APS NewsA P S N E W SJULY 1996 THE AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY VOLUME 5, NO 7

Approximately 1,400 physicistsassembled in Indianapolis,

Indiana, for the 1996 Joint Meeting ofThe American Physical Society (APS)and the American Association ofPhysics Teachers (AAPT), 2-5 May. Themost varied of APS meetings because ofthe number of APS divisions representedin the program, the Spring Meetingexplored current topics in particlephysics, astrophysics, fluids, particlebeams, physics of beams, nuclearphysics, applications, and atomic,molecular and optical physics.

Topics of technical sessions included thefirst entrapment of a francium atom (seestory below), new data on globular clus-ters (see page 4), the discovery of over100 new isotopes, (see page 3), and re-cent advances in nuclear-based medicalimaging (see page 2). General interestsessions included such topics as the fu-ture of renewable energy sources (see

Highlights from Indianapolis: Trapped Francium, EnergyAlternatives, Age of the Universe, Gender Gap

page 7), gender bias in the GREs (seepage 3), and the future of physics. Inaddition, the AAPT organized several ses-sions devoted to issues in education,some in conjunction with APS commit-tees or units.

Another prominent feature was a spe-cial plenary session on Friday afternoon,modeled on the Unity Day symposiaheld in recent years at the annual JointAPS/AAPT Meeting. The session featuredthe retiring presidential address by APSPast President C. Kumar N. Patel, as wellas general lectures on black holes andBose-Einstein condensation, respec-tively, by Kip Thorne (California Instituteof Technology), recipient of the 1996Lilienfeld Prize, and Carl Wieman (Uni-versity of Colorado/JILA) (see page 5).

The traditional ceremonial banquet forthe bestowal of prizes and awards washeld Saturday evening, preceded by a

reception hosted byAPS President J. Rob-ert Schrieffer (FloridaState University).Twelve prizes andawards were pre-sented, and therecipients gave lec-tures on theirrespective topics atvarious sessionsthroughout theweek. Citations andbrief biographies ofthe recipients ap-peared in the April1996 issue of APSNews.

Technical Sessions.Neutrino Oscillations. Los Alamosscientists have found additionalevidence that neutrinos have mass,observing 22 events that are consistent

with muon antineutrinos oscillatinginto electron antineutrinos, comparedto the nine events observed last year.Last year, an experiment at LANL turned

Ten thousand Francium Atoms trapped in a volume about the sizeof a pin head.

(Continued on page 8)

Scientists Trap Rarest Element — FranciumResearchers at SUNY-Stony Brook

have successfully trapped theworld’s rarest naturally occurring ele-ment, francium, setting the stage forhigh-precision tabletop measurementson how the weak nuclear force mani-fests itself at the atomic level. The StonyBrook team developed a technique totrap more than 10,000 francium atomsin a volume about the size of a headof a pin, using six laser beams and aninhomogeneous magnetic field.

Francium is the heaviest alkali and theleast stable of the first 103 elementson the periodic table. Less than 30grams of it exists on the Earth at anyone time, in uranium deposits. It ap-pears, atom by atom, as heavier atomsdecay, and it disappears in less than20 minutes as francium itself decays.While creating francium artificially has

cium or a pellet of francium,” saidOrozco. “You have to be making it allthe time in order to work with it.”

Because the atoms were created withtoo much energy to be immediatelytrapped with lasers, the Stony Brookteam devised methods to remove en-ergy from them quickly and efficiently.After converting the ions into neutralatoms and slowing them down con-siderably, they send the francium intoa magneto-optical trap, a device em-ploying six laser beams — which hadto be tuned to the correct frequency toslow and confine the atoms — and anonuniform magnetic field. Inside thetraps, the atoms bounce back and forthbetween specially coated glass walls,slowing down some atoms enough tobe caught at the center of the trap.

Now that this rare element can be con-centrated and confined, the research

team plans to study the atomic prop-erties of francium atoms, which opensnew horizons for the understanding ofthe atomic structure of a very heavyelement. For example, a new energylevel has been observed for the firsttime, and lifetime measurements are inprogress.

Studies of trapped francium can also ul-timately lead to high-precisionmeasurements of a phenomenon knownas parity nonconservation, which wouldthen provide information on the inter-relationship between theelectromagnetic and weak force. Thefrancium energy transition is forbiddenby the electromagnetic interaction be-cause it violates parity, but is permittedby the parity-violating weak interaction.The effects of parity violation are at least18 times more pronounced in franciumthan in cesium, another atom in whichparity violation has been studied.

not been a problem, it has been a majorchallenge to trap francium atoms andstudy them. Researchers at Stony Brook,Berkeley, and elsewhere have previouslyused magneto-optic traps to collect ra-dioactive atoms, but a challenge withfrancium has been to figure out how totune the trapping lasers, since there areno known stable isotopes of franciumto use as a reference. Recent develop-ments were described by Gene Sprousein a DNP Mini-symposia on Friday at theJoint APS/AAPT Meeting.

The SUNY team, headed by Luis Orozco,can now produce a million ions per sec-ond of francium-210, which has a half-lifeof about three minutes, by bombardinga gold target very close to melting pointwith beams of oxygen from the super-conducting linear accelerator at StonyBrook. “You can’t have a bottle of fran-

APS E-print Server RunningThe American Physical Society is

developing a World-Wide-Web-based system for members and otherphysicists to post preprints, and tobrowse those which have been madepublicly available. The service is similar tothe ‘e-print’ archives run by Paul Ginspargat Los Alamos since late 1991, but has sometechnical differences intended to make itmore accessible and user-friendly, andother features that should help a largerfraction of the physics community getinvolved with this enabling technology.

The APS E-print service will also help inthe exploration of new Internet-basedtechnology for submitting, refereeing,editing and publishing papers in thePhysical Review journals. A prototype

IN THIS ISSUE

Highlights from Indianapolis ........................................................................... 1Scientists Trap Rarest Element ...................................................................... 1APS E-print Server Running ........................................................................... 1Technological Advances May Revolutionize Medical Imaging ........................ 2Two New APS Topical Groups ........................................................................ 2Fighting the Gender Gap ................................................................................ 3Over 100 New Isotopes Discovered with Novel Fission Method .................... 3Particle Beam Processing Industrial Applications ........................................... 4APS Council Approves Three Statements on Energy Issues ......................... 4Science Policy, Black Holes and BEC Featured at Plenary Session ................. 5New Cluster Data Puts Universe at 13 Billion Years ...................................... 5Stockpile Stewardship, Non-Proliferation Policies Pose Challenges to Nuclear Weapons Labs ................................................................................ 5Opinion ........................................................................................................... 6Energy Alternatives Vital To Meet Future Demands ....................................... 7MULTIMEDIA REVIEW .................................................................................. 71996 General Election Preview ...................................................................... 9Announcements ........................................................................................... 11The Back Page ............................................................................................. 12APS Meeting News ................................................................................. Insert

version of the service will be availablefrom July 1, 1996 through the APS homepage [http://www.aps.org] under the‘New Services Available’ listing for thejournals, and during testing will be avail-able directly at http://publish.aps.org/eprint/test/.

Physicists are invited to try the APS E-Print prototype and send comments tothe administrators of the service at thee-mail address: eprint-adm@aps.org.Members can also contribute over thenext few months to the setting of pri-orities for the service (such as whatword processor formats to support) byanswering the questionnaire availableon the web at http://publish.aps.org/eprint/test/gateway/questions.

APS News July 1996

2

Schematic of active-matrix imager system.

APS NewsCoden: ANWSEN ISSN: 1058-8132Series II, Vol. 5, No. 7 July 1996© 1996 The American Physical Society

Editor: Barrett H. RipinNewswriter: Jennifer OuelletteProduction: Elizabeth Buchan-HigginsCoordinator: Amy Halsted

APS News is published 11X yearly, monthly, except the Au-gust/September issue, by The American Physical Society, OnePhysics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740-3844, (301) 209-3200.It contains news of the Society and of its Divisions, TopicalGroups, Sections and Forums; advance information on meet-ings of the Society; and reports to the Society by its commit-tees and task forces, as well as opinions.

Letters to the editor are welcomed from the membership. Let-ters must be signed and should include an address and daytimetelephone number. The APS reserves the right to select and toedit for length or clarity. All correspondence regarding APSNews should be directed to: Editor, APS News, One PhysicsEllipse, College Park, MD 20749-3844, email: letters@aps.org.

Subscriptions: APS News is an on-membership publication de-livered by 2nd Class Mail. Members residing abroad may re-ceive airfreight delivery for a fee of $20. Nonmembers: Sub-scription rates are: domestic $130; Canada, Mexico, Central andSouth America, and Caribbean $145; Air Freight Europe, Asia,Africa and Oceania $170.

Subscription orders, renewals and address changesshould be addressed as follows: For APS Members—Mem-bership Department, The American Physical Society, OnePhysics El l ipse, College Park, MD 20740-3844,membership@aps.org. For Nonmembers—Circulation andFulfillment Division, American Institute of Physics, 500Sunnyside Blvd., Woodbury, NY 11797. Allow at least 6 weeksadvance notice. For address changes, please send both theold and new addresses, and, if possible, include a mailinglabel from a recent issue. Requests from subscribers for miss-ing issues will be honored without charge only if receivedwithin 6 months of the issue’s actual date of publication.

Second class postage paid at College Park, MD and at additionalmailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to APS News ,Membership Department, The American Physical Society, OnePhysics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740-3844.

APS COUNCIL 1996

PresidentRobert Schrieffer, Florida State UniversityPresident-ElectD. Allan Bromley, Yale UniversityVice-PresidentAndrew M. Sessler, Lawrence Berkeley LaboratoryExecutive OfficerJudy R. Franz, University of Alabama, HuntsvilleTreasurerHarry Lustig, City College of the City University of New York, emeritusEditor-in-ChiefBenjamin Bederson, New York University, emeritusPast-PresidentC. Kumar N. Patel, University of California-Los Angeles

General CouncillorsDaniel Auerbach, Kevin Aylesworth, Arthur Bienenstock, Vir-ginia Brown, Jolie A. Cizewski, Jennifer Cohen, Charles Duke,Elsa Garmire, Laura H. Greene, Donald Hamann, William Happer,Anthony M. Johnson, Miles V. Klein, Zachary Levine, Susan Seestrom,Ronald Walsworth

Chair, Nominating CommitteeMartin Blume

Chair, Panel on Public AffairsDavid Hafemeister

Division and Forum CouncillorsFrank C. Jones (Astrophysics), Joseph Dehmer, Gordon Dunn(Atomic, Molecular and Optical), TBA (Biological), StephenLeone (Chemical), Joe D. Thompson, David Aspnes, Lu J. Sham,Allen Goldman (Condensed Matter), David Anderson (Compu-tational), Guenter Ahlers (Fluid Dynamics), James J. Wynne (Fo-rum on Education), Albert Wattenberg (Forum on History of Phys-ics), Ernest Henley (Forum on International Physics), DietrichSchroeer (Forum on Physics and Society), Andrew Lovinger (HighPolymer), Daniel Grischkowsky (Laser Science) , HowardBirnbaum (Materials), John Schiffer, Peter Paul (Nuclear), HenryFrisch, George Trilling (Particles and Fields), Hermann Grunder(Physics of Beams), Roy Gould, William Kruer (Plasma)

ADVISORS

Sectional RepresentativesJohn Pribram, New England; Peter Lesser, New York; Bunny C.Clark, Ohio; Joseph Hamilton, Southeastern; Stephen Baker, Texas

Representatives from Other SocietiesHoward Voss, AAPT; Marc Brodsky, AIP

Staff RepresentativesBarrett Ripin, Associate Executive Officer; Irving Lerch, Directorof International Affairs; Robert L. Park, Director, Public Infor-mation; Michael Lubell, Director, Public Affairs; Stanley Brown,Administrative Editor; Cindy Rice, Director of Editorial OfficeServices; Michael Stephens, Controller and Assistant Treasurer

Technological Advances May Revolutionize Medical Imaging

New advances in medical imagingtechnologies could significantly

revolutionize existing clinical practicesby enabling non-invasive and low-radiation alternatives for diagnosticpurposes, according to speakers at aThursday afternoon session of the 1996Joint APS/AAPT Meeting inIndianapolis, Indiana. Sponsored bythe APS Division of Nuclear Physicsand the Forum on Industrial andApplied Physics, the session exploredsuch emerging technologies as theapplication of positron emissiontomography to laboratory testing ofanimals, a functional mammographytechnique using radiotracer methodsto detect breast cancers, and digital x-ray imaging with active-matrix,flat-panel imagers.

PETs for Imaging Laboratory Ani-mals. Simon Cherry of the Universityof California, Los Angeles, described apositron emission tomography (PET)scanner that can detect features assmall as 1.7 mm, compared to the fourmm possible in conventional units.

In contrast to other medical imagingtechniques, such as MRI or CAT scans,PET provides unique information onthe rate of functional processes in thebody. According to Cherry, one of itsmajor strengths is the availability ofpositon-emitting isotopes of elements,such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, andfluorine. Many hundreds of com-pounds of these elements have beensynthesized without changing their bio-chemical properties. By choosing theappropriate positon-emitting compound,PET can be used to measure biologicalprocesses such as blood flow, glucosemetabolism, neutrotransmitter biochem-istry, receptor affinity, enzyme activity,and gene expression.

