- Cosmo-torun - cosmo.torun.pl

AA/2004/0337 - referee report (fwd)
by Boud Roukema 24 May '04

24 May '04

Witam :)) i think we should have no problem with these minor corrections. :)) The only question is whether or not to make changes based on the further tests made since we submitted the paper. Regarding the further tests which i started making, remember that in our paper we have: > However, the plots are striking and it seems prudent to release > them to the scientific community while a companion paper is prepared > with formal statistical analyses. So IMHO it is clear that we intend to publish a companion paper which goes into more detail in statistical tests, and there's no need to make things difficult for ourselves (and slow down publication) by adding more significant material now. How about a cafeplus this Friday to talk more on this + also about Bartek's jet idea? (not electronically public ;) Plus also whatever else cosmo/extragalactic related. # 21.05.2004 09.00g # Place: Radio building http://adjani.astro.uni.torun.pl/cgi-bin/twiki/view/Cosmo/CafePlus pozdr boud > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > Date: Mon, 17 May 2004 10:12:50 +0200 > From: aanda.paris at obspm.fr > To: boud at astro.uni.torun.pl > Subject: AA/2004/0337 - referee report > > 17/05/2004 > > Dr Boudewijn Roukema > Torun Centre for Astronomy, UMK > ul. Gagarina, 11 > PL-87-100 Torun > POLAND > > boud at astro.uni.torun.pl > Our Ref. : AA/2004/0337 > > Dear Dr Roukema, > > The manuscript entitled : > > "A hint of Poincaré dodecahedral topology in the WMAP first year sky map" > > was submitted to a competent referee who recommended publication following minor revision (see enclosed report). > > Please make the requested improvements and send us the revised version (please set line spacing to double spacing referee's format for language editing) at your earliest convenience. Instructions for resubmitting can be found at address https://mms-aanda.obspm.fr/is/aa. > > > > In your cover letter, please indicate precisely all the changes made in the revised version (p^df or ps.gz file), and mark them clearly (e.g., using boldface) in your manuscript. > > Please make sure that your manuscript is prepared according to the rules given in the Instructions to Authors (see the first Main Journal issue of the year), otherwise the publication of your paper will be delayed. > > Further instructions will be given to you once the paper is accepted. > > With best regards, > > Anthony Jones > A&A Editor > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Referee report > --------------- > > This paper contains new and important results and should be > published. There are however some minor points which should be > clarified before the paper could be published. Second sentence of > Section 3.2 "Errors would occur only if, for example, converting > the angular radius of a circle, alpha into a comoving distance in > megaparsecs, or using the inverse cosine of the ratio of the > in-radius, r_, to the distance to the surface of last scattering, > r_{SLS}, to infer the angular radius of a matched circle, i.e. > alpha \\sim cos^{-1}(r_/r_{SLS}) ", this sentence seems to be > missing something. > > There is a full stop after eq.(6), while it should be a comma. > > Second sentence after eq.(6) is "Moreover, the unknown physics of > the cosmological constant (or quintessence) makes it hard to em a > priori exclude any fluctuations in \\Omega_{\\Lambda}, especially > with an amplitude so close to that of matter fluctuations. " - > need to be corrected. > > Full stop after eq.(10) should be replaced by a comma. > > To make the list of References more balanced it should include at > least reference to J. Weeks book The Shape of Space (where there > is a nice discussion of the Poincare dodecahedral space).

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astro-ph/0310233 (apparently) accepted to PRL
by Andrzej Marecki 13 May '04

13 May '04

Nb. this is astro-ph/0310233. However it looks now as if it has been accepted by PRL. am ----- Forwarded message from physnews(a)aip.org ----- Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 14:50:16 -0400 From: physnews(a)aip.org PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News Number 685 May 12, 2004 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein OUR UNIVERSE HAS A TOPOLOGY SCALE OF AT LEAST 24 Gpc, or about 75 billion light years, according to a new analysis of data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). What does this mean? Well, because of conceivable hall-of-mirrors effects of spacetime, the universe might be finite in size but give us mortals the illusion that it is infinite. For example, the cosmos might be tiled with some repeating shape, around which light rays might wrap themselves over and over ("wrap" in the sense that, as in video games, something might disappear off the left side of the screen and reappear on the right side). A new study by scientists from Princeton, Montana State, and Case Western looks for signs of such "wrapped " light in the form of pairs of circles, in opposite directions in the sky, with similar patterns in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background. If the universe were finite and actually smaller than the distance to the "surface of last scattering" (a distance that essentially constitutes the edge of the "visible universe," and the place in deep space whence comes the cosmic microwaves), then multiple imaging should show up in the microwave background. But no such correspondences appeared in the analysis. The researchers are able to turn the lack of recurring patterns into the form of a lower limit on the scale of cosmic topology, equal to 24 billion parsecs, a factor of 10 larger than previous observational bounds. (Cornish, Spergel, Starkman, Komatsu, Physical Review Letters, upcoming article; contact Neil Cornish, 406-994-7986, cornish(a)physics.montana.edu) [...] ----- End forwarded message -----

