Home | Publications | APS News | December 2003 (Volume 12, Number 11)

December 2003 (Volume 12, Number 11)

December 2003 (Volume 12, Number 11) Entire Issue

News

APS March Meeting Heads North to Montréal
More than 5000 technical papers will be presented on a wide range of research topics.

APS Honors Two Undergrads with Apker Award
Peter Onyisi and Nathaniel Stern recognized for outstanding research.

California Physics Departments Face More Budget Cuts in an Uncertain Future
The recall election is over, but funding woes continue for the state's once top-ranked university system.

AMS, Biomedical Applications Highlight 2003 DNP Meeting
New Techniques for carbon-14 dating among new research results announced at Tucson conference.

Fusion Tops DOE Facilities List
Twenty-year plan includes 28 major facilities, listing ITER as top priority.

Entire APS Journal Collection Licensed by Los Alamos "Library Without Walls"
LANL digital library to provide model mechanism for futrue journal distribution.

GAO Says Current Missile Defense Plan Is Risky
New report recommends exploring options to demonstrate effectiveness.

Homeland Security Programs Need Best Scientific Talent, Says DHS Undersecretary
McQueary calls for best and brightest from premier universities and the private sector.

Meeting Briefs
2003 Fall section meetings.

APS Members Capture Array of Honors
Fermi Award, MIT Innovation Awards among those honoring physicists.

APS-Led Teacher Preparation Program Adds Another Participating School
PhysTEC continues to grow in scope.

Chicago Area Fellows Convene
APS Fellows from the Chicago area met on October 7th.

Program Committee Prepares for March Meeting
Program committee gathered at APS Headquarters.

Opinion

Letters
Don't Make Pancakes with Lumpy Dough

Viewpoint
High Schools Provide Useful Educational Model

The Back Page
Energy Department Releases 20-year Plan for New Facilities

Departments

This Month in Physics History
December 1958: Invention of the Laser

Inside the Beltway: A Washington Analysis
Cold Turkey and a Glass of Bubbly

Zero Gravity: The Lighter Side of Science
The 2003 Ig Nobel Prizes

Nobel Laureates Past and Present

Photo Credit: Darlene Logan

At a recent reception for APS Fellows in the Chicago area, Leon Lederman (left), Nobel Laureate in 1988, chats with Aleksei Abrikosov, Nobel Laureate in 2003, and his wife Svetlana. (Another picture from the same reception appears on page 2.) Abrikosov, for a long time at the Institute for Physical Problems in Moscow and now at Argonne National Laboratory, shares the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics with Vitaly L. Ginzburg of the Lebedev Institute in Moscow and Anthony J. Leggett of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). They were honored for their work on the theories of superconductivity and superfluidity. In addition, this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine recognized an important physics-based technology, magnetic resonance imaging or MRI. This Prize is being awarded to two pioneers in this field, Paul C. Lauterbur of UIUC, and Peter Mansfield of the University of Nottingham, UK. All of this year’s laureates will receive their prizes in Stockholm on December 10.

Candid CAMera

Photo Credit: Tom Tierney

The APS Forum on Graduate Student Affairs (FGSA), together with counterparts in Canada and Mexico, organized the latest in a series of joint meetings of the three physical societies, known as CAM meetings. CAM 2003 was the first ever international graduate student meeting, and it took place in Merida, Mexico, October 24- 26, organized around the theme “Student Visions for Physics in the 21st Century”. Shown here are students chatting informally with Ron Olowin (right) of St. Mary’s College, who gave an invited talk on Archeoastronomy in the American Southwest. Attendance at CAM 2003 included 46 participants from the US, 36 from Mexico and 24 from Canada. At the meeting, participants discussed plans for holding the next graduate student meeting, CAM 2005, in the United States.

©1995 - 2013, AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY
APS encourages the redistribution of the materials included in this newspaper provided that attribution to the source is noted and the materials are not truncated or changed.

Editor: Alan Chodos
Associate Editor: Jennifer Ouellette