Newsletters Index       Centrefolds Index

Number 90     April 2004

NEWSLETTER

OF THE

NEW ZEALAND MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY (INC.)

Contents

PUBLISHER’S NOTICE
EDITORIAL
PRESIDENT’S COLUMN
NEW COLLEAGUES
FEATURES
RECENT RESEARCH GRADUATES
CENTREFOLD Charles Pearce
BOOK REVIEWS
CONFERENCES
NOTICES
Join SIAM Today (Advertisement)
Application for Membership of the NZMS

MATHEMATICAL MINIATURE 23 The Commuting Mathematician goes to a Wedding

ISSN 0110-0025

PUBLISHER'S NOTICE

This newsletter is the official organ of the New Zealand Mathematical Society Inc. This issue was assembled and printed at Massey University. The official address of the Society is:

The New Zealand Mathematical Society,
c/- The Royal Society of New Zealand,
P.O. Box 598, Wellington, New Zealand.

However, correspondence should normally be sent to the Secretary:

Dr Shaun Hendy
Industrial Research Limited
Gracefield Research Centre
P O Box 31310, Lower Hutt
s.hendy@irl.cri.nz

NZMS Council and Officers

Newsletter Correspondents

Web Sites

The homepage of the New Zealand Mathematical Society with URL address:
http://www.math.waikato.ac.nz/NZMS/NZMS.html (Webmaster: stephenj@math.waikato.ac.nz)
The newsletter is available at: http://IFS.massey.ac.nz/mathnews/NZMSnews.shtml
Editorial enquiries and items for submission to this journal should be submitted as text or files to r.mclachlan@massey.ac.nz

EDITORIAL

NZMS Newsletter Centrefolds

The August 1980 newsletter reports that Mr M. D. E. Conder has been appointed to a postdoctoral fellowship at Otago University; and that Canterbury is looking for a new lecturer, with the Lecturer's scale beginning at $15,149 (equivalent to $52,745 today). Auckland reports one visitor and one mathematics seminar, on "Mathematical Models in Biology". And the newsletter ran its first Centrefold, on John Butcher, who had just been elected FRSNZ, joining Professors Davidson, Forder, Kerr, Lawden, and Peterson as Fellows. The idea, presumably due to then editor Brent Wilson, was a good one, and more than 60 centrefolds later they are still going strong. The informal 2-page, no-repeats limits are still in place (with a few exceptions) but the profiles have gradually become more and more detailed. With the help of Fiona Richmond and Judy Edwards, all previous Centrefolds have now been collected on the web, at

http://ifs.massey.ac.nz/mathnews/centrefolds/

When I became editor I inherited a hand-written sheet from the previous editor listing the centrefold subjects, authors, and a column headed 'Reason'. There under Vaughan Jones (August 1986 Centrefold) was entered the reason 'possible Fields medalist', with a note added later in different coloured pen, 'didn't win'. Proof-reading the transcriptions explained a striking event I witnessed in the 7th form. The finalists in the BNZ maths competition and their parents all got together to hear a lecture from Brent Wilson (August 1989 Centrefold). The subject was Rubik's Cube, then at the height of its popularity. Brent took a random-looking cube from his bag, passed it to the audience who made 3 moves without him watching. He then proceeded to solve the cube behind his back while continuing to recount the life story of Niels Henrik Abel. Not only that, but he couldn't stop laughing. How did he do it? The cube could have been set up in the nontrivial element of the centre of the cube group (each side cube flipped), but what then? Was it specially marked or something? I just couldn't figure it out. Now I know.

Robert McLachlan
Massey University

PRESIDENT’S COLUMN

For many of us this time of year means the return of students and the resumption of lectures. Gone are the days of summer and traveling from conference to conference. I spent the last week of January at the Mathematics in Industry Study group in Auckland, and the first week of February at the ANZIAM meeting in Hobart. Others have attended the NZMRI and NZIMA meetings in Nelson, and VIC 2004 in Wellington. The contents of these events are reported elsewhere, but the two that I was at received very different treatment from the local media.

The New Zealand Herald ignored MISG, but the Dominion Post reported it under the heading 'Industry problems for the boffins to solve'. My dictionary says that a boffin is a research scientist, especially in a technical or military area (20th century, origin unknown). Mr and Mrs Boffin appeared in 'Our Mutual Friend', apparently Dickens saw the name in the register of St. Andrew's, Holbourn, and thought it amusing. Opinion appears to be divided over whether it is derogatory or derisory. The Dominion Post went on to describe the participants of MISG as 'number-crunchers'. The front page of the same issue had a picture of Peter Jackson with one of his many awards, and a measured report on the event that avoided references to 'film fans' or 'movie maniacs'.

The Mercury (Hobart) had a reporter at the ANZIAM meeting. For three consecutive days the paper ran articles about the conference, covering applications of mathematics in epidemiology, MRI scanning, cell growth and migration, election strategies and aerodynamics. They carried a photo of me looking mean enough to scare away any infectious disease, and a much more flattering one of Ernie Tuck throwing a Frisbee. The reports were factual and interesting, and avoided making any facetious comments. It is fine to be world famous in Tasmania, and a pity that our news media find it difficult to give mathematics serious treatment in New Zealand.

Incidentally, the website 'World Wide Words' says that the surname Boffin is derived from the Welsh name Baughan. It is too much to hope for a front page picture of Vaughan Jones kissing his Fields Medal.

Accountants must tire of being referred to as 'bean-counters', an appellation that describes their insistence on mapping everything onto one dimension. Although Oscar Wilde's jibe "A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing". was made about a cynic, it is often used in this context. At the time of writing, the release of the results of the PBRF exercise is held up in the court because of their use to compare our universities with those in the UK. The damage that an inappropriate comparison could do is considerable. For example, I have just succeeded with an application for a UK fellowship. Would the outcome have been different if the committee had been able to look up a comparison of NZ and UK universities on the internet? Even if caution was advised because the criteria used were different, the relative rankings of institutions would still be (mis)used as a guide. In this case the criteria say that preference is given to candidates from Stanford University. An alphabetical merger with the USA would put Massey next to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one hopes that the comparison with the UK was not equally arbitrary.

In the last newsletter I congratulated members of the society who had received honours, but the editorial deadline meant that I failed to mention some others who were acknowledged elsewhere in the same issue. I would like to add my congratulations to David Ryan and Mike Steel on being elected Fellows of the Royal Society of New Zealand, to Charles Semple on being awarded the Hamilton Memorial Prize and to Robert McLachlan on being awarded the New Zealand Association of Scientists Research Medal. Another Fellow of the NZMS, Charles Pearce of the University of Adelaide, is also to be congratulated on being awarded a personal chair. Our society's fellowship scheme is a means by which we can recognize those that have made a substantial contribution to the objectives of the society, and hence to New Zealand mathematics. Its rules are enshrined in the constitution, so any change needs to be put to the membership. You will find a ballot paper for a wording change elsewhere in this issue. Further details of the scheme, and of the application process may be found on the Society's website. I would encourage our members who are not fellows to consider the criteria, and whether they should be applying for this recognition from the NZMS.

Mick Roberts
Massey University, Auckland

LOCAL NEWS

AGRESEARCH

Professor John Casti from the Santa Fe Institute and Technical University of Vienna visited the Ruakura campus on an AgResearch Senior Fellowship from February 17th to March 15th. Whilst here, he gave two seminars "Concepts and Problems of Complex Systems" on February 27th and "(M, R) Metabolism-Repair Systems" on March 1st. He also visited our Grasslands campus in Palmerston North, giving a seminar on "The Geometry of Data" on March 3rd. John also begun some collaborative work with our social researchers during a four day retreat at Whitianga, looking at introducing mathematical techniques into their research, particularly those areas involving issues of trust. Whilst there, he and Tanya Soboleva were introduced to the joys of beach cricket, though apparently theoretical knowledge of the perfect strategy did not translate into a practical victory!

