Number 88     August 2003

NEWSLETTER

OF THE

NEW ZEALAND MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY (INC.)

Contents

PUBLISHER’S NOTICE
EDITORIAL
PRESIDENT’S COLUMN
PRESIDENT’S REPORT 2002-2003
LOCAL NEWS
FEATURES
CENTREFOLD David Benney
NEW COLLEAGUES
BOOK REVIEWS
CONFERENCES
MINUTES
NOTICES
Application for Membership of the NZMS

MATHEMATICAL MINIATURE 21 R gave me a DAE underneath the Linden tree

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

AUSTRALIA

Despite the attendance of nearly 1700 mathematicians at ICIAM in Sydney last month, I'm afraid one of the participants didn't make it. He tried to board a plane carrying a sharp instrument, a compass. Worse than that, on searching his bags he was found to be a member of the radical group Al Gebra. He has now been charged with possessing instruments of maths instruction.

For me one of the highlights of ICIAM was a talk by Adam Spencer, Australia's number one mathematics comedian. He adapted well to an audience of professional mathematicians and had us all in stitches for an hour. (In fairness to Adam, the above joke is not one of his). He's on the Australian youth radio network JJJ every morning and has developed a bit of a cult following. How we need someone like him over here! In fact, thanks to the magic of time zones, you can even listen to him over the internet at work while you're preparing your calculus lectures. I've tried it and it works.

There was also some really great publicity material distributed by various maths departments, for example by UNSW who claim they are now #14 in the world for research impact. Other highlights were Jennifer Chayes, the head of Microsoft Research, speaking on phase transitions in combinatorial optimization, and Wilfried Schmid of Harvard. When he saw what his daughter was bringing home from school he took a bit of a break from Lie groups to look into maths education and let me tell you, what he saw was not pretty. Taken as whole, however, the invited speakers seemed to be having trouble pitching their talks at the right level for such large audiences. Also on the debit side is all the extra CO₂ emitted bringing all those people to Sydney. Was it worth it? (Am I turning into an old crusty?)

Congratulations to Hyam Rubinstein (Melbourne) on his election to the Australian Academy of Science. Many will remember his outstanding lecture at our Colloquium in 2001. The AAS is an extremely selective body, with only 300 members (compare the Royal Society of London's 3000+). Low-dimensional topology is having an exciting time currently, with Perelman's proof of the Poincaré conjecture holding up well (www.nytimes.com/2003/04/15/science/15MATH.html).

The Australian Mathematical Society's Gazette reports that 4 Australians have made it into a list of the 250 most-cited mathematicians world wide. The list itself makes interesting reading, mixing prolificness and mega-stardom in different proportions. The Australians are Edward Dancer (dynamical systems), Peter Hall (statistics), Iain Raeburn (C* algebras), and Ian Sloan (numerical analysis). An impressive performance and not one that I know our members are going to take lying down.

* * *

I've been thinking lately about enrolments. Of course our livelihoods these days are very directly connected to total enrolments—at Massey we receive weekly updates throughout the year— but I am thinking now about numbers just of maths and of maths honours majors. If these decline too much we have in a sense failed professionally. Talking to colleagues it seems to be a problem throughout New Zealand, and indeed throughout the world—even the Netherlands is in the process of closing several departments— and Steven Krantz, never at a loss for words, has some thoughts on the matter at www.ams.org/notices/200307/commentary.pdf ("For Whom the Bell Tolls", Notices AMS August, 2003, p. 765). As Mike Meylan commented, it would be worth simply trying some radical strategy for a few years to see if it works—what can we lose? Perhaps here in New Zealand we should start by gathering some firm data on actual numbers of graduates over the past decade, and see where to go from there.

Robert McLachlan
Massey University

PRESIDENT’S COLUMN

The society's AGM was held on July 9 in Sydney, in conjunction with ICIAM. I was not able to attend the meeting, and I would like to thank Graeme Wake for chairing it. Council now consists of two members from each of Auckland, Victoria and Massey Universities, one from each of Canterbury and Otago Universities, and one from IRL. A by-law requires that at least two council members should be from the North Island, and at least two from the South Island. I seem to recall a former requirement that one council member should be from industry (in the broadest sense), and I believe that I may have been the first incoming vice-president who was outside the university system when elected.

It is very easy to perceive the NZMS as a society for university mathematicians, especially from the outside. That is not the intention. The purposes of the society are, according to the constitution

1. To promote research in the mathematical sciences and to promote the development, application and dissemination of mathematical knowledge within New Zealand.
2. To assist mathematicians in New Zealand to maintain effective cooperation with one another and with mathematicians and mathematical societies in other countries, and to facilitate collaborative research in the mathematical sciences as a consequence of such cooperation.

I have spent a considerable time as the only mathematician on a CRI campus. In that situation you hear references to "scientists and mathematicians", or the derogative "scientists and modellers". It took considerable effort to overcome this division, and much time was spent advocating for the mathematical scientist to be part of the research team rather than an external consultant. At the same time it was necessary to maintain contact with the discipline of mathematics, which is where the NZMS comes in through the newsletter, the support for the colloquium and other activities. It may be that the majority of our members work in relatively large university maths departments, but the society's role in promoting communication and collaboration is especially important for those away from the main centres of mathematical activity.

We have just experienced the vast ICIAM and its associated and spin-off meetings, but looking ahead there are plenty of events to plan your summer holidays around. You can spend January in Nelson at NZMRI 2004 - Computational Algebra, Number Theory and Geometry, staying on for the NZIMA Logic and Computational Programme. You can then travel to Auckland for the Mathematics in Industry Study Group, cross the Tasman to ANZIAM 2004 in Hobart, and return in time for the Victoria International Conference. Further details of all these meetings may be found elsewhere in this issue or on the NZMS website, but their abundance demonstrates the currently healthy situation of mathematicians talking to other mathematicians, to biologists and to industry.

As well as keeping mathematicians in touch and collaborating the NZMS makes two important awards. This year's winner of the Aitken Prize for the best student talk at the colloquium is Cynthia Wang, a graduate student at Massey University (Albany) working under the supervision of Mike Meylan. Her talk `Modelling a plate of arbitrary shape in infinitely deep water using a higher order method' was praised by the committee for its clarity and quality of visual aids, as well as the technical difficulty of the subject. This year's winner of the New Zealand Mathematical Society Research Award is Rod Gover from Auckland University. The award is made "For highly original contributions in conformal differential geometry, that has led to the solution of some outstanding and difficult problems." Cynthia and Rod will be presented with their certificates at the Royal Society of New Zealand Awards Night in Science and Technology in November. This is another opportunity for the society to showcase the achievements of New Zealand mathematics to the scientific community and the media. Our congratulations go to both these high achievers.

Mick Roberts
Massey University, Auckland

PRESIDENT’S REPORT 2002-2003

This report covers the period from the last AGM in December 2002 till July 2003. Of course the reason that the period is not a full year is that the AGM is being held in Sydney as part of a meeting embedded in ICIAM. Congratulations to the organizers of this very large meeting.

