Tara Erraught at the National Concert Hall

Posted in Music with tags , , , , , , , , , , on November 2, 2024 by telescoper

Last night’s concert at the National Concert Hall featured star mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught (who is from Mullingar, in County Westmeath, and is artist-in-residence at the National Concert Hall for this season. She was accompanied by the National Symphony Orchestra directed by Laurence Cummings. You can tell how much I like Tara Erraught by the fact I went to the concert despite there being a harpsichord involved in some of the pieces; fortunately it was pointed away from the audience so we couldn’t hear it.

Before the concert, I was trying to remember when I heard her sing before. A look at my back catalogue revealed that it was this concert at which she sang a Mahler song-cycle. Last night’s performance comprised very different material, all from the 18th Century. There were three vocal pieces: a cantata in four sections by a name quite new to me, Marianna Martines, also known as Marianne von Martinez; a concert aria by Joseph Haydn; and by far the most exciting piece, Mozart’s wonderful Exsultate Jubilate. Tara Erraught was in fine voice throughout but I was particularly impressed with the precision of her articulation of the ornamented phrases in the last work. The audience loved it too.

The concert was all about Tara Erraught, however. The first half included Symphony No. 25 by Joseph Haydn, a funny little work only 13 minutes long and lacking the usual slow movement that seemed to me like it wasn’t really finished. It’s certainly not among Haydn’s best symphonies, anyway. It was a bit unfair on Haydn to have Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 “Jupiter” on the same menu as that it is one of the great symphonies by any composer. It did however demonstrate very powerfully how much the symphonic form had evolved in the twenty-odd years separating the two compositions (which incidentally are both in the same key of C Major). The Jupiter symphony is not only brim full of ideas, but the themes are woven into a much richer fabric. I might add that it was very well played by the NSO in a performance that was forceful and energetic without being too bombastic.

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Three New Publications at the Open Journal of Astrophysics

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on November 2, 2024 by telescoper

It’s Saturday, so it’s time once again for another summary of business at the  Open Journal of Astrophysics. This week I have three papers to announce, which brings the total we have published so far this year (Vol. 7) to 98 and the total published by OJAp to 213.

First one up, published on Tuesday 29th October 2024, is “Cosmology with shear ratios: a joint study of weak lensing and spectroscopic redshift datasets” by Ni Emas & Chris Blake (Swinburne U., Australia), Rossana Ruggeri (Queensland U, Australia) and Anna Porredon (Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany). This paper is in the folder marked Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics. The paper investigates the use of shear ratios as a cosmological diagnostic, with applications to lensing surveys

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

You can read the paper directly on arXiv here.

The second paper to present, also published on Tuesday 29th October 2024, is “Echo Location: Distances to Galactic Supernovae From ASAS-SN Light Echoes and 3D Dust Maps” by Kyle D. Neumann (Penn State), Michael A. Tucker & Christopher S. Kochanek (Ohio State), Benjamin J. Shappee (U. Hawaii), and K. Z. Stanek (Ohio State), all based in the USA. This paper is in the folder marked High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena and it presents a new approach to estimating the distance to a source by combining light echoes with recent three-dimensional dust maps with application to supernova distances.

The overlay looks like this:

 

 

You can read this paper directly on the arXiv here.

Last, but by no means least, comes  “A deconstruction of methods to derive one-point lensing statistics” by Viviane Alfradique (Universidade Federal do Rio De Janeiro, Brazil), Tiago Castro (INAF Trieste, Italy), Valerio Marra (Trieste), Miguel Quartin (Rio de Janeiro), Carlo Giocoli (INAF Bologna, Italy), and Pierluigi Monaco (Trieste).  Published in the folder marked Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics, it describes a comparative study of different methods of approximating the one-point probability density function (PDF) for use in the statistical analysis of gravitational lensing.

Here is a screengrab of the overlay:

 

To read the accepted version of this on the arXiv please go here.

That’s it for this week. I hope to post another update next weekend, by when we might well have reached a century for this year!

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Trinity Talk

Posted in Biographical, LGBTQ+ on November 1, 2024 by telescoper

Today I gave the inaugural EDI Seminar at the Department of Physics of Trinity College, Dublin, in the Lecture Theatre formerly known as Schrödinger. I wasn’t sure what to expect ahead of the event, but it was nice to see a large and attentive audience. At the end I was given the above book and whisked off to a pleasant lunch followed by a chat with some of the PhD students.

I’m going to a concert at the National Concert Hall later this evening. It being a mild evening, and there being no point making a trip to Maynooth and back,  I decided to walk around Dublin for a bit.

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Management Memes

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth on November 1, 2024 by telescoper

I’m out all day giving a talk at the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth, near Dublin, so in lieu of a proper post here’s another Management Meme.

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The Valencia Flood Disaster

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , on October 31, 2024 by telescoper

The death toll resulting from the terrible floods in the Valencia region of Spain has now risen to 158 and seems set to get higher as bodies are recovered from mud and collapsed buildings. Condolences to everyone affected. I was in the city of Valencia just a few months ago, though not in the part of the region most affected.

If you want to see how bad the floods were then take a look at these satellite images from the European Space Agency‘s website taken three weeks apart by the Landsat-8 satellite.

