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Two Weeks To Go…

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on April 27, 2026 by telescoper

There are just two weeks of teaching left in the Spring Semester at Maynooth University. Actually slightly less than that because next Monday (May 4th) is another bank holiday. That day doesn’t make any difference to my own teaching, however, as I have no teaching sessions on Mondays anyway.

As I mentioned last week, the formal teaching part of one of my modules (Computational Physics) is already over and the students are now – or should be – busy doing mini-projects.

My other module, Particle Physics, has four remaining lectures. That means that I’m on schedule, despite missing one lecture on Good Friday. The very last lecture for this module is on the last day of term, May 8th, so I don’t know how many students will be there. Come to think of it, because this is a final-year module, it may actually be the last lecture of all at Maynooth for some students…

The end of teaching does not mean the end of the term, however. We have a short “break” and then, on May 15th, the examinations start. In the break I’ll have to mark a stack of Computational Physics projects. That’s always quite hard work as I have to run the codes and check the results as well as read and grade the written reports.

This week and next we also have the final presentations for project students. That will take up two whole full afternoons (this Wednesday and next Wednesday). There’s usually a bit of a do after these to give the students a send-off, as these are projects done by the graduating class. I have been supervising two students this year, plus an MSc student (though the latter will not finish until August).

People sometimes ask me why we have such heavy teaching loads at Maynooth University. Four modules a year – other staff do five (as I did a few years ago when was also Head of Department) – plus projects is far more than one would expect of a “research-led” University outside Ireland. Part of the reason is what I mentioned yesterday – that the University (along with most others) spends far too much of its income on Management salaries and projects that have nothing to do with research or teaching. Other than that I can’t comment. According to this document, Maynooth University has committed to

Introduce a University Workload Allocation Model (WAM) enhancing transparent processes and procedures in the allocation of work.

If there is such a model, it is news to me…

P.S. There’s an even older document here (dated 2014) that says:

The University is committed to ensuring that the allocation of work is reasonable and fair across and within academic units. It is also required to exercise oversight of the implementation of academic workload management. In support of this, the Head of Department / School / Institute will monitor and record workload allocations and will provide to the university, via the Faculty Dean, an annual report on the procedure and model used to allocate workloads, and also an anonymised summary of the average and range of workload distributions between teaching, research and service among all academic staff in the Department/School/Institute.

The design and implementation of workload allocation models will be undertaken by Departments/Schools/Institutes in accordance with the general principles outlined above.

Will it? When?

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The Sharp End of Term

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on April 23, 2026 by telescoper

So here I am, sitting in the (empty) Physics Computer Lab. The formal Computational Physics lab sessions are over, but I’m on duty to provide help the students with their project work, which will take up the remaining two-and-a-bit weeks of term. It’s a lovely day outside which explains why there are very few people in the lab, and none of them have asked for help so I’ve been busy getting on with some work. Past experience with these sessions suggests that they’ll all come just before the project deadline, which is May 8th.

Up until last week I had a Computational Physics lecture at 9am on Thursdays, but the last one of those happened last Thursday. It was nice to have a more leisurely start this morning. I did think I might get a haircut on the way to work but when I passed my usual barber’s I saw it was full of people waiting their turn so I walked on. It seems that the good weather gave quite a few people the same urge to have shorter hair.

Yesterday was the last Class Test for my other class, Particle Physics, and I’ve taken the opportunity to correct all the scripts for that. I even had time to type up the solutions all neatly and tidily in Latex (including doing Feynman diagrams, which is fun).The end of that job means no more grading for that module until the main examination, which is about a month away. I do however, have lectures and tutorials still to do, including two at 9am on Tuesdays.

The finest weather is usually reserved for the exam period, of course, to maximize the annoyance of students. In my memory all my undergraduate examinations took place in very fine weather, with the exception of my Physics practical the night before which there was an enormous thunderstorm. Come to think of it, that could well have been a portent that warned me off experiments and made me become a theorist.

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Back for the Last Four Weeks…

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on April 13, 2026 by telescoper

So the Easter break is over and I was back to campus today armed with a very long to-do list. I’m pleased to say I’ve ticked all the items off except the last, which was to prepare my lecture for 9am tomorrow. I’ll do that after supper.