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DM from INTEGRAL satellite? - Rencontres Cosmologie-Astroparticule-Gravitation: Integral voit-il la matičre noire ? (fwd)
by boud 10 May '04

10 May '04

Discovery of dark matter by INTEGRAL? > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > Date: Mon, 10 May 2004 19:10:55 +0200 (MET DST) > From: Luc Blanchet <blanchet at iap.fr> > To: users_all at iap.fr > Subject: [X-UNKNOWN] Rencontres Cosmologie-Astroparticule-Gravitation: > Int[X-UNKNOWN] egral voit-il la matičre noire ? > > > Nous vous annonçons la seconde édition des rencontres d'Ile de France : > Cosmologie-Astroparticule-Gravitation: > http://cdfinfo.in2p3.fr/~bouquet/CAG.html > > ======================================== > le 18 mai 2004 de 14h ŕ 18h > Amphithéâtre de l'Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris > 98bis, Bd Arago - 75014 Paris > ========================================= > > > ============================ > INTEGRAL voit-il la matičre noire ? > ============================ Does INTEGRAL see dark matter? > > Résumé: > ------------ > Les récentes observations menées par le satellite INTEGRAL dans le > domaine des rayons gamma confirment l'émission d'un rayonnement > d'annihilation de paires électrons-positrons extręmement intense dans > les régions centrales de la Galaxie. La résolution angulaire et Recent INTEGRAL observations in gamma show very intense electron-positron pair annihilation radiation in central regions of the Galaxy. > spectrale sans précédent de ce satellite ont permis de caractériser le > milieu dans lequel ont lieu ces annihilations et l'étendue spatiale des INTEGRAL has better angular resolution and spectral resolution than earlier instruments/telescopes. > sources. Outre la trčs grande difficulté d'alimenter le centre > galactique en positrons au taux requis par les observations, les > modčles astrophysiques traditionnels se heurtent au problčme important > de la distribution spatiale des sources de rayonnement, dont INTEGRAL a > démontré qu'elles s'étendaient sur au moins 1 kpc autour du centre The sources are distributed up to at least 1 kpc from the G Centre - which is difficult to explain from traditional astrophysical models. > galactique. Comment produire autant de positrons (10^43 s'annihilent > chaque seconde !) et comment les disperser sur un aussi vaste volume ? How can so many (10^43) positrons annihilate per second? How can they be distributed over such a large volume. > Un scénario faisant intervenir une composante légčre de matičre noire > pourrait apporter une réponse simple et fascinante ŕ ces questions. One scenario is with a "light [non-heavy] component" of dark matter. > Alors, INTEGRAL voit-il la matičre noire du centre galactique? > > La demi-journée se déroulera comme suit : > ---------------------------------------------------------- > 14h00-14h40 : P. Jean (CESR-Toulouse) > Observations de l'émission d'annihilation > e+/e- galactique > 14h45-15h25 : M. Cassé (IAP-Paris, CEA/Sap-Saclay) > L'énigme des positrons du bulbe galactique : > Hypernovae ou matičre noire légčre? > 15h30-16h10 : C. Boehm (Oxford) > Comment tester le scénario de matičre noire légčre ? > 16h35-17h15 : D. Hooper (Oxford) > Evidence for particle dark matter ? > 17h20-18h00 : P. Fayet (ENS/LPT-Paris) > Physique des particules et matičre noire légčre: > une nouvelle interaction ? > > > > En espérant vous voir le 18 mai, > > Le comité d'organisation : L. Blanchet, A. Bouquet , Y. Giraud-Héraud, > B. Guiderdoni, J.-Ch. Hamilton, E. Parizot

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constructive ideas on cosmo/relativistic political problems?
by Boud Roukema 09 Apr '04

