Message from the

HoI pg 1

JH Michell Medal –

2008 pg 2

Quotable Quotes &

Interesting Facts pg 3

Interesting World

Statistics pg 4

Astronomy News

By Ljiljana Skuljan pg 5 & 6

Dates in History

By Chris Scogings pg 7 & 8

Discovery of a new

Planetary System—

By Ian Bond

pg 9 & 10

Research at IIMS pg 11 & 13

Bertrand Russell - A

Two-time failure pg 14 & 15

Just for a Laugh pg 16

Recipes of the

month pg 17

IIMS NEWS Massey University

Newsletter compiled by Michelle Campbell

March/April 2008

Message from the Head of Institute

This start of the academic year has been one of the most difficult I

can remember; preparing and delivering lectures, writing research

papers with short deadlines, correcting proofs, reading PhD theses, PhD examin-

ing, attending PhD registration confirmations, College meetings here and Palm-

erston North, etc, etc. None of these tasks is particularly onerous but when they

cram into a few hectic weeks they feel relentless. It was with a sense of relief there-

fore that I heard that I had had a research paper accepted in an international con-

ference in sunny Portugal in April. Then I realised that this timing conflicted with

the academic promotions round so I had to withdraw the paper! Ah well, perhaps

there will be a conference in rain swept Palmerston North or somewhere exotic like

Invercargill.

2008 will be an interesting year for IIMS. Our budget has been cut by close to 15%

compared with 2007 and that means targeted savings such as not replacing staff

who have resigned, selected efficiencies, and careful monitoring to control expendi-

ture. With this approach we can maintain most of our current activities and still

consider some new initiatives. One such initiative is the important appointment of

a Professor of Statistics which we have now advertised. Funding for conferences

will be tighter but I am hopeful that where staff do not have their own research ac-

counts IIMS will still be able to cover at least one conference per person to present

a full research paper especially if the paper is likely to lead to a journal publication.

Another potential initiative came out of the recent College of Sciences Strategic

Planning Day in Palmerston North. The College priority for Auckland is develop-

ment at the postgraduate level and in that respect please join me in welcoming

Yasar Javed as a new PG student in the IT Group. Yasar is one of three students to

undertake PhD studies within IIMS via the agreement between Massey University

and the Pakistan government – the others arrive later this year. Another aspect of

the PG priority is the development of professional short courses. As well as promot-

ing IIMS and our links with industry, the incentive for staff is that these courses

earn income that they can use for their own professional development, for example,

travel and conferences. More about this anon.

It is also a pleasure (and a relief!) to welcome Annette Warbrooke as the permanent

Executive Assistant for IIMS. We are already benefiting from Annette’s consider-

able experience in tertiary sector administration. We have been well served by

some fantastic administrative help over the last twelve months but it’s great to know

we can now build on a stable platform. Finally, congratulations (again) to Carlo

Laing for the award of the J H Michell medal (it’s pronounced ‘Mitchell’), to Ian

(again) for the discovery of a new solar system (if there’s life out there Ian re- cruit

some PG students!), and to Brian Whitworth for the award of an Ako Aotearoa grant

to develop his PhD training roadmap. Elsewhere in this issue of IIMS news I try

(miserably I am sure) to emulate Chris Scogings splendid essays on history. I do not

intend to give up my day job!

Inside this months issue

Something to ponder An unruly dog is a hazard to itself and others. The animal which has learned discipline and obedience can be trusted and will loyally and lovingly serve its master. It is then

allowed off its lead.

Through discipline comes freedom ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Page 2 IIMS NEWS

JH Michell Medal – 2008 At the annual meeting of ANZIAM (Australian and New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics) in Ka-

toomba, Australia in February, Carlo Laing was the awarded the JH Michell Medal for outstanding young re-

searchers, becoming the first New Zealander to be awarded the medal. The citation is below.

Carlo Laing did his schooling and undergraduate degrees in Auckland, and received his B.Sc. degree in 1991. He

took a Masters’ Degree in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Auckland in 1994, and a Ph.D. degree

from Cambridge University (DAMTP) in 1998. He has held postdoctoral and visiting positions in Cambridge, Sur-

rey, Pittsburgh and Ottawa before taking up a lecturing position at Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand in

2002. He is currently a senior lecturer in Mathematics at that University.

Carlo has already an extensive publication record, containing some 32 journal papers and 2 book chapters. The

broad theme of his work is in the area of dynamical systems, which he has applied to a variety of problems in

wave propagation and the analysis of mathematical models of neuronal activity. His work has appeared in pres-

tigious journals in the field, such as Physica D and Dynamics and Stability of Systems, the SIAM journals,

Nonlinearity and others. He has also published with leading international researchers in the area, such as Glend-

inning, Troy, Ermentrout, Kevrekidis, Coombes and numerous others. A couple of these international figures vol-

unteered their opinions on Carlo Laing’s work, pointing out that he has developed many of the tools in the area of

neuronal modelling, and that his work is beautiful, deep and original.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

IIMS would like to congratulate the following students for being awarded the Institute of Information and Mathe- matical Sciences Postgraduate Scholarship 2007

Karen Hart

William Hughes

Hyukjoon Kang

Daniel Playne

Vanessa Taylor

Bradford Heap (deferred one year due to special circumstances - Brad is the Albany Students’ Association Presi- dent for 2008).

Well done to all.

March/April 2008 Page 3

Quotable Quotes

Better a witty fool than a foolish wit. - Shakespeare

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

- Albert Einstein

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

- Will Rogers

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

- Albert Einstein

Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.

