Meeting Briefs

The APS Texas Section held its annual fall meeting October 5-7 at the University of Texas in Arlington. Invited speakers discussed a broad range of topics, including recent developments in superconductivity and light element systems; materials under pressure; excitonic superfluidity in quantum hall bilayers; applications of slow light physics; and plasmonics. Non-technical highlights included two planetarium shows, one on black holes, and the second on the “stars of the pharaohs.” Friday evening’s traditional banquet featured a special performance by actor and professor Dennis Maher of selections from Peter Parnell’s play QED, based on the writings of Richard Feynman.
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That same weekend, the APS Four Corners Section also held its annual fall meeting at Utah State University in Logan, featuring a broad range of invited lectures from various physics subfields. Topics included modeling how space weather impacts Earth; the sustainable hydrogen economy; creating cold molecules; integrating nanotechnology; gravitational holography; the quantum universe; and imaging coherent electron flow in 2D gases. Friday evening’s banquet speaker was NASA’s Mary Cleaves, who gave an overview of some of the highlights of her agency’s space program.
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The APS New England Section held its annual fall meeting October 13-14 at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. The technical program had an unusual focus: the physics of sports and athletics, with invited talks on the dynamics and kinematics of baseballs, baseball bats, footballs, dancers, the variability of sports records, and the effects of technology on sports. Speakers included Yale University’s Robert Adair (The Physics of Baseball) and University of Nebraska’s Timothy Gay (The Physics of Football). There were also technical talks on time’s arrow, large momentum transfer collisions off simple atoms, and the kinematics of liquid crystals.
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Also holding its annual fall meeting October 13-14 was the APS Ohio Section, which convened at the University Akron/Wayne College in Orrville, Ohio. The technical program featured invited talks on Benjamin Franklin and the honor of Dutch seamen; elastic instabilities in rubber; adhesion of model polymer membranes; Raman spectroscopy of surfaces; and neutron reflection studies of confined polymers.
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