Tuesday, May 15, 2012
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Have a safe day!

Tuesday, May 15
9 a.m.
Research Techniques Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Ben Mazin, University of California, Santa Barbara
Title: SuperMOS: A New Class of Low Resolution Multiobject Spectrographs
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Accelerator Physics and Technology Seminar - One West
Speaker: He Zhang, Michigan State University
Title: The Fast Multipole Algorithm in the Differential Algebra Framework to Calculate the 3D Self-Field Between Charged Particles

Wednesday, May 16
12:30 p.m.
Physics for Everyone - Ramsey Auditorium
Speaker: Lance Cooley
Title: Superconducting Radio-Frequency Cavities: Powering the Next Generation of Accelerators
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Fermilab Colloquium -
One West
Speaker: William J. Cooper, University of California, Irvine
Title: Application of Electron Beam Systems for Environmental Applications

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Wilson Hall Cafe

Tuesday, May 15

- Breakfast: Bagel sandwich
- Tomato bisque soup
- Lemon pepper club
- Liver & onions
- Smart cuisine: Korean garlic chicken
- Grilled chicken Caesar salad wrap
- Assorted calzones
- Rio Grande taco salad

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, May 16
Lunch
- Chopped shrimp Waldorf salad
- Strawberry cheesecake

Friday, May 18
Dinner
Closed

Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

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From the DOE Website

Lab Breakthrough: Fermilab Accelerator Technology

View Fermilab's two-minute video on latest advancements in superconducting accelerator technology.

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory accelerator scientist Stuart Henderson took some time discuss the role of particle accelerators in basic science, manufacturing and our daily lives. There are more than 30,000 particle accelerators in use around the world.

Question: First off, for my mom in Ohio – what makes the breakthrough so exciting for her?

Stuart Henderson: Your mom might not know this, but particle accelerators aren't only used by scientists to discover the secrets of the universe. They are also put to work every day improving her quality of life. More than 30,000 accelerators are in use around the world, most of them in medicine and manufacturing. Particle accelerators treat cancer, cure inks on cereal boxes, sterilize medical supplies, create better shrink wrap, spot suspicious cargo, clean up dirty drinking water, and help design drugs. This breakthrough will help us to build better and more efficient accelerators in the future.

Q: What about your facility made it the right place for this discovery – whether colleagues, equipment or interdisciplinary collaboration?

SH: Fermilab has brand-new facilities that use the latest technology to test and improve the performance of particle accelerator components. Our team built on tests that had been previously carried out at other DOE National Laboratories and international laboratories, and then used custom-built equipment to modify a critical step in the manufacturing process for these components. The result is a more efficient and environmentally friendly way of treating the surfaces of these components.

Q: I know that work often builds from other work in a 'standing on the shoulders of giants' type of way. Are there any particular technologies or discoveries that act as a basis for your work?

SH: There are way too many giants to list here. This work is part of an international effort that started many years ago. Over the last 10 years, Fermilab has developed the staff, the infrastructure and the know-how to become a world leader in this area, known as superconducting radio-frequency accelerator technology. The underlying technology relies on superconductivity, the discovery that at incredibly low temperatures many materials can conduct electricity without electrical resistance.

Q: What future needs will be met by more powerful accelerators?

SH: In addition to their applications in areas like medicine and manufacturing, accelerators are great discovery tools. By creating beams with more particles or by accelerating particles to higher energies, scientists can discover and explore new particles and forces, which provide for a better understanding of matter, energy, space and time.

Q: What other technologies are affected by the pursuit for a better (or more specialized) accelerator?

SH: Each different application of accelerators requires specialized technology. The needs of a security specialist scanning shipping containers are different from the needs of a doctor treating a cancer patient. Scientists are proposing to use this particular type of accelerator technology to treat and reduce the growing quantities of nuclear waste produced by nuclear power stations. Other scientists have proposed to use these superconducting accelerators to develop and operate nuclear reactors that are safer to operate, produce less long-lived nuclear waste, and can meet global power demands for at least 100 times longer than conventional technology.

Read more
In the News

Antimatter propulsion engine redesigned using CERN's particle physics simulation toolkit

From Technology Review blog,
May 14, 2012

Latest simulation shows that the magnetic nozzles required for antimatter propulsion could be vastly more efficient than previously thought--and built with today's technologies

Smash a lump of matter into antimatter and it will release a thousand times more energy than the same mass of fuel in a nuclear fission reactor and some 2 billion times more than burning the equivalent in hydrocarbons.

