Scientific meetings, often set up on short notice, have become essential to staying abreast of developments. Tom Mason said he and six other members of a team studying phase equilibrium in superconductive ceramics at Northwestern University's Materials Research Center take turns traveling to sessions around the country. There's no substitute, he feels, for hearing others in the field explain their latest results.
"You come away from a meeting feeling that, as of the time you lay your head on your pillow at night, you know the latest scoop about where this field is," he said. "Of course, that won't necessarily be true by the next day."
Such meetings can have a slapdash spontaneity in which organizers may not know in advance the number or names of the speakers, much less what they're going to say. The program for the March annual meeting of the American Physical Society had already been ...