Ken Louie (Ruakura) has received the Humphry M. Russell Award for 2004. This award is for research conducted on the Ruakura campus in the area of animal health, and will allow him to complete extra case studies using modelling to examine the effect of nematode parasites on sheep productivity.

Ken Louie

THE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND

Department of Computer Science

Peter Fenwick has been promoted to Associate-Professor.

In February Dr Richard Lobb and Dr Robert Berks were farewelled, when they resigned from the Department. In 1979, The University of Auckland appointed Richard Lobb as the first Lecturer in Computer Science—in the Department of Mathematics! In February 1980 the Department of Computer Science was founded and Richard became a Lecturer in that new department, and then a Senior Lecturer. He made Image Processing a significant topic within the Department. After 25 years here, he has decided that it is now time for him to apply his expertise to commercial computing. The University of Auckland hosted the first New Zealand Software Engineering Subject Conference on 1 –2 December 2003. It was attended by 37 academics from tertiary institutions in New Zealand. The aim of the conference was to establish and strengthen links between tertiary Software Engineering educators. Day 1 of the conference addressed Software Engineering teaching, and day 2 focused on Software Engineering research. Dr David Socha, a staff member of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle, gave the keynote address on Teaching. He is also involved in project management of the UrbanSim project. Professor Leon Sterling, who holds the Adacel Chair of Software Innovation and Engineering at the University of Melbourne, delivered the keynote address on Research.

The first batch of graduate students in Software Engineering have now commenced study.

Seminars

Professor Ralf Reulke, "Multi-sensor data fusion for traffic applications."

Professor Moshe Y. Vardi (Rice University), (Jointly with Mathematics) "Logic begat computer science: when giants roamed the Earth."

Professor Barbara Kitchenham, "Lessons learnt from 20 years of software cost estimation."

Hal Berghel, "Internet forensics."

Bodo Rosenhahn, "Pose estimation of free-form objects."

Ian Munro, "On the competitiveness of linear search."

Juergen Nehmer, "Software development based on system families."

Rainer Spittel, "Using graph-based spatial models for spatial reasoning."

Wolfgang Merkle, "Kolmogorov-Loveland stochastic sequences with additional properties."

Neal Glew, "LIL: An architecture-neutral language for virtual-machine stubs."

Ludwig Staiger, "Martingales, Lyapunov Exponent and Kolmogorov Complexity —An alternative view to s-gales and constructive dimension."

Miklos Szilagyi, "Agent-based simulation of nonlinear stochastic systems," and "Computer simulation of multi-person prisoners' dilemmas."

Yuman Huang, "Length and area estimation in digital picture analysis."

ChaoLi Ou, "Curvature estimation for voxel sets."

Byung Doo Lee, "The application of neuro-fuzzy reasoning to the opening game of 19 by 19 Go."

Helmut Juergensen, "Codes with synchronization."

Mukesh Mohania, "Maximizing realized revenue in a web-based Dutch auction."

Dr Greg Chaitin, "Leibniz, information, math and physics," and "Against real numbers."

Garry J. Tee

Department of Mathematics

Associate-Professor Josef Siran arrived, on February 24.

Dr Sina Greenwood, who has been a Post-Doctoral Fellow, has now been appointed as a new Lecturer on the permanent staff.

Ivan Reilly has signed a contract as half-time Professor from 2004 February 1 until 2008 January 31.

Mike Thomas has been promoted to Associate Professor.

Congratulations to the Mathematics 102/202 Team for winning a Faculty of Science Teaching Excellence Award.

Team Leaders: Greg Oates, Moira Statham, Bill Barton.

Team members: Alan delos Santos, Willy Alangui, Ivan Reilly, Mike Thomas, YeYoon Hong, Hannah Bartholomew, Garry Nathan, Viliami Latu, Sina Greenwood, Wiremu Solomon, Glen Bryant.

The citation reads "This team has made a strong contribution to the EO aspirations of the Faculty through the provision of opportunities for Maori and Pacific Island students to succeed in tertiary education. The team demonstrates a strong commitment to recruiting and retaining Maori and Pacific Island students. The strong course design and specific attention to learning styles and mechanisms which enhance learning for this cohort of students is the hallmark of this mathematics course. A measure of the success of this programme in launching students into academic life is the continued success which they enjoy in Mathematics in subsequent years."

We took advantage of the presence of a number of international visitors to the Department to run a series of lectures on January 15:

Burkhard Kuelshammer (University of Jena), "Cartan matrices of symmetric group and Hecke Algebras."

Vaughan Jones (Auckland/Berkeley), "Skein theory and permutation groups in planar algebras".

Akos Seress (Ohio State University), "Polygonal graphs."

John Conway (Princeton University), "The 184 uninteresting and 35 interesting crystallographic space groups".

The MISG (Mathematics in Industry Study Group) was held here on 26 –30 January 2004. Several industry groups brought along problems for which mathematics may be useful, and the members of the group presented helpful ideas about those problems.

On February 5 and 6 the Department of Mathematics, together with the Department of Economics, hosted an International Workshop on Game Theory and Social Choice. The invited speakers at this workshop were: Robert Aumann (Jerusalem), Herve Moulin (Rice), Anna Bogomolnaia (Rice) and Murali Agastya (Sydney). The local participants included Andy Philpott (Engineering), Ilze Ziedins & Geoff Pritchard (Statistics), John Hillas (Economics), Marston Conder, John McCabe-Dansted, Simon Marshall and Arkadii Slinko (Mathematics).

The 7th Devonport Topology Festival was held on February 13. The scheduled speakers were: Jiling Cao on "Semitopological groups," David Gauld on "Continuity and differentiability," Chris Good on "Monotonizations of countable paracompactness," Mark Harmer on "Spectral properties of the triangle groups," Vladimir Pestov on "Oscillation stability in topological groups," and Grant Woods on "One-point metric extensions and zero-sets of Stone-Cech."

John Butcher and Helmut Podhaisky attended the ANZIAM Conference at Hobart, in January –February.

David Gauld was on leave in December and January, concentrating on research with Frederic Mynard (University of Mississippi). David Alcorn was the Acting Head of Department—except for the first week of January when he was at Nelson, and Mike Thomas was then the Acting Acting Head.

Norm Levenberg attended the Oberwolfach meeting on Funktionentheorie in February.

Geoff Nicholls has a Visiting Associate Professorship in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Aalborg, Denmark, from March to June 2004.

Recent visitors include: Professor Len Bos (University of Calgary), Professor John Conway (Princeton University), Dr John Crisp (Université de Bourgogne), Professor Carl de Boor (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Dr Stefano De Marchi (University of Verona), Dr Charles Eaton (UMIST), Dr Ruhana Even (Weizmann Institute), Professor Hershel Farkas (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Associate Professor Valentin Gutev (Kwazulu-Natal University), Dr George Havas (University of Queensland), Professor Zdzislaw Jackiewicz (Arizona State University), Dr Ville Kolehmainen (Kuopio University, Finland), Professor Burkhard Kuelshammer (Jena University), Dr Hendrik Lenstra (Leiden), Professor Dany Leviatan (Tel Aviv University), Dr Steve Linton (St Andrews University), Associate Professor Kevin McLeod (University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee), Professor Herve Moulin (Rice University), Professor Peter Neumann (Oxford University), Professor Mike Newman (ANU), Professor Allan Pinkus (Technion, Haifa), Professor Zbigniew Piotrowski (Youngstown State University, Ohio), Dr Cheryl Praeger (UWA), Professor Robert Raphael (Concordia University, Canada), Steffen Schulz (Humboldt University, Berlin), Dr Akos Seress (Ohio State University), Professor Charles Sims (Rutgers University), Dr Gustav Söderlind (Lund University), Dr Caren Tischendorf (Humboldt University, Berlin), Dr Marco Vianello (University of Padua), Professor Grant Woods (University of Manitoba), Dr Will Wright (Université de Genéve), and Professor Zvi Ziegler (Technion, Haifa).

