Congratulations to Jackie Krim on her article in the August issue of Popular Mechanics. See the article on page 38 or posted on the bulletin board across from the Cox elevators on the first floor.

Congratulations to Michael Paesler, recipient of the award for the best pedagogical paper for his presentation "Anemochoric Palynomorphic Investigations of Paleoatmospheres: Using the physics of the movement of fossil spores in wind to study the history of the Earth's atmosphere" at the Spring meeting of the NC American Association of Physics Teachers. The work was based on a collaborative study with MEAS paleontology student Holly Woodward and Professor Dale Russell. Ms. Woodward presented a poster describing the investigation that won a best poster award at the annual NC State undergraduate research symposium.

Congratulations to Chueng Ji, who was re-elected as a member of ILCAC (International Light Cone Advisory Committee) for another three-year term.

"Spotlight on..." Physics Staff. Our continuing series for recognition of the SPA staff in Physics. Every two months we'll feature another staff member on a poster in the glass cases near the Cox elevators and the "Physics News" bulletin board outside the main office toward Dabney.

September- October's featured person is

The Graduate Physics Student Association (GPSA) has recently enjoyed an increase in interest that manifests itself in a variety of ways. In particular, the organization meets regularly. These meetings provide a forum for the presentation of talks that might be used as practice talks for graduate students.

GPSA meetings provide an excellent opportunity for your students to practice public speaking and presentation of their work. In addition to the benefits of practice, we believe that presenting to the GPSA will improve the sense of community and support throughout the department. If you have a student that will be defending, giving a talk, or publishing a paper please encourage them to present it to the GPSA.

GSPA regularly meets on the first and third Thursday of each month. Special meetings can be scheduled. Speakers for meetings are generally planned one month in advance. Contact GPSA president Eric Adles to schedule a presentation or for more information.

Please remember that if you wish to spend your money on any items and have the Physics Department reimburse you, you MUST have prior approval from Chris Gould or Robert Egler. Reimbursement requests made without prior approval of the purchase may not be honored.

The Undergraduate Physics Majors and Society of Physics Students (SPS) office has been relocated to Cox Hall 510A over the summer.

The first Workshop on the Fermion Sign Problem was held from July 23 to July 25 at CECAM, Ecole Normale Superieure, in Lyon, France. The workshop addressed ways to calculate the properties of a fermionic system which scale reasonably with the number of quantum degrees of freedom. Topics ranged from continuum electronic structure to lattice models in condensed matter and nuclear and particle physics. The Triangle physics community was well represented with Shailesh Chandrasekharan from Duke and Lubos Mitas and Dean Lee from N.C. State.

BOM Flood Update.

In the last newsletter we said that some of the planned space moves were on hold. This is now definite: The graduate student offices will be staying in Daniels, moving to the new area there in late Fall as per the original plan.

In other BOM news, the restoration is proceeding in the basement and the area should be available for storage within a month. We are still hoping to recover the Haase/Clarke/Huffman area for temporary lab space.

Shredding. The industrial-size shred of sensitive materials was a success (i.e. fast and cheap.) We will schedule another shred in a few weeks. If you have material you want disposed of (e.g. personnel information) get it together and inform Robert Egler. We will contact you the day before about where to bring it.

Niccolo Bucciantini, John Blondin, L. DelZanna (Univ. Firenze), E. Amato, (INAF Oss.Arcetri) "Spherically symmetric relativistic MHD simulations of pulsar wind nebulae in supernova remnants" Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol 405, p 617 (2003)

At 5:51 a.m. Eastern Time on August 27, 2003, the planet Mars will be the closest that it has come to Earth in nearly 60,000 years.

At that time Mars will be a mere 34,646,418 miles (55,758,006 kilometers) away from Earth.

Where do I look? Mars is rising a little after sunset in the east south east. Mars will be the brightest little dot among the stars in that area of the sky. Those with good color perception will note that Mars has a orange-reddish hue, which is caused by the red dust that covers most of the planet.

What will I see? Judging from the calls we've received from the public about the event, there is considerable misunderstanding on what to expect. Mars will not, for example, be as large as the full Moon!

Although Mars is closer to the Earth than it has been in recorded history, it really isn't all that much closer than it was at the close approach in 1988. Mars will be brighter, and those with telescopes will be able to see more detail on the surface. Assuming that Mars does not have one of its occasional planet-wide dust storms which blot out most surface features, you can expect to make out the large Martian planes and the larger surface features, and the polar ice caps. (There aren't any canals on Mars, by the way.)

The next time Mars will get this close is August 28, 2287! So get the telescope out of the attic and have a look at the best view of Mars in our lifetime.