Bulletin of the American Physical Society
10th Annual Meeting of the Northwest Section of APS
Volume 53, Number 6
Thursday–Saturday, May 15–17, 2008; Portland, Oregon
Session F1: Plenary Session II |
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Chair: Kara Keeter, Idaho State University Room: Evans Auditorium |
Saturday, May 17, 2008 8:30AM - 8:35AM |
F1.00001: Introductory Remarks |
Saturday, May 17, 2008 8:35AM - 9:11AM |
F1.00002: Characterization and Control of Chaos Invited Speaker: Many non-linear deterministic systems have regimes of operation in which long-term predictions are not possible; they display Chaos. This talk will discuss ways in which the strength of such chaos is measured. We will proceed to discuss how small perturbations of the parameters of operation, chosen in clever ways, may force the system to behave in an essentially periodic fashion. Examples will be drawn from our own work in Taylor-Couette fluid flow in systems with hourglass geometry, as well as electronic circuits employing operational amplifiers. Experiments and simulations appropriate to the undergraduate laboratory will be illustrated. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, May 17, 2008 9:11AM - 9:47AM |
F1.00003: The role of physics departments in the recruitment, preparation and support of pre-college teachers of physics Invited Speaker: The United States faces a critical shortage of qualified physics and physical science teachers. The number of high school students taking physics is increasing but the number of physics majors pursuing careers in pre-college teaching is not nearly sufficient to meet the demand. College and university physics departments have content expertise and ready access to potential future teachers of physics. In order to address the crisis in physics and physical science education, APS, AAPT, and AIP have developed the PhysTEC project. Seattle Pacific University is one of six fully funded PhysTEC sites. The PhysTEC project also supports a coalition of more than one hundred institutions that are committed to improving K-12 physics and physical science education. This talk will describe the national PhysTEC project along with our local PhysTEC program. We will explore ways in which physics departments can more fully integrate the preparation of pre-college physics teachers within existing departmental priorities. We will discuss opportunities for regional partnerships between 2-year and 4-year colleges, school districts, and teacher preparation programs. We will also highlight ways in which our research on the learning and teaching of physics informs the development of tools that teachers and teacher educators can use to diagnose student ideas and to design subsequent instruction that capitalizes on these ideas. \newline \newline In collaboration with Stamatis Vokos, Seattle Pacific University and Pam Kraus, Facet Innovations LLC. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, May 17, 2008 9:47AM - 10:23AM |
F1.00004: Frontiers in understanding matter at the extremes Invited Speaker: I will discuss current frontiers in understanding and predicting the structure of strongly-interacting matter in laboratory nuclei and in the cosmos. These include the development of effective field theory and renormalization group methods in nuclear physics, the advances of ab-initio approaches for nuclear structure, and the effort to develop a universal nuclear energy density functional based on microscopic interactions. Three-nucleon forces play a central role in these developments. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, May 17, 2008 10:23AM - 10:35AM |
F1.00005: BREAK
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Saturday, May 17, 2008 10:35AM - 11:11AM |
F1.00006: Novel Dynamics of One-Way Coupling Invited Speaker: Arrays of two-way coupled oscillators are familiar and have been extensively studied. However, arrays of one-way coupled oscillators have been studied only recently. One-way coupling seems impossible, because it appears to violate Newton's third law (and energy conservation). However, such arrays can be realized by enabling each oscillator to modify an external force that does work on a neighboring oscillator. The resulting arrays exhibit fascinating behavior of topological origin, such as the creation and annihilation of solitons. In this talk, I will describe theory, simulations, and experiments involving noisy one-way coupled oscillators. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, May 17, 2008 11:11AM - 11:47AM |
F1.00007: Applications of Two-Photon Absorption in Medicine and Biology Enabled by Specially Designed Biological Molecules Invited Speaker: We quantitatively study how the two-photon absorption (2PA) properties of biological molecules depend on their structure. 2PA is advantageous over regular one-photon absorption because of deeper penetration and more localized excitation in biological tissues. However, 2PA cross sections of biological chromophores are usually rather small to be useful in real life applications. Using quantum-mechanical few-level description of molecular electronic states, we interpret our data and predict new structures with considerably increased 2PA cross sections. These new materials either synthesized or genetically engineered make 2PA-based techniques applicable in medicine and biology. We show how our new porphyrin photosensitizers with drastically enhanced 2PA ($\sim$1000 times compared to regular porphyrins) can be used for in vivo two-photon-induced closing of blood vessels in Age-Related Macular Degeneration. The second example describes the application of fluorescent proteins in two-photon laser microscopy of biological cells. We demonstrate how the 2PA properties of fluorescent proteins can be considerably improved by smart mutations of the environment of chromophore inside the protein. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, May 17, 2008 11:47AM - 12:23PM |
F1.00008: Generation-IV Nuclear Energy Systems Invited Speaker: Nuclear power technology has evolved through roughly three generations of system designs: a first generation of prototypes and first-of-a-kind units implemented during the period 1950 to 1970; a second generation of industrial power plants built from 1970 to the turn of the century, most of which are still in operation today; and a third generation of evolutionary advanced reactors which began being built by the turn of the 20$^{th}$ century, usually called Generation~III or III+, which incorporate technical lessons learned through more than 12,000 reactor-years of operation. The Generation IV International Forum (GIF) is a cooperative international endeavor to develop advanced nuclear energy systems in response to the social, environmental and economic requirements of the 21$^{st}$ century. Six Generation IV systems under development by GIF promise to enhance the future contribution and benefits of nuclear energy. All Generation IV systems aim at performance improvement, new applications of nuclear energy, and/or more sustainable approaches to the management of nuclear materials. High-temperature systems offer the possibility of efficient process heat applications and eventually hydrogen production. Enhanced sustainability is achieved primarily through adoption of a closed fuel cycle with reprocessing and recycling of plutonium, uranium and minor actinides using fast reactors. This approach provides significant reduction in waste generation and uranium resource requirements. [Preview Abstract] |
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