2013 - the year of The Mathematics of Planet Earth

The International Mathematical Union has declared 2013 to be the year of The Mathematics of Planet Earth. Here is a short guide to some of the activities and resources.

A visit to Sano Laboratory

Masaki Sano is one of the pioneers of experimental, theoretical and computational nonlinear dynamics. Back in the eighties, he published, among many other things, work on chaotic attractors in Rayleigh-Bénard convection and systems of coupled oscillators. Today, he leads the Sano Laboratory in the physics department of the University of Tokyo. Members of his group work on topics as diverse as covariant Lyapunov vectors, two-phase thermal convection and experimental realisations of Maxwell's demon. This is a report on a visit by your Editor-in-Chief to Sano Laboratory last September.

The future of Snowbird

The bi-annual meeting of our AG will take place in Snowbird, Utah, this spring. The 2015 meeting will also be held there, but the location of the 2017 meeting has not been decided yet. One option is, obviously, for the AG to renew its contract with Snowbird and continue a tradition that started twenty years ago. However, over the years the character, scope and size of the meeting have changed, and some feel that the expiry of the current contract is a good opportunity to look for alternatives. Since this is a matter that affects most of our members, the DSWeb Magazine team will use the Editorial to open a discussion, in the hope that some concensus can be found in May.

ANZIAM'13

Your portal editor-in-chief visited the yearly ANZIAM (Australian and New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics) meeting for the first time. Below is a photo impression of the meeting.