The Nose-Hoover thermostat is a deterministic dynamical system designed for computing phase space integrals for the canonical ensemble. Newton's equations are modified by coupling an additional reservoir variable to the physical variables. The correct sampling of the phase space is dependent on the Nose-Hoover dynamics being ergodic. In joint work with Legoll and Moeckel, we have proven that the dynamics is not ergodic when the ``mass'' of the reservoir is large by demonstrating the existence of invariant tori that separate phase space into invariant regions.

We will present numerical experiments that show that adding additional reservoir variables as proposed by Martyna, Klein, and Tuckerman can be consistent with ergodicity.

The possibility that experiments at high energy nuclear
accelerators could create new forms of matter that would
ultimately destroy the Earth has been considered several times in
past decades. A review of experiments at the Bevalac at Lawrence
Berkeley National Lab in a Physics Today article in 1993 resulted
in the authors being placed on the FBI Unabomber watch list.
Concerns that experiments at RHIC at Brookhaven National Lab might
create black holes or nuggets of stable strange quark matter
resulted in a flurry of articles in the popular press. I will
discuss this history, and I will also discuss the book
CATASTROPHE: Risk and Response in which Richard Posner writes
"Congress should consider enacting a law that would require all
scientific research projects in specified areas, such as
nanotechnology and experimental high-energy physics, to be
reviewed by a federal catastrophic-risks assessment board and
forbidden if the board found that the project would create an
undue risk to human survival."

The pulsar wind nebula (PWN) powered by PSR B1509-58 is one of the few Crab- and Vela-like systems with a one-sided jet and arc- or torus-like structures. We use new and archival Chandra and ROSAT data to study the time variability of the X-ray emission from the PWN on timescales of one week to twelve years. Near the pulsar, we find a number of transient, small-scale knots that are possibly a result of turbulence in the flows surrounding the pulsar. The jet also shows significant variability most likely due to magnetohydrodynamic sausage or kink instabilities. Apparent outflow of material along the jet is observed with a velocity of 0.5c. The outer arc shows transverse structural variations and appears to have moved inward with a velocity of 0.03c over three years. We compare the observed variability with similar structures in the Crab and Vela PWNe and we discuss implications for various PWN outflow models. This work was supported by NASA through SAO grant GO3-4063A.

A traveling exhibit on efficient worker seating and posture traveled Germany from 1928 through 1932. The traveling exhibit offered more than suggestions on increasing workers' comfort and healthful support; it also illustrated an industrial need for regularity and uniformity in human motion, and the creation of a pathology of human movements that did not fit regular and uniform patterns. The exhibit, and in particular the Elmo workchair, featured in the exhibit and designed in the small electrical motors division of Siemens-Schuckertwerke, illustrate how an industrial norm of efficiency, which required straight lines and smooth curves of motion in machines, was mirrored in a pathology of human motions. The exhibit offered a solution: people made efficient by a mechanical form of discipline, their movements constrained much as were those of a machine.

The world will soon start to run out of cheap, easily produced oil. If we turn to the other fossil fuels to replace the missing oil, we might do incalculable damage to the climate of our planet, and we are likely to start running out of all fossil fuels, coal included, by the end of this century. We will take a careful look at this situation and all of its ramifications.

The neutral gas content of the Universe over the redshift interval z=0 to 5 is dominated by the so-called "damped Lyman-alpha systems" or DLAs. DLAs are the highest column density quasar absorption line systems, and it is believed they are associated with high redshift galaxies. I will summarize our recent work on these systems. In particular, my research has focussed on understanding the physics of the interstellar gas in these absorbers in order to constrain their relationship with luminous galaxies and on the use of these systems as probes of the nucleosynthetic origins of the elements.

Vito Volterra, born in 1860, died in Rome in 1940, having lived a tumultuous life that spanned the period from unification of Italy to the outbreak of World War II. Coming from a Jewish family of modest means, he became a world-renowned mathematician, developing a powerful mathematical language and theories that influenced everything from physics and applied mathematics to biology and economics. What manner of man was Volterra and how did he come to leave behind such a legacy?

I will describe the response of a fermionic condensate of cold atoms to a sudden change of the interaction strength. The system goes to a steady nonequilibrium state, which we determine exactly. As the coupling is decreased below a certain critical value, a "dynamical phase transition" occurs. The final state of the system combines normal and superfluid states in a peculiar way. For example, the gap vanishes, while the superfluid stiffness is nonzero. Possibilities for experimental observation of the novel state will be discussed.

I show that a gamma-ray burst afterglow model combined with an
underlying Plateau Type II supernova can fit the data of at least one Bright Linear Type II supernova, SN 1979C. I suggest that the Bright Linear subclass of Type IIs could be represented by this model. I describe a scenario in which a hydrogen rich massive star core collapses causing a jet explosion that punctures through the star and initiates a shock that ejects the hydrogen-rich envelope. The jet is responsible for a low density, high energy ejecta causing a gamma-ray burst optical afterglow. It is suggested that the jet contains enough energy to create
an asymmetric shock wave that ejects the He core and the overlying H envelope. However it is speculated that the energy of the jet should have been dissipated by the hydrogen envelope and thus not causing the ejecta to expand with the high velocities typically seen in Type Ic supernovae associated with gamma-ray bursts. The model presented here could be an example of a failed GRB and X-ray flashes.

We investigate the energy and phase relaxation of a superconducting qubit caused by a single quasiparticle. In our model, the qubit is an isolated system consisting of a small island (Cooper-pair box) and a larger superconductor (reservoir) connected with each other by a tunable Josephson junction. If such system contains an odd number of electrons, then even at lowest temperatures a single quasiparticle is present in the qubit. The quasiparticle resides in the reservoir with an overwhelming probability, but its quick round-trips to the Cooper-pair box lead to the relaxation of the qubit. We derive master equations governing the evolution of the qubit coherences and populations. We find that the kinetics of the qubit can be characterized by two time scales - quasiparticle escape time from reservoir to the box 1 / Γ_in and quasiparticle relaxation time τ . The former is determined by the dimensionless normal-state conductance g_T of the Josephson junction and one-electron level spacing δ_r in the reservoir ($\Gamma_{in} \sim g_{_T}\delta_r$), and the latter is due
to electron-phonon interaction. We find that phase coherence is damped on the time scale of 1 / Γ_in . The qubit energy relaxation depends on the ratio of the two characteristic times, τ and 1 / Γ_in , and also on the ratio of temperature
T to the Josephson energy E_J . In the limit and , the relaxation of
the qubit populations occurs in two stages. In the first stage,
, the initial population of the excited state changes only by a small amount . This quasi-stationary state relaxes to full equilibrium over a longer
time scale .

The particle physics is at a very exciting stage. Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Neutrino Mass, and Weak Force all suggest that TeV is the relevant energy scale of the problem. We are just about to probe this energy scale. The past two years the particle physics
community went through the planning process for the next twenty years. The outcome was the realization that there are many deep scientific questions that can be addressed in the near future.

How do we induce disorder? In open systems, as in stirred granular mixtures, this is not an easy question to answer. Circular drum "mixers" that rely on diffusive mixing for particulate mixtures produce a streaky segregation pattern reminiscent of viscous fingering patterns in fluids. Non- circular drum "mixers" that employ chaotic advection to improve mixing still produce segregation patterns, though here, regions surrounding elliptic and hyperbolic points are tagged by the different types of particles. I will show that these segregation patterns can be modeled by considering the interaction between coexistent solid- and liquid- like phases of the granular materials.

We will concentrate on Chapter 10 (Professional Development for TAs) in Elaine Seymour's new book Partners in Inovation. (Copies of chapter 10 can be obtained in room 161 B.)

Mega-masers, very powerful cosmic water masers, exist in the accretion disks around some active galactic nuclei. The mega-maser in NGC4258 serves as a prototypical system that provides direct evidence of a thin accretion disk around a super-massive black hole. The system can also be used for distance determination geometrically, providing an accurate measure of the Hubble Constant with minimum systematic effects.
It has been pointed out that the determination of the Hubble Constant to better than a few percent is the single most important complement to the CMB for measuring the dark energy equation of state at z ~ 0.5. A major program of determination of the Hubble Constant with mega-masers using the Green Band 100m telescope (GBT) and the Very Long Baseline Array will be described.

As a physicist, cultural figure, science administrator, and extremely complex individual Oppenheimer, his life, and his science encompassed a wide swath of 20th century American history. In this talk I will offer an overview of the biographical approach I attempted to follow in my recent book, how I handled some of the important issues involved, and how I envision its place in the constellation of recent Oppenheimer studies.

The Spitzer Space Telescope is revolutionizing our understanding of star formation and the dusty interstellar media of galaxies. The unprecedented resolution and sensitivity of the Spitzer images, when combined with observations at ultraviolet, visible, and radio wavelengths, are providing for the first time complete, detailed maps of the current star formation covering the full range of interstellar environments and evolutionary stages. The same data delineate the structure and topology of the cold ISM in galaxies with unprecedented depth and detail. The Spitzer mid-infrared spectra provide information on the physical conditions in all phases of gas, from the ionized regions surrounding massive stars to the surrounding PDR, neutral, molecular, and shocked environments.

