July 2004 NEWS Volume 13, No
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July 2004 NEWS Volume 13, No. 7 A Publication of The American Physical Society http://www.aps.org/apsnews APS Joins Science Organizations in What’s a Nice Equation Like You Urging Better Visa Regulations Doing in a Cartoon Like This? In May, the APS joined more than systems. But by 2002, that num- graduate students to leading US 20 other science, higher education ber had jumped to 14,000. And by research institutions for the 2004- and engineering organizations in a the spring of 2003, some 1000 2005 academic year. “If action is joint statement urging the federal cases were under review at any not taken soon to improve the visa government to adopt six practical given time. An increasing number system, the misperception that the recommendations for improving the of cases are being set aside for even US does not welcome international current visa processing crisis by more detailed screening. The students, scholars and scientists removing unnecessary barriers to result is massive backlogs and will grow, and they may not make multi-national collaborations. Taken delays that prevent students from our nation their destination of together, the group represents 95% attending university and scientists choice now and in the future,” the of the US research community. It is from participating in research and statement says. “The US cannot the first time that US science and conferences. hope to maintain its present scien- academic leaders have endorsed a In addition, a survey earlier this tific and economic leadership comprehensive plan to address the year by the American Council of position if it becomes isolated from visa-processing quagmire in the Education, among other organiza- the rest of the world.” wake of heightened security con- tions, found a substantial drop in Six major problems are outlined Earlier this year an animated feature called The Triplets of Belleville was cerns following the 9/11 terrorist applications by international See VISA on page 4 playing in movie houses around the country. It got some attention from the attacks. critics, and garnered two Oscar nominations (for best animated feature film and The statement is careful to best original song). Among its many interesting attributes is something that was express strong support for the US April Meeting Prize Recipients probably noticed by only a very tiny segment of the audience: as the opening government’s efforts to establish credits run, the bottom of the screen displays Einstein’s field equations of general relativity (see illustration). new visa policies while bolstering There is no obvious reason for this. Neither Einstein nor physics plays any role in national security. “We are confident the film itself. The film is a French/Belgian/Canadian collaboration, directed by that it is possible to have a visa sys- Sylvain Chomet of France. What were they thinking? Or is this just an act of whimsy tem that is timely and transparent, with no particular raison d’être? If any of our readers has either some inside knowl- that provides for thorough reviews edge, or a good theory as to why the equations are there, we would be eager to hear of visa applicants, and that still wel- about it. We will even offer a copy of the coffee-table book “Physics in the 20th Century” comes the brightest minds in the for a particularly convincing explanation. world,” the statement reads. “It is not a question of balancing science and security... These priorities are not APS Journals To Cost mutually exclusive; to the contrary, they complement each other, and each is vital to the other.” Less in 2005 There is ample evidence that By Ernie Tretkoff the visa processing system is sink- Photo Credit: Cronin Photography For the first time in many years, ing under the weight of stricter Front row (l to r): Arie Bodek, Suzanne Staggs, Herwig Schopper, Juan Maldacena, because electronic access makes the price for APS journal subscrip- security requirements. In 2000, Ikaros Bigi, George Bertsch, Anthony Sanda. Back row (l to r): Dmitry Teytelman, multiple print copies unnecessary, only 1000 non-immigrant visa Gabriele Veneziano, John Seeman, H. Jeff Kimble, Peter Onyisi, Andrew Steiner, tions will decrease for 2005, largely and smaller institutions have been applications were flagged for Shahram Rahatlou, Katsunobu Oide. Not shown: Marc Ross, Peter D. Zimmerman, due to a technology-driven reduc- forced to cancel subscriptions for review under the Visa Mantis pro- Wick Haxton. tion in the cost of production. financial reasons. This trend is seen gram, one of several US screening As is the case for most scientific throughout the journal publishing journals, the trend for APS jour- industry. QKD, XFELs Highlight 2004 DAMOP nals, which include Physical Review For 2005, APS will begin to A-E, Physical Review Letters, and reverse the trend of increasing The latest research results in Physics for his contributions His system uses single-photon