A Day of Computing

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , on February 3, 2022 by telescoper

Last Semester, Thursday was what I optimistically called a “Research Day” (on the basis that I had no teaching on it). This Semester it’s one of my busiest teaching days, with lecturing in the morning and a lab session in the afternoon, both for Computational Physics.

For most of the last two years I’ve been delivering the lectures and running the lab remotely, but now that we’re back teaching face-to-face I gave the lecture in person and was in the lab with the class for this afternoon’s session. I’ve got about twice as many students this year as last year swill be running two lab sessions (one next Tuesday repeating the material from the Thursday one, and so on throughout the term).

Running the lab remotely worked reasonably well because Python is available to download for free and works on a standard Windows-based PC. In the lab however we use a Linux (Ubuntu) system, which gives the students the chance to try a different operating system (and one which is for many purposes better than Windows).

It’s good to be back running the computing laboratory class in person but I was a bit nervous this morning because since I last did it that way the machines we have in our laboratory have all been upgraded to a new operating system and have a new (and very different) version of Python (3.9 versus the now obsolete 2.7). I’ve been around long enough to realize that things can go wrong in such situations, so I warned the class during this morning’s lecture that there might be teething troubles. Sure enough we had quite a few technical glitches but, to be honest, it it could have been a lot worse. Next Tuesday’s lab should be a bit less stressful as we’ve fixed a few of the things that went wrong.

So, by no means a disaster, but a busy and quite stressful day. Time to go home and relax.

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A Century of Ulysses

Posted in Biographical, Literature with tags , on February 2, 2022 by telescoper

 

When I woke up this morning the radio reminded me that today, 2nd February 2022, is the centenary of the first complete publication of  Ulysses by James Joyce. It had been published in installments before that, but it took a publisher in Paris to bite the bullet and publish the whole thing. The publication date also happened to be the 40th birthday of the author.

I have toyed with the idea of going into Dublin on Bloomsday (16th June, the day on which Ulysses is set) and wandering about some of the locations described in, but what with work and lockdowns I haven’t got round to it.  Maybe this year will be the time!

Or perhaps instead I’ll prepare dinner this evening in a style that Leopold Bloom would enjoy:

He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with breadcrumbs, fried hen cod’s roe. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

Or perhaps not.

If you haven’t read Ulysses yet then you definitely should. It’s one of the great works of modern literature. And don’t let people put you off by telling you that it’s a difficult read. It really isn’t. It’s a long read that’s for sure -it’s over 900 pages – but the writing is full of colour and energy and it has a  real sense of place. It’s a wonderful book.

(There’s also quite a lot of sex in it….)

I’ve read Ulysses twice, once when I was a teenager and again when I was in my thirties. I then lent my copy to someone and never got it back. The copy shown above is a new one I bought last year with the intention of reading the novel again now that I live in Ireland but I sadly have not had the time yet. I will, though.

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Back to Electromagnetism

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on February 1, 2022 by telescoper

So today I gave my first lecture of the new Semester, it being a gentle reintroduction to Maxwell’s equations for a 4th-year class on Advanced Electromagnetism. They have seen these equations before but it doesn’t do any harm to spend a bit of time refreshing the memory. In what follows I do some potential theory, applications to electrostatics (method of images, multipole expansions, use of the complex potential, etc), dielectric materials and polarization, magnetostatics, relativistic formalism of electromagnetism, gauge invariance, electromagnetic radiation and energy transport, and (if time) plasma physics (if time).

When I taught this module last year I did it all remotely from home – using the blackboard shown above – but this year until further notice I’ll be doing it in person in an actual lecture theatre, though I will be recording the lectures in case any students wish to look at them again for revision, etc, and webcasting them for any students unable to attend on campus. I know there are differences of opinion on this, but I think recording of lectures should become routine practice – as it is in all UK universities I’m aware of – but that is difficult here in Maynooth because the equipment available is inadequate (by which I mean virtually non-existent). Let’s hope the necessary investment will be made at some point.

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All Change for Semester Two!

Posted in Covid-19, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on January 31, 2022 by telescoper

So here we are, then, at the start of Semester Two at Maynooth University. When I arrived in the Department of Theoretical Physics I noticed a few differences:

August 2020 versus January 2022

All the signage relating to physical distancing has been removed. We are no longer required to observe 2m spacing between individuals in labs or anywhere else. That solves my potential problem about constraints in the Computational Physics lab (to the left of the picture).