This talk will highlight results from the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey (SINGS), a comprehensive, multi-wavelength Legacy survey of 75 nearby galaxies that span the full range of types, luminosities, and infrared properties found in the local universe, with a special emphasis on the power of spatially resolved spectroscopy to probe the variable mid-infrared emission spectrum of star forming galaxies.

Between 1904 and World War II, a group of researchers ranged the world over in an effort to understand the Earth's magnetism. They called themselves "magneticians" and they worked for the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Directed by Louis Agricola Bauer (1865-1932) and John Adam Fleming (1877-1956), these investigators followed carefully selected routes through Africa, Asia, South America, and other remote regions. They carried with them a heavy complement of instruments, camp gear, and evening wear, for those times when they reached outposts of European civilization. This paper will characterize both the research undertaken by the magneticians and their travel experience during a critical early period in the history of geophysics. The Carnegie magneticians provided the uniformity of instrumentation and practice, but also the atmosphere for innovation in theory, that allowed rapid change in geomagnetic research to begin in the mid-20th century

I will give a brief overview of the science goals, design, and construction status of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope project (ACT). In addition, I will describe the instrument we have built at Princeton, called CCAM, as a test-bed for various ACT receiver technologies and present our first sky observations.

This talk will feature the different aspects of the W charge symmetry measurement in the muon channel at D0. It will include a discussion of the Parton Distribution Functions in relation to the charge asymmetry. This talk will also briefly touch upon the challenges of doing experimental high energy physics at a hadron collider.

Global warming has exacerbated the need for a radical transformation of global energy systems away from fossil fuels. Given the large, but environmentally problematic, resources of coal, a revolutionary energy transition might be deferred to the 22 Century, or later. However, the well-known impacts, like the sea surface temperature and the sea level rising and the shrinking glaciers were all predicted decades ago by climate scientists as a result of increasing human inputs of greenhouse gases, primarily CO2 from fossil fuel burning. If 2005 was warmest year on record (and likely the warmest in the last 100,000 years), what awaits us as CO2 continues it's inexorable rise? Uncertainty regarding future warming is mainly associated with cloud radiative feedback, but the recently observed global warming is sufficiently close to the high end of the predicted range to warrant prompt action. The question is: What to do to prevent a warming in excess of 2 oC, above which it may become impossible to prevent the disintegration of the Greenland Ice Sheet, and later the West Antarctic Ice sheet as global GDP continues to grow 2-3%/yr. it will be necessary to generate 100-300% of all primary energy from non-CO2 emitting sources by mid-century. This is an enormous, but I believe doable, task. The long-term goal of a sustainable global energy system capable of supporting high-tech civilization with a minimum adverse impact on the climate and the ecosystem needs to be aggressively explored now. Accomplishing this energy transformation, as the world economy grows by a factor of five by mid-century, may be greatest challenge to applied science in history.

We introduce a combined transport approach employing relativistic 3D-hydrodynamics for the early, dense, deconfined stage of the reaction and a microscopic non-equilibrium model for the later hadronic stage where the equilibrium assumptions are not valid anymore. Within this approach we study dynamics of hot, bulk QCD matter, which is expected to be created in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions at RHIC. Our approach is capable of the self-consistent calculation of the freezeout of a hadronic system, while accounting for the collective flow on the hadronization hypersurface generated by the QGP expansion. In particular, we perform a detailed analysis of the reaction dynamics,
hadronic freezeout, radial and elliptic flows.

The Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer (MROI) is being designed and built at New Mexico Tech in collaboration with the University of Cambridge. The interferometer will be located in the Magdalena mountains about 30 miles W of Socorro at an altitude of 10,500 ft. This facility class interferometer is being designed to produce direct images of star and planet forming regions, complex stellar systems at various stages in their evolution, and the hearts of Active Galactic Nuclei, all with sub-milliarcsecond resolution. The completed interferometer will be comprised of ten 1.4m telescopes in four scalable configurations, operating from 600 nm to 2.4 microns. We have several of the long lead-time components under contract and will be breaking ground on the interferometer buildings in late spring this year. First light (fringes and closure phase) is expected in 2008 with commissioning to be completed by late 2009. I will present the reference science mission, flow-down from the science to the design requirements and current status of MROI.

What can rhetoricians bring to the study of scientific arguments? This paper explores how devices identified in rhetorical stylistics, figures of speech that were known as schemes, were used in many well known scientific texts. The device initially used for illustration is the antithesis. In the mid-nineteenth century, August Kekule and Gregor Mendel argued for insights that depended critically on antithetical expressions and reasoning. One hundred years earlier, Lavoisier, in his one foray into geology, used the same constitutive verbal device to organize his observations and claims, just as Newton, Harvey, Galileo and Gilbert had done in the century before him. The persuasive and potentially heuristic use in natural philosophy of an argument form like the antithesis has peculiar roots in the combined grammatical, rhetorical and dialectical training established during the humanist educational reforms of the sixteenth century. The rhetorically-inflected dialectical treatises of Rudolph Agricola, Philip Melanchthon and their many imitators, textbooks for the leading figures in early modern natural philosophy, reinforced the role of stylistic patterns in argument invention originally established in classical rhetoric. Thus in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, style and argument, now usually in the custody of different disciplines, reinforced each other productively. Understanding their potentially productive role depends on seeing the schemes as epitomes of certain lines of reasoning, and as epitomes they can also carry the core of an argument from text to text. The persistence of these "figures of argument," beyond their moment of cultural salience, invites an explanation based on the potential persuasiveness of pattern completion in language processing.

The cosmic microwave background is the oldest light in the universe. Linear polarization of this light carries information on a variety of physical processes ranging from the formation of the first stars to tests of inflationary physics. Driving this field is the prospect of detecting the signature of gravity waves excited during inflation, which would provide a model-independent measurement of the energy scale for inflation. I will discuss
recent measurements and the prospects for an eventual test of GUT-scale physics.

Brown dwarfs and low-mass stars show evidence of complicated atmospheres, including a variety of molecular species and clouds. Infrared observations are one of the best probes of the physics of these objects, but up until recently these observations have been limited in studies from ground-based telescopes by atmospheric absorption and insufficient sensitivity. With the launch of the on the Spitzer Space Telescope with its Infrared Spectrograph (IRS) instrument we now have the capability to undertake a systematic study of the atmospheric structure and chemistry in these cool objects. The IRS Dim Suns team has compiled spectra from objects ranging from M1 dwarfs with effective temperatures 3,800K of down to T8 dwarfs with effective temperatures of 700 K. This talk will present these results and discuss their implications for our understanding of cool dwarf atmospheric physics and structure.

It has been suggested that there may exist a connection between the highly damped quasinormal modes of black holes and the semi-classical level spacing in the black hole quantum area spectrum. It is still unclear weather this implies a significant physical "duality" or merely a numerical coincidence. It is therefore crucial to understand the physical/mathematical nature of the highly damped quasinormal modes in as many different situations as possible. We calculate analytically the highly damped quasinormal mode spectra of generic single-horizon black holes using the rigorous WKB techniques of Andersson and Howls. We thereby provide a firm foundation for previous analysis, and point out some of their possible limitations. The numerical coefficient in the real part of the highly damped frequency is generically determined by the behavior of coupling of the perturbation to the gravitational field near the origin, as expressed in tortoise coordinates. This fact makes it difficult to understand how the (in)famous ln(3) could be related to the quantum gravitational microstates near the horizon.

One of the important developments in elementary particle physics over the past ten years has been the precision study of the weak interactions through experiments in e+e- annihilation. Now, building on the successes of this study, particle physicists have proposed the construction of a giant e+e- linear collider, which will use the same tools to explore deeper into the structure of the weak interactions and even beyond them. In this colloquium, I will first describe some of the recent precision weak-interaction experiments and the questions they raise that might be answered at higher energies. I will then describe the International Linear Collider (ILC) Project. Finally, I will describe experiments that can be carried out at the ILC that bear on the
mysteries of the Higgs boson, cosmic dark matter, and other major
issues of particle physics.

The resistive anomaly in disordered itinerant ferromagnets has a long history, dating back to the first observation by Gerlach in 1932. In 1968, Fisher and Langer proposed a theory for this anomaly based on anomalous scaling. We show that the resistivity can exhibit a stronger singularity than predicted in that work. Close to the Curie temperature the correlation length becomes large compared to the mean free path and the quenched disorder is probed by diffusivecarriers. This forces one to go beyond the Boltzmann description used in all previous works. Our results are relevant for ferromagnets with low Curie temperature, whose mobility is limited by disorder.

For the last 5 years, physicists, chemists and biologists have traveled to India for the annual 3-week Science Workshops for Tibetan Monks. The purpose of the workshops are to introduce basic concepts of western science to Tibetan Monks who are in advanced stages of their religious education. During recent years, portions of the curricula for the workshops have been derived from research-based materials developed by the Physics Education Group at the University of Washington called "Physics by Inquiry." For this seminar, I will describe a recently developed set of tutorials on Special Relativity and share my experiences teaching these tutorials to 60 Tibetan Monks in a small village near Dharamsala, India.

