I attended the International Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Symposium (ILENRS-12) at The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia. I just got back. The website for the conference is here:
http://www.cvent.com/events/international-low-energy-nuclear-reactions-symposium-ilenrs-12/event-summary-2afdc5aee9fe479ca69ff752477cbd25.aspx I do not know why it is #12 or where the other 11 have been. Anyway, it was one of better cold fusion conferences I have been to lately. Reasons: New people. There were ~50 participants and I have never met about half of them. Many of them are spring chickens, in their 40s and 50s. One was an actual undergraduate! Interesting presentations and informal discussions, particularly by Rob Duncan, the people from NASA and the people from W&M who are just getting started in the field. As I have said before, you gotta love NASA people. A high level of enthusiasm. Progress has been made lately, and -- equally important -- there seems to be a lot of funding by the standards of cold fusion. People are getting equipment and permissions to do research. Peter Hagelstein presented a comprehensive version of his latest theory. I do not understand it but people who do were impressed. He calls this a complete theory compared to the "toy theories" he has presented in the past. He has gone through dozens of iterations. Rob Duncan described various projects now underway at U. Missouri. They want to be certain of the results before they announce them, but it is apparent that they are doing a lot of solid fundamental research in cooperation with the ENEA and others. Energetics Technologies has relocated from Israel to the U. Missouri commercial "incubator" where they are doing commercial-type R&D less open to discussion, more targeted to getting patents. As has been the case for the last few years, Rossi was the great absent influence. I think it is only a matter of time before various people replicate him. Piantelli has been more cooperative with various scientists in recent years, I suppose because of his rivalry with Rossi. As McKubre says, we all took a long hard look at Ni-H results thanks to Rossi, and that includes results from both Rossi and Piantelli. The proceedings from this conference will be made available at various web sites including LENR-CANR.org. The organizers are pushing the participants to submit papers quickly, within a few weeks. I think that is a good idea. - Jed
