Huizenruil / Looking for a house in the Netherlands

Wij zoeken een huis in Nederland We zijn een gezin van vier met deels Nederlandse roots en wonen sinds 2010 in Noorwegen: Michael is professor in offshore wind aan de universiteit, en Sanne werkt mee aan het beheer van de Noorse waterkracht. Halldór (2010) houdt van katten, piano spelen, programmeren en gamen. Julie (2014) houdt van tekenen, vechtsport, viool spelen, en alle katachtigen. Dit jaar gaat een lang gekoesterde wens in vervulling en zijn we een tijdje wat dichter in de buurt van familie!

To vaccinate or not?

To vaccinate or not? TL;DR: Current vaccination rates against COVID-19 seem to decrease and there are indications that the vaccination coverage among adults could be less than 85 percent in a number of European countries. Why would a significant number of people not want to vaccinate themselves, especially now that millions of Europeans have already done so (mostly) without any serious complications? It is important to realize that there can be very valid personal reasons for this!

On Mastodon

On Mastodon I am trying to update this site more often and to write more (and more regularly) blog articles. I also joined Mastodon, or rather: Mathstodon, in my case. Have a look at: https://mathstodon.xyz/web/accounts/236287

Copyright for Scientists

Copyright for scientists TL;DR: Copyright protects creative forms of expressions, not the content. In particular, facts or ideas cannot be copyrighted. On the side, we note that therefore mathematical proofs are not copyrightable. Even if something is copyrighted, it is usually possible to use quotations (including images) from such works in your own scientific publications. If in doubt, it is best to get permission from the copyright holder. Otherwise, one needs to check national copyright law - usually quotations are allowed in one’s own creative works, but only if this is necessary for the discussion and the copied amount is not larger than necessary.

Scoping fun in Julia

Background Julia is a high-level programming language that is exceptionally well suited for scientific and mathematical applications. If you are not familiar with it, you should give it a try! Last year, Julia 1.0 was finally released. Among other important changes, it introduced a different set of scoping rules. For the unwary, these can lead to quite unexpected behavior, and in some cases subtle but embarassing errors (I am speaking out of personal experience here!