Thirty years ago, in Animal Liberation, I argued for the then-novel view that we owe nonhuman animals equal consideration of their interests, and that to give them less is speciesism, a prejudice as objectionable as racism and sexism. I also argued that the implications of this position are that we should cease to eat animals, and that our use of them for research should be, at least, very drastically curtailed and controlled. After 30 years of debate about this proposal among philosophers, is there any kind of consensus about the moral status of animals?

I shall argue that there is a substantial degree of consensus, if not complete unanimity, that pure speciesism is ethically indefensible. There is, however, more controversy about the moral significance of features like autonomy, rationality and self-awareness, the boundaries of which run substantially, but not entirely, parallel to the boundaries of our species. At the practical level, there is again widespread agreement that factory farming, and research that involves significant animal suffering without a realistic prospect of major benefits for humans or animals, are wrong. There is, however, no agreement on the eating of humanely raised animals, or on less objectionable forms of research.

It has now been known for over a decade that low-mass stars located in star-forming regions are very frequently members of binary and multiple systems, even more so than main sequence stars in the solar neighborhood. Analyzing the statistical properties of young multiple systems in a variety of environments represents a powerful approach to place stringent constraints on star formation theories. I will first review a number of recent results related to the multiplicity of T Tauri stars. A series of studies focusing on the multiplicity and properties of optically-undetected, heavily embedded protostars will then be presented. These objects are much younger than the previously studied pre-main sequence stars, and they therefore offer a closer look at the primordial population of multiple systems. Finally, I will discuss recent results of an adaptive optics imaging survey for multiplicity in the young Eta Chamaeleontis cluster.

Patent protection has been granted to animals in the United States, Europe, and other countries only in the last twenty years, but at least since the late nineteenth century, animal breeders managed to devise alternative arrangements to protect the intellectual property (IP) in their living products. Fulfilling the requirements for such protection for example, being able to specify the product -- depended on biological knowledge of the animal. The arrangements also had to take the natural reproductivity of the animals into account. The long history of IP in animals is thus a story of the interplay between the development of biological knowledge and methods of breeding on the one side and of the arrangements at any given time that this body of knowledge and skills permitted. Ultimately, the patentability of animals was enabled by the exquisite specificity and reproducibility provided by the identification of DNA as the hereditary material and the ability to manipulate it with recombinant techniques.

The Sun is the most energetic particle accelerator in the solar system, producing ions up to 10s of GeV and electrons to 100s of MeV, in both large solar flares and fast coronal mass ejections (CMEs), but through different physical mechanisms. Solar flares are the most powerful explosions in the solar system, releasing up to 1032-1033 ergs in 100-1000s, most likely through magnetic reconnection, with up to ~10-50% of this energy in accelerated electrons and ions. The intense solar energetic particle (SEP) events directly observed in the interplanetary medium, however, appear to be accelerated by shock waves driven by fast CMEs. The RHESSI (Ramaty High Resolution Solar Spectroscopic Imager) mission launched in 2002 provides a new window on particle acceleration at the Sun, through imaging spectroscopy of the hard X-ray (HXR)/gamma-ray continuum and gamma-ray line emission produced by the accelerated electrons and ions, respectively. I will present results from RHESSI, including the first imaging of solar energetic ions at the Sun, the first high-resolution gamma-ray line spectroscopy and HXR imaging spectroscopy of solar flares. I will discuss the implications for our understanding of the flare energy release and particle acceleration processes, and of the relationship of flare particle acceleration to SEPs observed near 1 AU.

The manipulation of matter at the atomic scales facilitates understanding of the fundamental properties of magnetism and opens the possibility of designing systems with novel magnetic properties with limitless industrial applications. My work seeks to identify nano-scale magnetic coupling mechanisms in nanostructures assemblies and to better understand different magnetic phases and the associated transitions. This was accomplished through the study of two prototype systems: Fe nanodots of controlled size and density on single crystal substrates of nonmagnetic metals, and fractal – dimensional Fe on Cu(111). The first system shows the presence of a novel magnetic coupling in the nanodot arrays through the surface substrate, allowing the design of a Fe nanodot/Cu multilayer system with tunable magnetism in bulk and on surface. The second system shows a magnetic phase transition with unusual interface magnetism. In both systems, a new magnetic characteristic has been observed.

After reviewing the general evidence that supermassive black holes influence the formation and properties of galactic scale structure, I will discuss the impact that jetted active galaxies have on the intracluster medium of galaxy clusters. In particular, I will present some recent hydroynamic simulation work which aims to understand the feedback process that prevents cooling flows within the intracluster medium. I will end by discussing new observational results that present some surprising conclusions about the fueling of these radio-galaxies.

This presentation is designed to clarify the value of developing systematic studies of ignorance as a component of any robust theory of knowledge. I employ feminist efforts to recover and create knowledge of women's bodies in the contemporary women's health movement as a case study for cataloging different types of ignorance and shed light on the nature of their production, as well as to understand the ways resistance movements can be a helpful site for understanding how to identify, critique, and transform ignorance.

In this talk I will outline some of the exciting aspects of high energy nuclear collisions and talk about how they can be used to study the high temperature and high density regimes of QCD. The journey will begin with color glass states in large nuclei, witness the creation of very strong gluon fields, move on to a thermalized quark gluon plasma, finally arriving at the point where we see the cooling plasma freeze out into known hadrons at a critical temperature T_c. I will also talk about probes that are used to gather additional information along the way.

diSessa presents his ideas about "how new computational representations can change the landscape of learning important scientific ideas." He discusses "how intuitive knowledge - a much ignored and maligned component of human competence - is actually the platform on which students build scientific understanding." diSessa suggests that "Computer-based representations support this important kind of knowledge especially well." (If you would like copies of some of the material to be discussed stop in room 161 B.)

One of the greatest benefits of missions to other planets is the novel sense of bafflement that comes from seeing new and unexpected phenomenon. With Cassini in orbit of Saturn for nearly two years, we are comfortingly confused. I will present a few of my favorite sources of confusion and our attempts to understand them. This include how gap-moons create waves on the edges of rings (and what the waves tell us about the moons), the growth of small moons embedded in the rings, and how a careful photometry combined with numerical modeling can coax the rings to tell us their secrets.

In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled (in Loving v. Virginia) that state anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional. Historians who have discussed this significant change have focused on a number of important factors leading up to the decision. Conspicuously absent, has been a consideration of changes in biological thought. Indeed, William Provine has argued that there were no changes in genetics that were relevant for the shift in attitude on scientific racism which had supported many of the original miscegenation laws. This talk will explore the role biology had in shifting attitudes toward race mixing and will argue that the Modern Synthesis was an important factor. It will also discuss how the legal changes were slow to translate into policy in American universities, and consequently was a part of the history of what we describe as the 60s revolution on campuses.

The Casimir force is an attraction between parallel conducting plates due to quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic (EM) field. Thermal fluctuations of correlated fluids (such as critical mixtures or superfluids) are also modified by boundaries, resulting in similar interactions. A nice demonstration is provided by the thinning of a wetting film of helium at and below the superfluid transition. Quantitative understanding of the latter requires inclusion of surface undulations. The EM Casimir force is also modified for corrugated surfaces in non-trivial fashion. I shall also discuss other non-trivial geometries, in particular addressing the possibility of a repulsive force for a piston, and the force between a plate and a cylinder.

As borders between different regions, lines are an important element of natural images. Indeed, the neurons of the mammalian visual cortex are tuned to respond best to lines of a given orientation. This preferred orientation varies continuously across most of the cortex, but also has vortex-like singularities known as pinwheels. In attempting to describe such patterns of orientation preference, we are lead to consider underlying rotation symmetries: Oriented segments in natural images tend to be collinear; neurons are more likely to be connected if their preferred orientations are aligned to their topographic separation. These are indications of a reduced symmetry requiring joint rotations of both orientation preference and the underlying topography. This is verified by direct statistical tests in both natural images and in cortical maps. Using the statistics of natural scenes we construct filters that are best suited to extracting information from such images, and find qualitative similarities to mammalian vision.

The high energy limit of QCD is an area of major theoretical interest. One of its predictions is the so called perturbative BFKL Pomeron which manifests itself as a rapid growth of the gluon density with increasing center-of-mass energy. Although the rise of this density is indeed observed in the deep inelastic experiments at small values of Bjorken x, it is not compatible quantitatively with the prediction of the BFKL Pomeron. This leads to the intensive investigation of the possible corrections to the BFKL Pomeron such as higher order and the high density corrections. In this talk I will give an introduction to the high energy limit of QCD and discuss the idea of the parton saturation, an effect that is expected to occur when the gluon density is very high. I will discuss the nonlinear evolution equation (Balitsky-Kovchegov equation) for the gluon density which takes into account high density corrections. The concept of the saturation scale and the geometrical scaling at small Bjorken x will be also explained as well as an interesting link between parton saturation in QCD and the statistical physics. I discuss possible implications of the parton saturation in phenomenology: Deep Inelastic Scattering at HERA, limiting fragmentation at RHIC. I also give predictions for the gluon density at LHC which includes the saturation effects. Finally, I outline recent theoretical progress in developing theory with the Pomeron loops, the corrections which go beyond the Balitsky-Kovchegov equation.

Science standards and requirements for science teacher certification can have a large impact on the nature and quality of the science educational opportunities and experiences for students K-12 in Minnesota schools. The existing standards and the ways of influencing those standards will be addressed. The implications for Minnesota students and the state will be considered.

