Monday, June 9, 2014
spacer
Search
spacer
Calendar

Have a safe day!

Monday, June 9

8:30 a.m.-5:25 p.m.
ASTA Users Meeting - Building 327 Conference Room

10 a.m.-5 p.m.
New Perspectives - One West

2 p.m.
Particle Astrophysics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Alexandra Rahlin, Princeton University
Title: SPIDER: A Balloon-Borne Polarimeter for Cosmic Microwave Background Observation

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

4 p.m.
All Experimenters' Meeting - Curia II

Tuesday, June 10

9 a.m.-2:30 p.m.
ASTA Users Meeting - Building 327 Conference Room

10:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
New Perspectives - One West

Noon
Undergraduate Lecture Series - One West
Speaker: Maurice Ball, Fermilab
Title: Mechanical Engineering

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

4 p.m.
Accelerator Physics and Technology Seminar (NOTE LOCATION) - Curia II
Speaker: Vaia Papadimitriou, Fermilab
Title: Overview of the LBNE Beamline Design

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

Ongoing and upcoming conferences at Fermilab

Campaigns

Take Five

Weather

Weather Mostly sunny
75°/56°

Extended forecast
Weather at Fermilab

Current Security Status

Secon Level 3

Current Flag Status

Flags at full staff

Wilson Hall Cafe

Monday, June 9

- Breakfast: pancake sandwich
- Breakfast: sausage, egg and cheese croissant
- Philly chicken sandwich
- Smart cuisine: rosemary chicken breast
- Corned beef and cabbage
- Spicy buffalo chicken wrap
- Szechuan-style green beans with chicken
- Minestrone
- Texas-style chili
- Assorted pizza by the slice

Wilson Hall Cafe menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, June 11
Lunch
- Charmoula-marinated swordfish steaks
- Lime cilantro rice and sauteed pea pods
- Pineapple flan

Friday, June 13
Dinner
- Fresh corn and scallop johnnycakes with green onion sauce
- Coffee- and molasses-brined porkchops
- Creamy polenta with parmesan
- Roasted broccoli
- Espresso crepes with ice cream and bittersweet chocolate sauce

Chez Leon menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

Archives

Fermilab Today

Director's Corner

Frontier Science Result

Physics in a Nutshell

Tip of the Week

User University Profiles

Related content

Info

Fermilab Today
is online at:
www.fnal.gov/today/

Send comments and suggestions to:
today@fnal.gov

Visit the Fermilab
home page

Unsubscribe from Fermilab Today

Feature

William Colglazier: Science is a tool of diplomacy

William Colglazier (left), science and technology adviser to the Secretary of State, tours the neutrino experimental area. Photo: Reidar Hahn

Editor's note: William Colglazier, science and technology adviser to the Secretary of State, gave a colloquium at Fermilab on May 21. In this Q&A, he offers his views of science, diplomacy and how one can serve the other in improving our world.

How does science fit into the State Department?
Science diplomacy is really important to the State Department. "Science diplomacy" is kind of the term we use for how science can be helpful to diplomacy, using science as a tool to advance diplomatic goals, but it's also diplomacy advancing the scientific enterprise.

Many international collaborations all have to have agreements with other countries, and the State Department is the key in helping negotiate that. It's also involved in advancing U.S. science by helping overcome problems such as with visa issues and other things where collaboration can be hindered by policies of governments.

It may be that scientists want to have access to some unique research environment that doesn't exist in the United States, for example in ecological areas. Diplomacy can be very useful in helping advance scientific goals.

There are a lot of people in the State Department that have scientific backgrounds, which has grown over the years. Being there for three years, I've learned that science is even more of an asset to diplomacy than I appreciated, and I was sympathetic to begin with. Other countries do want to engage with our government agencies, but often even more so with our universities, our national laboratories, and our companies.

How can science be used as a diplomatic tool?
Science is actually a great strategic asset for American diplomacy because other countries do want to engage with us. We're the world leader in science and technology. Engaging with countries using science as the tool, the connector, is a great way to influence their science, their behavior, their investments. I deal with a lot of countries now, and with every country I talk with, no matter the level of development, the first thing their governments want to talk about regarding science and technology is the connection to innovation and economic development.

You might say, "Does that make them tougher competitors if we help them get more capable?" But my view is that it's in the U.S. interest to have countries more knowledge-based, to use science as input into their policy decision. That's clearly in the U.S. interest.

In countries where the U.S. does not have diplomatic relations — Iran, Cuba — the State Department is very supportive of using mutually beneficial scientific cooperation to keep a channel of communication open. With the encouragement of the State Department, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences has been engaging in several workshops a year with the Iranian scientific community. And many of the Iranian delegations come under a great program with the State Department called International Visitor Leadership Program. So the State Department has actually provided some of the financial support to enable Iranian scientific delegations to meet in the U.S. with the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Read more

Leah Hesla

View a video of Colglazier's colloquium talk.