However, while the process has beenused clinically in the diagnosis and

treatment planning of patients suffer-ing from heart disease, cancer, epilepsyand Alzheimer’s disease, its distribu-tion to date has been limited to majorresearch institutions and medicalcenters because of the high cost. Thereare currently fewer than 100 PET cen-ters in the U.S. Many of these use theprocess as a biomedical research tool inanimal studies.

Cherry’s laboratory, in conjunctionwith CTI PET Systems in Knoxville,Tennessee, ared e v e l o p i n gMICROPET, theworld’s highestresolution PET forthe imaging of smalllaboratory images.“This developmentopens the possibil-ity of performinganimal drug trialswithout the needfor vivisection, sav-ing animal lives andcutting costs fordrug companies,”said Cherry.

A use of MICROPETis to look at thefunctional effects ofsubstance abuse in the monkey brainand to relate this to human drug ad-diction and its treatment. Otherpotential applications include drugtesting, the effects of cancer treatments,and developmental studies in the nor-mal and abnormal brain.

Still other PET-based technologies un-der development include a low-costPET system to fit inside a conventionalMRI machine to permit simultaneousPET and MRI imaging, providing im-ages of the anatomy and function inthe same imaging session. Also in theworks is a low-cost detector system for

imaging the axillary nodes in patientswith suspected breast cancer, often thefirst site where cancer spreads.

Functional Mammography. In ef-forts to fight breast cancer, physiciansemploy mammography techniques —such as ultrasound imaging, magneticresonance imaging, PET, and single-photon imaging with a gamma camera.

In efforts to improve detection ofbreast cancers, Irving Weinberg of PEM

Technologies in Bethesda, Marylanddescribed a complementary approachcalled functional mammography, a pro-cedure that provides information onthe biochemical processes in the breastby introducing radioactive tracers intothe breast via the bloodstream. Thetracers are then are imaged with a de-tector similar to those used in PETscans.

The detector system can be added totraditional x-ray mammography ma-chines as a low-cost add-on,anticipated to be under $50,000. Un-like the gamma and PET camerasemployed, which imaged areas of thebody, functional mammography usesa detector system designed specificallyto be placed on the breast, resultingin highly efficient signal detection.

Weinberg hopes that this higher effi-ciency can be used to find smallertumors, or reduce the patient radiationdose used in conventional nuclearmedicine instruments.

Active-Matrix, Flat-Panel Imagers.Larry Antonuk of the University ofMichigan in Ann Arbor described a pairof flat- panel imaging systems for di-agnostic x-ray and cancer therapyimaging with image quality comparableto that possible through conventionaltechniques. Developed in collabora-tion between the University ofMichigan and Xerox, these devices arecapable of forming high-quality x-rayimages in real time — as fast as 30 timesper second.

As large as 26 centimeters on a sideand a millimeter thick, the imaging cir-cuits consist of thin-film transistors(TFTs) and photosensors made ofamorphous silicon. Together theseconstitute an imaging pixel, with theTFT acting as a switch to control read-out of signal generated in thephotodiode. The array is covered by aphosphorescent material which servesto convert incident X rays to light.

According to Antonuk, flat-panel im-agers offer a number of advantages.They are inherently resistant against ra-diation damage, so performance willnot degrade in the high radiation en-vironment of cancer therapyapplications. Good x-ray sensitivity,low noise and large dynamic rangeoffer the potential of superior imagequality at reduced exposure to thepatient. Finally, digital images allowquick processing on a computer orshared electronically. Other advantagesinclude the compact, thin profile of theimagers, real-time acquisition and dis-play, and a high linearity of response.

“There is every indication that the fu-ture imaging performance of optimizedactive-matrix, flat-panel imagers couldmeet or exceed that of existing radio-graphic, fluoroscopic, and portalimaging systems,” said Antonuk.

Two New APS Topical Gr oupsAt its Joint APS/AAPT Meeting, the

APS Council and Executive Boardapproved the establishment of two newtopical groups: the Topical Group onMagnetism and its Applications, and theTopical Group on Statistical and Nonlin-ear Physics. This brings the number ofAPS topical groups to seven. At least 200APS members must petition Council toestablish a new topical group, and thestatement of areas of interest must bereviewed by each existing division andtopical group to avoid excessive overlap.

The objective of the Topical Group onMagnetism and its Applications is toserve physicists working in magnetism,by providing a focal point for consid-eration of the technological aspects ofmagnetism within the APS; by organiz-ing conference sessions of interest tophysicists working in applications ofmagnetism; and by fostering interac-tions and meetings with other scientistsand engineers interested in advancingand diffusing knowledge of themultidisciplinary field of magnetism.

The objective of the Topical Group onStatistical and Nonlinear Physics is theadvancement and diffusion of knowl-edge in the interdisciplinary area ofnonequilibrium statistical physics, withemphasis on spatially extended non-linear systems. The group is alsointended to encourage research and ap-plications in this area and promoteinternational cooperation.

Members wishing to join these newtopical groups should write in thegroup in the space provided on theirmembership renewal invoice mailed inlate May, and include $6 for each unitjoined. For those members who havealready sent back their invoice, theycan send payment to APS: by mail withcheck or credit card; from the APShome page secure server with creditcard; and by telephoning their creditcard information. All related calls andcorrespondence should be directed tothe APS Membership Department, OnePhysics Ellipse, College Park, MD,20740-3844; phone: (301)209-3280.

July 1996 APS News

3

Fighting the Gender Gap:Standardized Tests Are Poor Indicators of Ability in Physics

Women and underrepresentedminorities typically score

significantly lower than men on thestandardized tests designed to predictperformance in undergraduate andgraduate physics and math courses, andare hence more likely to be disqualifiedduring the initial admissions screeningprocess. But according to speakers ata Friday afternoon session at the 1996Joint APS/AAPT Meeting, standardizedtests such as the SAT and GRE are inreality very poor indicators of students’success in these rigorous subject areas.

Anne Marie Zolandz, who works ontest development for the EducationalTesting Service (ETS), reported that in1994-1995, women represented about28 percent of the total population forthe SAT II physics test. However, whilemore women are taking the test thanever before, their scores continue toshow a 50-point difference from themen taking the test. African-Americans,Hispanics, and Native Americans alsoscore consistently lower than white andAsian-American students. Fewer stu-dents take the GRE physics subject test,with women comprising only 16 per-cent of the sample, and a comparisonof scores of men and women reveal astandard deviation of about 150. TheGREs are primarily taken by white stu-dents, followed by Asian-Americans,and these groups typically score sig-nificantly higher than other minorities.

The gender gap that favors boys per-sists across all other demographiccharacteristics, including family income,parental education, grade point average,course work, and class rank, accordingto Pamela Zappardino, a professionalpsychologist and executive director ofFairTest, a Cambridge, Massachusettsorganization that focuses solely on as-sessment reform, while working againstmisuses and abuses of standardized test-ing. “I think there’s a fallacy in theassumption that the SAT or GRE is actu-ally telling us something,” saidZappardino. “At best, the SAT only ac-counts for about 16 percent of thevariance in first-year college grades. Thatisn’t a great predictor, by anybody’s yard-stick.” The SAT math test, for example,consistently underpredicts women’s per-formance in college math courses.

An April 1995 study at the Universityof California, Berkeley, found thatwomen with identical academic in-dexes to men obtained higher gradepoint averages in every major on cam-pus, including math and physicalsciences. The report concluded thatwomen should have about 140 pointsadded to their index to compensate forthe SAT’s underprediction, and thatnon-test criteria, such as high schoolGPA, were much better predictors forwomen in all academically rigorous andmale-dominated fields. David Morin, aphysics graduate student at Harvard,conducted his own study last year ofthe correlation between GRE scoresand performance in graduate school,focusing on Harvard students. Hefound that while there was a very slightcorrelation between GRE scores andgraduate course grades, there was nocorrelation with other measures of suc-cess in graduate school, including oralexam scores and overall completiontime for the Ph.D. degree.

The gaps in scores do not seem to arisefrom inherent gender or ethnic bias in

the test itself. ETS has implemented nu-merous procedures in both testdevelopment and analysis to ensure thefairness of its tests. Specifically, it aimsfor broad representation on the test de-velopment committees, culling membersfrom college and high school, public andprivate institutions, with geographic dis-tribution and at least one minority andfemale representative. All tests are sub-ject to “sensitivity reviews” to eliminateany potentially offensive language orcontent, and are checked for sufficientreferences to minorities and womenwhen the subject matter warrants it.

Statistical analysis is also performed toidentify test items for which subgroupsof the population may perform differ-ently. For example, on biology tests, itwas discovered that women generallyperformed better on questions concern-ing the reproductive system. ETS usesa method called differential item func-tion (DIF) to identify potentially biaseditems. Those which show a large dif-ferential factor of 15 percent or moreare reviewed and sometimes discarded.Surprisingly, some of those items witha high DIF are standard physics prob-lems in kinematics, electrostatics, oroptics, with no obvious pattern in termsof content or skill levels to explain thewide differentials.

So where does the problem lie? A jointstudy by the ETS and the College Boardconcluded that multiple choice formatsfavor men over women, partly becausemen are more willing to guess on testswhen they don’t know the answer. Menalso perform better on timed tests.Another ETS study found that when thetime limit was removed from SATsubtests, girls’ scores improved mark-edly, while boys’ scores changed verylittle. At present, there are no plans toalter the format of the tests. “The ETSis dedicated to developing tests that areas equitable as possible to all groups,”explained Zolandz. “But we are oper-ating under the strengths associatedwith administering large-scale tests ata reasonable cost, which presentlymeans multiple choice questions.”

According to Zappardino, gender differ-ences can certainly be manipulated byselected different test items. For example,for the first several years when the SATwas offered, boys scored higher thangirls on the math section, while girlsachieved higher scores on the verbalsection. The ETS decided the verbal testneeded to be balanced more in favor ofboys, and added more questions per-taining to politics, business and sports.No similar efforts were made to balancethe math section. “Since then, boys haveoutscored girls on both the math andverbal sections,” said Zappardino. “Sowhen girls show a superior performance,balancing is required; when boys showthe superior performance, no adjustmentis necessary.”

Foreign students, especially those fromChina, also do well on the GRE sub-ject test, although their performance ingraduate school isn’t any better orworse than their American colleagues.“That suggests to me that the physicssubject test measures some specific skillthat can be taught, and it is taught veryeffectively in China, but it is not at allclear how much this skill has to do withwhat we want to know about poten-tial physics students,” said HowardGeorgi, who has been involved with

graduate admissions at Harvard Univer-sity for more than 20 years. JenniferSiders, a recent physics Ph.D. from theUniversity of Texas who is now at LosAlamos National Laboratory, took theGRE subject test four times to meet herdepartment’s minimum requirement of700. She finally managed to raise herscore 200 points, not by learning morephysics, but by learning how to takestandardized tests, often at the expenseof her actual coursework.

The standardized test format also seemsto favor students Georgi describes as“idiot savants”: those with strong math-ematical skills who are very good atmanipulating symbols without learningany of the real physics behind them,but who nevertheless tend to performexceptionally well on the GREs. In con-trast, two of his most impressiveundergraduate physics students, bothwomen with excellent undergraduaterecords, scored much lower than ex-pected. Phyllis Rossiter, author of TheSAT Gender Gap, concluded that, “Thishighly speeded test rewards the faciletest taker, rather than the sophisticated,

thoughtful thinker who gathers new in-formation, organizes and evaluates andexpresses original thoughts clearly andconcisely.”

The impact of gender gaps in standard-ized test scores can be devastating.Female students are twice as likely asmales to be disqualified by minimumcutoff score requirements, even thoughtheir overall academic performancetends to be higher. Many talentedwomen and minority students may bediscouraged from applying to top in-stitutions if they feel their scores aretoo low. In addition to lower self-con-fidence and career expectations, thegender gap may decrease women’schances of earning fellowships.

Zolandz emphasized that ETS policydictates that test scores should neverbe the sole basis for an admissionsdecision or rejection, and also discour-ages the use of cut-off scores belowwhich applicants are summarily re-jected. “The test scores are only onepiece of information about a student,”

Scientists have produced over 100new neutron-rich isotopes for ele-

ments between vanadium and rubidiumat the GSI laboratory in Darmstadt, Ger-many, using a novel technique reportedby Monique Bernas of the Institut dePhysique in Grenoble, France, Friday af-ternoon at the Joint APS/AAPT Meeting.Unlike conventional target-fission tech-niques, in which a target of metallic foilis hit by a beam of light particles, Bernashas developed a new method that relieson projectile fission.

The new isotopes were made by accel-erating uranium-238 up to an energy of750 MeV per nucleon and colliding themwith beryllium and lead targets. The frag-ments are then separated using thehigh-performance spectrometer FRS atGSI-Darmstadt. “All these neutron-richisotopes are produced daily in nuclearpower reactors, but they occur so rarelythat they could not have been observedbefore,” said Bernas. “This is the firstdirect observation of every single typeof isotope produced in fission.”

Fission is the most efficient means of pro-ducing neutron-rich isotopes, and since itsdiscovery in 1938, more than 400 new ra-dioactive isotopes have been found andstudied, separated mainly by radiochemi-cal methods. When the first uranium beamwas accelerated at relativistic energies atthe Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, thefission cross-sections were measured ina pioneering experiment using small sili-con detectors. However, while elementscould be identified, the isotopes werenot separated. On-line mass separationtechniques were established in 1967, butthe process was still chemistry-depen-dent and inefficient for some elementswith short-lived isotopes.

