In Search of Mathematics at the AAAS Annual Meeting: A PREVIEW

Watching the ocean views, graffiti, and tract housing of So Cal pass by my window, I am headed to The American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting in San Diego. There I will join over 10,000 scientists, journalists, and members of the public as we attend symposia ranging in topic from Astrobiology to Zoology. My mission is to attend as many mathematical Symposia as possible at this years meeting, whose theme is "Bridging Science and Society". Here is a list of the symposia I plan on attending. Each is about three hours long with several speakers from all over the United States and beyond.

• Sea Ice in the Changing Climate: Modeling a Multiscale Nonlinear System
  
• First-person Solvers? Learning Mathematics in a Video Game
• Traffic, Crowds, and Society
  
• Real Numbers: Mathematical Technologies for Counterterrorism and Border Security
  
• TIMSS 2007: Exploring the Dramatic Improvements in Performance in Two States
  
• Moving Across Scales: Mathematics for Investigating Biological Hierarchies 
• Mathematics and the Analysis of Fairness in Political Processes
• Can Singapore Mathematics Enhance Student Learning in the United States?

Tune in tomorrow to learn about the "ice-albedo" feedback loop, and how we can model the melting of our polar ice caps. And yes, "albedo" and "albino" have the same root --meaning "white". The albedo of an object is a measure of how reflective it is. And I hopethat there will be some reflection by readers on my writing this week. Feel free to comment!