The University's Graduate Research Fund has awarded grants to the following doctoral students in our Department:

Willy Alangui (& supervisor Bill Barton), "Rice terracing practice in Philippine indigenous communities: an ethnomathematical investigation," $2750.

Debasish Roy (& supervisor Geoff Nicholls), "Simulation-based methods in Bayesian inference for physical inverse problems," $3000.

Shehenaz Adam (& supervisor Bill Barton), "Ethnomathematics in the Maldivian curriculum," $2750 .

Jamie Sneddon received a PhD for his thesis on "Minors and Planar Embeddings of Digraphs," supervised by Paul Bonnington and Marston Conder.

Seminars

Professor Szymon Dolecki (Université de Bourgogne), "Convergence theory: convenient abstraction level."

Dr Melissa Rodd (University of Leeds), "Ways ahead: successful mathematics students at two universities."

Dr John Crisp (Université de Bourgogne), "Notions of curvature for 2-dimensional groups."

Professor David Smith (Duke University), "Reusable tools for creating interactive online learning environments."

Professor Frederic Mynard (University of Mississippi), "Sequentiality and Frechetness of finite products of topological spaces."

Professor Stephen Watson (York University), "Selection theorems through the notion of coherence."

Dr Stuart Scott, "The z-constrained conjecture."

Dr Tsukasa Yashiro (Osaka City University), "On some invariants of knots and surface-knots."

Professor Zbigniew Piotrowski (Youngstown State University), "Quasi-continuity, Baire 1 and separate continuity of functions."

Dr Heinz Bauschke (University of Guelph), "Hundal's alternating projections counterexample and the proximal point algorithm."

Dr Antonio Terlizzi (Lecturer in Applied Zoology ), "Scales of spatial variation, environmental impacts and experimental designs. An overview from Mediterannean rocky subtidal."

Dr Christine Hunter (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution), "Simplifying construction and analysis of multi-regional population models using the vec-permutation matrix."

Professor Hershel Farkas (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), "Theta functions: conformal mapping through combinatorial number theory."

Professor Bettina Eick, "Classifying p-groups by co-class."

Dr Mark Clements, "Prediction of lung cancer mortality using generalized additive models and Bayesian age-period-cohort models."

John Chambers, "Current research in statistical computing."

Professor Grant Woods, "Using group 'research projects' in the teaching of introductory calculus."

Kevin Wang, "Effects of cell-phone towers on housing prices."

Dr Ruhama Even (Weizmann Institute), "Preparation of providers of professional development for teachers of mathematics."

Mark Maunder, "Ecological modelling: information and uncertainty."

Michael Bulmer, "Virtual worlds for teaching mathematics and statistics."

Dr Kevin Grazier (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech), "The Cassini mission to Saturn."

Applied Probability Seminars

James Russell, "A recent survey of small mammal trapping methods."

Lara Jamieson (University of Cambridge), "Bayesian modelling of spatial and temporal spread of an epidemic."

Professor David Brillinger (University of California - Berkeley), "Some experiences with random effect (generalized) linear models."

Dr Mark Clements (ANU), "Prediction of lung cancer mortality using generalized additive."

Professor Hal Caswell (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution), "Stochastic demography of a threatened floodplain plant."

Dr Ken Brewer (ANU), "Combined survey inference: compromise or consummation?"

Dr Susan Pitts (Cambridge University), "Estimation for risk models."

Professor Herve Moulin (Rice University), "The random allocation of indivisible units: an axiomatic approach."

Dr Anna Bogolmonaia (Rice University), "A new solution to the random assignment problem."

Garry J. Tee

Department of Statistics

(Reprinted from the NZSA Newsletter 59)

We have enjoyed a lively stream of visitors in the City Campus over the summer. Hal Caswell and Christine Hunter joined us for three months from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution near Boston. Many readers will remember Hal from the 2002 SEEM4 conference in Dunedin, where he presented a workshop on matrix population models. His visit was funded by a MacLaurin Fellowship from the NZIMA Centre for Research Excellence.

Susan Pitts, from the University of Cambridge, spent a month visiting Ilze Ziedins. Other members of the department were quick to appreciate the value of having two experts in queuing theory on-site, and we haven't had to wait for our coffees all summer!

Statistical computing is thriving with the visits of John Chambers, from Bell Labs, and Masayuki Jimichi, from Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan. John Chambers, the designer of S and 1999 winner of the prestigious Software System Award of the ACM, will give a series of five talks through March on his recent research on statistical computing. Masayuki Jimichi is here until September. Over the summer we also welcomed a former student of the department, Jonathan Reeves, who now lectures in financial econometrics at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

The new semester is starting again, and we welcome Steven Miller to the department as a PhD student. Steven will work with Rachel Fewster on a Marsden funded project to investigate rat invasions through the NZ archipelago from genetic records.

Many department members spread their wings in November and December. Ross Ihaka and Paul Murrell were invited speakers at the Modern Statistical Visualization workshop at the Institute for Statistical Mathematics in Tokyo. They each gave three talks on R and Visualisation. Rachel Cunliffe gave a keynote presentation at the Australian Conference on Teaching Statistics (OZCOTS) in Melbourne, where she gave a workshop on narrated powerpoint presentations. After a job well done, she slept soundly through Melbourne's 100-year storm that night. Chris Wild, Matt Regan, and Maxine Pfannkuch attended the Delta Conference in Queenstown on undergraduate teaching in mathematics, and Chris was a plenary speaker. Ilze Ziedins gave an invited talk at the Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control and Computing in Illinois in October. In March she is travelling to Minnesota as an invited participant at the IMA programme on Probability and Statistics in Complex Systems.

After 33 years in the department, Alastair Scott has decided to retire at the end of the year. When Alastair joined the Department of Mathematics in 1972, university funding was booming and he was given an entire new seven-storey building all to himself! Unfortunately the honeymoon lasted only a couple of days before the rest of the department moved in. Alastair was the first head of the Statistics Department when it was established in 1994, and his wise vision and ever-cheerful manner have been a constant inspiration to generations of students and staff. We have reluctantly granted him retirement leave on the sole condition that he continues to visit the department five days a week. To mark Alastair's achievements, he was last year made an Honorary Life Member of the NZSA. This honour was also accorded to George Seber, who retired from the department in 1998. To fill the positions left open by Alastair and George, we are expecting to advertise two Chairs (full Professor positions) early this year. Watch this space!

And finally, Arden Miller and his wife Melissa celebrated Christmas last year with the birth of their first baby, Abigail Jada. Congratulations!

At the Tamaki Campus the new School of Population Health building is almost finished and is already occupied. This has dramatically increased the number of staff and students on campus. With it we gain additional services, such as a third cafeteria and (at last) an EFTPOS machine. The Landcare building in the southwest corner of the campus is also showing good progress, and not far from that, the extended and refurbished student cafeteria will be open in a couple of weeks.

The stats group moved from building 723 to 721. This was to make room for folk associated with commerce and the Bachelor of Business and Info Mgmt program. Despite a move of a mere 50 metres, it was a nightmare due to the logistics, and many staff and students lost belongings. Most, but not all, were later found in the wrong offices. Some items, particularly computer peripherals, have never been found. Thanks heaps to the moving company, which I had better not name! Anyway, important thing is that we are nicely settled into 721, the admin building. We have a few mathematicians for company, and 721 is joined to the new Population Health building by a sky bridge.

Thomas Yee is nearing the end of his year-long leave to Singapore and will be back with us by midyear. Marti Anderson and Russell Millar went on their annual fish survey dive trips in January, and were lucky to enjoy the period of good weather before it all turned to custard. This time they got in a few extra dives at some offshore islands, including the Poor Knights, Aldermans and Mayor Island.

On the business front, everyone is doing well, pumping out research, hosting visitors, getting loads of grants, and coping with the rigours of the new semester of teaching. Enough said.

