Don't forget to apply for one of our Mathematics in Africa Grants, where a maximum of £2,000 partial funding is available for any maths activities, such as events, conferences or research, that will be taking place in Africa. Next deadline: 15 September. ➡️ www.lms.ac.uk/grants/mathe...

✨️ Internship applications are now open! ✨️ We are accepting applications for 2027 internships, which will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Read about Holly's experience as our most recent intern, along with details of how you could do the same 👇️ senseaboutscience.org/activities/l...

The University of Surrey seems to have suspended their mathematics and physics course. The options for young people starting at university over the next few years are shrinking rapidly, especially if they need to stay close to home for financial (or other) reasons. A real shame. #UKHE

Times Higher Education (THE)@timeshighered.bsky.social · 6d ago

Several “important” courses in science and engineering have been suspended at the University of Surrey, with a union accusing the institution of “covert” closures https://ow.ly/iIil50ZuzXK

A lovely preprint by Ben Braun et al. on Ehrhart h*-distributions. #Combinatorics #LatticePolytopes #MathSky arxiv.org/abs/2607.15886

German World War I diplomatic and attaché codes – a revised study and the Dutch contribution www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

German World War I diplomatic and attaché codes – a revised study and the Dutch contribution

In World War I, Germany employed a multitude of codes and codebooks for the communications of diplomats and attachés – naval and military – in remote embassies across European neutral countries, th...

tandfonline.com

@eicathomefinn.bsky.social’s remarks reminds me of John Allen Paulos’ “A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper”. Statistical literacy is another transferable skill we’re failing to teach successfully. #MathSky www.hachette.co.uk/titles/john-...

A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

In this lively volume, mathematician John Allen Paulos employs his singular wit to guide us through an unlikely mathematical jungle,the pages of the daily ne...

hachette.co.uk

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 6d ago

15+ random people selected by unknown means say 15+ random thing under pseudonyms such as 'Dodgy Geezer'. One of the transferable skills all school leavers should have regardless of technical or academic orientation is how to assess the utility (or not) of compiled 'views' such as this.

Another lovely surprise — the rather formidable “Prokhorov Volume” from the Taiwanese J. Math. #AlgebraicGeometry #MathSky

What a lovely surprise on my desk this morning, from @giannipetrella.eu: his PhD thesis on “Windows, Walls and Invariants of Quiver Moduli”. Thank you Gianni!

The point isn’t to write an essay (or solve the problem sheet, etc). It’s to learn. It’s a foil against which the student can struggle and, in so doing, think. I’ve not seen this video by Burnham, but the wider sentiment — “essays are pointless because AI can write them” — is depressingly common.

Charlotte Weatherill@ckweatherill.bsky.social · last wk.

Full of despair today. Massive lay offs in social sciences and humanities across the country, Burnham puts out a video saying 'AI can write an essay', and my university is busy integrating co-pilot into all staff and student computers. We are being told we're defunct and there's no resistance.

Very interesting article in Science on the (lack of) publications coming from AI companies documenting their internal research into model development. www.science.org/content/arti...

AI’s top startups are barely publishing their research

More than half of AI “unicorns” have never published a paper or preprint

science.org

“Nature has learnt that the NSF has now pulled back $300 million from two of its divisions: mathematics and physical sciences, and computer and information science and engineering.” It seems the money is being used to fund AI ‘grand challenges’. If you’re sure AI can ‘solve maths’ this is sensible.

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 2w ago

Oh yeah, and if Kratsios gets his way the US government won't fund life science research or universities anyway. Nature story: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Too many academics across the UK are going through this process at the moment. Many more start next year expecting something similar. Maybe we’re foolish, but we love our universities; we’ve poured our lives into making them a success, and we mistakenly thought they cared for us. Difficult times.

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 2w ago

'The great thing about a redundancy process is that one is simultaneously confronted with the possible loss of the role and activities that give life meaning and forced to think about those activities in a way that makes them feel pointless and inadequate.'

