2012 Statistics from the German Science Foundation

The German Science Foundation (DFG) has recently released statistics and tables about science funding in Germany and, in some cases, the European Union. You can find all the numbers on this website. If they have an English version, I couldn't find it, so let me pick out for you some graphics that I found interesting.

First, here's a graphic for the national investment in research and development as a percentage of the GDP by country (click to enlarge).

From top to bottom the list shows Israel, Finland, Sweden, Japan, Korea, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, USA, Austria, Iceland, OECD total, France, Australia, Belgium, Canada, EU-27, Great Britain, Slovenia, Netherlands, Norway. I'm not surprised to see Sweden scoring high, but I am surprised that the Netherlands invest less than Great Britain. The color code from top to bottom says universities, other research institutes, industry, private non-profit.

Second graphic shows the distribution of ERC grants by country and field of research. The color code is: orange - humanities and social sciences, red - life sciences, green - natural sciences, blue - engineering. It would be interesting to see these numbers compared to the population, but they have no respective graph. It says in the text however that Israel and Switzerland have secured a very large number of grants relative to population. I have no clue why there's an arrow pointing to Iceland, maybe just so you don't miss it.

Finally, let me pick out a third graphic. It shows the fraction of women among those contributing to DFG projects (principal investigator, co-PI and so on). The fields shown are from left to right: humanities, social sciences, biology, medicine, veterinary medicine, chemistry, physics, mathematics, geology, mechanical engineering, computer science and electronics, architecture. The horizontal line at 15% with the label "Durchschnitt" is the average.

As usual, the female ratio in physics is on the lower end, something like 7 or 8%. I don't know what's wrong with architecture, which seems to have an even lower ratio. In the text to the graphic it says that the fraction is the same or similar to the fraction of woman among the applicants. You can apply for funding with the DFG as soon as you have a PhD. The fraction one sees in the graphic is more representative however of the female ratio in tenured faculty. Not surprisingly so, because it is difficult to get institutional funding (except possibly scholarships) without faculty support, and few try. (I did. Unsuccessfully.)

On the lighter side, I note that the Germans have adopted the English word "gender analysis" and made it into "Gender-Analyse."

Publication Cut-off

The German Research Foundation (DFG) has taken an important and overdue step. To limit their applicant's attempts to blind the reviewer with publications, from July 1st 2010 on a maximum of 5 publications can be listed in the CV. In addition to this, only papers that are already published can be listed. Previously, it was possible to also list papers that are submitted, but not yet published. The change in this policy is apparently a reaction to an instance last year in which applicants (in the area of biodiversity) invented publications. (More details on the new regulation here.) It remains unclear to me whether a paper on the arxiv counts as published or unpublished.

With this decision, the DFG is clearly signaling that it's quality that matters, and not quantity. Or at least that's what should matter for their referees. Another reason for the change is that other countries have similar restrictions. The NSF for example also has a limit of 5 publications relevant for the project, and the NIH 15.

Matthias Kleiner, President of the DFG said

“With this we want to show: For us it is the content that matters for the judgement and the support of science.”

And he bemoans that today

“The first question is often not anymore what somebody's research is but where and how much he has published.”

(As quoted in Physik Journal, April 2010, my translation).

The DFG is the funding source for scientific research in Germany. Not the only one, but without doubt the most important one. This decision will therefore have a large impact. The impact however is limited in that the other major reason publication numbers are ever increasing is that hiring committees pay attention to these numbers - or at least are believed to pay attention, which is sufficient already to create the effect. The President of the German Higher Education Association (DHV*), Bernhard Kempen, comments

“To assess a candidate's qualification in a hiring process it should also be solely the content of provided publications, not their number, that is decisive for an appointment.”

(as quoted here, my translation.)

Since I have written many times that it hinders scientific progress when selection criteria set incentives for researchers to strive for secondary goals (many publications) instead of primary goals (good research), it should be clear that I welcome this decision by the DFG.

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* DHV stands for Deutscher Hochschulverband. The literal translation of the German word "Hochschule" is "high school" but the meaning is different. "Hochschule" in Germany is basically all sorts of higher education, past finishing what's "high school" in America. The American "high school" is in German instead called "Oberstufe," lit. "upper step." See also Wikipedia.

