TABLE OF CONTENTS

TMS OPENS THE KNOWLEDGE RESOURCE CENTER . . .
. . . A New e-Store for Materials

MATERIALS SOCIETIES CREATE CONGRESSIONAL FELLOWSHIP . . .
. . . to Send Science Advisors to Washington

FROM OUR SPONSOR: CILAS LASER PARTICLE SIZE ANALYZERS
EcoSizer Awarded Product of the Year

JOM READER POLL . . .
. . . On Long-Term Nuclear Waste Storage

TMS AND APS ANNOUNCE JOINT PROGRAMS FOR TMS 2008
Societies Collaborate on ICME Topics

TMS PLANS THIRD INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR
Registration is Now Open for Furnace Systems and Technology

HOW TO . . .
. . . Learn More with Short Courses and Tutorials

TOP TEN . . .
. . . Things to Do at TMS On-Line

WASHINGTON NEWS FROM THE FEDERATION OF MATERIALS SOCIETIES
Omnibus Spending Bill Falls Short of Competitiveness Goals

YOU OUGHT TO KNOW . . .
. . . Abstract Deadline Reminders for 2008 Conferences

. . . A New e-Store for Materials

Order books. Download webcasts. Read technical papers. The new Knowledge Resource Center makes it easy to do all of these things. The site, which replaces the TMS Document Center, allows visitors to easily search more than 3,000 individual products available for sale or free download from TMS, including webcasts, podcasts, webinars, individual PDF papers, complete proceedings volumes on text-searchable CD-ROMs or in print, journals, videos, software, reports, and packages of educational materials.

The home page shows visitors what their colleagues are reading with lists of the site's newest offerings and best sellers. Visitors can easily find the exact product they seek or browse through all of the site's offerings by product type (book, webcast, etc.) or technical interest area. In addition to individual products, the site features Knowledge Packages—related TMS resources that are bundled together and sold for a single discounted price.

While much of the site contains products that are available for sale from TMS, the Knowledge Resource Center also includes a significant collection of papers that can be downloaded free of charge by all users. These sample articles are located in the "Free Items" section. Any web user can visit the Knowledge Resource Center and access the free content, but only TMS members receive discounts on product purchases.

. . . to Send Science Advisors to Washington

TMS is joining with the Materials Research Society and the American Ceramic Society to develop a new fellowship for materials professionals. The three groups are creating a Materials Societies Fellow through the Congressional Science and Engineering Fellows Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This long-standing program sends highly skilled scientists and engineers to Washington, D.C., where they spend one year serving as scientific advisors on the staffs of Congressional leaders.

The fellowship is ideal for post-doctoral and early career professionals because it provides a unique public policy learning experience and opens up a new potential career path for participants. No previous public policy experience is necessary to apply for the fellowship; the program is aimed at scientists and engineers who come from outside of government because they can bring external perspectives to the policy process. The fellowships are open to scientists with a Ph.D. or equivalent-level degree and engineers with a master's degree or higher.

The first Materials Societies Fellow will be named in 2008. Applications for the award will be available in January, with the final deadline to apply in mid-February. The fellowship will begin in September 2008. For more information, contact Warren Hunt, TMS executive director, at whunt@tms.org.

EcoSizer Awarded Product of the Year

Cilas Particle Size brings 40 years experience in developing laser particle size analyzers to our EcoSizer Laser Particle Size Analyzer. This award-winning system combines the accuracy and reliability of a traditional CILAS analyzer in a more economical instrument. The EcoSizer has a measurement range from 0.5 to 400 μm. An optional video camera provides particle shape information along with the traditional particle size distribution data. Cilas patented short optical bench design ensures the system is aligned at all times, eliminating the need to align the analyzer. All optical components are permanently fixed to a cast iron base plate to ensure the most accurate particle size data available anywhere. Integrated methods eliminate any guess work by the operator.

. . . On Long-Term Nuclear Waste Storage

JOM readers responded so enthusiastically to the journal's recent salary questionnaire that a new feature has been added to the magazine's News & Update section called "JOM Reader Poll," which looks at reader's responses to hot topic issues in materials science and engineering. This feature will look at responses to a recent survey and pose a new question for readers to weigh in on each month. Here is a preview of January's question, which matches the materials for nuclear energy theme of the January issue:

What long-term nuclear waste storage solution do you believe to be most promising?

