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Have a safe day!
Tuesday, March 2
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY
SEMINAR TODAY
Wednesday, March 3
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Fermilab Colloquium - One West
Speaker: Zlatko Tesanovic, Johns Hopkins University
Title: Superconductivity at Dawn of the Iron Age
Click here for NALCAL,
a weekly calendar with links to additional information.
Upcoming conferences |
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For information about H1N1, visit Fermilab's flu information site.
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Tuesday, March 2
- Breakfast: bagel sandwich
- Tomato bisque soup
- Lemon pepper club
- Beef fajitas
- Korean garlic chicken
- Grilled chicken Caesar salad
- Assorted sliced pizza
Wilson Hall Cafe Menu
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Wednesday, March 3
Lunch
- Roasted flank steak w/herb rub
- Smashed potatoes
- Baby carrots
- Lemon cheesecake
Thursday, March 4
Dinner
- Spinach & feta strudel
- Herb-crusted lamb rib chops
- Tomato risotto
- Grilled vegetables
- Lemon blueberry parfait
Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation. |
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Top quark turns 15 today
Above: Former Fermilab director John Peoples talks to the press on March 2, 1995, the day that the laboratory announced the discovery of the top quark by CDF and DZero experiments. Today marks the 15 year anniversary of that discovery.
Left: Fermilab scientist Alvin Tollestrup dons a top hat in honor of the top quark discovery.
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Tornado drill at 10 a.m. today for Wilson Hall
A tornado drill will take place at 10 a.m. today for Wilson Hall. All employees, other than those involved in the MicroBooNE review, must evacuate to the lower level of Wilson Hall when the alarm sounds.
March 1-5 is Illinois Tornado Awareness Week. Learn more about on-site severe weather safety precautions here. |
Improving traffic safety: no on-site cell phone use while driving, online safety training
In 2008, a driver distracted by a cell phone crashed into the safety barriers of the guard house at the Wilson Street gate.
In the last five years, Fermilab security responded on average to 48 accidents per year on the Fermilab site. While there were no fatalities, records show several near misses: a driver speeding and rolling the car; a driver running a stop sign and hitting another vehicle; a driver talking on a cell phone and crashing into a guard house.
"The biggest hazard for most of us who work at Fermilab is getting seriously hurt in a traffic accident," said Fermilab director Pier Oddone. "That's why I want to make traffic safety a top priority."
Beginning today, Fermilab is taking the following steps to improve traffic safety on site:
- Fermilab will no longer permit drivers to use cell phones, including hands-free devices, while driving on site.
- Repeated traffic violations will result in week-long suspensions without pay. Non-lab personnel can be banned from site.
- All employees and users are required to take the online training course titled Traffic Safety Awareness, which now becomes part of the ITNA training requirements for employees and users.
The ban of cell phone use while driving on the Fermilab site goes beyond the restrictions put in place by the Illinois Rules of the Road on Jan. 1. Illinois now prohibits drivers from texting while driving. However, studies listed by the National Safety Council show that any use of cell phones, even hands-free devices, is the most significant distraction that affects driving performance.
Fermilab will adopt a stricter standard than the state of Illinois, banning any cell phone use by drivers on site. For the first 30 days the new rule is in place at Fermilab, drivers will receive verbal warnings for cell phone use while driving. After this period, drivers will receive citations.
Read more |
The federal stimulus package: 1 year later
From the Geneva Sun, Feb. 28, 2010
Millions pour into local schools, projects
Since the economic stimulus bill was passed a little more than a year ago, millions of dollars have poured into the Fox Valley to help the poor, buy technology for schools and resurface roads.
While it's not clear whether the bill created many local jobs, it does appear to have helped avoid massive layoffs, particularly in school districts crippled by late payments from the state.
For the most part, federal spending has moved through government agencies, which used the dollars to hire contractors and purchase equipment for projects. The money also backed loans for small businesses, helping some stay open.
Read more
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Atom smasher restarts to prepare for new science
From Associated Press, Feb. 28, 2010
Operators of the world's largest atom smasher restarted their massive machine Sunday in a run up to experiments probing secrets of the universe, a spokeswoman said.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, sent low energy beams of protons in both directions around the 27-kilometer (17-mile) tunnel housing the Large Hadron Collider under the Swiss-French border at Geneva, said Christine Sutton.
After a cautious trial period, CERN plans to ramp up the energy of the beams to unprecedented levels and start record-setting collisions of protons by late March, Sutton said.
Read more
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ICFA and ILCSC
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| Leaders of the worldwide particle physics community met at Brookhaven National Laboratory last week for meetings of the International Linear Collider Steering Committee and the International Committee for Future Accelerators. |
Last week at Brookhaven National Laboratory we had back-to-back meetings of the International Linear Collider Steering Committee, the ILCSC, and the International Committee for Future Accelerators, or ICFA. These periodic meetings bring together the directors of the principal laboratories devoted to particle physics across the world.
The ILCSC reviewed the status of the R&D and design of the ILC and associated detectors. Plans still call for completion of the technical design report, or TDR, in 2012, a year that promises to be a milepost for particle physics at the energy frontier. It is the first year after the planned completion of the Tevatron data runs, the year when the LHC will have obtained one inverse femtobarn at 7 TeV before shutting down to complete repair of all magnet interconnections, and the year when the ILC TDR will be ready for review by funding agencies. By then, the LHC will have opened a significant discovery wedge that could give a big boost to the ILC. It is doubtful, however, that only one inverse femtobarn of LHC data at 7 TeV could be the basis for a decision on the next machine at the energy frontier. More likely, we will need more data at the full energy of the LHC to make such a decision, probably around mid-decade. Nonetheless, discoveries in the next couple of years will give a strong hint on whether the ILC is likely to be the next machine at the energy frontier.
ICFA generally concerns itself with global projects like the ILC and, through a series of panels, on issues of general interest to the field. Such topics include the state of networking in the world, instrumentation and accelerator schools, data preservation, worldwide particle physics communication, and the connection of our field to other relevant fields such as lasers. At this meeting ICFA started a more general discussion on how to position our field globally for the rest of the decade. ICFA will explore how to articulate a physics roadmap that could be useful globally. Clearly ICFA is not a selection committee to choose individual projects. It will rely on regional plans in Europe, the Americas and Asia. It has the opportunity to provide a unified view of the exciting physics opportunities in the next decade and how they may be realized. A compelling global strategy is essential to maintaining the support for our field in the face of strong competition from many other fields.
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Partly sunny 
