I loved thee, though I told thee not,
Right earlily and long,
Thou wert my joy in every spot,
My theme in every song.
And when I saw a stranger face
Where beauty held the claim,
I gave it like a secret grace
The being of thy name.
And all the charms of face or voice
Which I in others see
Are but the recollected choice
Of what I felt for thee.
by John Clare (1793-1864).
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Frustrated at my ongoing indisposition – I had to miss today’s Admissions Day at Sussex University, which has put me in a very bad mood – I’ve decided to deliver a short rant about widening participation. WP is the name given to schemes to open up access to higher education to students from less advantaged backgrounds. An excellent idea, of course.
The problem is that, despite pressure from the relevant quango (OFFA) most self-styled leading universities, especially those in the Russell Group, have consistently failed to widen participation to any significant extent. Why is this?
The easy answer is that universities have to take students who are adequately prepared for undergraduate studies, which means selecting on the basis of A-level grades, which means students from private schools have an advantage.
The problem with this argument is that, at least in Physics and Mathematics, I don’t think A-levels are a reliable indicator of aptitude for undergraduate study at all. If I had my way we wouldn’t use A-levels at all.
Unfortunately we’re stuck with the current, unfair, system because any “leading” university that takes a large number of students with weak A-levels (possibly through a Foundation Programme) will be penalised in the league tables for not being selective enough. Moreover, the Government’s decision to lift the cap on places for students with AAB or better, means that recruiting students with top A-level grades is potentially the most lucrative strategy.
That the system doesn’t work the way it is supposed to is obvious. If you don’t agree, then ask yourself why it’s not the case that virtually all Oxbridge students get first class degrees, when they admit only A*/A students?
Things won’t improve until we abandon the obsession with A-level tariff points and find a way of assessing intrinsic ability.
Follow @telescoperDuring my short visit to Cambridge on Wednesday I happened to pass through Magdalene College (on my way to a couple of pints in The Pickerel). I couldn’t resist taking a pic of the Lutyens Building, where I lived in the first year (1982/3). My room was second from the far end, on the first floor. I wonder who’s in there now?
The reason I was out of the office yesterday was that I was in Cambridge, doing a PhD oral in the Cavendish Laboratory so the first thing to say is congratulations Dr Johnston! It was one of those viva voce examinations that turned out to be less of an examination than an interesting chat about physics. In fact the internal examiner, Prof. Steve Gull, seemed to spend more time asking me questions rather than the candidate!
Afterwards I met up with Anthony Lasenby, the candidate’s supervisor. Not surprisingly the main topic of our brief discussion was today’s impending announcement of results from Planck. Anthony is one of the folks who have been involved with Planck for about twenty years, since it began as a twinkle in the eye of COBRAS/SAMBA. I was looking forward to getting in bright and early this morning to watch the live streaming of the Planck press conference from Paris.
Unfortunately however, I could feel a bit of a lurgy coming on as I travelled to Cambridge yesterday. It got decidedly worse on the way home – it must have been the Cambridge air – and I even ended up passing out on the train from Victoria to Brighton. Fortunately, Brighton was the terminus so someone woke me up when we got there and I got home, coughing and spluttering. I suspect many cosmologists didn’t sleep well last night because of excitement about the Planck results, but in my case it was something else that kept me awake. Anyway, I didn’t make it in this morning so had to follow the announcements via Twitter. Fortunately there’s a lot of press coverage too; see the ESA site and a nice piece by the BBC’s redoubtable Jonathan Amos.
Anyway, without further ado, here’s Planck’s map of the cosmic microwave background:
It’s rather beautiful, in a pointillist kind of way, I think…
It will take me a while in my weakened state to complete a detailed study of the results – and I’m sure to return to them many times in the future, but I will make a couple of points now.
The first is that the papers and data products are all immediately available online. The papers will all appear on the arXiv. Open Access sceptics please take note!