• A repository constructed in a mostly oxidizing and dry environment well above the water table (the U.S. Yucca Mountain approach)?
• A repository in rock or clay deep under the water table where the environment is mostly reducing (i.e., no oxygen)?
• Neither

Societies Collaborate on ICME Topics

In March, TMS joins with a new partner, the American Physical Society (APS), to present five joint sessions related to integrated computational materials engineering (ICME). These sessions will be open to attendees of both the TMS 2008 Annual Meeting and the APS March Meeting, both of which will take place in New Orleans, Louisiana, in March. The societies will present the following sessions:

• Creating the ICME Cyberinfrastructure: An Interdisciplinary Technology Forum (Hosted by TMS)
• Frontiers of Computational Materials Science (Hosted by APS)
• 9th Global Innovations Symposium: Trends in Integrated Computational Materials Engineering for Materials Processing and Manufacturing (TMS)
• Materials Informatics: Enabling Integration of Modeling and Experiments in Materials Science (TMS/APS)
• Computational Thermodynamics and Kinetics (TMS)

Registration is Now Open for Furnace Systems and Technology

For the past two years, TMS has held a sold-out industrial technology workshop in conjunction with the TMS Annual Meeting. This year, the Furnace Systems and Technology Seminar will be held Monday, March 10–Wednesday, March 12, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Representatives from 15 companies will present over the course of three days at this seminar.

Attendees will learn about:

• Basic combustion, energy savings, and improving furnace productivity
• Melting furnaces
• Burners designs
• Emissions and abatement
• Recirculating process furnaces
• Metal circulation, cleaning, and dross processing
• Casting
• Refractory issues and practices
• Contract engineering

. . . Learn More with Short Courses and Tutorials

To make the most of a trip to the TMS 2008 Annual Meeting, consider participating in one of the several continuing education opportunities that will be held in conjunction with the meeting. Two short courses and one tutorial will be held on Sunday, March 9. Because most technical programming does not begin until Monday morning, these continuing education options will not interfere with attendance of technical sessions. This year's offerings include:

Grain Refinement of Aluminum Alloys: Theory and Practice: This one-day short course is designed for professional or technical representatives in the aluminum casting industry and university researchers.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions: This one-day short course—for health, safety, and environment professionals; aluminum industry operational employees; and others wanting to learn more about greenhouse gas emissions and their reduction—will highlight the environmental challenges facing the global aluminum business and discuss how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from aluminum smelters.

Nanomechanical Characterization: This Sunday afternoon tutorial is for scientists and engineers interested in the mechanical behavior of materials at small scales, particularly nanoscale and nanostructured materials and micro and nanoscale devices.

Spaces for these special offerings are limited, so register for your continuing education courses—and the TMS 2008 Annual Meeting—soon through the link below.

. . . Things to Do at TMS On-Line

Need a break from your daily routine? Try some intellectual web surfing. Here are a few stops on the TMS site that will keep you informed of happenings in the materials community and the TMS world.

10. Visit the Global Meetings Calendar: Break out your 2008 calendar and start marking the conferences that interest you most for the coming year. The on-line TMS Global Meetings Calendar includes conferences from throughout the materials community, including those sponsored by TMS.

9. Browse the Membership Directory: Need an address for your holiday greeting card list? Or a speaker for a symposium that you are organizing? Get in touch with your colleagues through the on-line TMS Membership Directory (for TMS Members only).

8. TMS Career Center: Is switching jobs your New Year's resolution? Manage your career search through the TMS Career Center.

7. Renew Your TMS Membership: If you haven't already, it's not too late to renew for 2008. You can access more of the site as a member than as a non-member and renewing now means uninterrupted electronic benefits.

6. Browse the TMS e-Library at Knovel: If you're a member, these resources—a collection of 37 complete reference books—are free. So have a look around.

5. Register for the TMS 2008 Annual Meeting: Get the best rates on meeting registration and reserve your spot in short courses, service projects, and special events, too. And then . . .

4. . . . Visit the TMS Personal Conference Scheduler: Where you can create a customized daily schedule for the meeting.

3. See what's new at Materials Technology@TMS: Read the latest news and browse the most recently added resources.

2. Take the on-line JOM survey: Make survey responses a habit starting with this inaugural reader's poll. You can even subscribe to the survey forum via an RSS feed.