09 Apr '04

Dear Martin, Alvaro, Reva, All three of you have made a great effort - and risked being labelled as "troublemakers not interested in science" - by publishing your experiences in present-day astronomy, especially cosmology/relativistic astronomy. You may already know me, or if not, a quick search on astro-ph for "Roukema" will tell you more about my cosmo stuff. Just like you, i also would prefer just to do pure science and not have to worry about all this meta-stuff of how we organise and communicate, and now that i have a faculty position here at the Toruń Centre for Astronomy (TCfA), Nicolas Copernicus University, Poland (observationally we're working on the OCRA project which will hopefully soon be able to do a Sunyaev-Zeldovich survey), i no longer have a Damocles sword hanging over me regarding having to find my next job. :) (But trying to get the younger students up to speed is taking quite a bit of time...) IMHO people like us, who are willing to speak out openly and honestly in the interests of our common sense of scientific ethics, should find ways of coordinating our thoughts and maybe generating suggestions for making things better. At the moment i'm spamming (sorry) our general cosmo-torun mailing list because i don't think this sort of discussion should be secret, but i think that further discussion should go off to a discussion forum which will not bother people on the main list. IMHO, a wiki is one of the best ways of communicating on this sort of stuff - it's more structured than a mailing list - anyone can reorganise the pages and make them clearer - but it's much less formal than posting articles on arxiv.org. Anyway, i've put links to all three of your articles here: http://adjani.astro.uni.torun.pl/cgi-bin/twiki/view/Cosmo/AstroPolitics and it would be great if you could add your comments on the page, reorganise it, (or even rename it if you don't think "AstroPolitics" is the best name for the page), or put in a link to an electronic place where you think these sorts of questions can best be discussed. Hoping to hear from you (maybe on the twiki?), and keep doing good science :) boud

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(1) censorship only for extreme cases; (2) censorship itself uncensorable
by Boud Roukema 08 Apr '04

