A brief status report seems timely with this volume of the Annual Review of Nutrition. After many years of excellent service, Mr. Bill Kaufmann has retired and Dr. Sam Gubins, formerly Senior Vice President of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, has become President and Editor-in-Chief. In mid-November, a meeting of the new President, the Board of Directors, and the Editors unveiled the new Annual Reviews web site (http://www.annurev.org) and the progress being made toward putting Annual REviews on line. It also provided a "competitive analysis" of each Annual REview, a series of books that now includes some 26 disciplines. The Annual Review of Nutrition ranks first in quality among other publications in nutrition (based on data gathered by ISI) and is in the top few percent in overall ranking, standing out among over 4500 journals tracked by the Science Citation INdex, Journal Citation REports. We expect to continue at this level and ideally to increase our modest impact factor.

With regard to the current volume, there are diverse offerings. The prefatory chapter is by Dr. Bob Olson, preceding Editor and a long-standing champion of our profession. In addition, there are chapters on regulation of nutrient transport (glucose, bile acid, peptide, vitamin E), and on utilization (low-birth-weight infants, people after exercise), as well as chapters on LDL, antioxidants, folate and neural tube defects, control of appetite, and changes in eating practices.

With regard to future volumes, the ever-growing quantity of research makes it increasingly important to have periodic critical reviews that sift and summarize what has been learned and, when reasonable, to indicate new directions to be taken, the general raison d'être for Annual Reviews. For many topics, coverage spans progress at the basic scientific level to applications that can be made at the practical level. This breadth presents a challenge to those of us attempting to collate ongoing activity in nutrition. Our overall goal is to maintain quality achieved through judicious selection of topics while giving fair coverage to the wide range of subjects that comprise nutrition, a field that draws from disciplines ranging from molecular science to public health. Any of you who feel a timely chapter is needed to cover some appropriate subject, let us know. By no means can every suggestion be accommodated, but it may help the Editorial Committee, who want to select well from the many potential titles/authors.

As always, acknowledgments are in order. Our former Production Editor, Ann M. Dahlquist, has gone back to school. We wish her well. Our new Production Editor, Roberta (Robbie) Parmer, has been on-the-job since our last Editorial Committee meeting. We are blessed with Robbie's considerable experience at Annual REviews, where she also tends to Medicine and to Nuclear and Particle Science. Once again, my sincere thanks to Associate Editors Drs. Denny Bier and Alan Goodridge, who share much of the manuscript critiquing with me. They and other members of our Editorial Committee provide the suggestions of titles and authors, which you, the reader, are invited to augment.

Donald B. McCormick, Editor