- Bob Wells

———————————————————————————————————————————————————

Interesting Facts

Easter bunny originates from ancient Anglo-Saxon carnival

The ancient Anglo-Saxons celebrated the return of spring with a carnival commemorating their goddess of off-

spring and of springtime, Eostre. The word carnival possibly originated from the Latin 'carne vale' meaning "flesh,

farewell" or "meat, farewell." The offerings were rabbits and coloured eggs, bidding an end to winter.

As it happened, the pagan festival of Eostre occurred at the same time of year as the Christian observance of the

Resurrection of Christ and it didn't take the Christian missionaries long to convert the Anglo-Saxons when they

encountered them in the 2nd century. The offering of rabbits and eggs eventually (in the 8th century, it is thought)

became the Easter bunny and Easter eggs.

Prior to 325 AD, Easter was variously celebrated on different days of the week, including Friday, Saturday, and

Sunday. In that year, the Council of Nicaea was convened by emperor Constantine. It issued the Easter Rule which

states that Easter shall be celebrated on the first Sunday that occurs after the first full moon on or after the vernal

equinox. The "full moon" in the rule is the ecclesiastical full moon, which is defined as the 14th day of a tabular

lunation, where day 1 corresponds to the ecclesiastical New Moon. It does not always occur on the same date as

the astronomical full moon. The ecclesiastical "vernal equinox" is always on 21st March. Therefore, Easter must be

celebrated on the first Sunday after 21st March.

Christians commemorate the Friday before Easter as Good Friday, the day that Jesus was crucified. Easter Sun-

day is celebrated as the day Jesus rose again.

HOT CROSS BUNS

The word bun is derived from the Saxon word "boun" (pronounced ‘bo-han') which means "sacred ox." At the an-

cient Celtic feast of Eostre, an ox was sacrificed with the ox's horns becoming a symbol for the feast. They were

carved into the ritual bread, thus "hot cross buns." Initially, the cross on the buns represented the moon, the heav-

enly body associated with the goddess Eostre, and its four quarters. Today, the cross on hot cross buns represents

the cross of Christ.

Page 4 IIMS NEWS

Interesting World Statistics

March/April 2008

Astronomy News

Page 5

By Ljiljana Skuljan

From Galileo To Monster Telescopes History Of Ground Telescopes For thousands of years humans sought to discover the mysteries of the night sky, but the quantum leap from na-

ked-eye observations to telescopes was one of the greatest technological advances of mankind. Todays giant tele-

scopes have diameter more then 300 times larger then the first Galileo's "telescope" with an aperture of only 4cm.

Since then each successive increase in telescope diameter has widened our horizon of cosmic knowledge. Astro-

physicist want to collect more light to see dimmer objects and to resolve finer details. This ability of a telescope

(called optical resolution) to distinguish and detect details depends mainly on its diameter. It is often said that

astronomers suffer from, so called, the "aperture fever".

Contrary to popular opinions, Galileo Galileo did not invent the telescope, but he seems to have been the first to

use it to study the sky. How has everything started? It began with the lens. History reveals that the first simple

lenses made from rock crystal have been known from before recorded history. There is an evidence that the Ara-

bian astronomers were acquainted with the lenses way back in the 10th century.

In the 16th century Leonard Digges and others from England developed a device which has been used by the mili-

tary to spy into enemy camps. In 1608 Hans Lippershey from Holland, an eyeglass maker, arranged two lenses in

front of each other and saw a magnified image. One of the stories says that Lippershey got the idea for his inven-

tion when children playing in his shop held two eyeglass lenses up together and found they could see the weather-

vane at the top of a distant church. The original Dutch telescopes were constructed with a convex main lens that

curved outward, and the concave eyepiece lens that curved inward and produced inverted image.

As soon as an Italian mathematics professor Galileo learned about the device, he built one and set about improv-

ing it, creating the first refracting telescope. He developed techniques for grinding and polishing the lenses and

used math to calculate the distance between the lenses that would create the clearest images. Although he built

about 100 telescopes, Galileo considered just 10 of them good enough to use. At their best, they could magnify

objects about 30 times.

Because of flaws in its design, such as the shape of the lens, the images were blurry and distorted. But it was good

enough for Galileo to explore the sky.

Looking through the new instrument toward the sky, Galileo saw the shadows and bright spots that showed the

surface of the Moon had mountains and valleys. The planets, thought to be odd stars that wandered the sky, now

looked like little globes. Galileo discovered that the planets were accompanied by moving points of light, their

own moons.

Galileo quickly published his discoveries in a bulletin "Message from the Stars". He presented his device named a

"telescopio", Greek for "to see at a distance", to the leaders of that time, including the Catholic Church in Rome.

His claims were met at first with wonder and excitement. However as his investigations progressed, Galileo began

to make enemies. Some people argued that the telescope made people see illusions. Others claimed that the plan-

ets details couldn't be seen with the naked eye, and therefore didn't matter.

Galileo was uncovering evidence for the forbidden Copernican theory with the Sun in the center of the Universe.

For instance, he saw that Venus had phases, like the Moon, which showed that the planet was moving around the

Sun instead of the Earth. Also, Jupiter's moons were clearly moving around Jupiter, not the Earth.

His published observations were widely read and eventually caused him to be brought to trial by the Church and

forced to say he was wrong about the Copernican theory to avoid severe punishment. His book was banned and

he was held under house arrest until his death.

Page 6 IIMS NEWS Though the Catholic Church had tried to silence Galileo, his instrument spread across Europe along with a new

philosophy of basing scientific judgments only on measurable evidence. The next leap in the technology of re-

fracting telescopes (light is refracted or bent by a convex lens) occurred when a German-born astronomer, Jo-

hannes Kepler, in 1611 replaced the concave eyepiece lens with a convex lens. This change let the telescope see a

much larger area. He also was the first to understand how a glass lens focuses light. By studying the lenses of

the human eye, Kepler learned that a more complicated shape than a sphere would be needed to make a lens

focus perfectly.

Eventually, people stopped using the design made popular by Galileo and adopted Kepler's two-convex lens de-

sign. Astronomers did not yet have the technology to grind lenses of different shapes, but they could make

spherical lenses with a more gradual curve, which caused the light to bend less. Telescopes with flatter lenses

brought wider and clearer views of the sky, but required longer tubes. Astronomers began to design and build

longer and longer telescopes, achieving further discoveries. But then the designs began to get a bit out of con-

trol. Some of the telescopes were so long, that they could no longer be enclosed in tubes or handled easily.

Though the longest refracting telescopes were impressive and got a lot of attention, they didn't work very well.

They frequently suffered from mechanical failure because of their size and were too difficult to keep steady. Ob-

servations were often interrupted by the swaying and shaking of the telescope.

One of the longest telescopes of that time was Havelius' 46 meter long refractor which was used for making the

first accurate atlas of the Moon in 1673. The other long telescope was Hyugens' 37 meter long refractor com-

pleted in 1686. Using his telescopes, Huygens discovered that Saturn has rings that were not attached to the

planet at all.

(To be continued....)

Fig1 Fig2 Fig3 Fig4

Fig1. Galileo Galilei, Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer & philosopher.

Fig2: Galileo's telescope.

Fig3: Hevelius' 46m refractor.

Fig4: Huygens' 37m refractor.

March/April 2008

Dates in History

Page 7

By Chris Scogings

The Salt Satyagraha – 12th March 1930

“The whole concept of Satyagraha (Satya is truth which equals love, and agraha is force; Satyagraha, therefore,

means truth force or love force) was profoundly significant to me. As I delved deeper into the philosophy of Gan-

dhi, my skepticism concerning the power of love gradually diminished, and I came to see for the first time its po-

tency in the area of social reform.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

In January 1930 the Indian National Congress, led by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, issued the Puma

Swaraj (Declaration of Independence), stating that the British Government in India not only deprived Indian

people of their freedom but was based on the exploitation of the masses. The Congress then gave Ghandi the

responsibility for organising the first act of civil disobedience and he decided to stage a protest against the salt

tax. The 1882 Salt Act gave the British Government a monopoly on the collection and manufacture of salt

(although salt taxes had been imposed by various Indian rulers for centuries). In addition, a tax was added that

forced Indians to pay prices for salt that were up to 2,000% greater than the production costs. This tax made up

about 8% of the income to the British Raj. Violation of the Salt Act was a criminal offence.

Salt has been a valuable commodity for over 4,500 years and has been used in cooking, preserving food, medi-

cine, pottery and the production of gunpowder. It was used in the preservation of Egyptian mummies. Trade in

ancient Greece involving the exchange of salt for slaves gave rise to the expression “not worth his/her salt”. The

special salt ration (salarium argentum) paid to Roman soldiers has given us the word “salary”. During the

American Civil War, salt makers were exempt from military service. Offering bread and salt to visitors is still

traditional etiquette in many cultures. In particular, salt was important to the British chemical industry. An at-

tack on the salt tax was deeply symbolic, striking at one of the most ancient and enduring symbols of wealth and

power.

Ghandi proved himself to be a master at making the most of the international media. From the 5th February, he

issued regular statements about what would happen and why these actions were being taken. Dozens of Indian,

European and American newspapers responded and sent correspondents, along with film crews, to cover the

march.

On 12th March, a group of about 80 marchers emerged from the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad and set off to

walk the 390km to the coastal village of Dandi. The march would take 23 days and pass through 48 villages. The

route and the stopping places were carefully planned beforehand and events at each village were timetabled and

publicized in the Indian and foreign press. One example was the New York Times that wrote daily about the

march, including two front page articles. There was much speculation about whether Ghandi (who was over 60)

would actually complete the march. Thousands joined the marchers and they finally arrived in Dandi where

more than 50,000 had gathered.

On 6th April 1930 Ghandi picked up a lump of salty mud on the seashore. He held the mud aloft and declared

“With this mud, I will shake the foundations of the British Empire”. He then boiled the mud in seawater and

produced a small amount of (illegal) salt. Mass civil disobedience soon spread throughout India as millions

made salt or bought illegal salt. Boycotts of British cloth, goods and taxes were also started. The British Govern-

ment in India arrested over 60,000 people, passed new rules and declared the Indian National Congress illegal.

In Peshawar, British troops opened fire on protestors killing about 250. Some Indian Army soldiers refused to

open fire and were arrested. They received heavy penalties including life imprisonment.

Page 8 IIMS NEWS

Ghandi then planned to march to the Dharasana Salt Works in Gujarat, but was arrested shortly before the ac-

tion was to take place. The march went ahead as planned led by Ghandi’s wife Kasturba but she was arrested

before reaching Dharasana. Sarojini Naidu then took over as leader and she told the protestors “You must not

use violence. You will be beaten but you must not resist.” Several times, Naidu and the marchers approached

the Salt Works before being turned back by Indian police. At one point they sat down and waited for 28 hours.

