The past quarter has seen intense activity in preparation for the 2008 Health Physics Society (HPS) Midyear Topical Meeting. Those of us working to organize the meeting have exchanged literally hundreds of e-mails and spent many hours on the telephone. Every document prepared (including the poster) has been distributed for comment. Linnea Wahl is doing a very good job as the liaison between the Northern California Chapter and the Accelerator Section. Kamran Vaziri is also doing an outstanding job of organizing the accelerator session meeting at the annual HPS meeting in Portland, OR. I thank him very much for taking this responsibility so I can devote my time to organizing the 2008 midyear meeting.
We submitted the poster to the HPS board for their approval prior to printing (the goal being publication prior to the 2007 midyear in Knoxville, Tennessee). The Accelerator Section originally planned to print 500 posters. After a great deal of thought, the number was expanded to 1000, then to 2000. The printer made a mistake in the paper used in the printing and printed an additional 1000 posters to make up for the error. Thus, we ended up with 3000 posters. The HPS board strongly supported our efforts and voted by e-mail to approve the poster. The posters were printed in time for the Knoxville meeting, where the Northern California Chapter set up a booth to advertise the 2008 midyear meeting and distribute the posters to whomever wanted them.
The HPS board voted to absorb the cost of printing the posters (~$2000), and the HPS Secretariat agreed to mail the posters. A number of people have been involved in preparing a set of postal addresses for mailing the posters. I prepared a list of 341 university hospital addresses (including hospitals worldwide), Nisy Ipe prepared a set of 148 individual addresses at accelerator facilities, and Mike Grissom and I prepared an additional set of over 100 accelerator addresses. These have all been sent to the HPS Secretariat. The packet mailed to these addresses included an overview of the meeting, the detailed call for abstracts, and two posters. A friend sent me a list of 200-plus homeland security e-mail addresses. (Kamran volunteered to e-mail the poster, the call for abstracts, and the meeting overview to the homeland security list). Radoslav Radev and John Ahlquist from the Northern California Chapter have completed further work toward preparing the homeland security list and sending the poster and other material to those e-mail addresses. We are having difficulty acquiring a list of postal addresses for industrial and sterilization facilities. If any of you have any ideas, please contact Ted de Castro or me.
The meeting scope was further defined as follows:
"The radiation sources covered under the topic 'Radiation-Generating Devices' include large sources used for sterilization, food irradiation, and other industrial applications, and sources used as an integral part of an imaging system, but does not include check sources, calibration sources, lost sources, and any source recovery activities."
I have submitted three separate articles and a detailed call for abstracts to the HPS newsletter, Health Physics News. We tried to submit the poster for publication in the newsletter, but the newsletter printer advised us that the print quality would not be sufficient.
The Northern California Chapter has continued to enhance the Web page used to advertise the 2008 midyear, which now includes the documents we have published in the newsletter and will include information about tours, etc., as it becomes available.
The ground work for the plenary session has been laid, and in addition to the political speaker, topics such as accelerator health physics history (research, medical imaging/therapy, and industrial); accelerator health physics advances over the decade since our last midyear (research, medical imaging/therapy, industrial and security imaging); and future accelerator health physics needs (research, medical imaging/therapy, industrial and security imaging) will be covered. The speakers for these topics are nearly finalized. I will not elaborate until the speakers are finalized.
Don Cossairt, Vashek Vylet, and Linnea have nearly completed the gross details (teaching materials, teachers, budget, etc.) for the 2008 HPS Professional Development School, which will follow immediately after the 2008 midyear meeting. A member of the HPS board commented that he liked the idea of a school tied to the midyear but had no hope that it would happen during the first year following the plan to change the time and format.
We are accomplishing something each of us can be proud of. This midyear (if things continue to develop as they have been) will signify that the smallest section in the HPS is very alive, committed, and vibrant. Now each of us needs to step up and commit to submitting a paper for that meeting.