I should add as preamble that this is my final report as President of the NZMS. I wish to thank the councillors for all their time and effort devoted to the NZMS. Since the time I took over from Graeme Wake, so much has changed on the mathematical landscape in New Zealand. I think that there is some acknowledgement that we are an important part of New Zealand's intellectual capital. It is good to see things like the New Zealand Institute for Mathematics and its Applications centre of research excellence coming into existence. We must all work to take advantage of our opportunities here. I think that there is still a worry about the general support of industrial mathematics within New Zealand, and I hope that we can address this in the next few years.

Forder Lecturer 2003
The 2003 Forder Lecturer for 2003 will be Caroline Series of the University of Warwick. She will be here in September or thereabouts. Precise details will be coming out soon. As we said last year, the British Council, which has previously supported this activity, has declined to support Professor Series. The LMS is committed to this scheme and is looking into the matter for future lecturers.

Membership
Membership is now 234. This is essentially the same as last year.

Fellowship of NZMS
Jeff Hunter became a new Fellow of the NZMS for his excellence and his service to our mathematical community. This award was presented at last year's Colloquium Dinner.

NZMS Research Award
The 2002 award went to Bakhadyr Khoussainov from the University of Auckland Computer Science Department. The 2003 award will be announced at the Awards dinner at the Embedded Colloquium.

We thank this year's committee of Mike Steel, Gaven Martin and Vernon Squire who assisted with the selection process.

Aitken prize
The 2002 Aitken prize for the best student talk at the 2002 Colloquium was Sivajah Somasundaram of The University of Waikato.

Highly commended were the talks of Jonathan Marshall, Krasimira Tsaneva-Atanasova and Priscilla Tse.

Thanks to the committee of Rick Beatson, Shaun Cooper, Gaven Martin, and Mick Roberts (convener) who made these fine selections from a very good range of student talks.

The recipient of the 2003 award will be invited to a black tie awards night (see the Royal Society item) in November.

Performance Based Research Fund
The PBRF is now in full swing, with its heavy bureaucracy. I believe the excellence of New Zealand Mathematics will shine through and it will be a good thing for us, after the initial pain. Thanks to Vernon Squire for agreeing to chair this important committee.

Bernard Neumann
A good mathematical friend of New Zealand, Bernhard Neumann passed away on the 21st October, 2002. We knew Bernard not just through the legend, but because of his openness, friendliness, and mathematical vigour which lasted till the end. The society sends commiserations to his family.

Math Olympiad
New Zealand also did well at the Math Olympiad
obtaining its highest ever placing of 34th out of 84, and its first ever gold medal to Simon Marshall of Onslow College, Wellington. There are a dedicated group of people involved in this, lead by Michael Albert of Computer Science in Otago. The council has voted to commit to supporting this each year in the future.

Royal Society of New Zealand
The RSNZ has had a number of changes in its relationship with its constituent bodies. Shaun Hendy and Geoff Whittle have represented the NZMS in several discussions. More on this soon.

There were 10 new Marsden grants in 2002, including 3 new fast starts, and a number of new faces.

Awards Night
The Royal Society has decided to highlight the achievements of members of the constituent societies at a back tie awards night. This will be at the Stamford Plaza Hotel in Auckland on the 13th November, and we will have our Aitken Prize and Research Award being (re-)presented at this event, which has invited media coverage.

Congratulations
Two prominent New Zealand mathematicians have been appointed to personal chairs around the country, congratulations Mike Steel and Robert McLachlan.

NZMS Grants
The council decided to devote a considerable amount to supporting ICIAM and particularly student travel to that. Council made the following grants in 2002-3 (to date):

1. Ordinary student travel grants $500 (1 grant)
2. International Mathematics Olympiad $500
3. Maths Colloquium 2002 $2500 (NZMS Speaker $1500, student support $1000)
4. NZMS speaker at the Aust/NZMC during ICIAM2003 $1702 (being $AU1500)
5. ICIAM travel grants $8600 (8 student grants of $1000,
   one other grant of $600)
6. NZ Journal Mathematics $1000 (for 2002-3 year)

TOTAL $14802

Note, for the 2002 calendar year (up until the present time) the society gave 3 student grants. 2 of the 3 were made in July, and were included in last year's report. So the figures given above will disagree with the Treasurer's report for the 2002 year.

Other expenditure of interest: NZMS Lecturer $966 and Aitken Prize $250.

The total donations to the NZMS Endowment for Student Support in 2002 were $1799, plus $7057 from the colloquium float.

Centre of Research Excellence
Last year there was the exciting news that there have been the formation of two CoRE's of relevance to the NZMS.

One was the NZIMA headed by Vaughan Jones and Marston Conder, as directors, and with a large group of New Zealand mathematicians on the governing board. Funding for 2003 was provided to the following programmes: Numerical methods for evolutionary problems (John Butcher, Auckland) - middle part of 2003, Phylogenetic genomics (Mike Steel, Canterbury) - first half of 2003, Logic and Computation (Rob Goldblatt, Wellington) - late 2003 and early 2004, Modelling cellular function (Nicolas Smith, Auckland)

Most of these are now under way, and there are a number of upcoming related conferences and workshops particularly in early 2004 in Nelson, Kaikoura and Wellington.

There were two visiting Maclaurin Fellowships: David Evans (University of Bristol), first half of 2003 and who attended the NZMRI meeting in New Plymouth; and Richard Laugesen (University of Illinois at Urbana), first half of 2003. The inaugural NZ based Maclaurin Fellow was Rod Downey Victoria University (2003).

The Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution is also hosting programmes of interest to our members in 2003+ including the phylogeny meeting in Kaikoura.

The current round of decisions for funding 2004+ is under way, and the CoRE seems to be fulfilling its initial promise to provide great support for national mathematics within New Zealand.

The Australian Government has recently decided to have a similar, but more focused, CoRE based in Canberra.

NZMRI Summer Meeting
This was held in splendid weather in New Plymouth. There were a stellar group of speakers in the area of mathematical and combinatorial biology. Next year's one will be in Nelson.

Australian-NZ Mathematical Societies and ICIAM 2003
At the time you read this report, this meeting should be underway. The NZMS speaker for this meeting is Cheryl Praeger who has quite significant NZ connections down through the years.

VIC 2004
As an initiative of the NZMS, the NZIMA, and the Israel Math Society, there will be an international meeting in Wellington, with speakers Rod Downey (Victoria University), Vaughan Jones (Berkeley), Victor Palamodov (Tel Aviv University), Andre Nies (Auckland University), Janos Makowsky (Technion), Robert McLachlan (Massey University), Ran Raz (Weizmann Institute), and Hugh Woodin (Berkeley), and a large number of special session speakers. This looks a really successful initiative, and we may well see another such jointly sponsored meeting, perhaps in Israel, in a couple of years time. See www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~mathmeet

Special Thanks

Council members Peter Fenton and Rua Murray are finishing their terms after sterling service. Thanks to them. Thanks especially to Rua as retiring long-suffering Treasurer.

Also welcome to Mick Roberts, incoming President.

Rod Downey
Victoria University of Wellington

LOCAL NEWS

AGRESEARCH

Congratulations to Harold Henderson, a biometrician on the Ruakura campus who is the 2003 recipient of the NZSA Campbell Award

http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/nzsa/award.shtml the premier award of the NZ Statistical Association.

