1/10/2003

Milestone Paper in Near-field Optics. A publication by Michael Paesler was selected by the International Society for Optical Engineering as one of one hundred Milestone Papers in Near-field Optics. The 1993 Journal of Applied Physics paper, co-authored with Paesler by students Pat Moyer and Eric Buckland, is entitled "Resolution in collection-mode near-field optical microscopy." Dr. Moyer is now an associate professor at UNC-Charlotte where he is on a one-year leave of absence to take a position as the Director of Photonics Development at Waveguide Solutions. Dr. Buckland is the Chief of Staff of Optical Network Devices at Corning. The theoretical paper derived the lower limit of resolution for near-field microscopy that was subsequently demonstrated in the laboratory. All one hundred papers have been collected in the Society's most recent volume of its Milestone Series.

Congratulations to Gail McLaughlin, named one of six lecturers at the 2003 National Nuclear Physics Summer School to be held June 16-27, 2003 at Knoxville. Two of the other six also have an NC State connection: Eric Swanson (University of Pittsburgh), faculty member here 1995-2000, and Erich Ormand (LLNL) a 1980 NC State BS recipient.

Gail is also running for election for the APS Division of Nuclear Physics Executive committee- DNP members: don't forget to vote!

Congratulations to Michael Owen and John Blondin for their ground-breaking computational image of gas spiraling in towards a black hole. The image is featured in the December edition of Discover magazine in its coverage of the top 100 science stories for 2002. Look it up at number sixteen - "Weird Black-Hole Topography Proposed". The number one "story" was human cloning.

2003 Emerging Issues Forum. Jump-Starting Innovation: Government, Universities and Entrepreneurs. The annual Emerging Issues Forum will be held at the McKimmon Center on February 10 and 11, 2003.

Physics can sponsor 2 students to attend the forum with the Dean's Office picking up the cost of the tickets. Please send the names of students to whom you would like to offer this opportunity to Rebecca Savage by January 17.

Additional information is available on line at www.ncsu.edu/iei.

Fall Meeting of NC Section of AAPT. The Seventh Annual Fall Meeting of the North Carolina Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers met November 1-2, 2002, at the University of North Carolina Asheville in Asheville, North Carolina, with 121 participants in attendance. The meeting was a joint meeting with the Southern Atlantic Coast Section and the Society of Physics Students. There were 41 papers and six workshops presented. Special guest Edwin F. Taylor spoke of his experiences with on-line physics teaching Friday evening and on Saturday morning said goodbye to "F = ma" and hello to the Principle of Least Action for introductory physics. The complete program can be accessed at www2.ncsu.edu/ncsu/pams/physics/ncsaapt.

The Spring 2003 Meeting is scheduled for March 21st and 22nd at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, NC, with Chuck Stone, Abebe Kebede, and Floyd James as hosts.

Survey of Doctoral Programs Needs Major Changes, Panel Suggests. (From The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 10, 2003)

A panel of the National Research Council has proposed big changes in the methodology of its next survey of research-doctorate programs, to be completed in 2005. The survey, which is the definitive ranking of doctoral programs in the United States, would expand to 57 from 41 the number of academic fields it covers and would track "emerging" scholarly areas, such as gender studies and nanoscience.

The panel is also mulling other significant modifications. One would report the quality of each doctoral program as falling within a general range, rather than as a specific numerical rank. The aim is to deter university officials from fixating on minor differences in numerical rankings among programs. Another change under consideration would put greater weight on quantitative measures of educational quality, some of which could be based on polls of graduate students.

The 17 newcomers, which the panel concluded have emerged as distinct fields since the last survey, are agricultural economics, American studies, animal sciences, applied mathematics, communications, developmental biology, East Asian literatures, entomology, food science and food engineering, immunology, microbiology, molecular biology, Near Eastern literatures, nutrition, plant sciences, Slavic literatures, and theater and performance studies.

The panel has also proposed gathering and reporting data about other "emerging" fields in academe but would probably not rank them, said Charlotte V. Kuh of the research council, who is the survey's director. They include bio-informatics; cognitive studies; computational biology; feminist, gender, and sexuality studies; genomics; nanoscience; and race, ethnicity, and postcolonial studies.

Pilot studies of the new methodology are scheduled to begin soon at nine institutions and end by March. The institutions are: Auburn University, Florida State University, Michigan State University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Yale University, and the University of California at San Francisco, University of Maryland at College Park, University of Southern California, and University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. The panel expects that the full-scale survey will begin this fall.

State Employees Combined Campaign reaches goal! Congratulations to Dave Haase for leading the successful NC State University State Employees Combined Campaign (SECC) fund drive for 2002.

University faculty and staff have exceeded their giving goal of $420,000 in the annual State Employees Combined Campaign. As of December 19, 2002, $420,418 had been pledged. This marks the eighth time in the last nine years that NC State has surpassed its giving goal.

Employees can still make donations to SECC, with monies counting toward next year's total. The contributions, however, will go toward helping charities now.

Thanks also to Robert Egler and Rebecca Savage for leading the Physics Department fund drive.

Congratulations to Rebecca Hoffenberg (BS 1995) and Lawrence Freal, recently married in Portland, Oregon. Rebecca lives in Portland and continues her career there in neuropsychology, working in both clinical and research settings.

Physics Faculty Meeting Schedule for Spring Semester. The monthly departmental faculty meetings will be held on the following dates. All meetings are at 4:00 PM in Cox 400.

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