Celebrating the Launch of FAIR

Hidden in the woods about 10 km southeast of Frankfurt International Airport is GSI, the Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research. GSI is an accelerator laboratory for research with beams of all kinds of ions up to uranium. It is best known for its discoveries of new elements, such as Copernicium, and for exploration of the use of beams of carbon ions in tumor therapy. But there is also research done in heavy ion collisions to study properties of nuclear matter, in plasma physics, and atomic physics, where heavy ions allow to probe quantum electrodynamics in strong electromagnetic fields.

In the upcoming years, GSI will expand enormously, through the construction of FAIR, the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research.

A plan of GSI, and the new FAIR complex, shown in red. From the flyer "FAIR: Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research" (PDF file).
FAIR is a large international project, with a billion-euro budget. It will consist of several accelerators and storage rings, and provide high-intensity beams of heavy ions and antiprotons, and secondary beams of rare and unstable nuclei. Many different experiments will study phenomena as diverse as compressed baryonic matter, nuclear structure relevant for astrophysics, antiproton-proton collisions for hadron spectroscopy, or properties of high-energy irradiation for biophysics and materials research.

Construction of the FAIR accelerators has not begun yet, but yesterday saw the topping-out ceremony of the first hall built, the testing hall, where parts of the accelerators, bending magnets and experimental equipment will be thoroughly checked before deployment in the facility.

The topping-out, or "Richtfest," is a quite typical German tradition: Once the raw structure of a building up to the roof has been erected, a ceremony and subsequent party with the building owner, the architects, and the craftsmen is held. It's an occasion for a few solemn speeches, an occasion for politicians to pose for photos, and for exchanging best wishes for the future of the project.

As we were in the area yesterday, we used the opportunity to attend the topping-out, and to say hello to some old friends. Let's also not forget that following the ceremony there was the annual GSI summer party, idylically taking place at a small lake next to the facilities.

Here is the Scientific Director of GSI, Professor Dr Horst Stöcker, greeting the guests.

After the greetings, a representative of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Andreas Storm, spoke a few words and affirming the importance of FAIR and the funding of the project.


Storm said a lot of nice words, among other things he mentioned that the GSI recently had the honor to name the newly discovered chemical element "Copernicium" after its discoverer. Since unfortunately Copernicus died more than 450 years ago, the actual discovery was done by a group to whose leader Storm referred to as Ms Sigurd Hofmann. Hofmann probably doesn't often get mistaken for being a woman. Storm btw is totally hip and has a twitter account.

The below photo shows the pulling up of the "Richtkranz" to the ceiling (to the tune of Ode to Joy on Saxophone and bass, not bad at all):


And here is the master builder, in the traditional dress of a carpenter, toasting on the future of the building. The ceremony was finished by throwing the glass to the floor.


And if you like ducks, here's a photo from the little lake where we then went and grabbed some cake and sausages.

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For more about FAIR, there is a flyer "FAIR: Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research" (PDF file, 4.2 MB), and a longer "FAIR brochure" (PDF file, 17.9 MB).

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TAGS: physics, GSI, FAIR

Summer Solstice in Germany

This morning at 5:45 UTC was this year's summer solstice: On its annual apparent path across the celestial globe, the Sun has reached its northernmost point. In the northern hemisphere, today is the day of year with the longest period of daylight.

Unfortunately, here in Germany we cannot really enjoy it - it has been grey and rainy most of the time. Here is an interesting view of Germany today, an animation of the pattern of rainfall over three hours in the early evening:

Source: www.wetteronline.de.

Colours show precipitation from radar data, coded from light blue for a slight drizzle to magenta for heavy rain. There is a counter-clockwise rotating vortex of clouds, typical for a zone of slight low-pressure, sitting just over Germany. I hope it won't stay there for the rest of the summer.

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Hello from Germany

Every time I arrive at the airport in Frankfurt and go through passport control under the EU circle of stars it strikes me how GERMAN the border officials look. Maybe it's just that the uniforms are green instead of blue, or maybe it's because noticeably more of them are blond and blue-eyed than South-, East-, and Westward of here, but without that intimidating Viking chill you find further North. And if you arrive from North-America it's impossible not to notice how silent they are. They might just give my passport an uninterested look, hand it back, and nod over my shoulder to the next person. The guy on Wednesday was comparably chatty and mumbled “Schön Tach noch” (about: have a nice day).

