American Institute Of Physics Research Articles

Students, Scientists, and Family Commemorate the Life and Diverse Works of Jack Eddy

Eddy Cross‐Disciplinary Symposium on Sun‐Climate Research; Aspen, Colorado, 22–24 October 2010; In 1976, John Allen Eddy published a seminal article (see Science, 192(4245), 1189–1202) revealing a link between the Little Ice Age, which occurred during the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, and a period of low sunspot activity, which Eddy called the “Maunder Minimum.” This work placed Sun‐climate research on a firm scientific footing. Eddy passed away on 10 June 2009. Following Eddy's passions for education and cross‐disciplinary research, a symposium was held to expose talented college students to the science and politics of Sun‐climate research. Funding from NASA's Living With a Star Targeted Research and Technology program and from the High Altitude Observatory, Advanced Study Program, and Integrated Science Program of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) supported keynote speakers and provided scholarships for 30 students (junior year to Ph.D.) from diverse disciplines. Eddy's wife, Barbara, led a session devoted to personal recollections. Spencer Weart (American Institute of Physics) gave an after‐dinner tribute using recordings of Eddy from a 1999 interview.

Using Industrial Patronage to Manage Growth and Change in American Physics

During the interwar period both the quantity and quality of scholarly research in the sciences conducted within the United States increased dramatically. Besides an expansion in the scale of research produced and change in its quality, there was a rapid commercialization of research in the sciences. An essential ingredient to making these changes possible in the sciences was an efficient and scalable scholarly society. These trends were all perhaps most evident in the discipline of physics. Creating such a scholarly society requires funding and oversight with both being provided by the Chemical Foundation. The interaction between the Chemical Foundation and physicists, mediated through the formation of the American Institute of Physics, yielded a scholarly community that embraced an academic-industrial symbiosis and set the stage for a discipline able to accommodate dramatic growth and change after WW II. This discussion not only reveals the extent to which industry indirectly imposed itself through the Chemical Foundation on a scholarly society previously considered the product of a theoretical community, but also expands the limited understanding we have of the Chemical Foundation in an era of shifting funding priorities, motivations, and actors.

W kierunku ilościowej teorii wzrostu złożoności świata

The study of the growing complexity of the physical world is of great value to many scientific disciplines, including philosophy of nature, complexity theory, thermodynamics, and others. Here, I propose a systematic and quantitative method of describing the process of natural complexification throughout cosmic history, based on a list of the topical categories of PACS® 2008: Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme 2008, published by the American Institute of Physics. I assume that each of the selected 349 level-3 categories corresponds to a certain subset of natural phenomena, and I group them according to their first appearance in natural history. By analyzing their distribution, I derive certain qualitative and (tentatively) quantitative generalizations concerning the pace and scale of the growth of natural complexity. I contrast this approach with the results achieved by other methods and discuss its relevance to selected topics in philosophy of nature and philosophy of science.

Eleventh Joint MMM — Intermag Conference 2010 Conference Chair's Foreword

This volume contains selected papers from the 11th Joint MMM/Intermag Conference, which was held January 18-22, 2010 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, very close to the heart of Washington, DC. The Joint meeting is held every three years and is a merger of the annual Magnetism and Magnetic Materials Conference and the annual Intermag Conference. This Conference is sponsored jointly by the American Institute of Physics (AIP/PCI) and the Magnetics Society of the IEEE. This meeting, which was focused on recent developments in fundamental and applied magnetism, was a very successful meeting with over 2,300 digests submitted, of which some 1,715 were accepted for presentation. As a consequence, the conference was also very well attended with 1,719 registered attendees, making it one of the largest MMM-Intermag Conferences on record and the largest of the series ever organized in the United States.

American Institute of Physics appoints new Associate V.P. of Physics Resources

American Institute of Physics appoints new Associate V.P. of Physics Resources American Institute of Physics appoints new Associate V.P. of Physics Resources

What can we learn from statistics on acoustics?

