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The business meeting of commission 22 was held at the room 5 in the SulAmerica Convention Center in Rio de Janeiro(14:00-15:30). Fifteen people attended at this meeting:J.Borovička, E.Bowell, G.Consolmagno, D.Green, P. Jenniskens, A. Pellinen-Wannberg, R. Rudawska, J. Watanabe, J. Zhu, P. H. A. Hasselmann, F. Ostroviski, D. A. Oszkiewicz, W. Thuillot, P. Mahajani, and A. Sule. This meeting was managed by Junichi Watanabe, the current C22 Vice-President. The summary of the meeting is described.
The meeting was opened by Ted Bowell, president, at 11 am. The 2006 Division III meetings were reviewed by Guy Consolmagno, secretary; as the minutes of those meetings have already been published, they were assumed to be approved.
UNESCO's World Heritage List http://whc.unesco.org/en/list exists to help identify, protect and preserve sites and landscapes that are considered to be of outstanding universal value to humankind. This means that their significance reaches beyond national and cultural boundaries, and (if our attempts at preservation are successful) will remain as a source of inspiration for many generations into the future.
Commission 53 met in August 12, 2009. Outgoing President Michel Mayor chaired the meeting, and there were several dozen members present, including incoming President Alan Boss, incoming Vice President Alain Lecavelier des Etangs. Commission 53 (C53) was founded at the 2006 Prague General Assembly of the IAU. After a period of 6 years, C53 will come up for renewal at the 2012 IAU General Assembly in Beijing, China. For the moment, more than 150 IAU members have asked to be members of C53 and few dozen non-IAU members having asked to be informed of the commission activity.
There were four 1.5-hour sessions of Division I business meetings during the XXVIIth IAU General Assembly. The first three were devoted to the reports of Commissions, Working Groups and services associated with the Division, discussion about plans for the next triennium and future structure of the Division. Scientific presentations on the future space astrometric mission Gaia were made at the fourth session.
The business meeting was opened by the President, Irina Kumkova. She presented the agenda, which was approved. This session was attended by 42 participants. The meeting approved Dafydd Evans as secretary of minutes.
The members of the Commission 36 Organizing Committee attending the IAU General Assembly in Rio de Janeiro met for a business session on August 7. Both members from the previous (2006–2009) and the new (2009–2012) Organizing Committee partook in the discussions. Past president John Landstreet described the work he had done over the past three years in terms of supporting proposed conferences on the topic. He has also spent significant amount of time establishing an updated mailing list of all >350 members of the commission, which is unfortunately not provided automatically by the IAU. Such a list is critical for a rapid dissemination of information to the commission members and for a correct and smooth running of elections of IAU officials. Everyone present thanked John effusively for all of his hard work over the past three years to stimulate a high level of activity within the discipline.
Commission 33 held its business session in the afternoon of Friday 7 August 2009. The president briefly described developments during the previous months. A short discussion followed about the activities of the Commission and whether it should play a more active role in view of the many on-going surveys relevant to the subject of the Galaxy.
The business session for Commission 37 was held on 11 August 2009 at the IAU General Assembly in Rio de Janeiro. The meeting was attended by about a dozen members of our Comission, including President Elmegreen, VP Carraro and several committee members. We introduced ourselves and then went through a powerpoint presentation first prepared by outgoing President Hatzidimitriou and revised by incoming President Elmegreen. The contents of the powerpoint presentation are given in this summary.
Commission 5 and its working groups have continued to operate at a high level of activity over the last three years. In an era when the volume of astronomical data generated by next-generation instruments continues to increase dramatically, and data centres and data tools become increasingly central to front-line astronomical research, the activities of Commission 5 are becoming even more significant. However, most of the activities of Commission 5 take place through its working groups. That was reflected in the meetings at the IAU GA, where there was only one short Business Meeting of the Commission as a whole, but several vigorous meetings of the working groups.
Dr R. N. Manchester and Dr M. Hosokawa have been elected as, respectively, the new President and Vice-President of the Commission for the next term, 2009-2012. Concerning the Organizing Committee (OC) Members, we welcome as new members: Felicitas Aris (BIPM, France), Philip Tuckey (LNE-SYRTE, France), Vladimir Zharov (MSU, Russia), and Shougang Zhang (NTSC, China) and we acknowledge the outgoing members: Demetrios Matsakis, Gerard Petit, Mizuhiko Hosokawa, Sigfrid Leschiutta and Zao-Cheng Zhai. P. Defraigne remains on the OC as immediate Past-President.
What follows is a short report on the Business Meeting of the Astronomy and World Heritage Working Group held on Thursday August 6, 2009. This was the first formal Business Meeting of the Working Group since its formation following the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between the IAU and UNESCO on Astronomy and World Heritage in October 2008.
The business meeting of Commission 45 was held on Friday, 7 August. It was attended by the Vice-President of the Commission (who chaired the meeting in the absence of the President) as well as nine other members of the Commission. Attendance was limited, as usual, by the unavoidable occurrence of parallel sessions.
The President of the IAU, Dr. Catherine Cesarsky, welcomed the delegates and members to this the XXVII General Assembly. The delegates confirmed the agenda of the meeting as in the Program Book. The President invited the General Secretary, Dr. Karel A. van der Hucht, to present the first item.
The Local Group of galaxies consists of the Milky Way and all of its neighbours. The proximity of these galaxies allows for detailed studies of the processes that have led to their formation, structures, and evolution. In particular, studies of the Local Group can test predictions of structure formation that are based on dark energy and cold dark matter. This book presents a collection of review papers, written by world experts, on some of the most important aspects of Local Group Astrophysics. It is an invaluable resource for both professional researchers and graduate students in this fascinating area of research.