This is for sure true here at the conference. As Frank already pointed out, it is very cold in the conference centre while we have a beautiful summer day outside. I am also wearing a long sleeve shirt and regret very much that I left my fleece jacket in my room.
So I am also in Florida, at the IEEE NSS/MIC conference. This conference exists since more than 50 years and was established when instrumentation for the detection of particles and ionising radiation became a necessity. They started out with a rather small group of people. Many years this conference was held one year in San Francisco and the other year in Norfolk, the largest Navy base in the US. Only in 1998 they decided to go with this conference outside of the US and held the conference in Toronto, Canada. That was actually the first time I came to this event. Since then this conference changed into a travelling meeting. We were in Seattle, Lyon, San Diego, Norfolk, Portland, Rome, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Dresden and now Orlando in Florida.
What does NSS/MIC mean? It stands for Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference. Yes, Nuclear! When asked at the US border what conference I would be attending while being in the US, I usually say “Medical Imaging Conference” as the word “nuclear” always makes this guys nervous and might result in a lot of questions. Medical sounds really harmless.
But by nuclear one means everything related to detection of particles. And it is a large field. Here one meets not only particle physicists, but also people working at nuclear plants, in hospitals or people from the army. And this makes it even more interesting, to learn from completely different communities.
Yesterday for example I talked some time to a medical physicist and learned why they build this tiny little PETs*. Those small-animal PETs are for clinical studies at rats. For example when a cancer medication is tested, the rat can be placed in such a device and the impact of the medicine can be studied live using this device. Developing such a mini device is not as easy one would think. This conference is, besides many other topics, the place where experts on these devices meet and exchange their experience.
Important are also the evenings here. The last couple of days we were sitting outside close to the pool and met people from all over the world. As I attend this conference since 10 years, I have a lot of friends who I meet only once a year. But then we always have a nice time and exchange a lot of different view on science in the different fields.
By the way, the title of this blog was actually driven by a scientific talk. On one slide in a presentation on silicon detectors we (Frank and I) saw a picture of a silicon chip after dicing
and before it is attached to any other electronics – the speaker labeled that picture with “the naked die” …. our association was more in the direction of freezing in this building when not dressed sufficiently.
* PET positron emission tomography is a nuclear medicine imaging technique which produces a three-dimensional image or picture of functional processes in the body. The system detects pairs of gamma rays emitted indirectly by a positron-emitting radionuclide (tracer), which is introduced into the body on a biologically active molecule.
