Fermilab Today Wednesday, November 21, 2007
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Wednesday, Nov. 21
THERE WILL BE NO FERMILAB ILC R&D MEETING THIS WEEK
2:30 p.m.
Special Particle Astrophysics Seminar - Curia II (NOTE DATE)
Speaker: J. Roberts, University of Warsaw
Title: Use and Abuse of Fine-Tuning: Dark Matter at the LHC
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
THERE WILL BE NO FERMILAB COLLOQUIUM TODAY

Thursday, Nov. 22
Happy Thanksgiving!

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

Weather

Weather

Showers 46°/29°

Extended Forecast
Weather at Fermilab

Current Security Status

Secon Level 3

Wilson Hall Cafe
Wednesday, Nov. 21
- Italian wedding w/meatballs
- Diner style patty melt - Chicken w/Yucatan sauce
- Mongolian beef
- Greek chicken panini w/feta cheese
- Assorted slice pizza
- Chicken w/pesto cream

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, Nov. 21
Lunch
- Cheese fondue
- Apple & pecan salad on field greens
- Baked pears w/bittersweet chocolate sauce

Thursday, Nov. 22
Dinner
- Closed

Chez Leon Menu
Call x4598 to make your reservation.

Archives

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Info

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

Send comments and suggestions to:
today@fnal.gov

Feature

Fermilab celebrates
40 year anniversary

President Lyndon B. Johnson signs a bill at the 89th annual Congress.

During the last few decades, scientists at Fermilab have discovered particles, commissioned experiments and pursued new frontiers. All of those things, and those still to come, were made possible 40 years ago today, when then-President Lyndon B. Johnson fixed the fate of Fermilab with the swish of a pen.

On Nov. 21, 1967, at the 89th Congress, Johnson signed an appropriations bill authorizing $7.3 million, the first funds for the construction of the National Accelerator Laboratory. During the next five years, Johnson and his successor President Richard Nixon would authorize $253 million in funds for the laboratory's first phase.

The laboratory operated out of the top floor of the high-rise building at 1301 West 22nd St. in Oakbrook, until the 6,800 acre site that encompassed several farms and the former town of Weston became available. The technical and administrative staff moved to Weston in September of 1968, and construction on the LINAC began at the end of that year. The laboratory was formally dedicated and its name changed to honor Enrico Fermi, father of the Atomic Age, in May of 1974.

To celebrate the laboratory's anniversary, there will be a showing of "Water to the Ropes: The evolution of an accelerator" at noon in One West. The 30-minute film was produced by VMS to commemorate the 20-year anniversary of Fermilab and includes brief interviews with Robert Wilson and Leon Lederman, as well as early construction footage.

More information on the laboratory's formative years can be found in History and Archive Web pages. View the 1967 URA report prepared by URA's founding president, Norman Ramsey.

More information on the laboratory's move from Oakbrook to Weston can be found in the History and Archive Web pages.

-- Rhianna Wisniewski

In Memoriam

In Memoriam: Michael Schmidt

Michael Schmidt

We are sad to announce that longtime Fermilab user and CDF collaborator Michael P. Schmidt, of Yale University, passed away this weekend at his home after a long battle with cancer. He was surrounded by his family.

In addition to Michael's CDF participation, he was a member of the Fermilab Physics Advisory Committee, the APS Long-Range Planning Committee, LBNL's Directors Review Panel, Editorial Board for the Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Physics and most recently a member of P5 (Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel). This year, he was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society and was honored by his colleagues at a reception at Yale this fall.

Michael joined the CDF experiment in 1991. He and his group made significant contributions to the trigger system. During Run 1, they took over the maintenance and operation of a significant portion of the level-1 trigger. For Run II, he designed, built and operated the brain behind the level 1 trigger and data acquisition system. Michael's physics research interests were in the heavy flavor sector where most recently he and his students have been investigating the quantum oscillations occurring between the particle and anti-particle states of Bs mesons. Michael was also active on the ATLAS experiment where he and his group built the front-end electronics for the transition radiation tracker.

Outside of physics, Michael has always maintained a strong interest in the arts and in humanities. He was an avid reader and enjoying playing the guitar with family and friends. Michael is survived by his two children, Daniel, and Julia, along with his parents, brother and two sisters. Michael was a kind and considerate colleague who left an indelible mark on all of us. We will miss him greatly.

The funeral will be held on Saturday morning at 11 a.m. in the North Madison Congregational Church in Connecticut. Detailed information can be found on the Clancy Funeral Home Web page: http://www.wsclancy.com/

-- Submitted by Rob Roser on behalf of the CDF collaboration

Holiday humor

Talking turkey

A deep fryer on fire. Image courtesy of Underwriters Laboratories.

Readers shared their tales of Thanksgiving dinners gone wrong. Here is one of our favorites.

