The International Accelerator School for Linear Colliders will take place on 19-27 May at Sokendai, Hayama, Japan. Organized by the International Linear Collider (ILC) Global Design Effort, ICFA Beam Dynamics Panel and the ILC Steering Committee, the primary focus of the school will be on the ILC, but it will also cover multi-tera-electron-volt colliders, such as the Compact Linear Collider. This seminar-style school is intended for graduate students, postdocs and young researchers. Applications are welcomed from physicists who are considering changing their career from experimental physics to accelerator physics. Students from around the globe will be accepted into this first global accelerator school for linear colliders. For further information contact Yoko Hayashi, KEK, tel: +81 29 864 5214, or e-mail ilc-school@ milk.kek.jp or see www.linearcollider.org/cms/?pid=1000171.
The XXVI Physics in Collision conference will take place in Búzios, Rio de Janeiro on 6-9 July. These international conferences, which began in 1981, comprise invited talks and contributions in poster sessions. Speakers review and update key topics in elementary-particle physics with the aim of encouraging informal discussions on new experimental results and their implications. For further details see http://omnis.if.ufrj.br/~pic06/.
In the obituary for John Bahcall, who died in August 2005 (see CERN Courier December 2005 p41), his year of birth was unfortunately incorrectly given as 1935. John was in fact born in 1934. CERN Courier offers its apologies to all concerned.
In the obituary for Cesare Mansueto Giulio Lattes, who died in March 2005 (see CERN Courier November 2005 p48)., the first sentence implied that Lattes was the last surviving member of the team that discovered the pion. Hugh Muirhead is however still with us, and CERN Courier would like to wish him well and apologise to him and his family for any undue upset this error may have caused.
CERN Courier welcomes letters from readers. Please e-mail cern.courier@cern.ch. We reserve the right to edit letters.
In my proof that four-legged tables can be put in equilibrium, what matters of course is that the feet form a perfect square (see CERN Courier December 2005 p23). The top can be anything, in particular a disc. The next step is to extend the proof to the case where the four feet are on a circle, for instance, form a rectangle, and also a half hexagon, like the tables you find in the "salle des pas perdus" at CERN or in certain conference rooms.
André Martin.