================================================== IAU Division J Bulletin No. 1; April 3rd, 2014 ================================================== INDEX: * Message from Division J President * NIFTY: Numerical information field theory for everyone * Upcoming conferences (suggested by Division members) * Call for contributions --------------------------------------------------------------------------- * Message from the President: After the re-structuring of divisions in 2012, the IAU is now re-considering the role of Commissions. There will be a complete re-setting of all commissions in 2015, and a call for proposing new commissions will be issued in the next few months. Stay tuned! Francoise Combes --------------------------------------------------------------------------- * NIFTY: Numerical information field theory for everyone - Astronomers present a software package for all types of imaging Signal reconstruction algorithms can now be developed more elegantly because scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics released a new software package for data analysis and imaging, NIFTY (A&A 554A, 26 (2013),arXiv:1301.4499), that is useful for mapping in any number of dimensions or spherical projections without encoding the dimensional information in the algorithm itself. The advantage is that once a special method for image reconstruction has been programmed with NIFTY it can easily be applied to many other applications. The publicly available NIFTY framework has already enabled the development of two new astronomical imaging algorithms: D3PO, a code for Denoising, Deconvolving, and Decomposing Photon Observations, which is designed for X-ray and gamma-ray imaging (arXiv:1311.1888), and RESOLVE, a code for radio interferometric imaging of diffuse emission (arXiv:1311.5282) and its spectral index (arXiv:1401.4711). D³PO and RESOLVE are planned to become publicly available in the future. Links: NIFTY press release: http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/mpa/institute/news_archives/news1301_bbb/news1301_bbb-en.html NIFTY home page & download: http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/ift/nifty/ D3PO press release: http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/mpa/research/current_research/hl2013-12/hl2013-12-en.html Page on information field theory: http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/ift --------------------------------------------------------------------------- * Upcoming Conferences: - IAUS306 "Statistical Challenges in 21st Century Cosmology": Lisbon, Portugal, May 25-29 2014: http://www.iau.org/science/events/1090/ - The Chalonge Meudon Workshop 4-6 June 2014: "From Large to Small scale structures in Agreement with Observations: CMB, WDM, Galaxies, Black Holes, Neutrinos and Sterile Neutrinos". http://chalonge.obspm.fr/Cias_Meudon2014.html. - IAUS308 "The Zel'dovich' Universe - Genesis and Growth of the Cosmic Web", Tallinn, Estonia, June 23-28 2014: http://www.iau-zeldovich.org - IAUS309 "Galaxies in 3D across the Universe", Viena, Austria, July 7-11 2014: http://galaxy3d.univie.ac.at - IAUS311 "Galaxy Masses as Constraints of Formation Models", Oxford, UK, July 21-25 2014: http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/iau311/ - The 18th Paris Cosmology Colloquium Chalonge 23-25 July 2014: "Latest News from the Universe: LambdaWDM, CMB,Warm Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Neutrinos and Sterile Neutrinos". http://chalonge.obspm.fr/colloque2014.html. - "AGN vs star formation: the fate of the gas in galaxies", Durham, UK, July 28 - Agust 1 2014: http://astro.dur.ac.uk/AGNvsSF/ - 5-th Gamow International Conference in Odessa: "Astrophysics and Cosmology after Gamow: progress and perspectives" and 14-th Gamow Summer School: .Astronomy and beyond: Astrophysics, Cosmology, .osmomicrophysics, Astroparticle Physics, Radioastronomy, and Astrobiology. , 16-24 August, 2014, Odessa, Ukraine http://www.gamow-odessa.odessa.ua/ - IAUS313 "Extragalactic Jets from every Angle": Galapagos Island, Ecuador, September 15-19 2014: http://iau313ecuador.epn.edu.ec/ - "3rd Workshop on Active Galactic Nuclei and Gravitational Lensing", Serbia, October 7-11 2014: http://servo.aob.rs/AGN-workshop-Koncarevo/index.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------- * Call for contributions: If you wish to send contributions to the next Newsletter that are relevant to our Division J, please send e-mail to thaisa@ufrgs.br by *** June 21st, 2014 ***. This will appear in the next Bulletin issue, due July 1st, 2014. Thank you in advance for your inputs and best regards. Thaisa Storchi Bergmann Secretary of IAU Div J. ====================================================================== Thaisa Storchi Bergmann http://www.if.ufrgs.br/~thaisa Chefe do Departamento de Astronomia Chefe do Grupo de Pesquisa em Astrofísica Instituto de Fisica - UFRGS Campus do Vale, CP 15051 91501-970 Porto Alegre - RS - Brasil e-mail: thaisa@ufrgs.br Phone: 55 51 3308 6443 FAX: 55 51 3308 7286 ======================================================================