Fermilab Today

	Wednesday, March 9, 2011

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Have a safe day!

Wednesday, March 9
2:30 p.m.
LHC Physics Center Topic of the Week Seminar - Sunrise (WH11SE)
Speaker: Harrison Prosper, Florida State University
Title: Bayesian Statistics
3:30
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Fermilab Colloquium - One West
Speaker: Alexander Zholents, Argonne National Laboratory
Title: The Quest for Ultra-Short X-Ray Pulses

Thursday, March 10
2 p.m.
LHC Physics Center Topic of the Week Seminar - Sunrise (WH11SE)
Speaker: Christos Leonidopoulos, CERN
Title: W' Searches at CMS and 2011 Strategy
2:30 p.m.
Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Andreas Kronfeld, Fermilab
Title: Report on the Hadronic Light-by-Light Contribution to Muon g-2
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR TODAY

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

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Weather

Rain
43°/30°

Extended Forecast
Weather at Fermilab

Current Security Status

Secon Level 3

Wilson Hall Cafe

Wednesday, March 9

- Breakfast: English muffin sandwich
- Portabello harvest grain
- Santa Fe chicken quesadilla
- Hoisin chicken
- *Parmesan fish
- Cuban panini
- Assorted sliced pizza
- Shrimp pesto

*carb-restricted alternative

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, March 9
Lunch
- Stuffed flank steak
- Parmesan orzo
- Italian cream cake

Friday, March 11
Dinner
- Pasta carbonara
- stuffed filet of sole with crabmeat
- Sautéed spinach with lemon and garlic
- Pecan rum cake

Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

Computer security reminders

Computer security breaches can be prevented with proper vigilence.

To prepare for spring, Fermilab recently conducted preparedness drills to test our severe weather alert system. Discovering potential alert system glitches in advance is critical. The same holds true for computer security. Take a few minutes to think how you can prevent computer security breaches.

Here are some computer security reminders that can help you prevent a severe event.

Avoid using weak passwords. Centrally managed systems at the laboratory enforce password complexity, but other systems depend on your diligence.
Don’t use passwords that have fewer than eight characters and are without numbers, capital letters or symbols. Simple passwords, such as your last name, are easy to crack. They make it easy for spammers to hijack your account and use it to send questionable content to anyone on your mailing list.
Don’t reuse passwords on important systems, like financial and centrally managed laboratory systems.
Don’t write passwords down on paper. Many people store passwords near their computers on post it notes or paper lists. Anyone can find this information and gain access.
Lock your office when you leave for the evening or when you're gone for extended periods.
Lock your screen or log out of your workstation whenever you leave it.
Make sure your computer implements a password-protected screen-lock. If unlocked, strangers can access your files, your e-mail and proprietary software.
Don’t put unrecognized or unsolicited media (CDs, DVDs, USB sticks, thumb drives) in your computer. If you are suspicious of a piece of media, take it to the Service Desk in Wilson Hall. They will scan it for you
Ask for an ID when you encounter individuals who try to slip in and gain access to protected areas. They might ask you to hold a door, claim they lost their ID, or name people you don’t know as having authorized their entry.

-- David J. Ritchie and Kimberly Myles

In the News

Simon van der Meer:
1925–2011

From Physics World,
March 8, 2011

Simon van der Meer, who shared the 1984 Nobel Prize for Physics with Carlo Rubbia, died on 4 March at the age of 85. The pair were awarded the prize for their roles in discovering the W and Z bosons – the particles that carry the weak force – at the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) at the CERN particle-physics lab near Geneva. Van der Meer pioneered the technique of "stochastic cooling", which helped to ensure that sufficient antiprotons entered the collider to allow W and Z to be discovered.

Van der Meer was born on 24 November 1925 in the Hague, the Netherlands, before going on to study technical physics at the University of Technology in Delft. Graduating in 1952, he then joined the Philips Research Laboratory in Eindhoven, developing high-voltage equipment and electroncis for electron microsocopes. He joined CERN in 1956, where he was to spend the rest of his career before retiring in 1990.

Working under the leadership of John Adams – a future CERN director-general – Van der Meer made his name in the early 1960s developing a device known as a "horn" that could increase the intensity of neutrino beams. These devices are still used today as they allow focused beams of neutrinos to be sent through the Earth for hundreds of kilometres to huge, ultrasensitive underground detectors. Van der Meer then worked on an experiment at CERN for developing the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, which taught him the principles of accelerator design.

From the Technical Division

11 Tesla as a springboard to the future

Giorgio Apollinari

Giorgio Apollinari, head of the Technical Division, wrote this week’s column.

Fermilab achievements on the development of Niobium Tin (Nb₃Sn) technology within the LHC Accelerator Research Program have already been illustrated in these columns. Thanks to a close collaboration between Fermilab, Brookhaven and Berkeley laboratories, the US magnet community leads the world in designing and building accelerator-worthy magnets with Nb₃Sn. This technology allows accelerator magnets to achieve fields in excess of 10 Tesla (up to approximately 15 Tesla) in contrast to the Niobium Titanium (NbTi) technology currently used by the Tevatron and the LHC, where fields are limited to approximately 8 Tesla.

This Nb₃Sn technology achievement has not gone unnoticed. Shortly after the LARP collaboration pushed past the technology boundaries for the construction of Nb₃Sn accelerator magnets, a proposal was made to use Nb₃Sn in the construction of 11 Tesla magnets for the LHC. These magnets will be used for an upgrade to the LHC. By installing these stronger and more compact magnets in a few locations around the LHC ring, there will be enough free space to insert collimators and achieve the LHC design luminosity of 10³⁴ cm^-2s^-1 for the full exploration of the Energy Frontier.

There are close synergies between the Fermilab Nb₃Sn program and the 11 Tesla magnets. The same equipment, tools, expertise and construction procedures that enabled LARP's successes, can be easily modified for the development of the 11 Tesla magnets. The Technical Division’s High Field Magnet group is constructing an 11 Tesla demonstrator model that we plan to complete by the end of the year. The successful demonstration of this model in 2011 will pave the way for a construction project with the goal of installing Nb₃Sn magnets in an operating accelerator by 2016-2017 for a LHC shutdown.

In the longer term future, Nb₃Sn magnets will form the basis for the LHC luminosity upgrade in the early part of the next decade, a possible higher energy LHC or the proposed Muon Collider at Fermilab.

In addition to advancing technology for particle accelerators, this technology also has many potential benefits for society. I believe things will play out in a way similar to what the Tevatron development did for the now-ubiquitous MRI technology (an industry with an annual business of approximately $3 billion a year in the US and $10 billion worldwide). I like to believe that thanks to our efforts today in a few decades we, as well as our children and grand-children, will be able to visit hospital with Nb₃Sn-equipped MRI systems where the higher field achieved by these magnets could provide more detailed images, leading to improved medical diagnoses.

Safety Update

ES&H weekly report, March 8

This week's safety report, compiled by the Fermilab ES&H section lists no recordable incidents. An employee slipped on the property and reported to medical, but no treatment was necessary.

Find the full report here.

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