The second is that the most interesting result (as far as I’m concerned) is that at least some of the cosmic anomalies I’ve blogged about in the past, such as the Axle of Elvis Axis of Evil and the famous colder-than-it-should-be cold spot, are still present in the Planck data:
The other results excite me less because, at a quick reading, they all seem to be consistent with the standard cosmological model. Of course, the north-south asymmetry is a small effect on could turn out to be a foreground (e.g. zodiacal emission) or an artefact of the scanning strategy. But if it isn’t a systematic it could be very important. I suspect there’ll be a rush of papers about this before long!
I’m sure to p0st much more about the Planck results in due course, but I think I’ll leave it there for now. Please feel free to post comments and reactions through the box below.
Follow @telescoperOut of the office today so in lieu of a post from me here’s two minutes and twenty seconds of exquisite sadness delivered by the voice of the great Billie Holliday. No singer in history ever managed to express so much through such slender lyrics. The piano is played by Charlie Beal on this recording.
Follow @telescoperI was having a quick plough through the evidence submitted to the recent House of Lords enquiry into Open Access and found the following interesting exchange relating to the arXiv. The italics in the response by Steven Hall, Managing Director of the Institute of Physics Publishing company, to the question from Lord Rees of Ludlow, are mine:
Q44 Lord Rees of Ludlow: We know that things are discipline-dependent, even within the physical sciences. I have a question for Mr Hall, really. In physics and space science, as you know, there is a wellorganised archive and repository, which is used by almost all of the community. It would seem that that has coexisted with journals to a surprising extent.I wonder if you would like to comment on that as an example.
Steven Hall: Yes, thank you for the opportunity. When I speed-read the pile of submissions on the train last night I noticed at least three references to the success of the arXiv and its lack of impact on physics publishing. There are a number of myths about the arXiv and it would be good to deal with those here. First, it does not at all cover all of physics. There are certain sub-disciplines where there are very high levels of deposit in the arXiv; there are others where there is none whatsoever. To come back to your point, even within a discipline like physics there are real differences of approach. The other thing about the arXiv is that it is essentially a workflow tool. Much of physics is highly collaborative. Physicists will deposit early versions of their paper so that they can be looked at by their colleagues. It is a means for physicists to distribute to their immediate peers those early results of their research. It is a sharing tool. Most of the content of the archive is pre-print, though. It is not accepted manuscripts; it is not works that have gone through peer review. My own company’s policy there is the author can do whatever he or she likes with the pre-print, before we have added any value to it. We take a different view once we have added some value to it. The arXiv cannot be compared directly to, say, typical institutional depositories, which might have lots of accepted manuscripts in them. It coexists with formal publishing. The vast majority of physicists who use the arXiv would say that it is complementary to formal publication.
Lord Rees of Ludlow: Formal publication gives the accreditation, but I think most read the arXiv and would like to see it extended to other fields. It seems to be a rather good model, which, one would hope, would extend a bit more to other areas of science.
It will come as no surprise to hear that I’m right behind Martin Rees in his praise for the arXiv; the comments about it by Steven Hall are notable only for their irrelevance. Extending the arXiv to cover other branches of physics, and indeed other disciplines, would be much less expensive for the research community than the model he favours. I’d say that the arXiv needn’t be viewed as complementary to formal publication but that the arXiv gives us a way to make formal publication entirely redundant. It’s only a small step to turn that potential into reality, which is why IOPP wishes to dismiss it.
Steven Hall has repeatedly argued that Gold Open Access is best, which I suppose it is if you’re a publisher interested in making easy money rather than a scientist wanting to disseminate your work in inexpensive and timely a fashion as possible. However, I was struck by the totally misleading phrase in italics relating to “added value”. IOPP does not add value to research publications, it merely adds cost. Any value that is added derives from peer review, which in most case costs nothing at all and can in any case be done independently of any publisher.