Congratulations also to Katarina Domijan, who was awarded second place in the Hoare Research Software Student prizes at the NZ Statistical Association conference in 2003. The prizewinners gave presentations on their thesis research Second: Katarina Domijan, graduated MSc (Hons) from The University of Waikato in October and now works at AgResearch Ruakura.

The NZSA conference was also attended by Zaneta Park-Ng, Lilian Morrison, Roger Littlejohn, Martin Upsdell and David Baird (who addressed the Young Statisticians group).

Ken Dodds is attending the XIXth International Genetics Congress in Melbourne.

Paul Shorten from the Mathematical Biology Group travelled to France in June, 2003 to present a paper at the 4th international conference on Predictive Modelling in Foods in Quimper, France. Paul also visited the Toulouse National Veterinary and Agronomy schools and the Herbivore, Feeding and Environment groups at the INRA research institutes in Clermont-Ferrand and Rennes to discuss milk lipid modelling.

Ken Louie

THE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND

Department of Computer Science

Congratulations to Gillian Dobbie and Bakh Khoussainov, who succeeded in getting through the preliminary round of the Marsden Fund this year.

Seminars

Dr David Stanhill, "The wavelet transform and multi-resolution analysis", and "The wavelet transform - some advanced topics".

Johnson Chen, "Object-embedding panoramic images".

Xiang Lin, "Target positions self-calibration".

Professor Lyle Noakes (University of Western Australia), "Rigid body interpolations and Riemannian cubics".

Volker Rodehorst (TU Berlin), "Close-range auto-calibration using projective geometry".

Dr Bruce Mills (Massey University - Albany), "Entropy and parsing algorithms".

Associate Professor Bakhadyr Khoussainov, "Games played on finite graphs", and "Automatic structures".

Yuman Huang, "Measuring the pupil size of a human eye".

Sasha Rubin, "Proving non-automaticity".

Dr Ulrich Spiedel, "A Shannon entropy for finite strings", and "DARTH - A framework for the design of database driven websites through a web browser".

Garry J. Tee

Department of Mathematics

Dr Shixiao Wang (Advanced Engineering Technology, USA) has accepted the offer of the Industrial Mathematics Lectureship. He expects to start in Auckland on November 1. Dr Mike Meylan (Massey University - Albany) has accepted the offer of the Applied Mathematics Lectureship. He will start in Auckland on August 1.

Dr Hannah Bartholomew has arrived, as Lecturer in the Mathematics Education Unit.

Congratulations to the following colleagues who succeeded in getting through the preliminary round of the Marsden Fund this year:

Fast Start: Maxine Pfannkuch
Standard: John Butcher (with Will Wright as one of the AIs)
Standard: Colin Fox (with Boris Pavlov and Geoff Nicholls as AIs)
Standard: Warren Moors and Ivan Reilly (with Jiling Cao as AI)
Standard: Jozef Siran and Paul Bonnington

Congratulations to the following colleagues who were successful in the latest round of grants from the University of Auckland's Staff Research Fund (administered by the University's Research Committee): Maxine Pfannkuch ($9238), Ivan Reilly ($4050), Arkadii Slinko ($2100), David Smith ($1800), Steve Taylor ($5000), Mike Thomas & Ye Yoon Hong ($21000).

Our Staff-Student Consultative Committee have once again won an award in the WAVE Student Friendly Awards, recognizing excellence in student representation. The winners for semester one 2003 were:
1st Place (Winner of $250) - BBIM Tamaki
2nd Place (Winner of $150) - Art History
3rd Place (Winner of $100) - Mathematics
We have previously been first and second.

ICIAM 2003. The 5th International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics was held at Sydney on July 7 to 11. That congress incorporated the 6th Australian & New Zealand Mathematics Convention, the 11th Computational Techniques and Applications Congress, the 6th Engineering Mathematics and Applications Conference, the 17th National Conference of the Australian Society for Operations Research, and the 2nd National Symposium on Financial Mathematics. Members of these Departments contributed the following talks:

Alona Ben Tal (Bioengineering), "Mathematical modelling of the cardio-respiratory system".

Bruce Calvert, "Infinite nonlineear resistive networks after Minty", and "Large networks of multiterminal resistors".

Nicoleen Cloete, "Fitting a distribution over random graphs to data".

Marston Conder, "The New Zealand Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (NZIMA)".

Colin Fox (& Andres Christen), "Markov chain Monte Carlo using approximate likelihoods".

Rod Gover (& Kengo Hirachi), "Conformally invariant powers of the Laplacian - a complete non-existence theorem".

Geoff Nicholls (& Ian McKeague, Kevin Speer), "Physics-based Bayesian inference from oceanographic data".

Geoff Nicholls & Russell Gray, "Building and fitting a model of human vocabulary change".

Boris Pavlov, "Resonance scattering in networks", and "Zero-range potentials with inner structure-fitting parameters".

Andy Philpott (Engineering Science), Geoff Pritchard (Statistics) (& Philip J. Neame), "Long-term hydro scheduling in a pool market".

Ilze Ziedins (Statistics) (& Brad Luen, Kavita Ramanan), "Multicasting and phase transition in tree loss networks".

This year's Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia (MERGA) conference was held at Geelong, Australia between the 6th and 10th of July . It was attended by Bill Barton, Willy Alangui, Shehenaz Adam, Greg Oates, Viliami Latu, Hannah Bartholomew and David Godfrey from the Mathematics Education Unit, and all of them thoroughly enjoyed the occasion. Keynote addresses were given by Anne Watson, who spoke about opportunities to learn mathematics; Hillary Hollingsworth, who spoke about "The TIMSS 1999 video study"; and Susan Matthews, Peter Howard and Bob Perry, who spoke about "Enhancing Aboriginal Students' Mathematics Learning". The highlight of the week was that our Shehenaz Adam won the Early Career Award for her paper and presentation! That award, for excellence in writing up and presenting a piece of mathematics education research, encourages new researchers in mathematics education. It consists of a plaque and a prize of A$500, which were presented at that annual conference. Bill Barton in February conducted two teacher workshops on "Ethnomathematics in the curriculum" at Male and Mahibadoo (in The Maldives), and at the European Conference on Research in Mathematics Education (held at Bellaria, Italy), he gave a presentation on "Investigating the relationship between English language and mathematical learning: developing profiles". At the University of Pisa in March, he gave a public seminar (with Professor Phil Clarkson, ACU St Patrick's) on "Mathematics and language: matematica e lingua". He visited Granada University from March to May, and gave there a seminar on "Lenguaje Y Matemáticas / Language and Mathematics". In April he gave a seminar at Ankara University on "Topology and language", and at Charles University (Prague) he gave a Presentation to pre-service teachers. In May, Bill attended the Meeting of the International Programme Committee of ICME—10 (at Copenhagen), he was a Plenary Panel Member at the Malmo Mathematics Education Conference (Malmo, Sweden), and he gave a seminar on "Lenguaje Y Matemáticas / Language and Mathematics" at the University Autonoma of Barcelona. In June he gave a seminar on "Langage et Matématique / Language and Mathematics" at Grenoble University, a presentation on "Lenguaje Y Topología / Language and Topology" at the Fifth Iberoamerican Conference on General Topology & Its Applications, a seminar on "Language and Mathematics: What everyday talk tells us" at London University, and he gave an invited presentation "Mathematical discourse in different languages: implications for mathematics teachers" at the Midsummer World Mathematics Education Conference at Goteborg, Sweden, Midsummer World Mathematics Education conference. Bill rounded off a very busy month of June with an invited keynote presentation and summing up on "Mathematics Education and Indigenous People: What does international research and teacher experience tell us?" at the Saami Conference on Ethnomathematics at Jukkasjärvi in Sweden, June. In July at the MERGA—26 conference at Geelong, he gave a Presentation on "The Mathematics Enhancement Project: using concepts of cultural conflict, critical mathematics education, and didactic contract".

Paul Bonnington spent two weeks in June at the National University of Yokohama (by invitation), visiting Professor Seiya Negami and Professor Atsuhiro Nakamoto to initiate a joint research project. At the 5th Slovenian International Conference on Graph Theory (at Bled, Sloveni) he presented a talk "Toroidal triangulations are geometric". In July, he was invited to spend a week visiting Dr Primoz Potocnik and Professor Bojan Mohar at the University of Ljubljana.

Nicoleen Cloete gave a lecture on "Fitting a distribution over random graphs to data" at ICIAM in July 2003.

Marston Conder took part in a conference on "Groups and Computation" at Columbus (Ohio) in March, and another on "The Graph Theory of Brian Alspach" at Simon Fraser University (British Columbia) in May. The latter was sponsored by the Pacific Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and so he had a good opportunity to visit their offices and see how PIMS works. In Europe for three weeks in June and July, Marston was an invited speaker for a small conference "Algebraic Combinatorics on the Adriatic Coast" at Koper (Slovenia), a speaker at the 5th Slovenian Conference on Graph Theory at Lake Bled (Slovenia), a speaker and member of the Scientific Committee at a conference on "Conformal Geometry, Discrete Groups and Surfaces" held under the auspices of the Banach Center and the Polish Academy of Sciences, at the Mathematical Research and Conference Center at Bedlewo (Poland). At ICIAM in July, Marston took part in a minisymposium on mathematical research institutes. Finally, some mathematical news: Colin Maclachlan and Marston have used group-theoretic techniques to construct a compact orientable hyperbolic 4-manifold of volume 32p²/3, which is the smallest known volume for such 4-manifolds.

Sina Greenwood attended the Conference in Honor of Alexander Arhangelskii in New York, June 29 to July 3.

Norm Levenberg has attended the following conferences this year: Midwest Several Complex Variables, University of Notre Dam (in March), AMS Regional meeting, Indiana University (in April); and Constructive Approximation at Vanderbilt University, NORDAN (Several Complex Variables) at Visby, and Analysis Conference in honor of L. Carleson, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, all in May.

Gaven Martin was at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study in May/June. He gave colloquia there and at Syracuse University. He attended the annual Miller Symposium in the Basic Sciences, held at a beautiful resort on the Californian coast. He was in Helsinki/Jyväskylä in June, as an invited speaker at the 20th Nevanlinna Colloquium and a plenary speaker at the conference "Geometric Function Theory: Future Trends".

Warren Moors gave an invited talk on "Small sets associated with weak Asplund spaces", at the conference on "Small sets in analysis" at the Technion (Haifa), June 24 to July 1.

Greg Oates attended the MERGA conference held in Geelong in early July. He was invited to be one of the speakers in a plenary debate at the closing ceremony for the conference.

Eamonn O'Brien gave an invited lecture entitled "Aspects of matrix group recognition" at the "Groups and Computation" meeting, at Ohio in March 2003.

Philip Sharp had study leave in the US and Canada mid-April to mid-May. While there he continued collaboration with Drs Martin Duncan and Paul Wiegert of the Department of Physics at Queen's University, Kingston. He also gave a seminar in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics at the Univerity of Ottawa, and he attended a conference on dynamical astronomy at Cornell University. Philip was scheduled to give a seminar in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto; but three days before he left New Zealand, the University of Auckland, concerned over the spread of SARS, imposed what amounted to a travel ban on Toronto.

Shayne Waldron attended the conference on "Advances in Constructive Approximation" at Nashville, then visited Pete Cazassa (University of Columbia, Missouri), attended a conference at Dagstuhl in honour of the (formal) retirement of Carl de Boor (his advisor), and then visited Allal Guessab (University of Pau), Marco Vianello and Stefano di Marchi (Universities of Padua and Verona), and Kurt Jetter's group in Hohenheim.

Tsukasa Yashiro has departed, for a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Osaka University.

Recent visitors include Dr Majid Ali (Sultan Qaboos University, Oman), Dr Hermann Brunner (St Johns College, Newfoundland), Associate Professor Andreas Cap (University of Vienna), Professor Paul Gartside (University of Pittsburgh), Professor Simon Gindikin (Rutgers University), Professor Tim Goodman (University of Dundee), John V. Matthews 3rd (Duke University), Dr Larry Peterson (University of North Dakota), Professor Harvey Schmidt (Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon), Professor Jim Verner (Simon Fraser University), Professor Peter Webb (University of Minnesota). Tim Marshall and Vladimir Oleinik are long-term visitors.

Seminars

Sepideh Stewart, "Difficulties in the acquisition of linear algebra concepts".

Dr Tsukasa Yashiro, "Triple point numbers of surface-knots", and "Surfaces in 4-space".

Professor Steven R. Bishop (University College London), "Nonlinear dynamics and its applications".

Dr Holly Gaff (University of Tennessee - Knoxville), "A tick-borne disease model - spread and control of Ehrlichiosis".

Professor Andy Philpott (Department of Engineering Science, and Yacht Research Unit), "Optimization, probability, and the America's Cup".

Dr Alastair Rucklidge (University of Leeds), "Infinities of stable periodic orbits in systems of coupled oscillators".

Professor Alexander Dimitrov (Montana State University), "Analysis and modeling of sensory systems through information distortion".

Dr Mike Meylan (Massey University - Albany), "Application of spectral theory to linear water waves".

Dr Scott Parkins (Department of Physics), "Quantum chaos with ultra-cold atoms".

Dr Sina Greenwood, "Brunnian rings".

David Godfrey, "Student understanding of equations".

Professor James Sneyd, "Neither an ant nor a spider be: historical vignettes in mathematical physiology" (The Aldis Lecture for 2003).

Dr Philip W. Sharp, "Close approaches in $N$-body simulations of the solar system".

Sivajah Somasundaram (The University of Waikato), "Recent results on weak Asplund spaces".

Alan Gil delos Santos, "Representational ability and understanding of derivative".

Professor Myung Hyun Cho (Wonkwang University), "Topological operations of iterated star-covering properties and star-covering properties of s-products".

Dr John Enlow (University of Otago), "Modelling surfactant liquid crystal structures".

Dr Shixiao Wang (Advanced Engineering Technology, USA), "Solving physical and industrial problems with mathematical methods".

Dr Andrei Korobeinikov (University of Oxford), "Long-term coexistence of two competing spatially distributed species".

Dr Warren B. Moors, "A characterization of the Namioka Property".

Dr Nicholas Dudley Ward, "What I got up to in the City of London".

Sasha Rubin, "Automatic algebraic structures".

Dr Chris Messom (Massey University - Albany), "Trends in supercomputer technology".