Finally, in-flight separation techniquesbased on large spectrometers combin-ing electric and magnetic fields weredeveloped to separate ionized fissionfragments independent from their chemi-cal properties. They are fast, with theability to identify fragments in a millionthof a second. However, only one in amillion of the fission products are trans-

mitted through the magnet. Accordingto Bernas, the efficiency of her projec-tile-fission method is more than fourorders of magnitude greater than that offormer in-flight methods, and the timerequired for separation and identificationis shorter than any beta-decay half-lives.

In the present experiment, rare fragmentsof all elements produced in fission areunambiguously identified event by eventby measuring energy loss after separa-tion by the spectrometer andtime-of-flight along a well-defined pathin the magnets. This is because the frag-ments move at nearly the beam velocity,close to the uranium beam direction, andare totally ionized, making them easierto detect than in previous experiments,where they emerged at low velocities inany direction with different ionic states.Using this technique, a large number ofisotopes can be simultaneously ob-served; with target fission, only lightelements have been identified in flight.

The new isotopes do not last very long;their expected half lives range between20 to 700 milliseconds. However, a num-ber of them qualify as “r-process” nuclei.According to Bernas, in our universe,about half of the abundance of elementsheavier than iron was produced by rapidneutron-capture reactions occurring ona short time scale, and sequential cap-tures therefore lead to the productionof extremely neutron-rich isotopes. Later,these isotopes beta-decay back to thestable atomic nuclei.

Thus, the projectile-fission method opensa wide field for nuclear structure inves-tigations. For example, the spectroscopicanalysis of the newly observed isotopeof nickel-78 — a doubly magic nucleuswith 28 protons and 50 neutrons — willprovide a crucial test for nuclear structuremodels, and will be used to determine re-sidual interactions in the shell modelpicture. “Fundamental characteristics needto be known for these nuclei in order tounderstand mass abundancy in the solarsystem and to constrain astrophysicalmodels for supernova explosions,” saidBernas of the effect.

Over 100 New Isotopes Discoveredwith Novel Fission Method

(Continued on page 11)

APS News July 1996

4

Particle Beam Processing Industrial ApplicationsThere is burgeoning interest in the

development of particle beamprocessing techniques for commercialapplications, according to Fred Dylla ofCEBAF, who opened a Friday morningsession on the topic at the 1996 JointAPS/AAPT Meeting. There is increasingconsumer and regulatory pressure todevelop “greener” products using “drychemistry” with reduced environmentalimpact, as well as production processesthat yield only product and no waste.These objectives can be achieved withthe use of photons or elementaryparticles in such commercial processesas surface modification, polymerizationof materials, micromachining, anddeposition and etching of materials, toname a few.

However, apart from a handful of highvalue-added applications, the commer-cial impact of these emergingtechnologies is limited because the unitcost is too high, and production capac-ity too low, to compete with existingchemistry-based methods. “Acceleratedparticle beams offer many diverse op-portunities to process materials ifeconomic targets can be met,” saidDylla.

Electron Beam Processing. “The com-mercialization of electron processingapplications is driven by demonstratedtechnical advantages over current prac-tice,” said Joseph McKeown of AECLAccelerators. “Mature and reliable ac-celerator technology has permitted moreconsistent product quality and the de-velopment of new processes. However,the barriers to commercial adoption areoften not amenable to solution withinthe laboratory alone.” Plant engineer-ing, production, project management,financing, regulatory control, productthroughput, and plant operational effi-ciency all contribute to the business risk.

McKeown reported on his company’sefforts to develop and market threeIMPELA electron accelerators (10 MeV,50kW) to commercial environments.The accelerators cost about $8 millioneach, and are designed to displace ex-pensive chemicals used in the pulp andpaper industry, to sterilize sewagesludge, detoxify chemically contami-nated soils, to irradiate foodstuffs suchas cellulose, and build radiation servicecenters for a diversity of other applica-tions. Trials on 200 tons produced bypaper mills in 1995 resulted in savingsof $55 million and a 33% reduction inpollution. But competition from tradi-tional chemical methods is stiff, and theinvestment capital required is consider-able. McKeown estimated that about$1.5 million in revenue is needed an-nually to support outlays of this scale.

Electron Beam Curing. VictoriaWeinberg of Northrup Grumman de-scribed progress in electron beam curingof metals used in construction of mili-tary and commercial aircraft,automobiles, and recreational equip-ment, such as tennis rackets and golfclubs. Despite the high capital and op-eration costs of conventional thermalcuring methods, manufacturers in thepast were willing to pay those higherprices to achieve optimal performance.Now, however, economic pressures arecausing them to explore more cost-ef-fective alternatives while maintaininghigh performance, the most promisingof which is electron beam curing.

Electron beam curing uses high-energyradiation to effect physical and chemicalchanges in materials, and the process is10 to 1000 times faster than conventionalthermal curing, which usually takes 12-14 hours. Thermal curing requirescumbersome tooling and equipment. Theautoclaves used in the process run about

$3 million apiece, whereas an electronbeam accelerator like the IMPELA canachieve the same production yields asfour or five autoclaves, provided the vol-umes are high enough. Electron beamcuring also has lower energy costs, re-duced environmental costs due to lowertoxic emissions and the use of solvent-free resins, and lower residual distress toparts. In addition, it allows manufactur-ers to vary the dosage to do selectivecuring.

UV FEL Processing. According toMichael Kelley, a senior research asso-ciate with DuPont Central Science &Engineering, the ability of ultravioletlight to transform materials was recog-nized at the turn on this century, andever since, its use for processing hasbeen re-investigated each time a newUV light source technology has becomeavailable. Particularly promising are re-sults in the surface modification ofmetals and polymers, and inmicromachining, using short, intense,single-wavelength pulses from excimerlasers. However, the cost of excimer la-ser light and their maximum unit sizehave limited their commercialization tohigh-value applications, mostly in medi-cine and electronics manufacturing.Also, the bulbs are too small for massproduction quantities.

Kelley estimates that the horizon forcommercialization is an energy costbelow 0.5 cents per kilojoule of light,with a unit capacity above 10 kW. Theonly technology capable of reaching thisgoal is the free electron laser (FEL) basedon a superconducting radiofrequencyaccelerator. The FEL’s picosecond pulselength and high peak power offer fur-ther advantages for micromachining,and progress is being made toward a 1kW technology demonstration, the mini-mum required for micromaching

applications; surface processing requiresabout 10 kW.

Crystallography. According to C. Abad-Zapatero of Abbot Laboratories in Illinois,the unraveling of the three-dimensionalstructure of nucleic acids and proteins byphysics-based experimental techniques— including x-ray diffraction from singlecrystals — has had a tremendous impacton our understanding of many biomedi-cal processes. This structural knowledgeis finding applications of macromolecu-lar crystallography in biotechnology. Forexample, the knowledge of the three-di-mensional structure of the target enzymes,complexed with their inhibitors, is help-ing to accelerate the design of futuredrugs.

Novel enzymes with new characteristicsand improved catalytic properties arebeing produced by random and site-di-rected mutagenesis, and understandingthese structural alterations in the mutantenzymes is facilitating the design of novelproteins with still unknown properties.In addition, the advent of the third gen-eration synchrotron radiation sourcessuch as the Advanced Proton Source(APS) has opened yet another avenuefor the interaction between the physi-cal and biomedical sciences.Abad-Zapatero believes that the wideavailability of high brilliance, easily tun-able x-ray sources will have atremendous impact on the biotechnol-ogy of the future.

Other particle beam processing tech-niques described in the session includedx-ray lithography, ion beam surfacetreatment, magnetically nozzled plasmaaccelerators for materials surface treat-ments, and high-power proton beamapplications for such objectives asacclerator production of tritium.

APS Council Appro ves Three Statements on Energy Issues

The APS Council approved threestatements on energy-related issues

at its meeting in May. The first statementexpressed concern over proposed largebudget cuts for the DOE’s Office ofEnergy Research for FY 1998 and beyond.The second urged sustained support forplasma and fusion science, which is faceda one-third cut in its budget for FY 1996.The third statement called for continuedand diversified investments in energyresearch and development, and policies.The complete text of the three statementsfollows.

COUNCIL STATEMENT ON THE OF-FICE OF ENERGY RESEARCHThe Council of The American PhysicalSociety is gravely concerned that somepolicy documents and budget scenariosfor FY 1998 and beyond plan large cutsto the DOE’s Office of Energy Research,one of the primary sponsors of sciencein the United States. The cuts being con-sidered would seriously damage a majorcomponent of the nation’s outstandingbasic research activities, in universitiesas well as national laboratories. Theywould threaten our nation’s quality oflife, future economic competitiveness andmilitary security. The Council urges plan-ners to rectify this situation and makebudgetary adjustments accordingly.

For more than half a century, everyCongress and every President hasrecognized the unique role of science insustaining the nation’s world-powerstatus. They have consistently given

federal investment in basic researchstrong bipartisan backing. In spite ofextraordinary budgetary pressures,leaders in both political parties continueto maintain this bipartisan commitment.They have properly identified theNational Science Foundation (NSF) andthe National Institutes of Health (NIH)as key sponsors of scientific research.However, they have overlooked theprominent roles played by someprograms in the mission agencies. Thisis now particularly true of the Office ofEnergy Research (OER).

More generally, among federal agencies,the DOE through OER is the leading sup-porter of basic research in the physicalsciences, accounting for almost as muchfederal spending as NASA, the Departmentof Defense and the NSF, combined. Insupport of basic research as a whole, theDOE ranks third among federal agencies.With its progenitors, the Atomic EnergyCommission and the Energy Research andDevelopment Administration, DOE-fundedresearch has led to more than sixty Nobelprizes, attesting to the high quality andimpact of the work it supports.

The science base built through OER sup-port over the past several decades hasgenerated a wealth of technological ad-vances that have dramatically improvedthe energy security of our nation. Re-search supported by OER has also mademajor contributions to magnetic reso-nance imaging (MRI) and medicalisotopes; composite materials used inmilitary hardware and motor vehicles;

and x-ray diagnostics of computer chipsand other high-tech materials. The OERhas provided a vital complement to thesupport of basic research carried out byNSF and NIH and programs in other mis-sion agencies. The OER, for example, aspart of its radiation health and safetymission, initiated the human genomeproject and currently provides approxi-mately one-third of all of its federalfunding.

The Council of The American PhysicalSociety strongly urges policy planners notto make short-term decisions which re-duce DOE’s crucial basic researchactivities. Proposed cuts would dimin-ish our quality of life and our nation’sfuture economic competitiveness andmilitary security.

COUNCIL STATEMENT ON PLASMAPHYSICS AND FUSION SCIENCEThe American Physical Society stressesthe scientific importance of plasma phys-ics and fusion research, and the needfor a research environment that encour-ages fundamental, long-terminvestigation. The one-third reduction insupport of programs in plasma and fu-sion research in FY 1996 endangers thisarea of scientific research. Further cutsto these programs would seriously dam-age this important field. Once dismantled,these research programs may take de-cades to rebuild. The Council of theAmerican Physical Society urges sus-tained support for plasma and fusionscience by the U.S. government.

COUNCIL STATEMENT ON “ENERGY:THE FORGOTTEN CRISIS”Our nation’s complacency about the en-ergy problem is dangerous. While theunderstandable result of currently abun-dant supplies of energy at low prices,such complacency is short-sighted andrisky. Low-cost oil resources outside thePersian Gulf region are rapidly being de-pleted, increasing the likelihood ofsudden disruptions in supply. Energy-re-lated urban air pollution has become aworld-wide threat to human health. At-mospheric concentrations of carbondioxide, other greenhouse gases andaerosols are climbing; this will causechanges in temperature, precipitation,sea level, and weather patterns that maydamage both human and natural systems.

The introduction of non-fossil-fuel en-ergy sources, new ways of producing andusing fossil fuels, and a myriad of en-ergy-efficient technologies have helpedto improve our energy security and toreduce environmental stress. In an eraof growing global energy demand, suchinnovations must continue.

The Council of the American PhysicalSociety urges continued and diversifiedinvestments in energy research and de-velopment, as well as policies thatpromote efficiency and innovationthroughout the energy system. Such in-vestments and policies are essential toensure an adequate range of options inthe decades ahead. Our national secu-rity, our environmental well-being, andour standard of living are at stake.

July 1996 APS News

5

APS Past President C. Kumar N. Patelof the University of California, Los

Angeles, delivered the annual retiringpresidential address at a special generalplenary session at the Joint APS/AAPTMeeting in Indianapolis, Indiana. Patelfocused on the need to reinvent therelationship between physics andsociety, based on the significant changesthat have occurred in the last five years.

The most crucial issue facing physicstoday is the changing expectations ofsociety, which is asking questionsabout the cost-effectiveness of basicresearch in light of the continuedworldwide economic downturn andworsening social problems, such aseducation, jobs, housing and physicalsafety of citizens living in inner urbanareas. Specifically, international eco-nomic competition has now replacedthe national defense security as a pri-mary reason for supporting physicsresearch, and there is an increasedemphasis on conversion of basic re-search into new markets. “There is aperception that the U.S. is continuingto lose its competitive edge in hightechnology products worldwide, evenwhen physics and physical science re-search is well supported,” said Patel.

