130 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PLASMA SCIENCE, VOL. 34, NO. 2, APRIL 2006 Guest Editorial Special Issue on Plenary and Invited Papers From ICOPS 2005 T HE 32nd International Conference on Plasma Science (ICOPS) was held in Monterey, CA, in June 2005, chaired by Dr. Robert Cauble and Dr. Sophie Chantrenne and had over 500 presented papers from attendees from around the globe. This Special Issue is the fourth of its kind to focus on Plenary and Invited Papers from ICOPS. All participants at future ICOPS presenting either oral or poster papers are encouraged to submit their papers for publication to regular issues of the IEEE TRANSACTION ON PLASMA SCIENCE. The 14 refereed papers from the plenary and invited talks are included in this Special Issue, and are grouped into the following seven main areas: 1) basic processes in fully and partially ionized plasmas; 2) microwave generation and microwave–plasma interac- tion; 3) charged particle beams and sources; 4) high energy density plasmas and their interactions; 5) industrial, commercial, and medical applications of plasmas; 6) plasma diagnostics; 7) arcs and MHD. These topics ranged from our traditional interests in basic plasma processes, microwave generation and charged particle beams, high energy density plasmas and plasma diagnostics to industrial and commercial applications of plasmas. The work by Yukimura, is devoted to experimental studies of plasma assisted nitric oxide ( ) removal by dielectric barrier discharges. Wang et al. describes new methods of plasma diagnostics using microparticles. Based on the physics of microparticle interac- tion with plasma, one can measure plasma flow and structures of plasma turbulence by proper selection of microparticle size, materials, and physical properties. The paper by Alexeff et al. reviews an extensive research program on plasma antennas that can transmit, receive, and reflect lower frequency signals while being transparent to higher frequency signals. Paul de- scribes computational models of high-pressure arc discharge in Ar–Hg mixture of interest to high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps. The paper by Christlieb et al. is devoted to a grid-free alternative to the particle-in-cell (PIC) methods for plasma simulations that can potentially resolve steep gradients and Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPS.2006.872175 handle complex domains more efficiently. Davoudabadi et al. describe computational models for dust particle interactions with a weakly collisional plasma in the presence of magnetic fields. The results could be of practical interest for material processing applications utilizing micro- and nano-particles in modern technologies. Porkolab et al. reviews the principles of phase contrast imaging (PCI) enabling one to detect the varia- tion of the index of refraction of a dielectric medium (such as a plasma) due to the presence of waves or turbulent fluctuations. Examples of measurements are presented for high-tempera- ture plasmas. Dammertz et al. presents the important area of high-power gyrotron development for fusion applications. The work by Gordon et al. addresses the issue of direct imaging of femtosecond laser filaments in air to measure quantities such as the filament energy and fluence distribution. Fundamental work on the monochromatic X-ray self-emission imaging of imploding wire array Z-pinches on a Z-accelerator is presented by Jones et al. The paper by Zhang et al. describes high-den- sity field-reversed configuration plasma for magnetized target fusion. Experimental and numerical investigation of electron cross-field transport in Cylindrical Hall thrusters presented by Smirnov et al. has demonstrated that thruster efficiency can be increased even when minaturized. The paper by Kantsyrev et al. gives an extensive review of experiments conducted on the implosion of wire arrays and X-pinches produced by the 1-MA Zebra generator. The development of a three-dimen- sional theory of nonrelativistic, laminar, space-charge-limited, ellisped-shaped, charge particle beam formation is presented by Bhatt et al.. We would like to thank the referees for their precious time and invaluable comments. Special thanks go to Dr. S. Gitomer, Ed- itor-in-Chief of the IEEE TRANSACTION ON PLASMA SCIENCE, for his support and encouragement which have made this Spe- cial Issue successful. ADRIAN W. CROSS, Guest Editor Department of Physics University of Strathclyde Glasgow, G1 1XQ, U.K. VLADIMIR I. KOLOBOV, Guest Editor CFD Research Corporation Huntsville, AL 35805 USA 0093-3813/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE