bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Observed variations in convective precipitation fraction and stratiform area with sea surface temperature
Authors: Rondanelli Roberto , Lindzen Richard S.
Published: September 2008

This paper focuses on the relation between local sea surface temperature (SST) and convective precipitation fraction and stratiform rainfall area from radar observations of precipitation, using data from the Kwajalein atoll ground‐based radar as well as the precipitation radar on board the TRMM satellite. We find that the fraction of convective precipitation increases with SST at a rate of about 6 to 12%/K and the area of stratiform rainfall normalized by total precipitation decreases with SST at rates between −5 and −28%/K. These relations are observed to hold for different regions over the tropical oceans and also for different periods of time. Correlations are robust to outliers and to undersampled precipitation regions. Kwajalein results are relatively insensitive to the parameters in the stratiform‐convective classification algorithm. Quantitative differences between the results obtained using the two different radars could be explained by the smoothing in the reflectivity of convective regions due to the relatively large pixel size of the TRMM precipitation radar compared to the size of the convective clouds. Although a dependence on temperature such as the one documented is consistent with an increase in the efficiency of convective precipitation (and therefore consistent with one of the mechanisms invoked to explain the original Iris effect observations) this is but one step in studying the possibility of a climate feedback. Further work is required to clarify the particular mechanism involved.
An analysis of the dependence of clear‐sky top‐of‐atmosphere outgoing longwave radiation on atmospheric temperature and water vapor
Authors: Dessler A. E. , Yang P. , Lee J. , Solbrig J. , Zhang Z. , Minschwaner K.
Published: September 2008

We have analyzed observations of clear‐sky top‐of‐atmosphere outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) measured by the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES). These measurements were obtained during March 2005 at night and over the ocean and cover latitudes from 70°N to 70°S. First, we compare the OLR measurements to OLR calculated from two radiative transfer models. The models use as input simultaneous and collocated measurements of atmospheric temperature and atmospheric water vapor made by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS). We find excellent agreement between the models' predictions of OLR and observations, well within the uncertainty of the measurements. We also analyze the sensitivity of OLR to changing surface temperature Ts, atmospheric temperature Ta, and atmospheric water vapor q. We find that OLR is most sensitive to unit changes in Ta when that change occurs in the lower troposphere. For q, the altitude distribution of sensitivity varies between the midlatitudes, subtropics, and the convective region. We also partition the observed variations in OLR into contributions from changing Ts, Ta, and q. In the midlatitudes, changes in Ts and Ta contribute approximately equally, and are partially offset by changes in q. In the subtropics, changes in Ta dominate, with a smaller contribution from changes in Ts and a relatively small offsetting contribution from q. In the tropical convective region, a rapid increase in q in the midtroposphere leads to a dramatic reduction in OLR with increasing Ts, which has been termed the “super greenhouse effect”.
Reconstructing marine productivity of the Cariaco Basin during marine isotope stages 3 and 4 using organic‐walled dinoflagellate cysts
Authors: González Catalina , Dupont Lydie M. , Mertens Kenneth , Wefer Gerold
Published: September 2008

An organic‐walled dinoflagellate cyst analysis was carried out on sediment core MD03‐2622, retrieved from the Cariaco Basin. The core comprises the 73–30 ka interval. Down core changes in cyst abundance, accumulation rate, and composition of cyst assemblages were used to identify climatic and oceanographic changes at orbital and millennial time scales in this near‐equatorial seasonal upwelling area. Throughout the sequence, dinoflagellate cyst assemblages were dominated by heterotrophic dinocysts (mainly Brigantedinium spp.), with the exception of four autotrophic‐dominated (mainly Spiniferites ramosus) intervals around 58, 53, 46, and 37 ka. At orbital time scales, changes in the dinoflagellate productivity seem to follow low‐latitude insolation, with the highest productivities coinciding with maximum February insolation (47–38 ka). At millennial scales, cyst accumulation rates appeared to coincide with Dansgaard‐Oeschger (D‐O) variability, with significant increments occurring during warm interstadials. The opposite was true during stadials. Short periods of high nutrient availability and stratified conditions followed Heinrich events H4, H5, H5a, and H6 and concurred with enhanced river runoff. Spectral analyses confirm the existence of these and other higher‐frequency periodicities and support the idea of a tightly coupled terrestrial/marine and tropical/high‐latitude climate system during the last glacial period.
Pricing for water conservation with cost recovery
Authors: Loehman Edna Tusak
Published: September 2008

