12 GeV Upgrade

Design effort on the conventional facilities to support the 12 GeV CEBAF Upgrade continues to progress. The 100 percent design package for the Beam Switchyard (BSY) Service Building Addition was completed by the JLab Facilities Design Team. This is an internal addition in Building 98 that expands the power supply room into the welding area and includes two new penetrations into the accelerator tunnel. The package has been distributed for an internal design and safety review, and a meeting to discuss the review findings is scheduled for Feb. 13. Also, JLab Facilities has reviewed the first draft of the Hall D Complex Commissioning Plan developed by a local construction management firm.

Physics

Hall A successfully ran a series of tests for the lead-parity experiment E06-002 that included proving that the lead-diamond sandwich target could withstand a current of up to 100 microamps and commissioning two prototypes of the detector installed in the High Resolution Spectrometer focal-plane. On Feb. 4, the installation for the upcoming experiment on threshold pi-zero production started.

Accelerator

This period was very busy for the accelerator. It started with beam delivery to all halls (total beam delivered was 123 hours.) The beam current intensity was up to 100 microamps for Hall A, 15 nanoamps for Hall B and 40 microamps for Hall C. Things went well until Jan. 29, when a vacuum problem appeared in Hall C. The hall remained offline for the rest of this reporting period due to troubleshooting efforts on this vacuum problem. A pass change was performed on Jan. 30. Beam delivery continued until another energy/pass change on Feb. 1, in preparation for extended beam studies that began with beam break up (BBU) test plans on Feb. 2 and also included Optical Diffraction Radiation (ODR) installation and characterization in Hall A. Over the next three days, there was a total of 45 hours of test plans, and three energy/pass changes were accomplished.

Free-Electron Laser (FEL)

The gun processing on the Gun Test Stand is proceeding well, with the gun above 480 kilovolts (kV). The FEL gun is also reassembled and is preparing for high-voltage processing. In parallel with the gun work,  checkouts of the various FEL systems are being performed and items that have become inoperable during the shutdown are being fixed. Major progress was made on the Laser Personnel Safety System Master Controller by completing the wiring and getting it to communicate to the EPICS control system. Several personnel participated in a 4th generation light source workshop and planning meeting at LSU. This week, several valuable pieces of bioscience laboratory equipment became available to the Eastern Virginia Medical School/JLab collaboration. Collaborators at EVMS (Jorge Jacot, Frank Lattanzio, and Bill Wasilenko) arranged for EVMS to loan this equipment to the JLab FEL program.

Theory Center

Parity-violating deep inelastic scattering has recently been proposed as an important new tool to study aspects of the quark structure of nucleons, such as the ratio of the down/up quark distributions at large Bjorken-x and charge symmetry violation in quark distributions, as well as physics beyond the standard model. At low values of Q², however, corrections to the PVDIS asymmetries arise from kinematical effects and longitudinal contributions to photon-Z boson interference. A new paper explores these finite-Q² effects and gives estimates of the corrections to planned JLab PVDIS experiments at 6 and 12 GeV.

JLab's Safety Numbers

140 Days since Last Recordable Accident (JLab record: 319)
459 Days since Last Lost Workday Accident (JLab record: 459)

Continuously improving safety at JLab
To continually improve safety and to prepare for the Integrated Safety Management Review coming up in May and June, JLab has a new Integrated Safety Management webpage. It provides a platform for sharing ISM-related documents, tools and processes being used across the Lab to accomplish the goals of ISM. A unique feature is the ISM Thought of the Day, which provides a new message daily. The Thought of the Day can be used to advance safety discussions in meetings or provide a safety message to reflect or act on daily.

JLab Calendar of Events

Feb. 6: Colloquium, CEBAF Center auditorium, 4 p.m.
Feb. 12: Computer Center Maintenance Day, 5-10 p.m.
Feb. 12: Virginia U.S. Presidential Primary Election
Feb. 14: Valentine's Day
Feb. 18: Presidents' Day Holiday (JLab closed)
March 1: Virginia Regional Middle School Science Bowl
March 6-8: Photon-Hadron Physics with the GlueX Detector

Environment, Safety, Health & Quality

Many of us have noticed an increasing number of laptop computers in use at JLab. Laptops can have the power of a desktop, while weighing far less. Although extremely convenient, laptop computers do have potential ergonomic problems. A keyboard in a well-designed computer workstation should sit low and tilt downward toward the user. The screen top should sit near eye height. Meeting these criteria takes work because of the connection of the keyboard and screen. Setting the laptop on a stand that tilts the base down in front and up in back can help.  Laptop users are also urged to take several stretch breaks per hour and to avoid resting their forearms on sharp-edged work surfaces. Skin burns, equipment damage and fire have occurred during the use of some laptops. Laptop users are encouraged to make sure they have adequate space below their computers, unblock ventilation ports and make sure that cooling fans are running.

