According to some, Euler’s identity is one of the most beautiful mathematical expressions in the world. The identity is 1 + e__i? = 0 (although electrical engineers like myself are more familiar with seeing it written as 1 + e__j? = 0). * Euler’s Identity, Technical Museum Berlin* On a recent visit to the Mathema Exhibition at the German Technical Museum, Berlin, I took this photo of some art that represents this equation....
In about four weeks I will be giving a lecture to the Level 3 Engineering Dissertation class on proper referencing. I will probably want to cover the following ground: Plagiarism (or how not to reference) How to reference A couple of referencing styles (I was thinking numerical and Havard styles). Referencing tools: Word 2007, Zotero, Endnote. There is a brief guide to bibliographic referencing that has been provided by the Library and Information Service at Swansea University which I will use, but I am also looking for examples of plagiarism that I can cite (properly) and any pointers to good on-line resources for using the referencing tools....
A couple of interesting articles crossed my on-line reading list today. First of all, Chris Hall from the Swansea Learning lab posted a delicious.com bookmark to a Times Higher Education article which reported on a JISC Report on new models for academic publishing which concludes that “an “open-access” future for academic publishing would save money while boosting the profile of research and maximising its economic impact.” In The Guardian Technology supplement, Andrew Brown presents a similar argument in today’s Read me first column: “Digital Britain needs access to science journals, not YouTube....
[](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__bnNGgqRugY/SYh54SkCROI/AAAAAAAAJNY/Q9-ckaU1XYw/s1600-h/IMG_0008-10.JPG) The snow finally arrived in Swansea but brought with it the usual British “severe weather” madness. I received a Twitter tweet from a colleague that said that the University was closed and because I couldn’t believe it: I walked out into the pleasant wintry day to see if it was true. And it was! The entire staff was sent home at around 9.00 am. Students flooding in from Brynmill were turned away from lectures and were able to build snowmen and have snowball fights instead....
[](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__bnNGgqRugY/SYdMZ5R9SMI/AAAAAAAAJMg/A1bdH__d55g/s1600-h/IMG_0017-7.JPG) According to the [BBC](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7865378.stm “BBC Snow!”), snow falls today caused major [disruption](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7864315.stm “BBC: London Travel Severely disrupted”) to normal sevice of [UK PLC](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7864804.stm “BBC: Businesses counting the cost”). In Swansea, we had a light dusting as this shot of my route into work shows. Light snow showers expected tonight. [](http://picasa.google.com/blogger/)