More Day of Sadness

Today has been another day of sadness. I had my morning class as usual despite of having applied for leave. Around 10 am after the class, I received a message from my sister, that my brother Ahmad Tajuddin (the father of the nephew who passed away) had a stroke (and another message said also a heart attack). I froze and did not know what to do but just immediately messaged my other half who is waiting to get her second dose of the Covid-19 vaccination. Much of the time spent during that time was to look at further messages to know the development but was mostly left in the dark at the time.

My other half reached home slightly late since she told she was not feeling that well after the vaccination as her blood pressure went down. She rested for a while before asking information from somebody in PPUM on the status of my brother. She was told that my brother is still in the ER red zone and yet to be stabilized. The knowledge at the time is that my brother had a blood clot in the brain and some medication were administered noninvasively. Failing that, may  require invasive technique.

Despite not doing anything and not even travelling like we thought we are going to, I was feeling really tired. Later, a message came in that my brother has been transferred to a ward but it was already late in the evening. Thus we decided to visit only tomorrow as tried to avoid night driving. Later in the evening my blood pressure surged quite high and had to take extra medication and rest. Before resting, we were told that the burial of the late nephew will be early tomorrow morning and we regrettably will miss it. May Allah grant him forgiveness and blessings in the hereafter.

After some rest, woke up to write this post. Was made to be aware about this paper that quoted the thesis of my first PhD student Ahmed Bouketir. Knew this before since the author (student of Ted Jacobson) wrote to me earlier, asking the availability of the thesis electronically, which I do not have. Yet to read the paper carefully. Glad that somebody took interest in the work of my first PhD student. The paper made reference to the thesis (only partial) here and a conference paper here.

A Day of Sadness

Today is my day at the Faculty. Just like any other day, reached the university after 8am (the usual office starting time) due to congestion at the toll. 

I was essentially tired ever since last week (you can see my baggy eyes in the pic) and somehow was not quite in a good mood. Reflecting on my future.

Completed a recheck of a paper draft of my student and met him momentarily regarding his PhD thesis submission. Printed a few papers and then received the shocking news that my nephew, Nasyruddin (son of my brother Ahmad Tajuddin) passed away this morning. Shocking since I knew him as a very fit guy who probably have frequented the gym. The news is that he collapsed after complaining of ache in the stomach. Since I was at the Faculty, I called the Head of Department for permission to go back early and perhaps prepare myself (and my other half) for a visit. We filled up some forms to get permission from the local police station to do an interstate travel to visit my brother. Unfortunately the police told us we need a certifying letter of the death before we could do so. At the time, we do not have any documents apart from the whatsapp message. It is only later in the evening that we were given the police report of the death. The body has now been sent to PPUM for Covid-19 test and post-mortem for cause of death. The results of the test will only be known earliest tomorrow afternoon if not the day after. My guess, only thereafter, a proper burial can be done.

So I have taken an emergency leave tomorrow to prepare myself for a visit. Tomorrow is also the day my other half receiving the second dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. So the situation for now, is wait and see.

The last time I met the nephew is probably two years ago during Eid at my sister's house. Last year's Eid we did not get to go anywhere because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Below is my only relatively recent picture of him (four years ago)

He is the one standing at the back beneath the clock, wearing black. My brother is the one next to my other half. The late nephew should have been celebrating his 43rd birthday this coming September. May Allah grant forgiveness and blessings to his soul. Al-Fatihah.

15 Syaaban 1442

It has been more than a week since I last posted here. I have been mostly busy with my duties. Today is the evening of 15 Syaaban 1442 and it is a good day to reblog. Muslims are usually aware of this day as Nisfu Sha'aban (mid-Sha'aban). It also signifies that we have two weeks more before the blessed month of Ramadhan. 

Last week is the first week of the new semester. The subjects I'm teaching is Advanced Quantum Mechanics and Special Relativity & Classical Field Theory. Of the two, I will probably spent more time with the former since I still do not have a stable set of notes for Advanced Quantum Mechanics, which is essentially the second course of quantum mechanics for our curriculum. Also, I have began to make my lecture videos public in my YouTube channel. These are often uploaded almost right after the lectures with very little editing. The videos don't have too much gimmicks like some of the teaching videos I have seen.

Besides teaching, I had some immediate tasks of editing an article of my PhD student and the corrections for a PhD thesis for another student. Much of the work is really in English editing, which I really wished that I don't have to do. A lot of the problems seems to be long sentences, disjointed logical flows, inappropriate prepositions and conjunctions. They should show improvement over their writings over time as this is crucial for their career. I, or for that matter, anyone else may not always be there to help on such little feat.

To overcome boredom, tried to move away from my usual duties by reading something which is totally outside of my research interest. It is a book I have bought sometime ago during a Big Bad Wolf sale. It is George Zarkadakis' "In Our Image - Will Artificial Intelligence Save or Destroy Us?" (see pic below). Being a slow reader, I have yet to finish it. I hope to jot down some points from my reading for the blog, but I have yet to do this properly (and hence the recent absence of any posts). So this will have to be at a later time. Much brooding on my part on many matters, really.