An ineluctable, though subtle, consequence of Einstein's theory of general relativity is that relatively accelerating masses generate gravitational waves: tiny ripples on the curved surface of spacetime which propagate through the universe at the speed of light. With the earth-based gravitational-wave detectors such as LIGO well into observational runs and the development of the space-based detector LISA underway, we appear to be at the dawn of the era of gravitational astronomy. But detectors alone are not observatories. The other crucial ingredient is numerical simulation in order to interpret the wave forms detected. Such numerical simulation--numerical relativity--presents enormous computational and mathematical challenges. In this talk the speaker, will present an introduction to some of the keys issues in numerical relativity and report on some of the exciting recent progress and remaining challenges.

Why are environmental reform and social inequality so often linked together in America? The story of Lake Washington offers a window into this unsettling relationship. In 1958, Seattle area voters approved the Municipality of Metropolitan Seattle, one of the nation’s first regional governments, to clean up the polluted lake. Ten years later, the national media proclaimed success. Research by the eminent ecologist W. Thomas Edmondson, critical to Metro’s triumph, underscored the role of scientist as advocate. Yet restoration came at a cost to those on the periphery of power. Edmondson’s research, applied by politicians and engineers, meant removing pollution as quickly as possible. After Metro dumped effluent into nearby rivers, agency scientists and sport anglers blamed Indian fishermen for the subsequent decline in salmon. Today, Seattle is one of the first urban areas facing an Endangered Species Act listing because of vanishing salmon. The city’s current dilemma thus lays bare the complexities of environmental restoration at the expense of social justice through time.

Under conditions realized in central regions of compact (neutron) stars, dense baryonic matter is likely to have a very rich phase structure. In particular, such matter could be deconfined and color superconducting. The presence of an isospin asymmetry in neutral and beta-equilibrated matter gives rise to phases with unconventional Cooper pairing. Recent theoretical studies revealed several such possibilities. Similar phases were also conjectured to appear in very cold trapped gases of fermionic atoms. The fundamental problem in these studies is that a number of the proposed unconventional phases are (chromo-)magnetically unstable. In this talk, I describe the existing difficulties and the recent progress in the field.

Lysak (2004) has developed a novel approach to modeling the dynamical evolution of electromagnetic waves in the magnetosphere. This talk will discuss recent efforts to incorporate a realistic ionospheric conductance profile into the model and why, exactly, anyone should care.

Abstract: Quantum mechanics has been enormously successful in describing nature at the atomic level, and most physicists believe that it is in principle the "whole truth" about the world even at the everyday level. However, such a view prima facie leads to a severe problem. In certain circumstances, the most natural interpretation of the theory implies that no definite outcome of an experiment occurs until the act of "observation." For many decades this problem was regarded as "merely philosophical," in the sense that it was thought that it had no consequences which could be tested in experiment. However, in the last dozen or so years the situation has changed very dramatically in this respect. Leggett will discuss the problem, some popular "resolutions" of it, the current experimental situation and prospects for the future.

Neutrinos are extremely important in a core collapse supernova, as they dominate its energy budget and are involved in a variety of crucial processes in the star. They also give unique information on the interior of the star, opaque to photons, and on the neutrino properties, in particular on the neutrino mixing matrix and mass spectrum. After the observation of neutrinos from SN1987A, the study of supernova neutrinos is entering a new phase, with the first strong bounds on the diffuse flux of neutrinos from all supernovae. These bounds approach the range of theoretical predictions of the flux, so that the time is mature for in-depth work to update those predictions and determine their uncertainties. These are dominated by the poor knowledge of the spectra of the neutrinos produced inside a supernova, and have a strong impact on the possibility to use neutrino data to learn on the cosmic supernova rate.

What can we reasonably say we know for sure about superconductivity in the cuprates, without reliance on any microscopic "model"? On the basis of this knowledge and of some very generic and hopefully reasonable assumptions, are there interesting questions we can ask which we have some hope of answering definitively by experiment? Identified is one such question, namely: In which regions of momentum and frequency space is the inter-conduction electron Coulomb interaction energy saved (or expended) when the system becomes superconducting? A possible answer to this question is conjectured and shown to be consistent with the dependence of the transition temperature on the c-axis layering structure. This answer makes quantitative and experimentally testable predictions.

The expected lifetimes for molecular clouds has become a topic of
considerable debate as numerical simulations have shown that MHDturbulence, the nominal means of support for the clouds againstself-gravity, will decay on rather short timescales. Thus it appears that either molecular clouds are transient features or they are resupplied with turbulent energy through some means.

Jets and molecular outflows are recognized as a ubiquitous phenomena associated with star formation. Stars do not however form in isolation. Rich star forming regions such as Orion can contain as many as 1000 stars in a few parsecs. Low mass star forming regions such as Taurus or Perseus will contain hundreds of star in a similar volume.

The ubiquity and high density of outflows from young stars in clusters make them an intriguing candidate for the source of turbulence energy in molecular clouds. In this talk I present new studies, both observational and theoretical, which address the issue of jet/outflow interactions and their ability drive turbulent flows in molecular clouds. In particular we show that fossil cavities from "extinct" outflows may provide the missing
link in terms of transferring momentum and energy to the cloud.

Heavy-ion collisions at RHIC produce extremely dense QCD matter yet the mechanism for thermalization and plasma formation is not fully understood. Using real-time lattice simulations of the classical Wong-Yang-Mills theory I show that collective instabilities could emerge in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. Similarities and differences to ordinary Abelian plasmas are shown. A rapid avalanche of energy from very soft field modes to the ultraviolet is observed for three-dimensional simulations, which could play an important role for rapid thermalization.

The limits on the Higgs boson mass set at LEP in conjunction with the most recent top quark mass measurements from the Tevatron are beginning to favor supersymmetric theories over the predictions of the standard model. If nature is supersymmetric, then a wealth of potentially far-reaching discoveries are expected at the LHC, the next energy frontier in collider physics.

I will review the sigma-model description of superconductivity in disordered wires and its relation to the Langer-Ambegaokar-McCumber-Halperin (LAMH) theory of thermal phase slips. I will show that the sigma-model action has nonperturbative saddle points that provide additional (to the LAMH) contribution to the wire resistivity. The magnetoresistance associated with this contribution is negative.

The Center for Biology and Society at Arizona State University is collaborating with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPI) in Berlin in developing the "Embryo Project" within the larger Virtual Laboratory environment. The MPI system for storage, processing, and working with accumulating databases has already led to the first Virtual Laboratory Project in Physiology. At Arizona State, we are focusing on "Development." We have started with 6 selected episodes where embryo research led to significant changes in the scientific understanding of embryos. With each of these episodes, we are then asking about who did what, where, with what equipment, what organisms, asking what questions, and to what effect? What was the social, political, legal, and ethical environment in which the research was done? And how did the contributions penetrate into the public arena? A network of 15 researchers across 6 countries form the core of the project, and a laboratory setting of advanced undergraduates has already accumulated a database of thousands of items. We welcome contributors, suggestions, and collaborations, as well as challenges to our underlying assumptions so that we can improve the project.

A number of teachers in Minnesota and other states are teaching high school physics without the appropriate physics background and only a provisional license.
Hamline University has a 9-12 physics licensure program - the PhASE Project - for such high school teachers who want to learn more physics and obtain the proper certification. Information about the PhASE Project will be presented. There will be discussion concerning the appropriate preparation for teaching high school physics and how best to implement that preparation.

I show that a gamma-ray burst afterglow model combined with an underlying Plateau Type II supernova can fit the data of at least one Bright Linear Type II supernova, SN 1979C. I suggest that the Bright Linear subclass of Type IIs could be represented by this model. I describe a scenario in which a hydrogen rich massive star core collapses causing a jet explosion that punctures through the star and initiates a shock that ejects the hydrogen-rich envelope. The jet is responsible for a low density, high energy ejecta causing a gamma-ray burst optical afterglow. It is suggested that the jet contains enough energy to create an asymmetric shock wave that ejects the He core and the overlying H
envelope. However it is speculated that the energy of the jet should have been dissipated by the hydrogen envelope and thus not causing the ejecta to expand with the high velocities typically seen in Type Ic supernovae associated with gamma-ray bursts. The model presented here could be an example of a failed GRB and X-ray flashes.

The NIH urges that scientific research should lead to "translation" into clinical therapies, and nowhere is this message more urgently heard than for stem cell research. We are given the impression that stem cell research is new, and if only we throw enough money in that direction, we will have amazing cures just any day now. In fact, stem cell science has been around for a century. We will look at the transitions from what began as transplantation research (with experimental transplanting of various bits of tissue from one organism to another and to artificial culture media) to the current cries for translation. This exploration will take us through some embryology, cell biology, and with a closer look at the first tissue culture experiment and the first cloning. The presentation will lend support for the claim that history matters, and that richer understanding of history should modify our public enthusiasm for the "translation of the day" approach to research.

