Fermilab Today Friday, May 21, 2010
Search
Calendar

Have a safe day!

Friday, May 21
9 a.m. - 7 p.m.
International Workshop on Heavy Quarkonium
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Joint Experimental-Theoretical Physics Seminar - One West
Speaker: Eric Braaten, Ohio State University
Title: Stumbling Toward an Understanding of Quarkonium Production (in conjunction with Workshop on Heavy Quarkonium)

Monday, May 24
2:30 p.m.
Particle Astrophysics Seminar - One West
Speaker: Robert Feldman, Fermilab
Title: The Morphological Evolution of Group Galaxies
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
All Experimenters' Meeting - Curia II
Special Topic: Tentative Shutdown Schedule

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

Upcoming conferences

Campaigns

Take Five
Tune IT Up

H1N1 Flu

For information about H1N1, visit Fermilab's flu information site.

Weather

Weather
Showers
68°/53°

Extended Forecast
Weather at Fermilab

Current Security Status

Secon Level 3

Wilson Hall Cafe

Friday, May 21
- Breakfast: Chorizo burrito
- New England clam chowder
- Black & blue cheeseburger
- Tuna casserole
- Dijon meatballs over noodles
- Bistro chicken & provolone panini
- Assorted sliced pizza
- *Carved top round of beef

*Carb restricted alternative

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, May 26
Lunch
- Blackened chicken tortellini alfredo
- Blackberry-lemon pudding cake

Thursday, May 27
Dinner
- Closed

Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

Archives

Fermilab Today
Result of the Week
Safety Tip of the Week
CMS Result of the Month
User University Profiles
ILC NewsLine

Info

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

Send comments and suggestions to:
today@fnal.gov

Visit the Fermilab
home page

Unsubscribe from Fermilab Today

Recreation Feature of the Month

Classes, events and discounts for June

Children playing in the Fermilab pool. The pool will open on June 8.

Village pool opens June 8

  • Pool hours are noon- 7 p.m. Tuesday - Friday and 1 - 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Single memberships are available for $85 per person. Family memberships are available for $190 for up to four family members, $10 per additional person.
  • Adult swim lessons: 11:15 a.m. - 12: p.m. Mondays, June 7 - August 2. Cost: $60 per person.
  • Adult water aerobics: 11:15 a.m. - 12 p.m. Mondays, June 7 - August 2. Cost: $65 per person.
  • Preschool and youth swim lessons are also available beginning June 7. Cost: $60 per person.

Fitness classes starting soon:

  • Butts & Guts: noon - 12:45 p.m. Mondays, June 7 - August 2 in the Recreation Facility. Cost: $53 per person.
  • Walk to Health: 5-5:45 p.m. Mondays, June 7 - August 2 at Ring Road A1. Cost: $45 per person.
  • Kyuki Do: 5-6 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays, June 21 - July 28 in the Recreation Facility. Cost: $55 per person.

This month, the Benefits/Recreation Department will also sponsor the following wellness events:

  • "Lunch and Learn: Healthy Living to 100": 12 - 1 p.m. on Thursday, June 17, in Wilson Hall One West. Lunch will be provided. Registration is required by calling Jeanne at x2548 by June 10.
  • Qi Gong, Mindfulness & Tai Chi Easy: noon-12:45 p.m. on Fridays in the Wilson Hall Auditorium. Free.

Club meetings:

  • Toastmasters: noon-1 p.m. on Thursdays, June 3, and June 17, in the Racetrack conference room, WH7. Learn more
  • Sustainable Energy Club: 5:10 p.m. on Tuesday, June 15 in the Users' Center Music Room.

Athletic leagues:
Sand volleyball: Leagues play at 5:30 p.m. every Tuesday. Meet at Village sand volleyball courts behind the pool. Contact Oscar at oglez@fnal.gov for more information.