Marti Anderson preparing for a dive at Northern Arch, Poor Knights Islands marine reserve

Rachel Fewster & Russell Millar

UNIVERSITY OF CANTERBURY

Department of Mathematics and Statistics

The department welcomes four new appointments: Prof. Satish Iyengar (Professor of Statistics) (stochastic models, multivariate analysis, meta-analysis, applications to neuroscience); Dr Alex James (modelling of problems in combustion and ecology including larval fish growth and the role of environmental stochasticity); Dr Arno Berger (dynamical systems, ergodic theory, applied probability and stochastic processes, stability and bifurcation theory, symmetry and scaling, classical mechanics; and Dr Carl Scarrott (spatial statistics, extreme value methods and spectral analysis with application to problems in industry, ecology, environment and science).

In addition to these appointments, Dr Mike Plank began a two year Post-doc in the department at the start of this year. Mike did his PhD on models of tumour progression at Leeds University in the UK. He did three months postdoc at Leeds before moving to Canterbury, where he is now working on mathematical models of cell signalling events in the circulatory system that are linked to the onset of heart disease with David Wall.

Dr Britta Basse has won a prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship to continue her research in Cancer modelling in Leipzig, Germany (see Notices).

Also congratulations to Douglas Bridges for being elected as a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Douglas Bridges returned to the fold in February, after a year as a DAAD Gastprofessor in the Mathematical Institute of the University of Munich. During the year he taught graduate courses in his research speciality of constructive mathematics, participated in several conferences, did lots of research, and visited thirteen countries. He strongly recommends Munich as a place to spend sabbatical leave: it's a city full of history and culture, and the Bavarians really know how to enjoy themselves (not just at Oktoberfest).

Seminars

Sukanto Bharracharya (Bond University), "Computational application of Benford's first digit law to financial fraud detection."

Jaunty Ho (Australian National University), "A quick simulation method for wireless communication systems."

Dr Carl Scarrott (Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford part of NERC), "Spatial random effects modelling, spectral analysis, extreme value statistics."

Associate Professor Hajime Ishihara (Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Ishikawa), "A constructive theory of integration—a metric approach."

Dr Stephen McDowall (Western Washington University), "An inverse problem for the transport equation in the presence of a Riemannian metric."

Dr Sergey Tikhonov (Moscow State University), "Moduli of smoothness of fractional order and some applications."

Dr William Joyce, "Beyond non-associativity."

Dr Ben Martin (University of Kent), "Character varieties, geometric invariant theory and finite groups of Lie type."

Professor C. Vinsonhaler (University of Connecticut), "Approximately simultaneously diagionalizable matrices."

Professor Allen Rodrigo (University of Auckland), "The mathematics of HIV evolution and population dynamics."

Professor M J D Powell (University of Cambridge), "A new algorithm for unconstrained minimization without derivatives."

Tobias Thierer, "A characteristic function approach to perfect and imperfect phylogenies."

Professor Andreas Dress (Max Plank Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences Leipzig), "Valuated matroids, phylogenetic trees and tropical geometry."

Dr Michael Burns (Victoria University, Canada), "Subfactors and planar algebras."

Professor Horst W. Hamacher (Univ. Kaiserslautern), "Consecutive-1 matrix decomposition of integer matrices and applications."

Murthy Mittinty, "Imputation by propensity matching."

Professor Joe Perry (Rothamsted Experimental Station, UK), "Measuring spatial pattern for counts in ecology."

Marian Baroni, "Constructive suprema and infima."

Dr Magnus Bordewich, "Quantum computation, topology, and approximate counting."

Charles Semple

INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH LIMITED

Applied Mathematics Team

Warwick Kissling handed in his PhD thesis in February. Warwick has been studying part-time for his PhD (entitled "Deep hydrology of the geothermal systems in the Taupo Volcanic Zone, New Zealand") at The University of Auckland over the last few years. A new PhD student, Jade MacKay, will be joining us in July. Jade has been awarded a Top Achiever Scholarship by FRST and will work with Shaun Hendy on "The Electrochemical Growth of ZnO Nanostructures".

In February we were joined by another French intern, Celine Cattoen, from Toulouse. Celine is working with Graham Weir on modelling cryogenic refrigeration systems for use with superconducting coils. Graham attended MISG in Auckland and acted as facilitator on the problem of modelling earthquake damage to tunnels.

Finally, John Burnell has been presenting evidence in March at a resource consent hearing about applications to develop new generation capacity at Wairakei.

Shaun Hendy

LINCOLN UNIVERSITY

Applied Computing, Mathematics and Statistics Group

In the research community Lincoln University is best known for work in biosciences and environmental fields, so it may come to some surprise that there is also a growing activity in applied mathematics.

Evidence of that, is the publication of a new book "Stochastic Dynamics" by Lincoln authors Don Kulasiri and Wynand Verwoerd, as volume 44 of the prestigious North Holland series on Applied Mathematics and Mechanics. The book, subtitled "Modelling solute transport in porous media" is both a research monograph and a down to earth introduction to the esoteric field of stochastic differential equations, aimed at practical applications to physical systems.

Don Kulasiri comes from a background in theoretical engineering, and since he joined Lincoln in the early 1990's he has worked on a wide spectrum of modelling projects covering both mathematical and computing aspects, such as the root morphology of trees, strength of wool yarns, and inverse problems, to name a few. When an experimental program on solute transport in aquifers was established at Lincoln, he developed an interest in this field and its modelling using Ito calculus and other stochastic methods.

In 1999 he was joined by Wynand Verwoerd, a theoretical physicist who has worked extensively on quantum chemical modelling of semiconductor surfaces. At Lincoln, he joined the solute transport project and has developed a theoretical model using the Dynkin equation approach from stochastic PDE theory, to explain the observed scaled dependence of dispersivity in natural porous media. The first part of this development is covered in "Stochastic Dynamics", with further work being prepared for publication in the near future.

Together with other active researchers at Lincoln, Don and Wynand established the Centre for Advanced Computational Solutions (C-fACS) in 2000 and the centre has meanwhile performed contract research on applying artificial intelligence to network fault diagnosis for Transpower, the parallelization of computational models of river flooding events, and of mathematical dairy farm modelling for Dexcel.

Don and Wynand are presently members of the Applied Computing, Mathematics and Statistics group, and several other colleagues in this group also have interests in the application of mathematical methods.

Wynand Verwoerd

MASSEY UNIVERSITY

Institute of Fundamental Sciences (Palmerston North) Mathematics

Kee Teo took up his role as subject leader in the beginning of January. He has been busy allocating portfolios and nobody escaped.

Charles Little attended the 28th Australasian Conference on Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing, held at Deakin University, Burwood, Victoria, Australia during December 15 –19, 2003, and spoke on "A new proof of a characterization of Pfaffian bipartite graphs".

Robert McLachlan and John Hudson went to Nelson to soak up the sun and to participate at the NZMRI meeting on Computational Algebra, Number Theory and Geometry held on January 3 –11.

Igor Boglaev also decided to seek the sun and crossed Cook Straight to attend the Workshop on Logic and Computation in Nelson (January 11 –16).

Bruce van Brunt has been very busy as far as conferences are concerned. He first attended the MISG 2004 at the University of Auckland (January 26 –30). Then he crossed the Tasman Sea to catch up with friends and colleagues at ANZIAM 2004 held at Hobart, Tasmania (February 1 –5) followed by VIC 2004 at Victoria University (February 9 –13).

Robert McLachlan also went to the capital to give a plenary lecture at VIC 2004 (9 –13 February).