Variable unit pricing provides incentives for conservation, similar to increasing block rates, while covering system costs. For supply‐limited situations and planning contexts, it is also shown to provide for cost recovery with supply limits and capacity constraints. This paper presents two applications of pricing with supply constraints: (1) an application for Amman, Jordan, showing that VUP satisfying a supply limit can avoid more costly capacity expansion and (2) an example of seasonal pricing for Boulder, Colorado, as an alternative to water restrictions. These two cases also exhibit two methods for generating data needs: (1) a “full information approach” with specified demand and cost functions and (2) “iterative pricing” that uses a previous year's cost and consumption data to set future pricing.
Psychology of Human Kin Recognition: Heuristic Cues, Erroneous Inferences, and Their Implications
Authors: Park Justin H. , Schaller Mark , Van Vugt Mark
Published: September 2008

Humans possess explicit, rule-based, and culturally determined systems for identifying kin, but kinship inferences are also influenced implicitly by cue-based mechanisms found commonly across the animal kingdom. These mechanisms are fallible. An evolutionarily informed signal-detection analysis suggests that (a) cue-based kin recognition may sometimes be biased in favor of false-positive errors, resulting in implicit kinship inferences even in the presence of nonkin, and (b) the tendency toward this inferential error may vary predictably in response to specific developmental and contextual circumstances. This analysis has important implications for a wide variety of psychological phenomena (especially in the realms of person perception, interpersonal attraction, and prosocial behavior) and leads to the deduction of many novel hypotheses.
The Causal Generalization Paradox: The Case of Treatment Outcome Research
Authors: Staines Graham L.
Published: September 2008

Data from psychological experiments pose a causal generalization paradox. Unless the experimental results have some generality, they contribute little to scientific knowledge. Yet, because most experiments use convenience samples rather than probability-based samples, there is almost never a formal justification, or set of rigorous guidelines, for generalizing the study's findings to other populations. This article discusses the causal generalization paradox in the context of outcome findings from experimental evaluations of psychological treatment programs and services. In grappling with the generalization paradox, researchers often make misleading (or at least oversimplified) assumptions. The article analyzes 10 such assumptions, including the belief that a significant experimental treatment effect is likely to be causally generalizable and the belief that the magnitude of a significant experimental effect provides a sound effect size estimate for causal generalization. The article then outlines 10 constructive strategies for assessing and enhancing causal generality. They include strategies involving the scaling level of outcome measures, variable treatment dosages, effectiveness designs, multiple measures, corroboration from observational designs, and the synthesis of multiple studies. Finally, the article's discussion section reviews the conditions under which causal generalizations are justified.
Combat Flow: Military, Political, and Ethical Dimensions of Subjective Well-Being in War
Authors: Harari Yuval Noah
Published: September 2008

The theory of flow argues that subjective well-being results from absorption in an activity that strikes a good balance between challenges and skills. This absorption has been termed flow. Such absorption is often reported in combat situations, in which it contributes both to the subjective well-being and to the efficiency of soldiers. This article suggests that combat flow may have been central to military training and military performance throughout history. The study of combat flow could therefore shed new light on military history and form the basis for the development of new training techniques. The article simultaneously probes the ethical and political implications of manipulating the subjective well-being of soldiers in such a way. It cautions scholars of flow and subjective well-being that they should be aware of the ethical and political implications of their studies and warns against the dangerous political results of equating subjective well-being with happiness. The article further calls for greater cooperation between psychologists and historians in the study of well-being.
Morphology and Behavior: Phrenology Revisited
Authors: Gallup Gordon G. , Frederick Michael J. , Pipitone R. Nathan
Published: September 2008

Research conducted by evolutionary psychologists and biologists shows that subtle individual differences in body morphology can be related to surprising and important differences in human behavior and reproductive success. The authors summarize recent work on these effects as they relate to fluctuating asymmetry, facial attractiveness, finger digit morphology, sexually dimorphic differences in body configuration, and head circumference. Examples include the discovery that women who have sex with bilaterally symmetrical men report more orgasms; men with attractive faces have higher quality sperm; the length of the index finger in relation to the ring finger is related to verbal fluency, spatial ability, and the risk of autism; women with an hourglass figure have more regular menstrual cycles and are more fertile; and the sound of a person's voice predicts his or her sexual behavior.
Relationship between birthweight and arterial elasticity in childhood
Authors: Rondó Patricia H.C. , Lemos Jesuana O. , Pereira Joilane A. , Oliveira Julicristie M. , Innocente Luiz Roberto
Published: September 2008

