TRIL at ENEA
A meeting on "Scientific Cooperation Between Italy and Emerging Countries", sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and the Environment (ENEA), took place in Rome on 14 March. The objective of the Giornate della Cooperazione was to examine the impact of ICTP's TRIL (Training and Research in Italian Laboratories) programme and to discuss strategies for making TRIL even more effective in the future. Since its inception in 1983, more than 1000 scientists from 75 developing countries have participated in TRIL, conducting high level research in physics institutes across Italy. For additional information about TRIL, see www.ictp.it.

UN Under-Secretary General Visits ICTP

Adama Dieng, UN Under-Secretary General, met ICTP Director K.R. Sreenivasan on 2 February to discuss a wide range of issues related to the role of science in the UN System. Following the meeting, Dieng and Sreenivasan participated in a conference on human rights organised by the University of Trieste.

Minister from South Africa

Mosibudi Mangena, Minister of Science and Technology in South Africa, met ICTP Director K.R. Sreenivasan on 24 March to discuss future avenues of cooperation. The Minister also met other representatives of Trieste's international scientific community during his brief visit.

Science, Art and Music

The ICTP Cultural Committee, in cooperation with the University of Rome "La Sapienza", organised a public event at the Adriatico Guesthouse on 22 February titled "Science and Art - MOVEment = Thinking of the Present". Writers Giuseppe O. Longo, Marina Silvestri, and Annio Stasi took part in a discussion on art, music and science. An exhibition of paintings by Mery Tortolini, an artist who teaches at "La Sapienza" University, was inaugurated. The Trieste-based North Winds Band, which includes ICTP staff members Suzie Radosic and Joe Niemela, provided a musical interlude.

Dry Life
ICTP/TWAS Public Information Officer Daniel Schaffer is the co-editor of Dry: Life Without Water, published by Harvard University Press. The book, which includes more than 80 illustrations, describes how people living in arid environments across the developing world have learned to cope-indeed thrive-in water-sparse environments. For additional information, see http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/MASDRY.html.

Book Donations
World Scientific Publishing Co. (WSPC), one of the world's leading scientific publishers, has donated 21,000 textbooks to ICTP for distribution to libraries in the developing world. The 1200 titles range broadly in subject matters from physics to economics and from mathematics to medicine.

The ICTP Library, which is responsible for the project, has distributed nearly 13,000 volumes to 58 countries since WSPC's first shipment in September 2005. All of the books will be distributed by this summer.

Shenoy Returns to India

Subodh Shenoy, a member of the ICTP scientific staff and coordinator of the Centre's Diploma Course in condensed matter physics since 1994, has returned to his native India, where he will serve as a professor of physics at the University of Hyderabad. Shenoy received a bachelor of science degree from Queen Mary College at the University of London, UK, in the late 1960s and master's and doctorate degrees in physics from Yale University, USA, in the early 1970s. After his Ph.D, he worked at the University of South Florida, USA, Tata Institute, Bombay, the Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar, and the University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad. Shenoy first visited Trieste in the mid 1980s when, as a professor of physics at the University of Hyderabad, he was appointed an ICTP Associate. He returned to Trieste on numerous occasions over the next decade to attend Centre research and training activities and to conduct his own research before receiving a staff position with the Condensed Matter Physics group. Shenoy's decade-long stay at ICTP was marked by a continual flow of research publications in such scientific journals as Physics Review Letters, Europhysics Letters and Physical Review. It was also marked by the emergence of the ICTP Diploma Course as a critical Centre research and training activity for students from the least developed countries. Friends and colleagues wish Shenoy the best of luck in his newest professional endeavours and hope that he will return often to ICTP where his keen intelligence, warmth, generosity and kindly manners will be missed.

IN MEMORIAM
Mizanur Rahman, former ICTP Associate, died on 30 January. He was 72 years old. Mizanur Rahman was professor of mathematics at the University of Rajshahi in Bangladesh. He visited ICTP on many occasions to attend Centre training and research activities, especially in his primary field of interest, theoretical nuclear physics.

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