Actinide Research Quarterly Celebrates a Six-Year Anniversary-A Challenging Time

This issue of the Actinide Research Quarterly marks the sixth year anniversary of this publication, a significant accomplishment in technical news reporting by a part-time, three-person publication team. We have not missed a single quarter except the summer of this year when we combined the 2nd and 3rd quarters for the timely reporting of the "Plutonium Futures - The Science" conference with extended coverage of this international conference, held in Santa Fe in July.

Six years ago we started out with the simple objective of highlighting recent achievements and ongoing programs of the Nuclear Materials Technology (NMT) Division. In the beginning we did not have a very good idea about who might read the newsletter and what might constitute readable materials in a technical newsletter. What has worried me additionally is, "Can we continue to tap enough source materials to report and write about quarter after quarter?" While the NMT organization is large, its programmatic activities complex and diverse, and its mission and national goals compelling, it is not a daily event, or even a monthly event to record technical successes and accomplishments year after year.

Every quarter brings unique challenges and difficulties in selecting reportable articles and news items, in writing, rewriting, and editing the selected articles, and in presenting timely editorials, all within the limited resources. This past year presented us with an additional challenge: When the Laboratory goes through one of the most challenging times as witnessed during the past year: when Los Alamos is in the national news almost daily with the disastrous Cerro Grande fire, the security breaches investigation, the Wen Ho Lee case, etc., it is extremely difficult for even the most scientific minded to focus on science and to ignore all the happenings around us as only unneccesssary, irritating noises. An organizational newsletter is a living document so it suffers as do its authors and readers when things are not going well.

The past two or three years have been notoriously difficult for the coexistence between science and secrecy at the nation's nuclear Laboratories. For this situation my observations are

Everywhere we look
Universe-full of wonders to the students of science,
A world-full of secrets to the ever-suspecting souls.

Everywhere we look
A limitless horizon of discovery into the unknowns,
A countless number of opportunities for secrets to the jealous souls.

Everywhere we look
A deep valley runs between the world of science
And the proprietors of scientific knowledge.

The number of subscribers has increased more than three-fold over the six-year period although a "subscription" to this newsletter is only for the asking. We mail the newsletter worldwide, free of charge to individuals and organizations that request it. Once in a while, we receive praise and encouragement from a number of readers: One reader commented, "I have enjoyed The Actinide Research Quarterly very much, but the summer issue is special. The Seaborg article is superb, as it reminds us about the excitement of discovery." Another comments, "This good looking, quality newsletter is very informative." We received three awards of "Excellence in Technical Publications" from the New Mexico Kachina Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication along the way.

The newsletter also has served another important avenue of communicating scientific events worldwide. When the "Plutonium Futures-The Science" conference convened in Santa Fe in 1997 and 2000, The Actinide Research Quarterly was the main medium for us to publish the conference programs and also for reporting the main events of the conferences. There were 14 countries in the first conference and 15 countries in the second represented; our circulation of The Actinide Research Quarterly included all the participating countries.

ARQ is now on the Web also. Our readers can view entire back issues on-line http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/nmt/nmtdo/AQarchive/AQhome/AQhome.htmlIts Subject and author indexes are arranged.

Over time we, the publication team, realize how much we have learned just trying to keep up with the most current events in the actinide community, while we try to inform our readers. We find this to be one of the most rewarding aspects of publishing The Actinide Research Quarterly. In the end, every human endeavor is a learning process‹publishing this newsletter is no exception. We draw immense satisfaction knowing that our readers and the publication team members have journeyed together the past six years on this learning path.

This editorial was contributed by Kyu C. Kim, NMT Chief Scientist.

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