As indicated in the Pre-announcement for the Cycle 4 Call for Proposals, the Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) will accept proposals for Large Programs for the first time in Cycle 4. An announcement which provides guidelines to prepare a Large Program proposal can now be found on the ALMA Science Portal.

Half a Decade of ALMA: Cosmic Dawns Transformed

This international four-day conference will highlight ALMA results at the threshold of the array's fifth year of science operations and bring together researchers from around the world to motivate collaborations for ALMA Cycle 5.

September 20 - 23, 2016
Renaissance Indian Wells Resort & Spa
Indian Wells, CA, USA

A new installment of Science Verification data is available. This release contains data on the following Science Verification target: IRAS16293-2422 spectral line observations in Band 4 (CH3CN, CH3OH) with the 12-m Array, demonstrating the Band 4 capability.

More information can be found on the ALMA Science Portal

People interested in proposing VLBI observations with ALMA should be informed that ALMA will participate in some GMVA observations during ALMA Cycle 4 at 3mm wavelengths in the period Oct 1 2016 - Sept 30 2017. More details can be found in the ALMA Cycle 4 Pre-announcement.

Announcement from the German Node
To prepare the local astronomical community for Cycle 4, the German ARC node organizes the German ALMA Community Days 2016 at the Argelander-Institut für Astronomie in Bonn on 6-8 April 2016.

Announcement from the German Node
The course "Radio Interferometry: Methods and Science", held in English at the university of Bonn in April-July 2016, offers a hands-on overview of major aspects of radio/mm/submm interferometry for master students, PhD students and senior astronomers. The course also comprises hands-on tutorials, where participants learn how to reduce interferometric data with the widely used astronomical software packages AIPS and CASA.

The end of this year also marks the end of the RadioNet3 (http://www.radionet-eu.org) networking activity MARCUs (Mobility for ARC Users).  MARCUs has supported approximately 40 researchers in visiting one of the European ALMA Regional Centre nodes across Europe, where they received expert face-to-face support from the local staff.

Announcement from the Nordic Node
The Nordic ARC node has prepared a suite of software tools for analysis of primarily ALMA but also other interferometric data. Most tools are developed for use with CASA, but are in many cases general and adaptable to other packages.