Oct. 18, 1998 - Oct. 24, 1998 THE BOSTON AREA PHYSICS CALENDAR The Boston Area Physics Calendar is published weekly during the academic year by the Department of Physics at Boston College. You may send your announcements by e-mail (bapc@bc.edu) or FAX (617-552-8478). We cannot accept announcements by telephone. Entries should reach us no later than 11:00 a.m. on the Monday of the week preceding the week of the event. ENTRIES RECEIVED AFTER THE DEADLINE WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED. _______________________________________________ Monday, October 19, 1998 Monday, October 19, 1998, 2:00 p.m. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Monday Research Seminar MIT Center for Theoretical Physics, Bldg. 6, Third Floor "The d=11 SUGRA S-Matrix from Matrix Theory" Andrew Waldron NIKHEF Monday, October 19, 1998, 4:15 p.m. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Nuclear and Particle Physics Colloquium Kolker Room, 26-414 "New Sub-millimeter Dimensions and Quantum Gravity at the TeV Scale" Nima Arkani-Hamed SLAC Refreshments will be served at 4:00 p.m. Monday, October 19, 1998, 4:30 p.m. Brown University Physics Department Colloquium Barus & Holley 168 "Is the Universe Accelerating?" Professor Robert Kirshner Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Refreshments served at 4:00 p.m. Monday, October 19, 1998, 4:30 p.m. Harvard University Department of Physics Colloquium Jefferson Lab 250 "Surprises in 2D Electrical Transport" Professor Beth Gwinn University of California, Santa Barbara Tea will be served in Jefferson 450 at 4:00 p.m. _____________________________________________ Tuesday, October 20, 1998 Tuesday, October 20, 1998, 2:30 p.m. Tufts University Joint Tufts-CFA-MIT Cosmology Seminar Robinson Hall, Room 250 "Gravitational Waves from Collapsing Vacuum Domains" Professor Marcelo Gleiser Dartmouth College Refreshments will be served at 2:00 in Knipp Library, 251. Tuesday, October 20, 1998, 4:00 p.m. Brandeis University Martin Weiner Lectures Series, Physics Colloquium Physics Building, Abelson 131 "Disco Honey? Noise and Nanoscale Dynamics in Glass" Professor Nathan Israeloff Northeastern University Refreshments served at 3:30 p.m. in Room 333. Tuesday, October 20, 1998, 4:30 p.m. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Harvard-MIT Math/Physics Seminar MIT Room 4-159 "Seiberg-Witten Duality from the Point of View of Topological Field Theory in Various Dimensions" Professor Laurent Baulieu LPTHE, University of Paris VI ______________________________________________ Wednesday, October 21, 1998 Wednesday, October 21, 1998, 4:00 p.m. University of Massachusetts at Lowell Department of Physics Colloquium Olney 428 "Diagnosing Invisible Disease with Scattered Light" Lev T. Perelman Massachusetts Institute of Technology Refreshments at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, October 21, 1998, 4:00 p.m. Boston University ECE Colloquium Room 206, 8 Saint Mary's Street "Computational Science: The Real World of Ideas" Roscoe Giles Boston University Refreshments served directly before the talk outside Room 206 Send email to aaleman@bu.edu for more information. Wednesday, October 21, 1998, 4:00 p.m. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Physics of Computation Seminar MIT AI Lab, 545 Technology Square, 8th floor "playroom" "Parallel Quantum Computation and Quantum Codes" Cristopher Moore Santa Fe Institute Refreshments will be served after the talk. Wednesday, October 21, 1998, 4:15 p.m. Boston College Department of Physics Colloquium Higgins Hall, Room 354 "A Second Course in Physics: Special Relativity, General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics" Professor Edwin Taylor Massachusetts Institute of Technology Refreshments will be served at 3:50 p.m. Wednesday, October 21, 1998, 4:30 p.m. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Theory Seminar MIT/Center for Theoretical Physics, Bldg. 3, Third Floor "A Holographic N=1 Superconformal Field Theory" Steven Gubser Harvard University Refreshments at 4:00 p.m. Wednesday, October 21, 1998, 4:30 p.m. Harvard University Joint Atomic Physics Seminar Jefferson Laboratory, Room 356 "Symmetry Breakdown in Ground State Dissociation of HD+: Probing Charge Exchange at Very Low Collision Energies" Professor Itzik Ben-Itzhak Kansas State University Tea will be served at 4:00 p.m. _________________________________ Thursday, October 22, 1998 Thursday, October 22, 1998, 2:00 p.m. Boston University Biophysics Seminar SCI-352, 590 Commonwealth Ave. "Scaling and Complexity in Ecological Systems" Professor Tim Keitt Santa Fe Institute and National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, Santa Barbara Thursday, October 22, 1998, 3:45 p.m. Boston University Center for Space Physics Seminar Room 500, College of Arts and Science Building "JIM: A Global Model of Jupiter's Ionosphere" Dr. Nick Achilleos University College, London Thursday, October 22, 1998, 4:00 p.m. Northeastern University Physics Colloquium 114 Dana "The Origin of Universal Scaling Laws in Biology from Molecules to Whales" Geoffrey West Los Alamos National Laboratory and Santa Fe Inst. Thursday, October 22, 1998, 4:00 p.m. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Scientific Colloquium 60 Garden Street (Phillips Auditorium) "Middle-aged Galaxies" Dr. Roger Blandford California Institute of Technology Tea will be served at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, October 22, 1998, 4:00 p.m. Clark University Department of Physics Colloquium Sackler Science Center, Room N-105 "Laboratory Derived Friction Laws for Seismic and Aseismic Faulting" Professor Chris Marone Massachusetts Institute of Technology Thursday, October 22, 1998, 4:00 p.m. Brown University Physics Department Seminar Barus & Holley 751 "Few Surprises in Magnetotransport of Granular Ferromagnets" Professor Alexander Gerber Tel Aviv University Thursday, October 22, 1998, 4:15 p.m. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Colloquium MIT Room 10-250 "Why Do We Think Neutrinos Have Mass? And Who Cares?" Professor Boris Kayser National Science Foundation ______________________________________________ Friday, October 23, 1998 Friday, October 23, 1998, 12:30 p.m. Tufts University Lunchtime Cosmology Seminar Robinson Hall, Room 250 "Warm Inflation" Dr. Arjun Berera Vanderbilt University Friday, October 23, 1998, 1:00 p.m. Boston University Center for Space Physics Seminar Room 500, College of Arts and Sciences Building "Ion Dynamics during Magnetotail Reconnection" Dr. Manfred Scholer Max-Planck-Institut fŸr Extraterrestrische Physik Friday, October 23, 1998, 4:00 p.m. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Plasma Science and Fusion Center Seminar NW17-218, 175 Albany St. "Halo Formation and Control in Intense Linacs" Chiping Chen Massachusetts Institute of Technology Friday, October 23, 1998, 4:00 p.m. Harvard University Condensed Matter Seminar Pierce Hall, Room 209 "Ballistic Electron Emission Microscopy of Semiconductor Heterostructures, Quantum Wells and Quantum Dots" Professor Venky Narayanamurti Harvard University Refreshments will be served following the seminar. _________________________ Reminder: Deadline for the Oct. 25 - Oct. 31 issue is Monday, October 19 at 11:00 a.m. _________________________ Conference Announcement: Is Classical Statistical Mechanics a Useful Tool for Understanding Complex Systems? Reception: Fri., 23 October at BU, Rm PRB 593, 5 - 7 pm Conference: Sat., 24 October at MIT, Rm 6-120, 8am - 6 pm Saturday, October 24, 1998 8:15 am Bruce Boghosian, Boston University Opening Remarks 8:30 am Michel Baranger, MIT "Does Chaos Theory Have Interesting Things To Say About Statistical Physics?" 9:15 am Peter Coveney, Schlumberger Cambridge Research "Renormalisation Group Theory of Nucleation and Growth Phenomena" 10:00 am Break 10:15 am Jon Machta, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst "How to Define Complexity in Statistical Physics" 11:00 am Daniel Fisher, Harvard University "Scaling and Universality in Some Driven Dynamical systems: Relevance or Irrelevance" 11:45 am Discussion 12:30 pm Lunch 2:00 pm Jean-Pierre Boon, Universite Libre de Bruxelles "Random and Not So Random Walks: From Simplicity to Complexity" 2:45 pm Constantino Tsallis, Centro Barsileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas "Nonextensive Statistical Mechanics: A Possible Tool for Complex Systems" 3:30 pm Break 3:45 pm David Levermore, University of Arizona TBA 4:30 pm David Sherrington, Oxford University "Complexity Due to Disorder and Frustration in Strongly Interacting Systems" 5:15 pm Discussion 6:00 pm Adjournment For information, see http://www.necsi.org/events/spcs.html ---------------------- Joan Drane joan.drane@bc.edu Boston College