Friday, March 23, 2012
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Have a safe day!

Friday, March 23
1:30 p.m.
LHC Physics Center Topic of the Week Seminar - Sunrise WH11
Speaker: Ricardo Vasquez Sierra, University of California, Davis
Title: CMS Pixel Detector – Current Status and Upgrade
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Joint Experiment-Theoretical Physics Seminar -
One West
Speaker: Karsten Heeger, University of Wisconsin
Title: Observation of Electron-Antineutrino Disappearance at Daya Bay

Monday, March 26
2:30 p.m.
Particle Astrophysics Seminar - Dark Side
Speaker: Andrew Hime, Los Alamos National Laboratory WH6W
Title: A Noble Attack on Dark Matter
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
All Experimenters' Meeting - Curia II
Special Topic: Pre-Shutdown Work on ANU; Nb3Sn Quadrupole Development at Fermilab; Mu2e Magnet Design Changes

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

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Weather
Weather Chance of thunderstorms
70°/53°

Extended Forecast
Weather at Fermilab

Current Security Status

Secon Level 3

Wilson Hall Cafe

Friday, March 23

- Breakfast: Chorizo burrito
- Old fashioned ham & bean soup
- Philly-style chicken
- Chicken pot pie
- Smart cuisine: Baked fish over rice
- Roasted veggies & provolone panini
- Assorted sliced pizza
- Carved baked ham
Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Friday, March 23
Dinner
- Mussels w/ white wine & thyme
- Veal saltimbocca
- Spinach fettuccini w/ cherry tomatoes
- Shortcakes w/ strawberries & gran marnier

Wednesday, March 28
Lunch
- Creamy gruyere & shrimp pasta
- Cabbage & mixed green salad w/ tangy herb vinaigrette
- Baked apples w/ cream chantilly

Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

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Special Director's Corner

DOE decision on LBNE

Fermilab Director Pier Oddone

Yesterday I received a letter from Office of Science Director Bill Brinkman in which he describes the DOE decision regarding the future of the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment. DOE has decided that it cannot support the LBNE project in its current form in the current budget climate. The Office of Science remains very supportive of the experiment's scientific goals, however, and has charged Fermilab with investigating options for achieving these goals that fit within the more restrictive budgets predicted in future years.

Fermilab and the LBNE project team and collaboration remain committed to achieving these goals, which have broad support from the scientific community. We will work closely with DOE and the particle physics community over the coming months to outline options for a phased approach to the long-baseline neutrino experiments as per Dr. Brinkman's request:

    In order to advance this activity on a sustainable path, I would like Fermilab to lead the development of an affordable and phased approach that will enable important science results at each phase. Alternative configurations to LBNE should also be considered. Options that allow us to independently develop the Homestake Mine as a future facility for dark matter experiments should be included in your considerations.

The excellent work of the LBNE project team and the collaboration have resulted in an advanced conceptual design, which will be reviewed as planned, and important decisions over the past few months regarding the experiment's technology choices. We will continue to put this expertise to work to ensure an achievable, high-quality program for long-baseline neutrino physics using beams from Fermilab accelerators.

Photo of the Day

Spring flowers at Fermilab

Fermilab employee Barb Kristen, PPD, spotted these Hepatica flowers along Kirk Road.
Correction

Correction: NOνA

In the Thursday, March 22, issue of Fermilab Today, an article on the NOνA experiment incorrectly explained the acronym. The acronym stands for the NuMI Off-Axis νe Appearance Experiment. The corrected article is avaialble here.

Wellness Feature of the Month

April wellness offerings, classes, athletic leagues and employee discounts

This month, the Wellness Office
will sponsor the following free events:

  • Eight Pieces
    of Brocade Qigong classes from noon to 1 p.m. on Mondays from April 2 to June 4 in Ramsey Auditorium. For questions, please contact Seton Handville at x2152.
  • Qigong, Mindfulness & Tai Chi Easy® for Stress Reduction classes from 7 to 8 a.m. on Wednesdays in Ramsey Auditorium; and from noon to 12:45 p.m. on Fridays in Ramsey Auditorium.

