n e w s of t h e w e e k
Eli M. Pearce Wins ACS Presidential Race As the U.S. waits to learn the identity of its next chief executive, the results are in for the American Chemical Society's na tional election: Eli M. Pearce has been elected ACS president-elect for 2001. Pearce, University Research Professor at Polytechnic University, Brooklyn, N.Y., and currently ACS director-at-large, will serve as ACS president in 2002 and as a member of the board of directors from 2001 to 2003. The second candidate, Glenn A Crosby, professor of chemistry at Washington State University and a cur rent ACS Board member, proved to be tough competition, garnering 13,745 votes to Pearce's 14,227. "It's difficult to say what Fm going to do first," Pearce tells C&EN, but he's got big plans for ACS—namely in the area of services for society members. In his candidate statement, Pearce ex pressed his intent to address the con cerns of globalization and job security, to further develop ACS's information technology capabilities, and to foster new partnerships with other profession al organizations, as well as to establish or enhance additional member services. "The future of ACS," he says, "de pends on its responses to the needs of its members." Pearce has held many leadership posi tions within ACS's local and national gov ernance and in three technical divisions
ACS voting breakdown Votes
PRESIDENT-ELECT Eli M. Pearce Glenn A. Crosby
14,227 13,745
REGION 1 DIRECTOR Anne T. O'Brien Michael E. Strem
3,005 1,686
REGION V DIRECTOR E. Ann Nalley Theodore L. Brown
2,603 1,850
DIRECTORS-AT-LARGEb Joan E. Shields James P. Shoffner J. Ivan Legg Nina M. Roscher
237 188 156 155
a In the election, a total of 28,466 valid ballots were cast, but 477 did not include a vote for president-elect, and 17 ballots were submitted that voted for both candidates. In addition, 625 ballots were declared invalid, b Elected by vote of councilors.
10 NOVEMBER 20, 2000 C&EN
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since becoming a mem ber in 1950. In other board races, Anne T. O'Brien, manag er of library services at Wyeth-Ayerst Research, Pearl River, N.Y., and in cumbent E. Ann Nalley, professor of chemistry at Cameron University, Lawton, Okla., will serve as di rectors from Regions I and V, respectively. Joan E. Shields, profes sor of chemistry at Long Pearce Island University, Brookville, N.Y., will return as director-at-large. James P. Shoffner, now retired from AlliedSignal Research Center and currently an adjunct professor of science at Columbia College, Chicago, will begin his first term
ϋδas director-at-large. Each elected candidate will serve on the ACS Board from 2001 to 2003. An additional ballot, dealing with a change in the ACS constitution, was included in the ballot package that went to members. The result: 25,137 members voted in favor of an amendment to change the name of the geographical areas that are used to elect di rectors from "regions" to "districts" and to change the term "re gional director" to "district director;" 625 members voted against the amend ment (C&EN, Sept. 25, page 73). Kevin MacDermott
Device Gets A Leg Up On Future Memory Storage High-tech product designers usually try to rid their systems of bugs—especially ones with lots of legs. But some re searchers are actively trying to find a place for little critters in tomorrow's ad vanced microelectronics. Scientists at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory in Switzerland have demon strated a new data-storage device based on a large array of scanning-probe micro scope assemblies. Dubbed Millipede be cause of its 1,000-plus "legs," the memory chip has been shown capable of storing data in the range of 100 to 200 gigabits per sq inch while operating in a highly parallel fashion [Appl. Phys. Lett, 7 7 , 3299(2000)]. The rate at which magnetic disk drive manufacturers have managed to boost data-storage density—now at about 10 gigabits per sq inch—has been so swift in recent years that certain fundamental impediments to further improvements, which once seemed like far-off hurdles on the computer technology horizon, now loom large and quite close at hand. In just three to four years, by some estimates, magnetic disk technology could achieve the additional reduction in scale needed to bring magnetic data storage into the realm of the superpara magnetic effect—a physical mechanism through which magnetic bits that are smaller than a threshold size can spon taneously lose their data (C&EN, June 12, page 37). For that reason, research ers are looking to nonmagnetic tech niques for storing information.
The new IBM device uses an array of 32 χ 32 atomic force microscope (AFM) probes to make tiny indentations in a polymer medium. The presence or ab sence of an indentation corresponds to 0s and Is of digital data. Considered individu ally, each AFM tip reads and writes data rather slowly by magnetic hard disk stan dards. But by devising a procedure that enables 1,024 assemblies to operate in parallel, the IBM group has designed a device that may far exceed magnetic disk data-access rates in the near future. 'To my knowledge, this is the first time that such a large number of scan ning probes has been fabricated and inte grated on a single chip and successfully operated in a time-multiplexed parallel mode," says Peter Vettiger, manager of IBM's micro- and nanomechanics group. In this mode of operation, Vettiger ex plains, 32 tips in a single row work in par allel as each row is addressed in a timeorchestrated manner. Vettiger leads the Mil lipede research team, which includes Gerd K. Binnig, who shared the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the scanning tunneling microscope, and other IBM re search staff members and engineers. For data to be written with the scan ning probe device, heating elements be neath the tips warm them and soften a 50-nm-thick polymethylmethacrylate) storage medium. A small force applied to cantilever arms causes the tips to con tact the polymer, making uniform-sized indentations. Reading is accomplished by scan-