I was very tired this morning after doing a bit of gallivanting for a couple of days. Am I too old to be carrying on like that? Yes. Do I intend to stop? No. Although I had a lot to do I didn’t have any lectures or tutorials so I was able to knuckle down and get on with things, interrupted only by an obligatory telecon.

We have four weeks left until the end of lectures for Semester 2. To be precise it’s four weeks minus one Bank Holiday (on Monday 4th May) which makes it 3.8 (working) weeks, but I don’t have lectures on Mondays so this isn’t very relevant to me. My Particle Physics module will continue in the same vein until the end of teaching but Computational Physics changes after this week, with lectures and formal lab sessions ending allowing the students time to do their mini-projects (which they have already started). They will still have access to the labs and be able to consult the demonstrators for help on their projects, though they can work at home (or somewhere else) instead if they prefer.

Other signs of the approaching end of term is that the May Examination timetable has been published, the required papers are being printed, schedules of student presentations are being circulated, and arrangements being made to mark projects.

When teaching is over for the academic year , and before exam marking starts, assuming a whole day of decent weather arrives, I plan to walk from Maynooth into Dublin along the Royal Canal. That’s a distance of 27 km. I do intend to walk the length of the National Famine Way later this year, but I was convinced to do one stage first to see if my knees can take it. The final leg of the Famine Way is from Maynooth to Dublin, which is convenient because if I’m forced to give up I can easily get the bus or train home, as I can if I reach the end.

Now for a quick supper, write my lecture for tomorrow morning, and have an early night!

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Winding Down for Easter

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on April 2, 2026 by telescoper

When I was a lad, back in England, the name for the Thursday before Good Friday was Maundy Thursday. That term isn’t used here in Ireland, where it seems to be known as Holy Thursday. Anyway, Maynooth University is closed tomorrow (Good Friday) but not today (Holy Thursday). Although today is not an official holiday, some campus facilities are in fact closed – including Pugin Hall, where I often have lunch. This helped me plan my activities for the day.

My agenda for Holy Thursday included:

  • giving a 9am Computational Physics lecture;
  • grading the submissions from the last Computational Physics lab test and writing feedback;
  • meeting with my masters project student;
  • supervising a computer lab session,;
  • meeting with my undergraduate project student;
  • going home, and collapse in a state of exhaustion.

To get to the last item as quickly as possible, I decided my strategy to make use of the lack of availability of food on campus would be to work all the way through lunch to get my grading done.

On the way to campus for the first item on the agenda I noticed how quiet the town was this morning. The schools are on holiday this week and next so there was no school run. The lack of people was even more noticeable when I got to campus, with many fewer students than usual, even at 8.45am. I did consider the possibility that nobody might appear for my lecture, but in the end I had about 30% of those expected. That’s a disappointing number but I gather it’s a better attendance than some of my colleagues got today. When I finished at about 10am, I walked back to my office through a still very quiet North campus.

As usual happens in a day’s work, there were quite a few interruptions – mainly to do with postgraduate matters – but I managed to do all my corrections ahead of the lab this afternoon. I also had my two project meetings, just to keep up-to-date before the break next week. It’s a stressful time for students as we approach the end of the academic year, so I advised them to make sure they book took at least a bit of time off to regroup for the final push and the submission of their reports.

Anyway, I’ve now ticked off every item on my to-do list except the last and will shortly make my way home to complete the job.

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Ahead of a Four-Day Week…

Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Biographical, Education, mathematics, Maynooth with tags , , , , , , on March 29, 2026 by telescoper

It’s Sunday 29th March – Palm Sunday in fact – and Friday 3rd April is Good Friday, which is followed by a break of a week for Easter, so I’ve been looking at what I have to do in the four days between Monday and Thursday.

On Tuesday afternoon part of my 3rd Year Computational Physics class will be doing a supervised test in the computer lab. I (foolishly) promised to ensure they would get their grades before Easter, so I’m going to have to mark them straight away. This is a larger group than usual because some students who would normally be in the lab on Thursdays swtiched to Tuesday so they could go on a trip to Armagh. Anyway, this is the third lab test and at least I have graded the first two tests for all groups in time for the arrival of the new ones.

There will be one more of these lab tests after the Easter break but after that the students will be working full-time for 3 weeks or so on mini-projects. That is the part they usually enjoy most and I’m very happy to see that some have already started work.

