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IMU-Net 33: January 2009

A Bimonthly Email Newsletter from the International Mathematical Union
Editor: Mireille Chaleyat-Maurel, University Paris Descartes, Paris, France

CONTENTS

1. Editorial
2. IMU on the Web: The Digital Library of Mathematical Functions
3. Hyderabad ICM 2010 posters
4. 7th PACOM
5. Subscribing to IMU-Net

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1. EDITORIAL

Dear Reader,

Last month I visited India, and among others, I was shown the site of
our 2010 Congress in Hyderabad. I also attended a "Pre-ICM"
Conference in Delhi.

The ICM is the single most important event in mathematics every 4
years, and its organization, from the work of the local organizers to
the Program Committee to the Prize Committees to the publishers of
the Proceedings (and many others) is the most important task for our
community.

There is sometimes skepticism about the Congress, quoting its large
dimensions (for a mathematics meeting), and the fact that a single
participant will know only a small fraction of the other
participants, and will be able to follow only a small fraction of the
section talks. But if you talk with somebody from physics or computer
science, or from other branches of science, he or she will be envious
of the fact that we mathematicians have such an event, where we can
listen to carefully chosen speakers describing the latest
developments, where we can award our most important prizes, have
panel discussions about important issues, etc.

The Fields Medal and the Nevanlinna Prize themselves are unique in
their scope: they award the highest recognition not to old people
whose work is known and well recognized already, but to young people
and new results, thereby calling the whole community's attention to
these young mathematicians and their achievement.

Before I left for my trip to India, several friends wondered about
such a trip, mentioning all sorts of dangers from snakes to malaria.
If you recall, the particular time was also burdened by the terrorist
attacks in Mumbay, and indeed quite a few participants of the
conference cancelled their trips. Needless to say, the terrorist
attacks had no influence on my visit, except for some increased
security at public buildings. And with some caution, it is easy to
avoid infections. And India is a country where crime, especially
violent crime, is rare. And it is a country of fantastic sceneries,
buildings, and people.

So I can recommend visiting India very warmly to everyone, and hope
to see you at ICM 2010 in Hyderabad!

Laszlo Lovasz

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2. IMU ON THE WEB: THE DIGITAL LIBRARY OF MATHEMATICAL FUNCTIONS

The Digital Library of Mathematical Functions (DLMF) is a new
reference work modeled on the highly referenced 1964 Abramowitz and
Stegun Handbook of Mathematical Functions. Its 36 chapters, which
survey current knowledge about special functions, were written by
distinguished experts, validated by other experts, and supervised by
the NIST editorial board, consisting of Frank Olver, Dan Lozier, Ron
Boisvert, and Charles Clark. The DLMF is scheduled to appear later
this year in a print version, as well as to be released as a
free public Web resource at dlmf.nist.gov, which currently contains a
preview of 5 of the chapters. Among its distinguishing features are
references to available software instead of voluminous numerical
tables, inclusion of recently established properties, coverage of
special functions not previously represented, and extensive and
innovative two- and three-dimensional graphics.

Motivated by the Web's potential to radically change the way
mathematics is disseminated and used, the DLMF project has inspired
NIST to develop new techniques and software for semantically marked-up
representations of mathematical formulas, mathematically aware search,
and mathematical graphics. These innovations were designed to be used
in the DLMF, and also serve as models for similar developments in
other areas of mathematics and its applications.

LaTeX was designed to produce beautiful mathematical documents, but
lacks means of encoding semantics, that is, the mathematical meaning
of the symbols on the page. Since one of its long-term goals is full
semantic markup, the DLMF became one of the first large projects to
commit to preparing its entire Web site in XML/MathML, which is
specifically designed to provide superior rendering of type-set math
(the Presentation form of MathML) as well as the encoding of semantic
math (the Content form of MathML).
To generate the XML/MathML from the LaTeX source, Bruce Miller, the
DLMF's information architect, undertook the task of developing a
suitable processor, named LaTeXML. It soon became clear that LaTeXML
had much wider potential applications. For example, in a joint project
with Jacobs University in Bremen, LaTeXML has been applied to more
than 400,000 documents in the preprint archive at arxiv.org. For more
information, see
dlmf.nist.gov/LaTeXML.

Another goal of the DLMF project was to develop a more powerful
mathematical search engine, beyond simple bibliographic queries such
as author, title, and keywords. In collaboration with Abdou Youssef of
George Washington University, NIST undertook a project to provide for
search within the DLMF based on queries that contain math fragments.
Examples are Ai ^ 2+Bi ^ 2, for formulas containing a sum of squares of
Airy functions, int_0 ^ infinity BesselJ, for  infinite integrals with
the J-Bessel function of order zero in the integrand, and int ? ^ ? for
finite or infinite integrals whose integrand contains any variable
raised to any power. As with the LaTeXML processor, the mathematical
search engine has the obvious potential for applications far beyond the
DLMF.
For more information, see dlmf.nist.gov/help/search.

