Fermilab Today Friday, June 8, 2007
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Fri., June 8
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4:00 p.m.
Joint Experimental-Theoretical Physics Seminar - One West
Speaker: B. Kilminster, Ohio State University
Title: Cornering the Higgs with Nets: A CDF Search for SM Higgs Produced with a Z Boson

Sat., June 9
8:00 p.m.
Fermilab Arts Series: Eric Bibb - Auditorium
Tickets $17/$9

Mon., June 11
THERE WILL BE NO PARTICLE ASTROPHYSICS SEMINAR THIS WEEK
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4:00 p.m.
All Experimenters' Meeting - Curia II

Click here for NALCAL,
a weekly calendar with links to additional information.

Weather

WeatherPartly Cloudy 75°/50°

Extended Forecast
Weather at Fermilab

Current Security Status

Secon Level 3

Wilson Hall Cafe
Friday, June 8
- Cream of wild mushroom
- Blackened fish filet sandwich
- Southern fried chicken
- Tuna casserole
- Eggplant parmesan panini
- Assorted pizza slices
- Assorted sub sandwich

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, June 13
Lunch
- Sesame chicken salad
- Peanut noodle
- Lime tart

Thursday, June 14
Dinner
- Shrimp & chorizo kebobs
- Pork tenderloin w/ mexican chipotle marinade
- Sweet potatoes & poblano peppers
- Rum raisin soufflé

Chez Leon Menu
Call x4598 to make your reservation.

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Info

Fermilab Today is online at:
www.fnal.gov/today/

Send comments and suggestions to:
today@fnal.gov

Feature

Strong Fermilab future essential for US particle physics


Robin Staffin

“We have the responsibility to assure that the US particle physics program stays healthy,” DOE’s Robin Staffin, Associate Director for High Energy Physics told Fermilab users, even with a stretched-out schedule for the proposed International Linear Collider. A strong future for Fermilab is essential for a healthy program—and for a future U.S. bid to build the ILC, Staffin told the audience at the Users’ Annual Meeting at Fermilab on Wednesday, June 6.

Staffin emphasized that patience is crucial in ILC planning, particularly until the nature of discoveries at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider become clear. Meanwhile, “there are other opportunities for great science and discovery potential,” he said, citing dark matter and dark energy, neutrinos, B decays, cosmic rays, proton decay and other precision measurements.

“The Tevatron takes us to the door of the Terascale,” Staffin said. “The LHC opens the door wide and the multibillion-dollar question is, ‘What will we see?’ There is a strong sense that we are on the edge of something big. The next step ahead is less clear. How do we go through the looking glass where we know we will see the universe in a different way?”

Read More

-- Kurt Riesselmann

Feature

Policymakers share view on LHC, ILC and budgets

Tony Chan

Two weeks ago, Tony Chan visited CERN and toured the Large Hadron Collider. Yesterday, at the annual Users' meeting, he compared the LHC to sending the first man to the moon. "You are doing this for mankind," said Chan, who is the Assistant Director for Mathematics and Physical Sciences for the National Science Foundation. "Many of the scientists that I met at CERN are U.S. scientists.

"NSF is and expects to remain a strong supporter of the Fermilab experimental program and its broader impacts," Chan said. "We have a history of successful partnerships with the DOE Office of High Energy Physics." As an example, he cited the LHC. NSF and DOE contributed a total of $531 million dollar toward the construction of the LHC and its detectors. Together with DOE's Robin Staffin, Chan represents the U.S. in the international Funding Agencies for a Large Collider organization.

Speaking about the American Competitiveness Initiative, Chan pointed out the MPS has the largest budget within NSF and is "ACI-central." In FY08, MPS is to receive an 8.9% budget increase over FY07. While NSF-funded particle physics programs will not necessarily see the same increase, "it is the rising tide that helps everything."

Kathryn Beers, of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, spoke about the need for interagency cooperation among DOE, NSF and NASA, as well as for international planning "as we see for the ILC and ITER." But she asked, "Where is the business model for this? Where are the good examples? Where are the case studies.to avoid the pitfalls? Our office wants to be part of that discussion."

Read More

-- Kurt Riesselmann

ILC Newsline

Director's Corner: LCWS 2007 & ILC 2007


A solemn welcome by one of the zoo's residents to the workshop dinner.

