Monday, June 17, 2013
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Monday, June 17

PARTICLE ASTROPHYSICS SEMINARS WILL RESUME IN THE FALL

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

4 p.m.
All Experimenters' Meeting - Curia II

Tuesday, June 18

Noon
Undergraduate Lecture Series - Curia II
Speaker: André de Gouvêa, Northwestern University
Title: The Intensity Frontier

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

4 p.m.
Accelerator Physics and Technology Seminar - One West
Speaker: Nikolay Solyak, Fermilab
Title: The Conceptual Design of the PXIE Beam Dump, its Radiation Shielding and PXIE Complex Enclosure

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a weekly calendar with links to additional information.

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Secon Level 3

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Flags at full staff

Wilson Hall Cafe

Monday, June 17

- Breakfast: apple cinnamon multi-grain pancakes
- Breakfast: sausage, egg and cheese croissant
- Gyros
- Smart cuisine: sweet and sour apricot chicken
- Garam masala salmon with mustard sauce
- Spicy Asian chicken wrap
- Stir-fry sensations
- Spicy Thai beef noodle soup
- Texas-style chili

Wilson Hall Cafe menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, June 19
Lunch
- Spicy orange beef
- Cucumber salad
- Almond cake

Friday, June 21
Dinner
Closed

Chez Leon menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

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Feature

Summer students get a taste of particle physics research through Fermilab internships

Summer 2012 student interns pose in front of Wilson Hall. Photo: Cindy Arnold

Summer at Fermilab brings sun, greenery and plenty of outdoor activities.

Summer also brings more than 90 students from U.S. high schools and universities worldwide to participate in Fermilab's many summer student internship programs.

The programs, each of which has between six and 20 students, are a way for high-school students and undergraduates to put their knowledge of research methods to practice in a real laboratory environment, said Education Office Program Leader Spencer Pasero.

"Being in a lab situation can really change the students' expectations," Pasero said. "This is in many ways different from a university research environment."

The students spend 10 weeks working on projects ranging from constructing small pieces of machinery to computer-based data analysis. They are placed in nearly all experiments and divisions at Fermilab, from the Technical Division to groups on experiments such as CDF.

Additionally, project mentors are assigned to guide individual students through their day-to-day tasks and long-term research goals.

Students can come from around the world. Present and past students have come from Cuba, Italy, Mongolia and Russia. High-school, community college and university students come from all over the United States as well.

"I'm mainly here for the experience," said James Sebald, an undergraduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison who is working this summer on the Holometer, a project that may be able to measure whether or not space-time is quantized.

Sebald is involved in research at his university but said he chose the Fermilab summer internship because of the international community and the chance to be a part of discovering new physics.

Erik Ramberg, co-manager of the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship and the Internships for Physics Majors, agrees that working in a lab setting gives students a real taste of the research life.

"University research is more broad, but here the students can focus on particle physics," Ramberg said. "Some students can work on high-energy colliders and, at the same time, others can be doing searches for dark matter. But it all falls under the umbrella of particle physics."

Students present their work at the end of the summer, and mentors have a chance to critique their research and help them improve.

Pasero said the mentors and experiment groups enjoy having young students on their team.

"Experiment groups often tell us how interested the intern is," Pasero said. "We get feedback from the intern and the experiment, so reviews are a two-way street."

The feedback from many past summers of student programs will go into this summer's student work, which promises to be as valuable to the laboratory as it is to the students.

Sarah Khan

Accelerator Update

Accelerator update, June 14, 2013

As Fermilab is getting closer to finishing substantial upgrades to its accelerator complex, Fermilab Today will post updates on some of the work going on in the accelerator tunnels. The Accelerator Division aims to send first beam through the Main Injector later this month, and the commissioning of the revamped Recycler storage ring is scheduled to begin in July.

Mechanical technicians installed the Recycler beam pipe at RR60. Photo: Denton Morris, AD

Kautz Road Substation
The duty electrician switched on the MI pulsed power at the Kautz Road Substation, but operators reported that there were harmonic filter faults that delayed some of the planned tests. High-voltage experts troubleshot the problems and discovered a capacitor bank arcing to ground due to bad fuses. FESS personnel completed the repairs, but the harmonic filters haven't been tested yet.

Linac
Preaccelerator personnel installed a new dipole trim magnet.

Booster
Booster personnel conducted orbit-smoothing studies. They will need to access the Booster tunnel to install a new RF cavity this week.

Main Injector
Operators searched and secured the MI tunnels and the F-Sector transfer line. Operators used low-pots to clear all the ground faults on the MI bus and configured the power supply knife switches so that high-pot switches and power supplies were in the circuit. Operators conducted an MI high-pot. Operators removed all LOTO locks from the MI 13.8 kV box. Safety personnel recored all the MI tunnel door and gate locks. The Accelerator Fluids Group personnel reported that they had opened all of the Main Injector LCW valves. Personnel from the Technical Division repaired LCW leaks on MI Lambertsons. Mechanical technicians completed the MI-60 bias power supply shielding. (see photo; Photo: Denton Morris, AD)

Recycler
Mechanical technicians installed the Recycler beam pipe at RR60.