08 Apr '04

Hi Andrzej Kus, Grzegorz, Bartek, everyone, The purpose of a university is the collection and analysis of empirical information, its analysis and integration into theory, the development of theory, and the learning/teaching process between researchers and students. (1) IMHO, censorship is something that should not be taken lightly, and IMHO the minimum that is reasonable in the internet era is that (2) the ***process of censorship*** itself is public. This is why i would be most comfortable in discussing this on cosmo-torun rather than by private, secret emails. ***Please send any responses to cosmo-torun at astro.uni.torun.pl *** i have violated netiquette in forwarding this private email to the list, but i think this is acceptable since censorship is only something that should done, IMHO, in very extreme circumstances. Censorship was (AFAIK, i didn't live in Poland at the time) very common during the PRL period, and IMHO a university should be one of the places where academic freedom is most vigorously defended. If information on a web page is uninteresting or irrelevant, that is a very poor reason for censoring it. However, a polite request to someone who has published uninteresting or irrelevant information is surely sufficient if someone feels that the information needs to be hidden. Let us respect each other as intelligent adults! On Wed, 7 Apr 2004, Grzegorz Hrynek wrote: > Jako administrator serwisu internetowego Katedry Radioastronomii i z > upowaznienia Kierownika Radioastronomii prof. A. Kusa informuje, ze > odwolanie z glownej witryny serwisu KRa do strony internetowej o adresie > > http://adjani.astro.uni.torun.pl/~blew/ > > zostalo zablokowane. > > Strona o powyzszym adresie zostala stworzona przez Bartosza Lwa. > > Powodem zablokowania strony jest umieszczenie informacji i zasobow > prywatnych nie majacych zadnego zwiazku z dzialalnoscia wykonywana w KRa. KRA is part of UMK. UMK is a university. Knowledge can only very artificially be split between subjects. How can one study astronomy without knowing physics? How can one study physics without understanding mathematics? How can one use efficient learning methods without being aware of the research being done in psychology and pedagogy at the university? We have a research/teaching department in Pedagogy which investigates the efficiency of using the internet for teaching, for creativity in learning - http://www.ped.uni.torun.pl/kognityw/ Would there be a problem in publishing useful pedagogical information on KRA web pages? In any case, there is talk of extending UMK by uniting with an institute in Bydgoszcz - it would be rather inconsistent to claim that we want a bigger university when at the same time we try to discourage "cross-talk" and interdisciplinary discussion. As for the expression "informacji i zasobow prywatnych", those pages (which Bartek has chosen voluntarily to hide) concerned anecdotal documentation of ethnological information. Since he chose to publish them, they are no longer private information - the term "private information" refers to things like someone's private address, telephone number, bank account number, etc. In the case of publication of that sort of private information, a request to censor the information would be much more reasonable. We have a department of Ethnology: http://www.his.uni.torun.pl/wydzial/program/etnologia/progetno.shtml The fact that Bartek is a doctoral student in KRA rather than ethnology is, IMHO, not a good reason to ask him to hide the pages. A more valid point would be that the pages are only anecdotal rather than systematic. They do not claim (AFAIR) to constitute a systematic study of any given social group, and so are probably not terribly useful for quality ethnological research. However, whether this justifies requesting Bartek to hide the pages is not obvious to me. A more constructive suggestion would have been to propose to Bartek that he contact the Ethnology department (URL above) and find out if his documentation can be useful to them. The argument of wasted resources is a different argument: the amount of disk space and bandwidth used for the (now hidden) pages would IMHO be negligible compared to what we do which is directly cosmo related. On the contrary, sharing resources with resource-poor departments like Ethnology makes sense - we're here to work together, not compete with one another. (OK, OK, i know that among us we have divergent points of view on the validity of competition in an E=mc^2 society living on a planet with a climate system going into a non-linear warming phase.) > Zobowiazuje Bartosza Lwa do jak najszybszego usuniecia informacji prywatnych > z komputera adjani.astro.uni.torun.pl Well, they are not private information, IMHO, but in any case, Bartek seems to have chosen to hide them. > Informuje ponadto, ze do prezentacji wlasnych prywatnych materialow i > przekonan sluza serwisy platne swiadczace tego typu uslugi. There is no need to use commercial web servers, i don't think we should be encouraging people to commercialise information. We are a university, not a hypermarket. There are zero-cost servers like: http://geocities.yahoo.com/ http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/learn2/HowItWorks4_Free.html and probably on http://www.wp.pl, http://www.onet.pl etc it is possible to host quite a few images at no cost (apart from having to accept advertising). > Ponadto zwracam sie z prosba do administratora komputera > adjani.astro.uni.torun.pl - Bouda Roukema - o nadzor nad ta sprawa i jak > najszybsze wyjasnienie zaistnialego problem z uzytkownikiem Bartoszem Lwem. Well, i don't understand the urgency - in any case Bartek is a good cosmologist and an intelligent adult and as i understand it, he decided that fighting censorship in this case is probably not worth it. That's his decision. The important thing is that rumours do not start going around of students' web pages being arbitrarily censored. Hopefully in this case it is clear that a polite request has been made, and that any such requests can be publicly discussed and we can trust each other to make reasonable decisions based on constructive discussion - even if having highly diverging viewpoints. Please remember that creativity is an important part of the learning process. Creativity is not just poetry: it is something that can be measured (to some extent, e.g. see the recent PhD thesis (March 2004) by D. Siemieniecka-Gogolin consisting of empirical measurements of "creative attitudes" and "creative abilities" among Polish school teachers regarding the use of computers and the internet in teaching, in the Pedagogy Department of the University of Nicolas Copernicus (URL above, no direct link to thesis, sorry)). If a bunch of web pages showing a few photographs of personal travels stimulates the creativity of a doctoral student doing excellent work in trying to make a step forward in the problem of dark matter, i really do not understand the problem. The bubble chamber for detecting high energy particles is said to have been inspired by physicists driking beer and looking at the bubbles. Killing off creativity is appropriate for an army, not for a university. Creativity is certainly *not sufficient* for good science, but most scientists would agree that it is *necessary* for good science. KRA is part of a university, just as that same university exists as part of euro-asian-african-american-australasian civilisation, which exists on the planet Earth over a time interval of a few kyears and into an unknown, possibly very short time interval in the future (relative to our local space-time position), which formed about 4.6 Myears ago around the Sun which formed in a molecular cloud according to a process of star formation which is still poorly understood, in a galaxy which formed inside of a dark matter halo which virialised from a primordial density perturbation in a perturbed Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker Universe. Let's not forget the context. We are a university, not an army. pozdr boud

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Re: (1) pgplot licence vs other; (2) NR (fwd)
by Boud Roukema 31 Mar '04