Then, on Wednesday I have the second class test for my 4th year Particle Physics module. This is the second such test, and it will be held during a tutorial session. This is a pen-and-paper test rather than a coding test to be done in the lab. For such tests I allow students to bring whatever they like on paper but phones, laptops and tablets are banned. This is the easiest way I could think of to avoid students using AI to solve the problems. In previous years I gave take-home assignments for this module, and I still hand out exercise sheets to be gone over in tutorials, but these are for formative purposes only. The summative assessments are the class tests. There will be three of those, which means they will have to endure one more after Easter. In a normal week I would have a Particle lecture on Friday, but that won’t happen because it’s Good Friday and my lectures apparently aren’t good enough to happen on that day.

As well as the Computational Physics lab test and the Particle Physics class test, next I have two lectures, both at 9am – one on Tuesday and one on Thursday – and another lab session on Thursday which is not a test, but a practical session about solving ODEs.

Then it will be the Easter Break. After that, according to my calculations, there will be four more teaching weeks before the examination period. The last day of teaching is May 8th. Between that and the examinations there is a gap of a week during which I will have to mark all the completed Computational Physics project reports, as well as giving some revision classes if there is demand for them.

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Marking Over

Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Biographical, mathematics, Maynooth with tags , , , , on January 19, 2026 by telescoper

Well, that wasn’t too painful. I’ve completed my marking duties. The fact that it has been pouring with rain most of the day made it easy to concentrate on this task. I was going to have a break for lunch, but I decided to keep on going until I was finished, though I did have to take a break for a telecon this afternoon. I also had to dash out to the shops, primarily to replenish my stock of food for the garden birds but also to get some groceries for myself. Having skipped lunch I bought myself something nice for supper.

Looking at the departmental database I see that I appear to be the first member of staff to have finished and uploaded all their Semester 1 examination marking. Normally I’m just happy if I’m not the last!

It feels good to have finished this task. It’s definitely a weight off my mind. I wouldn’t want to leave any loose ends when Trumpageddon comes.

I can’t say anything about the results of course but the change I made to continuous assessment, from take-home assignments to class tests, does not seem to have had a negative effect on either group of students I have been teaching. The opposite may indeed have been the case, as the class tests perhaps provide better preparation for the final assessment than the previous method. I think some other lecturers might make a similar switch in future. Anyway, I definitely plan to do something similar for my Semester 2 module on Particle Physics.

Now I have a couple of weeks before teaching resumes so I can get on with other things. For the rest of this week my priority is to finish revising a paper that I hoped to do before Christmas. I’ll see how that goes before deciding what to do next.

I’ll also have to prepare teaching for Semester 2. That shouldn’t be too difficult, as I’ve taught both modules before, but I do have to give some thought as to precisely how I’m going to word the instructions on the use of AI for my Computational Physics module. That can wait a little while, though, as it mainly affects the mini-project to be done towards the end of the Semester. In the meantime I’ll be thinking about other things…

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2026: The Year Ahead

Posted in Biographical, Euclid, Maynooth with tags , , , on January 1, 2026 by telescoper 
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.

From Four Quartets, ‘Little Gidding’ by T. S. Eliot.

So it’s New Year’s Day. Athbhliain faoi mhaise dhaoibh!

For me this brings the festive season to an end. I’ve been eating and drinking too much for the last week as one is supposed to. Last night I brought in the new year with a dish of roast duck and the last of the Christmas vegetables. I think I’ll be buying any sprouts and parsnips for a while. When the iron tongue of midnight told twelve, I had a glass of excellent Irish Whiskey in the form of Clonakilty Single Pot Still (46%). It has been a most enjoyable week, but heightened level of self-indulgence has been rather exhausting, and I’ll be taking things a bit easier for a few days before I go back to work on Monday. It’s hard work being a glutton.

Anyway, I thought I’d mention a few things looking forward to the New Year.

January will, as usual, be dominated by examinations, and especially the marking thereof. The first examination for which I am responsible is on January 12th. The examination, incidentally, will be held in the Glenroyal Hotel in Maynooth as the Sports Hall on campus – usually a major exam venue – is out of commission due to building work.

I have a couple of writing deadlines, in addition to having to correct the examinations, so it will be a busy January.