Another development is that I have been invited by USM students to give a talk at their Physics Coffee Talk sessions. Tentatively it is scheduled on 14 May and it will be on overview of mathematical physics (their request). Since the topic is huge, I may have to pick and choose topics that I want to cover in the talk. The following are their FB page and WordPress site: 

• https://www.facebook.com/physicscoffeetalk/
• https://physicscoffeetalk.wordpress.com/

I hope I can deliver what they want.

Varia: Abel Prize and Physics Seminar

Yesterday, the recipients of 2021 Abel Prize were announced. It went to Avi Wigderson and Laszlo Lovasz. I almost forgotten about the announcement until my student posted it in WhatsApp. I was probably driving home from work when the announcement went live. As I reached home, I was resting mostly, due to a bad back. Quanta has a good description of their work here. Wigderson's field is perhaps a distant away from what I normally read. Lovasz, on the other hand, works in graph theory and I have come across his work while I was looking into the minimal set of Kochen-Specker vectors. I stumbled into this computer solution made by Arends. Further search along this topic, led me to Lovasz, Saks and Schrijver paper on "Orthogonal Representations and Connectivity of Graphs" (see correction here). This is as close as I can get to the work of Abel Laureate, Lovasz. For the work of Wigderson, there is a draft of his book "Mathematics and Computation" available here. There is this interview of Lovasz conducted by Wigderson himself back in 2011, which is interesting to watch. Anyway, congrats to them both.

Today, we had organized the first Seminar Jabatan Fizik under my watch. I guess being enthusiastic about it, we announced this seminar publicly, way too publicly, I guess. We were not expecting any form of trouble but we wanted to make the talk available as widely as possible. The talk is given by Dr. Yap Yung Szen on the topic of quantum computers (see poster below and I have to thank Shela for this). I got to know Dr. Yap from social media and through his article in a local newspaper on which I wrote a blog post (which he read, rather embarrassingly). So we communicated privately and thought we ought to discuss more on quantum technology and what he did. At present, he is the only Malaysian I know who works on quantum computing technology experimentally. He collaborates with Prof. Kitagawa in Osaka University and Prof. Rainer Dumke in CQT.

When the talk started, we saw some unfamiliar names in the participant list, but we did not bother in the beginning and we pretty much let everyone in. Along the way, some of them started to unmute their mikes and interfere briefly the seminar with inappropriate sounds. They also gave rude and vulgar remarks in the chatbox. Had to remove them from the event. Was slightly annoyed, but I tried not to get myself too perturbed by these childish behaviour. Certainly it would have been a better event/day without them around. Not sure of what their intentions were, but whatever cheap thrills they were having, I think they could have used their time better, playing games or whatever they are preoccupied with in their life, rather than disturbing other people who would actually ignore them. Anyway, I have got all of these on record, since initially I wanted to make the talk available to those who can't make it to the event. However, the recording had the speaker's audio quality being poor. So for now, I just make the recording available only to my group. Below is a pic taken by our Head of Department of the seminar.

For the future talks, we will not make them open and restrict the talks to our known colleagues. So you can thank them for not making future talks available.

A Hand in the Undergraduate Physics Curriculum

In the past, I used to have given up of having some say in the undergraduate physics curriculum. Being the only theorist then, I do have some idea what should a major (pure) physics graduate be knowledgeable about. Often these ideas are met with questions who is going to teach the so-called theoretical courses. Now, while this is a practical question to consider, I thought this question had it the wrong way round. We should focus on preparing students for some reasonable period in the future, rather than be concerning about ourselves. The one thing I can't challenge or compete is the idea that the department may want to have some special unique interest, which is mainly in materials sciences and in engineering-like physics. Being alone, I told myself that I should not interfere with curriculum matters at that period and focus my efforts in building up a theory group at research level.

Things have changed now, we have two more theorists in the department and the mentality that one theorist is enough, probably has died down. Note, somebody mentioned that for a significant research group, there should be at least three members. With me leaving the university soon, there is a need for another theorist to join. Otherwise, it may revert to the situation that I was in, years ago. Again, the department may need to think what should be the future of the theory group. Make it as a significant group in the department or not. With simply three, the theory group may have difficulty to survive in the face of competing interests. I recall a remark made by the director of ITMA at some point, research papers are getting more difficult to publish without considering solid theoretical background particularly in quantum physics. Thus, I find it strange if there is no effort in securing a proper theory group. When I was in ITMA years ago, Kwek and I have wrote a popular article in ITMA bulletin that with current interest in nanoscience and nanotechnology, it is only natural to include quantum ideas very soon as the length scale is already close to atomic scale.

