Setsubun

	Guess who's posing as "Oni"?

It is Setsubun today in Japan and a variety of rituals will be taken place. Probably most notable would be a Bean-Throwing Ceremony, "Mame-maki". This ceremony is meant to drive evil spirits or "Oni" away (See the picture). Another custom catching on lately is eating a sushi-roll called "Eho-maki." There is a designated bearing each year to which you should face while eating the roll. And you are not supposed to speak at all during this ritual dining. This setsubun used to be the day before the new year in the lunar calendar, so it was actually a New Year's Eve. No wonder people are inclined to do weird things for celebration. Happy Setsubun!

Upcoming Events

iTHES-RIBF Joint Seminar
Feb. 6 (Thur.), 2014, 13:30-
RIBF Hall (rm.201), RIBF bldg. 2F
Lembit Sihver (Chalmers Univ. of Technology, Sweden)
"Charged Particle Transport Simulations for Radiotherapy and Space Dosimetry"

iTHES-RIBF Joint Workshop
March 5, 2014, Faculty of Science, Kyushu University
Interdisciplinary workshop "Quarks, nuclei, and neutron stars"

iTHES-YITP Joint Workshop
March 10 - 23, 2014, Yukawa Institute, Kyoto University
"International Molecule-type Workshop on New correlations in exotic nuclei and advances of theoretical models"
http://www.yukawa.kyoto-u.ac.jp/contents/seminar/detail.php?SNUM=51665

Event Report

iTHES Theoretical Science Colloquium by Prof. Kei Tokita from Nagoya University was taken place last Friday, January 31st. This time, 2nd iTHES meeting was combined with the colloquium and three short talks by iTHES members were presented. Dr. Uriu started the session with his talk "Dynamics of mobile coupled cellular oscillators." Dr. Iitaka turned the subject to the planetary science and introduced the audience to the latest perspective of this actively discussed area with title of "Atomistic modelling of planets." The short talk session was concluded by Dr. T. Kanazawa's "Taming the randomness in QCD." He explained the basics of subatomic physics and introduced matrix models, which were also one of the ingredients of the following Prof. Tokita's talk.
Prof. Tokita showed his statistical mechanical approach to the eco-system composed with many mutually interactive species to the audience of about 40 researchers. His lecture was followed by lively discussions and questions from the audience.

Person of the Week

Takashi Nakatsukasa
Self-introduction

I am Takashi Nakatsukasa, a member of Interdisciplinary Fundamental Physics Team, and also a Head of Theoretical Nuclear Physics Laboratory in RIKEN Nishina Center. I received my PhD at Kyoto University in March 1994, then, had professional experiences at Osaka University (1994), at Chalk River Laboratory in Canada (1994-1996), University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology in UK (1996-1999), at RIKEN (1999-2001), at Tohoku University (2001-2004), and at University of Tsukuba (2004-2007), before the current postion in RIKEN (2007-present). My main research interests have been on the nuclear many-body problems and the collective phenomena of quantum many-body systems. The nucleus is a finite fermionic systems, showing a number of fascinating collective phenomena. The nuclear physics also has strong connections to a variety of fields. Especially, the research areas around its boarders with astrophysics and quantum chemistry are my current interest.

Visitors

Prof. Lembit Sihver
(Chalmers University of Technology, SWEDEN)
Nuclear Science and Engineering
Jan.20th - March 20th, 2014
room 302 (3rd floor, RIBF building)

Prof. Igor Shovkovy
(Arizona State University)
physics of graphene, quantum field theory,
dense matter in nuclear/particle physics.
http://shovkovy.faculty.asu.edu/
March 2 - March 15, 2014
room 433 (4th floor, main research building)

Prof. Gordon Baym
(Univ. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
cold atom physics, condensed matter physics,
dense matter and neutron stars
http://physics.illinois.edu/people/profile.asp?gbaym
March 18 - April 10, 2014
room 433 (4th floor, main research building)