There is a considerable debate about the potential influence of ‘fetal programming’ on cardiovascular diseases in adulthood. In the present prospective epidemiological cohort study, the relationship between birthweight and arterial elasticity in 472 children between 5 and 8 years of age was assessed. LAEI (large artery elasticity index), SAEI (small artery elasticity index) and BP (blood pressure) were assessed using the HDI/PulseWave™ CR-2000 CardioVascular Profiling System. Blood concentrations of glucose, total cholesterol and its fractions [LDL (low-density lipoprotein)-cholesterol and HDL (high-density lipoprotein)-cholesterol] and triacylglycerols (triglycerides) were determined by automated enzymatic methods. Insulin was assessed by a chemiluminescent method, insulin resistance by HOMA (homoeostasis model assessment) and CRP (C-reactive protein) by immunonephelometry. Two linear regression models were applied to investigate the relationship between the outcomes, LAEI and SAEI, and the following variables: birthweight, gestational age, glucose, LDL-cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, triacylglycerols, insulin, CRP, HOMA, age, gender, waist circumference, per capita income, SBP (systolic BP) and DBP (diastolic BP). LAEI was positively associated with birthweight (P=0.036), waist circumference (P<0.001) and age (P<0.001), and negatively associated with CRP (P=0.024) and SBP (P<0.001). SAEI was positively associated with birthweight (P=0.04), waist circumference (P=0.001) and age (P<0.001), and negatively associated with DBP (P<0.001). Arterial elasticity was decreased in apparently healthy children who had lower birthweights, indicating an earlier atherogenetic susceptibility to cardiovascular diseases in adolescence and adult life. Possible explanations for the results include changes in angiogenesis during critical phases of intrauterine life caused by periods of fetal growth inhibition and local haemodynamic anomalies as a way of adaptation to abnormal pressure and flow.
Nobel prize in chemistry to Berg, Gilbert and Sanger
Authors: Schwarzschild Bertram M.
Published: September 2008

The 1980 Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded last month to Paul Berg (Stanford University), Walter Gilbert (Harvard University) and Frederick Sanger (Cambridge University), for their work on the biochemistry of DNA. Half of the $210 000 chemistry prize was awarded to Berg for “his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acid, with particular regard to recombinant DNA.” The other half of the prize is shared between Gilbert and Sanger “for their contributions concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids.”
Gel collapse is phase transition
Authors: Schwarzschild Bertram M.
Published: September 2008

An infinitesimal change in temperature or fluid composition can, under the right conditions, abruptly collapse a gel to 1/500th of its original volume. This appears to be a phase transition in the classic thermodynamic sense. A gel is a crosslinked polymer network that holds a fluid in its interstices—for example, a jellied consommé. Considerable theoretical and experimental work has been done since the 1940's on the sol–gel transition, the phase transition from the liquid to the gel state. But prior to the recent work of Toyoichi Tanaka and his colleagues at MIT, it was not known that a phase transition could occur within the gel state itself.
Literally two-dimensional magnets
Authors: von Foerster Thomas
Published: September 2008

The theoretical description of phase transitions remains a challenging problem in statistical physics. Looking for mathematically simple systems, theorists have investigated one- and two-dimensional models. Such models, however present a challenge to experimenters: The world remains—except in very special cases—stubbornly three dimensional. Recent experiments, however, have produced what are apparently truly two-dimensional magnets: manganese stearate films deposited on quartz plates and oxygen adsorbed on exfoliated graphite. Because the substrates are nonmagnetic and have completely different structures from the adsorbed substances, the magnetic ordering can only be two-dimensional. These systems may become useful in investigations of the general properties of phase transitions as well as the specifically two-dimensional theories (PHYSICS TODAY, August 1978, page 17, and April 1980, page 17).
AIP Member Societies entering the 1980's
Authors: Porte Beverly Fearn
Published: September 2008

The nine Member Societies and their nearly 60 000 members have moved into a new decade, a decade with the promise and the problems of a steady-state environment. For six of the societies this will be their sixth to ninth decade of existence: The American Physical Society and the American Astronomical Society founded in 1899, followed by the Optical Society of America in 1916, the Acoustical Society of America and The Society of Rheology in 1929, and the American Association of Physics Teachers in 1930. The remaining three emerged, in their present form, after World War II: The American Crystallographic Association in 1949, the American Vacuum Society in 1953, and finally the American Association of Physicists in Medicine in 1958. Each decade has presented opportunities which the societies have explored and problems which they have weathered; this new decade will be no exception.
Industry–university interactions
Authors: Pake George E.
Published: September 2008

We have entered a period of exploration of new approaches between industry and the universities. There are opportunities for the evolution of stronger bonds between industrial and university researchers. Although many of the examples I will give are not specific to physics, these new opportunities clearly include research in many areas of physics.
Financial pinch kills British RFX pinch
Authors: Schwarzschild Bertram M.
Published: September 2008

The British Atomic Energy Authority has cancelled the Reversed Field Experiment. The £20-million RFX magnetic-confinement-fusion facility, planned for the Culham Laboratory in Oxfordshire, was to have been the world's most ambitious reversed-field-pinch machine to date. With its cancellation, for budgetary reasons, American plans for full participation in the RFX have come to a sudden and disappointing end (PHYSICS TODAY, September 1981, page 20).
The early days of accelerator mass spectrometry
Authors: Alvarez Luis W.
Published: September 2008

