Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2013
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Have a safe day!

Tuesday, Jan. 8

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

THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR TODAY

Wednesday, Jan. 9

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

4 p.m.
Fermilab Colloquium - One West
Speaker: Rob Schoelkopf, Yale University
Title: Quantum Optics with Superconducting Circuits: From Single Photons to Schrödinger Cats

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Flags at full staff

Wilson Hall Cafe

Tuesday, Jan. 8

- Breakfast: All-American breakfast
- Minnesota chicken and rice
- Chicken quesadilla
- Baja chicken enchilada casserole
- Smart cuisine: pork piccata
- California turkey panini
- Assorted pizza by the slice
- Taco salad

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, Jan. 9
Lunch
- Northern Italian lasagna
- Caesar salad
- Cannolis

Friday, Jan. 11
Dinner
Guest chefs: Grace and Gary Leonard
- Pear, blue cheese and walnut salad
- Cocoa crusted pork tenderloin
- Potato cakes
- Haricots verts
- Blueberry upside-down cake with cream chantilly

Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

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From the Patch Fermilab Blog

Science Next Door starts up

Science Next Door is a new cable access series that informs Fermilab's neighbors about what's happening at the laboratory.

Editor's note: Fermilab Media and Community Relations Specialist Andre Salles writes a weekly blog about Fermilab on Patch.com. The blog, which runs on local Patch sites throughout the Fox Valley, is intended to give Fermilab's neighbors a glimpse of what goes on at the laboratory. This is the ninth post in the series.

Happy New Year, everyone!

I know I'm probably the last one to say that to you. We're a full week into January now, although I confess I'm still writing 2012 on my checks, and probably will be through March. By now we've probably all broken our resolutions, too. One of mine was to stop eating chocolate. That lasted until 10:43 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 4. Oops.

But there are resolutions I'm planning to keep, and one of them is to make Fermilab more visible in 2013. And on that note, let me tell you about this new project we're starting this month.

We call it Science Next Door. It's another way for us to reach out to the local community, much like this blog, and let you all know what's happening here at Fermilab. If there's one thing I've learned in my nearly six months in this position, it's that the lab hosts a lot of interesting programs and events, and we want to do a better job of telling you about them.

Science Next Door is one of the ways we're going to do that. We're going to make use of the public access channels in our local communities—specifically, Geneva, St. Charles, Batavia, Naperville and, hopefully soon, Aurora. Once a month, we're going to record a short newscast-style video about the upcoming events at Fermilab and provide it to those stations, as well as post it on our website.

We want these videos to be comprehensive. We want them to cover everything the public can do at Fermilab during a given month, from lectures to concerts to tours to other special events. We want it to be an all-in-one lineup of all the cool things happening here on a regular basis.

The first video is out now, and you can see it here. Yes, that's me doing my best Brian Williams, which I promise will get better as we roll these out.

Expect a new video at the beginning of each month. In between, we'll also be providing other fun science content to our local public access stations under the Science Next Door name. The recording of our recent physics slam is next on the docket.

And don't forget, you don't have to wait for a special event to come visit us at Fermilab. Our site is open to the public every day from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and free public tours are offered every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. and the first Sunday of every month at 1 p.m. For more info on visiting Fermilab, check out this site.

We'll be rolling out more ideas to keep that resolution during the year, and I'll tell you all about them here. Enjoy your 2013, folks. It's gonna be a good year.

Andre Salles

Read more posts from Andre Salles' blog about Fermilab at Patch.com.

In the News

How do you know if you ran through a wall?

From Berkeley Lab News Center, Jan. 4, 2013

Researchers from Canada, California, and Poland have devised a straightforward way to test an intriguing idea about the nature of dark energy and dark matter. A global array of atomic magnetometers—small laboratory devices that can sense minute changes in magnetic fields—could signal when Earth passes through fractures in space known as domain walls. These structures could be the answer to the universe's darkest mysteries.

Dark energy opposes the mutual gravitational attraction of matter and causes the expansion of the universe to accelerate; it's thought to account for three-quarters of the universe's mass-energy. Another fifth is dark matter, sharing nothing with the remaining five percent of "ordinary" matter except gravitational attraction. There are plenty of theoretical ideas to explain dark matter and dark energy, but there's little experimental evidence to help scientists choose among them.

Read more
Director's Corner

At the start of 2013

Fermilab Director
Pier Oddone

This year should be an exciting one for the laboratory and for particle physics. At Fermilab, we will have new data as our accelerators turn back on at higher power. NOvA will see its first particles, the Dark Energy Survey will begin and many of our new projects—IARC, LBNE and Muon g-2, among others—will take big steps forward over the next 12 months.

Of course, building and operating projects require funding, and the federal government continues to struggle with two major interrelated issues that affect us: sequestration and this year's federal budget. The new year brought a much-publicized agreement by Republicans and Democrats that avoided raising taxes on the vast majority of taxpayers but also simply postponed by two months the deadline for sequestration, which would result in cuts to current budgets. As the federal government does not have a budget for the current year—we are in a continuing resolution through March 27—it is not even clear to what budget any cuts would be applied.

In the face of this uncertainty, both the Department of Energy and our laboratory will continue operations normally, making progress toward our many short- and long-term goals while planning for a variety of possible fiscal futures. In a memorandum by Deputy Secretary Daniel Poneman to DOE staff on the implications of enactment of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 for the DOE, he states:

"The agreement reached by Congress and signed by the President delays sequestration for a period of two months, until March 1, 2013. Accordingly, no automatic reductions in budgetary resources will take place at this time. The deal provides Congress with additional time to work on a balanced plan that can prevent these automatic spending cuts from ever occurring.

"This means that, for the time being, there will be no changes to our day-to-day operations or any personnel actions taken due to the threat of sequestration. We will continue to operate as normal. As the new deadline approaches, and until such time as Congress acts to permanently cancel these reductions, we will continue to keep you informed of all relevant developments."

The postponement of sequestration further into the fiscal year would make its application more and more disruptive, and hence it is more and more unlikely that sequestration would be carried out at full strength, if at all. However, our country continues to face large budget deficits, a long-term issue that both Congress and the White House will need to work to resolve. In the meantime, it is important for our spirits to remain high despite these uncertainties, and for us to continue to make progress on establishing a vital future for the laboratory.

Photo of the Day

Musselling their way in

Zebra mussels line up along the inner edge of a pipe through which, not long ago, water flowed into the Main Ring cooling pond system. Photo: Elliott McCrory, AD
Announcements

Martial arts classes - begin today

Yoga - begins Jan. 8

Butts & Guts offered Mondays and Wednesdays

Zumba offered Tuesdays and Fridays

Fermilab Lecture Series - Building Bionics - Jan. 18

Gallery Chamber Series - Metropolis Quartet - Jan. 20

Fermilab Arts Series - Tomas Kubinek - Jan. 26

January 2013 timecards and float holiday

Timecard instructions for nonexempt employees working on half-holidays

International Folk Dancing Thursday evenings in Kuhn Barn

Indoor soccer

Employee discounts on AAA membership