April 2014

Issue 60

Job opportunities

Visible and Infrared Remote Sensing Postdoc position

ISR-2 Space and Remote Sensing Los Alamos NM USA

The Space and Remote Sensing Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory is seeking outstanding applicants to fill postdoctoral research positions in visible and infrared remote sensing. Our team carries out multi-disciplinary programs in theory, modeling, instrumentation, experimentation, field deployment, data analysis, and data exploitation. We conduct research in passive remote sensing to support the Department of Energy non-proliferation mission. LANL offers a stimulating environment of diverse, world-class science, in a beautiful mountain setting, where scientists pursue research to solve problems of national significance.

---------For details see

https://jobszp1.lanl.gov/OA_HTML/OA.jsp?page=/oracle/apps/irc/candidateSelfService/webui/Vi

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1&transactionid=894379746&retainAM=N&addBreadCrumb=RP&p_svid=33139&p_spid=1518180&oapc=6&oa

s=FtpQ7CRnLmwpma4S5oDWYQ..

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Position for an optical scientist at Finnish Geodetic Institute

A post doc, doctoral student, or visiting scientist position is open at Finnish Geodetic Institute (FGI) http://www.fgi.fi, funded by the Academy of consortium with the Universities of Helsinki and Jyvaskyla. The project goals are to model scattering from snow, soil, regoliths and individual particles, validate and gain understanding experimentally, and develop new extra innovative remote sensing and astronomical techniques.

FGI is a governmental research institute with about 80 employee, and very high research profile. The scattering laboratory hosts the FIGIFIGO field gonio-spectro-polarimeter, several light sources, spectrometers, lasers, monocromators, cameras, reference targets, UAVs. The institute is located at Masala, 25 km from Helsinki, and 15 km from Espoo, at idyllic suburb area and is easily reached from Helsinki city centre by train within 40 minutes.

Duties of the employee include design, building, maintaining and operating optical measurement instruments and processing tools, including FIGIFIGO, polarised light sources and new systems. May include also some other research tasks, teaching or support work for other FGI projects or for the University of Helsinki. Excellent researcher training and team spirit will be provided.

Required skills

MSc or PhD in physics, engineering or relevant disciplines,

excellence in optical instrument design and building,

basic understanding on electromagnetic waves and light scattering

good written and spoken English.

Driving license and good programming skill are an advantage. The position requires some physical efforts, travel, and field work, but is suitable for both genders and all ages.

Salary will be based on governmental standards and qualifications, presumably between 2500 and 3500 E at start. Contract will be initially made for 1 year, with good possibilities for continuation.

The position will be filled as soon as possible, when the suitable candidate is found. To apply for this position please send a free form motivation letter along with your CV and list of publication to Dr. Jouni Peltoniemi preferably in April.

More information

Dr. Jouni.Peltoniemi@fgi.fi, +3585062689, project leader, remote sensing applications,

Dr. Maria.Gritsevich@fgi.fi, application scientist, meteorites

MSc Teemu.Hakala@fgi.fi, automation engineer, current instrument master,

Prof. Karri.Muinonen@helsinki.fi, team leader, planetary applications, modeling

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Call for Nominations: The 2014 Elsevier/JQSRT Raymond Viskanta Award

This Elsevier young-scientist award, sponsored by the Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer, in the category of Radiative Transfer is named after Professor Raymond Viskanta of Purdue University, Indiana, USA to honor his profound contributions to The field of Radiative Transfer since late 1950s. He is a W. F. M. Goss Professor Emeritus of Engineering at Purdue and a member of US National Academy of Engineering. He has written more than 500 papers, has guided more than 85 graduate students, and has influenced many engineers and researchers during his stellar career. 

The Viskanta Award will be competed among early-career scientists and engineers who work on the theory and application of radiative transfer (including thermal sciences, atmospheric radiation, optical sciences, near- and far-field radiation transfer, remote sensing or all other relevant areas) will be eligible. The Award will be presented at the 2nd International Workshop on Nano-Micro Thermal Radiation (NanoRad'14) taking place from June 6-9, 2014 in Shanghai, China.

A nominee:

* Can be an undergraduate, a graduate or a post-graduate student, or in his/her early career path with an outstanding record of scholarship and/or applications;

* Has not received a JQSRT Young Scientist Award previously;

* Has published in JQSRT previously, although this requirement may be relaxed in exceptional cases;

* Must be under 37 years of age on June 1, 2014 or finished his/her PhD within the 10 years preceding that date;

* Must present a paper at NanoRad'14;

* Must attend the award ceremony at NanoRad'14.