I have always been unhappy about science history because it so often skirts what I think is the most important element in a new observation or theory—how did this person happen to be doing this thing or happen to be thinking along these new lines? So, in writing here about my involvement in the early days of accelerator mass spectroscopy, I want to take you behind the scenes, to help you understand how I happened to be mixed up in three unusual projects.
The physicist as entrepreneur
Authors: Jacobs Michael
Published: September 2008

The phenomenal growth of physics as a science over the past half century has been paralled, breakthrough for breakthrough, by the explosion of physics as a marketable commodity. Technology has followed close on the heels of research, and has sometimes even taken the lead and acted as a stimulus for research.
Rayleigh scattering
Authors: Young Andrew T.
Published: September 2008

We all know that blue skies and red sunsets are due to the “Rayleigh scattering” of sunlight. But beyond that, Rayleigh scattering means different things to different scientists.
APS and AAPT hold January Meeting in San Francisco
Authors: Gladstone Daniel
Published: September 2008

Sessions will concern nuclear physics, synchrotron radiation and VLSI, as well as the arms race, funding, and education in China and the USSR
SLAC continues R&D on 100-GeV linear collider
Authors: Lubkin Gloria B.
Published: September 2008

SLAC is now using about ten percent of its operating budget for research and development on the SLAC Linear Collider, which would be the world's first linear collider. Unlike a storage ring, a linear collider eliminates the synchrotron radiation produced in circular devices by using an electron linac and a positron linac and then aiming the two beams at each other once (PHYSICS TODAY, January 1980, page 19); after the collision the remaining electrons and positrons are discarded.
Gambling with a theory of quarks
Authors: Levi Barbara G.
Published: September 2008

The aim of the game recently in quantum chromodynamics has been to find a single theory that describes both the short-range and the long-range interaction of quarks (PHYSICS TODAY, July 1976, page 17). The principal obstacle is that the coupling of quarks changes with the size scale: Gauge theories applied to the short range have predicted that the quark coupling there is weak, going to zero logarithmically with quark spacing. In this phenomenon of asymptotic freedom, the quarks behave as nearly free particles. By contrast, gauge theories applied to the long range have indicated that strong coupling would confine the quarks to bound states. The challenge is to bridge the gap between these two regions and to demonstrate that the longrange, strong-coupling property of confinement persists even when the shortrange couplings are weak. The application of Monte Carlo techniques to a lattice gauge theory has moved the players ahead one step in this direction. The game will be advanced by several more steps if theorists have luck in extending the same procedure to calculate the masses of the lowest lying quark bound states such as the pi or rho mesons.
Sensitive fiber-optic gyroscopes
Authors: Schwarzschild Bertram M.
Published: September 2008

Special relativity teaches us that no contrivance, mechanical or electromagnetic, confined in a closed vehicle, can detect the uniform rectilinear motion of that vehicle. But anyone who suffers from motion sickness can attest to the fact that nonuniform motion (acceleration or rotation) is a different story. Thus it is possible to direct ships, aircraft or missiles by inertial navigation systems, once an initial direction is established, without reference to magnetic compasses or radio beams.
Electron-acoustic microscopy
Authors: Cargill G. Slade
Published: September 2008

Electron-acoustic microscopy is a new technique enabling us to produce images that show variations in an object's thermal and elastic properties with a resolution on the order of microns. These images appear dramatically different than optical or electron microscope pictures, and contain much information not otherwise available (see figure 1). Because the technique is less than two years old, it is too early to identify with certainty the areas in which electron-acoustic microscopy will be important; we can, however, name a few possibilities:

▸ the non-destructive examination of complex integrated circuits

▸ the in vitro examination of biological materials

▸ the mapping of defects and inhomogeneities in amorphous solids

▸ the recovery of obscured metal imprints, such as the serial numbers on firearms.
Early days in cosmic rays
Authors: Rossi Bruno
Published: September 2008

Early in 1928, shortly after receiving my PhD at the University of Bologna, I was offered the position of assistant at the Physics Institute of the University of Florence. The Institute rose among olive trees, on the hill of Arcetri, a short distance from the villa where Galileo had spent the last years of his life as a political exile. The chair of physics was held by Professor Antonio Garbasso who, in earlier years, had done some creditable scientific work. But the first world war and subsequent events had diverted his interests toward politics. He was now a senator and the mayor of Florence. However, he still went to Arcetri three times a week to deliver his lectures, and he still had a strong desire to see the Institute, which he had built, become an important center of research.
Climate models
Authors: Bergman Kenneth H. , Hecht Alan D. , Schneider Stephen H.
Published: September 2008

The great social and economic impact of the weather continues to fuel the age-old quest for a way to predict future meteorological conditions. Enormous payoffs in areas such as agriculture, health and energy use await improved climate forecasting. Greater knowledge of the climate system would also contribute to our understanding of a wide range of phenomena—from the causes of the ice ages to the effects of decreased stratospheric ozone.
Elementary excitations in quantum liquids
Authors: Pines David
Published: September 2008

