Fermilab TodayThursday, April 7, 2005  
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Thursday, April 7
9:30 a.m. Presentations to the Physics Advisory Committee - Curia II
THERE WILL BE NO THEORETICAL PHYSICS SEMINAR THIS WEEK
3:30 p.m. DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4:00 p.m. Accelerator Physics and Technology Seminar - 1 West
Speaker: M. Craddock, TRIUMF
Title: FFAGs in 2005

Friday, April 8
8:30 a.m. Presentations to the Physics Advisory Committee - Curia II
3:30 p.m. DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4:00 p.m. Joint Experimental Theoretical Physics Seminar - 1 West
Speaker: U.-K. Yang, University of Chicago
Title: Top Quark Mass Measurement at CDF

Weather
Weather Becoming Sunny 57º/35º

Extended Forecast

Weather at Fermilab

Security

Secon Level 3

Cafeteria
Thursday, April 7
Tomato Florentine Soup
Grilled Chicken Cordon Bleu Sandwich $4.75
Chimichangas $3.75
Chicken Marsala $3.75
Maryland Crab Salad $4.75
Italian Sausage Calzones $3.25
SW Chicken Salad with Roasted Corn Salsa $4.75

The Wilson Hall Cafe now accepts Visa, Master Card, Discover and American Express at Cash Register #1.

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu
Chez Leon is now open. Call x4512 to make your reservation.

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Robin Staffin Addresses Fermilab Community Today at 11:30 a.m.
Robin Staffin
Robin Staffin
All members of the Fermilab community are encouraged to join Robin Staffin, Associate Director for High Energy Physics for DOE's Office of Science, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. today in Ramsey Auditorium. Staffin will discuss the perspective of the Office of Science on Fermilab's key role in the future of US particle physics. The talk will be broadcast to One West, and on Channel 9 within Fermilab. A link to live streaming video will be available.

Meet PPD's Mike Crisler
(With the Right Job Title)

Public Affairs would like to apologize to Mike Crisler, Kurt Krempetz, and the rest of Particle Physics Division for the wrong job descriptions: Krempetz is head of the Mechanical Department in PPD, and Crisler
Mike Crisler
PPD's Associate head
Mike Crisler explaining
his dark matter detector
in the MINOS gallery.
became Associate Head of PPD in January 2004.

Crisler is a native of Florence, Alabama. His father's career in the chemical industry took the family to Ohio and later West Virginia. Crisler's first job was cleaning and refurbishing rail cars that transported chlorine gas. His undergraduate studies were at Georgia Tech, and he came to Fermilab in 1979 as a graduate student from Ohio State University working towards his Ph. D. on charm production in a neutrino experiment. Since then, he has been a Wilson Fellow and has collaborated on several experiments including KTeV, the CDMS dark matter search, and most recently on a new dark matter detector called the Chicagoland Observatory for Underground Particle Physics.

Safety is a big concern for Crisler, and he takes personal pride in PPD's recent achievement of one million staff-hours without a lost-time injury. "My dad used to come home from work with stories of men hurt on the job, and I remember how proud he was when his chlorine plant first attained one million man-hours without a lost time accident," said Crisler. He lives in Chicago with his wife Ruth. In his spare time, Crisler designs and builds furniture, and he is trying to regain his southern accent. His son, Nick, recently enlisted in the Navy.
-Eric Bland

Accelerator Update
Baby Buffalo
Baby Buffalo
As of yesterday morning, 11 buffalo babies were happily roaming around Fermilab's pasture. (Click on image for larger version.)

In the News
From the DOE Office of Science, April 4, 2005
The Impact of U.S. Visa Policy on the Department of Energy Office of Science Missions
Statement by Dr. Raymond L. Orbach
I welcome this opportunity to discuss the impacts of the visa policies on the science missions of the Department of Energy and its National Laboratories. While many of our issues are similar to those expressed by the National Science Foundation, our emphasis is somewhat different, and I appreciate the opportunity to discuss this with you.

