Wednesday, May 4
11:00 a.m. Fermilab ILC R&D Meeting - 1 West
Speaker: A. Juste, Fermilab
Title: Overview of Top and QCD at the ILC
12:00 p.m. Wellness Works & The Fermi Creative Writers Club - Brown Bag Seminar - 1 West
Speaker: S. Weller (Author of The Bradbury Chronicles)
Title: Predicting the Past; Remembering the Future
2:00 p.m. Proton Driver General Meeting - 1 West
Speaker: H. Nguyen, Fermilab
Title: Instrumentation Development for Proton Driver
Era Kaon Experiments
Speaker: P. Limon, Fermilab
Title: SMTF Status and Plan
3:30 p.m. DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4:00 p.m. Fermilab Colloquium - 1 West
Speaker: D. Bryman, University of British Columbia
Title: Decays: Status and Prospects
of Experiments
Thursday, May 5
1:30 p.m. Special Particle Astrophysics Seminar (NOTE DATE, TIME, LOCATION) - One North
Speaker: M. Jarvis, University of Pennsylvania
Title: Cosmological Constraints from the CTIO Weak
Lensing Survey
2:30 p.m. Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: B. Ermolaev, Ioffe Physics Technology Institute
Title: Impact of the Total Resummation of the Leading
Logarithms on the Small x Behavior of the Spin
Structure Function g1
3:30 p.m. DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND
TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR TODAY
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Wednesday, May 4
French Onion Soup
Texas Style Meatloaf Sandwich $4.75
Grilled Chicken with Black Bean & Corn Salsa $3.75
Kielbasa & Sauerkraut $3.75
Three Cheese & Tomato Panini $4.75
Sausage & Pepperoni Combo $2.75
Fettucini Carbonara with Ham & Mushrooms $4.75
The Wilson Hall Cafe now accepts Visa, Master Card, Discover and
American Express at Cash Register #1.
Wilson Hall Cafe Menu
Chez Leon
is now open. Call x4512 to make your
reservation.
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Sci-Fi Writers Visit Lab
For Ideas and Information
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AD's Bill Higgins, at far right, explains Foucault's Pendulum to a group of
SFWA members. (Click on image for larger version.) |
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Last Friday, April 29, a group from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers
of America visited Fermilab and Argonne National Laboratory to broaden
their knowledge of science and gather new story ideas. The SFWA members
were in Chicago last weekend for the 2005 Nebula Awards, given for
excellence in science fiction and fantasy writing based on the judgment
of their peers.
Accelerator Division's Bill Higgins gave the dozen writers an afternoon
tour of the lab. Higgins is not a science fiction writer, but was asked
to lead the tour because of his decades-long activity in the sci-fi
community. "These folks have fun learning about science," said Higgins.
"I wanted to give them an opportunity to explore real science."
While SFWA members write fiction, getting the science right in their
stories is important. "We are science fiction writers," said June Jewell,
executive director for SFWA. "There are a lot of scientists in our audience,
and they want good science as well as a good story."
Richard Lovett, a professional geoscience writer and a part time sci-fi
writer, came to the labs looking for inspiration. On seeing the Crockcroft-Walton
he said, "You see this stuff and it fires your imagination. You can't get much
better than Fermilab."
-Eric Bland
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Judy Huite Heading Home
For Gardening and Travel
After serving the Fermilab community for nearly 16 years in a variety of
roles, Directorate's Judy Huite retired on May 2. The O'Fallon,
Illinois native and her husband, Bob Huite of Business Services, who will
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Judy Huite plans
to move downstate,
garden, and travel. |
retire next week, plan to move back to the downstate area, across the
Mississippi River from St. Louis. "My husband and son are big Cardinals and
Rams fans," said Judy, who has family in the area.
Judy considers Business Services her home, but she has also worked in the
Directorate, FESS, AD and PPD, and spent a summer working for former
director Leon Lederman. Wherever there was a need for administrative
support, Judy was on call to help. "I will definitely miss the people," she
said. "Everyone is laid back, friendly, and very nice."
Judy is excited about retirement. "This really is a milestone. I now get to
do all the things I want to do," she said. She plans to spend her time
traveling with Bob, and gardening. In a few years, she and Bob plan to visit
Svendborg, Denmark, where they were married almost 25 years ago.
- Eric Bland
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Let's Play Chess
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Bradley Guan waits for a challenger
in Fermilab's cafeteria last week.(Click on image for larger version.) |
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Last Friday afternoon, a very patient 7-year-old Bradley Guan
waited in the Fermilab cafeteria for a scientist to play a game of chess
with him. Bradley Guan had the day off from school, and his dad,
Computing Division's Richard Guan, had arranged for his son to play
chess with Fermilab Chess Club President Lenny Spiegel.
