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>> 27.04.04

Free learned member membership
After a couple of weeks away from my desk, I have settled down well into a motivated, consistent work schedule and am starting to get some good results from this increased effort. A good motivational talk from my supervisor on the back of the conference last week will certainly see me get my head down for the next few months, leading up to my transfer report. As an aside to all this, my supervisor let me know of a scheme ran by the EPSRC providing free membership to the most... {>>}

>> 22.04.04

BAMC 2004 (iv)
The final day of the conference saw the late nights and early mornings — along with the constant talk of maths and sheer effort of concentration — finally catch up with me and I fell asleep in at least one of the small talks. Altogether, this morning saw six such talks and the final plenary lecture. Since today has been similar to the others in many details aside from the mathematical ones (those being exactly the ones I can't really talk about), I shall concentrate on the overall impressions the... {>>}

>> 21.04.04

BAMC 2004 (iii)
The days are starting to go quicker, with today being the last full day of the conference. The structure of the schedule was such that talks were timetabled until lunchtime and the afternoon left as free time, before the main social event of the grandly titled "banquet", which was held in the "medieval splendour" of Saint Andrews Hall in Norwich city centre (images). The day's mathematical content comprised of six talks and a plenary lecture. Certainly, having listened to a lot of mathematics over the last couple of days, I... {>>}

>> 20.04.04

BAMC 2004 (ii)
One or two glasses of wine too many at the reception last night made this morning a potentially hazardous area; fortunately, the breakfast was especially satisfying and the dull ache that was to be present in my head all day had the positive effect of increasing my ability to concentrate. This acute concentration proved to be of great benefit, for the day contained no less than eight talks and three 1 hour plenary lectures. The majority of the talks I attended fell into the rough subject heading of bio-fluids ('fluids'... {>>}

>> 19.04.04

BAMC 2004 (i)
British Applied Mathematics Colloquium (BAMC) 2004 University of East Anglia, Norwich Note: I have been at my first mathematical conference for the last four days; what follows is a brief diary of those four days. I have edited the date of entry for each day such that it appears as though I was keeping the diary up to date each day whilst away. Images are on this page. The British Applied Mathematics Colloquium (BAMC) is an annual gathering of the UK's applied mathematicians, designed to provide a platform at which... {>>}

>> 16.04.04

Disjointed holidays
Easter has been a disjointed affair, what with the holiday in Spain, two days back in the "office" sorting out some boring stuff (research skills assignments, figuring out how many hours of marking I've done, marking leftovers etc.), the Easter weekend spent visiting the parents and three more days in the "office" (which brings us to today). The fun doesn't stop there since next week sees me in Norwich at the British Applied Maths Colloquium. I sorted out train tickets this morning (only £19.80, which — despite the fact that... {>>}

>> 06.04.04

Six-month report
All postgraduate research students have to complete six-monthly reviews as a condition of their higher degree registration. It is basically a means of ensuring some progress has been made and to provide some goals for the following six months. According to the progress report guideline: "Together with the annual review it provides formal reporting of the progress of the student's research and an opportunity to report and perceived problems or training needs." Which is all reasonable enough. The form is broken down into two main sections, one of which is... {>>}

Successful return
I'm back from holiday and have some great work to get my teeth stuck into. On the last day of the undergraduate term, the meeting with my supervisor turned out to be something of a breakthrough: having added what we thought were necessary complications to the method we were employing, it turns out that the main added complication was in fact redundant. By removing it, the method suddenly transforms into a more reasonable problem to tackle and it is that on which I am working now. The main problem we... {>>}

>> 02.04.04

Literature review (viii)
This is the eighth part of the literature review, as submitted in part for the annual review and which will eventually form the introduction to my thesis. For more details on this series, please see the first part. The remainder of the classical techniques currently available for dealing with BVPs also concentrate on classifying those initial conditions that, through the application of symmetry methods, will solve classes of associated IVPs. As a result, rather prescriptive methods have been developed in which B- and IVPs that can be solved have been... {>>}