Special event:

  • Book fair on Wednesday, April 4, in Wilson Hall Atrium from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and on Thursday, April 5, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Fitness classes:

  • Kyuki-Do martial arts class from 5 to 6 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays, April 2 to May 9, in the Fitness Center. $55 per person.
  • Butts & guts from noon to 12:45 p.m. on Thursdays, from April 26 to May 31, in the Fitness Center. $41 per person.

Athletic leagues:

  • Coed softball league at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesdays or Thursdays from May 2 to August 15 in the Fermilab softball field in the Village. Men and women welcome; can be placed on a team. For more information, contact Dave Hockin.

Employee discounts:

  • Changarro Restaurant
  • AMC & Regal movie tickets
  • More information can be found online.

Special Announcement

Hadron Collider Physics School deadline - March 25

The seventh annual Joint Fermilab-CERN Hadron Collider Physics Summer School will take place from August 6 to August 17 at Fermilab. The schools presents lectures aimed at providing young experimental and theoretical scientists with the necessary tools to analyze and interpret data from hadron colliders to develop the understanding of physics at the TeV scale.

Applications are due on Sunday, March 25. More information is available online.

Physics in a Nutshell

Combining results carefully

Combining chemicals in the wrong way can be disastrous. We have to be just as careful with physics data, or we could get an incorrect result.

There are two ways to make a scientific discovery. The first is a serendipitous observation of something that wasn't predicted. This is rare in modern particle physics. While we still expect the unexpected, a more common approach is that we try to verify a theoretical prediction that fits well into the existing theory, but hasn't been confirmed. For discoveries of this kind, a single measurement isn't enough.

In particle physics, the easy questions have already been answered. The more difficult questions have subtle answers, usually swamped by more common collisions that make the desired phenomenon hard to observe. When observing new phenomenon, you need to be certain that you're not being fooled by lookalikes. If all of the measurements tell the same story, it's more likely that the observation is a new phenomenon.

Take the discovery of the top quark. Commonly produced in a quark/antiquark pair, top quarks decay quickly into a bottom quark and a W boson. The unstable W bosons decay into two particles, but the method varies. In all, there are ten distinct decay patterns for top quarks.

When the top quark was discovered in 1995, both CDF and DZero observed top quarks in at least five different ways. All five ways were similar enough to give us confidence in the discovery. Specific decay patterns are often investigated using more than one algorithm.

The problem arises when we take those five (or more) different measurements and combine them into a single result. A combination gives a more precise result, as it provides more evidence that the measured value is not a fluke. If many measurements tell the same story, it is more likely that your measurement isn't accidental. It is rather easy to combine totally independent measurements, but multiple measurements from one experiment are not entirely independent. Each measurement uses the same detector, and if the detector is even slightly miscalibrated, the miscalculation will be true for all measurements. Also, we use the same programs to simulate detector performance and ordinary, expected phenomena.

Click here to read the expanded column on combining results.

Want a phrase defined? Have a question? Email Fermilab Today.

Don Lincoln

Announcements

Latest Announcements

Cafeteria closed - March 24

Changarro restaurant offers 15 percent discount to employees

Fermilab Lecture Series presents "The Intensity Frontier" - today

School's Day Out - March 26-30

FRA scholarship applications due April 2

Chicago Fire Soccer - April 15 and May 12

Python Programming class - April 16-18

Monday night golf league

Scottish country dancing meets Tuesday evenings in Kuhn Village Barn

International folk dancing meets Thursday evenings in Kuhn Village Barn

Argentine tango classes at Fermilab

Healthcare Flexible Spending Accounts

Fermilab Golf League

2012 CTEQ-Fermilab school on QCD and electroweak phenomenology

Abri Credit Union is now selling books of stamps

Fermilab Management Practices courses are now available for registration

"5 Treasures" Qigong for stress relief

Indoor soccer

Atrium construction updates

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