Then the rains came. Large parts of the Manawatu were flooded. The Manawatu River turned into a raging, angry and thundering river. It was quite a spectacular sight to drive over the bridge to work on the 16th of February. The walking tracks and adjacent low-lying farmland had become part of the river. Then the rumours started. It was conjectured that the flow had become too much for the bridge and that there were concerns regarding the structural integrity of the Fitzherbert Bridge. Another was that the bridge was going to be closed to pedestrians. All these rumours started about 11.00 am. The upshot was that schools were closed so that pupils and staff could get home. Even Massey staff was allowed to leave so most went home. Unlike Hamilton we have only one bridge so a collapsed bridge would have been disastrous. The need for a second bridge has been an ongoing saga for two decades or so and a decision is not in sight. Two mathematicians were affected namely Bob Richardson and Bruce van Brunt.

Professor Bob Richardson from Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina returned to New Zealand in December for another six months. As he lives in Pahiatua (on the other side of the hills), he became an isolated singularity for one day when the three roads connecting west and east were closed on the 16th. Currently two roads are still closed. Heavy traffic that used to go through the Manawatu Gorge now crosses the Tararua Ranges via the Pahiatua track, a road not at all suitable for milk tankers and articulated trucks. It took Bob a good two hours to cover a distance of 35km and the only way to get to Massey on time is to leave Pahiatua before the heavy traffic starts.

Bruce was an isolated singularity for two days. He lives in the Pohangina Valley north of the village. Bruce set out to go to Palmerston North on the 15th but wisely decided to return home when he saw the rapidly rising Pohangina River. Trouble was evident as it still rained hard. As it happened a big part of the road had been washed away causing a very big hole in the road. The road on the other side on the valley was also impassible. On the Wednesday Bruce managed to scramble down into the hole, walked through mud and debris and climbed got out of it again. From climbing mountains (maxima) a reversal to crawling into and out of holes (minima). Luckily he managed to hitch hike to Massey.

Robert has supervised for six months Bård Skaflestad, a PhD student from the University of Trondheim. While he was here he witnessed many extreme climatic weather conditions get broken. His home is well north of the Polar Circle and he could tell us all about the dark, long winter. B\aa rd went back to Norway early March.

We welcome Matthew Hardy as a Massey University Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Matthew has commenced a postdoctoral research project in computational mathematics. Working with Igor, Matthew will investigate the parallel implementation of monotone methods for singular perturbation methods. Matthew's PhD, undertaken at Oxford University, comprised numerical studies of gas-powered micro-particle propulsion devices. Previously, Matthew completed a BSc(Hons) in Pure Mathematics at the University of Sydney.

For the Allan Wilson Centre Mike Hendy reports:

Doom04

The mathematicians of the Allan Wilson Centre joined with the biologists at their annual workshop in phylogenetics, which this year was held at Whakapapa (Mount Doom)—participants queried whether it should be renamed "Gloom04" —as we were in rain or mist for most of the five days, or "Boom04", as the venue was struck by lightning on the last night. For most of that week we were isolated from the lower North Island by the torrential rains and high winds that devastated the region at that time. However the consolations included that we were able to witness spectacular waterfalls (overflowing gutterings) and swollen rivers (across the walkway between the accommodation block and the meeting room) and enjoy some excellent science. This year's participant numbered 54, and included a number of old friends as well as new vistors from overseas, including some new-comers, from France, Germany, Sweden, Israel, Russia, Australia, Canada, and United States. (Details, including abstracts can be viewed at http://www.math.canterbury.ac.nz/bio/doom04/doom04_programme.pdf.)

Helix

Our High Performance Computer, Helix, is currently being expanded with the addition of 12 Opteron (64-bit) nodes, and we are planning further expansion in the near future. Although usage is growing, there is still an opportunity for other NZ researchers to buy time on our facility. (For details contact Mike Hendy (m.hendy@massey.ac.nz).

INCOB

The International Conference on BioInformatics 2004 is being hosted jointly by the Allan Wilson Centre, and the Bioinformatics Institute, The University of Auckland, and is to be held at the Aotea Centre, Auckland from September 5 –8, 2004. More details, including registration, are given at http://www.incob.org/. Preceding the conference, there will be a 2-day hands-on parallel BioComputing workshop, Sept 2 –3, at the Albany campus of Massey University, which will include a general purpose introduction to parallel computing on Helix.

Seminars

Dr Henning Koehler (Information Systems, Massey University), "On skew polynomial rings".

Dr Bhalchandra Thatte (Post-doctoral Fellow in the Allan Wilson Centre), "Reconstruction problems in Graph Theory".

Dr Vadim Kuznetsov (University of Leeds, UK), "Bäcklund transformations for integrable Hamiltonian systems".

Professor Robert McLachlan, "Arranging points on a sphere".

Associate Professor Igor Boglaev, "Robust monotone iterates for nonlinear singularly perturbed problems".

Dr John Hudson, "Evolutionary trees and likelihood saddle point".

Dr Matthew Hardy, "Biolistics".

Marijcke Vlieg-Hulstman

Institute of Information and Mathematical Sciences (Albany)

Institute members were heavily involved with the Mathematics-in-Industry Study Group (MISG) and ANZIAM meeting in late summer.

MISG is reported upon elsewhere in the newsletter. Participants from the Institute included: Graeme Wake (director), Robert McKibbin, Mick Roberts and Tasos Tsoularis (who were all problem moderators), and Amanda Elvin, Jeff Hunter, Carlo Laing, Leng Leng Lim, Barry McDonald, Jo Mann and Winston Sweatman. It was an interesting and enjoyable week. We are looking forward to MISG2005 which will be again held locally under the direction of Graeme Wake on 24 –28 January 2005.

Robert McKibbin, Graeme Wake, Mick Roberts, Carlo Laing and Leng Leng Lim all participated in ANZIAM 2004 in Hobart in early February. Graeme spoke on the challenge of micromechanics modelling of hair, as well as reporting on the success of MISG2004 which had taken place the week before in Auckland. Mick talked about some of his infectious diseases modelling while Carlo presented some results on pattern formation in integral equations. Leng Leng spoke on modelling volcanic ashfall, joint work with Robert and Winston Sweatman

Robert McKibbin has taken up the Chair of ANZIAM for a two-year period. He thereby also becomes an ex officio Vice-President of the Australian Mathematical Society for that time.

It is the NZ Branch's turn to host the next ANZIAM meeting which will be held in Napier, 30 January –3 February 2005. The Convenor is Alfred Sneyd from the University of Waikato.

Our Data Mining Centre is up and running with Denny Meyer orchestrating. We also have a new Data Mining Major on the horizon, which is pooling resources widely across our institute by combining papers in statistics, computer science and information systems. Denny is also organising (with Ganesh, and Tim Ball from the Institute of Information Sciences and Technology, Massey University (Palmerston North)) a data mining workshop 28th to 30th June at Albany.

Our statistics major went under review last year (both internally and externally). One net result of the review, and various cross-campus debates, is that the Albany campus is now introducing R to second year students via two papers 'Probability Modelling' (161.230) and 'Statistical Modelling' (161.231). We are hoping that the inclusion of more statistical programming at second year will work well for our BInfSc students.

Shaun Cooper spent seven weeks in India over the summer break. He attended the joint Indian –American Mathematical Society Conference in Bangalore, and was an invited speaker at the Jangjeon Mathematical Society Conference in Mysore. Christmas Day was spent listening to mathematics lectures at a retirement function for a staff member at University of Mysore. On Boxing Day Shaun met his wife in Delhi, and they spent two weeks traveling in northern India. Shaun's running shoes were stolen at the Taj Mahal (the socks were not taken however) and he is finding out how difficult it is to run again after having had three months off. He also experienced reduced bargaining power upon entering a shoe store wearing only socks on his feet. After the holiday, Shaun spent a week at the Harish Chandra Institute in Allahabad, two weeks at University of Mysore, and two days at Bangalore University. He was pleased to finally meet three of his co-authors for the first time.

Paul Cowpertwait says that he is still beavering away at stochastic rainfall modelling; he had a successful trip to the Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne, where they plan to implement his algorithms into a software package for use by engineers throughout Australia. He says :"Why they need a rainfall model for that barren wasteland over there still beats me! I suppose it just makes my job easier: 00000..."

