January 31, 2017 (E39). This first issue of 2017 brings to you selected plenary and invited slide presentations from the 1^st Asian ICMC and CSSJ 50^th Anniversary Conference that took place in Kanazawa, Japan, on November 7 – 10, 2016.  The acronym CSSJ is used by the Cryogenics and Superconductivity Society of Japan.  All six slide presentations in this section provide regional overviews.  Covered are (1 and 2) the composite wire development in Europe and the US, (3) the development of high-T_c applications in New Zealand, (4) large scale applications in Japan, (5) applications and cryogenics in India, and (6) the status of superconducting materials development in China.

This issue also contains two late, but very timely ASC 2016 preprints on the progress of energy-efficient SFQ electronics, one of them invited, and the results of the SNF Contest for Best ASC 2016 Contributed Preprints. The winners and runners-up were determined from a large number of contributions based on the judgment of independent referees. In some cases, the decision was quite difficult, but this demonstrates the quite large number of excellent contributions to ASC 2016. There were 4 winning preprints and 6 runners up in the Electronics category, 2 winners and 6 runners-up in Large Scale, and 3 runners-up in Materials, but no winners. Congratulations and thanks for taking part in this competition!

One paper from a peer-reviewed journal is brought to your attention in our ‘Science and Technology Highlight' section. The 3^rd International Workshop on Superconducting Sensors and Detectors” (HE111) and “Responding to the U.S. Research Community’s Liquid Helium Crisis” (HP120) also deserve your attention.

Finally, a word on the further development of the Superconductivity News Forum: after issue No. 39, you will see changes in the design of the web-site; new columns (like opinion articles with reader discussion) will appear, and access to articles and news will be broadened to new media like Facebook and Twitter. We hope that this transition will take place without pain, and we expect your feedback, to be published in Letters to the Editor.  Your comments will help us to update the structure of our Internet site.