Dan Lozier and Peter Olver

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3. HYDERABAD ICM 2010 POSTERS

The organizers of the ICM 2010 have produced three posters to
advertise the next International Congress of Mathematicians which
will be held in Hyderabad, India on 19-27 August 2010.
All mathematical institutions in the world are asked to download,
print and post them.
To download the posters:
http://www.mathunion.org/activities/icm/icm-2010/poster/

Information about the ICM 2010 can be found on the ICM 2010 server:
http://www.icm2010.org.in/

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4. 7th PACOM

The 7th Pan African Congress of Mathematicians (PACOM) will be held
from Monday 3rd to Saturday 8th of August 2009 in Yamoussoukro (Côte
d'Ivoire), at the Félix Houphouët Boigny Foundation for Peace
Research, on the theme: New trends in the Development and the
applications of Mathematical Sciences.
For more information, please contact the Secretariat of the Congress:
Prof. Etienne DESQUITH, African mathematical Union (AMU)
Vice-President, West African Region (desquith@hotmail.com).

We apologize for the recent e-mail that was sent about the African
Congress: this was due to an administrative error.

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5. SUBSCRIBING TO IMU-NET

There are two ways of subscribing to IMU-Net:

1. Click on http://www.mathunion.org/IMU-Net with a Web browser and go
to the "Subscribe" button to subscribe to IMU-Net online.

2. Send an e-mail to imu-net-request@mathunion.org with the Subject-line:
Subject: subscribe

In both cases you will get an e-mail to confirm your subscription so
that misuse will be minimized. IMU will not use the list of IMU-Net
addresses for any purpose other than sending IMU-Net, and will not
make it available to others.

Previous issues can be seen at:
http://www.mathunion.org/imu-net/archive/

____________________________________________________________________________
IMU-Net is the electronic newsletter of the International Mathematical Union.
More details about IMU-Net can be found at: http://www.mathunion.org/IMU-Net/
You can find here, for instance, detailed information about subscribing to
the IMU-Net mailing list and  unsubscribing from it.

IMU-Net 32: November 2008

A Bimonthly Email Newsletter from the International Mathematical Union
Editor: Mireille Chaleyat-Maurel, University Paris Descartes, Paris, France

CONTENTS

1. Editorial
2. News from IMU: Kenya has become an Associate IMU member
3. IMU on the Web
4. Ramanujan Prize 2008
5. Passing away of Professor Kiyoshi Ito
6. ICSU booklet
7. Subscribing to IMU-Net

------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. EDITORIAL

Dear Reader,

We are happy to welcome Kenya as the third Associate Member of the IMU
after Ecuador and Kyrgyzstan. I take this opportunity to recall that
an important mission of IMU is to promote and encourage mathematical
research and education in developing countries.
You can also help us increase the distribution of the Newsletter by
forwarding this issue to colleagues and encouraging them to subscribe.
I wish you a Merrry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Mireille Chaleyat-Maurel
Editor

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2. NEWS FROM IMU: KENYA HAS BECOME AN ASSOCIATE IMU MEMBER

The vote on Kenya's application for Associate Membership yielded a
positive result. As of October 2008, Kenya is an Associate Member of
the IMU. For more information on Kenya's Adhering Organization see:
http://www.mathunion.org/members/countries/kenya/

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3. IMU ON THE WEB: Access Grid: enabling e-Collaboration

Access Grid
"Video-conferencing" covers a broad range of functionalities from basic
two way use of video and audio for meetings to include document cameras,
data exchange, desktop sharing, recording and shared applications (such as
interactive whiteboards). Many versions, mostly commercial, of
video-conferencing are available running in specially equipped rooms or on
desktops/laptops. The Access Grid, AG, developed at Argonne National
Laboratories (see http://www.accessgrid.org), has been described as
video-conferencing "on steroids":  it's free, scalable to many Access Grid
Rooms, AGRs, and flexible. AGRs run under Windows, UNIX or Mac
environments. There's no typical AGR (for a photo gallery, see
http://www.accessgrid.org). However AGRs usually have a "wall": one large
projection screen of three (or four) linked computer projection screens.
There's usually one audio stream and video streams from three cameras.