...As noted earlier, many foreign researchers have been integrally involved in the research and development, design, construction, and operation of the world class machines at our laboratories, as well as the design and operation of the experiments. Examples:

1) Most of the muon detector of the DZero experiment at the Tevatron at Fermilab was built in Russia. Russian physicists need to be at Fermilab to maintain and operate the system on behalf of the entire collaboration. There have been several occasions when planned visits were impacted by visa delays. While the collaboration managed the issues, there were real concerns that the researchers would need to turn off the detector during the delays. One of the key physics searches at the Tevatron, that is, the search for single top quark production, was delayed for several months because of delays in the receipt of the visa for a critical hire.
read more

Fermilab Result of the Week
SDSS Measures Size of the Universe; Finds Big Bang Echo in Galaxy Distribution
SDSS
Strength of the galaxy clustering as function of separation (1 Mpc = 3.26 million lightyears). The bump just above 100 Mpc is the clusterig signal. The colored lines represent different models, the magenta line is a model without Dark Energy that does not reproduce the observed bump.
A group of researchers from the SDSS collaboration headed by Daniel Eisenstein and Fermilab alumna Idit Zehavi, both of U of Arizona, has detected remnants of cosmic "ripples" from the early universe by studying the distribution of fairly nearby galaxies. The SDSS measures the redshifts of galaxies, which can be used to create a three-dimensional map of the galaxy distribution. Eisenstein, Zehavi and colleagues analyzed a sample of luminous red galaxies and found that they tend to cluster on scales of roughly 500 million light years.

Such a clustering had been predicted by the Big Bang theory: just after the Big Bang, matter in the Universe is distributed smoothly on large scales, but with some graininess on small scales (like the snowy picture on a TV set not tuned to any channel). Small overdensities of matter attract more matter, causing gas to fall in first, then bounce back out, creating so-called acoustic oscillations. The effect of these oscillations had already been seen in the Cosmic Microwave Background by the WMAP satellite. The clustering of galaxies observed by the SDSS comes from the same oscillations, as the small overdensities grow into larger and larger structures by attracting more and more matter. From the scale of the clustering, the scientists determined the ratio between the size of the Universe now and the size of the Universe just after the Big Bang to an accuracy of 4%, and confirmed that the Universe's expansion is accelerated by the presence of the so-called Dark Energy (something invisible with repulsive gravity). For further information see the SDSS press release and the astro-ph preprint.

SDSS
Members of the Computing Division's Experimental Astrophysics Group, which runs SDSS observations, data analysis and data distribution and is doing science with the SDSS. (Back Row Left to Right) Douglas Tucker, Steve Kent, Hubert Lampeik, Brian Yanny and Eric Neilsen; (Front Row Left to Right)Jen Adelman-McCarthy, Huan Lin and John Hendry. (Click on image for larger version.)

Result of the Week Archive

Correction
Yesterday's article "Escorts in Fermilab Property Protection Areas" incorrectly described the two situations in which obtaining an ID badge is not possible or not practical. The two situations are:
  1. A short term critical visitor to a PPA who does not at the time have the required documentation needed to obtain an ID badge (such as, if a non-us citizen does not have with them their passport and visa). This could, for example, be the case when an outside repair person is called in to work on equipment in a PPA.
  2. An outside group is given a Fermilab tour which includes a PPA.
A complete copy of the article is available on the Users' Office Web site.
Accelerator Update
April 4 - April 6
- During this 48 hour period Operations established two stores that provided the experiments with approximately 33 hours and 2 minutes of luminosity
- LRF5 PA tube replaced
- Booster chopper "on" tube replaced
- TeV quenched during antiproton transfer

Read the Current Accelerator Update
Read the Early Bird Report
View the Tevatron Luminosity Charts

Announcements
Fermi Singers
The Fermi Singers are back! Mark your calendars for April 22 at noon in the Auditorium. The group will present a Spring Concert for your listening pleasure. Snacks will be available for you following the performance!

Travel Information Rack
The Recreation Office is collecting travel brochures for Illinois and other states in the U.S. These can be found in the Travel rack in the Recreation Office. The brochures may be borrowed, but please return them when you are done so that others can use them.

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