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Have a safe day!
Monday, June 27
PARTICLE ASTROPHYSICS SEMINARS WILL RESUME IN THE FALL
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
All Experimenters' Meeting - Curia II
Operating CM-1, an 8-cavity TESLA-Style Cryomodule;
Achievements in Liquid Argon Electronics;
GCC Power Outage
Tuesday, June 28
Noon
Summer Lecture Series - One West
Speaker: Deborah Harris, Fermilab
Title: Neutrino Physics
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
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Monday, June 20
- Breakfast: Croissant sandwich
- Smart cuisine: *Potato leek soup
- Monte Cristo
- Smart cuisine: *1/2 roasted chicken
- Alfredo tortellini
- Chicken ranch wrapper
- Assorted sliced pizza
- Szechuan-style pork lo mein
*Heart-healthy option
Wilson Hall Cafe Menu
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Wednesday, June 29
- Szechuan spicy pork & noodle salad
- Carrot cucumber relish
- Lemon cheesecake w/ gingersnap crust
Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.
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Fermilab experiment weighs in on neutrino mystery
| The building blocks of matter include three types of neutrinos, known as electron neutrino, muon neutrino and tau neutrino. For more than a decade, physicists have seen evidence that these neutrinos can transform into each other. |
Scientists of the MINOS experiment at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced Friday the results from a search for a rare phenomenon, the transformation of muon neutrinos into electron neutrinos. The result is consistent with and significantly constrains a measurement reported 10 days ago by the Japanese T2K experiment, which announced an indication of this type of transformation.
The results of these two experiments could have implications for our understanding of the role that neutrinos may have played in the evolution of the universe. If muon neutrinos transform into electron neutrinos, neutrinos could be the reason that the big bang produced more matter than antimatter, leading to the universe as it exists today.
The Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) at Fermilab recorded a total of 62 electron neutrino-like events. If muon neutrinos do not transform into electron neutrinos, then MINOS should have seen only 49 events. The experiment should have seen 71 events if neutrinos transform as often as suggested by recent results from the Tokai-to-Kamioka (T2K) experiment in Japan. The two experiments use different methods and analysis techniques to look for this rare transformation.
To measure the transformation of muon neutrinos into other neutrinos, the MINOS experiment sends a muon neutrino beam 450 miles (735 kilometers) through the earth from the Main Injector accelerator at Fermilab to a 5,000-ton neutrino detector, located half a mile underground in the Soudan Underground Laboratory in northern Minnesota. The experiment uses two almost identical detectors: the detector at Fermilab is used to check the purity of the muon neutrino beam, and the detector at Soudan looks for electron and muon neutrinos. The neutrinos’ trip from Fermilab to Soudan takes about one four hundredths of a second, giving the neutrinos enough time to change their identities.
For more than a decade, scientists have seen evidence that the three known types of neutrinos can morph into each other. Experiments have found that muon neutrinos disappear, with some of the best measurements provided by the MINOS experiment. Scientists think that a large fraction of these muon neutrinos transform into tau neutrinos, which so far have been very hard to detect, and they suspect that a tiny fraction transform into electron neutrinos.
Read more
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New SSVSP questions and answers posted
Employees can access up-to-date information on the self-select voluntary separation program on the SSVSP Web pages.
Q. Will there be a tally count of the number of applications submitted for SSVSP posted on the website?
A. No, we will not be posting a tally. Because the important number for this voluntary separation program is the number of applications that are accepted, we will not post a running tally of the number of applications submitted. The number of applications that have been accepted will be announced in late July after the affected employees have been notified.
Q. Three years ago when we had a major voluntary separation program Divison/Sector/Center heads were required to shuffle people within their organizations to cover holes left by employees who had separated. Transfers from other organizations were prohibited. Will we have more flexibility this time to match the remaining staff to the programmatic needs?
A. Yes, there is more flexibility in this program. Internal transfers will be allowed when needed to fill vacant positions.
Q. Can an employee who accepts the SSVSP receive his or her severance pay in calendar year 2012?
A. No. Because the employee will have the right to the severance payment in 2011, the pay would be taxable in 2011, regardless of when it is received.
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More subatomic spot changing
From The Economist, June 24, 2011
IN THIS week's print edition we report a recent result from the T2K collaboration in Japan which has found strong hints that neutrinos, the elusive particles theorists believe to be as abundant in the universe as photons, but which almost never interact with anything, are as fickle as they are coy.
It has been known for some time that neutrinos switch between three types, or flavours, as they zip through space at a smidgen below the speed of light. The flavours are distinguished by the particles which emerge on the rare occasion a neutrino does bump into something. And so, an electron-neutrino conjures up an electron, a muon-neutrino, a muon, and a tau-neutrino, a tau particle (muons and tau are a lot like electrons, but heavier and less stable). Researchers at T2K observed, for the first time, muon-neutrinos transmuting into the electron variety—the one sort of spot-changing that had not been seen before. But their results, with a 0.7% chance of being a fluke, was, by the elevated standards of particle physics, tenuous.
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When passwords attack!
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| Lock up your information with a strong password. |
An important part of the lab’s computer security defenses for warding off password attacks involves choosing strong passwords.
The Computer Security team continuously compiles a list of passwords from actual attacks.
The following characteristics and patterns were found in the list of passwords used in a recent attack:
- Dictionary words, in any language, including proper names, fictional characters and movie titles.
- Personal details, such as phone and address information. Exploiting free search sites attackers have unprecedented access to personally identifiable content fed from public records, social media sites and any site that you are a member of or that houses information you’ve entered.
- Recognizable, repeating word and number patterns such as 123123, 123456789, Ab1ab2ab3 or words with letters swapped out by numbers such as Gr8ist and thri11er.
- Adjacent keyboard keys such as qwerty,!@#$%, or uiop.
- Identifiable, dissimilar word and number combinations such as turtlelime20 or yahooSerious1972.
The strongest passwords are often difficult to memorize, long, complex and unpredictable. A safe password format includes a mix of upper and lower case letters, symbols and numbers with more than six characters (ideally fifteen). Good examples of strong passwords include Xi8*76#NEx or PaX171RuGBLw.
You can create a complex password that’s easier to memorize by taking a favorite quote or line from a movie and using the first letter of each word and alternating upper and lower cases along with non-sequential numbers.
Whatever method you choose, keep in mind that the best defense against those trying to gain access to your information is to keep your password complex.
— Mark Leininger
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Sneak attack on cattle egret
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| A red-winged blackbird chases a cattle egret near Batavia road at the bison enclosure on June 9. They seem to be enjoying the newly formed lakes that resulted from the heavy rain that week. Photo: Gene Oleynik, CD |
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Science on display
From Black Hills Pioneer, June 18, 2011
LEAD — Progress at the Sanford Lab is moving forward as the race for dark matter continues.
On Friday, several media outlets were given a tour of the 4,850-foot level of the Lead laboratory, where scientists and engineers are searching for neutrinos and dark matter in the depths of the former Homestake gold mine.
The tour focused on three areas in the mine: the MAJORANA Lab, the Transition Cavern and the Davis Cavern. Each area of the old mine is being prepped for cutting-edge science experiments.
Read more
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June 22-24
- Three stores provided ~ 34 hours of luminosity
- NuMI power supply E:V118 lower trip limit lowered
- CDF and DZero accessed their collision halls
- Tevatron RF station (TRF4) had its LCW filter changed
- Beam aborted during shot setup
- MTA (MuCool) took an hour of beam
- A loose cable connection on BFR5 caused Booster problems
- FESS repaired Pbar exhaust fan, Booster worked on BRF5, MTA tested a power supply and NuMI conducted a target scan
Read the Current Accelerator Update
Read the Early Bird Report
View the Tevatron Luminosity Charts
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Chance of thunderstorms
ES&H Tip of the Week:
