RENAISSANCE PAINTING AND OPTICAL DEVICES
Painter David Hockney and physicist Charles Falco (Univ of Arizona) began collaborating a few years ago in proposing the idea that some Renaissance painters used optical devices to aid to in the production of realistic, almost photographic, details in their works. This hypothesis has generated a great deal of controversy in art-history circles. Falco (520-621-6771, falco@u.arizona.edu) will summarize evidence in favor of the theory and his work with Hockney. He will also give a public lecture on this subject at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore on the Wednesday of the meeting (at 6:30 PM). (Session H4a)

NANOTUBE YARNS AND TEXTILES
New carbon nanotube yarns and sheets, stronger than steel and extremely light, could be used for a wide variety of futuristic applications, including artificial muscles, solar cells, energy storage, solar sails, electrically conducting appliqués, and several types of lamps, displays and sensors. These sheets are transparent, flexible, light, and extremely strong, and can be produced quickly. Ray Baughman of the University of Texas at Dallas (ray.baughman@utdallas.edu, 972-883-6538) will describe how he and colleagues produce these textiles by starting with a forest of nanotubes and spinning them into long, thin sheets, and will evaluate their use for some of these amazing applications. (N32.1)

CHOOSING SEX IS A MATTER OF TIME
One of the major unsolved questions in evolutionary biology is why sexual replication appears to be the preferred, indeed often the only, mode of replication for com
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Contact: James Riordon
riordon@aps.org
301-209-3238
American Physical Society
17-Mar-2006