And as usual, Germany looks different from the inside than from the outside. The only thing I seem to read in newspapers and magazines overseas about Germany is the chancellor Angela Merkel's hesitation to throw more of taxpayer's money out of the window, which drowns these day in a vast sea of articles about layoffs, commentaries on The Great Recession, declines in consumer spending, rises in unemployment and other over-interpreted statistics. Browsing through a German newspaper however, reporting on the financial crisis remains in the business sector. Unlike six years ago, so far nobody of my friends or relatives has lost his job, and I haven't noticed any unusually large amount of closing sales either. Instead, Frankfurt has just "added a new dimension to shopping" with a recently opened 8 floor storehouse on Frankfurt's main shopping street Zeil, named in best Germenglish “MyZeil.” I have the best intention to visit the place and to support the German economy with my new credit card (in case Stefan recalls where he put the respective letter from the bank, cough).

Instead of global or national hiccups in the financial systems, the topics of the month are apparently the upcoming NATO summit in April in Kehl, and the country is still collectively in shock about the recent school shooting where a nutcase of a teenager killed 15 people.

Besides this, Germany has a federal election upcoming this year in September, meaning the election campaigns are slowly starting. As a consequence everybody is criticizing everybody else. Dirk Kurbjuweit (a well-known journalist) just published a book “Angela Merkel: Die Kanzlerin für alle?” (Chancellor for Everybody?) portraying her as too eager to please everybody and having lost direction. And Daniel Friedrich Sturm wrote a book “Wohin geht die SPD?” (Where does the Social Democratic Party go?). That's a good question indeed, maybe somebody should have asked it like 20 years ago. But what's really new about this is that, guess what, the guy has a blog.

Speaking of books, Lee Smolin's book “The Trouble with Physics” will be published in German on April 14th under the title “Die Zukunft der Physik: Probleme der String-Theorie und wie es weiter geht” (The Future of Physics: Problems of String-theory and how it will go on), according to the blurb “ein erfrischend provozierenden Buch” - a “refreshingly provocative book.”

The End of Arrogance?

Spiegel - one of the major German weekly magazines - had a cover story this week titled

THE END OF ARROGANCE
America Loses Its Dominant Economic Role

Unusually enough, I read it. Unusually because I don't typically read essays about economy. What stunned me about this article was the quite obvious cheerfulness, the finger pointing, the Schadenfreude. It's a rather lengthy writing, but let me just give you some adjectives for a taste.

G.W. Bush is called “old,” “erratic,” “unkempt,” what he said is “absurd” according to an unnamed German diplomat, he was a “laughing stock” at the UN meeting, the “lame duck president whom the rest of the world is no longer taking seriously” . The Bush administration was “immoderately self-confident,” and “offended even some of its best friends” .

The United States is no longer “muscular and arrogant” , the article says, no longer “the superpower that sets the rules for everyone else and that considers its way of thinking and doing business to be the only road to success”. American turbo-capitalism comes crashing down in a giant snowball system, they write, it was an “irrational exuberance”. They proclaim an “erosion of American supremacy”.

The second part of the article is considerably less polemic and more contentful, possibly somebody else wrote it. While I was visiting Germany the last weeks, I've come across several articles in that spirit, though most were not quite as blunt.

While I was reading this essay two things came into my mind. First, it looks like the authors were striving to replace American arrogance with European arrogance. Second, it's a very premature judgement. Premature because I doubt anybody knows what the consequences of the present crisis will look like for Europe. Premature also because Americans won't give up their conviction of an alleged “supremacy” that readily.

Now today, they post a selection of several letters received in reply to this article, see

Is America Arrogant?

Well, here are some extracts:

“The financial crisis will pass and [...] the US will be stronger than ever.” -- Alice Griffin, New York City.

“The current "crisis" is less a debacle than it is an opportunity to do what the US always does, namely step up and fix the problem.” -- Steve Kopper, Washington, DC.

“Please do not be so quick to count us out. This is not a time to despair but, rather, it is an opportunity to make some money, if you are brave and patient.” -- Kurt Christensen, USA.

“With history comes clarity, and Bush will be judged more accurately than he is today. He could care less what people think.” -- a reader from Cary, North Carolina, USA.

“[Y]ou are dead wrong to count Americans out and to count capitalism out. Free markets and capitalism are the only road to prosperity.” -- Mario Faustini, New York.

“Never count out the United States of America. Yes, we are, and will be, going through a period of pain and retraction, but our people are resilient.” -- Steve H., USA.

So, Europe. Can you imagine such a reply from your citizens to a Europe-critical article in an US magazine? I can't. And that's why they will stay ahead of us.

