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Wednesday, Oct. 29
- Breakfast: breakfast casserole
- Breakfast: ham, egg and cheese English muffin
- Barbecue beef brisket sub
- Baked penne with chicken and mushrooms
- Italian lasagna
- Turkey bacon panino
- Mongolian beef or chicken stir fry
- Chunky broccoli cheese soup
- Texas-style chili
- Assorted calzones
Wilson Hall Cafe menu |
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Wednesday, Oct. 29
Lunch
- Rouladen
- Spaetzle
- Dill baby carrots
- Baked apples
Friday, Oct. 31
Dinner
Closed
Chez Leon menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.
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2014-15 Fermilab Student and Postdoc Association works to improve laboratory life
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| The 2014-15 FSPA officers are, top row, from left: Mateus Carneiro, Pengfei Ding, Alex Drlica-Wagner. Bottom row, from left: Rob Fine, Pavanpoot Pandey. |
Fermilab is a home away from home for many of its scientist users, who often come from abroad for an extended stay at the lab to conduct their research. The Fermilab Student and Postdoc Association works to create a comfortable research home for these users.
FSPA's new officers, elected earlier this month for one year, plan to pick up on accomplishments of last year's representatives.
"We want to improve the quality of life here," said incoming FSPA officer Pengfei Ding, a Fermilab postdoc on the NOvA experiment. "We plan to continue FSPA's excellent work."
Ding is one of five newly elected officers. The others are Mateus Carneiro, Alex Drlica-Wagner, Rob Fine and Pavanpoot Pandy.
The FSPA officers understand first-hand what it's like to live at the laboratory and far from home. Three of the five hail from outside the United States. Four of them reside in the Fermilab Village, where, with the assistance of one of last year's officers, residents were recently hooked up with better Internet connectivity.
This year, the officers said, they hope to provide Village residents with faucet water purifiers to make it more convenient to filter drinking water. They also plan to host more sports events for social interaction and as a way to release energy.
"Many families live in the Village, and we represent them, too," said Carneiro, who works on MINERvA as a graduate student at the Brazilian Center for Physics Research (CBPF). "We want to bring people together, not just to work, but to talk."
In the spring, the officers will accompany the Fermilab Users Executive Committee to Washington, D.C., to advocate for particle physics. And in the summer they will host the annual New Perspectives conference, which takes place during the Fermilab Users Meeting.
Meet the new group at this year's Halloween party, which takes place at Kuhn Barn on Friday, Oct. 31, at 6:30 p.m. All are invited. Costumes are encouraged, and snacks and beverages will be provided.
You can subscribe to the FSPA email list or follow them on Facebook.
"I'm excited to support the Fermilab student and postdoc community this year through organizing traditional events, as well as to help create new traditions," said Fine, graduate student at the University of Rochester on MINERvA. "I'm grateful for the service of our outgoing FSPA leadership, and I look forward to making them proud."
—Leah Hesla
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| Don your spookiest outfit, grab a friend and go get some candy at this year's Halloween party at Kuhn Barn. The party starts at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 31. Costumes are encouraged. |
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COO meeting tomorrow
An all-Office-of-the-COO meeting will be held Thursday, Oct. 30, from 9:30-10:30
a.m. in Ramsey Auditorium.
If you work in one of the following
departments, please plan to attend: WDRS, Office of Campus Strategy and
Readiness, FESS, Office of Communication, Office of Integrated Planning and
Performance Management, Legal Office, Office of Partnerships and Technology
Transfer, and Illinois Accelerator Research Center.
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Decades-old scientific paper may hold clues to dark matter
From Science, Oct. 24, 2014
Here's one reason libraries hang on to old science journals: A paper from an experiment conducted 32 years ago may shed light on the nature of dark matter, the mysterious stuff whose gravity appears to keep the galaxies from flying apart. The old data put a crimp in the newfangled concept of a "dark photon" and suggest that a simple bargain-basement experiment could put the idea to the test.
Read more
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Evidence builds for dark matter explosions at the Milky Way's core
From Scientific American, Oct. 28, 2014
So far, dark matter has evaded scientists' best attempts to find it. Astronomers know the invisible stuff dominates our universe and tugs gravitationally on regular matter, but they do not know what it is made of. Since 2009, however, suspicious gamma-ray light radiating from the Milky Way's core — where dark matter is thought to be especially dense — has intrigued researchers. Some wonder if the rays might have been emitted in explosions caused by colliding particles of dark matter. Now a new gamma-ray signal, in combination with those already detected, offers further evidence that this might be the case.
Read more
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All is one
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Sergei Nagaitsev
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Sergei Nagaitsev, head of the Accelerator Division, wrote this column.
"All is number," Pythagoras declared, making himself likely the first person to say that the physical world could be described by the language of mathematics. We certainly have many numbers that describe our world at Fermilab: budgets, hours of operation, beam power, protons on target. The numbers describe nearly everything, but not quite.
This week we are finishing up the six-week accelerator complex shutdown, on schedule. The shutdown is an example of a remarkable coming-together of the entire laboratory. All divisions, sections, centers and offices pitched in: scientists, engineers, technicians, welders, drivers, machinists, procurement specialists, alignment specialists, electricians, riggers … the list could go on and on. On behalf of the entire Accelerator Division I would like to say "Thank you, Fermilab!" for helping us accomplish our plan, which can be described by numbers, of course:
- 253 jobs were approved for the shutdown.
- Two individuals from ESH&Q worked on accelerator upgrades, as did four from the Technical Division, nine from the Particle Physics Division, dozens from FESS, and of course all of the hundreds of personnel in the Accelerator Division.
- About 10 miles of cable were pulled in the course of upgrading the complex.
- Nearly 1,000 feet of beamlines were modified.
- At least five major power outages were required to upgrade and maintain the electrical grid that feeds power to the accelerator complex. More than 20 days of substation maintenance and 10 one-day outages were performed for the maintenance of transformers and switches.
The shutdown work has touched every Fermilab accelerator and beamline. For example, we installed a new beam-pulse-forming lens and upgraded the vacuum systems in the Linac. We replaced one radio-frequency cavity and two large transformers in the Booster. We installed a radio-frequency cavity in the Recycler for NOvA and retrofitted the Recycler's vacuum systems. And we performed many upgrades and maintenance activities in the NuMI target hall, as well as in the Booster neutrino beamline.
Our work is far from over. As we start up operations once more, we must check all the machines and their instrumentation to make sure they work as expected. We must also test our power substations to ensure that we can properly control the delivery of electrical power to the accelerator complex from a single substation next year. And we will conduct the usual debrief to collect the list of unfinished business items from the shutdown, which, along with goals motivated by the lab's cutting-edge neutrino and muon programs, we plan to address in the accelerator shutdown of summer 2015.
So, Pythagoras was correct: "All is number," and this number is one, as in One Lab.
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Out on a limb
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| A great blue heron and a young double-crested cormorant enjoy the evening on Bulrush Pond. Photo: Bridget Scerini, TD |
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ESH&Q weekly report, Oct. 28
This week's safety report, compiled by the Fermilab ESH&Q Section, contains one incident.
Molten material from a weld landed on some foam board insulation, causing a fire that burned through about three square feet of foam board. There were no injuries.
See the full report.
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Mostly cloudy
