July 2015 • Vol. 24, No. 7 Physicists Improving Lives A PUBLICATION OF THE AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY Pages 3 & 5 WWW.APS.ORG/PUBLICATIONS/APSNEWS Newly-Elected IUPAP Officers Meet in Trieste, Italy APS Election Results By Aihua Xie and Kennedy Reed The 2015 Executive Council and As this issue of APS News goes to press, Commission Chairs (C&CC) Meet- votes in the APS general election are still ing of the International Union of being counted. Members are voting for Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) was held April 24-26 at the Inter- Vice President, Chair-Elect of the APS national Center for Theoretical Nominating Committee, and International and General Physics in Trieste, Italy. Counselors. For the first time, members are also elect- IUPAP promotes international cooperation in physics and spon- ing an APS Treasurer, a position on the Board of sors four types of international Directors created as part of recent changes in APS and regional conferences. These governance. All those elected will take office on Janu- include (1) general conferences, (2) topical conferences, (3) special ary 1, 2016, when the current Vice President becomes conferences, and (4) workshops APS President-Elect, and the President-Elect in developing countries. In addi- becomes President. tion, IUPAP Commissions sponsor From left to right: Beverly Berger, Aihua Xie, Kennedy Reed and Heidi Schell- IUPAP Young Scientist Prizes to man near the International Center of Theoretical Physics (ICTP). recognize outstanding early-career Voting ended on June 30, 2015 and the results can be physicists, and also sponsor other Four APS members attended the designate; Heidi Schellman, Oregon found at www.aps.org/about/governance/election/ awards to recognize excellence in IUPAP C&CC meeting: Kennedy State University, Vice Chair of the the subfields of physics represented Reed, Lawrence Livermore National IUPAP Commission on Particles by the Commissions. Laboratory, the IUPAP President- IUPAP continued on page 6 Senate Bill Provides 5-year Roadmap Thinking Big and Outside the Box for Energy Research Funding by Michael S. Lubell, it might work, and how it might ply easier for American companies By Tawanda W. Johnson, sustained, reliable funding under a APS Director of Public Affairs be just what scientists, politicos, to find and buy the rights to new APS Office of Public Affairs bipartisan, partial reauthorization The science advocacy industry wonks, and business leaders are discoveries wherever they are made. APS has given its support to of the America COMPETES Act. that APS helped start in Washington looking for. But there is another motiva- the newly-introduced Senate bill “The Senate bill is notable for First a few facts: Today, the fed- tion for American companies to 20 years ago is no longer deliv- “Energy Title of the America COM- making science a priority, even in eral government spends about $50 shed their research laboratories, times of constrained budgets,” said ering the high returns it once did. PETES (Creating Opportunities to billion per year on basic research, eviscerate their research budgets, Michael S. Lubell, APS director of Rising above the noise of hyper- Meaningfully Promote Excellence in accounting for 55 percent of the and disband their research teams. public affairs. partisanship, political sniping, and Technology, Education, and Science U.S total expenditure. Academic Changes in how corporate execu- The legislation would bol- electoral campaigns that never end Act) Reauthorization Act of 2015” and other nonprofit institutions, tives receive their compensation ster energy research programs has become a daunting task, even (S. 1398). Co-sponsored by U.S. combined with state and local and how Wall Street conducts its in the Department of Energy’s for the best messengers delivering Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) governments, account for slightly business have removed almost all Office of Science (DOE-SC) and the best messages. Couple that chal- and Chris Coons (D-Del.), and less than 25 percent, while industry the incentives for long-term indus- the Advanced Research Projects lenge with science’s almost total five other senators, S. 1398 would contributes about 20 percent. trial commitments. reliance on a dwindling discretion- put energy research on a path of BILL continued on page 3 It wasn’t always that way. Half In 1960, stockholders held ary slice of the federal spending pie a century ago industry was a major an average stock for eight years. — projected to shrink to 25 percent player in the research game. Think Today, with the reduced costs of of total spending by 2040, from 62 of Bell Labs, Xerox, IBM, GE, electronic trading and the prolif- percent in 1970 and 36 percent GTE, GM, Kodak — the list is eration of hedge funds, the average United States Traveling Team Selected today — and you have gloom if long. But with each passing