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Alberta Dawson Larsen
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The Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society Administrative Committee (AdCom) met in retreat on March 11 and held its first AdCom meeting of 2000 on March 12, both at the Sheraton Atlanta Downtown, Atlanta, Georgia.
Principal issues addressed at the retreat included the state of the society and of each of the technical committees; policies and concerns for off-shore conferences; the function and management of the NPSS web site; the impact of the DOE Conference Management Directive on conference attendance; and AdCom travel policy. There was considerable lively discussion and a number of issues were referred to the AdCom meeting the next day for further discussion.
The AdCom meeting was well attended, and the newly elected members, Richard Callis representing Fusion, Kenneth Galloway representing Radiation Effects, Osamu Ichihara representing Plasma Science and Applications, and Edl Schamiloglu representing Pulsed Power Science and Technology were welcomed. Peter Turchi was welcomed as the new chairman of the Pulsed Power Science and Technology technical committee. Joel Karp, the new chair of the Nuclear and Medical Sciences Imaging TC was represented by John Aarsvold.
Ed Lampo, the Society treasurer, reported that if conferences were not closed on time, IEEE would impose a fine. In general, NPSS conferences have done well in closing in a timely way in the last two years, and the return to the society is improving. Overall, the Society's financial position is good. This is especially due to the income from long-term investments and from the Transactions. Transactions on Plasma Science shared in the 1999 bonus.
Igor Alexeff, the Society president, reported on the last TAB meeting. The new IEEE logo is available. There is a widely held view that it was a boondoggle for the advertising agency that designed it and a major waste of IEEE funds. Its greatest value is that it will be used to give a standard look to all IEEE publications. Other TAB issues included a discussion of the problems of the Computer Society regarding the hiring of an Executive Director without following IEEE procedures. When IRS deemed the salary of the individual to be excessive and removal from office was recommended, the individual opened a lawsuit against IEEE. This incident has led to a requirement that Mary Ann de Wald at IEEE must sign off all contracts over $10,000, including those related to conferences.
The head of the IEEE legal staff reported that if an elected member sends a proxy, the proxy can't vote, especially on financial issues. If there were a case of fraud, the proxies voting would be held liable. There will be a new financial model in the future. The last proposed version was rejected.
Technical committee chairpersons reported on upcoming conferences and on meetings of the executive and technical committees. The Real Time conference proceedings were mailed in February. The 2001 conference will be held in Valencia, Spain, with Antonio Ferrer as chair. An organizational meeting will be held in Lyon in conjunction with the 2000 NSS/MIC. A new conference editor is being sought. There is some discussion on joining the Real Time conference and ICALEPCS, the International Conference on Accelerator and Large Experimental Physics Control Systems, since they are both held biennially and have a large overlap in material. ICALEPCS will be held in San Jose, CA, the heart of Silicon Valley, in late November 2001.
The 2001 Symposium on Fusion Engineering is nearing hotel contract closure. The DOE Conference Management Order is expected to be severely damaging to attendance at this and several other NPSS-sponsored conferences.
The Nuclear Instruments and Detectors committee (NIDcom) has a new standard on DCT detectors under review.
The 2000 NSS/MIC will be held in Lyon the week of October 16 (See article). Patrick LeDû of CEA-Saclay is the general chairman. The Nuclear and Medical Imaging Sciences-sponsored Medical Imaging Conference, MIC, program chair is Stig Larsson of Stockholm's Karolinska Hospital. The Radiation Instrumentation-sponsored Nuclear Science Symposium, NSS, program chairman is Chris Damerrel of the Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory, Oxford. The short course program is in order, there are already 40 exhibit booths sold, and there are plans for at least one demonstration (hadron therapy) to be made available to the public since the meeting overlaps with Science Week in Europe. Plans for the 2001 NSS/MIC in San Diego are on track, and site selection for both 2002 and 2003 is in process. The site for 2002 should be known shortly.
The 1999 PAC should be closed by now. By all metrics this was a highly successful conference. The PAC 2001, to be held in Chicago, has been dealing with the DOE Conference Management Orders, and a review of the IEEE NPSS/APS DPB Memorandum of Understanding governing this conference that was signed in 1992. A committee has been appointed to conduct this review. For about 30 years prior to 1992 the NPSS ran the conference independently.