I’m afraid this is yet another example of publishers putting their own profits before the needs of researchers. The fact that IOPP’s profits also support the activities of the Institute of Physics is beside the point. I hope that before long the IOP remembers what it is actually for and changes its modus operandi to support the community it purports to serve, rather than exploiting it. The days of the traditional publisher are numbered in any case, and the IOP along with the other learned societies will have to find a way of surviving that doesn’t rely on income from the academic journal racket.
Follow @telescoperA time there was – as one may guess
And as, indeed, earth’s testimonies tell –
Before the birth of consciousness,
When all went well.
None suffered sickness, love, or loss,
None knew regret, starved hope, or heart-burnings;
None cared whatever crash or cross
Brought wrack to things.
If something ceased, no tongue bewailed,
If something winced and waned, no heart was wrung;
If brightness dimmed, and dark prevailed,
No sense was stung.
But the disease of feeling germed,
And primal rightness took the tinct of wrong;
Ere nescience shall be reaffirmed
How long, how long?
by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Follow @telescoperCatching up yesterday evening with the Times Higher, I found yet another article about the confusion generated by RCUK‘s plans for Open Access publishing. Apparently pressured by the powerful Publishers Association, RCUK has adopted the following “decision tree” to explain how its proposal will work.
As you can see, this basically says that if you have any money from RCUK for Open Access you have to spend it on the Gold Open Access which means you have to hand it all over to a publisher. Only when you’re skint can you go Green, and even then you have to tolerate a lengthy embargo. This is as transparent a scam as you could ever hope to find. The Academic Publishing Industry is clearly out to fleece us for as much as it can get away with, bleeding our block grants dry before allowing us to do the right thing and publish our research the only sensible way, i.e. via Green OA repositories such as the arXiv.
There’s more:
An RCUK spokeswoman confirmed that even when funding for gold is still available via universities’ RCUK-provided block grants, researchers could still choose the green option with its shorter embargo periods.
But this reading of the decision tree was disputed by a spokeswoman for the Publishers Association. She insisted that if funds and gold options were available, researchers should choose gold.
It is obvious from this exchange that the agenda is not being generated by researchers or the research councils, but by the Publishers Association, who have hijacked the entire Open Access debate for their own ends. Clearly the Academic Publishing Industry doesn’t live in the austere economy the rest of us inhabit – their profits are protected by generous dollops of cash from the taxpayer via RCUK.
And the government seems happy to go along with this hefty backdoor subsidy. I wonder why?
Follow @telescoperI’ve been offline for a couple of days owing to being back at the old place in Cardiff, and consequently without internet connection. I could have used my phone, of course, as I’m doing now, but the 3G coverage in Wales is very poor so I find it frustrating to blog on my Blackberry.
Anyway, I came back to Cardiff to take care of a few loose ends and also to attend the annual Chaos Ball on Friday evening, which is run by the staff-student society in the School of Physics & Astronomy. It was a pleasant experience to see former colleagues and students again, so thanks to the organisers for finding tickets for me and my guest at the last minute!
Yesterday it was a different ball that took centre stage, as this year’s Six Nations rugby came to a dramatic conclusion with Wales’ comprehensive and well-deserved victory over England in Cardiff. I didn’t go to the game, but did watch it in a local pub. There’s a very special buzz in Cardiff on such occasions, and I was glad to experience it one more time, despite being an Englishman..
Now I have to get my act together and head back to Brighton. I wonder what sort of balls the British railway system will serve up?
Follow @telescoperWell, Herschel may be going blind but it seems that just as one observatory gets ready to close its eyes on the Universe, another one gets ready to open them. Yesterday saw the official opening of the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (known to its friends as ALMA). What better way to celebrate the opening of this remarkable observatory than with an appropriately-named piece of music.
Con Alma is an original composition by Dizzy Gillespie who plays it on this track made with his big band in 1954, a period when Dizzy was experimenting with various fusions of bebop with Latin-American rhythms. It’s a deceptively complicated tune, with lots of changes of key to keep everyone on their toes. It may be more Cuban than Chilean in influence, but that’s the closest I could think of!
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In the Dark 