Invitation to IVTN Moscow

I have been invited to IVTN Computer Applications in Scientific Research in Moscow describing its mission as follows:

• In recent years the economical situation in Russian science has changed greatly. The destructive period of early 90-s is over and a great number of branches of science has revived.
• The main aim of the IVTN.ru project is to take an active part in supporting Russian science and apply new forms of the support.
• The main objectives of the IVTN.ru include providing opportunities for exchange of research experience, arranging discussions on actual problems, eliminating geographic and bureaucratic boarders, supporting the search for foreign scientific contractors.

Maybe an opportunity to sell BodyandSoul, FEniCS and Unicorn, in April in Moscow.

The Collapse of UN Climate Science and Politics

The UN climate politics is now collapsing in front of our eyes inside the Bella Conference Center of the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit, while the snowstorm and activist demonstrations rage outside. The collapse was triggered by Climategate showing the UN Climate Panel IPCC is based on scientific fraud.

The collapseY will not change global politics, but science in general and climate science in particular is hit by a strong blow. IPCC will be dismantled and the big governmental institutions behind IPCC must be reorganized; it is inconceivable that Phil Jones resumes his position.

Scientific academies and societies, including in particular the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, have to back off from their support of IPCC and regain credibility by resurrecting scientific standards with a clear distinction between science and politics.

It will be very interesting to follow the emergence of a new FEniCS rising from the ashes... 

It seems unlikely that Obama will get on Air Force One to Copenhagen, since he has nothing to deliver and nothing to gain. 

The witness by Patrick J. Michaels, formerly professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia (1980-2007) and now senior fellow at the Cato Institute, should be listened to by the Royal Swedish Academy in particular:

• Few people understand the real significance of Climategate...But there's something much, much worse going on—a silencing of climate scientists, akin to filtering what goes in the bible, that will have consequences for public policy, including the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) recent categorization of carbon dioxide as a "pollutant.
• "The bible I'm referring to, of course, is the refereed scientific literature. It's our canon, and it's all we have really had to go on in climate science (until the Internet has so rudely interrupted). When scientists make putative compendia of that literature, such as is done by the U.N. climate change panel every six years, the writers assume that the
peer-reviewed literature is a true and unbiased sample of the state of climate science.
• That can no longer be the case. The alliance of scientists at East Anglia, Penn State and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (in Boulder, Colo.) has done its best to bias it.

Three leading climatologists in the Royal Swedish Academy have signed a letter to UN contradicting the official statement by the Royal Academy in support of IPCC and scientific consensus on AGW. This is the same filtering of scientists not believing in the bible as described by Michaels. This is very damaging to the very core of science.

Obama on Unicorn in FEniCS

Unicorn is a unified continuum mechanics fluid-solids interaction solver in FEniCS. The web is now being flooded with images and paintings of Obama riding a Unicorn, which signifies that Obama has joined the FEniCS development team. Wellcome!

Obama's mathematics for a health care reform is now debated: Will it add to the budget deficit? Republicans accuse Obama of breaking his deficit-neutrality promise and health experts scoff at the Democrats' fuzzy math.

In The Obama Education Plan: Math, Science and Rigor Obama's spokesman  says:

• We have 20 English teachers for every job and can't find a math teacher, and that's a problem. We have to pay math and science teachers differently.
• We've got to push to get more kids taking algebra in eighth grade, and then you start to think about calculus in that fourth year of high school.
• One downside of No Child Left Behind was 50 states dumbing down things.
  

In his first major speech on education on March 10 this year, Obama states:

• It's time to give all Americans a complete and competitive education from the cradle up through a career. We've accepted failure for far too long. Enough is enough. America's entire education system must once more be the envy of the world -- and that's exactly what we intend to do.
• Studies show that children in early childhood education programs are more likely to score higher in reading and math, more likely to graduate from high school and attend college, more likely to hold a job, and more likely to earn more in that job. 
• See, I want every child in this country to have the same chance that my mother gave me, that my teachers gave me, that my college professors gave me, that America gave me.

Math is supposed to bring the US back into its proper position in the World, but which math will do it? Traditional Calculus?

FEniCS on Youtube

The talks at the FEniCS Workshop in Oslo June 11-12 can now be watched on Youtube. 

Start with the fascinating story of the Birth of FEniCS. 

If you can stand it, you can listen to my litania:

• Will FEniCS Fly? Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

To actually see FEniCS fly, look at the simulation by Johan Jansson starting at time 6:30.

Also listen to the talk by Johan Hoffman Part 2 Part 3.

FEniCS Workshop at Simula

A FEniCS Workshop was held June 11-12 at Simula Research Laboratory in Oslo with 50 participants from Europe and the US. An introduction to my talk is posted as a knol.

FEniCS came out from a 30 year cooperation with Ridgway Scott initiated when we both were post docs at the University of Chicago in the mid 70s as the mathematics of the finite element method was booming. 

FEniCS  is a realization of our common dream of automating computational solution of differential equations by exploiting the generality and efficiency of the finite element method, that is the dream of the finite element machine. 

FEniCS has developed from a cooperation between my former students Anders Logg and Johan Hoffman and now involves several groups at several universities and laboratories into an exponentially increasing activity with good prospects of exceeding the initial dreams. In particular, Simula now contributes considerable manpower to FEniCS.

FEniCS is an essential part of my main goal of reforming education in mathematics, science and technology by using the power of automated computational mathematics, as presented in the Body&Soul Project.

Tomorrow the President of KTH will say yes or no to a new program in Simulation Technology based on Body&Soul/FEniCS, see my blog of June 5. Either answer will have serious consequences. Follow the thrilling combat...

Sweden also needs a Simula. In Norway Simula was created because the Minister of Education understood the need of reform, which universities did/do not. Maybe our new Minister of Education will also be able to understand...see my blog of June 15.