February 2014
Issue 59
MEETINGS
Astronomical Polarimetry
2014 (ASTROPOL 2014)
This is the second announcement for
ASTRONOMICAL POLARIMETRY 2014. Registration and call for contributions are
open. Please visit our website at: www.polarisation.eu/index.php/astropol-2014
The aim of ASTROPOL 2014 is to bring
together all researchers interested in astronomical polarimetry to discuss the
most recent results and advances, technical and scientific. The 2014 meeting
will be co-organised by the European COST action
"polarisation as a tool to study the solar
system and beyond". See www.polarisation.eu.
Since 2008, spectacular astrophysical
results using polarimetry were obtained in all fields, from the ground and from
space, from the Cosmological Background, to galaxies, to nearby exoplanets and
Solar System objects. New instruments are also coming on-line with ever improving
polarimetric capacities: ALMA, and the high resolution planet finder
instruments GPI on Gemini South and SPHERE on the ESO/VLT, to name just a few.
Future instruments like SKA, LOFAR and the giant optical/NIR telescopes are
also taking shape. This is a very exciting time for polarimetry and ASTROPOL
2014 promises to be just as exciting, rich in new results and technical
advances. The conference is limited to 150 participants.
ASTROPOL 2014 will be held at MINATEC
and WTC. Both are conveniently located near the train station and the main
tramway line serving the city center. The conference rooms are modern, air
conditioned, and adjacent to a large dining hall where coffee breaks and
catered buffet for all participants will be provided every day. The same common
space will also be used to keep posters on display for the full week, allowing
for maximum exposure and lively scientific discussions.
An outline of the conference schedule
is included below. The balance between sessions will evolve as a function of
the number of oral contributions received. There will be ample room to present
posters as well.
For more information, please see our
website or contact us at astropol2014@gmail.com.
Please circulate this message to your
colleagues. We hope to see many of you in Grenoble
Francois Menard, on behalf of the SOC
Key dates before the meetings are:
March 15th, 2014: Third Announcement
April 1st, 2014: closing of early
registration & request for funding from our COST Action
April 1st, 2014: Deadline for submission
of abstracts.
May 1st, 2014: closing of late
registration
May 26-30, 2014: Conference, in
Grenoble France
Outline of Programme
26 May - DAY 1 - New Instrumentation
and Facilities
I- NIR / OPTICAL
II- FIR / submm
/ RADIO
27 May - DAY 2 Lab data and ISM
III- Lab measurement / particle
properties / modeling techniques
IV - ISM / Molecular Clouds / Star
Formation
28 May - DAY 3 (half a day, afternoon
free)
V - Circumstellar Matter
29 May - DAY 4
VI- Stellar Magnetic Fields
VII- Solar System and Exoplanets
30 May - DAY 5 (up to 14h00)
VIII- High energy Objects (GRB, SN)
IX- External Galaxies, AGN's, and CMB
ASTEROIDS, COMETS, METEORS
2014 (ACM'2014)
June 30 -
July 4, 2014, Helsinki, Finland
CALL
FOR ABSTRACTS AND REGISTRATION
Asteroids, Comets, Meteors focuses on the research of small
Solar System bodies. Small bodies are the key to understanding the formation
and evolution of the Solar System, carrying signals from
pre-solar times. Understanding the evolution of the Solar System helps unveil
the evolution of extrasolar planetary systems. Societally,
small bodies will be important future resources of minerals. The near-Earth
population of small bodies continues to pose an impact
hazard, whether it be small pieces of falling meteorites or larger asteroids or
cometary nuclei capable of causing global environmental
effects.
ACM'2014
hosts a special workshop on Absorption, Scattering, and Emission of
electromagnetic radiation from the surfaces of asteroids and cometary nuclei,
cometary comae and tails composed of dust particles,
as well as from meteoroids, meteors, and meteorites. Direct and inverse
problems in polarimetry, photometry, and spectroscopy are assessed using
observational, experimental, numerical, and theoretical methods.
The
conference series entitled "Asteroids, Comets, Meteors"
constitutes the leading international series in the field of small Solar System
bodies. The first three conferences took place in Uppsala, Sweden in 1983,
1985, and 1989. The conference is now returning to Nordic countries after a
quarter of a century. After the Uppsala conferences, the conference has taken
place in Flagstaff, Arizona, U.S.A. in 1991, Belgirate,
Italy in 1993, Paris, France in
1996,
Ithaca, New York, U.S.A. in 1999, in Berlin, Germany in 2002, in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil in 2005, in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. in 2008, and in
Niigata, Japan in 2012. ACM in Helsinki, Finland in 2014 will be the 12th
conference in the series.
The
ACM'2014 Call for Abstracts and Registration is now open at
http://www.helsinki.fi/acm2014/
(e-mail: acm-2014@helsinki.fi
)
Abstracts and registration are due by March
31, 2014
Looking
forward to seeing you in Helsinki,
Karri
Muinonen
Chair,
ACM'2014 Scientific Organizing Committee,
Department
of Physics, University of Helsinki &
Finnish
Geodetic Institute
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ADDA news
Dear ADDA users,
On behalf of ADDA contributors I would
like to bring your attention to the beta-version of ADDA (1.3b4). It has two
exciting new features:
* Rigorous treatment of particles near
the infinite plane surface with full 3D-FFT acceleration.
* Use of point-dipole incident field,
which enables calculation of dipole decay-rate enhancement.
An extensive changelog
is available at doc/history. If you would like to test these new features
and/or use it in your research, please download the ADDA package (both main
package and, if needed, executable for 32- and 64-bit Windows) from:
http://code.google.com/p/a-dda/wiki/Downloads (mind that the latter address is
different from the one used previously).
This version has received a standard
(large) amount of pre-release testing, so it is, in principle, ready for
production runs. Moreover, both new features were tested against alternative
methods/implementations. See, e.g., http://code.google.com/p/a-dda/wiki/ComparisonOtherCodes#Particles_near_surface
But we decided to make a beta-release, since we want to finish a few minor things
before the final release and to collect your feedback on the new features.
Also, we do not recommend you to upgrade to the new version unless you plan to
use new features.
Development of ADDA has always relied
on feedback of users. But now we specifically ask for your opinion. Not only on
the correctness of the implementation (whether ADDA agrees with other methods),
but also on the clarity of the manual, wiki page, and used definitions, as well
as on the convenience of using the new features. Overall, it would be great if
you can use the new features in the production (research) workflow and suggest
how to improve user's experience.
Your feedback is welcome either at the
discussion group - adda-discuss@googlegroups.com
, or directly at the issue tracker, e.g.
http://code.google.com/p/a-dda/issues/detail?id=101
http://code.google.com/p/a-dda/issues/detail?id=149
Finally, please note that ADDA is an
open-source project which development relies on the community around it. There
are many ways to help:
* Using ADDA and advocating its use through
publications and conference presentations. Please also consider citing the
papers from the list http://code.google.com/p/a-dda/wiki/References
.
* Active participation in the
discussion group - http://groups.google.com/group/adda-discuss
, in particular, sharing your experience with other users.
* Commenting and improving wiki pages ( http://code.google.com/p/a-dda/w/list ) and other
documentation.
* Locating bugs and proposing new
features for ADDA, using the issue tracker - http://code.google.com/p/a-dda/issues
.
* Contributing and improving the
source code - http://code.google.com/p/a-dda/wiki/InstructionCommitters
.
Best regards,
Maxim Yurkin.
======================================================================================
See recently
indexed and summarized papers on the optics of particles and dispersions in TPDSci: http://www.tpdsci.com/Sv_.phplist=SvPdo