But you know what? After I've complained for 4 years, one now can actually get cash-back on the Debit card in some German grocery stores...

Update Oct 4:

The NYT comments on Germany's reaction to the mortgage crisis:.

Germans tend to be the strait-laced, play-it-safe types in financial matters [...] “Americans have trust in the future and are willing to borrow against it,” said Matthias von Arnim, a German financial expert and author. “The Germans say, ‘In the future everything is going to be worse, so I have to save.’ ”

[...]

In interviews here, German citizens actually seemed less willing to blame the Americans for the troubles at home, pinning the problem on the greed of their own banks.

“The Americans always go first,” said Gesine Wiemer, 40, who works in marketing for a scientific research company, “but the rest of them go along with them.”

The most lopsided tower

According to the Guinness Book of Records, the most lopsided building of the world is no longer the tower of Pisa, but a church tower in the German village of Suurhusen, in the far North-West of the country. It is measured leaning at a 5.19° angle compared to only an 3.97° angle at which the tower of Pisa leans.


[Photo: Church Website]

The church was built in middle of the 13th century, the tower was added in 1450. The tilt of the tower is thought to arise from a combination of its oak wood foundation and wet soil.

However, as Craig Whitlock from the Washington Post reports, this caught by surprise the inhabitants of Bad Frankenhausen, whose "Church of Our Beloved Ladies by the Mountain" is tilded only by 4.4° but is twice as high. So the locals want their church to be acknowledge as the "World's Crookedest Tower".

Germany, the land of crooked and tilted towers ;-)

The world's most powerful woman

holds a PhD in physics.


Congrats Angie!


See: Forbes, The World's 100 Most Powerful Women

The German Academy of Sciences

The UK has its Royal Society, France the Institut de France with its Académie des sciences, Italy has the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, and the US the The National Academies with the National Academy of Sciences, which bring together committees of experts in all areas of scientific and technological endeavor [...] to address critical national issues and give advice to the federal government and the public.

So far, Germany has been missing a comparable institution to produce evidence-based statements as a basis for discussions and political decisions. But since today, The German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina is Germany's first National Academy of Sciences - it was officially appointed so in a ceremony with Germany’s Federal President Horst Köhler, who also took over the patronage of the Leopoldina as the National Academy.

The Leopoldina was founded in January 1652 by four physicians in the Free Imperial City of Schweinfurt to explore Nature to the Benefit of the Human Being, and is named after Emperor Leopold I (1640–1705), who was well-known for his interest in the arts and sciences of his time.

Let's hope that the new Academy will establish a fruitful two-way exchange between the inhabitants of the Ivory Tower and the public, or its elected representatives, respectively.

German Citizenship Test

As previously mentioned, Germany has introduced a citizen test for immigrants. Spiegel Online now has the full version with 33 questions:

TAKE THE CITIZENSHIP TEST
Are You Smart Enough to Be German?

I got 32 right, I failed on the colors in the state flag of North Rhine-Westphalia. Outcome:

"Well done! You would have no problem getting a German passport."

I'm relieved to hear. Particularly nice the question:

Which of the following do Germans traditionally do at Easter?



• Leave pumpkins in front of the door
• Decorate a fir tree
• Paint eggs
• Let off fireworks

Hint: if you follow this blog, you know the answer.

They left out however some of the really important questions, here are my suggestions:

1. Besides being a citizen of Frankfurt, what is a 'Frankfurter'



• A: A bakery
• B: A sausage
• C: A flat tire
• D: A drink mixed of beer and lemonade

2. If a German says he will meet you at three-quarter eight (dreiviertel Acht), what does he mean?



• A: 8:45
• B: 8:15
• C: 7:45
• D: Any time between three quarter to and after eight, ie 7:15 - 8:45

3. What did the crowd chant on Nov. 9th '89 at the Brandenburg Gate?



• A: Lasst uns rein - Let us in
• B: Lasst uns raus - Let us out
• C: Wir sind der Staat - We are the state
• D: Wir sind das Volk - We are the people

4. If a Bavarian tells you to "Grüss Gott" - "Say hello to God", he means



• A: Thank you
• B: Hello
• C: Piss off
• D: I died and went to heaven

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(Answers: 1 - B, 2 - I don't know!, 3 - D, 4 - B)

This and That

• It's summer in the city again - last week saw the first really hot days in Frankfurt. One of the many nice things about Frankfurt is that it's easy to escape to the countryside - the meadows and fields at the foot of the Taunus hills for example are a great place for a after-work walk,
  
  
  
  with the city skyline in the background...
  
