In this issue you will find two practical papers that should be of interest to the EMC community. The first entitled, "How Much is a dB Worth?" by Gabe Sanchez and Pat Connor, was originally presented at the 2001 meeting of the Antenna Measurement and Techniques Association (AMTA) in Denver. It is featured on the cover of this issue. Gabe and Pat address the question of how much money should be spent on an anechoic chamber given its required performance. Is it worth it to buy that last dB of performance? Enough good comments were received about this paper that we thought wider dissemination was warranted. The second paper is the one promised in the last issue of the Newsletter and is about the history of EMC activities at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). I think you will agree that much fundamental EMC work has been and is being carried out there. The resources available at NIST are a significant asset and should be better known among EMC engineers.

The purpose of this section is to disseminate practical information to the EMC community. In some cases the material is entirely original. In others, the material is not new but has been made either more understandable or accessible to the community. In others, the material has been previously presented at a conference but has been deemed especially worthy of wider dissemination. Readers wishing to share such information with colleagues in the EMC community are encouraged to submit papers or application notes for this section of the Newsletter. See page 3 for my e-mail, FAX and real mail address. While all material will be reviewed prior to acceptance, the criteria are different from those of Transactions papers. Specifically, while it is not necessary that the paper be archival, it is necessary that the paper be useful and of interest to readers of the Newsletter.

Comments from readers concerning these papers are welcome, either as a letter (or e-mail) to the Associate Editor or directly to the authors.