|
Have a safe day!
Thursday, Dec. 9
2 p.m.
Computing Techniques Seminar - FCC1
Speaker: Steve Timm, Fermilab
Title: The FermiCloud Project: Pilot Service Deployment
and Future Plans
2:30 p.m.
Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Leandro Almeida, CEA-Saclay
Title: Jet Hunting with Templates
3:30
p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK -
2nd Flr X-Over
THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR THIS WEEK
Friday, Dec. 10
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Joint Experimental-Theoretical Physics Seminar
-One West
Speaker: Yvonne Peters, University of Manchester/Fermilab
Title: A Top Quark Carol
Saturday, Dec. 11
8 p.m.
Fermilab Arts Series - Auditorium
Title: A Celtic Christmas with Tomaseen Foley
Tickets: $28/$14
Click here for NALCAL,
a weekly calendar with links to additional information.
Upcoming conferences
|
|
Thursday, Dec. 9
- Breakfast: Apple sticks
- Santa Fe black bean soup
- Steak tacos
- Chicken Wellington
- Chimichangas
- Baked ham & Swiss on a ciabatta roll
- Assorted sliced pizza
- Crispy fried chicken salad
Wilson Hall Cafe Menu |
|
Thursday, Dec. 9
Dinner
- Spinach & strawberry salad
- Lobster tail w/drawn butter
- Spaghetti squash w/green onions
- Sautéed pea pods
- White chocolate-raspberry crème brule
Wednesday, Dec. 15
Christmas Lunch
12 p.m.
- Crab cakes w/red pepper mayo
- Lemon orzo
- Sautéed spinach w/ garlic
- Chocolate raspberry torte
Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.
|
|
Employee Commuting Survey results are in
Katie Kosirog, ES&H environmental protection specialist, wrote this column.
 |
|
Katie Kosirog
|
Thanks to all who completed Fermilab’s employee commuting survey in November. More than 55 percent of employees, or 1150, completed the survey. Executive Order 13514 and DOE’s Strategic Sustainability Performance Plan require Fermilab to reduce greenhouse gas emissions related to employee commuting and business travel 12 percent by 2020. The survey asked questions related to public transportation, carpooling, alternative work schedules, and telecommuting because a combination of these approaches will help lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Fermilab's ES&H environmental protection group used the results to calculate greenhouse gas emissions related to employee commuting for DOE’s annual Pollution Prevention Tracking and Reporting System. DOE requires Fermilab to submit data into this database every fiscal year by Dec. 1. This year DOE asked us to gather more specific data and then use that data to estimate more accurate greenhouse gas emissions related to Fermilab employee commuting habits.
Here are some of the survey results:
- 71 percent of responders drive passenger cars, 21.5 percent drive vans or SUVs, 2.1 percent carpool, 3.6 percent bike or walk to work, 0.5 percent take public transportation
- 30 percent would use public transportation more than driving if it was readily available
- 48 percent would carpool at least two days per week
- 38 percent would bike or walk more if it was more convenient
- 80 percent would work from home at least one day a week
- 78 percent would like to work an alternative schedule
We received a lot of great comments and suggestions. The Environmental Protection Subcommittee will also analyze the survey results and will use those results and the comments and suggestions to form a recommendation to Fermilab management regarding possible solutions to meet the new DOE goal.
To continue to track commuting habits, the ES&H section will conduct similar surveys in the future. Your participation is greatly appreciated.
 |
One result from the recent employee commuting survey. |
|
Retirement events
Below is a listing of upcoming retirements events:
Bob Mau, AD. Cake in the Main Control Room at 2:30 p.m. on Dec. 14. Retirement party will take place at 11:30 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 14, 2011 at Lincoln Inn Banquets, Batavia. Contact Mary Kohler, x8225
Alan Jonckheere, PPD. Retirement event at 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 15, at Andres Restaurant, 5 Webster Street, Batavia. Contact Julie, x4591.