  
  
  Both photos have actually been taken from the same place, at around the same time. If you look closely, you can see the shadow of one of the towers projected onto another building, a phenomenon one can witness in Frankfurt at sunset around the summer solstice.
  
  My time in Frankfurt is coming to an end soon, and preparations for the move and all the things involved are one of the main reasons for my sparse blogging activity lately.



• The week also saw the record average price for gasoline so far, with €1.60 per litre, or $9.40 per gallon, which makes commuting to Heidelberg quite expensive. I'm quite happy that my old Twingo is content with a bit more than 5 litres per 100 km, or, eh, has a mileage of about 45 miles per gallon.
  
  I've always found the concept of mileage a bit confusing, not just because of the conversion to strange units such as miles and gallons, but also because of the reciprocal involved. Fortunately, there are now online tools to ease the conversion, and even Google does the job.
  
  It seems that the use of "miles per gallon" can mislead when searching for fuel efficiency - that's because the differences of inverse quantities are not very intuitive. You can check this out for yourself with an (a bit silly...) interactive quiz. But I'm still surprised that this deep insight has made it onto the pages of Science.



• Speaking of Science, this week's edition of the magazine is a Special Issue with reports on results from the first MESSENGER flyby at Mercury last January (subscription required, unfortunately). Which reminds me that I owe someone a longer post about the flyby I should publish soon.

Have a nice weekend!

Do you qualify to be German?

I just read in Spiegel Online that from September on anyone who wants to become a German citizen will have to pass a citizenship test with questions to test applicants' knowledge of the country's history, politics and society.

QUIZZING FOREIGNERS
Germany to Introduce Controversial New Citizenship Test

From 33 question the applicants have to answer 17 correctly. Spiegel has a sample citizen test with 7 questions.

To my own surprise, I answered all of them correctly at first attempt without Googling, even the capital of whats-the-name! My sozi-teacher would have been delighted.

Elegant proofs

Here is a little riddle:

Take a checkerboard, and remove two squares at opposite corners. Is it then possible to find an exact and complete cover of the remaining board using dominoes (two are shown in orange), without overlap and overhang?

There is a surprisingly simple and elegant proof for the negative answer to this question. I've just learned it this afternoon, in a great public talk by mathematician Günter Ziegler, coauthor of "Proofs from the book", current president of the German Association of Mathematicians, and main organiser of the "Year of Mathematics 2008" in Germany.

Starting with the "Year of Physics" in 2000, the German Federal Ministry of Science and Education has dedicated each year since to one particular discipline, and following the humanities in 2007, this year is all about math. As Ziegler writes in the March 2008 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, "The entire year 2008 has been officially declared Mathematics Year in Germany. This has created an unprecedented opportunity to work on the public's view of the subject."

And he used the opportunity, in a talk this afternoon on the occasion of the opening of the Mathematics Year for Frankfurt. He discussed the role of proof in mathematics, and then gave examples of actual elegant proofs of geometrical problems using colorations of the plane. The checkerboard riddle was just the first of them - he ended explaining the steps of a quite surprising proof that a square can not be decomposed into an odd number of triangles of equal area. I was amazed to see how I was guided by him through the steps and the idea of the proof - it's exciting to follow a talk like this! And my impression was that the 300 or so people in the audience have felt the same. Most of them, however, were faces I knew from the math department, or students and teachers. It would be great if such an event will attract even more people from the interested public.

Have a nice weekend - and if you want to solve the checkerboard riddle by yourself, don't read the comments - I'm convinced the answer will be there pretty soon!

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Unfortunately, the slides of the talk are not online. Here are, roughly, the steps of the proof of the impossibility to decompose the square into an odd number of triangles of equal area: Start by colouring the rational points of the unit square in three different colours, using a scheme depending on the enumerator and denominator of the coordinates of the point. Then, convince yourself that each decomposition of the square into triangles (with corners in the rational points) contains at least one triangle with three different colours for the three corners. It comes out that this triangle, because of the rules chosen for colouring, has an area with an even denominator. Hence, in a decomposition into triangles with equal area, it cannot be part of a decomposition into an odd number of triangles. Use some heavy machinery to promote this proof from rational corner points to any corner points of the triangles, and you're done. If you find an error in this description, it's probably my fault - you may consult the original papers, "A Dissection Problem" by John Thomas, Mathematics Magazine 41 No. 4 (Sep. 1968), 187-190 (via JSTOR; subscription required), and "On Dividing a Square Into Triangles" by Paul Monsky, The American Mathematical Monthly 77 No. 2 (Feb. 1970) 161-164 (via JSTOR, subscription required).

