Effective April 1, 1992, individual membership rates were $55 for U.S. residents, $65 for non-U.S. residents, and $60 for Canadians. For organizations the rates were $105, U.S.; and $115, non-U.S. The student rate remained $25. In Newsletter VII.1 of March 1992 the ACES Editorial Board Committee (chaired by Editor-in-chief Stein) pondered the problem of offsetting rising postal rates with a possible future solution in electronic publishing. This would standardize publication formats but discourage some authors who lacked the required software. As an intermediate measure the Committee decided to encourage but not require authors to submit their papers on disks, along with the camera-ready copy. At least this would achieve partial standardization and simplify error correction.
Randy Jost (Stanford Research Institute, International) proposed an e-mail database and asked the membership for an expression of interest. By June 1 seventeen members expressed interest. Mr. Jost would update the database regularly, maintain a "telephone directory" of members, and offered to create an on-line database for electromagnetic code users if there was sufficient interest. The Eighth Annual Review of Progress, March 16-20, 1992, with Patricia Foster as Chairwoman, featured 80 papers in 12 sessions, 25 by authors outside North America. Tradition was broken with a variety of events during one afternoon: technical poster sessions, CAEME demonstrations of its software, other software vendors, along with a parallel meeting on Canonical Problems. Four full-day short courses and three half-day courses were held.
Newsletter VII.2 of July 1992 contained the following news. Professor Luis M. Correia (Technical University of Lisbon) had agreed to serve as ACES representative in Portugal, and Professor Duncan Baker agreed to be a representative in South Africa. The annual business meeting on March 17 saw the election of Secretary Adler, Treasurer Breakall and Frank Walker to the BOD for 3-year terms. Secretary Adler announced a temporary California non-profit status for ACES, with permanent status contingent upon continuation of the U.S. non-profit status, already granted. The financial statement by ACES CPAs, dated
December 31, 1991, listed total assets (cash + property) of $36,251. On January 1, 1991, retained earnings (i.e., total assets) amounted to $40,494. The 1991 net income was the difference, or -$4,243 (a loss). Total assets on January 1, 1990, were $31,814.
Editor-in-chief Stein reported the average time from an article submission to Journal publication was four months. At that time two Journals were published each year, with a special issue occasionally replacing a regular one. The Newsletter was publishing three times a year. Andrew Peterson (Georgia Institute of Technology), Chairman of the ACES Software Performance Standards Committee, stated that the joint ACES-APS Workshop on Benchmark Problems would be held July 25, 1992, following the IEEE-APS International Symposium in Chicago. Eleven persons would attend this Workshop. Also a TEAM Workshop would be held at the Fifth Biennial Conference on Electromagnetic Field Computation at Harvey Mudd College, August 6-7, 1992. Fifty-four persons would participate in this latter Workshop.
This issue VII.2 of the Newsletter contained an updated index of 44 computer codes described in the newsletter and in Vol. VI, 1991 of the Journal. Some of these codes might not have been available to ACES members. In future years the second Newsletter issue of each year would contain a similar updated index of various codes described in the previous year's Journals and Newsletters. Newsletter Editor Elliot requested information on measured electromagnetic data in all areas of electromagnetics for a bibliography. The Code User Group's Chairman, Russell Taylor, reported that information received from developers and users would either be distributed to User Group members or published in a Newsletter. Anthony Fleming, the ACES International Workshop Chairman, announced an International Workshop on Applied Computational Electromagnetics, entitled "Directions for the Nineties", to be held on August 14, 1992 between the Asia-Pacific Microwave Conference in Adelaide and the URSI Electromagnetic Theory Symposium in Sydney, Australia. Vol. VII.3 of the Newsletter, November 1992, reported the following news.
Russell Taylor of the Code Users Group Committee said an ACES on-line bulletin board would be established on INTERNET during the next few months. Wayne Harader of the Committee on Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems sought suggestions and comments on ways to develop the artificial intelligence electromagnetics area and obtain sponsorship. Frank Walker and Andrew Terzuoli, co-chairmen of the Software Exchange Committee, were preparing to go to press with the 1993 edition of the ACES Software Catalogue, planned for distribution at the 1993 Ninth Annual Review.
The Newsletter also summarized the ACES/TEAM Workshop at Telecom Australia Research Labs, with about 80 attendees. Edmund Miller discussed the likely impact of future computers on computational electromagnetics. Gerald Burke described features of soon-to-be-released NEC-4; Tapan Sarkar (Syracuse University) spoke of integral equation approaches for microstrip-like structures. J. Bach Andersen (University of AÄalborg) described application of the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method to portable antennas. The workshop demonstrated the usefulness of ACES/TEAM as a forum.
A special ACES Journal issue entitled "Advances in the Numerical Computation of Low Frequency Electromagnetic Fields" was announced. The guest editors would be Adalbert Konrad and J. Douglas Lavers (both University of Toronto). The deadline for papers would be May 31, 1993. The membership dues changed on April 1, 1993. Four separate regions were identified: the U.S. and Canada; Mexico, Central, and South America; Europe, the former USSR, Turkey and Scandinavia; and Asia, Africa, Middle East and Pacific Rim. Surface mail, which was not appropriate for the U.S. and Canada, would be $63 for the other regions. Individual airmail would range from $60 for the first region to $80 for the last. All organizational mail would be airmailed at $110. Student rate would remain $25 everywhere.
Randy Jost stated that 34 ACES members were on the E-mail databases as of November 1992.
At the end of 1992 ACES membership stood at 514, with 8 students, 88 organizations, and 418 individuals. Approximately 28% were from non-U.S. countries. Total membership had decreased by 2% from December 1991, but total non-U.S. membership rose by 6%.
The Financial Report by Treasurer Logan disclosed assets on January 1, 1992 of $33,375, which had dropped to $27,998 on December 31, 1992. Income for 1992 was approximately $89,206, expenses were nearly $94,600, for a net loss of $5,377. This loss was due to increased publication costs (9% higher) and increased postage and flyer costs (18% higher). ACES had run a loss for 1990, 1991, and 1992 and it appeared to be at a financial crossroads! Some unexpected income from the Department of Energy (DOE) in 1993 helped to change this bleak financial picture.