Monday, May 9, 2011
spacer
Search
spacer
Calendar

Monday, May 9
2 p.m.
LHC Physics Center Topic of the Week Seminar - Sunrise WH11NE
Speaker: Marina Artuso, Syracuse University
Title: Highlight on Early Physics Results from LHCb
2:30 p.m.
Particle Astrophysics Seminar One West
Speaker: Segev BenZvi, University of Wisconsin
Title: The Deepening Mystery of Cosmic Rays: Observations of Anisotropies in the Galactic Cosmic Rays at 10 TeV
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
All Experimenters' Meeting - Curia II
Special Topics: T-978:  CALICE - SiW ECAL/Digital HCAL at FTBF

Tuesday, May 10
2 p.m.
LHC Physics Center Topic of the Week Seminar - Sunrise (WH11SE)
Speaker: Marina Artuso, Syracuse University
Title: The LHCb Upgrade
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.

Upcoming conferences

Campaigns

Take Five

Weather

Weather Chance of thunderstorms
74°/58°

Extended Forecast
Weather at Fermilab

Current Security Status

Secon Level 3

Wilson Hall Cafe
Monday, May 9
- Croissant sandwich
- French quarter gumbo soup
- French dip w/ horseradish cream
- Santa Fe pork stew
- *Country baked chicken
- Popcorn shrimp wrap
- Assorted sliced pizza
- Sweet and sour chicken w/egg roll

*Heart healthy option

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, May 11
Lunch

- Lemon sole
- Green beans
- Fresh fruit plate

Friday, May 13
Booked

Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

Archives

Fermilab Today

Director's Corner

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

Feature

LHC Physics Center gives Chou's career a boost

John Paul Chou (left) speaks with colleagues Alexey Ferapontov, Brown University; Saptaparna Bhattacharya, Brown University; and Charles Plager, UCLA/Fermilab. Photo: Christine Herman

John Paul Chou knew he wanted to pursue science when he was a little kid.

“I think I wanted to be a professor since I was 8,” Chou said. “Science is something that always fascinated me.”

Currently, Chou is a post-doctoral research fellow and an LPC fellow under Greg Landsberg at Brown University, where he has focused his efforts on seeking out large extra dimensions at the LHC.

This fall, he will be taking the next big step in his scientific career by becoming a professor of physics at Rutgers University.

Chou said he wasn’t planning on actively looking for jobs this year until he learned of the position at Rutgers, which has a reputation for having great interplay between its experimental and theoretical physicists.

“It was an opportunity and I didn’t want to miss it,” he said.

As a post-doc carrying out research at Fermilab, Chou got plugged in to the LHC Physics Center (LPC) where he found many opportunities to network, collaborate and mentor others.

Chou put together a physics reading group, served as chair of the “LPC topic of the week” forum and mentored graduate students.

Chou also found mentors for himself amongst LPC professors, who gave him a sense of what it’s like to be a professor.

“There’s a lot of expertise at the LPC— real genuine experts in particular fields,” Chou said. “Having access to that is huge.”

Ian Shipsey, physics professor at Purdue University and co-director of LPC, said he saw in Chou exactly the skill set needed in a professor and tried to nurture those qualities.

“He is the epitome of what we want in a young person at the LPC, because he’s excited about physics and about the community here, and he cares deeply about it,” Shipsey said. “He plans ahead, he gets people on board and he gives credit where it is due.”

Shipsey said he is very happy to see Chou take this next step.

“It’s a bit like being a parent who is losing a child, but you know that the child is going on to do something wonderful,” Shipsey said. “Of course we’ll miss him, but we’re very excited for him.”

Christine Herman

Special Announcement

LHC Physics Center launches new website

The LHC Physics Center (LPC) has launched a new website, which features updated navigation, bios of members of the LPC community and a list of LPC events, programs, lectures, seminars and more.

Milestone

Death: Gennady Obrant

Gennady Obrant, DZero collaborator, passed away last week from a heart attack. Obrant was a long-time collaborator on DZero, where he worked on many aspects of the experiment, including in the control room and as an active member of the Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) group.

“Gena was an excellent physicist, always helpful, and a good friend to many of us. We will miss him,” said DZero co-spokespersons Dmitri Denisov and Stefan Soldner-Rembold.”We would like to express our condolences to Gena’s family in Russia.”

A service for Obrant will take place from 5 - 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 10, at the Countryside Funeral Home, located at 950 South Bartlett Road in Bartlett. To get to the funeral home from the laboratory, head north on Route 59 to Bartlett Road. The funeral home is on the southwest corner of Stearns Road and South Bartlett Road, one mile east of Route 59.

Read his obituary (in Russian).

