Thursday, June 16, 2011
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Have a safe day!

Thursday, June 16
11:30 a.m.
All-hands meeting - Ramsey Auditorium
2 p.m.
Special Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: John Womersley, UK Science & Technology Facilities Council
Title: Fundamental Physics in the UK and Recent History and Lessons for the US
2:30 p.m.
Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: David Wilson, Argonne National Laboratory
Title: Non-Perturbative Solutions of the Gluon and Ghost Propagators in Landau Gauge QCD
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Accelerator Physics and Technology Seminar - One West
Speaker: Yuri Kamyshkov, University of Tennessee
Title: Increasing Yield of Cold and Ultra-Cold Neutrons from Spallation Target for the Search of Neutron Oscillations

Friday, June 17
11 a.m.
Special Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Mark Palmer, Cornell University
Title: Electron Cloud Studies at Ultra Low Emittance: The CESR Test Accelerator R&D Program
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Joint Experimental-Theoretical Physics Seminar - One West
Speaker: To Be Announced
Title: T2K Result and Fermilab Neutrino Programs

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

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Weather Chance of showers
78°/58°

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Current Security Status

Secon Level 3

Wilson Hall Cafe

Thursday, June 16

- Breakfast: Apple sticks
- Minnesota wild rice w/ chicken
- Tuna melt on nine grain
- Smart cuisine: Italian meatloaf
- Chicken casserole
- Buffalo crispy chicken wrap
- Assorted sliced pizza
- Smart cuisine: Chicken pecan salad

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Friday, June 17
Dinner

- Romaine, walnut & radish salad
- Veal w/ leek & Roquefort sauce
- Sauté of peas w/ tarragon
- Lemon-scented saffron rice
- White chocolate raspberry terrine

Wednesday, June 22
- Ancho-fired flank steak
- Roasted potatoes
- Maque choux
- Coconut cake

Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

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Special Announcement

All-hands meeting at 11:30 a.m. today in Ramsey Auditorium

Employees are encouraged to attend an all-hands meeting at 11:30 a.m. today in Ramsey Auditorium.

For those employees who cannot attend in person, the meeting will be available via webcast and archived online for later viewing.

Feature

Fermilab employees rescue gosling from fishing line

FESS employees Jim Kalina, Steve Whiteaker and Mike Pfaff helped free a gosling from the fishing line that cut off circulation to its leg. Photo: Bob Lootens

Fish hooks are for catching fish, not geese. But last week, a young goose got a hook through its foot and a fishing line tied around its leg.

Fermilab employees rescued the frantic gosling from the east Reflection Pond near Wilson Hall on June 9.

“His little heart was pounding pretty hard, he was definitely scared,” said Jim Kalina, FESS employee.

The line had wrapped several times around the gosling’s leg and had cinched so tightly that it cut off circulation to its foot. FESS employees Steve Whiteaker and Mike Pfaff used sharp knives to gently cut the tangled line. About 10 minutes later, they set the gosling free at Swan Lake near the high rise.

“We put him on the grass and he got up and ran, but we could see his one leg was still very sensitive,” Kalina said.

Recently, Kalina spotted the goose near the high rise and it appears to be doing OK.

This incident serves as a reminder to everyone to clean up after using Fermilab’s grounds for recreational activities.

“The biggest thing is when you’re a fisherman and you’ve got a line to toss, don’t leave it laying on the shoreline,” Kalina said.

Employees, users and visitors can participate in helping keep our site clean at the 3rd Thursday lunchtime cleanup.

The next opportunity to help out is Thursday, June 23. A light lunch is provided to volunteers. Contact Jeannette Olah via email or at x3303 for more information or to sign up.

“We need the help of volunteers,” Kalina said. “Thanks to all those that come– it’s really a great help.”

— Christine Herman

FESS employee Steve Whiteaker holds the gosling that he helped set free from a fishing line that had entangled its leg. Photo: Bob Lootens
Feature

Chicago Afrobeat project at Fermilab this Saturday

Free advance tickets available to FNAL employees, users and grad students!

The Chicago Afrobeat project will perform at Fermilab on June 18. Photo:CAbP

Hypnotic beats and hard-hitting horn lines from one of the hottest afrobeat bands out there will make Fermilab’s high rise the place to be this Saturday night.

Chicago Afrobeat Project will perform at 8 p.m. on Saturday, June 18, in Fermilab’s Ramsey Auditorium. Fermilab employees, users, grad students can get two free tickets in advance by coming to the box office.

The band brings together musicians from Chicago’s diverse music scene and boasts a broad range of musical influences: rock, jazz, afro-cuban, high life and juju music. According to the Chicago Afrobeat Project website, their music has “a hypnotic, dance-compelling pulse” at its core, and their shows are characterized by dynamic solos by each member of the band, ranging from “melodic and hard-hitting horn lines” to a “cutting, driven rhythm section dynamic.”

