Fermilab Today Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Search
Furlough Information

New furlough information, including an up-to-date Q&A section, appears on the furlough Web pages daily.

Calendar

Tuesday, Feb. 26
2:30 p.m.
Special Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: G. Gabadadze, University of Minnesota
Title: Infinite Volume Extra Dimensions
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR TODAY

Wednesday, Feb. 27
Noon
Wellness Works Brown Bag Seminar - One West
Speaker: B. Hatipoglu, MD
Title: Latest Advances in Treatment of Diabetes
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Fermilab Colloquium - One West
Speaker: D. Archer, University of Chicago
Title: Global Warming in Geologic Time

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

Weather

WeatherSnow 25 °/13°

Extended Forecast
Weather at Fermilab

Current Security Status

Secon Level 3

Wilson Hall Cafe
Tuesday, Feb. 26
- Tomato bisque
- Lemon pepper club
- Beef with peppers
- Smart Cuisine: tortellini alfredo
- Grilled chicken Caesar wrap
- Assorted pizza slices
- Rio Grande taco salads

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, Feb. 27
Lunch
- Wild mushroom strudel
- Salad of field greens w/tomatoes, cucumbers & onion
- Cold lemon soufflé

Thursday, Feb. 28
Dinner
- Sancocho w/pastetobos
- Roast suckling pigs
- Chayote guisado
- Rice & pigeon peas
- Flan & tropical fruit

Chez Leon Menu
Call x4598 to make your reservation.

Archives

Fermilab Today
Result of the Week
Safety Tip of the Week
ILC NewsLine

Info

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

Send comments and suggestions to:
today@fnal.gov

Feature

Fermilab to host global warming presentation

A worn-down iceberg. Image courtesy of: © Anne Hormes/Alfred-Wegener-Institut

What effects of global warming will you see in your lifetime? Do you know what to do to lessen your contribution to global warming? Find out answers to these questions and more Thursday, when Fermilab hosts a public talk on global warming and a conference for area science teachers.

The event celebrates International Polar Year, a scientific program focused on the Arctic and Antarctic.

By providing the site for the two-day event, Fermilab can expose local educators to advances in the understanding of climate change and to physics research at Fermilab.

David Carlson, professor of oceanography from Oregon State University, will speak from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Feb. 28 in Ramsey Auditorium. His free presentation, titled "Exploring the Polar Regions at a Critical Time," will offer the latest climate data from around the world. He will discuss tips on how to help slow warming. The presentation, partially sponsored by the Fermilab Friends for Science Education, is open to the public.

Carlson, one of the world's leading experts on global warming and the current state of the planet, will discuss changes needed during the next eight years and the implications for the next few decades if those changes don't occur.

As part of their annual workshop, DuPage County science teachers will discuss global warming and how to integrate it into the classroom. Four speakers will present at Fermilab. While Fermilab carries out research in particle physics, the laboratory does host research in alternative fuels and carbon sequestration, which can help mitigate global warming.

The teachers requested to hold the lecture and conference at Fermilab, which has featured its research at previous conferences.

"It is recognition that Fermilab is an important scientific resource in the neighborhood and that K-12 teachers see us as a partner," said Marge Bardeen, Fermilab Education Office director.

For more information view the flyer or contact Nancy Lanning via e-mail or at (630) 840-5588.

In the News

Time machine to be created underground? Probably not.

From Wired.com, Feb. 7, 2008

The stream of stories about the Large Hadron Collider's operation is getting genuinely weird. Nineteen-sixties, little-green-monster, B-movie sci-fi weird. Not, mind you, that that's an entirely bad thing.

Latest is a group of stories that spin off from a paper published in October by pair of Russian physicists, who - in a display of serious, but also seriously speculative mathematics - theorize that the LHC's operation could in fact "lead to the formation of time machines (spacetime regions with closed timelike curves) which violate causality." New Scientist offers a cover-story look at this idea, but if you really want to get a sense for how science reporting goes sensational, check out the British Sun's tabloid version.

Read more

In the News

A life in the day: Dr. Brian Cox

From Times Online,
Feb. 24, 2008

The physicist, 39, is designing the world's largest particle accelerator at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) in Geneva. He commutes between there and Manchester, where he lives with his wife, the TV presenter Gia Milinovich, and his stepson, Moki, 11.

I'm terrible at waking up - I hate it. If I can get away with it, I get up at 9 o'clock. I stay in a little Holiday Inn close to Cern at the foothills of the Jura mountains in France. They knock on the door with breakfast, so I have to get up. I get the Herald Tribune delivered and crispy bacon on French bread, pain au chocolat and coffee. Cern is one big physics lab, so if you wore anything that looked like you bought it last year, you'd look stylish. It's a 20-minute walk away, through a little French village, St. Genis, with chocolate and bread shops, and across the border into Switzerland. You can see Mont Blanc - it's absolutely beautiful.