Photo of the Day

Color purple

Japanese irises catch the sunlight outside the Main Control Room. These lovely flowers serve as a testament to the Roads and Grounds crew, who work outside all day every day to make Fermilab beautiful. Photo: Marty Murphy, AD
In the News

A confluence of anniversaries

From Physics Today, June 2014

The year 2014 seems to be a propitious one. CERN is celebrating its 60th anniversary. It is also the 50th anniversary of Murray Gell-Mann's and George Zweig's invention of the quark model and the 50th anniversary of James Cronin and Val Fitch's discovery of CP violation.

An anniversary is a useful thing. The memories it can stir are particularly helpful in retirement, when rumination is one's main occupation.

I will begin by recalling a incident that happened long before I had heard of CERN or quarks or CP violation. The event may have had a silent influence on the direction of my later career.

The incident took place on 8 May 1958. In a pause between lectures, I was standing in the verandah outside the lecture room of the physics department. I was 18 and completing the first year of study in physics. The place was Hoshiarpur, a small town in the Indian state of Punjab, which was the temporary location of the University at the time. Three months later, the university would move to a brand-new campus in the brand-new city of Chandigarh.

Read more

Tip of the Week: Cybersecurity

Self-inspection for security

Fermilab conducts its own audits of computing systems to keep the site safe. Photo: Joe Hall

Fermilab's cybersecurity team constantly scans and assesses the laboratory site and computing operations for security vulnerabilities. As most Fermilab Today readers know, finding vulnerabilities before a malevolent outsider does is critical. Less obvious, however, is that it's important to find and fix these flaws before an external auditor discovers them. Unmitigated vulnerabilities may be seen as evidence of deficiencies in our security program.

Several DOE organizations regularly audit Fermilab on various items, including security. These auditors conduct external vulnerability scanning (using external Internet connections), internal scanning (using the Fermilab network), and the physical inspection of buildings, offices and computer systems. They may enter buildings they find unlocked after office hours and search for computers not locked by screen savers. They even require us to turn off some of our automated defenses in order to scan our site.

In years past, auditors have discovered cyber vulnerabilities and obtained access to systems they should not have been able to use. In most (but not all) cases, these findings did not represent significant risks to our security, since a successful breach would have required the attacker to be physically present on our site. However, such findings still represent security shortcomings.

Thus it is important for us to perform our own scans and audits, both for vulnerabilities we consider real dangers and for issues an auditor might be concerned about. We run continuous scans looking for instances of what we have classified as critical vulnerabilities, which may result in immediate network blocks for the affected systems. We watch for the appearance of outdated operating systems on our network. Several times a year we perform full-scale labwide penetration tests, looking for the full set of vulnerabilities an auditor might also look for. Once a year, we do our own physical walk-throughs after business hours, looking for open buildings and offices with computers left in a vulnerable state.

Discovery of any of these exposures will generate a message to the user to request fixes or patches but will not necessarily issue an immediate block.

Vigilant scanning coupled with good cooperation from users has had a positive effect, as recent external audits have not found any significant vulnerabilities. In our recently concluded physical walk-through, conducted without advance warning to users, we did find instances of passwords written down in close proximity to computers, and some buildings that had been locked in the past were open. On the positive side, we found only 21 systems with open sessions on their screens, which was significantly fewer than found in previous walk-throughs. Also, users stopped and questioned the Security Team more frequently. This is definitely a good indicator of user awareness.

It appears that good user conduct protects the large majority of systems. Let's continue to be vigilant.

Irwin Gaines

In Brief

ASTA Users Meeting - today and tomorrow

On June 9-10, about 60 scientists will gather at Fermilab to discuss the status of and future plans for the Advanced Superconducting Test Accelerator.

As America's only test bed for accelerator research aimed at Intensity Frontier proton accelerators, ASTA will enable research on advanced beam optics and space-charge compensation techniques at its IOTA ring and on superconducting radio-frequency technologies for high-intensity beam acceleration. The Users Meeting is an important step in evaluating and better aligning the ASTA experimental R&D program with recently announced P5 priorities.

View the ASTA Users Meeting agenda.

Announcements

Today's New Announcements

Register for next week's FIFE Offline Computing Workshop - June 16-17

FermiWorks training for managers

Outdoor soccer

Scottish country dancing not meeting June 10, moves to Ramsey June 17

Lecture Series : Quantum Universe - Hitoshi Murayama - June 11

Int'l folk dancing cancelled June 12; in Ramsey June 19

The CIE + Cisco EIR Innovation Challenge - due June 15

Register for the FIFE Offline Computing Workshop - June 16, 17

Zumba Toning - register by June 17

Zumba Fitness - register by June 19

Planning to attend DASTOW on June 20?

Fermilab Lecture Series presents Particle Fever with Q&A - June 20

Wilson Hall EBS customers to use the Managed Print Service

Registering your personal device to access the Fermilab network

Fermi pool memberships