The plans for SERMON 2005 are progressing.  This year the conference will be held at
the University of South Carolina from April 15-17.  The web page for the conference is:

http://www.math.sc.edu/~filaseta/SERMON2005/SERMON2005.html

We will have talks on Friday, Saturday, and (hopefully) Sunday.  There will be two 50 
minute talks - one on Friday afternoon and one on Saturday.  Both Trevor Wooley and 
Alf van der Poorten have expressed their willingness to give these talks.  More details
will be forthcoming.  The remaining talks will be contributed 20 minute talks.  There will
also be a problem session on Saturday as well as social gatherings on Friday and Saturday
nights.

We encourage (not require) everyone wishing to speak to submit a title and abstract (in
LaTeX if possible) at 

http://atlas-conferences.com/cgi-bin/abstract/submit/caqa-01

Abstracts can be viewed at

http://atlas-conferences.com/cgi-bin/abstract/caqa-01

Participants can go to the last web page above to get an idea of the subject matters 
of the talks in advance.  We will use these web pages to start planning the talks and
determining the length of the conference in advance.  We should also be able to provide 
a copy of the abstracts for the participants during the conference.

Hopefully, with the two 50 minute talks and a little extra planning and some gentle prying,
we will ensure that the conference goes through Sunday morning.  If you are not
interested in attending SERMON this year, we encourage you to go to the first link above
using a Netscape browser.  You may suddenly find yourself inexplicably wanting to attend
the conference.  We offer no explanation for this, but look forward to your attendance.

With Best Wishes for the New Year,

 From the Organizers:

Michael Filaseta     filaseta@math.sc.edu
Bob Murphy           murphy@math.sc.edu
Ognian Trifonov      trifonov@math.sc.edu
Gang Yu              yu@math.sc.edu