This talk will present current statistics on acoustics degrees and employment in acoustics. The data come from the National Science Foundation’s studies of degrees awarded and from the American Institute of Physics’ surveys of members of our ten Member Societies (including ASA). Because acoustics encompasses many different disciplines, these statistics will be compared to data from larger fields such as engineering, physics, and life and earth sciences. Although the numbers are very small in acoustics, data will be shown on the participation of under‐represented minorities and women where possible. Finally, implications for increasing diversity in acoustics will be discussed.

“Future faces of physics” and other initiatives to broaden participation in science.

Together, Hispanic‐Americans and African‐Americans make up over 25% of the US population, but they earn only 7% of physics bachelor’s degrees. In order to help broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in STEM fields, the American Institute of Physics has several programs to work with students as well as to reach the general public. To engage physics undergraduates on the challenging subject of diversity, the Society of Physics Students (SPS), a society of over 4000 undergraduate physics students that is part of the American Institute of Physics (AIP), has launched two new programs. SPS has developed a Physics Jeopardy‐like game as part of a “Future Faces of Physics” kit that includes various materials that help engage students in conversations about diversity. These kits have been used at more than 20 regional and national meetings since 2008 with positive results. AIP has also worked with Research Corporation to launch a program that brings Nobel laureates to HBCU’s and to SPS campus or regional events that include participation by Minority Serving Institutions. Another AIP program creates short TV science news segments and distributes them free of charge in Spanish. These programs and future directions will be summarized.

Astronomy Education Review Version 2.0: A Welcome and Guide from Your Editors

We discuss the transition of AER to our new publisher, the American Astronomical Society, and to our new web site, at the American Institute of Physics. We describe some of the novel and expanded features of the journal, and invite our readers to contribute papers and articles to the journal. We are proud to announce that, as of January 2009, the American Astronomical Society has taken over the publication and management of Astronomy Education Review. They have engaged the American Institute of Physics AIP to re-design, update, publish, and archive the journal. The AIP has a flourishing journal and electronic journal program and we have thus become part of a much larger publishing enterprise. They publish more than 180 journals, and have an electronic publishing platform called Scitation, into which AER is now integrated. This brings many benefits to our readers, authors, and editors — benefits that we anticipate exploring together with you in months to come. The new web site, on which our back issues are already on display and on which new papers will be published is: http://aer.aip.org. We will keep issues live at http://aer.noao.edu for several months. However, we respectfully ask our readers and supporters to begin substituting the new AER address in any links or bookmarks you have for the journal. And, as you see on both sites, the submission e-mail address for submitting papers and articles, and communication with the editors has also changed to: aer@aas.org. We continue to welcome the same categories of papers, articles, essays, and announcements as we have in the past see Journal Sections above our title , but look forward to being more efficient in responding to them and to having our contents indexed and available to a wider community of educators and scholars. Judy Johnson, a long-time member of the staff at the American Astronomical Society, will join us as the manager of editorial functions and liaison with the AIP. As you look around on the page where this article is displayed on the AIP web site, you will notice a number of additional features that are now available to you: 1. Each AER paper or article is assigned a permanent Digital Object Identifier DOI , and becomes part of an international system of tagging intellectual property. You can use this identifying number i.e., DOI and the resulting link i.e., Permalink to keep track of articles on our site and elsewhere. These numbers have already been assigned for all our back issues as well. See the Help page for additional information on DOIs. 2. The “title page” for each AER paper or article shows you its abstract and, with one click, its references. Whenever the referenced article has a DOI, it shows up as a link, and one click will take you to it. Just at the right of these main boxes — under the headline “Full Text Options” — are symbols for seeing the article itself, either as an HTML file the full article or one section at a time or as a PDF file. This is the one part of our new design that might take some getting used to — if you are the title page you need to click a blue button to see the full article. 3. The Search Tools for our journal see the link above, just below the title have been greatly expanded and strengthened. Note for example, the Hitlist Sorting Options for returning contents in the order and with the filtering you prefer. 4. As an AER reader, you have free access to My Scitation, a service that lets you personalize your use of the Scitation platform on which our journal is built. For example, you can set up a “Virtual Filing Cabinet” in which to keep articles you want to come back to, not just from AER but from other AIP managed journals. These include Physics Teacher, Physics Today, and The American Journal of Physics, all of which carry some relevant articles on education. 5. If you use other systems for keeping track of your favorite articles, AER pages provide you with a one or two-click way of saving a particular reference. Among the systems that are connected to us now are: BibSonomy, Connotea, CiteULike, del.icio.us, BibTex, and EndNote. If , like your editors, you are perhaps too old to get heavily into social bookmarking and cross-referencing, you can just take pleasure in the fact that we are making your younger colleagues happy. 6. Each paper in AER has also been assigned one or more PACS identifiers seen at the bottom right of the page. This “Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme” see: http://www.aip.org/pacs/ is a complex system of organizing all topics in our field. It seems more precise for scientific research than for education, and doesnt quite map into the “keywords” we and our advisors set up for AER. However, it has one immediate advantage. If you find a PACS identifier of interest, you can click on and find a list of dozens to thousands of articles that have been assigned that same identifier in the literature. We welcome your comments and suggestions about the new look and new platform and would also appreciate your letting colleagues and students know about our new URL. Our aim has always been to make AER more than just a journal — we would like to encourage its use it as a community “meeting place” for everyone engaged in the usually unsung and underpaid but increasingly important mission of astronomy education and outreach. AER 010401-1–010401-2