📌 Save the date: Metascience 2027 is heading to Montreal, June 14–16, 2027! The Tanenbaum Open Science Institute (@theneuro.bsky.social) and @cos.io are bringing the global metascience community together in one of the world's top research cities. Updates: metascience.info #Metascience2027

Excellent article in the Guardian summarising the destruction of humanities at UK universities. It’s an unsettling - and upsetting - read, even if you’re familiar with what’s happening. #UKHE www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Humanities among degrees being ‘extinguished’ by hard-up universities

Exclusive: Experts fear rise in education ‘cold spots’ and social immobility as 4,000 academic posts lost in one year

theguardian.com

I took (2x) six months leave for each of my two children. I think it resulted in a really nice dynamic. Stepping away from research and my students for the duration was very difficult psychologically, especially the first time, but to be honest I doubt they missed me. I’m extremely glad I did it.

Hetan Shah@hetanshah.bsky.social · 3w ago

Longer paternity leave benefits the whole family. Nice bit of qualitative research supported by a @britishacademy.bsky.social small research grant www.thetimes.com/article/d547... (underlying paper: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...)

Actors, including presenter Emma Barnett from BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, join the campaign to save theatre at @uniofnottingham.bsky.social, which is being closed due to the university’s “unprecedented” financial challenges. #Nottingham #BBC www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Theo James and Ruth Wilson join call to save university theatre

Nottingham New Theatre shut in 2023 after water ingress made the building "unsafe for use" campaigners say.

bbc.co.uk

The parallel with the conversation in pure mathematics is striking. We’re all having the same discussions. A fun read. “Most basically, though, I do not use AI, because I for the most part like the activities of my work enough that I do not feel the constant need to streamline it.” #LLM #MathSky

Joshua Grochow@joshuagrochow.bsky.social · 3w ago

I think this same thing applies to math and (T)CS - as with much of the rest of the essay. (Literally change the one word "philosophy" to "mathematics")

Many congratulations to *DOCTOR* @giannipetrella.eu who successfully defended his viva on Friday. 🍾 giannipetrella.eu

Good read, and much ports over easily to the context of pure maths talks, but of course it doesn't all map nicely. I think maths could learn "the talk is not the paper" better, be more aware of themselves as advertisements for the paper, the concepts, the speaker, the (sub)-field.

Kieran Healy@kjhealy.co · last mo.

Somewhat more constructively, and in lieu of me saying something rude.

This sounds like an astonishingly cruel process by @exeter.ac.uk They wouldn’t dream of treating their students this way, so why is this appropriate for academic staff? #UKHE

Kristin Grogan@kristingrogan.bsky.social · last mo.

Faculty will be ”given a score between zero and three by the university” - unbelievable stupidity and cruelty, solidarity with comrades at Exeter

❗️Final policy briefing topics announced!❗️ #EvidenceWeek connects policymakers with researchers, who present their latest research to inform policy Read this 🧵 for our final policy briefing sessions - or see the full list 👉 senseaboutscience.org/evidence-wee... 🧵 1/4

“Known as the only entirely student-run theatre in England, the site hosted more than 30 plays a year…” A sad closure due to the ongoing financial turmoil at @uniofnottingham.bsky.social

Times Higher Education (THE)@timeshighered.bsky.social · last mo.

Actors and broadcasters have launched a campaign to save a famed student-run theatre at the University of Nottingham, after the institution said it would not reopen as a result of financial pressures

I moved to the Warwick Mathematics Institute @uni-of-warwick.bsky.social one year ago. So happy. A wonderful research and teaching environment, and everything a university should be. Fantastic students, fantastic colleagues, and incredible support for my work. #MathSky

WMI - Warwick Mathematics Institute

WMI - Home page of the Warwick Mathematics Institute and Mathematics Department

warwick.ac.uk

🗞️ The LMS Newsletter is published quarterly and welcomes submissions of feature content, including mathematical articles, career-related articles, and microtheses, from members and non-members. The next deadline is next week (10 July) ➡️ www.lms.ac.uk/publications...

