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Have a safe day!
Wednesday, March 14
1:30 p.m.
Particle Astrophysics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Jeter Hall, Fermilab
Title: How to Discover WIMP Dark Matter
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Fermilab Colloquium -
One West
Speaker: Nergis Mavalvala, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Title: Quantum Opportunities in Gravitational Wave Detectors
Thursday, March 15
2:30 p.m.
Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Tim Cohen, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Title: Electroweak Baryogenesis and Higgs Signatures
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Accelerator Physics and Technology Seminar - One West
Speaker: John Corlett, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Title: Next Generation Light Source R&D and Design Studies at LBNL
Click here for NALCAL,
a weekly calendar with links to additional information.
Upcoming conferences
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Wednesday, March 14
- Breakfast: English muffin sandwich
- Portabello harvest grain
- Santa Fe chicken quesadilla
- Hoisin chicken
- Smart cuisine: Parmesan fish
- Cuban panini
- Assorted sliced pizza
- Shrimp pesto
Wilson Hall Cafe Menu |
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Wednesday, March 14
Lunch
- Cornish game hens w/ mushroom sauce
- Wild rice
- Caramelized carrots
Friday, March 16
Closed
Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.
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Joy and toil as Fermilab sends first particles to SeaQuest
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| SeaQuest spokesperson Paul Reimer inspects part of the detector. Photo: Reidar Hahn |
On the night of March 7, SeaQuest operators celebrated the detection of their first particles – a new milestone for the experiment.
For spokesperson Paul Reimer of Argonne National Laboratory, 13 years of planning, proposals, funding and construction have led to this moment, when SeaQuest switched from a long-sought goal to a current reality. Reimer hopes that data gained from this experiment will help scientists better understand the strong force, which is responsible for binding quarks together to form protons and neutrons and for binding protons and neutrons into atomic nuclei.
The day leading up to that moment began with Fermilab engineering physicist Mike Geelhoed and the Accelerator Division. They were tuning the beam to create a more stable stream of particles, having recently rejuvenated one of Fermilab's old proton beamlines. The group was pushing to get protons to the experiment as soon as possible, but couldn't guarantee an exact time. This is never a one-person job, Geelhoed stressed. Hundreds were involved in the process through several support groups from the AD, PPD and TD.
Read more
—Brad Hooker
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"Great News!" email is SPAM
An email with the subject, "Great News!" was sent to Fermilab employees and users this morning. This email is SPAM and was not sent from Fermilab. You should not click the link in the message of the email, but if you clicked and entered your user name and password, please call the Service Desk at x2345.
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Not just the Higgs boson
From BBC.com, March 13, 2012
Physicists at Cern are powering up the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) again, ready for a final push to confirm the discovery of the Higgs boson - the final piece of the jigsaw known as the Standard Model of Particle Physics.
So what then? Such a fuss has been made about finally nailing down the Higgs you could be forgiven for thinking that - once the champagne had been quaffed and the Nobel Prizes handed out - we could all pack up and go home.
Not a bit of it. Only two of the four main experimental detectors straddling the 27km ring of the LHC are even looking for the Higgs and both are interested in much, much more.
The mission statement for the Atlas experiment - titled Mapping the Secrets of the Universe - makes no mention of the Higgs, preferring to focus on the forces that have shaped our universe, extra dimensions of space, the unification of fundamental forces and evidence for dark matter candidates.
Read more
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Spacecraft aims to expose violent hearts of galaxies
From Nature.com, March 13, 2012
Low-cost mission will tap into the unexplored upper reaches of the X-ray spectrum.
Who would have thought that a ringside seat at some of the Universe's most extreme events could come cheap? But by the standards of space-based astronomy, the NuSTAR telescope that NASA plans to launch as early as this month has a modest budget, US$165 million. Yet it will be sensitive to the high-energy photons produced at the turbulent thresholds of supermassive black holes.
Due to be lofted into orbit by a Pegasus rocket launched in mid-air from a carrier jet, NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) is taking aim at an under-explored region of the spectrum.
Read more
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Changes in the sensitive assets verification process
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Jack Kelly
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Property and Inventory Control Manager Jack Kelly wrote this week's column.
Every year our laboratory must perform an inventory of sensitive assets, such as laptops and digital cameras. These are items that, regardless of cost, have a high potential for loss. There are currently about 17,000 such items for which Fermilab must account. The Property and Inventory Control Department works with all the custodians to account for these assets and is always looking for ways to make the process better. Sometimes, improvements in technology can make a difference. With help from the Core Computing Division's Information Systems department, this year software will be used that can verify if an asset is connected to the network, giving evidence of its presence.
At 11 a.m. on March 21, the network group will verify any asset that is on the network. This electronic search and verification will update the Property Management system with a resolution for each asset found connected to the network. In response, each resolved item will be removed from the manual verification list of the responsible custodian. Custodians are still responsible for the assets but they won't have to personally verify that they have these assets and have their supervisors verify that the assets are here at the laboratory.
After the online verification, the Property Office will mail custodians the paperwork for the remainder of the sensitive assets inventory. Because so many sensitive items are connected to the network, the new method will reduce the amount of paper generated for the inventory reports. It will also reduce the workload for the custodians, supervisors and the Property Office.
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New employees - Feb. 27
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From left: Brian Kramper, AD, and Vincenzo Li Vigni, TD. Credit: Cindy Arnold. |
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ES&H weekly report, March 13
This week's safety report, compiled by the Fermilab ES&H section, does not contain any incidents.
Find the full report here. |
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Breezy
