One important mechanism by which the Division exercises leadership in the "state of the art" of a competence is that of sponsoring special conferences and symposia. Experts from around the world are invited to these conferences to summarize the present status of the many facets of a particular competence. In addition, contributed papers as well as comments of rapporteurs or summaries of panel discussions are often used to help better define this status.The first such conference sponsored by the Division was a broad one on "Trace Characterization -Chemical and Physical" held October 3-7. 1966 at the new NBS Laboratories at Gaithersburg, Maryland.On June [12][13] 1967, a seminar on a more restricted topic, "Quantitative Electron Probe Microanalysis," was held in these same facilities. The hard-cover proceedings of each of these meetings are available from the Government Printing Office as NBS Monograph 100 and NBS Special Publication 298, respectively.As a continuation of these definitive "state of the art" conferences, Authors were encouraged to make liberal use of figures and tables for the preparation of the condensations which appear in these proceedings.These condensations were then made available to the attendees one week prior to the beginning of the conference in a preprint booklet.Although each condensation was carefully edited and the author's corrections have been made, questions resulting from the absence of the usual "refereeing system" may arise. All authors of condensations are encouraged to publish their work in greater detail in a formal scientific periodical of their choice.Each day of the conference began with a "state of the art" plenary lecture on a major phase of the activation analysis technique. In order to provide complete coverage of the field, simultaneous sessions were required. The regrettable problem that the attendee faced in wanting to be in two places at once was alleviated to some degree by convening a plenary panel discussion at the end of each day in which all of the chairmen of the day's sessions provided a synopsis of the major points of discussion in their particular session. Synopses of these discussions appear in these proceedings.The availability of highly efficient business machines when combined with the format for this conference, provided for rapid publication of the proceedings (which is a necessity if conference proceedings are to have any useful purpose). All of the papers were typed on a typewriter that was connected to a magnetic tape recorder. The typewritten copy was reproduced to create the preprint. Authors were asked to edit their paper in the preprint. These corrections along with properly coded v VI PREFACE instructions were entered onto the previously recorded tape. This tape was then converted to a computer-compatible tape which was formatted to be processed through an automated typesetting system, with graphicart quality, at the Government Printing Office. Since uncorrected parts remained unchanged on the tape, the author's correction of the preprint co...