Archive for University of Melbourne

Nature snapshots

Posted in Books with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 5, 2024 by xi'an

Some quick breakfast reads from the 11 July issue of Nature (the one with the frog cover!),

  • A tribune on the Canadian example of advocating for graduate and postdoc pay raises, with a success last April. It would prove difficult to achieve in a French academic landscape when postdocs here earn about as much as starting lecturers, whose salary is notoriously low.
  • A news article on the UK elections Labour landslide impact on national scientific landscape, with the former Conservatives’ government Chief Adviser and former Head of Research at GlaxoSmithKline and governmental speaker during the COVID crisis appointed as science minister (how many countries enjoy a science ministry?!) But Labour has shown no inclination to back up (from the former stance) on EU collaborations (no Erasmus!), restrictions on students visa that induced a 40% drop in overseas enrolments, or funding of UK universities (whose finances are in a terrible state). Followed by a call from five UK researchers to “give UK science the overhaul it urgently needs¨.
  • A paper about identifying brain cells attached to a word’s meaning (with an example opposing son and Sun that reminded me of the confusion I had with the Taïwanese movie A Sun!)
  • An another paper on an analysis of January 2020 data collected in the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, with three virus identified. But inconclusive about the origin of the virus.
  • A work column on the challenges of conservation ecology, with trade-offs between intervention and inaction for endangered species (with the nugget of information that Ecuador gives nature constitutional rights).
  • And a back page on the TIGRR lab [great acronym!] in Melbourne attempt at resurrecting the extinct thyalacine (or Tasmanian tiger) from historical specimens, not mentioning the involvement of a biotech company, Colossal Biosciences, also involved in recreating  mammoths. Which sounds counterproductive beyond the bioengineering feat, esp. with regard to the mammoths, which would be woolly (!) unsuited to the current World (except in some remote corner of Siberia?!) and its climate. When considering how challenging protecting the few remaining African elephants is, imaging free roaming mammoths that would not come to clash with human activities beggars belief.

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freedom for women jailed in Iran

Posted in Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 30, 2019 by xi'an


Three women are currently on hunger strike in Iranian jails to protest against their arbitrary detention under espionage charges and the dire conditions of these detentions. Two of them, Fariba Adelkhah and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, are dual nationals with Iranian nationality, whose second nationality is not recognised by Iranian authorities and makes their release from jail the more unlikely. On the French side, Fariba Adelkhah, anthropologist, along with Roland Marchal, sociologist, is a researcher at Sciences Po Paris. They were arrested in June 2019. On the British side, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe (jailed in April 2016) is working with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the Canadian news agency Thomson Reuters‘ charitable arm and Kylie Moore-Gilbert (jailed since October 2018) is a  Middle East Lecturer at the University of Melbourne‘s Asia Institute. Petitions have been launched to support them, but I wonder at the possibility to move the Iranian cynical stance other than through the respective governments of these women. (Obviously, there are many many other women and men jailed in Iran for political or other discriminatory reasons who should equally be freed.)

 

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AMSI-SSAI Lectures #4-5

Posted in Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , on July 27, 2012 by xi'an

Yesterday night I gave my AMSI-SSAI public lecture on simulation at the University of Melbourne. Following a seminar in the early afternoon on ABC (essentially the same as in Adelaide and UWS, although I should shorten it). The seminar was well-attended, despite being during the first week of the semester and between classes. I am afraid the lecture did not draw many members of the public, though, which is not a great surprise given my esoteric (?) title, and I am afraid the academics who attended the talk did not really need this basic intro to simulations… I also visited the offices of AMSI on the campus, where I was very warmly welcomed, thank you! This even included an interview with a media officer who happened to be a Physics Honour student at the University of Melbourne, working on a cool radar data analysis. (This Honour program is an interesting entry into research that is missing in the French curriculum, providing students interested in research to spend a year mostly working on a research project right after undergraduate graduation…) In addition, it was an opportunity to look at the great posters made by AMSI to promote math in high schools with the motto “maths make your career count“. Today, I give a seminar at Monash on ABC model choice.

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Xi’an Australian Tour 2012

Posted in Running, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , on May 25, 2012 by xi'an

Here is my schedule (so far) for my Australian trip this summer/winter… Looking forward meeting loads of interesting people, problems and places!

Tour Schedule

Date Host Institution Venue Time Title
12 July Australian Statistical Conference Meeting Room 11 9:30 am Approximate Bayesian Computation for model selection
13 July University of Adelaide TBC TBC TBC
16 July University of NSW Via AGR 2 pm ABC methods for Bayesian model choice
17 July University of Western Sydney TBC TBC Rao-Blackwellisation of sampling schemes
26 July University of Melbourne Russell Love theatre, Richard Berry (Bldg 160) 2 pm Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC): advances and limitations
26 July AMSI Public Lecture TBC
 6 pm Simulation as a universal tool for statistics
27 July Monash University, Econometrics and Business Statistics seminar TBC
 2 pm ABC methods for Bayesian model choice
14 August Australian National University Seminar Room G35, John Dedman (Bldg 27) 2 pm Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC): advances and limitations
15 August University of Wollongong CSSM Meeting (Goulburn) Rao-Blackwellisation of sampling schemes
20 August University of Queensland Room N201, Building 50 2 pm Rao-Blackwellisation of sampling schemes
21 August Queensland University of Technology GP-Z1064 Gibson Room TBC ABC methods for Bayesian model choice
21 August Queensland University of Technology GP-Z1064 Gibson Room TBC
Simulation as a universal tool for statistics

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