SECTIONS

AAAS offers 24 sections, covering the spectrum of scientific disciplines, so members can promote issues in a particular field.

• Agriculture, Food, and Renewable Resources
• Anthropology
• Astronomy
• Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Sciences
• Biological Sciences
• Chemistry
• Dentistry
• Education
• Engineering
• General Interest in Science and Engineering
• Geology and Geography
• History and Philosophy of Science
• Industrial Science and Technology
• Information, Computing, and Communication
• Linguistics and Language Science
• Mathematics
• Medical Sciences
• Neuroscience
• Pharmaceutical Sciences
• Physics
• Psychology
• Social, Economic, and Political Sciences
• Societal Impacts of Science and Engineering
• Statistics

DIVISIONS

AAAS members may participate in association activities through four geographic divisions: Arctic, Caribbean, Pacific, and Southwestern and Rocky Mountain. Through annual meetings and other activities, members address science issues that are significant to their region.

Arctic Division

The 51st annual AAAS Arctic Science Conference was held in 2000 with the theme “Crossing Borders: Science and Community.” Held September 21-24 in Whitehorse, Yukon, the conference was attended by more than 275 researchers, managers, communicators, and educators from the diverse communities of Alaska and northern Canada. The conference attracted people from rural and urban centers across the western part of the North American Arctic. Of the 212 participants from Alaska, Yukon and the Northwest Territories, 59 came from 20 communities other than the major center of Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, Whitehorse, and Yellowknife.

The conference provided a forum for such topics as climate change, wildlife and fisheries, aquatic and atmospheric science, paleoecology, environmental protection, and science policy. A number of associated events were also held, including the Yukon North Slope Conference (part of the implementation of Canada’s Western Arctic land claim settlement), a workshop sponsored by the Northern Climate ExChange, and meetings of the Canadian Polar Commission and the Northern Sciences Network (a United Nations Program). The conference was hosted by the Yukon Science Institute.

Caribbean Division

Over the years, the Caribbean Division has sponsored a number of meetings and symposiums for its members. Each year, the division cosponsors the AAAS-Puerto Rico Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research meeting, which offers a numbers of scientific presentations and draws participants from Puerto Rico and across the Caribbean. The division has also sponsored the Annual High School Student Congress, which serves as a meeting for the finalists of the Puerto Rico Science Competition Program, and the Annual Symposium on Island Ecology, which draws researchers, government officials, industry representatives, and high school and undergraduate students. Other meetings have included the Latin American Chemistry Congress and the Puerto Rico Science Teachers Association Meeting.

Established in 1985, the Caribbean Division is the newest AAAS division. This division has more than 500 members and covers the areas of Puerto Rico, Central America, islands of the Caribbean Basin, Venezuela, and southern Mexico.

Pacific Division

The 81st Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division was held June 11-14 at South Oregon University in Ashland, with 245 people in attendance. A special lecture was delivered by Andrew Kuzmitz, whose work on the dinosaur heart was published in Science. John Erlandson delivered a lecture on “Anatomically Modern Humans: Seafaring and the Peopling of the New World”; Ken Goddard addressed the expansion of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife National and Forensic Laboratory; and Frank Long gave a talk on rare plants of serpentine soils. The meeting also organized 11 symposia, covering such topics as the fire history in Pacific Northwest, active learning strategies in college biology class, earthquake potential and response in the Pacific Northwest, and climatic and oceanographic variability and change in the Pacific Basin.

The meeting offered several field trips, including a visit to the coast and the redwoods, wine tasting in southern Oregon, and an Ashland watershed tour. Other field trips covered such topics as the rare plants of serpentine soils, volcanics of southern Oregon, climate, and soils. And at the Divisional Awards Dinner, representatives of the affiliated societies and divisional sections presented students with awards of excellence and awards for the best student papers and posters of the 2000 meeting.

Southwestern and Rocky Mountain Division

The Southwestern and Rocky Mountain Division sponsored two meetings in 2000 for the second year in a row. The 76th Annual Meeting was held in Las Cruces, New Mexico, April 9-12, 2000, with the cooperation of New Mexico State University and the New Mexico Academy of Science. The meeting included an all-day excursion to the Trinity National Historic Landmark, the site of the United States' first atomic bomb test in 1945. The meeting offered six special symposia on such diverse topics as "Genomics and Biotechnology," "Physics at New Mexico State University," "Dogs and their Relatives," "A Repertoire of Responses to Nature and Human-Made Challenges," "Development of Opioid Glycopeptides as Novel Analgesic Agents," and "Comparative Animal Behavior and Cognitive Development." The John Wesley Powell Memorial Lecture was delivered by well-known neurologist, scholar, and author Oliver Sacks.
The division also held a fall meeting at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, on November 12-14, 2000. Nearly 100 presentations were made in the symposia, contributed paper sessions, and the general poster session. The highlight of the meeting was the general poster session held in conjunction with Creighton's celebration of Saint Albert's Day (St. Albert the Great is the patron saint of science), with the division's executive director, Donald Nash, portraying Saint Albert.