Keeping one’s head above water..

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth on September 26, 2024 by telescoper

I had two teaching sessions today, on two different modules, both of which I’m teaching for the first time, and also had to prepare the first assignments for both sets of students, so I thought it might be a difficult challenge, metaphorically speaking, to keep my head above water. What I hadn’t expected, however, was that the rain would be bucketing down all day, making it almost literally difficult to keep above water. Now that I’ve done what I planned to do at work I have to make my way home through the deluge. At least I remembered to bring a brolly…

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The Case Against Academic Publishers

Posted in Open Access with tags , , , , , on September 25, 2024 by telescoper

It seems appropriate to pass on news of a federal antitrust lawsuit being brought in the United States against six commercial academic publishers, including the “Big Four” (Elsevier, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis and Wiley). The case is filed by lawyers Lieff Cabraser Heimann and Bernstein. The plaintiff is Lucina Uddin, Professor of Psychology at UCLA.

I suggest you read the full document linked to above for details, but in a nutshell the case alleges three anticompetitive practices:

  1. agreeing to “fix the price..at zero” for the labour of authors and peer reviewers;
  2. agreeing not to compete for manuscripts by forcing authors to submit to one journal at a time;
  3. agreeing to prohibit authors from sharing their work while under peer review, “a process that often takes over a year”

I’ve spoken to a few people who know a bit about US law on such matters and they all say that the plaintiff’s legal representatives have a good track record on antitrust litigation. Nevertheless, there is some doubt about whether the case is winnable but at the very least it will bring a lot of attention to the Academic Journal Racket, so is probably a good move even if it doesn’t succeed. If it does succeed, however, it might blow a hole in the entire commercial publishing industry, which would be an even better move…

As an interesting postscript (found here) is that, in 2002, the UK Office of Fair Trading reviewed complaints about anticompetitive practices in academic publishing; see here. It found market distortions but decided not to act because of the recent rise of Open Access. I quote

It is too early to assess what will be the impact of this … but there is a possibility that it will be a powerful restraint on exploiting positional advantage in the STM journals market.

Now that 22 years have passed, is it still too early?

P.S. Comments from legal experts would be especially welcome!

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Back to Teaching

Posted in Education, mathematics, Maynooth with tags , , on September 24, 2024 by telescoper

So, after an absence from teaching of over a year, this afternoon I returned to the lecture theatre to give a double session on the module EE206 Differential Equations and Transform Methods. I was a bit apprehensive about having a two-hour slot and it is fair to say that I felt a bit knackered after it, but `then I am getting on a bit. I did have time for a ten-minute break in the middle during which the students could relax and stretch their legs a little. Some of them even came back afterwards.

This module is meant for students on two courses, Electronic Engineering and Robotics and Intelligent Devices, so I will have to think of relevant examples. I’ve got the RLC circuit, of course, but I’ll have to more than that!

If you’re interested you can find an old summary of the module here to see what topics are covered.

The good news from my point of view is that I have a decent room to teach in – complete with chalk boards – and the students seemed pleasant and engaged. I always like to get some interaction going in my classes so it was good to find a reasonable number of people willing to offer answers to questions I asked and indeed willing to ask me questions or request clarification. Overall, I was quite pleased with how it went. You will have to ask the students to see if they agree. At any rate I did manage to get through everything I planned to cover. The class size is about 55, incidentally.

Anyway, today I just warmed up for the module with some revision of basic calculus. I had pessimistically imagined that the students would have forgotten what they did in the first year about this, but in fact quite a few of them remembered quite a lot. I have my second session with this group on Thursday, though that should be a bit easier as it is only one hour instead of two. I will start differential equations proper then.

My remaining teaching sessions this week are all in the Arts Building. I have been quite worried that the rooms I am supposed to use would not be ready in time, but I took a walk around yesterday morning and they are ready (although construction work is going on elsewhere in the block). I was thinking I might have to give these lectures via a remote connection from home as in the old days of the pandemic, but that fortunately is not the case.

