WASHINGTON, D.C., March 8, 2024 -- 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 MEETING
- Topological Insulators
- World's Fastest Transistors
- Magnetic Tuberculosis Detector
- Solid Metal Batteries
- Cooperation, Cheating, and the Games that Yeast Play
- Solar Cells and Cities of The Future
- New Technique for Measuring the Strength of a Cell
- AC/DC Power Converter as Wide as a Human Hair
- Blood Clot Glue
- ) The Flow of Particles in a Room
- Using DNA as Building Blocks
- A "Periodic Table" of Biosensors
- Heroines of Modern Physics
- Nanotube Toxicity
- A Nanoscale Bean-Counter for Viruses
- Infrared Pictures with a Digital Camera
- Optimization and Biological Physics
- A List of Other Interesting Sessions and Talks by Day
- More Information for Journalists
1) TOPOLOGICAL INSULATORS
One 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 TRANSISTORS
For 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 BATTERIES
Nitash 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 FUTURE
When 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 CELL
The 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-HAIR
Every 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 GLUE
Your 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 ROOM
What 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 BIOSENSORS
The 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 PHYSICS
A 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 TOXICITY
The 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 VIRUSES
A 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 CAMERA
X-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 PHYSICS
Some 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 CONFERENCES
Press 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 JOURNALIST
Science writers intending to go to the meeting should contact
Jason Bardi (
jbardi@aip.org 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 INFORMATION
A 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.
SOURCE