The Plasma Science and Applications Executive Committee conducted a very careful analysis and decided to accept the offer to hold ICOPS 2003 in Korea. An international steering committee has been formed to address some of the possible problems. ICOPS has been held in the US and in Canada, but this is its first major offshore venture. The Real Time conference, on the other hand, alternates between the US and Europe so perhaps they can offer guidance. A Korean conference has the advantages of an active and growing Asian community to support it, and this also supports IEEE's goals of globalization.
The 1999 Pulsed Power conference was highly successful, with attendance considerably above projection. Proceedings and a CD-ROM are out, and there will be a special issue of TPS edited by Hugh Kirby with 60 to 70 papers. The 2001 joint Pulsed Power Plasma Science conference, to be held June 17-22 in Las Vegas is on track. At the moment this is the only joint conference being planned since the 2003 ICOPS will be held in Korea. One hopes that after the 2001 conference is evaluated there may be negotiations for joint conferences in the future at some regular interval (4 or 6 years?).
Radiation Effects also held a highly successful conference in 1999 with a large industrial exhibit. The 2000 conference will be held in Reno, NV in July, and the 2001 conference will be held in Vancouver, BC. Plan early to attend the Vancouver conference. It will be the first NSREC held outside the US in a very great many years, so help make it a huge success.
The NPSS Conference Policy document is available on the Web (http://hibp7.ecse.rpi.edu/~connor/ieee/IEEE_Complete.pdf) for review and use. Input and comment on this document should be sent to either Lou Costrell (louis.costrell@nist.gov) or Ray Larsen (larsen@slac.stanford.edu). The document will be revised after the 2000 committee meeting, to be held in Lyon in October and will include material on offshore conference management. A group from the NPSS led by Bill Moses and Ray Larsen will also draft a summary of the advantages to conferences of being under the IEEE NPSS umbrella. This will be posted with the planning document.
The Awards Committee will be reviewing and standardizing the NPSS awards language and structure. Most NPSS awards have increased in their monetary value, but there is still some discrepancy. There is also a need to advertise more effectively for award nominations. Send suggestions to me to be passed along to the committee.
Vern Price, the Memberships, Chapters, Distinguished Lecturers chairman, left our October meeting in poor health. It is good to report that he's now doing well and we all hope to see him at conference membership desks soliciting new members before very long. We also need more effective local mechanisms within labs or groups to encourage IEEE and NPSS membership. A sad example - although PAC was formed as an IEEE conference, only 25% of the registrants are IEEE members whereas about 50% are APS members. APS requires membership to present a paper at one of their conferences. Should we be thinking about this? What suggestions do you have to help boost our membership? Send them to v.price@ieee.org.
Steve Gitomer, the new NPSS Editor-in-Chief, is working with IEEE to get all publications to be in fully electronic form. There is a push for IEEE to accept PDF files, but so far they are only willing to accept MS Word and LaTex files, with graphics in separate files. There are many complex issues to be evaluated. There is still a big need to improve the time to publication.
Web issues include making our web site something that will give a first good impression of NPSS and that will be up-to-date, with obsolete material deleted regularly, and with links to appropriate sites maintained and updated regularly. This has become a bigger and bigger undertaking as more and more material is posted to the web and as more people rely on web postings.
While IEEE has disemboweled its own Ethics effort, there is now a new help service available on-line through the Ethics Center for Engineering and Science (http://onlineethics.org/). There was an interesting question raised about giving editors training in publication ethics. Apparently NIH offers a course on this type of ethics awareness that also covers liability and libel issues. Ned Sauthoff, in his role as president-elect of IEEE-USA is, evaluating several ethics issues, including sending a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno concerning the Wen-Ho Lee case. To date several major IEEE society presidents have written concerning his treatment, worse than that of any convicted spy in recent memory, and for no clear reason.
The new Sensors Council originated through the efforts of John Vig and on which we are represented by Bill Moses of LBNL, is now developing plans for the publication of a journal. The IEEE Publications financial analysis gave this a positive potential. Its biggest competition would be Elsevier's Sensors and Actuators Journal.
The issue of changing associate members to full members of IEEE continues to be addressed. So far 41 people have had their status changed to full member and this effort, which is also being addressed by the IT community, will also consider changes to senior membership. One must be a senior member to be eligible to become a Fellow.
The next meeting of the IEEE NPSS AdCom will be held on July 29, 2000 at the Silver Legacy Hotel, Reno, NV, following the NSREC conference.
Albe Dawson Larsen, the NPSS Secretary, can be reached at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, P.O. Box 4939 Stanford, CA 94309; Phone: (650) 926-2728; Fax: (650) 926-5124; E-mail: a.dawson@ieee.org