NEWS

Robert Resnick

On behalf of the European Academy of Wind Energy (EAWE1) and WindEurope (formerly the European Wind Energy Association, EWEA, until April 2016), we have the pleasure of presenting the Scientific Proceedings of the WindEurope Summit 2016.WindEurope Summit 2016 took place in Hamburg from 27-29 September 2016 and was one of the largest and most important meeting places of the wind energy industry, featuring 50 thematic sessions with more than 300 oral and 200 poster presentations. Known previously as EWEA's Annual Conference and as the European Wind Energy Conference before that, it has included a Science & Research component since 2007. The event is a well-known meeting place that allows engineers and scientists to present their latest findings to a mixed audience consisting of both researchers and industry experts. The industry involvement helps to focus the research, while the scientists often demonstrate relevant, novel ideas and solutions to problems of current industrial interest. This often leads to interesting comments and discussions that have an impact well beyond the conference boundaries.In the course of continuously improving the conference experience, in 2015 the organisers decided to combine scientific and general content in all conference sessions, rather than reserving the presentation of the Science & Research contributions in a separate track as was done at previous editions. Sessions at EWEA Annual Event 2015 were therefore combinations of general and of scientific presentations, which allowed for a more flexible choice of topics. In particular small research topics could also be accommodated in the context of a wider session. This successful setup of the conference has been carried over to this year's event in Hamburg.The improvements continue this year, with an agreement between WindEurope and IOP Publishing, which allows for the scientific contributions to be published in the Journal of Physics: Conference Series, an Open Access journal managed by the Institute of Physics (IOP). The European Academy of Wind Energy has for some time recommended such an arrangement, and we are very happy to see this happen. The most important advantage is that conference papers will be much more visible, being fully indexed and online available free of charge to anyone, while the authors retain their copyright under the permissive IOP Proceedings License. The IOP also provides long-term archival and access.All papers published in this volume originate from scientific contributions presented in the oral sessions of WindEurope Summit 2016, and have been peer-reviewed in order to ensure strict, international research standards. Selected papers, suitably extended and rewritten, will additionally be invited and considered for the new Wind Energy Science journal of the EAWE.The proceedings in this volume consist of 21 papers covering a wide spectrum of wind energy research. The topics include aerodynamic investigations and blade design, controller design for load mitigation, forecasting of power production, investigations related to wind turbine wakes, atmospheric stability and monitoring of turbines, as well as contributions concerned with floating supportstructures, optimal strategies for bidding on the energy market and mathematical failure modeling for offshore wind turbines, among others.As with previous events, the European Academy of Wind Energy is responsible for organizing the review process for scientific contributions, has contributed to develop the sessions, and provides scientific chairs for all sessions. All papers were peer-reviewed by a Scientific Committee, consisting of scientists from EAWE member institutes and their associates. We thank all authors for their willingness to take part in this procedure, including the strict deadlines imposed by the tight publication schedule, and the reviewers for their hard work alongside their daily business. WindEurope is responsible for the organisation and logistics of the conference, and we thank their highly professional staff and their associates for the excellent collaboration.1http://www.eawe.eu/

YOUR NEWS WANTED The news section gives updates on what has been happening in physics education worldwide. Items included show how events in one country could be relevant to good practice elsewhere in the world. Contributions are welcome from all our readers and should be about 200 to 300 words and can include a picture.

Prominent research physicist Sid Nagel writes about the fragmentation of physics, but does not include the growing separation between physics and physics education. Over the past 30 years, the American Association of Physics Teachers, once a society of physicists interested in teaching, has become largely a society of educators interested in physics. The number of AAPT members who are research physicists has declined while the number of physicists from high schools and two-year colleges has increased.On past occasions, top physicists like Ed Purcell and I. I. Rabi could be seen at AAPT meetings. Now, noted research physicists rarely come to a meeting unless they are being honored and asked to give an invited talk. And the joint AAPT/American Physical Society meetings that brought research physicists and physics educators together are no more.The 2002 conference of the International Research Group on Physics Teaching (GIREP) in Sweden, with a thoroughly international group of participants, had as a theme the flight from physics. Physics enrollments and degrees are down in most countries, and not one research physicist of note was among the 400 conference participants.The undergraduate physics curriculum once united physicists. We bragged that, unlike the chemists, any physicist could teach any undergraduate physics course. The knowledge base provided by the undergraduate curriculum gave physicists in all research areas the ability to move from their frontier research position, take a few steps back toward that base, and find common ground with physicists in other specialties. That ability is no longer available. The chain of logic from a specialty back to a common base is too long. So we do not talk to each other—hence Nagel’s crisis.My introductory physics text of the 1950s, Sears and Zemansky (Addison-Wesley, 1955), is a black-and-white version of current physics textbooks. My introductory texts in chemistry and biology, however, bear no resemblance to current textbooks in those fields. Students are introduced to chemistry and biology in ways that represent the disciplines as they are today. Physicists, though, introduce students to their discipline as they did 50 years ago. Yet look at how physics has changed.If we reform the structure and content of undergraduate physics to represent more accurately what contemporary research physicists do, we might establish a new knowledge base that would provide common ground for our discipline. Then, perhaps, we could talk to each other once again.© 2003 American Institute of Physics.