On 21st May, some of the protestors tried to pull away the barbed wire protecting the salt pens. They were then

charged by the police who were armed with their traditional lathis (heavy sticks, often bamboo, bound with

iron). United Press correspondent Webb Miller reported that:“Not one of the marchers even raised an arm to

fend off the blows. They went down like ten-pins. From where I stood I heard the sickening whacks of the clubs

on unprotected skulls. The waiting crowd of watchers groaned and sucked in their breaths in sympathetic pain

at every blow. Those struck down fell sprawling, unconscious or writhing in pain with fractured skulls or broken

shoulders. In two or three minutes the ground was quilted with bodies. Great patches of blood widened on their

white clothes. The survivors without breaking ranks silently and doggedly marched on.”

The British Government initially tried to censor Miller’s story but it was eventually published in 1,350 newspa-

pers around the world. Ghandi was released from prison about a year later to hold talks with the British Vice-

roy in India. These talks would lead on to several Round Table Conferences that paved the way for Indian inde-

pendence.

Mahatma Gandhi picking up a lump of salty mud near Dandi, Gujarat, on the 6th April 1930.

March/April 2008

The discovery of a new Planetary System

Page 9

By Ian Bond

In March of this year the discovery of a new planetary system was announced. The “discovery paper” was pub-

lished in Science magazine in March of this year and it included Winston Sweatman, Ljljana Skuljan, Wei Lin, and

myself as co-authors. I got another 15 minutes of fame by being hauled up in front of a number of media outlets,

but it was really thanks to the efforts of an unseen member of IIMS that we managed to get any data at all on this.

This discovery presents a good opportunity to introduce you all to Paul Tristram who has been employed by

Massey since 2006 as a “Winter Observer” using funds from my research grant. His job is to take up residence at

the Mt John Observatory and keep the telescopes operating and pointing in the right direction and to make sure

MOA gets the data that’s needed. The job being what it is, Paul keeps unusual hours. It turned out that he was able

to get crucial data on this planetary at just the right times. To appreciate this, I’ll briefly recap how the technique

microlensing works.

Planets orbiting stars other than the Sun are extremely hard to detect and astronomers have developed a number

of techniques. Most extrasolar planets have been detected by observing the Doppler effect of its parent star as it

wobbles about the centre of mass of the star and any planets orbiting it. Microlensing on the other hand, uses star

and its orbiting planets as a naturally occurring lens on the light of a physically unrelated star that happens to be

in the line of sight. Prior to 2008, four planets had been discovered with this technique. In the latest result, not

one but two planets were found to be orbiting the lens star. This is the first multiple planet system discovered by

microlensing and brings the total number of planets discovered by this technique to six.

The process of discovering a new planet by microlensing involves a number of steps. First, it is necessary to detect

the microlensing event in which one star is moving along the line of sight of another star. This requires a telescope

with a wide field high mega-pixel CCD camera. There are only two instruments of this type in the World. One of

them is operated by the OGLE (Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment) collaboration at Las Campanas in the

Andes Mountains in Chile. The other is a 1.8 m telescope operated by the Japan/New Zealand MOA (Microlensing

Observations in Astrophysics) collaboration at the Mt John Observatory near Lake Tekapo in the South Island.

OGLE and MOA find a total of around 800 microlensing events per year, but not all of them are suitable for

searching for planetary signals. One has to select the most promising events for detailed study depending on the

real-time properties of events in progress. Any event that shows some of sign of deviating from it normal behav-

iour is studied by networks of telescopes throughout the globe. Discovering planets by microlensing is a highly

time critical process – one must be observing the right event at the right time.

During March 2006, the main MOA telescope was still undergoing commissioning tests. However, our (friendly)

rival in Chile had alerted a microlensing event in progress that was showing some interesting behaviour possibly

indicating some sort of planetary signal. An international call was made to all microlensing observers to obtain

follow-up data on this event. I did not pay much attention to this, being more concerned with getting our own sur-

vey telescope operational, but Paul Tristram got onto one of the other telescope at Mt John and started observing

this event. He was actually the first New Zealander to get onto it. In the end, 12 telescopes around the globe

mapped out the time signature of this event. However, Paul managed to get data at crucial times that allowed the

parameters of the two planets to be determined.

This was just another one of more than 250 distant planetary systems so far discovered. What made this signifi-

cant was that it could be thought of as a scaled down version of our own Solar System. The two planets were deter-

mined to have masses of 0.7 and 0.3 times that of the planet Jupiter and orbiting their parent star at separation of

2.3 and 4.6 astronomical units (1 A.U. is the distance between the Earth and the Sun). The parent star has a mass

of approximately half that of our Sun. The ratios of the masses of the two planets to the parent star are very similar

to the mass ratios of Jupiter and Saturn to our own Sun. Also the ratio of orbital separations scale similarly. This

discovery was thus reported as a Jupiter/Saturn analog.

Page 10 IIMS NEWS

Note that the event was first observed in March 2006, but the results were not announced until February 2008 –

nearly two years later. The mathematical modeling of the time signatures of microlensing events is a notoriously

difficult affair. Last year, at least four new planetary detections were made by microlensing – all of them heavily

involving MOPA data. However, we are still working on the analysis, so we can’t announce anything just yet. It

seems that we are actually detecting planetary microlensing events at a faster rate than we can model them.