Our physics curriculum undergoes a revision every five years. I do consider that it is necessary that whatever curriculum is adopted, it should be stable enough to last for at least ten years for particular character or traits to emerge and persist from the curriculum. Otherwise it will be too volatile. This also means that one should do some crystal ball forecasting what will be and remains important in the next ten years. Sincerely I felt that it is best for the younger generation to decide what will be the (future) direction of the subjects taught at the department. I would give my views, however, if I was asked. Thus, yesterday I was invited to the curriculum meeting. Initially, I intend to be quiet in the meeting, but then members began asking my views on the courses reviewed and the new courses. I do think that some courses that were drafted in the early days of UPM should be relooked and modernized. I even suggested this to my favourite course of quantum mechanics since wave mechanics is now part of Modern Physics. Our theory group did suggest Quantum Information & Technology as a new course but now with the view that it is a recommended course for pure physics major. Nevertheless, with all these suggestions, it is subject to the majority decision of the department.

Today, being at the Faculty, did my part in editing the synopsis and course outline of some of the theoretical courses. I hope it is acceptable to my colleagues. As I have said earlier, it is really up to the younger colleagues to see these courses implemented successfully.

It seems like it is going to rain soon. Can't wait to get home. Here are the cats waiting for us to get home.

PS: Reached home quite early - there seems to be no traffic jam today.

Pi Day Pi

This is meant to be yesterday's post. I wanted to have an entry for Pi Day (March.14th) but I was a bit late. No, I was not watching AJL. I slept early, only to wake up at this hour. It's part of my sleep disorder and part being too tired having too much to worry about. I wasn't even sure about writing about pi day at all since to some, I'm neither a mathematician nor a physicist. Note that pi day has been declared as the International Day of Mathematics by IMU. I can see that there are some local events being organized for this day and hopefully they are noted as part of the international celebration.

Anyway I've been wanting to get active back at my technical blog and my Malay blog since beginning of the year. However I was too busy before this, with all the teaching. Now that the teaching and marking are over, I thought I should post something on pi day. Well, I did. Being neither the physicist and mathematician I am, searched something about tension between the two fields and found this article. Read it up a little and blogged it over here.

I also wanted to review the book by Avner Ash and Robert Gross called Fearless Symmetry and write something on Acu Frekuensi. But I guess this will have to come on another day. Anyway, we are going back to teaching in another week - it is a very short break that we are having now. With the new semester in soon, I hope I have some spare time for me to explore the things I want and do some research.

There is another date around the corner, that one should be waiting for, which is the announcement of the Abel Prize on March 17. Abel Prize is the 'Nobel Prize' for mathematics. Unlike Fields Medal, there is no age limit for this prize. So let's see who will it be this year.

Finally to end this day with a kind of craziness, let me share this short clip of the movie Pi that tells the story of the obsession of finding a hidden order behind reality. Pity that this film is not that well-known.

Or should I go crazy over 23

Ascend or Descend on the Realm of Possibles

Last Thursday was a holiday in Negeri Sembilan commemorating a significant Islamic event Isra' and Mi'raj regarding Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) ascension to the heavens. It is one of the many things for me that is best kept as mystery, just as the many unfathomable ordinary things in life. I remembered an Islamic magazine approached and interviewed me on the matter from a scientific perspective given that they have found some website on the internet trying to do so. It was really a difficult situation for me to explain my position as I prefer to keep the religious event and scientific theories separate. With the little knowledge that we have of both, speculative explanations often becomes a disservice to both. The normal things that people often try to do is to find the latest (speculative) findings in physics and explain the possibility of such travel. Wormholes are usually referred to in this case, just like they are often referred to in science fiction for interstellar travel (before wormhole, they normally just say generically space-time warps). Physicists have been toying with wormholes for quite awhile and the first instance it was discussed mathematically was by Morris and Thorne in American Journal of Physics, a journal published by American Association of Physics Teacher. The article showed that wormhole can be given as a nonsingular solution of Einstein's equation but it however needs exotic matter with negative energy density. The article's aim was, in fact, a pedagogical one as the title "Wormholes in Spacetime and Their Use for Interstellar Travel: A Tool for Teaching General Relativity" suggests. There is no evidence that wormholes exist physically but that did not stop physicists studying it. Wormholes continued to be explored in physics journals in various guises. Matt Visser even wrote a book on it and I recommend it to those who wants to understand wormholes mathematically. Some even argue further that wormholes can be used as time machines (see e.g. https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.61.1446). 

With speculations running wild, physicists can also be very imaginative in putting up titles such as "The Jinn of the Time Machine: Nontrivial Self-Consistent Solutions". Before anyone takes this literally, do get some knowledge of general relativity and read up the article properly. It is all about closed timelike curves and their mechanics. Idea of closed timelike curves perhaps first appeared in Godel's cosmological solution of rotating universe. Yes, it's the same Godel of the Incompleteness Theorem fame. There is a nice article on "Visualization of the Godel Universe". Thus, one can see physicists tend to explore the realms of what is possible, but bound by mathematical theories. Whether  'nature' follows them is totally a different question and it is important to know details so as not to be misguided. The broad classification of theories by Penrose in his book The Emperor's New Mind may be useful to help one sieve theories namely superb, useful and tentative. Most current theories are in tentative category and some bordering on fantasies.

