|
Have a safe day!
Thursday, Feb. 9
1:30 p.m.
Particle Astrophysics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Lauren Hsu, Fermilab
Title: Next-Generation Dark Matter Searches with SuperCDMS
2:30 p.m.
Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Toshihiko Ota, Max Planck Institute for Physics, Munich
Title: Effective Operators in Neutrino Physics - A Bottom-Up
Approach to New Physics
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Accelerator Physics and Technology Seminar - One West
Speakers: Alexandr Drozhdin, Igor Rakhno, Leonid Vorobiev, Fermilab
Title: Multiturn Stripping Injection and Foil Heating with Application
to
Project X
Friday, Feb. 10
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Joint Experimental-Theoretical Physics Seminar - One West
Speaker: Victor Bazterra, University of Illinois at Chicago
Title: Single Top: A Window to Top Quark Electroweak Interactions
Sunday, Feb. 12
2:30 p.m.
Gallery Chamber Series - 2nd Floor Art Gallery
Quintet Attacca
Tickets: $17
Click here for NALCAL,
a weekly calendar with links to additional information.
Upcoming conferences |
|
Thursday, Feb. 9
- Breakfast: Apple sticks
- Tomato florentine
- BBQ pork sandwich
- Smart cuisine: Kielbasa & sauerkraut
- Smart cusiine: Chicken marsala
- Smoked turkey melt
- Assorted sliced pizza
- Southwestern chicken salad w/ roasted corn salsa
Wilson Hall Cafe Menu
|
|
Friday, Feb. 10
Dinner
Valentines Dinner
- Roasted butternut salad w/ sherry vinaigrette
- Surf & turf
- Sautéed spinach
- Cauliflower gratin
- Chocolate pots de crème w/ fresh berries
Wednesday, Feb. 15
Lunch
- Roasted chicken-artichoke calzones
- Spiced marinated tomato salad
- Pumpkin cheesecake
Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation. |
|
Call for applications: URA Visiting Scholars Program
Universities Research Association, Inc. (URA) has announced a deadline of Feb. 29 for the submission of applications for the spring 2012 cycle of awards in the URA Visiting Scholars Program at Fermilab. Award recipients will be notified at the end of March.
These awards provide financial support for faculty and students from URA's 86 member universities to work at Fermilab for periods of up to one year. URA makes two rounds of awards each year, in the spring and fall. The application deadline for the fall 2012 cycle will be announced at a later date.
Proposals may range from attendance at conferences or summer schools to year-long research stays. Support from this program can include transportation costs, local lodging expenses during a series of shorter visits or salary support during a longer visit. Individual awardees may receive up to a maximum of $50,000 in any 12-month period. URA has made a total of 120 awards since the beginning of 2008, including 16 awards conferred in March 2011.
The program is sponsored by the URA. The 86 URA-member universities each contribute $5,000 a year for five years in support of joint Fermilab-URA research and education initiatives.
For details on the URA Visiting Scholars at Fermilab Program, including eligibility, application procedure, award administration and names of award recipients, visit the URA Visiting Scholars website.
|
New employees - Jan. 30
 |
| From left: Laura Ortega, FS; Thomas Alexander, PPD; Margherita Merio, TD; and Yenchu Chen, PPD. Photo: Cindy Arnold |
|
New Kavli Institute announced at the University of Tokyo
Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe receives major endowment from the Kavli Foundation, joining family of Kavli institutes
The University of Tokyo (Todai) announced today the establishment of an endowment by The Kavli Foundation for the Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (IPMU).
The Institute, which will now be known as the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU), probes the biggest mysteries in modern cosmology: How did the universe begin, and how will it end? What is it made of, and what laws govern its behavior? How did we come to exist? The Institute is seeking answers through collaborative research conducted by a wide range of scientists, including mathematicians, theoretical physicists, experimental physicists and astronomers. Together, they focus on topics such as dark matter and dark energy, which make up nearly 96 percent of the universe but today are completely unknown, and the possibility of a single unified theory that can explain the cosmos at the smallest and largest scales.
"It is a great honor for the University of Tokyo that the world-renowned Kavli Foundation has chosen the Institute for the Mathematics and Physics of the Universe as the recipient of a major donation, and to become the newest member of the Kavli group of research institutes as the Kavli IPMU," said University of Tokyo President Junichi Hamada. "Mr. Kavli's generous donation ensures a secure foundation for the Kavli IPMU today and guarantees that the institute will remain at the forefront of its field tomorrow. In addition, this donation has provided the occasion to reexamine and reform our systems for managing donated funds. Seizing this opportunity, I hope to build on this momentum and redouble our efforts to pursue reform at the University of Tokyo."
Said Daisuke Yoshida, Director-General, Research Promotion Bureau, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), "IPMU was established in 2007 and has been supported by the World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI) of the Japanese government. The WPI program is designed to promote world-class science in Japan and its international visibility.
Read more
|
Making scientists seem human – through film!
From Scientific American PsiVid, Feb. 7, 2012
This coming weekend I am heading to Chicago to screen a "work-in-progress" science documentary about cold fusion called "The Believers". Cold fusion is one of those topics that elicits strong words and sentiments. Due to these powerful feelings and discourse about the topic, it is the perfect topic to be tackled by the filmmakers, whose goal is to show the human side of science.
According to 137 Films, in association with The Chicago Council on Science and Technology , a sponsor of this screening, "The Believers" tells the strange story of Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, chronologically documenting the summer of 1989 as well as new developments today. The tale includes mystery, scandal, personal tragedy, and scientific wonder.
Understanding of events shifts depending on who is telling the story. A mixture of interviews, vérité footage, archival media, scientific animation, and reenactments will compliment interviews with scientists, journalists, politicians, and officials. Woven together, they paint a vivid, often contradicting account of what happened.
Read more
|
|
Width watchers test top quark
 |
|
DZero physicists precisely determined the width of the top quark, something that cannot be measured with a ruler.
|
In the Standard Model, the top quark is considered a point particle and lacks any spatial size or volume, yet DZero physicists have recently performed the most precise determination of the width of the top quark to date. This statement seems to contradict itself when considering the kind of width you might measure with a ruler, but is perfectly sensible when discussing the decay width of an unstable particle.
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle limits how accurately certain pairs of particle properties can be known at the same time. One such relationship exists between the energy of a particle state and the length of time that state lasts. An unstable particle that doesn't stick around long before it decays, such as a top quark, is not always produced at exactly the same mass. The decay width of a particle measures this inherent range of possible masses. A particle's lifetime and decay width are directly related through the uncertainty principle, such that a particle with a short lifetime will have a large decay width.
DZero physicists combined two previous results to determine the width of the top quark. The first, a previous result of the week, is the rate of the specific mode of single top quark production where a bottom quark and a W boson fuse to create a top quark. The top quark decay width is proportional to this production rate. The second is the chance for a top quark decay to produce a W boson with a bottom quark, in particular, out of the possible down quark, strange quark or bottom quark decay products. This information is used to help transform the single top quark production rate into the world's best determination of the top quark width. This best value translates into a top quark decay lifetime of less than a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second!
If you are interested in hearing more about this and other single top quark related analyses, they will be the focus of tomorrow's Joint Experimental-Theoretical Seminar.
—Mike Cooke
 |
| These physicists made major contributions to this analysis.
|
 |
| Over the course of Run II, in parallel with data taking and analysis efforts, a number of improvements have been developed for the DZero event reconstruction algorithms. This team is reprocessing a significant part of the DZero Run II data set using the best available algorithms, which will lead to improvements in DZero's physics results.
|
|
|
Sunny