Employees and users can also contact the Recreation Department to take advantage of special discounts, including:

  • AMC and Goodrich Theater tickets: AMC anytime tickets $8. AMC two-week restriction tickets $7. Goodrich anytime tickets $7.
  • Rosati's Pizza of Batavia now offers Fermilab employees a 20 percent discount on pizzas and 15 percent off other menu items.
  • Fermilab Days at Six Flags Great America will be held on June 26, July 3, 4, 5, 31 and August 1, 7 or 8. Tickets are available online for $26. Visit sixflags.com, choose Six Flags Great America park, and enter the promo code (Fermi) in the upper right hand corner. Any day tickets are available for $33 online.

In the News

Editorial: The being of being

From New York Times, May 20, 2010

Why is there something instead of nothing? That is a child's question, but it also haunts the imaginations of physicists and mathematicians. What they know is that the matter and antimatter created in the Big Bang should have canceled each other out, leaving nothing instead of the something we call the universe. Why that didn't happen may have been partially revealed in a recent experiment in the Tevatron - a particle accelerator - at Fermilab, in Batavia, Ill.

We proceed gingerly when interpreting the results of high-energy physics experiments. The way it has been explained is that it all comes down to a very slight bias, an asymmetry, in the behavior of a subatomic particle, the neutral B-meson. As it oscillates between its matter and antimatter states, it shows a slight predilection for matter, a result predicted by Andrei Sakharov.

That preference for one state over another - becoming matter more readily than it becomes antimatter - is small, about 1 percent. But that may be enough to explain the preponderance of matter. We expect more news on this front from the Tevatron and its larger European cousin, the Large Hadron Collider.

Read more

Recovery Act

Expansion project to match form to function

>
Construction crews work at MI-8.

The MI-8 building can be a loud place, especially at night.

Technicians at MI-8 test pieces of equipment used to make neutrino beams, a deafening process that involves jolting the pieces with 200,000-amp pulses of electricity about every two seconds for hours at a time. Each pulse crackles as loudly as a sledgehammer against an anvil.

They run these tests at night to avoid interrupting other work in the building including the construction of parts for neutrino experiments. There is simply not enough room to separate the testers from the builders.

To fix problems like this one, Fermilab awarded $2.9 million in funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to R.C. Wegman Construction Co. to expand MI-8.

The MI-8 building is actually a service building for the 8 GeV line in the accelerator complex, complete with a hatch that spans almost from wall to wall and leads to the service tunnel 30 feet below. It's an awkward fit for the technicians and their equipment. They tuck spare parts and raw materials against the railing around the hatch, stack them on the floor and even prop them in the nooks of the building's I-beam columns. Delicate pieces of replacement equipment wait under plastic sheets near the door. To assemble long, fragile pieces of focusing horns used in neutrino experiments, they use a crane hanging over the service tunnel hatch.

Fermilab scientists use focusing horns, which roughly resemble 12-foot trumpets, to create beams of neutrinos for experiments. To do this, Fermilab scientists send high-energy protons into a carbon target. The debris from each collision passes through a pair of focusing horns before decaying into neutrinos.

Each horn costs about $1 million and takes around two years to build. Once installed, horns are exposed to harsh environments, which makes them very difficult to repair when they fail. So technicians build them to last and are constantly making spares.

The expansion will allow them to build spares faster by giving them workspace specifically built to accommodate them. This might also save them from working the night shift.

-- Kathryn Grim

Announcements

Latest Announcements

10,000 Steps Per Day Walking Program

Interaction Management Coaching Forum - July 27

Introduction to LabVIEW course - July 13

Embedded Design with LabVIEW FPGA and CompactRIO seminar - July 13

News at Toastmasters

Sign up for summer Science Adventures classes

News for Cigna plan participants

May habitat restoration - May 22

May "Benefits Bulletin" now available

Argentine Tango Wednesdays through May 26

Pool memberships available now

Sand Volleyball Tuesdays begin May 25

43rd Fermilab Users' Meeting - June 2-3, register now

SciTech summer camps start June 14

Employee discount at Batavia Rosati's

Fermilab Arts Series presents Corky Siegel and Chamber Blues - June 26

ANSYS Mechanical Application classes offered in May

Additional activities


Submit an announcement


Classifieds
Find new classified ads on Fermilab Today.

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