EDS05/Bulletin N° 1

I. PLACE AND DATES

The XIth International Conference on Elastic and Diffractive Scattering:Towards the High Energy Frontiers will be held in the Château Royal de Blois, France, from Sunday, May 15th, to Friday, May 20th, 2005.
Our conference is the eleventh of the series of the International Conferences on Elastic and Diffractive Scattering, founded in 1985 in Blois. Since that time, meetings were organized in New York, USA (1987), Evanston, USA (1989), Isola d'Elba, Italy (1991), Providence, USA (1993), Blois, France (1995), Seoul, South Korea (1997), Protvino, Russia (1999), Praga, Czech Republic (2001) and Helsinki, Finlande (2003).

In 2005, we will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the series.

The picturesque old French town of Blois, famous for its XIV-XVIIth century château, is about 170 km (100 miles) from Paris in the beautiful region of the « Châteaux de la Loire ».

The « Rencontres de Blois » are international conferences, whose spirit is explicitly multidisciplinary. They have now been organized for a number of years in the city of Blois, in France, and have covered topics ranging from particle physics to chaos theory, life and planetary science. They are a mix of invited and contributed papers. The present conference is the XVIIth Rencontre de Blois.

The conference will take place in the Château de Blois itself, an ancient Royal residence situated in one of the most charming regions of France; lunch and dinner are served in the castle to all participants; the conference format is designed to encourage discussion and cross-fertilization of ideas. Participants are expected to stay for the whole duration of the Rencontres.

Conference secretary

The address of the conference secretary is:

II. PRACTICAL ORGANIZATION

1. Welcome and Registration

Participants are expected to arrive on Sunday afternoon, May 15th. Registration at the conference office in the Château de Blois will start at 15:00 on Sunday, May 15th. A welcome cocktail will be offered to the participants and their families at 19:00. It will be followed by a dinner.

2. Conference Schedule

The conference will start on Monday, May 16th, at 9:00 and will end on Friday, May 20th, at 16:00. The conference room will be located at the Château Royal de Blois.

3. Technical Facilities

The following equipment will be available:
- Slide projector for 5 cm x 5 cm slides
- Overhead-projector for transparencies
- LCD projector (beamer) for video and PowerPoint presentations (participants are expected to use their own laptops).

4. Transparencies

In order to make transparencies of the conference available on the Web, speakers who have their talks in file format (powerpoint, pdf, postscript, html, Word .doc) are invited to send them by E-mail to Basarab Nicolescu: nicolesc@lpnhep.in2p3.fr

5. Abstract submission form

Participants wishing to present their work should refer to the conference abstract submission form. For more information please have a look at the "scientific program" pages.

6. Proceedings

The proceedings will be edited and published. Participants will receive a copy of the proceedings at no extra charge. The deadline for submitting the manuscript is October 1st, 2005. Instructions for submitting the manuscripts will be distributed at the conference and will be also available in our Web pages.

7. Registration Fee

The registration form is available on the registration page. The registration fee will amount to 320 Euros. Accompanying members will be charged 150 euros to cover the conference "banquet", the visits of the Châteaux and the excursions. Payment of the registration fee can be made:
- by personal check in euros to the order of Rencontres de Blois, sent to the conference secretariat or on arrival at the conference;
- by traveller's checks in euros or US dollars on arrival at the conference;
- by prepayment by bank transfer (remember to add 25 euros or 25 US$ for bank fees) to the following account:

It will take one month for our account to be credited, so please have the bank transfer made before April 15. In any case, bring proof of the transfer and give it to the conference secretariat during registration in Blois. Please, note that we are unable to accept credit card for registration payment.

8. Accommodation

Hotel accommodation will be available in 3 categories :
one star (*), two stars (**) and three stars (***), all rooms having either a shower or a bath.

Please note that the number of 3* rooms are very limited.

The hotel reservation must be done directly by the participants. Please do your reservations as soon as possible, the capacity of the hotels being limited.

NB: The given prices are indicative and per person (breakfast included).

Anne de Bretagne**
31 avenue Jean Laigret
41000 Blois
Tel: + 33 2 54 78 05 38
Fax: + 33 2 54 74 37 79
annedebretagne@free.fr
http://annedebretagne.free.fr
From 32 € (double) to 58 € (single)

Etap Hôtel*
4 rue Jean Moulin
41000 Blois
Tel: + 33 8 92 68 31 77
Fax: + 33 2 54 78 83 88
http://www.etaphotel.com
From 23 € (double) to 36 € (single)

Relais de l'Octroi**
14 avenue Jean Gambetta
41000 Blois
Tel: + 33 2 54 45 11 11
Fax: + 33 2 54 45 31 10
http://www.hotel-relais.com
From 24 € (double) to 45 € (single)

Citotel le Savoie**
6 rue Ducoux
41000 Blois
Tel: + 33 2 54 74 32 21
Fax: + 33 2 54 74 29 58
hotel.le.savoie@wanadoo.fr
http://www.lesavoie.activehotels.com
From 27 € (double) to 43 € (single)

Hôtel Le Médicis***
2 allée François 1er
41000 Blois
Tel: + 33 2 54 43 94 04
Fax: + 33 2 54 42 04 05
christian.garanger@wanadoo.fr
http://www.le-medicis.com
From 110 € (single)

9. Meals

In order to enhance the interactions and exchanges between participants, all participants are requested to have lunch and dinner together. The conference has asked a caterer to serve lunch and dinner in the Château de Blois. The package cost for 5 days is 220 euros and will be paid to the caterer on the conference site by cash or check. Please, note that this package cannot be reduced for partial attendance. The conference banquet will take place on Thursday, May 19th.

10. Social program

The following social activities are planned during the conference for participants, their families and guests:
- visits of Châteaux de Blois et de Chenonceau;
- a « son et lumière » show at Château de Blois;
- visit of the « Clos Lucé » museum;
- an additional program for the accompanying persons (cost not included in the above) will be organized in collaboration with the tourist office of Blois.

11. Travel

By train:
The most convenient way to reach Blois is to arrive in Paris and take a train (SNCF) from the Austerlitz railway station to Blois. The following train schedule is still preliminary. Please, check with your travel agency or by consulting www.voyages-sncf.com.

Sunday, May 15th, 2005		Friday, May 20th, 2005
Departure from	Arrival	Departure	Arrival in
Paris-Austerlitz	in Blois	from Blois	Paris-Austerlitz
11 h 41	13 h 35	11 h 42	13 h 41
13 h 35	15 h 29	13 h 25	15 h 11
15 h 50	17 h 28	15 h 39	17 h 34
17 h 03	18 h 58	17 h 28	18 h 56



			The 20th anniversary of the Blois Workshops