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WASHINGTON, D.C., May 6, 2016 -- The following articles are freely available online from Physics Today (http://www.physicstoday.org), the world's most influential and closely followed magazine devoted to physics and the physical sciences community. You are invited to read, share, blog about, link to, or otherwise enjoy:
1) VIRGINIA’S DROWNING CITIES
Physics Today’s David Kramer reports on what Norfolk, Virginia, and surrounding cities are doing to prepare for the dire threat of sea-level rise. The city is currently ranked 10th among the world’s port cities whose assets are at risk from rising seas, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
“Norfolk is increasingly subject to nuisance flooding that occurs after heavy rains and when tides are exceptionally high, particularly in the fall. Water doesn’t drain well from many streets because century-old stormwater outfalls are submerged even at low tides. ‘You have a thunderstorm and suddenly everybody in Norfolk is modifying how they get from point A to point B because they know certain streets they won’t be able to drive on,’ says Ann Phillips, a retired rear admiral and Norfolk resident who consults for ODU’s office of research. ‘In some places, it gets up to feet deep, and things are completely impassible.’”
MORE: http://bit.ly/1rSiHby
2) THE ANTENNA THAT SPEAKS WITHOUT LISTENING
If telecommunications were speed dating, the nonreciprocal antenna’s behavior would be reprehensible. But, thankfully for communications experts, it isn’t – the device developed by Andrea Alù and postdocs Yakir Hadad and Jason Soric of the University of Texas at Austin breaks the time-reversal symmetry of electromagnetic radiation by use of a weak alternating electric signal, allowing it to transmit signals 50 times more strongly than it receives. Physics Today’s Johanna Miller describes the nonreciprocal copper antenna’s inception and operation in this Search and Discovery story.
“[The device] consists of a copper sheet on which the researchers constructed a transmission line designed to carry RF signals… To break time-reversal symmetry, the researchers injected a 600 MHz electric signal into the device. At that frequency, the signal propagated too slowly along the antenna to couple to radiating waves, but it still caused the capacitances to oscillate and influence the antenna’s interaction with waves at other frequencies.”
MORE: http://bit.ly/1WGIKxm
3) EUROPE’S ROAD MAP TO LARGE-SCALE SCIENTIFIC SUCCESS
Physics Today’s Toni Feder reports on the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures’ new research road map, released on March 10. The ESFRI is made up of scientists and government representatives from the European Union’s 28 member states and Israel, Norway, and Switzerland; it put out their first road map in 2006.
According to current ESFRI chair John Womersley, head of the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council, there was a realization that countries needed guidance to invest collectively in big science facilities. The most recent update consists of 50 pan-European and global research endeavors encompassing humanities and the social, medical, life, and physical sciences, and is meant to coordinate the prioritization of research projects that are beyond the budget of a single country.
“ESFRI tries ‘to fulfill an incubation role by providing continued feedback, monitoring, and guidance,’ says Womersley. Balance among fields emerged naturally, he says. For the arts and humanities, ‘it’s a new trend to do large projects. Mostly they involve large data sets.’ The ESFRI process weeds out over- lap among projects, and its stamp of approval helps scientists and countries choose which projects to sign on to.”
MORE: http://bit.ly/1SLUU3l
4) HEARTS ATOMIC
Between 1967 and 1977, the National Heart Institute and US Atomic Energy Commission each sought to develop a mechanical heart that could derive its power from the decay of radioactive isotopes. In this feature, Shelley McKellar, the Jason A. Hannah Chair in the History of Medicine at Western University in London, Canada, discusses the promise and ultimate failure of projects that sought to bring the stuff of speculative fiction to life.
“A governmental committee on atomic energy instructed the two agencies to negotiate an integrated, interagency plan to develop an atomic heart, but the NHI and AEC failed to do so. The failure led to two federally funded but independent programs, each pursuing a different approach to design and testing. The NHI proposed developing a short-term-assist heart device, or partial artificial heart, in two stages: A non-radioisotope-powered pump system would come first, followed by a radioisotope-powered engine. The AEC ... planned instead to develop an integrated pump and engine as an implantable system that would completely replace the diseased heart on a long-term basis—a loftier, more expensive goal.”
