Have a safe day!

Tuesday, March 27
3 p.m.
LHC Physics Center Topic of the Week Seminar - Sunrise
Speaker: Liantao Wang, University of Chicago
Title: Searching for Light Dark Matter at Colliders
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR TODAY

Wednesday, March 28
2 p.m.
LHC Physics Center Topic of the Week Seminar - Sunrise
Speaker: Liantao Wang, University of Chicago
Title: Higgs Signal and New Physics Implications
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Fermilab Colloquium -
One West
Speaker: Dean Alhorn, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
Title: Flying on Sun Shine: Sailing in Space

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

Upcoming conferences

Take Five

Extended Forecast
Weather at Fermilab

Secon Level 3

Tuesday, March 27

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Wednesday, March 28
Lunch
- Creamy gruyere & shrimp pasta
- Cabbage & mixed green salad w/ tangy herb vinaigrette
- Baked apples w/ cream chantilly

Friday, March 30
Dinner
Closed

Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

Fermilab Today

Director's Corner

Result of the Week

Safety Tip of the Week

CMS Result of the Month

User University Profiles

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

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Happy webiversary!

Twenty years ago, physicists, computer scientists, and a librarian at what is now SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory opened the first website in North America.

On Dec. 12, 1991, the first Web server in North America went into operation. It didn't come from a blue-chip tech company like IBM or a hungry upstart like Microsoft. It came from what is now SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, whose mission was high-energy physics, not computer science. The server, inspired by an idea developed at the European particle physics center CERN, provided users remote access to SPIRES, the Stanford Public Information Retrieval System database, a collection listing some 200,000 preprints of scientific papers.

In trying to solve one specific and vexing problem—how to share information among colleagues effectively and rapidly—a SLAC librarian and a small group of physicists and computer experts helped launch a medium whose impact may, in retrospect, usurp that of television and telephone.

Read more

—Diane Rezendes Khirallah

Flowers in bloom at Fermilab

This little flower found the sun through the Fermilab woods. Photo: Leticia Shaddix, PPD

PPPL delivers plasma source for new Berkeley Lab accelerator

From DOE Pulse, March 26, 2012

Scientists at DOE's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have designed and delivered a crucial component for a device that can heat a spot of foil to 30,000 degrees Centigrade in less than a billionth of a second. The part will complete a linear accelerator that researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are using to create a superheated state called "warm dense matter."

Researchers are eager to study this substance, which is rarely seen on Earth but common throughout the universe. Warm dense matter can be found in the molten core of giant planets like Jupiter, and in the preliminary stages of fusion, a process that powers the sun and stars. Such matter intrigues physicists studying the cosmos and scientists including those at PPPL who are seeking to harness fusion to produce electric power.

The trouble with data that outpaces a theory

From The New York Times,
March 26, 2012

The British astrophysicist Arthur S. Eddington once wrote, "No experiment should be believed until it has been confirmed by theory."

So when a group of physicists going by the acronym Opera announced in September that a batch of the strange subatomic particles known as neutrinos had traveled faster than the speed of light in a 457-mile trip through the earth, the first response among many physicists was to wonder what had gone wrong with the experiment.

After all, Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, which proclaimed the speed of light as the cosmic speed limit, is the foundation of modern science and has been shown to work to exquisite precision zillions of times. Knock it down and you potentially open the door to all kinds of things, like the ability to go back in time and kill your grandfather.

Independent laboratory-wide survey on ES&H culture

Fermilab Director Pier Oddone

I would like us to participate on an independent survey on ES&H culture. For the survey to be effective as a learning tool for our laboratory, I am encouraging everyone to participate. The survey is done by the Indiana University of Pennsylvania Department of Safety Science, funded by the Alcoa Foundation. The DOE has encouraged all its laboratories to participate.

Workplace surveys such as the one we want to participate in are designed to hear from everyone in the workforce. They empower the workforce to provide input in order to make the most robust and safe program possible. While individuals taking the survey will remain anonymous, the results of the survey (i.e. collective responses) will be used to give us a picture of where we are both at the lab as a whole and in Divisions/Sections/Centers. Since this is an independent survey that other DOE laboratories have been invited to participate in, we will also get a comparison of our results versus other labs and facilities. It will help us to determine where to focus our resources in improving our safety culture. For these reasons, our goal is at least a 70 percent participation rate.

There are two different surveys, one for people who mainly supervise or manage and the other for those who mainly do not. Management and supervisors will report on the safety practices in their group, while employees will report on things such as safety climate, their engagement in the safety program, their safety behaviors and their perceived working conditions.

Responses are anonymous and will automatically be stored in a database corresponding to organizational groups at the Division/Section/Center level.

The survey is online and should take roughly 15 minutes. If you feel you mainly supervise personnel, please fill out the management/supervisor survey, otherwise please fill out the employee survey. If you do not have access to a computer, there are ones available on the ground floor of Wilson Hall across from the Credit Union. There will also be paper surveys made available. Please contact your supervisor for more information.

All personnel will receive an email reminder giving the link to both surveys. Please participate so we can get the most out of this survey.

March 23-26

Wireless network maintenance - through March 29

FRA scholarship applications due April 2

Chicago Fire Soccer - April 15 and May 12

Python Programming class - April 16-18

Changarro restaurant offers 15 percent discount to employees

Monday night golf league

Scottish country dancing meets Tuesday evenings in Kuhn Village Barn

International folk dancing meets Thursday evenings in Kuhn Village Barn

Argentine tango classes at Fermilab

Fermilab Golf League

2012 CTEQ-Fermilab school on QCD and electroweak phenomenology

Abri Credit Union is now selling books of stamps

Fermilab Management Practices courses are now available for registration

Indoor soccer

Atrium construction updates