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The Opening of the Fifth Seal

Posted in Art with tags , , , on September 23, 2024 by telescoper

I was trying to find a work of art with which to illustrate the start of teaching term and decided on this remarkable painting by El Greco, usually called The Opening of the Fifth Seal though it has been given other names. Actually it’s only part of the original painting – the upper section was destroyed in 1880 – which at least partly accounts for the unusual balance of the composition. What I find astonishing about this work, though, is that at first sight it looks for all the world like an early 20th Century expressionist work, complete with distorted figures and vivid colour palette. It’s very hard to believe that it was painted in the early years of the 17th Century! El Greco was 300 years ahead of his time.

by Doménikos Theotokópoulos (“El Greco“), painted between 1608 and 1614, 224.8 cm × 199.4 cm, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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Autumnal Equinox 2024

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags on September 22, 2024 by telescoper

The Autumnal Equinox (in the Northern hemisphere) takes place this afternoon (Sunday 22nd September 2024)  at 13.44 Irish Summer Time (12.44 UT).

Although  the term `equinox’  refers to a situation in which day and night are of equal length, which implies that it’s a day rather than a specific time, the astronomical equinox is more accurately defined by a specific event, i.e. when the plane defined by Earth’s equator passes through the centre of the Sun’s disk (or, if you prefer, when the centre of the Sun passes through the plane defined by Earth’s equator). Day and night are not necessarily exactly equal on the equinox, but they’re the closest they get. From now on days in the Northern hemisphere will be shorter than nights and they’ll get shorter still until the Winter Solstice on 21st December 2024 at 9.21am Irish Time.

Many people take the autumnal equinox to be the end of summer. There is a saying around these parts, however, that `Summer is Summer to Michaelmas Day’ (September 29th), which is not until next week. I must say, though, though it doesn’t feel particularly summery this morning although we did have good weather for most of last week. Looking back over my posts on past occurrences of the Autumnal Equinox, it is notable how many talk about a period of good weather around this time of year. The Welsh phrase Haf Bach Mihangel (Michael’s Little Summer) refers to this kind of spell.

I’ve often remarked how the academic year at Maynooth is largely defined by the astronomical phenomena of the equinoxes and solstices. This year demonstrates this perfectly: Semester 1 lectures for undergraduates begin tomorrow (23rd September), the day after the Autumnal equinox; they end on 20th December, the day before the Winter Solstice. The half-term study break coincides with Samhain, a cross-quarter day. It’s all refreshingly pagan.

This time last year I was getting ready to travel to Barcelona. My sabbatical started on 1st September but I didn’t actually leave for Spain until 24th September. That all seems a very long time ago now, and my sabbatical is well and truly over. I resume teaching next week, though my first lectures (a double session of Engineering Mathematics) are not until Tuesday. I hope I can remember how to teach! I’m also doing Differential Equations and Complex Analysis for 4th Year Mathematical Physics students, but the lectures for that are a bit later (Thursday and Friday). I have taught neither of these modules before, so I am a bit apprehensive.

I now know what I’ll be teaching next Semester too. I’m returning to Computational Physics 1, which I taught for 5 years before my sabbatical, so that’s a familiar one. I’m also doing Particle Physics for 4th year students. I taught a full module in that at Nottingham and a half-module in Cardiff so it’s not exactly new but I haven’t lectured in the subject since about 2010. Has anything important happened in that field since then? I assume that had there been, for example, any new boson discovered I would have heard about it…

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Random Gallery

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth with tags on September 21, 2024 by telescoper
A cloudy day on campus
A sunny day on campus
It seems I’ve been demoted as well as elevated…
They’ve changed the signs already!
remains of a dead pigeon
Not to mention the entropy!
I found this in my office. I don’t know what it is but apparently it belongs to someone called Jack Splitter

In the absence of anything better to post, I thought I’d share a few random pictures I’ve taken around Maynooth University campus since I moved into my new office.

Oh, I’ll just add this little anecdote. I was away from campus on Thursday and after I had done the necessary I was required to take a taxi home. The taxi driver asked me what I did for a living and when I told him he said he was fascinated interested in nuclear physics and proceeded to ask me a series of questions including what heavy water is, whether plutonium occurs naturally, and what is measured in röntgen. It’s always nice when a member of the public shows an interest in physics.

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Bluesky in the Dark

Posted in Biographical with tags , on September 19, 2024 by telescoper

I posted last month about how I’ve been faring on social media since I left Twitter. That piece included this:

The first thing I noticed was that my BlueSky account was suddenly getting quite a lot of new followers. I now have about 850, still a long way short of the over 7000 I used to have on Twitter, but the level of engagement is far higher.

