Jefferson Lab Weekly Briefs February 18, 2009

Jefferson Lab Weekly Briefs

February 18, 2009

Accelerator

The accelerator performed reasonably well, with a continued low trip rate. The injector Wien angle was changed to optimize beam polarization for all three halls after Hall A was changed from pass 1 to pass 5. Vacuum valves VBV1L04A and VBV1L04B closed several times, most likely due to an internal leak of cryomodule 1L04. The vacuum has stabilized itself.

Free-Electron Laser (FEL)

The FEL team had a good week in getting to continuous wave lasing with moderate average power at short wavelengths (0.9 microns). The team is still working to increase gun cathode life. The cathode seems to be getting vacuum loading from downstream, which gradually kills the quantum efficiency. FEL staffers are working the transport setup and injector settings to resolve a low-energy tail in the beam distribution that leads to halo interception before the wiggler.

Theory Center

A new theory paper (arXiv:0902.0780 [hep-ph]) estimates the nuclear medium modifications of the quark contribution to the bound nucleon spin, Jq*, and the quark helicity, ΔΣ*. It also estimates the orbital angular momentum, Lq*, contributions to Jq*. The calculation is based on a model of bound nucleon GPDs that uses as input the bound nucleon elastic form factors predicted in the quark-meson coupling model. The medium modifications are found to increase Jq* and Lq* and decrease ΔΣ* compared to the free nucleon case, and the effect is large and increases with increasing nuclear density.

Engineering

The RF group has a request for best and final offers out for the 12 GeV klystron procurement; responses are due shortly. The DC power group has issued a request for information for vendors interested in new power supply procurements for 12 GeV. The Alignment group re-positioned the Hall C beamline chicane components to facilitate the 5.9 GeV energy requirements of the Spin Asymmetries of the Nucleon Experiment (SANE).

Announcements

A Special Message from the Worker Safety Committee
The Worker Safety Committee offers its support for the Jefferson Lab policy on injury reporting. The policy, that all injuries will be reported, serves several functions... (more)

2009 Benefits Open Enrollment Is Underway
Jefferson Lab’s 2009 Benefits Open Enrollment will be offered Feb. 18 - March 3, via the Employee Self Service System. All regular and term employees are eligible for medical, dental, health and dependent care flexible spending accounts, short-term disability and supplemental life insurance. For complete information on benefits options, visit the newly updated Human Resources Benefits webpage.

U.S. Postal Service Mail Delivery at JLab
In FY2006, the sorting and delivery of regular mail was transferred from in-house to the U.S. Postal Service. Every employee at JLab was given a new postal mailing address (that included a suite number). Options for obtaining your correct postal mailing address can be found online.

Shipping & Receiving has been accepting and sorting incorrectly addressed mail, totaling approximately four to five crates a day. Most of this is catalogs, sale flyers, newsletters and similar third-class bulk mailings (e.g. junk mail). Shipping & Receiving cannot continue to handle this volume of incorrectly addressed mail. Starting on March 2, incorrectly addressed mail will be returned to the sender.

JLab's Safety Numbers

44 Days since Last Recordable Accident (JLab record: 331)
161 Days since Last Lost Workday Accident (JLab record: 676)

JLab Calendar of Events

Feb 20: 12 GeV Adopt-A-Spot Litter Pickup Event
March 7: Virginia Regional Middle School Science Bowl
March 10: Science Series Lecture: The Science of Art Preservation
March 12:13: Spin Structure at Long Distance Workshop
March 25-27: International Workshop on Positrons at Jefferson Lab

 

 

 

Environment, Safety, Health & Quality

Jefferson Science Associates, LLC, was recently recognized with a Perfect Record Award by the National Safety Council. This award was given for safe operations during the period November 11, 2006 to September 10, 2008.  This equates to 2,740,858 hours worked by employees, users, and subcontractors without an occupational injury or illness involving days away from work.  In order to be recognized, the National Safety Council requires that companies, units and/or facilities complete a period of at least twelve consecutive months without incurring an occupational injury or illness that resulted in days away from work or death.

A new chapter on the Safety Warden Program was recently incorporated into the ES&H Manual, as well as two revisions to the Environmental Program. All recent changes are listed below:

  • New Content - ES&H Manual Chapter 2500 Safety Warden Program and its associated Appendix T1 Safety Warden Inspections (Approved 02/10/09)
    - These documents were written to provide an initial structure and set of  requirements and expectations for JLab's Safety Warden Program.
  • Revision Update - ES&H Manual Chapter 6720 Outdoor Air Quality Management Program and its associated Appendix T1 Ozone-Depleting Substances (ODS) for Non-Experimental Use (Approved 02/10/09)
    - These documents have been re-written to reflect current Laboratory operations, and to update JLab's programs with relevant contract requirements.
  • Revision Update - ES&H Manual Chapter 6710 Environmental Protection Program (Approved 02/10/09)
    - This document was updated to reflect current laboratory Environmental Protection Program expectations and conditions.

Computing and Networking Infrastructure (CNI)

E-mail Outage and Reconfiguration, Friday, March 20, 10 p.m. Through Saturday March 21, 3 p.m.
The IT division's CNI group will be performing a major reconfiguration of user's e-mail and will require the above outage. No e-mail services will be available during this time. E-mail sent to JLab addresses from offsite will queue and be delivered after the outage. Reading or sending e-mail from within JLab (including webmail and offsite computers configured to use JLab's e-mail servers) will fail during the outage.

The location of e-mail folders is being changed; e-mail folders will be moved to a new location. Currently, JLab account holders have e-mail folders that are stored in their home directory (/home/user on Unix or J: drive on Windows). The reconfiguration will move these folders out of account holders' home directories and place them on a standalone, isolated file system. Account holders will not have direct access to this new file system. All access to these folders will require an IMAP mail client (i.e. Thunderbird, Pine configured as an IMAP client, etc). Further information about this reconfiguration will be available on the CNI group web page as the date approaches.

Windows Common User Environment (CUE) Software Refresh
On Monday, Feb. 23, the CNI group will release upgrades to Firefox, Thunderbird, Acrobat Reader plugins and Flash Player plugins for all Windows systems. The plugins will work with both Firefox and Internet Explorer. Once the upgrade starts, all Windows users will see those programs being advertised in the lower right-hand corner of their desktop. To install the new programs, users can click the advertisement message. If you choose not to install at this time, the updated packages will be installed for you on the next maintenance day, Tuesday, March 17. If you miss the advertisement and would like to install the software before the next maintenance day, you can go to the Control Panel->Add or Remove Programs->Add New Programs and select the updated packages. If you have any questions about installing the new software, you can contact the helpdesk at x7155 or helpdesk@jlab.org.

 

 

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