31 Mar '04

witam, Michał wrote: > Boud Roukema wrote: > > >>what is the purpose of GPL? creating better, community driven software. > >>imho it is more than a license, it is a philosophy. your "software" just > > > > > > It is not philosophy. It is politics, because it relates to the power that > > some people have over other people, and the power that people do *not* > > have over other people. > > > > The intention is to minimise the power that people have over others to > > the minimum necessary - in the context of computer code. > > > > It depends what you mean by "politics" and "philosophy" I believe. in > fact it is both. but developers seem to prefer the term "philosophy" > since it is more positive in meaning. i guess this may be an anglophone/francophone difference. Personally i prefer precision rather than political correctness. > >> do not fit GPL. it is a set of mathematical operations. > >>how the hell do you want people to use it/trace bugs/improve when you > >>only provide hardly readable code?????? > >> > >>we could argue about the quality of the code but I do not think will do > >>any good. > > > > > > The point is not to argue about the quality of the code. > > > > The whole point of the GNU GPL is that concrete discussion of the > > code can happen according to rules which encourage improvement of the code. > > > > Without distribution under GNU GPL, it is difficult to get the *feedback* > > that someone has the opinion that the code is "hardly readable". > > > > I agree. :) > but without providing high-quality code and docs it is hard to > get useful feedback. It's sufficient to improve by the same fraction. Consider a code of low initial quality p(0) = 0.3 with low docs quality q(0)=0.3, versus code with high initial quality p'(0)= 1.0 and high initial docs quality q'(0) = 1.0. In the first case there is on average one iteration of feedback each week which yields moderate improvement in the combined quality x = pq of 10% (alpha = 1.1), in the second case the initial version is only distributed after one year, and then gets feedback yielding improvements of 10%. p(0)=q(0)=0.3 p'(0)=q'(0)=1.0 x(t) = p(0)q(0) alpha^n (n= weeks) x'(t) = p'(0)q'(0) alpha^(max(0,n-52)) which gives for t \ge 52: x(t)= 12.8 alpha^(n-52) x'(t)= 1.0 alpha^(n-52) Conclusion: many iterations through a positive feedback loop starting from an imperfect beginning can give a better result than waiting a long time for a "perfect" beginning to be ready. > > On the other hand, if there is a delay of between several days and > > a few weeks for having the right to use the code, and then a further > > delay of unknown length to redistribute modified versions, the cooperation > > between X, Z, W and U is unlikely to happen, especially given that Y > > feels unhappy with the code and may influence the delays. > > > I can bet that Kriss would be more that happy to accept any help with > porting his software to other languages. Have you tried to chat with him > about licence issues? If you wished to be a neutral, third party moderator to discuss with a certain person regarding certain software, for a publicly archived discussion (like this one) regarding porting of cosmologically useful software to a version distributed under the GNU GPL or a compatible licence, and if you convinced that person and other people interested that you would be a good moderator (meaning that you clarify the discussion, stop different people from flaming or threatening each other, ask them to apologise or find other ways of getting people to cool off if they start flaming, etc.), i would be happily accept this. My prediction is that this would be not be accepted by some of the people, but i would be glad to be wrong. > As I still am quite sure about there is no licence that suits scientific > software and gpl is not the best. that is why some people refuse > gpl-ing. I myself would be very happy having a nicer licence for sci soft. Personally i'm not convinced of the need. I'm aware that if you spend a lot of time on software and don't write many publications, you need to get credit for the software. The GNU GPL already guarantees that the original author's name remains, and IMHO the cosmo community is small enough that people writing, or more importantly, maintaining good software do get credit. Just because it's not formally part of these strange formulas attempting to measure scientific productivity in PL, does not mean the credit is not there. However, you want a modified licence, so please have a look at: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL What do think of a licence which is identical to the GNU GPL, but we remove the preamble (unless FSF agrees that we may include it in our modified version after discussion), we modify the end-wording, and we add a term/condition like: SSL-13.0 - proposal for Scientific Software Licence-term/condition 13.0 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 13. Any publication in a recognised scientific journal which makes use of this software must contain the acknowledgment: "Use has been made of PROGRAM-NAME which can be obtained at PROGRAM-URI", where PROGRAM-NAME is the name of the Program and PROGRAM-URI is a Universal Resource Identity showing where the full machine-readable source code of the Program can be downloaded from." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- and then write to licensing at gnu.org to ask for advice. My guess is they would only complain about the compatibility question: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatIsCompatible In which case i would suggest in addition: SSL-2.1 - proposal for Scientific Software Licence-term/condition 2.1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- identical with GNU GPL v2 term/condition 2. except for the following: %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% "But when ... wrote it. " %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% becomes %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% "But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of either this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it, or of the GNU General Public License, as published by the Free Software Foundation (either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version) whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it. If you apply the GNU General Public License rather than this License to the whole, then you are requested (but not required) to include a file called README.acknowledgments in the machine-readable source code which includes the text of term/condition 13. below, with the phrase "Any publication ... acknowledgment:" replaced by "It is kindly requested (but not legally required) that any publication in a recognised scientific journal which makes use of this software should contain the acknowledgment:" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In short, this means that if an SSL protected package is combined with a non-GNU GPL package, then: - if the other package is also under SSL, the new one can also be SSL - if the other package is GNU GPL, then the new one *must* be GNU GPL (condition 2 of GNU GPL), but the user is *requested* to add a file converting term/condition 13 into a README.acknowledgments file which *requests* the user to write an acknowledgment - if the other package is under some other licence, it may or may not be possible to distribute the combined package, it depends on that other licence. IMHO, this is as strong as we could get while retaining GNU GPL compatibility. If we try to make the request into a requirement, then my worry is it would be GPL incompatible. In fact, compatibility is one of the big issues of the GNU GPL. It enables modules to be combined together in ways far beyond what the original authors ever could do alone. Remember: there are 6 billion of us. That's a lot. Anway, you wanted a licence: what do you think of this one? If we go through a few iterations, with a bit of feedback :), then i'd be happy to write to licensing at gnu.org, point them to our discussion, and see what they think. A simpler alternative to SSL-13.0 + SSL-2.1 would be: SSL-13.1 - proposal for Scientific Software Licence-term/condition 13.1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 13. It is kindly requested (but not legally required) that any publication in a recognised scientific journal which makes use of this software should contain the acknowledgment: "Use has been made of PROGRAM-NAME which can be obtained at PROGRAM-URI", where PROGRAM-NAME is the name of the Program and PROGRAM-URI is a Universal Resource Identity showing where the full machine-readable source code of the Program can be downloaded from." If you distribute this Program as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, and you apply the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) to that whole, then you are kindly requested to copy this term/condition 13. to a file called README.acknowledgments (if it is not already present) and include it in the machine-readable source code. Since further distribution of the whole would occur under the GNU GPL, there would be no further obligation to include the file, only a kind request. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- pozdr boud

