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News from ICTP 88 - Dateline
The hunt is on for the universe's highest energy cosmic rays and Nobel Laureate James W. Cronin (Physics 1980), Professor of Physics at the Enrico Fermi Institute of the University of Chicago, is leading the charge. Last February, Cronin outlined the next steps in the 'hunt' in front of more than 150 people at a high energy seminar in ICTP's Main Lecture Hall. He told the audience that this year, the world's most sophisticated detector, located in Mendoza, Argentina, will begin scanning the skies for these powerful, yet distant, rays. Another detector, at a yet-to-be-determined site in the northern hemisphere, will be built in the future. The Pierre Auger Project, named in honour of the late French physicist who discovered cosmic ray showers in 1938, serves as the driving force behind these efforts, which now include scientists from some 18 nations. Cronin is one of the two project leaders; the other is Alan A. Watson, Professor of Physics at the University of Leeds, UK. The cosmic-ray hunt received a boost in the early 1990s when scientists detected two of the highest energy cosmic ray events ever: one in the western United States in 1991 and the other in Japan in 1993. With the completion of a state-of-the-art detector in Argentina and plans for another, Cronin has good reasons to believe this 'cosmic safari' will become even more active--and more fruitful--in the future.
Vladimir I. Keilis-Borok, a long-time organiser of ICTP training and research activities, was awarded the Lewis Frey Richardson Medal by the European Geophysical Society. He was honoured for his contributions to the study of nonlinear geophysics. Keilis-Borok, a researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences' International Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Mathematical Geophysics, has been course director of ICTP's training activities on earthquake prediction since 1983. He shared the medal with Raymond Hide, a researcher at Oxford University's Clarendon Laboratory, UK, who has also lectured at the Centre. The award's ceremony took place on 19 April in The Hague, The Netherlands, during the European Geophysical Society's XXIV General Assembly.
On 19 March, the ICTP Steering Committee held its bi-annual meeting at the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. The Italian government was represented by Nicola Cabibbo, Professor of Physics, University of Rome La Sapienza; the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) by Maurizio Iaccarino, Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences; and the IAEA by Sueo Machi, Deputy Director General, Department of Nuclear Science and Applications. The Committee tentatively approved the Centre's budget for the year 2000; voiced support for ICTP's three-year draft plan; and urged UNESCO's upcoming evaluation of ICTP to focus on the Centre's overall mission and responsibilities. The Committee's next meeting is scheduled to take place in the fall.
Climate Group at Full Strength
Four scientists have joined ICTP's newly created Physics of Weather and Climate Group. Their arrival means that the group is now at full strength--ready to meet the challenges posed by an ambitious research agenda for this year and next. Senior Scientist Franco Molteni, whose expertise includes research on climate variability and predictability, comes to the Centre from the Interuniversity Computer Centre of Northeast Italy (CINECA), headquartered in Bologna, where he specialized in regional meteorological and climatic models. Support scientist Bi Xunqiang comes from a more distant location, having worked previously at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Beijing, where he served as an associate scientist. His colleague, Dusan Jovic, also coming to the Centre as a support scientist, was last employed as a teaching assistant at the University of Belgrade's Department of Meteorology. Filling out the group's roster of researchers is post-doc Yun Qian, who was a fellow with the START Programme at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Qian was educated at Nanjing University in Nanjing, China. They join Italian-born Filippo Giorgi, who arrived in Trieste last May as the first head of the Physics of Weather and Climate Group. Like other research groups at ICTP, the Physics of Weather and Climate Group plans to hold a series of seminars throughout the year focusing on issues related to its work. The group's first seminar took place on 8 April when William L. Chameides, Smithgall Chair and Regents Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, spoke on the chemical and radiative effects of atmospheric aerosols. The group's first big research and training activity will be the Summer Colloquium on the Physics of Weather and Climate, which will examine the issue of climate change from a regional perspective. The Colloquium, which is expected to draw some 100 scientists and students from around the world, will take place 7-25 June. Meanwhile, Oreste Reale, Visiting Scientist in Climatology since 1995, will soon leave the ICTP to join the Centre for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies in Calverton, Maryland, in the USA. We wish him well in his endeavours. All ICTP staff and visitors will undoubtedly miss his weather forecasts.
This spring, the work of ICTP scientific staff and visitors was again featured in a number of publications. Scientific Computing World offered its readers a profile of the Centre's Physics of Weather and Climate Group, based on an interview with group head Filippo Giorgi. Physics Today printed an article on "security and arms control" issues in India and Pakistan in the aftermath of last year's nuclear tests in both countries. The article drew on the opinions of seven ICTP lecturers and former Associates. CERN Courier included a research article, written by ICTP Staff Scientist Alexei Smirnov and post-doc Amol Dighe, focusing on discussions at the Centre's Workshop on the Physics of Relic Neutrinos held last fall. A full-page article in The Sunday Times examined the surprising success of Brian Greene's monograph, The Elegant Universe, an examination of string theory that is the most widely discussed science book since the publication of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. Greene visited the Centre last month as a lecturer in the Spring Workshop on Superstrings and Related Matters. Finally, the "Science Section" of Corriere della Sera, Italy's leading newspaper, included a feature article on teleportation spurred by discussions that took place at ICTP's Third Adriatico Research Conference on Quantum Interferometry. The article contained observations by Francesco De Martini, Anton Zeilinger and GianCarlo Ghirardi.
Distinguished theoretical physicist Riazuddin, a Pakistani by birth who has worked for many years at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, was recently appointed director of the new National Centre for Physics (NCP) at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. He was an Associate (1969-1970), a Senior Associate (1972-1992) and is now an Honorary Associate (1994-1999).
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