Wednesday, June 1, 2011
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Have a safe day!

Wednesday, June 1
8 a.m.
Annual Users' Meeting Registration - Auditorium Lobby
9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Annual Users' Meeting - Auditorium
2 p.m.
LHC Physics Center Topic of the Week Seminar - Sunrise WH11NE
Speaker: Graham Kribs, University of Oregon
Title: Strong Dynamics Without Technicolor
THERE WILL BE NO DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK
THERE WILL BE NO FERMILAB COLLOQUIUM THIS WEEK

Thursday, June 2
9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Annual Users' Meeting - Auditorium
2:30 p.m.
Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Rakhi Mahbubani, CERN
Title: Counting Dark Matter at the LHC
THERE WILL BE NO DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK TODAY
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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Secon Level 3

Wilson Hall Cafe

Wednesday, June 1

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

*Heart healthy choice

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, June 1
Lunch
- Thai roast duck salad
- Tangerine mousse w/ ginger spice cookies

Friday, June 3
-Scallops w/ bacon & maple cream
- Spencer steaks w/ red wine-shiitake sauce
- Fresh corn & cheddar cheese soufflé
- Haricots verts
- Strawberry crepes

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

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

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Special Announcement

Users' Meeting begins today

Fermilab's 44th annual Users' Meeting begins today. Registered users can attend today's lectures and events, which include results from the Tevatron and neutrino experiments, presentations of the Tollestrup and URA Thesis awards and talks by Fermilab Director Pier Oddone, the Acting Associate Director of DOE's Office of High-Energy Physics Mike Procario and a talk about KEK's future plans by KEK Director General Atsuto Suzuki.

The Graduate Student Association poster session will take place at the banquet, which will follow a memorial talk honoring Bruce Winstein.

For more information on the Users’ Meeting or to register, visit the event website.

News

Updated CDF result

Last month the CDF collaboration published evidence of an unexpected excess of particle collision events that produce a W boson accompanied by two hadronic jets. This week, CDF updated that analysis by adding an additional 3 inverse femtobarns of data. The analysis technique itself remained unchanged from the initial publication, which used 4.3 inverse femtobarns of data and observed an excess with a significance of 3.2 sigma. In the new data, an excess is seen at the same mass with a significance of 2.85 sigma. When both data sets are combined, CDF observes a peak with a significance of 4.2 sigma, which means that there is a less than 1 in 20,000 chance that the effect is mimicked by a statistical fluctuation. Work is ongoing at CDF to understand the origin of the peak. DZero has also undertaken an analysis.

In Memoriam

Afternoon lecture honors Bruce Winstein

A plaque honoring Bruce Winstein for his accomplishments will be hung following the memorial lecture at the annual Users' Meeting.

A lecture this afternoon will honor the life and contributions of Bruce Winstein, an award-winning experimental particle physicist who made a great impact on the field of particle physics. Winstein died earlier this year. Ed Blucher, University of Chicago’s chairman of the Department of Physics, will give the memorial lecture at 5 p.m. in Ramsey Auditorium as part of Fermilab’s annual Users’ Meeting. A plaque honoring Winstein for his accomplishments will be hung following the lecture.

“Bruce changed the field of fixed target experiments,” said Bob Bernstein, who worked with Winstein for many years. “You could wander down the hall and find someone who was affected by Bruce in some way.”

Winstein served as Bernstein’s thesis advisor, although Bernstein said he got more from Winstein than guidance.

“One of the things that I got from Bruce was an externalized conscience,” Bernstein said. “Whenever I do a piece of work, I feel him on my shoulder. He taught you to keep going until you understood something or until you did it right.”

Bob Tschirhart, who worked with Winstein on KTeV and other fixed target experiments for more than a decade, still can hear Winstein’s words from time to time.

“His personality was extremely intense,” Tschirhart said. “When you were analyzing data, he wanted to make sure your logic was sound. If you said something stupid, he’d call you on it. It could be painful to be on the receiving end, but it made you a better researcher.”

Read more

Rhianna Wisniewski

Feature

Two winners selected for 14th annual URA Thesis Award

Two graduate students working at the Tevatron were selected to receive the URA Thesis Award, honoring them for their research achievements.

Xuebing Bu, a graduate student at the University of Science and Technology of China working on DZero, and Simone Pagan Griso, a graduate student at the Universita Degli Studi di Padova who worked on CDF, are the joint recipients of the 14th annual Universities Research Association Thesis Award.

“Both were excellent for different reasons and we were unable to split between them,” said Steve Brice, Fermilab particle physicist and URA Thesis Award committee chair.

Xuebing Bu

At DZero, Bu developed mathematical algorithms to search for the Higgs boson via its decay to diphotons. When Bu started on the project, no single approach to photon identification in collision data was widely accepted in the field. As co-convener of DZero’s electron/photon identification group, Bu led the way in redesigning and unifying the process of photon identification.

Aurelio Juste from IFAE-Barcelona nominated Bu’s thesis, titled "Higgs to gamma gamma Search and Direct Photon Pair Production Differential Cross-Section Measurement at D0.”