At the same time, universities are ex-pected to interact more extensively withindustry, which impacts the educationand training of new physics Ph.Ds.“The efforts necessary to pursue careersin physics are seen as being out of line

with the financial rewards of such ca-reers,” said Patel, citing visibleunemployment of physicists as an ex-ample. “No discipline can expect toremain vibrant and capable of makingadvances if the smartest among theyoung people lose faith in its value.”

Patel offered several suggestions tohelp physics and physicists prosper inthe 21st century, including the contin-ued expansion of understandingphysical phenomena and the world;participation in setting priorities withinphysics and among related disciplines;learning to relate today’s industrial andhealth science successes to the long-term investment of resources in physicsfunding; and improving technologytransfer with improved partnershipsbetween academia and industry. Phys-ics research in the 21st century should

also emphasize team efforts, cost ef-fectiveness, productivity improvement,accountability, customer focus,multidisciplinary topics, training ofphysicists to be problem solvers, andintegration into the social fabric.

“Physics will have to make its casebased on its importance to understand-ing nature and natural phenomena andits utility to long- as well as short-termneeds of the society,” said Patel, add-ing that while the latter does not implythat basic research should be disre-garded, “Physicists must be mindful ofwhat constitutes value to society. If weforget the value aspect, then physicsmay well be funded at the same levelas arts and humanities, which wouldnot be acceptable to anyone.”

The plenary session also featured a lec-ture by the 1996 APS Lilienfeld Prizerecipient, Kip Thorne of the CaliforniaInstitute of Technology, who summa-rized the theoretical exploration ofnonlinear phenomena in general rela-tivity from 1960 to 1999, including workon black holes, singularities and gravi-tational wave detectors. For instance, theInterferometric Network presently underconstruction can perform observationalstudies of nonlinear space-time warpageand black holes, which have yet to bedirectly observed. After 2000, he believesdetailed observational studies usinggravitational wave detectors, as well asthe Laser Interferometer Space Antenna

(LISA) under development by the Euro-pean Space Agency and scheduled forcompletion in 2014, will dominate this area.

Finally, Carl Wieman of JILA/Universityof Colorado gave a general lecture onlast year’s achievement of Bose-Einsteincondensation (BEC), a new state ofmatter predicted over 70 years ago byAlbert Einstein and the Indian physi-cist Satyendra Nath Bose. In this stateof matter, gas atoms are cooled to near-absolute-zero temperatures and arecrowded together to the point that theatoms overlap with each other andcollapse into a single quantum state,where they behave essentially as asingle “super-particle.” Wieman’s teamcombined two key technologies tomake their Bose-Einstein condensates:laser trapping and cooling, and mag-netic trapping and evaporative cooling.

Further studies of BECs promise impor-tant insights into the strange world ofquantum mechanics, includingnondestructible probes, phase transi-tion dynamics, Josephson tunneling,and the shape and correlation of wavefunction, among other phenomena.They will also illuminate the future pos-sibility of technologically usefulinventions such as the hypothesized“atom laser,” a potentially powerfulnanotechnological tool in which theBEC atoms, all in the same energy state,would be deposited on surfaces withexquisite precision.

Science Policy, Black Holes and BEC Featured at Plenary Session

Stockpile Stewardship, Non-ProliferationPolicies Pose Challenges to NuclearWeapons Labs

(Continued on page 7)

New Cluster Data Puts Universeat 13 Billion Years

One of the outstanding issues inastrophysics is determining the age

of the universe. Some measurements ofthe Hubble constant suggest an age aslow as 8 billion years, while studies ofthe very old stars in globular clustersindicate an age of 13 billion years ormore. At a Thursday morning session atthe 1996 Joint APS/AAPT Meeting, DonVandenberg of the University of Victoriareported on measurements of globularstar clusters that support previousestimates of their age to be at least 13billion years. Based on measurementsof the distances to galaxies in the Virgocluster and elsewhere, the new data hasimportant implications for the ongoingdebate over the large-distance scale ofthe universe.

An important adjunct to the debate isthe notion that the universe cannot beolder than its older stars, which appearto be those in globular clusters, spheri-cal clumps of hundreds of thousandsor millions of stars found near andaround our galaxy. VandenBerg usesthe Canada-France-Hawaii telescope toview the ancient, metal-poor stars inglobular clusters, which largely lack theelements heavier than helium that manyyounger stars inherit from earlier su-pernova explosions. By plotting thestars’ luminosities versus their colors,and by employing the standard modelfor stellar evolution, the age of the starscan be calculated.

Vandenberg said the oldest reliablydated stars, in globular cluster M92,were most likely 15 billion years old.Uncertainties in the determination ofthe distances to the clusters — effect-ing calculations of the stars’

luminosities — might permit an age of12 or even 13 billion years. But he as-serted that the ages could not be muchyounger than that. New observationsof his in globular cluster M13 did notalter this assessment.

The session also featured a talk byWendy Freedman of the Carnegie In-stitute, who presented new HubbleSpace Telescope results based on mea-surements of galaxies in the Fornaxcluster, at a distance of 60 million lightyears. Freeman reported at a NASApress conference in early May that sheand her colleagues were finding thatvalues for the Hubble constant (H), ameasure of the expansion of the uni-verse, hovered in the range 68 to 78km/sec/Mpc. (In 1994, they reported apreliminary value of 80.) A separategroup led by Allan Sandage, also ofCarnegie, recently reported a Hubbleconstant of 57.

Freedman’s team is midway through athree-year program of measuring thedistance to 20 distant galaxies by ob-serving Cepheid variable stars, whoseintrinsic brightness is related to the rateat which their luminosity varies. Theseobservations in turn can be used to cali-brate other means for determiningdistances to objects at even larger scaleswhere local gravitational interactionshave a lesser impact on a calculation ofH. The secondary yardstick methodsinclude the determination of the peakbrightness of type-Ia supernovas andthe use of the Tully-Fisher relation, ac-cording to which a galaxy’s luminosityis related to its rotation rate. The latestentry in Freedman’s inventory is galaxyNGC1365 in the Fornax cluster.

Nuclear weapons scientists in theU.S. face a unique technical chal-

lenge in supporting twin national policyobjectives: to enhance nonproliferationgoals and global security through theNuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)and a negotiated Comprehensive TestBan Treaty (CTBT), while maintainingthe safety and reliability of a smallerdeterrent force without nuclear testingor new weapons types. Speakers at aSaturday morning session of the 1996Joint APS/AAPT Meeting discussedsome of the issues surrounding stock-pile stewardship, as well as thelikelihood of CTBT approval in Genevathis year.

The NPT was extended indefinitely oneyear ago. This treaty, signed in 1970,calls in part on Nuclear Weapons States(NWS) to work towards the disarma-ment of their existing nuclear weapons.Critics of this indefinite extension feelthat the NWS will not be under regularpressure to do so by all the NPT signa-tories if there is no regular reassessmentof the status of disarmament. PeterPella, a former William Foster Fellowwho worked with the Arms ControlDisarmament Agency on the NPT,maintained that countries will pursuenuclear disarmament as a goal only ifthey feel it is in their national intereststo do so, and that the permanence ofNPT along with other measures willenhance security and speed up the dis-armament process.

A comprehensive ban on nuclear explo-sive testing has been the quest ofscientists and statement for more than40 years, according to John D. Holum,

director of the U.S. Arms Control andDisarmament Agency. The Conferenceon Disarmament in Geneva is close toreaching this goal, and the U.N. GeneralAssembly hopes to open the treaty forsignature before the 51st General Assem-bly convenes in September. A majorobstacle to be overcome is China’s re-luctance to move ahead, particularly itsinsistence on the right to conduct peace-ful nuclear explosions, which Holumdescribed as “the atomic equivalent of afriendly punch in the nose.”

Many have characterized the CTBTchiefly as a nonproliferation measure,but Holum believes its great practicalimpact will also be for arms control —to end development of advanced newnuclear weapons and keep new mili-tary applications from emerging. “Byfending off such developments, theCTBT will help make nuclear war lesslikely, and sustain today’s trend towardsmaller nuclear arsenals with shrinkingroles in national defenses,” he said.

Last October, President Clinton directedthe DOE weapons laboratories to main-tain scientific capabilities adequate tomaintain the U.S. stockpile, building onhis 1993 decision to develop “stock-pile stewardship” without nucleartesting. Stockpile stewardship can helpassure the safety and reliability of theU.S. nuclear deterrent, according toJohn Immele, director of the nuclearweapons technology program at LosAlamos National Laboratory. However,global attention to the control ofnuclear materials, including reactor-grade plutonium, and some

APS News July 1996

6

OPINIONLETTERSAPS VIEWS

Foreign Students Do Impact Job Market

I would like to comment on the letterin the March 1996 issue entitled “Don’tBlame Foreigners for Job Problems,”by Munawar Karim. Karim asserts thatxenophobia fuels the concern with theeffect of foreign-born scientists andengineers. It is insulting to U.S. citizenphysicists when Karim says that “thestandards of Ph.D. qualifying exams areoccasionally lowered to allow U.S. stu-dents to pass in order to preservebalance.” This suggests that the creden-tials of U.S. citizen Ph.D.s (mine, forexample) may be suspect, and seemsto imply that foreign graduates may ac-tually be preferable.

I do recognize that fewer able Ameri-cans are choosing physics, both at theundergraduate and graduate level. I be-lieve there are good reasons for this thathave little to do with the adequacy ofbasic schooling. In many cases, under-graduate programs are neglected byfaculties which emphasize research andgraduate programs. I was fortunate tomajor in physics at a university wherethe faculty was committed to under-graduate teaching, and labs werehandled by professors or full-time in-structors.

On considering graduate school, po-tential students must weigh theconsiderable investment in time againstthe likelihood of finding appropriateemployment. Karim says that physics

students should expect long hours, lowpay and job insecurity, and this is adescription of an immigrant’s work.Yes, all of these items must be accepted,to a degree. There are at least two fac-tors concerning pay and security which,in my opinion, may favor some foreignstudents.

First, U.S. tax treaties with some foreigngovernments exempt assistantships fromU.S. taxes. Citizens of these countries ineffect receive more income than U.S. citi-zens or foreigners who must pay tax.Karim suggests that low pay is part ofthe bargain, but now it seems that in-come is even lower for U.S. citizensthan for some foreign students. The sec-ond factor I see as favoring someforeign students is the “fall-back” posi-tion. In general, U.S. citizens arerestricted to the U.S. job market. For-eign nationals can make an attempt tocrack the U.S. market, and then returnhome if they do not succeed here.

I believe that the physics graduate edu-cation establishment will eventually beunable to justify expending consider-able resources to educate apreponderantly foreign student base,many of whom are not able to pursuecareers for which they were trained.We must address this issue.

Arnold R. MoodenbaughWesthampton, New York

WHY ENCOURAGE WOMEN TO ENTER PHYSICS?by Katharine B. Gebbie, Chair, APS Committee on the Status of Women in Physics

The Committee on the Status of Women in Physics was founded 24 years ago toaddress the production, retention, and career development of women physi-cists and to gather and maintain data on women in physics in support of theseobjectives. To this end, the Committee sponsors a diverse array of projectsincluding the quarterly CSWP Gazette, which has a circulation of more than4,000; a Roster of Women in Physics to assist institutions in finding qualifiedwomen candidates for job openings; the CSWP/AAPT site visit project, aimed atimproving the climate for women in university physics departments; WIPHYS,an Internet listserver for women in physics with more than 600 subscribers; anda new project to compile an archive of the Contributions of Women to Physics1898-1998, to demonstrate that women, as well as men, have been major play-ers in the scientific endeavor. And, the number and percentage of women inphysics have indeed increased.

Yet in the present job market, the question may reasonably be asked, Whyencourage women to make careers in physics? Is it fair to them? Will they notsimply swell the numbers of unemployed and underemployed physicists? J.Robert Schrieffer, APS President, gave the following answer to these questions:

“…We believe that our goal of advancing and diffusing the knowledge ofphysics is best served if the profession draws upon the widest possiblespectrum of talented individuals. We are therefore committed to remov-ing barriers that limit the participation of women in physics and to makingavailable to women the same range of career choices traditionally opento men. Women have the right, the need and the talent to compete forthese opportunities…”

(excerpt from the April 1996 Physics and Society newsletter)

Members of CSWP have also addressed the question of why we are encourag-ing women into physics when jobs are scarce. Here are three views:

“The health of a field is determined by the quality of people who go intoit, and physics cannot achieve and maintain excellence without draw-ing the best and the brightest from all segments of society. Thus anincreased female presence has the potential to improve the quality of thephysics workforce. If we believe that the field of physics is (or should be)a meritocracy, and if making the field more open to the entry of brightwomen were to reduce opportunities for some men, it would presumablybe the mediocre who find themselves squeezed out. Surely the reasonswhy women should be encouraged to enter physics are the same as whymen should be so encouraged—intellectual satisfaction, and an oppor-tunity to make a difference in the world by the use of one’s talents andenergy. Why should men have all the fun?”

