Fermilab Today Thursday, Jan. 28, 2010
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Thursday, Jan. 28
2:30 p.m.
Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Stephen Martin, Northern Illinois University
Title: Extra Vector-Like Matter and the Higgs Mass in Supersymmetry
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Accelerator Physics and Technology Seminar - One West
Speaker: Shane Curry, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Title: The BaBar Detector's Influence on Accelerator Operations

Friday, Jan. 29
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Joint Experimental-Theoretical Physics Seminar - One West
Speaker: William Molzon, University of California, Irvine
Title: Status Report and First Results on MEG Search for µ → e V

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Wilson Hall Cafe

Thursday, Jan. 21
- Breakfast: Apple sticks
- Southwestern chicken tortilla
- Philly style cheese steak
- *Garlic herb roasted pork
- Mardi Gras jambalaya
- *Southwestern turkey wrap

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Thursday, Jan. 28
Dinner
- Closed

Wednesday, Jan. 27
Lunch
- Broiled tilapia w/Thai coconut curry sauce
- Tri-colored peppers
- Pineapple upside down cake

Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

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Milestone

Accelerator champions Jim Wendt and Ray Hren retire

Jim Wendt (left) and Ray Hren retire tomorrow after 42 years at Fermilab.

James Wendt and Raymond Hren were barely more than teenagers when they first arrived at the National Accelerator Laboratory, which was then little more than a blueprint and a hole in the ground.

This Friday, more than four decades later, Wendt and Hren will turn in their badges-numbers 80 and 81-and leave Fermilab as employees for the last time.

They're known around here as Jim and Ray, and they dress with the same understated practicality. Both sport faded jeans, a belt loop of keys and a shirt pocket stuffed with pens and the stray dosimeter. But that's where the resemblance ends.

Standing side by side, they are the stuff of Charles Dickens novels. Wendt is tall, lean and soft-spoken, with the gentle demeanor of a minister. Hren is shorter, with a workman's build and a mischievous chuckle, and has the affable manner of a favorite uncle. Their partnership has lasted longer than many marriages, and it shows. The two can finish each other's sentences. When each finally got his own office a few years ago, they had a window cut through the wall that divided them.

Their desks sit just beyond a row of work tables heaped high with glinting copper wire and a jumble of tools, near where the beam originates. It's an apt spot for two people integral to getting it started in the first place.

Hren and Wendt were on parallel paths before they ever met. Both studied electronic engineering at Chicago's DeVry Technical Institute at the same time. Both were hired on the same day-Jan. 22, 1968. But it wasn't until they spent six months together at Brookhaven National Laboratory, meticulously winding the magnets that would eventually go inside Fermilab's Linac, that Hren and Wendt really got to know each other, and began their career-long collaboration.

When they returned to Fermilab, they spent their days in what is now the Village, constructing the first tank for the accelerator. Wendt handled the drift tubes. Hren worked on the pre-accelerator.

"There was nothing here when we came," Hren said. "Building this place was a lot of fun-one thing led to another, and we just kept going," he said.

Read more

-- Andrea Mustain

Milestones

Service awards

On Dec. 14, 2009, service awards were given out for 25, 30, 35 and 40 years of service to the laboratory. Fermilab Today readers will see more service award photos in the near future. The laboratory did not give out any service awards during 2008, when furloughs made getting people together difficult, and is catching up on these awards now.

25 Year Service Award: Row 1 from left: Rick Zifko, Dervin Allen, Ken Koch and John Cornele. Row 2 from left: Steve Holmes (Directorate), Jim Budlong, Bernie Wisner, Arthur Kreymer and Mike Crisler.

30 Year Service Award: Row 1 from left: John MacNerland, Chander Sood and Jim Wilson. Row 2: Steve Holmes (Directorate), Wilma Cardona, Ralph Pasquinelli, Ellie Arroyo and Jane Sylvester.

35 Year Service Award: Row 1 from left: Merle Watson, Bruce Brown and Keith Schuh. Row 2: Steve Holmes (Directorate), Earl Shaffer, Roy Rubinstein and Duane Voy.

40 Year Service Award: Row 1 from left: Barry Barnes, Muzaffer Atac and Rich Andrews. Row 2 from left: Steve Holmes (Directorate), George Krafczyk and Bob Jensen.

Fermilab Result of the Week

The Tevatron's Higgs boson search

The recent submission of a combined DZero/CDF limit on the production of a Higgs boson could not have occurred without a spirit of cooperation between the two experiments.

Usually, a DZero Result of the Week presents one of the collaboration's many measurements. However, this week, we're reporting on a combination of our data with CDF's, effectively doubling the amount of beam involved and producing a stronger result. While Fermilab's DZero and CDF experiments have always enjoyed a friendly rivalry, the impending competition from the LHC has brought the two of us together in the spirit of cooperation.

The subject today is a search for Higgs bosons decaying into a pair of W bosons. This decay path was the subject of recent DZero and CDF ROWs. We have now submitted to Physical Review Letters, one of the most discerning physics journals in the world, a paper that combined two experiment's data.

While physicists do not know the mass of the Higgs boson, if it exists at all, they do know how it will decay. For masses above about 150 times more than the mass of a proton, Higgs bosons decay predominantly into pairs of W bosons. The measurement investigates this hypothesis.

Submission for publication is the final result of scientific inquiry. It indicates that every objection has been answered and the result is as good as possible. With an author list comprising about 1,100 people, a record number for a publication from the Tevatron, this is a very high standard.

In order to be ready for submission to a journal, there can be no loose ends, no overly-cautious estimates. But this takes time, especially when the results are combined from two large and complex experiments, and that is why this paper was submitted now.

This combined analysis also bodes well for Fermilab's physics future.

When the LHC experiments turn their attention to the subject, they will need twice as much data to compete as it would if the two Tevatron experiments each stand alone.

-- Don Lincoln

The complex nature of the DZero collaboration's portion of this Higgs boson analysis required contribution from everyone working on the experiment. This photo includes only a fraction of the collaboration.
This Higgs boson analysis result would not be possible without the entire Tevatron community. We thank you all.
In the News

Caltech cosmologist Andrew Lange dead at 52

From Washinton Post, Jan. 26, 2010

California Institute of Technology physicist Andrew E. Lange, co-leader of an international team that produced a detailed image of remnants of the Big Bang showing the universe is flat, has died in an apparent suicide, police said Tuesday. He was 52.

Read more

Accelerator Update

Jan. 25-27
- Three stores provided ~44 hours of luminosity
- H- Source removed for cleaning
- Accelerator complex conducting maintenance

Read the Current Accelerator Update
Read the Early Bird Report
View the Tevatron Luminosity Charts

Announcements

Romanian/Fusion Dance workshop today at Kuhn Village Barn

PII training required for all employees

ACU's presents "How much will I need to retire?" Feb. 9

Weight Watchers at Work begins new session

Fermilab blood drive Feb. 15 and 16

Chicago Bulls discount tickets available online

Argentine Tango classes through Feb. 24

Intoduction to Argentine Tango classes - FREE

On-site housing for summer 2010

Elder Care: Where do I begin? Interactive seminar

Muntu African Dance Theatre - Feb. 6

English country dancing Feb. 7, with live music

Fermilab Management Practices seminar beginning Feb. 11

Applications accepted for awards in URA Visiting Scholars program

BLAST! The Movie: intro, film and Q&A - Feb. 19

Fermilab Family Open House - Feb. 21

Python Programming class Feb. 24-26

FRA Scholarship 2010

2010 standard mileage reimbursement rate

International folk dancing, Thursdays at Kuhn Village Barn

Additional activities


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