Wyatt passes torch, car keys

Darien Wood (right) is the new DZero co-spokesperson, replacing Terry Wyatt (left). On Wednesday, Wyatt handed Wood the keys to his car before moving back to the University of Manchester in England. Wood, who also took some of Wyatt's furniture, said that he is thrilled to be more involved in the DZero experiment at such a results-rich time. "I am coming at one of the most exciting times, particularly because of the potential for discovery," said Wood, who is associate professor of physics at Northeastern University.

Barb Perington retires today

In the 1970s, in the midst of the Cold War, PPD's Barb Perington was explaining to Russians visiting Fermilab how to write checks, get an American driver's license and assimilate into life at the laboratory.

"This group was small. It was their first time to the United States. So you just took them under your wing," Perington said of the lab's first visiting Russian scientists.

After she retires from the lab today, Perington plans to continue in her ambassador role, now as a member of the lab's Auditorium Committee. She also will contribute through the natural volunteer work days.

"I have to be weaned. I can't just quit working," she said. "It would be too much of a shock to the system."

In her 37 years at the laboratory, Perington watched it grow from a small group of researchers forging big science out of a small farm town to the world's top high-energy physics laboratory.

She was part of the laboratory's first experiment, E36, with the Internal Target Group and CZero.

"She has helped so many people over the years," said Elaine Phillips, Particle Physics Division support staff department head. "She will be missed for many reasons, and especially for her competence and many kindnesses to employees and visitors alike."

Perington has worked as an administrative assistant with CDF from nearly its inception, most recently arranging foreign travel and registering new collaborations. She regrets she won't see CDF finish its run, possibly in 2009. "It would be nice to be here to the end," she said.

Instead, she'll have to make due visiting the home countries of those she's met at Fermilab over the years. You also may see her traversing the four-mile Tevatron ring or cross country skiing the woods with Fermilab employees as she's done for the last 30 years.

"My working here was an accident, because it was just a six-week assignment, and I had never heard of an accelerator. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me," Perington said. "I can't imagine having worked anywhere else."

--Tona Kunz

Congratulations to sand volleyball winners

Team Sidorov won the outdoor Recreational Summer Volleyball League with a final record of 24 wins and 5 losses. The final game took place Tuesday, Aug. 14, at the sand courts behind the village pool.

Particle physics: Fermilab proposes way station on the road to the ILC

From Science, Aug. 31, 2007

Facing an uncertain future, officials at the last dedicated particle physics lab in the United States have developed a backup plan in case their grand ambition to host a gargantuan international collider were seriously delayed.

Under the plan, researchers at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, would construct a proton accelerator using parts that meet all the design specifications for the proposed multibillion-dollar International Linear Collider (ILC). The proton source would feed neutrino experiments and searches for certain rare particle decays while serving as a test bed for the ILC, according to a draft report released by the lab's steering committee earlier this month. The more modest accelerator would still cost more than $500 million, and it faces competition from a Japanese lab.

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Julius Wess, 72, theoretical physicist, is dead

From New York Times, Aug. 27, 2007

Julius Wess, a theoretical physicist who plumbed the universe for unseen symmetries, including those in a theory that led to a prediction of a new class of fundamental particles, died Aug. 8 in Hamburg, Germany. He was 72.

The cause of death was a stroke, said Bruno Zumino, an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who collaborated with Dr. Wess.

"They came up with quantities that you could measure and you could observe," said Roman W. Jackiw, a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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