EC-15 Useful Information

Dear Colleagues,

This is the most recent announcement of the Fifteenth Joint Workshop on Electron Cyclotron Emission and Electron Cyclotron Heating, which will be held the week of 9 March 2008 at the Yosemite National Park in California.

The International Program Committee is preparing an exciting slate of speakers and the Local Committee is working to provide interesting activities to round out the week.

Please check the conference web site at http://swim.gat.com/conferences/ec-15/ where travel information, registration forms and details of the schedule are available.

DEADLINES:

Abstract submission:  1 December 2007 (Passed)
Registration:  1 December 2007 (Passed)
Camera ready papers:  13 March 2008 at the workshop

The abstract and registration deadlines are firm to allow time for preparation of the meeting schedule and book of abstracts and to avoid the workshop's having to pay for empty hotel rooms from the reserved block at the expense of better food for the banquet.

ENTRANCE FEE:

There is a park entrance fee of $20 per car for all occupants or $10 for those arriving on foot. If you are a citizen or permanent resident of the U.S., and are at least 62 years old, you can, and should, buy the lifetime Golden Age Pass, which gets you into all National Parks and Monuments for as long as you last. The entrance fee is included in the bus fare for those arriving with the conference busses.

SCHEDULE:

Sunday 9-March-2008
  Bus pickup at the Fresno Airport at 15:00, afternoon and evening registration with a reception 19:00-21:00
Monday 10-March-2008
  First day's scientific sessions (8:30 AM)
Tuesday 11-March-2008
  Second day's scientific sessions, conference banquet, and, following the banquet, a solo acoustic guitar concert by Laurence Juber, formerly lead guitarist for Paul McCartney's band, Wings
Wednesday 12-March-2008
  Third day's scientific sessions in the morning, conference excursions in the afternoon, evening scientific sessions
Thursday 13-March-2008
  Fourth day's scientific sessions, summaries and closing ceremony
Friday 14-March-2008
  Buses depart for the Fresno Airport at 8:30

PRESENTATIONS:

The scientific program is being organized by the International Program Committee headed by Sante Cirant, cirant@ifp.cnr.it. The conference language is English. Presentations will be in oral or poster format. There will be no parallel sessions. There will be two historical retrospective talks by colleagues who have contributed significantly to both ECH and ECE research over their careers.

Presentation TypeTime
Oral15 min + 5 min for questions
Contributed Oral 25 min + 5 min for questions
Special Invited Oral 45 min + 15 min for questions

Poster format to be determined.

PROCEEDINGS:

  1. Download the appropriate zip file to your computer.
  2. Unzip the zip file.
  3. Follow instructions in the read me PDF file.
  4. If using Word, please enable macros.
The presentations will be published in hardcover book form, 22.5 x 15 cm trimmed page size, with an included CD, as was done for the EC-12 workshop. Contributed papers are limited to 6 pages and invited papers are limited to 10 pages in the workshop proceedings. The format template is available on the web site. Although the book will be black and white halftone, the CD will be in full color. Keep in mind that your presentations submitted for the proceedings should be clear to the reader in black and white and try to use the CD as a backup. Please pay special attention to callouts on figures so they will be legible in the format of the book without editorial intervention. The presentations will be checked by the editors for clarity and format, but, in keeping with the philosophy of a workshop, will not be refereed. You should submit your camera ready copy to the organizers at the time of the workshop. The editors will strive to produce the proceedings soon after the workshop.

The journal Fusion Science and Technology is prepared to produce a special issue containing expanded versions of presentations from the workshop, which will be refereed. In order to avoid copyright infringement issues, these submissions will need to have substantially rewritten abstracts and expanded content, appropriate for an archival journal. The journal will require about 20 submissions in order to produce the special issue. If sufficient numbers of contributions from the workshop are not received by FS&T, the papers which are submitted will be sent through the normal publication process, rather than being included in a special issue.

