Physics Today on the web
January 2000 Contents
Januray 2000 cover

Here, superimposed on the iris is a magnified, false-color image of a retina that was taken through the subject’s own eye with an adaptive optics camera. The arrangement of blue, green, and red cone photoreceptors—each of which is just 4–5 mm across—can be clearly seen. To learn more about how adaptive optics technology is being applied to retinal microscopy and human vision, read Don Miller’s article, which begins on page 31. (Image courtesy of Austin Roorda and David Williams, University of Rochester.)

Articles

Motile Behavior of Bacteria
E. coli, a self-replicating object only a thousandth of a millimeter in size, can swim 35 diameters a second, taste simple chemicals in its environment, and decide whether life is getting better or worse
--Howard C. Berg

Retinal Imaging and Vision at the Frontiers of Adaptive Optics
By compensating for the minor, as well as the major, defects in the eye’s optics, we can look through the lens to observe retinal features the size of single cells--Donald T. Miller

Physics and the Information Revolution
Quantum physics holds the key to the further advance of computing in the postsilicon era--Joel Birnbaum and R. Stanley Williams

Departments

Physics Update

From the Editor

Reference Frame
Mass without mass II: The medium is the mass-age --Frank Wilczek

Letters

Search and Discovery
Mapping the interstellar cloud we live in...The decreasing Arctic ice cover...What really gives a quantum computer its power?...Experts dismiss doomsday scenarios for RHIC

Washington Reports
DOE shuts Brookhaven lab’s HFBR in a triumph of politics over science...Washington ins & outs: Wolff to leave as NOAO head, Oertel departs AURA...Washington briefings: One too many mishaps on voyages to Mars; NIF faulted for cost and schedule overruns; Disappointing report card on K–12 education

Physics Community
Stakes rise in row over siting UK synchrotron light source, as fury persists over canceled French facility...UMinn faculty teach each other science...Chiaverina and Hubisz join AAPT presidential line...Sartwell is AVS president-elect for 2000...In brief...

Web Watch

Books
Making Physics: A Biography of Brookhaven National Laboratory, 1946–1972, R. P. Crease (reviewed by R. W. Seidel)...Active Galactic Nuclei: From the Central Black Hole to the Galactic Environment, J. H. Krolik (reviewed by R. A. Daly)...Properties of Materials, M. A. White (reviewed by T. F. Rosenbaum)...Accelerator Physics, S. Y. Lee (reviewed by D. Hartill...X-Ray Scattering from Soft-Matter Thin Films: Materials Science and Basic Research, M. Tolan (reviewed by M. D. Ward)

New Products
Focus on data acquisition

We Hear That

Obituaries
Edwin Thompson Jaynes...Gregory Eugene Stillman

Information Exchange

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