Newswise — The March Meeting of the American Physical Society (APS) -- the largest physics meeting of the year -- will take place from March 15-19, 2010 in Portland, Oregon at the Oregon Convention Center and the Hilton Portland and Executive Tower Hotel. Journalists are invited to attend the meeting free of charge. Registration information may be found at the end of this release.
Traditionally the March APS meeting has been a major venue for presenting the scientific principles and techniques behind many of the high-tech devices of today and tomorrow -- such assuperconductors, lasers, bio-detection, cloaking, smart materials, DNA sequencing, and microchips. This tradition will continue at this year’s meeting. Scientists from around the world will present more than 7,000 papers on a wide variety of discoveries in the areas of condensed matter physics, new materials, chemical and biological physics, fluids, polymers, and computational physics.
A number of sessions will address the role of physics in industry and the impact of physics on national security, climate change research, and energy storage. The increasing ability to study social behavior will be manifest in sessions on human dynamics (session D7) and auto traffic (H8). The relatively new APS Topical Group on Energy Research and Applications (GERA) will host sessions on energy conversion (session A11), energy storage (B11), and sustainability (T4).
This year is also the 50th anniversary of the laser’s invention, a milestone that is being recognized by the yearlong celebration of “Laserfest,” a series of events that emphasize the laser's impact throughout history and highlight its potential for the future. These include sessions B5 and J8 at the March meeting. For more information on LaserFest, visit http://www.LaserFest.org
**************************************HIGHLIGHTS OF THE MEETING1) Topological Insulators2) World's Fastest Transistors3) Magnetic Tuberculosis Detector 4) Solid Metal Batteries5) Cooperation, Cheating, and the Games that Yeast Play6) Solar Cells and Cities of The Future7) New Technique for Measuring the Strength of a Cell8) AC/DC Power Converter as Wide as a Human Hair9) Blood Clot Glue10) The Flow of Particles in a Room11) Using DNA as Building Blocks12) A "Periodic Table" of Biosensors13) Heroines of Modern Physics14) Nanotube Toxicity15) A Nanoscale Bean-Counter for Viruses16) Infrared Pictures with a Digital Camera17) Optimization and Biological Physics18) A List of Other Interesting Sessions and Talks by Day19) More Information for Journalists**************************************
1) TOPOLOGICAL INSULATORSOne of the hottest topics in condensed matter physics is the latest manifestation of the quantum Hall effect. In this phenomenon, the electrons at the interface between two semiconducting layers, kept at cold temperatures and held exposed to a high magnetic field, will lapse into fixed-energy quantum states; the conductivity of the material comes in multiples of a basic unit. A few years ago an elaboration of this research, an effect called the quantum Hall spin effect, showed that the spin of the electrons can produce additional interactions and that it was possible to see Hall effects even in the absence of large magnetic fields. Now, with a species of materials called topological insulators, even the low temperatures are not necessary. The material acts as if it were a metal box: an insulator on the inside and a conductor on the outside. The currents that flow are not large; this is not a material that can support the transmission of high power. But it might be able to facilitate fault-tolerant quantum computers. Sessions A2, D2, and others are devoted to the subject. (For more information, see the Jan. 2010 issue of Physics Today).
2) WORLD’S FASTEST TRANSISTORSFor fifty years the silicon transistor has steadily grown smaller, allowing manufacturers to cram millions and millions more transistors onto their computer chips. But experts forecast that the silicon transistor will soon reach its physical limits, so a race to develop the next transistor technology is afoot. Phaedon Avouris, manager of IBM's Nanometer Scale Science and Technology Research Division, will present his team's cutting-edge alternative to silicon: transistors made of graphene, a one-atom-thick layer of carbon that is highly conductive to electricity and can be turned on and off very quickly. As recently reported in Science, the team has created high-frequency 100 gigahertz RF graphene transistors that could be useful for high-speed communications devices and faster than silicon devices of the same size.