I've always been a scientist, always. From as far back as I can remember I wanted to do something about space exploration or astronomy. Apparently, even when I was a year old, I'd watch anything to do with Apollo and the moon landing. I didn't go to university until I was 22. Instead I joined a rock band called Dare. We made two albums and toured for a few years. Then we had a fight in a bar in Berlin and split up. I came back and rang Manchester University and said: "Right, I want to come to university now and do physics."

Read more

Director's Corner

HEP scenarios

Pier Oddone
Pier Oddone

Those of us with long careers in particle physics realize how special these times are, with the answers to an unprecedented number of profound questions seemingly within our grasp. To coin a phrase, in many ways it is the best of times and also the worst of times. We are confronted with severe cuts in funding and, to judge from the damage to high-energy physics resulting from the omnibus appropriation bill, a clear retrenching of the U.S. from a position of leadership across many important areas of our field. Whether these cuts will be restored in coming budget cycles will depend largely on how well we articulate the opportunities in our field at higher budget levels.

The Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel is in the midst of analyzing the optimum configuration of our field in a variety of budgetary scenarios. A compelling program has to emerge for each scenario. These scenarios correspond to discrete levels of funding that range from the present restricted level caused by the omnibus appropriations bill through higher levels that would restore a position of leadership on all three fronts of particle physics: the energy frontier, the intensity frontier and the particle astrophysics frontier.

The hardest scenario to deal with is the lowest budget scenario. Not everything we need and want to do will fit. P5 will have to make careful choices that will define the field at its core. It will also have to resist the temptation to spend all its time analyzing this most difficult scenario. Just as important will be the analysis of higher budget scenarios in which P5 must make a compelling case for what we gain as we move up to higher levels of funding. A compelling case for funding that gives us a world-class program in the three frontier areas of our field is our goal. This effort by the community and its expression in P5 will not be effective unless the entire HEP community comes together coherently to support the plans that emerge from P5.

Accelerator Update
Feb. 15 - 25
- Seven stores provided luminosity to the experiments during this period
- Experts repaired leak in Recycler kicker
- MTest experiment T953 completed their run
- Pbar sets record stack with 310mA of antiprotons

Read the Current Accelerator Update
Read the Early Bird Report
View the Tevatron Luminosity Charts

Announcements

Have a safe day!

FermiGrid classes starting Feb. 26
FermiGrid 201:Scripting and Running Grid Jobs course serves as an introductory course for grid computing.
Learn more and enroll

FermiGrid 202:Grid Storage Access course includes lab time.
Learn more and enroll

FermiGrid 101 "Brown Bag" seminar to be held on Thursday, March 6, from noon to 1 p.m. in Curia II.
Learn more

Children's Summer Day Camp registration due
Registration forms for the on site day camp for children of Fermilab employees are due by 5 p.m. Feb. 28. The camp for ages 7 through 12 consists of three separate three-week sessions: session I: June 16 - July 3, session II: July 7- July 25, session III: July 28 - Aug. 15. The camp, held in the lower level of the Kuhn Barn in the village, runs from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. You may choose any or all of the sessions. The fee for each day camp session is $295 per camper. A $125 deposit per session per camper must accompany the registration form. Registrations will be accepted at the Recreation Office, M.S. 126. Applications go into a lottery held on Feb. 29. An information booklet and registration form can be found on the Recreation Website.

Brown Bag Seminar on diabetes
The Wellness Works committee presents a Brown Bag Seminar on diabetes from noon to 1 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 27, in One West. Betul Hatipoglu, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago will speak on the latest advances in diabetes. Hatipoglu also serves as the medical director of the Pancreas and Islet Transplantation Program at the university.

Improve your interpersonal communication skills
Learn effective communication strategies by assessing your communication style and developing skills for more productive work relationships through the "Interpersonal Communications Skills" course on March 4. Click here for more info and enrollment.

Applications due for 2008 CERN-Fermilab Hadron Collider school
Applications for the 2008 CERN-Fermilab Hadron Collider Physics Summer School are due Feb. 29. The school takes place August 12-22, 2008, at Fermilab, and focuses on training advanced graduate students and young postdocs. Both theorists and experimentalists should apply. The list of lectures and lecturers has been posted at the school Web site. Click here for more information.

Scottish Country dance Tuesday
Scottish Country Dancing will meet Tuesday, Feb. 26, at Kuhn Barn on the Fermilab site. Instruction begins at 7:30 p.m. and newcomers are always welcome. Most dances are fully taught and walked through, and you do not need to come with a partner. For more information, call (630) 840-8194 or (630) 584-0825 or folkdance@fnal.gov.

Fermi National Accelerator - Office of Science / U.S. Department of Energy | Managed by Fermi Research Alliance, LLC.
 
Security, Privacy, Legal  |  Use of Cookies