Monday, July 7, 2014
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Monday, July 7

PARTICLE ASTROPHYSICS SEMINARS WILL RESUME IN THE FALL

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

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

Tuesday, July 8

9 a.m.-6:30 p.m.
Liquid-Argon TPC R&D Workshop - CDF Big Room
Registration fee: $26
Register in person

Noon
Undergraduate Lecture Series - Curia II
Speaker: Rod Walton, Fermilab
Title: The Green Physicists' Dilemma: Sustainability at the Frontiers

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

THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR TECHNOLOGY AND PHYSICS SEMINAR THIS WEEK

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86°/67°

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Secon Level 3

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Flags at full staff

Wilson Hall Cafe

Monday, July 7

- 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, July 9
Lunch
- Spiced pork tenderloin with summer relish
- Grilled potato planks
- Apple pie squares with bourbon caramel sauce

Friday, July 11
Dinner
- Roasted vegetables with pasta
- Striped bass
- Lemongrass rice
- Wilted spinach
- Lime tart

Chez Leon menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

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In Brief

All-Office of the COO meeting - tomorrow in auditorium

Chief Operating Officer Tim Meyer will be holding an all-Office of the COO meeting tomorrow, July 8, from 1 to 2 p.m. in Ramsey Auditorium to discuss how the recent changes will affect Office of the COO organizations.

Please plan to attend if you are a staff member in the Facilities Engineering Services Section, Workforce Development & Resources Section, Legal Office, Office of Communication, Office of Campus Strategy & Readiness, Office of Integrated Planning & Performance Management, Office of Partnerships & Technology Transfer or Illinois Accelerator Research Center.

From symmetry

What's next for Higgs boson research?

Two years after the groundbreaking discovery of the Higgs boson, physicists are still hard at work. Photo: Sarah Charley

On July 4, 2012, physicists announced an amazing discovery — they had identified a new particle that looked very much like the predicted Higgs boson.

Two years later, physicists have pinned down the traits of this particle and confirmed its identity. But the story doesn't end there.

This week, physicists presented their most recent measurements of the properties of the Higgs boson at the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Valencia, Spain (and celebrated with chocolate cake). Among the highlights are new precision measurements of the Higgs mass, characterizations of its quantum mechanical properties, an exploration of its decay patterns and new measurements of its lifetime.

"In just two years, our knowledge of this particle has improved dramatically," says Gabriella Sciolla, an ATLAS physicist and professor at Brandeis University. "For instance, we now know the mass of this particle with a precision better than half a gigaelectronvolt — which is remarkable since just two years ago, we had no idea what this mass could be."

But there is still more work to be done, she says.

"The measurements of the Higgs boson's couplings [to other particles] are just in their infancy," she says. "Much more accurate measurements will be possible in the future. They will allow us to really probe deeper into the Higgs properties and hopefully answer the main question that is on our mind: Is the Higgs really what the Standard Model predicts, or is there more to it?"

The Higgs is a totally new sector of physics, says Michael Peskin, a professor of theoretical physics at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. "It is a particle that is not related to any other particles we know about ... There's lots left to explore."

Since the 1970s, the Higgs boson has been a cornerstone of the Standard Model of particle physics — our best understanding of matter at its most fundamental level. Its discovery in 2012 bolstered physicists' confidence in the model, but it also surfaced deep, structural questions about what else might be hiding just out of reach.

Read more

Sarah Charley

Photo of the Day

Painted lady

A painted lady butterfly alights on a flower on the hiking path by Lake Law. Photo: Gordon Garcia, Bartlett, Illinois
In the News

'Revolutionary' physics: Do sterile neutrinos lurk in the universe?

From Live Science, July 1, 2014

A completely new subatomic particle — one so reclusive and strange that it passes undetected through ordinary matter — could be lurking in the universe.

If so, a detector set to turn on later this year could find the first convincing evidence for the particle, called a sterile neutrino. The new experiment, whose 30-ton detector was recently lowered into place at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, will look for traces of this elusive particle transforming into another type of neutrino.

Unlike the Higgs boson, the particle thought to explain why other particles have mass and which most physicists predicted should exist for decades, sterile neutrinos would be in the realm of completely unknown physics that only some physicists believe exist, said Bonnie Fleming, the experiment's spokeswoman and a physicist at Yale University. "It would be completely revolutionary," Fleming said.

Read more

Tip of the Week: Quality Assurance

Quality assurance and quality control – what's the difference?

Much the way a watch's components must be perfectly arranged to provide us with an accurate measurement of time, many pieces must come together to ensure that quality work is done at Fermilab. Quality management aids in the achievement of desired results. Photos: StoneLeaf (left) and Chris Roach (right)

Many people use the terms quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) interchangeably. But each has a different meaning and, together, they make up a quality management (QM) system. For the mathematicians in the crowd, QA + QC = QM. At the highest level, QA is proactive and attempts to prevent problems, while QC is reactive and attempts to detect problems while fabricating a product or providing a service.

Quality assurance focuses on developing a systematic approach to activities, one that will help us avoid problems and deliver an end product that meets the expectations of our customers. Examples of QA are using qualified workers, following an accepted design process, procuring appropriate materials and services, controlling materials, following written procedures, investigating failures, documenting and applying lessons learned, and auditing work processes. Fermilab's Quality Assurance Program is in line with the DOE QA Order 414.1D. Our Integrated Quality Assurance Program defines the elements of our approach to QA at Fermilab.

Quality control, on the other hand, focuses on verifying the quality of our deliverables and aims to control outputs by performing inspections, tests and validations to determine whether or not design specifications have been met.

If all we did was QA, we would have what looks and sounds like a great set of processes and documents, but we would never actually test, check or measure the product or service to verify that it actually does what it is supposed to do.

If all we did was QC, we would be constantly checking, measuring and testing our services, widgets or research results without making any effort to improve our processes. Even if we were to find something that failed or did not meet specifications, with a QC-only approach, we would not do anything to understand problems we found when testing or attempt to eradicate those failures.

In either case, the service or product would be unlikely to meet our customers' needs and expectations.

We've always had QA and QC elements integrated into our work processes. Implementing a quality management system approach that includes both the QA and QC aspects provides a framework to articulate our work processes, clearly define system performance specifications and use measurement and testing criteria to minimize scrap, waste, schedule delays and outright failures.

Using the integrated approach, our aim is to produce exceptional end products and services that allow us to make the best use of our available resources and achieve our ambitious research goals.

TJ Sarlina, quality assurance manager

In the News

Synopsis: Gluons chip in for proton spin

From Physics, July 2, 2014

The proton has a spin that comes from its constituent quarks and gluons. Experiments in the 1980s found — unexpectedly — that the contribution from the intrinsic spins of the quarks was small. This so-called "proton spin crisis" remains unresolved, but a new comprehensive analysis of proton scattering data, reported in Physical Review Letters, finds the first clear evidence that the gluon spin polarization is not zero, suggesting that gluons may have a significant role in the spin of the proton.

Read more

Announcements

Today's New Announcements

Deadline approaching for on-site housing requests for fall 2014 and spring 2015

Lecture Series - Technology for Advanced Neural Prostheses - July 11

Fermilab prairie plant survey - July 12, July 23, Aug. 9

Register for the C++ Fermilab software school - Aug. 4-8

Scottish country dancing Tuesday evenings in Ramsey Auditorium

International folk dancing Thursday evenings in Ramsey Auditorium

Fermi Days at Six Flags Great America

Employee Appreciation Day at Hollywood Palms Cinema