newsletter - New Zealand Mathematical Society

Hands-On-Science program for high school students. The focus of the project was on the use of
population models in conservation. As well as considering the practical aspects of models that are used to
help organisations like the Department of Conservation, the students also found out about the
mathematics underlying some of the models. The first day was spent learning about an example of a
population that is in need of conservation: Hector's dolphin. The students got to know something about
where these dolphins live and roughly how many there are. The focus for the rest of the day was on
modelling the number of dolphins in the population that lives around Banks Peninsula. They looked at
simply exponential models, and then those that involve density dependence and stochasticity. This
naturally led on to ideas of chaos and of risk assessment. Later in the week, discussion of chaos led on to
using software to draw fractal images such as SierpinskiÕs Gasket and Barnsley's Fernleaf. Overall, a
good time was had by all!
A MARK workshop sponsored by The Wildlife Society Biometrics Working Group. This advanced
workshop was held at Canterbury University, Christchurch, New Zealand, in December 2003 as part of
the 3rd International Wildlife Congress in Christchurch. Led by Gary White and Richard Barker, the aim
of the workshop was to update experienced MARK users on some of the latest developments in MARK.
Seminars
Dr Michael Bulmer (University of Queensland), "Virtual Worlds for Teaching Mathematics and
Statistics".
Dr Margaret Walshaw (Department of Technology, Science & Mathematics Education, Massey
University), "Explorations of girls and mathematics".
Professor Bruce Reed (McGill University), "1,2,3, C".
John Shanks, "Horner in the Corner".
Richard Barker, "McMC, WinBUGS and the Bayesian rEvolution".
Amal Amleh, "A Basic Introduction to Very Interesting Nonlinear Difference Equations".
THE UNIVERSITY OF WAIKATO
Department of Mathematics
Lenette Grant
The summer break is usually a time for travelling and this was certainly the case for members of the
department. Within New Zealand, Kevin Broughan and a PhD student Vasile Sinescu attended the
workshop on "Computational Algebra and Number Theory" held in Nelson, while Alfred Sneyd attended
the "Mathematics-in-Industry Study Group" held in Auckland. In early February, Ernie Kalnins and Rua
Murray attended the "Victoria International Conference" held in Wellington.
Ernie was also an international traveller. He spent most of January visiting Linköping University in
Sweden. While there, he gave a talk at the conference on "State of the Art of Classical Separability
Theory for Differential Equations". He then participated in the workshop held directly after the
conference. This workshop was focused on current research problems in separability theory. He also had
the opportunity to give some lectures to students at the university.
Recently appointed lecturer Tim Stokes returned to Australia for two months over summer for a
combination of work and rest. He worked in Melbourne for a fortnight with Marcel Jackson (Latrobe
University) on semigroup theory. Later, he attended the ANZIAM conference in Hobart in early February,
where he presented a talk. In fact he stayed in Hobart for several weeks, mostly working with colleagues
Larry Forbes (University of Tasmania) and Graeme Hocking (visiting from Murdoch University, WA) on
withdrawal problems for free surfaces in fluid mechanics. He reports that the weather was a lot drier in
South-Eastern Australia than in Hamilton on his return!
Sean Oughton spent two weeks at his alma mater, the University of Delaware, where he was collaborating
on magnetohydrodynamic turbulence problems, including applications to the question of why the sun's
atmosphere is so much hotter than its surface. Solar heat in Delaware, however, was rather lacking. The
visit coincided with an unusually cold winter period with typical daytime temperatures of -10C.
In March Ian Craig spent a week at the Yukawa Institute of Kyoto University when he gave an invited
review talk on magnetic reconnection as part of the workshop on "Explosive Phenomena in Magnetized
Plasmas—New Developments in Reconnection Research".