March 1999 Contents

ARTICLES

Special Issue: The Physics Community and the Wider World

APS and the Wider World

Founded a century ago, the American Physical Society not only has played a leading role in advancing and diffusing knowledge and understanding of physics, but has widened its influence and importance by speaking out on public issues — Harry Lustig

Physics and Government

Physicists' advice to the US government, and the government's support of physics research, have seen many changes in this century — most dramatically after World War II — Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky

Physicists in Politics

Through their public opposition to the nuclear arms race and human rights violations, US physicists have played a pivotal role in setting the national and international political agenda — Kurt Gottfried

Archaeology of a Bookstack: Some Major Introductory Physics Texts of the Last 150 Years

Changing styles in high school and college physics texts reveal an evolution in teaching methods, but we can also see signs of the same debates that continue today — Charles H. Holbrow

DEPARTMENTS

Search and Discovery

• Phase synchronization may reveal communication pathways in brain activity

• Deep under the South Pole, a novel telescope records ultrahigh-energy astrophysical neutrinos

• Electron cryomicroscopy comes of age

From the Archives

Physics Community

• Physicists pursue dialogue on security and arms control on Indian subcontinent

• Lasers abandoned by nuclear power industry could become core of a new South African laser facility

• Germany weighs barring bomb-grade uranium at research reactor

• Web Watch

Books

Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project: A Study in German Culture, P. L. Rose (reviewed by J. Logan)

Maxwell's Demon: Why Warmth Disperses and Time Passes, H. C. von Baeyer (reviewed by R. H. March)

Tracks to Innovation: Nuclear Tracks in Science and Technology, R. L. Fleischer (reviewed by W. P. Trower)

Foundations of Vacuum Science and Technology, edited by J. M. Lafferty (reviewed by L. G. Rubin)

Understanding Materials Science: History, Properties, Applications, R. E. Hummel (reviewed by A. C. Gossard)

Advanced Stellar Astrophysics, W. K. Rose (reviewed by G. W. Collins II)

Plus ...

Our regular sections: Physics Update, Letters, New Products, We Hear That, and Information Exchange.