With the discovery of high temperature superconductors, the practical challenge of obtaining compounds able to better transport current have led to re-open the pandora box of the very fundamental problem of the effect of disorder on crystals, and more generally on elastic systems. Indeed crystals, though usually highly stable, are inordinately sensitive to external disorder. Even an infinitesimal amount of impurities leads to the destruction of the crystalline order. What is the resulting state of matter is a longstanding and highly debated issue. Disorder gives rise to properties analogous to those of glasses but with subtle differences, which certainly complicates the task of the theorist but lead to very exciting novel properties. The consequences of such a study reach way beyond the field of superconductors since the physics of such disordered elastic systems underlies many other different experimental situations such as magnets, ferroelectrics and even the electron gas inside a field effect transistor.

This conference covers a broad range of subjects in modern condensed matter theory, including the physics of superconductors, electron interactions in solids, and statistical physics and kinetics of disordered media. The conference is dedicated to the memory of Professor Anatoly Larkin.

In this talk I will present an introduction to some aspects in three-flavor color superconducting quark matter. After a brief review of quark color superconductivity, I will focus on the color-flavor locked matter, concretely its pairing and symmetry breaking patterns. Then, the unconventional pairing and thus less-symmetric phases of color-flavor locked matter are discussed, which are expected to exist in the realistic
situation such as large strange quark mass and moderate matter density. I will also report on some of the recent difficulities and progress in the field.

Two projects dealing with assessment of learning and teaching will be addressed., One project deals with topics in a 2nd semester introductory physics course - electricity, magnetism, DC circuits and optics. The second project uses interviews and pre-post surveys to assess a revised Physical Science course taken by elementary education majors. Preliminary results will be presented. Discussion will consider ways of improving these assessments and methods for increasing reliabiltiy and validity. All seminar attendees will be encouraged to suggest ways to improve these assessments. Discussion will include ways of checking the reliability and validity of these assessments.

A summary of recent developments in quantum chromodynamics and gauge theories at large.

Advances in condensed matter physics and theoretical chemistry have made possible a comprehensive modeling of materials. We can adapt and apply these theoretical methods to study the amazing properties of nanostructures. I will discuss two examples where such theories helped the understanding of the mechanical response of carbon nanotubes (generally considered as a paradigm for nanoscale materials).

In materials modeling the most common way to implement molecular dynamics is via translational periodic boundary conditions. This is not the natural choice when modeling carbon nanotubes and other nanostructures. Appealing to the helical and rotational symmetries of the nanoscale graphitic tubules, molecular dynamics and structural relaxation can be done in a simplified way, on a modest number of atoms. This new method, termed objective molecular dynamics 1, is compatible with full quantum mechanics under the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. The utility of objective molecular dynamics will be presented in the context of studying the carbon nanotubes under elongation and twist.

Combining a probabilistic approach of the rate theory with detailed quantum mechanical computations of failure nucleation and transition-state barriers, allows for a comprehensive analysis of the underlying atomic mechanisms and evaluation of the yield strain for arbitrary nanotubes under realistic conditions 2. The numerical results are captured in a concise set of equations for the breaking strain, and reveal a competition between two alternative routes of brittle bond breaking and plastic relaxation. The employed probabilistic approach ultimately allows for the creation of a "strength map", which plots the likelihood that a nanotube will break – and how it's likely to break.

References
1 T. Dumitrica and R.D. James, Objective Molecular Dynamics, Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids (submitted).
2 T. Dumitrica, M. Hua, and B.I. Yakobson, Symmetry, time-, and temperature-dependent strength of carbon nanotubes, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 103, 6105 (2006).

The coldest place in Minnesota is really 1/2 mile underground. Despite the recent announcement from NASA, no one has ever directly detected dark matter. We are trying to do just that, using a terrestrial detector cooled to 50 mK. If WIMPs are the dark matter particle, then we learn more about the Big Bang and a clue to unifying the fundamental forces of nature.

In October 1924, The Physical Review, a relatively minor journal at the time, published a remarkable two-part paper by a young assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, John H. Van Vleck. Van Vleck used Bohr's correspondence principle and Einstein's 1916 quantum theory of radiation to find quantum analogues of classical expressions for the emission, absorption, and dispersion of radiation. Van Vleck's paper is much clearer than the famous 1925 paper by Kramers and Heisenberg on dispersion theory, which covers similar terrain and is widely credited to have led directly to Heisenberg's paper on matrix mechanics a few months later. Van Vleck's paper is thus extremely valuable to historians trying to reconstruct the genesis of matrix mechanics. It also suggests that matrix mechanics just might have been invented right here in Minnesota!

For additional information, see http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00002818/

I will discuss the new demands on lattice gauge theory to produce
physically relevant values for the thermal phase transition of QCD. In this context I will present a new method that substantially improves the five-dimensional domain wall fermion formulation of lattice QCD by opening the eigenvalue gap of the Hamiltonian that controls propagation along the fifth dimension. I will also briefly discuss the lattice N=1 SYM theory using domain wall fermions.

In Germany the Vivisection Debate was one of the first public arguments between the so-called lay-public and specialised scientists about ethical boundaries to biosciences. The article presents the vivisectors, their opponents and their campaign, within which gendered positions of men and women as well as gender metaphors played a highly ambivalent, but crucial role. The debate focussed on the most spectacular of the new laboratory techniques: the physiological, pharmacological and surgical experiment on the living animal. In the background, however, rivalling medical worldviews, moral values and concepts over the relations between humans and animals were negotiated. The outcome of this debate marks a successful power play of science and state. This alliance succeeded in defending its science-ethical defining power and marginalizing the science-critical public.

Hardly any of the belligerent states in World War II can be shown to have harbored a basically hostile attitude toward science and the advancement of knowledge. All were willing and able to support scientific projects at least to the degree that these were regarded as beneficial for their own war aims. Everywhere scientists were ready to respond to the wartime needs of their country, while at the same time drawing the greatest possible professional advantage from such activity. Nowhere did the nationally configured systems of science and scholarship in the 20th century have reliable, system-specific barriers at their disposal which could prevent links and schemes of cooperation with criminal regimes deemed fundamentally adversarial to their own raison d’être. In a matrix of international comparison, the role of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (KWS) in the Third Reich can be described more precisely over and beyond the striking contrastive attributions of a leading scientific center for National Socialist race policy on the one hand, versus a bastion of scientific autonomy on the other. German scientists had very few ethical, legal or political barriers they had to contend with once they had managed to present their own scientific-scholarly interests as compatible with the political and military aims of the Nazi regime. Against this backdrop, the KWS functioned professionally as a mediator between the professional interests of its members and the regime’s desire for scientific expertise. The KWS was a reliable partner of the Nazi regime on all military and race-political fronts.

Kurt Gottfried is emeritus professor of physics at Cornell University. A
cofounder of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), he has served on the
board since its inception and led the UCS critique of the "Star Wars"
program. Dr. Gottfried has served on the senior staff of the European
Center for Nuclear Research in Geneva and is a former chair of the Division
of Particles and Fields of the American Physical Society. He is a member of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council on Foreign
Relations. Dr. Gottfried will discuss problems in scientific accuracy and
scientific integrity in the context of policymaking, drawing from his
involvement in the activities and report of the Union of Concerned
Scientists in early 2004. He will discuss efforts to advance the importance
of accurately using and relaying scientific information in the context of
regulation and policy, using examples dealing with climate change,
pollutants, global warming, food and drugs, and reproductive health.

Genomic sequences obtained from a large number of organisms have shown clearly that what make biological organisms complex lies not so much in the genes themselves but in the control of their expression (i.e., under what conditions the genes are turned on and off). The biophysical processes governing the control of gene regulation provides many interesting problems of statistical physics, including those involving disorders (protein-DNA interaction), nonlinear transport (transcriptional and translational elongation), and stochasticity (noisy gene expression). In this talk, I will focus on the strategy the cell uses to implement combinatorial control of gene expression. The analysis suggests that the control machinary operates as a molecular Boltzmann machine and can hence implement a wide variety of control functions.

Substantial collective flow is observed in collisions between large nuclei at RHIC (Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider) as evidenced by single-particle transverse momentum distributions and by azimuthal correlations among the produced particles. The data are well-reproduced by perfect fluid dynamics. A calculation of the dimensionless ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density by Kovtun, Son and Starinets within AdS/CFT yields eta/s = hbar/4pi which has been conjectured to be a lower bound for any physical system. Motivated by these results, we show that the transition from hadrons to quarks and gluons has behavior similar to helium, nitrogen, and water at and near their phase transitions in the ratio eta/s. We suggest that experimental measurements can pinpoint the location of this transition or rapid crossover in QCD.

The quest for unification of the fundamental forces has played a central role in theoretical and experimental physics. The success of electroweak unification during the 1970's led to Grand Unified Theories (GUTs) that predicted observable, spontaneous decay of protons and bound neutrons. During the 1980's, a number of experiments attempted to observe these decays, separating them from cosmic ray neutrino background events. By the mid-1990's, it
became clear that the "background" was more interesting than the "signal." Proton decay was not observed, but neutrinos changed spontaneously from one flavor to another. This talk will describe serendipity in experimental physics and the role of the University of Minnesota in this adventure.

Mathematics and Physics are twins, fraternal, not identical; they grew up together into young manhood. Then they separated, but kept in close touch with each other. In this talk I will describe instances where mathematics came to the help of physics as well as many instances when physics supplied mathematics with new problems and ideas.

