PRESS ACTIVITIES AT THE MEETING
During the week a number of press conferences will be held. A press conference schedule will be issued in early March, along with further tips about notable papers at the meeting (see also the list below). Science writers will be able to attend any regular invited- or contributed-paper session at the meeting.

THE FOLLOWING LIST OF ITEMS IS INTENDED AS A SUMMARY OF POSSIBLE STORY IDEAS AND SELECTED HIGHLIGHTS AT THE MEETING.

FOUNDATIONS OF EVOLUTION
From gene chips to microfluidics and nanotechnology, new tools now exist to test and explore biological evolution at a much deeper level than was possible 20 years ago. An entire session will be devoted to cutting-edge physical sciences approaches for bolstering the study of evolution. According to speaker Daniel Fisher of Harvard (fisher@physics.harvard.edu), evolution can now become a quantitative experimental science, with the ability to do such things as manipulate microorganisms at the genetic level, move biomolecules with microfluidics, and make detailed measurements with state-of-the-art optics tools. The University of Chicago's Jim Shapiro (jsha@uchicago.edu), another speaker at the session, shows that an information-science approach is bound to offer many new details about evolution. As he points out, the results of 50 years of molecular biology research have demonstrated that the genome is not a passive blueprint, but rather a complex information-processing unit, and that cells have "natural genetic engineering tools" for restructuring DNA molecules. Other speakers at the session include Michael Deem of Rice University ("Life Has Evolved to Evolve"), Juan Keymer of Princeton (evolutionary ecology of E. coli), and Richard Lenski, Unive
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Contact: James Riordon
riordon@aps.org
301-209-3238
American Physical Society
17-Mar-2006