Math Blog

Zentralblatt for developing countries

villegas — 2014-04-26T14:37:28Z

I am currently attending the annual meeting of the Committee for Developing Countries of the The European Mathematical Society. I may write more on this in later posts but I wanted to mention one point right away. Zentralblatt MATH zbMATH is, in their own words, "the world's most comprehensive and longest running abstracting and reviewing service in pure and applied mathematics". In addition, they are adding new features. An interesting example is swMATH, which is a database on mathematical software. This is a joint project with the Mathematical Research Institute Oberwolfach, funded by the Leibniz Association. EMS-CDC reports that some developing countries are eligible to get free access to Zentralblatt services. Details of how this works is described in this poster. The eligible countries are given in this list.

Who wants to be an author?

villegas — 2014-11-03T13:07:14Z

At the EMS-CDC meeting last year in Berlin I heard for the first time the concept of predatory publishing. I have received, like many other I am sure, endless e-mails asking me to submit papers to journals I have never heard of.

It doesn't take much to suspect an e-mail addressed to a number theorist that claims:

given your expertise in the area of supply chain dynamics, disruption management, resilience, and control, we cordially invite to submit a paper to a Special Issue on Supply Chain Dynamics, Control and Disruption Management in IJPR with the NEW submission deadline by JULY 15, 2014.

I typically just took it as yet more spam to have to deal with.

As it happens things can be nastier than that. I quote from the Wikipedia page on predatory publishing

"In academic publishing, some publishers and journals have attempted to exploit the business model of open-access publishing by charging publication fees to authors without providing the editorial and publishing services associated with more established and legitimate journals (open access or not)."

As if things were not already hard enough for researchers struggling to have their work published in reputable journals.

I heartily recommend the Wikipedia article as well as the editorial by B. Teissier in the EMS newsletter discussing the issue further.

Villani speaks to Trieste high schools students

villegas — 2014-11-03T10:51:37Z

As part of the activities for the 50th anniversary of ICTP early last October Cedric Villani gave a talk at the Liceo Oberdan in Trieste for over 100 high school students on the Mathematics of Bats. An amazing performance by one of the masters.

Panama - Costa Rica

villegas — 2013-11-26T22:56:39Z

Last October Claudio Procesi and I went to Panama and Costa Rica, where we gave a couple of talks on general topics in Algebra. My talk was on "Algebra and the real world". In the same spirit as my talk at the Congress of the Americas in Guanajuato, México this past August the underlying theme of this talk was roughly the question: "Is our world continuous or discrete?"

One could argue that though the world used to look like the former it progressively looks more and more like the latter. Algebra is quintessentially the science of the discrete and its relevance for the real world will only increase with time. (Unfortunately due to some technical problems there is no video of my talk in Guanajuato but you can watch a short interview where I discuss some of this.)

One of the places we visited in Panama was the Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá. You can find some details of our visit here (in Spanish).

In Costa Rica we visited the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica as well as the Universidad de Costa Rica. At the end of our stay in San José, Claudio and I also participated in a meeting with many representatives of Universities from around Central America on an ongoing discussion to open a regional Doctorate in Physics and Mathematics. The rectors from 22 Universities from 6 countries in the region met to continue to hammer out the details of this important project.

More publishing trouble

villegas — 2014-11-07T10:44:33Z

Via Fabio Vlacci I heard of the issues with the Journal of K-theory. From The Aperiodical

The rumours are true: the editors which in 2007 resigned from the journal K-Theory have now resigned from the splinter journal they helped set up, Journal of K-Theory, to start a third journal, Annals of K-Theory. What a headache!

Have a look at the whole post. Interesting times indeed.

It's eleven o'clock, do you know where your mathematical software is?

villegas — 2014-11-03T13:24:27Z

My ICTP colleague Ralph Gebauer mentioned to me this article. It is in German. The main point however is discussed in the paper by Antonio J. Durán, Mario Pérez und Juan L. Varona titled "The Misfortunes of a Trio of Mathematicians Using Computer Algebra Systems. Can We Trust in Them?" linked in the article.

Determinants? Really?

Is mathematician the best job?

villegas — 2014-04-17T08:15:39Z

From our physicist colleague Sandro Scandolo we got a pointer to an article in the Wall Street Journal claiming that the best job in 2014 is, yes, mathematician. Not bad.

Is knowledge a commodity?

villegas — 2014-11-15T20:47:18Z

At the Menao event (part of the 2014 ICM ) in Seoul last August, Prof. Sir Partha Dasgupta from Cambridge University, gave a very interesting lecture. He argued that knowledge is indeed a commodity.

His first slide includes the surprising list:

theorems, laws, social norms and practices, art and culture,

all examples of what he called "public knowledge", words I never expected to appear together in the same phrase.

He also described the Fields medal (which were going to be awarded the day after) and similar prizes as an "amazingly cheap way to produce knowledge".

Overall a remarkable and thought-provoking lecture.

ictp-math-dinner-2.jpg

villegas — 2013-12-29T12:03:51Z

ICTP Math Section Blog

opadmin — 2013-11-25T13:15:00Z

ICTP Math Section Activities 2014

villegas — 2013-12-30T12:23:42Z

I am experimenting with the free map creation website zeemaps to keep track of relevant information. As a test here is a map with all the activities of the Math Section for the year 2014. You can get all of the same information from the main ICTP site but it is nice to see the geographical spread of the activities in one go.

Happy New Year 2014!

villegas — 2013-12-29T12:11:34Z

A group of us from the math section at ICTP went out for dinner to celebrate the end of 2013 to Ristorante Capriccio on Piazza Libertà in Trieste. This was one of Ramadas' favorite restaurants in Trieste. Simple but good. (Thanks to Stefano for the pictures)

Best wishes for the New Year! Auguri!

CIMPA - ICTP school in Benin

villegas — 2014-07-30T12:39:26Z

A few weeks ago I attended the first few days of a CIMPA-ICTP school “Algebraic Number Theory and Applications” in Dangbo, Benin. It was held at ISMP an affiliate center of ICTP. I can't do better than to link to a blog entry of my former student, Adriana Salerno. Her whole blog is worth reading of course!

Bitcoin

villegas — 2014-04-11T08:49:11Z

Curious about the math behind Bitcoin? Have a look at this talk for undergraduates by UT Austin Prof. Felipe Voloch.