An effort is underway at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to develop a fundamental and general framework to foster the science and technology needed to support real-time monitoring of early degradation in materials used in the production of nuclear power. The development of such a capability would represent a timely solution to the mounting issues operators face with materials degradation in nuclear power plants. The envisioned framework consists of three primary and interconnected “thrust” areas including 1) microstructural science, 2) behavior assessment, and 3) monitoring and predictive capabilities. A brief state-of-the-art assessment for each of these core technology areas is discussed in the paper.

The Phytochemical Society of North America will have its 50th anniversary meeting from December 10 through 15th, 2011, on the big island of Hawaii. The society has a long tradition in the study of plant biochemistry, chemistry, natural products (whether for commodity chemicals, food and fiber sources, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals and other bioactive substances). The meeting, being a very special celebration, is anticipated to attract a very broad range of researchers drawn from worldwide locations. This is also reflected in the international composition of our organizing and scientific program committees. We are now finalizing speakers for the PSNA 50 conference which has a variety of scientific themes, including biofuels/bioengineering, transcriptome profiling, metabolism and metabolomics, and new characterization technologies/methodologies. A most important part of our PSNA 50 conference is to provide opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to present their research findings and exchange ideas with scientific colleagues. In this regard, the bulk of the funding in support of this conference is anticipated to come from sponsorships (industry, foundations, and so forth) and registrations which are currently underway. It is essential, however, that we strongly encourage the participation of both young graduate students and postdoctoral fellows at our historic …

In this report, we provide an overview of scientific/technical literature on information visualization and VA. Topics discussed include an update and overview of the extensive literature search conducted for this study, the nature and purpose of the field, major research thrusts, and scientific foundations. We review methodologies for evaluating and measuring the impact of VA technologies as well as taxonomies that have been proposed for various purposes to support the VA community. A cognitive science perspective underlies each of these discussions.