Let us now descend on to the real world of mundane activities. Recently the cinemas are allowed to operate for people to go to with social distancing procedures observed. They have been closed for almost a year now. So on Thursday, my kids decided to go and watch Monster Hunter. My other half and I did not go as we were just too busy with other things. Here is a photo of what it looks like in the cinema.

Yesterday it was my turn to be at the Faculty and it is for the whole full day. Took the opportunity to get my supply of meds at the university health centre. In the afternoon, there was a departmental meeting held online (see below for a pic). In the meeting, I was given the task of organizing seminars for the department and apparently I'm the only academic involved. I will try to do this according to my capacity. Will try to do this fortnightly, alternating between a guest from outside the department with members of the department. Hopefully it will be recorded.

At the same time, INSPEM was holding a weekly seminar in conjunction with the International Day of Mathematics tomorrow. Due to the departmental meeting, I cannot be there. There was also the launching of Bicara Naratif of INSPEM giving views of the founders of the institute. Their videos can be seen below.

All the best to the institute's new leadership to carry out the visions envisaged by them.

After the departmental meeting, I drove home and got stuck in a jam at the Seremban toll for more than an hour. It was due to the checkpoints suddenly made strict that day (due to perhaps mischievous complain). Here is my pic waiting to get to the toll (reached home after Maghrib).

Vaccinated and Fascinated

This morning my other half took her first shot of Pfizer vaccine against Covid-19, followed by her staff at the clinic in the afternoon. She is included in the first batch as she is considered a frontliner in the health services. There was initial concern about side effects but she is ok. There will be a second shot, 21 days later. To learn more about the Pfizer vaccine, can read it here.

For me, I have registered through MySejahtera (also I was asked by the department about my health problems and had given my name for possible early vaccination - not sure where it went) and probably be included in the second batch of the vaccination programme (those having high risks). To know more about the vaccine programme, one can read here. There is also a special website for Malaysia Covid-19 vaccination programme at https://www.vaksincovid.gov.my/en/.

As stated above, Pfizer vaccine is the first batch of vaccine that Malaysia receives. There was quite an excitement in the news when it first arrived. Note that Malaysia will be receiving four other vaccines as reported here, namely, Astra Zeneca, Sinovac, CanSino Biologics, and Sputnik-V. See also here. In other words, I will not know what type of vaccine I'll be taking until the time comes.

It is reported here, the first three individuals who got vaccinated in Malaysia i.e. the Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, frontliner driver for Putrajaya clinic, Clement Marai Francis and the Health Ministry Director-General Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah. The distribution of vaccine among states in Malaysia can be read here. The world data for covid-19 vaccinations can be found at https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations.

It is hoped that, with the arrival of the vaccines, the desired herd immunity will be achieved sooner that what is expected. Otherwise it will take another year more for us to be in the current state (and I will be retired).

60 Years and Still Rocking

Today I posted on FB saying that I've turned 60 and received a lot of reactions (and questions). Actually I'm now 60 years old according to the Hijri calendar. I almost forgotten about it but I knew it was sometime soon. When I checked the Hijri calendar early this morning, it happens to be today (25 Rejab) and spontaneously posted it on FB. How do I get to know it is 25 Rejab is the Hijri date? Well, some might think that I may be using a calendar converter. Actually, no. It was one of the things I remembered about my late father jotting in his diary, the birthdates of all his sons and daughters, every time he changed to a new one. Remembered mine, right up to the hour I was born. So it got stuck in my mind. Realising today is my Hijri birthday, I wasn't initially thinking of celebrating but tonight will be pizza night with my family.

The age 60 years is the official retirement age of public servants in the country. Some went ahead to greet me and said welcome to the retirees' club. Unfortunately, I have not retired as yet. Have about less than two years to go. In the meantime, I will try to fulfill my duties accordingly. As in yesterday's post, have finished my marking which is such a chore and hence glad that it is over. I still have to get the reports done and if I'm unlucky, some committee may scrutinise the results and I will have to answer appropriately. Hopefully it will not get to that.

This morning, had a meeting cum briefing for proposal evaluation panel of the university. Concurrently, there was another meeting of the science congress event we are coorganising with institutions from Thailand and Indonesia - see http://conference.upm.edu.my/IFSC2021?&lang=en. I chose the evaluation panel meeting since this is a bit critical given that there is a risk of being penalised by the ministry if the evaluation does not go as planned. I will have to take some time off tonight to see the proposals assigned to me.

