The Japanese government has just (as of Oct 1, actually) established a rather bold and innovative (and well funded) institute under the management of the University of Tokyo and located on its Kashiwa (a Tokyo suburb) campus. Novel features of this new institute include the requirements to have a substantial fraction of non-Japanese on its research staff, to use English as its "working language" and not to be bound by the standard Japanese academic salary scales. It aims to be active in mathematics, fundamental physics, astrophysics, statistics and so forth with cosmology as a connecting theme/topic. Many details are still being worked out, but there is quite a bit of information at http://ipmu.fiw.ad.jp/ The Insitutute will be doing a substantial amount of hiring at a wide range of career levels and also hopes to have a very active visitors program. It is a rather unusual situation/development and may offer some significant new opportunities. I urge`you to check it out for yourself and/or bring this information to the attention of your colleagues, students and anyone you think might be interested. Perhaps of particular interest to the SDSS communities, work on large scale cosmological surveys is mentioned explicitly in the Institute's plans. Ed Turner PS - I am sure that at least a few of you will already be aware of IPMU, as it is called; if you are one, please excuse the spam. APO APO APO APO APO Apache Point Observatory 3.5m APO APO APO APO APO This is message 1069 in the apo35-general archive. You can find APO the archive on http://www.astro.princeton.edu/APO/apo35-general/INDEX.html APO To join/leave the list, send mail to apo35-request@astro.princeton.edu APO To post a message, mail it to apo35-general@astro.princeton.edu APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO