Second Announcement and Call For Papers

                           MEGA 2005

             The Eight International Symposium on              
             Effective Methods in Algebraic Geometry

   Computing in and with algebraic geometry:
     Theory, Algorithms, Implementations, Applications.


            Porto Conte, Alghero, Sardinia (Italy)
                     May 27th -- June 1st
 

  MEGA is the acronym for Effective Methods in Algebraic Geometry (and
  its equivalent in Italian, French, Spanish, German, Russian, etc.), a
  series of roughly biennial conferences on computational aspects of
  Algebraic Geometry with very high standards. Previous meetings were held 
  in 1990 (Castiglioncello, Italy), 1992 (Nice, France), 1994
  (Santander, Spain),1996 (Eindhoven, Nederlands), 1998 (St. Malo,
  France) 2000 (Bath, United Kingdom) and 2003 (Kaiserslautern, Germany).
  
  Proceedings containing a selection of the papers and invited talks
  presented at previous Mega conferences have been published by
  Birkhäuser in the series Progress in Mathematics (volumes no. 94,
  109 and 143), by the Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra (volumes
  no. 117 and 118, 139 and 164) and by the Journal of Symbolic
  Computation (volume 36 n. 3-4) 
  
  

  On the occasion of the Mega 2005 Conference there will be a special 
  issue of the Journal of Symbolic Computation. Even more so than for 
  former Mega conferences, the special issue should be seen as a collection 
  of refereed journal papers rather than as the proceedings of the 
  conference. In particular, papers submitted to journals elsewhere 
  can be presented at the Mega 2005 conference, and papers presented 
  at the conference need not appear in the special issue of JSC.


  
  
			 Conference Topics			  
  
  Effective Methods and Theoretical and Practical Complexity Issues in:
  Commutative Algebra, Geometry, Real Geometry, Algebraic Number Theory,
  Algebraic Geometry and related fields: Algebraic Analysis of
  Differential Equations, Differential Geometry, Associative Algebras,
  Group Theory, Algebraic Groups and Lie Algebras, Algebraic and
  Differential Topology, as well as applications of these fields.
  
  
			Invited Speakers 
 
 Elizabeth Allman, Patrick Fitzpatrick, Herwig Hauser, Bjorn Poonen (to be 
 confirmed), Thorsten Theobald. 
  
 
		       Conference chair
  
  Carlo Traverso,(Pisa, Italy)
  
		       Conference Committee			      
  
  Patrizia Gianni (Pisa, Italy), chairman
  André Galligo (Nice, France),
  Alicia Dickenstein (Buenos Aires, Argentina),
  Marc Giusti (Palaiseau, France),
  Teo Mora (Genova, Italy),
  Tomas Recio (Santander, Spain),
  Joseph Schicho (Linz, Austria).
 
  
		       Advisory Board			       
  Arjeh Cohen (Eindhoven, Netherlands),
  James H. Davenport (Bath, United Kingdom),
  Wolfram Decker (Saarbrücken,Germany),
  Vladimir Gerdt (Dubna, Russia)
  Laureano Gonzalez-Vega (Santander, Spain),
  Gert-Martin Greuel (Kaiserslautern, Germany),
  D. Yu. Grigoriev (Rennes, France),
  Rimvydas Krausauskas (Vilnius, Lithuania)
  Mark van Hoeij (Tallahassee, USA),
  Daniel Lazard (Paris, France),
  Gunter Malle (Kassel, Germany),
  Louis M.Pardo (Santander, Spain)
  Ragni Piene (Oslo, Norway)
  Lorenzo Robbiano (Genova, Italy),
  Marie-Françoise Roy (Rennes, France),
  Frank Sottile (Amherst, USA)
  Nobuki Takayama (Kobe, Japan),
  
  
		   Local arrangements
  Marco Bodrato  (Pisa, Italy)
  Massimo Caboara (Pisa, Italy) 
  Pasqualina Conti (Pisa, Italy)
  Giorgio Dalzotto (Pisa, Italy)
  Patrizia Gianni (Pisa, Italy)
  Franco Piras (Cagliari, Italy)
  Carlo Traverso (Pisa, Italy)
 
  
  
		      Important Dates
  
  15.01.2005  Deadline for submissions of contributed talks
  
  01.03.2005  Deadline for submissions of software presentations

  10.03.2005  From this date it is possible to apply for support

  15.03.2005  Notification of acceptance of contributions

  01.04.2005  Early registration deadline. WARNING: the accommodation is 
	      not guaranteed after that date, and an extra charge of 50 Euro 
	      will be requested

  27/5-1/6.2005 Conference
  
  
			     Venue.
  
  The conference will be held at Hotel Corte Rosada, a sea resort at
  Porto Conte (Alghero).
  