Hamburg put on its best face to greet the more than 600 registered guests who arrived at DESY last week for the big annual ILC get-together; blue skies and sunny warm weather succeeded the drizzle and grey of the pre-meetings. It was a workshop that sat on the cusp between two eras, that of the Reference Design and the Engineering Design. A similar phase change is also occurring in the detector community, as it comes to terms with how to coalesce to form two collaborations. This imminent change of pace gave the meeting a feeling of excitement and anticipation which has palpably displaced the sense of achievement, and exhaustion, evident at our last major meeting in Beijing.

Read more

-- Brian Foster

Feature

SciBooNE taking data ahead of schedule


Event display of SciBooNE's first neutrino event on May 30. The display shows the PMT hits from the top view of a neutrino-induced muon track in the SciBar detector (left, green), energy deposited in the Electron Catcher (center) and the Muon Range Detector (right, blue).

When all of the pieces of the SciBooNE experiment moved into their new home last month, no one anticipated that the experiment would be up, running and taking data by mid-June. Project head Rick Tesarek had estimated that setting the experiment up would take until the end of June, but with a lot of dedication and extra hours on the part of the SciBooNE team, the experiment was able to start commissioning yesterday.

“No one thought we’d be able to start taking data so quickly,” said Tesarek. “We’ve got very aggressive timelines, but our collaborators dedicated extra time and everything came together better than expected.”

SciBooNE recorded its first neutrino events near midnight on May 30, which the SciBooNE team was then able to present to the NuInt07 conference at Fermilab later that same day. However, not enough pieces had been in place for the experiment to begin running unattended until yesterday.

SciBooNE Run Coordinator Masashi Yokoyama, who worked with the Scibar detector when it was at KEK four years ago, said that seeing the detector start up a second time around is just as exciting.

“Our hope is to take some antineutrino data before the shutdown,” said Yokoyama, who plans to have the experiment operating stably before the end of this month.

And even though there are always bugs when an experiment is first begun, Tesarek said that they already know what some of those are going to be, and that they have solutions for them. “The next step is to find out how well things are actually working,” he said.

For more information on the SciBooNE experiment, click here.

-- Rhianna Wisniewski

In the News

From NewScientistTech.com,
June 5, 2007:

World's biggest particle collider is delayed again

Particle physicists seeking to uncover the secrets of the universe will have a little longer to wait after the CERN laboratory in Switzerland confirmed a delay in the start-up of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - the world's most powerful particle accelerator.

The LHC is a 27-kilometre circular tunnel 100 metres below the French-Swiss border near Geneva, in which protons will collide at close to the speed of light. CERN says it will now start operations next spring, not in November as originally planned.

"The start-up at full level was always scheduled for spring 2008, but we had planned to test the machine for two weeks before Christmas, which will not now take place," said James Gillies, a spokesman for the laboratory.

Read More

Announcements

Men's locker room closed next week
The men's locker room will be closed June 11 through June 15 for ceramic tile repair.

Bob Betz memorial symposium
A memorial celebration of the life of Dr. Robert F. Betz and his lasting influence on Fermilab and the region will take place on Saturday, July 7, at 2 p.m. in Ramsey Auditorium. The event will highlight the great contributions that Bob made to prairie conservation and restoration in Illinois, in particular his work at Fermilab and its National Environmental Research Park. Please RSVP to x5422. Click here for more information.

DASTOW 2007
On June 21, Fermilab will hold this year's Daughters and Sons to Work day (DASTOW). Please check the DASTOW Web site for more information.

Employment Department orientation video volunteers
The Employment department is seeking 15 volunteers to speak in our upcoming new hire orientation video. The video segment involves voice recordings of excerpts from an employee opinion survey, "why I enjoy working at Fermilab." Please contact Heather Sidman at x3326 or by email if you would like to participate.

Tickets for Fermi Days at Great America on sale June 11
The Recreation Office has designated July 14, 15, 28 & 29 as Fermi Days at Great America. Purchase tickets in the Recreation Office for only $27.25 and enjoy ANY ONE of these days at Great America with your friends and family. Ticket price includes unlimited rides and shows for a one-day event and admission to Hurricane Harbor. Children three (3) and under are admitted free and do not require a ticket. You are eligible to purchase a next day ticket at the Box Office. There is no limit on the amount of tickets you can purchase, and these are not available for resale.

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New classified ads have been posted on Fermilab Today.

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