sent: 8 January 2003 subject: TC18 newsletter nr 1 2003 Dear all, This electronic newsletter is sent to all members and it is also added to the TC18 web page. Stina Svensson is in charge of the web page. This is the first TC18 newsletter. Since the first announcement for TC18, around 40 people have joined. We welcome all of you. It is nice to know that so many are interested already from the start. It is also nice to know that there are a large group of people wanting to have an active role in TC18. We are at the moment distributing the various tasks among the interested. More about how we plan to structure the work is indicated below. In this newsletter we have included the information we find relevant for the moment. Please let us know if you want us to write about other topics. The same holds if you have something you want to add, such as announcements for conferences, special issues or other important events. The next newsletter is planned for the end of March. We are already collecting information for it. If you have any ideas on how to improve the presentation of the web page, or to want help, do not hesitate to contact us. Best regards, and HAPPY NEW YEAR 2003 Annick and Stina. Contents: ========= 1. DGCI deadline coming up 2. Special issues 3. Image/code data base 4. Basic notions and open problems 5. Degrees ===================================== 1. DGCI deadline coming up Deadline for paper submission to DGCI is approaching. The last date is 15 march 2003. We remind you to submit papers. Please visit the web page for the conference for more information: http://dgci.cib.na.cnr.it/ During the conference the first TC18 meeting will be held. This will allow us to meet and discuss about Discrete Geometry in general and what role we want TC18 to have in particular. 2. Special issues The second of the two special issues for DGCI 2000 is now ready. It is published as Volume 125, Issue 1 in Discrete Applied Mathematics. A Special Issue in Theoretical Computer Science (TCS) on "Combinatorics of the Discrete Plane and Tilings" is planned to be published in October 2003. Deadline for paper submission is February 28th, 2003. For more information, see http://www.liafa.jussieu.fr/~vuillon/special2003.htm or contact Laurent Vuillon (Laurent.Vuillon@liafa.jussieu.fr). 3. Image/code data base Currently a TC18 image and code data base is under construction. Responsible for this are David Coeurjolly (dcoeurjo@univ-lyon2.fr) and Eric Remy (eric.remy@mailup.univ-mrs.fr). It will be available from the TC18 web page. The idea is to make it easy for us to try our own algorithms on the same image examples as other researchers, as well as to try the algorithms of other researchers. More work is required before the web page can open, such as file formats and uploading process for members. What is fixed so far is that there will be only copyright free data and code. The aim is to have a mix between synthetic images and real data. Also wanted is mathematical objects, to have a kind of exact Euclidean signatures of the shapes (surface area, curvature...) in order to allow experimental comparison of discrete estimators. 4. Basic notions and open problems The "open problems" discussion is already available thanks to Reinhard Klette. Do not hesitate to propose and discuss new problems. A very efficient tool to find explanations as well as references on some specific topics is also available on the open problem page (see link from the TC18 web page) under "Publication Database". In the following, the part of TC18 web page dedicated to basic notions will be organised into sub-topics with some main references, and some slides. Work with the organisation of this is still in progress. 5. Degrees Recently we have had (at least) two persons, registered as TC18-members, getting a new degree. Dr. Ingela Nyström, Centre for Image Analysis, Uppsala, Sweden, has received the "Docent" degree during the autumn. In Sweden this degree, taken 4-5 years after the PhD, is, for example, necessary to have your own PhD students. On 13 November 2002 she held her "Docent" lecture. The title of the talk was "Challenges in measuring surface area and volume in digital images". MSc David Coeurjolly, Université Lumière Lyon 2, Lyon, France, defended his PhD thesis " Algorithmique et géométrie discrète pour la caractérisation des courbes et des surfaces" on 18 December 2002.