1. Browse the new TMS Knowledge Resource Center: Even if you've been to the TMS web site a hundred times before, we guarantee you'll find something new at this site.

Omnibus Spending Bill Falls Short of Competitiveness Goals

Members of the science, engineering, and technology community were disappointed at what has become an all-too-familiar year-end frenzy to pass key legislation. Despite enactment of the America COMPETES Act calling for doubling of R&D funding in the National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy (DOE), and the core laboratories of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)—which works out to approximately a 7% increase per year—the omnibus appropriations bill passed on December 19 provides for:

• A 2.5% increase overall for the NSF
• A 6.8% increase for the DOE Office of Science
• A 1.4% increase for NIST's research core, and, as one observer put it, "the construction budget gets earmarked to death," meaning legislators' pet projects are funded at the expense of overall agency goals

. . . Abstract Deadline Reminders for 2008 Conferences

Time is running out to submit abstracts for two of TMS's 2008 fall and winter specialty conferences: REWAS 2008 and PMP-III. Abstracts for both of these conferences can be submitted through CMS-Plus, the on-line TMS conference and proceedings management system.

2008 Global Symposium on Recycling, Waste Treatment and Clean Technology (REWAS 2008)
Abstracts due January 15
REWAS 2008, the Global Symposium on Recycling, Waste Treatment and Clean Technology, will serve as the 2008 TMS Fall Extraction and Processing Meeting. To be held October 12–15, 2008, in Cancun, Mexico, REWAS 2008 will provide a forum for the world's scientific and technical communities to address the continuing globalization of environment protection through progress in the recycling technology, re-engineering of the production system, and clean technologies.

Processing Materials for Properties-III (PMP-III)
Abstracts due February 1
This conference will focus on many aspects of Processing Materials for Properties, such as prominent materials processing technologies, materials properties and applications, and highlighting the process-structure-property pathway. PMP-III will emphasize the contemporary theme, E3: Electronics, Energy and Environment, in its coverage of processing aspects of materials research, development, and production. PMP-III will be held December 7–10, 2008 in Bangkok, Thailand.

ABOUT e-NEWS

TMS e-News is a monthly e-mailed newsletter that provides information on The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society's membership, meetings, publications, and other activities of interest.

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News Editor:
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OPEN ACCESS ARTICLES

The following articles from TMS journals and web sites are available to all readers at no charge. This month’s featured articles are:

JOM: "Directions and Materials Challenges in High-Performance Photovoltaics" by John Merrill and Donna Cowell Senft
More efficient and higher performance photovoltaic solar cells continue to be developed for spacecraft power and are beginning to be developed for terrestrial concentrators. The need for high-efficiency and low-cost solar cells drives research into new materials and new materials applications. An overview of active areas of research into high-performance solar cells is presented in this article. [READ]

Journal of Electronic Materials: "Growth of Polarity-Controlled ZnO Films on (0001) Al₂O₃" by J.S. Park, et al.
The polarity control of ZnO films grown on (0001) Al₂O₃ substrates by plasma-assisted molecular-beam epitaxy was achieved by using a novel CrN buffer layer. Zn-polar ZnO films were obtained by using a Zn-terminated CrN buffer layer, while O-polar ZnO films were achieved by using a Cr₂O₃ layer formed by O-plasma exposure of a CrN layer. [READ]

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A: "On Cyclical Phase Transformations in Driven Alloy Systems" by Jong K. Lee
This article is based on a presentation given in the symposium Solid-State Nucleation and Critical Nuclei during First Order Diffusional Phase Transformations, which occurred October 15–19, 2006 during the MS&T meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio, under the auspices of the TMS/ASM Phase Transformations Committee. [READ]

Materials Technology@TMS: Education: "Views on the Future of Engineering Education" by Todd M. Osman
This article presents an overview of two distinguished lectures, delivered by Charles M. Vest, president of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and Diran Apelian, TMS vice president and director of the Metal Processing Institute at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, on the societal impact of the engineering profession and the need to employ engineering to solve the challenges facing the 21st century. [READ]

Materials Technology@TMS: ICME: "Multi-Paradigm Modeling of Fracture of Chemically Complex Materials" by Dipanjan Sen and Markus J. Buehler
Predictive modeling and simulation of the mechanical behavior of chemically complex materials in extreme conditions is a grand challenge problem of materials science. This article looks at the work of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology group that develops and applies multi-paradigm simulation methods to describe deformation and fracture processes of such materials. [READ]