Maybe it is a nice problem to have - I’m not sure.

What would really be exciting is the detection of a true Solar system analog. That is, a planetary system compris-

ing one or more giant planet outer orbits, like Jupiter and Saturn, together with one or more low mass inner

planets, like Earth and Mars. No such system has yet been detected, but one of the events from last year that is

under analysis is looking quite promising.

Microlensing remains the only technique currently in use that is capable of detecting Earth mass planets. It’s

only a matter of time before one is discovered. And it will be sooner rather than later. I have used words like

“discovery” a lot in this article. But I think it is true that astronomy is very much a discovery driven science. This

is one reason why I find it very exciting.

Fig 1 Fig 2

Fig1: Artists View of what the planetary system may look like

Fig2: Paul Tristrim “winter observer” at the Mt

John Observatory

March/April 2008

Research at IIMS

Page 11

IIMS research outputs reported in January February 2008

Journal article

Begg, R., Wall, D.J.N., & Wake, G.C. (2008). On the stability of steady size‑distributions for a cell-growth process with dispersion. Differential and Integral Equations, 21(1-2), 1-24.

Ben-Tal, A., & Smith J.C. (2007). A model for control of breathing in mammals: Coupling neural dynamics to

peripheral gas exchange and transport. Journal of Theoretical Biology, doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2007.12.018.

Cowpertwait, P., Isham, V., & Onof, C. (2007). Point process models of rainfall: Developments for fine‑-

scale structure. Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 463, 2569-2587.

Gaudi, B.S. et al., including Bond, I.A., & Sweatman, W.L. (2008). Discovery of a Jupiter/Saturn ana-

log with gravitational microlensing. Science, 319, 927‑930. DOI: 10.1126/science.1151947

Lim, L.L., Sweatman, W.L., McKibbin, R., & Connor, C.B. (2008). Tephra fallout models: The effect of

different source shapes on isomass maps. Mathematical Geosciences, 40, 147-157.

Sarrafzadeh, A., & Dadgostar, F. (2007). Effect sensitive computer based tutors: Dream or reality? Quar-

terly Journal of Education, 23(1), 11-40.

Watson, P.E., & McDonald, B.W. (2007). Activity levels in pregnant New Zealand women: Relationship

with socioeconomic factors, well-being, anthropometric measures, and birth outcome. Applied Physiology, Nutri-

tion and Metabolism, 32, 733-742.

Journal editorial

Cowpertwait, P., Wake, G., Anderson, R.D., Edwards, H., & Searle, S. (2007). Statistics and applied

probability: A tribute to Jeffrey J. Hunter. Editorial in the Journal of Applied Mathematics and Decision Sci-

ences

Volume 2007, 4 pages. Hindawi Publishing Corporation. DOI: 10.1155/2007/57619.

Book – Authored

Stobart, S., & Parsons, D. (2007). Dynamic web application development using PHP and MySQL, London,

UK: Cengage Learning EMEA.

Book - Chapter

Whitworth, B., & Liu, T. (2008). Politeness as a social computing requirement, appears in Handbook of

Conversation Design for Instructional Applications, Rocci Luppicini (Ed.), Information Science Reference, IGI

Global, PA, USA, pp 420-437. ISBN: 978-1-59904-597-9

Mathrani, A., Viehland, D., & Parsons, D. (2007). Dynamics of offshore software development success:

The outsourcers perspective. In Verma, V. (Eds.) Management Offshore Software Projects, Novembger 2007, pp

58-80, Series: BPO / Outsourcing, ISBN: 81-314-1178-2.

Book – Edited

Cowpertwait, P. (Ed.), (2005). Special Issue: Proceedings of the 14th International Workshop on Matrices

and Statistics, Research Letter in the Information and Mathematical Sciences, 8, Auckland, NZ: Institute of In-

formation and Mathematical Sciences, Massey University.

Cowpertwait, P., Wake, G., (Guest Eds.), (2007). Statistics and applied probability: A tribute to Jeffrey J.

Hunter. Journal of Applied Mathematics and Decision Sciences. Volume 2007, Hindawi Publishing Corporation.

DOI: 10.1155/2007/57619.

Abstract in Published Proceedings

Cowpertwait, P., Isham, V., & Onof, C. (2007). Developments of fine scale structure for point process

models of rainfall. New Zealand Hydrological Society Conference, November 20-23, Rotorua, New Zealand.

Full paper in published proceedings

Hawick, K.A., James, H.A., & Scogings, C.J. (2006). High-performance spatial simulations and optimisa-

tions on 64-Bit architectures. H.R. Arabnia (Ed.), in the Proceedings of the 2006 International Conference on

Modeling, Simulation and Visualisation Methods (MSC’06), June 26-29, Nevada, USA:CSREA Press.

Page 12 IIMS NEWS

Hawick, K.A., James, H.A., & Scogings, C.J. (2007). Structural circuits and attractors in Kauffman net-

works. In M. Randall, H. Abbass, & J. Wiles (Eds.), in the Proceedings of the 3rd Australian Conference on Arti-

ficial Life (ACAL 2007), December 4-6, Gold Coast, Australia, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 4828, (pp

190-201),. Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.

Hawick, K.A., Scogings, C.J., & James, H.A. (2007). Spatial emergence of genotypical tribes in an animat

simulation model. In S.G. Henderson et al (Eds.), in the Proceedings of the 2007 Winter Simulation Conference

(WSC07), December 9-12, (pp 1216-1222), Washington DC, USA.

James, H.A., Hawick, K.A., & Scogings, C.J. (2007). User-friendly scheduling tools for large-scale simu-

lation experiments. In S.G. Henderson et al (Eds.), in the Proceedings of the 2007 Winter Simulation Confer-

ence (WSC07), December 9-12, (pp 610-616), Washington DC, USA.

Mathrani, A., Goel, G., & Parsons, D. (2007). Building trust across virtual social spaces: The software

vendors’ perspectives. In the Proceedings of the 18th Australasian Conference on Information Systems, (pp 585-

594), Dec 5-7, Toowoomba, Australia.

McKibbin, R., (2008). Force, flight and fallout: Process on modelling hydrothermal eruptions. In the Pro-

ceedings of the 29th New Zealand Geothermal Workshop and the New Zealand Geothermal Association Seminar,

(7 pages), November 19-21, 2007. CD ISBN 978-0-86869-115-2.

Mercer, G. Sweatman, W.L., Elvin, A., Caunce, J., Fulford, G., Harper, S., & Pennifold, R. (2007).

Process driven models for spray retention by plants. In G.C. Wake (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2006 Mathematics-

in-Industry Study Group (MISG2006) (pp 57-85). January 30 – February 3, Massey University, Auckland, New

Zealand: Mathematics in Industry Study Group, Massey University. ISBN 0-473-11068-7.

Parsons, D., Lal, R., & Ryu, H. (2007). Software development methodologies, agile development and us-

ability engineering. In the Proceedings of the 18th Australasian Conference on Information Systems, (pp 172-

178), Dec 5-7, Toowoomba, Australia.

Pritchard, G., Sweatman, W.L., Nan, K., Camden, M., & Whiten, B. (2008). Maximising the contri-

bution of wind power in an electric power grid. In T. Marchant, M. Edwards & G. Mercer (Eds.), Proceedings of

the 2007 Mathematics-in-Industry Study Group (MISG2007), (pp 114-139). February 5–9, University of Wol-

longong, NSW, Australia: Mathematics and Statistics in Industry Study Group, University of Wollongong. ISBN

978-0-646-48555-3.

Messom, C., Sarrafzadeh, A., Gerdelan, A., & Johnson, M. (2007). Operating system virtualization for

management and delivery of E-learning. In the Proceedings of E‑Learn 2007 World Conference on E Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education, (pp 7267-7273), October 15-19, Québec, Canada.

Sarrafzadeh, A., Shanbehzadeh, J., Messom, C., & Johnson, M. (2007). Innovative technologies for

the creative industries: Advanced human-machine interfaces for dynamic performance effects. In the Proceed-

ings of the 4th International Conference on Innovation in Information Technology, (pp 223-227), November 18-

20, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Shanbehzadeh, J., Gholami, M., & Sarrafzadeh, A. (2007). Compressed domain image retrieval based

on modified CVQ. In the Proceedings of the 22nd Image and Vision Computing New Zealand 2007 Conference,

December 5-7, (pp 211-216), Waikato University, Hamilton, New Zealand.

Shanbehzadeh, J., Pezashki, H., & Sarrafzadeh, A. (2007). Features extraction from Farsi hand written

letters. In the Proceedings of the 22nd Image and Vision Computing New Zealand 2007 Conference, December

5-7, (pp 35-40), Waikato University, Hamilton, New Zealand.

Thongmoon, M., McKibbin, R., & Tangmanee, S. (2008). A comparison of some numerical methods for

the advection‑diffusion equation. In the Proceedings of the Annual National Symposium on Computational

Science & Engineering (ANSCSE11), (pp 413-420), March 28-30, Prince of Songkla University, Phuket, Thai-

land.

March/April 2008 Page 13

Oral Presentation – Conference contribution

Ben-Tal, A. (2006). More on the control of respiration. Dynamical Systems and Numerical Analysis One- Day Meeting, June 27, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Ben-Tal, A. (2006). Simplified models of the respiratory control system. Joint Society for Industrial and Ap- plied Mathematics-Society for Mathematical Biology Conference on the Life Sciences, July 31 – August 4, North Carolina, USA.

Ben-Tal, A. (2007). Modelling Cheyne - Stokes respiration and other aspects of the control of respiration. The 1st Joint International Meeting between the American Mathematical Society and the New Zealand Mathemati- cal Society, December 12-15, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.

Laing, C. (2007). Coarse-graining: A neural example. Symposium on Mathematical & Computational Nanoscience 2007. December 9-11, Wellington, New Zealand.

Laing, C. (2007). Bumps and rings in a two-dimensional neural field: Splitting and rotational instabilities. The 1st Joint International Meeting between the American Mathematical Society and the New Zealand Mathe- matical Society, December 12-15, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.

McGuinness, M., Sweatman, W.L., & Baowan, Y. (2008). Cold-point determination in heat treated steel coils. Conference of the Australia and New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ANZIAM 2008), February 3-7, New South Wales, Australia. McKibbin, R. (2007). Solving the particle transport equations for ele- vation-dependent atmospheric flows. The International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth’s Interior Inter-Association Symposia and Workshops, July 2-12, Perugia, Italy.

McKibbin, R. (2007). Analytic solutions to the particle transport equations for a non‑uniform atmosphere. The 6th International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM2007), July 16-20, ETH Zurich and University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.

McKibbin, R. (2007). Components and phases: Modelling hydrothermal eruptions. The 10th Wellington- Manawatu Applied Maths Conference, August 29, MacDiarmid Centre, Lower Hutt, New Zealand.

McKibbin, R. (2007). Modelling turbulent dispersion of pollen in a forest canopy. The 1st Joint International Meeting between the American Mathematical Society and the New Zealand Mathematical Society, December 12-15, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.

Roberts, M.G. (2008). The evolution and transmission of a virus. Plenary Talk at the Conference of the Australia and New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ANZIAM 2008), February 3-7, New South Wales, Australia.

Sweatman, W.L. (2007). Full ionisation in binary-binary encounters at high velocity. The 1st Joint Interna- tional Meeting between the American Mathematical Society and the New Zealand Mathematical Society, De- cember 12-15, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.

Sweatman, W.L. (2008). Full ionisation in four-body encounters between binary stars. Conference of the Australia and New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ANZIAM 2008), February 3-7, New South Wales, Australia.

Poster – Conference contribution

Ben-Tal, A., & Smith, J.C. (2008). Studying the control of breathing in mammals by coupling neural dy- namics to peripheral gas exchange and transport. Workshop on Multi-scale Modelling of the Respiratory Sys- tem, February 19-22, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.

Oral presentations

Ben-Tal, A. (2006). Simplified models for the lungs and the control of respiration. Professional Oral Presen- tation. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Israel Institute of Technology, Israel, January 8.

Roberts, M.G. (2008). Modelling the control of influenza outbreaks. Invited Presentation at the Applied Epi- demiology Course, Seasonal and Pandemic Influenza: Surveillance, control and Research, Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, New Zealand, February 21.

Sweatman, W.L. (2008). Encounters of binary stars that lead to mutual destruction. Departmental Collo- quia Series. Physical, Environmental, & Mathematical Sciences, University of New South Wales, Australia, Feb- ruary 11.

Page 14 IIMS NEWS

Bertrand Russell – A Two-time Failure

by Tony Norris I’ve been reading Confessions of a Philosopher by Bryan Magee. Magee is a writer, novelist, literary and theatre

critic, academic philosopher, and one-time Member of Parliament whom I first came across in 1978 when he

presented a BBC television series, Men of Ideas. The series consisted of fifteen 45-minute programmes in which

Magee simply conversed with an eminent philosopher about his own area of expertise or some other key phi-

losophical ideas. That was it – just two talking heads on a television screen! The series was a great success dem-

onstrating that there was a market for the presentation of serious topics if the programmes were well planned

and the ideas were clearly articulated for a thinking audience. People would come up to Magee in the street or

the tube station, congratulate him on the series and discuss the most recent programme. Men of Ideas was re-

peated and led to a second series, The Great Philosophers, which was screened in 1987/88.

Can you imagine this happening today? Nowadays, producers assume a 30-second attention span often taken up

with irrelevant images intended to dull rather than stimulate our senses. Each image typically lasts 1-2 seconds

during which a voice-over has no place so we are exposed to banal ‘musik’ clips composed for the tone deaf. Ei-

ther that or the subject material is made more palatable for us poor viewers by presenting it as cartoons (‘Pluto’s

Republic’ or that dysfunctional family, ‘The Descartes’?), or fantasy adventures (‘Harry Stotle and the Philoso-

pher’s Stone’?), or soap operas (‘Satre Street’?). But I digress – back to Confessions of a Philosopher. It’s been a

long read, partly because it’s nearly 600 pages long but mainly because each time Magee has mentioned an im-

portant philosopher I put the book aside and looked up the subject of his attention in a more specialised tome.

That’s how I came to read more about Russell.

Bertrand Russell was born in 1872 and died at the age of 97 in 1970. Throughout his long life

he espoused freedom of mind (loose morals according to many critics) and controversial

causes. He was twice sent to prison, once for being a conscientious objector in World War 1

and again for anti-nuclear protests at the age of 89 in 1961. He became an Earl on the death

of his brother in 1931 and he was the very image of an English aristocrat emanating supreme

confidence. I remember him vaguely as a television personality in the late 1960s and in newspaper reports of his

latest and very public escapades. He cut a very emaciated and wizened figure but fixed you with inquisitive but

kindly eyes that fully suggested the power of his mind.

Although Russell contributed to many fields in the sciences and humanities – he began life as a mathematician

– he is best known for his work as a philosopher and the great thinker who advanced the field of logic from pretty

well where Aristotle had left it in the fourth century BC. His interest in mathematics led him to the con- cern that

all of mathematics relied on unjustifiable premises, that is, it appeared that you simply had to accept that certain

premises or axioms were true because you couldn’t prove them to be true by logical argument. Every

mathematical derivation or proof depends on a set of rules or procedures but it has to begin somewhere, that is

with the relevant axioms. These axioms and the rules cannot be shown to be true by the mathematical proof or

derivation itself because that would mean that the procedure was proving what it had taken for granted. The

argument would be circular. It seemed, therefore, that whilst mathematics might work quite well in practice and

give us some useful results it was based on some very shaky foundations (hardly scientific!).

March/April 2008 Page 15

Apparently, once in the course of a public lecture, Russell emphasised these ideas by stating that it was not possi-

ble to break the rules of mathematics without disastrous consequences. Once a false mathematical statement was

intro-duced, it was possible to prove anything. At this point a voice from the back of the audience inter-rupted

him: "If two multiplied by two is five, then you must be able to show that I am the Pope. Prove it!" Without hesita-

tion Russell replied: "If two multiplied by two is five, then four equals five. Subtract three from both sides, then

one equals two. But you and the Pope are two, therefore you and the Pope are one. Thank you your Holiness!”.