Subscribers to the hard-copy of Physics in Medicine and Biology (PMB) will have become accustomed to the twice-monthly arrival of the little red book and may have noted, with due allowance for statistical fluctuation, the ever increasing weight of the same. Indeed the journal in 2004 published 6288 pages compared with 3844 in 2001 (2001 was the last year of monthly publication), so that the mean thickness of each issue is almost the same now as it was in 2001, despite the doubling of frequency. In 2001, 430 articles were submitted for publication; in 2004 the figure was 722.In order to curb the rapid growth of the journal the Editorial Board (EB) has had to make some tough decisions. We have decided to reduce the percentage of articles accepted for publication and referees will be asked to bear this decision in mind when they review papers. Authors will also be asked to reduce the length of their papers to no more than 14 journal pages and they will need to provide robust justification as to why this limit should be exceeded. A further plank to our new policy is that we will no longer publish special conference issues, although we may from time to time invite special issues (for example the 50th anniversary issue to be published in July 2006).The impact factor (IF) of PMB has been steadily rising over the years (again subject to statistical fluctuation) which is generally viewed as evidence of improved quality. However, the IF can also be considered as an average index of topicality or popularity of the various fields covered. PMB traditionally covers a broad church, with some fields being popular, some not, some emerging and some waning as topics of interest to the research community. The trick for the editorial team is to try to keep a reasonable balance of old and emerging fields while improving the overall standard of the journal. The new policy should also gradually increase the IF though this is not the EB's main reason for tightening the screw. Nevertheless, even though some might have private doubts about the link between IF and quality, publishers have to be aware that granting institutions take the IF very seriously.Turning to other matters, readers will be aware that the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine (IPEM) and Institute of Physics Publishing (IOP) have together introduced an annual prize awarded to the author/s of one of the best papers in a given volume (e.g. 2003). The EB, in discussions with IPEM and IOP, have decided in future to award two annual prizes, one (the current one) determined by a combination of referees' comments and the averaged views of an editorial review panel (currently the EB and IAB members participate in the final selection). The second prize will be determined by citations over the previous five years, i.e. the paper with the most citations wins. The latter prize is therefore based on impact, as judged by citations, so will inevitably be awarded to authors of papers in the most popular fields. In awarding these prizes the EB is fully aware that in one case the selection is biased by the opinion of a few individuals and in the other case is biased towards popular fields. In practice, and this is the important point, both prizes will be awarded to top-quality papers competing with other top-quality papers.

The data we report on in this column come from the Nationwide Survey of High School Physics Teachers. Since 1987, the American Institute of Physics (AIP) and the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) have sponsored the High School Teacher Survey. Prior to our initial study, much of the previous literature focusing on high school physics employed anecdotal evidence or qualitative surveys for curriculum reviews or explorations of teachers' experiences and pedagogical techniques. As a direct response to this dearth of data, the Nationwide Survey of High School Physics Teachers was initiated in 1986–87 to answer questions about the number of teachers teaching physics, the educational background of these teachers, the number of students enrolled in physics, the variety of physics classes being offered, the demographics of the students and teachers, the textbooks being used, and the number of high schools offering physics regularly. Since the beginning of this study, we have surveyed both public and private high schools in the United States. The results of our study provide the definitive data about physics in U.S. high schools. The initial survey was conducted during the 1986–87 school year. The second was completed during 1989–90. Beginning with the 1992–93 survey, we have conducted the survey every four years. The 2012–13 survey will be the eighth in the series. Thus, we have a rich history of physics teaching in U.S. high schools.

The American Association of Physics Teachers bestowed honors on four individuals at its 123rd meeting, held in Rochester in July.The 2001 Robert A. Millikan Award was given to Sallie A. Watkins, a professor emeritus of physics and the former dean of the college of science and mathematics at the University of Southern Colorado in Pueblo. She received the award in recognition of her “ability to identify and solve major problems in physics education and her track record in supporting those of us also working on these very difficult problems.” Virginia Trimble, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and the University of California, Irvine, received the 2001 Klopsteg Memorial Lecture Award. Trimble, who was cited for her leadership, her contributions to the literature, and her dedication as a teacher, gave a talk entitled “Cosmology: Man’s Place in the Universe.” Robert Erlich, a professor of physics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, received the Excellence in Undergraduate Physics Teaching Award for his contributions in “teaching undergraduate physics, in the use of technology, in making physics accessible to the public, and in analyzing the issues facing undergraduate physics.”The 2001 Excellence in Pre-College Physics Teaching Award went to Clarence Bakken, a teacher at Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California. Bakken was recognized for his achievements over 30 years of teaching physics and working with physics teachers and his leadership in the physics teaching community, including his activities as an apparatus developer, writer, and presenter of workshops.© 2001 American Institute of Physics.