They are also working to solve a problem that currently prevents graphene from being used in digital electronic devices -- its lack of a band gap, which means that current continues to flow in a graphene device even after it has been turned off. A computer chip packed with graphene transistors would have trouble reliably identifying which ones were on and which were off. To improve this situation, IBM's researchers stacked two parallel layers of graphene on top of each other, an arrangement theoretically predicted to provide a band gap upon application of a high perpendicular electric field. They achieved an on/off current ratio of 100:1 at room temperature, not quite good enough yet for digital electronics but about twenty times better than the typical on/off ratio of single-layer graphene. "Creating a band gap in graphene is probably one of the most important and tantalizing research topics in the graphene community since it may ultimately enable new applications in digital electronics, pseudospintronics, terahertz technology, and infrared nanophotonics," the researchers report.---Talk X21.4, http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/123204
3) MAGNETIC TUBERCULOSIS DETECTOR A group of researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School have developed a new portable system for detecting pathogens, including tuberculosis (TB) bacteria in human lung fluid.
This is a significant advance because two billion people worldwide carry the TB pathogen, and most of them do not even know they are infected. Once their disease is detected, people with TB can be treated with a long course of antibiotics, and one of the basic strategies behind the World Health Organization's current efforts to curb the spread of the disease worldwide is to simply find those people and get them antibiotics. Finding infected people is not so simple. Doctors can turn to a century-old technique called a sputum smear, where a sample of coughed fluid is stained and examined under a microscope for indications of the infection, but this generally only works if the concentration of bacteria is high enough.
Now the team led by Ralph Weissleder and Hakho Lee at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School has developed a hand-held TB detector that has shown to be 1,000-times more sensitive at detecting TB in laboratory experiments. The device is basically a miniature version of a hospital MRI that Lee projects may eventually cost only a few hundred dollars to make and around ten dollars per use. It detects TB after coughed fluids from the lungs are mixed with magnetic nanoparticles that specifically stick to the rod-like TB bacteria. Says Lee, they plan to field-test the device in South Africa later this year to see how well it can detect actual cases of the disease.---Talk X30.8, http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/123334
4) SOLID METAL BATTERIESNitash Balsara, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, is building a new kind of lithium battery. Unlike the rechargeable lithium ion batteries that now power cell phones and laptops, this battery contains lithium metal foil -- which could dramatically increase the amount of charge that such batteries can hold. "We are trying to make a battery that goes beyond what lithium ion can deliver today in terms of energy density," said Balsara. This approach to battery chemistry has been tried before -- with limited success -- because over time lithium tends to build up inside these batteries in structures called "dendrites" that lead to short circuits and cut the lifetime of the battery. But now Balsara's group has made a step forward in countering this problem. Instead of using a liquid electrolyte to allow charged particles to flow -- as would be found in other kinds of batteries -- they use a solid block copolymer. At this year's APS meeting, they will present a new block copolymer electrolyte, polystyrene-block-poly(ethylene oxide), that resists short circuiting at least two orders of magnitude longer, increasing the number of times that a battery based on this architecture could by cycled. The technology is still years from the market and still faces technological hurdles -- such a battery would likely take a long time to recharge, for example. But it could someday provide a jolt in battery technology for the electric car industry. ---Talk Q16.5, http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/120729
5) COOPERATION, CHEATING, AND THE GAMES YEAST PLAY Yeast is a convenient "model" organism that scientists can use to test ideas about evolution because they can easily genetically alter yeast in the laboratory and grow large populations of different strains in a matter of days.
Mathematicians who study "game theory" often analyze worldly subjects as complex as macroeconomics or evolution by using simple abstractions that involve multiple players competing for limited resources. Such analyses sometimes attest to a simple, if unfair, rule -- that in games, as in life, the best strategy may be to cheat. But according to MIT physicist Jeff Gore, who studies cooperation and cheating in different strains of yeast, sometimes the good guys (or yeast) do win in the end.
Populations of certain strains of yeast will cooperate with each other metabolically by secreting an enzyme called invertase that breaks down the sugar sucrose (which they cannot digest) into the sugar glucose (which they can). In a homogeneous pool of such yeast, each cell benefits from the collective actions of the whole pool.