"At my last job, some of our staff decided to deep-fry a turkey. We placed the fryer in the office parking lot and watched over it in shifts. It started to rain and nobody even considered the safety hazard . until the fryer burst into flames and set the outside of the building on fire! Thankfully, nobody was hurt beyond minor first aid, and the fire department responded quickly so there was minimal property damage. It is far enough away from the "turkey frying incident" that we can laugh about it, but we definitely learned our lesson: always perform a hazard analysis and only deep-fry a turkey in dry weather!"

-- Heather Sidman, Employee Relations Specialist

For tips or advice on cooking turkeys, try the Butterball Turkey podcast; their Turkey Talk Line, 1(800) Butterball or the Jennie-O hotline, 1(800)Turkeys.

From ES&H

Successful job planning

This week's column is written by Bill Griffing, head of ES&H

Bill Griffing

One of our strong programs at Fermilab is that of keeping radiation doses As Low As Reasonably Achievable. With higher beam intensities now being used in pursuit of our scientific goals, the 2007 accelerator shutdown provided substantial challenges in ALARA.

In preparation for this shutdown, AD head Roger Dixon highlighted the importance of ALARA at all meetings and briefings related to shutdown work. In preparation, AD staff proposed 539 tasks that were reviewed individually by the AD Radiation Safety Officer, Mike Gerardi, and his team. Working in collaboration with job-planners, each task was evaluated step-by-step to estimate the dose of radiation that would be received. The dose estimates were used to identify the precautions that needed to be taken. As the tasks unfolded, the work practices and dose estimates were further refined. Over 440 radiation workers, most from AD but including those from other organizations, temporarily assigned to shutdown projects, were involved in performing these tasks.

I am pleased to report that due to this management support of ALARA, along with the committed work of all involved, the dose actually received was about half of that initially estimated. This success illustrates what can happen in any application of hazard assessment when people work together as a team to accomplish a goal.

In the News

Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology announces new deputy director

From Interactions.org, Nov. 20, 2007

Menlo Park, CA-Stanford astrophysicist Sarah Church is the new deputy director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), a joint institute based at Stanford University and the Department of Energy's Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

Read More

In the News

Hollywood comes to Cern

From Tribune de Genève, Nov. 20, 2007

A Hollywood film promises to raise the profile of Cern, the particle physics research station on the Geneva-French border. Oscar-winning film director Ron Howard visited the research facility last summer in preparation for his planned adaptation of Dan Brown's novel, Angels & Demons. The book is the prelude to Brown's blockbuster hit The Da Vinci Code, which Howard also turned into a film. Angels & Demons is a detective story about a secret society that wants to destroy the Vatican by using antimatter stolen from Cern. American actor Tom Hanks, who starred in The Da Vinci Code, will play the same character in the new film.

Howard toured the European nuclear research center in June with his location and production managers. Rolf Landua, a physicist at the center showed Howard and his associates around the facility. "They wanted to get an impression of the atmosphere and the aura of the underground area," Landua said in an article that appears on Cern's website. The center has built a 27-kilometer tunnel where it hopes to reproduce the effect of the "Big Bang" that created the universe with a device called the Large Hadron Collider, scheduled to go into operation in May 2008.

Read More

Safety Update

ES&H weekly report, Nov. 20

This week's safety report, compiled by the Fermilab ES&H section, includes no reportable cases. Fermilab has now worked 46 days since its last OSHA recordable injury. The full report is here.

Safety report archive


Announcements

Have a safe day!

AFS outage Saturday morning
On Saturday, Nov. 24, from 6 to 10 a.m., the AFS service will be out for an emergency upgrade. It has been determined that the current release of code, OpenAFS v1.4.4 can have issues with clients that are behind a NAT. These issues can indirectly cause a resource problem on the fileservers. This outage will affect central Web services and FNALU.

Benefit enrollment
Wednesday, Nov. 28, is the final day to review and change your benefits for the 2008 plan year. You will find enrollment materials on the Benefits Office Web site. Representatives from Blue Cross and CIGNA will be available on Wednesday, Nov. 14, from 8 a.m. to noon and Tuesday, Nov. 20, from 1 to 5 p.m. They will be located in the Aquarium Conference Room on the 15th floor of Wilson Hall.

Seasonal holiday student requests
Managers who would like to bring back their summer students for holiday seasonal employment can access information and a request form here. Only students who were summer 2007 employees are eligible. Students who were on-call must return as on-call workers.

Education Office holiday sale Dec. 4-6
The Education Office will host its annual holiday sale Dec. 4-6, from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., outside One West in Wilson Hall.

Secure Coding course Jan. 15 and 16
This course focuses on Web applications and clearly defines the software security problem. It introduces and describes a set of software security best practices called touchpoints and much more. Learn more and enroll

Fermilab Basketball League
Basketball League play begins on Nov. 29 in the gymnasium at the Recreation Facility. Games are played Thursday evening beginning at 5 p.m. Contact Ryan Schultz at X6571 or email if you are interested in participating. Current Recreation Facility membership required.

Additional Activities

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