ASTI-5 & ISCMNS Report
from Dr. Michael McKubre

March 26, 2004 Report from Mike McKubre, following the 5th ASTI and the first ISCMNS meetings.

I have just returned from two meetings in Italy; one in Asti and the other in Frascati.  Since these were important meetings, both scientifically and societally, I thought I would make a summary and report to the US community.  Only John Dash was present with me in Asti and I attended the Frascati meeting as the solo Americano.

Focusing first on science: Dr. Iwamura (MHI) gave two excellent talks on the Isotope mutation effects, the one at INFN Frascati being more extended and with more time for questions.  These were similar to his results presented in Cambridge but the work is becoming even more compelling as he and his team work through the systematics and uncertainties and do more experiments to observe physical trends.  MHI is presently collaborating with NRL to replicate their study.  This work also is supported by results of Ni to Cu transmutation being obtained by Dr. Violanti at ENEA Frascati just across the road.  I had the opportunity to spend the day with Dr. Violante and his team including some excellent students.  In addition to the laser stimulated NiH transmutation experiments, this group is also working to follow up the Case heat-helium results that we reported on in Lerici.  The Energetics (Israeli) group presented a summary of results at both Asti and Frascati. For those of you who have not heard me say it, I think that the Energetics glow discharge work has produced the most important new heat results in the field in recent years, particularly in terms of scale-up towards a practical device.  Their work on novel waveforms for D and H loading and heat generation also has enormous potential significance.

Many beautiful results were presented at Asti, the most remarkable by Dr. Mizuno (who has often stunned me with the elegance and unexpectedness of his results).  He reported a clear signal of neutrons from a small pyrex tube containing nothing except D2 gas in a strong magnetic field at liquid nitrogen temperatures.  Unless the walls are involved it is very hard to see how this can be a coherent effect.  But the system is so simple that it is harder to see how this could be measurement error and even harder to imagine how this could be a result of two-body hot fusion.  Stay tuned.   Medals newly minted to honor Giuliano Preparata were awarded by the chairman of the local organizing committee, Dr. Francesco Celani, to Drs Iwamura, Mizuno and Antonella de Ninno.  A medal was also voted for Peter Hagelstein who was unable to be present as he was helping Scott Chubb defend the fort at the APS meeting in Montreal.

One of the primary purposes of conducting this (possibly last?*) Asti conference was to begin to tackle the tasks of creating a Condensed Matter Nuclear Science International Society.  Most will know that the Cambridge (10th) meeting of the ICCF steering committee (the only International organizing body our community has had to date) appointed Scott Chubb and Vittorio Violante to begin the process of organizing an International society ultimately to control the conference series, the Journal, and anything else we choose to pursue. At this same time Peter Hagelstein was asked to enact and edit the new Journal (first issue due soon), and Jean Paul Biberian was accepted as Chairman of ICCF-11.

Unfortunately, organizing the legal and logistical details of a fledgling International Society is a lot of work of a type rather different from that normally undertaken by cold fusion researchers. Since August 2003 this task has been worked on largely by Bill Collis with support from the Italian community: Francesco Celani, Antonio Spallone and Vittorio Violante.  All are to be greatly thanked and congratulated for their effort.  The idea is to incorporate a society to provide legal protection for its officers, to wield bank accounts, to solicit funding, support conferences, student travel etc.  There are many good reasons for this eloquently described by Bill in Asti. He has or shortly will incorporate the society in England (also for sufficient and explained reasons).  For details you should contact Bill or look at the website http://www.iscmns.org/news.htm

A society needs a president and two very fine candidates were presented: Professors Xing-Zhong Li and Akito Takahashi.  It is a measure of their stature that the vote was as close as it could be to a dead heat in the 34 cast.  As a result of this voting Prof. Takahashi will be the founding president of the ISCMNS and Prof. Li will be our first Vice President.

The new society also plans to have an Executive Committee to assist with specific tasks, provide overall guidance and continuity.  We did not vote members to this committee although there was some discussion of it.  An important goal in forming the new society is that we all feel part of it; to do this we need more thought and more discussion than so far has been possible.  However, we needed somebody to do something, and Bill has made an excellent start.  We also need to preserve flexibility so that we can all be proud to participate and contribute.  I urge you all to read through the proposed constitution, volunteer members for the Executive Committee, make suggestions of features that you would like included or not.

In terms of the Executive Committee it seems that we really already have a good one to take us to ICCF-11 where we can constitute a formal body.  Scott Chubb and Vittorio Violante were asked at ICCF-10 to do this job so they already were the committee.  Likewise Peter Hagelstein as outgoing conference Chairman and Editor of the Journal, and Jean Paul Biberian as incoming Chairman must be included on the committee, and is my proposal (here) that those titles be always represented on the Executive Committee to support the President (Akito Takahashi) and Vice President (Xing-Zhong Li).  It is also very clear that Bill Collis must be on the Executive Committee as Secretary (and Treasurer?).  He is almost single handedly responsible for getting us this far and is the only one of us to have demonstrated the drive and skills to get the tasks done.  A full and new voting will occur in Marseilles, but if we don't support Bill I believe this effort will flounder. 

With this committee we demonstrate a very good International character and have represented: the US, Italy, France, Japan, China, and the UK. I feel we do need to expand and enforce this Internationalism, and the National representatives should take on the responsibility of communicating their committee and society activities in their home countries.  In terms of expansion I feel we need to select representatives from Russia and Israel, and it will be important in the future to have representation from Germany and/or Eastern Europe. All of us need to think how this committee should be constituted, how big it should be, how numerously the different nations should be represented, what the assigned tasks should be.  This committee will really decide the future of our society. 

In terms of added features I have a suggestion that I want to discuss further.  I would like to propose a bicameral Executive Committee with an upper body constituted to increase the society stature and recognize the past contributions of our most senior members.  The people from overseas who spring to mind immediately are Martin Fleischmann, Franco Scaramuzzi and Yoshiaki Arata.  These men all have the highest stature in the world of science, that I hope they would agree to lend to our new society.  They also have all made fundamental contributions to the development of condensed matter nuclear science that simply must be recognized, and we would greatly benefit from their wisdom.  If you agree with the principal I invite you to consider others in this category.  There are one or two from the US whom I would like to see in this role, although the numbers should be few since the necessary stature must be very high, and working members should be selected for the regular Executive Committee.

As a final point, the functioning of our fledgling society must be completely transparent to avoid rancor and suspicion.  I believe there should be no secrets not even in voting.  Bill Collis is in the process of implementing a system of electronic communication so all can be informed and involved.  I encourage you all to participate strongly and enthusiastically to make a society that works for the benefit of all.

Ciao

Mike McKubre


* The Asti meeting originally was a small working group sponsored by Fiat.  A prize was presented (a head sized truffle).  Much food and wine were consumed.  After Fiat reduced then dropped their sponsorship Bill Collis was able to secure support from a local bank, and with a great deal of work on his part, and remarkable success, he has transformed the workshop into a small conference that has received a considerable following primarily from the Italian and Japanese cold fusion workers.  Rather than continuing to rely on Bills good will and hard work, the idea is to incorporate the conference as an International Society activity.  The reason to hold it always in Asti now is lost and Dr. Fulvio Frisone has volunteered to consider including the next meeting under the aegis of his Foundation newly created by the Sicilian government to study in the area of CMNS.  This is a very generous offer, and a very good idea.