At first glance cheaters -- yeast that do not secrete anything -- would seem to have an advantage in this scenario because they would enjoy the glucose while being spared from having to spend any energy producing the enzyme. However, according to experiments Gore and his colleagues published in Nature last year, that's not always the case. In populations of yeast where the number of cooperators is initially small, it is the cooperators that enjoy the distinct advantage because they are always as close to the food source as possible. The majority of the sugar they break down diffuses away from them, but they still have preferential access to some portion of it.
In Portland, Gore will discuss his experiments testing game theories in yeast as well as the results of new experiments probing the degree to which evolutionary adaptations are reversible.---Talk B7.1, http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/116920
In an unrelated series of experiments, Wenying Shou and colleagues at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle have used pools of yeast to show how cooperation between two different strains can quickly improve over a short period of time. In their experiments, they grew two metabolically complementary yeast strains, known as mutual cross-feeders, together.
"Each gives each other what is needed for survival," explains Shou. One synthesizes an essential amino acid that the other cannot make, and vice-versa. This codependence allows them to look at how cooperation might evolve and how “cheaters,” or cells that take but not give, might influence cooperation.
What they found is that the cooperative systems become more robust, at least when grown in the absence of cheaters. For the two yeast strains to form a viable cooperative system, their initial population densities must be large enough, and below a minimal threshold, the population will crash within a few days. This minimum threshold can be explained mathematically from properties of the two cooperating strains. However, after the system had been evolved for less than 100 generations, this threshold was 100-fold smaller. Hence cooperation can improve rapidly. This is significant, says Shou, because cooperation has been postulated to drive major evolutionary transitions to higher biological complexity.---Talk A27.10, http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/116688
6) SOLAR CELLS AND CITIES OF THE FUTUREWhen materials scientist Yang Yang of the University of California, Los Angeles looks at the tall office buildings surrounding his urban campus, he sees opportunities. Many of them have partly tinted windows to curtail the bright Californian sun, and Yang dreams of covering them with a different kind of tint -- semi-transparent, semi-conducting panels of carbon-based solar cells that draw energy from the sun even as they shade the conference rooms of downtown L.A.
Expanding our sources of renewable energy is critical for the future, notes Yang, and one way to do it will be to greatly expand the use of solar panels, moving from a few panels on isolated urban rooftops to covering entire buildings with them. "In order to do so," he says, "one must make sure they are very low-cost." One obvious way to contain cost would be to use cheaper materials. Yang and his colleagues are designing a new generation of solar cell fabricated on top of semiconducting polymers -- essentially plastic -- rather than the brittle, opaque silicon backing normally used. They have already developed an early prototype, and the technology has been licensed to a company in California, which is commercializing it. Yang predicts that the technology will be commercially available in just a few years. Currently their device converts energy from the sun to electrical energy at nearly 8 percent efficiency, which is less than the industry standard for commercial solar panels (those approach 20 percent). Even so, the polymer materials used in his cells are so inexpensive that Yang predicts they will produce the same amount of energy as commercial panels for a quarter of the cost. He is now designing a stacked "tandem" polymer-based solar cell that he hopes will achieve 12-15 percent efficiency.---Talk L29.1, http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/119872
7) NEW TECHNIQUE FOR MEASURING THE STRENGTH OF A CELLThe shape and physical properties of cells, particularly the rigidity of their internal framing, or "cytoskeleton," are intimately tied to their ability to survive. Bacterial cells, for instance, spend a great deal of their energy synthesizing molecules that make up their stiff cell walls, helping them grow quickly during an infection inside the hostile environment of a host. Many of the existing antibiotic drugs target these cell wall components, and they kill bacteria by weakening their cell walls, causing them to burst. With the rise in infections with multiple antibiotic resistance, scientists would like find more ways to weaken cells, but one of the challenges is that measuring a cell's stiffness and other physical properties is not an easy matter.
