For information about H1N1, visit Fermilab's flu information site.
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Thursday, April 22
- Apple sticks
- Southwestern chicken tortilla
- Philly style cheese steak
- *Garlic herb roasted pork
- Mardi Gras jambalaya
- *Southwestern turkey wrap
- Assorted sliced pizza
- *Marinated grilled chicken caesar salads
*Carb restricted alternative
Wilson Hall Cafe Menu
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Thursday, April 22
Dinner
- Closed
Wednesday, April 28
Lunch
- Crab cakes w/red pepper mayonnaise
- Lemon orzo
- Carrot cake
Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.
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Celebrate Earth Day today at ES&H fair in atrium
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Celebrate Earth Day at the ES&H Fair from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. today in the Wilson Hall atrium. |
Learn how to be a good steward of the Earth at the lab-wide, ES&H Section-sponsored Earth Day Fair from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. today in the Wilson Hall atrium.
Taxi service frequency will be increased during fair hours. Arrange taxis by calling x4225.
Learn more
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Toward a sustainable laboratory
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Bruce Chrisman |
As we celebrate Earth Day here at Fermilab, I would like to remind people of the Executive Order 13514 - Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy and Economic Performance, signed by President Obama last fall. This order expands the federal requirements for sustainability and the reduction of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. It lays out sweeping goals for the federal sector, including the following:
- Significant reduction in energy usage
- Reduce the use of fossil fuels in fleet vehicles
- Employ water conservation strategies, including responsible storm water management
- Recycle 50 percent of both general waste and construction and demolition waste
- Design new buildings to meet zero-net energy standard by 2020
In response, DOE Secretary Chu has set an ambitious goal to reduce DOE greenhouse gas emissions by 28 percent by FY2020. At least 15 percent of the reductions should come from behavioral changes rather than expensive engineered solutions. Secretary Chu has proposed that employee performance plans include an energy conservation element. Fermilab management is considering implementing this idea for FY2011.
To meet our goals, we need to make changes in procurement, operations and management and to develop a culture of sustainability. Fermilab will attempt to:
- Reduce overall energy use
- Recycle more waste
- Procure Energy Star or Federal Energy Management Program-designated products when available
- Re-think expenditures for business travel and conferences
- Intensify efforts to minimize waste and prevent pollution at the source
- Utilize "smart building" technologies to optimize building and system operations
- Adopt landscape and land management processes that use less energy and water
- Seek conservation and energy reduction from vendors and sub-contractors
Achieving this goal requires all employees to take responsibility, help conserve water and energy, and recycle waste whenever possible:
- Turn off lights and computer monitors when not needed
- Minimize idling time of cars and equipment
- Establish and maintain thermostat temperature settings in individual buildings
- Turn off faucets after each use and report leaking and dripping faucets
- Ensure that computers employ energy-saving features
- Use rechargeable batteries whenever possible
- Keep cars in good working order, with tires properly inflated
By observing these simple practices, employees, users and contractors can make a difference-and not just on Earth Day.
--Bruce Chrisman, Fermilab chief operating officer
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Visa holders: how to weather volcanic activity travel delays
The Visa Office has confirmed procedures for Fermilab users stranded in the U.S. because of the air traffic disruptions in Europe caused by the Icelandic volcano eruption.
Visa waiver users with approaching departures (or who were unable to leave the U.S. as scheduled) should make an appointment with the Visa Office. The Visa Office will provide a letter for the individual that confirms the guidance received from Customs and Border Protection. These users should carry this letter, along with a photocopy of their I-94 and original travel itinerary (showing the original departure date) during their next visit to the U.S.
B-1 users with approaching (or past) I-94 expiration dates must complete and file a Form I-539 Application to Extend Status with the United States Citizen and Immigration Service. The Visa Office will assist in this process. There is a mandatory $300 fee for this filing. The USCIS accepts personal checks or money orders made payable to "The Department of Homeland Security." Individuals without U.S. bank accounts may obtain money orders from a U.S. Post Office in exchange for cash. The Department of Homeland Security will view the decision not to file the I-539 application as voluntarily overstaying. If you overstay in the U.S. you must make all future visa applications from your home country. The user also would be unlawfully present in the U.S, and so the Users' Office would be unable to extend the visitors' ID badge. As well, the failure to file the I-539 will be a factor that U.S. Consulates can consider in deciding whether to issue a new visa to the user.
Read more
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Wanna routinely win March Madness? Bet on science
From symmetry breaking, April 20, 2010
When most people think of March Madness, they think of precision and brawn. But they ought to throw brains into that list.
Basketball teams from universities involved in the particle-physics outreach program QuarkNet routinely swoosh their way through the brackets in the annual National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament.
Since QuarkNet's inception 12 years ago, a dozen of the 64 competing teams, on average, have had QuarkNet ties. In 2004, all of the teams in the national finals, known as the Final Four, claimed QuarkNet allegiance.
QuarkNet-participating schools consistently have a higher proportion of men's teams advancing to the Final Four and women's teams advancing to the Sweet 16. Based on the number of QuarkNet teams that have participated in the NCAA tournament during the past 12 years, statistically 4.3 men's teams should have been in the finals, yet 10 teams made it. Only two QuarkNet men's teams should have become national champions, but five did. For the Women's teams, 4.3 should have made it to the finals, while 5 teams did and two should have claimed the national championship, which is what has happened.
Read more
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Not your ordinary lepton
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An example of one of the discriminate distributions (the BDT output) used to separate the Higgs signal from the backgrounds. The signal (blue hatched histogram) tends to accumulate at high values of the discriminant, while the backgrounds tend to have lower values. |
The CDF and DZero experimenters are making great progress in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson.
Experimenters (or scientists) predict that a light Higgs boson will decay into a pair of bottom quarks. But if the Higgs' mass is more than 135 giga electron volts (GeV), it would decay primarily into a pair of W bosons. For Higgs masses of about 165 GeV, scientists expect that the Higgs will decay almost exclusively into pairs of W bosons. These W bosons can decay into leptons, including electrons, taus and muons, as well as three types of neutrinos. Events with two charged leptons would be easier to identify than events with two b quarks. Therefore, the best chance to discover or exclude the Higgs boson at the Tevatron is at the higher masses.
A recent combination of data from CDF and DZero searches for a high-mass Higgs boson in the WW decay channel excludes the existence of a Higgs boson in the 162-166 GeV/c2 mass range. Of the three charged leptons (electrons, muons and taus) the electrons and muons are easiest to identify and have lower backgrounds. Therefore, in the combination of CDF and DZero data, CDF scientists only analyzed events in which W bosons decay into electrons or muons.
In order to improve the analysis, CDF scientists are now including tau lepton reconstruction into the search.
CDF scientists see evidence of most taus as narrow cones of energy deposited in the calorimeter. Unfortunately, other particles that are produced much more often than the Higgs boson can produce a similar signal, or background, in the detector. Because of these large backgrounds, CDF scientists developed techniques to help discriminate between Higgs events with taus and the more common background events. These techniques combine kinematic information, such as the energies and angular relationships of the measured particles, with the quantities used in identifying the taus in the detector. This combined information is a discriminant, a powerful variable for separating signals and backgrounds. By combining this new search with previous searches, which were based on electrons and muons, CDF scientists were able to improve the overall sensitivity of Higgs searches in the mass range around 165 GeV/c2 by several percent. Check Fermilab Today for more results as CDF continues to add more channels and improves analysis techniques in order to increase the mass range of Higgs exclusion or maybe to see the first evidence of a signal.
- edited by Craig Group
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The CDF scientists responsible for this new analysis. From left: Massimo Casarsa, Fermilab; Anadi Canepa, TRIUMF; and Sergo Jindariani, Fermilab. |
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Wilson Hall lighting retrofit project now underway
Electricians will install new, energy-efficient lighting in Wilson Hall cafeteria over the next several days between the hours of 5 a.m. and 3 p.m. They are scheduled to finish on April 28, after which point they will replace selected lights in the auditorium. The activity will not result in any cafeteria closures. Additional seating is available on the second floor crossover during meal periods.
This is part of a five-step, energy conservation project contracted out to energy-services company Ameresco. Amaresco is financing the project, and the laboratory will repay the company using the savings from reduced energy consumption over the 15-year contract term.
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