The 9th International Symposium on Salt now has an active website and has issued a Call for Papers. Deadline for abstract submission is December 15, 2008.

The meeting, themed with the Salt Institute slogan (and film title) "Salt: The Essence of Life," will be held at the China National Convention Center in Beijing. It is being sponsored and organized by Salt Institute member China National Salt Industry Corporation . The Salt Institute is co-sponsoring, along with the Indian Salt Manufacturers Association and the Solution Mining Research Institute .

Topics for which papers are invited include the following:

• 1. Reduction of Energy Consumption in Salt Production
• 2. Salt Production Safety
• 3. Salt Sources and Occurrences
• 4. Salt Extraction
• 5. Rock Salt
• 6. Evaporated Salt
• 7. Sea/lake/Solar Salt
• 8. Salt Byproducts
• 9. Salt Processing, Analysis and Quality Assurance
• 10. Salt Markets and Applications
• 11. New Applications
• 12. Applications of New Technologies and Equipments
• 13. Salt and the Environment
• 14. Salt and Health
• 15. Iodized Salt for IDD Elimination
• 16. Salt and History (Salt and Culture)

Keep a watch on the website as the program develops.

Maybe you should be reading BizCentral.org . That's the opinion offered by Mark Tapscott, editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner .

After commenting about the origin of the word "insourcing," Tapscott admonishes:

By the way, if you aren't checking BizCentral.org regularly, you should be, as it brings together a dozen or so of the top minds from across the field of business-related associations that follow policy debates and developments in Washington.

Obviously, we're both flattered and prone to agree: visit BizCentral.org .

ABC News' The Blotter noted the launch of BizCentral.org and the high-flying lobbying groups participating, including the Salt Institute. Enjoy . Justin Rood reported:

Blogging: It's not just for the little guy anymore.

Big business has officially moved into the blogosphere, a territory once claimed by radicals, grassroots organizers and armchair political philosophers.

Bizcentral.org is a new group blog authored by lobbyists for some of the biggest industries in America. The petroleum industry is represented, as well as nuclear power, chain drug stores, the American Trucking Association - even the Salt Institute, "the world's foremost source of authoritative information about salt (sodium chloride) and its more than 14,000 known uses."

Business needs a stronger voice in the blogosphere and so the Salt Institute joined today with ten other associations - representing sectors as diverse as energy, transportation, telecomm, manufacturing, retail and consumer goods - to launch BizCentral.org , a community blog for business associations, the Salt Institute announced today.

The charter members of BizCentral.org may represent very different industries, but they support common pro-growth economic principles like free markets, free trade, and low taxes. But, while each of the industries has a unique story, the collective story of how business and industry satisfy basic consumer needs and what public policies can deliver sustainable economic security is a message that will interest and inform the influentials who we expect to participate in the blog discussion.

A Congressman can't be too careful in dealing with the media. Latest example: Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) who represents Morton Salt's Manistee evap plant, responded to a question on page 17 of today's print issue of The Hill newspaper, in "The Culinary Inquisition" by reporter Kris Kitto. The question seemed innocuous: "Salty or sweet." Apparently caught without a District-sensitive staffer at his elbow, Hoekstra opted for "sweet." It's an election year, Congressman. What will the Manistee precincts think?

With mounting concern about the potential for terrorists to target in-transit chlorine, we've blogged about the potential for on-site chlorination. Others are promoting a switch in disinfectants, suggesting replacing less costly chlorine with bleach or UV light, the Center for American Progress among them warned of "toxic trains and terrorists:"

Each year, thousands of tons of highly toxic chlorine gas travel by rail in the United States to drinking water and wastewater treatment facilities and other industries. These massive railcars traverse some 300,000 miles of freight railways, passing through almost all major American cities and towns. A rupture of one of these railcars could release a dense, lethal plume for miles downwind, potentially killing or injuring thousands of people.

The Department of Homeland Security and numerous security experts have repeatedly warned that terrorists could use industrial chemicals as improvised weapons of mass destruction-and indeed, terrorists recently attacked and blew up several trucks carrying chlorine in Iraq. In this respect, railcars of chlorine gas represent a distinct national security vulnerability. Yet Congress and the Bush administration have not acted to eliminate unnecessary uses of chlorine gas railcars even where undeniably affordable and practical alternatives exist.

We think on-site chlorination needs a closer look . Water utilities know how to handle chlorine. It works and it's the least costly option. On-site chlorination removes the threat of some rocket attack on a railcar or tanker truck.

American poet Kate Greenstreet has been described as "quirky" and "genuinely interested in furthering the cause of words." Whatever. We applaud her source material. One reviewer explained the poet's technique in her book case sensitive which contains extensive notes of her sources which, surprising to us, include "the Salt Institute's website, and loads of other stuff."

The book has five sections including one on science, about which Publishers Weekly says of Greenstreet's poem "Salt:"

[SALT]" treats its titular mineral's properties (e.g., "[on icy streets makes winter travel safe]") as jumping-off points for questions about human nature: "Can you shut the eye with something in it and continue?

Yes, salt's historic thread in culture continues today .

A wave of salt-inspired culture is forming. The Big Apple is already home to sculptress Bettina Werner , self-styled "Salt Queen ." Now, before Labor Day, an off-Broadway -- actually 145 6th Avenue (between Spring and Broome) -- ballet choreographed by Vicky Virgin and directed by Umit Celebi exploring "salt in its myriad forms." It's on our calendar ; is it on yours? Here's the playbill:

Salt becomes a metaphor for desire in Vicky Virgin's new dance theater piece, Salt Lake, a New Ballet in 3 Acts . Story ballet converges with performance art providing the framework for the emergence of Fleur de Sel, an odd character with an irrational craving for salt. Three salt nymphs join her as she negotiates that dangerous landscape of passion: the desire, bliss and despair. Elements include video on a screen of falling salt and a Shakespeare sonnet. Salt in its myriad forms are fully explored. In the end, you will be left with nothing less than pure unadulterated thirst.