So, Russell tried to argue that mathematical axioms could be shown to be logically true and therefore that the

whole of mathematics was based on sound logical principles from which everything else could be deduced. Start-

ing with arithmetic, he laboured at this mammoth task for several years before laying out the groundwork of his

theory in his great book, The Principles of Mathematics, published in 1903.

Unfortunately (The first great failure) by this time, Russell had belatedly discovered that a German mathema-

tician named Frege had been working on the same problem for years and had already come to the same conclu-

sions. Russell acknowledged Frege’s work in his book but you can imagine the bitter disappointment in discover-

ing that someone else had beaten you to the punch after all those years of effort. No Google search in those days!

Undaunted, Russell embarked on a collaboration with his former tutor, A N Whitehead, to go the extra mile and

not just argue the reducibility of mathematics but actually demonstrate it. After ten further years of intense re-

search they published the results in three volumes (1910, 1912, 1913) entitled, as if to upstage Isaac Newton, Prin-

cipia Mathematica. A fourth volume was never completed and throughout almost the next two decades there was

the uneasy feeling (shared by Russell) that something wasn’t quite right.

Then in 1931, Russell’s proposition that mathematics was based on logically derived axioms was shot to pieces

(The second great failure) by the publication of a now famous proof by an Austrian logician, Kurt Gödel, who

showed conclusively that the truth of mathematical axioms could never be proved. In case my mathematician

readers are struggling with the lack of rigour in this essay here is the full statement of Gödel’s incompleteness

theorem.

“For any self-consistent recursive axiomatic system powerful enough to describe the arithmetic of the

natural numbers (Peano arithmetic), there are true propositions about the naturals that cannot be

proved from the axioms.”

Feel better now!

In this FOOTnote, I note that Whitehead once said that “The whole of philosophy can be regarded as a footnote to Plato”. Perhaps it should be a PAWnote to Pluto”!

Page 16 IIMS NEWS

Just For A laugh

While being interviewed for a job, the personnel manager said to the Maguire brothers:

'We're going to give you a written examination. Ten questions. Whoever gets most right we'll hire.'

Papers were produced and the boys set to work answering the general knowledge questions. When the time was up the personnel manager collected and marked the papers.

'Well,' said he, 'you've both got nine out of ten, but I'm giving Mick the job.'

'Why's that?' asked Pat.

'Well,' said the manager, 'you both got the same question wrong but he had

'I don't know this' and you had 'Neither do I!'.

There now follows a list of inventions. They were the brainchildren of the Kerry man who was history's unluckiest producer of lemonade. Over the years he came up with 4-up, 5-up, 6-up and then stopped! And if that isn't bad enough, look at other things he produced:

An inflatable dartboard

A chocolate kettle

A soluble life-raft

A self-righting aspirin

A solar-powered torch

March/April 2008 Page 17

Recipes of the month - Something Irish

Guinness beef stew with parsley dumplings (Serves 4)

Save time on the clean up with this one pot wonder

Directions:

Ingredients: 4 Tbsp oil 3 Tbsp flour 1 kg diced beef chuck steak, fat removed 2 onions, diced 2 cloves garlic, chopped 2 Tbsp tomato paste 2 small potatoes, peeled and diced 1 carrot, peeled and cut into thick rounds 1 parsnip, peeled and cut into thick rounds 440ml can Guinness or dark beer 2 cups beef stock 2 bay leaves 2 sprigs thyme Dumplings 1½ cups self-raising flour ¼ tsp salt 2 Tbsp cold butter, grated 2 Tbsp chopped parsley ¾ cup milk

Heat a heavy-based saucepan to high and add half the oil. Place flour into a bowl. Add cubed beef, season with salt and pepper and toss to coat. Sear the beef on all sides by frying it in three batches until well browned. Remove beef to a plate and put aside. Add remaining oil and fry the onions and garlic on low for 5 minutes until soft. Return beef back to the saucepan, add tomato paste and stir over the heat for 1 minute. Add vegetables, Guinness and beef stock. Add the bay leaves and thyme, stir and season well with salt and pepper. Bring to the boil, stir again, cover and turn down to a simmer. Cook for 1 hour, stir- ring occasionally. After 1 hour, make the dumplings by sifting the flour and salt into a deep bowl. Rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips. Sprinkle parsley over, add milk and quickly mix to a soft dough. Place spoonfuls of dump- ling mix into the simmering pot of stew, cover and cook for 20 minutes on low. Serve large spoonfuls of stew and dumplings on warm plates. Cut the hot dumplings and add a sliver of butter. Cooking with beer Try using a dark, or heavier style, beer in casseroles and stews. Guinness is particularly nice to cook with as it has a slightly sweet taste and is rich and dark. It is notably high in Iron. If you cannot find Guinness, try a locally made dark brew like Mac’s Black.

Sourdough rarebit

Cheese on toast by any other name, sourdough adds an extra

flavour dimension

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp Guinness

25g butter, softened

100g cheddar, finely grated

1 tsp mustard, any sort

2-4 slices sourdough, toasted

Directions:

Mix the Guinness, butter and cheese to- gether. Add the mustard and season. Spread the cheese mixture onto the toast and cook under a very hot grill until browned and bubbling. Cook's note You can replace the cheddar with another cheese if you like