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Living Reviews in Relativity has introduced a new LaTeX macro that allows authors to link their articles to an identifier query in the SIMBAD Astronomical Database. SIMBAD provides basic data, cross-identifications, bibliography and measurements for astronomical objects outside the solar system. It currently contains information about more than 4.6 million objects with 235,000 bibliographical references.

Sample LRR articles linking to SIMBAD:

• “Binary and Millisecond Pulsars” by Duncan R. Lorimer (lrr-2008-8)
• “The Evolution of Compact Binary Star Systems” by Konstantin A. Postnov and Lev R. Yungelson (lrr-2006-6)
• “Testing General Relativity with Pulsar Timing” by Ingrid H. Stairs (lrr-2003-5)

Hyperspace@aei has been designed and developed to increase the exchange of information and foster the interaction among scientists working in general relativity and gravitation. It replaces the QMUL hyperspace service, which has been maintained for 20 years by Malcolm MacCallum. The new site is edited by Luciano Rezzolla with support from the Max Planck Digital Library, the Living Reviews team, and it is hosted at the Albert Einstein Institute (Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics) in Germany. This site is also sponsored by the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation, (ISGRG).

Hyperspace@aei provides the opportunity to post announcements about conferences, job opportunities, and general news. All of this information can be easily accessed on the site and is collected in the form of a bulletin which is sent to the hyperspace mailing list (which replaces MacCallum’s GRG list) at the beginning of each month. In addition, the information in the bulletin is also stored in calendars and RSS feeds which can be browsed on the site but also imported for private use.

URL: http://hyperspace.aei.mpg.de/

Thanks to crossref’s excellent OpenURL interface, we’ve been able to find quite a few DOIs for records in our reference databases which previously had none.

More precisely:

• 6580 new DOIs for the reference database of the two physics journals,
• 111 for Living Reviews in European Governance and
• 77 for Living Reviews in Landscape Research.

Using the Google Books API we also managed to add links to book previews for many of our reference records.

So if you know the journals but haven’t checked out the reference databases yet: they just got a little more useful.

Thomson Reuters has selected Living Reviews in Relativity for coverage in their information services. The journal is now indexed and abstracted in SCI, JCR and Current Contents. Thus, it will be listed with a Journal Impact Factor in the 2009 JCR edition, to be released in June 2010.

Shown are the results of an online user survey of Living Reviews in Relativity which was conducted from September 2008 to February 2009. The survey aimed to find out where readers come from, their professional background and their reading and download habits. The analysis is based on 80 completed questionnaires, 60 by readers with a scientific background, and 20 by non-scientists. The largest group of readers who took part in the survey came from Europe, the second largest from the United States, and third one from India. A very satisfactory result is that more than half visit Living Reviews in Relativity at least once a month.

Download the complete results in PDF.

A short interview on the journal Living Reviews in Relativity with editor-in-chief Bernard Schutz has been published by Andreas Trunschke on his Weblog Forschung in Brandenburg.

Prof. Schutz explains the concept of a scientific review and highlights the advantage of regularly updated online articles for researchers. The interview (Nr. 19) is part of a blog post introducing the work of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute).

We would like to draw your attention to a new electronic journal on low-frequency gravitational waves science. In cooperation with the Digital Editions group of the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL), GW Notes is published by the MPI for Gravitational Physics (AEI).

What:

The e-journal, GW Notes, has been born from the need for a journal where the distinct communities involved in gravitation wave research might gather. While these three communities – Astrophysics, General Relativity and Data Analysis – have made significant collaborative progress over recent years, we believe that it is indispensable to future advancement that they draw closer, and that they speak a common idiom.

Why:

The electronic publishing service arXiv is a dynamic, well-respected source of news of recent work and is updated daily. But, perhaps due to the large volume of new work submitted, it is probable that a member of our community might easily overlook relevant material. This new e-journal proposes to offer scientists of the Gravitational Wave community the opportunity to more easily follow advances in the three areas mentioned: Astrophysics, General Relativity and Data Analysis.

How:

We hope to achieve this by selecting the most significant e-prints and list them in abstract form with a link to the full paper in both a single e-journal (GW Notes) and a blog (LISA Brownbag).

Whenever you see an interesting paper on GW science and LISA, you can submit the arXiv number to our submission page:

http://brownbag.lisascience.org/

This is straightforward:
No registration is required (although recommended, see ahead) to simply type in the number in the entry field of the page, indicate some keywords and submit. Don’t expect it to be immediately displayed in the blog. The submission will be reviewed to check it suits the blog.

You can register here:

http://lists.aei.mpg.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lisa_brownbag

Note:

Of course, this also implies that the paper will have its impact increased, since it will reach a broader public, so that we encourage you to not forget submitting your own work.

In addition to the abstracts, in each PDF issue of GW Notes (released quarterly), we will offer you a previously unpublished article written by a senior researcher in one of these three domains, which addresses the interests of all readers:

http://brownbag.lisascience.org/lisa-gw-notes/

Bernard Schutz and Pau Amaro-Seoane
Editors

A public lecture in the Living Reviews in Relativity Anniversary Lectures Series. We are celebrating our 10th year online with a number of colloquia by distinguished authors in the Berlin/Potsdam area.

Date:
March 11, 2009 – 14:00

Place:
Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute), Lecture Hall, Am Mühlenberg 1, 14476 Potsdam-Golm (map)

Abstract:
It is well known that the description of the non-gravitational interactions (electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear forces) relies on finite-dimensional Lie groups and algebras (e.g., SU(3)X SU(2)X U(1)). Recently, it has been argued by many research teams that the description of the gravitational interaction should involve infinite-dimensional Lie algebras of hyperbolic Kac-Moody type, such as E(10). The talk will provide a brief, pedagogical introduction to these mathematical structures and present some of the evidence for their relevance to gravity.

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A public lecture in the Living Reviews in Relativity Anniversary Lectures Series. We are celebrating our 10th year online with a number of colloquia by distinguished authors in the Berlin/Potsdam area.

Date:
November 13, 2008 – 18:00

Place:
Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (BBAW), Akademiegebäude am Gendarmenmarkt, Einstein-Saal, Jägerstraße 22/23, 10117 Berlin (map)

Abstract:
In general relativity, it is meaningless to ask what happened before the big bang because this is the moment when time itself came into existence. How the initial state arose that set up the expanding universe, or what exactly happened at that initial time are questions which cannot be answered by general relativity. In this theory, the big bang appears as a mathematical singularity: a time when the dynamical equations for a changing universe break down. Only by extending the theory by equations which do not break down can we reliably see what the earliest stages of the universe may have looked like. A commonly expected extension is to combine general relativity with quantum features. Cosmological models analyzed in this context show the emergence of repulsive forces in a small and dense universe, which prevent the formation of a singularity. Instead, the universe did have a pre-history prior to the big bang where the universe collapsed before bouncing into the expanding phase we see now. Detailed mathematical derivations combined with sensitive observations may some day allow us to obtain glimpses of our universe at and before the big bang.

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