Mick Roberts spent 25th November to 6th December visiting Geoff Aldis at the University of New South Wales (ADFA) in Canberra. During this time he was an invited speaker at both the annual ACT ANZIAM meeting and the Australasian Region Conference of the International Biometric Society, which were both held at ANU.

Congratulations are due to Jo Mann for her MInfSc with first class honours for her thesis `Modelling repeated epidemics with general infection kernels' and for her Massey University PhD scholarship.

We said farewell to Paul Bracewell who has left to join OffLode, a Wellington-based Data Mining company. We wish him all the best for his future career. We welcome our new arrivals in Mathematics and Statistics: Dr Claire Jordon (Lecturer) (see New Colleagues), Marie Fitch (Senior Tutor) and Nicoleen Cloete (Tutor). Heung Yeung Lam (Frederick) has also joined the teaching team as a tutor.

Marie Fitch joins the team as a Senior Tutor to assist in particular with the first year statistics teaching. Marie has plenty of invaluable teaching experience having spent the last 10 years teaching maths and stats at Corran School (Auckland City), where she was also a careers advisor.

Nicoleen Cloete has taken up a temporary Tutorship in Mathematics until the end of Semester 2, and will contribute to the teaching programmes in both Mathematics and Statistics. Nicoleen is currently completing a PhD in stochastic processes and probability theory from the University of Auckland.

Frederick Lam is a familiar face within the institute as he is completing his PhD studies.

On the subject of baby news, Winston Sweatman is enjoying less sleep following the happy arrival of son Iain.

Visitors

James Wallace from Bradford University, England, visited Tasos Tsoularis in March for research collaboration.

Seminars

Horst Hamacher (Technical University of Klauserlauten), "Consecutive-1 Matrix Decomposition of Integer Matrices and Applications."

Shaun Cooper, "Confessions of a Mathematician."

Claire A. Jordan, "Bayesian Classification using Product Partition Models."

Winston Sweatman

Institute of Information Sciences and Technology

Statistics

The Massey statisticians at Palmerston North have finally relocated from the Social Sciences Tower to the AgHort Building, thereby joining the computer scientists and information engineers who make up the rest of our Institute. Our arrival coincided with that of our new Head of Institute Professor Janina Mazierska, formerly of James Cook University in Australia. The week before the start of the first semester saw us frantically packing and unpacking boxes while simultaneously trying to prepare for a new academic year. The drama of the occasion was heightened by the floods and high winds which hit the Manawatu at this time. Ganesh's house came closest to being flooded, but his vantage point near the swollen river did enable him to take some stunning photographs of cows swimming to safety, which later appeared in the local newspaper.

Steve Haslett managed to avoid the trauma of moving by the simple expedient of being somewhere else, although as the "somewhere else" in this case was Dhaka it might have been less traumatic staying here. Steve was giving the final presentation of the results of a project which he and Geoff Jones carried out for the World Food Programme and the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics during October to December, involving small-area estimation of poverty and malnutrition incidence. They describe the experience of living and working in Dhaka as one not to be missed.

Earlier in the year Steve was in Uganda, providing sample design and implementation advice to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) programme. This is one of 37 international surveys (representing 62\% of the world population) that is carried out by GEM, which has both strong academic links and connections with the United Nations Business Council. Steve returned to learn of his promotion to full professor, for which we congratulate him.

Dongwen Luo successfully defended his thesis in October and has now been awarded his PhD. Alasdair Noble and David Alexander have submitted theirs and are awaiting further developments.

Geoff Jones

UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO

Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Associate Professor Peter Fenton has taken up the reins as new Head of Department from the beginning of February. The following item is contributed by Dennis McCaughan.

Over the summer Vernon was leaving to move upstairs as AVC Sciences. By late January, as the suspense reached breaking point, the (former) AVC finally spoke and our new HOD appeared as in a puff of white papal smoke. Wine buff, cyclist extraordinaire, francophile (close friends address him as Pierre), debonair, erudite and suave, Peter Fenton is a new style HOD for the next three years of the 21st Century.

He has instituted much more frequent department meetings, a new hands-up rather than hands-on management style, and more working parties on specific issues. He is also promoting contacts with other departments.

Vernon is now looking down from Olympus and brandishing thunderbolts in the traditional way. The present outlook is somewhat stormy, but Peter has ensured a threefold supply of departmental umbrellas.

With Vernon Squire's departure to the Division of Sciences, the Department now has a vacant Chair of Applied Maths.

Dr Amal Amleh joined the staff in February as a Fixed Term Lecturer in Applied Mathematics. Amal is a native of Palestine whose academic career has included two years at Auckland University and one year at University of Michigan-Dearborn. A chance visit to the South Island and Dunedin happened at a very opportune time!

Dr Markus Neuhäuser resigned his Senior Lecturership in Statistics at the end of February and has returned to his home country of Germany with his family, which has doubled in the time he has been in NZ! Markus' input to the teaching and research of the department will be sorely missed.

Mr Jason Rabbitt has joined the staff as a Teaching Assistant. Jason is a familiar face around the Department as an Honours student and tutor last year. He is also working towards his MSc in Statistics.

Between November 2003 and January 2004, Robert Aldred gave invited talks at meetings in Nyborg, Denmark, Nashville, USA, Muscat, Oman, Yokohama, Japan and Tokyo, Japan. He also visited with colleagues (including Professors Carsten Thomassen, Mike Plummer, Mark Ellingham, Richard Anstee, Kevin McAvaney, Akira Saito, Ken-ichi Kawarabayashi and Katsahiro Ota) for collaborative research purposes. More talks were given at departmental seminars at various universities along the way. Although hectic the time away was very productive and several projects are under way with promising results.

Gerrard Liddell, Jonni Bidwell and Dennis McCaughan spent an idyllic week 3 –10 January at Tahunanui motor camp in sunny Nelson (it did rain a little) at the NZMRI workshop on Computational Algebra and Number Theory. A stellar lineup of speakers was presented by Eamonn O'Brien and Marston Conder: John Conway talked about inaudible shapes, Hendrik Lenstra about primality testing, Karl Rubin about elliptic curves, Peter Neumann about matrix groups and Charles Sims about algebraic algorithms. Evening lectures included a very entertaining account by Lenstra of some of Escher's artwork. A great time was had by all, and Jonni distinguished himself by being (he says) the only grad student to make the Saturday 9 am lecture after the conviviality of the barbecue on Friday night. A wonderful, stimulating week.

In January, David Fletcher ran a week-long mathematics and statistics project as part of the University's Hands-On-Science program for high school students. The focus of the project was on the use of population models in conservation. As well as considering the practical aspects of models that are used to help organisations like the Department of Conservation, the students also found out about the mathematics underlying some of the models. The first day was spent learning about an example of a population that is in need of conservation: Hector's dolphin. The students got to know something about where these dolphins live and roughly how many there are. The focus for the rest of the day was on modelling the number of dolphins in the population that lives around Banks Peninsula. They looked at simply exponential models, and then those that involve density dependence and stochasticity. This naturally led on to ideas of chaos and of risk assessment. Later in the week, discussion of chaos led on to using software to draw fractal images such as SierpinskiÕs Gasket and Barnsley's Fernleaf. Overall, a good time was had by all!

A MARK workshop sponsored by The Wildlife Society Biometrics Working Group. This advanced workshop was held at Canterbury University, Christchurch, New Zealand, in December 2003 as part of the 3rd International Wildlife Congress in Christchurch. Led by Gary White and Richard Barker, the aim of the workshop was to update experienced MARK users on some of the latest developments in MARK.

Seminars

Dr Michael Bulmer (University of Queensland), "Virtual Worlds for Teaching Mathematics and Statistics".

Dr Margaret Walshaw (Department of Technology, Science & Mathematics Education, Massey University), "Explorations of girls and mathematics".