—Laurie McNeilGordon Gray Professor of Physics and Astronomy

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

“The next generation of physical scientists, we know from our research,has grown up, been educated, and wishes to live in a co-ed profession.Young people are thoroughly co-ed in their perceptions of the field. Theyare the future. And their future includes women as equal partners athome and in the workplace. Therefore, the notion that women should (orcould) be “discouraged” from entering physics flies in the face of women’sabilities and ambitions and of the needs of the field. The problem isn’toversupply; it’s insufficient new job creation in physics. In my view womenare as likely to contribute to new job creation as men.”

—Sheila TobiasCo-author of “Rethinking Science as a Career: Perceptions and Reali-

ties in the Physical Sciences,” (Research Corporation, 1995)

“No one should be encouraged to “go into” physics. You should pursue acareer in physics when you are called to it - when your love for the beautyof this way of looking at the world makes other choices impossible. It isnot supposed to be easy. Except for a few extraordinary times in history,it hasn’t been. But everyone should be encouraged to explore physics, tolearn about it, and to have the chance to learn to love it. The wrong thatthe CSWP tries to set right is that at every level of our educational andprofessional structure, there are obstacles that make it more difficult forwomen than for men to have this opportunity. If we can remove thesebarriers, then more women will be called to physics careers. Indeed, thismay make it more difficult for everyone who is called. At the same time,however, I believe that new opportunities for careers in physics will openup. This is a critical time for the future of science in the United States.”

—Howard GeorgiHarvard University

If science is to thrive, we must make it our goal to achieve a scientificallyliterate society, a population that understands and values the contributions thatscience can make to our national well-being. Women are half that population.Only when women see that women are participating fully in the scientific en-deavor—as researchers in the laboratory, as scientific leaders, and as policymakers—will they feel equal partners in a technological society.

importation of more foreign-born sci-entists and engineers.

Stephen M. HohsSan Jose, California

Given that the APS is spending a sub-stantial amount of effort to re-orientphysicists in other technical careers, Iwould be curious to know why theSociety does not take a stand on the

Wilhelm C. Roentgen, the discoverer of X rays, was expelled from high school atage 18; he studied for his high school equivalency exam, took it, and failed; heprepared for an entrance exam to Zurich’s ETH, but never took it. He wasadmitted to the ETH through the help of a friendly professor.

“Your mere presence spoils the respect of the class for me.” Said by a seventhgrade teacher at the Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich to his student Albert Einstein.

Courtesy of: J. Rigden, Chair APS Forum on History

Historical FACTOIDS

July 1996 APS News

7

MULTIMEDIA REVIEWby Ben Stein

A Brief History of Time: An Inter-active Adventure and The CartoonGuide to Physics (CD-ROM)

Dealing as it does with the dynamicflow of matter and energy in our uni-verse, physics is a natural candidate formultimedia, electronic presentationscombining text, graphics, animation,sound, and music. At its best, multi-media can convey ideas with avividness practically unrealizable onpaper or blackboard. As CD-ROM-equipped home computers becomeincreasingly widespread in the U.S.,software companies are starting to shipmultimedia versions of bestsellingbooks. Popular books on physics arenow receiving the multimedia treat-ment, and both titles tested for thismonth’s column are very good.

A Brief History of Time: An Interac-tive Adventure (Scientific American/W.H. Freeman, $49.95) is the CD-ROMversion of Stephen Hawking’s 1988 best-seller that traces humankind’s discoverieson the nature of space-time. Largelymodelled after the 11-chapter book, andutilizing video and sound from the styl-ish Errol Morris movie adaptation, theCD-ROM employs ample narration bythe author, beautiful graphics and ani-mated thought experiments to flesh outthe often-difficult concepts in Hawking’spopular work. Chapter One, entitled“Our Picture of the Universe,” containsa gallery of famous philosophers andphysicists in history. Clicking on Aristotlebegins a slide presentation, narrated bythe speech-synthesizer-aided Stephen

Hawking, describing how the Greekphilosopher convincingly argued that theEarth is round by appealing to the roundshadows the Earth makes when iteclipses the moon.

In “Relativity Street,” an animated ver-sion of Albert Einstein recalls how hewas inspired with the idea of relativityafter talking to a painter who had fallenoff a roof. A subsequent thought ex-periment on relativity shows Einsteinplaying a game of ping-pong inside atrolley heading towards the edge of acliff. From Einstein’s point of view, thepath of the airborne ping-pong ballseems to change as the trolley goes intofree fall, but from the outside we cansee that the ball would follow the sametrajectory if the trolley had continuedto travel on the rails. In a humorouslive-action skit elsewhere in the chap-ter, Marilyn Monroe seductivelydescribes a thought experiment on spe-cial relativity to a receptive Einstein.

Another section of the program allowsone to take a trip aboard a spaceshipto the suspected black hole Cygnus X-1. On the way to a beautiful renditionof the swirling galaxy surrounding Cyg-nus X-1, video clips play as physicistJohn Wheeler and others describe theproperties of black holes and what itwould be like for an astronaut to fallinside one. There also is a well-donebiography section of Hawking discuss-ing his affliction with Lou Gehrig’sdisease and his decision to live life tothe fullest and become a serious scien-tist. The complete text of the book canbe found on the disc, with links to theappropriate graphics and animations.

Much lighter is the CD-ROM version ofThe Cartoon Guide to Physics(HarperCollins Interactive, $39.95),based on the popular book by LarryGonick and Art Huffman. Suitable foranyone who is receiving his or her firstintroduction to physics, the CartoonGuide offers clear and correct lessonsin basic mechanics, covering such top-ics as Newton’s Laws, energy andmomentum. To its credit, the programdoesn’t shy away from displaying ba-sic equations and even performingsimple mathematical derivations.

Each physics lesson consists of ani-mated black and white vignettesnarrated by a live-action characternamed Lucy and demonstrated by anaccident-prone cartoon figure namedRingo. These are very much like ani-mated versions of Gonick’s popularcartoon books and bimonthly columnsin Discover. The lesson on Newton’sThird Law begins as Isaac Newton chis-els the formal versions of his three lawson a stone tablet. Then, in MontyPythonesque fashion, a block of let-ters falls from on high reading, “Actionequals reaction.” The lesson showshow a horse manages to pull a cart eventhough, at first sight, the two seem toexert forces that cancel out each other.Other examples show the forces in-volved when a book is held up on atable, and the way in which a spaceshuttle is pushed up by exhaust gases.

A section of the program entitled “TheWorkshop” consists of five games in-tended to give the user a feel for suchproperties as inertia, projectile motion,and potential and kinetic energy. I

found this to be the weakest part ofthe program, as the games are kind ofbasic and not very fun. In the Hall ofFame section, Lucy and Ringo standnext to busts of ancient, classical, andmodern scientists and converse on theachievements and importance of each.Finally, a glossary contains good work-ing definitions of the termsencountered on the disc. The anima-tion on this disc is smooth andseamless.

System requirements:A Brief History of Time: An InteractiveAdventure, Scientific American/W.H.Freeman (1-800-777-0444). Windowsversion requires a 386 SX or faster, VGAcolor monitor and graphics card runningat 256 colors, 8 MB RAM, Windows 3.1,SoundBlaster or a compatible soundcard, mouse, double-speed CD-ROMdrive. Macintosh version requires an LCIIor faster, including Performa, Quadra,and PowerMac series, 256 color moni-tor at least 13", system 7.0 or later, doublespeed CD-ROM drive.

The Cartoon Guide to Physics ,HarperCollins Interactive (800-424-6234). Windows users require a 486/33 or compatible with hard disk drive,Microsoft Windows 3.1, 8 MB RAM, 5MB free hard disk space, 256-color orhigher graphics card, 14" SVGA moni-tor, double speed CD ROM drive, MPCcompatible sound card and speakers.Macintosh version requires 25 MHz68030 or better, 8 MB RAM, 13" 256-color monitor, double speed CD-ROM.

Ben Stein is a science writer in AIP’sPublic Information Division.

Energy Alternatives Vital To Meet Future Demandsin the trillions of dollars, according tothe DOE’s Allan Hoffman. The WorldBank has estimated that over the next30-40 years, developing countries alonewill require 5 million megawatts of newgenerating capacity, compared withtoday’s total world capacity of about 3million megawatts, at a capital cost ofbetween $1000 and $2000 per kilowatt.

“The environmental implications of thatmuch capacity using fossil fuels, evenin the more benign form of natural gas,are severe,” said Hoffman. “If we are tominimize adverse local and global envi-ronmental impacts from the inevitablepowering up of developing nations, re-newable forms of non-polluting andnon-greenhouse-gas-emitting systemsmust be widely used.” He predicts agradual transition to a global energy sys-tem that is largely dependent onrenewably energy within 100 years, withhydrogen possibly emerging as an im-portant energy carrier to complementelectricity because of its ability to be usedin all end-use sectors and its benign en-vironmental characteristics.

According to Rosenberg, several promis-ing new strategies are ready forimplementation, including the use of coolerroofing and paving materials, and shadetrees to reduce air conditioning load, re-verse the urban heat island effect, andreduce smog. The DOE will showcase vari-ous commercially available renewabletechnologies at the 1996 Summer OlympicGames in Atlanta, Georgia, this summer,including photovoltaics, solar/thermal dishgenerators, fuel cells, and alternative fuelvehicles. In addition, three new energy

efficient technologies have recently beendeveloped: high-frequency ballasts, com-pact fluorescent lamps, and low-energywindows.

Energy efficient windows were first in-troduced commercially in the early1980s, and Rosenberg estimates cumu-lative volume sales since then at about1.7 billion square feet, with a cumula-tive savings of about $1.8 billion. Recentimprovements have resulted in a newdesign for these windows, consisting ofthree glazing layers, two coatings, and afilling of argon or xenon gas, providingexcellent optics and durability at a lowcost to manufacturers. In the future, heexpects the commercial availability ofenergy efficient windows with electricchromates that allow for clear glass aswell as adjustment of light.

John Sheffield from Oak Ridge NationalLaboratory postulated that with the likelydepletion of most fossil fuels by 2100,alternate energy sources will be devel-oped according to the region’sindigenous resources, and that in manyregions, fusion energy will probably beone of the technological goals. Basedon the World Bank population projec-tions, he believes that all alternativeenergy sources will be needed to meetfuture energy demands, and thus sup-ports continued investment in fusionenergy research. He estimates the firstfusion plants could become operationalaround 2050, most likely in those coun-tries, such as Japan and Europe, that havealready deployed substantial nuclearpower and will need more as cheap fos-sil fuel becomes less available.

cooperation among the nuclear statesin crafting post-Cold War security re-gime are also essential to reducing thenuclear danger.

A science-based program of evaluation,assessment and expert judgment is aprimary requirement for the U.S. toenter safely into a test ban treaty. “Forthe first time in history, because of ad-vances in science and technology,including computing and experimen-tal simulation, the underpinningsneeded for stockpile safety and reliabil-ity under a comprehensive test bantreaty may have finally come withinreach,” said Immele. “Although the taskis difficult and some risks exist, science-based stewardship of the nation’sremaining nuclear weapons is now fea-sible in an environment of no testingand no new weapons.”

Immele believes that effective steward-ship programs will require severalcomplementary efforts at the nationallaboratories, including advances inhigh-performance computing; en-hanced surveillance to predict agingand other defects; improved non-nuclear testing with high explosives;archiving of past design, testing andmaterials data; and scheduledrevalidation and life-extension for theseven basic weapon designs in thecontinuing U.S. stockpile.

Non-ProliferationPolicies PoseChallenges to NuclearWeapons Labs(continued from page 5)

The world population will have toincreasingly rely on all forms of

energy to meet future energy demands,according to speakers at a Mondaymorning session at the 1996 Joint APS/AAPT Meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana.The Clinton Administration promotes thedevelopment and deployment ofrenewable energy resources andtechnologies such as photovoltaics,wind, solar thermal, biomass, geothermaland hydropower energy options, withparticular applications being tailored tocertain local situations and needs.

During the energy crisis of the 1970s and1980s, scientists in the U.S. began examin-ing ways to make new products moreenergy efficient. The result: the U.S.doubled the efficiency of most new prod-ucts and reduced energy bills by close to50 percent. Arthur Rosenfeld, senior advi-sor at the U.S. Department of Energy,discussed new scientific strategies forimproving the energy and economic sav-ings even further. “The potential forfuture savings through energy efficiencyis even larger if we change utility profitrates,” he said, pointing out that in Cali-fornia, it is far more profitable for utilitiesto sell efficiency than to sell raw energy.

Improving technological performanceand reductions in associated energy costshave enabled renewables to be low-costoptions for generating power under cer-tain conditions. Also driving theirincreased deployment are environmen-tal concerns, future energy security, andthe recognition that renewables are com-peting for a total target market ranging

APS News July 1996

8

Highlights from Indianapolis (continued from page 1)

up tentative evidence of neutrinooscillation, a phenomenon in whichone type of neutrino (muon, electron,or tau neutrino) transforms intoanother. According to LANL’s FredFederspiel, the observation of the newdata cannot be attributed to eitherknown background processes or tostatistical fluctuations, since the totalestimated background from cosmic raysand other neutrinoes is only about fouror five events. The team is alsoanalyzing data on neutrinos producedby pions and muons decaying in flight,which have higher energies, andexpects to continue collecting data withtheir detector over the next two years.