Pay-Per-View at the American Institute of Physics: One Scholarly Publisher’s Experience with “The Article Economy”

Pay-Per-View at the American Institute of Physics: One Scholarly Publisher’s Experience with “The Article Economy”

Physics bachelors find jobs despite recession

November 2009 Physics Today 29 Physics bachelor’s degree holders who entered the workforce in academic year 2008– 09 earned starting salaries in the range of $40 000–$64 000. That puts them among the highestearning new college graduates, according to data collected by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (see figure). Roman Czujko, who heads the Statistical Research Center at the American Institute of Physics, says, “It’s remarkable that during a tight economy campus recruiters were interviewing and offering physicists jobs, and that there were enough data to talk about. The fact that the data include physics is positive. The fact that physics salaries are among the top numbers is also positive.” Recessions, Czujko adds, “come at least once a decade, sometimes twice. At least 3 out of 10 graduating classes have the misfortune to graduate during a recession. This time physics bachelors are doing well. But in general, I’d like to tell those kids to keep struggling. It will get better.” Roughly, physics majors and the other top earners are working as programmers and engineers, graduates in the middle group of majors in the table are in mathintensive jobs, and the bottom group, says Czujko, “shows that when you read reports about a shortage of scientists and engineers, they are twisting the data. There is no shortage at the bachelor’s level. The 75 000 biol ogy bachelors are going into the workforce with a set of knowledge and skills that are not valued. Biology majors do not do well in a strong or a poor economy. Their starting salaries are no better than secondary-school teachers’. It’s okay if they go on to grad school or medical school.” Further evidence that the skills of physicists are valued can be found in the Statistical Research Center’s recently updated state-by-state listing of who has hired physics bachelors in the past three years (http://www.aip.org/statistics/whohires). The jobs— only those that make use of a technical background are included—are largely in programming and engineering, and they span actuarial insurance companies, finance firms, startup companies, and large defense contractors. Says the center’s Patrick Mulvey, “The range of fields in which bachelors are applying their skills and knowledge and problemsolving capabilities is very broad.” Toni Feder B A C H E L O R ’S F IE L D Chemical engineering

Ignition on the National Ignition Facility: a path towards inertial fusion energy