Working on 2 screens
Many presenters work with two screens (with other screens used for video
of remote audiences etc). One screen displays the main presentation (pdf
slides, say) and one screen displays software demonstrations or "Digital
Ink": handwritten asides, worked examples or sketches. How Digital Ink is
provided depends on the hardware and software used.

Since the AG uses VNC for the data/software stream, the presenter chooses
to enable, or not, remote control: remote collaborators can take over the
mouse and control the software (Maple, Word, etc).

PIGs
The AG software can run on a desktop/laptop: it's free and all that's
required is a web-cam, headphones with a microphone and good internet
connection, resulting in a Personal Interface to the Grid, a PIG.

Canadian seminars
For three years, led by Simon Fraser University and Dalhousie University,
about 90 regional and coast-to-coast seminars, in mathematics and computer
science, have been conducted via a network of Canadian AGRs [1].

In Australia
ICE-EM (the education arm of the Australian Mathematical Sciences
Institute, AMSI), is coordinating and partially funded 11 AGRs, in
mathematics precincts in Australia. Most of the 38 universities in
Australia have access to an AGR. In December 2007, an AMSI one-day seminar
on engineering mathematics education had 16 remote AGRs participating.

Using AGRs to collaboratively teach Honours (that is, 4th year)
mathematics and statistics courses commenced in July 2006. During 2008, 17
courses were offered (see http://www.ice-em.org.au  and follow the links
Access Grid > Subject and Course List). Students, with the approval of
their home university, can take courses for credit toward their Honours
degree. All AMSI member universities are invited to participate.

The UK
Six centres in the UK, funded by the EPSRC, commenced (in October 2007)
the teaching of "broadening" courses for PhD students. Two of these
centres use AG technology: the MAGIC consortium of 15 universities (see
http://www.maths.dept.shef.ac.uk/magic/index.php) and the Taught Course
Centre: a collaboration between the Universities of Bath, Bristol,
Imperial, Oxford and Warwick (see http://www.tcc.maths.ox.ac.uk).

Conclusion
The Access Grid enables very rich multi-nodal remote collaborations in
research and teaching. Likewise, it is also an excellent and
travel-reducing way to run a variety of administrative and planning
meetings. The mathematics community, in Australia, the UK and Canada, is
leading the way with collaborative teaching of advanced mathematics or
seminars across networks of AGRs [2].

References
[1] Borwein, J., et al., Coast-to-Coast (C2C) Seminar: Background,
History, and Practice; and Apendices A & B.  In Borwein, J., Rocha, E.M.
and Rodrigues, J.F. (Editors) Communicating Mathematics in the Digital
Era. AK Peters, 2008. Available from
http://users.cs.dal.ca/~jborwein/c2c08.pdf

[2] Bill Blyth, What is Access Grid? . and so what for maths? Aust MS
Gazette, 35, 5 (November), in press, 2008. Available from:
http://www.austms.org.au/Gazette

Bill Blyth  (bill.blyth@ice-em.org.au)
National Coordinator, Access Grid project
Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute, AMSI

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4. 2008 RAMANUJAN PRIZE

The 2008 Srinivasa Ramanujan Prize will be awarded to Professor Enrique R.
Pujals, Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada (IMPA), Brazil.
The Prize is in recognition of "his outstanding contributions to Dynamical
Systems, especially the characterization of robust dynamics for flows and
transformations and th development of a theory of generic systems."

The Prize is supported by the Niels Henrik Abel Memorial Fund, with the
participation of the International Mathematical Union.

Information on:
http://prizes.ictp.it/prizes/Ramanujan/

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5. PASSING AWAY OF PROFESSOR KIYOSHI ITO

Kiyoshi Itô died on November 10, 2008, at the age of 93. Kiyoshi Itô was
one of the great figures of probability theory in the twentieth century,
along with A.N. Kolmogorov and P. Lévy. Itô's most famous mathematical
contribution is his invention of stochastic integrals, which were
initially motivated by the theory of stochastic differential
equations. The celebrated Itô formula gives an expression for a smooth
function of Brownian motion, or of more general random processes, in
terms of stochastic integrals. Itô's stochastic calculus has had an
enormous impact in theoretical probability, as well as a huge number
of applications in domains such as mathematical finance. For the
latter reason, Kiyoshi Itô was awarded the
first Gauss Prize of IMU at the 2006 ICM in Madrid.

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6. ICSU BOOKLET

The International Council for Science (ICSU) endorses a new booklet on
Freedom, Responsibility and the Universality of Science.

In the light of recent high profile cases of scientific misconduct, the
General Assembly of the International Council for Science (ICSU)
reaffirmed the universal values that should guide the conduct of science.
The Assembly also explicitly recognised the key social responsibilities of
the scientific community as laid out in a new booklet, which will be made
widely available to scientists across the world.

