Two industries come together for meeting at Homewood

Experts on the telecommunications and pharmaceutical industries will converge on Homewood campus this week to examine what forces are driving these two industries and what's in store for them in the future. The economics conference will take place from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, March 30 and 31, in the Glass Pavilion, Levering Union.

"The unprecedented innovation, competition and turmoil that characterizes these industries along with the response of public policy-makers to these trends has enormous implications for national economic growth," said Louis Galambos, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Institute of Applied Economics and a co-host of the conference.

The conference, which is free and open to the public, will have key experts from around the world and includes current and former industry executives from Merck Co. and AT&T. For a complete list of speakers and conference schedule, contact Jill Friedman at 410-516-7593 or [email protected].

MIT scientist to give annual Potts Memorial Lecture

Frank Wilczek, the Herman Feshbach professor at MIT, will give the annual Isaac and Leah M. Potts Memorial Lecture on Monday, April 2. Wilczek's lecture, "The World's Numerical Recipe," begins at 5:30 p.m. in Schafler Auditorium in the Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy.

The Potts Lecture is jointly administered by the departments of Physics and Astronomy and Near Eastern Studies.

"It's an unusual series in that its goal is to compare and contrast scientific and biblical views of cosmology," said Julian Krolik, professor of physics and astronomy. "To accomplish that, we alternate speakers--one year, Physics and Astronomy; the next year, Near Eastern Studies."

Wilczek is an eminent theoretical physicist who is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has been a MacArthur Foundation Fellow. Krolik said Wilczek's research has important implications for cosmologists' efforts to understand dark matter and dark energy.

The conference, open to the public, will be held in the Nitze Building's Kenney Auditorium. To register, members of the public must call 202-663-5648 or send e-mail to [email protected].

Turn-of-the-century Ocean City is subject of author's talk

C. John Sullivan will give a lecture, "Old Ocean City: The Journal and Photographs of Robert Craighead Walker, 1904-1916" at noon on Wednesday, March 28, at Shriver Hall, Homewood campus.

The lecture is based on Sullivan's book of the same name, published by the Johns Hopkins University Press, in which he relates what Ocean City was like for visitors in the early 1900s as told through the words and photographs of the Walker family of Washington, D.C. To tell his story, Sullivan mixes his own commentary and explanatory captions with more than 100 of the Walker family photographs and excerpts from a daily journal, "My Vacation," penned by Robert Walker.

This lecture is part of the Wednesday Noon Series presented by the Office of Special Events. This event is co-sponsored by the Johns Hopkins University Press and is free and open to the public. For more information, call 410-516-7157.

International film screening and discussion set in Washington

The Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and Visions Cinema will co-sponsor a film screening and discussion, "Crossing the Borders: Culture and International Cinema," from 6 to 9 p.m. on Tuesday, March 27, at Visions Cinema in Washington, D.C.

The event will include the screening of One Day Crossing (Hungary) by Joan Stein and Christina Lazaridi and The Chorus (Iran) by Abbas Kiarostami. Following the short films, a group of panelists will discuss the role of international cinema and culture.

Panelists include Jean-Michel Frodon, film critic from the French daily Le Monde; Azar Nafisi, visiting scholar at the Foreign Policy Institute at SAIS; Andrew Mencher, programmer for Visions and general manager of Key Sunday Cinema Club; and moderator Eddie Cockrell, D.C. film critic.

This event is in conjunction with "Encounters with Abbas Kiarostami: Film Festival," co-sponsored by SAIS, the Freer Gallery of Art and the National Gallery of Art during March and April.

Tickets, which are $5, must be purchased at Visions Cinema, 1927 Florida Ave., N.W. For more information contact Felisa Neuringer at 202-663-5626.

Fun and education on tap at Community Science Day

The health system's Community Service Department and the Basic Science faculty are hosting Community Science Day on Thursday, March 29, in the Preclinical Teaching Building, JHMI.

Eighty-five students will participate in a day of science fun as they watch Hopkins researchers demonstrate visual illusions, what cells look like, what we can learn from worms and other scientific experiments. The day will end with a lecture on "The Joys of Science" by Donald Coffey, the Catherine Iola and J. Smith Michael Distinguished Professor of Urology at the School of Medicine.