March 3, 2008 to March 7, 2008 THE BOSTON AREA PHYSICS CALENDAR The Boston Area Physics Calendar is published weekly during the academic year by the Department of Physics at Brandeis University. Entries should reach us no later than 2:00 pm the Wednesday of the week preceding the week of the actual event. NOTE: Entries that are past the deadline will have to be sent by you to the bapc late entry email address listed below. On time entries send to: bapc-events@cosmos.phy.tufts.edu. Late entries send to: bapc-late@cosmos.phy.tufts.edu To subscribe or unsubscribe from the bapc please go to: http://cosmos.phy.tufts.edu/bapc.html _____________________________________________________________________ Monday, March 3, 2008 12:30 p.m. Boston University Physics Department Particles and Fields Seminar 3 Cummington St. "Un-hidden local symmetry and electroweak symmetry breaking" Josh Erlich 2:00 p.m. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Theoretical Physics 6c-442 Cosman Seminar Room Nuclear and Particle Theory Seminar "Effective Field Theory and Collider Physics" Matthew Schwartz Johns Hopkins University Refreshments will be served 4:15 p.m. MIT Nuclear and Particle Physics Colloquium Building 26 Room 414 "The Energy-Environment Challenge and MIT's Energy Initiative" Ernie Moniz MIT 4:30 p.m. Brown University Department of Physics Colloquium Barus & Holley 168 "Giant Magnetoresistance and Spintronics" Professor Gang Xiao Brown University Refreshments begin at 4:00 p.m. http://physics.brown.edu/ www.lns.mit.edu _____________________________________________________________________ Tuesday, March 4, 2008 12:30 p.m. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Institute for Theory and Computation Seminar Pratt, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge TBD Feng Yuan Shanghai Observatory http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/itc/events/ 3:30 p.m. Boston University High Energy Seminar 3 Cummington St., Room 595 "Starting from the top: plans & prospects for early ATLAS results" Ayana Holloway Arce Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 4:00 p.m. Brandeis University Martin Weiner Lecture Series--Physics Colloquium Abelson 131 "Plasmonics, radiating nanowires, and light-powered E.coli" Jan Liphardt UC Berkeley Physics Department Refreshments outside Abelson 131 at 3:30 p.m. _____________________________________________________________________ Wednesday, March 5, 2008 2:00 p.m. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Theoretical Physics 6c-442 Cosman Seminar Room String Theory Seminar "Universality without symmetry" Pavel Kovtun University of Victoria/MIT Refreshments will be served 2:30 p.m. Physics Department Brown University HET Theoretical Seminar: B&H 555 "New String Vacua with Simple Topologies" Dr. Alessandro Tomasiello Harvard University _ Wednesday, March 5, 2008, 11:30 AM Boston University Special Biophysics Seminar Metcalf Science Center, Room 352 590 Commonwealth Ave. "The forces which stablize small functional RNAs" Sebastian Doniach Stanford University____________________________________________________________________ Thursday, March 6, 2008 11:00 a.m. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Institute for Theory and Computation Seminar Pratt, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge "Absorption in Pairs of QSOs: Absence of QSO feedback and winds from galaxies" David Tytler UCSD http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/itc/events/ 11:30 a.m. Brandeis University Condensed Matter Seminar Abelson 229 "Nuclear Magnetic Spin Noise--Fundamental Properties and Application Potential" Dr. Norbert Muller Johannes Kepler University Thursday, March 6, 2008 1:00 PM Harvard University Condensed Matter Theory Seminar Lyman 425 "Counterflow condensates: from projected metallic hydrogen to Bose-Einstein and excitonic condensates" Egor Babaev UMASS, Amherst 4 p.m. Harvard University Duality Seminar Jefferson 453 "Black holes and quantum criticality" Sean Hartnoll (KITP) Tea & cookies in the high energy theory coffee area, 4th floor Jefferson, at 3:30. 4:15 p.m. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Weekly Physics Colloquium Series Building 34, Room 101 "Testing Gravity with Telescopes" Christopher Stubbs Harvard University Refreshments @ 3:45 pm in 4-349 (Pappalardo Community Room) http://web.mit.edu/physics/newsandevents/colloquia/spring2008.html _____________________________________________________________________ Friday, March 7, 2008 12 Noon Boston University Condensed Matter Seminar Metcalf Science Center, Room 352 590 Commonwealth Ave. "Influence of non-equilibrium conditions on thin film stress and surface morphology evolution" Eric Chason Brown University Pizza served at 11:30 AM 3:00 p.m. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Plasma Science & Fusion Center Seminar "Inertial Confinement Fusion on NIF: Physics and Challenges" Otto Landen Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 3:00 p.m. Boston University Special Condensed Matter Seminar 3 Cummington St., Room 595 "Graphene: Exploring Carbon Flatland" Andre Geim University of Manchester Friday, March 7th, 2008 11am 114 Dana Research Center Northeastern University Prof. Erio Tosatti SISSA, ICTP and INFM/Democritos, Trieste, Italy "Unconventional Superconductivity and Mott Transition of Expanded A3C60 Alkali Fullerides" refreshments available at 10:45am Applied Physics Colloquium The New Art of Structural Engineering David P Billington Princeton University 4:00 pm, March 7th refreshments start at 3:30 pm 209 Pierce Hall Harvard University Abstract: Since the Industrial Revolution there has arisen a new art form, _Structural Art_ in which the major innovators in structural engineering have recognized the aesthetic possibilities first with iron, then steel, then reinforced concrete and prestressed concrete. This lecture will focus on five great structural artists of the 20^th century whose works have recently been exhibited in art museums and galleries or will soon be so exhibited, all through photographs, documents and elegant models designed and built by Princeton students of structural engineering. The lecture will identify the unifying ideals of this new art as discipline (avoidance of waste in materials and money) and the expression of elegance within those disciplines. Naomi Brave Center Coordinator Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Harvard University 29 Oxford Street Pierce Hall room 228 Cambridge, MA 02138