There are indications that the physics teaching situation in the United States is especially acute at the present time and that it will be even more so in the years to come unless physicists act promptly to expand and intensify their programs relating to physics education. In recognition of this need the American Institute of Physics and the American Association of Physics Teachers, being the two physics organizations most immediately concerned, joined with the Fund for the Advancement of Education in calling a conference in August, 1956, to review the status of their present activities and to consider what further steps might be taken to insure the best use of the good physics teachers now available, to increase the number of competent teachers, and to assist teachers in continuing their education and in improving the quality of their teaching.

PHYSICS teaching by television or film, in terms of measuralbe contributions to learning, appears to compare favorably with conventional classroom instruction in high schools, according to a report issued recently by the American Institute of Physics. The report (A Study of the Teaching of Physics by Film and Television, by Grant O. Gale) summarizes the results of an evaluation program carried out in 1957–58 under the joint sponsorship of the AIP and the American Association of Physics Teachers and with support of the Fund for the Advancement of Education.

Today we honor Robert Wichard Pohl, Professor Emeritus of Physics and former Director of the Institute of Experimental Physics, Goettingen, Germany, as the twenty-fourth Oersted Medalist. He joins that distinguished group of men who have made exceptionally “notable contributions to the teaching of physics.” Dr. Pohl is the second European selected to receive this honor, the other person being Professor Arnold Sommerfeld. The accomplishments of Dr. Pohl have been recognized before by the American Association of Physics Teachers. In 1953, the Awards Committee selected him for Honorary Membership in the Association. Only three other men hold such Honorary Memberships.

PrefaceOn behalf of the European Academy of Wind Energy (EAWE1) and WindEurope (formerly the European Wind Energy Association EWEA), we hereby have the pleasure of presenting the Scientific Proceedings of the WindEurope Conference 2018.Global Wind Summit 2018 (WindEurope Conference & WindEnergy Hamburg) took place in Hamburg on 25-28 September 2018. It is one of the largest and most important meeting places of the wind energy community. This year’s conference has featured 50 thematic sessions with a total of more than 500 speakers. As in previous years, the sessions mixed industrial content with scientific works, in order to increase the visibility of relevant scientific research and to facilitate an interchange of ideas between industry and academia.In continuation of the successful agreement between WindEurope and IOP Publishing, the scientific contributions of the WindEurope Conference 2018 are published in the Journal of Physics: Conference Series, an Open Access journal managed by the Institute of Physics (IOP). All papers in this volume originate from scientific contributions presented at WindEurope Conference 2018, and have been peer-reviewed in order to ensure strict, international standards, coordinated by the Scientific Proceedings Editors and aided by the EAWE Wind Europe Scientific Committee.New this year was the possibility for every accepted scientific abstract to submit a paper for the Scientific Proceedings. In previous years only the scientific papers presented in oral sessions were given this opportunity, but this year authors could submit a manuscript also for accepted scientific poster presentations. We believe this is an important development that benefits our community, and that greatly increases the attractiveness of WindEurope Conference. In particular, this guarantees long-term storage and easy electronic reference of conference papers, and we thank WindEurope for making this possible. Of course this positive development has also meant a much higher workload than previously. This year, a total of 46 original papers were submitted, of which 40 were eventually accepted for publication.

The American Phyiscal Society has announced a forthcoming open access journal, Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research. "The journal will be distributed without charge, and financed by publication charges to the authors or to the authors' institutions." The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) and the APS Forum on Education are co-sponsors.

Notes on Contributors

The 2021 Inclusive Curriculum in Physics Workshop Series is a three part series organized and led by the National Society of Black Physicists, the National Society of Hispanic Physicists, and the American Association of Physics Teachers. The series leverages the expertise of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) experts, as well as an organizing team of physics students, faculty and STEM professionals at different stages of their studies and careers.The purpose of the series is to: Explore the importance of EDI in the classroom and the existing instructional materials that focus on EDI, with members of the broad physics education community; Engage participants in discussion and action items around the current challenges to equity in STEM education with input from experts in the field; Provide support to working groups through a network of partners to engage in specific physics education projects using the lens of inclusion. 

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