Fermilab Today

	Monday, Nov. 11, 2013

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Have a safe day!

Monday, Nov. 11

2 p.m.
Particle Astrophysics Seminar (NOTE TIME, LOCATION) - Curia II
Speaker: Martin White, University of California, Berkeley
Title: Cosmic Sound, Near and Far

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

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

Tuesday, Nov. 12

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

THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR THIS WEEK

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Secon Level 3

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Wilson Hall Cafe

Monday, Nov. 11

- Breakfast: blueberry pancakes
- Breakfast: sausage, egg and cheese croissant
- Sloppy joe
- Smart cuisine: pasta primavera
- Pecan-crusted chicken breast
- Oven-roasted vegetable wrap
- Shrimp and crab scampi
- Vegetarian potato leek soup
- Texas-style chili

Wilson Hall Cafe menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, Nov. 13
Lunch
- Herb roasted cornish hens
- Sage and onion stuffing cups
- Roasted broccoli
- Pumpkin pie with whipped cream

Friday, Nov. 15
Dinner
- Spinach and strawberry salad
- Grilled mahi mahi with roasted red-pepper sauce and cilantro pesto
- Green rice
- Sugar snap peas
- Coconut cake

Chez Leon menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

Fermilab security officer returns lost diamond to St. Charles resident

Fermilab Director Nigel Lockyer thanks Lieutenant Chris Jones, Fermilab security, for helping a neighbor who had lost a diamond in Kuhn Barn. Photo: Reidar Hahn

A diamond from a local resident's wedding ring, lost during an English country dance at Fermilab's Kuhn Barn, has been returned to her, thanks to the sharp eyes and sympathetic heart of Lieutenant Chris Jones, Fermilab security officer.

On Oct. 27, Wendy Hodowal of St. Charles was settling in at home after an evening of dancing at the barn when she realized that her wedding ring's principal diamond was missing. She immediately called Mady Newfield, dance organizer, who directed her to Fermilab Security.

"I was pretty distraught that evening and really didn't expect that the diamond would turn up," Hodowal said in a letter to Fermilab Director Nigel Lockyer. "It would be like finding a needle in a haystack!"

At 10:30 p.m. that night, she received a call from Lieutenant Jones with good news: He'd found the diamond. Although an initial sweep turned up nothing, Jones checked a second time, carefully inspecting the floor along the walls. He shined his flashlight underneath a rack of tables, and the diamond sparkled back at him.

"It felt pretty good to find it," Jones said. "I know how it feels to lose something like that."

Hodowal was grateful.

"I sincerely appreciate the fact that Chris Jones went above and beyond the ordinary expenditure of time, energy and effort to recover my lost diamond, return a call to me immediately so that I could rest easy that night, and then arrange for me to pick up the diamond the next day at my earliest convenience," Hodowal said.

"She would have missed it — it has sentimental value," Jones said. "It's the ring she got on her wedding day. Even if you replace it, it's not the same thing."

Director Lockyer met Jones after receiving Hodowal's letter to thank him for his service.

Photos of the Day

Ice fishing at AZero

A liquid-nitrogen system at the north end of the AZero building helps cool radio-frequency-power cavities in the AZero north and south caves. The liquid nitrogen flows through cryostats that surround the cavities and leaves as cold gas, which is then vented out of the building. The gas is cold enough compared to the ambient temperature that water vapor in the air condenses on the cold pipe pictured above, freezes and builds up as an ice ball. The nitrogen gas flowing out of the pipe creates and sustains a hole (the ice fish's mouth) in the ice ball. What causes the "fish head"? Chaos, and a pebble for good measure. Photo: Jamie Santucci, AD

In the News

Why the LUX results matter to dark matter — and to WIMPs

From Forbes, Nov. 7, 2013

Reading through the coverage of the first results from the world's most sensitive search for dark matter, the Large Underground Xenon (LUX), you'd be forgiven for thinking that researchers working on dark matter had either discovered nothing at all or were on the verge of laying their (metaphorical) hands on the stuff. As with so much scientific research though, things are never as simple as they seem.

With the Higgs boson safely tucked under one arm, the next great hunt for physicists is the search for dark matter, even if scientists really don't know very much about it at all. With their typical caution, the most any physicist will commit to is that there is something out there that is dark — in that it doesn't show up in visible light or other electromagnetic waves — and that interacts with the universe in a similar way to visible matter.

After that, we're firmly in the realm of theory. Dark matter might be made up of particles and those particles might be weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). WIMPs interact through the weak force and gravity, but not through electromagnetism — so they can't be seen and not through the strong nuclear force. Then again, dark matter might be made up of axions, a hypothetical elementary particle. Or it might be made up of something else entirely.

Tip of the Week: Cybersecurity

Computer Security Awareness Day takes place tomorrow

Irwin Gaines gives a talk at a past Computer Security Awareness Day. Photo: Reidar Hahn

The most important component of our computer security defenses is an informed and aware user community. To strengthen this defense, Fermilab holds an annual Computer Security Awareness Day, in which training is provided to the user community. This year's event will take place tomorrow, Nov. 12, in Wilson Hall.

There will be two categories of presentations. First, all of the ITNA-required cybersecurity and privacy courses will be offered as lecture classes in the morning, allowing employees, visitors and contractors to meet their training requirements without having to take an online test. Users can register for these classes in advance or show up tomorrow morning and sign in. Advanced and Basic PII (Personally Identifiable Information) Training will be given at 9 and 10 a.m. in WH One East. Basic Computer Security, Security Essentials for Desktop System Admins and Security Essentials for Fermilab System Admins will be given at 9 a.m., 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. in WH Curia II. Note that the PII classes only need to be taken once, but the cybersecurity classes must be retaken, either in person or online, every two years.

In the afternoon, a series of topical presentations on security-related issues of current import will be given in Curia II. The talks will include discussions of two new Fermilab services: the guest wireless network and the managed print service. Experts will give tutorials for security on mobile devices and for home networks, a general presentation on the current state of Internet threats, and a talk on how to make sure your experiment's data acquisition system doesn't get blocked from connecting to the Internet.

Finally, representatives from Dell and the Service Desk will be available at the IT Doctor's Booth to show how to use the self-service password reset service.

View full details on CSA Day.

—Irwin Gaines

From symmetry

Ultra-high-energy neutrinos

Scientists on the IceCube experiment discovered two extraterrestrial neutrinos with energies higher than any neutrino previously detected. Image courtesy of IceCube Collaboration

Physicists on the IceCube experiment were in for a jolt. In processing data taken by their strings of more than 5,000 light-sensitive detectors suspended under Antarctic ice, they discovered two particles called neutrinos with 1,000 times more energy than the ones that regularly zip through IceCube's detectors. They are the highest-energy neutrinos ever observed.

Nearly all of the neutrinos that IceCube sees are produced in Earth's atmosphere. These atmospheric neutrinos tend to have energies somewhere between 1 and 10 — and occasionally as high as 100 — trillion electronvolts. The two unusual neutrinos appear to have come from far out in space and carried an impressive 1,000 trillion electronvolts of energy. Each one lit up hundreds of IceCube's detectors.

—Kelen Tuttle

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