Fermilab Today

	Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013

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Calendar

Have a safe day!

Wednesday, Feb. 27

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

4 p.m.
Fermilab Colloquium - One West
Speaker: Alan Bross, Fermilab
Title: Neutrinos from STORed Muons - νSTORM

Thursday, Feb. 28

2:30 p.m.
Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Dean J. Robinson, Cornell University
Title: SU(3) Sum Rules in Charm Decay

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

THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR TODAY

Click here for NALCAL,
a weekly calendar with links to additional information.

Ongoing and upcoming conferences at Fermilab

Campaigns

Take Five

Weather

Snow
35°/28°

Extended forecast
Weather at Fermilab

Current Security Status

Secon Level 3

Current Flag Status

Flags at full staff

Wilson Hall Cafe

Wednesday, Feb. 27

- Breakfast: breakfast pizza
- Tomato florentine soup
- Ranch house steak sandwich
- Italian lasagna
- Smart cuisine: Thai peanut chicken
- California club
- Assorted calzones
- Chicken carbonara

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, Feb. 27
Lunch
- Broiled tilapia with Thai coconut curry sauce
- Sautéed tri-colored peppers
- Jasmine rice
- Tropical coconut cake

Friday, March 1
Dinner
Closed

Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

Logbook: Higgs-like particle

Early in the summer of 2012, excitement reached a peak as members of the CMS and ATLAS collaborations confirmed among themselves that they would soon announce the discovery of what looked like the Higgs boson. Photo: CERN

In June 2012, particle physicists on experiments at the Large Hadron Collider had a secret to keep, just between themselves and a few thousand colleagues. Scientists on the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the European laboratory CERN had both seen signs of a possible Higgs boson rise above the significance level customarily required to declare a new particle discovery. The Higgs boson, an excitation of the field thought to give mass to other subatomic particles, was the last missing piece of the Standard Model of particle physics.

Outcomes from different searches had begun to line up, and even the most obstinate skeptics had begun to agree: This was looking more and more like the particle scientists had been pursuing since theorists first predicted it in 1964.

It had been a difficult search, one that became a focal point of programs at the Large Electron Positron collider at CERN and later at the Tevatron collider at Fermilab. The two largest experiments at the LHC tentatively planned to release their results the first week of July—in two individual presentations. Scientists designed the CMS and ATLAS detectors in part to verify one another's conclusions. To keep the experiments independent, the scientists needed to keep their data to themselves.

In late June, each of the two collaborations held an historic, internal meeting in which it announced—for its members' ears only—Higgs search results that came close to the traditional threshold for a discovery.

—Kathryn Jepsen

Photos of the Day

A wild encounter

Earlier this week on Lake Law, a coyote approached an opossum that was gnawing on a bit of food. After a brief stare-off, the coyote took the opossum's snack. They continued glaring...

...until the coyote inexplicably lay down.

Then the coyote got up and ran away. Photos: Steve Krave, TD

University Profile

Kansas State University

NAME:
Kansas State University

HOME TOWN:
Manhattan, Kan.

MASCOT:
Willie the Wildcat

COLORS:
Royal purple

COLLABORATING AT FERMILAB SINCE:
1993

WORLDWIDE PARTICLE PHYSICS COLLABORATIONS:
ArgoNeuT, CMS, Double Chooz (IN2P3), LBNE, MicroBooNE

NUMBER OF SCIENTISTS AND STUDENTS INVOLVED:
Six faculty, three postdocs, 11 graduate students

PARTICLE PHYSICS RESEARCH FOCUS:
The group is very active in theoretical cosmology and astrophysics. The group is pursuing experimental work at both the Intensity and Energy frontiers, including measuring neutrino mixing angle θ₁₃, studying the newly discovered boson at CMS, building next-generation neutrino experiments and upgrading the CMS detector.

WHAT SETS PARTICLE PHYSICS AT KANSAS STATE APART?
Kansas State University is a graduate university with a very active and energetic high-energy physics group with a very strong publication and funding record. Our faculty and research members spend significant periods of time at Fermilab and CERN, thus enhancing interaction with our U.S. and international colleagues.

FUNDING AGENCIES:
DOE, NSF

View all university profiles.

From the Core Computing Division

Collaboration tools and services at Fermilab

Sheila Cisko

Sheila Cisko, computing services specialist and videoconference service owner, wrote this column.

Collaboration tools enable individuals and groups at Fermilab to meet and collaborate as if they were in the same room. These tools form the basis of the unified communications services the Core Computing Division offers to the laboratory. Primary services of this type are from the DOE Office of Science Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), which provides us with collaboration services (ECS) that include audio, video and data conferencing. General information is available at the Computing Sector website.

ECS ReadyTalk is an on-demand collaboration service that allows you to hold conference telephone calls and desktop-sharing meetings. The telephone and the desktop-sharing features can be used separately or together. ReadyTalk accounts are required to host a ReadyTalk session but not to join a meeting. Many people already use the system. There are roughly 1,475 active ReadyTalk accounts within the ECS user community, which include over 8,200 hours of phone connections and 2,600 hours of web connections last month. View a ReadyTalk tutorial, which includes details on registering.

ECS Ad-Hoc videoconferencing provides on-demand videoconference services for standards-based IP room systems and desktop clients. There are nearly 50 on-site videoconference rooms or shared workspaces that support communications for globally disparate organizations. The Ad-Hoc system is also widely used at Fermilab. Within the ECS user community there were more than 18,000 video meetings lasting more than 90,000 hours last year. Read details about the ECS Ad-Hoc services.

Instant messaging (IM or chat) is available for everyone at Fermilab with computing privileges and offers quick transmission of text between two or more people. Fermilab's current instant messaging service uses a technology named jabber, and everyone has a Fermilab jabber address ready to use. Your address can be found by looking at your online telephone listing. We had close to 250 unique jabber users in January at Fermilab. Read details about using the jabber collaboration services.

All these services can be used to support collaboration today. The Core Computing Division is working to improve the unified communication tools at your disposal. We will be seeking your input on requirements and technology that you feel are missing during an upcoming community survey—please watch for it.

Safety Update

ESH&Q weekly report, Feb. 26

This week's safety report, compiled by the Fermilab ESH&Q section, contains three incidents.

Two employees slipped on ice and fell. They received first-aid treatment.

An employee was stung by an insect. She received first-aid treatment.

Find the full report here.

In the News

"The wolf is at the door": likely impacts of sequestration

From FYI: The AIP Bulletin of Science Policy News, Feb. 19, 2013

"My testimony today makes clear that sequestration, especially if accompanied by a year-long CR [continuing resolution], would be devastating to DoD—just as it would to every other affected Federal agency. The difference is that, today, these devastating events are no longer distant problems. The wolf is at the door." So warned Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter at a recent Senate Appropriations Committee hearing focusing on the impacts of automatic budget reductions on civilian and defense departments and agencies. Unless Congress and the Administration reach a new agreement the cuts will occur on March 1.

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