Alexei Gilchrist customised a very good LaTeX thesis template for Macquarie University, Faculty of Science students. It can be found on his blog here http://ectropy.info/2009/03/latex-thesis-templates. I have made some minor changes to the template:

1) The "hyperref" macros package is now included in the class file and can be activated by using the option "foronline" in the document class options ( \documentclass[foronline]{mqthesis} ). Citations and references will then be hyperlinked within the document as will links to external sites and emails. The thesis index it also hyperlinked to the chapter and sections. All of this really only works if you are using pdflatex to make your pdf document. If you want to make a pdf copy for black and white printing just leave out "foronline".

2) A \pdfinfo section is also included in the thesis.tex file. This includes meta data into the pdf document, such as title, author and keywords.

For more info on the changes and how the template works, see the readme file and the documentation within the thesis.tex file and the mqthesis.cls (if you have to make changes) class file.

I think the LaTeX thesis template is pretty much perfect for Macquarie University students in the Faculty of Sciences as it is now. To use this thesis template for your faculty just get the right Macquarie University logo for your faculty. I tried to find these to include them, but gave up eventually. They were easy to find once, but now they are gone. WTF MQ?

Adapting the mqthesis LaTeX template to your university:

1) Get your university logo and slap it in the UNIlogos folder and rename it mqlogo.
2) Open the mqthesis.cls file in a text/tex editor.
   a) Search for all "Macquarie University" and change to your uni's name.
   b) If you want to change the bibliography style search for "\bibliographystyle" and change it to something you like.
3) Fiddle with the margin sizes if your uni is particular about these, other wise just leave as is.
4) Save your changes.    

Yep, and that's about it, you can change the way the chapter headings look by playing with  "\usepackage[grey,times]{quotchap}", enjoy and happy thesising.

The template can be downloaded from here:  http://members.iinet.net.au/~johannelna/mqthesis_v23.zip

 

No  one solved the riddle from two weeks ago (hats), i'm still wating for the answer.

Light bulbs

You are standing in front of a wall with 100 light bulbs and 100 switches numbered 1 to 100.
the light bulbs  are all off, and the switches have the following effect:
flipping a switch will change the state of all the bulbs that are multiples of that switch (so flipping 10 will change the state of 10,20,30,40..100)
you decide to flip the switches one by one, how many light bulbs will be lit at the end?

flipping the first switch(1) will turn all the bulbs on, flipping the second (2) will then turn off all the even numbers etc... finally turning the 100th switch (100) will change the state of the 100th bulb.


enjoy.

No one solved last week's riddle yet so here's a small hint.
The answer is 1, but what's the algorithm?
For all those who asked, the prisoners cannot use any special methods
like timing their answers etc... the only information each prisoner can send is a single bit (i.e either black or white) but
that has to also be his guess for the hat.

In the mean while, here's a simple one

what are the next numbers in this series

18, 46, 94, 63, 52, ...

In a really harsh prison the sadistic warden decided to give 100 prisoners the following task:
They must stand in a line, and he will put a hat on each of their heads. The hats can be either black or white. Then each prisoner will be allowed to say one word, either "black" or "white", trying to guess what hat he has. At the end of the game, all prisoners who got their color right will be released, all the rest will be killed. If any prisoner brakes any rule (looks backwards, says any other word, jumps , pokes, etc..) everyone will be killed.

What is their best strategy to get the minimum amount of prisoners killed ? How many prisoners are risking their lives using such a strategy?
The can decide on the stratagy ahead of time.

Again the rules. They all follow the algorithm. They can all hear what the fellow prisoners say. Each prisoner can see all the guys ahead of him , but non of those behind. They can all say either "black" or "white" once but the order of talking is
whatever they want. The number of black and white hats is unknown (but there are  100 hats in total). 

 

 

A few people solved last week's murder mystery. It's quite obvious that Bill killed his brother hoping the girl would come to the funeral.
While the logical connection is simple, it takes a twisted mind to see the solution. The story is that this riddle was used to test psychopaths.
This makes this weeks hike very interesting since Lauri , Ingo and me all solved the riddle. (and it's on Halloween).
As for 2000!mod2003 Gavin is the only one who solved it. I guess i owe you a beer.

Today's riddle requires some thought although it seems easy at first sight.

What is the longest day on the equator, how long is it?
what is the shortest day, how long is that?

Think about your answer.

Last weeks riddle has not been solved by anyone yet. I'm giving you all a chance to try it again for another week.

In the meanwhile i have a small hint: The answer is 1001 - but how do you calculate it? The beer offer still stands.

And another easy but interesting riddle. This one took me 10 seconds to solve, but more about that next week....

The riddle:

During his mother's funeral Bill saw the most beautiful girl he has ever seen. It was love at first sight

for him, but being distracted for one second he lost sight of her and did not see her again....

Two weeks later Bill's brother was murdered

Who killed him and why?

Please don't post the answer to this one here, send me an email, tell me the answer or just keep it to yourself

I will give the answer next week.

And don't forget 2000!mod2003.

Cirac, Wineland, and Zoller have been awarded the 2010 Franklin Medal in physics:

For their theoretical proposal and experimental realization of the first device that performs elementary computer-logic operations using the quantum properties of individual atoms.

See:

http://www.fi.edu/franklinawards/10/bf_physics.html

 

 

Thanks to Charles Clark for posting this info on Facebook.

For those interested in cellular complexes--and if you care about quantum computing, topological phases, or quantum gravity, this means you---there is an exhibition of wire sculptures not to be missed at the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art this month.  The creator, Neil Taylor, is a sculptor based in Melbourne.  When finished with the cold hard scientific motifs there is plenty good warm and fuzzy art to see as well.

Well done to Johann, Ingo and all others who solved last week's riddle. I was surprised to find that my solution was not as good as theirs.
As i promised , this week i'll give a hard one. It took me a month to solve and i'll buy a uni bar guiness to the first person to solve it this week. Since it involves a calculation I don't want only the answer but also the general method for solving it without a computer. A mathematician friend of mine solved it in about 5 mins and said any decent mathematician should be able to solve it in less then 10.
The riddle: 2000!mod2003
where ! is factorial and mod is the modulo defined as the operation that finds the remainder of division of one number by another eg 7mod5=2 or 39mod3=0.

Hint:2003 is a prime number

If you know the easy (mathematician's solution) you don't get a beer.

Have fun.

Hi all,
The only person to send me an answer to last week's riddle was Johann. So this week I'm going for an easy one with the promise of a really hard one next week.

After building a 100 story tower, the engineers were faced with a new problem. What's the highest level from which you safely throw an egg without it braking. As usual with the budgeting of such large projects, getting money for the little things is hard and the engineers were given only two eggs to find the maximum height. This could be an easy problem , but being computer engineers rather then civil engineers they decided they must find the fastest "worst case" method of getting the answer i.e the minimum number of eggs throws in the worst case scenario.

here is an example of a bad method. start on the first floor and throw the egg, if it doesn't break go to the second etc.. until the egg breaks. In the worst case this will require 99 tests.

Remember you have 2 eggs, and by the end of the test , both can (and should) be broken.

What is the minimum number of throws in the worst case? (what algorithm do you use).

You can send the answer by email.

Hint: the number is between 2 and 34.