Professor Lax is a recipient of the National Medal of Science, the Wolf Prize in Mathematics, and the Abel Prize. For some background on his work, please see http://www.abelprisen.no/en/prisvinnere/2005/documents/popular2005eng6.pdf

The paper addresses the question of what the nature of science is. I will first make a few preliminary historical and systematic remarks. Next, in answering the main question, I shall propose the following thesis: Scientific knowledge is primarily distinguished from other forms of knowledge, especially from everyday knowledge, by being more systematic. This thesis has to be qualified, clarified, developed and justified. Finally, I will compare my answer with alternative answers.

Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 asserts that energy and mass are different aspects of the same reality. It is usually associated with the idea that the small amounts of mass can be converted into large amounts of energy, as in nuclear reactors and bombs.

For fundamental physics, however, the more important idea is just the opposite. We want to explain how mass itself arises, by explaining it in terms of more basic concepts.

An important part of my work has been to show that this goal can, to a remarkable extent, be achieved. I'll discuss how - it's quite beautiful! I'll also discuss some of the consequences - an explanation of why gravity is so feeble, and suggestions for new physical phenomena at the large hadron collider.

Much of the matter in our universe is in the plasma state. To understand particle acceleration and energy conversion in natural systems, such as the sun, planetary magnetospheres and astrophysical shocks, it is necessary to understand the physics of plasmas. The Space Plasma Physics Group at the University of Minnesota is expert in the design, construction and analysis of data from electric field and plasma wave instruments for space applications, as well as in analytic theory and plasma simulations. I will describe several examples of interesting phenomena we are studying using data from currently operational NASA and ESA satellites. Recent results on auroral particle acceleration, interplanetary shocks and reconnection will be described. I will also briefly discuss upcoming missions including Stereo (stereoscopic imaging of the sun and study of energetic particle acceleration) and RBSP (acceleration processes in the Earth’s radiation belts) and examples of possible thesis projects.

When stars evolve and become luminous cool giants, they not only act as beacons of the underlying populations, but also play an important role in the structural, dynamical and chemical evolution of their host galaxy.

Friction affects many aspects of everyday life and has played a central
role in technology dating from the creation of fire by rubbing sticks
together to current efforts to make nanodevices with moving parts.
The friction "laws" we teach today date from empirical relationships
observed by da Vinci and Amontons centuries ago. However, the microscopic
origins of these laws have remained unclear, because friction is a
complex multiscale phenomenon that depends on both atomic interactions
in contacts, and the macroscopic elastic and plastic deformation that
determine the morphology and stress distribution within these contacts.
The talk will begin with continuum studies of contact between elastic and
plastic surfaces with self-affine surface roughness. The results show
that the area of real contact generally increases linearly with load,
but reveal inconsistencies in the continuum approach and common
assumptions. Next, the fundamental limits of continuum theory
are explored using molecular dynamics. The most important factor is not
discreteness within the solids, but the surface roughness present on any
surface composed of atoms. The above results show that the area of
contact between surfaces depends on many factors that do not influence
measured friction forces. The talk will conclude by showing that a simple
mechanism based on the presence of debris between surfaces naturally
explains Amontons' laws and common exceptions to them.

Selected References:
G. He, M. H. Muser and M. O. Robbins, Science 284, 1650 (1999).
J. Ringlein and M. O. Robbins, Am. J. Phys. 72, 884 (2004).
S. Hyun, L. Pei, J.-F. Molinari and M. O. Robbins, Phys. Rev. E70, 026117
(2004).
B. Luan and M. O. Robbins, Nature 435, 929-932 (2005).

Cosmic Rays have long been known to be an important constituent in the local universe, on a par, energetically with gas, magnetic fields and radiation. The presence of highly energetic elementary particles in even the largest cosmic structures is now also clear, while those particles and their sources appear to play potentially crucial roles in the dynamics and the evolution of galaxies, galaxy clusters and perhaps even larger structures. In addition, their observable properties can provide unique insights into the physics of these environments. Possibly excepting the very highest energy cosmic rays, the emerging picture of their origins depends on the physics of collisionless shockwaves and turbulent plasmas and processes remarkably similar in character to those proposed more than 1/2 century ago by Fermi. Our research centers on understanding these processes and their application to key astrophysical environments. Most of our studies involve sometimes large numerical simulations of shocks and complex astrophysical environments containing shocks. These environments range in scale from stars to sizable chunks of the universe.

Jacob Bronowski once pointed out,"Many people believe that reasoning, and therefore science, is a different activity from imagining. But this is a fallacy. Reasoning is constructed with movable images just as certainly as poetry is." An outstanding source of real examples of the productive use of images in the interconnected world of models, ideas, and experiments is the crucial period in the history of science when a path was charted to show how best to explore the world beyond the immediate reach of the senses. It will be argued that chemistry holds a special place in this story, for after about 1820, to reason chemically meant to exercise the visual imagination, precisely because its investigative objects, atoms and molecules, are beyond direct or immediate perception. The success achieved by chemists provided a model for other sciences, not just of the use of the visual imagination, but more generally, of transdiction and distant inference.

We consider diffusion-limited pair annihilation reactions of q species: A_i + A_j -> 0 (1 <= i < j <= q) in d space dimensions. Starting from the master equation associated with this stochastic process, we employ various tools including mean-field and scaling arguments, van Kampen's fluctuation expansion, mapping to a field theory representation, and Monte Carlo simulations to study the system's asymptotic behavior. For equal initial densities as well as uniform reaction and diffusion rates for each species, the total particle density decays according to a power law ~ t^{-a(q)} at long times. In one dimension, segregation into single-species domains occurs, and we obtain a(q) = (q-1)/2q. We find that the segregation phenomenon is limited to dimensions d < d_s = 4/(q-1). For d > d_s the system remains well mixed, and for d > 2 the density decays with the universal mean-field exponent a = 1 that also characterizes single-species pair annihilation. Certain symmetric special cases will be discussed as well, and intriguing connections to quantum many-particle systems and spin chains will be pointed out.

References:
O. Deloubriere, H.J. Hilhorst, and U.C.T., Multispecies pair annihilation reactions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 250601 (2002) cond-mat/0209471;
H.J. Hilhorst, O. Deloubriere, M.J. Washenberger, and U.C.T., Segregation in diffusion-limited multispecies pair annihilation, J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 37, 7063 (2004) cond-mat/0403246;
H.J. Hilhorst, M.J. Washenberger, and U.C.T., Symmetry and species segregation in diffusion-limited pair annihilation, J. Stat. Mech. P10002 (2004) cond-mat/0409079

Fueled by advances in software, microelectronics, and large optics
fabrication, a new type of sky survey is being designed. In a continuous
campaign of 15 second exposures, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will
cover the sky to high redshift every week, opening a new window on objects
that change or move on rapid timescales. The superb images from the LSST
will also chart billions of galaxies, providing multiple probes of the
mysterious Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Thirty TB of multi-color images
per night will be transformed into a new view of our four dimensional
universe.

In the modern information era, where the demand for higher bit-rate seems to be increasing without bound, it is essential to understand the physical limits on communications. I will start by reviewing the concept of a Shannon limit of how many bits per second can be conveyed from a transmitter to a receiver. We then discover that in a disordered environment (in a city, for example) it becomes essential to understand wave interference in order to find this Shannon limit for modern communication systems. It becomes advantageous to make an analogy between radio waves in cities and electron waves in disordered metals. Using our understanding of mesoscopics we can understand more about howinformation capacity is limited. We find the question of
information can be reduced to a random matrix problem which is attacked with traditional condensed matter field theory methods. Finally we bring the story full-circle by deducing new insights about mesoscopics from our results on wireless communications.

I will discuss ion transport of a protein ion channel in lipid membranes or water filled nanopores in silicon films. It is known that due to the large ratio of dielectric constants of water filling the channel and of the surrounding media, the electric field of an ion placed inside the channel is bundled inside the channel, so that the ion has a large electrostatic
self-energy barrier. Two such ions are connected by linearly growing with distance interaction similarly to two quarks. This should lead to negligible conductance of the channel. Nevertheless ion channels function. I will talk about two mechanisms employed by Nature for reduction of the electrostatic barrier namely effects of salt ions dissolved in water and of immobile charges on the internal channel walls. Both type of
charges lead to insulator-metal crossover. The first transition resembles Mott transition in the exciton gas with increasing density of excitons (or de-confinement of quarks in high density of matter); the second one resembles transition in a doped semiconductor with growing concentration of impurities. Of course, I will be talking about completely
classical phenomenon (happening in water at room temperature), where the entropy plays the role of quantum mechanics.

It is widely accepted that comets contain the most primordial material accessible in the solar system and that they provide major constraints on the conditions in the protoplanetary disk. It is also widely accepted that the outer layers of a comet are highly evolved and does not represent the original material of comet nuclei. The major gaps in our understanding of cometary nuclei can be addressed only by probing the nucleus to depths of tens of meters. This has been done on July 4, 2005 by hitting comet 9P/Tempel-1 with the 360-kg impactor during the Deep Impact space mission. The collision of the impactor with the comet resulted in a huge cloud of excavated material that was observed not only from the flyby spacecraft but also from the Earth by ground-based and space telescopes. I present the main results of the Deep Impact mission obtained with the spacecraft instruments (high-resolution camera, medium-resolution camera, and infrared spectrometer) as well as ground based, Spitzer, and HST telescopes. The emphases are made on properties of the nucleus and the dust in the ejecta cloud. The latter has been the subject of my research. Finally, I briefly describe the plans for the extended Deep Impact mission.

