community of researchers” I referred to in my quote above.

It also demonstrates that peer review, however thorough, is never perfect and having wider scrutiny can find errors a referee might not.

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Astronomical Heads Up

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on May 3, 2022 by telescoper

You may recall a great deal of excitement about three years ago concerning the imaging of the “shadow” of the event horizon of the black hole in the centre of the galaxy M87. There was so much interest in this measurement that you could hardly move without seeing this picture somewhere or other:

The question I was asked most frequently back then is that there’s a much closer black hole in the centre of our own Galaxy, the Milky Way, so why wasn’t that imaged first? The answer is that the black hole in the centre of M87 is about 1000 times further away from us than the black hole in the centre of the Milky Way – known to its friends as Sagittarius A* or SgrA* for short – but is also about 1000 times more massive, so its Schwarzschild radius is 1000 times larger. In terms of angular resolution, therfore, the observational challenge of imaging the event horizon is similar in the two cases.

I mention this because the Event Horizon Telescope team who made the above image are holding a press conference next week at ESO on “groundbreaking Milky Way results from the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration”.

I wonder what these “groundbreaking results” might be?

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A Dress Code for Physics?

Posted in Biographical, Education with tags , , , , , , on May 2, 2022 by telescoper

This image has been doing the rounds on Physics Twitter recently, accompanied by a mixture of incredulous, amused and angry comments. It’s from the instructions from the 13th International Particle Accelerator Conference (IPAC2022) which takes place in Thailand next month.

To be fair I think this dress code is only for delegates wishing to attend a special event at which the Thai Royal Family will be present, but that it is strange that it should be so “Westernized”. It seems nobody wearing more traditional formal clothing from African or Asian countries, or even Thailand itself would be allowed.

Aside from that, the highly gendered instructions would make many attendees uncomfortable. Women must wear skirts, not trousers for example. Why? I wonder if they’d allow a Scotsman wearing a kilt? It’s all very silly and not at all inclusive. I suspect this nonsense has put off a number of potential attendees.

Speaking for myself, I don’t mind dressing up a bit for special social occasions that have a dress code. At the RAS Club Dinners at the Athenaeum the dress code for men is, amusingly, “jacket and tie”. Trousers are apparently not allowed and there’s no restriction that I know of on female dress. As a matter of fact I find it a relief when the dress code for a function is formal (e.g. “black tie”) because a male person such as me then doesn’t have to think about what to put on. IG wouldn’t like to have a dress code imposed on me at work, though.

The instruction that clothing must be “crisp, neat, pressed and never wrinkled” would represent an impossible standard for most of my colleagues in physics who for the most part dress in a manner that’s more “scruffy academic” than “business professional”. I have however worked with physicists who dress at work in a wide variety of ways. One I remember always wore a three-piece suit (even at the height of summer) and another was full Goth, neither style made any difference to their ability to do research.

I have sometimes been asked by junior researchers about how to dress for things like interviews or conference talks. I wrote about this before, here.

In brief the idea of of dressing up for job interviews in academia has always seemed rather odd to me. The default style of dress for academics is “scruffy”, so it’s a bit odd that we all seem to pretend that it’s otherwise for interviews. I suppose it’s just to emphasize that it’s a formal occasion from the point of view of the interview panel, and to show that the candidates are taking it seriously. I don’t really pay much attention to what interviewees wear, other than that if they look like they’ve just been dragged through a hedge one might infer that they’re  a bit too disorganized even to be a member of the academic staff at a University or that they’re not really putting enough effort into the whole thing.

On the other hand, some people feel so uncomfortable in anything other than jeans and a T-shirt that putting on a suit would either be an unbearable ordeal for them or conflict with their self-image in some fundamental way. Neither of these are intended, so if that’s going to be the case for you, just dress as you normally do (but preferably with something reasonably clean).

I sometimes get asked whether a (male) candidate for a PhD place should wear a suit and tie forsuch an interview. Having conducted interview days for many years at a number of different institutions, my experience is that a smaller proportion do dress formally for PhD interviews than for job interviews. My advice to students asking about this is just to say that they should try to look reasonably presentable, but suit–and-tie are definitely not compulsory. I would say “smart casual” is a good guide, though I have to say I don’t really know what that is. In any case it’s unlikely the staff interviewing you will be dressed formally…

Anyway, in writing this I started to think that the world would be a better place if “business professionals” were made to dress like academics, rather than the other way round.

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Lá Bealtaine

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19, Education on May 1, 2022 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. The month of May is called Bealtaine in Irish and May Day is called Lá Bealtaine. It’s one of the so-called Cross-Quarter Days that lie halfway between the equinoxes and solstices. These ancient festivals take place earlier in the modern calendar than the astronomical events that represent their origin: for example, the halfway point between the Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice is actually next week.

