Articles
Why Many Undergraduate Physics Programs Are Good but Few Are Great 
No single action, activity, or curricular reform will rescue a struggling physics department. Rather, it takes many elements, interacting over time, to make a department thrive — Robert C. Hilborn and Ruth H. Howes
What Works for Women in Undergraduate Physics?
The predominance of men in physics remains a puzzle. To attract talented women and minorities, the culture of college physics needs a makeover — Barbara L. Whitten, Suzanne R. Foster, and Margaret L. Duncombe
Paradigms in Physics: Restructuring the Upper Level
Eight years ago, Oregon State University's physics faculty reshaped their curriculum into one focusing on themes and concepts that cut across a variety of subjects. Students, faculty, and teaching assistants discuss the changes — Corinne A. Manogue and Kenneth S. Krane
Web departments
Readings from the Physics Today Archive
Departments
Reference Frame
Accelerators and Dinosaurs — Michael S. Turner
Letters
More Than Texts Need Reform in Middle Schools
Counterterrorism Priorities and Policy
Search & Discovery
Four Experiments Give Evidence of an Exotic Baryon With Five Quarks
It's been a long-standing puzzle that the quantum numbers of all the known mesons and baryons could be attributed to bound states of two or three quarks. But now the first exception has apparently been found.
Composite Molecules Store Rewritable Digital Data
A storage system based on photochromes—molecules that flip between two stable structures in response to light of the right frequency—may one day pack 100 terabytes of data into a volume the size of a matchbox.
Gamma-Ray Images Uncover Solar Flare Surprises
A new space-based observatory is providing unprecedented views of solar activity.
Issues & Events
APS Study Points to Severe Limits on Boost-Phase Missile Defense
A two-year study challenges many of the assumptions behind the Bush administration's $600 million boost-phase program.
HERA Scientists Fight to Extend Strong Interaction Studies
When should a productive machine be turned off?
Astronomers Lobby for New Lease on Hubble's Life
Tight budgets, new rules for space shuttle missions since the Columbia disaster, and plans for the James Webb Space Telescope may stymie efforts to extend the life of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Work Progresses on Next-Generation Space Telescope
Once technical and financial difficulties are beaten, the James Webb Space Telescope will collect data about galaxy, star, and planetary system formation, and interstellar dust.
Virgo Gears Up to Wait for Gravitational Waves
The latest detector to join the hunt for gravitational waves is the €76 million ($86 million) Virgo, an Italian-French collaboration near Pisa that celebrated its inauguration and started testing at the end of July.
Atkinson Arrives as State Department Science Adviser
State Department science adviser Norman Neureiter is stepping down in mid-September and will be succeeded by George Atkinson, a University of Arizona chemist.
Disbanding of NNSA Advisory Panel Raises Concerns
An independent advisory committee created in June 2001 to review science and technology programs for the National Nuclear Security Administration and make recommendations for strengthening them was disbanded in June.
Bush Team Unveils 10-Year Climate Change Research Plan
With political leaders describing it as "historic" and government scientists defending it as "intellectually sound," the Bush administration released its 356-page "Strategic Plan for the Climate Change Science Program" at a lengthy press conference in late July.
Wadsworth Takes ORNL Helm
As the new director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, on 1 August Jeff Wadsworth became responsible for a $1 billion annual budget and 3800 researchers.
Scientists Plunge Into Policy
Roughly 30 scientific societies sponsor scientists and engineers each year under the auspices of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. About a half dozen are sponsored by physics societies.
Web Watch
Strange Matter; Chemical Heritage Foundation; Women in Engineering
Books
Meanest Foundations and Nobler Superstructures: Hooke, Newton and the "Compounding of the Celestiall Motions of the Planetts", Ofer Gal (reviewed by George E. Smith)
Biophysics: An Introduction, Rodney M. J. Cotterill (reviewed by Howard C. Berg)
Gerhard Herzberg: An Illustrious Life in Science, Boris Stoicheff (reviewed by William Klemperer)
New Books
New Products
Focus on Sensors
We Hear That
OSA Names Recipients of 2003 Prizes
AAPM Honors Medical Physics Achievements
In Brief
Obituaries
Rudolf Kingslake/Hilda Gertrude Kingslake
Pierre Aigrain
Daniel Chonghan Hong
Yutaka Uchida
Leon Van Speybroeck
|