This paper begins with the literature on “rate and direction of technical change” that developed from the work of Richard Nelson (and many others). It is common to assess the impacts of public subsidy on the ‘rate’ of technical change, generally finding a positive role for public funding (e.g. Kenneth Flamm 1988; National Research Council 1999). But it is less common to assess the impacts of public subsidy on the ‘direction’ of technical change, e.g. the multiple branching paths and alternate technical designs that typically exist while technologies are under development. This is odd since theorizing in evolutionary economics offers many pertinent concepts: variation and selection (see Ziman 2000) as well as the ‘path dependence’ and ‘lock in’ concepts of Brian Arthur.

This paper then analyzes the generally positive but curiously linear assessment of the military’s role in promoting technical changes. In his recent book, Is War Necessary for Economic Growth? (Oxford 2006), Vernon Ruttan examines six general-purpose technologies; here, I focus on his treatment of the computer and semiconductor industries. Briefly, his argument is that massive military support resulted in technical innovations and productivity growth that would not have occurred -- or not at the same rate -- given only private-sector actors and initiatives. While his analysis is informed and historically attentive, equaling that of Nathan Rosenberg on the history of technology, the ‘direction’ dimension slips out of focus.

The paper next scrutinizes the linkages and assumptions underlying Ruttan’s appendix on “Computers, Microprocessors, and the Internet: a Counterfactual History.” While I deeply admire his advocating narrative analysis, he has imported into his analysis a number of consequential historiographic oversights: e.g. there was no civilian market for transistors in the 1950s; the oft-repeated belief that IBM was computer-averse; and a subtle mistake that the civilian airline reservation system SABRE was a ‘spin-off’ from the military project SAGE. In correcting these points, I suggest alternative scenarios and try to make explicit the linkages and assumptions and how they influenced both the 'rate' and the 'direction' of technical change in this sector.

The conclusion outlines my thoughts on developing analytical scenarios of technology development, stressing equally the dimensions of ‘rate’ and ‘direction’. Finally, I suggest an implication of this analysis for next-generation work in technology assessment and technology forecasting.

Conventional electronics has ignored the spin on the electron. Besides its fundamental unit charge, the electron has a magnetic moment due to its quantum of angular momentum. Things began to move in 1988, with the discovery of giant magnetoresistance in metallic thin film stacks. This led to the development of spin valves and magnetic tunnel junctions, which allowed magnetic recording to ride the tiger of 100% year-on year growth of recording density for the past ten years. Tunnel junctions are the active elements for most schemes for nonvolatile magnetic random-access memory, which will be briefly surveyed. These devices, which underpin the multi-billion dollar magnetic recording industry, are nothing more than sophisticated magnetoresistors, the simplest two-terminal electronic device. If we are to see a second generation of spin electronics, it will be necessary to develop more complex devices such as a three-terminal spin transistor with gain. Here magnetic semiconductors are required, or at least the ability to manipulate spin-polarized currents in normal emiconductors. The puzzling new family of dilute magnetic oxides, such as ZnO:Co or SnO2:Mn, and the emerging class of d0 ferromagnets such as HfO2 or CaB6 may produce a new paradigm for magnetism in solids, and support entirely new device concepts. A major challenge is to separate spin and charge currents in solids, and transmit information magnetically, without dissipation.

Quantum ChromoDynamics, the theory of strong nuclear force, is one of
the most remarkable theories of Nature with elegantly concise first
principles and an exceptionally broad range of phenomena to describe.
At enormous temperatures -- briefly after the Big Bang and in today's
heavy ion collision experiments, or at enormous densities -- within
compact stars, the strong force comes fully into play and determines
thermodynamic phases and transitions in such a hot and dense matter.
I shall review the recent progress in the understanding of the QCD
phase diagram, discuss open theoretical problems and outline the
strategies for discovering the features of the phase diagram in heavy
ion collision experiments.

Supersymmetry, born in the early 1970s, is a very rich theory which is supposed to describe the widest range of natural phenomena. Although it has not yet been discovered experimentally, it proved to be a powerful tool in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) -- the theory of hadrons -- and strongly coupled gauge theories at large. Efforts aimed at solving various aspects of QCD basing on supersymmetry and string-inspired ideas bring fruits. In a remarkable entanglement, theoretical constructions of the 1970s and 1990s combine with today's ideas to provide new insights and a deeper understanding.

I will review the physics of 1D Bose gases, and describe experiments that confirm the longstanding exact theory across all coupling regimes. I will then describe how we create 1D Bose gases far from equilibrium. These oscillating gases are quantum versions of the well-known Newton's cradle momentum lecture demonstration. Whether or not a real 1D Bose gas will thermally equlilbrate has been an open theoretical question. We observe negligible approach to equilibrium even after each atom has undergone thousands of collisions. We show that even a slight relaxation of the criteria that make the gas one dimensional allows it to thermally equilibrate.

A bottom-up approach is used to build an artificial cell as a programmable phospholipid vesicle. A cell-free expression system is encapsulated in phospholipid vesicles. The translation machinery is used as the hardware and the DNA as the software. In vitro transcription and translation is maintained a few days in cell-sized vesicles with the internal expression of membrane channel alpha-hemolysin. This toxin allows exchange of nutrients and removal of byproducts with an external feeding solution. To obtain a real homeostatic state, the synthetic membrane is transformed in an active interface, specific degradation mechanisms of the synthesized messengers and proteins are introduced in the vesicles. On a broader scope, with this approach we investigate the possibility to build and program soft robots with biomolecules. Perspectives and limitations will be discussed.

Superclusters represent the largest scale at which gravitational structure formation is important at the current epoch. Thus, the history of supercluster formation provides important constraints on theories of structure formation via gravitational collapse and the evolution of a substantial fraction of the baryons in the universe. Although such structures have been studied in the local universe, they remain largely unexplored at higher redshifts, where most observations have targeted only the densest cluster cores. By expanding observations to intermediate-density regimes at redshifts around one, we examine regions of intense galaxy transformation, including groups and filaments. To increase the sample of high-redshift superclusters, we have undertaken ORELSE, a multi-band survey of regions around a sample of twenty well-studied, rich clusters at z > 0.6. This survey consists of (1) deep optical photometry to identify potential structures; (2) extensive high-resolution spectroscopy to confirm structure members and study their stellar populations; (3) near-infrared imaging to obtain stellar masses and SEDs; (4) mid- and far-infrared imaging to study AGN, starbursts, and dust; (5) X-ray observations of the intracluster gas and AGN, and (6) radio observations to detect obscured star formation and AGN. We present some of the early results of this survey, including multiple new supercluster systems and properties of their galaxy populations. The importance of multi-wavelength observations to understand environmental effects on galaxy properties. star formation, and AGN is discussed.

Many analysts agree that Iran has pursued a nuclear weapons capability for decades, arguably for reasons of deterrence, domestic politics, and prestige. There is little agreement, however, on who drove and controlled the program. While the Supreme Leader, at first Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and since 1989 Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made final decisions on nuclear matters, he relied on advisers, who held diverse views on the nuclear program. This presentation analyzes the history of the Iranian nuclear program from the Iranian Revolution in 1979 to the present and argues that scientists and engineers associated with the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) have driven the program at critical turning points. The presentation focuses on the interactions between AEOI scientists and managers, clerics, and other members of Iran's nuclear policy elite to highlight the complexity of nuclear decision making in Iran. Furthermore, it emphasizes the significance of the nuclear establishment as a driving force behind the country's nuclear aspirations. This study is part of a larger project on the role of scientists and engineers as drivers of nuclear proliferation.

Nanoscale magnets are attractive model systems for studying fundamental spin interactions. These structures are also being used to increase data storage capacities and are promising candidates for implementations of novel spin-based computation techniques. The imaging, manipulation, and spectroscopy capabilities of scanning tunneling microscopes (STMs) make them versatile tools for studying nanoscale structures with atomic resolution. Through the use of a spin-polarized tunneling current, the STM can image the spin orientation of two-dimensional layers and small magnetic islands. At the single-atom level, the STM has been used to detect the Kondo interactions between conduction electrons and a single adsorbed impurity spin. In-situ atomic manipulation can further be used to construct magnetic dimers and trimers, which display evidence of coupled-spin behavior

By placing magnetic atoms on a thin insulating layer above a metal substrate, we can isolate atomic spins from the underlying conduction electrons and still perform STM studies. Using the atomically precise manipulation capabilities of the STM, we can now build individual magnetic structures one atom at a time on copper nitride, a well-characterized isolating surface. With STM-based inelastic spectroscopy, we then measure the spin excitation spectra of individual structures in-situ and follow the evolution of the spectra as additional atoms are added. We observe excitations of the coupled atomic spins that can change both the total spin and its orientation. Comparison with a model spin-interaction Hamiltonian yields the collective spin configuration and the strength of the exchange coupling between the atomic spins.