Record High Laser Intensity. The adventof tabletop terawatt lasers hasprompted the study of new nonlinearoptical effects. Donald Umstadter of theUniversity of Michigan reported on anexperiment in which a self-focusinglaser beam passing through a plasmareached an intensity of 1020 W/cm2, thehighest yet reported for any laser. Inthe process of excluding plasma elec-trons from a narrow region forming athin channel through the plasma, thelaser creates pressures exceeding onegiga-bar, higher than any other manmade pressure. The collimated and in-tense laser beams will eventually beused in attempts to accelerate electrons toGeV energies over a space of centimeters.A new generation of ultrashort durationhigh-energy electron and photon coursesmay thus be built, potentially the equiva-lent of a Stanford Linear Accelerator orAdvanced Proton Source on a tabletop.

Crystalline Beams. In a Thursday morn-ing session on advances in beams andaccelerators, Jeffrey Hangst of AarhusUniversity in Denmark reported on ef-forts to cool the relative motion ofparticles in a circulating beam, as wellas the use of resonant laser light as adiagnostic tool for studying fundamen-tal issues in beam dynamics. Accordingto Hangst, the great strength and speedof the laser cooling process have ledscientists to believe it could be used toproduce a crystalline beam, in which theions’ relative kinetic energy decreases tothe point that an ordered state is formed.He summarized recent experimentalprogress in this area, as well as currenttheoretical understanding of the condi-tions under which a spatially orderedion beam might be obtained.

Delta-Enhanced Multifragmentation.Scientists at Indiana University have ob-tained the first direct evidence for theexpansion of nuclear matter using pro-ton and helium beams from particleaccelerators to heat atomic nuclei to sev-eral billion degrees. The fragmentsproduced in the process were then ana-lyzed with the Indiana Silicon SphereDetector, an array consisting of 162 “tele-scopes” for identifying nuclear fragmentsformed in the disintegration of hot nuclei.The Indiana researchers concluded that thenucleus expands as much as 50 percent ofits normal size before breaking apart, whichcorresponds to a density about one-thirdof normal nuclear matter. The results arerelevant not only to the understanding ofmicroscopic nuclei, but also to cosmologi-cal problems, such as supernovae and theformation of neutron stars, pulsars, or pos-sibly black holes.

Superdeformed Nuclei. When two nu-clei collide off-center, they can fuse tocreate a superdeformed nucleus: a foot-ball-shaped nucleus with a large

amount of spin, according to scientistsat Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Us-ing the GAMMASPHERE detector atLBL, Teng Lek Khoo of Argonne Na-tional Laboratory and his colleagueshave measured, for the first time, thetotal energy and angular momentum re-leased when a superdeformedmercury-194 nucleus decays to a well-understood, lower-energy nuclear state.According to Khoo, connecting thesetwo states paves the way toward un-derstanding the many mysteriesassociated with this nuclear state.

Supersymmetry. Supersymmetry is atheory that seeks to unite quantum me-chanics with general relativity. Animportant ingredient is the existence ofcertain hypothetical particles. Accordingto the theory, each known fermion —such as an electron and quarks with ahalf integral spin — would have a newboson counterpart. Likewise, all knownbosons — particles such as photons withintegral spin — would have new fermioncounterparts. Gordon Kane of the Uni-versity of Michigan discussed howsupersymmetry theory could be put tothe test, and how certain events recordedin scattering experiments at Fermilabmay already provide the first hints ofsupersymmetry at work.

Materials at Intense Pressures. Scien-tists at Los Alamos are probing the limitsof experimental physics on extremestates of matter using magnetic fluxcompression, a technique for convert-ing the chemical energy released byhigh explosives into intense electricalpulses and intensely concentrated mag-netic energy. The pulse generatorsreach magnetic fields in excess of 1000Tesla. Using the technique, the research-ers have made discoveries about severalproperties of materials observed at theatomic level, including the quantum Halleffect, Faraday rotation and magnetic-fieldinduced superconductivity. These experi-ments may provide answers to questionsin astrophysics and planetary physics,such as clues to the state of matter insidethe great gas giant planets, as well as newdirections in materials science and solidstate physics. Researchers will next attemptto compress argon up to 8 million atmo-spheres to observe the rising stages ofconductivity in the gas, possibly leadingto the production of metallic argon, a phasestate never before seen on Earth. Untilrecently, the technique has been usedprimarily for nuclear weapons research.

Forecasting Individual Storms. Presentweather models used in NationalWeather Service Operations employ agrid resolution of 45-60 kilometers,which is sufficient to forecast larger-scalefeatures, such as fronts and low-pres-sure systems, but not enough toanticipate isolated storms over specificcounties or cities. Kelvin Droegemeierof the University of Oklahoma has de-veloped a new computational model thatprovides storm forecasts up to six hoursin advance, with up to one-km resolu-tion. This may lead to enablingforecasters to predict individual storms,which can be around five km in size.

Unlike present weather models the newmodel takes into account vertical accel-erations, which are generally notnegligible for storms, where the verticalwind velocity can be as strong as thehorizontal wind velocity. The system wastested over the Southern Great Plains lastyear and will be run again this year dur-ing collaborative testing with American

Airlines over their major hubs in Dallasand Chicago. The tests will help deter-mine whether this model can be usedto reduce the number of needlessly re-routed plane flights.

Colliding Beam Fusion. Conventionalnuclear fusion reactions are initiated bymagnetically confining a deuterium andtritium plasma and introducing energysources to generate the high-tempera-ture conditions necessary for fusion.Norman Rostoker of the University ofCalifornia-Irvine proposed that re-searchers should consider conductingexperiments that explore the possibil-ity of using exclusively high-energyparticles to create fusion.

Experiments have shown that when asmall amount of high-energy particlesare trapped in a magnetic field, theyare confined for long periods of time.With longer confinement times, fusionis easier to achieve. According toRostoker, this approach could open thepossibility of fusing hydrogen with iso-topes such as boron-11. It wouldproduce charged-particle by-productsthat are have advantages over the neu-trons that result from the traditionallyused deuterium-tritium fuels.

New Measurements of G. Conflictingmeasurements of Newton’s constant G,which relates the gravitational force be-tween two objects to their mass andseparation, were presented at the 1995 APS/AAPT Spring Meeting (see APS News, July1995); the highest discrepancy was morethan half a percent greater than the ac-cepted CODATA value. The results havestimulated a number of new measurementsof G by various groups worldwide. Forexample, a group at Wuppertal Universityin Germany is improving their ability tomeasure their source mass position, andplans to move their apparatus to anothersite where temperature and noise levelcontrol will be better. Also underway aremeasurement experiments at ZurichUniversity, University of California,Irvine, the University of Washington, andJILA in Boulder, Colorado, as well as inRussia, Taiwan and Japan.

Accelerators in Industry. Phil Wombleof Oak Ridge National Laboratory de-scribed a technique for detecting“remote-handled transuranic waste,”which are neutron-emitting radioactiveby-products, heavier than uranium, anda significant component of nuclearwaste produced at Argonne NationalLaboratory and elsewhere. In the newtechnique, a compact accelerator gen-erates a tiny amount of fission in thewaste, creating by-products that helpidentify isotopes in the sample. In thesame session, George Vourvopoulos ofWestern Kentucky University discussedhow neutrons produced by compactaccelerators can be used to performreal-time analysis of coal to help test-ing and blending of different types ofcoal. The technique can also be usedto burn coal economically and envi-ronmentally safety, as well as to testcoal by-products, such as ash.

Nontechnical Sessions.Effects on Radiation at Low Doses. In1928, the International Commission onRadiological Protection advised that forprudent public protection, no amountof radiation should be accepted with-out expectation of benefit, based on1924 studies by physicist JeffreyCrowther that showed linearity at lowdoses. However, this cautious approachis based on direct epidemiological dataobtained from studies at high radiationdoses, since a large number of test sub-jects would be needed to find a small

effect low doses, with considerable bio-assay effects. In a Sunday morningsession, Bernard Cohen of the Univer-sity of Pittsburgh reviewed two possibleapproaches to study the linear-nothreshold theory (LNT) of radiationcarcinogenesis in the low dose region.

The best approach, according toCohen, is use of the radon vs. lung can-cer relationship, but these studies havenot been sufficiently robust to extrapo-late meaningful conclusions from thedata. An alternative is to study lungcancer rates for various counties andcompare them to average radon expo-sure in those counties. Cohen hasfound that regardless of corrections forsmoking prevalence, the mortality rateactually decreased with increasing ra-diation doses, in sharp contrast topredictions, with a standard deviationfactor of 20. This discrepancy lead tothe conclusion that the LNT theory maywell fail in the low dose region.

Science, Politics and Human Rights.Where does one draw the line betweenscientific activity and complicity with atotalitarian regime? Nicholson Medal re-cipient Yuri Orlov of Cornell Universityexamined the ethical decisions a scien-tist must face when confronted bypolitical realities that make the pursuitof science morally challenging and/orprofessionally difficult. In 1986, Orlovwas stripped of USSR citizenship anddeported to the U.S., where he has con-tinued to be active in the human rightsarena while doing physics research atCornell. He discussed the implicationsassociated with speaking out, and ex-tended the moral dilemma to U.S.scientists who must decide whether ornot to collaborate with colleagues whohold positions of high power in repres-sive regimes.

Special thanks to Philip F. Schewe andBenjamin P. Stein of the American In-stitute of Physics Office of PublicInformation for contributing to the cov-erage of technical sessions in this issue.

1996 JOINT MEETINGPROGRAM COMMITTEE:

Chair: David Cassell, Cornell Univer-sity; Vice-Chair: Virginia Brown,Lawrence Livermore Laboratory;AAPT Program Chair: Ronald Edge,University of South Carolina; APS:Judy Franz,; Program Committee:Beverly Berger, Oakland University(GTG); Fred Dylla, CEBAF (FIAP);Robert Erdman, Keithley Instruments,Inc. (IMSTG); Charles Falco, Univer-sity of Arizona (FIP); RichardFreeman, AT&T Bell Laboratories(DAMOP); Joan Frye, Howard Uni-versity (COM); Katherine Gebbie,NIST (CSWP); Edward Gerjuoy, Uni-versity of Pittsburgh (FPS); PaulGrannis, SUNY-Stony Brook (DPF);Geoffrey Greene, NIST (PCMTG);Franz Gross, College of William &Mary (FBSTG); Beverly Hartline,CEBAF (FED); Wick Haxton, Univer-sity of Washington, (DAP); RichardHazeltine, University of Texas (DPP);Barry Klein, University of California-Davis (DCOMP); Claudio Pelegrini,University of California-LosAngeles (DPB); Lee L. Riedinger, Uni-versity of Tennessee (DNP); JohnRigden, American Institute of Phys-ics (FHP); and Steven Sibener,University of Chicago (DCP).

Meeting arrangements were made byMichael Scanlan and Tammany Buckwalterof the APS Meetings Department.

July 1996 APS News

9

Astronomy, as well as the APS PhysicsPlanning Committee.

David N.Schramm

University ofChicago

Schramm received hisS.B. from MIT in 1967and his Ph.D. in 1971

from Caltech, where he remained as apostdoctoral fellow for the following year.After a two-year stint as an assistant pro-fessor at the University of Texas at Austin,he joined the faculty of the University ofChicago, where he is currently the LouisBlock Professor of Physical Sciences. Hechaired the department from 1979 to 1985,and in 1995 became vice president for re-search, with responsibilities at ArgonneNational Laboratory as well as the univer-sity. He also co-founded the astrophysicsgroup at Fermilab. His research has in-cluded numerous topics in theoreticalastrophysics and cosmology, as well as theinterface of these subjects with nuclear andelementary particle physics. He was electedto the National Academy of Sciences in1986. He is the recipient of numerousawards, most recently the 1993 APSLilienfeld Prize. Schramm currently chairsthe NRC’s Board on Physics and As-tronomy.

FOR CHAIR-ELECT OF THENOMINATING COMMITTEE

Wick HaxtonUniversity ofWashington

Haxton received hisPh.D. in physicsfrom Stanford Uni-versity in 1976. He

✃

Nom

ination Ballot—

1997 Bylaw

Com

mittees

To be Com

pleted Only by M

embers of T

he Am

erican Physical S

ociety (please complete both sides)

The C

om

mittee o

n C

om

mittees h

as the resp

onsib

ility for n

om

inatin

g elected m

embers o

f the P

ublicatio

ns

Oversigh

t Com

mittee an

d ad

vising th

e Presid

ent co

ncern

ing su

itable can

did

ates for service o

n all o

ther

Bylaw

Com

mittees ap

poin

ted b

y the P

residen

t. Info

rmatio

n o

n th

e Com

mittees an

d th

eir presen

t mem

ber-

ship

appears o

n th

e APS h

om

e page u

nder G

overn

ance.

The C

om

mittee n

eeds in

put fro

m th

e mem

bersh

ip. P

lease pro

vide th

e nam

e and

affiliation

of n

om

inees

and

attach in

form

ation

on

career high

lights an

d su

itability

of th

e no

min

ee for th

e particu

lar com

-m

ittee ind

icated. N

om

inees m

ust b

e AP

S mem

bers. Self-n

om

inatio

ns are stro

ngly

enco

uraged

.

The deadline for receipt of nom

inations is 9 August 1996.

