Have a safe day!
Wednesday, May 1
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Fermilab Colloquium - One West
Speaker: Douglas MacAyeal, University of Chicago
Title: Energy Sources for Yotta-TeV Iceberg Showers
Thursday, May 2
2:30 p.m.
Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Valentina Verduci, University of Graz
Title: Pion-Nucleon Phase Shifts in Lattice QCD
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
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Wednesday, May 1
- Breakfast: breakfast strata
- Harvest moon vegetable soup
- Monte Cristo
- Baja chicken enchilada casserole
- Smart cuisine: ancho chili barbecue beef
- Italian antipasto sandwich
- Assorted calzones
- Szechuan green beans with chicken
Wilson Hall Cafe menu |
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Friday, May 3
Dinner
Closed
Wednesday, May 6
Lunch
- Apple- and horseradish-glazed salmon
- New potatoes with dill
- Roasted broccoli
- Lemon cake
Chez Leon menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.
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One minute with William Miner, PPD senior technician
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William Miner works at the Proton Assembly Building. Photo: Reidar Hahn
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How long have you been at Fermilab?
I started working at Fermilab as a temporary technician for three years and then became a full-time technician 10 and a half years ago. I have also traveled to CERN three times while working here.
What is a typical day for you like?
I help build, repair and maintain the machinery and systems used for experiments at the Proton Assembly Building. A typical day involves starting at 6:30 a.m. to maintain and run vacuum and cryogenics machinery. Over eight years, I helped build the cryogenics systems, called Luke and Bo, and I help with ongoing support and modifications.
How did you become interested in this line of work?
I've worked with mechanical equipment all my life. Before Fermilab, I was an industrial mechanic at a refractory company in this area. When they closed down, I applied for a job at Fermilab. I was very interested in the technology that's used here. It's all history after that.
What do you enjoy best about working at the lab?
I enjoy the people here, and I think there is a sense of family among co-workers. You have your ups and downs, but someone is always there for you, and I'll never forget any of my co-workers.
What's next for you?
I plan on staying here for as long as Fermilab will have me.
What do you like to do for fun?
I live in Marseilles, Ill., where the Fox and Illinois rivers meet. I enjoy fishing and camping in the summer months as much as I can and sledding in the winter. I also spend a lot of time with my 4-year-old granddaughter. Every Saturday morning I go bird watching by the rivers near my home. At CERN I enjoyed mountain climbing and meeting new people.
—Sarah Khan
If there is an employee you'd like to see profiled in an upcoming issue of Fermilab Today, please e-mail today@fnal.gov.
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The cold side of DarkSide
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Last week the DarkSide collaboration completed the assembly of the DarkSide-50 time projection chamber at Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy. Photo: Yury Suvorov, UCLA |
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The time projection chamber was installed in its cryostat and then lowered into the center of a 4-meter-diameter metal sphere, which will be filled with liquid scintillator. The liquid scintillator is used to identify neutrons, which are a background to the dark-matter search. Photo: Yury Suvorov, UCLA |
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This view shows the cryostat in the scintillator vessel with the vessel lid closed. Photo: Yury Suvorov, UCLA |
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CERN celebrates twenty years of a free, open web
From Interactions.org, April 30, 2013
Editor's note: CERN made the World Wide Web available to the public in April 1993. Ten months later, Fermilab also created its first Web pages for the public, in February 1994.
Geneva - Twenty years ago CERN published a statement that made the World Wide Web ('W3,' or simply 'the web') technology available on a royalty free basis. By making the software required to run a web server freely available, along with a basic browser and a library of code, the web was allowed to flourish.
The technology, invented in 1989 at CERN by Tim Berners-Lee, was originally conceived and developed to meet the demand for information sharing between physicists in universities and institutes around the world.
Read more |
Particle physics: Minimalism triumphant
From Nature, April 24, 2013
The discovery of a particle that looked like the Higgs boson marked a milestone for physics. Results reported since then are strikingly consistent with expectations for the Higgs particle of the minimal standard model of particle physics.
