A lot has come to pass since my last message. Both the Health Physics Society’s (HPS's) midyear meeting and the professional development school (PDS) were resounding successes. At the 2007 annual meeting, six months before the midyear, we had received only 13 abstracts. However, through Herculean efforts by Northern California Chapter (NCCHPS) members (spear-headed by their past-president, Radoslav Radev; Local Arrangement Task Force co-chairs Kathleen Dinnel-Jones, John Ahlquist, and Dawn Banghart; NCCHPS liaison, our own Linnea Wahl; Elsa Nimmo of the Technical Program Committee; and all of our section membership), we ended up with more than120 papers and a very well-attended meeting.
PDS enrollment had to be capped at 120 students, which I hear is the highest that recent schools have had. The April issue of the HPS newsletter, Health Physics News, has a lot of details on the school. All copies of the textbook were sold out. Additional copies are available for sale. The link is on our section’s home page.
In the April issue of Health Physics News, President Kevin Nelson discusses the results of the preliminary HPS membership survey results. From what I see there, our proposed long-track courses, which we tried at the 2008 PDS, are the way of future.
Because of the midyear meeting and the PDS, we will have a shorter special accelerator technical session at the 2008 annual meeting at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The keynote speaker is Nolan E. Hertel from Georgia Institute of Technology. The title of his talk is “A Review of High-Energy Dose Conversion Coefficients,” which is very near and dear to the heart of those of us who are dealing with the 2007 amendments to the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, 10CFR835. I wish we could allow more time for the follow-up discussions to this talk. Nolan’s talk will be followed by several good presentations.
Based on the recommendation of the board of directors, made at the Oakland meeting, the proposed Accelerator Section logo was put up for vote. A total of 39 members voted. 59% voted for the proposed logo, 23% voted to keep the current logo, and 18% would like to see more choices. I think in a few years from now we should have a logo design contest.
The election is coming up in May. Please be sure to vote. For your write-in candidates, please make sure they are willing to serve. The past-president, Scott Walker, will be sending you the preliminary notice and ballot.
We will be evaluating students’ presentations and posters at the annual meeting for Wade Patterson Award nominations. Students and/or their sponsors: please do not forget to submit your work for award consideration.