The recipient of the award will be awarded a monetary prize of USD 750 and an official certificate. The winner will be selected by the JQSRT Editors-in-Chief (M.P. Menguc, M. Mishchenko, L. S. Rothman) and the NanoRad'14 Chairs, and will be announced during the conference dinner.

The nomination package of a candidate should be sent to M.P. Meguc (pinar.menguc@ozyegin.edu.tr) by April 15th, 2014. The package should include a cover letter, the CV and the PDFs of up to 5 best peer-reviewed journal papers. Please note that any nominee to be considered for the Elsevier/JQSRT Raymond Viskanta Award, should present a paper at NanoRad'14. 

M. Pinar Menguc

Editor-in-Chief Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer

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MEETINGS

The 15th Conference on Electromagnetic and Light Scattering (ELS-XV) is tentatively scheduled to take place in Leipzig, Germany in June of 2015. It is expected that this conference will feature the presentation of the following Elsevier/JQSRT awards:

* The 2015 Hendrik C. Van de Hulst Award from Elsevier for landmark contributions in the field of electromagnetic scattering.

* The 2014 and 2015 Peter C. Waterman Awards from Elsevier/JQSRT for outstanding contributions by early-career scientists in the field of electromagnetic scattering.

* The 2014 and 2015 Richard M. Goody Awards from Elsevier/JQSRT for outstanding contributions by early-career scientists in the field of atmospheric radiation and remote sensing.

Detailed information about the awards will be provided later.

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Cosmic Dust (second circular)

WEBSITE: https://www.cps-jp.org/~dust/

VENUE: Umeda Satellite Campus of Osaka Sangyo University Osaka station 3 building (Osaka Ekimae 3rd Bldg.), 19th floor 1-1-3, Umeda, Kita-ku, Osaka 530-0001, JAPAN

DATE: Monday, August 4 - Friday, August 8, 2014

OBJECTIVES: This series of Cosmic Dust meetings aims at finding a consensus among experts on the formation and evolution of cosmic dust: where it comes from and where it goes. The meeting is organized by dust freaks who are very enthusiastic not only to make the goal achievable but also to establish a dust community across every scientifically relevant discipline for the development of cosmic dust research. For this reason, the primary objective of the meeting is to bring together professionals who deal with cosmic dust as well as provide an opportunity for participants to develop human relations and interactions among themselves.

SCOPE: All kinds of cosmic dust such as

* intergalactic dust

* circumnuclear dust

* interstellar dust

* protoplanetary disk dust

* debris disk dustq

* cometary dust

* interplanetary dust

* circumplanetary dust

* stellar nebular condensates

* presolar grains

* micrometeorites

* meteoroids

* meteors

* regolith particles

* planetary aerosols

are the subject of discussion. The meeting is open for any aspects of dust research by means of different methods of studies (in-situ and laboratory measurements, astronomical observations, laboratory and numerical simulations, theoretical modeling, data analyses, etc.). All dust-related topics, for example, the formation of molecules and their reactions on and their desorption from the surface of dust particles, are also welcome. Publishing the proceedings of this meeting is currently being planned as a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal, while paper submission to the proceedings is not obligatory.

CONFIRMED INVITED SPEAKERS

* Mike A`Hearn ``Cometary volatiles: Icy grains and drivers of activity''

* Til Birnstiel ``Dust in protoplanetary disks''

* Erika Gibb ``Interstellar ices''

* Mika Juvela ``Dust in cold molecular clouds''

* Mike Kelley ``Dust in comet ISON''

* Antonio Mario Magalhaes ``Interstellar polarization: A tool for studying magnetic fields''

* Rachel Mason ``Dust in active galactic nuclei''

* Johan Olofsson ``Dust mineralogy in protoplanetary and debris disks''

* Takashi Onaka ``The lifecycle of dust grains in the interstellar medium''

* Aurélie Rémy-Ruyer ``Herschel observations of dust in nearby galaxies''

* Toru Yada ``Curation and characteristics of Hayabusa-returned particles''

ADMISSIONS APPLICATION: Please complete online meeting application at the CPS website in order to attend the meeting (deadline: May 13, 2014, 11:59 p.m. Japan Standard Time). https://www.cps-jp.org/~dust/Application.html Because the number of participants shall be limited to approximately 50, the online application does not guarantee admission to the meeting. Participants will be determined at the discretion of the SOC and all applicants will be notified of the admissions decision by May 31, 2014. Priority will be given to those who contribute to oral or poster sessions and retain enthusiasm for discussions throughout the meeting. For further details, please visit the Cosmic Dust website.