The booklet asserts that: "all scientists have a responsibility to ensure
that they conduct
their work with honesty and integrity; and to ensure that methods and
results are reported in an accurate, orderly, timely and open fashion."


The booklet and more on the General Assembly are available at:
www.icsu.org/3_mediacentre/GA_29.html

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7. SUBSCRIBING TO IMU-NET

There are two ways of subscribing to IMU-Net:

1. Click on http://www.mathunion.org/IMU-Net with a Web browser and go
to the "Subscribe" button to subscribe to IMU-Net online.

2. Send an e-mail to imu-net-request@mathunion.org with the Subject-line:
Subject: subscribe

In both cases you will get an e-mail to confirm your subscription so
that misuse will be minimized. IMU will not use the list of IMU-Net
addresses for any purpose other than sending IMU-Net, and will not
make it available to others.

Previous issues can be seen at:
http://www.mathunion.org/Publications/Newsletter/archive
____________________________________________________________________________
IMU-Net is the electronic newsletter of the International Mathematical Union.
More details about IMU-Net can be found at: http://www.mathunion.org/IMU-Net/
You can find here, for instance, detailed information about subscribing to
the IMU-Net mailing list and  unsubscribing from it.

IMU-Net 31: September 2008

A Bimonthly Email Newsletter from the International Mathematical Union
Editor: Mireille Chaleyat-Maurel, University Paris Descartes, Paris, France

CONTENTS

1. Editorial
2. IMU on the Web
3. Emmy Noether lecturer
4. Sad news about Ibni Oumar Mahamad Saleh
5. Subscribing to IMU-Net

------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. EDITORIAL

A year ago two lecturers were sought to participate in the beautiful
project of the French organization CIMPA (Centre International de
Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées) to help rebuild the mathematics
infrastructure in Cambodia. The context of this work was described to
potential volunteers as follows:

"We seek lecturers for intensive 3-4 week courses at universities in the
developing world, at the advanced undergraduate level.  The lecturer
would be assisted by a local mathematics professor who prepares the
students beforehand, assists when necessary during the course, and takes
care of any necessary follow-up. These courses should have a student
audience of 20 or more, be controlled, with examinations, and be part of
a regular degree program at the university at which they are offered.

Past experience in the developing world is desirable but not necessary.
However what is required is tolerance for working in circumstances of
modest resources, unexplained inefficiencies, and limited physical
comforts.

Funds for all expenses, including travel, will be provided; however,
we request that the mathematician's home institution offer leave with
pay during his/her 3-4 week absence.  We believe that a strong case
can be made that cooperation with this program will not only bring
personal and professional benefit to the lecturer, but will also
redound to the credit of the lecturer's institution."

40 volunteers immediately responded!  Such an outpouring of interest
in contributing to the formation of students of mathematics in the
developing world could not be ignored!  The Developing Countries
Strategy Group of the International Mathematical Union, in cooperation
with CIMPA and the U.S. National Committee for Mathematics, have built
on that nucleus of 40 volunteers to launch the "Volunteer Lecturer
Program" (VLP), whose goal is to provide mathematician volunteers to
give intensive month-long courses at universities in the developing
world. The program is quite modest in size due to the
limited financial resources of the sponsoring organizations.  But
mathematicians interested in participating in the VLP,  universities in the
developing world interested in hosting lecturers to teach in the
context described above, and, as importantly, donors desiring to
provide the E.3000 necessary to support a VLP lecturer, should contact:
Sharon Berry Laurenti
Administrative Secretary
Developing Countries Strategy Group of the International Mathematical Union
e-mail: cde@ictp.it

Herbert Clemens
Chair of the DCSG

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2. IMU ON THE WEB: Preserving our History

The use of TeX over the last decade and a half to write papers,
lecture notes and even ephemera has moved from the unusual to the
commonplace. Indeed, some of my younger colleagues can't remember using
anything else but TeX to write mathematics.  For those of us somewhat
longer in the tooth, we remember using other software, which was preceded
by the little golf balls that allowed typing of mathematical symbols,
which in turn was preceded by writing in the mathematics by hand (with
the hope that the typesetting would introduce only a few errors).

One of the happier results of this migration to TeX has been the ability
to put our papers on personal web pages so that anyone with a standard
computer configuration can acquire them. This usually means making a pdf
or a PostScript file available for download. The little postcards that
were mailed to request reprints has now joined those little golf balls
as historical curiosities.

