Fermilab Today Friday, March 7, 2008
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Furlough Information

Reminder:
An IDES representative will conduct small group meetings every 30 minutes in the Wilson Hall Atrium Dining Room (SW corner) each Friday from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. from tomorrow through the end of March.

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

Layoff Information

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

Calendar

Friday, March 7
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4:00 p.m.
Joint Experimental-Theoretical Physics Seminar - One West
Speaker: S. Nelson, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
Title: B Decays with tau Leptons in the Final State at BaBar
8:00 p.m.
Fermilab International Film Society - Auditorium
Tickets: Adults $5
Title: Tito i ja (Tito and Me)

Sunday, March 9
2:30 p.m.
Gallery Chamber Series - 2nd Floor Art Gallery
Tickets: $15
Linda Marianiello, Baroque and Traditional Flute with David Schrader, Harpsichord

Monday, March 10
2:30 p.m.
Particle Astrophysics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: B. Robertson, University of Chicago
Title: A Physical Model for Molecular Gas, Interstellar Radiation, and the Scale-Dependency of Star Formation in Galaxies
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
All Experimenters' Meeting - Curia II
Special Topic: Switchyard 120/MTest Beam Upgrades

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

Weather

WeatherMostly sunny 26°/9°

Extended Forecast
Weather at Fermilab

Current Security Status

Secon Level 3

Wilson Hall Cafe
Friday, March 7
- 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, March 12
Dinner
- Moussaka
- Greek salad
- Baklava

Thursday, March 13
Dinner
- Closed

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

Reminder

Daylight-saving time
begins Sunday

It's time to spring forward! Daylight-saving time begins this weekend. Don't forget to set your clocks ahead one hour Saturday night before going to bed.

The shift to daylight-saving time also serves as a reminder to install new batteries in warning devices like smoke detectors and hazard warning radios.

Feature

U.S. CMS Tier-2 computing centers build success

Data processing for CMS and other LHC experiments are based on a three-Tier model.

When University of Nebraska-Lincoln graduate student Brian Bockelman applied for a position with the university's computing department, he didn't realize he'd be working on cutting-edge technology for one of the world's leading particle physics projects.

Nebraska, like 40 other institutions worldwide, hosts a CMS Tier-2 computing center, where many physicists will be analyzing CMS data. One day of data would fill more than 50,000 computers.

"No one has tried to build a computer system for a project of this scale before," said US CMS Tier-2 program manager and University of Nebraska-Lincoln physics professor Ken Bloom.

Even though the experiment's data-taking days are months away, the seven U.S. centers already have made vital hardware and software contributions.

"The U.S. sites are pretty strongly engaged," Bloom said. All sites have similar guidelines on what must be accomplished, but each site makes its own choices on the technical implementation.

Advancements made at the U.S. centers are now in place throughout the world. Bloom cited a program written by Bockelman that fixed a disk system problem. Terrence Martin, a CMS systems manager at UC-San Diego, was instrumental in creating a management system that acts as a queue for jobs waiting to use the machines on the Open Science Grid.

"Before this, there was no way to control how many jobs would run at the same time on the gatekeeper," Martin said.

When particle collisions occur within the CMS, the detector records the electronic signals of particles dispersing from the event. That data gets translated and sent to computers at CERN. Once processed and written to tape, seven Tier-1 computing centers, including Fermilab, receive the data, archive two copies of it and skim for and reconstruct any important events. Then data gets transferred to the Tier-2 centers, typically hosted by universities, which split their responsibilities between data analyses and simulations.

"In our modern times the demands that particle physics experiments put on computing have become so great that we cannot put all of the needed computing at one site, because the power and cooling needs would be too overwhelming," Bloom said. "We're forced to distribute computing around the world, but that also allows us to leverage the expertise in computing that's available in different countries."

-- Rhianna Wisniewski

Announcement

Beware phishing scam

An increasing number of phishing emails have been reported lately, such as the example below. These e-mails criminally attempt to obtain sensitive personal information for fraudulent use. Do not reply to these e-mails. Never give information such as passwords, usernames or credit card information via e-mail.


Phishing example:

From: Support Team

Subject: Confirm Your E-mail Address

Dear User,

We wrote to you on 28th February 2008 advising that you change the password on your account in order to prevent any unauthorised account access following the network intrusion we previously communicated.

We have found the vulnerability that caused this issue, and have instigated a system wide security audit to improve and enhance our current security, in order to continue using our services you are required to update you account details below.

To complete your account verification, you must reply to this email immediately and enter your account details below.

Username: (**************)

password: (**************)

Failure to do this will immediately render your account deactivated from our database.


To test your phishing detection skills check out this Web site.

Interactions.org press release

International Committee for Future Accelerators calls for stability in science funding

From Interactions.org,
March 6, 2008

The International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) has issued a statement on the need for continuous and stable funding for large international science projects like the planned International Linear Collider. This statement is a reaction to recent cuts in the science budgets of the United Kingdom and the United States and addresses governments and science funding agencies around the world.

Albrecht Wagner, chairman of ICFA and chairman of the board of the DESY Directorate, said: "As the international body who plans and facilitates the construction of accelerators for fundamental research we are very worried about the missing political awareness that international partnership in science and beyond is based on reliability. I hope that our statement will help strengthen this awareness and ensure that vital projects like the International Linear Collider are supported and strengthened by continuous funding from partners around the world."

Read more

Safety

Four employees win prizes in second safety sign contest

Winners of Fermilab's second safety message contest. From left: Don Flynn, Christine Ader, Lee Scott and Nick Gnedin.

In February, we asked our readers for the second time to get creative and to submit safety messages that could be displayed at the three Fermilab site entrances. You responded: ES&H received more than 50 submissions from people across the laboratory. Picking the winners wasn't easy.

"We had an hour-long discussion about the pros and cons of all the safety messages we received," said Tim Miller, associate head of ES&H, who chaired a selection committee of five people. "Eventually, we decided to award prizes to four people."

The winners are (in no particular order):

Don't just have a safe day, make it a safe day.
-- Lee Scott, technical specialist, Particle Physics Division

Double back when backing up, look around again.
-- Don Flynn, Web collaborator, Finance Section

Lifting? Put your back at ease, bend your knees.
-- Christine Ader, mechanical engineer, Accelerator Divison

Obey the speed limit, even light has one.
-- Nick Gnedin, scientist, Particle Physics Division

The messages will be on display at the site entrances beginning March 17. As prize, the winners could choose a flashlight, a baseball cap or a Fermilab fleece pullover.

--Kurt Riesselmann

Photo of the Day

Furlough - not just for employees anymore

When an elevator in Wilson Hall stopped working Wednesday afternoon, someone made sure that the elevator followed proper furlough procedure. A furlough request form filled out for Elevator three was taped to the door. Click on the image to see a close-up of the request form.

From ISTGW

Introducing TRIUMF: Canada's Tier-1 on the worldwide grid

When the Large Hadron Collider starts up at CERN in 2008, the world will be waiting to receive the data it produces. In Canada, researchers will be looking to TRIUMF, Canada's particle and nuclear physics national laboratory.

TRIUMF is host to one of eleven Tier-1 centers, forming an integral part of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid collaboration and supporting the particle detector experiment, ATLAS, one of the LHC-powered experiments.

With its experience supplying 24/7 service to international collaborations, TRIUMF provides the facilities required for the large-scale, data-intensive analysis that LHC data will require, while attracting expertise in the operation of the facilities as well as for user-support.

Read more

--Sandra Fleming, TRIUMF

Announcements

Have a safe day!

U of C Tuition Remission program deadline March 10
The deadline for applying for the tuition remission program at The University of Chicago for the Spring 2008 quarter is March 10. See the Web site for more information or contact Karen Karlix, x4365 with questions.

2008 CTEQ-MCnet School August 8-16
Applications are now accepted for the 2008 CTEQ-MCnet Summer School on QCD Phenomenology and Monte Carlo Event Generators from August 8-16 in Debrecen, Hungary. The CTEQ-MCnet School program will include lectures on QCD theory, phenomenology and analysis as well as a practical approach to event generator physics and techniques with hands-on sessions using the techniques in real analyses. The application deadline is April 30, 2008. Enrollment will be limited to 80 participants. Application procedures and additional information are available here.

Computing Techniques Seminar
On March 12 at 3 p.m. in Curia II, Fermilab will offer C++: New and Improved!, a Computing Techniques Seminar that will present an overview of changes forthcoming in the next C++ standard. Walter Brown, who participates on Fermilab's behalf in the international C++ standardization effort, is the presenter. He is a member of the Computing Division's LSC department.

IDES representative on-site Friday
An IDES representative will be on-site in the Wilson Hall Atrium Dining Room (SW corner) Fridays through the end of March. Small group meetings will occur every 30 minutes, beginning at 11 a.m. and ending with a final meeting at 1 p.m. If you are beginning your furlough week, please fill out a benefit application on-site. You may also apply for benefits online or at your local IDES office the week you are on furlough. Please contact Heather Sidman x3326 or Jeannelle Smith x4367 with questions.

Excel 2003 Intermediate
An intermediate class on Excel 2003 is offered. Learn how to create templates, sort and filter data, import and export data, analyze data and work with Excel on the Web. Learn more and enroll

Classifieds
New classified ads have been posted on Fermilab Today.

Additional Activities

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