*** IAU Division D Bulletin N. 6: July 1st, 2015 ***

INDEX:

* Reminder on Commission Organizing Committees elections
* Working Group on Time Domain Astronomy
* Sleeping Beauties in Theoretical Physics
* Upcoming Meetings
* Deceased IAU Members


* Reminder on Commission Organizing Committees elections

Please remember that the deadline for voting for the Members of Commission Organizing Committees
is Wednesday, 8 July 2015, 23:59 CEST. The overview of Commission OC candidates can be found at:

http://www.iau.org/submissions/commission_candidacy/review/

Go to https://www.mi-vote.com/ and please use your unique voting code to make your selection.

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* Working Group on Time Domain Astronomy

Considering the high relevance of this topic also to Division D, we herewith inform that the IAU Working Group on Time Domain Astronomy, chaired by Rob Seaman, was constituted under Division B Commission 5, with the scope of promoting the study of variability - transient, periodic, secular, or aperiodic - across all disciplines of astronomy from the solar system to cosmological distances.

See full description and details at:

http://www.iau.org/science/scientific_bodies/working_groups/219

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* Sleeping Beauties in Theoretical Physics: 26 Surprising Insights

[Springer; 2015 edition] (release date: 18 March 2015)
Author: Thanu Padmanabhan

This book addresses a fascinating set of questions ranging from Newtonian mechanics to quantum field theory and cover several puzzling issues that do not appear in standard textbooks. Some topics cover conceptual conundrums, the solutions to which lead to surprising insights; some correct popular misconceptions in the textbook discussion of certain topics; others illustrate deep connections between apparently unconnected domains of theoretical physics; and a few provide remarkably simple derivations of results which are not often appreciated. Each topic is introduced with proper background discussion and special effort is taken to make the discussion self-contained, clear and comprehensible to anyone with an undergraduate education in physics.

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* Upcoming Conferences, Meetings, Workshops and Schools

Symposia and Focus Meetings at the XXIX IAU GA (Honolulu, 3-14 August 2015) that are particularly relevant to Division D are listed below:

IAU Division D Meeting: http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/IAU-DivisionD/divmeeting2015.html
IAU Symposium 319: http://astronomy2015.org/symposium_319
Focus Meeting n. 6: http://astronomy2015.org/focus_meeting_6
Focus Meeting n. 10: http://astronomy2015.org/focus_meeting_10
Focus Meeting n. 12: http://astronomy2015.org/focus_meeting_12
Focus Meeting n. 14: http://astronomy2015.org/focus_meeting_14
Focus Meeting n. 18: http://astronomy2015.org/focus_meeting_18

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5-th Gamow International Conference in Odessa:
"Astrophysics and Cosmology after Gamow: progress and perspectives",
Odessa, Ukraine, 16-23 August 2015
www.gamow.odessa.ua

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The Universe in High-resolution X-ray Spectra: Current Results and Future
Opportunities
Cambridge, MA, August 19-21, 2015
Website with registration and other details available at http://cxc.harvard.edu/cdo/hrxs2015/

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Exploring the Hot and Energetic Universe:
The first scientific conference dedicated to the Athena X-ray observatory
8-10 September 2015
Please visit the web portal of the conference at:
http://www.sciops.esa.int/index.php?project=CONF2015&page=ATHENA2015

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Summer school on Computational solar and astrophysical modeling
14-18 September 2015
Supercomputing Centre, FZ Juelich, Germany

This summer school will acquaint a generation of young researchers (advanced master students, PhDs, and junior postdoctoral researchers) to modern open-source software efforts adapted to High Performance Computing platforms, with a deliberate focus on hands-on sessions. In these sessions, participants will work with three different open-source software packages, learn about their typical applications and evaluate their performance aspects on massively parallel systems. Participants will make use of the MPI-AMRVAC framework on applications covering plasma dynamics in the solar atmosphere and into the heliosphere. For fully kinetic plasma modeling of e.g. the Earth's magnetosphere, they will work with iPic3D. Participants will also be introduced to the open source Swift cosmological particle hydrodynamics code.

Dedicated compute time on the FZ Julich supercomputers will be available, allowing participants to explore scaling aspects, perform data analysis and visualization (using Paraview and Visit), while working on representative state-of-the-art scientific simulations. The school is open to a maximum of 28 participants, and is supported by a
Belgian Belspo-funded Interuniversity Attraction Pole P7/08
CHARM (http://wis.kuleuven.be/CHARM) connecting heliospheric to astrophysical communities.

Registration at:

http://www.fz-juelich.de/ias/jsc/EN/Expertise/Workshops/Conferences/CSAM-2015/_node.html

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Demographics and environment of AGN from multi-wavelength surveys
CHANIA, Crete, Greece
21-24 SEPTEMBER 2015
http://xraygroup.astro.noa.gr/conferences2015

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International Meeting on HIGH-ENERGY PHENOMENA IN
RELATIVISTIC OUTFLOWS V
La Plata city, October 5-8, 2015
http://hepro5.iar.unlp.edu.ar/

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The New High Energy Sky after a Decade of Discoveries
(2015 INTEGRAL Workshop)
Rome, Italy, 5-9 October 2015
http://www.iaps.inaf.it/sz/integral2015/

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OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE OF GAS ACCRETION ONTO GALAXIES?
9-10 October 2015
A Workshop at the NA ALMA Science Center (NAASC), NRAO
Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
https://science.nrao.edu/science/meetings/2015/accretion2015/

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Time Domain Astrophysics with Swift
Clemson, South Carolina, USA
19-21 October 2015

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Exchanging Mass, Momentum, and Ideas: Connecting Accretion
and Outflows in Young Stellar Objects
27-29 October 2015
ESTEC, Netherlands
www.cosmos.esa.int/web/accretion-outflow-workshop

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28th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics
December 13-18, 2015
International Conference Centre in Geneva, Switzerland.
https://indico.cern.ch/event/texas2015

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* Deceased IAU Members

IAU has sadly informed us about the passing of the following IAU Members:

- Roger J. Thomas
- Andrzej G. Pacholczyk

We regard upon their memory with respect and our thoughts are with their families.

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If you wish to share with IAU Div D any information about matters that may be relevant to the activities of Div D Members, please send e-mail to elena.pian@sns.it by *** September 21st, 2015 ***. This will appear in the next Bulletin issue, due October 1st, 2015.
Thank you in advance for your inputs and best regards.
Elena Pian
Secretary of IAU Div D Steering Committee
Associate Astronomer - INAF-IASF Bologna, Italy & SNS, Pisa, Italy
elena.pian@sns.it
pian@iasfbo.inaf.it
www.iasfbo.inaf.it/~pian