The annual Fall Meeting of the Texas Section of the American Physical Society was held on the campus of the University of North Texas in Denton on 9 - 11 October 1997. The local arrangements were organized by Physics Department Chair, Dr. Sam Matteson, with help of the organizing committee Dr. Zhibing Hu, Dr. Don Kobe and Carol Bowden, and the students and staff of UNT. 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 was over 400 people.

There were two plenary sessions. In the first plenary session on Friday morning, Dr. Marlan Scully, TAMU, presented a lecture entitled "Atomic coherence effects in quantum optics: From lasing without inversion and high index materials to spontaneous cancellation." The second lecture on the future of semiconductors was presented Dr. Bob Hewes, Vice President of Semiconductor Group at TI. In the second plenary session on Saturday morning, Dr. David Seiler, NIST, spoke on "Semiconductors: Still a wide open frontier for scientists/engineers." In the second lecture Dr. Francis Slakey, APS, spoke on the incredible success of the APS sponsored lobby effort to increase funding for research. There were six invited symposia: Quantum Optics organized by Marlan Scully; Applied Accelerator Physics organized by Jerome Duggan; Atomic Physics organized by David Golden; Nonlinear Dynamics organized by Bruce West; Materials Science in the Metroplex organized by Russell Pinizzotto; and Industry and Physics organized by Zhibing Hu. APS had 113 contributed papers presented in all areas of physics in 12 contributed paper sessions. AAPT sponsored two contributed papers sessions and one invited session in which Dr. Dan Mauldin, UNT, mused on "Musing on Fractal Geometry," and Dr. Robert Hilborn, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, posed the question: "Undergraduate Physics Reform- something old or something new?". SPS sponsored one student session with ten papers.

The AAPT scheduled its customary array of 9 workshops on physics education topics for area teachers and interested participants.

The Friday luncheon was followed by TSAPS and TSAAPT and SPS Zone 13 business meetings. Forthcoming meeting and dates were announced: Spring 1998 at Incarnate Word College in San Antonio, March 19 - 12, hosted by Dr. Tom Hudson; Fall 1998 at UT El Paso, October 15 - 17, hosted by Dr. Jorge Lopez; Spring 1999, the APS Texas Section will participate in the national centennial meeting in Atlanta March 22 - 26; Fall 1999 at UT Austin, October 27 - 29 (tentative), hosted by Manfred Fink. The millennial-minus-one meeting . . . year 2000 . . . is still open.

The Friday Evening Banquet was followed by a musically illustrated presentation by Dr. Russell Pinizzotto, UNT, entitled " Surfing the Waves of Musical Acoustics," in which Russ was ably assisted by musicians from his popular class at UNT.

The committee to select the outstanding student presentations, chaired by Carl Collins, reviewed the presentations of 28 graduate and 6 undergraduate students competing and selected eight students to receive awards consisting of a certificate and a check for $150 each. The very popular and successful award program is supported by the Section's general operating fund. Winners in alphabetical order were:

• Chris J. Bednar, Texas A&M University, Optical Pumping in High-F Magnetic Systems"
• J. L. Hastings, Texas Tech University, "The Interaction of Hydrogen with Vacancy Clusters in Silicon"
• Phil McJunkins, Texas A&M University, Computer Analysis and Modeling of an Eclipsing Binary Star"
• Jordi Mompart, Texas A&M University, Quantum-jump approach to amplification without inversion in closed three-level systems"
• Remus Nicolaescu, Texas A&M University, Linewidth Narrowing of a Pulsed Alexandrite laser using intracavity phase modulation"
• T. D. Sauncy, Texas Tech University, Excitation Intensity Dependent Photoluminescence Studies of (100(- and (111(-grown In 0.22Ga 0.78As/GaAs strained single quantum wells"
• Hami E. Teal, University of North Texas, Development of Hydrophobic Interaction Chromatography Based on Temperature Sensitive Gels"
• Jagoda Mary Urban, Texas Christian University, Doppler Broadening and Residual Gas Measurements of Rocks as a Function of Temperature"