In the News

One hundred years of superconductivity

From ILC Newsline, May 5, 2011

This year is the 100th anniversary of the discovery of superconductivity, a state in some materials to conduct electricity without energy loss at very low temperatures. Heike Kamerlingh Onnes demonstrated the phenomenon of superconductivity in 1911 at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands when he observed the resistivity of mercury go to zero as he cooled it below 4 K. Onnes won the Nobel Prize in physics for this remarkable discovery, which has had profound impacts on both science and society over the past century. Superconductivity is the central enabling technology employed in modern particle accelerators.

One of the most basic formulas we learn in physics is Ohm’s Law, V = IR. The voltage drop across a material (e.g., a wire in an electrical circuit) is proportional to the current applied and the resistance of the material. The voltage drop is zero if the resistance is zero, which is a special state for some materials at very low temperatures called superconductivity.

Read more

ES&H Tip of the Week: Safety

Fermilab keeping refrigerants in check

Fermilab Refrigerant Manager Pat Marsh weighs a cyclinder of refrigerant at the Site 39 Storeroom. Cyclinders are accurately weighed at check out and back in to determine how much refrigerant has been used or lost. Photo: Rod Walton

Fermilab has more than 600 pieces of refrigeration equipment, including large chillers that provide cold water to cool experimental apparatuses and air conditioners for computing centers, offices and even cars. Each of these pieces of equipment uses one or more refrigerants, chemicals that carry heat away from an area and disperse it into the surrounding air.

But through conservation and management practices, Fermilab minimizes the negative effects from these chemicals.

The most frequently used refrigerants in the 1980s were ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) commonly known as Freon. In 1990, the Clean Air Act Amendments were adopted, and the sale of CFCs was prohibited. Fermilab began phasing out CFCs and returning them for recycling. Last year, we eliminated the last CFC use on site.

Replacement chemicals such as hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are now widely used. We currently manage about 11 different refrigerants.

The Clean Air Act requires Fermilab to designate a person as refrigerant manager to track refrigerant use and ensure compliance with strict limits on the amount of refrigerant that can be accidentally released without remedial action. Pat Marsh, of the FESS Operations Department, is the Fermilab refrigerant manager. The FESHM Chapter 8081 describes the Fermilab policies and procedures for managing these substances.

Equipment is allowed to lose only a small percentage of its refrigerant charge before it must be shut down and repaired. To avoid this, Fermilab closely tracks its use of refrigerants. All refrigerants must be obtained through Pat Marsh at the Site 39 maintenance storeroom. Only EPA-certified technicians can service refrigeration equipment, and they must keep strict accounting of all refrigerant chemicals used and recovered. Any amount that cannot be accounted for is recorded as an emission.

Since most of our refrigeration equipment is critical to our mission, it behooves us to adopt conservative management practices. You should make sure that equipment is in good working order and that no one except certified technicians works on cooling equipment, using chemicals obtained from the Fermilab refrigerant manager.

Equipment owners should consider a program of planned maintenance and/or surveillance to discover potential leaks before they develop into a problem. Because it’s important to recover chemicals from old equipment that has been replaced, the refrigerant manager should be informed about all scrapped, replaced or new cooling equipment to make sure that refrigerants are properly recovered.

— Rod Walton, Fermilab ecologist

In the News

Dark matters

From www.phdcomics.com, April 27, 2011

Recently, I sat down with physicists Daniel Whiteson and Jonathan Feng to talk about dark matter and how CERN's collider is helping answer the question: What is it?

Click on the link below to watch the six-minute video from "Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge Cham.

Watch video

Accelerator Update

May 4-6

- Three stores provided ~39.75 hours of luminosity
- Tevatron personnel conducted hollow beam studies
- Linac personnel repaired KRF7's LCW leak
- Operators tuned to correct MI-8 collimator beam positions
- The Thursday day shift was full of accesses for repairs
- MIRF7 tripped off and operators bypassed the station
- Cryo system personnel replaced a wet engine flywheel at F2

Read the Current Accelerator Update
Read the Early Bird Report
View the Tevatron Luminosity Charts

Announcements

Latest Announcements

Accelerated C++ short course - June 6

Registration open for 44th annual Users' Meeting - June 1-2

Creative Writers - May 19

NALWO Spring Tea - May 9

How to Advance Women in Science - May 12

Windows 7 Introduction course - May 19

Word 2010: Transition from 2003/2007 course - May 25

Excel 2010: Transition from 2003/2007 course - May 25

Change in cashier's office hours

Adult swim lessons at Fermi pool

Beginner swim lessons at pool

Pre-Kindergarten swim lessons at pool

Aqua Tots at the pool

Pool opens - June 7

Medical scans that use radioisotopes require work adjustments

Do you have a foreign bank account outside of the U.S.?

Jazzercise Discount for employees

Chilled Water Plant Design course - June 14 – 16

Security, Privacy, Legal  |  Use of Cookies