Fermilab TodayThursday, May 12, 2005  
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Thursday, May 12
2:30 p.m. Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: K. Benson, Emory University
Title: Constructing Braneworld Field Theories
3:30 p.m. DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4:00 p.m. Accelerator Physics and Technology Seminar - 1 West
Speaker: J. Branlard, Illinois Institute of Technology
Title: Small-Signal Analysis of High Frequency Semiconductor Devices

Friday, May 13
3:30pm DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4:00pm Joint Experimental Theoretical Physics Seminar 1 West
Speaker: G. Veramendi, University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign
Title: High Mass Phenomena at CDF
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John Carson, Magnate Of Magnets, Retires May 12
John Carson
John Carson stands in front of a skin welding press. (Click on image for larger version.)
Technical Division's John Carson has worked at Fermilab for nearly 32 years and will retire this Thursday, May 12. Carson, along with others in the division, is responsible for every dipole and quadrupole magnet in the Tevatron and the magnets in the Main Injector. He also helped to build the prototype magnets and tooling equipment for the now-defunct Superconducting Supercollider and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Asked to pose for a picture next to a machine he helped to build or design at TD, Carson responded: "Well, I guess I could stand next to just about anything here." Carson's favorite part of working at the lab was the mental effort, "the challenge of doing things that had never been done before." He plans to retire to a place on Loon Lake north of Fermilab, where he will fish, boat, garden, and spend time with his five grandchildren. A native of Chicago, Carson and his wife Maria have been married nearly 40 years, and have three children.

Carson will miss the people at the lab the most. "The people are such a diverse cross-section of technicians and engineers, cultures and experiences," he said. "Coming to Fermilab was the best thing I could have done." But Carson shouldn't get too comfortable, joked the head of TD, Bob Kephart. "We will be calling him at some point with magnet questions," said Kephart.
--Eric Bland

From Purchase Requisitions to Hiring Employees, Joy Thomas Retires After 36 Years
Joy Thomas
Joy Thomas (right) accepts her 35 year service award from Director Mike Witherell in December 2004. (Click on image for larger version.)
When Lab Services' Joy Thomas started working at the lab as a clerk typist in 1969, she had the rare opportunity of witnessing the lab under construction. "We would walk over to Wilson Hall during our lunch break to see the progress on the construction," Thomas said. "Eventually we could see the building from the village." And now after 36 years of watching the lab grow and evolve, Thomas retires tomorrow on May 13.

Thomas spent her first ten and a half years at Fermilab working in Purchasing (now Procurement). "We typed all of the purchase requisitions for the lab, and there were many to do because they were buying everything for the lab at the time," she said. Thomas recalls typing an average of 100 to 150 purchase requisitions a day on a large key punch machine. "The machines were very noisy, so they put us in our own house in the Village," she said. "We sat in a big living room typing away, so I always thought of Fermilab as my home away from home because it was very cozy."

For the past twelve years, Thomas has been a Recruiter in the Employment Office. From initially typing purchase requisitions to more recently hiring employees, Thomas really helped build the lab. "Joy has touched the lives of everyone at the lab," said Employment Manager Tom McMahon. "It is going to be hard to come into the department and not have her smiling face around. She will be greatly missed."

Thomas' first goal for retirement is to not be on a schedule. "I just want to get up and do whatever I want to do on that day," she said. With her husband still working and her only daughter recently married, Thomas is looking forward to having time to herself before grandkids eventually come along. She also hopes to travel and visit her two sisters who are out of state. But one of the first things that Thomas plans to celebrate with her husband is their 35th anniversary this June. "We have a lot of milestones this year," she said.
Elizabeth Clements

Bob Huite's Plans Include Teaching and Volunteering
After 18 years of work at Fermilab, Business Services' Bob Huite will retire tomorrow, May 13. Huite had two stints at Fermilab, one in 1984-1985, after which he worked at the Scott Air Force Base in southern Illinois, and then again from 1988 until his retirement. As a Senior Procurement Administrator, Huite worked on several major purchasing projects, such as the NuMI Tunnels and Halls/Outfitting Contract, the Utility Incentive Program/Energy Saving Performance Contract, and the Cafeteria Food Service Contract, and helped to set up the Fermilab credit
Bob Huite
Bob Huite
card program. Huite, the self-proclaimed "Jack-of-all-procurement areas," took advantage of Fermilab's Tuition program and obtained his BA from Park University and his MBA from Aurora University.