Then February sees the start of a new semester. I’ll be teaching Particle Physics again. I was a bit surprised to be asked to teach this again, as I was filling last year in for our resident particle physicist who was on sabbatical. I’m glad to be able to continue with it given the work I put in to do it last time. My other module is Computational Physics which I have taught at Maynooth every year since 2018, apart from 2024 when I was on sabbatical. This time, however, I will have to think hard about how to deal with the use of generative AI in the coursework.

Will I get to teach any astrophysics or cosmology at Maynooth before I retire? That’s looking very unlikely. I think it’s probable that the new academic year, starting in September, will find me teaching the same modules as last year.

The year ahead will also see the first data release (DR1) from the European Space Agency’s Euclid Mission. The date for that will be October 21st 2026. This is a hard deadline. There’s a huge amount of work going on within the Euclid Consortium to extract as much science as possible from the observations so far before the data becomes public, but you’ll have to wait until October to find out more!

This reminds me that I forgot to share this nice image from Euclid that was released just before Christmas.

Galaxy NGC 646 looking like a cosmic holiday garland in this image from the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope.

Once upon a time, WordPress used to send an email about the year’s blog statistics, etc, but it stopped doing that some time ago. I checked this morning, however, and learned that traffice on the blog in 2025 was up by 2.6% since 2024. I’m not sure how meaningful this is, because there is so much scraping going on these days. That figure doesn’t include the people who get posts via email or RSS or via other platforms such as the Fediverse.

While I’m on about social media I’ll mention a stat about my Bluesky account. I joined Bluesky in 2023 when I abandoned Xitter. As of today I have 8,078 BlueSky followers, which is more than I ever had on X, and with far higher levels of engagement and much friendlier interactions.

I’m also on Mastodon, although with a much smaller following (1.4k). This blog also has a separate existence on Mastodon here. I very much like the federated structure of Mastodon (which, incidentally, accords with my view of how academic publishing should be configured) and am a bit disappointed that it doesn’t seem to have caught on as much as it should.

That disappointment pales into insignificance, however, with the outrage I feel that my employer – along with most other universities – persists in using Xitter. Touting for trade in a far-right propaganda channel is no way for a institution of higher education to behave. You can read my views on this matter here.

And finally there’s the Open Journal of Astrophysics. The year ahead will see the 10th anniversary of our first ever publication – on an experimental prototype platform, long before we moved to Scholastica. It will be next Monday before we resume publishing, starting Volume 9. Which author(s) will be the first to get their final versions on arXiv in 2026? Stay tuned to find out!

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Quasimodo Sunday

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , , on April 27, 2025 by telescoper

One of the useless facts stored in the increasingly inaccessible recesses of my memory is that the first Sunday after Easter is sometimes called Quasimodo Sunday, not for Hunchback of Notre Dame, but from the start of the traditional introit to the roman liturgy for this day: Quasi modo géniti infántes… (“in the manner of newborn babes”).

This year in Maynooth University Quasimodo Sunday is the last day before the students return after a short Easter break for the remaining two weeks of teaching of the Spring Semester. It’s just less than two weeks of teaching, actually, because Monday 5th May is a public holiday. This will be a very busy period as we have not only to finish teaching our modules, but also to complete grading any remaining assessments ahead of the examinations that start on 16th May. I have just four lectures and two tutorials remaining in Particle Physics but I have one assignment still to correct (which I intend to do this afternoon) and there will be one more due in at the end of term (Friday 9th May). In Computational Physics the only item on the agenda for students is the project work also due in on 9th May, at which point I will have reports from 32 students to grade. Then there’s the examinations…

I also have another important job to do over the next couple of weeks, which I can’t write about here. I had hoped to start on it a few weeks ago but that plan was stymied by a bureaucratic delay, so I actually only got started last Friday. It looks like I’ll have to do it alongside everything else during the next two weeks. I won’t post about it until it’s finished, but I’m optimistic that it will turn out well.

Oh, and I’m giving a Colloquium in the Department of Physics on 9th May too. It’s all go.

