January 2001 HEAD mini-news 1. A note to HEAD members from Jonathan Ormes concerning the upcoming NASA review of the research grant program. 2. Statistical Challenges in Modern Astronomy III, July 18-21, 2001, University Park, PA 3. Stellar Coronae in the Chandra and XMM-Newton Era, June 25-29, 2001, Noordwijk, The Netherlands --------------------------------------------- Dear Colleagues, I am writing to solicit your assistance in providing information concerning research supported by NASA under its High Energy Astrophysics Cluster SR&T program. The High Energy Astrophysics Cluster comprises the science disciplines of X- and Gamma-Ray Astrophysics and Cosmic Ray Astrophysics. As you may be aware, upon the recommendation of its advisory committees, the Research Program Management Division of NASA's Office of Space Science (OSS) has decided to implement a periodic re-assessment of the appropriate balance of resources between the various scientific disciplines, as reflected by nine broad Research Clusters. To assist them in this task, Lou Kaluzienski has asked us (Fiona Harrison, Dan McCammon, Simon Swordy and me) to form a Cluster Proposal writing team to compose the report to be submitted to peer review in June 2001. We are on the hook to get a draft posted on the web for review by the Structure and Evolution of the Universe Subcommittee (SEUS) at their February 26 and 27, 2001 meeting. The report and drafts are being posted to a web site here at GSFC, http://hearap.gsfc.nasa.gov/, so that if you are interested you can go to this site and see what is happening. Login with the case sensitive username: hearap and password: HeaRap01 As part of this report we are preparing a "proposal" for a budget enhancement that we hope will result in $1 to 3 M of additional funds. We don't think more of the same is going to sell, so we are looking for new ideas of things to incorporate. If you wish to suggest something, send an email to me or another member of our small band. We don't guarantee to include your suggestion, but we do promise to consider it carefully. If you have been a grantee under the High Energy Astrophysics Cluster SR&T program you should have gotten a request for information from Lou Kaluzienski, Vernon Jones, or one of the team members. An important component of each Cluster report will be a summary of the highlights of results obtained within a Cluster over the past several years as well as examples of ongoing research efforts. If not, please feel free to contact them. We will try to make the strongest possible case for continued support of research in our science disciplines. This is particularly important because High Energy Astrophysics SR&T work will be in competition with the many other worthy programs currently receiving support. Submitted by Jonathan F. Ormes Jonathan Ormes: jfo@lheapop.gsfc.nasa.gov Fiona Harrison: fiona@srl.caltech.edu Dan McCammon: mccammon@wisp.physics.wisc.edu Simon Swordy: swordy@odysseus.uchicago.edu Lou Kaluzienski: lkaluzienski@hq.nasa.gov Vernon Jones: wvjones@hq.nasa.gov ------------------------------------------- Statistical Challenges in Modern Astronomy III Wednesday July 18 2001 to Saturday July 21 2001 Penn State University, University Park PA Contact: Eric Feigelson Address: Dept. of Astronomy & Astrophysics, 525 Davey Laboratory, Penn State University, University Park PA 16802 USA Phone: (1) 814-865-0162 FAX: (1) 814-863-3399 Email: edf@astro.psu.edu WWW: http://www.astro.psu.edu/SCMA ------------------------------------------- Stellar Coronae in the Chandra and XMM-Newton Era" June 25-29, 2001 ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands Further information can be found at http://astro.esa.int/Symposia/Coronae2001/ or by contacting the LOC at coronae2001@astro.estec.esa.nl.