Now K.C. Huang of Stanford University and Doug Weibel of the University of Wisconsin at Madison have developed an easily implemented, inexpensive, quantitative method for measuring the strength and rigidity of growing cells by placing them in gels of different stiffness and watching them grow against the gel. They call their method the Cell Length Assay of Mechanical Properties or "CLAMP," and in principle it should allow researchers to rapidly test the ability of various chemicals to alter the strength of a wide variety of bacterial strains. Such studies may reveal new targets inside the cell for antibacterial drugs that kill bacteria by weakening their protective shell. ---Talk Q7.1, http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/120618
8) AC/DC POWER CONVERTER AS WIDE AS A HUMAN-HAIREvery laptop comes with a power adapter, a clunky black box on the power cord that converts the alternating current (AC) in the outlet to the direct current (DC) that feeds the computer. The U.S. Army, which puts a premium on size and weight, is funding research to create smaller, lighter power converters -- suitable for low-power devices that require a small package size, such as wireless sensors, biomedical implants, or communications devices. The result: Mark Griep, Govind Mallick, and Shashi Karna of the U.S. Army Research Lab, in collaboration with Pulickel Ajayan of Rice University, have developed a new diode rectifier made of single-walled carbon nanotubes only the width of a human hair. It demonstrates a power conversion efficiency of 20 percent, comparable to larger MOSFET diodes. "Another potential application is low voltage energy harvesting" said Karna. ---Talk X14.10, http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/123106
9) BLOOD CLOT GLUEYour blood is loaded with a gluey molecule called von Willebrand Factor (vWF). Normally, this gigantic protein (the second-largest in our body) tumbles about freely through the bloodstream. Cut your finger, and it becomes sticky, attaching to the site of injury and causing platelets to clump together to start the process of plugging the wound with a clot. Charles Sing and Alfredo Alexander-Katz of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered the secret to this stickiness, a principle that could be exploited to create artificial compounds that could sense leaks and seal leaky pipes from the inside. After injury occurs, the vWF stretches out, exposing sticky bits usually hidden on the inside.
This shape change happens because injury causes the blood vessels to constrict, which changes the flow inside and creates forces that, from the molecule's perspective, pull the ends in opposite directions. "It's triggered by mechanical forces, in this case by flows," said Alexander-Katz. The finding may also help researchers to better understand medical conditions such as von Willebrand Disease -- in which vWF is defective or deficient and excess bleeding occurs -- and thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, a life-threatening condition in which the molecule works too well and forms clots that travel through the circulatory system.---Talk T11.10, http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/121466
10) THE FLOW OF PARTICLES IN A ROOMWhat happens to droplets of saliva filled with influenza viruses or other nasties in the office environment? John McLaughlin of Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY and his colleagues Xinli Jia, Goodarz Ahmadi, and Jos Derksen (University of Alberta and Clarkson) have modeled this situation on the computer using a technique called direct numerical simulation. His models track the flow of thousands of particles of differing size and density in an 8-foot by 6-foot office space with a mannequin seated in the middle of the room in front of an air vent. The mannequin is heated to simulate the effect of an actual person, and this heat creates a plume in the room that affects the flow of air.
McLaughlin and his colleagues found that the heat plume also affects the motion of the particles carried by the room air -- quite dramatically, in fact. "They come raining down on the mannequin," McLaughlin says. He hopes next to incorporate breathing in his models to see how many particles get sniffed up by the mannequins.---Talk L42.7, http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/120045
11) USING DNA AS BUILDING BLOCKS Besides being one of the basic building blocks of biology, DNA has the potential to be a scaffold for advancing other areas of science says nanotechnologist Ned Seeman of New York University. Seeman and his colleagues recently reported in the journal Nature the results of a project 29 years in the making that was designed to do just that.
