Minutes of the New York City Meeting

Thursday, May 27, 2004
Open Meeting

This meeting was held in conjunction with the open meeting of the Physical Acoustics Technical Committee (Chair Thomas Matula). This report focuses only on the issues relevant to the BU/BV TC.

Major action items:

  1. I need a TPOM rep for the San Diego Meeting who is willing and able to go to San Diego from 6-8 August (see point 2)
  2. I would like volunteers for session chairs for San Diego (see point 2).
  3. I would like to get ideas for special sessions for future meetings particular for Minneapolis (Fall 05) which will need to be finalized in San Diego. (see point 4).
  4. An election for the new TC chair will take place at San Diego and I am seeking nominations (self or otherwise). (see point 11).

The results from the Student Paper Award are as follows:

First Prize
Paolo Zanetti of Boston University

Second Prize
Jeremy Bercoff of Laboratoire Ondes et Acoustique, Paris

I would like to take this opportunity to commend all the students who entered the competition as the quality of presentations this year was the highest I have ever seen. I would also like to thank all the people who acted as judges: Doug Mast, Inder Makin, Charlie Church, Carr Everbach, Paul Barbone, Jeff Ketterling, Peter Kackowski, Charly Thomas, and Michael Bailey.


  1. New York
    Thanks to our TPOM representatives Jeff Ketterling and Elisa Konofagou for managing to organize the sessions under very constrained conditions. Jeff was also on the local organizing committee for the meeting and so played a significant role in helping with the general smooth running of this large and rather complex meeting. Note that this ASA meeting was the first use of electronic paper copying service through ASA home page or directly via: http://scitation.aip.org/asameetingpapers/ This service will be provided in the future and all presenters are encouraged to submit their material. The editor-in-chief of JASA indicated that submitting to this service will NOT be considered as a prior publication.
  2. San Diego 15-19 Nov 2004
    Abstracts due 26 July 2004 BU/BV is planning one special session: "Light and sound for imaging in the body" to be organised by Ron Roy (Joint with PA).
    We will be holding a one-day Topical Meeting "Ultrasound Characterization of Cancellous and Cortical Bone" to be organized by Kendall Waters. Please let me know if you wish to be involved in this topical meeting in any way.
    We do not have a TPOM representative for the BU/BV sessions at this meeting. I need to select a TPOM representative immediately. The TPOM will start with a tour of the hotel on the evening of Friday 6th August. The paper shuffling will take place on the 7th and 8th. It is anticipated that the paper shuffling will be complete by lunchtime on Sunday (8th). Because of the typically low number of BU/BV papers at the fall meeting it should be a relatively easy task.
    I am also looking for people who are willing to volunteer as session chairs at the meeting.
  3. Vancouver 23-27 May 2005 Special Sessions ideas that are currently planned for Vancouver include:
  4. If you have any other ideas please let me know. Mike Bailey has volunteered to be our TPOM representative.
  5. Future Meetings: Minneapolis 17-21 October, 2005
    I am looking for suggestions both for a Topical Meeting and Special Sessions. These sessions will need to be finalized at San Diego.
    Providence Spring 2006
    Suggestions for special sessions are encouraged.
    Hawaii Fall 2006
    The executive council suspects that the turn-out for this meeting will be large and as a consequence it may be necessary to employ more poster sessions.
    In addition, this meeting will be held in conjunction with the Japanese Acoustical Society and if you have colleagues with whom you could organize a session it would be good to start putting out some feelers.
  6. Joint meetings with other societies The executive council would like to encourage more joint meetings with the ASA. Currently the ASA does hold joint meetings in the noise technical area with INCE every 2-3 years. We had a discussion as to which organizations may be appropriate the list included: AIUM, Society of Wave Propagation in Random Media, ISTU, International Symposium on Ultrasonic Imaging and Tissue Characterization and International Conference on the Ultrasonic Measurement and Imaging of Tissue Elasticity. The benefit of joint meetings was debated with the consensus being that the logistics would likely not be manageable with other large organisations, e.g., AIUM. Therefore, if there is a small organization that you are involved with that might be open to co-ordinating a meeting with an ASA meeting (either formally or informally) please let me know.
  7. Statement on ethical issues Bill Yost has drafted a statement on ethics (human subjects, non-human subjects, and conflict of interest) for the ASA. In the near future the ASA will require all authors to "sign" (in hand or electronically) this ethics statement before submitting abstracts or manuscripts. The final draft will probably be approved at the San Diego ASA meeting. Please email me if you would like to comment on the draft before the final version is submitted to executive council.
  8. JASA comments The editor informed us that ARLO is now recognized by ISI and so all ARLO articles should appear in citation searches.
    The editor is keen to get feedback on Peer-Express. The general feeling was very positive.
  9. Is ASA list-serv appropriate? Executive council wanted to check that ASA members do not feel overwhelmed (or underwhelmed) by emails from the ASA list-serv. The consensus was that the current level of traffic was acceptable and appropriate.
  10. Seminal papers in JASA? There has been a suggestion that a list of seminal papers published in JASA should be put on the ASA web-site to attest to the importance of JASA in the community. There was discussion about exactly how those papers would be selected with one suggestion that a citation search be carried out to determine "important" papers by the number of citations. The editor will investigate as to whether such searches are possible with the current citation search interface.
  11. Student Council Neil Owen is our current student council representative and reported from the student council. The student mentoring award that was initiated this year, http://www.acosoc.org/student/mentoraward.html, should be announced and presented at San Diego ASA meeting.
    In addition, it was mentioned that a second new award was initiated this year: the Rossing Prize in Education Acoustics, http://asa.aip.org/fellowships.html#rossing.
    Note both of these awards require nomination from members - they are not dealt with by the Medals and Awards committee. I would encourage you to nominate individuals who have impacted you.
  12. Election of TC chair My term as TC chair will come to an end on the last day of the Vancouver meeting. We will hold elections at the San Diego ASA to select my replacement who would ideally be present at the entire Vancouver meeting and can go through the process of a meeting with me. The term is for three years and it is expected that the TC chair will attend all ASA meetings during this time (Spring 2005 to Spring 2008 inclusive). In addition, to running the BU/BV TC meeting (normally on Thursday evening), all TC chairs are expected to attend both technical council meetings-the first takes place on Monday afternoon and the second on Friday morning. Nominations (self or otherwise) will be accepted until 10th November. Please let me know if you would be interested in being TC chair.
  13. New business The next International Symposium for Nonlinear Acoustics will be held at Penn. State in July 2005, http://outreach.psu.edu/c&i/isna17/. We voted to request that the TC provide $3000 to support this conference.
    Respectfully submitted,
    Robin Cleveland