Fermilab Today Thursday, Sept. 3, 2009
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Have a safe day!

Thursday, Sept. 3
2:30 p.m.
Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Peter Skands, Fermilab
Title: Towards a Phenomenology of Everything
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR TODAY

Friday, Sept. 4
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Joint Experimental-Theoretical Physics Seminar - One West
Speaker: Sarah Eno, University of Maryland
Title: New DZero Results on the W Width and Charge Asymmetry, and on Gauge Couplings


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Sunny
77°/52°

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Current Security Status

Secon Level 3

Wilson Hall Cafe

Thursday, Sept. 3
- Tomato Florentine
- *Pork BBQ sandwich
- Kielbasa & sauerkraut
- Chicken Marsala
- Smoked turkey melt
- Assorted sliced pizza
- SW chicken salad w/roasted corn salsa

*Carb restricted alternative

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Thursday, Sept. 3
Dinner
- Coquille St. Jacque
- Veal saltimbocca
- Roasted potatoes
- Julienne of peppers, onions and basil
- Hazelnut cake w/crème Anglais

Wednesday, September 9
Lunch
- Chicken Marbella
- Saffron rice w/vegetables
- Chocolate cheesecake w/strawberry coulis

Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

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www.fnal.gov/today/

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Special Announcement

All-Hands meeting 11 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 9

On Wednesday, Sept. 9, at 11 a.m., Director Pier Oddone will discuss the status of the laboratory and operational initiatives. All Fermilab employees are encouraged to attend.

Quality Assurance

Audit coming up:
Know your representative

Teams at Fermilab have spent the last two years working to make sure that the processes you use are the best possible.

As part of Fermilab's Integrated Quality Assurance program, teams of employees and EG&G contractors have worked since January 2007 planning, assessing and helping employees improve quality controls for their work.

Between Sept. 14-18, the Department of Energy will assess the implementation phase of that program throughout the laboratory. A group of quality-assurance personnel from other laboratories and DOE representatives from the DOE's Chicago site office will be at Fermilab investigating how well improvements to employees' work processes have been identified and implemented.

Fermilab's quality assurance representatives are currently contacting employees to set up interviews between the employee and assessment team members. Even if you are not contacted by Sept. 14, members of the assessment team may need to ask you questions about your work processes.

You should know:

  • Who is your Quality Assurance Representative? (Look at the QAR list to check your answer.)
  • How do you ensure that the work you do achieves the expected results?
  • Do you know the practices and written procedures that apply to the work you do?

Work with your supervisor and Quality Assurance Representative if you don't know the answers.

Between February and April of this year, quality-assurance representatives met with employees to do an As-Is Assessment of processes and quality controls that employees use for work. With employees' help, quality-assurance teams determined corrective actions that will improve the processes. Quality assurance professionals identified approximately 100 corrective actions that will make Fermilab operations work processes more efficient and effective. They submitted a summary of these actions as a report to the Department of Energy and began working with employees to implement the improvements.

Fermilab Director Pier Oddone will address Fermilab's Integrated Quality Assurance program's progress assessment as part of a state of the laboratory all-hands meeting at 11 a.m. in Ramsey Auditorium on Wednesday, Sept. 9.

University Profile

The University of Manchester

Front row from left: Maiko Takahashi, Clara Nellist and Christian Schwanenberger. Back row from left: Graham Wilson (now with the University of Kansas), Pengfei Ding, Stefan Soldner-Rembold, Mika Vesterinen, Krisztian Peters,Yvonne Peters, Luke Thompson, Terry Wyatt and Tim Head. Not pictured: Phil Rich, Louise Suter, Tammy Yang, Mark Owen and Un-ki Yang.

NAME:
The University of Manchester

HOME TOWN:
Manchester, United Kingdom

MASCOT:
There are three bees on the university crest, but we don't really have a mascot.

SCHOOL COLORS:
Purple, yellow and grey

PARTICLE PHYSICS COLLABORATIONS:
ATLAS, BaBar, CDF, DZero, LHCb, NEMO-3 and SuperNEMO

EXPERIMENTS AT FERMILAB:
DZero (mainly) and CDF

SCIENTISTS AND STUDENTS AT FERMILAB:
Four faculty, three postdocs and six Ph.D. students currently work on Fermilab experiments. Two of the faculty, all the postdocs and three of the Ph.D. students are based at Fermilab. During the summer two undergraduate students also work at the laboratory.

COLLABORATING AT FERMILAB SINCE:
1999, when Graham Wilson and Terry Wyatt joined DZero

MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO FERMILAB EXPERIMENTS:
DZero trigger development and data quality monitoring; calorimeter calibration and lepton identification; convener of Higgs, top and electroweak physics groups; physics coordinator, institutional board chair and two Dzero spokespersons. On CDF, charged Higgs searches and convener of top mass group. Hugh Montgomery, former associate director for research at Fermilab, studied as an undergraduate and graduate student at Manchester.

PARTICLE PHYSICS RESEARCH FOCUS:
We have a wide spectrum of research interests: Higgs searches and electroweak physics on DZero, top physics on CDF, DZero and ATLAS; forward physics and searches on ATLAS; tau and B physics on BaBar and neutrinoless double beta decay on NEMO. We have a strong hardware group, specializing in 3-D silicon and we are part of the Cockcroft Institute with several accelerator physicists. Our theorists work on a wide range of subjects from quantum chromodynamics to supersymmetry and neutrino physics.