Chicago Afrobeat Project performs at more than 100 shows each year across the country, and has been nominated for several awards including the Chicago Music Awards’s Best African Artist in 2004 and 2005, and the CMA’s “Award of Honor for Contribution to World Beat Music” in 2006.

Free tickets are available to Fermilab employees, users, grad students at the box office in advance only.

At the door, tickets are $15 for adults and $8 for guests age 18 and under. For more information, visit the websites for Chicago Afrobeat Project and the Fermilab Arts Series.

— Christine Herman

In the News

Astrophysicist looks to stars to uncover neutrino’s secrets

From North Carolina State University, June 13, 2011

A North Carolina State University astrophysicist hopes to gain better understanding of one of nature’s most elusive particles – neutrinos – as well as the supernovae that spawn them.

Dr. James Kneller, professor of physics at NC State, has received a five-year, $750,000 Early Career Research Program grant from the Department of Energy to study how neutrinos interact with one another in extremely hot and dense environments, such as those found in galactic supernovae.

Neutrinos come in one of three types which scientists refer to as “flavors.” Over the past decade, physicists have found that a neutrino’s flavor is not fixed at the moment it is created; rather neutrinos can change from one flavor to another as they move along.

Read more

Result of the Week

Things that go bump in the night

DZero tried to faithfully reproduce a CDF result that had the blogosphere buzzing in early April. As is evident from the picture, no bump was observed corresponding to the one seen by CDF. The corresponding CDF figure can be seen here.

Things that go bump in the night can send a chill up your spine. They are unexpected, unknown and could be anything. Bumps in data have a very similar effect on physicists. If we see an unexpected bump in a data plot, it could be the very first observation of something unknown. A discovery might be in the offing.

On April 6, CDF announced observation of an unexpected bump in its data. An update of this result was shown just two weeks ago. In events in which two jets were made at the same time as a W boson, CDF researchers wondered what the mass of the parent would be if the two jets were the decay products of a single, parent particle. They found that there was an unexpected excess at a mass of about 145 times heavier than a proton. When CDF collaborators announced their result in a seminar at Fermilab, the news spread like wildfire across the blogosphere and even made the front page of CNN.

With such a flurry of excitement, it was imperative for the observation to be confirmed or disproved. The only other experiment that could duplicate this exact measurement is the DZero experiment and, naturally, we immediately looked at our data. While our similar result already existed and was immediately available for scrutiny, the two experiments had made different choices on data selection. In order to reproduce the CDF analysis, DZero needed to modify its analysis to duplicate choices made by the CDF collaboration. Further, with a possibly-momentous discovery on the line, it was critical that DZero do the analysis extremely carefully. Confirmation or rejection of the bump that sent shivers up the spines of millions of science enthusiasts is a serious business.

Last Friday, the DZero experiment released its measurement, which reproduced the CDF methodology as closely as possible. As you can see in the figure above, the collaboration did not observe a similar bump.

So where does that leave us? Experts will continue to debate how DZero could have missed a real effect or how CDF could have inadvertently manufactured a signal. A task force created by Fermilab Director Pier Oddone and the CDF and DZero collaborations will coordinate a study of the two experiments’ analyses. Over the next weeks and months, the picture will be clarified and the truth revealed. This is the beauty of the scientific method.

Don Lincoln

These physicists performed this very delicate analysis. It is the official position of the DZero collaboration that the analyzers for this analysis were selected solely on the basis of talent, and their names, while appropriate, are purely coincidental.
Fermilab’s Mike Diesburg has the very important task of processing all of the DZero data to make it suitable for physics analysis. He is one of the very few people who makes contact with every event recorded by DZero.
Accelerator Update

June 13-15

- Four stores provided ~37.25 hours of luminosity
- Cryo system technicians worked on the Tevatron sector B2 system
- The Main Injector excitation control and regulation system caused problems
- Store 8816 set the second-highest luminosity mark with 424.56E30
- Tevatron hollow beam studies were performed
- Store 8816 was lost due to a lightning strike

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

Announcements

Latest Announcements

Toastmasters - today

Creative Writing - today

3rd Saturday Habitat Workday - 9 a.m. to noon, June 18

Indian Creek Road will be closed again today

Introduction to LabVIEW class - today

Argentine Tango at Fermilab, Wednesdays in Ramsey Auditorium starting today

Bereavement policy update

10,000 Steps-A-Day iPod Shuffle winner

Fermilab Natural Areas picnic - June 26

Fermilab Arts Series presents Chicago Afrobeat Project - June 18

New anti-virus, anti-spam system

International folk dancing in Ramsey Auditorium

Two high school seniors awarded ACU college scholarships

Deadline for UChicago tuition remission program - June 23

Heartland Blood Drive - June 20 & 21

DASTOW 2011 - June 22

Fermilab management practices courses presented this summer

SciTech summer camps June 20 - Aug. 12

Change in cashier's office hours

Beginner swim lessons at the pool

Jazzercise discount for employees

10,000 Steps-A-Day personal fitness kit winner

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