Volume 7, March 1998 - EDITORIAL

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Preparations for the workshop are well underway. We have assembled both our Scientific Organizing Committee (SOC) and Local Organizing Committee (LOC), booked the meeting rooms, worked out the costs, and established the topics of all the sessions. We are currently in the process of choosing and inviting the speakers, although many senior scientists in the field have already agreed to attend.

We will hold ten sessions, each designed to address a specific question such as: How do we reconcile models and observations of Sgr A*? The talks will be followed by 30 minutes of directed discussion. The session leaders will have prepared discussion outlines to insure the discussions proceed smoothly and consistently. In addition, workshop participants who are presenting their work in the poster sessions, will be encouraged to bring overheads and/or slides of their latest results as well; thus all the results presented in the poster sessions can be used during the discussions to illustrate whatever point a workshop participant is trying to make. Each day will end in a scheduled one hour discussion session. During this time, topics covered throughout the day and throughout the workshop, can be revisited in light of more recent talks and will hopefully promote both understanding of current research and facilitate the formation of new ideas to be researched after the conclusion of the workshop.

In order to create an atmosphere which is conducive to extensive discussion, the workshop will be held just north of Tucson at the Sheraton El Conquistador. In addition, the workshop will be strictly limited to 60 participants as meaningful discussions with more than 60 is impossible. The workshop fee has been set at $250. Additional information on the workshop can be found at our newly created web site http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/gc98/. Since the workshop is limited to 60 participants, we will not be able to include all interested participants; therefore we will be using the submitted abstracts to assemble a well-balanced and relevant program. We hope to encourage attendance by young researchers and therefore have applied to the NSF for funding for 15 graduate students and/or postdocs: monetary support will be based entirely on need. Publication of workshop proceedings are planned. A deadline for registration and the submission of abstracts has not been set yet, but applications for participation are already being accepted. Please consult the web page for additional details concerning the conference.

This issue

Besides the announcement of the conference, we again have a number of new and interesting abstracts. Radio astronomy clearly dominates this list: from molecular line observations to mm-observations of Sgr A*. Again we have also solicited an article on an important topic in GC research. Susanne Hüttemeister member of a collaboration which has performed a large C¹⁸O survey of the GC region will try to answer the naive questions of the editors: What are all these surveys of the molecular gas in the GC region good for? What have we learned from them? As usual we have asked for the impossible: comprehensive but concise and short -- which we think she has achieved and therefore we can wholeheartedly recommend the following article to molecular line lovers and loathers alike.