Fo

r Mem

bersh

ip o

n th

e Co

mm

ittee on

Co

nstitu

tion

& B

ylaw

s:

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Fo

r Mem

bersh

ip o

n th

e Co

mm

ittee on

Ed

ucatio

n:

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Fo

r Mem

bersh

ip o

n th

e Co

mm

ittee on

Ap

plicatio

ns o

f Ph

ysics:

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Fo

r Mem

bersh

ip o

n th

e Co

mm

ittee on

Fello

wsh

ip:

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Fo

r Mem

bersh

ip o

n th

e Co

mm

ittee on

Intern

ation

al Scientific A

ffairs:

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Fo

r Mem

bersh

ip o

n th

e Co

mm

ittee on

Intern

ation

al Freed

om

of Scien

tists:

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Fo

r Mem

bersh

ip o

n th

e Investm

ent C

om

mittee:

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Fo

r Mem

bersh

ip o

n th

e Pu

blicatio

ns O

versight C

om

mittee:

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Co

ntin

ued

on

Reverse

The membership of The AmericanPhysical Society will elect a Vice Presi-dent, a Chair-Elect of the NominatingCommittee, and four General Council-lors in the 1997 General Election.Ballots must be received by the 8 Sep-tember deadline in order to be valid. Aslate of candidates has been preparedby the Nominating Committee, and bio-graphical summaries for each areprovided below. Full biographical in-formation and candidates’ statementsare printed in the ballot.

FOR VICE PRESIDENT

Jerome I.Friedman

MassachusettsInstitute ofTechnology

Friedman receivedhis Ph.D. in experi-mental particle

physics from the University in Chicagoin 1956. After a year as a research as-sociate there, he accepted a three-yearappointment at Stanford University. In1960, he joined the MIT faculty as anassistant professor, where he hasserved as director of the Laboratory forNuclear Science and as head of thephysics department. His research hasincluded studies of particle structureand interactions with high-energy elec-trons, neutrinos and hadrons. Recipientof the Society’s W.H.K. Panofsky Prizein 1989, he shared the 1990 Nobel Prizein Physics with Henry Kendall and Ri-chard Taylor. Friedman’s professionalactivities include service as vice-chairof the Board of the University ResearchAssociation, and on the National Re-search Council’s Board on Physics and

spent 1977 as a research associate at theUniversität Mainz followed by seven yearsas a research associate, Oppenheimer Fel-low, and staff member in the TheoryDivision of Los Alamos National Labora-tory. He spent one year as an assistantprofessor at Purdue University (1980-81),and returned to teaching in 1984 at theUniversity of Washington, where he iscurrently a professor of physics and di-rector of the Institute for Nuclear Theory.His research interests include atomic andnuclear tests of symmetry principles andconservation laws, nuclear astrophysicsissues, and many-body techniques.Haxton chaired the Division of NuclearPhysics in 1992 and currently chairs theDivision of Astrophysics. He is currentlyan editor of Physics Letters B and is aformer General Councillor.

John W. WilkinsOhio State University

A University of Illinois Ph.D., Wilkinsjoined the Cornell University physicsdepartment in 1964 after a year-longpostdoc at Cambridge University. Hewas traded for a draft choice in 1988 toOhio State University. Only with theassistance of over 70 graduate studentsand postdocs, could he have rambledfrom superconductors to metals to semi-conductors, sampling many excitationsprocesses by single-particle and many-body paths. Within the APS his primaryconcern has been publications with ser-vice both on Reviews of Modern Physics,Physical Review B and Physical ReviewLetters and in the oversight and reviewof APS journals. But he also had to en-dure a term on both the Council andthe Executive Board. Unbelievably heis a founding member of the Division ofBiological Physics, a field in which hehas never worked.

General Election Preview: Members To Choose New Leadership for 1997

FOR GENERALCOUNCILLOR

David D.AwschalomUniversity of

California, SantaBarbara

Awschalom re-ceived his Ph.D. in

experimental physics from Cornell Uni-versity, and was a research staff memberand manager of the NonequilibriumPhysics Group at the IBM T.J. WatsonResearch Center. In 1991 he joined thefaculty of the University of California,Santa Barbara, as a professor of physics,where he is also a member and programcoordinator for magnetism and super-conductivity in the Science andTechnology Center for Quantized Elec-tronic Structures. His research interestscenter on exploring electronic and mag-netic interactions in semiconductorquantum structures, as well as the clas-sical and quantum mechanical propertiesof mesoscopic magnetic systems.

James BallOak RidgeNational

Laboratory

Ball received hisPh.D. from theUniversity of Wash-ington in 1958,

joining Oak Ridge National Laboratoryas a postdoctoral associate that sameyear, and soon became a permanent staffmember. He has remained at ORNL formost of his career, serving as director ofthe Holifield Heavy Ion Facility until

(Continued on page 10)

APS News July 1996

10

Fo

r M

emb

ersh

ip o

n t

he

Co

mm

itte

e o

n M

emb

ersh

ip:

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

Fo

r M

emb

ersh

ip o

n t

he

Co

mm

itte

e o

n M

eeti

ngs

:

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

_

Fo

r M

emb

ersh

ip o

n t

he

Co

mm

itte

e o

n M

ino

riti

es:

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

Fo

r M

emb

ersh

ip o

n t

he

Co

mm

itte

e o

n t

he

Stat

us

of

Wo

men

in

Ph

ysi

cs:

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

Fo

r M

emb

ersh

ip o

n t

he

Ph

ysi

cs P

lan

nin

g C

om

mit

tee:

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

___

Nom

inat

or’s

Inf

orm

atio

n

Nam

e:__

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

Ad

dre

ss:

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

__

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

__

Sign

atu

re:

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

____

__

Ple

ase

Add

ress

You

r E

nvel

ope

to:

The

Am

eric

an P

hysi

cal S

ocie

tyAT

TN

: A

MY

HA

LST

ED

One

Phy

sics

Elli

pse

Col

lege

Par

k, M

D 2

0740

-384

4F

ax:

(301

) 20

9-08

65E

mai

l: h

alst

ed@

aps.

org

The

dea

dlin

e fo

r re

ceip

t of n

omin

atio

ns is

9 A

ugus

t 199

6.

✃

Madison in 1966, and spent the nexttwo years as a postdoctoral fellow atBell Laboratories. In 1968 he joinedSandia National Laboratories, perform-ing research in such solid state physicsareas as plasma in solids, inelastic lightscatting in solids, phase transforma-tions and ferroelectricity, andsemiconductor physics. Most recentlyhe served as Sandia’s director of mi-croelectronics and photonics, withresponsibility for its silicon, compoundsemiconductor, sensor and packagingR&D activities. In August 1995 he leftSandia to assume the presidency ofSEMI/SEMATECH, a consortium ofmore than 200 companies that providethe U.S. equipment and materials sup-plier base for the semiconductor devicemanufacturing industry.

Chris QuiggFermi National

AcceleratorLaboratory

Quigg received hisPh.D. in theoreticalparticle physicsfrom the University

of California, Berkeley in 1970, andspent the next four years as a memberof SUNY-Stony Brook’s Institute forTheoretical Physics. Since 1974 he hasbeen associated with Fermilab, head-ing the Theoretical Physics Departmentfrom 1977 to 1987. Until 1991, he wasalso on the faculty of the University ofChicago. His research emphasizes theessential interplay between theory andexperimentation, including such top-ics as electroweak symmetry breaking,properties and interactions of heavyquarks, and high-energy particle colli-sions. Quigg has served on theexecutive committee of the APS Divi-

General Election Preview1983, when he was named director ofthe Physics Division. His primary re-search interests are in nuclear structurewith direct reactions, two-nucleon trans-fer reactions, heavy ion reactionmechanisms, shell model treatment ofthe A=90 region of nuclei, and accelera-tor physics. A former chair of the APSDivision of Nuclear Physics, he alsoserved three years as the general pro-gram chair for the APS/AAPT JointMeeting.

S. James GatesUniversity of

Maryland

Gates received hisPh.D. in physics fromMIT in 1977, andspent the next threeyears doing post-

graduate research as a junior fellow of theHarvard Society of Fellows. He spent twoyears on the faculty of MIT’s mathematicsdepartment before joining the physics de-partment of the University of Marylandat College Park. His research centers oninvestigations of the mathematical prop-erties and realizations of supersymmetryin quantum and classical theories of par-ticles, fields and strings, and co-authoredSuperspace, the first advanced compre-hensive book on supersymmetry. Gateswas the first director of the NASA-sup-ported Center for the Study of Terrestrialand extra-Terrestrial Atmospheres, andwas the recipient of the first APS Ed-ward Bouchet Award.

Paul S. PeercySEMI/SEMATECH

Peercy received hisPh.D. in physicsfrom the Universityof Wisconsin at

sion of Particles and Fields, and as anassociate editor for both Physical Re-view Letters and Reviews of ModernPhysics.

Ravi SudanCornell University

Sudan received hisPh.D. from ImperialCollege at the Uni-versity of London.After working a fewyears in England

and India in industry, he joined thefaculty of Cornell University wherehe is the IBM Professor of Engineer-ing, and member of both theelectrical engineering and appliedphysics departments. From 1975 to1985 he served as director of theLaboratory of Plasma Studies andhelped to establish the CornellTheory and Supercomputer Center,serving as its first deputy director. Hisresearch spans all aspects of plasmaphysics, including thermonuclear fu-s ion and the technology ofhigh-powered charged par t ic lebeams. Recipient of the 1989 APSMaxwell Prize, Sudan has served onthe executive committee of the APSDivision of Plasma Physics, and cur-rently chairs the National ResearchCouncil’s Plasma Science Committee.

Virginia T rimbleUniversity ofMaryland/

University ofCalifornia, Irvine

Trimble receivedher Ph.D. in as-tronomy from the

California Institute of Technology in1968, and presently divides her timebetween the physics department ofthe University of California, Irvineand the astronomy department of theUniversity of Maryland. Her early re-search focused on advanced stagesof star evolution, including whitedwarfs, supernovae and pulsars.More recently she has investigatedthe statistical distributions of prop-erties of binary stars and numeroustopics in the history and sociologyof physics and astronomy. She hasserved as secretary-treasurer of theAPS Division of Astrophysics, and onthe APS Committee on Meetings.

Sau Lan WuUniversity ofWisconsin,Madison

Wu received herPh.D. in high en-ergy physics fromHarvard University

in 1970 and did her postdoctoralstudy at MIT. She participated in the1974 discovery of the charm quarkat Brookhaven National Laboratory,where she had previously spent asummer as an undergraduate student.She has been a faculty member in thephysics department at the Universityof Wisconsin at Madison since 1977.She is a co-recipient of the EuropeanPhysical Society’s 1995 High Energyand Particle Physics Prize for the firstdirect observation of the gluon. Sheis a Fellow in the American Academyof Arts and Sciences. Wu is also amember of the DOE’s High EnergyPhysics Advisory Panel.

July 1996 APS News

11

ANNOUNCEMENTS

IN BRIEF• The APS Lars Onsager Prize will be awarded annually beginning in 1997.

Originally endowed by Russell and Marian Donnelly as a biennial $10,000award, the couple has decided to make additional yearly donations tofund the award until the principle grows to full endowment of the yearlyprize. Until now, only the Lilienfeld and Schawlow Prizes have beenannual $10,000 awards. The purpose of the Onsager Prize is to recog-nize outstanding research in theoretical statistical physics, including thequantum fluids.

• Physicist and human rights activist Liu Gang fled the People’s Republicof China and arrived in the United States on Wednesday, May 1st, 1996.After serving a very hard six-year prison sentence, which began shortlyafter the massacre of non-violent protesters at Tiananmen Square onJune 4th 1989, Liu was released in June of 1995. He had been third onthe list of “most wanted” students involved with the democracy move-ment. Since his release, Liu was deprived of any chance of employmentand constantly harassed by police, thus robbed of his basic human rightof survival. The APS’ Committee on the International Freedom of Scien-tists wrote numerous letters to the PRC Government concerning Liu’streatment while he was imprisoned and following his release, much ofwhich was in violation of the Constitution of the People’s Republic ofChina and the United Nations’ Declaration on Human Rights. Liu Gangintends to start a new life in a the U.S.

• The APS New England Section held its annual spring meeting 26-27 Aprilat MIT, organized jointly with the New England regional sections of theAmerican Association of Physics Teachers and the Society of PhysicsStudents. Friday afternoon’s plenary session featured lectures on suchtopics as magnetic resonance imaging of lungs with laser polarized gases,imaging two-dimensional electrons with scanning tunneling microscopes,and the global positioning system. Saturday morning’s plenary sessionon relativity in astrophysics featured talks on the discovery of the binarypulsar, the search for gravitational waves using laser interferometry, anddetecting dark matter with gravitational lenses. Friday evening’s banquetfeatured a keynote address by MIT’s Philip Morrison, entitled “Solar Sys-tems: Plural at Last.”

• The APS New York State Section held its annual spring meeting 11-12April at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center, organized as a topical sympo-sium on “21st Century Computing: Physical Basis to ClassroomApplications.” Friday morning featured lectures on such topics as quan-tum constraints on information processing, ballistic computation, andquantum computation. Friday afternoon focused on new ways of com-puting, such as the use of cellular automata, adiabatic design of CMOSlogic, and massively parallel computing using DNA. The Friday eveningbanquet featured a public lecture by IBM’s Rolf Landauer on 50 years ofphysics computation. The symposium closed with a Saturday morningplenary session on new computing environments for the classroom, cov-ering such topics as Web technologies and high-speed communicationnetworks, the Internet as a K-12 teaching tool, and the use of virtualreality in graduate education.

