WHAT'S NEW Friday, 11 Apr 03

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

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From: "What's New" <opa () aps org>
Reply-To: opa () aps org
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 16:10:12 -0400
To: "What's New" <whatsnew () lists apsmsgs org>
Subject: WHAT'S NEW     Friday, 11 Apr 03

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 11 Apr 03   Washington, DC
               
1. PATRIOT ACT: LIBRARIANS DENOUNCE ASSAULT ON THE RIGHT TO READ.
The USA PATRIOT Act, passed in haste after 9/11, gives the FBI
authority to examine all library circulation records.  The law
also forbids libraries from informing patrons that their reading
habits are being monitored.  Libraries across the country began
shredding circulation records and posting signs warning patrons
that "anything you read is now subject to secret scrutiny by
federal agents."  The American Library Association urged Congress
to repeal the provision in the Patriot Act dealing with library
records.  Contacted by the Vermont Library Association, Rep.
Bernie Sanders (I-VT) last week introduced the Freedom to Read
Protection Act (H.R. 1157).  So far, there are 70 cosponsors.

2. 17 YEARS AGO IT WAS THE FBI'S "LIBRARY AWARENESS PROGRAM."
Unfortunately, the goal of the program was not to improve the
literacy of agents.  WHAT'S NEW stumbled on the story first in
1986 after a trench-coated FBI agent asked a student working at
the University of Maryland Physics Library for the record of all
books checked out to a visiting foreign scientist.  The agent
resembled Inspector Clouseau more than Elliot Ness.  The student
called the science librarian.  Maryland is one of 38 states in
which library records are protected by law, and in the absence of
a court order, the librarian refused.  After the New York Times
picked up the story a year later, the FBI ran checks on 266
people who had been publicly critical to see if they were part of
a Soviet plot to discredit the program.  The full story of the
infamous Library Awareness Program is told by librarian Herb
Foerstel in "Surveillance in the Stacks"(Greenwood Press, 1991).

3. FUSION: SANDIA PULSED-POWER MACHINE PRODUCES FUSION   BRIEFLY.
At the APS meeting in Philadelphia last week, scientists from
Sandia National Laboratory announced that Sandia's Z machine had
created a hot dense plasma that caused deuterium fusion.  Fusion
was confirmed by a burst of neutrons from a BB-sized deuterium
capsule.  The question, as it always is in controlled fusion, is
whether the process can be scaled up.  In the Z machine a huge
pulse of electricity is used to generate X rays, creating a shock
wave in the target deuterium capsule, compressing the deuterium.
This must be done over and over in rapid succession while
extracting the energy.  Well, that's just an engineering problem.

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