At the upcoming Joint Meeting of the American Physical Society (APS) and the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) in Columbus, Ohio, the following news conference will take place in room B205 at the Columbus Convention Center.

The newsroom itself will be room B204, where the phone numbers are 614-722-1202 and -1203; the fax number is 614-722-1204. In addition, a general news release on the meeting as well as several lay language papers exists at our "Virtual Pressroom" website: www.aps.org/BAPSAPR98/vpr/.

NEWS CONFERENCE: COSMOLOGY TODAY. Friday, April 17, at 12 noon. At this briefing, cosmologists will discuss recent experimental evidence and theoretical ideas about the expansion of the universe. Only recently have observations of distant supernovas suggested that the expansion is not slowing down at all but rather speeding up. Robert Kirshner of Harvard (617-495-7519) is one of the leaders of this supernova effort. Wendy Freedman of the Carnegie Observatories (626-304-0204) will summarize work to measure the Hubble Constant in the relatively nearby space. The other two speakers are David N.Spergel of Princeton (609-258-3589), who will talk about how to sharpen our estimates of various cosmological parameters (such as the expansion rate and the baryon density), and Edwin Turner, also of Princeton, who uses gravitational lensing to calculate the age of the universe. (Session/workshop 7WK at the meeting)