Brian Kramper, AD. Retirement luncheon will take place at 11:30 a.m. on Monday, Dec, 13, Riverview Banquets,
1117 N. Washington Ave., Batavia. Contact Rebecca, x5069, or Dennis, x 6410.
Ed Crumpley, FESS. Retirement event: Cake at 1:30 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 13, on WH5E.
Merle Olson, FESS. Retirement event: Cake at 1:30 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 13, on WH5E.
|
Education Office to hold annual holiday sale today
 |
|
Fermilab Director Pier Oddone wears one of the Fermilab silk ties available at the Education Office. |
Prepare for the winter holidays with Fermilab gear. From 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. today, stock up on winter clothing, science toys and more at the Education Office's Super Science Stocking Stuffer Sale. The Education Office is holding the sale next to One West. All major credit cards are accepted.
|
Leaping coyote
 |
Scott Seifrid caught one of the Fermilab coyotes in mid-flight. Photo: Scott Seifrid |
|
"Our generation’s Sputnik moment is back": President Obama reiterates his support for R&D
From The AIP Bulletin of Science Policy News, Dec. 8, 2010
Research and development continue to play a prominent role in the national discussion about restoring America’s economic prosperity. Following last week’s release of the report by The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform recommending “expanding high-value research and development in energy and other critical areas,” President Barack Obama discussed the value of R&D two separate times this week. The first was during a 40-minute address at a community college that was largely devoted to the importance of innovation that provides an expansive view of the President’s position on R&D, the second in response to a question at yesterday’s White House press briefing. Excerpts from both follow:
White House Press Briefing, December 7, 2010
“But we’ve got to have a larger debate about how is this -- how is this country going to win the economic competition of the 21st century? How are we going to make sure that we’ve got the best-trained workers in the world? There was just a study that came out today showing how we’ve slipped even further when it comes to math education and science education.
Read more
|
|
Living flavorfully with biases
 |
If the data sample were unbiased we would expect
the red line to be a straight downwards sloping line. |
Millions of particle collisions take place each second at the Tevatron. Some collisions produce B hadrons that live for approximately a millionth of a millionth of a second before decaying to other particles. Although so many B hadrons are produced, scientists are still working to accurately measure the short-lived particle's lifetime. CDF scientists have made such a measurement by employing new analytical techniques.
A precise measurement of the B hadron's average decay time is crucial to understanding the low energy interactions between the quarks that make up B hadrons. To collect events with B hadrons, physicists employ fast algorithms that retain events containing interesting signatures.
One signature of B hadrons is that some of them live long enough to travel
a few millimeters from the collision point. So, an event is more likely to contain a B hadron
if it has decay tracks that do not originate at the collision point.
However, if scientists were to look at the distribution of the B hadron's decay time it would look distorted since selection algorithms are more likely to choose particles that live longer and travel further in the detector. Performing a measurement using this sample would be biased, like concluding the average house price in a country by sampling only the affluent neighborhoods.
Particle physics research often relies on simulated data to estimate these biases. However, there are differences between simulated and real data that lead to large uncertainties on the measurement.
To make a measurement of the B+ lifetime at CDF, scientists employed a new analytical technique to calculate the biases using only
information gathered from the data.
The result is a method that has a limiting precision better than 1 percent, which
is more than a factor of two smaller than methods that rely on simulation.
We measure the mean decay time of B+ as 1.662 ± 0.023 (stat.) ± 0.015 (syst.) pico seconds. This method, developed at CDF, is available to other experiments such as LHCb at the LHC where it could be used to further understand the B hadrons.
More information
-- edited by Andy Beretvas |
|
First row from left: Jonas Rademacker, Sneha Malde, Farrukh Azfar, Nicola Pounder, all Oxford. Second row from left: Louis Lyons, Oxford; Joe Boudreau and Aziz Rahman, Pittsburgh; and Todd Huffman, Oxford. |
|
|
Chance of snow
