Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2016
Volume 61, Number 6
Saturday–Tuesday, April 16–19, 2016; Salt Lake City, Utah
Session U7: Sakharov Prize SessionInvited
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Sponsoring Units: FIP Chair: Maria Spiropulu, California Institute of Technology Room: 150G |
Monday, April 18, 2016 3:30PM - 4:06PM |
U7.00001: Andrei Sakharov Prize: Human Rights and Peace - A Personal Odyssey Invited Speaker: Zafra Lerman For more than 30 years, I have devoted my life to promoting scientific freedom and human rights around the world. This devotion led me to put pressure on the American Chemical Society (ACS) to become active in the fight for human rights. Due to this pressure, in 1986, ACS established the Subcommittee on Scientific Freedom and Human Rights, which I chaired since its’ inception for over 25 years. In 1988, I met with Andrei Sakharov who advised me to never stop pressuring governments or organizations that abuse human rights. Based on his council, I took a crash course in Russian before traveling to the Soviet Union several times to meet with dissidents, despite the risk to my own safety. After the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989, I worked diligently on the issue of human rights in China. Traveling often to work on the release of pro-democracy prisoners, I met with several dissidents of China, including physicist Xu Liangying who was under house arrest. In my lecture, I will discuss additional cases of my fight for human rights. After 9/11/2001, I expanded my work on scientific freedom and human rights to the Middle East by organizing the Malta Conferences, which use science for diplomacy and as a bridge to peace. These conferences bring together scientists from 15 Middle East countries including Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, etc. with 6 Nobel Laureates to work for 5 days on solving regional problems. Although acts of war and terrorism have destabilized the political and economic climate in the Middle East, the Malta Conferences have made it possible for scientists from countries that are on the opposing sides of political and cultural conflicts to meet in a politically neutral environment. There they can work to forge relationships that bridge the deep chasms of mistrust and intolerance. Scientists who normally don’t have the opportunity to speak with one another are able to discuss their research and issues of mutual concern. In a time when the world’s eyes are focused on the Middle East and rhetoric, policy and media reports appear hopeless, the Malta Conferences offer a fresh approach to historic problems and political dysfunction. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, April 18, 2016 4:06PM - 4:42PM |
U7.00002: Fang Lizhi Memorial Lecture Invited Speaker: Perry Link |
Monday, April 18, 2016 4:42PM - 5:18PM |
U7.00003: LeRoy Apker Award: The Atmospheric Dynamics of Pulsar Companions Invited Speaker: Adam Jermyn Pulsars emit radiation over an extremely wide frequency range, from radio through gamma. Recently, systems in which this radiation significantly alters the atmospheres of low-mass pulsar companions have been discovered. These systems, ranging from ones with highly anisotropic heating to those with transient X-ray emissions, represent an exciting opportunity to investigate pulsars through the changes they induce in their companions. In this work, we present both analytic and numerical work investigating these phenomena, with a particular focus on atmospheric heat transport, transient phenomena, and the possibility of deep heating via gamma rays. We find that certain classes of binary systems may explain decadal-timescale X-ray transient phenomena, as well as the formation of so-called redback companion systems. In addition, we examine the temperature anisotropy induced by the Pulsar in its companion, and demonstrate that this may be used to infer properties of both the companion and the Pulsar wind. [Preview Abstract] |
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