Later today, had some (virtual) discussions about changes in the curriculum. Some of the changes did surprise me and if implemented well could be a good change. Care must be taken assumptions of the prerequisite knowledge that is assumed. For instance, one-dimensional wave mechanics can now be taught earlier in Modern Physics and one can straight away begin the quantum mechanics directly with the bra-ket formalism. That is in fact, the way I have learned it in Adelaide but of course I had more quantum-related courses. In fact, we had quantum field theory, particle physics and general relativity courses in the fourth year. Not sure if they are planning such change because there may be little interest in these subjects. We did draft a quantum information course sometime last year (I think) but not sure if this is considered for the new curriculum. If the department is in need of more theoretical courses, I can think of a few. If field-theoretic operators can be introduced, then one can do quantum optics and quantum many-body physics. The latter may lead to more recent interesting ideas in condensed matter. Another one that comes to mind is complexity science mix-matching statistical physics, nonlinear physics and networks. These could, of course, be given separate courses, treated with more depth (maybe at a graduate level). But then the usual question is: are there any takers from students and who will teach these courses. Since I won't be around then (new courses may take awhile to be endorsed by the university), I leave this to the younger colleagues to pursue, if interested.

Finally, despite being 60, I'm still not out of ideas and things to do. As I have mentioned to Bob, will keep on rocking in the way I could.

Peering Exams

Yesterday, I have just finished marking and calculating marks for the various POs for all my courses for the first semester of 2020/2021. For me doing all the marking on the computer put a great deal of stress on my back. This slows me down a little. Anyway I get to experience several new things with this semester's online teaching and assessment.

All the tests and exams are conducted as open book exams within a given specific period. Of course, we have done this for the previous semester. I only have small classes last semester and have more control over how the tests/exams are conducted (could even individualise the questions if needed). For this semester, however, I have more than thirty students for each course. Conducting online tests/exams are trickier with such number of students. To decrease possibility of inter-candidate communications, the time given for each question is often just enough. Being open book also requires that the question is not a simple repeat of textbook materials and questions from assignments but yet the students should have come across the general way to answer them. Thus, it takes some amount of thought in designing such questions. That's why I cringe a little when others talk about deadlines and make peer assessments on the question papers. Each of us have justifications of putting up such questions and one gets uncomfortable when others question them. It is always good to remind ourselves to be polite ad kind among colleagues, and that we are all trying our best to do our duties. Also a good practice is to have the reviewer be among those who have taught the subject before or know enough about (related) subject matter. I have seen senior academics got turned off by this peer reviewing (they have left the university) and normally it is just about the manner of how the matter was being handled. Proper private discussions could have just avoided any problematic situations. 

For me, the tests/exams are a matter of testing the students whether they have understood enough on the subject matter. It is not about us being clever or about us obtaining the correct distribution of marks or following a strict set of universal procedures. So whatever the worry about putting online open book exams there is, I frame the matter in this context. So when I mark the exam scripts, I do look for some genuine differences among the answers given by the students. I was in fact delighted to see departures from the given solution schemes, showing they have found different ways of getting the solutions to questions. Some give problematic answers that one has to think about what thoughts are appearing in their minds and where they have gone wrong. So it is not just getting the marking tasks done. Good students will be able to express their solutions clear and systematically. It is a surprise to me to see a few who could not write equations down properly, perhaps due to bad habits. Some even struggle with the Greek symbols. Usually this could have been introduced in the earlier courses, just like one sees the Greek alphabets being written out in the inner cover pages of the University Physics books. I remember during my early days of teaching quantum mechanics, I encourage the students to ask questions even about the symbols that we use, so that this issue is settled early.

Given the only few semesters left of my teaching, I hope to see more flexibility of running the courses. Flexibilities encourage creativity, which should have been critical ingredients of teaching and learning. Like the interview of Abel Laureate, Isadore Singer in my previous post, good academics thrive on freedom of intellectual thoughts. I look forward to teach special relativity and advanced quantum mechanics in the forthcoming semester and hope I can teach better.

Thoughts on Mathematical Physics

Yesterday I had a discussion with my student regarding the difference between theoretical physics and mathematical physics. A short answer to this will be the rigour, with mathematical physics being the more rigorous of the two. Also, one can say that theoretical physics tend to dwell on conceptual ideas that are needed to model the physical system. Why this discussion arises is due to the matter of selecting the appropriate journal to publish one's research. Sending to a mathematical physics journal requires one to be more mathematically rigorous in writing out the results. There is very little room for hand-waving arguments. The degree of rigour can be pretty subjective but a rule of thumb that one can use is the more familiar a topic or a technique is to the community of theorists, then the more rigour one needs to put in.