Boomers will remember the Sixties when the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, OH caught on fire; it was that polluted. No more . Still, the notion of water bursting into flame is intriguing and quite visual ( 1 2 ).

Touted by some to be akin to an energy-producing perpetual motion machine, a device developed by John Kanzius, a former broadcast executive with a background in physics, burns salt water using a radio wave machine he originally developmed to kill cancer cells. While testing his machine to see if it desalinized water, the water burst into flame, apparently burning the hydrogen liberated from the water. He claims a 76% efficiency rating and has filed patents for the process using saltwater as an alternative fuel. No doubt it's easier to find saltwater in the ocean than oil under desert sands.

Salt's in the news, whatever direction you look! (make sure you see at least one of the videos ( 1 2 ).

On innumerable social occasions, I've found myself describing in detail the 1980 Lake Peigneur, LA, disaster when an errant Texaco oil-drilling crew, drilling underwater, pierced the side of a salt mine, flooding it and emptying the lake. The wound to the mine was mortal, but the salt miners were so well drilled in emergency evacuation that all 55 miners escaped without injury. You can see the action unfold on YouTube .

So it makes perfect sense that Louisiana salt miners take seriously efforts by mine managers to maintain readiness for mine disasters. Thus, the headline in yesterday's Daily Iberian (New Iberia, LA) was eye-catching, but unsurprising: "Mine Stages Disaster ." No, it wasn't an insurance scam. It was a full-scale drill by Cargill Salt's Avery Island mine. Drills like this are why salt mine rescue teams regularly dominate national competitions among various mine rescue units which compete annually, recognizing that competition heightens not only skills, but awareness.

The National Association of Manufacturers has just issued its seventh edition of The Facts About Modern Manufacturing . It's a reference book about the value of manufacturing the the US economy.

As such, it counters the notion that we are a post-industrial economy, pointing out that if manufacturing would be considered by itself, it would be the eighth largest economy in the world.

Some key facts:

Manufacturing makes the highest contribution to economic growth of any sector, being responsible for more than 70% of private sector research and development.

Manufacturing achieves a high productivity rate year in and year out, increasing by more than 50 % in the past decade.

Manufacturing contributes more than 60% of U.S. exports or about $50 billion a month.

Manufacturers pay wages and benefits that are about 25% higher than in non-manufacturing jobs.

More than other sectors, each dollar spent by manufacturing generates an additional $1.37 in economic activity.

The report also documents policy changes NAM believes necessary to ensure future growth of manufacturing, including:

An educated and productive workforce. Eighty-one percent of respondents in NAM's 2005 Skills Gap survey said they could not find qualified workers to fill open positions.

High built-in costs. Structural costs such as taxes and health care add 31.7% to U.S. manufacturing costs, making it more difficult to produce from a U.S. base.

There's lots more.

The latest USGS figures for 2006 are in and for the first time, the production and salt in China (48 million MT) has exceeded production in the US (46 million MT). As is readily apparent from the figures published on the Salt Institute World Salt Production Webpage , China has shown largest growth during the last 15 years, doubling its output from 24 - 48 million metric tons. Very significant production gains have also been experienced in India and Australia. Where will the next decade take us?

The January 2007 edition of the Salt Science Research Foundation Report contains a fascinating article on the ability of electrolysis water to kill pathogenic bacteria. Researchers found that the acidic water produced around the anode of a salt water electrolysis system has sterilizing properties which have since been put to use preventing hospital infections. A prototype piece of equipment has been put to use for the sterilization of endoscopes prior to their use in endoscopic procedures. In fact, researchers have optimized the process by first washing the equipment with the alkaline electrolysis water from the cathode side and immediately following this within a rinse from the anode side. What is really produced at the anode side is hypochlorite, but it appears to be much more active than the equivalent levels of hypochlorite produced by conventional means. Researchers are currently evaluating the long-term practicality of this system.

The beautiful and unique sounds of the Stradivarius and Guarneri violins have always been the subject of musical and mathematical mystery and the controversy. Was it the wood? Was it the glue? Was it simply the craftsmanship of the maker? These questions have been asked over and over again.

In a recent article entitled Lord of the Strings , in the December 2 edition of New Scientist, the latest analysis indicates that treating wood with salt water results in a violin that has many of the same qualities as a Stradivarius. This appears to be application number fourteen thousand and.....

Ray Keating, chief economist for the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council just posted a Thanksgiving-themed opinion column of this title.

Personally, I tend to think of pumpkin pies for Thankgiving. Perhaps that's why the piece caught my eye. It's worth a read. Keating makes the point that there are "seemingly countless individuals and businesses that must coordinate their efforts to make sure pie lovers are happy on Thanksgiving." He simply reviews the recipe for a cherry pie and the production processes that produce the "shortening, flour, salt, sugar, margarine or butter and, of course, cherries." (full disclosure: Keating cites the Salt Institute for his information on salt).

Keating references Adam Smith's "invisible hand" to explain how myriad self-interests combine to produce a public good. I was reminded, even more, of R.W. Grant's classic, The Incredible Bread Machine, which has just been re-published (see the online reviews at Amazon.com ).

Enjoy your pie, whatever ingredients you use (mine will be pumpkin!) -- you'll surely be using salt. And be thankful for the competive marketplace that has produced such abundance at historic bargain-basement prices -- whether of pies, of salt or of any of a million items in daily commerce.