Reviews of Modern Physics, has been prices by taking advantage of the quantum key distribution, quan- to realizing Bose-Einstein Con- polarization states, with active increasing prices over the past cost reductions made possible by tum entanglement, and next- densation. switching, and is capable of con- several decades. In addition to nor- technology. For example, said generation free electron lasers tinuous operation through day and mal inflation in the costs of McIlrath, software that automati- (FELs) were among the technical Searching for a Quantum KeyKey. night. production, the journals have been cally copyedits and formats highlights at the 35th annual meet- Quantum key distribution (QKD) steadily growing in size every manuscripts greatly reduces the ing of the APS Division of Atomic uses single-photon communica- FEL’’’ s Generation XX. Stanford Lin- year, said Tom McIlrath, APS Trea- manpower needed. Also, almost all Molecular and Optical Physics tions to generate the shared, secret ear Accelerator Center’s planned surer/Publisher. The journals are manuscripts are now submitted (DAMOP). It was held May 25-29 random number sequences that Linac Coherent Light Source is an expected to grow by 4% from 2004 on-line, saving the cost of having in Tucson, Arizona, in conjunction are used to encrypt and decrypt example of the next generation of to 2005. to reenter them. Outsourcing some with the corresponding division secret communications. The secret X-ray free electron lasers (XFELs). While the size of APS journals of the production process to other of the Canadian Association of to the technique’s security is based These instruments will offer has been increasing, the number countries accounts for some of the Physicists. on the interplay between quantum users the ability to study ultrafast of subscriptions has been decreas- lowered costs, but technology is Among the special events was a physics and information theory, time-dependent phenomena with ing. Large institutions have really the major factor in control- welcoming reception Tuesday according to Richard Hughes (Los resolutions at atomic length scales. cancelled duplicate subscriptions ling costs, said McIlrath. evening at the Arizona Historical Alamos National Laboratory). But in order to take full advantage After hearing input from the Society Museum, and an after- “An adversary can neither suc- of this time resolution, users will Publications Oversight Committee, dinner lecture by Rice University’s cessfully tap the transmissions nor need single-shot measurements, in the APS Council set the journal Neal Lane, former director of both evade detection,” he said, since real time, of the temporal charac- HHighlights prices for 2005, deciding to pass the National Science Foundation eavesdropping raises the key teristics of the bunches of the cost savings on to libraries. and the Office of Science and Tech- error rate above a set threshold electrons that power such sources, The BackPage: Journal prices are set to cover costs nology Policy. value. Hughes described a recent according to speakers at a Satur- Illicit Trafficking of with some margin to allow for The conference also featured a QKD experiment performed over day morning session on new 8 Weapons-Usable Nuclear uncertainty in predicting costs and public lecture on Wednesday multi-kilometer line-of-sight paths, techniques for studying ultracold Material By Lyudmila revenue two years in advance. “It Zaitseva and Friedrich evening by JILA’s Eric Cornell, win- serving as a model for a satellite- molecules. Electro-optic sampling Steinhausler. was a clear decision that in these ner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in to-ground key distribution system. See DAMOP MEETING on page 4 See JOURNAL COSTS on page 5 2 July 2004 NEWS This Month in Physics History Making History “I don’t think anybody’s going ✶✶✶ to get the whole story. I am pre- “It’s tough to get an animal to lie July 13, 1901: Santos-Dumont Flies Around Eiffel Tower senting some difficult subjects, like still for 40 minutes. It’s tough When we think of early avia- missed colliding with it on the extra spatial dimensions. It’s a little enough to get people to do it.” tion, invariably the Wright turn, and had to fight the wind hard to visualize.” —Craig Woody, Brookhaven, on a Brothers come to mind. But head on during the trip back. He —John Schwarz, Caltech, on giving a device he’s developing called RatCAP, there were many others who made it back to Saint Cloud only public lecture about string theory, a compact PET scanner for awake lab made significant contributions 40 seconds past the established Los Angeles Times, May 13, 2004 rats, Newsday, May 31, 2004 to the realization of early flight, time limit, and the judges some- ✶✶✶ ✶✶✶ among them a Brazilian inven- what grudgingly awarded him “I do what works. I see what “Always assume this is your last tor and aviator pioneer named the prize, which he generously causes people to fall asleep.” clear night on the telescope.