Our little kitchen is also now back in operation so we can share that space for lunch or coffee, sitting around the table which has now been put back in place. Staff meetings can be held in person, though the meeting of Academic Council I have to attend this afternoon will still be via Teams. I don’t actually start teaching until tomorrow and will be in the office most of the day so will have to wait until tomorrow until I find out how busy the campus seems; we expect there to be more students around than last term.

Students are still to wear face coverings in lectures etc but other than that all restrictions seem to have gone, including those on eating and social spaces on campus. Everyone seems to have decided that this pandemic is all over. Only time – and perhaps the next coronavirus variant – will tell whether they are right.

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Bloody Sunday Remembered

Posted in History, Politics with tags , , , on January 30, 2022 by telescoper

I’ve been a bit busy today catching up on the backlog caused by my recent incapacity so I’ll just post a quick item to mark the 50th anniversary of the Bogside Massacre which took place on Bloody Sunday (30th January 1972) in Derry as British paratroopers opened fire on a civil rights demonstration. For more information see here.

I’m old enough to remember the news of this at the time and the widespread coverage of this event on the media today brought back a lot of memories. I certainly didn’t think then that, fifty years on, none of the soldiers who murdered these civilians would have been brought to justice.

Thirteen people people died that day, and another died of his wounds some months later. Their names are:

Patrick (‘Paddy’) Doherty (31)
Gerald Donaghey (17)
John (‘Jackie’) Duddy (17)
Hugh Gilmour (17)
Michael Kelly (17)
Michael McDaid (20)
Kevin McElhinney (17)
Bernard (‘Barney’) McGuigan (41)
Gerald McKinney (35)
William (‘Willie’) McKinney (26)
William Nash (19)
James (‘Jim’) Wray (22)
John Young (17)
John Johnston (59) – shot twice and later died on 16 June 1972

May they rest in peace, and may their murderers not.

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New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , on January 29, 2022 by telescoper

It’s time yet again to announce a new publication in the Open Journal of Astrophysics! This one is the 2nd paper in Volume 5 (2022) and the 50th in all. We actually published this one a couple of days ago I’ve only just got around to announcing it now.

It’s very nice to mark our 50th publication with two firsts: (1) this is the first ‘Citizen Science’ paper we have published; and (2) it is the first paper in the folder corresponding to the arXiv section on Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP).

The latest publication is entitled The CosmoQuest Moon Mappers Community Science Project: The Effect of Incidence Angle on the Lunar Surface Crater Distribution and is written by Matthew Richardson (Planetary Sciences Institute, Tucson = PSI), Andrés A. Plazas Malagón (Princeton & Astronomical Society of the Pacific=ASP; corresponding author), Larry A. Lebofsky (PSI), Jennifer Grier (PSI), Pamela Gay (PSI & ASP), Stuart J. Robbins (Southwest Research Institute) and The CosmoQuest Team.

Here is a screen grab of the overlay which includes the abstract:

You can click on the image to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the arXiv version of the paper here. As I mentioned above this is the first publication in the folder marked Earth & Planetary Astrophysics.

There is a nice twitter thread by the corresponding author explaining what the paper is about:

If you click on the above it will take you to the rest of the Twitter thread.

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Back Pain

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth with tags on January 28, 2022 by telescoper

I broke a 170-day blogging streak yesterday (Thursday) by failing to post anything. The reason for this lapse was that on Wednesday evening I started to experience very painful back spasms which carried on all night and made it almost impossible to get any sleep. It seems only very slight movements would trigger one of these, so it wasn’t just getting into and out of bed that caused problems: even adjusting my sleeping posture triggered a stabbing pain. Getting out of bed involved various abortive attempts to twist and slide into a position from which I could stand before finally managing to find one that minimised the pain. Standing up was OK, but the transition to sitting or lying, or walking, was perilous. As was getting dressed…

I had to be on campus in the morning so I made my way there gingerly and did what I had to do, but sitting in a chair was even more difficult than lying down, and I wasn’t getting anything useful done, so I decided to go home, try to get some rest and hope a bit of natural healing would mend whatever had gone wrong.