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2 topo articles on astro-ph in 1 day!
by Boud Roukema 30 Mar '04

30 Mar '04

Hyperbolic Universes with a Horned Topology and the CMB Anisotropy Authors: Ralf Aurich, Sven Lustig, Frank Steiner, Holger Then http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0403597 A Note on the Robustness of Pair Separations Methods in Cosmic Topology Authors: A. Bernui, G.I. Gomero, B. Mota, M.J. Reboucas http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0403586 The Foot et al papers on mirror matter as a dark matter candidate are also starting to sound convincing (at least from the abstracts). Now it sounds like they get a good match for explaining the relative values of Omega_b and Omega_m which implies a 1ev energy scale and hints at a connection with neutrino oscillations: http://de.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0402267 Any comments, Bartek? pozd boud

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atto-cosmology: NOAA terrestrian warming goes non-linear?
by Boud Roukema 30 Mar '04

30 Mar '04

atto-cosmology (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix for "atto") NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, USA): http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=505798 > Global warming spirals upwards > By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor > > 28 March 2004 > > Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have jumped abruptly, > raising fears that global warming may be accelerating out of control. > > Measurements by US government scientists show that concentrations of > the gas, the main cause of the climate exchange, rose by a record > amount over the past 12 months. It is the third successive year in > which they have increased sharply, marking an unprecedented triennial > surge. > > Scientists are at a loss to explain why the rapid rise has taken > place, but fear that it could show the first signs that global warming > is feeding on itself, with rising temperatures causing increases in > carbon dioxide, which then go on to drive the thermometer even > higher. That would be a deeply alarming development, suggesting that > this self-reinforcing heating could spiral upwards beyond the reach of > any attempts to combat it. In other words, we may have reached d(\Delta T)/dt \propto (\Delta T) in which case \Delta T \propto \exp(t) . Of course, negative feedbacks will have to happen sooner or later, but the stable point in N-parameter space could be quite different from the stable point where we have been during the previous 2000 years... ... > The carbon dioxide measurements have been taken from the 11,400ft > summit of Hawaii's Mauna Loa, whose enormous dome makes it the most > substantial mountain on earth, by scientists working for the US > government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. ... > The latest measurements, taken a week ago, showed that carbon dioxide > had reached about 379 parts per million (ppm), up from about 376ppm > the year before, from 373ppm in 2002 and about 371ppm in 2001. These > represent three of the four biggest increases on record (the other was > in 1998), creating an unprecedented sequence. They add up to a 64 per > cent rise over the average rate of growth over the past decade, of > 1.8ppm a year. > > The US scientists have yet to analyse the figures and stress that they > could be just a remarkable blip. Professor Ralph Keeling - whose > father Charles Keeling first set up the measurements from Mauna Loa - > said:"We are moving into a warmer world". i highly recommend the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming For people sceptical about the sources of the data (as we all should be), at the bottom of the page there are external web links classified by the biases of the different organisations: "Scientific" (NASA + NOAA) "United Nations" "Environmentalist" "Conservative-affiliated" "Industry-sponsored" "Independent (or receives too little support to constitute "sponsorship")" "Other" Environmental scientists don't seem to publish on http://arxiv.org or the equivalent, unfortunately. pozdr boud

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astro-ph/0403111
by Andrzej Marecki 25 Mar '04

25 Mar '04

astro-ph/0403111 Date (v1): Thu, 4 Mar 2004 03:41:19 GMT (12kb) Date (revised v2): Fri, 12 Mar 2004 04:15:48 GMT (12kb) Date (revised v3): Mon, 22 Mar 2004 02:04:28 GMT (12kb) Date (revised v4): Wed, 24 Mar 2004 04:03:35 GMT (0kb,I) Problems with studying topology of the universe via circles from cosmic microwave background data. Authors: Evelise Gausmann, Reuven Opher Comments: This paper has been withdrawn -- Andrzej

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fealpix vs healpix - it stinks for me
by Michal Frackowiak 24 Mar '04

24 Mar '04

hi there! I have just downloaded the version of fealpix. here are my thoughts after a few minutes of browsing the sources and an attempt to compile things: - Boud: you claim the software to be GPL and attach the license. but the software itself is not in the spirit of GNU at all!!! the idea of gnu software is not: look at me, I can handle dozens of lines of code and several equations without a single line of comment! and that is the software you have created - extremelly unclearly coded, uderstanding hardly possible. with such attitude you simply discourage others to use/learn/modify the code. and that is not gnu. you should not release the code in that form and imho it is against gnu philosophy. - the code is not even comparable to HEALpix in both functionality and documentation - chosing "fealpix" as a name is not fortunate. it seems as a "negative campaign". - no docs, no examples, no comments - could you start using gnu autoconf? - I find "astropolitics" stuff inlcuded somehow improper. you permanently call HEALpix non-free and claim its authors to blindly follow rules of feudal reality. - I am very not sure about NR stuff you use and claim that simple rewrite of routines code makes it free. I have compared just one of the files with what can be found in NumericalRecipies and it is IDENTICAL (apart from changing the variables' names and some minor rearragement). you not simply use provided algorithms, you use provided code which is distributed under somehow more restricted license. that is not the way it should be. if all the gnu community acted like that the gnu software would be a patchwork from stolen code. fortunately others are more creative and write original software. you should not distribute those routines in the present form - the code is not yours. I see all this felapix was intended as a battle for "free software". but the way you fight turns against gnu in fact - by offending people, being extreme radicalist, mixing code and politics, writing unreadable code, stealing code and claiming yours. you should change the way you fight for "free software" because it does not do any good. do the Octave people constantly cry about Matlab beeing non-free???????? or Kaffe and Java?????????? or gcc and icc???? gjc and Java again???????? GNU is about creating BETTER software, not accusing proprietary software of being non-free. that is my oppinion. at this very moment I feel disappointed with what you do with GNU and GPL philosophy. regards - michal BTW: for NR, this is the license you are obliged to follow: If you are the individual owner of a copy of this book and you type one or more of its routines into your computer, we authorize you to use them on that computer for your own personal and noncommercial purposes. You are not authorized to transfer or distribute machine-readable copies to any other person, or to use the routines on more than one machine, or to distribute executable programs containing our routines. This is the only free license.

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