The weather was mostly rather grim over the Easter break but has improved today and the forecast for the next few days is good. I propose to mow the lawn before starting on my grading tasks. I have let the grass grow for a while, resulting in a splendid crop of dandelions which, among other things, are good for the bees. Dandelions are generally thought of as weeds but the I find the splashes of yellow colour all around very easy on the eye and do not share the desire that some people have to destroy them on sight. In fact there seem to be more around than I’ve noticed in previous years. I’ll let the ones at the back of my house carry on for a while, but I’m sure others will soon grow in the front after I mow the lawn.

Update: mowing was hard work because the grass was still rather wet.  I gave it a rough cut and will go over it again in a couple of days when what’s left will hopefully be dry.

As well as dandelions, there are quite a few cowslips here and there:

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Half-term Time!

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , , on March 14, 2025 by telescoper

After a Departmental meeting this afternoon being the last item on the agenda for this week, at last we’ve reached the Mid-Semester Half-Term Study-Week Break. Six weeks down, six weeks to go (not including an extra week off for Easter). This coming Monday is St Patrick’s Day, a national holiday here in Ireland, and the rest of the week is free from lectures, labs and tutorials. I have two batches of computational physics tests and a particle physics assignment to grade, four examination papers to write and a graduation ceremony to attend before we return, so it’s not exactly a holiday. I plan to try to make the most of the time freed up by not having to teach to finishing writing up at least one, and possibly two, papers.

I’m glad of the arrival of this break, as I’ve been running on empty for the last several days, the general sense of fatigue exacerbated by a flare-up of the arthritis in my knees. Doctors say that there’s no reliable evidence that arthritis pain correlates with the weather, but in my case it does seem to come on when the weather changes, especially when it suddenly becomes cold or damp as it has done over the past few days. I’ll be due for another steroid shot soon, which should help, and hopefully the weather will improve over the next few weeks. Possibly. It seems to be a tradition for St Patrick’s Day to take place during inclement weather so, while I plan to go and watch the parade in Maynooth on Monday, I won’t linger outside if it’s cold. I will be taking the whole day off though.

The second half of term should be a bit easier than the first. For one thing, we have another break coming up four weeks after the resumption. Good Friday is on April 18th, so that is a holiday, as is the following week. The second 6 weeks of the Semester is therefore split 4-2 with a week off in between. Moreover, I usually only give lectures in Computational Physics for 9 or 10of the 12 teaching weeks in the Semester, after which the students will be working on the mini-projects which form part of the assessment for this module.

Anyway, it’s time to head home via the shops and buy something to eat while I watch St Pat’s versus Bohemians on the telly box. I haven’t got the energy for anything else!

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Term goes on…

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , , , on March 2, 2025 by telescoper

Here we are, about to start the fifth week of the Spring semester at Maynooth University. Teaching isn’t going too badly, but I have come to realize that I have a lot of continuous assessment marking to do – classs tests and mini-projects for Computational Physics and assignments for Particle Physics. The numbers of students involved are 32 in the first case and 23 in the second, but I have to do all the corrections myself. Ho hum. Still, I’m enjoying teaching particle physics again after a gap of 15 years or so so I can’t complain about that.

Last week saw some important achievements by research students. Two students in the Department of Physics – one of them supervised by me – submitted their PhD theses last week. Nominations of examiners have to be approved by Faculty and Academic Council but that should be a formality and we then have the viva voce examinations, so the process is not over yet, but the submission of a thesis is a landmark in itself and is to be celebrated.

Something less worthy of celebration is the ongoing chaos at Maynooth over funding for future research students. You may recall that I posted about the terrible decision by the Management of Maynooth University to scrap the John and Pat Hume Doctoral Scholarships and followed this up with another post suggesting the decision might be reversed and another pointing out that it hadn’t been. The Hume scheme has been paused for a “review”. That review was actually completed in January. It is now March and academic staff have still had no word about the status of the Hume Scholarships. Someone is stalling.

I have received a number of enquiries in recent weeks from prospective students about when applications would open as I’m sure is also the case for several of my colleagues. It has been very depressing to have to reply saying that I have no idea. As far as I know the scheme is suspended indefinitely. It’s now effectively too late for this year anyway, as most prospective students will already have lined up offers elsewhere. Only students not able to secure a place elsewhere will be available to apply if and when the scheme does open.

The timing of this is especially sad for the new Department of Physics. Our final-year Theoretical Physics class sizes are larger than ever but the Maynooth is sending them a very clear signal that it doesn’t want any of them to stay here for their PhDs.

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