A consequence of all this is that Monday is a Bank Holiday and, in keeping with tradition, the weather has taken a turn for the worse and it is pouring with rain. Nevertheless  Lá Bealtaine shona daoibh go leir!

On the corresponding days last year and the year before I was wondering about how the pandemic would pan out. Back on May 1st 2020 I didn’t think it would last until May 2021 and back in 2021 I did not forecast that we would still have over a thousand new infections every day in May 2022.  The vaccination programme seems to have done its job though and although case numbers remain high, the number of hospitalizations, ICU admissions and fatalities have not increased as in previous waves.

The Department of Health no longer gives Covid-19 updates at weekends (or on holidays) so here is the chart up to Friday 29th April:

May 1st 2021 was around 410 on the time-axis, with cases and deaths falling:

I hadn’t expected the subsequent increase to much higher levels of infection, but the ratio of deaths to cases is much lower now than it was a year ago despite the lower level of testing now.

It was announced on Friday that the Department of Health is to stop giving daily updates. I don’t know if they’re still going to put daily figures on the data hub (which is where I get them from) but if they don’t I’ll discontinue putting data on my Covid-19 page.

Anyway, yesterday’s open day went ahead without physical distancing though some staff and visitors were wearing masks. It was so busy in the Iontas Building that the hubbub made it difficult to be heard while talking with a mask on so I just dispensed with mine for the duration. Some visitors were wearing theirs though.

After tomorrow’s holiday we have four days left of teaching term then there’s a study week for the students – duyring which I’ll be marking computational projects and other assessments – and then the exams begin. For many students this will be their first on-campus examinations and we’re all a bit nervous about how they will go, but we’ll find out soon enough…

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Open Day on Campus

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth on April 30, 2022 by telescoper

Today was an Undergraduate Open Day at Maynooth University and contrary to my pessimistic expectations it was extremely busy, probably the busiest I have ever attended in Maynooth. I was told that there were 4,500 people on campus for this event which compares to a more normal figure of 3,000ish. I gather one of the reasons it was so busy was that few (if any) other Irish universities are having open days on campus this year.

Busy foyer stands in the Iontas Building

The stand in Iontas was quite busy all morning and my subject talk on Theoretical and Mathematical Physics was so well attended that the room was full and people were standing at the back. I was in the last slot of the day (as usual) so nobody else was in the lecture room after my group so I invited people to stay and ask questions if they wanted to. It ended up with 45 minutes of very interesting discussion.

This is the first of these sessions we’ve done since November 2019. Since then the entire admissions process has been disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic. There is more than a little uncertainty about entrance requirement for September 2022, but I gave the best advice I could. Talking face-to-face with real people made a very pleasant change from the webinars and pre-recorded videos we’ve been doing recently.

Anyway, I think today has been a success, though a very tiring one. It’s very exhausting trying to be nice to people. I think I’ll need the rest of the holiday weekend to recover!

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Full Focus JWST!

Posted in The Universe and Stuff on April 29, 2022 by telescoper

I just saw a very welcome news item announcing that after months of work by the relevant teams, the James Webb Space Telescope is at last completely aligned, in full focus and all the associated instruments are working well. Here is a composite of images demonstrating this:

For reference here is a glossary of the abbreviations:

(NIRISS is actually coupled within the same module with the Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) so they can be regarded as parts of the same instrument.)

Anyway, congratulations to everyone involved on this impressive achievement, which is a testament to a great deal of skill and hard work. The job isn’t over yet, of course, as there is still a great deal detailed testing and science validation to be carried out. No doubt we can look forward to some really exciting images from the commissioning period in due course!

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What would I do without this world – #PoetryDayIRL

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on April 28, 2022 by telescoper

what would I do without this world faceless incurious
where to be lasts but an instant where every instant
spills in the void the ignorance of having been
without this wave where in the end
body and shadow together are engulfed
what would I do without this silence where the murmurs die
the pantings the frenzies towards succour towards love
without this sky that soars
above its ballast dust

what would I do what I did yesterday and the day before
peering out of my deadlight looking for another
wandering like me eddying far from all the living
in a convulsive space
among the voices voiceless
that throng my hiddenness

by Samuel Beckett (1906-89)

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Girls, Physics and “Hard Maths”

Posted in Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on April 28, 2022 by telescoper

There was an appropriately hostile reaction from people who know things yesterday to bizarre comments by Katharine Birbalsingh, who is apparently a UK Government commissioner for something or other, but who seems to know very little. Birbalsingh is in charge of a school in which only 16% of the students taking physics A-level are female, whereas the national average is about 23%. She tried to explain this by saying that girls don’t like doing “hard maths” and as a consequence…

..physics isn’t something that girls tend to fancy. They don’t want to do it, they don’t like it.