Happily, the papers that were written in the predigital era are not
beyond redemption. They, too, can and perhaps should be made available
for download. In the past several years there have been significant
advances in the ability to scan paper documents. With the right equipment,
scanning several hundred or even a thousand pages is not difficult.

The are two approaches, both of which work well. The first is to use
a standalone scanner. Robust models with document sheet feeders are
available for under $1000. These include the software for doing the
scanning. There are lots of options when using such software, so here
are some suggestions.

When scanning the pages, the software can produce colour, grayscale or
black and white files. Unless there is a compelling reason, black and
white is usually the best choice for older documents. There is also a
choice of resolution: 200, 300, 600 or 1200dpi (dots per inch). Usually
the 600dpi is the best choice.

There are also several different types of files that can be produced
by the scanning software. All of them have some compression: these come
in two types: lossless (no data lost during the compression) and lossy
(some data irretrievable). A lossless compression is the best. There
are also different file formats, the most common being pdf and TIFF.
The pdf files are the ones to put on your web page; they can be read
on any modern computer with readily available software. Note that there
are two different types of pdf files: ones that are image only and those
that are also text searchable. The latter type is preferable, and most
scanners can produce them.

There is also a compelling reason to keep lossless TIFF files. Newer and
smarter software will emerge that will do things we can't do today. If
you keep the TIFF files, there will be no need to rescan since the
information is already in an industry-standard format.

A second approach is to use a photocopier. Many of them come with scanning
software built in: you feed in the pages and the image files are emailed
back to you. Usually there are fewer options than with a scanner. The
default resolution is usually 200dpi, so be sure to set it to 600dpi.
The provisos given above for scanners are also valid for photocopiers.

I recently carried out a two-month project that involved scanning of
some 53000 pages. It really wasn't difficult. In fact the hardest part
of preserving your mathematical history may be taking the staples out
of those old pages.

Our mathematical history is important and worth preserving. A bit of
effort by all of us can produce a significant body of mathematical
literature.  Let's get our history out of the file cabinet and onto
the web!

Michael Doob
Member of CEIC

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3. EMMY NOETHER LECTURER: for ICM 2010 in Hyderabad

Emmy Noether was one of the great mathematicians of her time, someone
who worked and struggled for what she loved and believed in. Her life
and work remain a tremendous inspiration. The 2010 Emmy Noether
Lecture will be presented as a plenary lecture at the International
Congress of Mathematicians in August 2010 in Hyderabad, to honour
women who have made fundamental and sustained contributions to the
mathematical sciences.

There have been Emmy Noether Lectures at four previous ICMs, and this
will be the second time that the selection of the Emmy Noether
Lecturer has been made formally by the IMU. The IMU Executive
Committee has established a committee of five, chaired by Cheryl
Praeger (Australia), to select the 2010 Emmy Noether Lecturer. The
committee will conduct their work over the next 6-9 months, and
suggestions for consideration by the committee may be sent to Cheryl
Praeger at praeger@maths.uwa.edu.au

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4. Sad news about Ibni Oumar Mahamat Saleh

Following the report of an independent enquiry on the events that took
place in the Republic of Chad between January 28 and February 8, 2008,
the French professional societies (SFdS, SMAI, and SMF) have notified
the IMU that almost certainly Ibni Oumar Mahamat Saleh died in detention
a few days after having been kidnapped from his home on February 3rd,
2008 by the armed forces of Chad. Ibni Oumar Mahamat Saleh, Professor of
Mathematics at the University of N'Djamena was instrumental in the
establishment of higher-education exchanges between France and Chad. He
was one of the leading figures in the democratic opposition to the
government of Chad. For more information and to continue demanding the
truth on the fate of Ibni Oumar Mahamat Saleh, please go to:
http://smf.emath.fr/PetitionSaleh/

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5. SUBSCRIBING TO IMU-NET

There are two ways of subscribing to IMU-Net:

1. Click on http://www.mathunion.org/IMU-Net with a Web browser and go
to the "Subscribe" button to subscribe to IMU-Net online.

2. Send an e-mail to imu-net-request@mathunion.org with the Subject-line:
Subject: subscribe

In both cases you will get an e-mail to confirm your subscription so
that misuse will be minimized. IMU will not use the list of IMU-Net
addresses for any purpose other than sending IMU-Net, and will not
make it available to others.

Previous issues can be seen at:
http://www.mathunion.org/Publications/Newsletter/archive

____________________________________________________________________________
IMU-Net is the electronic newsletter of the International Mathematical Union.
More details about IMU-Net can be found at: http://www.mathunion.org/IMU-Net/
You can find here, for instance, detailed information about subscribing to
the IMU-Net mailing list and  unsubscribing from it.