So it's no wonder that antimatter is the dream fuel for science fiction fans.

The problem, of course, is that antimatter is in rather short supply making the prospect of ever building a rocket based on this technology somewhat remote.

But from time to time physicists put aside these concerns and have a little fun working out how good antimatter rocket engines can be. Today it's the turn of Ronan Keane at Western Reserve Academy and Wei-Ming Zhang at Kent State University, both in Ohio, who take a new approach to the problem with some interesting results.

Read more
Director's Corner

Kudos to our award winners

Fermilab Director Pier Oddone

Last week the Department of Energy announced the Early Career Award recipients for 2012, and I am pleased to congratulate our four winners: Brendan Casey, Tengming Shen, Pavel Snopok and Sam Zeller. The awards are highly competitive with only 68 awards granted out of more than 800 peer-reviewed proposals. Over the last couple of years we have encouraged our young investigators to compete for these awards. This great program encourages and rewards outstanding scientists early in their careers and gives them the flexibility to explore new directions in their research. Recipients typically receive $500,000 per year for five years to cover salary and research expenses.

Ours is mostly a team science, with credit and funding shared by many scientists working on a given program or project under strong leaders and as a result there are few avenues for young investigators to strike in new directions on their own. This DOE program provides one of those avenues and we are very appreciative of the effort and emphasis that DOE places on the program.

We are very proud of this year's crop of awards, three to staff members of the laboratory and one to a scientist who holds a joint Fermilab/Illinois Institute of Technology appointment. The range of topics selected for awards at Fermilab covers new detector and accelerator technologies with emphasis on Intensity Frontier projects:

  • Brendan Casey, Fermilab: "Tracking for the New Muon g-2 Experiment"
  • Tengming Shen, Fermilab: "Engineering High Field Superconducting Materials for Frontier Accelerator Technology"
  • Geralyn "Sam" Zeller, Fermilab: "Understanding Liquid Argon Neutrino Detectors: Moving from Art to Science"
  • Pavel Snopok, joint appointee IIT-Fermilab: "Advanced Simulation Tools for Muon-Based Accelerators

You can find the complete list of awardees, including abstracts, here. Of course in a highly competitive environment with less than 10 percent of proposals selected, many meritorious proposals were not funded. Kudos go to all the scientists in our laboratory who participated in the program, and especially to those who were selected to receive awards.

Special Announcement

Fermilab central websites and AFS outage - May 17

On the morning of Thursday, May 17, the Core Computing Division will make two overlapping changes. Between 4 a.m. and 9 a.m., CCD staff members will move the Fermilab central web servers, including www.fnal.gov and approximately 200 other websites, to a new load balancer to increase web server reliability.

During the maintenance period, visitors to these websites will notice that the sites cannot be accessed. Sites will become accessible beginning at 9 a.m. See the full list of affected websites at the Fermilab Service Desk website.

Between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m., staff will upgrade Andrew File System (AFS) software. AFS users will notice intermittent outages during this time and should reboot their computers when they arrive at work on May 17.

Among other features, the AFS upgrade will allow the use of the kcron utility on computers with Scientific Linux Fermi version 6 or higher.

The Service Desk and Fermilab Time & Labor will be available during the outage.

Announcements

Latest Announcements

University of Chicago Tuition Remission Program deadline - June 15

Walk the Ring - today

Sexual harassment training for FNAL managers and supervisors course - today

Introduction to LabVIEW class - today

DreamWeaver CS5: Intro class - June 19-20

DASTOW - June 20

Intermediate/advanced Python programming class - June 20-22

Swim lessons for adults, youth & preschoolers

Scottish country dancing meets Tuesday evenings in Kuhn Village Barn

Martial arts classes

Fermilab Family Outdoor Fair

Six Flags Great America discounts

Mac users: Software update procedures changed

Employee offer at Pockets

2012 standard mileage reimbursement rate

GiftTree.com offers Mother's Day discount

Dragon II restaurant employee discount

Changarro restaurant offers 15 percent discount to employees

International folk dancing meets Thursday evenings in Kuhn Village barn

Atrium construction updates

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