Users' Meeting begins today; public lecture speaker change

Fermilab's annual Users' Meeting begins today. Registered users and Fermilab employees with their supervisor's permission can attend today's lectures and events, which include a status update on Fermilab's Accelerator Complex; results presentations from MINOS, MiniBooNE, SciBooNE and MINERvA; and talks by Department of Energy Under Secretary for Science Steve Koonin and Deputy Director of the Office of Science for High Energy Physics Dennis Kovar.

Due to ongoing issues with the Gulf oil spill, Steven Chu is unable to give the public lecture this evening. However the Under Secretary for Science, Steven Koonin, will speak on energy in his place.

The Graduate Student Association poster session will take place at the banquet, which will follow Koonin's talk.

Tickets for this evening's public lecture have all been given away. If you have any tickets that you will not use, please call the box office at 630-840-ARTS (2787) or turn them in at the lobby box office tomorrow beginning at 7 p.m.

Tingjun Yang receives 13th annual URA Thesis Award

Tingjun Yang, recipient of this year's URA Thesis Award, with advisor Stanley Wojcicki.

Tingjun Yang will receive this year's University Research Association Thesis Award for his thesis, "A Study of Muon Neutrino to Electron Neutrino Oscillations in the MINOS Experiment." His thesis documents a six-year search for the last unmeasured neutrino-mixing angle at MINOS.

Yang, who was surprised and honored to receive a phone call in early May informing him of the award, credits the support of his collaborators on MINOS as crucial to developing his thesis.

"I really cherished the experience that I had at the MINOS experiment," Yang said. "I am grateful to the many people that I worked with and I want to thank especially my advisor, Stanley Wojcicki."

Yang was nominated for the award by Wojcicki, who was not surprised to learn that Yang would receive this year's prize.

"It is as good a thesis as I have seen in the last 10 years since I started working on MINOS," he said.

Yang's thesis details the measuring of electron-neutrino appearance in the NUMI beam and the search for theta₁₃. Since the MINOS experiment was not designed for this kind of research, Yang and his colleagues developed several new techniques in order to conduct their studies.

The adaptation efforts allowed Yang the opportunity to participate in nearly every aspect of the search process and this range was reflected in his thesis.

"Yang's thesis is quite remarkable for the breadth of material covered," said Steve Brice of the selection panel. "A lot of students take one small aspect of a search and really make it their own. Yang did that, but for seven or eight pieces."

The URA Thesis Award recipient is chosen by a six-person panel representing a range of the laboratory's activities. The recipient, whose Ph.D. thesis work can focus on any aspect of these activities, receives a certificate and $3,500 check.

Since completing his thesis in 2009, Yang has received his Ph.D. from Stanford University and is currently a member of the CDF collaboration and working part-time on research and development of liquid argon time-projection chambers. Yang will receive his prize today at the Fermilab Users' Meeting.

-- Daisy Yuhas

Solving the riddle of why matter exists

From NPR, May 28, 2010

Throughout the millenia, philosophers, theologians and scientists have pondered the simple question: Why are we here? Science News writer Ron Cowen discusses results from the Fermi Lab's particle collider which may help explain the preponderance of matter, not anti-matter, in the universe.

Listen or read the transcript.

Particle chameleon caught in the act of changing

From CERN, May 31, 2010

Researchers on the OPERA experiment at the INFN1's Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy today announced the first direct observation of a tau particle in a muon neutrino beam sent through the Earth from CERN2, 730km away. This is a significant result, providing the final missing piece of a puzzle that has been challenging science since the 1960s, and giving tantalizing hints of new physics to come.

The neutrino puzzle began with a pioneering and ultimately Nobel Prize winning experiment conducted by US scientist Ray Davis beginning in the 1960s. He observed far fewer neutrinos arriving at the Earth from the Sun than solar models predicted: either solar models were wrong, or something was happening to the neutrinos on their way. A possible solution to the puzzle was provided in 1969 by the theorists Bruno Pontecorvo and Vladimir Gribov, who first suggested that chameleon-like oscillatory changes between different types of neutrinos could be responsible for the apparent neutrino deficit.

Read more