The recent precise measurements of muon anomalous magnetic moment could be interpreted as a signal of new physics beyond Standard Model. I describe theory of different contributions to the magnetic moment and comparison with data.

Supernovae of type IIn possess spectral signatures that indicate an intense interaction between the supernova ejecta and surrounding dense circumstellar material cast off by the star in pre-explosion mass-loss episodes. Studying this interaction can yield clues to the nature of Type IIn progenitors and their mass loss history. In particular, polarization
spectra of Type IIn's show complex line polarization and position angle features that arise from a combination of geometrical and optical effects. I will discuss ways in which polarized line profiles can be produced by the interaction between Type IIn supernovae and their circumstellar environments. I have constructed a Monte Carlo code that simulates the
transfer of the H alpha line through circumstellar shells with various geometrical configurations and optical characteristics. The superposition of broad and narrow line components produced in different regions of the circumstellar environment and modified by electron and resonance line scattering, hydrogen absorption, thermal emission, and geometrical and viewing angle effects gives rise to a variety of polarized line shapes in the model spectra. I compare these results with recent high-quality spectropolarimetric observations of Type IIn supernovae, and show how they can be used to constrain the characteristics of the circumstellar material in these intriguing objects.

The origin of superconductivity in cuprates--the high-temperature superconductors discovered in 1987, remains a mystery. Unlike the conventional superconductors, the attraction between the electrons in cuprates may be mediated by magnetic excitations. I review the spin-fluctuation approach to the normal and superconducting states of the cuprates. Interaction of electrons -fermions -- with the continuum of spin bosonic excitations, lead to significant deviations of the cuprate normal-state properties from those of a standard Fermi liquid. Spin fluctuations lead also to an anisotropic pairing of electrons into the superconducting condensate. I will demonstrate a mutual feedback from the pairing on the fermions and bosons, and argue that some manifestations of the feedback are the fingerprints of spin-mediated pairing. Finally, I compare spin-fluctuation and phonon pairing mechanisms for the cuprates.

I consider the problem of 2D fermions interacting with gapless
long-wavelength collective bosonic modes. The theory describes, among other cases, a ferromagnetic quantum-critical point (QCP) and a QCP towards nematic ordering. There have been intensive discussions recently about whether one can introduce an order parameter and construct a controllable expansion in it near the QCP, what are the "correct" fermionic and bosonic modes at criticality, and whether the Hertz theory -- the "standard model" of quantum critical behavior, is actually correct. I argue that a controllable, Eliashberg-type expansion at QCP is possible, and can be rigorously justified. I further show that for an SU(2) -
symmetric ferromagnetic QCP, there exists singular corrections to spin susceptibility, which are not present in the Hertz theory. These singularities destroy a ferromagnetic QCP and (depending on parameters) either lead to first order transition, or to intermediate spiral phase. Similar effect also exists near an antiferromagnetic QCP. There it does not destroy a continuous transition, but still leads to an anomalous behavior of the dynamic spin susceptibility.

Low temperature transport through a quantum dot in the Kondo regime proceeds by a universal combination of elastic and inelastic processes, as dictated by the low-energy Fermi-liquid fixed point. We show that as a result of inelastic processes, the charge detected by a shot-noise experiment is enhanced relative to the noninteracting situation to a universal fractional value, e = 5/3e. Thus, shot noise reveals that the Kondo eect involves many-body features even at low energies, despite its Fermi-liquid nature. We discuss the influence of symmetry breaking perturbations.

Young neutron stars probe some of the most extreme physical environments in the Universe. Their rapid rotations and large magnetic fields combine to accelerate particles to extremely high energies, producing energetic winds that result in the slow spin-down of the stars and generate nebulae of synchrotron-emitting particles spiraling in a wound-up magnetic field. The structure of these nebulae is determined by the energy input from the central pulsars as well as the structure and content of the medium into which they expand. In the centermost regions, relativistic outflows in the form of rings and jets are formed; the geometry of these emission regions reveals the orientation of the pulsar spin axes and can provide information on the formation of kicks imparted in the moments following their formation. Their large-scale structures reveal details of the magnetic field and signatures of interaction with the ejecta from the explosions that gave them birth. The emission from these nebulae extends from the radio band to the TeV gamma-ray band, providing strong constraints on the extraction of spin-down energy from these rotating stars.

In this talk I will summarize recent advances in our understanding of pulsar wind nebulae, introducing observations of several particular systems to demonstrate the evolution of these structures.

It is well known that at the temperatures above Tc superconducting order parameter, being zero, fluctuates in time and space. These fluctuations lead to the experimentally observable corrections to the thermodynamic and dynamic properties of metals. We theoretically study the manifestation of the superconducting fluctuations on the current noise in the tunnel junction in the vicinity of the superconducting transition. It turns out that the current noise acquires singular in T-Tc correction, which is peaked at the Josephson frequency. This correction originates from the fluctuating ac Josephson current. Recent experimental studies confirm this phenomenon.

Mathematics is an essential element of physics problem solving, but as professionals, we often fail to appreciate exactly what we are doing with it. Math may be the language of science, but math-in-physics is a distinct dialect of that language that requires both more subtlety and more skills than are typically taught in math courses. Research with students in classes ranging from algebra-based physics to graduate quantum mechanics indicates that (1) we sometimes don't appreciate the skills students need to solve the problems we assign, and (2) students problems are sometimes with their expectations about what they are supposed to be doing rather than with their math skills. Implications for instruction will be discussed.

We describe a mathematical framework for the sampling of path space. This framework, in which the Onsager-Machlup functional plays a central role in defining a probability density on the space of paths, allows a unified viewpoint for the formulation of a number of important problems including signal processing, data assimilation, data interpolation, and the sampling of rare events.

In many molecular models, we would like to understand phenomena that happen on a variety of time scales. The time scales of the motion are a reflection of the free-energy landscape. Typically, the phase space that the system "visits" will be in a basin of one of the many free-energy minima. On short time scales, the system explores the phase space in one of the basins, and this describes the evolution of the "fast degrees of freedom." On a longer time scale, the system will progress over a barrier and into another basin; this progression governs the "slow degrees of freedom." A natural question is whether we can understand, and quantify, the motion of the particles on the longer time scales. In this modeling, we would like to incorporate the effects of the fast degrees of freedom, as we describe the evolution of the slower moving variables.

The approach taken here is to employ a Langevin equation in path space, calculated from the Onsager-Machlup functional, to sample these rare events. In particular, we look at paths in phase space, conditioned to cross a relevant free-energy barrier. Such paths allow us to investigate the crossing of such barriers in the presence of representative thermal motions.

The particular system we are studying is a collection of 89 particles in a two dimensional container. The 10 X 9 lattice holds one vacancy. We are investigating the infrequent movement of a particle into the vacancy as it is buffeted by the thermal motions of the other particles. We use the motions of the particle, as described by the space of sampled paths, to extract an effective single-particle potential particle from the many-body problem.

This talk will examine the emergence of civil aviation in Europe in the period from 1919-1933, its role in the restructuring of European space, and its contribution to the “hidden integration” of Europe. To what extent, and in which specific ways was civil aviation in Europe an agent of either nationalism or internationalism in this era? Looking at aircraft capabilities, the politics of route development, control of airspace, and at the new culture of air travel (reflected, for example, in airline posters), this presentation will examine how civil aviation was linked to changing identities and old and new visions of the world­from nationalist and imperialist visions, to globalist and integrationist visions.

Recent advances have made it possible to fabricate nano-scale superconducting circuits by the metal coating of individual molecules. These advances in nano-fabrication are important both for technology and because they allow the investigation of new physical phenomena. In this talk, I shall describe two such phenomena that we have studied in collaboration with Alexey Bezryadin’s group. First, I shall describe an all-superconducting nano-scale quantum interference device consisting of two nanowires connecting a pair of thin-film leads. In particular, I shall describe how the resistance of the nanowires is sensitive to the order-parameter phases in the leads which can, in turn, be controlled by magnetic fields, supercurrents, and vortices in the leads. In the second part, I shall describe how an applied magnetic field can enhance the critical current in a superconducting nanowire in the presence of magnetic impurities.

The High Energy Physics detectors of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are scheduled to begin taking data 12 months from now. The detectors at the LHC have unique opportunities for discovery at the new energy frontier, but extracting the new physics is a daunting task in a new regime of both data volume and data complexity. In this presentation I will discuss the challenges facing the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector with a strong focus on the computing and data analysis efforts. I will briefly discuss the physics and data selection challenges and concentrate on the computing, analysis, and collaborative challenges. CMS has chosen a distributed computing model, which relies heavily on grid services for its functionality. I will present the results of the most recent large scale integration testing and discuss the activities for the final year of preparation.

We consider interference experiments with two independent low dimensional Bose gases Phase fluctuations result in both the reduced contrast of interference fringes and shot to shot fluctuations of the interference contrast. Full distribution function of fringe visibilities is determined by high order
correlation functions within individual condensates and contains non trivial information about quantum and thermal fluctuations in the system. We show that the problem of finding the full distribution function of fringe contrast can be mapped to the problem of the statistics of random surfaces. We develop a general method for calculating full distribution functions for low-dimensional Bose gases, and apply it to one and two dimensional cases with nonzero temperature.
Related reference: cond-mat/0612011.