Do the maths
The first AAAS meeting was held on 20 September 1848. So, not including this one, how many meetings do you think they’ve had so far? 160? Wrong. According to page one, paragraph six of the FAQ secti...
A resolvable contradiction
“Boston…is America’s science town,” began David Baltimore at a breakfast buffet this morning. He was speaking to a room full of journalists in the Hynes Convention Center with the intentio...
Science and technology from a global perspective
The 2008 meeting for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is perhaps the biggest general science fair of the year. Not only is it a chance to catch up on all the latest break...
Been there…got the t-shirt
APS memorabilia: these will be worth a fortune on eBay someday. I actually didn’t buy an APS t-shirt — or a bumper sticker, slinky or travel mug — but I’m still glad I came to ...
A little bang at SLAC
What’s the best way to determine the structure of a molecule that cannot be integrated within a periodic lattice? Blow the heck out of it using x-ray pulses from the Linac Coherent Light Source ...
The great pages debate
IOP Publishing’s reception was a big hit last night, judging by the fact that the buffet had to be replenished several times — you can work up a huge appetite running back and forth betwee...
Brrr…it's cold in there
Some of the most interesting condensed matter physics occurs at very low temperatures and physicists need accurate ways of knowing just how cold their samples are. Traditionally, this has meant spendi...
On to the exhibition
I was having so much fun with the physicists that I nearly forgot to check out the exhibition before it closed for good this afternoon. First stop was the IOP Publishing stand where I had a chat with ...
Living surfaces self-organize
Here’s a new recipe from Jeffrey Brinker of the University of New Mexico (P42 1) Mix together water, alcohol, detergent, silica and a good dollop of single-cell organisms. Dip in a substrate of ...
'Buckets of BEC with inter-bucket tunnelling'
What? Not Mott? Pots not dots, lots per pot …and hot! You can only get away with describing your experiment with a poem if you have a Nobel Prize — and JILA’s Eric Cornell has one of...
