November 2005 Archives

...where I'm attending the fifteenth Japanese Workshop on General Relativity and Gravitation.

At some point, I'll blog about:

• All the interesting work being done by the mostly young, mostly Japanese physicists here;
• The distressing things The Royal Society is saying about open access to scientific information (which has already been covered all over the blogosphere); and
• The harsh things the Royal Society's outgoing head, Lord Robert May, is saying about science in the UK and the US (I hope the new head, astrophysicist Sir Martin Rees, will be equally strident).

But for now, you can look at my pictures.

Alright, in-flight wi-fi internet is a luxury I do not need and can scarcely afford, but too cool to resist this once.

Next stop, Tokyo.

So, why Helsinki? I was here to be the “Opponent” for a Ph.D. examination for a student at the University of Helsinki. I felt like the host of a talk show: after short presentations by the candidate and me, we sat at the front of an auditorium, and I quizzed him on topics near to our hearts (or our brains, at least): the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), and analyzing data from the soon-to-be-launched Planck Satellite using the specific algorithms that he had developed, implemented and tested. Some questions were hard, some were easy, and I'm sure that plenty were just asked in a confused way. But I'm happy to say that he comported himself very well, and he'll be all Doctored-up within a few weeks (in Finland, that seems to involve buying a special hat).

The whole process was very formal, very Northern European (in principle we were meant to be wearing tophat and tails, but we settled for dark suits). Most of my colleagues sniff at these things, but I'm all for a bit of ritual and symbolism -- getting your doctorate should be a big deal. That it was, indeed, a big deal was made even more plain by the next part of the ritual: the VäitösKaronkka, the party, hosted by the newly-minted Doctor in honor of the Opponent and other “respected guests”. We had several kinds of wine, foie gras, grouse (complete with buckshot; not for the squeamish) -- no reindeer, sadly. This one was held in the Hotel Kämp, a recently-restored 19th-century building where, apparently, Finnish luminaries like Sibelius had held court, drank, avoided their families, and planned Finnish independence.

Right now, I'm sitting in the Helsinki airport: right back to the UK for about 12 hours, and then off to the even more remote locale of Tokyo for a week. Next installment: General Relativity from the far East!

... from Helsinki, Finland (no turkey for me...)!

The official aims of the MP-Scientist pairing scheme are

• To help scientists recognise the potential methods and structures through which they can feed their scientific knowledge to parliamentarians.
• To help practising research scientists understand the pressures under which MPs operate.
• To give MPs the opportunity to forge direct links with a network of practising research scientists.
• To give MPs the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the process of scientific understanding and topical research and ultimately to be able to bring this knowledge into better informed discussions and decision making.

I think the scheme was largely successful in these aims (aside: in the UK, “scheme” doesn’t have the negative connotation that it may have to Americans), although you’ll have to ask the MPs whether they’ve learned more about “the process of scientific understanding and topical research”. I’ve seen the various science committees in action, and although the participants themselves occasionally despaired of their impact on policy, they did seem to feel that government did pay some attention to the results of their enquiries. (But it would be worthwhile studying this in detail, and I hope there are a raft of social scientists on the case.) Certainly I’ve “networked” with a few MPs -- and seen how hard they work on both national and local issues. I was particularly impressed with how much time my MP spent working with her constituents on local issues: answering the reams of mail, talking with local reporters, meeting with representatives from local institutions such as Swindon FC and the local branch of the National Museum of Science and Industry.

But, as was mentioned in the comments over at Cosmic Variance, there’s nothing here about money: the Government (which, we certainly learned this week, is not the same thing as Parliament) provides most of the science funding in the UK, and of course many of us were there to understand -- and maybe manipulate to our own, pure-as-the-driven-snow, ends -- the funding system. Briefly, our research is funded through Research Councils such as, in my case, PPARC, which are part of the Office of Science and Technology, itself part of the Department of Trade and Industry, an arm of the Government; education per se is funded separately.

Sorry I've been so quiet this week: I’ve just finished participating in the Royal Society’s MP-Scientist Pairing Scheme. They’ve linked 25 youngish scientists from throughout the UK with a member of Parliament, and let us “shadow” them for much of this week (as well as giving us presentations on the way science and scientists interact with the UK Parliamentary system): attending meetings, watching debates, going to the bar*, generally absorbing the chaos that goes along with politics and government. My MP was Anne Snelgrove, a Labour MP from Swindon, newly elected this year. More later, once I can digest it all, but first let me just say thanks to Anne and Dan and Eric on her staff for everything this week.

*Yes, “bar” as in a place with drinks. In particular, “The Strangers’ Bar” which guests (known as “strangers”) can visit.

Yesterday I had the privilege and the pleasure of teaching cosmology to some of the A-Level Physics students at the Maria Fidelis Convent School in London, where they are justly proud of their science curriculum.

Despite the weird (to me) habit of calling all the adults “Sir” or “Miss” and the very Catholic (but not catholic!) school motto, “Growing together though Christ with courage confidence and dignity” it was great to see a group of smart and motivated students who seemed more than happy to learn and to think. I admit to being chagrined to remember that, well, appearances can be deceiving: the two boys in the class rolled in late, having come from lessons a few blocks away, and gave a little stick to their teacher when she chided them for it. Uh oh, I thought, this could be a tough crowd. But I should have remembered (having been one) that all adolescent males look like disaffected slackers no matter what’s going on underneath. Once we started actually talking about astrophysics and cosmology, their minds were engaged, despite their hoodies and their slouches. The girls were slightly harder to bring out of their shells, but they too were happy to participate and, indeed, to show off what they could do.

So thanks to all of the students (even if I didn’t teach them to make salad), to their teacher, Miss Innocent Mutumba, and to everyone else that I met there.

Spotted on Gloucester Road, London SW7.

Any good suggestions for or case studies of using blogs as part of teaching?

The obvious possibilities: I could blog all of my notes (although I’m not actually teaching any lecture courses this year). But that’s just using a slightly different medium for an old task (and it’s hard to translate math into html!). Or the students could blog theirs -- I suppose that would count as a sort of “User-Generated Content”...

More ideas welcome -- from students and teachers!

OK, here's an example from Coturnix at Science and Politics: using blogs as both a model and a research tool (which is safe if you have a reputable starting point).

And Rachel suggests this nice list of bloggers in eduction.

Next week, I need to account for my time down to about 15 minutes, as part of Imperial’s TOAST (The Original Academic Staff Time) Survey. This will let the College figure out exactly how we (collectively and anonymously, or so we’re told) spend our time. Which, I presume, lets them figure out how to best get money from the government, and allocate it internally. Last time, one of my colleagues included his bathroom visits, but I think they are trying to avoid such fine-grained reporting this round.

Maybe I’ll post my results.

Also, we’ve got a new dress code “in the light of security concerns raised by the terrorist incidents which had occurred over the Summer”: ID Cards must be visible at all times (sort of a test run for the government?); and “Clothing that obscures an individual’s face is not allowed on any of the College’s campuses” -- no hoodies, no veils.