Durham Cathedral, taken by Ian Huston

The list of participants and the programme outline are on the Durham website, however I do not expect the slides of the talks to be uploaded except perhaps by individual speakers.

Due to it being organised at the last minute and the fact that it took place quite close to the start of the academic term the meeting wasn’t as well attended as others have been, but this allowed for more discussions and for everyone to get to know each other quite well. It also meant that the speakers were allocated 30 minutes each including time for questions, a time scale which is a lot more manageable than the ten minute slots that have previously been used.

The talks and discussions were of a very high quality over the two days, helped by the generous lunch and tea breaks which encouraged the research conversations to continue. The setting was also superb, the Ogden Centre being a very impressive place with a friendly open atmosphere. On Monday evening we were shown what must be one of Durham’s most spectacular outreach efforts, the 3-D film Cosmic Origins, which shows a journey from our solar system, through the Hubble Deep Field, out to the Last Scattering Surface. A 2-D version of the film is embedded below, but for the full experience the 3-D version, glasses and all, needs to be seen. The film was shown at the 2010 Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition.

The two days of talks were really enjoyable and the unrushed pace of the meeting should be replicated next time if possible. With a one day meeting time constraints are very severe, but I think longer time slots and extra discussion time could still be beneficial. I tweeted a few times during the meeting but penetration of Twitter in to the cosmological field has not reached the levels seen in the Science Online London conference last week.

I would like to thank everyone who helped to organise the meeting and make us feel welcome in Durham. I hope to put together a few overview posts about the work that was presented so they should appear here sometime in the future.

As an Android user for a while now, the options were previously limited to navigating to the arxiv website which doesn’t really scale well onto a phone screen, and manually searching for the right paper, or scanning the new list.
For a while there has been an iPhone app called arXivew which listed the latest papers and allowed you to easily download and view the one you wanted.

Now, there is an Android app to compete. ArXiv Droid, released in June by Jack Deslippe, performs admirably, listing all the new papers in each category, including sub-categories like astro-ph.CO for cosmology. You can select categories as favourites for easy access and easily select and view the abstracts of papers. Papers are viewed using the builtin pdf viewer so your mileage may vary depending on whether you mind scrolling around the page. Handily the app prominently displays the size of the pdf before it is downloaded, in case data limits are tight.
Paper titles can be shared via the usual methods, but there doesn’t currently seem to be a way to select papers as favourites, or to see a log of the last abstracts viewed (there is a list of pdfs viewed). However, having seen the progress made in just the last few months, I would look forward to seeing something like this in the future.

With the exception of the problems of viewing A4 sized pdfs on such a small screen, this app does a great job of getting you to the papers you want fast when you are away from your desk. As the proliferation of tablets, e-readers and mobile units continues, I think the arXiv might have to consider some kind of additional format suitable for use on these devices. A quick fix might be to just compile the LaTeX with the geometry of the page changed to A5 or smaller. This would obviously still not allow the reflowing of text which is a key feature of e-readers, and would probably mess up a lot of formatting rich papers.

Until this problem is solved arXiv Droid is an admirable app which helps you stay on top of the deluge of research now flooding the arXiv every day. Get it in the Android Market from this link or by scanning the QR code.

I think PhD students go through a range of feelings towards their theses, beginning with excitement and some trepidation when they start a blank text file, progressing through despair in the mandatory mid-cycle slough, to eventually being completely fed up and just wanting it out the door. Now that I’ve gone through all that and seen the finished product in lovely blue serge cloth, the only thing left to do was to put it online.

So the final, corrected version of my thesis is now available at the arXiv. I’m not expecting anyone to actually go read the thing but when I have lost or mislaid my copy at least I’ll be able to download it.

Jack of Kent is going to give his analysis of the ruling over the weekend, starting here.

This is only one case however and the need for reform of the libel laws is still as pressing as ever. Jack Straw has outlined Labour’s plans for reform if they win the election. With the general election due in a few weeks, now is the time to put pressure on all politicians by signing the petition at libelreform.org.

I use the Beamer package for LaTeX which is a great way to include mathematics in your slides, and is pretty straightforward to use if you are proficient with LaTeX.
The default settings in Beamer are quite pretty but after a few days of a physics conference they can become quite repetitive. I like to make my slides at least somewhat different to all the others out there, and try to use my customisations to keep the attention of my audience.

One main change I think is useful with beamer is to make the equations use a serif font like a normal paper would, and not the sans-serif font used by default. This is achieved by having the following command
before \begin{document}:

\usefonttheme[onlymath]{serif}

To get rid of the navigation symbols at the bottom right of each slide I use

\setbeamertemplate{navigation symbols}{}

and the template I use is given by

\usetheme{Frankfurt}
\usecolortheme{rose}
\usecolortheme{seahorse}

I don’t like all the clutter that’s normally at the top of each slide
(contents, title etc) so I use the “plain” option for each frame:

\begin{frame}[plain]
...
\end{frame}

To do the black background with white text is slightly tricky but the
template below should work. Just be aware that the curly brackets
outside all the other commands are required to limit the change to
just one frame.

{
\setbeamercolor{normal text}{bg=black}
\setbeamercolor{whitetext}{fg=white}
\begin{frame}[plain]{}
\begin{center}
{\usebeamercolor[fg]{whitetext}

INSERT TEXT HERE

}
 \end{center}

\end{frame}
}

These are pretty simple changes but used judiciously they can have a striking effect. I think the most useful is the change of maths text to be serif, in line with the standard used in academic print. The sans-serif maths font just looks a little odd in comparison.

The slides for the talk are available as a pdf or through the embedded widget below. My style for talks is heavily skewed towards minimalist slides with lots of verbal explanation so without having me beside you to guide you through them they might be hard to understand. Perhaps one day I will get around to recording the audio for a talk as well.

Slideshare:

The deadline for registering your interest in attending or giving a talk is tomorrow the 16th. Funding is being provided for travel costs and PhD students and postdocs are especially encouraged to apply to speak. More information about the programme and location is on the meeting webpage.