Well the exodus from Twitter seems to be accelerating and I now have 1.2K followers on BlueSky including more than a few old contacts I left behind on Twitter. The total number of users of BlueSky has now passed 10 million, which led to this message which I received last week.

I’m quite proud of being among the pioneering 1% of Bluesky users. The Open Journal of of Astrophysics is also there among the first 10%:

I hope this message prompts a few more to take the plunge. I’ll also take this opportunity to reiterate my opinion that it is indefensible for my employer, along with most other universities, to maintain a presence on Twitter.

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A Maynooth University Campus Question

Posted in Maynooth with tags , , , , on September 19, 2024 by telescoper
The TSI Building

Ironically, the day after access to this blog on Maynooth Campus was restored, I have to spend the whole day located elsewhere and without internet access. I will therefore leave those on and off campus to ponder a question related to Maynooth University campus.

In LHBS units*, how much did it cost Maynooth University for a palatial new office in the TSI Building for its President, Professor Eeva Leinonen?

(*1 LHBS = the cost of one Leinster House Bike Shed = €336,000).

Please place your guesses in the Comment Box below. FOI requests may be used.

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Beating the Ban

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth with tags , , , , on September 18, 2024 by telescoper

Access to this blog is still blocked on Maynooth University campus. I was told that this was because of phishing activity, but IT Services are not replying to my requests for information about this alleged misconduct. If it were true I would have been subject to disciplinary action, and I haven’t because it is not true. I can only assume that it is a half-witted attempt at censorship.

I did originally think that the entire WordPress.com domain was blocked but I found that I could access the excellent blog by mathematician Terry Tao so it does appear I have been singled out for banning.

You can still read this blog off campus, but if you want to read it on Maynooth University campus, my posts are available in full federated form on Mastodon by following In the Dark on mastodon.social here.

That means you can read whole posts there rather than having to follow a link as on other social media (Threads, BlueSky, LinkedIn and Facebook).

Alternatively, you can receive posts via email here:

In the past I have used this blog, along with my other social media, to promote activities, courses, and job opportunities at Maynooth University. I will not be doing that until the ban is lifted. I have of course also posted items critical of the University management and will continue doing that.

UPDATE: By sheer coincidence (?), just a couple of hours after posting this item (from home), IT services contacted me and told me that this page has now been “reclassified as a blog” and is now accessible from campus (which is where I am writing this update). What it was classified as before is anyone’s guess, but access from campus has now been restored.

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In Search of Stokes V

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on September 17, 2024 by telescoper

Many moons ago I went to a seminar on the design of an experiment to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background. At the end of the talk I asked what seemed to me to be an innocent question. The point of my question was the speaker had focussed entirely on measuring the intensity of the radiation (I) and the two Stokes Parameters that measure linear polarization of the radiation (usually called Q and U). How difficult, I asked, would it be to measure the remaining Stokes parameter V (which quantifies circular polarization)?

There was a sharp intake of breath among the audience and the speaker responded with a curt “the cosmic microwave background is not circularly polarized”. It is true that in the standard cosmological theory the microwave background is produced by Thomson scattering in the early Universe which produces partial linear polarization, so that Q and U are non-zero, but not circular polarization so V=0. I knew that, but had asked my question because I had an idea that it might be worth measuring V (or at least putting an upper limit on it) in order to assess the level of instrumental systematics (which are a serious issue with polarization measurements). It might also help constrain variations from the standard model too.

Well, that thought came back today when I saw a new paper on the arXiv with the abstract:

V-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background is expected to be vanishingly small in the ΛCDM model and, hence, usually ignored. Nonetheless, several astrophysical effects, as well as beyond standard model physics could produce it at a detectable level. A realistic half-wave plate – an optical element commonly used in CMB experiments to modulate the polarized signal – can provide sensitivity to V modes without significantly spoiling that to linear polarization. We assess this sensitivity for some new-generation CMB experiments, such as the LiteBIRD satellite, the ground-based Simons Observatory and a CMB-S4-like experiment. We forecast the efficiency of these experiments to constrain the phenomenology of certain classes of BSM models inducing mixing of linear polarization states and generation of V modes in the CMB. We find that new-generation experiments can improve current limits by 1-to-3 orders of magnitude, depending on the data combination. The inclusion of V-mode information dramatically boosts the sensitivity to these BSM models.

arXiv:2409.10424

It seems it might be feasible to measure Stokes V after all!

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