The theme of the conference

Energy needs in future will increase at a rapid rate, and there are at least two principal reasons for that. One is a rapid emergence of new industrial nations with extremely large populations and the other is greater demand in industrialized nations for even higher standard of living. Energy is used for food production, chemical and pharmaceutical industries, education, social order and transport. Economizing energy consumption is important as a short term solution but it is imperative to explore the sources that would satisfy long term needs. In particular the conference will deal with the three of the major problems, fusion, solar energy and hydrogen technology. Fusion is ultimately the solution for the energy needs of our civilization. It is virtually an unlimited source, with deuterons from water, it does not affect the environment, and it is the most “democratic”, meaning that no particular geographic region would have a monopoly of it. Solar energy is another important source, but before its large scale harvesting several important problems must be solved. The foremost is to increase the efficiency of solar cells, that is, the direct conversion of electromagnetic radiation into electricity. Hydrogen has two important roles in the future solution of the energy problem. One is for storage of energy that is produced by other means. Hydrogen is not easy to manipulate and storage is a challenges because it also involves efficient retrieving it from storage. One also has to improve the efficiency of hydrogen production.

General information

At the conference the discussion periods are assigned significant lengths of time and the oral presentations are designed to form a framework for meaningful discussion. Apart from the usual aim of developing an up-to-date perspective of the present state of a given topic, the fundamental scientific philosophy behind the series of conferences is the stimulation of cross-disciplinary flow of knowledge and expertise from both the experimental and theoretical standpoints. In particular it is hoped that the impact of the topic on areas which are distantly related can be explored.

Apart from the invited presentations there are both oral and poster contributions; however the number of oral presentations is reduced to a minimum in order to give time for uninterrupted discussion.

No proceeding of the conference is published, except the book of abstracts. This is in accordance with the scope of the conference where discussion of novel ideas, not yet in the final form, is encouraged. However, all lectures and discussions will be sound recorded for the archive of the conference, which will be able to access from the internet.

The conference fee is EU 100, for students EU 50.

Deadlines

The conference attendance is limited to 60 participants (excluding accompanying guests). As a consequence it is important that, if you wish to participate, you should return the form below as soon as possible, not later than 31. May 2010 when the final reservations at the Brioni Conference Centre must be confirmed. Please indicate below how certain you are of coming in the event that the conference is oversubscribed.

Application should contain the following information
NAME
ADDRESS, including email
TITLE OF CONTRIBUTION

and should be sent by email to: bosanac@irb.hr

Organizing committee S. D. Bosanac - chairman H. Kroto - co-chairman T. Ebbesen G. Pichler

Scientific committee P. Biermann, Germany S. D. Bosanac, Croatia P.-P. Delsanto, Italy T. Ebbesen, France J. Jortner, Israel W. Klemperer, USA D. Kleppner, USA H. Kroto, UK S. Leach, France J. Murrell, UK T. Oka, USA M. Quack, Switzerland H. Sadekhpour, USA P. Toennies, Germany