Indiana University South Bend

Front row, from left: Joshua Behnke; Phil Mark, applied math; Andrea Vollrath, local science teacher. Rear row, from left: Andrea Palenchar, physics major; Edward Behnke, engineer and physics bachelor of science; Ilan Levine, professor. Not pictured: Brendan Sweeney, physics major.

Indiana University South Bend's mascot, The Titans

NAME:
Indiana University South Bend

HOME TOWN:
South Bend, Indiana

MASCOT:
The Titans

SCHOOL COLORS:
Cream and Crimson

PARTICLE PHYSICS COLLABORATIONS:
COUPP, PICASSO

EXPERIMENTS AT FERMILAB:
COUPP

SCIENTISTS AND STUDENTS AT FERMILAB:
7

COLLABORATING AT FERMILAB SINCE:
2004

MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS:
Acoustic sensor and preamp R&D and production. Encapsulation of various detector components for deployment in bubble chamber. Radon emanation and diffusion measurements.

PARTICLE PHYSICS RESEARCH FOCUS:
Search for WIMP dark matter (COUPP and PICASSO experiments).

WHAT SETS PARTICLE PHYSICS AT INDIANA UNIVERSITY SOUTH BEND APART?
All of the best work is done by undergraduate students. We designed and built the sensors used to do the first-ever acoustic particle identification, distinguishing neutrons from alphas.

FUNDING AGENCY:
National Science Foundation

FAVORITE NATIONAL LABORATORY:
Fermilab

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ES&H fair during lunch hours today in Wilson Hall atrium

A display of prizes from the summer ES&H fair.

Environmental Safety and Health staff will raffle prizes and hand out freebies such as hand sanitizer, ice scrapers, granola bars and water bottles at the lunchtime ES&H Fair in the Wilson Hall atrium.

The event will take place between 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. at 15 tables set up in the atrium.

The goal of Thursday's fair is to disperse information to employees and users about how to stay healthy and safe, with an emphasis on information about the H1N1 flu and winter safety. The fire department will offer winter tips and the ES&H staff will give out information about how to reduce greenhouse gases. ES&H Director Nancy Grossman will give out advice at the Take Five table.

The event is a follow-up to June's inaugural ES&H Fair, which emphasized summer safety and health tips, such as how to avoid sunburn and lightning strikes. ES&H's Minnie Koch said they hope to continue hosting two annual fairs, one for the warm weather and another for the cold weather.

Koch said they will have the raffle drawings in the afternoon and contact winners by phone.

Extreme Beam lecture series
4 p.m. Thursday in Curia II

The next lecture of the Extreme Beam lecture series will take place at 4 p.m. Thursday in Curia II. Kenneth Long, from the physics department of Imperial College London, will give a talk titled "The Neutrino Factory: Sensitivity for the Next Decade." A reception will follow.

The lecture series, which will feature talks at Fermilab throughout 2009, will give in-depth information about the science of accelerator and detector technologies that will create a world-leading physics program at the Intensity Frontier.

Visit the Extreme Beam Web site for more information.

So close, yet so far

From American Physical Review, Oct. 16, 2009

Observations of cosmic microwaves from 380,000 years after the big bang have been essential to modern cosmology, but cosmic neutrinos should carry information on the state of the universe when it was less than a second old. In the 23 October Physical Review Letters, a team points out a curious and hitherto ignored fact about these relic neutrinos: because of their masses, they travel more slowly than light does and actually originate from a much nearer region of the universe than the cosmic microwaves. Although detecting cosmic neutrinos is still a long way off (if it's possible at all), the work clarifies the type of information that, in theory at least, could be gleaned from relic neutrinos.

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