Shelving Collapse "Near Miss"
A shelving collapse near miss at DOE's Hanford site points out the importance of following shelving manufacturer instructions. Event followup determined that the heavily loaded shelves were inadequately braced, and individual shelf fasteners were not properly tightened. Also, a failure to install cross-bracing between the adjacent wall and the shelves was noted. Why not take time this week to look at shelving in your office, cubicle, or work area for the use of shelving fasteners and if the shelving is adequate for its loads.

Computing and Networking Infrastructure

CNI Maintenance Day is scheduled for Feb. 12
Maintenance is scheduled for 5-10 p.m. There will be intermittent network outages, and all public log-in servers, including jlabs*,  jlabl*, and ifarm systems will be rebooted during the maintenance period. Maintenance activities can be found on the Computer Center website.

Feb. 12 e-mail changes to impact users of Pine, Mutt and mailx clients
Changes are being made to JLab's e-mail environment to improve e-mail performance and manageability. The first phase of changes will be implemented on Feb. 12 and will directly affect those who use text-based e-mail clients on Unix systems. Examples include Pine, Mutt and mailx. These changes will likely not affect those who use Thunderbird, Outlook, Mozilla, or other e-mail clients that use the IMAP protocol to read mail.

The changes that will take place are two-fold:

• The mail spool directory (/var/mail) is currently mounted on all central user login machines, as well as many CUE level 1 linux desktops around the site. This access is being removed. This means that users of Pine, Mutt, or other text-based e-mail readers in Unix systems will need to configure these e-mail readers to use IMAP to access e-mail. Information on reconfiguring Pine is available on the Computer Center website. Access to e-mail on the local file systems will no longer be permitted.
• Some advanced users have their inboxes stored in their home directories in a file called mbox. These users will have their inboxes migrated back to the mail spool directory. This change will be transparent to all users that use IMAP e-mail clients.
• The Computer Center will remove Pine, Mozilla, Netscape, Thunderbird, and Firefox from all central Solaris systems. This includes jlabs1, jlabs2, and ifarms1. Pine, Firefox, and Thunderbird will still be available on jlabl1(RHEL3), jlabl2(RHEL5), and jlabl3(RHEL5).

Additional changes that will affect all users and where you store your e-mail folders will take place later in the spring/summer. Announcements will be made regarding those changes at a later date.

Automatic Installation of Microsoft Office on March 4
On the evening of March 4, the Computer Center will automatically install Office 2007 on all JLab Common User Environment (Computer Center-managed) Windows systems that haven’t already installed it. *Non-Windows systems, including Unix-based systems such as Mac OS X and Linux, will not be affected.* As always, should you encounter difficulties with your computer, call or visit the Computer Center Help Desk, x7155 or CEBAF Center F200.

Announcements

Pollution Prevention Award Nominees Sought
The Hampton Roads Sanitation District recognizes regional businesses and industry for outstanding pollution prevention initiatives with the annual HRSD Excellence Awards. Eligible entries include those that prevent or reduce waste at the source, recycle waste materials, treat hazardous wastes to make them less toxic, or any innovative activity that reduces waste or pollution caused by waste streams. If you are aware of any special or new actions or projects that the Lab, you or your work group has done to make JLab a more environmentally friendly place,  submit your ideas by Feb. 12 to Linda Even at x7308 or LLE@jlab.org.

JAG Dog Sports Training Club Informational Meeting
If you are interested in training your dog in basic obedience, agility skills or freestyle dog dancing, you're invited to Come, Sit, Stay at an informational meeting! Those interested in forming a JAG Dog Sports Training Club will hold an hour-long brownbag lunch in VARC room 72 on Thursday, Feb. 28 at noon. For more information, contact Joyce Miller at x7163 or miller@jlab.org or Brian Kross at x7022 or kross@jlab.org.

Come Out and Play on the JLab Softball Team
All are invited to try their hand with a bat and glove. JLab is forming its 2008 coed team to play in the York County Parks and Recreation Industrial League. Games are played Friday evenings at Chisman Field. Practices will likely begin in late March, with games scheduled to begin in April. So come join us for some coed fun. To sign up, contact Kandice Carter at kcarter@jlab.org or x7263 by Feb. 8.