MESSAGE FROM THE TECHNICAL CHAIR

This year's meeting was the first to ask for electronic submission of abstracts. This trend for electronic submission and eventually evaluation, and reply to the authors will continue. Some of the problems we had, like multiple media submissions and duplication will go away and we will end up with a faster and more efficient system. This year we had 475 total papers submitted which is a slight reduction from last year. However, the international flavor of the symposium gets stronger every year. Over 40% of the submissions came from America (U.S.A, Canada, Mexico, and central and south America), over 40% came from Europe (East and West), 17% from Asia (Japan, China, and the rest of the continent) and .2% from Australia.

The contributions continue to increase with respect to the other groups. Nearly 40% of the submissions are in Medical Ultrasound, with NDE & Industrial Applications, and Surface Acoustic Waves holding at over 20% while the Physical Acoustics group saw a slight reduction to a little over 17%. This represents a slight shift in the interest of the group as many of us have interests in several different areas of research in Ultrasonics.

The San Antonio meeting promises to be very exciting in both technical and social events and we look forward to seeing all of you in San Antonio in November.