Education Minister to visit China

February 18, 2014 ajb Leave a comment

The UK Education Minister Elizabeth Truss is going to lead a fact-finding mission to Shanghai in order to find out how children there have become the best in the world at mathematics.

(They) have a can-do attitude to maths, which contrasts with the long-term anti-maths culture that exists here.

Ms Truss

In my opinion, there seems to be an acceptable level of mathematical ignorance in the UK and that needs to be addressed as a cultural issue as much as an educational one.

Let us hope that Ms Truss returns with some good ideas on how to revitalise mathematics education.

Link
Shanghai visit for minister to learn maths lessons BBC News website.

Education, Physics

Peter Higgs talks to Jim Al-Khalili

February 18, 2014 ajb Leave a comment

Prof. Peter Higgs is interviewed by Prof. Jim Al-Khalili on BBC Radio 4’s The Life Scientific this Tuesday, 18 February.

Higgs reveals that he did not see the full significance of his initial paper on symmetry breaking and how he got left behind with the further developments for a while before returning to the field in the 1970s.

Link
Peter Higgs talks to Jim Al-Khalili on Radio 4 IOP website.

Education, General Mathematics

A brief history of mathematics

February 17, 2014 ajb Leave a comment

Prof. Marcus du Sautoy on BBC radio 4 a few of years ago gave a series of short accounts of some of the personalities that shaped modern mathematics. You can find these radio programs on the BBC i player by following the link below.

p.s. I must thank my brother for pointing this out.

Link
A brief history of mathematics .

Astronomy, General

Galileo's birthday

February 15, 2014 ajb Leave a comment

Today, the 15th February is Galileo Galilei’s birthday. He is often referred to as the farther of modern physics. He is of course also know for his discoveries using his telescope including the Galilean Moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, the phases of Venus many geographical features of the Moon.

Galileo as born on the 15th February 1564 in Pisa, Italy.

His legacy for theoretical physics
Galileo’s legacy for physics was his blend of mathematics with experimentation. Most of the contemporary science at the time was rather qualitative and Galileo was one of the first to believe that the laws of nature can take a mathematical form.

Link
Galileo Galilei Wikipedia.

General Mathematics

No cards on Valentine's day? This maybe why.

February 14, 2014 ajb Leave a comment

No cards on Valentine’s day, well this could be due to the so called Carol syndrome…

Your lack of cards is due to game theory and in particular an interactive decision problem. Follow the link below for more details.

I hope it makes some of you feel better!

Link
The Carol Syndrome

Post Doc Poland, Research work

Seminar: A first look at N-manifolds

February 13, 2014 ajb Leave a comment

I will be giving a talk at the Geometry and Differential Equations Seminar at IMPAN (Warsaw) on Wednesday 26th February 2014. The title is “A first look at N-manifolds”.

Abstract
In this talk I will introduce the concept of an N-manifold as refinement of the notion of a supermanifold in which the structure sheaf carries an additional grading, called weight, that takes values in the natural numbers. I will provide several motivating examples which largely come for the theory of jets, before discussing some generalities.

Link
Geometry and Differential Equations Seminar

Astronomy, Education

New exhibition at Jodrell Bank near Manchester

February 9, 2014 ajb Leave a comment

Big Telescopes, Big Science is a brand new exhibition which will be unveiled in February at Jodrell Bank visitors centre. the exhibition will include hands-on activities showing how telescopes work and how it is possible to use many smaller telescopes to act as one large telescope.

There will also be running family science shows as part of the half term activities.

Follow the link below for more details.

Link
Big Telescopes, Big Science

Physics

Son of LHC!

February 7, 2014 ajb Leave a comment

CERN is putting plans in place to build a successor to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Possible options for the next generation of colliders will be discussed at the University of Geneva next week.

There are plans for a massive circular collider – with a circumference of 80–100 km – that would accelerate protons to energies of about 100 TeV! The LHC has a 27 km circumference and can collide protons with energies up to about 7 TeV.

Link
CERN kicks off plans for LHC successor.

Education, General

The Brighton Science Festival 2014

January 28, 2014 ajb Leave a comment

Brighton

The Brighton Science Festival 2014 is going to be held from the 6th February to the 2nd March at various locations throughout the city of Brighton, East Sussex. A list of the events can be found here.

If you are in Brighton or nearby over the above dates I am sure you could find something to interest you.

Link
Brighton Science Festival 2014

General

Scientists get the Hollywood treatment!

January 27, 2014 ajb Leave a comment

Monday night on the Science Channel, the Breakthrough Prizes are having their USA television debut!

Preview and clips at http://tinyurl.com/peo97q3

Hosted by Kevin Spacey, the show hands out seven $3 million prizes, and honors physicists Joseph Polchinski, Andrew Strominger, Cumrun Vafa, John H. Schwarz and Michael B. Green, as well as leading medical researchers James P. Allison, Mahlon R. DeLong, Michael N. Hall, Robert Langer, Richard Lifton and Alexander Varshavsky.

Helping to celebrate the scientists are celebrities Conan O’Brien, Anna Kendrick, Glenn Close, Rob Lowe, Michael C. Hall, as well as tech leaders Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Anne Wojcicki, Jimmy Wales and Yuri Milner.

The show is at 9:00ET/PT, 8:00CT, 7:00MT.

Mathematical Ramblings