Bulletin of the American Physical Society
12th Annual Meeting of the Northwest Section of the APS
Volume 55, Number 6
Friday–Saturday, October 1–2, 2010; Walla Walla, Washington
Session B1: Welcome and Plenary Session I |
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Chair: Mike Miller, Washington State University Room: Maxey Auditorium |
Friday, October 1, 2010 8:15AM - 8:30AM |
B1.00001: WELCOME |
Friday, October 1, 2010 8:30AM - 9:06AM |
B1.00002: Materials for Energy Applications Invited Speaker: New materials that address worldwide energy needs will attract significant research effort into the foreseeable future. This talk will focus on the fundamental properties of several materials that have potential to increase energy production or reduce energy demand. One example is zinc oxide (ZnO), a wide-band-gap semiconductor that has attracted resurgent interest as an optoelectronic material. The efficiency of the emission is higher than more conventional materials such as GaN, making ZnO a strong candidate for energy-efficient white lighting. Another major advantage of ZnO is the fact that, in contrast to GaN, large single crystals can be grown. ZnO has also been used as a transparent conductor in solar cells. In general, physicists can contribute significantly to this field, by elucidating fundamental phenomena that will lead to new or improved devices. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 1, 2010 9:06AM - 9:42AM |
B1.00003: The Hunt for Habitable Exoplanets Invited Speaker: Fifteen years after the discovery of planets around other stars, the discovery of rocky, 1 Earth-mass, 1 Earth-radius planets around other stars is imminent. Of particular interest are planets that receive similar amounts of stellar radiation as the Earth, as they could support liquid water, probably the most critical requirement for habitability. Current technology favors the discovery of these planets around low-mass stars, about one-tenth the mass of the sun. In that case, habitable planets need to orbit about ten times closer to these cooler star. Such proximity introduces hazards that are of negligible importance for life on Earth: increased exposure to (time-varying) short wavelength radiation, stronger magnetic fields, tidal effects, and atmospheric removal by the stellar wind. Nevertheless, there are no obvious reasons to presume these planets are sterile. I discuss observational campaigns to discover rocky exoplanets, theoretical methods to predict their potential habitability, and prospects for the remote detection of life. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 1, 2010 9:42AM - 10:18AM |
B1.00004: Mechanical mysteries of bio-membranes Invited Speaker: The membranes that form the boundaries of every cell and every organelle inside every cell are remarkable materials -- flexible, two-dimensional, self-assembled fluids. Exploring the ways in which these physical characteristics guide the biological functions of membranes has yielded many fascinating insights in recent years. I'll describe two projects from my lab in the area of membrane biophysics. One relates to the trafficking of cargo in cells, which involves dramatic changes in membrane shape and topography. By tugging on membranes with optical tweezers to measure their mechanical rigidity, we've found that a key trafficking protein has the ability to lower membrane rigidity by up to 100{\%} as a function of its concentration, thereby lowering the energetic cost of membrane deformation. The other relates to the fluidity of membranes. By carefully examining the Brownian motion of membrane-anchored nanoparticles, we have found that membranes are not simple ``Newtonian'' fluids, but rather are viscoelastic -- a two-dimensional analogue of the entertaining grade-school staple of corn-starch and water. I'll stress in my talk the fascinating issues that invite exploration at the intersection of physics and biology, and some of the challenges involved in exploring them. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 1, 2010 10:18AM - 10:35AM |
B1.00005: BREAK
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Friday, October 1, 2010 10:35AM - 11:11AM |
B1.00006: Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos generated by Optoelectronic Feedback Oscillators Invited Speaker: Nonlinear differential equations describe the time evolution of a huge class of naturally occurring and practically relevant systems. Although explicit analytic solutions of any particular differential equation can be found only in rare cases, the mathematical tools of nonlinear dynamics provide significant insights into universal qualitative aspects of system behaviors that are often of greater interest, such as whether systems oscillate or not and how new solutions arise through bifurcations as parameters are changed. In this talk, I will introduce some of the relevant mathematical concepts and discuss how they can be used to investigate the dynamics of time-delay systems on the example of experiments utilizing optoelectronic feedback oscillators. A fascinating feature of these oscillators is that they are simple devices yet capable of generating a wide range of dynamic behaviors, from periodic oscillations to high-dimensional chaos. I will discuss these dynamic regimes and give examples of possible applications. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 1, 2010 11:11AM - 11:47AM |
B1.00007: Unraveling the Mysteries of Nature in the Smallest Dimensions Invited Speaker: What the universe is made of and how it works have always been the basic questions in the heart of particle physics. How does the quantum world connect to the cosmic scale? What is the structure of space-time? Do all the forces become one? High-energy particle accelerators constitute a powerful tool in the quest to understand the nature of the universe, by recreating the particles and forces of its early state. As an example, we will present the case of the electroweak symmetry and how we are striving to understand it at the highest energy accelerators, the Tevatron at Fermilab and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 1, 2010 11:47AM - 12:05PM |
B1.00008: DC State of Mind; A Congressional update Invited Speaker: Every day the headlines are dominated by news of a slow economic recovery, high unemployment, and a Congress focused on the next election. Deficit hawks, Tea Partiers, partisanship, and mid-term elections are all topics typically outside the ken of physics but are critically important to our ability to continue to pursue cutting edge innovative research. For example, during the last six months Congress has, among other things, worked on passing the 2011 federal budget and reauthorization of America COMPETES. Both of these major pieces of legislation are fundamental to how our country will fund physics research for the next few years. For the past two years, science has done very well thanks to the support of Congress and the administration. The coming years are going to be far more difficult and every physicist needs to commit themselves to defending the gains we have made. This talk will provide an overview of what has happened on Capitol Hill in the past few months and what, to the best of our knowledge, the physics community can expect for the coming years. The legislative successes of the last few months were, in part, made possibly with the aid of physicists who got involved. Around the country, physicists wrote opinion pieces for their local papers, wrote letters-to-the-editor, called their representatives, made their voices heard and helped shape policy. [Preview Abstract] |
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