ICTP in Brief September October 2006

Tue Nov 7 12:07:54 CET 2006

    ICTP IN BRIEF

Bi-monthly unabridged listing of news published on http://news.ictp.it/ 
<http://news.ictp.it>

*1/9/2006*

      Boltzmann Remembered on 4 Sept <http://news.ictp.it/index.php?p=189>

ICTP is sponsoring the Boltzmann Memorial Meeting 
<http://users.ictp.it/%7Esci_info/Boltzmann.pdf>. The meeting will take 
place on Monday 4 September at Congress Hall, Duino Castle, beginning at 
10:30 a.m. Introductory remarks by ICTP Director K.R. Sreenivasan will 
be followed by three lectures given by Leo Kadanoff, president-elect, 
American Physical Society; Peter Laggner, Managing Director, Institute 
of Biophysics and Nanosystems Research of the Austrian Academy of 
Sciences, Graz; and Giuseppe Mussardo, professor of physics, SISSA 
<http://www.sissa.it/main/>. Following the talks, participants will 
gather at the nearby former Hotel Ples to attend a ceremony unveiling a 
plaque honouring Boltzmann. Giorgio Ret, mayor of Duino, and Marc 
Abrioux, head of school of the United World College of the Adriatic, 
will offer remarks at the ceremony. Austrian-born Ludwig Boltzmann, 
father of statistical mechanics, is widely considered one of the 
greatest physicists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He took 
his life while on vacation with his wife and daughter in Duino on 5 
September 1906.

*15/9/2006*

      Open Day Miramare Science Campus <http://news.ictp.it/index.php?p=190>

Open Day <http://openday.ictp.it> at Miramare Science Campus will take 
place tomorrow Saturday 16 September. Festivities begin at 10:30 am. 
Following brief opening remarks by ICTP director, K.R. Sreenivasan, 
Italian astronaut Umberto Guidoni will speak about his experience on the 
Space Shuttle and international space station. Later that morning, 
Italy's world champion skier and Olympic gold medal winner, Manuela Di 
Centa, will discuss her travels in the Himalayas and her successful 
ascent of Mount Everest. There will also be a roundtable discussion by 
local scientists illustrating research efforts in climate and weather, 
seismology, the Earth's core, black holes and dark matter. Additional 
talks throughout the day will involve the role of science in criminal 
investigations, medicine and sport. Some 35 scientific stands will 
present research activities taking place at scientific institutions on 
the Miramare Science Campus. Guided tours of ICTP, SISSA 
<http://www.sissa.it/main/> (the International School for Advanced 
Studies), /Immaginario Scientifico/ 
<http://www.immaginarioscientifico.it/ita/index_e.htm>, Parco di 
Miramare, and /Riserva naturale marina di Miramare/ 
<http://www.riservamarinamiramare.it> will be held throughout the day. 
For additional information, including information on transportation to 
and from the Miramare campus, see http://openday.ictp.it.

*27/9/2006*

      On Auctions <http://news.ictp.it/index.php?p=191>

Four ICTP scientists---Tobias Galla, Matteo Marsili, Mauro Sellitto and 
Riccardo Zecchina---have recently uncovered ways to use statistical 
mechanics to optimize the outcome of combinatorial auctions. Such 
auctions have been used to determine landing and takeoff priorities at 
airports and to distribute licenses for radio spectrums. Their findings 
have been published in the 22 September edition of /Physical Review 
Letters/.
When there is one item on the auction block, auctioneers have no trouble 
determining the winning bid: it simply goes to the highest bidder.
However, in so-called combinatorial auctions, in which multiple buyers 
bid 'in combination' on multiple objects, the winning bid, or should we 
say bids, is not so easy to determine. Moreover, when there is a large 
number of bidders and objects, which holds true, for example, in the 
case of airport takeoff and landing slot allocations, determining the 
optimal allocation can consume unrealistic amounts of time even when the 
information is being processed by the world's fastest computers.
ICTP scientists turned to the statistical mechanics of disordered 
systems and, in particular, to the behaviour of granular particles to 
provide a mathematical approach to such a problem. Their approach relies 
on an algorithm previously devised as an analytical tool for spin-glass 
physics. They hope that their finding may vastly improve upon existing 
time-exhausting approaches and therefore more quickly solve the 
bedeviling winner-determination problem that to date has restricted the 
use of combinatorial auctions.