“Bu put in an enormous amount of work to squeeze information out of photons and electrons in the DZero detector,” Brice said. “His work will be important for Higgs searches at the LHC.”

Simone Pagan Griso

Pagan Griso received the award for his work on CDF, where he searched for the Higgs boson decaying to two W bosons. He developed novel techniques for separating potential signal events into multiple analysis channels based on their kinematic properties. By isolating events likely associated with specific Higgs production and background production processes, Pagan Griso was able to make significant improvements in the overall search sensitivity.

Read more

Christine Herman

Director's Corner

Science strategy

Fermilab Director Pier Oddone

We spent yesterday with the Office of Science leadership discussing strategy for particle physics and Fermilab. We also met with Secretary of Energy Steven Chu. In designing the laboratory strategy for the post-Tevatron era we try to meet the following criteria:

  • Address critical and exciting questions
  • Be bold and establish world leadership in at least one domain
  • Attract partners to leverage our investments through international collaboration
  • Fit within a global strategy for the field and within reasonable U.S. funding
  • Be resilient in the face of physics discoveries and funding fluctuations

In the next decade we have a vital program along the three frontiers of particle physics: Energy, Intensity and Cosmic. In the past we have led in all three frontiers, but with the increasing size of facilities and the global nature of our field, we need to define our domain of leadership. We have chosen the Intensity Frontier. At this frontier we have great opportunities to contribute to the world’s program with the study of neutrinos and rare transitions.

We have a first rate program at the Intensity Frontier in the next decade with the present accelerator complex; a world-class set of neutrino experiments: MINOS, MicroBooNE, NOvA and MINERvA; and two leading muon experiments: g-2 and Mu2e. For the long term we have proposed a strategy that includes the development of the Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE) first and, in the longer term, a broad program with Project X. Project X, a high-intensity continuous wave superconducting linac, coupled to the rest of the Fermilab complex, greatly increases the flux of particles, which is the key to a long-term program at the Intensity Frontier. Fitting these grand ambitions in current budget projections is very difficult. Nevertheless, agreeing on a clear long-term strategy is important even if the time scale is stretched due to the current financial circumstances for the Office of Science.

Read more

In the News

Anomaly at the Tevatron might be something real?

From Cosmic Variance,
a Discover Magazine blog, May 30, 2011

The Tevatron, Fermilab’s mighty but ancient (as these things go) particle accelerator, is scheduled to be shut down at the end of this year. But the old beast might have a trick or two left yet.

Way back in April we talked about a couple of lingering anomalies in the Tevatron data that had risen to the level where theorists were intrigued enough to start building models. One of these — a forward/backward asymmetry in top-quark interactions — had been around for a while, and was taken seriously by a number of people. The other — a tiny bump near 150 GeV in the total number of events that produce a W boson and two jets — was relatively new, and was greeted by a bit of scoffing.

Read more

Accelerator Update

May 27-30

- Five stores provided ~41.5 hours of luminosity
- NuMI off for target replacement
- Tevatron electron lens noise caused beam problems
- Tevatron sector B3 wet engine repairs halted, B3 cryo system operated via Jewel Thompson (JT) valve
- Store 8770 quenched due to abort kicker prefire
- Lightening strikes interrupted shot setup and disrupted other systems

*The integrated luminosity for the period from 5/23/11 to 5/30/11 was 58.41 inverse picobarns.

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

Safety Update

ES&H weekly report, May 31

This week's safety report, compiled by the Fermilab ES&H section, includes no recordable incidents and three injuries/vehicale accidents: An employee overextended her wrist while unloading paper, requiring first-aid treatment; a contractor backed his truck into FCC, shattering a window but resulting in no injuries; and an employee was stopped at the stoplight at Kirk and Wilson street when the government vehicle he was driving was struck from behind (rear ended) by another vehicle, requiring first-aid treatment.

Find the full report here.
Announcements

Latest Announcements

Users' Center opening Delayed until 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 2

Pool membership drive at Users' Center - June 1

Yoga class now offered on Thursdays

Fermilab Family Outdoor Fair - June 12

Creative writing - June 2

International Folk Dancing will not meet June 2, resumes June 9 in Ramsey Auditorium

Silk and Thistle Scottish dancing moves to the Auditorium from May 31 through August

Detailed org chart and financial, procurement, and property web queries downtime - June 1

Bill Brinkman talk at UChicago - June 8

Town hall meeting: former worker medical screening program - June 7

10,000 Steps-A-Day heart rate watch winner

Deadline for U Chicago tuition remission program - June 23

DASTOW 2011 - June 22

SciTech summer camps June 20 - Aug. 12

Fermilab Arts Series presents Chicago Afrobeat Project - June 18

Change in cashier's office hours

Registration is now open for Accelerated C++: a short course in practical programming by example - June 6

Argentine Tango classes through June 8

Water aerobics at the pool - June 13

Adult swim lessons at Fermi pool -June 13

Beginner swim lessons at the pool

Learn to scuba dive at Fermi - June 15

Preschool swim lesson deadline - June 6

Aqua Tots deadline - June 6

Pool opens - June 7

Jazzercise discount for employees


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