The 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science will be held in Boston, February 14–18. The program features several expository talks by mathematical scientists, along with a Topical Lecture on the Poincaré conjecture, “The Geometry of 3-Manifolds,” by Curtis T. McMullen. The theme of this year’s meeting is “Science and Technology from a Global Perspective.”

   Section A is sponsoring five symposia:

• Mathematics and the Brain (organized by Jack Cowan, Chicago);
• Design of Mechanical Puzzles (organized by Peter Winkler, Dartmouth);
• Modeling the Dynamics of the Drug-Resistant Killers of the 21st Century (organized by Sally Blower, UCLA);
• Quantum Information Theory (organized by Mary Beth Ruskai, Tufts); and
• New Techniques in the Evaluation and Prediction of Baseball Performance (organized by Edward Aboufadel, Grand Valley State).

   Other symposia of interest to the mathematical community include Biometrics in Border Management: Grand Challenges for Security, Identity, and Privacy; Atomic Detectives: Nuclear Forensics and Combating Illicit Trafficking; Ethical Issues in Scientific Publishing; Enhancing Science Globally Through High-Performance Computing and Simulation; Information, Computing, and Communications: Keys to Sustainable Global Development; Collaboratively Developing Student Mathematical Thinking Among APEC Member Economies; Promoting the Success of Minority Graduate Students; and Inside the Double Bind: Women of Color in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

   The AAAS program offers nearly 200 sessions in the physical, life, social, and biological sciences. The complete program can be found at http://www.aaasmeeting.org.

   AAAS encourages mathematicians and mathematics educators to participate in its annual meetings. (AAAS acknowledges generous contributions from AMS and MAA for travel support and from SIAM for support of media awareness efforts.) The AAAS Program Committee is interested in offering symposia on topics of current interest in pure and applied mathematics; programs in previous years have included symposia on such subjects as the changing nature of mathematical proof, mathematical ecology, and recent results in prime number research.

   Looking ahead, the 2009 meeting will be held in Chicago, February 12–16. The Steering Committee for Section A seeks organizers and speakers who can present substantial new material in an accessible manner to a large scientific audience. All are invited to attend the Section A Committee business meeting in Boston on Friday, February 15, 2008, at 7:45 PM; brainstorming for future mathematical symposium ideas is on the agenda. Alternatively, I invite readers to submit proposals for sessions at future AAAS annual meetings to me at aboufade@ gvsu.edu.

   The members of the Steering Committee for Section A from February 2007 to February 2008 are Carl Pomerance (Dartmouth College), chair; William Jaco (Oklahoma State University), chair-elect; Jack Cowan (University of Chicago), retiring chair; Edward Aboufadel (Grand Valley State University), secretary; and Walter Craig (McMaster University), Mary Beth Ruskai (Tufts University), David Isaacson (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), and Claudia Neuhauser (University of Minnesota), members at large.—Edward Aboufadel