Meeting Briefs

Ohio Section

The APS Ohio Section held its annual fall meeting October 10‑11 in Dayton, Ohio, co‑hosted by the Air Force Institute of Technology and Wright State University. Topics included ultrafast dynamics with laser‑produced soft x‑rays; proteins and other “foldameric” materials; the connection between solid state physics, nanotechnology, and the environment; and spectroscopic indicators of life on other planets. Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research and founder of the annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, gave a public lecture.

New England Section

The APS New England Section held its annual fall meeting October 10‑11 at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, organized around the theme, “Out of Equilibrium.” The invited speakers addressed such topics as entropy and “temperature” of granular packings; single molecule dynamics in cell division; controlling the motion of ultracold atoms; nonequilibrium phase transitions in thin granular layers; the equilibrium and non‑equilibrium behavior of liquid water in bulk, nanoconfined and biological environments; the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis and quantum thermodynamics; and the structure and dynamics of a uniformly heated granular fluid, among others.

Texas and Four Corners Sections

The APS Texas and Four Corners Sections held a joint annual fall meeting at the University of Texas in El Paso. Topics discussed by invited speakers included liquid crystals, astrophysics, semiconductors, K‑12 education, science policy, and nanoscience. Friday evening’s banquet featured a talk by Thomas Calligaro (Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musees de France, the Louvre) on the use of particle accelerators to aid new discoveries in art and archaeology.

California Section

The APS California Section held its annual fall meeting October 17‑18 at California State University at Dominguez Hills in Carson, California. Invited speakers addressed such topics as the search for gravitational waves with LIGO, how the Large Hadron Collider heralds the onset of a new revolution in physics, the science of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, and an update on the National Ignition Facility. The keynote speaker at Friday evening’s banquet was Uwe Bergmann (SSRL), who spoke about what scientists can learn about an ancient manuscript by Archimedes using synchrotron radiation sources.