College Park, MD, January 23, 2003: The biggest physics meeting of the year, the American Physical Society (APS) March Meeting, will be held March 3-7, 2003 in Austin, Texas. An estimated record 5600 talks will be delivered. The APS March Meeting is traditionally a showcase for both important fundamental physics and also the kind of applied physics that forms the backbone of modern technology in all its diverse forms: computing, displays, lighting, photon-based and wireless communications, global positioning, smart materials, medical imaging, automated study of biological molecules, sensing and scanning, printing, the mixing of powders and fluids, and early cancer detection.

Further down in this press release you will see a more detailed list of possible highlight sessions at the meeting. But here are some quick examples of the immense diversity of topics to be exhibited during the week. In the area of solid state lighting, LED's with high efficiencies and high power will lead to LED backlighting and auto headlights (session V7). Magnetic resonance force microscopy (MRFM), the marriage of STM and MRI technology, seeks to produce atomic-scale images of biomolecules (session P14). The smallest doped fullerenes, cage molecules consisting of less than 30 carbon atoms, have been turned into solids (paper A25.1).

Other topics: cultivating physics and physicists in Africa (H2); radiation processing in food packaging, mail handling, and bio-electrodes (B8); global infrasound monitoring in the atmosphere for studying volcanoes and weather (paper H3.2); assessing the value of physics research to the economy (session S2); superfluid gyroscopes (G4.2); single-molecule LEDs (P11.3); quantum cellular automata (P19.4); cerebral synchronization (N15.12); are sunscreens bad for you? (X31.3)

SOME EXPECTED HIGHLIGHTS OF THE MEETING

NEW DISCOVERIES IN
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Contact: David Harris
harris@aps.org
301-209-3238
American Physical Society
23-Jan-2003