The meeting was attended by about 36 people. The items of business were:
(1) Thanks and kudos to B&B special-session organizers (Shira Broschat, Robin Cleveland, Inder Makin), to session chairs (the above plus Diane Dalecki, Brian Fowlkes) and award winner Ron Verrillo (Silver Medal). Also thanks to Robin Cleveland for organizing the student paper contest at Columbus and for Jan Weisenberger for writing the encomium for Ron Verrillo's award. Special thanks to Inder Makin who was the TPOM representative and arranged the papers into sessions.
(2) Technical Initiatives from B&B for the year 2000 will include $300 for webpage development (Shira Broschat issued several pleas for links to members' websites that she could include on the B&B homepage), $750 for a student paper contest in Atlanta, and $1500 for the travel expenses of invited speakers (up to $500 per speaker). Other suggestions included a brochure describing our newly renamed committee, a hardcopy newsletter, and the purchase of the AIUM mailing list for the purposes of mass-mailing a subset of AIUM members who might be interested in ASA B&B. A $2000 request was made to Technical Council to cover these items. If you have any other ideas, please contact Carr Everbach at CEVERBA1@swarthmore.edu so that an amended list may be made for the Atlanta meeting.
(3) B&B Special Sessions for the Atlanta meeting are listed as follows:
Diane Dalecki has tentatively agreed to be the TPOM representative for the Atlanta paper sort during February 4-5, 2000. Doug Mast and Ibrahim Hallaj have volunteered to chair regular sessions in Atlanta (thanks all).
Carr Everbach will organize a student paper contest in Atlanta with separate prizes for categories of undergraduate, master's and doctoral students. In addition, there will be a book fair in Atlanta for aspiring authors: bring copies of your book to sell and sign.
(4) Future ASA meetings will be as follows:
N.B.: Starting with Spring 2003, there is a proposal to have ASA meetings every 8 months (+/- 1 month) or three every two years, rather than two a year.
and afterwards, possible sites include Salt Lake City, UT, and Honolulu, Hawaii.
The attendees of the Berlin B&B TC meeting had voted to emphasize only one ASA meeting each year, in particular the Spring meeting, to avoid conflicts with AIUM or IEEE. At the Columbus meeting, it was agreed (with one in dissent) that the Fall meetings might have a different character, something like a short course or themed open discussion following a tutorial. Therefore, for the Newport Beach meeting, there will be a day-long (preferably Monday) tutorial, round-table, and open discussion of the Physics of Contrast Agents. In addition, there will be one regular special session (organized by Doug Mast) on "Beamforming in Biomedical Ultrasound" and regular sessions of contributed papers.
(5) Allan Pierce, the editor-in-chief of JASA, wants to require the use of PACS classification numbers in all submitted abstracts. There was general agreement that this was OK. JASA back issues to 1929 will be available soon using the AT&T product "Deja Vu" rather than PDF files, for a cost of approximately $200 for a set of 15 CD-ROMs. There are plans for a special session at the Atlanta meeting on how to write good papers for submission to JASA, with examples of good and bad writing shown by various associate editors.
(6) Pat Kuhl's Societal Growth initiative on targeting youth identified a need for a council of students to advise the president in the way the technical committee (TC) chairs do. Accordingly, each TC was asked for the name of a student to serve only at the Atlanta meeting as a laison to set up such a student council. After discussion, it was agreed that it was unfair to simply pick a student. Rather, nominations and a slate of students will be put together and a committee consisting of Carr Everbach, Shira Broschat, Ron Roy, and Murray Korman will choose a student representative from the slate. A separate email message, following this one, will contain more specifics.
(7) ASA may support an AIP initiative to produce 90-second newsclips on items of scientific interest that will be sold to the local news station markets for editing and broadcast on nightly news shows nationwide. Most attendees were in support of this venture.
(8) Larry Crum had proposed to Executive Council the notion of an "Affiliate Membership" that would allow electronic access to JASA at a reduced dues rate. At the technical council meeting following the B&B meeting, it was decided to call such a membership a "Subscribing Membership" to avoid concerns about reciprocity with other acoustical societies or the fellows status of such subscribing members.
(9) The proposal for a new Biomedical Imaging institute at NIH was discussed and a brief presentation made by Philip F. Judy. After some discussion, it was agreed that the ASA should take no official position regarding the formation of such an institute at this time.
(10) Bob Apfel reminded us all that ARLO is going well, and that we should submit papers to it. He also noted that videoclips were especially effective on ARLO and that B&B imaging papers might include them. Floyd Dunn announced the creation of a new virtual journal of biological physics, more about which he will send via email.
The meeting adjourned after about an hour and a half.
Respectfully submitted,
E. Carr Everbach, Chair
(if you have comments or corrections to these minutes, please send them to me at CEVERBA1@swarthmore.edu)