By 1931 it was already clear that condensed matter was to be a marvelous proving ground for the then newly developed quantum mechanics. The Sommerfeld free electron gas model for a metal; Bloch's theorem; the description of energy bands in solids; the theoretical explanation of why some solids are metals, some insulators, some semiconductors; all these provide eloquent testimony to the ingenuity of the theorist in developing a quantum description of independent electron motion that explained or illuminated experiment. During the succeeding decade, theorists began to examine some consequences of electron–electron interactions. Thus in 1934, when Frederick Seitz and Eugene Wigner developed the first theory of energy bands and cohesion in the alkali metals, they drew upon the pioneering study by Wigner of Coulomb correlations in a quantum plasma (interacting electrons moving in a uniform background of positive charge). In 1937, John Bardeen took into account the screening of ion motions by electrons in his seminal investigation of electron–phonon interactions in metals, while the concept of a pseudopotential to describe the way in which strong short-range electron correlations influence the electron–ion interaction in solids was put forward by H. Hellman in 1936 and independently by Conyers Herring in 1939.
This golden age of solid-state physics
Authors: Geballe Theodore H.
Published: September 2008

Michael Faraday (in 1843) was surprised to find the resistance of silver sulfide went down when the temperature went up; Hans Meissner (in 1929) was surprised to find that copper sulfide suddenly became a much better conductor than metallic copper at very low temperature (2 K); people through the ages (from 3000 BC to a very young Albert Einstein) have puzzled over why the compass does what it does. We now have a fairly fundamental understanding of why these things happen. Solid-state physics has been able to show how real materials governed by the laws of quantum mechanics can behave in such a variety of ways. In doing so, it has enabled us to make useful predictions and to synthesize materials with unprecedented properties and it has enabled us to use some materials as a basis of new technologies, making possible new styles of life.
A new wave of acoustics
Authors: Beyer Robert
Published: September 2008

In 1946, Richard Feynman, giving a contributed paper at a meeting of the American Physical Society, remarked that the allotted time was not long enough for him to read his abstract (it was a peculiarly long one), but only enough for him to point out the errors in it. In a similar vein, modern acoustics is so broad that the space allowed here is scarcely enough to reprint the PACS classification of the subject, let alone to instruct or entertain. Acoustics today is a festival of the applications of physics, both theoretical and experimental. We must therefore restrict ourselves to a sampling of topics, ranging from acoustical devices as ancient as the guinea pig's ear (figure 1) to others as modern as the electron-acoustic microscopic (figure 2).
Optics: an ebullient evolution
Authors: Franken Peter
Published: September 2008

I did my undergraduate and graduate work in physics right after World War II, as a Columbia victim. It was an era in which optics and electronics enjoyed similarly undistinguished roles in the curriculum, although optics was a required course and electronics was not. But then, electronics was useful, which brought these academic requirements into line with extant pedagogic philosophy. I guess most of us thought optics was useful too, but we didn't really think we had to understand anything more than the thin-lens equation, whereas we really had to know how to do electronics because we were all up to our navels in vacuum tubes and stuff. (Some of you are probably too young to know what a vacuum tube is; imagine a sort of glass cylinder with strange prongs at the base, one of which is always slightly bent….)
Atomic physics: a renewed vitality
Authors: Bederson Benjamin
Published: September 2008

In 1951 I had just accepted a job as assistant professor at New York University. I was at the time a postdoc working in Jerrold Zacharias's atomic-beams laboratory at MIT. My PhD thesis (at NYU) had been in the field that was then called “gas discharges”, and now has the more dignified appellation of gaseous electronics. I wondered what kind of experiment to set up, upon my return to NYU, that would effectively exploit my rather minimal expertise in two seemingly disparate fields, one involving complex macroscopic phenomena in the gas phase, the other an elegant, though technically challenging field that dealt with atoms one at a time.
Vacuum: from art to exact science
Authors: Lafferty James M.
Published: September 2008

Vacuum is derived from the Latin word vacuus meaning empty. Absolute vacuum, a space entirely devoid of matter, is a theoretical concept only, never fully achieved by man or Nature. In modern usage, the word vacuum applies to any space at less than atmospheric pressure.
AIP Today- and Tomorrow
Authors: Koch H. William
Published: September 2008

Certainly one of the most evident and exciting aspects of American physics during the last fifty years has been its phenomenal growth—growth in the number of individuals committed to the profession, growth in the amount and variety of their research experiences, and growth in the stature of physics as a profession of eminence both within and outside the wider community of science. Hand in hand with this vital development of the profession has been the equally prominent evolution of the organization that serves it—the organization that is dedicated to its support and is sensitive to its proclivities—the American Institute of Physics.
Physics in 1981±50
Authors: Ramsey Norman F.
Published: September 2008

