APS 1998 March Meeting

1998 APS March Meeting will be held 16-20 March 1998 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California. It is the largest and most varied of APS meetings. Eight APS divisions, three topical groups, and five forums will participate, representing the fields of condensed matter and materials physics, high polymer physics, chemical physics, biological physics, laser science, fluid dynamics, computational physics, instrument and measurement science, statistical and nonlinear physics, shock compression of condensed matter, and industrial and applied physics. There will also be sessions on international physics, physics history, education, and women and minorities in physics.

A list of invited speakers will be available on the APS Meetings homepage. This year there will be more than 90 invited symposia and over 550 invited speakers. Last year, contributed and invited submissions totaled over 4,500 papers, and the APS anticipates an even higher number of submissions for the 1998 meeting.

Focused technical sessions will be organized around such topics as magnetic field effects on biological systems and others areas of interest in biophysics; the chemical physics of photosynthesis; clusters, liquids and proteins; femtosecond surface dynamics; spectroscopy at high magnetic fields; and such areas of materials physics as nitride semiconductors, ferroelectric materials, and intragranular defects in high-temperature superconductors. A complete listing and descriptions of the various focused sessions in each field can be found in the October 1997 issue of APS Meeting News.

Because of the success of the electronic abstract submission process initiated two years ago, the complete program for the meeting will be available to the membership much earlier than it was when paper submission was the only option. Look for the 1998 March Meeting program to be posted on the APS homepage by 15 January 1998, a full two months prior to the meeting itself. This will enable attendees to create their own schedule in advance and take advantage of reduced airfare by booking their flights earlier.

In addition to the regular technical program, the Division of High Polymer Physics will offer a two-day short course on Challenges in Polymer Research for Microelectronics Technologies. There will also be eight tutorial sessions offered on Sunday, March 15, prior to the start of the regular meeting. Tutorials are designed to give the attendees practical applications of a diverse set of tools, technology and theory. Topics will include vacuum gauging using total pressure measurements, fractile biology and chaos in medicine, fullerenes, quantum wires and dots, advances in microscopy, the physics and applications of magnetoresistance, and quantum computations. See the APS Meeting News insert for course and tutorial descriptions, as well as information on how to register.