@dundee.ac.uk is closing their mathematics undergraduate degree as part of a plan to cut further 190 jobs (on top of 675 jobs already lost). "Dundee insisted that the decision to close the programme was necessary to 'ensure a sustainable future'" #MathSky www.timeshighereducation.com/news/maths-c...

Maths course closure at Dundee a ‘national tragedy’

University defends decision to shutter provision after more than a century because of declining recruitment

timeshighereducation.com

"Computational Decomposition of Minimal Polynomial for Quasi-Ordinary Hypersurface Branch Truncation" by João Cabral and Ana Casimiro. #ExperimentalMath #Hypersurfaces

Computational Decomposition of Minimal Polynomial for Quasi-Ordinary Hypersurface Branch Truncation

In this paper, we introduce a computational algorithm for decomposing irreducible quasi-ordinary hypersurfaces defined by a minimal polynomial f and a branch \eta with s characteristic exponents. Our approach begins by truncating \eta into a sequence \tilde{\eta}_1,\tilde{\eta}_2,...,\tilde{\eta}_s, where each \tilde{\eta}_i retains the first i characteristic exponents and defines a hypersurface Y_i with minimal polynomial f_i. We prove that for every i and j satisfying 1 <= i <= s-1 and i+1 <= j <= s, the polynomial f_i is an i-semi-root of f_j, and we establish support properties of each f_i. The algorithm leverages both the semigroup structure and the support of the involved polynomials through an iterative elimination process. Our results provide a systematic framework for the semi-root decomposition of a truncated quasi-ordinary branch, and we include pseudocode for the algorithm.

tandfonline.com

🌸 𝗝𝗼𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗟𝗠𝗦! 🌸 If you are considering joining the LMS and enjoying the many benefits, don't forget to fill in the application by 29 June (one week's time!) so it can be presented at our next Society Meeting on 3 July. Full details ➡️ www.lms.ac.uk/membership

"Quadratic Units and Cubic Fields" by Florian Breuer and James Punch. #ExperimentalMath #NumberTheory

Quadratic Units and Cubic Fields

We investigate Eisenstein discriminants, which are squarefree integers d \equiv 5 (mod 8) such that the fundamental unit e_d of the real quadratic field K=Q(\sqrt d) satisfies e_d \equiv 1 (mod 2\mathcal{O}_K). These discriminants are related to a classical question of Eisenstein and have connections to the class groups of orders in quadratic fields as well as to real cubic fields. We present numerical computations of Eisenstein discriminants up to 10^11, suggesting that their counting function up to x is approximated by N(x) = 1/3\pi^2 x - 0.024x^5/6. This supports a conjecture of Stevenhagen while revealing a surprising secondary term, which is similar to - but subtly different from - the secondary term in the counting function of real cubic fields. We include technical details of our computation method, which uses a modified infrastructure approach implemented on GPUs.

tandfonline.com

Fantastic new preprint on the arXiv: "Naive atoms of blowups: examples", by Christian Böhning, Hans-Christian Graf von Bothmer, and Zac Su'a. #AlgebraicGeometry #MirrorSymmetry #MathSky

Naive atoms of blowups: examples

We define naive atomic decompositions of smooth projective varieties. We show that they satisfy a naive version of Iritani's blowup formula in several examples that are complicated enough to show…

arxiv.org

"There’s a wider sorrow, too, and it’s watching waste... Watching departments, indeed whole faculties, built up with so much taxpayers’ money just cave in because of the whims of a mere here-today, gone-tomorrow fashion for markets." @gsoh31.bsky.social states it perfectly.

What Does It Feel Like to Live Under the Threat of Redundancy?

by Glen O’Hara

isrf.org