MicroNews Nov/Dec 1992

 Micronews November 1992

Our winter council meeting will be held January 16th and 17th at the Pacifica Hotel in Los Angeles.

The '93 MAS meeting will be held at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, July 11 - 16. Our Local Committee, Jack Worrall, Chairman, as well as John Armstrong and John Porter, Program Co-Chairs have assembled an interesting scientific program. Al Romig and Dave Williams are organizing AEM-93 in the long standing tradition of our MAS-only meetings. Jack Worrall guarantees an exciting social agenda and assures us this will be a great spot to bring the entire family. The kids will no doubt attend sessions while the parents are on the beach. It should also be noted that following another long standing tradition, manufacturers will not be amassing their usual displays, but will be represented by table top displays which will give them much more of an opportunity to take part in the technical and social sessions.

I urge you to continue your past support of our society by promptly returning your ballot and your annual dues and by encouraging your colleagues and students to entertain membership in MAS. Our student membership is one of the finest bargains in science today.

It is with a great deal of humility and pride that I assume the helm of MAS for this '92 - '93 year. Being active on Council since '86, has afforded me many opportunities to interact with so many of you. I welcome this opportunity to return to the society a small bit of what it has given to me.

If during my term, there is to be a particular emphasis, I wish it to be placed on student participation, recognition and awards. Students are our society's future and in the long run perhaps the most rewarding return any of us can expect on our investment.

Finally, it is with deep personal regret that I must inform you of the death of Tom Fisher, a very old and generous friend and supporter of MAS.

Thank you for your support of MAS and in advance for your support of my presidency and the support of our council.

Thomas G. Huber

President

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Dear Colleagues:

The Boston '92 meeting is now behind us, setting a new attendance record of 4,100 persons, a 40% increase over any previous MAS/EMSA meeting. There were 120 corporations represented in 280 booths. MAS contributed papers were at an all time high, sending MAS Council a welcome signal that our membership is comfortable with their society. Our journal made its long awaited debut at the meeting and was received with enthusiasm and excitement. Credit for this achievement belongs to Rich Linton and his capable editorial board.

Our new society logo has been reproduced on a handsome plaque and was presented to all of our sustaining members at the Sustaining Members Breakfast. Many of the plaques were seen displayed on the booths during the meeting. Thanks for the new design goes to Jon McCarthy.

The summer council meeting saw the appointment of a new Long Range Planning Committee comprised of Al Romig, Chairman, David Wittry, Inga Holl Musselman, and Jim Kerner. Our society's future direction is in their hands.

Our Nominating Committee has presented us with an excellent slate of candidates for our fall election. Running unopposed, as is our custom for President Elect, is our society Secretary, John Small. John is currently employed in the Microanalysis Research Group at N. I. S. T. He received the Department of Commerce Bronze Metal Award (1988) as well as the Macres Award (1988). John has been a member of MAS since 1976 and has served our society as Director 1987-1989. John did an outstanding job as MAS Technical Chair for the '92 Boston meeting. Dave Simons, also of N. I. S. T., has agreed to finish out the remainder of John's thankless task as Secretary. As is our custom, we will elect two new Directors replacing Ryna Marinenko and John Friel both of whom are rotating off Council this year. Our candidates for Directors are Joanna Batstone, Meredith Bond, Mary Grace Burke, Joseph Geller, Dave Kruger, and Charlie Lyman. These candidates span a wide range of disciplines and geographic areas. You may read about their qualifications for office on the following pages of MicroNews. At this point, I wish to thank our Past President, Dave Williams, as well as our retiring Directors, Ryna Marinenko and John Friel, for their service and commitment to the council and to our society.

MEETING AND SHORT COURSE

CALENDAR

Meetings

SCANNING '93,

Orlando, FL, April 20-23

Contact: SCANNING '93

Box 832

Mahwah, NJ 07430-0832,

(201) 818-1010; 0086 FAX

EMAS '93

European Microbeam Analysis Society

Rimini, Italy, May 9-13

Contact: Dr. Aldo Armigliato

Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche

Istituto LAMEL

Via de' Castagnoli 1

I-40126 Bologna

ITALY

SEEMS '93

Alabama Electron Microscopy Society and

Southeastern Electron Microscopy Society

Birmingham, AL, May 12-14

Contact: Dr. James Sheetz

Division of Anatomy

University of Alabama at Birmingham

Birmingham, AL 35294

(205) 934-5341

MAS '93, Los Angeles, CA, July 11-16

MSA '93, Cincinatti, OH,

MAS / MSA '94, New Orleans, LA

MAS '95, Denver, CO

MAS / MSA '96, Minneapolis, MN

Short Courses

Lehigh's SEM, AEM, and SPM Short Courses - 1993

June 14-18 Basic Course

June 21-25 Advanced Courses

June 21-25 AEM Courses

Contact: Dr. Joseph I. Goldstein

Dept. of Materials Science and Enginnering

Lehigh University

5 E. Packer Avenue

Bethlehem, PA 18015-3195

(215) 758-5133; 4244 FAX

MAS / EMSA MEETING

1991 MAS AWARD WINNERS

Best Contributed Paper (Birks Award)

