Northwest Mining Association's 106th Annual Meeting and Exposition, Spokane, WA, USA, Dec. 4-8, 2000

摘要

The theme permeating our journal is advanced materials, thus the title of this Conference Report may come as a surprise. However; all advanced materials initially, in one form or another; are mined; more broadly mining also includes coal mines, semi-precious and precious stones, metals, chemicals feedstocks, fertilizers, and construction aggregate operations, as well as the critical issue of how to handle abandoned mines. Thus to cover the "front end" of advanced materials, I recently attended this Conference in Spokane, Washington, USA. As a material scientist, I have no plans to go into the details of mining, but rather to give the material scientist/engineer an overview of where the mining industry is coming from. This Conference is considered to be one of the major world-wide mining events of the year; and as such is well attended by participants from around the world, (Figure 1).