February 28-March 4, 2005 THE BOSTON AREA PHYSICS CALENDAR The Boston Area Physics Calendar is published weekly during the academic year by the Department of Physics at Boston University. You may send your announcement by e-mail (bapc-events@cosmos.phy.tufts.edu ) or FAX (617-353-9393). We cannot accept announcements by telephone. Entries should reach us no later than 12:00 p.m. the Tuesday of the week proceeding the week of the event. ENTRIES RECEIVED AFTER THE DEADLINE WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2005 Monday, February 28, 2005, 2:00PM Massachusetts Institute of Technology Nuclear and Particle Theory Seminar Center for Theoretical Physics, Building 6, Third Floor seminar room ``A non perturbative formulation of the Witten-Veneziano mechanism: solution to the U_A(1) problem in QCD" Leonardo Giusti CERN and Marseilles Refreshments will be served Monday, February 28, 2005, 4:15 p.m. Harvard University Department of Physics Colloquium Jefferson 250 "Quantum Foam and Melting Crystal" Cumrun Vafa Harvard University tea will be served in Jefferson 450 at 3:30 pm Monday, February 28, 2005, 4:15 PM Massachusetts Institute of technology Laboratory for Nuclear Science LNS Colloquium Kolker Room, 26-414 "Do Ordinary Nuclei Contain Exotic States of Matter?" John Arrington Argonne National Laboratory Refreshments @4:00 PM Monday, February 28th, 2005, 4:15PM MIT Nuclear and Particle Physics Colloquium 26-414, Kolker room "Do Ordinary Nuclei Contain Exotic States of Matter?" John Arrington Argonne National Laboratory Refreshements at 4PM Monday, February 28, 2005, 4:15 PM Harvard University Woodward Lecture Series in the Chemical Sciences/Organic Chemistry Seminar Pfizer Lecture Hall, 12 Oxford St. "Semisynthesis of Post-translationally Modified Antibiotics." Wilfred van der Donk University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Monday, February 28, 2005, 4:30 PM Brown University Physics Colloquium Barus & Holley 168 "Measuring and Predicting Cosmological Parameters" Professor Max Tegmark UPenn/MIT TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 2005 Tuesday, March 1, 2005, 1:30 PM Brandeis University High Energy Theory Seminar Physics Building, Room 229 "Chameleon Scalar Fields: Detecting Dark Energy with Tests of Gravity" Dr. Justin Khoury Massachusetts Institute of Technology Tuesday, March 1, 2:00 PM Note day (CANCELLED) Massachusetts Institute of Technology Special String Theory Seminar Center for Theoretical Physics, Building 6, Third Floor seminar room ``New Techniques in Perturbative Gauge Theory: Tree and One-Loop Calculations" Freddy Cachazo IAS-Princeton Refreshments will be served Tuesday, March 1, 2004, 2:30pm Tufts University Joint Tufts/CFA/MIT Cosmology Seminar Robinson 250 "The Q0957 Cosmic string Candidate and Other Related Brightness Anomalies" Dr. Rudy Schild Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Refreshments served at 2:00pm in Knipp Library, Room 251 Tuesday, March 1, 2005, 4:00 PM Brandeis University Martin Weiner Lecture Series, Physics Colloquium Physics Building, Abelson 131 "Impact Cratering in Loose Granular Media" Professor Douglas Durian University of Pennsylvania Refreshments in Room 333 at 3:30pm WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2005 Wednesday, March 2, 2:00 PM Massachusetts Institute of Technology String/Gravity Theory Seminar Center for Theoretical Physics Building 6, Third Floor seminar room ``Non-gaussianities of primordial fluctuations" Paolo Creminelli Harvard University Refreshments will be served Wednesday, March 2, 2005, 4:30 PM Boston University Joint Theory Seminars Physics Research Building 3 Cummington St., Room 595 "Little Higgs and perturbative tumbling gauge theories" David Kaplan Johns Hopkins Refreshments served at 4:00 PM *Wednesday, 2 March 2005, 2:30 p.m. Brown University *Theoretical Seminar Department of Physics - B&H 555 "To be announced" **Dr. Keonraad Schalm Columbia University THURSDAY, MARCH 3, 2005 Thursday, March 3, 2005, 4:15 PM MIT Department of Physics Physics Colloquium Series Room 10-250 "Dynamics of Random Packings in Granular Flow" Martin Bazant Massachusetts Institute of Technology Thursday, March 3, 2005, 4:15 pm Clark University, Department of Physics Colloquium Sackler Science Center, Room N-105 'THE ENTROPIC LATTICE BOLTZMANN EQUATION (or "Why Numerical Analysts have Started Caring about Boltzmann's H Theorem")' Professor Bruce M. Boghosian Department of Mathematics Tufts University 12pm, Thursday, March 3rd Harvard University Condensed Matter Theory Seminar Department of Physics Lyman 425 "Critical behavior of the spin susceptibility near the 2D metal-insulator transition" Sergey Kravchenko Northeastern University Thursday, March 3, 2005, 4:15 PM Harvard University Duality Seminar Jefferson 453 "Attractors on Landscape" George Dvali NYU Refreshments served at 3:45 High Energy Theory coffee area, 4th floor Jefferson, Thursday, March 3, 2005, 5:00 PM Harvard University Woodward Lecture Series in the Chemical Sciences/Harvard-MIT Physical Chemistry Seminar MIT, Room 6-120, 77 Massachusetts Ave. "Energy Landscapes for Cooperative Processes: Nearly Ideal Glass Transitions, Liquid-liquid Transitions and Folding Transitions." C. Austen Angell Arizona State University. FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 2005 Friday, March 4, 2005, 4:00 PM MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center Seminar Building NW17-218 175 Albany St. "The Importance of Electron Kinetic Effects in Understanding Shear Alfve'n Waves" Stephan Vincena UCLA