Monday, Jan. 14, 2013
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Monday, Jan. 14

THERE WILL BE NO PARTICLE ASTROPHYSICS SEMINAR THIS WEEK

3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over

THERE WILL BE NO ALL EXPERIMENTERS' MEETING THIS WEEK

Tuesday, Jan. 15

3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over

THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR TODAY

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Wilson Hall Cafe

Monday, Jan. 14

- Breakfast: oatmeal raisin pancakes
- Bourbon Street gumbo
- The Fermi burger
- Veal parmesan
- Smart cuisine: country baked chicken
- Classic club sandwich
- Assorted pizza
- Cantonese sweet and sour chicken

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Chez Leon

Wednesday, Jan. 16
Lunch
- Balsamic glazed salmon
- Roasted new potatoes
- Brussels sprouts
- Lemon cheesecake

Friday, Jan. 18
Dinner
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Feature

Accelerator Division graduate student helps develop world's first digital DCCT

From March to November last year, graduate student Silvia Zorzetti worked with a team in the Accelerator Division to develop a digital DCCT for measuring beam intensities. She graduated in December with a master's in electronics engineering from the University of Pisa, and her thesis on the DCCT earned the maximum number of points. Photo courtesy of Manfred Wendt, CERN

It's difficult to assign a value to the meaningful contributions of students at the laboratory, but faculty members at one university recently gave top marks on a student's Accelerator Division project.

The project was the development of the world's first digital direct-current current transformer, or DCCT, which measures particle beam intensities. The development of this new Fermilab component is thanks to Silvia Zorzetti, former Fermilab intern and recent guest scientist in the Beam Instrumentation Department.

Zorzetti graduated in December from the University of Pisa with her master's degree in electronics engineering. Her thesis, which focused on the Fermilab DCCT on which she worked from March to November last year, scored the maximum number of points from her thesis advisors.

"She was the star of the show at her graduation," said Manfred Wendt, former head of the Instrumentation Department and then advisor to Zorzetti.

Typical DCCTs use analog control electronics and are widely used around the world to measure beam currents in circular accelerators. Using digital electronics for the DCCT allows for more flexibility and stability in processing those signals.

"It should work as well or better than the traditional analog system and also provide all the advantages of modern digital signal processing," said Instrumentation Head Nathan Eddy.

Under the direct supervision of Aisha Ibrahim, Zorzetti developed and implemented the DCCT firmware. Her expertise in electronics engineering meant she understood the electronics, but she also had to learn the physics that motivated the project, the DCCT's operation and the practical matters involved in building it.

"Every component of the system could be its own thesis, but she had to understand the whole system to create the best algorithm for the part she worked on," Ibrahim said.

Her effort paid off. She wrote her high-score thesis over two months of long days and nights and in time for December graduation.

"I enjoyed my work at Fermilab," Zorzetti said. "I'm thankful to the Italian community for welcoming me. Everyone in the Accelerator Division was also very kind, and every time I had a question, someone was ready to help."

The Instrumentation Department team will continue to work on the DCCT, which will be used in Fermilab's current and future accelerators.

Over the next year, Zorzetti will work as an intern with CERN's Beam Department, helping to develop the design of radio-frequency power electronics.

Leah Hesla

In the News

New clock revolves around an atom's mass

From Science News, Jan. 10, 2013

It's part clock, part scale: A newly developed atomic clock measures time based on the mass of a single atom. The research, published online January 10 in Science, is controversial but could provide scientists with more precise methods of measuring both time and mass.

"This is the first clock based on a single particle," says Holger Müller, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley. "Its ticking rate is determined only by the particle's mass."

The idea for the clock stemmed from the quantum principle that particles also behave as waves, and vice versa. In particular, Müller and his colleagues wanted to determine how frequently the wave form of a single atom oscillates, a quantity that in quantum mechanics is inherently linked to the atom's mass. Then the researchers could use those oscillations like swings of a pendulum to create a clock.

Read more
Tip of the Week: Cybersecurity

New certificates for the new year

The DOEGrid Certificate Authority is about to turn off. Individuals that use DOEGrid certificates to identify themselves on the Internet will soon need to get their certificates from a different place.

If you ever need to securely identify yourself on the Internet, you need to be aware of upcoming changes involving certificates. Both individuals and computers that use certificates to identify themselves to others must take action soon, as the DOEGrid Certificate Authority (CA) is about to turn off. After March 1 it will no longer issue or renew certificates, and so lab users who need new or renewed certificates will need to get them elsewhere. (Note that any existing DOEGrid certificates will remain valid for their full lifetime.)

Most Fermilab users and computers have obtained their certificates from either the Fermilab Kerberos Certificate Authority, which generates short-lived certificates (good up to one week) based on your Fermilab Kerberos account, or the DOEGrid CA, which delivers longer-lived certificates (good up to one year) to both users and computers for a variety of purposes. The turning off of the DOEGrid CA will require users to get their certificates from a different place. The Open Science Grid consortium, which has provided grid infrastructure to the U.S. scientific community for a number of years, has arranged for a commercial certificate provider (DigiCert) to issue certificates. Users will soon be able to get new DigiCert Grid certificates to replace their DOEGrid certs by following the link below. Service providers can get new host certificates in the same manner.

But there are a few additional tasks. First, users will need to tell places that have been accepting their old certificates that they are now using a different certificate. This process will usually be handled by the virtual organization (typically an experimental collaboration like CMS, CDF or DZero), but in some cases the users will need to re-register themselves to some services with their new certs. Service providers will need to modify which user certs they will accept. Finally, both service providers and users will need to add the DigiCert Grid CA to the list of trusted certificate authorities in their Web browsers to prevent the generation of annoying messages that a service is showing an "untrusted certificate." In most cases, the latter will be handled by the Deskside Services support group.

Full details about all required actions can be seen on the Fermilab PKI transition Web page.

Irwin Gaines

Photo of the Day

V formation

A bald eagle soars over the pond by DZero. Photo: Marty Murphy, AD
Announcements

Today's New Announcements

January 2013 float holiday for timecard use

Abri Credit Union - member appreciation

Interested in a Vaughan Athletic Center membership discount?

Fermilab Lecture Series - Building Bionics - Jan. 18

Gallery Chamber Series - Metropolis Quartet - Jan. 20

NALWO Armenian cooking demonstration - Jan. 24

Fermilab Arts Series - Tomas Kubinek - Jan. 26

UChicago panel discussion on Higgs discovery - Feb. 7

2013 FRA scholarship applications accepted until April 1

Fermilab Management Practices courses available for registration

Interpersonal Communication Skills course offered in May

International Folk Dancing Thursday evenings in Kuhn Barn

Indoor soccer

USA Athletic Club and Spa discount for employees

Employee discounts on AAA membership