Pine Street traffic a concern for bicyclists and motorists

Bicyclists concerned about motor traffic or those wishing to avoid the limestone bypass in wet conditions can use the established bike path on the south side of Pine Street. A crossover path, incidcated above, is available for those bicyclists heading westbound on Pine Street.

A few years ago, a bicyclist was killed at the entrance to SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, near Sand Hill Road.

SLAC has since taken precautions to prevent anything like this from happening again. We want to make sure that no bicyclists are harmed while riding at Fermilab.

Sometimes, when bicyclists and motorists meet, the rules of the road can get overlooked. Bicyclists have a legal right to ride on either the road or on Fermilab's paved bicycle path.

Some areas, such as the Pine Street entrance on the laboratory's west side, can be dangerous for bicyclists, particularly if motorists aren't paying attention or don't let bicyclists merge. The road narrows near the west guardhouse and motorists must allow bicyclists to merge onto the main road.

Bicyclists who choose to ride on the bike path throughout the Fermilab site have also expressed concerns about the limestone bypass on the north side of Pine Street. Bicyclists can find the bypass difficult to ride on in wet conditions. In these conditions, Roads and Grounds staff members encourage bicyclists to use the established bike path on the south side of Pine Street, as outlined on the above map, to get around the problem area.

To get to this recently paved bike path, Roads and Grounds staff members encourage westbound cyclists to use the path crossing inbound Pine Street near the Lederman Science Center just west of the woods and east of the Margaret Pierson Prairie Path parking lot. A sign now marks this path.

People need to stay extra alert at these two areas where bicyclists and motorists come into close contact.

Bicyclists should watch for oncoming traffic when crossing Pine Street to enter or leave the established path. Motorists need to watch for bicyclists and drive the posted speed limit as they exit the laboratory on Pine Street.

By working together to share the road, everyone can remain safe.

-- Mike Becker, Roads and Grounds

LCLS: The world's first hard X-ray laser achieves "first light"

From SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory news room, April 21, 2009

The world's brightest X-ray source sprang to life last week at the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) offers researchers the first-ever glimpse of high-energy or "hard" X-ray laser light produced in a laboratory.

When fine tuning is complete, the LCLS will provide the world's brightest, shortest pulses of laser X-rays for scientific study. It will give scientists an unprecedented tool for studying and understanding the arrangement of atoms in materials such as metals, semiconductors, ceramics, polymers, catalysts, plastics, and biological molecules, with wide-ranging impact on advanced energy research and other fields.

"This milestone establishes proof-of-concept for this incredible machine, the first of its kind," said SLAC Director Persis Drell. "The LCLS team overcame unprecedented technical challenges to make this happen, and their work will enable frontier research in a host of fields. For some disciplines, this tool will be as important to the future as the microscope has been to the past."

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New Visa Office Web site

The Visa Office has recently launched its new Web site, visas.fnal.gov. The new site clearly sets out the procedures involved in obtaining new or extensions of J and H-1B visas. It also features a glossary of immigration terms and links to online fillable information forms. The Web site also includes a new section, called Alerts, which are short articles relating to U.S. immigration processes, laws or other topics of interest to our non-U.S. citizen employees. The Visa Office welcomes feedback or suggestions for improvement.

Closer look at Einstein's brain

From ScienceNow , April 17, 2009

When a rare genius like Albert Einstein comes along, scientists naturally wonder if he had something special between his ears. The latest study of Einstein's brain concludes that certain parts of it were indeed very unusual and might explain how he was able to go where no physicist had gone before when he devised the theory of relativity and other groundbreaking insights. The findings also suggest that Einstein's famed love of music was reflected in the anatomy of his brain.

When Einstein died in 1955 at Princeton Hospital in New Jersey, his brain was removed by a local pathologist named Thomas Harvey, who preserved, photographed, and measured it. A colleague of Harvey's cut most of the brain into 240 blocks and mounted them on microscope slides. From time to time, he sent the slides to various researchers, although few publications resulted. Harvey, who moved around the United States several times in the course of his career, kept the jar containing what remained of the brain in cardboard box. Finally, in 1998, Harvey--who died in 2007--gave the jar to the University Medical Center of Princeton, where it remains today.

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