*28/9/2006*

      Kravtsov Travels to Viet Nam <http://news.ictp.it/index.php?p=192>

Vladimir Kravtsov, head of the ICTP condensed matter group, recently 
participated in the sixth edition of the /Rencontres du Vietnam/. More 
than 300 scientists from around the world attended the event, which was 
first launched in 1992. The purpose of the event, which focuses on 
advanced scientific research in astrophysics and condensed matter 
physics, is to provide an opportunity for the world's most eminent 
researchers in these fields to meet and discuss their work. This year's 
conference focused on fundamental research and applications in the 
burgeoning field of nanotechnology. While at the conference, Kravtsov 
was among a select group of participants who met Nguyen Minh Triet, 
president of Vietnam.

*12/10/2006*

      2006 Ramanujan Prize Winner <http://news.ictp.it/index.php?p=193>

We are pleased to announce that the 2006 Ramanujan Prize 
<http://news.ictp.it/php/linkout/o.php?out=http://www.ictp.trieste.it/%7Esci_info/awards/Ramanujan/Ramanujan.html> 
for Young Mathematicians from Developing Countries will be awarded to 
Professor Ramdorai Sujatha of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research 
(TIFR). Dr. Sujatha received all her university education in India and 
has been with TIFR since 1985, where she is currently Associate 
Professor in the School of Mathematics.
The Prize is in recognition of her work on the arithmetic of algebraic 
varieties and her substantial contributions to non-commutative Iwasawa 
theory. In particular, together with Coates, Fukaya, Kato and Venjakob, 
she formulated a non-commutative version of the main conjecture of 
Iwasawa theory, which now drives much of the work in this important subject.
The Prize is supported financially by the Norwegian Niels Henrik Abel 
Memorial Fund <http://www.abelprisen.no/en>.

*18/10/2006*

      Bandwidth Management in Print <http://news.ictp.it/index.php?p=194>

ICTP staff consultants Enrique Canessa, Carlo Fonda and Marco Zennaro 
are part of a team of information experts who have recently published 
/How To Accelerate You Internet: A Practical Guide to Bandwidth 
Management and Optimization Using Open Source Software/. The book, which 
includes an introduction by ICTP Director K.R. Sreenivasan, can be 
accessed free-of-charge on the internet. It is designed to help network 
specialists, especially network specialists working in the developing 
world, learn effective technical and management techniques for 
maximizing the use of the internet by, for example, reducing viruses and 
spam, prioritizing network traffic and providing local content caching. 
The book, released under a Creative Commons license, was written by the 
BMO Book Spring Team and sponsored by the International Network for the 
Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP). Other organizations 
contributing to the effort include Aidworld and Hacker Friendly LLC. The 
text is available in both PDF and HTML formats at http://bwmo.net.

*19/10/2006*

      Science and Culture at Centre <http://news.ictp.it/index.php?p=195>

ICTP will hold an international workshop, Science for Cultural Heritage 
<http://cdsagenda5.ictp.trieste.it/full_display.php?smr=0&ida=a05230>, 
23-27 October. More than 100 scientists from around the world will 
participate in discussions on the use of such tools as accelerators, 
carbon dating and synchrotron radiation for analyzing our heritage and 
culture. On 26 October, Chris Stringer, Department of Paleontology at 
the Natural History Museum, London, UK, and Mike Morwood, University of 
New England, Armidale, Australia, will present a pair of public lectures 
beginning at 14:00 in ICTP's Main Building. Stringer will speak about 
early humans in Europe and Morwood will discuss his team's recent 
discovery of /homo floresiensis/s, a new human species recently 
discovered in Indonesia.

*24/10/2006*

      Centre Links <http://news.ictp.it/index.php?p=196>

ICTP Director K.R. Sreenivasan has proposed the creation of a centre in 
India designed to link universities. The centre, which would be created 
with assistance from the University of Hyderabad and the B.M. Birla 
Science Centre, would seek to improve teaching and research capabilities 
across the nation. Sreenivasan made his remarks in Hyderabad. He was 
there as part of a week-long visit to India designed to increase 
cooperation between ICTP and India's universities and research institutes.

©2005-2006 ICTP || *news.ictp.it* <http://news.ictp.it>

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