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3/24/2000
X-ray Imaging Technique Receives Major Press Coverage. Research by a team of people from NC State, including Dale Sayers and Mik Kiss from Physics, has received major press coverage for developing a new X-ray Imaging Technique, called Diffraction Enhanced Imaging (DEI), that produces significantly better pictures of breast tissue than conventional X-rays and could make mammography more effective in revealing tumors. The research was done in cooperation with Brookhaven National Laboratory's National Synchrotron Light Source, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility.
For more information, see the paper:
Pisano E. D., Johnston R. E., Chapman D., Geradts J., Iacocca M. V., Livasy C. A., Washburn D. B., Sayers D. E., Zhong Z., Kiss M. Z., Thomlinson W. C. "Human Breast Cancer Specimens: Diffraction-enhanced Imaging with Histologic Correlation - Improved Conspicuity of Lesion Detail Compared with Digital Radiography" Radiology 2000: 414(3); 895-901.
Congratulations to Wilma Gill, who has accepted the accounting position in PAMS. Wilma's office will be on the fourth floor of Cox. The search for a new Departmental Accounting Technician will be underway shortly.
Outstanding Employee Nominees Announced.
The Dean's Office has announced the 2000 Awards for Excellence Nominees.
Interim Dean Solomon will introduce the nominees and announce one SPA and one EPA winner at the College reception on March 27 from 3:00 - 4:00 p.m. in 2405 Williams Hall. Each winner will receive a plaque and a $250 check. These winners will represent PAMS in the University Awards for Excellence Program.
The SPA nominees are:
Eddie Barefoot,
Brenda Burgess,
Mel DeFeo,
Howard Foster,
Connie Hockaday,
Steve Jenkins,
Leonard Page, and
Sharon Patton.
The EPA nominees are:
Seyma Bennett,
J. Howard Sanford,
Dr. Sabapathy Sankar, and
Dr. Brenda Wojnowski.
The NC State University Awards for Excellence Program is divided into 16 units including PAMS. The university level winners will be announced at the 2000 Awards for Excellence luncheon on May 26 at the McKimmon Center. At this luncheon 5 nominees will be selected as University nominees for the Governor's Award for Excellence.
Tickets for this luncheon can be purchased from Seyma Bennett, 5-3157.
WebAssign is Nominated by the Chancellor for a technology award from Educause. Congratulations and good luck in the competition to John Risley and all the WebAssign personnel.
Faculty Annual Reports Now Due! The annual faculty activity reports should be submitted to Phyllis Breedlove, preferably electronically in MS Word format. The report format is that same as the last several years. Please pay attention to the peer review requirements: an annual visit at a mutually agreed upon time by a faculty member of your choice.
Annual Faculty Retreat. The annual Physics Faculty retreat is scheduled for Wednesday, May 17at the Marriott at RTP. All regular faculty and EPA staff with teaching duties are invited to attend. Please let Becky Savage know by Thursday, May 11, if you will be attending. Maps to the Marriott will be distributed in faculty mailboxes at a later date.
PAMS Dean Search. The search is on schedule, and on-campus interviews are expected to begin in April. Keep up to date at the website off of the Provost's Office home page:
www.ncsu.edu/provost/deansearches/pams/
FICA (Social Security) Withholding for RAs and TAs in Summer. Internal Revenue Service has required that FICA be withheld from the paychecks of all graduate students employed by the university during months in which they were registered for fewer than one hour.
The Graduate School consulted with the Payroll Office and they conferred with officials at the tax auditing firm of Price Waterhouse Coopers to see if an exception could be made for graduate students employed during the summer months but not actually registered for course work. The Graduate School has recently been informed that no exception can be made for these students, specifically Research Assistants, who are not registered for at least one hour during the summer months.
Therefore, effective with the first summer session of 2000, FICA will be withheld from their paychecks for the months of June and July. Other strategies are being explored but at this time there appears to be no other alternative.
Bureau of Mines Renamed? There have been a few questions about the sign for the Bureau of Mines building. No, the building has not been renamed "Physics Annex". The building name part of the sign was damaged during snow removal in early February. NC State Facilities has a work order to replace the name sign, and will do so as soon as possible. For better or worse, its still the "Bureau of Mines" building.
Recent and Upcoming Travel:
Jackie Krim: to Washington, DC, to present an invited talk at a Nanotribology workshop; to Minneapolis, MN, to attend the American Physical Society meeting; to San Francisco, CA, to present an invited talk at the American Chemical Society meeting.
Spring Puzzler (thanks to Don Bitzer):
What's the momentum of light in water?
Bounce light off a mirror in a vacuum. The mirror feels an impulse I equal to the change in momentum of the light. For a single photon of energy E, frequency, f at normal incidence this is:
I = 2E/c = 2hf/c.
The puzzle is, what happens if the mirror is in a bath of water with refractive index n? Specifically, is the impulse the same (seems OK because the frequency hasn't changed), or is it smaller by a factor of n: I = 2hf/nc? (seems OK because the light is travelling slower in the water) or is it larger by a factor of n: I = 2hfn/c? (also seems OK because the wavelength is down by n so the wave number is up by n).
Which is it?
Send your answer to Robert Egler (robert_egler@ncsu.edu) by March 31. Free coffee for two for first correct answer randomly drawn.
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