Wednesday, April 2, 2014
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Have a safe day!

Wednesday, April 2

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

4 p.m.
Fermilab Colloquium - One West
Speaker: Eszter Hargittai, Northwestern University
Title: Connected, but Confused? How People's Internet Skills Influence What They Do - and Do Not Do - Online

Thursday, April 3

11 a.m.
Academic Lecture Series - One West
Speaker: Wolfgang Altmannshofer, Perimeter Institute
Title: EDMs and Higgs and Flavor Physics

2:30 p.m.
Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Yanou Cui, University of Maryland
Title: Baryogenesis from WIMPs

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

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Secon Level 3

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Wilson Hall Cafe

Wednesday, April 2

- Breakfast: breakfast strata
- Breakfast: ham, egg and cheese English muffin
- Grilled meat loaf sandwich
- Smart cuisine: baked Cajun catfish
- Country fried steak
- Oven-roasted vegetable wrap
- Shrimp and crab scampi
- Vegetarian harvest moon vegetable soup
- Texas-style chili
- Assorted calzones with marinara sauce

Wilson Hall Cafe menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, April 2
Lunch
- Northern Italian lasagna
- Caesar salad
- Italian cream cake

Friday, April 4
Dinner
Closed

Chez Leon menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

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Feature

LBNE's core is at Sanford Lab

Rock Mechanics Engineer for ARUP Reza Ghasemi and LBNE Project Director Jim Strait inspect a rock core at the Sanford Lab. The core comes from the level that will be excavated to house the LBNE far detector. Photo: Matt Kapust, Sanford Underground Research Facility

Nearly a mile underground, a drilling crew is working around the clock to extract rock core at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, S.D. Core samples are used to explore the rock mass that would house the proposed Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment liquid-argon far detector.

Last month, LBNE project staff went underground to observe the geotechnical work.

"We wanted to kick the tires, learn how it works and see the drilling process," said LBNE Project Director Jim Strait.

It's the first activity at Sanford Lab in preparation for the anticipated LBNE project, said LBNE Conventional Facilities Manager Tracy Lundin. The exploration program is intended to characterize the rock mass. Core samples can tell engineers about the rock's strength and geologic composition. They can also reveal the orientation of folds and other imperfections in the rock mass, all of which can influence the design of the excavation that would house the detector.

LBNE would aim a beam of neutrinos generated at Fermilab to an underground detector at the Sanford Lab, 800 miles away. "It's a lovely distance," said Strait. "It's in the sweet spot we need to efficiently study neutrinos."

Drilling subcontractor First Drilling is creating four exploration holes on the 4850 Level — the level 4,850 feet below the surface — yielding 3-inch-diameter rock cores hundreds of feet long and taken out in 5-foot sections. Engineering firm ARUP is logging and packaging it in boxes for later testing at a geotechnical laboratory.

First Drilling set up a 1970s-era Conner 208h core rig for the job.

"It may be old but these babies get the job done," said Mike Kukar, drill supervisor.

The rig had to be properly configured to fit in the narrow 8-foot drift, or underground tunnel. A generator set up behind the drill powers the rig, which uses a hollow diamond-tipped bit that cuts through the hard rock and leaves a solid rock core sample in its wake. It takes 8 to 12 gallons of water per minute to lubricate and flush out the borehole. Kukar said it was one of the most extreme setups he's had to arrange.

Kukar left a good impression with LBNE's Environment, Health and Safety Manager Mike Andrews. Kukar's first conversation upon entering the work site was a thorough safety briefing.

"You just knew that safety was number one when managing this site," Andrews said. "I'm extremely happy with what I saw in the drilling project safety program."

Sanford Lab Executive Director Mike Headley said he was happy to host the LBNE staff and is pleased the drilling project is ahead of schedule.

"Without the investment from South Dakota it might not be possible to construct LBNE in the United States," Strait said. "It's amazing that such a small state would make this tremendous investment in basic science."

Matt Kapust, Sanford Underground Research Facility

Editor's note: A version of this story appeared in Sanford Underground Research Facility's Deep Thoughts.

Photo of the Day

It's always snowy in Minnesota

The snow may have taken its leave on the home front, but it was still going strong last week at the NOvA far detector in Minnesota. Members of the Alignment and Metrology Department recently visited the detector to survey the NOvA far-detector blocks. Photo: O'Sheg Oshinowo, PPD
In Brief

Windows XP end of life April 8

In November, we announced that the Microsoft Windows XP operating system was reaching the end of its vendor-supported life cycle. Microsoft will no longer provide software updates beginning Tuesday, April 8. After that date, computers running Windows XP will pose security risks.

To mitigate these risks, Fermilab, like many other organizations, will begin blocking computers running Windows XP from accessing the Web on its network starting April 8. Further network restrictions may also be imposed later.

Please arrange to have your computers upgraded as soon as possible. The Service Desk can provide answers to questions and can schedule upgrades for laboratory-owned computers.

