Texas at Arlington on 10 - 12 October 1996. The local arrangements were organized by Dr. Suresh Sharma, with help of Dr. Kaushik De, Dr. John Fry, Dr. Alex Weiss, and the students and staff of UT Arlington. The meeting began on Thursday evening with registration and the President's Wine and Cheese Reception.

The meeting was held jointly with the Texas Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers and Zone 13 of the Society of Physics Students. Registration of 474 people included 32 AAPT, 223 APS, 216 SPS, and 4 vendors.

There were three plenary sessions. The first on Friday morning included talks by Nobel laureate Dr. B. N. Brockhouse, McMaster University on "Slow neutron spectroscopy: its origins over the years 1950- 1965 and its applications to the magnetic and interionic forces in crystals and other forms of condensed matter;" and by Dr. Lothar Frommhold, UT Austin, on "Supramolecular spectra and sonoluminescence". The second plenary session on Saturday morning on the topic of Bose-Einstein condensation featured Dr. Michael Matthews, University of Colorado, on "Bose-Einstein condensation in a dilute gas of Rubidium;" and Dr. Randy Hulet, Rice University, on " Bose-Einstein condensation in Lithium." The third plenary session on Saturday afternoon was presented Dr. B. King, NIST, on the observations of the Schroedinger Cat using a 9Be+ ion. There was an invited session on University-Industry collaboration, and almost all contributed paper sessions began with one contributed paper selected by the local organizing committee presented as an invited paper.

There were 174 APS contributed papers arranged into 27 sessions touching on most research areas of physics. There were also 16 AAPT contributed papers in 2 sessions, 13 SPS papers in 2 sessions, and a poster session on High School Teaching. The AAPT scheduled its customary array of 13 workshops on physics education topics for area teachers and interested participants. Also 69 high school students came from Dallas.

The Friday luncheon was followed by TSAPS and TSAAPT and SPS Zone 13 business meetings.

The Friday Evening Banquet was followed by an exciting illustrated lecture on "Planets Orbiting Solar-Like Stars " given by Dr. Geoffrey Marcy, San Francisco State University.

The committee to select the outstanding student presentations, chaired by Manfred Fink, reviewed the presentations of graduate and undergraduate students competing and selected nine students to receive awards consisting of a certificate and a check for $150 each. The award program is supported by the Section's general operating fund. Winners in alphabetical order were:

• Zane Arp, Texas A&M University, "Vibrational Spectra and Pseudorotation of 1,3 Dithiolane and Tetrahydrothiophene."
• W. Bigelow, University of North Texas, "A Compact Electrostatic Quadrupole Triplet Lens for a 200 kV Accelerator." 
• Coronado, University of Texas El Paso, "Signal Analysis Techniques for Gravity Wave Detection and Verification in Spacecraft Tracking Data." 
• R. Flanders, University of North Texas, "Experimental Investigation of Porous N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPA) Gels."
• Chuguang He, Texas Tech University, "Madelung Energy Correction for Cluster Calculations of Defects in Compound Semiconductors."
• L. Liu, Texas Tech University, "A Modified Single Photon Counting Technique for Determining Fluorescence Decay Times with Beta-Particle Sources."
• C. A. Qualls, Texas A&M University-Commerce, "Spectral Analysis of Sonic Transducers Using Impulse Response Techniques."
• K. F. Stephens, University of North Texas, "Space-Charge Saturated Electron Emission from a Plasma-Facing Material Surface"
• Darin T. Zimmerman, Texas A&M University, "The Self-Assembling Tunnel Junction - An Adjustable Microscopic Junction for Vibrational Spectroscopy."