In life, DNA almost always adopts the distinct double-helical structure made famous by Watson and Crick. However, there are some times in a cell when a DNA molecule will adopt a branched structure -- most notably when the genes of the father and mother are combined during the development of germ cells. Seeman and his colleagues took advantage of the ability of DNA to make these branching structures and designed small branched pieces of DNA with "sticky" ends that can join one to the other. Depending on the design of these pieces, the scientists can form interesting 3-D arrangements in the test tube. So far, they have used the technique to make polyhedra, nanomechanical devices, 2-D lattices, and self-assembled 3-D crystals of DNA, whose structures they have determined by X-ray crystallography.
Now that they have this basic structure, they are hoping to use it to organize complex 3-D arrangements of these structures that would have useful applications. It may be useful as a scaffold for crystallizing proteins -- an important tool in basic biomedical science. He also envisions applications in organic electronics where the DNA structures would be designed to organize nanoelectronic elements from the bottom up.---Talk Q18.10, http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/120751
12) A "PERIODIC TABLE" OF BIOSENSORSThe field of biosensors has rapidly expanded in the last decade, fueled by a combination of technological breakthroughs and burgeoning interest in the wake of 9/11. A large number of underlying technologies exist for detecting trace amounts of biological and chemicalmaterials in the environment -- microscopic silicon wires, tiny carbon nanotubes, and magnetic nanoparticles, for instance.
"There are at least 20-25 different ideas today," says Purdue professor Muhammad Ashraful Alam, and there are scores of groups working on various versions of biosensors based on them. The effort has led to a dramatic increase in the sensitivity of detection. Today's best biosensors can detect trace chemicals or biological compounds a million times more sensitively than state-of-the-art systems fifteen years ago.
Postdoctoral fellow Pradeep Nair and Alam have developed what they call a 'periodic table' of biosensors that explain the sensitivity gain. The approach explains how today's various technologies relate to each and how the underlying physics relates to the sensitivity and speed of detection. This framework, says Alam, will accelerate the field because it will help organize techniques in ways that will allow them to be repeated across laboratories.---Talk T10.4, http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/121447
13) HEROINES OF MODERN PHYSICSA course at Xavier University called "Women who shaped modern physics" is aimed at undergraduate, non-physics majors. One of the scientists covered is Rosalind Franklin, whose historic x-ray pictures of DNA molecules helped to reveal their helical structure. Heidrun Schmitzer (paper K1.21) will describe how she and her colleagues bring this work to life in the lab. Instead of shooting X-rays at crystallized DNA, students will shoot laser light at the springs used in ballpoint pens. The structure of the springs will be deduced from diffraction patterns left on a screen 12 feet away. The diffraction pattern, says Schmitzer, looks strikingly similar to the famous Photo 51. Other topics in the course include Marie Curie and Radioactivity (the students measure the half-life of silver), Lise Meitner and Nuclear Fission (which is staged with ping pong balls), Jocelyn Burnell and Pulsars, and Maria Goeppert-Mayer and the Structure of the Atomic Nucleus. ---Poster K1.20, http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/119272
14) NANOTUBE TOXICITYThe effects of carbon nanotubes on living tissue have received a lot of recent attention as the tiny structures are incorporated into new kinds of electronics and studied for new drug delivery methods. Because of their tiny size, nanotubes can penetrate the membranes that surround our cells, and studies have suggested that they can be harmful when inhaled. To get a better idea of how worried we should be, Michelle Chen of Simmons College treated ovarian cells from hamsters with different concentrations of carbon nanotubes. After inspecting the surface of the cells to look for signs of damage, she found that high levels can cause problems, but that lower levels of carbon nanotubes, in the range of quantities now being explored for drug delivery technologies, caused no noticeable changes. "Nanotubes can enter cells, do their drug delivery job, and it doesn't cause the cells to die," said Chen. "At low concentrations, the cells reproduced just fine."---Talk X30.7, http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/123333