MORE: http://bit.ly/1UFbHJS
5) BECOMING A PHYSICIST
When does a student studying physics become – in their own mind – a physicist? To help answer this question, Paul Irving, a research associate in physics education at Michigan State University, and Eleanor Sayre, an assistant professor of physics at Kansas State University, surveyed the experiences of 20 undergraduate physics students at Kansas State University over the course of six semesters. The pair interviewed each student several times, tracking changes in their perceptions over time as they engaged in more physics practices, such as upper-division coursework and undergraduate research.
“Acquiring a professional identity is a fundamental part of any student’s development. Students are significantly more likely to persist with a program in physics—or any other discipline— when they identify themselves as students of that discipline. However, developing an identity as a professional physicist and member of the physics community is a complicated process that can take a long time and involve overcoming multiple barriers.”
MORE: http://bit.ly/1UwXwqt
6) BREATHING IN THE SMALLEST SUBSTANCES
In this Quick Study, Robert Sturm, a research scientist in the department of materials science and physics at the University of Salzburg in Austria, discusses the physics behind nanoparticle interactions with human lungs. The particles—which include viruses, soot, and carbon nanotubes, among many, many others—range from 1 nm to 100 nm in size and are of key interest to public health on a global scale, particularly because the lung's ample surface area enables inhaled particles to quickly accumulate to large concentrations.
“Nanoparticles exist both as single objects and as larger agglomerates that most likely form due to electrostatic attraction, chemical affinity, or diffusion. Once they enter the respiratory tract, they are subject to various forces and torques that influence their probability to be deposited on the airway walls or in the alveoli where oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange takes place. The net forces and torques experienced in the air stream by single, small nanoparticles differ from those experienced by the larger, clumpier agglomerates, so the two classes of nanoparticles behave differently when inhaled.
Modeling the aerodynamic behavior of nanoparticles carried along in lung and other respiratory structures represents a rather complicated challenge for experimental and computational physics…”
MORE: http://bit.ly/1WGIZZa
PHYSICS IN 100 YEARS
PHYSICS TODAY would like you to join Frank Wilczek in thinking about what the next 100 years will bring to physics. We invite you to imagine yourself in 2116, ready to write an essay for the magazine in the style of a Search and Discovery news story. Your essay should report on an exciting discovery, an advance in physics, or a new technology. It should be at most 2000 words long and should not have been published previously.
We will award a prize of $7500 to the author of the winning essay. If more than one essay wins, the prize will be divided equally among the winning authors. A distinguished jury of physicists will select the winner or winners in the final round of judging. The decisions of the judges and are final.
Winning entries will be published in Physics Today. The winners will be asked to sign a standard transfer-of-copyright agreement.
You may submit only one entry, and it must be received by 1 June 2016. Include your daytime phone number and email address. Employees of the American Institute of Physics and AIP Publishing are not eligible for this contest. Entries should be emailed to [email protected], with the title of your essay as the subject line.
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ABOUT PHYSICS TODAY
Physics Today is the flagship publication of the American Institute of Physics. Each month it includes a mix of in-depth feature articles, news coverage and analysis, and fresh perspectives on scientific advances and ground-breaking research. See: http://www.physicstoday.org
ABOUT AIP
The American Institute of Physics is a federation of scientific societies in the physical sciences, representing scientists, engineers, educators, and students. AIP offers authoritative information, services, and expertise in physics education and student programs, science communication, government relations, career services, statistical research in physics employment and education, industrial outreach, and the history of the physical sciences. AIP is home to the Society of Physics Students and the Niels Bohr Library and Archives. AIP owns AIP Publishing LLC, a scholarly publisher in the physical and related sciences. More information: http://www.aip.org