Materials Technology@TMS: Lead-Free Solders: "A Look at the TMS Electronic Packaging and Interconnection Materials Committee" by interview with Srinivas Chada
Materials Technology@TMS talks with Srinivas Chada, chair of the TMS Electronic Packaging and Interconnection Materials Committee, about the current activities and future plans for this group. [READ]

Materials Technology@TMS: Magnesium: "Twinning in Magnesium Alloys" by Lynette Karabin
Magnesium alloys display low ductilities and low room temperature formability as compared to other metals. This has been attributed to twinning deformation, which can lead to early, ductile failure. The hope is that an understanding of this deformation mechanism may lead to alloy and process improvements to enable improved ductility and formability. This article reviews key papers and resources on the subject. [READ]

Materials Technology@TMS: Materials for Nuclear Power: "A Look at the TMS/ASM Nuclear Materials Committee" by interview with Carl M. Cady
Materials Technology@TMS talks with Carl M. Cady, chair of the TMS Nuclear Materials committee, about the current activities and future plans for this group. [READ]

Materials Technology@TMS: Superalloys: "A Look at the TMS High-Temperature Alloys Committee" by interview with Sammy Tin
Materials Technology@TMS talks with Sammy Tin, chair of the High-Temperature Alloys committee, about the current activities and future plans for this group. [READ]

Programs, on-line registration, and more:

2008 International Hydrogen Conference: Effects of Hydrogen on Materials
Moran, Wyoming
September 7-10, 2008

11th Intl. Symposium on Superalloys (Superalloys 2008)
Champion, Pennsylvania
September 14–18, 2008

3rd Global Foundry Sourcing Conference 2008
Qingdao, China
September 16-17, 2008

The 13th National Conference & Exhibition on Titanium
Luoyang, China
September 17-18, 2008

Materials Science & Technology 2008 Conference and Exhibition (MS&T'08)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
October 5-9, 2008

10th CNS International Conference on CANDU Fuel
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
October 5-8, 2008

2008 Global Symposium on Recycling, Waste Treatment and Clean Technology (REWAS 2008)
Cancun, Mexico
October 12-15, 2008

2008 Fourth International Conference on Multiscale Materials Modeling (MMM-2008)
Tallahassee, Florida
October 27-31, 2008

Processing Materials for Properties-III (PMP-III)
Bangkok, Thailand
December 7-10, 2008

2nd International Conference on Thermomechanical Simulations and Processing of Steel (SimPro'08)
Ranchi, India
December 9-11, 2008

TMS 2009 Annual Meeting
San Francisco, California
February 15-19, 2009

5th International Materials Symposium (MATERIAiS 2009)
Abstracts due: 10/31/2008
Lisbon, Portugal
April 5-8, 2009

International Deep Drawing Research Group Conference 2009 (IDDRG 2009)
Abstracts due: 12/1/2008
Golden, Colorado
June 1-3, 2009

Electronic Materials Conference (EMC 2009)
University Park, Pennsylvania
June 24-26, 2009

European Metallurgical Conference 2009 (EMC2009)
Innsbruck, Austria
June 28 - July 1, 2009

Conference of Metallurgists (COM 2009) Nickel-Cobalt 2009
Sudbury, Ontario, Canada
August 23-26, 2009

14th International Conference on Environmental Degradation in Nuclear Power Systems
Virginia Beach, Virginia
August 23-27, 2009

Thermec 2009: Sixth International Conference on Advanced Materials and Processes
Abstracts due: 11/7/2008
Berlin, Germany
August 25-29, 2009

2009 International Symposium on Liquid Metal Processing and Casting
Abstracts due: 1/15/2009
Sante Fe, New Mexico
September 20-23, 2009

5th International Conference on Science and Technology of Ironmaking (ICSTI'09)
Abstracts due: 10/31/2008
Shanghai, China
October 19-22, 2009

Materials Science & Technology 2009 Conference and Exhibition (MS&T'09)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
October 25-29, 2009

TRANSFAC '09 - International Conference on Innovative Solutions for the Advancement of the Transport Industry
Detroit, Michigan
October 31 - November 3, 2009

TMS 2010 Annual Meeting
Seattle, Washington
February 14-18, 2010

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