Friday, May 1, 2014
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Thursday, May 1

9:30 a.m.-4 p.m.
New Perspectives on Dark Matter - Curia II
Registration is free

11 a.m.
Intensity Frontier Seminar Series - WH8XO
Speaker: Kevin McFarland, University of Rochester
Title: The MINERvA Experiment

THERE WILL BE NO THEORETICAL PHYSICS SEMINAR THIS WEEK

3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over

4 p.m.
Accelerator Physics and Technology Seminar (NOTE DATE) - One West
Speaker: Davide Braga, Imperial College London
Title: Development of the Front-End Readout for the High-Luminosity Upgrade of the CMS Strip Tracker

Friday, May 2

9:30 a.m.-5 p.m.
New Perspectives on Dark Matter - Curia II
Registration is free

3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over

4 p.m.
Joint Experimental-Theoretical Physics Seminar - One West
Speaker: Maxim Pospelov, Perimeter Institute and University of Victoria
Title: Broadening the Search for New Physics at Intensity Frontier Experiments

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Wilson Hall Cafe

Thursday, May 1

- Breakfast: Canadian bacon, egg and cheese Texas toast
- Breakfast: corned beef hash and eggs
- Carolina pulled pork sandwich
- Smart cuisine: barbecue chicken breast
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- Grilled or crispy chicken Caesar salad
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- Assorted pizza by the slice

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Chez Leon

Friday, May 2
Dinner
Closed

Wednesday, May 7
Lunch
- Potato cod cakes with dijon tartar sauce
- Kale salad
- Lemon pound cake with blueberry sauce

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Call x3524 to make your reservation.

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Feature

Making a Fermilab video

Ian Krass (left) and Jim Shultz shoot footage for a new Fermilab video about dark energy. "These videos are not a short lecture. We want it to be visually interesting and also include jokes and more than one character," Shultz said. Photo: Amanda Solliday

As of today, Fermilab's "What is a Higgs Boson?" video on YouTube has more than a million and a half views. This video and hundreds of others are produced each year by Fermilab's Visual Media Services. Jim Shultz, with assistance from part-time intern Ian Krass and VMS' Al Johnson, produce the videos that allow the lab's work to be seen around the world.

The videos provide an accessible way to learn more about particle physics.

"I'm always surprised at the variety of people I encounter both at work and away who have seen the videos we produce," said Johnson, who takes care of streaming video, operates the teleprompter for some of the scripted videos and assists with the technical set up.

The team produces educational films and training session videos, as well as recordings of meetings, lectures and other events. More than 3,000 of these videos are on servers at Fermilab.

That's in addition to the videos they post for the public on YouTube.

"What we do is distill concepts in a way that the public can understand," said Shultz, who's been a videographer at Fermilab for more than 20 years. "We also try to have fun with it and show a lighter side of physics research."

For example, the Higgs video features Fermilab scientist-actor Sudhir Malik as Eddy the massive particle splashing through a pool representing the Higgs field.

Krass and Shultz are each behind a camera during filming sessions.

Krass is supported by US CMS outreach funding to produce educational science videos for the public.

"Ian and Jim are the reason the videos are so well-liked," said Fermilab's Don Lincoln, US CMS outreach coordinator and narrator in the Higgs boson video, among many others. "They're the difference between just a boring physicist talking to a camcorder and a polished video."

The team also documents notable events for a number of Fermilab experiments. For example, to capture the construction of the NOvA near and far detectors, Shultz used seven webcams to create a million and a half stills, or 13 hours of video. He plans to use time-lapse techniques to compress hours of footage taken over almost three years into a few minutes, so anyone can casually watch how scientists and engineers built the neutrino detectors and positioned them underground.

In one of their favorite video series, the team chased the giant Muon g-2 magnet down the Illinois interstate at night. They shot footage from overpasses, on-ramps, roadsides and riverside as they recorded the muon storage ring traveling from Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York to Fermilab. For them, variety is part of the fun.

"Making videos can require you to see many different walks of life," Krass said. "And we get to make videos about unique machines that don't exist anywhere else. My previous projects seem so normal in comparison."

Amanda Solliday

Photo of the Day

Discussing the Discover Science Collaboration between India and the U.S.

On Monday, senior officials of the government of India visited Fermilab. Vikram Doraiswami, left, briefed Fermilab Director Nigel Lockyer on the approval status of the DAE-DOE Discovery Science Collaboration agreements for PIP-II and LBNE. Doraiswami stated that the collaboration is of strategic importance for both countries. Lockyer stressed the importance of Indian collaboration to the Fermilab and U.S. high-energy physics program. From left: Joint Secretary Vikram Doraiswami, Indian Ministry of External Affairs; India Consul General Ausaf Sayeed, Chicago; Fermilab scientist Shekhar Mishra, U.S. Technical Coordinator, Discovery Science Collaboration; Fermilab Director Nigel Lockyer. Not pictured: India Consul Debashish Banerjee, Chicago. Photo: Reidar Hahn
In the News

URA funds University of Maryland's ASTA proposal

From ASTA Newsletter, April 2014

A research proposal to investigate controlled density perturbations on a high-brightness electron beam at the ASTA has been selected for funding by University Research Association (URA). The proposed work by the University of Maryland scientist Dr. Brian Beaudoin in collaboration with Dr. Jayakar 'Charles' Thangaraj of Fermilab will involve experimentally investigating how density modulations introduced at the beginning of the accelerator evolve in a linear accelerator.

