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Have a safe day!
Wednesday, April 18
12:30 p.m.
Physics for Everyone - Auditorium
Speaker: Tom Kroc, Fermilab
Title: Fighting Cancer With Neutrons
2 p.m.
LHC Physics Center Topic of the Week Seminar - Sunrise WH11
Speaker: Can Kilic, University of Texas
Title: The Collider Phenomenology of Vectorlike Confinement
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Fermilab Colloquium -
One West
Speaker: Aephraim M. Steinberg, University of Toronto
Title: Quantum Measurement and the Real World
Thursday, April 19
2:30 p.m.
Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Can Kilic, University of Texas
Title: Topics in Dark Matter: Flavored Dark Matter and Limits on Gamma-Ray Lines from Unitarity
3:30
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK -
2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Accelerator Physics and Technology Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Kavin Ammigan, Illinois Institute of Technology
Title: Planar Laser-Induced Fluorescence Imaging of Fuel Droplets Exposed to Asymmetric Radiant Heating
Click here for NALCAL,
a weekly calendar with links to additional information.
Upcoming conferences
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| Wednesday, April 18
- Breakfast: English muffin sandwich
- Smart cuisine: Beef barley soup
- Gyros
- Fish Florentine
- Baked linguine and cheese
- Beef and cheddar panini
- Assorted sliced pizza
- Grilled chicken bowtie w/ tomato cream
Wilson Hall Cafe Menu |
Wednesday, April 18
- Southern California crepes
- Spicy chicken
- Tomato & avocado salad
- Chocolate fondue w/ fresh fruit
Friday, April 20
Dinner
Closed
Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.
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Physics for Everyone - today
From 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 18, Fermilab physicist Tom Kroc will give a talk titled, "Fighting cancer with neutrons," as a part of the Physics for Everyone lecture series. The talk, which will take place in Ramsey Auditorium, will include time for questions and answers.
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Sci-fi writer rolls into Fermilab
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| James Rollins |
Bestselling science fiction author James Rollins visited Fermilab on April 16 seeking inspiration for his next novel.
"I'm always looking for a piece of science that I can play with and extrapolate into something exciting," Rollins said. "I always have my antenna up, watching, making notes, looking for new ideas and information. Then I look for connections between bits of science and history I've collected and I formulate a story around it."
Rollins came to Fermilab after a friend recommended he visit the laboratory to learn about new physics.
"I was going to Chicago for a writer's conference and one of my friends is acquainted with people at Fermilab and suggested I come here. She thought it would be a good source of inspiration," Rollins said.
Rollins was given a full Fermilab tour, visiting sites such as the LINAC, main control room, NOvA near detector and DZero. He will draw upon these experiences to help fuel his next novel.
"I write science fiction, and I like to cycle between different subjects. This next novel is going to be about physics, probably dark matter and dark energy," Rollins said. "Fermilab is a great place to learn about these things."
—Sarah Charley
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Fermilab flags at half-mast
To keep our readers informed, Fermilab Today has added a new section to the left-hand column, titled, "Current Flag Status." This link will bring readers to a page describing when and why the flags are lowered, usually on the order of a proclamation from the governor of Illinois. The page also provides links to the specific details of each proclamation.
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Crushed comets give star a dusty belt
From Scientific American's Basic Science, April 17, 2012
Two thousand comets a day collide around nearby star Fomalhaut creating a continually replenished dust belt in the outskirts of the star's system, according to a new paper recently published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Fomalhaut is a young star but is already twice as big as the sun. It sits 25 light years away from us. In the 1980s, astronomers discovered that it was surrounded by large amounts of dust. The Herschel Space Observatory has now produced the best ever far-infrared images of the star system and given a team of astronomers lead by Bram Acke at the University of Leuven in Belgium chance to take a fresh look at the system.
Most intriguing is a narrow belt of dust and debris in the outer edges of the Fomalhaut system, that is a bit like the solar system's own Kuiper belt. Fomalhaut's belt is 140 times further from the star than the Earth is from the sun. The dust particles that fill it have temperatures between -170C and -230C.
In our solar system, the Kuiper belt includes Pluto and two other dwarf planets but mostly consists of smaller icy objects left over from the formation of the solar system. Belts like this tend to exist in planetary systems at locations where, for one reason or another, no planets formed. Fomalhaut's belt is much younger than the Kuiper belt, though. And it is more active too.
Read more
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Elusive particle may be found after decades of searching
From msnbc.com, April 16, 2012
Majorana fermion could be useful in storing information easily in quantum computers
An elusive particle that is its own antiparticle may have been found, and, if confirmed, would be the first time a phenomenon predicted decades ago has been seen in a real system.
Some researchers suggest that in the future, this mysterious particle called a Majorana fermion could be useful in carrying bits of information in quantum computers.
In a paper published in the journal Science Thursday, Vincent Mourikand Leo P. Kouwenhoven said they were able to make the Majorana fermions appear by exposing a small circuit to a magnetic field.777
Until now, the only suggestion of the particle's existence was a theory posed by Italian physicist Ettore Majorana in 1937, who predicted the Majorana fermion.
While the evidence is strong, there are still more experiments to do to confirm the finding. But that may be fitting: Majorana himself was, by many accounts, a brilliant physicist. (He was the first to propose a theoretical basis for the existence of neutrons.)
Read more
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Here to help
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| Alicia Filak |
Alicia Filak, Head of Internal Audit Services at Fermilab, wrote this column.
People often think that the Office of Internal Audit has only a single mission: to verify that our laboratory spends taxpayer dollars in compliance with various rules. However, our purview also includes administrative and operational areas throughout the laboratory. We use our audit methodology and knowledge to assess a variety of processes and assist with continuous improvement initiatives.
The Office of Internal Audit comprises three people: Susan Meduga, Kevin Klepper and myself. We reside in the Directorate and report to the FRA Board of Directors Audit Committee. We are part of the corporate governance structure and are here to help a wide range of departments at the laboratory. Every year we conduct about seven audit projects based on our risk assessment of key functional areas, as well as advisory services. For example, in addition to our annual audits of expenditures, our plan may include assessing new employee on-boarding processes, evaluating procurement administration or reviewing information technology implementation projects.
Through our audits, we help assure multiple stakeholders—including Fermilab management, the Audit Committee and the Department of Energy—that internal controls operate as designed. Internal controls function as a safety net intended to prevent or detect errors, or mitigate risks. They also serve as an insurance policy. Our work products and suggestions help management maintain a reasonable level of internal controls as well as identify issues before they become significant.
A poster with IA's vision statement hangs on the wall of our office area, and we try our best to embody its spirit: Use leading practices to continually improve the quality of compliance and advisory services provided to our customers. We challenge ourselves to raise the bar in terms of best practices and emerging trends in the audit profession.
IA is integral to the laboratory's contractor assurance system (CAS). The audit procedures we perform in the Finance Section help support the Director's Annual Assurance Memorandum to the DOE. In addition to the chief financial officer, other CAS management system owners request audit services to help verify that their procedures are effectively implemented and comply with requirements. We currently serve on the Laboratory Director's Advisory Council on Integrated Assurance and provide suggestions as deemed necessary. As CAS continues to mature, we look forward to working with management system owners to contribute to the success of Fermilab. We are here to help!
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ES&H weekly report, April 17
This week's safety report, compiled by the Fermilab ES&H section, contains two incidents. A contract employee was injured after falling down the stairs. He received medical treatment and had days away from work, making this case a DART. There was also a management concern after a component was removed without authorization at the Linac Klystron Station 8. AD is following up on the incident, including corrective and preventative actions.
Find the full report here. |
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Chance of showers