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Tag: Mathematics Year

Hazardous Quantum Mechanics

Quantum mechanics is hazardous - make sure to wear a lab coat and protective goggles when handling delicate formulas!

(Found under the heading "Research" at academics.com, the online job market for higher-education professionals who are aiming to develop their career in Germany, Austria or Switzerland. I wonder what the operators of the web site know and think about their target group?)

This and That

• Perimeter Institute is now accepting postdoc applications for the next academic year. More info on the website. The deadline is Nov 5.



• The German Media Group Burda joins the Seed Media Group to introduce science blogs in Germany. According to FAZ.net they call their target group 'Leonardos', defined as 'young people who are interested in science, but also politics and arts' (you further ought to be living in a metropolis and have a decent salary, just so you know). Marcel Reichart, Burda's CEO in Research and Development, hopes 'science blogs as media markets of the next generation could bridge the gap between science and the public'. (Thanks to Stefan).



• Flip has started an interesting series of posts around the Web2.0, so far there is Part I and Part II. Since I was about to utter something about that topic as well, I encourage you to read these really informative exposes first.



• In the spirit of yesterday's discussion about the many mathematical worlds, here is a remark from Achim Kempf that I thought might humor you, made at the end of Max Tegmark's colloquium here at PI last Winter (the very last minute of the audio):
  
  
  "If I understood you correctly there would be part of the universe where everything is pretty much the same as here [...] You would be there, we would be here, but you'd be telling us exactly the opposite - so why should I believe you?"
  
  
  According to Garrett, the answer is that a Tegmark telling the opposite wouldn't be as pretty.
  
  Saturday's talk that caused me to wake up in the early morning from a dream in which I was a holomorphic function, is now online.



• Spell check wants to replace 'holomorphic' with 'Hallmark', so much about the Mathematical Universe.



• Neil informs us that today CBS starts a new series Big Bang Theory - according to their website 'a new comedy that shows what happens when two hyperintelligent scientists meet a beautiful woman'. Once again, I am happy not to own a TV. Let's hope they explain at least the basics of string theory, it could come in handy every now and then.



• If one turns the PI logo around it reads Id.



• I got a salary increase for sitting around a whole year without doing anything too obviously embarrassing. Therefore, here is my conclusion from the Many World's at 50 conference that ended today:
  
  
  "We are
  
  Living in a material world
  And I am a material girl
  You know that we are living in a material world
  And I am a material girl"
  
  
  
  ~Madonna



• Have a nice day

Auenland

Most Germans believe to know that the Saarland, named after the Saar river, is an industrial region of coal and steel, quite poor now because of the decline of these industries, that it has something to do with France (or is it actually part of it?), and that it provides a convenient unit of area.

There is some truth to most of these points: Every child in Saarland learns at school that about 1 million people live here on an area of 50 × 50 = 2.500 km² (about 1000 square miles, a bit smaller than Rhode Island). In the first half of last century, the Saar region changed several times between France (or French administration) and Gemany, but since 50 years now, the Saarland has been part of the Federal Republic of Germany. And no, French is not the native language of the Saarländer. Coal and steel industries, once the important pillar of the local economy, have vanished during the last years. One of the disused steel mills, the Völklinger Hütte, now features on the UNESCO World Heritage List, and the last coal mines will be closed by 2018.



But even though the former industrial regions along the Saar river valley are very densely populated, the Saarland has never been at all a dusty and rusty region, but, on the contrary, very green. Most visitors are pleasantly surprised to find a landscape of gentle hills, with small villages interspersed between meadows, fields, and woods. That's especially so in the northern parts of the Saarland, where I grew up.



I am happy that also Bee has taken to the charme of this region. When we visited my mother over last weekend, she told me that she had been reminded of Auenland, home of the Hobbits in Middle Earth, since she had first seen it.

In case you want to come to Auenland, where she has taken the above photos (click to enlarge), you have to travel to here.

