APP Newsletter 16 November 2007

Dear colleague,

Recent APP news in the Netherlands:

  • The 2nd APP roadmap meeting was organised in Amsterdam, 20-21 September 2007. The meeting was very successful. The 7 working groups had assembled the timelines, budget requirements and priorities for the future projects in their (sub)field. The next step will be taken in the coming months when the PRC will set overall priorities for all projects within ASPERA/ApPEC.
  • The APP symposium on 12 October 2007 at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute was well organised and very well attended with over 100 participants and many new scientific results.
  • The 10th APP symposium will be organised by the Astronomical Institute Anton Pannekoek in Amsterdam on Wednesday 5 March 2008.
  • On 9 November the scientific results of AUGER made it to the cover of Science. In the article, evidence is presented that the locations at the sky of the highest energy cosmic rays (>56 EeV) found with AUGER are strongly correlated with the positions of nearby Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN's). Next day there were articles in de Volkskrant and NRC.
  • ASPERA sends out a monthly News-letter, "ASPERA this month" (http://info-aspera.web.cern.ch/info-ASPERA/). We strongly recommend you to subscribe to this News-letter to be able to follow all European Astroparticle developments in future issues. The latest issue carries an article about the AUGER data and an interview with Jos Engelen, CERN's Chief Scientific Officer, in which he gives his view on CERN's relationship with astroparticle physics.
  • 2007 was a very active year in the search for new APP funding; a variety of groups and individuals have submitted a FOM programme proposal, an NWO investment proposal, several FOM open competition proposals, two (novel) European Research Council proposals and one VENI-fellowship proposals.
    • This week the FOM programme proposal, 'The origin of cosmic rays', for the 'science exploitation of Antares and Auger', was approved, which is a very big step forward in the funding of the Dutch APP research programme.
    • Earlier, a proposal in the FOM open competition about the radio detection at Auger (AM vd Berg et al) was approved.
  • Wednesday 28 November the next CAN meeting will be in Utrecht. Please, contact the representative of your institute/university if you have input for this meeting.

Best regards,

Rob van der Meer
Secretary of the Committee for Astroparticle Physics in the Netherlands (CAN)
ASPERA liaison officer - NL

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