Oddone to meet today with divisions, sections

Meetings will discuss upcoming furloughs

Director Pier Oddone and senior lab managers will meet with employees of all divisions and sections today, Jan. 24, in Ramsey Auditorium. The one-hour meetings will provide information and respond to questions about the rolling furlough program that will begin in February as a budget-cutting measure.

9:30 a.m.
Accelerator Division, Technical Division, Accelerator Physics Center

11 a.m.
Computing Division, Particle Physics Division, Center for Particle Astrophysics, CMS Center

1:30 p.m.
Business Services Section, Directorate, ES&H Section, Facilities Engineering Section, Finance Section, Workforce Development & Resources Section

In addition to attending the meetings for their divisions and sections, employees who are visa holders and their supervisors should also attend a special meeting at 3:30 p.m. in Ramsey Auditorium. Employees should reserve visa-related questions for this meeting.

Employees received packets of furlough information by campus mail Wednesday, Jan. 23. Furlough materials are available online at http://www.fnal.gov/faw/furlough/

Project X second workshop to further physics plan

Fermilab Director Pier Oddone talks to attendees of the first Project X Physics workshop.

Project X holds exciting discovery opportunities, and this week scientists will craft them into a clear, compelling plan for Fermilab's future. More than 150 people will gather Jan. 25-26 for the second Project X Physics workshop, hosted by Fermilab and Fermilab Users Executive Committee.

"In the second workshop, we're really narrowing the focus," said Kevin Pitts, UEC chair. "The first was about the big picture, and now we'll spend more time examining the details of what an experimental physics program might potentially look like."

The first workshop, held at Fermilab in November 2007, laid the groundwork for the physics case for Project X. It drew more than 200 people from 78 institutions. Many have continued their efforts as part of separate workgroups.

"Project X has the potential to engage in a a broad range of forefront experiments covering a wide area of science," said Doug Bryman, workgroup organizer and physics professor at the University of British Columbia.

Each workgroup worked in the charge of developing an ideal respective roadmap for making discoveries in neutrino, kaon, muon and antiproton research. An overall experiment strategy will incorporate reports from each group. HEPAP's Particle Physics Project prioritization Panel will receive the strategy report at the meeting at Fermilab on Jan. 31 through Feb. 2.

"As Fermilab and the U.S. particle-physics community struggle with the FY2008 omnibus funding bill, the importance of a clear and compelling plan for the future becomes even greater," said Fermilab Deputy Director Young-Kee Kim. "Our job now is to create an excellent strategy that we can convey to P5 and the community."

Information about the workshop, working groups and registration information is available here. There is no registration fee.

Last piece lowered for CMS

Touch down. Now that the final piece is underground, final commissioning will begin on the CMS detector. Image courtesy of CERN.

Early Tuesday morning (Jan. 22), scientists of the U.S. CMS collaboration joined colleagues around the world to celebrate the lowering of the final piece of the Compact Muon Solenoid detector into the underground collision hall at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. The near completion of the CMS detector marks a pivotal moment for the international experiment, in preparation for the start-up of the Large Hadron Collider this summer.

Read More

Shattered illusions

From nature.com,
Jan. 23, 2008

Trying to follow the actions of the US Congress on research spending in 2007 was like sitting blindfolded on a rollercoaster, and when the year ended in sudden free-fall, science lobbyists were shaken and stunned, and left wondering how they were taken for a ride. The year's victories - a supplemental spending bill in the spring that unexpectedly included additional science funding; legislation in the summer pledging to double research spending over 10 years; and spending bills in the autumn with long-sought increases for the physical sciences - proved to be no harbingers of a bounty for researchers when Congress finally completed its work in December. The final budget for research as a whole for fiscal year 2008 does not keep pace with inflation.

Read more

Future of top U.S. particle physics lab in jeopardy

From Scientific American,
Jan. 22, 2008

In recent years the U.S. national laboratories have laid out an ambitious research agenda for particle physics. About 170 scientists and engineers at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., have been developing designs and technologies for the International Linear Collider, a proposed machine that would explore the frontiers of high-energy physics by smashing electrons into their antimatter counterparts. Another 80 researchers at Fermilab have been finalizing the plans for NOvA, a giant detector in northern Minnesota that could answer fundamental questions about the neutrino, a particle that is ubiquitous but maddeningly elusive. But on December 17, 2007-a date that scientists quickly dubbed "Black Monday"-Congress unexpectedly slashed funding for ILC and NOvA, throwing the future of American physics into doubt.

Read more

See all related news stories here.