First announcement:

Invitation to a Workshop in

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Galactic and Extragalactic ISM Modelling
in an ALMA Perspective
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Onsala, Sweden, October 13-15 2005


Scientific Organizing Comittee:

S. Aalto (Chair), F. Le Petit, M. Spaans,
A. Weiss, M. Juvela


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BACKGROUND

ALMA's unprecedented angular resolution and sensitivity will offer a
cloud-scale view of galaxies to the extragalactic community.  The
models needed to interpret ALMA's high resolution data require careful
consideration already today and warrant a dialogue between the
Galactic and extra-galactic communities.  Central to this discussion
is whether we can treat the extreme environments often encountered in
the cores of deeply embedded starbursts simply as scaled-up versions
of Sgr B2 and M82 or whether these environments are different enough
to require a novel approach.  At the core of this question is whether
starburst processes are the same everywhere - and thus independent of
variations in large-scale molecular cloud properties and environment.

The workshop will be driven by a number of key questions:

*Are the IMFs of the compact ULIRG bursts the same as the IMFs of
  kpc-scale bursts in less luminous starbursts or those of
  Galactic star-forming regions?
*How different is the interstellar medium around an AGN compared to that
  of a compact starburst?
*What is the small-scale connection between dynamics, cloud properties
  and star formation in density wave spiral arms and bar-shocks?
*To what extent can we use low-metallicity dwarfs, or the outskirts of
  the Milky Way, as templates for high redshift systems?
*How can we handle the modelling of ensembles of molecular clouds in
  a turbulent, radiatively and chemically active environment?

There will be discussions on existing computer codes and databases on
molecular excitation, PDRs and radiative transport, such as the Leiden
LAMDA site, CLOUDY and the Meudon PDR code.
In summary, the goal of the workshop is to make extragalactic ISM
researchers aware of the modeling efforts by Galactic scientists - and
how these efforts can be applied to extragalactic environments - as
well as to make Galactic-oriented modelers aware of important issues
and unsolved problems in the extragalactic scene.

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The workshop will consist of both review talks and contributed talks,
but a strong focus will be put on panel discussions of important
topics. There will be no poster session.

For more information, and to be put on the mailing-list for the second
announcement please contact:

Susanne Aalto, email: susanne@oso.chalmers.se,  fax: +46-300-35590,
						phone: +46-300-35506.

We are working on a website for the workshop where you can register
and where more information can be found.  It will be available at the
time for the second announcement.


Intended number of participants: 30-40

Conference fee: We hope that we can avoid conference fees since the
workshop will be partially sponsored by RadioNet. More information on
this shortly.

We do not plan to have proceedings - apart from possible
web-publishing.  Possibility to produce a "cookbook" - or a summary of
panel discussions will, however, be investigated.