ACCOMMODATIONS:

The headquarters hotel and the venue for all sessions, breakfasts, lunches and the reception will be the Yosemite Lodge, where a block of rooms has been reserved at a deeply discounted rate. An additional ten rooms have been reserved at the elegant Ahwahnee Hotel at a substantially discounted, though not inexpensive, rate. Please make your reservations only through the web site so that the conference room commitment will be met.

Hotel reservation deadline: February 9, 2008 (Click here for the reservation form)

TRAVEL:

Detailed travel information is available on the web site. Yosemite National Park is accessed by air, from the Fresno-Yosemite Airport (FAT) with about 50 direct flights daily, mostly using regional jet and turboprop smaller planes, from the following US gateway cities:

Dallas (DFW) American Airlines
Denver (DEN) United Airlines
Las Vegas (LAS) US Air
Los Angeles (LAX) American Airlines
Ontario California (ONT) ExpressJet Airlines
Phoenix (PHX) US Air
Portland (PDX) Alaska Airlines
Salt Lake City (SLC) Delta Airlines
San Diego (SAN) ExpressJet Airlines
San Francisco (SFO) United Airlines
Seattle (SEA) Alaska Airlines

Conference busses will depart for the Park from Fresno at 15:00 on Sunday 9-March-2007. The return bus trip will depart from the park at 8:30 in the morning on Friday 14-March. The trip to /from Fresno takes about 2 hours but weather related delays can occur, so please make your travel plans to allow plenty of time for the bus trip and connections. There will be a $30 charge for the round trip bus ride between the Fresno airport and the Park. Because of the expense of sending a bus from the Park to Fresno round trip, if you intend on taking the bus, you must make a reservation for the bus on the conference web site and you will be billed at registration. The conference will have a room at the Fresno Airport Holiday Inn near the terminal where luggage can be left until the busses collect everyone on Sunday. For greater flexibility, a weekly car rental can be arranged at the Fresno Airport, at Oakland or at SFO.

For those renting cars, it is about a three hour drive, 160 km, from the SFO airport and two hours, about 100 km, from the Fresno Airport to the Yosemite Lodge, with a beautiful last section along the Merced River in the Park. The Oakland Airport is more convenient than SFO for driving to the Park from the San Francisco Bay area. At the time of this writing, there were no flight connections from Oakland to Fresno.

Please make sure that the conference organizers have your travel itinerary.

EMERGENCY CONTACT INFORMATION:

Contact general manager at the Yosemite Lodge ; backup contact at the Yosemite Lodge ; if all else fails, John Lohr, local chairman cell phone

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK:

The Park is located in the high Sierra Nevada mountains of California and is visited by over 3.5 million people each year. Its total area is about 3.000 square km. It has been a World Heritage site since 1984. The main glacially carved valley is flanked by 1,000 meter high granite walls with spectacular waterfalls cascading from the valley rim to the floor. In March, before the descent of the hoards of summer, the natural beauty of the park should serve as the backdrop for a serene experience as spring takes over from winter. At this time there usually will be skiing at the Badger Pass ski area, which has 5 lifts and many km of Nordic trails. In the valley, at an elevation of about 1,200 m above sea level, the mean daily temperature ranges from 2 to 19 degrees throughout the year, with March being somewhat difficult to predict. Expect chilly nighttime lows near freezing and daytime highs around 15 degrees C. Pleasant hiking on improved trails or easy bicycling can take you around the main part of the Yosemite Valley. Depending on the temperature history, the ice skating rink may still be in operation during our meeting. The Valley has shops, galleries, museums, nature centers, a grocery store, medical clinic, pizzaria and a small jail for presenters who run over their allotted time. Wildlife abounds in the area and hungry bears will be seen along the roads trying to trade photo opportunities for pizzas. There have in the past been spring floods, which covered the valley in 2 m of rushing water, and there have been early springs with snow only at the higher elevations above the valley floor. A phenomenon called the La Nina is currently operating in the Pacific Ocean near the equator. This usually brings a drier than normal winter in California. If there does happen to be a huge flood during the meeting, you can look for the EC-15 local chairman at a bar in Fresno.