What is mathematical physics? From wikipedia, it is the development of mathematical methods (hence the rigour) to problems in physics. I remember a younger colleague dismisses it as applied mathematics, to which I rebuke, then why would Cambridge University have the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP). Let me just mention another instance of degrading the subject of mathematical physics; it is said that mathematical physics label lacks attraction and the label of mathematical engineering was adopted instead. Another case was the suggestion of physical mathematics to replace mathematical physics, which I guess is for asserting that mathematics is the primary subject. One could argue endlessly on these labels and in my view it is counterproductive. Let me just say then the following: what has been accepted at the international level? Indeed, like in this wikipedia article on classification of subjects of mathematics, one could group several topics of mathematical/theoretical physics under the broad umbrella of applied mathematics. But this also applies to other forms of applications e.g. probability, operations research and computational mathematics. If the idea is to refine the classification, then mathematical physics would lump all theoretical aspects of physics into mathematical physics (see here). For recent classification made by Zentralblatt Math, one can use this document or visit their site. Indeed, if one studies the history of classifying mathematical subjects, mathematical physics has always been part of mathematics. For instance, the International Congress of Mathematicians, they have one prize dedicated for mathematical physics.

My own view of what mathematical physics is, is dependent on the period when it is considered. Certain established techniques will either be taught at a more basic level or even phased out. For instance, older books of mathematical physics tend to emphasize solutions of differential equations or integral equations. More modern mathematical physics books tend to include more abstract structures that have gone in vogue for theoretical physics. This is why when I was teaching the graduate course, Advanced Mathematical Physics last semester, I use the book of Szekeres and explore more structures than what is often taught. I was hoping to include these in the revised curriculum but unfortunately this was not accepted. In the context of DAMTP, the topics that involve differential equations and numerics tend to be grouped differently from the group that has quantum field theory, relativity and particle physics to which more abstract structures are used.

From the link of the mathematical physics prize for ICM, it is good for us to be aware about the forthcoming congress in St. Petersburg in 2022. INSPEM was involved in the congress in Seoul in 2014 (unfortunately, I did not get to go). The congress is held every four years, and the one in 2018 was held in Rio de Janeiro. I'm not aware of anyone from INSPEM went to the congress in 2018 but I know Prof. Teo Lee Peng went to the congress. At some point, I think there were interests in bidding for the congress to be in Malaysia but I heard we just do not have a sizable community and active participation in such international events. For those interested what are discussed at ICM, the proceedings are available here. Just around the corner is the International Congress on Mathematical Physics, scheduled on 2-7 August 2021 in Geneva. Mode of the conference seems to be both physical and online. The online mode has a slightly cheaper registration fee (but still expensive for us normal people). I do hope that they will post up videos online for us to watch.

March 4 Varia

Today my son help me renew my car insurance and road tax at Gateway Seremban. The usual agent no longer is able to service us due to illness. Also, there seems to be a new development: will only be getting the road tax sticker later than usual - the reason seems to be the possible delay due to the pandemic situation (?). Despite the assurance that the renewal is said to be already recorded online, I still feel insecure about it, particularly if I were to do interstate travel to work when the new semester starts soon during which conditional movement control order (CMCO) is still in place. Still waiting for updates from the university or ministry regarding our work.

Another development: my research funds are running out and there will be difficulty in supporting my continuing students. As much as I want to help them, I don't think I will be applying for new funds given my near retirement. Also research funding opportunities (particularly for pure theoretical research) are getting more difficult to get. I have warned my students that they should try to conclude their studies real soon.

Just a few days earlier, I have also received an invitation from the organizers of International Conference on Applied Analysis and Mathematical Modelling (ICAAM2021) in Istanbul, Turkey. The conference will be held online and thus there will be no travelling complications. I have been to Turkey in 2018 before, for the same series of conference, and met one of the Chairmen for the conference, Prof. Aydin Secer (perhaps the reason of the invitation). Below is a picture of me with him and also a photo with the other Malaysian delegates.

I have accepted the invitation and now I have to think on what topic to give the talk on, hopefully it will be something more recent. Before so, I have to settle all my marking of exam scripts.

Briefly Back at Faculty

Today reminds me back in the 'good old normal days'. It was my turn to be on duty at the Faculty. Develop some form of anxiety because I'm doing an interstate travel which is prohibited during the MCO period (Selangor is still in MCO until Friday). Coupled with the fact that the maximum fine for disobeying any SOP has been raised to RM10,000. I did went to the Seremban 2 police station yesterday, to get the permission to do interstate travel (there is a form to fill). My younger colleague says there is no need for such permission given one has the letter from the university, but I wasn't feeling secured. On meeting the police officer, indeed she said that the university letter is already good enough for the travel. Yet, I still harbour the fear that I can be slapped with the RM10,000 fine.

So I was up early today, feeling anxious and drove to the campus, expecting some form of police check-points along the way. There were still plenty of cars along the highway almost like any normal day. There weren't any check-points and I arrived early in campus. I saw that there were only a few cars parked but this is because I'm early. Later in the afternoon, when I'm going home, there were more cars and saw some people walking around. Yes the faculty divided the day into two halves. For each half, I was told that there should only be one academic staff on each floor of each wing. Essentially I did not meet any lecturer friend while I was there. I went into my temporary office to do some work (see photo below). Later check out my old office; they have replaced the air-conditioner with a new one. By right, I should be staying there but it is in a messy state and I can't clean this up quickly within the half-day period.