50 years is just the wrong interval of time to predict the future. We could all predict the state of physics 24 hours from now: It will be about the same as it is now. And depending upon the outcome of some current experiments on the decay of the proton, I might in a few years be able to make a fairly reliable prediction about the state of physics in 1033 years—namely nucleons will have decayed away and there won't be any physics. But 50 years is too long to be able to make detailed predictions and, of course, too short to make cosmological predictions.
The last fifty years—a revolution?
Authors: Weart Spencer R.
Published: September 2008

In some periods great conceptual revolutions shake the world of physics; at other times research seems to plod ahead within the confines of an established framework. And the structure of the physics community must change in a way that somehow matches the changing style of research. What, then, has been the form of physics during our own lifetime, and how has it changed? This is a difficult, but not impossible question. Only history can give us an inkling of the answer.
US particle Accelerators at age 50
Authors: Wilson R. R.
Published: September 2008

Fifty years ago, a dramatic race was under way to see who would be first to accelerate protons to an energy high enough to disintegrate the atomic nucleus. This contest, coincidental with the birth of the American Institute of Physics, could be considered as the beginning of what was to become a Golden Age of high-energy physics. The race might also be taken to mark the end of an Age of Innocence of nuclear physicists. Heretofore during an era to which all physicists look back with nostalgia, much of the fundamental knowledge about the nucleus had been obtained by the use of rather primitive experimental devices, followed by sophisticated analysis. Rutherford's famous α-particle scattering experiment is a case-in-point—a little string and sealing wax and not much else. Not much, that is, except great leaps of reason and imagination. In the future, in addition to make-do skills, physicists were going to have to master arcane techniques, such as those of mechanical and electrical engineers. Indeed they would have to invent a whole new technology of accelerator building in order to explore the inside of the nucleus and to identify and study its constituent parts.
Nobel Physics Prize to Bloembergen, Schawlow and Siegbahn
Authors: Lubkin Gloria B.
Published: September 2008

The 1981 Nobel prize in physics has been awarded to Nicolaas Bloembergen of Harvard University, Arthur L. Schawlow of Stanford University and Kai M. Siegbahn of Uppsala University. Bloembergen and Schawlow will receive half the prize “for their contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy.” The other half will go to Siegbahn “for his contribution to the development of high-resolution electron spectroscopy.” The prize, to be awarded in Stockholm on 10 December, this year amounts to one million Swedish kroner (worth about $180 000).
Peking institute plans e+e−collider
Authors: Lubkin Gloria B.
Published: September 2008

After the Chinese government decided at the end of the last year to suspend work on its 50-GeV proton synchrotron, a research and development program for a smaller machine has been established at the Institute of High-Energy Physics in Peking. This smaller machine would be an electron–positron collider with 2.2 GeV in each beam.
How to address the APS
Authors: Darrow Karl K. , Havens W. W.
Published: September 2008

Consider an actor in a hit show on I Broadway, and contrast him with a physicist addressing The American Physical Society. The actor has all the advantages. He is speaking lines written for him by a master of the art of commanding the interest of an audience (remember that we are postulating a hit show). He has a gift for acting, and also a long experience in the art; otherwise he would not be in the cast. Even so, he is not allowed to speak his lines in any way that occurs to him. Every phrase, every inflection, every gesture, even the position that he is to take on the stage, has been tested or even prescribed by a professional director, who does not hesitate to give him mandatory instructions, or even to alter the lines if they seem ineffective.
Physicists and their work in the automotive industry
Authors: Jamerson Frank E. , Muench Nils L.
Published: September 2008

“Among the many fields of present-day physics which promise significant contributions to the automotive industry in the near future, is the physics of the ‘solid-state’.” These words, spoken in a March 1938 address by Cornell University physicist Floyd K. Richtmyer, proved to be prophetic. Today, virtually every vehicle on the road has some solid-state component in its electrical system. In fact, the newest American automobiles embody integrated circuit technology in the form of durable microcomputers, which are an essential part of electronic engine-control systems. Such systems are just one example of the important role that physics has played in the progress of the US automotive industry.
Organic charge-transfer salt shows superconductivity
Authors: Lubkin Gloria B.
Published: September 2008

A highly anisotropic organic charge-transfer salt has been made that shows a variety of fascinating properties. The material, (TMTSF)2PF6, is the first organic solid to become superconducting. But the superconducting transition occurs at about 1.3 K and with the application of 6 kbar pressure. One can make other related salts, retaining the TMTSF as donor and replacing the acceptor with another inorganic anion, such as AsF6, or ClO4. These related salts are also superconductors with lower applied pressure or even atmospheric pressure but still at very low temperature.
HEAO-2 x-ray spectra study plasmas
Authors: Schwarzschild Bertram M.
Published: September 2008

