Rich set of topics considered at recent PAC meeting

Members of the Physics Advisory Committee met in November at Fermilab to listen to reports and make recommendations to the director about the laboratory's future plans.

Scientists have a bountiful list of ideas for experiments that will help keep Fermilab on the cutting edge of scientific discovery. Many of these ideas were submitted to the laboratory in time for consideration at the November meeting of Fermilab's Physics Advisory Committee (PAC).

Scientists have tapped pioneering technologies as ways to explore the energy, intensity and cosmic frontiers, consistent with the recommendations of the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5) and the Particle Astrophysics Scientific Assessment Group (PASAG).

The wealth of new ideas demonstrated not only the vibrancy of the current efforts, but also the potential ability to continue to entice scientists throughout the world to come work with Fermilab and U.S. scientists.

The PAC listened to detailed design and physics potential reports from proponents. These reports covered plans for upgrades to the CMS detector, six topics at the cosmic frontier and four topics at the intensity frontier (with neutrinos, kaons and muons).

"The number and range of things to consider was so extensive that we had to skip most of the status reports, which are usually included to help keep the PAC members up-to-date on the ongoing research program," said Jeff Appel, PAC secretary.

The PAC is composed of senior scientists from universities and high-energy physics laboratories in the U.S. and abroad. The committee is a major source of advice to the director about the future direction of Fermilab's experiments and programs. Ever since Fermilab's early days, the PAC's recommendations and comments have offered insight into opportunities and issues important to members of the laboratory community.

Although PAC members had tough questions for the experimenters about why the projects are necessary now, why Fermilab is the best partner for them and how they complement current experiments at Fermilab and around the world, they appeared generally receptive to the proposals.

Researchers explained how Fermilab offers the unique capabilities and facilities needed for the experiments. They also noted that Fermilab's participation would enable large projects with substantial university collaboration that would not be possible otherwise.

The submissions to the laboratory and the charge to the PAC are available on the PAC Web site. Recommendations from the PAC will be posted soon.

— Tona Kunz

Personally identifiable information training required

Fermilab takes the job of preventing identity theft and protecting the privacy of employees and users seriously.

This is why all Fermilab employees must complete a training course about protecting personally identifiable information.

The training, which takes about 15 minutes, explains how to handle personally identifiable information, or PII.

At Fermilab protected PII is defined as an individual's name in combination with one or more of a list of items including medical records, social security, passport, visa or personal credit card information. Employees may come across PII in resumes, conference databases or trip reports.

Employees who have already taken the course are not required to take it again. Employees who do not complete the course within the next couple of months be reported as delinquent.

The training is available online, and the Computing Division offered it at the recent annual Computer Security Awareness Day.

To take the training, go to the TRAIN class schedule page and sign in with your employee ID. Select the training category "Computing" and click "Submit."

Next, click on "Protecting Personal Information at Fermilab." Click on the button "Go to Online Test." This will generate an e-mail message with a link to both the test and the training material.

Once you have reviewed the training material, take the online test to complete your requirement.

LHC sets new energy record, full power still year away

From Ars Technica, Nov. 30, 2009

The excitement in the particle physics community is palpable at the moment, with a regular stream of tweets emitting from CERN. In the latest news, the large Hadron collider (LHC) reported that it had reached 1.18TeV with its beams, the highest energy ever recorded for an Earth-bound particle accelerator.

The unexciting news is that we are all still here, and (barring a meteor strike) we will still be here when the LHC reaches 7.5TeV very late next year. In the meantime, what can we expect during the build-up? According to Lynn Evans, the operators of the LHC are taking it very slowly this time, having become a bit paranoid about little things like resistance building in the brazed joints between magnets. One reason for this caution is that not every sector of the LHC was brought back up to room temperature, which means that extra pressure relief valves have not yet been installed on the whole machine yet-that will have to wait until the next maintenance period.

Every sector but the one that failed last time has now been tested at full power, so the operators have some confidence in the machine now, even if they're being cautious about bringing it all together — I can just picture them doing this with long sticks while hiding behind a couch.

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