Subject: summer meeting in Amsterdam on black holes of all sizes 
From:    Tom Maccarone  
Date:    Mon, January 19, 2004 7:14 pm 
To:      marek@fy.chalmers.se 

Dear Marek:

On behalf of the scientific organising committee of myself, Rob
Fender, Luis Ho, Michiel van der Klis and Andrea Merloni, I would like
to invite you to a small workshop next year entitled "From X-ray
Binaries to Quasars: Black Hole Accretion on All Mass Scales."  We are
aiming specifically at having talks and discussions that lead to
developing ways that things learned from X-ray binaries can be applied
to AGN and vice versa.

The workshop will be held at the Astronomical Institute, University of
Amsterdam, for three days from 2004 July 13 to 15. We plan to limit
the number of people attending the workshop to about 40, in order to
facilitate useful discussion and informal development of ideas. As a
result, the meeting is invitation-only, but we are intentionally
leaving a few spaces open, and if you have a student or a young
post-doc you would like us to invite, we encourage your suggestions.

Some topics that we hope will be addressed are: (1) whether the
spectral state phenomenology seen in X-ray binaries is also seen in
AGN (2) whether quasi-periodic oscillations are seen in AGN, and what
might be the best strategies for finding them (3) how the observations
of disk-jet coupling in AGNs and X-ray binaries can be used in a
complementary manner to gain a fuller understanding of jet formation
(4) whether some of the high resolution spectral features most
commonly associated with one type of source (e.g. the non-relativistic
outflows in AGN) are observed in the other type.  We also expect that
the participants may bring up additional topics that we have not
listed here.

Note that given the aformentioned limit on numbers, we request that
you reply to us as soon as possible, using the brief form at the end
of this email.  We also request that if you have a student or a
post-doc whom you would like us to invite, that you please let us
know.  We cannot make promises, but we would like to be made aware of
anyone whom we might not know who could give an interesting
presentation and contribute to the discussion.  Unfortunately, we
anticipate that the number of additional spaces available will be
rather low.  We also encourage you to bring posters from students or
others in the event that we cannot accomodate their participation.

I hope to have a meeting web page up and running soon at:
http://zon.wins.uva.nl/~tjm/workshop2004.html

This workshop has been deliberately arranged to be the week between
the interacting binaries meeting in Sicily and the COSPAR meeting in
Paris, in order that additional travel expenses for people already
planning to attend one of these meetings can be minimized.

The workshop will be held at the Astronomical Institute `Anton
Pannekoek', University of Amsterdam. (http://www.astro.uva.nl/)

The institute is easily accessible from the centre of Amsterdam by
public transport, or bicycle.  We will endeavour to arrange reduced
deals with hotels but, given this is the tourist season, it will be
necessary to book early.

There is, unfortunately, very little chance of financial support for
your travel costs, but there will be no additional fee for attending
the workshop, we will provide refreshments including a conference
dinner, and a free proceedings will be published by Kluwer.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact 
Tom Maccarone - tjm@science.uva.nl - +31 20 5257472 or 
Rob Fender - rpf@astro.uva.nl - +31 20 5257478

Tom Maccarone
Astronomical Institute "Anton Pannekoek"
University of Amsterdam
Kruislaan 403, 1098 SJ Amsterdam
The Netherlands
+31 20 525 7472 (Office)