Professor Bruce Reed (McGill University), "1,2,3, C".

John Shanks, "Horner in the Corner".

Richard Barker, "McMC, WinBUGS and the Bayesian rEvolution".

Amal Amleh, "A Basic Introduction to Very Interesting Nonlinear Difference Equations".

Lenette Grant

THE UNIVERSITY OF WAIKATO

Department of Mathematics

The summer break is usually a time for travelling and this was certainly the case for members of the department. Within New Zealand, Kevin Broughan and a PhD student Vasile Sinescu attended the workshop on "Computational Algebra and Number Theory" held in Nelson, while Alfred Sneyd attended the "Mathematics-in-Industry Study Group" held in Auckland. In early February, Ernie Kalnins and Rua Murray attended the "Victoria International Conference" held in Wellington.

Ernie was also an international traveller. He spent most of January visiting Linköping University in Sweden. While there, he gave a talk at the conference on "State of the Art of Classical Separability Theory for Differential Equations". He then participated in the workshop held directly after the conference. This workshop was focused on current research problems in separability theory. He also had the opportunity to give some lectures to students at the university.

Recently appointed lecturer Tim Stokes returned to Australia for two months over summer for a combination of work and rest. He worked in Melbourne for a fortnight with Marcel Jackson (Latrobe University) on semigroup theory. Later, he attended the ANZIAM conference in Hobart in early February, where he presented a talk. In fact he stayed in Hobart for several weeks, mostly working with colleagues Larry Forbes (University of Tasmania) and Graeme Hocking (visiting from Murdoch University, WA) on withdrawal problems for free surfaces in fluid mechanics. He reports that the weather was a lot drier in South-Eastern Australia than in Hamilton on his return!

Sean Oughton spent two weeks at his alma mater, the University of Delaware, where he was collaborating on magnetohydrodynamic turbulence problems, including applications to the question of why the sun's atmosphere is so much hotter than its surface. Solar heat in Delaware, however, was rather lacking. The visit coincided with an unusually cold winter period with typical daytime temperatures of -10C.

In March Ian Craig spent a week at the Yukawa Institute of Kyoto University when he gave an invited review talk on magnetic reconnection as part of the workshop on "Explosive Phenomena in Magnetized Plasmas—New Developments in Reconnection Research".

Seminars

E. Kalnins, "Separation of variables for spaces of constant curvature.

T. Stokes, "Internalized equality and modal logic.

A. Windsor (University of Manchester), "Exactly realizable sequences are smoothly realizable.

V. Kuznetsov ( University of Leeds), "Jack polynomials: integral equation, factorization and representation.

J. Cao (University of Auckland), "Automatic continuity.

G. Rickard (NIWA, Wellington), "Ocean modelling at NIWA."

Stephen Joe

Department of Statistics

Recent activity in the Statistics Department has included a one-day workshop conducted by Professor Peter Green. Professor Green has just completed his term as President of the Royal Statistical Society and is Professor of Statistics at the University of Bristol. He has recently been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. The theme of the workshop, which was very well attended, was "Structure and uncertainty: statistical modelling, stochastic systems and Bayesian computation."

Bill Bolstad's book "Introduction to Bayesian Statistics" is now with the publishers and is due for release in April, 2004.

Carole Wright, one of our PhD students, has submitted her thesis entitled "Variety Trials in 2-dimensional layouts." Another PhD Student, Khangelani Zuma, has also submitted his thesis. The title of his thesis is "Sexual Network Random Effects Model of Migration and Spread of HIV and other STIs in South Africa." We have recently welcomed a new PhD student, Oday Theodore, who joins us from Iraq.

Khange has returned to South Africa, where he has taken up an appointment with the Human Sciences Research Council, in Pretoria. Carole is working temporarily as a field technician at Food and Crop in Hastings, and is off on her OE later this year. At the recent International Biometric Society (Australasian Region) Conference, (held in Canberra) Carole was the winner of the best student presentation prize and also, at last year's New Zealand Statistical Association Annual Conference in Palmerston North, she was the winner of the Hoare Research Software prize for the best student paper presented at the conference for her presentation titled "Quick Generation of Row-Column Designs." Second place (for best student presenter at the NZSA conference) went to ex-student, Katarina Domijan who graduated in with a Masters degree, in October 2002 and now works as a statistician at AgResearch in Hamilton. Katarina's paper was "Semi-mechanistic modelling in Nonlinear Regression: a case study." Further adding to the accolades received by Waikato, was Harold Henderson, Biometrician at AgResearch and Honorary Lecturer to the Statistics Department at Waikato. Harold was the recipient of the Campbell Award. This is the second time the award has come to Waikato, as it was presented the previous year to Murray Jorgensen, also from the Statistics Department.

Finally, it is with sadness that we announce the death of Mrs Faye Sharples. Faye, who died suddenly at the end of March, was a Senior Lecturer in the Mathematics and Statistics Department for twenty years, before her retirement in 1995.

Seminars

Lyn Hunt "Unsupervised learning from incomplete three-way data using a mixture model approach.

James Curran "Two problems in forensic science.

Ian Westbrooke (Science and Research Unit, Department of Conservation, Christchurch) "Meeting statistical needs in a conservation management organisation.

Emlyn Williams (CSIRO Forestry and Forest Products, Canberra) "Statistical consulting and research in CSIRO forestry and forest products.

Carole Wright "Row-column designs and their contractions.

Dave Saville (Statistics Group, AgResearch, Lincoln) "Multiple comparison procedures: consistency and family-size robustness.

Neil Cox (Biometrician, AgResearch, Hamilton) "What role does Excel have in the practice and teaching of statistics?

Nicholas Longford (De Montfort University, Leicester, England) "Stability of household income in European countries.

Megan Jowsey and Rachel Cunliffe (Project Coordinator and Web site/Publicity Developer) "CensusAtSchool NZ: a statistical experience for children.

Chris Wild (Department of Statistics, The University of Auckland) "Regression problems with missing data.

Graham McBride (Senior Scientist, NIWA, Hamilton) "Some issues in quantitative health risk assessments for waterborne diseases.

Colin Aitken (School of Mathematics, University of Edinburgh) "Evaluation of trace evidence in the form of multivariate Data.

Michael Bulmer (Department of Mathematics, University of Queensland) "Virtual Worlds for Teaching Mathematics and Statistics."

Judi McWhirter

VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF WELLINGTON

School of Mathematical and Computing Sciences

Bert Gerards from CWI in Amsterdam is visiting for three months. Jim Geelen from the University of Waterloo in Canada is here for three weeks. They are both here to do work in matroid theory with Geoff Whittle.

Rod Downey has the following visitors, supported by an NZIMA logic and computation program:

Carl Jockusch (University of Illinois at Urbana), Andre Nies (Auckland), Wolfgang Merkle (Heidelberg), Eric Allender (Rutgers), Janos Makowsky (Technion), Angsheng Li (Academica Sinica). Steffen lempp (Madison).

Moshe Vardi Rice visited in December and gave three talks on the unusual effectiveness of Logic in Computer Science.

Several of Rod's visitors spoke at either the VIC 2004 special session on complexity, and/or the Nelson Logic and Computation program, details of which can be found on http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~mathmeet/.

Rob Goldblatt has had Ian Hodkinson (Imperial College) visiting. Rob Goldblatt is now Coordinating Editor of The Journal of Symbolic Logic, the leading research journal in the field. He takes over that position from Rod Downey, who has become Managing Editor of the associated Bulletin of Symbolic Logic.

A very successful workshop was held during 11 –16 January at Tahuna Beach, Nelson, as part of the NZIMA programme in Logic and Computation directed by Rob Goldblatt. There were 36 participant, including 12 graduate students, who were treated to some outstanding lectures on a range of topics in computability and model theory. Lecture slides and other material related to the workshop is available at the webpage http://www.cllc.vuw.ac.nz/LandCworkshop.shtml. We will have Dr Huixiang Chen to visit for one year, starting in April. He is currently teaching at Yangzhu University, China. Dr Chen's research interest is in noncommutative algebra, representation theory.

