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Have a safe day!
Thursday, Nov. 10
2:30 p.m.
Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Dru Renner, Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility
Title: A New Approach to Hadronic Vacuum Polarization for Muon g–2 and αEM
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Accelerator Physics and Technology Seminar - One West
Speaker: Robert Hardin, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Title: SNS Accumulator Ring Instability Damper and Beam Transfer Function Studies
Friday, Nov. 11
11 a.m.
Research Techniques Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Richard Wigmans, Texas Tech University
Title: Dream – Towards High-Resolution Jet Spectroscopy
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Joint Experimental-Theoretical Physics Seminar - One West
Speaker: Teppei Katori, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Title: Test of Lorentz and CPT Violation with MiniBooNE Excesses
Click here for NALCAL,
a weekly calendar with links to additional information.
Upcoming conferences |
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Thursday, Nov. 10
- Breakfast: Apple sticks
- Tomato Florentine
- BBQ pork sandwich
- Smart cuisine: Kielbasa & sauerkraut
- Smart cuisine: Chicken marsala
- Smoked turkey melt
- Assorted sliced pizza
- Southwestern chicken salad w/ roasted corn salsa
Wilson Hall Cafe Menu
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Friday, Nov. 11
Dinner
Closed
Wednesday, Nov. 16
Lunch
- Rouladen w/ buttered noodles
- Medley of peas & carrots
- German chocolate cake
Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation. |
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Involuntary separation
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Fermilab Director Pier Oddone |
Yesterday we carried out the first phase of the involuntary separation. This affects a total of 16 employees from across the laboratory. We anticipate a second, smaller phase in 2012 that will affect the Computing Sector, which was excluded from this phase due to ongoing restructuring. This action follows the voluntary separation program that was completed at the beginning of October.
The involuntary separation is necessary in order to meet budget constraints and to best match skills to the current and future scientific programs. The number of staff members who were involuntarily separated is smaller than we anticipated some months ago due to several factors, including voluntary resignations, attrition and increased project needs.
It is my hope that no additional actions will be necessary for some time to come. However, as you all know the federal budget climate is uncertain. I will keep you updated about the status of the laboratory’s budget for this and coming years. In the meantime, if you have questions about the involuntary separation, please contact laboratory management.
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Annual enrollment information sessions - through Nov. 18
Through Friday, Nov. 18, Fermilab employees have the opportunity to enroll their flexible spending accounts, as well as their medical and dental plans. Any changes made will be effective on Jan. 1, 2012.
Each employee will receive an enrollment packet outlining benefits options. Those currently enrolled in the Blue Cross Blue Shield HMO IL plan will need to enroll in another plan, as this option will no longer be offered. If an employee does not wish to change his or her benefits plan, then he or she does not need to complete an enrollment form.
There will be an information session Thursday, Nov. 17 at 10 a.m. in the AD-Huddle conference room. The complete list of information sessions is here. For more information, please contact the Benefits Office at x3395.
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The multiplying effects of an accelerator economy
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| Image courtesy of Niowave.
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Niowave in Lansing, Mich. is bringing superconducting cavities to the larger science community
On the homepage of a US-based company website is a picture that, at first glance, looks like an advertisement for a major household appliance. A yellow starburst graphic assures you that delivery time is quick. A text-boxed baseline price is presented in glowing type. And at the centre is the touted item: an ILC/TESLA-type accelerator cavity.
Through the ad, Niowave, Inc., a superconducting linear accelerator company based in Lansing, US, showcases its capability for producing cavities with relatively short turnaround times. For the accelerator community, the ad could be a sign that the production of these superconducting structures is very slowly inching its way towards a place in the market as an in-stock product.
“It’s an indication of their confidence in this product as a catalog item,” said Global Design Effort Project Manager Marc Ross. “It means there’s somebody there willing to buy a number of them in that way.”
Read more
—Leah Hesla
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Fall patterns in nature
| Petals and leaves mix on the ground behind Wilson Hall to create a colorful pattern. Photo: Pat Sheahan, AD |
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Particle physicists learn cancer-fighting tricks
From Discovery News, Nov. 9, 2011
Over the last few decades, particle physicists have developed all kinds of useful simulation tools to help them predict the behavior of subatomic particles interacting with matter, with valuable applications in medical and space science to boot.
Now Joseph Perl, a physicist with the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) is adapting one of those simulation tools to help make cancer therapy that much safer.
Geant4 was designed to track subatomic particles in high-energy accelerators, but it's also ideal for mapping out the paths protons take through the body during proton therapy treatments.
The "father of proton therapy" is Robert R. Wilson, the physicist who built Fermilab. He'd become interested in researching the effects of radiation damage on the human body as a result of his Los Alamos experiences on the Manhattan Project -- especially the deaths of two fellow physicists from radiation sickness after accidents with the fickle plutonium cores, which affected him greatly.
Read more
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Dibosons the hard way
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| This is the result of the fit to data in events
where CDF scientists identified b-jets using the b-tagger.
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Physicists at CDF are working hard to continue to improve their experiment’s sensitivity to the Higgs boson. One group is now examining a physics process similar to that of the Standard Model Higgs but more prevalent in order to improve their analysis tools. Specifically, they are conducting a search for a diboson signal comprised of one W and one Z particle that requires the Z to decay into a pair of b jets. This diboson physics analysis is almost identical to the search for the Standard Model Higgs particle but the Higgs decay is replaced by the Z boson.
This analysis builds on a previous observation of the combined production of WW, WZ and ZZ diboson pairs in events with neutrinos and jets. After employing a variety of methods to reduce and model the large amounts of background events, CDF scientists searched for a bump in the distribution of the mass of jet pairs near the W and Z masses in two samples: jets that are identified as coming from b quarks, called b jets, and those that are not.
To pick out b jets from other kinds of jets, CDF scientists have created a new b-jet tagger. This is a computer algorithm that looks at an event and tries to identify jets that do not come from the primary vertex - meaning b quarks that travel some distance before decaying into a jet of particles. This new tagger is unique in that it takes a more holistic approach; using as much information available in a given event as it can rather than the current strict cut-based approach where only certain high quality tracks are considered in order to spot signs that the jet in question came from the production and decay of a B hadron.
The new tagging algorithm performs very well compared to existing b taggers and, for this analysis, has slightly improved its ability to identify b-quarks. It has also made a large improvement in reducing the rate of mistags. Using approximately half of the available data set, CDF measured
the cross section for production of WZ + ZZ particles by proton-anti proton collisions to be equal to 5.8 +3.6/-3.0 picobarns, which is in good agreement with the Standard Model prediction of 5.1 picobarns.
Efforts are currently underway to incorporate elements of this tagger into existing Higgs searchs as CDF prepares for its final Higgs results this winter.
Learn more
—Edited by Andy Beretvas
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These CDF physicists contributed to this data analysis. Clockwise from top left: Stephen Poprocki, Cornell University; Sasha Pronko, Fermilab; Wes Ketchum, University of Chicago; Vadium Rusu, Fermilab; John Freeman, Fermilab; and Peter Wittich, Cornell University.
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Snow
