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3/8/2002
Call for Nominations: Rodney I. McCormick Undergraduate Research Award. The Rodney I. McCormick Undergraduate Research Award recognizes excellence in research by an undergraduate physics major. The winner will be selected from the nominations from faculty and will be made on the basis of the quality of research and the contributions of the undergraduate to the project. The award will consist of $250 and a certificate.
Any faculty member in the Physics Department may nominate any undergraduate physics major for the award. Nominations should be in the form of a short letter (one or two pages), which describes the research performed, its significance, and the role of the nominee in the research. If the research resulted in a presentation or publication a copy of the abstract or paper should be attached.
Please submit nominations to Rebecca Savage by March 18, 2002.
Physics Undergraduates: $25 prize for all physics majors who present posters at the University Undergraduate Research Symposium (April 18) and the Department's Undergraduate Research Colloquium (April 29). Additional monetary awards will be given for best posters at each event. More information is available at www.ncsu.edu/ugrs.
Annual Faculty Retreat. The annual Physics Faculty Retreat is scheduled for Wednesday, May 15, at the conference room at Lake Wheeler Park. (Please note the change in location from past retreats.) All regular faculty and EPA Staff with teaching duties are invited to attend.
Please let Becky Savage know by May 8 if you will be attending. A map to the retreat will be distributed at a later date.
Copenhagen, a Tony award-winning play on the 1941 meeting between Bohr and Heisenberg will be performed at the BTI Center March 12 through 17. A symposium on Copenhagen "Exploring Science and History Onstage" will be held Saturday, March 16, from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM at the North Carolina Museum of History. Local speakers include Worth Seagondollar, Chris Gould, Seymour Mauskopf (Duke) along with History, English, and Drama faculty from Duke, UNC, and NC State. Admission is free, but space is limited. To register, call 515-5973.
News Release:
Cosmic Ray Theory Tested in NASA Balloon Flight. A NASA balloon launched from Antarctica last December will help NC State researcher Don Ellison test a theory for the origin of cosmic rays - a theory that challenges the decades-old model.
The Trans-Ion Galactic Element Recorder (TIGER) helium-filled balloon, larger than a football field, was launched from McMurdo Station in Antarctica on December 20 and traveled at the edge of space for almost 9,000 miles. The experiment, which set a new flight record of 31 days, 20 hours aloft and traveled twice around the South Pole, will help researchers understand the source of cosmic rays, atomic particles that shoot through the galaxy at near-light-speeds and reach Earth in an ongoing shower.
According to Ellison, understanding cosmic rays is important because they are matter from outside the solar system we can measure directly. The isotopic abundances of some cosmic rays may differ from elements found on Earth and provide information on how elements are created in exploding stars called supernovae.
Ellison's research is meant to help clear up two fundamental mysteries about cosmic rays: from what material they originate, and how they get so much energy. With Jean-Paul Meyer (Service d'Astrophysique, Saclay, France) and Luke Drury (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Dublin, Ireland), and TIGER project's principal investigator, Robert Binns (Washington University, St. Louis), Ellison suggests that cosmic rays start off as dust grains in the interstellar medium. He used a computer simulation of the acceleration of dust grains by supernova shock waves to determine how fast they go, how many ions sputter off and what fraction of the sputtered ions end up as cosmic rays.
The TIGER project is a collaboration among Washington University; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; the California Institute of Technology at Pasadena; and the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis. A plot of the balloon's flight can be viewed at http://192.149.107.13/ice0102.htm.
News Release:
NC State Scientists Share $3 Million NSF Grant. A team of seven Triangle-area scientists, including four from North Carolina State University, has been awarded a $3 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to develop new software tools for simulating biological molecules. The team is led by Dr. Celeste Sagui, professor of physics at NC State. It comprises Drs. Jerzy Bernholc, Christopher Roland, and Lubos Mitas, all from NC State's department of physics, John Board from Duke University; Thomas Darden from the National Institute of Environmental and Health Sciences, and Lee Pedersen from UNC-Chapel Hill.
"Understanding the structure and function of molecules is fundamental to a wide variety of research avenues," said Sagui. "This research will contribute to the study of genetic diseases and mutations; bacterial infections, which involve molecular recognition; virus replication and the possible mechanisms to prevent it; and how a foreign enzyme differs from a human enzyme B which allows the manufacture of drugs that kill bacteria but do not harm humans." Software tools will help the team visualize cellular processes.
In addition to this research, the team hopes to work with NC State's Center for High Performance Simulations, now being formed, to provide new courses for simulation methodology for students. "This is an area of tremendous growth," said Bernholc, Drexel Professor of Physics at NC State. "Advanced simulation technologies that study highly complex biological systems lead the way to the science of the future, and our students have a great opportunity to get the required training now."
Faculty Start-up costs Accelerate. (Reprinted from Research Corporation's recent report.) Research Corp. has recently completed a study of start-up costs provided to faculty who are beginning their academic careers in astronomy, chemistry, and physics departments that offer the Ph.D. Data were taken from information provided to the foundation from 1998 to 2001 in connection with its Research Innovation Award program that was begun in 1997. Data are self-reported, but there is a high level of confidence in the outcome.
Average start-up costs for all applicants increased from $215141 in 1998 to $331566 in 2001, a 54% overall increase at a time of low inflation. This average is for all applicants from astronomy (1-6%), chemistry (70-79%), and physics (21-24%) departments that offer Ph.D. degree programs in the US (87-93%) and Canadian (7-13%) institutions. For US applicants, 90% are from "research extensive institutions" in the 2000 Carnegie Classification, and about 20% are from private universities or colleges.
Start-up costs for new faculty in US physics departments:
Year/ Cost at Public Institutions
2001 / $303,269
2000 / $269,406
1999 / $181,644
1998 / $218,333
The increase in start-up costs for physics parallel those for chemists. This is, in part, due to the change in hiring of new physicists from those associated with large group efforts at national facilities to the predominant hiring on condensed matter physicists and biophysicists whose set-up needs are similar to those of chemists.
Questions raised by Research Corp.: How long can institutions continue to offer these high start-up packages? For departments that require two faculty replacements each year, what is the probability that the institutions can provide up to $1,000,000 for each year? Do large start-up packages demand a downsizing of departments?
Trash Pick-up Reminder. University housekeeping now empties office trash cans once a week. Due to the attraction for pests, it is advisable that no food, food wrappers, or similar items be disposed of in office trash cans.
Trash cans in the restrooms are emptied daily.
Happy Vernal Equinox!
March 20 
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