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>> 27.09.04

Maths on the radio
Whilst the annual report continues to demand my attention and thus prevent further PhD developments in the diary, another off-topic entry will suffice to keep things ticking over. It seems that the BBC's Radio 4 is paying more attention to mathematics of late for on several occasions I have been listening and a mathematically slanted programme has been aired. The most recent programmes have been part of the five shapes series, an interesting look at shapes, topology, maths and their place in the world around us. I'd thoroughly recommend them... {>>}

>> 24.09.04

Redesign doesn't affect work "shock"
Having planned a redesign for arbitrary constant for some time now, a concerted effort has seen the change finally take place. Not strictly anything to do with the PhD, I'll admit, although it may be easy to assume that in order to complete the redesign I have neglected the pressing issue of my annual report. Although your concerns are appreciated, this has not been the case. The annual report is virtually finished, aside from a few paragraphs of the introduction (which doubles up as the literature review). In fact, the... {>>}

>> 09.09.04

Recent maths news
I know I wrote recently about the Clay Institute Millennium Prize hoo-ha because I was moaning about something or other to do with it, or how journalists write about it, to be more precise. Well, news was delivered this week on progress made in two of the seven million-dollar questions: the Riemann hypothesis and the Poincare conjecture and it unfortunately proves the point I was trying to make. If you would like a short summary of my point, it is here; if you would like a short summary of whether... {>>}

Annual report progress
I have been working hard on my end of first-year report and have been doing a lot of typing to try and get on top of things. I have split the process of writing the report into two main sections and subsections thereof: typing up the maths-y work that has been done and researching/writing the literature review. At this stage, both of those sections are complete in what I would consider to be their first draft, which is to say that everything I want to say is written down in... {>>}

>> 08.09.04

The end of the Genesis mission
As if enduring an incomprehensibly poor movie isn't enough, I've just read of some news that, though not the end of the world, is slightly upsetting in a mathematical sense. A capsule from the Genesis probe has unfortunately crashed to earth this afternoon and with it one of the most exciting space recaptures to have been conceived. The Genesis mission was designed to collect particles of the solar wind for study in the scientific community and was an important mission for a great many people. Although some of the capsules... {>>}

>> 06.09.04

Too many happy returns
As a postgraduate student, you know that the new academic year has started because: i) you have to queue for 25 minutes to get cash from a cash machine ii) the cash machines have run out of money iii) the people behind and in front of you are asking each other if they had a nice holiday and what their house is like and how far from campus it is iv) you have to queue for 20 minutes to buy your breakfast in a restaurant that is no longer tidy... {>>}

>> 01.09.04

Further applicability of maths
Yesterday's entry, on second reading, seemed a little bit self-satisfied, an overdue vindication that maths can actually be useful and therefore a call to the world that here is some proof that maths is useful. I'd love to say that I won't do it again but my entry title for today has already given the game away. Reading through the literature for the review I am currently undertaking, I came across this short paper: Lie Group Analysis Applied to a HIV Transmission Model. The subject of AIDS and HIV is... {>>}