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Table of Contents June 2003

Articles


The Search for a Permanent Electric Dipole Moment

Small-scale experiments sensitive to tiny effects could offer profound insights into what lies beyond the standard model of elementary particles — Norval Fortson, Patrick Sandars, and Stephen Barr

Supercooled and Glassy Water
Cold, noncrystalline states play an important role in understanding the physics of liquid water. From recent experimental and theoretical investigations, a coherent interpretation of water's properties is beginning to emerge — Pablo G. Debenedetti and H. Eugene Stanley

Plasma Accelerators at the Energy Frontier and on Tabletops
Charged particles surfing on electron density waves in plasmas can experience enormous accelerating gradients — Chandrashekhar Joshi and Thomas Katsouleas

Web departments

Readings from the Physics Today Archive

Departments

Physics Update

Letters

Weighing Proton Therapy's Clinical Readiness and Costs

UNSCEAR Back on the Job

Financial Planning 101 for Career Physicists

Continuous Neutron Source Needed

Search & Discovery

Hydrogen adsorbed on silicon carbide creates metallic surface states
Researchers expected adsorption to eliminate surface electronic states. Instead, it created one-dimensional states that resemble nanowires.

The Force Need Not Be With You: Curvature Begets Motion
Cyclic deformations can alter the free-fall motion of a composite body as it moves through curved spacetime.

Issues & Events

Post-September 11th Visa Woes Still Plague International Students and Scientists
Prospective international students and visiting scientists are facing greater security scrutiny and long delays before obtaining US visas. Those already in the US are being advised not to leave for fear of not being allowed to return.

NSF Nears Decision on Underground Lab Site
As a Canadian mining company appears determined to shut off the pumps that keep South Dakota's Homestake mine from flooding, the threat of high water is pressuring NSF to choose among three possible underground labs.
New Mexico Plans Optical Interferometer and Fast-Slewing Telescope
Thanks to pork-barrel funding, a small university in New Mexico is building an observatory with scientific, educational, and military applications.

Not All in a Flash
After 40 years of near solitude, New Mexico Tech's Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research may have to adjust a bit when the Magdalena Ridge Observatory sets up nearby.

Astronomers Save Historic Plates
Over three million photographic plates taken by astronomers across the globe are at risk of disappearing owing to neglect and natural disasters. A new International Astronomical Union working group is rushing to save them.

VERITAS Scrambles to Find New Site
The successful appeal against a permit to site VERITAS in the Coronado National Forest in Arizona has left the cosmic-ray detector homeless and possibly penniless.

Russian Prize Aims to Stimulate Energy Research
Three physicists will share the first annual Global Energy Prize, to be bestowed by President Vladimir Putin on 15 June in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Masters in the Field
Physics bachelors who earn a master's degree in any math, science, or engineering field have higher salaries and a greater appreciation of their undergraduate training than their counterparts with only a bachelor's, according to a recent report by the American Institute of Physics.

News Notes
LANL contract to open for bid; Space weather journal

Web watch
Reaction-Diffusion Patterns; Acoustics and Vibration Animations; Java-based particle simulator

Opinion

What criteria should be used to establish funding priorities?D. Allan Bromley

Society Meeting

Crystallographers Convene South of Cincinnati

Books

A Matter of Degrees: What Temperature Reveals About the Past and Future of Our Species, Planet, and Universe, G. Segrè (reviewed by P. Salamon)

In War and Peace: My Life in Science and Technology, G. Stever (reviewed by D. A. Bromley)

Advanced Solid State Physics, P. Phillips (reviewed by S. Sachdev)

Bose-Einstein Condensation in Dilute Gases,, C. J. Pethick and H. Smith (reviewed by T.-L. Ho)

Soft Condensed Matter, , R. A. L. Jones (reviewed by D. A. Weitz)

The Science of Soccer, J. Wesson (reviewed by J. D. McCullen)

New Books

New Products

Focus on Software

We Hear That

ASA Bestows Awards in Nashville

Scientists Honored for Work in Geophysics

NAE Adds to Its Ranks

In Brief

Obituaries

Arthur Taylor Winfree

Charles Kincaid Bockelman

Bunji Sakita

Bruce Albert Scott

Anthony Leonid Turkevich



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Cover: Sunlight on this Alpine glacier in the Peuterey pass on Mount Blanc creates a glare and reveals some of the beautiful behavior of water's different phases. In their article beginning on page 40, Pablo Debenedetti and Gene Stanley discuss how the physics being developed to explain the behavior of metastable water is providing a unified framework for understanding stable water as well. (Photo courtesy of Guillaume Dargaud, www.gdargaud.net.)

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