The Health Physics Society's (HPS's) midyear meeting in Oakland, California, was very successful: 475 individuals registered for the meeting. Nearly as many vendors had booths at this meeting as at the 2007 HPS annual meeting in Portland.
The two American Academy of Health Physics (AAHP) classes were very well attended as were the six professional enrichment program (PEP) classes on Sunday. The Lord provided many very good instructors for these classes, and the students received them very well.
The plenary session included a presentation by Ralph Thomas describing the past development of accelerators and the development of health physics accompanying those accelerators. In addition, Ralph continued to champion resolving the debate centered around ICRP dose conversion factors, dose units, and weighting factors (quality factors), principally concerning neutrons in the higher energies. Other presentations followed, laying the groundwork for the future of accelerators in homeland security, medical applications, research, and industrial applications. Dr. Michael Current presented the final message on industrial applications of accelerators with a focus on ion implant machines. Dr. Current was a very animated and articulate speaker. We were left with slight discomfort from having learned that most old ion implant accelerators do not die, but end up in someone's garage.
Nikolai Mokhov presented a Morgan Lecture titled "Challenges, Advances, and Future Needs in Shielding Code Development." His paper outlined the recent developments in shielding codes, the broad range of capabilities now available in these codes, and future challenges to code development. The codes have come a long way in the decade since the last HPS midyear meeting on radiation-generating machines, and the capabilities of these codes have expanded greatly. The codes have also made predictions in many areas that are very consistent with experimental data.
Dr. Fred Mettler presented a Morgan Lecture in the medical session of the midyear titled "Medical Radiation Exposure in the United States: 2006." He presented data verifying that exposures from medical procedures (particularly computerized axial tomography [CAT] scans) now account for 80% of the radiation dose received by the public in the United States. The tools provided by these new procedures allow physicians to quickly isolate and treat injuries from accidents and other medical emergencies but certain physicians have moved toward ordering CAT scans as a routine part of normal exams with no thought to the radiation exposure involved.
The submitted papers mandated two sessions throughout most of the meeting. Foreign nationals presented nearly 10% of the papers and attendees came from as far away as Nigeria. The meeting included a well-attended panel discussion on nanoparticles on Tuesday evening. The very diverse and interesting papers covered the range of topics listed in the call for abstracts. The attendees felt the quality of the presentations were quite outstanding.
The HPS leadership was very happy with the meeting. Those who submitted papers and helped organize the meeting are to be congratulated. The Northern California Chapter worked very hard throughout the meeting to ensure that all went smoothly. We are in debt to both the Northern California chapter and the HPS Program Committee for orchestrating this very successful meeting.