His favorite aspect of the job was the variety. "I enjoyed working with a wide range of people, from physicists to engineers, staff to visitors, and the DOE office" said Huite. "You will always miss the pleasant environment and you miss the people." Huite will take some time off before moving back to southern Illinois with his wife, Judy, who retired on May 2. Once he is settled there, Huite plans to teach procurement/business classes at one of the local community colleges, volunteer with the Scott Air Force Base Retiree Activities Office and veterans organizations, and catch up with his favorite authors: John Grisham, Dan Brown, Patrick Davis and many others. The Huites will soon travel to Svendborg, Denmark, where they were married almost 25 years ago.
--Eric Bland

In the News
From The Washington Post, May 8, 2005
Einstein for Dummies
When we want to indicate that someone is a little dimwitted, we say, "He's no Einstein." But there were some moments when even Albert Einstein was no Einstein. He struggled for the last 30 years of his life searching for a Theory of Everything and barking up a lot of strange trees. Any day now someone will probably publish a book with a title like Einstein: The Dumb Years.
read more

Fermilab Result of the Week
Beam Me Up, Scotty!
DZero
Result of the DZero search for Randall-Sundrum gravitons. Shown with blue markers are the data corresponding to the dielectrons or diphotons (left) or dimuons (right) produced in proton-antiproton collisions. Shown with a red line is the predicted spectrum, which agrees well with the observation. Shown with a black line is a simulated peak due to an excited graviton. The apparent lack of an excess in the data yeilds stringent limits on Randall-Sundrum model parameters. (Click on image for larger version.)
In the past few years physicists have been striving to find extra dimensions in space - the idea originated in the 1920s, but more recently has been popularized by string theorists. In the past physicists looked for extra dimensions that had a similar geometry, or metric, to the ones we are used to. In our world, if one takes a meter stick, its length remains the same, no matter where in space it is placed. However, in a recent paper (hep-ex/0505018, submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett.) the DZero Collaboration has broken new ground and searched for an extra dimension that comes straight from the Star Trek! This spatial dimension has a special "warp factor," which results in
DZero
M.C. Escher's "Circle
Limit IV: Heaven and
Hell" drawing that
illustrates the geometry
of anti-deSitter space.
The curvature of space
changes, as one moves
outside the circle along
its radius. Thus angels
and demons, which all
would have the same
size in our, Eucledian,
space, become smaller
and smaller in the
anti-deSitter space.
(Image Courtesy M.C.
Escher Foundation
the length of a meter stick depending on where it is in space. Such geometry is known as "anti-deSitter space", after Dutch astronomer Willem deSitter, who has first proposed it in his work on general relativity. Due to this warp, the relative strengths of interactions depend on where in space they are "generated."

A few years ago, Lisa Randall and Raman Sundrum proposed solving the infamous hierarchy of forces problem (why is gravity so much weaker than other forces?) via the warping of anti-deSitter space. One of the predictions of their model is the production of excited states of the gravitational quantum - the graviton - in particle collisions at high energies. DZero physicists have searched for decays of excited gravitons into pairs of electrons, muons, or photons. So far, no evidence for graviton production has been found and the first experimental limits have been set on the Randall-Sundrum model parameters. However, this is just the beginning. DZero hopes to increase the amount of data by a factor of 10 in the near future, thus enhancing the sensitivity of the search significantly.

DZero
Greeting you from warped space: (Top row, left to right) Ryan Hooper, Greg Landsberg (Brown University), and Emmanuelle Perez (Saclay) are the primary authors of the paper. (Bottom row, left to right) Yurii Maravin (Fermilab) and Jan Stark (Grenoble) contributed to the electron and photon identification, as well as calorimeter calibration. (Click on image for larger version.)

Result of the Week Archive

Accelerator Update
May 9 - May 11
- During this 48 hour period Operations established two stores that combined with an existing store provided the experiments with approximately 42 hours and 9 minutes of luminosity
- Booster trips due to EAPS
- Pbar and NuMI suffer trips

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

Milestones
Retired
- Joseph Lazarra, AD, 5/12/05

Announcements
Annual NALWO Spring Tea
The annual NALWO spring tea will be held at the Director's house on May 12 from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. All women associated with Fermilab are invited. more information

Fermilab Arts Series Announces 2005 Summer Season
This summer, the Fermilab Arts Series takes a world tour as they present music and dance from Mexico, Cuba, India, Ireland, Ukraine and back home again to the U.S. The season begins with the folkloric sounds of Mexico and Cuba as performed by Cascada de Flores, a folkloric quartet that brings beautiful vocals, guitar, and a plethora of musical instruments, some familiar and some new. Singer/songwriter Tom Paxton has been a fixture of the folk music scene since the 60's in Greenwich Village. He will be joined by the witty singer/songwriter, Cheryl Wheeler. Tickets are on sale for these and all the other 2005/2006 Arts Series events by calling 630/840.ARTS weekdays from 9 - 4, closed for lunch.
more information

Retirement Party for Rap and Joanie
Join us at the Users' Center on Friday, May 20 at 5:00 p.m. Please bring a dish to pass! Call Lisa Carrigan, X3185, P1143, or lcarrigan@fnal.gov with any questions. Rap's last full day at the lab will be Thursday, May 12.
more information

Summer Coed "Fun" Volleyball League The new league representative for the summer volleyball league is Jenny Thorson. League play will begin May 24 at the sand volleyball courts located behind the swimming pool in the village. There will be a league meeting for captains or team representatives on May 16 at Noon in the Atrium. New league rules will be discussed so it is important that someone from your team attend. Games are played on Monday and Tuesday evenings. If you are interested in getting on a team or you have a team that would like to participate contact Jenny Thorson at jthorson@fnal.gov or x 3470. Rosters for teams must be turned in to Jenny by May 20.

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