Monday, Aug. 18, 2014
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Have a safe day!

Monday, Aug. 18

9 a.m.-5:30 p.m.
Fermilab-CERN Hadron Collider Physics Summer Symposium

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, Aug. 19

9 a.m.-5:30 p.m.
Fermilab-CERN Hadron Collider Physics Summer Symposium

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

THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR THIS WEEK

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a weekly calendar with links to additional information.

Ongoing and upcoming conferences at Fermilab

Weather

Weather Chance of thunderstorms
81°/66°

Extended forecast
Weather at Fermilab

Current Flag Status

Flags at half staff

Wilson Hall Cafe

Monday, Aug. 18

- Breakfast: eggs benedict
- Breakfast: sausage, egg and cheese croissant
- Sloppy joe
- Smart cuisine: teriyaki pork stir fry
- Chicken curry
- Oven-roasted veggie wrap
- Taco salad
- Vegetarian cream of spinach
- Texas-style chili
- Assorted pizza by the slice

Wilson Hall Cafe menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, Aug. 20
Lunch
- Grilled vegetable lasagna
- Red cabbage and spinach salad
- Ricotta cheesecake with fresh berry topping

Friday, Aug. 22
Dinner
- Gazpacho salad
- Spicy flank steak
- Habanero pilaf
- Calabacitas
- Banana taco with papaya and strawberry salsa

Chez Leon menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

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Press Release

Dark Energy Survey kicks off second season cataloging the wonders of deep space

This image of the NGC 1398 galaxy was taken with the Dark Energy Camera. This galaxy lives in the Fornax cluster, roughly 65 million light-years from Earth. Photo: Dark Energy Survey

On Aug. 15, with its successful first season behind it, the Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration began its second year of mapping the southern sky in unprecedented detail. Using the Dark Energy Camera, a 570-megapixel imaging device built by the collaboration and mounted on the Victor M. Blanco Telescope in Chile, the survey's five-year mission is to unravel the fundamental mystery of dark energy and its impact on our universe.

Along the way, the survey will take some of the most breathtaking pictures of the cosmos ever captured. The survey team has announced two ways the public can see the images from the first year.

Today, the Dark Energy Survey relaunched Dark Energy Detectives, its successful photo blog. Once every two weeks during the survey's second season, a new image or video will be posted to www.darkenergydetectives.org, with an explanation provided by a scientist. During its first year, Dark Energy Detectives drew thousands of readers and followers, including more than 46,000 followers on its Tumblr site.

Starting on Sept. 1, the one-year anniversary of the start of the survey, the data collected by DES in its first season will become freely available to researchers worldwide. The data will be hosted by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. The Blanco Telescope is hosted at the National Science Foundation's Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, the southern branch of NOAO.

In addition, the hundreds of thousands of individual images of the sky taken during the first season are being analyzed by thousands of computers at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The processed data will also be released in coming months.

Scientists on the survey will use these images to unravel the secrets of dark energy, the mysterious substance that makes up 70 percent of the mass and energy of the universe. Scientists have theorized that dark energy works in opposition to gravity and is responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe.

"The first season was a resounding success, and we've already captured reams of data that will improve our understanding of the cosmos," said DES Director Josh Frieman of the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the University of Chicago. "We're very excited to get the second season under way and continue to probe the mystery of dark energy."

Read more

Special Announcement

All-hands celebration of Muon g-2 and MicroBooNE - Wednesday, Aug. 20

You are invited to celebrate the move of the Muon g-2 magnet to its permanent home and the recent successful move of the MicroBooNE detector at an all-hands meeting and reception on Aug. 20 at 9:30 a.m. in Ramsey Auditorium.

Muon g-2 Project Manager Chris Polly, MicroBooNE Deputy Project Manager Catherine James and MicroBooNE Co-Construction Manager Jennifer Raaf will discuss the projects.

Afterward enjoy refreshments with your colleagues in the atrium and talk with scientists about the experiments.

In the News

Finding a piece of the proton-spin puzzle

From MIT News, Aug. 13, 2014

What causes a proton to spin?

This fundamental question has been a longstanding mystery in particle physics, although it was once thought that the answer would be fairly straightforward: The spin of a proton's three subatomic particles, called quarks, would simply add up to produce its total spin.

But a series of experiments in the 1980s threw this theory for a loop, proving that the spins of the quarks are only partially responsible for the proton's overall spin. Thus emerged what physicists now refer to as the "proton spin crisis," prompting a decades-long search for the missing pieces, or contributors, to a proton's spin.

Read more

Tip of the Week: Cybersecurity

Stay away from the bleeding edge

The newest Mac operating system is named for the Yosemite Valley, which boasts beautiful, precipitous cliffs. Be just as cautious adopting the latest OS on your Fermilab computer as you would in approaching a cliff's edge. Photo: Yosemite National Park

I have written previously about security vulnerabilities associated with running unsupported operating systems, focusing on keeping patches and fixes up to date. However, there are also dangers in running new versions of operating systems too soon.

When new versions of popular operating systems become available, Fermilab's Desktop Engineering Group evaluates these new releases and tests that all standard applications can still run properly. These tests are rigorous and thorough to ensure that nothing will break. Complex software interdependencies can make this process time consuming.

Only after these tests are complete is the new system declared as supported by the laboratory. Afterward, lab systems are automatically upgraded, and users are then able to take advantage of features of the new OS. But upgrading to new releases too soon, before this testing process is complete, may have surprising consequences.

A current example is the difficulty of using Fermilab's Kerberos systems with the newest Mac OS version, Mac OS 10.10 (Yosemite). Aspects of this OS version are incompatible with the version of Kerberos used at Fermilab. So those who upgrade prematurely will find Kerberos usage — from certificates to logging in — broken.

These developments have prompted Fermilab's Authentication Group to advance existing plans for modernizing our Kerberos infrastructure and to accelerate this work within the next six weeks (instead of the next six months, as planned originally). This work involves building new software for the Fermilab Kerberos Key Distribution Centers (KDCs), which use more modern encryption standards to work with Yosemite. This will involve replacing our outdated cryptocards with more modern hardware tokens for Kerberos logins. Of course, as the KDC code is modified, we must test to ensure all existing Kerberos applications continue to work properly. As this work is completed, Kerberos will no longer be an obstacle to allow an upgrade to Yosemite.

So please continue to keep your operating systems updated, but don't get too far ahead of the curve. As a reminder, unsupported operating systems, both too old or too new, may be blocked from laboratory networks. Please contact the Service Desk if you need to upgrade (or roll back).

Irwin Gaines

Photo of the Day

You lookin' at me?

The dragonfly's pearly eyes meet the camera's gaze. Photo: Leticia Shaddix, PPD
Announcements

Today's New Announcements

eBook by head of Technical Division available at the Fermilab Library

Batavia Smashburger employee discount

Deadline for the UChicago tuition remission program - today

Walk 2 Run offers two time slots in August

Zumba Toning and Zumba Fitness registration

International folk dancing Thursday evenings at Ramsey through August

Scottish country dancing Tuesday evenings at Ramsey through August

English country dancing at Kuhn Barn

Bowlers wanted

Outdoor soccer