Read more (see page 3)

In the News

Dark matter could send asteroids crashing into Earth: new theory

From Space.com, April 28, 2014

Dark matter could sling lethal meteors at Earth, potentially causing mass extinctions like the cataclysm that ended the Age of Dinosaurs, Harvard scientists say.

Physicists think the mysterious, invisible substance called dark matter makes up five-sixths of all matter in the universe. It was first detected by the strength of its gravitational pull, which apparently helps keep the Milky Way and other galaxies from spinning apart, given the speeds at which they whirl.

Scientists have recently suggested that a thin, dense disk of dark matter about 35 light-years thick lies along the central plane of the Milky Way, cutting through the galaxy's disk of stars. The sun travels in an up-and-down, wavy motion through this plane while orbiting the center of the galaxy.

Read more

Frontier Science Result: DZero

Measuring the "direction" of the Standard Model

The weak mixing angle, recently measured by the DZero collaboration, expresses the relation between the observed photon and Z boson, and the more fundamental bosons of the unified electroweak interaction. This is analogous to expressing earthly directions in terms of the cardinal points of a compass. The angle is extracted by examining the variations in the forward-backward asymmetry of electron-positron pairs as a function of their combined mass.

Disponible en español

For some time, we've known that the apparently fundamental forces of electromagnetism and the weak interaction are actually just the low-energy manifestations of a single unified electroweak interaction. This beautiful concept was developed by theorists in the 1960s and has been confirmed resoundingly by years of rigorous experimentation, including the discovery of the W, Z and Higgs bosons. This theory has only a handful of parameters; measuring them with the highest possible precision is crucial to test the unification mechanism and search for possible hints of new physics signatures.

One such fundamental parameter is the weak mixing angle (or Weinberg angle, after one of the pioneers of the electroweak theory). By analogy with a compass, where any particular direction can be expressed in terms of north-south and east-west components, the mixing angle represents the "direction" of the weak and electromagnetic forces, within the overarching framework of the electroweak interaction. In technical terms, the observed electromagnetic (photon) and weak (Z0) neutral force carriers are actually formed from some blend of the more fundamental electroweak bosons, denoted B0 and W0.

The DZero collaboration has recently performed a new measurement of the weak mixing angle. According to the Standard Model, electroweak production of electron-positron pairs from the original proton-antiproton collision has an inherent directional asymmetry (electrons are more likely to follow the original proton direction and vice versa for positrons). This asymmetry is a function of the mass of the electron-positron system, and the details of this mass dependence are highly sensitive to the weak mixing angle, allowing it to be extracted from the data.

This latest measurement makes several improvements compared to previous DZero publications. The data set itself is doubled, but in addition, the analysis is expanded in scope to include events not previously considered, giving a total increase in the sample size of more than 400 percent and a corresponding halving of the statistical uncertainty. Scientists also used a new technique to ensure an accurate determination of the electron energy scale, which is a crucial input to the mass dependence. In this method, the measured electron energies are corrected using a calibration database derived from the well-known Z boson mass.

The final measurement of the weak mixing angle, with all improvements taken into account, is expressed as the quantity sin2θleff, which we measure to be 0.23106 ± 0.00053, corresponding to an angle of around 29 degrees. This is the most precise determination of this parameter ever made at a hadron collider and is consistent with previous measurements made at the SLC and LEP colliders. It is also the most precise instance of extracting the weak angle using this inclusive electron-positron asymmetry method. As such, it provides an important input for global tests of the electroweak theory.

Mark Williams

These DZero members all made significant contributions to this publication.
The DZero authorship committee keeps track of all members of the collaboration, ensuring that everyone does their fair share of service work before they are rewarded with a place on the author list for new publications. Service work covers a wide range of essential activities, including building or maintaining parts of the detector, designing and implementing essential software tools, and reviewing and editing the papers themselves.
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Today's New Announcements

English country dancing - May 4 and with live music on May 18

Centrally managed Macs to receive Adobe Flash Player 13 - today

National Day of Prayer Observance - today

Wilson Street entrance closed starting May 5

NALWO spring tea - May 5

Martial Arts open house - May 5

Pre-retirement planning Lunch and Learn - May 7

Yoga registration due May 8

Take the train commuting survey by May 9

Change in tax practice may affect some visitors

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