Dr Mike Thomas, "The role of representation in understanding functions".

Professor John Butcher, "Stability and accuracy of numerical methods for initial value problems".

Judy Paterson, "Listening to teacher talk, easier said than done".

Professor David Schaeffer (Duke University), "A well-posed BVP for a hyperbolic equation with Dirichlet boundary conditions".

Professor Peter Webb (University of Minnesota), "Computing resolutions for group cohomology".

Dr Lawrence J. Peterson (University of North Dakota), "A Mathematica-based approach to conformal geometry".

Dr Simon Gindikin (Rutgers University), "Manifolds of rational curves, twistors, solitons", and "Complex crowns of Riemann symmetric spaces".

Dr Andreas Cap (University of Vienna), "Geometry of 2nd-order ODE's and parabolic geometries".

Professor Tim Pedley (Cambridge University, Rutherford Lecturer 2003), "Modelling pattern formation in suspensions of swimming micro-organisms".

Professor Nathan Kutz (University of Washington), "Local and nonlocal mean-field theory in $N$-body quantum mechanics: applications to Bose-Einstein condensates in standing light waves".

Associate Professor Bakhadyr Khoussainov (Computer Science), "Games, automata, and complexity".

Professor Ivan Reilly, "The language of topology: A Turkish case study".

Professor Matthias Langer (Vienna University of Technology), "Resonances and spectral concentrations of a Sturm-Liouville problem depending rationally on the eigenvalue parameter".

Professor Malcolm Brown (Cardiff University), "Some inverse spectral problems for the Sturm-Liouville equation".

Professor Boris Pavlov, "Techniques of intermediate operators in perturbation theory".

Dr Marie Hofmannova (Charles University, Prague), "Attitudes of mathematics and language teachers towards new educational trends".

Professor Paul Gartside (University of Pittsburgh), "Free subgroups of Polish groups".

Garry J. Tee

Department of Statistics

Marti Anderson and Russell Millar got married on April 12.

Chris Triggs has been appointed as Assistant Dean of Science - Tamaki.

At ICIAM 2003, Geoff Pritchard (with Andy Philpott & Philip J. Neame) spoke on "Long-term hydro scheduling in a pool market", and Ilze Ziedins (with Brad Luen & Kavita Ramanan) spoke on "Multicasting and phase transition in tree loss networks".

Staisticians Maxine Pfannkuch,Ross Parsonage and Christine Miller,celebrating at the Beehive

A statistics teaching programme at The University of Auckland's Department of Statistics has won one of New Zealand's most prestigious teaching awards, a National Tertiary Teaching Excellence Award for collaboration in teaching.

The first-year statistics teaching programme was originally developed ten years ago to cope with the huge numbers of students taking the course, and to ensure the consistency and ongoing improvement of the learning resources in the department.

More than 3700 students take first year statistics papers at the University every year. In 2002, these enrolments involved 17 streams spread over three semesters, four campuses, 14 lecturers, 29 tutors, 25 laboratory demonstrators and 60 student markers.

Department of Statistics Head Chris Wild says the department developed a team-based model to cope with the large numbers of students and teachers involved.

"There is little point having one course taught superbly to one group of students by one teacher. Our aim was to capture the good ideas permanently into a system that everyone used, so the courses improved each time they were taught, regardless of who taught them," says Professor Wild.

New improvements include the development of an interactive CD-Rom that contains a full set of lecture slides, videoclips, interactive worksheets and a soundtrack.

The University of Auckland Vice-Chancellor Dr John Hood says the award is welcome recognition of the very strong emphasis the University places on the quality and innovative nature of its teaching programmes.

"Statistics is the backbone of much of the research undertaken at the University, so it is important that a wide group of students are enthused and encouraged to carry on in the subject," says Dr Hood.

Professor Wild says the key to the success of the programme has been the sharing culture and selflessness teamwork within the Department.

"We wouldn't be at the point we are today, where we can cope with the huge numbers of students, without the teamwork and systems we now have in place. This has enabled us to build a set of tools that is far richer than any of us could have produced alone."

A 10-member team from the University was presented with the award at a ceremony at Parliament on Monday June 23. The award includes a $20,000 grant.

Seminars

Derek Law, "Recent developments of data visualization tools".

Professor Pip Forer (School of Geography & Environmental Science), "Subtleties of space: gaps in the armoury of geographic".

Dr Geoff Pritchard, "Stochastic methods in finance".

Dr David Boyce (University of Illinois at Chicago), "Congestion management by road pricing: implications for urban travel forecasting models".

Dr Gerald Cheang Hock Lye (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore), "An introduction to exotic options", and "A simple approach to pricing options with jumps".

Garry J. Tee

UNIVERSITY OF CANTERBURY

Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Professor Brian Sleeman (University of Leeds) is currently visiting the department for 6 weeks. He is an Erskine Visitor visiting David Wall. Also, Dr Daniel Sjoberg (University of Lund) is currently here visiting David.

Douglas Bridges is currently on Sabbatical as a DAAD Gastprofessor in the Mathematisches Institut of Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich. He tells us that the culture, weather, scenery and beer there are fantastic. The northern hemisphere conference season is starting and this will take him to Oviedo, Spain (Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science), Cincinnati (Computability and Complexity in Analysis), Scotland (British Logic Colloquium), and Rostock (German Mathematical Society Annual Meeting). Last month he had Hajime Ishihara, Robin Havea (USP, Fiji), and Luminita Simona Vita (UC) visitng him at the same time to work together on foundations of analysis and topology.

Seminars

Dr Alastair Rucklidge (University of Leeds), "Infinities of stable periodic orbits in systems of coupled oscillators".

Alistair Smith, "Optimal marine farm structures".

Dr Frank Lad, "Learning from the probability assertions of experts".

Dr Philip Sharp (University of Auckland), "Close approaches of the many kind".

Professor Timothy J. Pedley (University of Cambridge), "Mathematical modelling of blood flow in arteries".

Professor Tim Goodman (University of Dundee), "Asymptotic normality, wavelets and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle".

Professor Brian Sleeman (University of Leeds), " The war on cancer: A mathematical challenge".

Charles Semple

INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH LIMITED

Applied Mathematics Team

This year's FRST bidding round is a significant one for IRL with some notable changes in direction taking place. Indeed, much of the Applied Maths Team's funding is up for grabs this year. We will be bidding in a number of new areas including nutraceuticals, microfluidics and nanofacturing. We will also be trying to strengthen our activities in materials modelling. Wish us luck!

Graham Weir, Shaun Hendy and John Burnell attended ICIAM 2003 in Sydney in July. Graham and Shaun both gave talks in the "Mathematics and Mechanics of Granular Materials" minisymposium which was well attended throughout the week. One participant noted that this was the best series of seminars on granular materials he had ever attended.

Joanna Atkin left us in June to start her PhD studies in physics at Columbia University in New York. Joanna was with us for six months mainly working with Shaun Hendy on modelling the growth of passive films. Sadly, one of our German interns, Adrijana Juricev, has returned home after the sudden death of her mother. Our other German intern, Eva Kaiser, will stay at IRL until January.

Finally, Steve White made another trip to Lihir in Papua New Guinea. Steve was also in the US in May attending a conference in Washington and visiting Lawrence Livermore National Lab where he gave a talk.