The Einstein Observatory satellite has been orbiting the Earth at an altitude of 300 miles since November 1978, with an x-ray telescope comparable to large optical telescopes in resolution and sensitivity. Among the various on-board detectors that examine the x-ray images produced in the focal plane of this 58-centimeter telescope is a Bragg crystal spectrometer that makes possible for the first time detailed study of x-ray spectral lines from sources outside the solar system. This high-resolution xray spectrometer, developed by Claude Canizares, George Clark and their colleagues at MIT, permits one now to investigate hot gases in distant supernova remnants and clusters of galaxies with the same diagnostic techniques that have been applied to plasmas in the laboratory and in the solar corona for decades.
Physics at VEPP-4 e+e− collider
Authors: Schwarzschild Bertram M.
Published: September 2008

A new electron–positron storage ring, at Novosibirsk in central Siberia, has recently begun doing physics. The VEPP-4 colliding-beam accelerator is designed to collide electrons with positrons at center-of-mass energies up to 14 GeV. When it achieves its design energy and luminosity, VEPP-4 will be one of only two e+e− storage rings in the world capable of producing at high rates the “bottom-flavored” mesons that carry the recently discovered bottom (b) quark (PHYSICS TODAY, October 1980, page 19).
Atomic spectra for nuclear studies
Authors: Redi Olav
Published: September 2008

The atom, through its spectrum, reveals some of the key features of its nucleus. From the earliest days of nuclear physics, high-resolution measurements of the hyperfine structure of atomic energy levels have provided reliable data on nuclear angular momenta (spins) and electric and magnetic multipole moments. Shifts in atomic energy levels from isotope to isotope—the “isotope shifts”—have given information about the change of the mean-square radius of the nuclear charge as a function of neutron number. Often the optical spectrum of bound electrons provides the only probe of these nuclear properties. Magnetic dipole moments and spins have played an important role in clarifying the individual-particle aspects of the nucleus, described by the shell model, while electric quadrupole moments and isotope shifts have dramatically demonstrated the collective nuclear degrees of freedom. To perform systematic studies of these effects over long sequences of isotopes, to shed as much light as possible on the structure of the nucleus, one must be able to make measurements with radioactive nuclei. This requirement has posed a challenge to atomic spectroscopists to develop new high-resolution techniques suitable for studies of nuclear structure with the very minute or dilute samples that can be produced with accelerators or reactors. Notable advances were made in the past thirty years in working with small samples—and particularly the small radioactive samples produced at accelerators—and by the introduction of radio-frequency and level-crossing techniques.
Superconducting electronics
Authors: McDonald Donald G.
Published: September 2008

The pioneers of superconducting electronics are accumulating an impressive record of achievement. For example, they have now gained the high-performance lead in the important field of digital electronics. Logic delays of 13 picoseconds and switching times of 9 picoseconds have been experimentally demonstrated. The same basic devices, Josephson junctions, also make the most sensitive microwave detectors, the most sensitive magnetometers (or current sensors) and the most stable voltage sources. Although each of these developments is an important independent accomplishment, the combination of these developments in a single technology merits special attention.
Laser spectroscopy on-line with nuclear accelerators
Authors: Schuessler Hans Achim
Published: September 2008

During the last few years the study of highly unstable nuclei has made dramatic advances as a result of breakthroughs in experimental technique. As Olav Redi has discussed in the previous article, on page 26, electrons interact with the nucleus so that one can use atomic spectra to probe nuclear structures. The recent experimental developments have both the production of intense and pure beams of mass-separated isotopes, on the one hand, and sensitive and sophisticated techniques for the observation of these nuclei on the other. The basic difficulties in the experiments arise from the very small number of the unstable nuclei that are available even with modern on-line mass separators and from the short lifetimes of the nuclei.
Period-doubling route to chaos shows universality
Authors: Lubkin Gloria B.
Published: September 2008

In some systems, as an external parameter is varied, the behavior of the system changes from simple to erratic. For some range of the parameter, the behavior of the system is orderly; for example, it is periodic in time with a period, T. Beyond this range, the behavior does not reproduce itself in T seconds. Instead, two intervals of T are required. In order words, the period doubles to 2T. This new periodicity remains over some range of parameter values until another critical value is reached; now a period of 4T is required for reproduction. At a certain value of the parameter, an infinite number of doublings has been reached and the behavior has become aperiodic or chaotic. Thus period doubling is a characteristic route for certain systems to follow as they change from simple periodic to complex aperiodic motion.
Surface EXAFS yields bond sites
Authors: Schwarzschild Bertram M.
Published: September 2008

Extended x-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS), a powerful source of information about the immediate environment of selected atoms in systems without long-range order, is now being exploited for the study of surfaces. Using the high-intensity x-ray beams produced by synchrotron radiation from SPEAR, the e+e− storage ring at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL), groups from Bell Labs and Stanford have recently been able to determine with high precision the bond lengths and adsorption sites of fractional monolayers of atoms adsorbed onto various substrate surfaces.
Plans for VLBI with 10 antennas
Authors: Schwarzschild Bertram M.
Published: September 2008

