Категория: Welcome to the EFOMP quarterly newsletter, European Medical Physics News, Winter 2022 issue.
Winter is a breathtakingly gorgeous season. With coolmornings, bright, crisp days, and powdered snow, it is easy to see how this stunning natural depiction has inspired cultural festivals throughout history. The Winter Solstice is an astronomical event on Earth, when the days get shorter and shorter, culminating on the evening of the solstice, Wednesday, December 21, 2022, at 4:48 p.m. EST. The winter solstice marks the start of astronomical winter (as opposed to meteorological winter, which starts about three weeks prior to the solstice). Boxing Day, Chinese New Year, Christmas, Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Las Posadas, St. Lucia Day, and Three Kings Day are just a few of the winter celebrations. Whatever holiday you celebrate this year, these international winter festivals are interesting to learn about!
The main topic of this issue is the celebration of the International Day of Medical Physics (IDMP), which was on November 7, 2022. Several NMOs have written about how they marked the day: Beaumont MPCE – International Day of Medical Physics in Dublin -reported by Lynn Gaynor; International Day of Medical Physics in Lithuania – reported by Greta Vainiūtė; the Celebration of the International Day of Medical Physics 2022 in Plovdiv – reported by Todorka L. Dimitrova; and the Bulgarian Society for Biomedical Physics and Engineering celebration in two sites, Plovdiv and Pleven, reported by Ivo Petrov.
The outcome of the election of the governing committee’s officers for the 2024-2026 term of office (EFOMP officers) is also announced in the articles at the heart of this issue by the president and general secretary. The winners of this election were the following: Efi Koutsouveli (GR), President; Brenda Byrne (IE), Secretary General; Jaroslav Ptácek (CZ), Treasurer; Oleksandra V. Ivashchenko (NL), Communications and Publications Committee Chair; and Dimitris Visvikis (UK), Projects Committee Chair. Sincere congratulations from the editorial board to everyone. I would like to take this opportunity to thank and express my and the members of the Communications and Publications Committee gratitude to Professor David Lurie, the past chairperson of the Communications and Publications Committee, for his hard work and wonderful experiences during his tenure. I would also like to extend a warm welcome to Oleksandra V. Ivashchenko, who will become the committee’s vice chairperson in January 2023. We all wish her the best of luck in her work with us in the committee, and I would like to personally extend my warmest regards to her in advance.
In this edition, EMP News’s Educational Advisor Danielle Dobbe-Kalkman has interviewed one of the most highly distinguished medical physics educators and communicators in the world, Professor Ben J. M. Heijmen, Medical Physicist and Professor of Radiation Oncology Physics at the Erasmus MC Cancer Institute of the Erasmus University Medical Centre Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
For this winter issue of EMP News, Iuliana Toma-Dasu, Editor-in-Chief of Physics Medica, selected three articles from the most recent issue of Physica Medica (EJMP). Julien Jurczak has presented a brief on his PhD thesis titled “Establishment of Primary Standards for Small Fields in Radiation Oncology,” which was the foundation stone of the establishment of Primary Standards for Small Fields in Radiation Oncology in the French Primary Dosimetry Standards Laboratory, while Lijana Lileikyt has summarised her MSc on the Evaluation of the Absorbed Dose in Blood Samples Using the Dicentric Chromosome Assay. Jonas Andersson and Gavin Poludniowski have also continued in Hacking Medical Physics series: Part 4. ImageJ – a Closer Look at an Old Friend.
In addition, our popular Medical Physicist’s art and hobby collection includes, the sixth article by Prof. Jim Malone in his “Art to Challenge and Inspire” series about Homage to Newton. Salvador Dali (1904 -1989); a new comic strip series of the Aurora Project starts on “Cancer and Its Treatment from the Inside”; Sofia Spampinato shares her experiences as a public speaker and gives tips on how to stay calm and collected under pressure.
This issue contains the following meeting reports: Leticia Irazola Rosales reported on the ECMP2022 Early Career Section; Markus Buchgeister flagged up the German Medical Physics Congress 2022 in Aachen; Csilla Pesznyak noted on the 6th European Congress on Radiation Protection; Prof. Dr. Oliver Jäkel et al. reported on the 4th Summer School in Medical Physics 2022 on Radiobiology and Radiobiological Modelling for Radiotherapy; Konstantinos Petrou and Evgenia Alamani reported on the 1st Panhellenic Conference of Medical Physics and Manuel Vilches reported on the biennial meeting of the Spanish Society of Medical Physics (SEFM).
In this issue, there are a number of EFOMP SIG updates, as well as the educational course reports. Pablo Minguez Gabia from Barakaldo, Spain, provides an update on the activities of this EFOMP Special Interest Group; Ruben Pauwels and Paddy Gilligan introduce the newly established Imaging in Dentistry SIG to call for new members; student experiences on the EFOMP E&T Committee Erasmus+ Traineeships are reported by Carmel J. Caruana; and Milana Marjanovic recounts her fantastic experiences at the hybrid ESMPE Statistics in Medical Physics course in Greece.
Several items from EFOMP company members have been incorporated into this collection. I have no doubt that learning about the services and pursuits of the businesses will be entertaining to read about. This edition of European Medical Physics News features, as it usually does, a diverse collection of articles; if you read any of them, I really hope you find them fascinating!
I would like to remind you that the EFOMP mailbase discussion list is now up and running. If you haven’t joined yet, please send a request to join by going to the public subscription page at the link below and following the instructions: https://lists.efomp.org/
December 2022—Mohamed Metwaly and the Editorial Team (pubcommittee@efomp.org).
