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Zumba Toning and Zumba Fitness registration due soon

Retirement gathering for Barry Barnes - RSVP by today

Philosophy Society: "Value of Fundamental Science" open discussion - April 23

MS Excel 2013: Introduction offered two half days - April 28 and 30

2014 FSA deadline is April 30

Managing Conflict (a.m. only) on June 10

Interaction Management course (three days) scheduled for June 28, July 9, July 28

Performance review training for managers and supervisors - Aug. 4, 5, 6

Mac OS X security patches enabled

Fermilab Board Game Guild

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Players needed for 2015 Fermilab co-ed softball league

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Scottish country dancing Tuesday evenings at Kuhn Village Barn

International folk dancing Thursday evenings at Kuhn Barn

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Press Release

ICARUS neutrino experiment to move to Fermilab

The Italian experiment — the world's largest of its type — will become an integral part of the future of neutrino research in the United States. Photo: INFN

A group of scientists led by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia will transport the world's largest liquid-argon neutrino detector across the Atlantic Ocean to its new home at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

The 760-ton, 65-foot-long detector took data for the ICARUS experiment at the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics' (INFN) Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy from 2010 to 2014, using a beam of neutrinos sent through the Earth from CERN. The detector is now being refurbished at CERN, where it is the first beneficiary of a new test facility for neutrino detectors.

When it arrives at Fermilab, the detector will become part of an on-site suite of three experiments dedicated to studying neutrinos, ghostly particles that are all around us but have given up few of their secrets.

All three detectors will be filled with liquid argon, which enables the use of state-of-the-art time projection technology, drawing charged particles created in neutrino interactions toward planes of fine wires that can capture a 3-D image of the tracks those particles leave. Each detector will contribute different yet complementary results to the hunt for a fourth type of neutrino.

"The liquid-argon time projection chamber is a new and very promising technology that we originally developed in the ICARUS collaboration from an initial table-top experiment all the way to a large neutrino detector," Rubbia said. "It is expected that it will become the leading technology for large liquid-argon detectors, with its ability to record ionizing tracks with millimeter precision."

Fermilab operates two powerful neutrino beams and is in the process of developing a third, making it the perfect place for the ICARUS detector to continue its scientific exploration. Scientists plan to transport the detector to the United States in 2017.

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Photo of the Day

Catching a wave

Water jets are discharged into the Main Injector cooling pond. Photo: Steve Krave, TD
In the News

Robert Wilson: Fermilab's master physicist, sculptor and engineer

From American Scientist, May-June 2015

To discover and study some of the smallest particles in the universe, physicists need some of the largest machines in the world. These have gone by various names — accelerator, cyclotron, synchrotron, collider, not to mention atom smasher — and they are typically designed and developed by large teams of scientists and engineers. Presently, the largest machine in the world is the Large Hadron Collider built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), whose 17-mile-long circular tunnel straddles the border between France and Switzerland. Since beginning full operation in 2009, the LHC has produced data said to confirm the existence of the long-sought-for elementary particle known as the Higgs boson.

Before the LHC came online, the largest particle accelerator was located about 40 miles due west of Chicago, just north of Aurora and Naperville, on a 6,800-acre irregular-polygon-shaped site of what had been sprawling Illinois farmland that spills over the line separating DuPage from Kane County. Founded in 1967 as the US National Accelerator Laboratory, in 1974 the site was renamed in honor of Enrico Fermi. Having a proper name affixed to its official designation allowed the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory to be referred to simply as Fermilab. On a recent visit I was fortunate to have a host and guides who were steeped in its history and culture, about which I was happy to learn.

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From the Neutrino Division

A collaborative platform for neutrino science

Regina Rameika

Regina Rameika, head of the Neutrino Division, wrote this column.

As the new Neutrino Division continues to define and refine its mission, we work to ensure that the activities across the laboratory related to the neutrino program are coherent and relevant to the laboratory's strategic goals. To this end we have developed the Fermilab Neutrino Platform, which spans across laboratory organizations. Today I would like to highlight just a few of the areas where our colleagues outside of the Neutrino Division are playing key roles in the neutrino program.

A key aspect of the Neutrino Platform is to deliver neutrino beams to neutrino detectors. Currently the Accelerator Division is delivering record-setting beam power to the NuMI beam, which provides neutrinos to the NOvA, MINERvA and MINOS+ experiments. In the near future, beam will be delivered to the Booster Neutrino Beamline for the MicroBooNE experiment. The Neutrino Beam Group of the Neutrino Division works closely with the External Beams and High Power Targetry groups within the Accelerator Division. The design of the LBNF beamline for DUNE and improvements to the Booster Neutrino Beamline are currently high-priority items for these groups. The targetry group has also embarked on a dedicated R&D effort to more fully understand how high-energy beams affect potential target materials.

Another important aspect of the Neutrino Platform is the support of test beams for detector development and calibration. The Particle Physics Division manages the Fermilab Test Beam Facility, where LArIAT, a liquid-argon detector, will use one of the facility's test beams to characterize the response to charged particles in the energy range relevant to current and upcoming neutrino experiments. The MINERvA collaboration is using a different test beam to characterize their detector performance with beams being collected in medium-energy mode.

Finally, software activities of the Neutrino Platform fall largely within the Scientific Computing Division. The artdaq framework, used for data acquisition in the current generation of neutrino experiments, is a key element of the support provided by scientific computing. Fermilab has also invested strongly in the GENIE neutrino generator and intends to extend that support in the future. And LArSoft, based on the artdaq framework, is designed for use in all analysis of data from liquid-argon-based neutrino experiments.

These activities — just a few of many — demonstrate the wide range of strong support for neutrino science at Fermilab.

Safety Update

ESH&Q weekly report, April 21

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

An employee is showing a standard threshold shift in his left ear. An evaluation of the employee's workplace noise exposure history is in progress.

See the full report.

In the News

Two Argonne teams each win $75,000 in new Lab-Corps pitch competition

From Chicago Tribune, April 20, 2015

A device designed to reduce power demand during peak periods and a system that uses sound waves to test buildings for energy-robbing air leaks came away as winners of a new U.S. Department of Energy business pitch contest at Argonne National Laboratory.

The Lab-Corps competition aims to nudge national lab-generated research into the commercial realm, either through tech-driven startups or licensing technology to the private sector, said David McCallum, Argonne's business capture manager. It's modeled after the National Science Foundation's I-Corps program, which does the same for university-generated researchers, he said.

Similar pitch contests are taking place at four other national laboratories.

Six finalists competed Friday for the top two spots at Argonne. The program, managed in partnership with the Chicago Innovation Exchange at the University of Chicago, includes researchers from Argonne and from Fermilab in Batavia.

Teams that developed the Frequency Sensing Charge Controller and the SonicLQ each won a $75,000 research grant and entry into an eight-week national Lab-Corps program that will walk them and winners from other national labs through the business-building process.

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