August 1998, Part 1 Contents

Articles:

The Revealing Role of Pressure in the Condensed Matter Sciences

Experimenters can now change the densitites of condensed matter by upward of an entire order of magnitude, and thereby impart dramatic changes in physical and chemical properties of materials -- Russell J. Hemley and Neil W. Ashcroft

A Surface View of Etching

Experiments conducted with scanning tunneling microscopes in ultrahigh vacuum reveal a fascinating, step-by-step picture of the etching process -- John J. Boland and John H. Weaver

Self-Trapping of Optical Beams: Spatial Solitons

Beams of light, prevented from diverging by nonlinear media, exhibit particle-like behavior, as do waves in many other nonlinear systems in nature -- Mordechai Segev and George Stegeman

Departments:

Search and Discovery

• Cosmic-ray showers provide strong evidence of neutrino flavor oscillation.

• In the bowels of a zinc mine, 13 thousand phototubes keeping watch over 50 thousand tons of water have provided the strongest evidence yet of neutrino oscillation, and therefore of neutrino mass.

• Strings may tie quantum gravity to quantum chromodynamics.

• Might we learn more about the strong interactions by studying string theory? That's one possibility raised by recent work showing that string theories and gauge field theories are flip sides of the same coin.

• Berlin-Heidelberg group reports phase transition in glass at millikelvins in presence of microtesla field.

• Why should a microtesla field raise the dielectric constant of a glass at millikelvin temperature?

Washington Reports

• The price of victory in cold war is $5.8 trillion for nuclear arms and delivery systems, says panel

• Clinton names UN ambassador Richardson to succeed Pena as energy secretary

• Washington briefings: Gingrich's daunting exchange; Westinghouse's farewell to physics

Physics Community

• New minister is unlikely to resuscitate Russian science

• Saving Russian science will take an internal overhaul, more interaction with the world's scientific communities and cash

• Neutrino experiment's gallium remains under siege

• As US-Cuba ties improve, scientists ask that travel restrictions be lifted

• University of Texas opens materials institute

• Web Watch

Books

Fractals and Scaling in Finance: Discontinuity, Concentration, Risk, B. B. Mandelbrot (reviewed by N. Goldenfeld)

What is Mathematics, Really?, R. Hersh (reviewed by J. A. Rudnick)

Traces of the Past: Unraveling the Secrets of Archaeology through Chemistry, J. B. Lambert (reviewed by G. Harbottle)

An Equation that Changed the World: Newton, Einstein, and the Theory of Relativity, H. Fritzsch (reviewed by F. Rohrlich)

Interpreting the Quantum World, J. Bub (reviewed by R. Healey)

Beyond Star Trek: Physics from Alien Invasions to the End of Time, L. M. Krauss (reviewed by J. A. Frieman)

Quantum Chaos and Mesoscopic Systems: Mathematical Methods in the Quantum Signatures of Chaos, N. E. Hurt (reviewed by M. C. Gutzwiller)

Experimental Innovations in Surface Science: A Guide to Practical Laboratory Methods and Instruments, J. T. Yates Jr (reviewed by L. G. Rubin)

X-Ray Charge Densities and Chemical Bonding, P. Coppens (reviewed by K. Hermansson)

Plus ...

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