The National Ignition Facility (NIF), the world's largest and most powerful laser system for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and experiments studying high-energy-density (HED) science, is nearing completion at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). NIF, a 192-beam Nd-glass laser facility, will produce 1.8 MJ, 500 TW of light at the third-harmonic, ultraviolet light of 351 nm. The NIF project is scheduled for completion in March 2009. Currently, all 192 beams have been operationally qualified and have produced over 4.0 MJ of light at the fundamental wavelength of 1053 nm, making NIF the world's first megajoule laser. The principal goal of NIF is to achieve ignition of a deuterium–tritium (DT) fuel capsule and provide access to HED physics regimes needed for experiments related to national security, fusion energy and for broader scientific applications.The plan is to begin 96-beam symmetric indirect-drive ICF experiments early in FY2009. These first experiments represent the next phase of the National Ignition Campaign (NIC). This national effort to achieve fusion ignition is coordinated through a detailed plan that includes the science, technology and equipment such as diagnostics, cryogenic target manipulator and user optics required for ignition experiments. Participants in this effort include LLNL, General Atomics, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory and the University of Rochester Laboratory for Energetics (LLE). The primary goal for NIC is to have all of the equipment operational and integrated into the facility soon after project completion and to conduct a credible ignition campaign in 2010. When the NIF is complete, the long-sought goal of achieving self-sustaining nuclear fusion and energy gain in the laboratory will be much closer to realization.Successful demonstration of ignition and net energy gain on NIF will be a major step towards demonstrating the feasibility of inertial fusion energy (IFE) and will likely focus the world's attention on the possibility of an ICF energy option. NIF experiments to demonstrate ignition and gain will use central-hot-spot (CHS) ignition, where a spherical fuel capsule is simultaneously compressed and ignited. The scientific basis for CHS has been intensively developed (Lindl 1998 Inertial Confinement Fusion: the Quest for Ignition and Energy Gain Using Indirect Drive (New York: American Institute of Physics)) and has a high probability of success. Achieving ignition with CHS will open the door for other advanced concepts, such as the use of high-yield pulses of visible wavelength rather than ultraviolet and fast ignition concepts (Tabak et al 1994 Phys. Plasmas 1 1626–34, Tabak et al 2005 Phys. Plasmas 12 057305). Moreover, NIF will have important scientific applications in such diverse fields as astrophysics, nuclear physics and materials science.This paper summarizes the design, performance and status of NIF, experimental plans for NIC, and will present laser inertial confinement fusion–fission energy (LIFE) as a path to achieve carbon-free sustainable energy.