I’ve had such spasmodic attacks before though it has been a while since the last one, and they haven’t usually been quite so painful. In the past they’ve usually lasted just a few days and I hoped that would be the case this time too, especially because I have to start teaching on Monday! Luckily that seems to be true, as this morning I found I could get out of bed much more easily than yesterday. I am still getting twinges but, fingers crossed, I think it will pass.

As to what brought this all on, I have no idea.

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The Complex Heart of the Milky Way

Posted in Art, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on January 26, 2022 by telescoper

I couldn’t resist sharing this amazing radio image of the Galactic Centre made using the South African MeerKAT radio telescope:

Radio frequency electromagnetic radiation is able to penetrate the dust that permeates this region so can reveal what optical light can not. In particular you can see the very active region around the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, bubbles caused by exploding stars and – most interesting of all – a number of magnetized filamentary structures.

It’s an extraordinarily beautiful picture made from a mosaic of 20 separate observations. In fact I like it so much I’ve cross-filed it in my “Art” folder. Those of us who work in astronomy or astrophysics are wont to say that there’s much more to it than pretty pictures, but when one like this comes along we’re all sure to geek out over it!

For more information about this image at the science behind it, see here.

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Maynooth University Library Cat Update

Posted in Maynooth with tags on January 26, 2022 by telescoper

It’s been a while since I’ve posted an update about Maynooth University Library Cat so I’m taking the opportunity provided by our return to campus to correct that omission. In a nutshell, said feline seems to be in good health and is well nourished. I visited him at his usual spot on Monday afternoon in order to give him some food but he had already dined and was in the process of departing for a post-prandial walkabout.

I realized when I watched him toddle off into the distance that he is such a creature of habit that he has worn away a path through the grass. I think it’s visible on this picture. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to spot where he is.

Incidentally the magpie to the left of the picture is another regular visitor to Library Cat’s spot – to eat any leftovers from his dish. It’s a waste of time leaving food out for him when he’s not there as the birds get it all.

Anyway, here’s a more conventional picture so you can see he looks well:

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Starting Back Again

Posted in Covid-19, Education, Maynooth on January 25, 2022 by telescoper

So. The Examination Period at Maynooth University is over and the students are having a bit of a break before we start teaching again next Monday, 31st January. In the meantime we have to finish the examination marking and prepare for the new term. I’ve actually been on campus for part of the last two days, as have a few of my colleagues though there aren’t many students around.

Yesterday we received the expected guidance on how teaching will proceed based on the Government’s decision on Friday to relax most Covid-19 related restrictions. The one big change that I really expected was that large lectures (to audiences of 250+ students) would resume on campus, but it seems that will not happen until half-term. Presumably that’s because many Departments had planned on the basis of these being online and were caught on the hop by the abrupt change. It was at half-term in 2020 that we entered the first lockdown so it will be two full years until we completely re-open (assuming there are no setbacks).

This makes no difference to Theoretical Physics however as we don’t have any classes with more than 250 students in them.

Another thing to have changed is the staggered start of lectures. In the Good Old Days all lectures at Maynooth started at five past the hour and ended at five to and were consequently 50 minutes long. Last term rooms were designated to have lectures starting at 10 past or 5 past and and lectures were reduced in length to 45 minutes so would finish either at 5-to or 10-to. This was to avoid having large numbers of students mingling in foyers and corridors at the start and end of lectures.

Semester 2 will have a full 12 weeks of teaching too, as we won’t miss the first week like we did last term. Hopefully that means Semester 2 will be a bit less rushed than Semester 1; for example in the first year there will be 36 lectures of 50 minutes’ duration (1800 minutes altogether) compared with 33 lectures of 55 minutes (1485 in total), which gives 315 extra minutes – five and a quarter hours – which is about 21%! It seems a lot when put like that. Perhaps we should adjust the weighting of Semester 1 v Semester 2 modules to reflect this?

My biggest worry was a capacity limit on our Computational Physics lab, but with no physical distancing requirement that worry has receded. I’ve decided however that I should still allow any students that want it to attend the lab remotely.

That brings me to the interesting issue. Although officially we are reopening to something near full capacity the question remains as to how many students are comfortable with the new arrangements. Little thought seems to have been given to vulnerable students with underlying health issues and we may find quite a lot of them opting not to return to campus just yet. It is incumbent on us to cater for these students in the best way possible but as yet we don’t know how many there will be in this situation.

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