There is an easy rebuttal of this line of “reasoning”. First, there is no “hard maths” in Physics A-level. Most of the mathematical content (especially calculus) was removed years ago. Second, the percentage of students taking actual A-level Mathematics in the UK who are female is more like 40% than 20%. The argument that girls are put off Physics because it includes Maths is therefore demonstrably bogus.

An alternative explanation for the figures is that schools (especially the one led by Katharine Birbalsingh, where the take-up is even worse than the national average) provide an environment that actively discourages girls from being interested in Physics by reinforcing gender stereotypes even in schools that offer Physics A-level in the first place. The attitudes of teachers and school principals undoubtedly have a big influence on the life choices of students, which is why it is so depressing to hear lazy stereotypes repeated once again.

There is no evidence whatsoever that women aren’t as good at Maths and Physics as men once they get into the subject, but plenty of evidence that the system dissuades then early on from considering Physics as a discipline they want to pursue. Indeed, at University female students generally out-perform male students in Physics when it comes to final results; it’s just that there are few of them to start with.

Anyway, I thought of a way of addressing gender inequality in physics admissions about 8 years ago. The idea was to bring together two threads. I’ll repeat the arguments here.

The first is that, despite strenuous efforts by many parties, the fraction of female students taking A-level Physics has flat-lined at around 20% for at least two decades. This is the reason why the proportion of female physics students at university is the same, i.e. 20%. In short, the problem lies within the school system.

The second line of argument is that A-level Physics is not a useful preparation for a Physics degree anyway because it does not develop the sort of problem-solving skills or the ability to express physical concepts in mathematical language on which university physics depends. In other words it not only avoids “hard maths” but virtually all mathematics and, worse, is really very boring. As a consequence, most physics admissions tutors that I know care much more about the performance of students at A-level Mathematics than Physics, which is a far better indicator of their ability to study Physics at University than the Physics A-level.

Hitherto, most of the effort that has been expended on the first problem has been directed at persuading more girls to do Physics A-level. Since all UK universities require a Physics A-level for entry into a degree programme, this makes sense but it has not been very successful.

I believe that the only practical way to improve the gender balance on university physics course is to drop the requirement that applicants have A-level Physics entirely and only insist on Mathematics (which has a much more even gender mix). I do not believe that this would require many changes to course content but I do believe it would circumvent the barriers that our current school system places in the way of aspiring female physicists, bypassing the bottleneck at one stroke.

I suggested this idea when I was Head of the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at Sussex, but it was firmly rejected by Senior Management because we would be out of line with other Physics departments. I took the view that in this context being out of line was a positive thing but that wasn’t the view of my bosses so the idea sank.

In case you think such a radical step is unworkable, I give you the example of our Physics programmes in Maynooth. We have a variety of these, including Theoretical Physics & Mathematics, Physics with Astrophysics, and Mathematical Physics and/or Experimental Physics through our omnibus science programme. Not one of these courses requires students to have taken Physics in their Leaving Certificate (roughly the equivalent of A-level).

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Euclid Launch Concern

Posted in Euclid, Politics, Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on April 27, 2022 by telescoper

I saw the following picture on Twitter. It was taken during a talk at the annual Euclid Consortium Meeting (which I am not at) and it gives a not -very-optimistic update about the timescale for the launch of Euclid.

Picture Credit: Hervé Aussel

I thought a delay in the launch was inevitable as soon as news broke of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (see here) because the original plan was to launch on a Russian Soyuz vehicle. The subsequent decision by the Russians to remove all their personnel from the launch site at Kourou (see here) made these even more likely, although according to the slide not certain.

The basic problem is that Plan B involves launching Euclid on an Ariane 6 rocket (which comes in two varieties, Ariane62 and Ariane64, with two and four payloads boosters respectively). The problems are (a) that Ariane 6 is that it hasn’t yet had its first flight and (b) Euclid isn’t the only spacecraft having to find an alternative launcher. The competition from commercial and military satellites may mean a lengthy delay to the Euclid Launch unless lobbying succeeds at a political level, which is what the last lines of the slide are about.

Being one of life’s pessimists I think a long delay is the likeliest outcome, though this is not based on any specific knowledge at all about the discussions going on and I’d be delighted to be proved wrong. I am now however seriously wondering whether Euclid will be launched before I retire!

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