Shaun Hendy

MASSEY UNIVERSITY

Institute of Fundamental Sciences (Palmerston North) Mathematics

Our congratulations to Kee Teo who has been elected as the mathematics discipline leader starting next year when Mike Carter retires. We wish Kee all the best.

We welcome back Robert McLachlan from a year sabbatical in Oslo. Robert surely must `enjoy' the New Zealand winter after a long and dark one in Oslo. He spoke at the conferences "Innovative Time Integrators for PDEs" in Amsterdam, "Geometric Integration" in Cambridge, "MAGIC '03" in Rondablikk (like the NZMRI workshops, but with skiing instead of surfing), and "Geometric Integration for PDEs" in Oslo.

Our congratulations to Paul Gardner who successfully defended his PhD thesis "Simulating the RNA-world and Computational Ribonomics". Currently Paul is in Bielefeld, Germany, and has started a six-month postdoc and then he will to go to Halifax, Canada, for a further postdoc. We wish him all the best with these positions.

Professor Graeme Wake in South Korea at the Korean Industrial Mathematics Initiative

ICIAM provided a great opportunity to catch up with 44 members of the New Zealand mathematical community as well as our colleagues from Australia and around the world. Among these it was good to see an old friend and Massey MSc graduate Anton Selvaratnam who is currently teaching at Avondale College in Cooranbong and who attended the ICIAM education day. The weather was perfect on Sydney's Darling Harbour, with sunny days and temperatures consistently near 20. From Massey, PN Robert McLachlan (with Fiona and Helena) and Tammy Smith attended and half of the 8 New Zealand student presentations at ICIAM were given by Massey, PN students. Patrick Rynhart spoke on "Liquid bridges between three particles", Seung-Hee Joo on "Contact systems and contact integrators" , Padmanathan Kathirgamanathan (Kathir) on "Source parameter estimation of atmospheric pollution from accidental releases of gas" and Jonathan Marshall on the "Analyticity of solutions to functional differential equations." Congratulations to Jonathan Marshall on being recognized by the NZMS for his "highly commended" talk. All who attended were impressed by his confident, even and careful presentation, as well as for the way he explained a difficult problem in a manner easy for a general audience to understand. Tammy Smith would also like to thank Mark McGuinness, David Wall and Paul Hafner for their help in judging this year's Aitken Prize.

Kathir also attended the MODSIM (Modelling and Simulation in Australia and New Zealand) 2003 held at Townsville, Australia, from 14-17 July. He presented a paper (published in the proceedings) titled: "Inverse modelling for identifying the origin and release rate of atmospheric pollution."

Igor Boglaev, Robert McLachlan and Seung-Hee Joo went up north to attend "Anode (Auckland Numerical Ordinary Differential Equations) 2003", the last one out of a series of four. This conference was in honour of John Butcher's 70^th birthday. Robert was an invited speaker and spoke about "Runga-Kutta-Nyström methods and the entropy of classical mechanics". Igor spoke about "Monotone iterates for non-linear singular perturbed problem".

Bruce van-Brunt was an invited speaker at the Industrial Mathematics Initiative held at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Djeon, Korea. Bruce spoke about "Flexible Surface Design" and applications of differential geometry in surface design.

Charles Little has been appointed as a managing Editor of the Australasian Journal of Combinatorics. This appointment is a direct reflection of his international standing in this field. Well done Charles.

Mike Hendy writes: "INSTITUT HENRI POINCARE, Paris, May-June 2003. I was fortunate to participate in the "Programme: Genomics, Mathematics and Informatics" at the "Centre Emile Borel" of the "Institut Henri Poincaré" at the "Universite Pierre et Marie Curie", in Paris last month. Of particular note to me personally, was that the French mathematician, Jacques Hadamard, was one of the committee of three that established the Institut (with Carnegie Foundation support) in the 1930's. (Hadamard's outstanding conjecture, published in 1893, has been pivotal in my own research in phylogenetics in the past 15 years. I was particularly thrilled to meet a retired physicist who had known Hadamard, "very tall, very genial, and lived to 98", I was informed). The Poincare Institut compares itself with similar centres such as Isaac Newton, Cambridge, MSRI, Berkeley and RIMS, Kyoto. The Borel Centre runs thematic programmes ranging from 2 to 6 months on various subjects in mathematics and physics. These invite participants, mostly young researchers from the Paris area, to attend series of lectures and workshops of invited experts from around the world. My invitation was for four weeks, to give four 2-hour lectures, and to present a 75 minutes' overview at the workshop, and to interact with the young researchers there. I was also able to attend lectures of other invitees present for that month. These included David Bryant* (PhD from Canterbury, my doctoral grandson) who is now at McGill in Montreal, together with others from US, Canada, France and Poland. I found this setting much more conducive to presenting deeper theoretical results, given the audience was mostly mathematical. The Borel Centre had 2 floors of the building, and each afternoon at 16:30, coffee and biscuits were available in the common room together with black and whiteboards, where informal "petit seminars" were encouraged, where we (presenters and students) encouraged to speculate and debate controversial issues. My time there concluded with an one week workshop with 15 invited presenters and more than 200 registrants. As well as David and I, Mike Steel* and Vince Moulton* were presenters, and in the audience were other kiwi-philes including Dietmar Cieslik* (Greifswald) and Sagi Snir* (Tel Aviv). The opening presentation was Emeritus Professor Walter Fitch, the "grand-father" of phylogenetics who gave a historical perspective of the field. Walter, although a biochemist by training, was one who had encouraged mathematicians into this field. My first weekend I visited Daniel Huson*, who is now Professor of Bioinformatics at Tübingen, a very old delightful city near Stuttgart, where DNA was first identified. On the second weekend I made a moving pilgrimage to the 1st world war battlefields at Passchendale near Ypres in Belgium, (a much greater loss of life of NZ'ers in one day than at Gallipoli) on my way to Bielefeld, where I spent 2 days working with Andreas Dress*. My third weekend was spent working with Sagi Snir, who is completing his PhD under Benny Chor* in Tel Aviv. As I had declined an invitation to visit Tel Aviv at this time, Sagi made the trip to Paris, where we were able to make considerable progress on a problem he had been struggling with since his visit to NZ 16 months ago.

(*—For those who don't know these people, they have all been visitors to us at Massey during the last 3 years.)"

Barbara Holland will be attending WABI 2003—Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics which is being held in Budapest, Hungary from 15-20 September. Barbara will be presenting a talk on "Visualizing large sets of trees." After the conference she will be heading up to Uppsala to work with Vincent Moulton and Katharina Huber for a few weeks. Vince and Kathi have both been regular visitors to Massey over the last few years.

Seminars

Professor Mike Hendy, "Hadamard matrices".

Dr John Hudson, "Orbifolds and wallpaper".

Associate Professor Charles Little, "A new proof of a characterisation of Pfaffian bipartite graphs".

Dr Mike Carter, "Eudoxus: The evidence".

Associate Professor Igor Boglaev, "Monotone iterative algorithms for nonlinear differential equations".

Jonathan Marshall, "A method of Frobenius for functional differential equations".

Professor de Witt Sumners (Florida State University), "DNA Topology".