15) A NANOSCALE BEAN-COUNTER FOR VIRUSESA low-cost, disposable device for detecting viral infections would be a boon to many areas of public health, and there are many possible new devices in the works in laboratories across the country. In Portland, Jean-Luc Fraikin and Andrew Cleland of the University of California, Santa Barbara will describe the performance of one such device that counts streams of tiny nanoparticles passing through microfluidic channels. The device measures the conductance of the samples passing through channels, and it counts individual particles using their electrical properties. The eventual idea is to chemically modify these nanoparticles so that they stick to blood components or virus particles. Then the device would be able to directly detect viral infections or directly measure the concentration of some essential component of the blood. Their eventual goal is to develop a diagnostic tool for detecting hepatitis C infections. ---Talk T12.8, http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/121475
16) INFRARED PICTURES WITH A DIGITAL CAMERAX-ray images of famous paintings reveal a host of details, such as corrections or underdrawings made by the artist. Such imaging research can be painstaking to set up. Charles Falco of Arizona State University will show how infrared pictures can be made using relatively simple adaptations to a common digital camera. This is possible since many paints are at least partially transparent to near-IR waves. A camera sensitive to waves (830-1100 nm) just beyond the visible can reveal details on the canvas that no one has glimpsed in centuries. The trick is replacing the low-pass filter used in many digital cameras (allowing visible light but blocking IR) with a high-pass filter (one allowing IR but blocking visible). Some extra steps in focusing and in setting apertures are necessary for producing accurate pictures. (Copies of Falco’s recent article in Review of Scientific Instruments will be available in the pressroom.)--Talk Q3.3, http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/120596
17) OPTIMIZATION AND BIOLOGICAL PHYSICSSome organisms, including humans, have developed eyes so sensitive that they can see a single photon, the dimmest flash allowed by the laws of physics. Are such examples of biological performance reaching the limits of physics the rare exception or the rule? According to William Bialek of Princeton University, many scientists have found examples of such optimal or near-optimal performance. Now Bialek is chairing a session at the March Meeting that focuses on what scientists can learn by exploring optimization as a general principle of biological physics.
"Optimization is not just a curiosity, but potentially a principle from which we can derive and predict the properties of living systems in some detail," says Bialek.
To achieve this, Bialek adds, will require meeting many new experimental and theoretical challenges. On the theoretical side, scientists need new mathematical tools powerful enough to make predictions about what strategies are optimal in the complex, dynamic conditions faced by real organisms in the natural environment. Experimentally, they need model systems to quantitatively test optimization and follow the dynamics of the adaptation, learning or evolutionary processes that can lead to optimal performance. Session H7, "Optimization principles in biological physics" will explore many of these ideas.---http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/SessionIndex2/?SessionEventID=124935
18) A LIST OF OTHER INTERESTING SESSIONS TALKS BY DAY
MONDAY, MARCH 15---Quantum Chemistry on a Quantum Computer (Talk A26.3) http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/116667---Basketball Viewed as a Network Problem (Talk C1.155) http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/117583---Deadly Electroshock Weapons (Talk C1.271)http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/117700---Seth Lloyd on Quantum Computing (Talk D4.2)http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/117745---Growth Mediated Feedback and the Abrupt Onset of Antibiotic Resistance (Talk A27.6)http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/116684---The Physics of Global Catastrophes and Global Countermeasures (Session B8)http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/SessionIndex2/?SessionEventID=125693---Network Model of Voting Behavior (Talk D7.4)http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/117766---Weighing the World: the First 18th Century Experiments (Talk: D5.1) http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/117750---Energy All Day Long: 3D Photovoltaics (Talk: A11.3)http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/116444
TUESDAY, MARCH 16---Does Gender Matter When it Comes to Teaching Physics? (Talk J5.2) http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/118770---Traffic Congestion: The Pricing of New Roads (Talk: H8.2) http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/118296---How the Interstate Highway System is Used in Cities (Talk: H8.4) http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/118298--Conductive Polymer Electrodes (Talk: L17.1)http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/119707---Optimization Principles in Biological Physics (Session H7)http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/SessionIndex2/?SessionEventID=124935---LaserFest: Laser Education and Outreach (Session J8)http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/SessionIndex2/?SessionEventID=118786
