IVOA Theory IG Meeting

[Nicholas Walton]

hi dave

we did indeed look at  the issue of moving to a Theory-WG and a proposal
will be generating a position note on this at the May interop. focus of
that would be work on SNAP - simple numerical access protocol.

i'll be circulating a fuller summary of key outcomes of the meeting early
next week. in the mean time - please take a look at the meeting wiki page
at
http://www.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/CambridgeTheoryWorkshopFeb06

cheers, nic

========================================================================
Dr N. A. Walton
(AstroGrid Project Scientist	       http://www.astrogrid.org)
(Euro-VO VOTC Project Scientist	       http://www.euro-vo.org)
Institute of Astronomy          Tel:   +44 1223 337503
University of Cambridge         Fax:   +44 1223 337523
Madingley Road                  WWW:   http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~naw
Cambridge, CB3 0HA              email: naw at ast.cam.ac.uk
========================================================================


On Wed, 22 Feb 2006, Dave De Young wrote:

>
> Dear Nic, Gerard, et al.
>
> I am sorry that I will be unable to attend the forthcoming Theory
> IG meeting next week; it sounds like a very important meeting.
> However, I did have a discussion with Bob Hanisch at our NVO
> Advisory Committee meeting last week about "next steps" for the
> Theory IG as seen from the IVOA "Process".  It seems that the topics
> described for next week's meeting are very much on track for moving
> the Theory IG into the areas of interest covered by other IVOA
> working groups and eventually for the Theory IG to become a Theory
> Working Group.  Once the topics to be discussed at Cambridge are
> reasonably well defined, the next step seems to be an informal
> "note" to the IVOA Exec that characterises the major problems,
> outlines the initial definitions of the metadata required, and
> describes the next steps to be taken.  A clear area of interest is
> the use of large scale simulations by observers, and hence a
> description of what would be needed to make such simulations
> accessible to observers, including the basic metadata, would be
> very relevant.  Some simulations have made a lot of progress in
> this area, while others have done very little, as all of you know.
> Also of interest are some descriptions of the interaction with,
> and requirements from, other IVOA working groups such as DAL,
> Registry, etc.
>
> I notice that the Workshop announcement specifically describes
> large scale cosmological simulations as an area of emphasis.  These
> calculations are very complex, often with many assumptions (e.g.,
> "feedback"), and they can be very high profile (e.g., Millennium).
> But I urge the workshop to also include the problems involved in
> other classes of complex simulations that are used by a large
> fraction of the community.  These have been discussed before at
> our meetings, and they include areas such as radiation transfer,
> binary systems evolution including general relativity, relativistic
> hydrodynamics, and 3D MHD simulations with turbulence and radiation.
> I suspect the metadata issues for these classes of simulations may
> be very different that those for the cosmology or purely N body
> calculations.
>
> Again, my apologies for being unable to attend.  If at the end of
> the workshop there are issues that need further development,
> particularly in the area of MHD and hydrodynamic simulations, I
> would be happy to assist.  Please let me know.
>
> Best wishes for a successful meeting.
>
> Dave
>
>
>