Robert Thomas Beyer

A participant for more than 50 years in American Institute of Physics (AIP) and Acoustical Society of America (ASA) activities and Hazard Professor of Physics Emeritus at Brown University, Robert Thomas Beyer died 19 August 2008 in Providence, Rhode Island. After battling various serious ailments throughout his life, including multiple sclerosis and several bouts with rheumatic fever, Bob finally succumbed to congestive heart failure.Bob was born 27 January 1920 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. His mother died only a few weeks after his birth, leaving him to be raised by his aunt. Various ailments kept Bob from most of his high-school classes, but he nevertheless managed to attend Hofstra College and graduate in 1942 first in his class with an AB in mathematics. He earned his PhD in physics in 1945 at Cornell University, where he worked on a secret World War II project involving magnetic amplifiers. Soon after receiving his PhD, Bob was hired by Brown University as an instructor in the physics department. He became a full professor in 1958, department chairman from 1968 to 1974, and Hazard Professor of Physics Emeritus in 1985. He taught all levels, from freshman physics through advanced graduate courses, while mentoring graduate students with their MS and PhD theses. His students knew him as a strict but kind and considerate taskmaster. He was especially gentle when given the unpleasant task of advising a student to drop out of the graduate program. He once recounted accidentally meeting a dropout on the street a year later. Upon greeting the ex-student with some embarrassment, Bob was assured that his advice was the best the ex-student could have received; he was now employed on Wall Street, earning several times what he might have as a physicist. The early research projects under Bob’s supervision at Brown were concerned mainly with ultrasonic properties of matter: the propagation velocities and absorption coefficients of ultrasonic waves as a function of frequency in water and common organic liquids and in electrolytic solutions, suspensions, single crystals, condensed gases, and liquid metals. In the late 1950s, Bob and his students joined the growing field concerned with large-amplitude acoustic waves and nonlinear interactions between propagating waves. In addition to their theoretical work, they performed experiments to confirm their theoretical predictions, including the controversial predictions of Brown colleague Peter Westervelt.Bob was a prolific writer. In addition to some 75 scientific papers and journal articles, some written jointly with graduate students, he wrote four textbooks, including Nonlinear Acoustics (Naval Ship Systems Command, 1975) and Sounds of Our Times: Two Hundred Years of Acoustics (AIP Press, 1999).One of Bob’s many talents was an exceptional facility with foreign languages. He was well versed not only in English literature but also in French, German, and Russian. He had read Dr. Zhivago and Remembrance of Things Past in their original Russian and French. That facility led to a second, parallel career: translating textbooks and various scientific journals from German and Russian into English. His journal translations began with the Russian Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics and Soviet Physics–Acoustics. Bob served two years as editor of the English version of the Chinese Journal of Physics. He was part of AIP’s translation program at the beginning and remained active in it for more than 50 years, performing translations and serving on the translation advisory board from 1955, including as chairman from 1957 to 1977, and on the board of translation editors from 1974.In addition to his translation activities, Bob was a member of the AIP Governing Board for 24 years, from 1969 to 1993, and of its Executive Committee from 1974 to 1987 and 1990 to 1991. He was editor of AIP publications on acoustics and signal processing and a member of the AIP Publication Board and the committee of society treasurers. He was equally active in ASA, a charter Member Society of AIP, and served in many capacities, including Executive Council member, vice president, president, treasurer, and associate editor for book reviews. He received the society’s Distinguished Service Citation in 1978 and its Gold Medal in 1984. He was a well-known participant in international acoustical activities; he became a member of the UN International Commission on Acoustics in 1975 and was its chairman from 1978 to 1984.Bob’s personality and writing style, including his occasional curmudgeonly side, are perhaps best conveyed by quoting him. In a 1993 letter to the AIP executive director and CEO, Bob wrote, Ornery Bob is back in condition. In discussing the selection of a new board chair, you wrote “AIP is fortunate to have had a succession of outstanding Board Chairs (including Richard Crane, Frederick Seitz, and Norman Ramsey in recent memory).” What’s the matter with Phil Morse? Was he some kind of klutz, or did the fact that he once served as President of the Acoustical Society of America condemn him to the dust heap? You see that ASA paranoia is still in good form. At a farewell meeting honoring Hans Frauenfelder on his departure as AIP Governing Board chairman, Bob opened his remarks with I feel in strange territory tonight. First, I went off the AIP Governing Board just before this meeting began, after some 24 years…. I have fought my battles against Hans, against Ken, and finally against the wishes of the majority of the Governing Board. I have been defeated and that war is over. I therefore feel I have something in common with those ancient chiefs of Gaul, who, having been conquered by Caesar, marched behind him at his triumph in Rome. Of course, after that triumph, the chiefs were executed. Perhaps my going off the Board is the modern equivalent. Bob’s presence in AIP and ASA activities continues to be missed. His students knew him as a compassionate father figure who gave them all equal time, regardless of their ability; they felt they had benefited by his council, although they were unable to emulate his talent for telling stories and jokes. His colleagues were unanimous in admiring his knowledge of many languages, his general erudition, and his success in promoting international scientific cooperation.Robert Thomas BeyerPPT|High resolution© 2009 American Institute of Physics.