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 17---Carbon Sequestration at the Microscopic Level (Talk: T14.14) http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/121513---Storing Energy by Splitting Water into Hydrogen and Oxygen (Talk: T23.15)http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/116454---How to be a Referee: A Tutorial (Talk: P41.1)http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/118743---Deflecting Snow Drifts Around Buildings with the use of Fins (Talk: S1.192) http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/121307---Sharpening Literature Searches in Databases (Talk: S1.239) http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/121368---Finding Quasicrystals in the Kamchatka Penninsula (Talk: T1.2) http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/121385---Do Earthquakes Result from an Avalanche-Like Process? (Talk: T7.2) http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/121421---Former DOE Official Ray Orbach on Pending Energy Legislation (Talk: T14.3) http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/121502---A Critical Challenge for the Biotech Industry (Session Q5)http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/sessionindex2/?SessionEventID=124943
THURSDAY, MARCH 18---Using Neutron Scattering to Better Understand Cement (Talk: V5.2) http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/121936--Petaflop-Scale Simulations of Atoms with Los Alamos’s Machine Roadrunner (Talk: V6.3) http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/121943---Performing Calculations With A Quantum Gas Microscope (Talk: X2.3) http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/125190---Searching for Magnetic Monopoles and Dirac Strings (Talk: X3.4) http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/123003--Recalling the Discovery of Superfluid Helium-3 (Talk: X8.4) http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/123033---Phaedon Avouris speaks on Graphene Electronics and Optoelectronics (Talk: X21.4) http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/123204---Looking for Evidence of Magnetic Monopoles in Ensembles of Spins (Talk: X3.1) http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/123000--Developing Quantum Computing in Diamond (Talk: V35.1)http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/Event/122338---The Neural Dynamics of Songbirds (Session X6)http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/sessionindex2/?SessionEventID=123017---The Physics of Molecular Motors (Session V7)http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/sessionindex2/?SessionEventID=125182
FRIDAY, MARCH 19---Plasmonics Applications (Session Z4)http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/SessionIndex2/?SessionEventID=125578---Emerging Perspectives in Cancer (Session Y7)http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/SessionIndex2/?SessionEventID=125698
************************************************19) MORE INFORMATION FOR JOURNALISTS- General Meeting Information: http://www.aps.org/meetings/march/info/index.cfm- Searchable Abstracts: http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR10/APS_epitome- Oregon Convention Center: http://www.oregoncc.org/- Main Conference Hotel: http://www1.hilton.com/en_US/hi/hotel/PDXPHHH-Hilton-Portland-Executive-Tower-Oregon/index.do
PRESS CONFERENCESPress conferences will be held daily in the Oregon Convention Center room A103, which is adjacent to the pressroom. A press conference schedule, which will include instructions for dialing in remotely, will be issued in early March.
REGISTERING AS A JOURNALISTScience writers intending to go to the meeting should contact Jason Bardi ([email protected] or 858-775-4080) about free registration. Onsite registration is possible in the pressroom throughout the meeting, but to speed the process journalists are encouraged to register in advance. Press badges can be picked up in the pressroom and will allow you to attend any session at the meeting.
PRESSROOM INFORMATIONA dedicated and staffed pressroom will operate throughout the meeting at the Oregon Convention Center. Phones, computers, printers, and free wireless Internet access will be available to reporters using the pressroom. - Location: Oregon Convention Center, rooms A104 and A103- Hours: MON-THU, 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and FRI, 7:30 a.m. to noon- Phone numbers: 503-963-5700, x5701, x5702, and x5703- Fax number: 503-963-5704- Food service: Both breakfast and lunch will be provided on MON, TUE, and WED. Breakfast only will be served on THU, and coffee/tea will be available on FRI.
ABOUT APSThe American Physical Society is the leading professional organization of physicists, representing more than 47,000 physicists in academia and industry in the United States and internationally. APS has offices in College Park, MD (Headquarters), Ridge, NY, and Washington, D.C.
ABOUT AIPHeadquartered in College Park, MD, the American Institute of Physics is a not-for-profit membership corporation chartered in New York State in 1931 for the purpose of promoting the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of physics and its application to human welfare.
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