The President's Message

A new Health Physics Society (HPS) year started at the annual meeting in Washington, DC. The meeting was a good opportunity for Accelerator Section members to get together, discuss topics of interest to the section, and socialize. I thought to send you a brief note on the highlights of the meeting. At the same time, I would like to thank the outgoing board members, Ted deCastro and Tosh Ushino, and the previous past president, Carter Ficklen. I’d like to extend a hearty welcome to the new members of the board of directors, Doug Wells and Gary Zeman, and the new secretary, Michael Duran. Also, congratulations are in order for our president-elect, Lorraine Marceau-Day.

The Washington, DC, meeting was well represented by members of the Accelerator Section, and we had a productive business session.

• There was a full-day technical session with 13 excellent oral presentations. There were also several posters presented mainly by students.
• The keynote address at our technical session was presented by the recipient of the G. William Morgan Lecturer Award for the HPS, Graham Stevenson. An abstract of his talk is provided in this newsletter, as are photos of the award ceremony and other HPS annual meeting events.
• The second H. Wade Patterson Memorial Award was presented to Vakhtang Makarashvili for the best student presentation at the accelerator session. Vakhtang is a graduate student at Idaho State University; his paper was titled, "A Non-Destructive, Highly Penetrating Gamma Activation Assay of Uranics and Transuranics" (see an abstract of his presentation later in this newsletter and a photo in the past president's message).

A number of items were discussed at the meeting of the board members and in the business section meeting.

• This year, no papers were submitted for the Patterson award, so the board decided to present the award to the best presentation (oral or poster). Many thanks to Kamran Vaziri and Vashek Vylet for serving as the referees, and to Lorraine Marceau-Day and Marcia Torres for preparing a plaque and the cash award.
• The board also voted to increase the cash award for the Patterson award from $250 to $300. Suggestions for increasing the students' interest in the Patterson award are welcome.
• A two-hour professional enrichment program (PEP) course given by Scott Walker was well attended. Interest was expressed in expanding the course to four hours, two PEP sessions, and/or an eight-hour American Academy of Health Physics (AAHP) course.
• The success of the Erice, Italy, school was noted, and on-going interest has been expressed in holding another course.
• There have been many activities in preparation for a midyear meeting in 2008 on radiation-generating machines to be sponsored by the Northern California Chapter of the HPS (NCCHPS). The board voted to form a working group consisting of Carter Ficklen and Lorraine Marceau-Day for coordinating the Accelerator Section’s activities with Gary Zeman and the NCCHPS.
• A progress report on the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) report was presented by Scott Walker, co-chair of the committee. Good progress has been made, and January 2005 is the next target date for the committee to complete its work.
• Marcia Torres presented the statement of income and expenses and the account balance as of 4/30/04 was $7020.39
• Ralph Thomas was present at the meeting and reiterated his concerns about radiation-weighting factors assigned to neutrons over a wide energy range and asked that the Accelerator Section get involved in this discussion. The Accelerator Section board voted to form a working group to review the proposed International Commission on Radiation Protection (ICRP) Publication 92 as it relates to working at particle accelerators. Bob Casey will be the chair of the working group composed of Alberto Fasso, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC); Don Cossairt, Fermi National Accelerator Lab (FNAL); Nolan Hertel, Georgia Tech; and me.
• Bob and I discussed the formation of this working group with President Ken Kase and President-Elect Ray Guilmette of the HPS. We were asked to consider coordinating with a similar task group formed by the society, if such a combined response is appropriate.
• The results of the Accelerator Section’s election were announced, and the list of officers and their e-mails is provided above.
• Robert Whitcomb is the section’s new liaison with the board of directors.
• In the business meeting and in the meeting of the section’s board of directors, the efforts of Linnea Wahl, newsletter editor, were unanimously acknowledged and applauded. Linnea has made the newsletter into an outstanding source of information and communication for the section members and another reason for recognition of the section's efforts by the HPS at large.

Please share with me your thoughts on topics and issues that we should be considering during the year ahead.