  Participants will be hosted at the hotel. Full board at the hotel will
  cost 375 Euro for the 7 nights from 26/5 to 2/6 for double occupancy,
  455 Euro for single occupancy.
  
  Porto Conte is in a natural park 10 KM from Alghero, a small walled
  town in the northwestern coast of Sardinia. The town has catalan
  origin, and catalan is spoken locally. 
  
  Alghero has an international airport, served by low cost airlines, and
  connected to Milan, Rome, London, Hahn-Frankfurt and
  Girona-Barcelona. Another possible airport is Olbia.
  
  People coming with a car can come through Porto Torres, 35 km far, with
  daily ferry connections from Marseilles and Genova.
  
  
		   Registration and Accommodation		      
  
  A registration form will be available online on the Mega WWW-site from
  March 2005 on. The registration fee will be 130 Euro per person (110
  Euro for accompanying persons, 60 Euro for students; 50 Euro
  supplement for late registration). It will partly cover the conference
  expenses.
  
  We expect to be able to support at least partially some of the
  participants. Applications will be possible after 10.03.2005,
  People with accepted  contributions (full talks, software demos or short 
  contributions) and no other funding possibility will be preferred.
  

  
****************************************************************************
  
		  Submissions of contributed talks			
					     
 Papers should be submitted electronically by January 15, 2005,
 through the submission form.
 
 People having problems with the form may submit by email
 sending a message with the files of the submission to the address
 mega2005@posso.dm.unipi.it.
  
 Authors who have problems with electronic submissions should contact
 the address mega2005@posso.dm.unipi by e-mail or the address given at
 the end of the announcement by regular mail.
 
 The submissions should contain recent original research relevant to
 the themes of the conference, and should consist of a paper and an
 abstract of two to four pages. The paper can be either a full paper 
 with complete proofs or an extended abstract of at least 4 pages containing
 full results, an outline of the proofs and all of the main
 ideas. In this case, the submission of the abstract of 2
 pages is not necessary. There is no upper limit. The paper and the abstract 
 should be in english.
 
 The abstract will be used to organize the refereeing, and should give
 sufficient details to understand the significance of the contribution
 and address the paper to a proper referee. A bad abstract might result
 in a wrong choice, and cause the rejection of an otherwise acceptable
 contribution.
 
 Both the paper and the abstract should be either in postscript or in
 pdf format.
 
 Already published papers or papers submitted elsewhere might be
 acceptable but this fact should be stated and a motivation given in the
 abstract. The acceptance of an already published paper depends on the
 special significance and on the research perspectives opened by the
 paper.
 
 
			   Short communications
 
  As an addition to the conference program, there will be a few
  tutorials and short communications sessions.  The tutorials will be
  organized directly, and announced later.
  
  The short communications will be accepted on the basis of an abstract
  or of a full paper, to be submitted before the conference.  The
  submissions will not be refereed, but only checked for coherence with
  the conference topics and selected by the conference committee on the
  basis of the interest of the subject. A short communication may
  contain complete results or announcements of ongoing research, or
  results of significant computations and applications.
  
 
  A first selection of contributions arrived before march 1 will be made
  on time to allow the proponents to register early in case of
  acceptance. Additional talks might be added later, or even at the
  conference, if there will be time left.


			Software Presentations  		      
  
 In the context of MEGA2005, a software presentation is a presentation
 of a program or package, not of specialized procedures or algorithms,
 (that should be configured as a full contributions or a short
 communication.)
 
 Each submission should not exceed 4 pages and consist of a description
 of the contents of the presentation, not a description of the package
 itself.
 
 Software presentations might be suitable of inclusion in the
 conference material, in particular in the preliminary issue of
 AJCA. For this a separate submission will be necessary.
 
 
 
			      AJCA 
		 Active Journal for Computer Algebra
 
 Some of the conference organizers are currently planning an electronic
 "active" journal, i.e. a new combination of papers and software that
 will allow the concurrent publication of both and the execution of the
 software by the user on his own computer, possibly with his own
 data.
 
 We plan to have a preliminary test issue in the conference material
 distribution.  Material unrelated to the conference, if significant
 for the AJCA, will be included too. Material submitted to the
 conference, if suitable for inclusion in the AJCA, will be invited to
 submit.
 
 The papers in this preliminary number will not be refereed for
 mathematical content, but only for conformity to the spirit of the
 AJCA; in particular, they should allow execution of software from
 inside of the paper. New active versions of already published papers
 are especially suitable for inclusion, if allowed by the original
 copyright.
 
 Further information on the preliminary issue and submissions can be
 made taking contact with mega2005@posso.dm.unipi.it; please specify
 AJCA in the subject line. Since this is ongoing research, the format
 of the submission is a moving target, but basically we expect to define
 a LaTeX style that allows displaying and executing the code through
 hyper links and special commands.