The amiable Einstein and Nordström

Schucking replies: The uncharitable story that Albert Einstein refused to see physicist Gunnar Nordström, who had traveled from Finland to Zürich, Switzerland, to discuss his theory of gravitation, does not accord with the events as recounted by Paul Ehrenfest. For almost a month in June and July 1913, Ehrenfest stayed with Einstein in Zürich. In his diary for 13 June through 1 July of that year, 1 1. P. Ehrenfest, diaries, Papers 1902-1933, ENB 4-15, Museum Boerhaave, Leiden, the Netherlands; microfilm copy at Archives for the History of Quantum Physics, Ehrenfest Notebooks, EHR-12, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives, College Park, Maryland. particularly in the entry for 29 June, Ehrenfest says that Einstein and Nordström discussed their gravitational theories during Nordström’s visit. Based on those discussions, Nordström published an improved version of his theory, dated Zürich, July 1913, in which he thanked Einstein directly. In his September 1913 lecture in Vienna, Einstein extensively discussed Nordström’s new version and made it clear that it was a viable alternative to his own then unfinished theory. The relationship between Einstein’s and Nordström’s theories is analyzed in The Genesis of General Relativity . 2 2. J. D. Norton, in The Genesis of General Relativity, vol. 3, J. Renn, ed., Springer, Dordrecht, the Netherlands (2007), p. 413. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4000-9_18 The volume also contains English translations of Nordström’s papers.REFERENCESSection:ChooseTop of pageREFERENCES <<1. P. Ehrenfest, diaries, Papers 1902-1933, ENB 4-15, Museum Boerhaave, Leiden, the Netherlands; microfilm copy at Archives for the History of Quantum Physics, Ehrenfest Notebooks, EHR-12, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives, College Park, Maryland. Google Scholar2. J. D. Norton, in The Genesis of General Relativity, vol. 3, J. Renn, ed., Springer, Dordrecht, the Netherlands (2007), p. 413. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4000-9_18 , Google ScholarCrossref© 2009 American Institute of Physics.

Editorial: A note from the new Co-Editor

In an emerging field with so many prominent researchers, I am tremendously humbled to have been appointed as Co-Editor of Biomicrofluidics alongside Professor Hsueh-Chia Chang, who has done such a terrific job in leading the journal since its inception in 2007. It is, therefore, with great honor that I assume this editorial responsibility, having had the privilege of serving the journal first as an Editorial Board member in 2007 and as Associate Editor in 2008. The journal, of course, would not have been possible without the commitment and dedication of the various staff at the American Institute of Physics, who have worked tirelessly behind the scenes to maintain the high standards of the journal. We are also grateful for the many authors who have chosen to publish their research in Biomicrofluidics even in its infancy and look forward to your continual support of the journal. Biomicrofluidics is first and foremost your journal. It exists to serve the needs of an interdisciplinary community spanning science, engineering, and medicine who broadly work on research themes associated with fluid flow and manipulation at the smallest scales ever imaginable. Our aim is, therefore, centered around improving the journal to serve these needs. With this in mind, our goals for Biomicrofluidics are indicated below. (i) To improve the quality and visibility of the journal so that it is ranked among the leading journals in the field. It is my desire to see not just an increase in the number of submissions but also an increase in the quality of the manuscripts we publish. Very soon, the journal will receive an impact factor and associated bibliometrics, which will allow us to monitor the quality of the journal and to strategically plan ways to continually increase our presence in the scientific community. However, we also realize that a crucial and indispensable part of quality is our author services, such as ease of submission, as well as the speed and quality of the review process, which we will seek to improve. Another example of continuous improvement is the new sectioning of journal articles, which includes a provision for brief communications, reviews, and perspective articles. Other services to the community will also be promoted, such as job postings on the journal’s website, which we believe will be a helpful service to postdoctoral researchers and graduate students. (ii) To widen the appeal and accessibility of the journal both geographically and to the broad interests of the community. We recognize that the microfluidics and nanofluidics community is, indeed, interdisciplinary—spanning fields as wide as physics, chemistry, biology, applied mathematics, rheology, pharmaceutical science, biomedical science, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, and electrical engineering, to say the very least. We would like to see every one of these fields represented in the articles we publish and cater to both fundamental and applied research in the broadest sense. In addition, we will work toward building the eminence of the journal by increasing its international involvement, particularly in Australasia and in Europe, where the microfluidics and nanofluidics community is growing rapidly. The journal is already involved with the organization of the Advances in Microfluidics and Nanofluidics conference, which seeks to bring together the best researchers in the Asia–Pacific rim region, as well as sponsorship of other conferences and symposia. You may already have seen some of the special conference issues that have appeared as a result, and we anticipate this to grow in number as we strive to increase the relevance of the journal to researchers in academia and professional scientists and engineers in industry worldwide. These are challenging goals, especially as we attempt to steer the journal in the early stages of its growth. Nevertheless, they are relevant and feasible goals, which we believe we can achieve with your support. Already, we are putting our minds to work with creative new initiatives that we hope will distinguish the journal and at the same time serve the needs of the microfluidics and nanofluidics community. Open-access model. The journal was conceived with the open-access model in mind, with the aim of enhancing accessibility to a wide readership and to improve the dissemination and recognition of the articles we publish. We certainly hope that this will be evident in terms of the citation impact when the journal receives its impact factor and associated metrics shortly. What distinguishes Biomicrofluidics from most other open-access models, however, and what we believe to be unique in the community, is that the publication charges have now been removed. All articles published in Biomicrofluidics are, therefore, made available to anyone and everyone for free. Multimedia capability. We are greatly aware of the increasing emphasis on multimedia-associated publishing. This is especially relevant to the microfluidics and nanofluidics community given the need to disseminate information, which is not necessarily macroscopically apparent or which occurs at very fast time scales. While multimedia archiving has been a central part of our published journal papers since the launch of the journal, we are constantly seeking ways to enhance the use of multimedia both as a research and a pedagogical tool. We are launching an open-access multimedia collection in which video files associated with our journal papers are collated into a searchable thematic library. As each video is linked with the journal paper, we believe this is a great way to improve the visibility and impact of our papers. Moreover, with the increasing number of graduate and even undergraduate courses in microfluidics and nanofluidics, we feel this will be a great resource for both instructors and students in aiding the understanding of microfluidics and nanofluidics science and technology. Fabrication and Laboratory Methods section. An integral part of the new journal sectioning is the Fabrication and Laboratory Methods section, which, quite unique to the community, is intended to be a collection of published “recipes” on novel and classic techniques of laboratory methods and micro-∕nanofabrication procedures. We believe making such procedures freely available will help in the promotion and acceleration of microfluidic and nanofluidic research. We are also convinced that the articles appearing in this section, each of which will be rigorously peer-reviewed according to the high standards of the journal and carry a journal citation in their own right, will be a way to make our research directly relevant to other researchers, particularly in other disciplines and even to industry practitioners, thereby increasing the scientific impact of our work. There is, therefore, lots to do, but I am greatly excited by these opportunities to serve the community. Biomicrofluidics is a young journal, and we are keen to see it grow; with your help and support, it will. I am particularly interested in involving our authors and readers every step of the way, and, therefore, especially welcome feedback and dialog on your views as to how we can improve the journal to meet your needs. Please feel free to contact me at leslie.yeo@eng.monash.edu.au. I look forward to hearing from you.