In the News

Probing the accelerating universe

From Physics Today, April 2014

The Dark Energy Survey's map of 200 million galaxies will help determine if cosmic acceleration is driven by a cosmological constant, by a new and dynamic form of energy, or by physics beyond the scope of general relativity.

Two teams of astronomers studying distant supernovae stunned the physics world in 1998 when they announced evidence that the expansion of the universe is speeding up. That remarkable discovery, since confirmed by other observations, was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics. In the 15 years since the discovery, astronomers have taken a number of approaches to more precisely measure the parameters that define that acceleration and other aspects of the now-standard concordance model of cosmology.

Read more

In the News

Persistent analysis fills in 50-year gap

From DOE Pulse, March 31, 2014

It takes dedication and perseverance to solve a mystery that has been around for 50 years. Just ask Reinhard Schumacher, a professor of physics at Carnegie Mellon University. He and his colleagues analyzed data from an experiment conducted at DOE's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility to finally pin down two key characteristics that had never been measured before of an elusive particle, the Lambda(1405).

Read more

From symmetry

30 years of inter-American collaboration

Three decades ago in March, scientists from Latin America came to do research at Fermilab, forming the ties of a lasting collaboration. Image: Sandbox Studio

In 1983, Fermilab Director Leon Lederman put his money on the table at the second Pan American Symposium on Elementary Particles and Technology in Rio de Janeiro. His daring proposition: If the Brazilian Research Council would not at the time fund that nation's physicists to do research at Fermilab, he would pay the salaries himself.

His parlay worked. A year later, 30 years ago in March, four physicists from Brazil took paid leave to work on the E691 fixed-target experiment at Fermilab. They were Fermilab's first Latin American scientists and the beginning of its relationship with the region.

"Lederman made the bold offer in that meeting," says Carlos Escobar, one of the four trailblazing Brazilians who crossed over the Equator to Fermilab. "That was the deciding factor."

Mexico soon followed, spearheaded by then Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México professor Clicerio Avilez. The university sent two scientists and a graduate student, the first Latin American student to get his Ph.D. for work done at Fermilab.

Since then, the collaboration between Fermilab and Latin American institutions has grown to also include Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Twenty-one Latin American institutions participate in the collaboration, which consists of theorists and members of eight experiments: CMS, DAMIC, DZero, LBNE, MINERvA and MINOS, as well as on the Dark Energy Survey and the Pierre Auger Observatory — both of which reside in South America. That's in addition to the nine fixed-target experiments that completed their runs in the 1990s.

Read more

Leah Hesla

Readers Write

Another hat in the ring

Fermilab docent Wendy Mouche nominates Dudley Do-Right for Fermilab deputy director.

Editor's note: In yesterday's April Fool's Day issue, we ran an In Brief on the final four candidates for the laboratory's deputy director. Wendy Mouche objected to the narrow selection, nominating another. We note that, unlike the other four, Do-Right is not already a deputy.


April 1, 2014

Dear Fermilab Today,

Please reconsider your final candidate pool. Dudley Do-Right is your man. A brief survey of his background highlights his illustrious career, including the following qualifications:

  1. He is conscientious and cheerful.
  2. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, of which he is a member, are unique in the world as a national, federal, provincial and municipal policing body. This is surely important given our local setting and our status as a national lab.
  3. He is responsible for an unusually broad set of duties. Why, he could be our "officer friendly" too, eh!
  4. The RCMP can patrol with sled dogs — a distinct advantage, given the snowfall this past winter.
  5. He knows how to ride horses, so he would be able to patrol our prairie quadrats inside the Main Injectre.

If the candidate list is closed, perhaps you would consider this highly qualified candidate at a future date. It's aboot time.

In all sincerity,
Wendy Mouche
FermiLab Docent

Safety Update

ESH&Q weekly report, April 1

This week's safety report, compiled by the Fermilab ESH&Q Section, contains one incident.

An employee reported being unable to use her mouse or comfortably type, having experienced severe pain in her right hand since March 21. She was given a rigid splint.

Find the full report here.

Announcements

Today's New Announcements

Edward Tufte artist reception - April 16

Wednesday Walkers - begins today

What's New in SharePoint 2013 for Contributors - today

C2ST: The Real Science Behind Star Trek - today

What's New in SharePoint 2013 for Site Owners and Designers - April 3

English country dancing with live music at Kuhn Barn - April 6

LabVIEW seminars scheduled on April 10

Interpersonal Communication Skills course - April 16

MySQL relational database management course - April 22-23

Tour guides for Illini Alumni event - May 3

Supervisors needed for SIST interns

West bike rack area closed

Portions of west atrium stair closed for construction

On sale now: Fermilab Natural Areas hats and shirts

Abri Credit Union gives away two $1,000 scholarships

Active For Life Multilab Challenge

Walk 2 Run

2014 Fermilab Golf League season is upon us

Martial Arts

Indoor soccer

Scottish country dancing meets Tuesday evenings at Kuhn Barn

International folk dancing meets Thursday evenings at Kuhn Barn