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The Scopus Horror Show

Posted in Open Access with tags , , , on October 31, 2024 by telescoper

Today being Hallowe’en, it seems an appropriate time to tell you a horror story. A few weeks ago I posted about the inaccuracy of the Scopus bibliographic database. I’ve contacted Scopus multiple times to supply them with correct data about the Open Journal of Astrophysics, but the errors persist. It seems I’ll have to take legal action to get them to correct the false and misleading information Scopus is displaying.

I was recently told about a paper with the title The museum of errors/horrors in Scopus. Written by F. Franceschini, D. Maisano & L. Mastrogiacomo and published in 2016, it demonstrates that people have known how poor Scopus is for many years. Yet still it is used.

Here is part of the abstract:

Recent studies have shown that the Scopus bibliometric database is probably less accurate than one thinks. As a further evidence of this fact, this paper presents a structured collection of several weird typologies of database errors, which can therefore be classified as horrors. Some of them concern the incorrect indexing of so-called Online-First paper, duplicate publications, and the missing/incorrect indexing of references. A crucial point is that most of these errors could probably be avoided by adopting some basic data checking systems.

DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2015.11.006

Eight years on, there’s no sign of scopus adopting “basic data systems” but they don’t really have an incentive to improve do they? It seems the world of research assessment refuses to question the reliability of the product. Critical thinking is an alien concept to the bean counters.

P.S. Oíche Shamhna shona daoibh go léir!

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Swans Again

Posted in Maynooth with tags , , , on October 30, 2024 by telescoper

Some time ago, back in July, I posted about the sad demise of one of the beautiful swans that had been nesting at the canal harbour in Maynooth. I used to walk along the towpath to work sometimes, but currently there is work being done to renovate the canal bank so I have got out of the habit of walking along there. A couple of days ago, however, a colleague sent me a photograph which reminded me to post an update:

Picture credit: Joost Slingerland

You will see that there are two swans once again. In fact there are three, as I shall explain.

First, contrary to what I said in my previous post, it was the male swan (cob) that died of an infection. The female swan (pen) was also very ill, and was taken aware to be nursed back to health by the team at Kildare Wildlife Rescue hence her temporary disappearance. She recovered, and was returned to the canal. However, a new pair of young swans – shown in the picture – moved in on the little island where the previous pair used to nest and drove off older pen. I’m told there wasn’t exactly a peaceful handover; it was more of a forcible eviction. The new swans will no doubt nest on the island, and perhaps raise cygnets next year, while the older one is usually to be found further along the canal, near the Mullen Bridge, apparently healthy but on her own.

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New Image Casts Doubt on Standard Cosmological Theory

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on October 28, 2024 by telescoper

Scarcely a day goes by without some news outlet or other claiming that recent observations have ruled out the standard cosmological model. This remarkable new image does however seem to cast doubt on many aspects of the Big Bang Theory:

For one thing, it seems to be much less homogeneous and isotropic than we previously imagined. Although the composition is uncertain, it also seems to have a much higher fraction of baryonic matter than currently assumed. Whether or not this picture overthrows the standard model or not, it seems likely to lead to a revival of interest in cosmological applications of the Burgers equation.

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Management Memes

Posted in Education, Maynooth with tags , , on October 28, 2024 by telescoper

I’m too old to be making memes, but it’s a Bank Holiday so,in the light of recent developments at Maynooth University, I thought I’d give it a go. If this one proves popular there are many more I could post…

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The League of Ireland

Posted in Football with tags , , , , , , on October 27, 2024 by telescoper

I don’t think I’ve ever written a blog post about the League of Ireland (soccer) before, but since it’s a holiday weekend and I’ve just watched Dundalk versus Shamrock Rovers on the telly, I thought I’d do a quickie.

I’ve been following this year’s League of Ireland Premier Division with some interest as it has been very close. You can see how competitive the league is just by looking at the table: 35 games played with three points for a win and the top team only has 60 points! Each team plays the others 4 times, incidentally, making a total of 36 games. The last round of matches happens next Friday, 1st November; the season runs from February to November.

Anyway, Shelbourne seemed to be battling it out with Derry City for the top spot, but then St Patrick’s Athletic and Shamrock Rovers starting gaining ground, as Both Derry and Shelbourne stumbled. Today’s result was important because Shamrock Rovers had to win to keep the competition alive. Favourites to win against the bottom club, they didn’t play very well but scraped home 1-0. The gap in quality between top and bottom of this league is really very small.

Now the situation is simple: if Shelbourne win on Friday – or if Shamrock Rovers don’t – then Shelbourne are champions. If Shelbourne lose or draw and Shamrock Rovers win then Shamrock Rovers are champions. On paper, Shelbourne have the tougher game, away at Derry City, while Shamrock Rovers at home to Waterford. It’s a toss-up who will win.

UPDATE: 1st November. They left it very late but Shelbourne beat Derry 1-0 to take the title. Shamrock Rovers also won, but to no avail…

P.S. As the crow flies, Shamrock Rovers (who play at Tallaght Stadium) is the nearest Premier Division club to Maynooth

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