January 2011
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:: ASESMA NEWSLETTER, JANUARY 2010 ::
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Happy New Year!
This month's newsletter features a fresh motivation to
establish your profile page on our website. Check out
George Manyali's profile:
https://sites.google.com/site/asesma2010/people/participants/george-manyali
More on that below, and instructions for getting your own
profile page.
Also in this issue: An article suggestion from Sandro
Scandolo, and my pick for the web-resource of the month.
I hope that 2011 is a great year for all you:
healthy, happy, and loaded with good science.
- Alison
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:: CONTENTS ::
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1) Announcements
2) Journal article of the month: Sandro's pick
3) Establishing your web presence, part II
4) "Computational Nanoscience: Do It Yourself!"
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:: ANNOUNCEMENTS ::
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The "official" ASESMA website is now up and running:
It promises that the location of the 2012 school will be
announced soon, so check back for that exciting news!
IBM India is hiring for multiple research positions in the
field of electronic structure calculations. See full
information copied at our website:
https://sites.google.com/site/asesma2010/announcements/researchpositionsadvertisedatibmindia
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:: ARTICLE OF THE MONTH ::
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"Electrical Polarization and Orbital Magnetization: The
Modern Theories" by Raffaele Resta
http://www.psi-k.org/newsletters/News_96/Highlight_96.pdf
This month's article is suggested by Sandro Scandolo and
was the Psi-k Dec 2009 "Highlight" article.
Sandro says:
"We would naively expect that the macroscopic polarization
(and magnetization) of a crystal is determined by the
microscopic dipole moments in the crystal unit cell, and
therefore by the charge density of the polarized crystal,
as discussed in several textbooks. A series of papers
published in the early 90's by D. Vanderbilt, R. Resta,
and collaborators have shown that this widespread belief
is incorrect. The polarization has nothing to do with the
periodic charge distribution of the polarized crystal: the
former is essentially a property of the phase of the
electronic wavefunction, while the latter is a property of
its modulus. The article of Resta reviews the field and
its latest developments. Particularly interesting is the
connection between orbital magnetization and topological
invariants in insulators. After reading Resta's review you
will feel a compelling desire to know more about what
exactly is a topological insulator. Fortunately, an
excellent review on these exotic states has just appeared
in Reviews of Modern Physics, by Hassan and Kane."
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:: ESTABLISHING YOUR WEB PRESENCE ::
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This is part II in our series on establishing your web
presence. Last week we announced our addition of personal
profile pages on the ASESMA website. To help motivate
those of you who haven't done it yet, check out George
Manyali's profile:
https://sites.google.com/site/asesma2010/people/participants/george-manyali
George's profile is the third "hit" I see when I Google
his name from the US, and it's the only page in the top
ten search results that features his academic achievements.
It establishes his association with Moi University, with
ICTP, and with ASESMA and its various prestigious
instructors.
If you are planning to apply for academic positions,
particularly at foreign institutions, you should make sure
that your academic record is easily located on the
internet and that it looks professional. The ASESMA
website is increasingly well-connected and can help make
your achievements visible to the world.
To get your own profile page, follow these instructions:
https://sites.google.com/site/asesma2010/how-to-make-your-personal-page
You can do it all yourself, or provide Alison with your
details and let her do the formatting.
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:: WEB RESOURCE OF THE MONTH ::
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"Computational Nanoscience: Do It Yourself!"
http://www.fz-juelich.de/nic-series/volume31/
This free resource hosts a long list of articles on
computational nanoscience. They cover DFT basics as well
as advanced techniques and topics in computing. Enjoy!
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participated in the ASESMA 2010 workshop or expressed an
interest in the ASESMA organization. If you'd like to opt
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