NuMI
NuMI personnel finished training Water Group personnel on operating the MI65 exchange skids. NuMI personnel completed the horn pulse testing, power supply and magnet testing, and the thermal scans of the stripline. Operations closed in VCBs and established a 40-GeV ramp on the MI bus and proved that MECAR worked. More MECAR work is needed.

Fixed-target area
Operators and switchyard personnel completed the Meson and F-Sector Separator conditioning. Working on the G2 NM1 berm pipe installation, mechanical technicians came up with a cost-saving method that eliminated the need to rent expensive magnet spacers.

View the AD Operations Department schedule.

Tip of the Week: Cybersecurity

APTs: The bad guys have us in their sights

Perpetrators of advanced persistent threats, or APTs, operate under the radar. They may steal information from your computer long before you realize it, so be vigilant. Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

You have probably seen recent stories in the news about organized cyberspace attacks on U.S. financial and government institutions. The perpetrators of these attacks are often known as advanced persistent threats, or APTs: advanced, because they make use of sophisticated hacking toolkits; persistent, because they conduct their attacks over extended periods of time, including separate phases for reconnaissance, infiltration and data exfiltration; and threats, because they are up to no good.

DOE laboratories, including Fermilab, are frequent targets of such threats because of DOE's connection with weapons programs and other classified data. The attackers, often from foreign countries, may not appreciate the differences between an open science lab like Fermilab and other DOE facilities. Or they may think that Fermilab has special trusted connections to labs that have more sensitive information. They could also just want to take advantage of our very high-bandwidth network connections for further attacks. Whatever the reasons, we are a target.

Unlike the more traditional kinds of attackers that we have dealt with in the past, the APTs don't do flashy things that attract attention. They do not deface websites or start up robot programs on your PC that exhibit extreme and unusual network behavior. Rather, they try to fly under the radar for as long as possible until they have collected massive amounts of data and are ready to ship that data off site.

They may use the same mechanisms—malicious attachments to e-mail, phishing for passwords or other sensitive information, or Trojan payloads downloaded from websites—to obtain initial access to our computing systems. But after their initial penetration, they will lay low as they install backdoors and slowly try to hack their way onto more systems. Meanwhile they will be looking for whatever data files might be of interest. Often they are not detected until they have collected as much as they can and their delivery of data off-site sets off network alarms.

There are no silver bullets to protect against these threats. We must all continue the same vigilance in all uses of computing systems, lab- or personally owned, that are connected to the laboratory networks. Keep any sensitive data, such as private information, export controlled information or vendor proprietary data, in appropriately secured systems, and if possible make sure this data is encrypted. Our intrusion detection, Web proxies and virus scans may catch some of these attempts, but protecting ourselves against these threats requires effort from us all.

Irwin Gaines

Photos of the Day

Flight and landing

A heron shoots through the air like an arrow. Photo: Steve Werkema, AD
The heron gets ready to cool off in the pond in front of Wilson Hall. Photo: Steve Werkema, AD
In the News

SLAC's X-ray laser explores big data frontier

From SLAC Today, June 12, 2013

It's no surprise that the data systems for SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source X-ray laser have drawn heavily on the expertise of the particle physics community, where collecting and analyzing massive amounts of data are key to scientific success.

With its detectors collecting information on atomic- and molecular-scale phenomena measured in quadrillionths of a second, LCLS stores data at a rate and scale comparable to experiments at the world's most powerful particle collider, the Large Hadron Collider in Europe.

Read more

In the News

New kind of dark matter could form 'dark atoms'

From Space.com, June 10, 2013

The mysterious dark matter that makes up most of the matter in the universe could be composed, in part, of invisible and nearly intangible counterparts of atoms, protons and electrons, researchers say.

Read more

Announcements

Today's New Announcements

BuZheng Qigong & Tai Chi Easy begins June 24

Registration for FEMA assistance due July 9

DASTOW scheduled for June 21

Help the environment! Attend Abri's Shred & Recycle event - June 22

Behavioral interviewing course scheduled for July 18

Summer intern Friday tours

Sitewide domestic water flushing

Volunteer opportunity - Coat Drive 2013

Bible Exploration for Lunch League begins study of prophecies

10K Steps participation drawing winner

Pool now open

Water fitness at Fermi Pool

Ultimate Frisbee Mondays and Wednesdays

Outdoor soccer at the Village

International folk dancing moves to Wilson Hall for summer

Scottish country dancing meets Tuesday evenings in Auditorium

Join the Tango Club

Raging Waves water park discount