---------------------------------------------------------------

      M I S T   E L E C T R O N I C    N E W S L E T T E R

No. 5                                               21 Sep 2001
---------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Colleagues,

AUTUMN MIST 2001

The main purpose of this Newsletter to remind you about this
year's autumn MIST meeting in London. (I am writing now because
next week I will be departing for a 5-week trip to Antarctica.)
The meeting will have a similar format to previous years; it will
be on Friday 23rd November at the Geological Society Lecture
Room, Burlington House, Piccadilly, beginning at 10.30 am (coffee
will be available in the Geological Society library from
10.00am). A sandwich lunch (for a small charge) and afternoon tea
will also be provided. The abstract deadline is 5th November, and
the programme will be published shortly after that date. If you
wish to contribute, please send me your abstract in electronic
form by the deadline, not forgetting to include the title, and
all the authors with their affiliations, indicating which one
will be presenting. If you have any special requirements, other
than a standard overhead projector, please specify this.

One special consideration this year is that there will be an RAS
G-MIST Discussion Meeting on CLUSTER II just two weeks beforehand
(see below). As an aside it is encouraging to note that our
community is flourishing sufficiently to be able to support two
such closely-spaced meetings. I am assuming that nearly all of
those in the MIST audience who are interested in CLUSTER will
also be at the Discussion Meeting and therefore I would like to
eliminate any duplication. In other words, if you have presented
Cluster work at the 9 November meeting don't just submit a
re-hash of essentially the same stuff for 23 November. If
however, for whatever reason, your work did not make it into the
9 November programme, the Autumn MIST will provide an opportunity
to present it.

Details of the meeting are on the web at:
http://www.nerc-bas.ac.uk/public/uasd/mist.html#autumn01
The lecture room must be vacated by 5.30 pm, but proceedings
usually continue informally over a pint at the "Walkers of St
James" pub in Duke Street (across Piccadilly from Burlington
House). Many thanks to the Royal Astronomical Society for
supporting our London meetings.


"Cluster - A new view of the magnetosphere"

As noted above, this RAS G-MIST Discussion meeting, which is
being organised by Mike Hapgood, Peter Cargill, and Manuel
Grande, will be held at Burlington House on 9th November. More
details are available on the RAS website at
http://www.ras.org.uk/meetings/01-2002.htm


SPRING MISTs

Since the last Newsletter, the Jorvik MIST meeting held at York
has come and gone. Many thanks to Ian Mann and his colleagues for
organising this very successful meeting, and to Neil Arnold and
Ian for writing the meeting report which appeared in the August
2001 issue of "Astronomy & Geophysics" (and is also available on
the MIST website). If you don't receive this journal (free to
members of the Royal Astronomical Society) every two months, you
should consider joining the Society which is the independent
learned society representing MIST science, and is the
professional body for MIST scientists. There are reduced fees for
students, new members, young members, and retired members.
Details are on the RAS website: http://www.ras.org.uk/ras/

The Jorvik MIST included the first "MIST Cup" 5-a-side football
tournament; a match report may be found on the MIST website.

The Spring 2002 MIST meeting will be held at the University of
Sheffield, 9-11th April. More details will be available in due
course. For 2003 the spring MIST venue will move south (but not
very far) to Leicester. The dates will be 14-16 April.


LONDON MIST 2002

This will be on Friday 22 November 2002 at Burlington House. More
details nearer the time.


RAS AWARDS

Could I remind you of the 29 October 2001 deadline for
nominations for the 2002 RAS awards. See:
http://www.ras.org.uk/nominate.htm


ELECTRONIC MAILING LIST

Subscribers to the MIST electronic mailing list currently number
around 243 including a handful of overseas subscribers. For
further information, including how to subscribe, unsubscribe and
send messages to the list, and what kind of messages are
acceptable, please see:
http://www.nerc-bas.ac.uk/public/uasd/mist/misteml.html
Messages sent to the mailing list are currently running at around
5-10 per month.

Sometimes I receive notification that a message could not be
delivered to a particular subscriber. If this persists it is
usually because the subscriber has left the organisation where
they had their mail account, and has forgotten to unsubscribe
(and perhaps resubscribe from a new account). In these
circumstances I will unsubscribe that person after a minimum of
one month.

As you may remember, in June I made the list a moderated one
because of unwanted junk messages (spam) being sent to the list.
This means that semi-automatic rather than completely automatic
operation is now in force. All messages are vetted by me, as
moderator, before being cleared for distribution. This procedure
will inevitably cause some delay so please be patient. When I am
away, a deputy (currently Gill Alexander) acts as moderator.
Numerous obnoxious spam emails have been filtered out in this
way, and these arrangements will continue indefinitely.

Remember that your message is sent out to the list exactly as it
is received. There is no need to include a "covering letter" e.g.
"Please send this message to the MIST LIST"; if you do, that also
will be sent out.

Finally a word about attachments. The MIST mailing list
guidelines state that plain text messages without attachments are
preferable. Although attachments are generally handled
satisfactorily by the Majordomo mailing list software, they can
present a possible security risk because of the vulnerability of
some email systems to "worms" such as Melissa, Nimda, etc. Some
computer security experts recommend that all unexpected email
attachments, even from known addresses, should be deleted without
opening; most MIST mailing list messages are by their nature
unexpected. If appropriate, consider putting your information on
a website and sending a plain text notification of the URL.


EMAIL DIRECTORY

MIST people are listed in the MIST email directory:
http://www.nerc-bas.ac.uk/public/uasd/mist/mistemai.html
Any additions or amendments should be sent to me, and if you
would like to have a link to a personal home page from your entry
in the directory, then please sent me the details. New
subscribers to the MIST mailing list are added to the directory
unless they request to the contrary.

See you in November?

Best wishes,

                        Andy Smith, MIST Coordinator
-- 
Dr A.J. Smith,                   
British Antarctic Survey,        Phone: +44-1223-221544
Madingley Road,                  Fax:   +44-1223-221226
Cambridge CB3 0ET, UK.           Email: A.J.Smith@bas.ac.uk

MIST Home page:
http://www.nerc-bas.ac.uk/public/uasd/mist.html