Professor Tim Pedley FRS (Professor of fluid mechanics, Cambridge University (2003 Rutherford Lecturer), "Mathematical modelling of blood flow in arteries".

Dr Barbara Holland, (Allan Wilson Centre, Massey University), "Consensus networks".

Dr Kee Teo, "Graph polynomials related to chromatic polynomials".

Marijcke Vlieg-Hulstman

Institute of Information and Mathematical Sciences (Albany) Mathematics

Mick Roberts attended the WHO global meeting on the epidemiology of SARS, Geneva in May, and the WHO global conference on "SARS—where do we go from here?", in Kuala Lumpur in June. In KL he gave a paper in the modelling workshop session.

Carlo Laing attended the SIAM Conference on Applications of Dynamical Systems in Snowbird, Utah in May, giving two invited oral presentations and a poster. He then attended a 5-day workshop on Symmetry and Bifurcation in Biology at the Banff International Research Station (BIRS) near Calgary, giving an invited presentation. BIRS is a recently-opened joint US/Canada maths research centre, with a spectacular setting in the Canadian Rockies.

Carlo Laing, Robert McKibbin, Winston Sweatman, Cynthia Wang, and Graeme Wake all attended the 5th International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Sydney, Australia, during July. Graeme gave a talk in the Inverse Problems symposium entitled "A mollified method for the solution of the Cauchy problem for the convection-diffusion equation" and was co-author of two other presented papers. Carlo gave two talks. Winston's talk was on "Cosmic Billiards: Features of the Symmetrical One-dimensional Newtonian 4-body problem". Robert McKibbin gave two talks, on "Slugging in oil-gas pipelines" and "Discovering the source of current-borne particles from their deposition patterns", and was also a co-author on another paper presented by one of his PhD students (Patrick Rynhart from IFS, PN).

At the New Zealand Mathematics Colloquium, held in conjunction with ICIAM, Cynthia Wang's presentation won the Aitken Prize for the best student paper.

Graeme Wake and Carlo Laing both attended the Modelling Cellular Function conference run by the NZIMA CoRE on Waiheke Island, 14th-18th July. Both gave talks with Graeme talking on "Cell- population dynamics".

Winston Sweatman (together with D.C. Heggie) gave a poster presentation on "The wake of a body moving through a stellar distribution" in the "Dynamics and Evolution of Dense Stellar Systems" session at the 25th General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union, Sydney, Australia, on 18th July. Jeff Hunter and Barry McDonald attended the New Zealand Statistical Conference at Palmerston North, 2-4th July. Barry presented a paper "Applying multidimensional scaling to the Party Vote: 2002 New Zealand Election". Graeme Wake had a contribution (presented by Dominic Lee, together with Andrew Rudge, Geoffrey Chase, Irene Hudson, Geoffrey Shaw, Lucy Johnson all from the University of Canterbury) on "Dynamic Model Assessment Using a Probability Band for Local Linear Kernel Regression with an Application in Agitation-Sedation Modeling". Jeff was re-elected onto the Executive Committee (with continuous executive involvement since 1992!).

Mick Roberts gave a presentation at ESR Science Centre, Kenepuru, Wellington on July 23 on "A mathematician in Asia—dining on dengue and supping with SARS".

Denny Meyer presented a seminar at RMIT Melbourne on 1st July on "Cointegration for Count Data".

Paul Bracewell spoke on 21 July in the Informal Statistics seminar series on the "HM algorithm test for redundancy".

Visitors
Steve Coombes (Loughborough University), July 18--22 with Carlo Laing. Steve gave a Seminar on "Dynamics of the Thalamus: Arnol'd tongues, Clustering and Travelling Waves".

John Casti (Santa Fe Institute), Distinguished Visitor to IIMS, gave a seminar on 23 July on "Socionomics: An Emerging Science of Human Events".

Seminars

Professor William Duke (Department of Mathematics, UCLA, USA), "Reciprocity laws, elliptic curves, and the Riemann hypothesis".

Professor David G. Schaeffer (Duke University, North Carolina, USA), "A two-current model for the dynamics of cardiac membrane".

Dr Mike Meylan (Massey University—Albany), "Application of Spectral Theory to Linear Water Waves".

Mike Meylan

UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO

Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Must be a quiet time just now, probably the lull before the PBRF and Marsden storms. Like Otago, no doubt all universities have been gathering information about research output, peer esteem and the contributions to the research environment of their academic staff. Like Otago, some staff have submitted Marsden proposals and are waiting for the various panels (especially MIS) to meet to get their results. Along with some teaching, this is basically what Vernon has been involved in with very little else to report.

Richard Barker visited the Authur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research in Victoria, Australia. There were two visits: one from April 7--17 and another from June 9--20, which continued collaboration on capture-recapture models.

Derek Holton has given the following account of the NZAMT8 Conference:

`I went to the New Zealand Association of Maths Teachers conference in Hamilton (8 to 11 July) because the NZ Olympiad Committee had obtained a grant from the Ministry and it seemed appropriate to tell teachers about the work that is being done by that group. So, along with Alan Parris of Linwood College, Christchurch, I gave a workshop on the Olympiad generally.

Over 350 people attended the conference that had a theme of Magic. This theme was taken up by all of the plenary speakers in one way or another. The most subtle of these was when Jeff Witmer took a random sample of teachers by selecting a red or a black card at random from a pack. Surprisingly (?) only red cards were drawn.

There were an incredible number of workshop presentations. I think something like 10 were on at any one time. One of interest to academics was on the NCEA. Teachers discussed the pros and cons of the new certificate. Whether you might think that it is good or bad, the products of it are coming to a university near you in 2005. Staff involved in first year courses need to get a handle on what it will mean for selection into the various first year papers.'

Sutha Sritharan has left her Teaching Assistant position to go back to Sri Lanka to finish her MSc in Statistics.

Lisa Avery replaced Sutha as a Teaching Assistant as from mid-July. Lisa is also continuing her MSc in Statistics.

We farewelled in July our three visitors who had spent the first half of the year in the Department: Jill Dietz, Jennifer Hoeting, and Geof Givens, who all return to the USA.

Seminars

John Williams (Department of Marketing), "Structural equation models for heterogeneous data: a finite mixture model approach".

Geof Givens(Colorado State University, USA), "Statistics and the whaling debate at the International Whaling Commission: Bayesian simulation modeling and decision making".

Eric Pandiscio(University of Maine, USA), "Dynamic geometry software and teachers' conception of proof".

Sutha Sritharan "Bootstrap autoregressive order selection".

Hans van Ditmarsch(Department of Computer Science), "Topics in proof visualization".

Ian Westbrooke(Science and Research Unit, Department of Conservation), "Assessing the impact of a possum control poison operation on tomtits".

Chris Linsell (Dunedin College of Education), "Teaching and learning early algebra: what's the problem?".

Robert Lewis, "Assessment in mathematics at the senior years in the english-speaking Carribbean high school".

Katrina Sharples (Department of Preventive & Social Medicine), "A statistical perspective on study design".

Julie Anderson (Dunedin College of Education),"The impact of the intermediate number project on teacher classroom practice. (A Case Study)".

Laimonis Kavalieris, "State space models for time series".

Dr Gill Thomas (Dunedin College of Education), "Learning Objects: What are they and who needs them?!".