REGISTRATION FEE: The early bird rate of 10,000 JPY is available for those who complete both admissions application and abstract submission by April 30, 2013. The registration fee for those who complete admissions application on and after May 1, 2014 is 15,000 JPY. While no payment is required at the time of admissions application and abstract submission, the registration fee should be paid by cash on arrival at the venue. No matter what circumstances are specified, the registration fee will not be waived.

IMPORTANT DATES:

30 April 2014, Deadline for Early-Bird Application

13 May 2014, Deadline for Admissions Application

31 May 2014, Notification of Admissions Decision

4-8 August 2014, Cosmic Dust

SCIENTIFIC ORGANIZING COMMITTEE (SOC): Hiroshi Kimura (Kobe University, Japan) [Chair], Jean-Charles Augereau (IPAG, France), Cornelia Jäger (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Germany), Hidehiro Kaneda (Nagoya University, Japan), Ludmilla Kolokolova (University of Maryland, USA), Aigen Li (University of Missouri-Columbia, USA)

LOCAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE (LOC): Hiroki Chihara (Osaka Sangyo University) [Chair], Takayuki Hirai (ISAS/JAXA), Akio Inoue (Osaka Sangyo University), Hidehiro Kaneda (Nagoya University), Hiroshi Kimura (Kobe University), Hiroshi Kobayashi (Nagoya University), Hiroki Senshu (Chitec/PERC), Takashi Shimonishi (Kobe University), Ryo Tazaki (Kyoto University), Koji Wada (Chitec/PERC), Daisuke Yamasawa (Tohoku University)

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Hiroshi Kimura dust-inquiries@cps-jp.org

Graduate School of Science, Kobe University

c/o Center for Planetary Science (CPS)

Chuo-ku Minatojima Minamimachi 7-1-48

Kobe 650-0047, Japan

Fax: +81 78 599 6735

SUPPORT AGENCIES: Osaka Sangyo University; Society for Promotion of Space Science

BRIEF HISTORY: The Cosmic Dust meeting started in 2006 as a session called ``Cosmic Dust'' (Asia-Oceania Geoscience Society) annual meeting in Singapore. Dust freaks have kept on organizing the session at subsequent AOGS meetings in Korea (2008), India (2010), and Taiwan (2011). The Cosmic Dust series has been recognized as the most successful session of the AOGS Planetary Sciences Section. In 2012, the time was ripe to be free from organizing restrictions on the AOGS meeting. From that time on, the Cosmic Dust meeting is totally independent of any international conference. The past meetings on Cosmic Dust have been held in a relaxed and joyful atmosphere. So will be the coming one!

Review Paper

Review on Mueller matrix algebra for the analysis of polarimetric measurements

Jose J. Gil J. Appl. Remote Sens. 8(1), 081599 (Mar 17, 2014). doi:10.1117/1.JRS.8.081599

Open access: http://remotesensing.spiedigitallibrary.org/article.aspx?articleid=1850398

Content: Abstract | Introduction | Matricial, Vectorial, and Operatorial Descriptions of the Polarimetric Properties of Linear Media | Anisotropy Coefficients of a Mueller Matrix | Components of Purity of a Mueller Matrix | Indices of Polarimetric Purity | Parallel Decompositions of Mueller Matrices | Polarimetric Subtraction of Mueller Matrices | Serial Decompositions of Pure Mueller Matrices | Serial Decompositions of Depolarizing Mueller Matrices | Arrow Form of a Mueller Matrix | Serial-Parallel Decompositions of a Mueller Matrix | Differential Mueller Matrix and Its Decomposition | Geometric Representation of Depolarizing Mueller Matrices | Geometric Representation of Nondepolarizing Mueller Matrices | Conclusion | Acknowledgments | References ======================================================================================

See recently indexed and summarized papers on the optics of particles and dispersions in TPDSci: http://www.tpdsci.com/Sv_.phplist=SvPdo

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