Applications of SIMS in Cosmochemistry and Geochronology: Probing the Evolution from Stardust to the First Continents

K. D. McKeegan

Department of Earth and Space Sciences

UCLA

Best Student Paper (Castaing Award)

Characterization of Thin Polymer Films by LAMMS

P. J. Cunningham, J. A. Leake, and E. R. Wallach

Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy

University of Cambridge

MAS / EMSA '92 SUMMARY

Dave Williams, Past President

It's perhaps not a wise decision to have the Past President report on what happened at the MAS meeting because the lot of the outgoing President is to attend innumerable committee meetings and several memorable cocktail parties and on occasions sneak into a technical session. Nevertheless, I spent enough time in the conference center over the week to feel confident in pronouncing the Boston meeting a great success.

MAS Council made several notable achievements, not least of which was the completion of business in a total time of about nine hours, thus considerably reducing council costs for staying in expensive hotels and immeasurably improving the tenor of the meeting and the concentration level of the council members. As approved by the business meeting in San Jose we agreed to raise the dues to $40 for 1993 to cover the costs of Microbeam Analysis, our fine new journal which all of you should have received and read by now. Many promotional copies were handed out from the MAS stand and we hope that these copies will encourage MAS members and other microanalysts to submit articles for publication. Much of our society's reputation rests on the success of this journal.

Council also confirmed the election of Georges Slodzian to Honorary Membership joining only ten distinguished microanalysts who have this honor. Georges received a plaque during the Presidential Symposium, along with the other award winners, Graham Cliff, Gordon Lorimer, Edgar Etz and Steve Pennycook. Paul Lublin who received the Special Service Award was unfortunately unable to attend as he was recovering from an automobileaccident. Art Chodos, Tom Huber and Oliver Wells accompanied me to Paul's house outside Boston where we presented him with the award in an informal ceremony. This single event will remain in my mind one of the best things that MAS has done on a personal basis in a long while.

We had record attendances at our sustaining members breakfast and we presented the representative of each sustaining member company with a plaque, recording their affiliation with MAS. Many of these plaques designed through Jon McCarthy's efforts appeared on the companies' exhibition stands. Due to Jack Worrall and Art Chodos' efforts we continue to enjoy a record level of sustaining member support. A similar large group attended the local affiliates lunch and tour speakers for next year were decided. Paul Hlava has turned around the tour speaker program and last year was one of the best in our history both in terms of local group reaction and participation.

The social evening on Boston Harbor was apparently a great success although I did not attend since it was my wife's birthday (and a significant birthday too, but I'm not telling you which one!) No one fell in the harbor (to my knowledge) and a good time was had by all. Tremendous thanks are due to Mary Finn for all her work on the local arrangements committee. The whole program proceeded remarkably smoothly, to Mary's credit.

The technical sessions, effortlessly arranged by John Small, were well attended and the abiding interest in microanalysis bodes well for next year's MAS only meeting in Marina del Rey (not Los Angeles really!). You will hear about paper deadlines etc. for next year in due course. I encourage you all to attend and make next year as successful in a different way as this year's meeting. It has been generally a pleasure to have the honor of the MAS presidency, if only for giving me the opportunity of relieving the incoming president of many dollars on the golf course.

The society is financially stable - thanks to Harvey Freeman and Gordon Cleaver's sound investments. The new journal will give us increased visibility, but we need to continue to work to preserve our independence and a forum for all kinds of microanalysis and microscopy.

EMSA / MAS / MSC '92 - COMPUTER

WORKSHOP AND SOFTWARE EXCHANGE

John Mansfield, MAS Computers Acitivies Chair

In keeping with the events of recent years, a Computer Workshop and Software Exchange was help at this years ;joint meeting of EMSA, MAS and MSC. The workshop was a great success, a total of 486 people signed our attendance lists of whom 25% were MAS members. This represents a sizable increase over last year.

