foreword

The importance of high level analytical practice is becoming more and more important as a consequence of various challenges that nowadays face humankind, and this trend is likely to continue. Analytical standards including precision, accuracy, quality assurance and quality control are increasing. Proton Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE) method is an accelerator-based technique which offers sensitive, multi-elemental, and fast analysis. Further development and improvements of PIXE are continuing and it has a great breadth of applications. PIXE can provide all or part of the data requested by the client on a variety of different sample types; given the growing imperative to provide complete information, the remaining part of the data can sometimes be acquired by application of complementary methods, accelerator-based or otherwise.

The PIXE Conferences are organised in a series with a triennial period. After the first one at Lund, Sweden in 1976, the other nine followed in alteration between Europe and the Americas with exception of the one in Tokyo, Japan in 1992. At the 9th PIXE Conference at Guelph, Canada, the International Advisory Committee (IAC) committed the organisation of the 10th PIXE meeting to Slovenia. The group from Jožef Stefan Institute, working with PIXE for about thirty years, was chosen as the organiser. Thanks to financial support by sponsors, including Ministry of Education, Science and Sport of Slovenia, International Atomic Energy Agency, European Physical Society, and High Voltage Engineering, as well as several exhibitors and advertisers the 10th, jubilee, PIXE Conference took place in Congress Centre of Hoteli Bernadin, Portorož, Slovenia, June 4-8, 2004.

The pleasant Mediterranean weather served us well and helped to induce a nice working atmosphere during the Conference. About 120 participants from 31 countries discussed the most recent achievements in PIXE and its applications. There were 45 oral presentations given at seven sessions, and 73 poster contributions displayed at two poster sessions. The main topics were Physics of Fundamental PIXE processes, Experimental Methodology, Archaeometry and Conservation, PIXE Facilities and Commercialisation, Environmental and Atmospheric Science, Material Science, and Biomedical Science. The established practice of inviting a speaker who is not strictly from the PIXE Community was implemented with an excellent talk from Dr. Alessandra Giumlia-Mair who presented the needs for chemical analyses in archaeometallurgy. In addition, to strengthen the technical aspects of PIXE, two round table discussions were organised - on PIXE spectrum fitting, and in relation to aerosol studies with PIXE.

The concluding remarks and visions were given by Dr. Geoff Grime, the new chair of the
PIXE International Advisory Committee. It is more and more obvious that PIXE presents an excellent analytical tool offering multidisciplinary academic and research activities in the field of earth to planetary investigations, environmental studies, biomedicine, archaeometry, and many others. Also, it became obvious that there is still space for improvements and developments in PIXE technique itself, both, on fundamental and experimental level. In this respect the best poster award was given to A.Potiriadis, A.G.Karydas, Ch.Zarkadas, and A.Clouvas for their study of PIXE continuum radiation.

A special exhibition was organised during the Conference presenting the instrumentation and facilities, which enable the use of the PIXE technique. We warmly thank the companies who have been prepared to participate in this exhibit.

The social programme was organised for the Conference participants and the accompanying persons. On Friday morning the social activities started with the opening session and in the evening they brought us to the welcome reception hosted by the Mayor of Piran municipality, birthplace of the well-known violinist and composer Giuseppe Tartini. Nice weather on Sunday contributed to an enjoyable excursion to the famous horse stud farm at Lipica, "teran and pršut" tasting at a peasant restaurant, and visit to Škocjan caves, a UNESCO world natural heritage site. Sunday evening was reserved for the banquet where we had an opportunity to hear an expose of Slovenian scientific history during the public lecture of Professor Stanislav Južnič. And at the end, on Tuesday, after the closing session and farewell, a glimpse of the Microanalytical Centre in Ljubljana with tandem accelerator and IBA activities was organised.

The decision of the International Advisory Committee to recommend some changes in the mode of the publication of the Conference materials was implemented at PIXE2004. Besides the CD Proceedings, a special issue of X-Ray Spectrometry (XRS) Review is dedicated to the Conference. From the invited and contributed papers a subset has been selected by the CPC and the IAC for publication as regular papers in XRS. It is planned that this special issue will be published in spring 2005.

The PIXE2004 Proceeding you received includes all the contributions, prepared as 2-3 page manuscripts, which were presented at the Conference, and accepted by the reviewers. There are one hundred papers included in the Proceedings. We would like to use this occasion to thank all of our reviewers for their hard and expeditious work. The volume is organised as the web file, giving the opportunity to access its parts through the menus shown. Besides the scientific information there are several technical and organisational issue included on this CD. We hope that this publication will further contribute to dissemination of knowledge and applicability of the PIXE method

It was a great pleasure and privilege for the Local Organising Committee to host PIXE community delegates who made the meeting in Portorož so pleasant and productive. On behalf of my colleagues I wish to express my gratitude to the Jožef Stefan Institute, and all the sponsors and financial supporters, who contributed to the success of PIXE2004. I acknowledge all the authors, as well as the Conference Program Committee and the Poster Award Committee, for making the scientific level of the meeting so high. And, I thank all my colleagues from the local committee for their dedication and excellent work.

The International Advisory Committee accepted a bid from the group dedicated to PIXE at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, headed by Dr. Javier Miranda, to host the 11th PIXE Conference at Puebla, Mexico, in June 2007. We wish the organisers all the best, and we are looking forward to meet old friends and newcomers at PIXE2007.

Miloš Budnar
PIXE2004 Chairman