A New Service: Archiving Supplemental Material to Journal Publication

In my May 2008 editorial, I had mentioned our desire to offer more archiving publication options for materials that exceed the current presentation capabilities of the journal as a print medium. I am pleased to let you know that authors of ASME Transactions Journals will be now able to submit material supplemental to their papers. The ASME journals team has made this service available through the Electronic Physics Auxiliary Publication Service (EPAPS) depository of the American Institute of Physics (AIP). It will be provided without charge to the author. Last Fall, the ASME Transactions Editors council appointed a committee consisting of Jerry Miller, Panos Papalambros, Bahgat Sammakia and Demetri Telionis, and charged it with setting up guidelines for the implementation of this new archiving mode. These guidelines are provided further below.We all feel that the following three elements are very important for the success of this new archiving program: (i) reviewing the material; (ii) making it available for posterity and (iii) establishing standards. We recognize that this new capability will increase the workload of both editors and reviewers, and we should make sure that this increase be minimal. The proposed guidelines aim to accommodate these goals.ASME is launching this service on a trial period, with some journal editors volunteering to get it started and report on their experience. The plan is to have this service available to all journals.I am pleased to make this new venue available to JMD authors. We will be providing further information and updates at the JMD website http://www.asmejmd.org. As this program moves forward, both the Associate Editors and I will welcome input from authors and reviewers on how to make this new service efficient and valuable to the JMD constituents.

Vibration–rotation–translation spectrum of molecular hydrogen in fullerite lattices around 80K

Abstract Calculations are presented for the fundamental vibration–rotation spectrum of H 2 in fcc C 60 (fullerite) lattices near 80 K using the approach and the parameters used by Herman and Lewis [Phys. Rev. B 73 (2006) 155408; in: E. Oks, M. Pindzola (Eds.) Spectral Line Shapes, AIP Conference Proceedings, No. 874, American Institute of Physics, 2006, pp. 162–176 (Proceedings of the 18th ICSLS)] at 293 K. Good agreement is found with recent drift spectra of FitzGerald et al. [Personal communication, 2006]. It is argued that our approach cannot be extended to the 10 K spectrum without significant modification.

How to build your own teaching apparatus

Do‐it‐yourself apparatus for better physics teaching is now within the reach of many small departments. Developed at a dozen leading colleges and universities, the apparatus ranges in scope from a simple kinetic‐theory demonstration to a student‐model mass spectrometer. All of the items can be built with the facilities of an average departmental shop. This opportunity for local construction of apparatus is offered through the Apparatus Drawings Project, sponsored jointly by the American Association of Physics Teachers and the American Institute of Physics. The recent publication by Plenum Press of a 162‐sheet portfolio and a 289‐page bound volume of shop drawings and construction notes on thirty pieces of apparatus brings to completion the project which was undertaken in 1959 with support from the National Science Foundation.

Editorial: Welcome to a new, international research journal from the American Institute of Physics—Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy

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Structural health monitoring of anisotropic plates using ultrasonic guided wave STMR array patches

Structural health monitoring (SHM) of plate-like structures used in aerospace industries, using transducer arrays located suitably on the structure, such as the single-transmitter multiple-receiver (STMR) array [Wilcox PD, Lowe M, Cawley P. Lamb and SH wave transducer arrays for the inspection of large areas of thick plates. Review of progress in quantitative nondestructive evaluation, vol. 19A. Melville, NY, USA: American Institute of Physics; 1999. p. 1049–56; Wilcox PD. Guided wave beam steering from omni-directional transducer arrays. Review of progress in quantitative nondestructive evaluation, vol. 22A. Melville, New York, USA: American Institute of Physics; 2002. p. 761–8], has been demonstrated here. The reconstruction of the material state was carried out by utilizing a phased addition reconstruction algorithm. In addition to the signals from damage sites, the ultrasonic guided wave-based reconstruction procedures also need the complete set of elastic moduli as a continuous input throughout the SHM process. In the present study, two flexible printed circuit board (PCB)-based patches: ((i). single-quadrant, double-ring STMR material characterization (MC) array and (ii). Full-ring STMR SHM array) were developed for accomplishing both objectives, i.e. (a) online MC and (b) SHM of anisotropic plate-like structures, respectively. Experiments were conducted on 3.15 mm graphite-epoxy composite plate using PCB-based STMR arrays, the feasibility of accomplishing both objectives was demonstrated.

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