The IEEE Consultants' Network is hosting Dick Nash, the founder of Peace of Mind Industries, who will tell the story of the LeakFrog™ - a multipurpose, affordable reliable water alarm for the home on which he holds the patent. This story and Dick's interactive presentation will probably evoke some issues for those considering building a business. This presentation will be at 6:15 p.m. on Monday, August 11 at the Holiday Inn Select at 1655 North Central Expressway south of the intersection of Central and Campbell Roads. There is a $5 charge for IEEE members and a $10 charge for non-members. The fee includes a light supper. For more information, email maura@BestatSelling.com or call 972 380 0200.

G. Kemble Bennett, Ph.D., P.E. , the vice chancellor for engineering at Texas A&M University and the director of Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEEX) is presenting the August Homeland Security Lecture at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) at 12 noon on August 12 in the Conference Center room 1.102 on the UTD campus. The event and the reception at 11:30 a.m. are free and open to the public.

The Emergency Services Training Institute, a division of TEEX, provides training for the National Emergency Response and Rescue Training Center (NERRTC) to emergency personnel around the country, including the Texas Department of Emergency Management. TEEX also has contracts with the Department of Defense, Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice to provide a variety of training on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and terrorism and also courses in threat and risk assessment, incident management, leadership development and domestic preparedness. During this presentation, Dr. Bennett will discuss the critical role of training in Homeland Security and what TEEX is doing to prepare first responders.

In 1992, Dr. Dr. G. Kemble Bennett was named director and CEO of the Texas Engineering Extension Service and associate vice chancellor for engineering of The Texas A&M University System. In this post he established Texas Task Force One, a disaster response group. He led a team called for special duty at Ground Zero following the World Trade Center tragedy. Dr. Bennett is the executive director of the National Emergency Response and Rescue Training Center. He was appointed by President George W. Bush to administer the state Domestic Preparedness Program and served as founding chairman of the U.S. Department of Justice National Domestic Preparedness Consortium. He is a member of the ECO Terrorism Committee of the National Association of Universities and Land Grant Colleges.

Registration is not required. Questions should be directed to keithly@utdallas.edu.

Presented by the Metroplex Technology Business Council is presenting the Metroplex Tech Titans Awards ceremony is designed to celebrate growth and innovations in technology by Metroplex technology companies. The event will be held at 5:30 p.m. on August 22 in the Meyerson Symphony Center, located at 2301 Flora Street in Dallas. Tickets are $125 each. For more information see www.tech-titans.com.

The Medical Device Action Alliance, an affiliate of The Health Industry Council is hosting a seminar on some of the key issues of being a successful medical device company. The event will begin at 8 a.m. on August 27 in the UT Southwestern Medical Center - Simmons Biomedical Research Building, located at 6000 Harry Hines Blvd. in Dallas. Topics will include medical device training and FDA classifications, developing and marketing medical devices - 'design control', and business incubators/accelerators. Speakers include Chris Chavez, CEO of Advanced Neuromodulation Systems, David Arvelo of the FDA and Tom Leppert, the director of the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce. There is a $40 charge per person. For more information or to register, please call 972-256-2291. Exhibit information is available by calling 972-256-2291.

As a research student, Dr. Russell Hulse, together with his thesis advisor, Dr. Joseph Taylor, made a discovery that provided some of the best "cosmic laboratory" evidence in support of Einstein's theory of general relativity and won them the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics. Hulse, now the principal research physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory at Princeton University, will visit The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) next month to give a Distinguished Researcher Lecture entitled "An Astronomical Detective Story: The Discovery of the Binary Pulsar" to mark the 10-year anniversary of winning the Nobel Prize.

Hulse will give his presentation on Friday, Sept. 5, at 7 p.m. in the main auditorium of the Conference Center on the UTD campus. A reception in honor of Hulse will follow. The two events will be free and open to the public.

Hulse won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the first binary pulsar, a discovery he made in 1974 with Taylor, then a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, using the 300-m radiotelescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico.

The discovery of the first binary pulsar is of great significance for astrophysics and gravitational physics research. A binary pulsar is a small and dense neutron star with two heavy bodies that rotate very fast around each other and emit regular pulses of polarized radiation. The significance of this discovery is that the behavior of these two bodies deviates greatly from what classical Newtonian mechanics predicts. The behavior of this system has been studied closely and used to verify Einstein's general theory of relativity, especially the existence of gravitational radiation.

In 1977, Hulse changed fields from astrophysics to plasma physics and joined the Plasma Physics Laboratory at Princeton University. There he conducted research associated with the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor, an experimental nuclear-fusion facility.

Dr. David Spong, president of Aerospace Support for Boeing Integrated Defense Systems in Chicago, will be a keynote speaker during the 14th annual International Conference on Work Teams sponsored by the University of North Texas Center for the Study of Work Teams. This year's conference, "Beyond Teams: The Collaborative Enterprise," will be Sept. 22-24 (Monday through Wednesday) at the Hyatt Regency Dallas, 300 Reunion Boulevard. The conference is co-sponsored by S.C. Johnson and Boeing.

The event is aimed at human resource professionals, managers, organizational development specialists, vice presidents and industrial/organizational psychologists, among others.

Self-managed work teams are groups of employees who are responsible for not only what they do in their jobs, but also for the manner in which they work. Conference participants will learn about tools and techniques that reach beyond teams to build companies' collaboration among employees across time, distance and organizational boundaries, thus giving the companies a competitive edge.

The regular registration fee for this year's conference is $895 for individuals and $845 for each individual in a group of 10 or more. After Aug. 29 (Friday), the conference fees will increase to $995 for individuals and $945 for those in groups of 10 or more.

To register online, go to www.workteams.unt.edu, or call (940) 565-3096 for a registration form.

A complete conference schedule, with links to sessions, is available at www.workteams.unt.edu/conf/fall/schedule.htm.

The conference will be preceded by workshop, "Assessing the Teams, Its Environment and Its Value," from 2 to 5 p.m. Sept. 21 (Sunday). The workshop, limited to 60 participants, is free to all registered conference participants.

The TBN BioScience Initiative and its members are hosting a MiniEXPO at 7:30 a.m. on Friday October 17th, 2003 at the Norris Conference Center Ballroom located at 2525 West Anderson Lane in Austin, Texas. The goal is to highlight Austin and Texas companies & expertise working in, or providing a product or service to the bioscience industries, and introduce them to opportunities in and outside Texas. The format includes the BioScience Forum Meeting from 8:00am to 9:00am with a keynote speaker, David Floyd, President of Centerpulse Orthopedics based in Austin. The cost to attend has not been announced. For more information or to register, call 512-795-8394.