A new website called Asian Accelerator Plaza (AAP) was officially launched on 27 May, and is aimed to be a comprehensive reference tool for anybody who is interested in Asian accelerator-related activities. This website was developed by collaboration among several Asian accelerator science research institutes, and is being operated in four languages: traditional and simplified Chinese, English, Japanese and Korean. “I first thought it will be very challenging to translate the contents into different languages, but with the help from our Asian colleagues, it went quite smoothly,” said Tsunehiko Omori, KEK physicist and editor-in-chief of this website.

The new website collects all relevant information on accelerators in Asia.

Accelerator science has long been led by Europe and the United States. It was not until the late 20th century that Asian countries started to promote accelerator science as their national projects. “Now, Asia has become a new player in the accelerator science community, and Asia's importance in the field is growing. However, information regarding accelerator activities in Asia available on the Internet is very limited. This is the biggest reason why we developed the AAP web site,” said Omori. This activity is officially reported to and welcomed by the Asian Committee for Future Accelerator (ACFA), which assesses the construction and use of accelerators in Asia, and promotes regional collaboration and exchange of personnel.

Omori explains that the site is targeting anybody who is interested in Asian accelerator information, especially people from the non-scientific community such as policymakers or journalists. “We try to keep the site map and contents as simple as possible for easy access, and try to use plain language,” said Omori. The main mission of this website is to collect current information about accelerator science in Asia, such as latest news, images or the science technology policy of each country. He also expects that jointly managing this website will help to foster better communication between Asian scientists.

The website houses pages which provide information on accelerators in Asia and a glossary list of particle physics and accelerator science terms, which are still on the way to completion, and will be updated to have full contents soon. “Many words in particle physics have interesting behind-the-scene episodes, such as how the term 'big bang' was coined,” said Omori. “We try to make our glossary list not just an explanation of each word, but also interesting short stories to read to draw attention to our research field. This is not so easy though. That is why we only have a short list of words at the opening of the website,” he added. They plan to complete their list by this coming summer, hoping many students use it for their summer homework.

-- Rika Takahashi