WHAT SETS PARTICLE PHYSICS AT MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY APART?
We are one of the largest particle physics groups in the UK with more than 100 members. Theorists, experimentalists and accelerator physicists collaborate very closely in our group, for example by jointly supervising Ph.D. projects. Particle physics in Manchester has a long tradition: Exactly 100 years ago, in 1909, Geiger, Marsden and Rutherford discovered the nucleus at the University of Manchester in the gold foil experiment.

FUNDING AGENCY:
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and the Royal Society

FAVORITE NATIONAL LABORATORY:
Fermilab

View all University profiles

Fermilab Result of the Week

Quantum mechanics,
DZero style

To study the range of possible masses the W boson can take, DZero scientists had to make half a million measurements, although they used more complex equipment than Einstein does here. This particular measurement is the single most precise one so far. Drawing courtesy of Sergio Cacciatori.

Particle physicists expend a lot of effort measuring the mass of the tiny particles they create. Accurately determining the mass of these objects is an extremely important contribution to our understanding of the micro-realm.

However, when scientists speak about the mass of a particular subatomic particle, they are unintentionally misleading. The reason is that when physicists measure the mass for many particles of a particular type, (such as the top quark or the W boson) they find that the particles do not have a single, unique mass, but rather a range of masses. All of the masses in this range are close to the mass you find quoted in textbooks. Thus, the mass should be more accurately called the average mass of a particle.

The reason that particles do not have a unique mass stems from the principles of quantum mechanics. In 1927, quantum physics pioneer Werner Heisenberg realized that it is impossible to know with total precision simultaneously the energy of an object and the time over which it is observed. Since Albert Einstein showed that mass and energy are one and the same, this boils down to stating that an object that lives a very short time will have a broad range of observed masses, while a long-lived particle will have a precisely determined mass.

DZero scientists have recently investigated the range of masses possible for the W boson, which is a very short-lived particle and one of the carriers of the weak force. This measurement is very attractive because physicists can predict it with considerable precision (to an accuracy of 0.1 percent). Further, theoretical physicists understand very well how new theories would affect their prediction of this range. So, an accurate measurement will strictly constrain theoretical predictions of new physical phenomena. This measurement is the single, most accurate measurement to date, with a precision of about 3 percent.

The data and Standard Model predictions were in excellent agreement. Once again, precise DZero data can be used to constrain ideas about new physical models.

Editor's note: This measurement will be shown at the Wine and Cheese lecture scheduled at 4 p.m. in One West on Friday, Sept. 4.

-- Don Lincoln

The difficulty of this measurement required a large team of scientists to complete.

Stable operation of the DZero calorimeters requires constant vigilance by this team of experts.
In the News

Museum brings new butterflies to Fermilab

From Batavia Republican, Sept. 2, 2009

With butterfly nets and a cooler full of larvae, curators from Chicago's Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum walked alongside butterfly specialists and onlookers from Fermilab.

"There it is," said Doug Taron, curator of biology at the museum. Taron excitedly stopped mid-sentence and pointed at the turtlehead plant needed for the Baltimore checkerspot butterfly species to grow.

Fermilab and the museum are looking to introduce the Baltimore checkerspot butterfly into the vast fields of Fermilab in hopes that it can grow and keep the species vibrant.

"This is a really, really beautiful species of butterfly here," Taron said. "It's one of the flashier species in the Chicago area."

Read more

Accelerator Update

Aug. 31 to Sept. 2
- MI beam pipe repairs continue
- Pbar developed vacuum problem
- CUB Chiller #3 passed pressure test
- Beam to MiniBooNE today

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

Announcements

Latest Announcements

Use Fermilab Toastmasters Club to help you prepare for that next presentation - Sept. 3

S&T Policy: A View from Washington, D.C. - Sept. 18

Weekly time sheets due Sept. 4

Country dancing now in Kuhn Village Barn

Vacation policy changes for exempt employees in effect

International folk dancing returns to Kuhn Village Barn on Sept. 3

Bowlers wanted Wednesday nights

Thai Village restaurant discount

Robotics for Fermilab employees' children Sept. 9, 12

Argentine Tango - through Sept. 9

Scrapbooking Open House - Sept. 14

New Lo Cardio Class - Sept. 14 - Nov. 16

New Tai Chi For Health class - Sept. 14 - Nov. 16

MathWorks and Avnet demonstration Sept. 23

URA Visiting Scholars Program now accepting applications

Bristol Renaissance Faire discount tickets

Six Flags Great America discount tickets

Raging Waves Waterpark online discount ticket program

Mosaico Hispanico - celebrating Hispanic music and dance - Sept. 19

English Country Dancing - Sept. 20

Sign up for fall Science Adventures classes

Office 2007 New Features class offered in September

Buttered Rum performs on Fermilab Arts Series Oct. 24

Fred Garbo Inflatable Theatre - at Fermilab Arts Series - Nov. 7

Process piping (ASME B31.3) class offered in October and November

"The Night Before Christmas Carol" at Fermilab Arts Series - Dec. 5

 
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