decade, holding time is a mere four months. not doom in your future. one American industrial giant after Today, in response to stockholder David Voss travel to Mumbai, India, in July to We have come to a critical another bailed out of long-term demands, companies compensate In a ceremony on May 27, 2015 participate in the 46th International juncture: Either we develop new research, basic or applied. executives mainly with bonuses at the American Center for Physics in Physics Olympiad. arguments and new strategies to It’s not that they believed they based on stock performance, and College Park, Maryland, the Ameri- Started in 1967, the Olympiad is persuade Congress and the White no longer needed the benefits of with options that allow them to buy can Association of Physics Teachers an international competition among House that current budget policies research. They well knew, and they their company’s stock at a future (AAPT) announced the group of five high school students from more will knock the United States off its still know, that research is funda- date at a fixed “strike” price, often U.S. high school students who will OLYMPIAD continued on page 6 high perch on the innovation pyra- mental to the future of any high-tech only a year or two after they receive mid, or we look beyond the annual enterprise. So, why did they aban- the options. The more the share appropriations process to fund long- don their commitment to their price rises, the more the option is term research. If you spend just a powerhouse in-house laboratories? worth. David Voss few days suffering in the fetid polit- Thomas Friedman has written The result of such incentives ical climate in Washington as I do, extensively about one of the moti- is that American corporations use you will quickly concede that we vations: the IT revolution that has fully 80 percent of their annual prof- need a dramatically new approach driven globalization. Two of his its to buy back their stock with the to funding research. bestsellers, “The World Is Flat,” explicit goal of boosting the price We must become innovators first published in 2005, and “Hot, of a share. For a Fortune 500 CEO ourselves. And we must think big. Flat, and Crowded,” published in with an average tenure of only 4.6 An American Research Invest- 2008, are must-reads for anyone years, spending money on research ment Fund, run as a private-public looking for a window onto the 21st that doesn’t contribute to the bottom partnership, could be the answer. century high-tech landscape. In The 2015 U.S. Physics Olympiad traveling team (l to r): Saranesh Prembabu, Here is how it might happen, how such a brave new world, it is sim- BELTWAY continued on page 5 Adam Busis, Jason Lu, Kevin Li, and Zachary Bogorad. Revised 7/7/15 2 • July 2015 This Month in Physics History “The prize has been sitting on “People point that out to me and a shelf somewhere for the last 20 say, ‘You know, Newton was reli- July 2, 1591: Death of Vincenzo Galilei years. … I made a decision to sell it. gious.’ The point is — well, first of usic, math, and science have long enjoyed the Pythagorean doctrine favored by theorists, It seems like a logical thing to do.” all, in that time the church was the a symbiotic relationship, which led to the which specified precise ratios for the intervals. Mei Leon Lederman, retired from National Science Foundation. It was M Renaissance notion that the motion of celestial encouraged Vincenzo to test this for himself, tuning Fermilab, after putting his Nobel the only place to get an education; it bodies gave rise to the “music of the spheres.” two different lutes, one to the requirements of equal Prize medal up for auction, The was the only place to fund research. Galileo Galilei’s scientific accomplishments may temperament, and the other per the dictates of the Washington Post, May 27, 2015. But that’s fine. It is okay to have well have been influenced by his love of music, theoreticians. Vincenzo did so, which convinced a relationship, but you grow up. instilled in him by his father, Vincenzo, a musi- him that Mei was right. “Doing things the same way is Parents are useful for children, but cian and composer who brought an experimental The prevailing assumption at the time was not going to lead us to the break- the whole point is children grow up sensibility to his study of music theory. that, just as the ratio of lengths of two identical throughs we need.” and move beyond their parents — Very little is known about Vincenzo’s early strings with the same tension and mass per unit Catherine Foley, Common- we certainly hope that’s the case.” life. Most accounts peg his birth around 1520, in length, tuned an octave apart, would be 2:1, the wealth Science and Industrial Lawrence Krauss, Arizona State a small Tuscan village, Santa Maria a Monte, near ratio of the tensions of two identical strings of Research Organisation, Canberra, University, on whether the Bible modern-day Florence.