For more than a decade, astronomers have been using very-long-baseline radio interferometry (VLBI) to investigate the structure of distant objects three orders of magnitude smaller than the resolution limit of any optical telescope. A network of seven radio telescopes, from Massachusetts to California, acting as a transcontinental interferometer, has in recent years given us radio images of quasars and galactic nuclei, showing features down to a fraction of a milli-arcsecond. No other astronomical technique—existing or proposed—can come within two orders of magnitude of such resolving power.
High-resolution analytical electron microscopy
Authors: Carpenter R. W.
Published: September 2008

The objective of high-resolution analytical electron microscopy is the determination of the local structure of a wide variety of specimens. This is accomplished by collecting and analyzing the many different signals emitted by a sample when it is irradiated by a high-energy (around 100 keV) electron probe. At present one can determine the structure and composition of solids at spatial resolutions of 50 nm or less; the results are, in general, characteristic of the bulk solids from which the specimens were taken. Such detailed knowledge of the local structure and composition of solids is required especially in geology, materials science, solid-state physics and solid-state chemistry, where properties such as flow stress, fracture modes, electron mobilities and phase transformations are highly sensitive to details of structure and composition.
The future of nuclear energy
Authors: Weinberg Alvin M.
Published: September 2008

In many ways nuclear energy is a fantastic success: a completely new source of energy now producing, or soon scheduled to produce, about 20 exajoules per year or almost 10 percent of all the energy man now produces. This energy will come from approximately 500 large reactors in 36 countries (see figure 1). These reactors, if replaced by oil-fired power plants, would require about 107 barrels of oil per day—that is, about one-seventh of all the oil produced in the world. Were the output of these plants used for electric resistive heating, in principle 5×106 barrels of oil per heating day could be displaced; if used to recharge electric vehicles, perhaps 10×106 barrels.
Accelerator superconducting magnets give headaches
Authors: Lubkin Gloria B.
Published: September 2008

Two major high-energy accelerator projects in the US are designed to use superconducting bending and focusing magnets in their rings. Both the Isabelle project at Brookhaven and the Energy Doubler project at Fermilab have found that developing a reliable high-field superconducting magnet that could be reproduced almost a thousandfold is a lot harder than originally anticipated: The difficulties with the Isabelle magnets are sufficiently troubling that Brookhaven has recently established three alternative magnet-design task forces. The hope is to produce a design that could be substituted in case Brookhaven cannot substantially improve the performance of the present magnet design.
Studying tectonics with quasar VLBI
Authors: Schwarzschild Bertram M.
Published: September 2008

To study the tectonic deformation of the Earth's crust, geophysicists would like to be able to measure intercontinental distances to within about a centimeter. The long-term movement of tectonic plates is typically a few centimeters per year. Recent developments in very-long-baseline radiointerferometry (VLBI) and laser ranging, using quasars and orbiting satellites as reference markers, appear to be putting these techniques within striking distance of this extraordinary accuracy. By such means one also measures very precisely tidal deformations of the Earth's crust, and variations in the direction and speed of its rotation.
Physics and the APS in 1980
Authors: Feshbach Herman
Published: September 2008

The last hundred years have witnessed an astonishing growth in our understanding of the physical universe. It is no exaggeration to say that this development is an incomparably profound achievement of the human mind. It rests directly upon remarkably few principles and concepts which are applicable to a wide range of phenomena extending from the sub-atomic world of nuclear and particle physics, including the atomic and molecular regimes of chemistry and condensed matter, to the domain of astrophysics which, for example, considers the history of the universe from the time of the “big bang.” But as much as has been accomplished, the end is nowhere in sight. New and challenging fundamental issues which demand the development of new concepts continue to make their appearance. Consequently a pervasive sense of excitement and expectation exists which is coupled with a perception of assured progress based on past success. Not that these new mysteries will necessarily be easily resolved. But there is a confidence that the methods which have been effective in the past will prove to be equally effective in the future.
Compact high-field toroids: a shortcut to ignition?
Authors: Schwarzschild Bertram M.
Published: September 2008

The achievement of thermonuclear ignition in a deuterium–tritium plasma will require a temperature well in excess of 4 keV (50 million kelvin), and a confinement parameter nτ (particle density×confinement time) greater than 1014 sec/cm3. This important goal is being pursued primarily by designing and building ever larger tokamaks. But despite the size and cost of the large tokamaks now under construction in this country (Princeton's TFTR), Europe (JET), Japan (JT-60) and Russia (T-15), it is not expected that this generation of machines will achieve a self-sustaining plasma burn. To that end, still larger tokamaks, costing a billion dollars or more, are now in the planning stage.