Fermilab Today Friday, January 11, 2008
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Friday, Jan. 11
9 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.
U.S. CMS "JTerm II workshop" - WH2W
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Joint Experimental-Theoretical Physics Seminar - One West
Speaker: M. Mattson, Wayne State University
Title: Evidence for D_o - D_obar Mixing at CDF
8 p.m.
Fermilab International Film Society - Auditorium
Tickets: Adults $5
Title: Passport to Pimlico

Saturday, Jan. 12
9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
U.S. CMS "JTerm II workshop" - WH2W

Monday, Jan. 14
THERE WILL BE NO PARTICLE ASTROPHYSICS SEMINAR THIS WEEK
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
All Experimenters' Meeting - Curia II

Weather

WeatherCloudy 37°/27°

Extended Forecast
Weather at Fermilab

Current Security Status

Secon Level 3

Wilson Hall Cafe
Friday, Jan. 11
- Cream of asparagus
- Buffalo chicken wings
- Cajun breaded catfish
- Sweet & sour pork over rice
- Honey mustard ham & swiss panini
- Assorted pizza slices
- Carved turkey

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, Jan. 16
Lunch
- Catfish fillet Veracruz
- Green rice
- Corn and red pepper

Thursday, Jan. 17
Dinner
- Closed

Chez Leon Menu
Call x4598 to make your reservation.

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Milestone

MiniBooNE achieves record proton number

MiniBooNE reached a 1e21 protons recorded on target during the last five years.

On Monday, Jan. 1, the MiniBooNE experiment achieved a milestone - 1e21 protons recorded on target, the largest number of protons ever collected at a high-energy facility.

"This is really an achievement for AD, particularly the proton source, operations, and external beams departments," said MiniBooNE co-spokesman Richard Van de Water. "Before we turned on, there was not a need for a lot of protons. But since we turned on, they had to get 30-year-old machines working at top performance. The Booster now routinely puts out 10 times more protons than prior to the experiment start up."

The experiment, which studies neutrino oscillations, has been operating for five years. It is expected to run through 2009. To get enough neutrinos and anti-neutrinos to run the experiment, a vast number of protons must collide with a fixed target.

"The robustness of the final analysis directly relates to the number of protons," he said.

Although 1e21 is a large number, the total mass of the protons collected is small. Van de Water said small enough to be equivalent to the mass of 10 ants.

"It doesn't seem like much, but to take 10 ants and accelerate them to the speed of light, that is significant!" he said.

-- Rhianna Wisniewski

MiniBooNE reached a 1e21 protons recorded on target. The milestone can be seen at the right side of the blue plot: 10.0325 E20 POT. Click on the image to view the entire graph and graphs of numbers of neutrino and horn pulses.


In the News

Don't panic

From nature.com, Jan. 10, 2008

Whether to build the International Linear Collider is an open question, but R&D on it should be supported.

Big science has taken a hit in recent budget cuts both in the United States, where significant lay-offs at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, are now threatened, and in the United Kingdom, which is to chop tens of millions of pounds over the next few years from astronomy and high-energy physics budgets. In both cases, one significant casualty has been participation in the development of the International Linear Collider, the envisaged successor to CERN's Large Hadron Collider. The latter has suffered delays; and is not likely to see its first useful collisions until 2009. Time to take stock.

Read more

Budget News Update

Budget cuts mean
layoffs at two DOE labs,
end for SLAC collider

From Science Magazine, Jan. 10, 2008

An unexpectedly tight science budget this year at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will shut down a particle collider in California and curtail activities at another accelerator lab in Illinois. In addition, up to 325 scientists, technicians, and workers are facing layoffs after Congress last month turned a planned 4% increase in the particle physics budget into an 8.5% reduction.

The 2008 budget, signed into law the day after Christmas, hit DOE's particle physics program especially hard. Physicists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, fretted that their Tevatron collider would have to shut down for a month. Instead, DOE officials have decided to pull the plug on the PEP-II collider at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park, California, at the beginning of March, 7 months ahead of schedule, SLAC Director Persis Drell announced on 7 January.

"This came as a total surprise," says Hassan Jawahery, a physicist at the University of Maryland, College Park, who leads the 600-member international collaboration working with BaBar, the particle detector fed by PEP-II. "We had a full program ahead of us."

Read more


Fermilab Director interview featured on local television

From Naperville Community Access Channel 17, Jan. 11, 2008

Naperville Community Access Channel 17 interviewed Fermilab Director Pier Oddone regarding the implications of the FY2008 budget cuts. The interview can be seen on Channel 17 by Naperville residents who have WOW or Comcast cable. For those who do not live in Naperville, the program will stream online at www.nctv17.com during regular airing hours, 6 p.m., 9 p.m., 7 a.m. and noon Jan. 11 through Jan. 18.

See all related news stories here

Announcements

Have a safe day!

New location for International Services
The Visa Office and Assignment Services have joined the User's Office to form International Services. The office has moved to the first floor of Wilson Hall on the west side. The contact information is as follows: Amanda Petersen, x4203; Barb Book, x3111; Melissa Clayton Lang, x3933; and John Galvan, x3811. The mail stop is MS 103 and the fax is x3688.

Folk Club barn dance Jan. 13
The Fermilab Folk Club will host a Barn Dance on Sunday, Jan. 13, at 6:30 p.m. with music by the No Mountain String Band and calling by Paul Watkins. More information

Pidgin: Secured Onsite Instant Messaging Client course
A course on Pidgin, an instant messaging client supported by the Computing Division, will be offered Feb. 12 and 14. Learn what instant messaging has to offer and how to use Pidgin. Learn more and enroll

Additional Activities

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