When Spiegel
got held up in a meeting, Bradley Guan and his dad decided to open
the game up to anyone who wanted to play. Eventually Brian Yanny, of
the Experimental Astrophysics Group, challenged Bradley Guan to a game.
"Bradley won 6th place in a State Chess Tournament
in February and 15th place in the Illinois 2005 Scholastic State Chess Championships
(2nd and 3rd Grade Division)," said Richard Guan. "He admires all scientists
and dreams of watching their work and playing chess with the Fermilab Chess Club."
-Elizabeth Clements
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FYI: AIP Bulletin of Science Policy News, May 3, 2005
Senators Support Higher Funding for DOE Office of Science
More than two-thirds of U.S. senators have signed a letter recommending an increase of 3.2% in the FY 2006 DOE Office of Science budget. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) were joined by 66 of their colleagues in signing a letter to Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-NM) and the subcommittee's Ranking Member Harry Reid (D-NV) advocating a $3.715 billion budget for the Office of Science.
read more
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SDSS Spectroscopic Survey Shows
Spongy Distribution of
Galaxies in the Universe
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This "pie diagram" shows the distribution of galaxies found by the
SDSS redshift survey out to redshift 0.25, corresponding to a
comoving distance of 3.3 billion lightyears. The SDSS is the largest
redshift survey of galaxies ever. (Click on image for larger version.) |
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The Sloan Digital Sky Survey is really two surveys wrapped into one project.
The first survey is the photometric survey, which takes 5-color images of
the night sky. The photometric pipeline software identifies astronomical
objects in these images and determines their positions, brightnesses and
sizes. However, these observations do not reveal the distance to any object.
Finding out the distance to any object is the task of the second survey
inside the SDSS - the spectroscopic survey using the SDSS spectrograph.
A spectrograph works like a prism, deflecting light of different wavelengths
(colors) by different amounts and creating a spectrogram (or simple
spectrum). Each kind of astronomical object has its unique fingerprint in a
spectrogram, allowing astronomers to determine whether an object is a star
in our own galaxy or in another galaxy, or a quasar (a very luminous object
powered by the release of gravitational energy from matter falling into a
supermassive black hole). The universe's expansion makes the light from
distant objects appear redder when it arrives on Earth than when it was
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Michael Blanton of NYU contributed to this result. |
originally emitted. The amount of this redshift encodes the distance to the
object.
This figure, created by Fermilab alumnus Michael Blanton (now at NYU), shows
the distribution of nearby galaxies found by the SDSS in a small slice of
the sky. On small scales, the galaxy distribution is not homogeneous; but
there is structure on all scales, starting from groups of galaxies with just
2 or 3 members, to clusters of tens or hundreds of galaxies, and up to
superclusters - clusters of galaxy clusters. Conversely, there are big voids
in the galaxy distribution - vast stretches of space which are really mostly
empty, and of comparable size to the superclusters. The SDSS is the biggest
redshift survey so far, charting these clusters and voids in a large
fraction of the sky visible outside the Milky Way, beautifully showing the
spongy structure of the universe.
All SDSS data are available online.
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Result of the Week Archive
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Monthly Windows Policy Committee Meeting
The monthly Windows Policy Committee meeting will be on
Wednesday, May 4 from 1:30-2:30pm in
WH5SW. For more information, contact winpol@fnal.gov.
Brown Bag Seminar Today
There will be a Brown Bag Seminar on Wednesday, May 4 from noon
to 1:00 p.m. in One West.
Wellness Works will present,
"Predicting the past; Remembering the future."
The presenter, Sam Weller, is the author of "The Bradbury Chronicles"
the recently published, authorized biography of Ray
Bradbury.
Save the date! Witherell Symposium, Reception on Thursday, July 14
Fermilab will hold a symposium, "Fermilab Science: The Witherell Years" in
honor of Michael Witherell, who will leave his position as director on June
30. The Symposium will be held in Ramsey Auditorium on the afternoon of July
14, and will be followed by a labwide reception at 4:30 p.m. in the Wilson
Hall atrium. Fermilab Today will publish more details as soon as they are
available.
Mail a Scientist
Today, the US Postal Service begins the sale of four new stamps honoring
American scientists. The stamps feature images of physicists Richard Feynman
and Josiah Willard Gibbs, mathematician John von Neumann, and geneticist
Barbara McClintock.
More Information
International Folk Dancing
International Folk Dancing will meet Thursday, May 5, at
Kuhn Barn on the Fermilab site. Dancing begins at 7:30 p.m.
with teaching earlier in the evening and request dancing later on.
Newcomers are welcome and you do not need to come with a partner.
A workshop with Bulgarian Daniela Ivanova, and live accordion music
by Angel Nazlamov is planned for May 12. Info at 630-584-0825 or
630-840-8194 or folkdance@fnal.gov.
Upcoming Activities
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