The scope of this workshop expands each year. In addition to the six Macintoshes and six MS-DOS machines setup for exchange of software in the Electron Microscopy and Microanalysis Public Domain Library (EMMPDL) and the Microbeam Analysis Society Software Library (MASSL), there were two new features of the workshop. Firstly, one each of both the Macintosh and DOS computers were connected to a modem. This enabled attendees to experiment with the joint MAS/EMSA Bulletin Board System (BBS). While we had experimented with modems on the Macintoshes in previous workshops, this was the first time that there was general access for all attendees. The BBS, which is maintained by Nestor Zaluzec at Argonne National Laboratory, is open to members of both MAS and EMSA. The BBS provides a forum for discussions, allows members to exchange electronic mail, contains Society and meeting information and has useful files and programs from the MASSL and EMMPDL available for download. A more detailed description of the BBS and how to access it will appear in the next issue of MicroNews.

The second new feature of the workshop was the appearance of a UNIX computer. A Silicon Graphics IRIS computer supplied by Baylor College of Medicine was used to demonstrate their image and diffraction pattern analysis software Spectra. The software was demonstrated by Man Wei Tam. The Computer Committee are currently negotiating with Baylor College to make the software available to the MAS/EMSA community via anonymous ftp. Access to this package from Baylor and other software of use to the MAS members, other than that contained in the MASSL and EMMPDL, will be discussed in an upcoming article in MicroNews.

We will continue to develop this workshop and would appreciate input from our members. If you have any comments or suggestions as to how the workshop could be enhanced, please contact the Computer Committee Chair, John Mansfield (see Mousin' Around for address).

Call and Instruction for Papers

The MAS Meeting will include tutorial workshops on Sunday, July 11 as well as the Presidential Symposium. Special Sessions and Regular Sessions as identified below. All papers, whether invited or contributed, must be submitted on the forms provided at the back of MicroNews, or, if prepared by a word processor, must be set with margins to match the templates. The entire paper must be on two pages, no more, no less, and should be submitted to the Program Chairs as instructed on the Authors' Data Sheet.

Preliminary Technical Program

MAS '93 Meeting

Program co-chairs:

John Armstrong, Caltech

John Porter, Rockwell Science Center

Meeting chair:

Jack Worrall, USC

Loyola Marymount University

Marina del Rey / Los Angeles, California

Plans are well underway for an exciting and unique national MAS meeting. The Southern California Microbeam Analysis Society (SCMAS) will be hosting the meeting at Loyola Marymount University located on the bluffs just north of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) overlooking the ocean and Santa Monica. The 27th national meeting will occupy the entire university campus and a portion of the Pacifica Hotel both of which are located very close to the beach, Marina del Rey. Virtually all of the campus facilities will be available and interaction between members will be inevitable (and hopefully peaceful). It will be a unique opportunity for members and visitors to socialize and explore new ideas. Because of the apartment style housing available at the university it will be convenient (and inexpensive) for families to come to the meeting site and enjoy the nearby attractions in Southern California. Planning is underway to accommodate spouses and children with activities on campus and off. We hope to have child care arranged at the meeting site to accommodate the smallest guests.

The 1993 MAS Meeting will be held in conjunction with the 1993 Analytical Electron Microscopy Workshop. The program committees are planning to present a diverse technical program with sessions ranging from photonics to forensics. The Southern California area will also afford an opportunity for local attendance and participation from the universities, aerospace and other high tech industries in the area. Student participation in the meeting should set new highs and help our society make contact with new researchers in microanalysis.

The LA area offers a wide range of activities from the obvious: Disneyland, Magic Mountain, Universal Studios, and Knots Berry Farm, to the less obvious: Hollywood Bowl, Getty Museum, Huntington Library, Rodeo Drive, TV shows, and Beverly Hills. These activities are all within an hour drive and some only minutes from the meeting site. All of this, combined with the beach close at hand, should provide significant stimulation for the guests and the members attending this meeting.

With the sea breezes coming off the ocean, daytime temperatures are generally in the mid 70's to low 80's and evening temperatures are usually in the low 60's or the 50's depending on the fog. For a meeting which is being held in the summer, in what is actually a desert, it should be quite comfortable and possibly a bit cool in the evenings. The nearby marina should offer some interesting opportunities for exhibitor's social events.

With Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) just four miles to the south, travel connections to the meeting will be uncomplicated.

Don't forget to mark these dates on your calendar - July 11-16 - and please join us. For further information contact:

Jack Worrall

MAS '93

P.O. Box 1014

Monrovia, CA 91017-1014

(213) 740-1990