AvH's 10 point plan

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation is the master of science networking among the German non-profit foundations. If you've managed to get one of their scholarships you become part of their brotherhood for a lifetime, including a membership card - Unfortunately I don't know about the secret handshake, since I've never even applied. The largest drawback of their scholarships is that one can only apply to a host who is also a member (Humboldtianer!), which was the reason for me to choose the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) instead.

However, I've just found that AvH came up with a ten point plan of recommendations "for making Germany more attractive for international cutting-edge researchers". Their suggestions make a lot of sense to me and I find the press release worth mentioning. Even though some of it (2./7.) addresses specifically German problems, especially the points 9. and 10. apply to many other countries as well, so does 4., and 3. is generally a good idea (that I too have mentioned repeatedly, and in my opinion an issue that will become more important the more complex and global the scientific community becomes). Let us hope that all these pretty word-ideas will have concrete consequences in the not to far future.

For the full text, see here. In brief the points are:

1. More jobs for scientists and scholars

On average, German professors supervise 63 students. This is more than twice as many as the average at top-rank international universities.

2. Academic careers need planning certainty: establishing tenure track as an option for junior researchers

German universities must take measures to plan the career stage between a doctorate and a secure professorship and make it compatible internationally. On the pattern of the Anglo-Saxon tenure track, clear, qualifying steps should be defined at which decisions are made about remaining at an institution.

3. Career support as an advisory and supervisory task of academic managers

Senior academics as well as university and/or institute directors must play an active role in human resources development for their junior researchers. Young scientists and scholars need careers advice.

4. Promoting early independence by taking risks in financing research

By international comparison, young academics in Germany have less scope for decision-making and action. Funding programmes for early, independent research must be strengthened. Especially for researchers at an early stage in their careers, procedures should be profiled for research work involving an unknown risk factor.

5. Making recruitment and appointments more professional

Appointment procedures must have an open outcome and be transparent. To this end, commissions charged with appointments must include external or independent expert reviewers. Good academics should be appointed quickly. Internationally respected universities can no longer afford to take years over appointments, particularly as universities and research establishments now actively have to recruit junior researchers internationally to a much greater extent than they did in the past.

6. Dissolve staff appointment schemes and adapt management structures

Rigid staff appointment schemes must make way for flexible appointment options, or be dissolved. Independent junior research group leaders must be put on a par with junior professors within the universities and in collaborations between universities and non-university research establishments.

7. Creating special regulations for collective wage agreements in the academic sector

According to many of those involved, the new wage agreement for the public service sector is not commensurate with appropriate remuneration for academic and non-academic staff at non-university and university research establishments. By comparison with other pay-scales, it is not competitive, either nationally or internationally, it restricts mobility, and its rigid conditions do not take account of the special features of academic life.

8. Internationally competitive remuneration

It must be ensured that cutting-edge researchers can be offered internationally competitive remuneration. The framework for allocating remuneration to professors currently valid at universities leaves too little scope for this.

9. Internationalising social security benefits

Internationally mobile researchers often have to accept major disadvantages or financial losses with regard to pension rights.

10. Increasing transparency and creating an attractive working environment

Includes:

• Academic employers in Germany must be put in a position to offer organisational and financial support for removal and relocation which is already the norm in other countries, especially when top-rank academic personnel are appointed.
• Child-care facilities for internationally mobile researchers at universities and non-university research establishments must be expanded quickly and extensively. International appointments in Germany still often fail because there is a lack of child-care facilities.
• Careers advice and support for (marital) partners seeking employment as well as so-called dual career advice or support for academic couples are required to attract internationally mobile researchers. Examples from abroad indicate that this does not necessarily mean concrete job offers ( which are often difficult to find), rather, intelligent counselling can satisfy many people's needs.

Related: See also The LHC Theory Initiative, The Terrascale Alliance, Temporary Display, and Temporary Display - Contd.

Terascale Alliance

The German Helmholtz Association has formed an alliance 'Physics at the Terascale' which is specifically designed to support elementary high energy particle physics. The research center DESY, together with Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, 17 further universities and the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich will focus their research endeavors within this program. Moreover, it provides funding especially for 'junior scientists' ('junior' being a synonym for untenured, possibly without habilitation - the latter being one of the most stupid features of the German academic system).