On the way home, there are check-points at the UPM toll and at the Seremban toll. I was not stopped for any checks it seems. I guess all my fears are unfounded. Reached Seremban and took the time to get my kids some packed lunch. The weather was pretty hot and was feeling unwell thereafter.

Pretty mundane post, right?

The Passing

Ever since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have seen several notable scholars (international and local) and close friends/relatives leaving us. Will try to say a few words about them and the influence they had on me.

First, is the passing of John Conway himself on April 11, 2020. It is reported that he had contracted Covid-19 and succumbed to the disease. I knew first of Conway, like everyone else I guess, through the Game of Life. I was toying around the idea of research in cellular automata at the time. I even bought Ilachinski's book on the subject, but the research initiative did not materialise. The other influence from him is through finite groups which had a role in my research on hyperbolic surfaces (but not the groups named after him). At some point, I even tried to invite him to EQuaLS but somebody in Princeton replied saying good luck to me, implying it is difficult to get him. The reason for the invite is possibly two-fold, to get his insights for finite groups and also his work on Free Will Theorem. In his interview, he revealed he wished he did not invent the Game of Life, but he was rather proud of his work on Free Will Theorem. 

The other mathematics legend who passed away, is Vaughan Jones, who left on September 6, 2020. His work best known to physicists is Jones polynomial that helps characterise knot invariants. Did experiment a little bit with these via a MSc student studying the cases of more than 10 crossings, but we stopped since we could not discover any significant new results then. Later, was informed by Michel Planat that our work on hyperbolic surfaces could have been extended to include quantum information and knots (see here, here and here). Unfortunately, due to unfavourable local circumstances, I miss out an opportunity to work further with Planat.

More recently, Isadore Singer passed away on February 11, 2021. He is best known for his work with Michael Atiyah on the Atiyah-Singer index theorems. I had the opportunity to learn them when I did my Part III essay on Witten index. There is this interview that I had posted on FB and I recommend it for students to listen, particularly on academic freedom and the danger of using jargon without proper understanding.

Closer to home, on December 15, 2020, Ungku Abdul Aziz passed away. He is known to all Malaysians in many different circles and particularly, he is the person responsible for the development of Tabung Haji that has helped Malaysian muslims to perform hajj (given this is expensive to most ordinary folks). He is also the only Royal Professor to date, which is a title held for life. Coincidentally, listened to a forum last night in his remembrance - see https://fb.watch/3ZxHHHeHNF/.

Also, close to the department is the passing of Dr. Norlaily. I knew her since she was a student at Physics Department. While she was doing her PhD, I did follow her blog for a while. When she came back, I wasn't around the department that much then but I know that she was active in the department, particularly as the coordinator for Academic Advisors. It came to a surprise for me, that she was ill from cancer and she passed away on June 25, 2020.

Much earlier, before the pandemic, was the passing of my school-mate of the same class, Prof. Mashitah Yusoff, who also concealed her illness from cancer. I believe her passing on January 24, 2020 came to all of us as a shock. Despite her high ranks, I remembered her visiting me once in the department and once in the institute (she commented on the use of plastic flowers then, since she is very much an environmentalist); very humble. She also invited me to visit UMP while she was the Dean, I believe. Occasionally, we corresponded over a few administrative matters.

Back in UPM, Prof. Arfah Salleh also left us on December 20, 2020. I did not know her that personally close despite possibly meeting her in some university functions. Just when the pandemic started last year, we corresponded through WhatsApp mainly due to her interest in the philosophy of quantum theory with ramifications in social sciences, particularly on human governance with Islamic outlook. I did not get to delve into her ideas to know more of what she is thinking but she introduced me to the work of her daughter and the work of Tarja Kallio-Tamminen. Due to preoccupation of my own research, I regretted that I have not discussed more with her.

Another friend who passed away earlier this year, is Hashim Ishak whom I met in Adelaide. He used to put me up at his place when I was in transition of place to live then. In many occasions, we met when we had some social events to go to (mostly in the weekends). Back here, he was in contact with me two years back, always inviting me to go for some coffee/tea somewhere but I was busy then and thereafter the pandemic arrived. He left us on January 5, 2021 rather suddenly. Regretted that I did not get to see him before.

Finally, closer to home, is the eldest brother to my other half, Saharuddin who left us on October 3, 2020. He was in Seremban hospital and we accompanied his body to Segamat for his final resting place. May Allah grant him forgiveness and placed among the faithful in the hereafter.

FYP Weekend

This weekend, I was occupied with evaluating BSc physics students dissertations for their final year projects. With everything given electronically, I had to face the computer for long periods, aggravating my ailment. I was struggling with my back pain all weekend that had both my legs weakened a little. Took pain killers and with my current sleep disorder, it had me sleeping much. 

