The article ‘Photon trajectories, anomalous velocities and weak measurements: a classical interpretation’ , authored by Konstantin Y Bliokh and Franco Nori of iTHES-cond Team along with Aleksandr Y Bekshaev and published in the New Journal of Physics, has been selected by the editors for inclusion in their exclusive 'Highlights of 2013' collection. To mark this achievement they provided a certificate formally recognising the inclusion of this article. Articles were chosen on the basis of referee endorsement, novelty, scientific impact and broadness of appeal. The full list of selected article highlights is available online at http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/page/highlights-of-2013

On April 30 and May 1, 2014, "NCBS-RIKEN joint meeting for theoretical approaches in biology" was held at NCBS in Bangalore, India. The meeting was organized by NCBS (the National Centre of Biological Sciences) and RIKEN iTHES. In the meeting, there are nine scientific talks (i.e. four talks from NCBS and five talks from RIKEN). Topics of the talks are rich in diversity and include molecular dynamics simulations, organelle formation, regulatory network, and biomechanics. For example, we had a talk by M. Venkadesan (NCBS) on biomechanics. Human is known to throw a ball with very high speed compared with other primates. In his laboratory, there are monitoring systems of throwing as well as running in which behavior of parts of our body are measured in detail to consider its mechanics and efficiency. Since presented biological phenomenon in all the talks are challenging and interesting themselves, participants enjoyed talks and lively discussions regardless of their disciplines. Simultaneously, researchers studying related problems and/or mathematical models deepened their mutual understanding each other by discussions during and after the talks.

NCBS is one of leading research institutes of biology in India. There are five groups of theoretical biology which are supported by the Simons Foundation to establish the Simons Centre for the Study of Living Machines(http://theory.ncbs.res.in/). Buildings of NCBS are surrounded by beautiful gardens and farms. While the schedule of the meeting was tight, one of organizers, M. Thattai (NCBS) kindly arranged a small but exciting excursion within the campus. In the campus, we can see birds, trees of cashew nuts and mangos, big nests of white ants, and so on. We enjoyed the excursion very much. The meeting was fruitful and we hope interactions between NCBS and RIKEN iTHES on theoretical biology continue.

On May 9, 2014, T. Hatsuda gave an iTHES informal seminar on particle, nuclear and astrophysics at Mochizuki Theoretical Biology Laboratory. About 25 theorists from Mochizuki lab., Hatsuda lab., Nakatsukasa lab., Sugita lab. and Nagataki lab. have joined. Hatsuda started his talk by introducing "Fundamental Questions in Particle, Nuclear and Astro Physics", i.e., (i) Where are we from? (ii) what are we? and (iii) where are we going? (see the first slide). After explaining the present answers to these questions from physics point of view, he went on to discuss his recent works on the structure of neutron stars which are the super dense stars composed of quantum liquid of neutrons and quarks. During his three-hour talk, there were very lively discussions among the theorists in different disciplines.

I am Shinya Wanajo, who just joined the iTHES fundamental physics team from May 1st. Before coming here, I have worked at National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), Sophia University (Jochi University in Japanese), University of Tokyo, and Max-Plank Institute (in Germany). My major research field is nucleosynthesis, which I call "cosmo-nuclear science", an interdisciplinary field crossing over many other regions such as astronomy, nuclear physics, and computational science. My particular interest is to give an answer to the greatest mystery of nucleosynthesis, the astrophysical origin of the "r-process elements" (those heavier than iron such as gold and uranium). I hope to be closer to the answer of this long-standing problem through collaborative works with the iTHES members.