Fermilab Today Wednesday, August 8, 2007
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Wed., Aug. 8
THERE WILL BE NO FERMILAB ILC R&D MEETING THIS WEEK
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
THERE WILL BE NO FERMILAB COLLOQUIUM THIS WEEK

Thurs., Aug. 9
1:00 p.m.
Research Techniques Seminar - WH-8NW, Hornet's Nest
Speaker: A. Penzo, INFN Trieste
Title: Compensating Hadron Calorimetry
THERE WILL BE NO ILC ALCPG PHYSICS AND DETECTOR R&D SEMINAR THIS WEEK
2:30 p.m.
Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: J. Zupan, Institut Jozef Stefan
Title: Probing Minimal Flavor Violation at the LHC
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR TODAY

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

Weather

WeatherPartly Cloudy 83°/65°

Extended Forecast
Weather at Fermilab

Current Security Status

Secon Level 3

Wilson Hall Cafe
Wednesday, Aug. 8
-Portabello harvest grain
-Santa Fe chicken quesadilla
-Terkiyaki chicken w/vegetables
-Beef stroganoff
-Triple decker club
-Assorted sliced pizza
-Pesto shrimp linguini w/leeks & tomatoes

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, August 8
Lunch
- Salmon w/Shallot Sauce
- Pine Nut & Lemon Orzo
- Chocolate Cake w/Strawberries & Ice Cream

Thursday, August 9
Dinner
Closed

Chez Leon Menu
Call x4598 to make your reservation.

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Feature

Congressional visit to Fermilab focuses on the future

Pier Oddone gives Rep. Dan Lipinski a tour of Fermilab during the congressman's visit Tuesday.

Fermilab Director Pier Oddone gave Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL) an overview of the labratory during the congressman's visit yesterday afternoon. Lipinski, who is vice chairman of the Congressional Committee on Science and Technology, visited Fermilab as part of an effort to understand the future of particle physics in the U.S.

"I am interested in funding for Fermilab and basic and applied science research," Lipinski said. "My visit helps me to get a better idea of Fermilab's future, including plans for the ILC, which is critical for the future of particle physics at Fermilab and in the U.S."

Oddone and Lipinski also joined CDF co-spokesperson Rob Roser for a tour of the CDF facility later that afternoon.

Photo of the Day

Labwide party photos

On Friday, August 3, nearly 1,000 people turned out for this year's labwide party, a celebration of the lab's accomplishments during the past year. A selection of photos from that event is now available online.

Feature

Ultimate Frisbee match fosters friendly competition, friendships

Members of both Fermilab and Argonne's Ultimate Frisbee clubs participate in an annual match.

Usually when Fermilab and Argonne physicists get together, it's to collaborate on experiments. But one recent meeting had nothing to do with particle physics. Instead, representatives from each lab met at an athletic field in Lisle to face off in their sixth annual Ultimate Frisbee match.

Although they lost to Fermilab last year, Argonne's team reclaimed their title with a score of 15-10. The friendly rivalry between the two teams has helped to generate interest in the match and the sport - this year's event drew the most players and spectators in the match's history. "The match is really turning into a big event," said Rich Wellner, who worked as a programming contractor for both Fermilab and Argonne and organized the first match in 2002.

The Argonne Ultimate Frisbee club, begun in the early 90s, has about 20 participants who practice three times a week during lunch. The Fermilab Ultimate Frisbee club, formed in 2002, has about the same number of people, although participation in both clubs increases during the summer. Fermilab's club practices twice a week and is an after-work haven for many summer students. Yichen Li, a graduate student from SUNY at Buffalo working on DZero and CMS, enjoys playing Ultimate Frisbee at Fermilab because it has helped him connect with people from other areas of the lab and provides a good opportunity to talk with others about their work. "The interaction gives you a better feel for the variety of things going on at Fermilab," said Kristen Vaccaro, a Fermilab undergraduate intern from Reed College working on the COUPP experiment.

Stuart Martin, Argonne senior software engineer and president of the lab's Ultimate Frisbee club, believes the annual match brings lab employees, users and students together on a social level and helps to strengthen the relationship between the two facilities. "A lot of us are collaborators at the respective labs, so the game is a chance for us to come together for something other than physics," Martin said. "Both teams want to win, but that's not the priority - it's joining together with our colleagues to play a game that we love."

-- Amelia Williamson

From the Accelerator Division

Teamwork

Today's column is written by Paul Czarapata, deputy head of the Accelerator Division.

Paul Czarapata

My dad was born and raised on a farm in northeastern Wisconsin. (Natives claim there is a football team in a nearby town called Green Bay.) In a recent phone conversation he told me of one of his annual tasks on the farm, picking rocks in the field. It seems the winter would somehow "grow" rocks throughout the fields and, as everyone knows, rocks and plows are not good partners!

Springtime was also the break-in period for his two plow horses, Daisy and Maisy. Over the long winter they didn't get much work. So rock picking time prepared them for the long spring and summer of work ahead. My dad had a regular routine for taking care of the two horses, and their special care involved treats of oats and molasses. He needed those horses, after all, to be successful with the farming.

The thing that struck me the most was him describing how the two horses had to work together in unison, hooves churning up the ground while pulling a sled full of rocks. He told of how neither one could slack off because it took both of them working together, as a team, to get that load of rocks out of the field.

We are now in another scheduled accelerator shutdown. This is our season of preparation for the coming year, preparing for running the accelerator complex better than ever before. It takes each and every member of the entire laboratory, pulling together as a team, to accomplish the goals of this year's shutdown safely and efficiently. No one can slack off, no one can cut corners.

Staying healthy, of course, is the foundation on which we all must build. Then, as a team, we can succeed.

In the News

From PhysOrg.com,
August 7, 2007

New Dark Matter Candidate Proposed

A vacuum - space essentially void of any matter whatsoever - is a strange thing. And it may be even stranger, according to recent research. Motivated by the results of an experiment known as PVLAS, which showed that not only is the vacuum empty but can act like a crystal under a strong magnetic field, a group of physicists has proposed a dark-matter candidate particle produced during the early universe and within stars.

Crystals, materials with ordered atomic structures, are nothing new in the world of physics. Physicists use them in many ways, such as to cause light that is oscillating in one direction ("linearly polarized" light) to spin around while oscillating (becoming "circularly polarized" light). But a vacuum acting like a crystal is something altogether different.

In the PVLAS experiment, which is located at Italy's Legnaro National Laboratory, researchers created a vacuum in a chamber, applied a strong magnetic field to the chamber using powerful magnets, and directed a beam of light into one end. They observed that the light coming out spun around as if it had passed through a crystal.

Read more

Announcements

FRA Scholarship Update
FRA is pleased to announce its scholarship and tuition remission programs for various Illinois-based Universities. Employee Relations has placed the information on one website for your convenience. Please visit the FRA Scholarship homepage for links and contact information for each program.

CERN Safety Commission presentation today
Fermilab will be hosting Maurizio Bona, head of the CERN Safety Commission, today. Mr. Bona will be giving a presentation in One West at 9:00 a.m. in which he is expected to discuss recent changes in the CERN safety system. Anyone who is interested is invited to attend.

Barnstormers meeting today
The Fermilab Barnstormers monthly meeting is today, August 8 at the Frelo field next to site 39. In case of inclement weather, it will be held at the users center.

Additional Activities

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