CAUGHT IN THE WEB

Notable additions to the APS Web Server

for the month of May. The APS Web Server

can be found at http://www.aps.org

Now Appearing in RMP....

Reviews of Modern Physics is a quarterly journal featuring reviewarticles and colloquia on a wide range of topics in physics. Titlesand brief descriptions of the articles in the July 1996 issue are pro-vided below.

Particle physics summary. The 1996 edition of the biennially publishedReview of Particle Properties appears here in summary form. The presentedition marks the completion of the table of standard-model quarks, withthe discovery of the top. It also includes new sections on solar neutrinos,big-bang nucleosynthesis, and the Hubble constant.

Quantum computation and Shor’s factoring algorithm. Artur Ekertand Richard Jozsa explain in simple physical terms Shor’s algorithm forfactorization of large umbers. The use of quantum interference to performcomputations has attracted great interest among computer analysts andphysicists, and this algorithm provides a striking illustration of the potentialpower of quantum computation.

On the measurement of a weak classical force coupled to a harmonicoscillator: experimental progress. Mark F. Bocko and Roberto Onofriodiscuss quantum noise as a limiting factor in measurements with macro-scopic systems, such as gravitational wave detectors. They also reviewrecent experiments that approach this fundamental limit.

Quantum noise in photonics. C. H. Henry and R. F. Kazarinov reviewthe basic physical phenomena associated with quantum noise in photonicprocesses, those processes involving the generation, amplification, trans-mission, and detection of light. In a style bridging the gap between physicsand engineering sciences, the authors outline the important role played byquantum noise in many applications.

Nuclear magnetic resonance of C60

and fulleride superconductors.Charles H. Pennington and Victor A. Stenger review the contributions ofnuclear magnetic resonance to our understanding of fullerite and fullerides,the materials made from C

60 molecules. Magnetic resonance reveals un-

usual structural properties as well as providing insight into the mechanismfor superconductivity.

Magnetic relaxation in high-temperature superconductors. Y.Yeshurun, Alexis P. Malozemoff, and A. Shaulov review the phenomenonof magnetic relaxation in high-TC materials, which prevented realization ofthe early expectations for superconductivity at liquid-nitrogen tempera-tures. The leakage of magnetic flux from these materials has become awidely studied phenomenon in its own right, which the authors examinewith emphasis on the empirical evidence.

RMP Colloquium:The 18 arbitrary parameters of the standard model in your everydaylife. Robert Cahn explores the many ways in which the 18 parameters ofthe standard model affect the world as we know it. While these parametersare in a sense arbitrary, slight changes in their values would drastically alterthe properties of our universe.

If you would like to subscribe to RMP, please add it to your invoice orcontact:

The American Physical SocietyAttn: Membership DepartmentOne Physics EllipseCollege Park MD 20740-3844Phone: (301) 209-3280Email: membership@aps.org

❏ Domestic, $45 ❏ Foreign Surface, $55 ❏ Optional Air Freight, $70

she said. “They may help contribute toyour decision, but they are never de-signed to be the sole indicator.”However, institutions often ignore thisdictum, as in the case of Siders’ experi-ences with the University of Texasgraduate admissions committee.

The reliance on standardized testing foradmission is slowly beginning tochange. FairTest compiles an annual listof four-year colleges that do not requirestandardized test scores, and there arecurrently 241, compared with 112 in1989. While Harvard’s graduate admis-sions committee requires both the GREgeneral and physics subject test, itsmembers rely more heavily on letters

of recommendation, the personal es-say, and undergraduate records whendeciding whom to admit.

While Siders emphatically believes thatGRE requirements should be droppedfor graduate admissions, Georgi favorsa modified version of the GRE physicssubject test, reducing the number ofquestions by half to give students timeto think through the answers and elimi-nate time pressures, focusing instead onbasic skills and knowledge. However,“As presently constituted, it’s quite pos-sible that the GRE physics subject testdoes more harm than good, and weshould either fix it, or seriously considergetting rid of it altogether,” he said.

Fighting the Gender Gap (continued from page 3)

APS News Online (latest edition)

Units• Updated FHP homepage• Updated DCMP homepage

Membership• Add your personal home page URL

to your Member Directory Listing• Memberships Renewals can now be

done online now using our SECURESERVER.

Meetings• Updated APS Meetings calendar

Careers• More job listing sites

Miscellaneous• Help plan and prioritize the APS E-

print Server• New APS Statements on:

-Office of Energy Research (96.1)-Energy: The Forgotten Crisis (96.2)-Plasma Physics and Fusion Science(96.3)

APS News July 1996

12

THE BACK PAGEGlobalization of Technology Poses Challenges for Policymakersby Mary Lowe Good

While science and technology in Europeand Japan will continue to have impor-tant implications for the U.S., growth inthese countries will be much slower overthe next two decades than in a gooddeal of the rest of the world. Instead,the locus of world economic growth isshifting dramatically to places such asArgentina, Brazil and Mexico in the West,to Indonesia, South Korea and China inthe East. Growth rates in these coun-tries are expected to be phenomenal,and they are soaring now: Argentina at7.4 percent, Indonesia at 7.3 percent,Malaysia at 8.8 percent, South Korea at8.4 percent, Singapore at 10.2 percent,and China at 11.5 percent.

As a group, these newly industrializedcountries pose a competitive challengethat could erode the high-tech positionof the advanced industrial nations. Theyrecognize the linkage between technol-ogy, growth and jobs, and view theirparticipation in world markets for high-tech products as a matter of nationalpride. Many have set their sights on join-ing the ranks of the world’stechnological leaders. To that end, manyhave established a basic two-prongedstrategy directly aimed at economicgrowth competitiveness: first, acquiretechnology from the world’s leaders tocompensate for inadequate science andtechnology infrastructures; and second,address those short-comings by aggres-sively developing indigenoustechnology resources. Many of thesenations have backed up their strategieswith formal development plans.

A look at South Korea offers a harbin-ger of things to come if these nations bringtheir national visions to fruition. SouthKorea has great ambitions to become aG-7 nation by 2001 and an equal partnerwith the advanced countries. It plans topave its path to advanced industrial sta-tus with information technology, finechemicals, biotechnology, new materials,and aeronautics. Some Korean compa-nies are now working in cutting edgetechnologies that were once the sole do-main of advanced industrial nations.Samsung, a South Korean company, isnow the world’s largest maker of DRAMs,and Korea plans to spend $50 billion onan information superhighway.

Since 1980, the South Korean govern-ment has increased its R&D investmentsignificantly. The science and technol-ogy budget has increased by 15 percentannually and jumped to over 30 per-cent in the 1996 budget. The Koreangovernment plans to increase its R&Dspending to over 4 percent of the GDPby 1998, and to 5 percent by the year2000. Following the same trend, theKorean private sector has rapidly aug-mented its R&D investment by about 20percent annually, encouraged in largepart by government incentives. As a re-sult, total R&D investment has increasedfrom $418 million in 1981 to over $5.4billion in 1995.

While one can certainly say that SouthKorea is just one country, and its re-

sources and capabilities incomparablein size and scope to those of the U.S.,Europe and Japan, all indicators suggestthat there will be many such nationsboth crowding and expanding worldmarkets, challenging traditional marketleaders for a share. It is happening now.From 1994 to 1995, non-Japanese semi-conductor suppliers in the Asia/Pacificregion increased their world marketshare from 8.9 percent to 12.1 percent.The Europeans lost very little; instead,these gains came at the expense of Ja-pan and North American countries.

In my view, policies designed to addressthe globalization of technology shouldseek to leverage a nation’s interests inthe global market place, but do so with-out impeding world business andgrowth. First, in the international arena,we need to agree on some reasonablerules of the game.

For example, the Trade Related Aspectsof Intellectual Property (TRIPs) Agree-ment will raise the standards ofprotection given copyrights, trademarks,patents, industrial designs, semiconduc-tor chip layout designs, and trade secretsin all of the countries that become mem-bers of the World Trade Organization.High-tech companies should be majorbeneficiaries. For instance, U.S. softwarevendors supply 75 percent of the $77billion world market for packaged soft-ware. Yet it has been estimated thatpiracy deprived U.S. software develop-ers of about $13 billion in worldwiderevenues in 1993. U.S. vendors’ futurecompetitiveness depends most signifi-cantly on the level of protection ofintellectual property rights worldwide.

The globalization of technology hasbrought many new opportunities forbilateral R&D cooperation and formultilateral cooperation. Theprecompetitive technologies developedjointly in such collaborations are clearlydestined for commercial use and, thus,these arrangements must be carefullycrafted to create the appropriate balancebetween cooperation and competition.The U.S. Commerce Department hasworked hard to ensure adequate pro-tection of intellectual property rights,and to develop frameworks that ensurebalanced contributions and equitablebenefits. The Intellectual ManufacturingSystems Program was ground-breakingin the development and testing of sucha framework for multilateral coopera-tion, and we hope it will serve as amodel for other international initiatives.

Second, nations must recognize that theglobalization of technology has impor-tant implications for their domesticpolicies. For example, the U.S. Food andDrug Administration’s product approvalprocess and export regulatory require-ments are critical issues affecting U.S.exports of medical equipment and sup-plies. This industry cites regulatorydelays as one of the key reasons thatU.S. manufacturers have relocated someof their production and R&D facilitiesoverseas. Recent data show a significant

increase in overseas investment bymedical device firms. Foreign direct in-vestment capital outflows from the U.S.grew from an annual outflow of $333million in 1989 to more than $1 billionin 1992.

Finally, with the globalization of capi-tal, labor and technology, countrieseverywhere are striving to attract theseengines of wealth creation to theirshores, help them grow, and keep themwithin their borders. In the U.S., we havetaken a number of measures to makeour country a more attractive place todo business. For example, we are work-ing toward deficit reduction and abalanced budget to free up capital forprivate sector investment. The recentlypassed telecommunications reforms willunleash a tidal wave of investment, cre-ativity and new technology that willfurther buttress the U.S. lead in the In-formation Age. And the President andVice President have championed thecause of modern infrastructure throughthe National Information Initiative, gen-erating interest, excitement andinvestment across the nation.

Thus, global competition is taking placeon two levels. First is the competitionbetween companies. Second is the com-petition between nations to attract andretain the engines of wealth creation thatincreasingly skip around the globe look-ing for the best opportunities. This is acompetition for investment capital, tech-nology, business activity, and the jobsthat come with them.

People around the world have recog-nized this competition between nations.For those nations who have little in theeconomic arena, the competition is per-ceived to be filled with opportunity andhope for the future. In contrast, for thosenations that have had much, includingthe U.S., this competition has raisedmuch anxiety. Yet we cannot turn backthe clock and we cannot secede fromthe global competition. Our challengeis to prepare ourselves to seize the op-portunities and create fertile ground foreconomic growth, with a healthy busi-ness climate, a modern infrastructure,and a world-class workforce.

Mary Lowe Good is the Under secretaryfor Technology in the U.S. Departmentof Commerce. This article was adaptedfrom her comments at the 1996 APSMarch Meeting in St. Louis, Missouri.

Technology is directly linked tonational economic growth, and its

globalization poses difficult challengesfor policymakers, not just in technologypolicy, but in areas such as trade andregulatory policy. Technology-relatedpolicy issues are made all the moredifficult as one struggles to interpret thenational interest, when much of thetechnology needed for national growthis developed and managed bymultinational companies whosemarkets, operations, and sources ofcapital are distributed throughout theglobe.

The sources of this growth — capital,technology, and even labor — are in-creasingly globalized. Investment capitalflows around the world daily in searchof the greatest returns. As an exampleof the globalization of labor, thousandsof engineers in India are designing com-puter chips for America’s leading firms,and beaming these designs overnight toCalifornia and Texas via satellite. Asmore workers telecommute on a globalbasis, we may well begin to ask, “Whatis the American workforce?”

But it is technology that contributes mostto economic growth. Leading econo-mists estimate that technology accountsfor at least one half of economic growthin the advanced industrial nations overthe past 50 years. This is not to say thatscience should take a back seat to tech-nology. Science is an integral part ofthe balanced portfolio of research anadvanced nation must have to ensureits long-term growth. But science alonecannot secure a nation’s competitiveedge. The results of basic research areavailable to the world — often instanta-neously over the Internet — with thepotential to generate economic benefitsfor any company capable of using thoseresults.

In contrast, in this high stakes pokergame we call global competition, tech-nology — by virtue of its proximity tothe market — must be played close tothe vest. Yet as the world’s nationsscramble for a winning hand, technolo-gies — in the form of products,know-how, intellectual property, peopleand companies — are being traded,transferred, hired, bought and sold ona global basis.

In addition to global trade in technol-ogy, technology infrastructure — oncethe sole domain of advanced industrialnations — is increasingly globalized asnations around the world recognize thelinkage between indigenous technologyassets, and economic growth and jobcreation. In the U.S., our attention haslong been focused on the technologypolicies of our European and Japanesetrading partners, and we have carefullyexamined their science and technologypolicies and R&D spending patterns.Support for R&D remains strong, andcollaborative efforts — industry-govern-ment partnerships, as well as bilateraland multilateral cooperation — aremajor strategic thrusts.

The Back Page is intended as a forum to foster discussion on topics of interest to the scientific community. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the APS, itselected officers, or staff. APS NEWS welcomes and encourages letters and submissions from its members responding to these and other issues.