Since the announcement last July that a new kind of particle had been discovered at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Europe's particle-physics laboratory near Geneva in Switzerland, a much fuller portrait of that particle has emerged. The two main experimental collaborations, ATLAS and CMS, reported a host of measurements in papers and presentations at last month's Moriond conference in La Thuile, Italy1, 2. So far, all results remain consistent with the interpretation that the new particle is the Higgs boson anticipated in the minimal implementation of electroweak symmetry breaking in the standard model of particle physics.
Read more |
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Contractor assurance: the DOE perspective
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Michael Weis
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Michael Weis, DOE Fermi Site Office manager, wrote this column.
What is all this talk about CAS? The Department of Energy Fermi Site Office, Fermi Research Alliance and Fermilab have worked together over the past four years to try to become more efficient and effective in our respective oversight processes to maximize science delivery through the use of a contractor assurance system (CAS) model. FSO has the independent oversight responsibility to ensure the Fermilab science mission is performed safely, securely and efficiently and within the terms of the contract with Fermi Research Alliance. We hold the lab to very high standards because the safest, most efficient lab is the most productive.
Beginning in 2010, the DOE Office of Science (SC) began to shift from a transactional, compliance-based oversight model to one that is centered on an analytical assessment of laboratory contractor assurance systems. The objective of CAS is to put strong laboratory management systems in place that generate relevant and reliable performance information that can be independently analyzed and confirmed. The belief is that CAS reinforces contractor accountability, eliminates duplicative work and focuses the federal role on performance evaluation.
DOE must "trust but verify" that the labs' systems are capable of identifying potential problems before they happen. The CAS model replaces an audit-driven checklist mentality. The model helps define DOE expectations and allows the local DOE site office to focus on activity-based observation, contractor CAS data reviews through systems such as FermiDash, and confirmatory assessments as necessary.
The SC community has completed peer reviews of CAS systems at each of the national laboratories over the last few years and determined that the labs' CAS systems are in varying stages of maturity. The SC community disseminated lessons learned, and a series of activities are under way to institutionalize CAS across the SC laboratory complex and to build a continuous learning culture into the processes.
DOE is still transitioning and will continue to advocate for a performance-based approach to oversight, embracing operational verification and promulgating this approach and expectation to federal staff. Laboratory site offices continue to have an important role in overseeing lab operations, but that role will need to change as the Fermilab CAS matures. We look forward to working with FRA and Fermilab on our continuing journey to build a stronger partnership and better CAS. Fermilab is one of this nation's most precious resources, and we have a personal responsibility directly to the American public for its safe and effective operation. The primary tool we use to achieve our mutual goals is the strong, trusting partnership.
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Administrators to complete certification course this week
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These individuals are candidates for administrative professional certification. Bottom row, from left: Julie Wiley, Susan Quarto, Odarka Jurkiw, Elena Farago-Trofimuk. Top row, from left: Helen Szuba, Kathleen Venn Bowers, Jennifer Thorson, Sylvia Gonzalez
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A group of administrative professionals from across the laboratory, pictured above, began an employee-led, 16-week course titled Power Boosting Skills for Administrative Professionals. The cohort is scheduled to complete the certification exam on May 4, earning 15 college-level credits with a passing score.
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These individuals are candidates for organizational management certification. From left: Kathleen Venn Bowers, Karen Seifrid, Rosa Foote (course leader), Odarka Jurkiw, Anita Menz-Cwiklik
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Four Fermilab employees have taken additional coursework for certified administrative professionals. They will take the organizational management portion of the CAP exam on May 4.
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ESH&Q weekly report,
April 30
This week's safety report, compiled by the Fermilab ESH&Q section, contains three incidents.
Two employees suffered eye irritation requiring medical treatment. Both cases are recordable.
An employee fell in the parking lot. No treatment was required.
Find the full report here. |
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Sunny