As the DESY press release from May 15th says:

"More than 50 new positions for scientists, engineers and technicians will be financed with Alliance funds during the initial five-year period. Junior scientists in particular are given the opportunity to lead research groups with options for tenure positions, opening up attractive perspectives for a future in particle physics. Joint junior positions at all partner institutes, coordinated recruitment and teaching substitutes for scientists who are abroad make it possible to work at large-scale international research institutes without interfering with teaching duties. "

To me this sounds very promising indeed - as many of the recent developments in the German scientific environment, e.g. the 'Excellence Initiative' has by now noticeably increased the number of interesting job opportunities, and the Emmy Noether program, which provides especially young researches with an attractive financial support (though the tenure option is missing).

In the last decades, Germany must have lost a lot of young scientists to the US because the research programs have been too inflexible and conservative. Just to give you an example, about 5 years ago we have had a well working group on physics beyond the standard model in Frankfurt and we applied for funding. Our proposal was declined with the argument that it doesn't fit into the already existing research (in this case heavy ion/nuclear physics). Needless to say, that was the reason why we wrote the proposal in the first place. As a consequence, I moved to the States, and the group basically fell apart. Sadly enough, this story is quite typical for research at German universities (keyword: Forschungsschwerpunkt).

Ironically, I learned about this from Physics Today, and not the German equivalent which is called Physik Journal. Though I am a member in both physics societies, I prefer the APS version which imo is better balanced between theory and experiment.

The Teddy Factory

A somewhat belated 'Hello' from Germany!

What is new here? Well, the whole country is upset about the G8 summit in a city that nobody had ever heard of before. Border security has been enhanced, and Lufthansa had all passengers sniffed at by a huge dog. I can also report that Lufthansa meal sizes have increased again, they still serve liquor for free, and my flight was otherwise a classical chicken-or-pasta event. Besides this: congratulations America! When I was here last time late 2006, newspapers were praising the USA for remembering democracy, now you've succesfully regained global-asshole status (I am currently not in the mood to elaborate on global energy scarcity, for an extended version of my opinion, see Global Warming.)

Sure sure, America is still faster, bigger, better: Germany still doesn't have penny trays (I consider that to be one of the most important advantages of the USA), they still don't know what 'cash back' is, and shops are still closed when I finally find the time to go there.

Something completely different: since all-my-mother's-children have moved out and the cat died, the house gets populated by an ever increasing amount of handmade Teddy bears.

[Figure: Representavive sample of the German population -- Can you find out which item does not fit in?]

Black - Red - Gold

Germany vs. Sweden 2:0

My younger brother just came back to Germany from a vacation in Sweden. He also said, he almost didn't recognize Germany! Within only a couple of weeks, German flags appeared everywhere. Flags are hanging out of windows, on street lamps, trees, and cars. (The latter apparently breaks off easily -- I have seen them frequently flying around on the Autobahn.) Yesterday, we drove through Frankfurt after the soccer game was over, and everywhere people were waving flags. Some wore them as skirts, some as capes, some knotted them around their dogs. I saw many people having flags painted to their cheeks.

In the stores you can literally buy everything in the national colors: T-shirts, bags, hats, caps, shoes, scarves. But we are lacking behind of the US - I haven't yet seen cookies in black-red-gold...

Temporarily the German flags were sold out. But Taiwan quickly delivered more...

To me this is really stunning. If you didn't grow up in Germany, it might be hard to believe, but before this summer, you could hardly find a national flag anywhere. I remember a comment on my post Excuse me

The one thing I noticed in West Germany and West Berlin in the 1980's, was that the German national flag was almost nowhere to be seen. [...] In other countries like America, England, France, etc ... the national flags were everywhere.

Indeed, if you had been driving around with a national flag on your car, you probably would have been stopped by the police and been asked if you have a problem. The national flag has been displayed so rarely, many people apparently didn't know which side is the upper one, some others bought Belgian flags instead.

Two days ago, I found in the Frankfurt Rundschau the article I had been waiting for. The delegate from the PDS (the former communist party) Julia Bonk call the flags a 'nationalist's symbol introduced through the back door' which 'causes suppression of those in our country who think different'.

Yesterday, we took off the flowers and balloons from the car and Stefan bought a flag to attach to his window. (At least he tried. He then noticed that he forgot his purse.) Some days ago, I just had to get a flag and walk through the streets with it. I admit I was kind of afraid someone would start accusing me to be a Nazi. Instead, I got smiles and cheers, people waved at me from cars and houses. A small child pointed at my flag and said: Daddy, what is that. And daddy said proudly: It's the German flag. It's black-red-gold.

I don't particularly like the colours of the German flag (I actually find the US flag much nicer), but it's great to see Germany in such a good mood.