Fred Lam, "Fieller's interval".

Bryan Manly (Western EcoSystems Technology Inc. Laramie, Wyoming), "Statistics by the hour".

Matthias Futschik (Department of Information Science), "Normalisation of microarray data and significance testing for chromosomal position of differential gene expression".

Tamsin Meaney (Educational Assessment Research Unit), "How does changing the question result in children changing their answers?".

Dr Hamish Campbell (British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge UK and Portobello Marine Laboratory), "The Eco-physiology of antarctic fish investigation by electronic tagging and power spectral techniques".

Tim Williams, "Scattering of water waves by pressure ridges in Antarctic sea-ice".

Noel J. Walkington (Department of Mathematical Science, Carnegie Mellon University, U.S.A.), "Simulating fluids exhibiting microstructure".

Preliminary presentations of fourth year mathematics projects. The students and topics are -

Timothy Ball, "Much ado about nothing - the Vacuum".

Lauran de Ruiter, "Localizations of rings".

Richard Norton, "Grid generation and redistribution".

Fraser Rew, "Chain conditions on ideals of rings".

Daniel Stride, "Descartes".

Preliminary presentations of honours statistics projects. The students and topics are -

Julia Hall, "Assessing purchasing price parity through nonlinear mean reversion".

Clinton Hayes, "State space modelling and the Kalman filter".

Philip Liu, "Inflation error in New Zealand".

Jason Rabbitt, "Duckworth-Lewis".

Matthew Schofield, "Bayesian models for stochastic volatility".

Lenette Grant

THE UNIVERSITY OF WAIKATO

Department of Mathematics

We welcome Tim Stokes to our department. Tim is from Murdoch University in Perth and further information about him may be found in the New Colleagues section of this Newsletter. During June, Tim had Michael Bulmer from the University of Queensland as a visitor for about a week.

We congratulate Ian Craig on his recent promotion to Professor. His term of study leave has now ended and he is back in the saddle as Chairperson. In June and July, Ian had Yuri Litvinenko from the University of New Hampshire, Durham, visiting for about four weeks. He also had John Brown (Astronomer Royal of Scotland) from the University of Glasgow visiting at the end of July.

Another visitor was Anthony Quas from the University of Memphis. He visited Rua Murray for about a week towards the end of July.

We congratulate David Harder who has now completed the requirements for his PhD degree. He is off to New York for a break.

Alfred Sneyd is now on study leave. He left for Grenoble, France in early June and will be returning in early August. He comments that `there is just too much wine to be drunk, and it's so hot'.

Other travellers in the department include Jacob Heerikhuisen, Stephen Joe, Sivajah Somasundaram, and Tim. They all went across the Tasman to participate in ICIAM and the joint Sixth Australian-New Zealand Mathematics Convention.

After ICIAM, Stephen stayed behind to attend the Mathematics of Computation and Approximation conference held to celebrate the 65th birthday of his former PhD supervisor, Ian Sloan. On returning from Sydney, Stephen attended the ANODE 2003 conference held in Auckland to celebrate the 70th birthday of John Butcher. Because the Dean of the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences will be on leave until July 2004, Stephen has taken on the position of Associate Dean in the School. His main brief will be to assist the Acting Dean.

Seminars

J. Brown (University of Glasgow), "Black holes—white rabbits".

A. Quas (University of Memphis), "Non-mono-tonicity in voting systems".

R. Kulkarni (Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay), "Iterative computation of eigenelements".

R. Bartnik (University of Canberra), "General relativity and the concept of mass: An introduction".

D. Harder, "Geodesic geometry of some static axisymmetric vacuum spacetimes".

R. Canfield (University of Montana), "Of tilt and twist".

M. Bulmer (University of Queensland), "Equational reasoning as a tool for data analysis".

J. Heerikhuisen, "Magnetic reconnection with a generalised Ohm's Law".

K. Broughan, "The approximation theorem of Dirichlet (and Kronecker) and its application to the Riemann zeta function".

W. Moors (University of Auckland), "Baire category theorem in analysis".

R. Murray, "Orbit statistics for maps with indifferent fixed points".

M. Conder (University of Auckland), "Hurwitz groups with arbitrary centres".

A. Rucklidge (University of Leeds), "Quasipatterns in the Faraday wave experiment".

K. Louie (AgResearch, Ruakura), "Roll me over in the clover-a model for growth of Trifolium repens".

Stephen Joe

VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OFWELLINGTON

School of Mathematical and Computing Sciences

Guohua Wu visited The University of Chicago at the end of May and gave a talk on "Quasi-complements of the cappable degrees". During this visit, he also attended the Annual Meeting of ASL (1-4 June, 2003) in the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he contributed a talk on "Complementing the cappable degrees in the difference hierarchy".

Mark McGuinness was in Oxford for a week visiting OCIAM, at the Korean Advanced Institute for Science and Technology in Taejon, South Korea for a week where he presented an invited talk on "Cooking crispy cereals, cooking sloppy rice, tall tapered feeders and hot-dip cast-iron coatings—Industrial Case Studies from Mathematics-in-Industry Study Groups" to the Industrial Mathematics Initiative 2003, and at ICIAM for a week where he talked about coal volatilisation and about synchronisation between heart-beats and breathing while asleep.

Siofilisi Hingano from Tonga, our former MSc student with Merit (2001), has been awarded a Canada Commonwealth Scholarship to support his PhD studies at the University of Ottawa, once again under Vladimir Pestov's supervision. Aleksandar Stojmirovic, our PhD student, has attended the 18th Summer Topology Conference in Washington, D.C. (July 9-13), where he gave a warmly received talk in the section on applications of topology to computer science, and will spend three months in Ottawa working with Vladimir, who remains Aleksandar's co-supervisor, on his doctoral thesis due to be finished in March next year.

We are looking forward to the visit of Forder lecturer Caroline Series, who will talk about Indra's Pearls at 6pm on Thursday 9 October in the Hunter building, and Kleinian Groups at 4pm Friday 10 October in Cotton 339.

We have welcomed our new Dean of Science, now called Pro-Vice Chancellor, Professor David Bibby from Industrial Research Ltd. There is talk of us coming under the umbrella of our new Pro-Vice Chancellor of Information Technology (Professor Warwick Clegg), together with the School of Information Management, which could be an interesting change.

Seminars

Greg Hjorth (UCLA), "Borel equivalence relations".

Darren Upton(Cambridge University, UK), "Pricing Bandwidth Derivatives".

Eileen Drew (Department of Statistics, Trinity College Dublin), "Career Progression of Women in Academy".

Ian Hodkinson (Imperial College London), "Random Graphs and Canonicity of Algebras".

Tim Pedley (Cambridge University, UK), " Modelling Flow and Oscillations in Collapsible Tubes".

Geoffrey West (Los Alamos; Santa Fe), "The Origin of Universal Scaling in Biology: from Molecules & Cells to Whales & Ecosystems".

Elizabeth Burslem, "Actions of solvable groups on the circle".

Bill Naylor, "Mathematical Markup Languages".

Alan Agresti, "Analysis of Repeated Categorical Measurement Data".

Sebastiaan Terwijn, "Effective Measure and Hausdorff Dimension".

Mark McGuinness

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