I remembered my final year project in Adelaide. We were given a list of topics for us to consider from potential supervisors among the four permanent academic staff of the Department of Mathematical Physics (no longer in existence). I chose something on Grand Unification Theory. The dissertation I wrote was "Minimal SU(5), Modifications and Related Topics". There was another student (a close friend of David Hartley that I've forgotten the name) who also took the grand unified theory theme but he was working on E_6, if I'm not mistaken. Remembered how he bragged about his theory is more difficult than mine but I took that as a friendly joke. My project was to review the minimal SU(5) grand unification and I focused on two main problems of this unified theory, namely fermion masses and proton decay. For both problems, I reviewed the use of higher dimensional Higgs multiplets (would eventually also produce more Higgs particles) and the use of effective field theories. Using higher-dimensional Higgs allows one to have more parameters in the theory enough to tweak out the right (order of) answers. Effective field theories are a little bit more difficult but the fact that the Planck mass scale is already close to the unified mass scale helps modify the fermion masses but not so for proton decay. For proton decay, however, one has to cook up some form of family interactions (interactions between the different generations of quarks and leptons). My main reference to my review is Paul Langacker's Physics Reports article, "Grand Unified Theories and Proton Decay" and numerous articles of John Ellis. I was happy to be able to hear John Ellis live in Singapore some years ago - kind of my hero during my undergraduate days. Due to this project, it spurred my interest in supersymmetry and supergravity thereafter, continuing with the unification theme, but now with less parameter fiddling. Started to read then Peter van Nieuwenhuizen's Physics Report article "Supergravity". It was fun then to do the project, getting me to the frontier topics.

However what I did then (going to real frontier topics of theoretical physics), cannot really be applied to theoretical physics final year project here. This is due to the huge gap between what was taught in our undergraduate syllabus and research-level topics for theoretical physics. Much of my earlier attempts was to introduce some standard topics in theoretical physics that was not taught here - the favourite topic chosen has been usually black holes and variants (like wormholes), I'm not sure why. It didn't really quite work to what I actually wanted and there are risks of students simply parroting what is found in articles. When I joined the institute, I stopped taking final year project students much due to preoccupation with administrative duties and research postgraduates. Also the understood terms of agreement (then) when one is borrowed by the institute is that one only do one subject of teaching.

It take me several years to think what is best formula for theoretical physics final year projects, given our present curriculum. They can't really compete with their experimental colleagues who tend to explore experiments with various new materials. Since the final year project is meant to impart some basic research skills, they need to properly do the calculations of the materials suggested to them (as opposed to simply accepting the equations). In some ways, this has been implemented. The thing I hope they can get to do is to make a pedagogical review of their final year research topic in a way accessible to their colleagues in other groups. I have always suggested to them to look into articles published by American Journal of Physics or European Journal of Physics or Contemporary Physics for their pedagogical approach. For me what makes their dissertations of value is that it help others to learn the subject. Their work will not be read by researchers in the corresponding field. (There are exceptions of course. See for instance https://scholar.rose-hulman.edu/rhumj/. The mathematics department at Roseman-Hulman Institute recently won a 2021 AMS award for exemplary program).  Thus, it does not make sense for them to write the dissertation's content as if they are writing them for a research journal. If so, most probably, it will not be read by anyone apart from themselves and their close friends. Thus for me, this would be my requirement and writing a pedagogical dissertation for an advanced topic is not easy and requires talent, which I hope will be nurtured through these exercises. Who knows they can hone these skills to be a good science communicator in the end, if not high flying researchers.

One of the obstacles for nicely written pedagogical treatise is their language skills (and this need not be necessarily just the English; the Malay abstract is often not that well-written either). There is no short-cuts in acquiring good language skills but one has to read and write more. Sometimes it can be frustrating that instead of playing the role of a supervisor or an independent evaluator, one got stuck to be a language editor. Sometimes it can be so bad that the scientific content got misrepresented. There are two books I highly recommend for students to read:

1. Sir Ernest Gowers, "The Complete Plain Words"
2. Robert A. Day, "How to Write & Publish a Scientific Paper"

Students should not be shy to read such books. I read them too. In fact, I read even more basic books like Thomson & Martinet, "A Practical English Grammar". I remembered buying this book from WH Smith if I'm not mistaken for a few pounds. The book goes into grammar details which is helpful if I need to confirm on something. One of the things I found out from repeatedly reading students' dissertations that our own grammar gets corrupted after awhile and hence one needs to be constantly reminded by reading standard books. For standard formats and other publishing matters, the books I use will be The Chicago Manual of Style and the CBE Scientific Style and Format. Just one last thing, important for theoretical physics, is that one treat equations as parts of sentences in the text. Thus, they are normally followed with punctuation marks and there should be no orphaned equations (without accompanying texts).

I hope the above suggestions will help theoretical physics students to write their final year project dissertations.

Talking about books, the books that I have ordered from Ilhambooks has arrived last Saturday. See pics below - have yet to read them. Also below is the three books I've mentioned earlier.

Keep reading.