Mark McGuinness spent a few months over Christmas visiting the Applied Mathematics Division of the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Korea, accompanied by his family for part of the time. He came back to Auckland for the Mathematics-in-Industry Study Group in January, with a contingent of Korean students and academics. The Koreans were very impressed with the MISG process, and they all had a wonderful time in Auckland and sight-seeing in Rotorua afterwards. Mark also gave an invited lecture on modelling submarine lead-acid batteries, at the Applied Mathematics Forum held on 16 –17 February in Su An Bo, South Korea. Mark's next overseas trip is three weeks in Oxford, working on modelling the regulation of blood pressure in humans, in June and July.

Quite a lot has happened at VUW recently on the Stats/OR front. One of the biggest pieces of news is the departure of Yu Hayakawa, who left VUW early in February 2004, after 11 years here. Yu has accepted a position of Associate Professor in Statistics at Waseda University, Tokyo, back in her home country of Japan. Her many valuable contributions at VUW will be remembered for a long time, and the memory of her infectious enthusiasm and happy smile will stay with us for even longer, I suspect. We wish Yu all the best in her new position.

Before leaving VUW, Yu Hayakawa organised a Workshop on Point Processes in Reliability, jointly with Stefanka Chukova. The meeting was held in September 2003, and further details can be found on line at http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/events/workshop03. Stefanka Chukova also participated at the International Conference in Reliability and Survival Analysis, May 21 –24, 2003, Columbia, South Carolina, USA.

Richard Arnold and Yu Hayakawa spent 2 weeks at Hong Kong University in December 2003, working with Paul Yip on Bayesian approaches to the analysis of capture-recapture datasets.

Helen Haywood turned 1 on 5 December 2003, which meant that her dad, John, had to hurry back from the second day of the Inaugural New Zealand Time Series Study Group Workshop held at University of Canterbury, where he was one of the invited speakers. John also (jointly) presented a paper at the 2003 NBER/NSF Time Series Conference, which was held at the University of Chicago in September 2003, in honour of George Tiao's retirement. In addition, John gave invited talks to the Statistics New Zealand Time Series in Official Statistics Day (in December 2003, in Christchurch) and to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand in August 2003.

Ivy Liu, Dong Wang and John Haywood all gave talks at the NZSA 2003 Conference held at Massey University (Palmerston North) in July. In August, Ivy also gave a talk at the 54th ISI meeting held in Berlin, Germany, in the same session as Sir David Cox. Perhaps not surprisingly, that session was well attended. Dong recently spent the summer months working in China and Australia, and arrived back at the end of February to start teaching 100-level statistics the next day.

Shirley Pledger has been enjoying sabbatical leave since September 2003, which continues until the end of June 2004. Shirley spoke at two conferences last year: EURING 2003 in Radolfzell, Germany (in October), and the International Wildlife Management Congress in Christchurch, in December. Shirley has hosted three visitors recently. Ken Burnham came from Colorado State University in December, while Hal Caswell and Christine Hunter, both from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts (but visiting Auckland University Statistics Department), were here in February 2004. Shirley recently honed her skills capturing and recapturing frogs on Maud Island in Pelorus Sound; however, she tells us she was there officially as a statistical consultant.

Estate Khmaladze was on sabbatical from mid-2003 to January 2004. In September he spoke at a conference at the Institute for Mathematical Research in Oberwolfach, and also was International Programme Committee Chair for the Kolmogorov-100 conference in Tbilisi, which had 49 selected participants from 32 countries. Estate spent November at the University of Karlsruhe, working on his Marsden-funded project on applications of differential geometry to statistics. In February 2004, back at VUW, Estate gave a paper at the VIC 2004 Conference: an international meeting in cooperation with the Israel Mathematical Union, the New Zealand Mathematical Society and the New Zealand Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. Estate's talk was in the session on Geometric Aspects of Functional Analysis.

Our PhD students have been busy too. Nuovella Williams returned home to Montserrat in early March 2004, where she will complete the write up of her thesis shortly. Caroline Roughneen has been visiting VUW from Trinity College, Dublin, since July 2003. Currently she is back in Ireland, but Caroline will be returning to Wellington within a couple of months. Steve Johnston is (jointly) responsible for the newest addition to the Stats/OR fold here at VUW: Timothy was born safe and sound (and pretty quickly too!) on 25 February 2004. The whole family are doing well, although Steve is looking a bit more tired than he used to.

Statistics student numbers are up 30\% putting some strain on our resources.

The Wellington Statistics Group (WSG) continues to meet regularly, with a typical gap between meetings of 5 –6 weeks, and a slightly longer break for summer. Over the last year, in reverse chronological order, there have been WSG talks given by:

• Brian Easton: "The Econometrics of Household Equivalence Scales.
• Stefanka Chukova and Yu Hayakawa, VUW: "Warranty analysis: An overview and some new probabilistic models.
• Nick Longford, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK: "Stability of household income in European countries in the 1990s and a NZ connection.
• Caroline Roughneen, Trinity College, Dublin: "Study of Engineering as a Career Choice.
• Mark Weatherall, Wellington School of Medicine and Health "Sciences: Prevention of falls and fall related fractures in community dwelling older adults: A meta-analysis of estimates of effectiveness based on recent guidelines.
• Leigh Bull, DOC: "Sizing up shearwaters: morphological variation in the genus Puffinus.
• Chris Francis, NIWA: "Simultaneous testing for mean and variance differences with nasty data.
• Srinivas Chakravarthy, Kettering University, USA: "Impact of worker cross-training in service systems.

The next two WSG meetings will be addressed by Shirley Pledger on 25 March, and Jim Liu on 29 April. Shirley will be talking on "Using finite mixtures to model heterogeneity in capture-recapture models," while Jim will tell us about "Dynamics of interpersonal political environment and party identification: Longitudinal studies of voting in Japan and NZ." Anyone who does not presently receive WSG announcements and who wishes to be informed of future events is welcome to contact the WSG Convenor, John Haywood: John.Haywood@mcs.vuw.ac.nz.

Seminars

Bill Caelli (QUT), "Grand challenges in information security: Views from the CRA Conference November 2003.

Alex Potanin, "Snapshot query-based debugging.

Robin Tucker (Lancaster University), "The energy-momentum density of gravitational plane waves.

Dr Neal Glew (Intel), "LIL: An architecture-neutral language for virtual-machine stubs.

Professor Miklos Szilagyi (University of Arizona), "Computer simulation of multi-person prisoners' dilemmas.

Larry Constantine, "Abstract prototyping: user interface design using canonical abstract components.

Eric Grinberg (University of New Hampshire; UNH), "Integral geometry over finite fields. "

Dr Ray Hoare (HRS Ltd), "STATISTICA for research and teaching. "

Jerzy Filar (University of South Australia), "Sustainable production systems. "

Hal Caswell (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USA and NZIMA), "Stochastic demography of a threatened floodplain plant".

Frank Maurer (University of Calgary), "What is the fuss about agile methods?

Andreas Bogk, Keith Bauer, Gabor Greif, Bruce Hoult, and Alex Potanin, "Rapid prototyping in Dylan and ICFP".

Graham Farr (Monash University), "Graph polynomials from the game of go."

Stewart Fotheringham (University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK), "Geographically weighted regression. "

Kenneth P. Burnham (Colorado State University, USA), "Model selection: AIC, BIC and multimodel inference. "

Moshe Vardi (Rice University), "Constraints, graphs, algebra, logic, and complexity," "And logic begat computer science: when giants roamed the Earth (on the unusual effectiveness of logic in computer science)" and "Automated verification = graphs, automata, and logic."

Hugh Anderson (National University of Singapore), "Affine-based size-change termination. "

Mark McGuiness

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