The 43rd Annual Conference on Bioassay, Analytical and Environmental Radiochemistry will take place in the heart of the historic district of Charleston, SC at the Francis Marion Hotel. The annual conference is a vehicle for chemists, physicists, and dosimetrists to gain insight, share experience, and develop solutions to problems in a very informal setting. The sponsors for the 43rd annual conference will be Environmental Physics, Inc., Westinghouse Savannah River Company, Florida State University, Eichrom Industries, and The College of Charleston.

REGISTRATION

In order to encourage early registration, we are offering a special rate for pre- registering prior to October 8, 1997. We urge you to pre-register as early as possible. All persons registering prior to October 31 will be included in the list of attendees disbursed at the conference.
 

Conference activities begin early Sunday with a golf outing, technical workshops will be held on Sunday and Monday, and the main technical sessions will be held Tuesday, Wednesday, and until noon on Thursday. A special workshop on Bayesian Statistics (separate registration) is being held in conjunction with the Bioassay Conference. A full description is appended to this announcement. Vendors will exhibit their materials on Monday evening, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
 

SOCIAL EVENTS

On Sunday evening, an informal reception sponsored by Canberra, Eichrom, and Environmental Physics, Inc. will be held at Environmental Physics. Other special events include a vendor reception sponsored by Eichrom Industries, Inc. on Monday evening at the Francis Marion Hotel, and a luncheon sponsored by Canberra and Packard on Tuesday. There will be a low-country dinner and beach party on Wednesday evening at a beach house on Sullivan’s Island. A Fun Run/Walk through historic Charleston is scheduled for Wednesday morning before the sessions. A spouse program will include entry into all of the scheduled social events with the exception of the luncheon on Tuesday. The spouse program will also include a guided tour of Charleston.
 

HOTEL **Make your reservations as soon as possible**

Recently renovated, the Francis Marion is one of Charleston’s most elegant hotels. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the Francis Marion has provided a magnificent setting for special occasions and important meetings for over 70 years. Located in the heart of the historic district, the Francis Marion Hotel is within easy walking distance of Charleston’s wonderful restaurants, galleries, King Street shopping, and many historic attractions.

The hotel has reserved a block of rooms for conference attendees at $92.00 plus tax. This rate will be good from November 6 through November 16. The special conference rate for this block of rooms is only guaranteed through October 8, 1997, and reservations must be made by calling the Francis Marion Hotel (Tel: 803-722-0600). For those requiring government per diem rates, a limited number of rooms have been reserved at the Comfort Inn (Tel: 803-577-2224). The Comfort Inn is located outside of the downtown area and is accessible to the Francis Marion by public transportation.
 

TRAVEL

Charleston is served by several major airlines including Delta, U.S. Air, Continental, Midway, and United Express. All major rental car agencies are located in the airport in Charleston. The Low Country Limo (Tel: 1-800-222-4771) provides transportation to downtown Charleston for approx. $15. The official travel agent for this conference will be Abbott & Hill, Inc. (Tel: 1-800-535-0956). Delta Airlines will be the official carrier for the conference and is offering a conference discount which can be obtained through Abbott & Hill.
 

VENDOR EXHIBITS

A vendor exhibition will be held from Monday evening through Wednesday afternoon on the mezzanine level of the Francis Marion Hotel. The following companies will be exhibiting at the conference:

3M, Acadia Insurance Company, American Radiation Services, Analytics, Aptec Nuclear, Barringer Laboratories, Bioscan, Canberrra Industries, CEM Corporation, Chemcheck Instruments, EG&G ORTEC, Eichrom Industries, Environmental Express, Environmental Physics, Gamma Products, Isotope Products Laboratories, Nuclear Technical Services, Ordela, Outreach Technologies, Oxford Instruments, Packard Instrument Company, Protean Instrument Corporation, Thermo NUtech, TVA Radiological Services, QST Environmental, Quanterra
 

WORKSHOP SCHEDULE

The technical workshops are being held on the Sunday and Monday preceding the start of the Bioassay Conference on Tuesday. The workshops are designed to provide in-depth presentations and group discussions of radiochemistry issues and technologies in an informal setting.

The schedule for regular technical workshops is presented in the table below.
 

	Session I	Session II
Sunday Morning
9:00-12:00		Ordela PERALS Workshop VII  Wayne Graves
Sunday Afternoon
1:30-3:30	Packard	"State-of-the-Art in Bioassay Measurements"  Myint Thein
3:45-5:30	EG&G ORTEC	"Linear Statistical Modeling"  Ken Scrabel
Monday Morning
8:00-10:00	Oxford  "New Technology in LL a/b counting"	"DOE QA Program"  Pam Greenlaw
10:15-12:00	"MDA and Detection Limits"  M. Hotchandani/ Rao	Eichrom Workshop  "Radiochemical Separations using Extraction Chromotography"
Monday Afternoon
1:00-3:00	"DOE Mixed Waste Performance Evaluation Program (MAPEP)"  Stan Morton	"Alpha Spectrometry"  Canberra Industries
3:15-5:00	3M EmporeÔ Rad Disks	"NIST Rad Intercomparison Program"  Chaun F. Wu and Steven Bakhtiar

 

TECHNICAL PROGRAM

The response to this year’s call for abstracts has been overwhelming. The Conference Committee received approximately 75 abstracts while a complete program would only require about 50 presentations! Because of the larger than expected number of submissions, we had to decline many late abstracts and request that some presenters combine multiple presentations. Even after these steps it was still necessary to schedule some concurrent sessions to accomodate as many presentations as possible. Fortunately, this will be necessary only for Thursday morning. The final program has a total of 59 presentations that include a broad scope of topics of interest to conference participants. We feel that this will be one of the best Bioassay Conference programs yet!

The complete program has been scheduled and a copy is provided in this announcement. All abstracts will be reproduced and distributed in the Conference Binder at the meeting.
 

AUDIO/VISUAL EQUIPMENT

We will have an overhead projector, a 35-mm slide projector, and flip charts available for the presentations during the technical sessions. A video player and monitor can be provided by special advanced request only. Following the precedence set in previous years, we will not provide equipment for computerized slide presentations. If you have special needs or requirements other than those mentioned above, please contact Nancy Slater at Environmental Physics, Inc. (803-556-8171).
 

* There will be a golf outing for the conference attendees, vendors, and guests at the Charleston National Country Club on the morning of November 9th. Tee times begin at 7:15 A.M., and there is room for 40 golfers. Green fees and carts will be $34.00 per person and this charge is NOT included in the price of the conference. Participants must pay at the clubhouse. More information will follow in the final announcement. Interested individuals should contact Brian Crandall by October 15th, 1997. Phone: (803) 725-3413 E-mail: brian.crandall@srs.gov

CONFERENCE CONTACTS
 

For additional information please see the Bioassay Home Page that has been designed and maintained by Donivan Porterfield at Los Alamos National Laboratory (Email: dporterfield@lanl.gov). The internet address is: