Jefferson Lab Weekly Briefs May 2, 2012

Jefferson Lab Weekly Briefs
May 2, 2012

All-Staff Memo

Foreign Travel Order 551.1 Revisions Instated
Changes that will affect the traveler directly involve:

  1. Attendance at a foreign conference: Abstract and complete written talk to be added to request for foreign travel;
  2. Personal leave combined with business: Ratio is now two business days for every personal day. The calculation includes travel days;
  3. A Trip Report is no longer required.

A new Foreign Travel Guidance document on the Travel website should be reviewed by anyone traveling after May 31 that does not already have their approval and clearance from Travel Services.

12 GeV Upgrade

Winding of two coils for the Hall C Super High Momentum Spectrometer Q1 quadrupole magnet is complete and winding of the third coil has started. Soldering of the copper stabilizer to the superconducting SSC cable for the Q2, Q3 and dipole magnets is underway, with the first reels of production conductor now shipped to the magnet vendor. A contract is in place for the several hundred tons of steel yokes for those magnets. Most sections of the support structure have arrived at JLab, with the balance due in June. Detector construction funded through National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation university grants continues, with the parts for the quartz S2Y plane of the hodoscope now in hand at North Carolina A&T State University, and the stringing of the drift chambers underway at Hampton University.

Physics

In Hall A, the g2p / GEp experiments continue to run smoothly.

Hall C completed a measurement of the asymmetry of inclusive scattering of 3.35 GeV electrons on hydrogen. This measurement will constrain the uncertainty on one of the largest corrections to the measurement of Q-weak. The Q-weak experiment is now returning to the standard configuration of 1.16 GeV beam and plans to take production data until the end of the run.

In Pictures: Doing Physics
The Institute of Physics' Physics World magazine has issued a photo challenge to all physicists to provide interesting pictures of physicists "doing physics." Photos may be submitted through May 8. For more information, visit the blog.

Accelerator

At the start of the week, Hall B was in the process of changing out a target, while Halls A and C were taking production beam. The Hall C beam current monitor was calibrated, and the limits on the ion chambers in Hall A were adjusted. A cathode power supply high voltage module was replaced on radiofrequency zone SL25. Hall B successfully brought their new target up and started taking beam again midweek. The C100 zone was pushed during beam studies by raising the individual cavities' maximum applied voltage to obtain more data on the cryomodule's characteristics. Then the cavities were not reset to nominal operating levels but left at higher levels for the weekend. On Sunday, the Central Helium Liquefier 2 Kelvin coldbox tripped, resulting in the usual short delay until Cryogenics staff could be called in to restore it. In an access to the South Linac, ice was found surrounding an 2L09 "L tube," a piece of tubing in the cryogenic transfer lines. This will have to be corrected another day. Overall, the accelerator performed very well during this time period.

Center for Theoretical and Computational Physics

Researchers at Trinity College, Dublin, in collaboration with Theory Center members, have presented a new calculation of the excited-state spectrum of charmonium, the bound system of a charm quark and anti-quark, determined from a lattice QCD calculation. This work builds on recent progress in computing the light-meson spectrum and finds several interested parallels. Notably, there appears to be a spectrum of 'hybrid' mesons - mesons featuring an excited gluonic field - that has a very similar structure regardless of whether the quarks are light or heavy. This suggests a connection between spectroscopy programs at JLab and those seeking new charmonium states, such as the future GSI-FAIR PANDA experiment.

Engineering

The Electrical Engineering Services department is moving into the new TED building this week. All EES staff will be co-located for the first time. All offices and shops are being moved. On the accelerator operations front, the EESRF team conducted a successful 24-hour push on the new C100 cryomodules in the tunnel to demonstrate their performance near the operating conditions expected for the future research program. This was successfully achieved on Thursday last week. Virtually everyone in the EES department contributed to this success in some manner over the last few years.

Facilities Management and Logistics

JLab will hold an Open House on May 19. In preparation for that event, the lab will conduct a sitewide cleanup May 7-11. The cleanup will involve all divisions and all employees. All managers are responsible for ensuring the participation of their individual staffs. The cleanup is not optional; Everyone is expected to participate.

The goal is to clean up individual work areas, as well as to remove scrap wood, cardboard, metals and other excess items that may have piled up over time both indoors and out. During the clean up, be careful not to mix recyclables. In other words, wood scrap goes into a wood dumpster, recyclable metals in their dumpster, and paper and other permissible recyclable office waste goes into the paper dumpster.  If you will need a dumpster or other equipment to clean your area, contact Carl Iannacone, x5430, or Bill Brisiel, x7233.

The cleanup also will be an excellent time to identify excess equipment or furniture. You can contact the Property Office at x6270 for removal of these items.

Environment, Safety, Health and Quality

The Department of Energy is celebrating National Electrical Safety Month with a series of topics on electrical safety. Now is a good time for all of us to re-examine your surroundings at work and at home for electrical hazards.

This week's focus is on electrical work. A general rule of thumb to remember is: "When in Doubt, Lock it out!" The four principles for an electrically safe working environment are:

  • Before starting work: Establish an electrically safe work condition;
  • Until proven otherwise, consider it energized;
  • Establish clear boundaries around exposed and potentially energized electrical equipment;
  • Working on energized circuits is always a last resort and not a first option: Make every attempt to work de-energized.

For a complete toolbox talk on this topic, click here.

Computing and Networking Infrastructure

Email Migrations into New System Ongoing
The CNI group is continuing to migrate staff and some users into the new email and calendar suite, Zimbra. These migrations are going well, with nearly 400 staff and users migrated into Zimbra and about 180 still left to migrate. These migrations are occurring overnight, and you will receive an email around noon on the day you are scheduled to be migrated. For more information, see the article in the March 16 OnTarget newsletter.

Announcements

JLab to Test Tornado Warning Siren Friday at 10:30 a.m.
JLab's tornado warning siren will undergo its monthly operational test at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, May 4. Depending on weather conditions at the time of the test, the siren may be heard by anyone outdoors within a 1.5-mile radius of the lab. Individuals planning to be in the Central Materials Storage Area (where the siren is located) while the test is taking place must have with them and wear two layers of hearing protection. A sign will be posted at the Central Materials Storage Area gate to notify entrants of the test. It will be removed when the test is over. More information about the siren is in this March 2012 On Target newsletter article.

Tornado Preparedness and Response Awareness Survey Results Posted
About 200 members of the JLab community completed the survey after the Tornado Drill held on March 20. For a snapshot of the results, lessons learned and planned improvements, click the link.

Today's Colloquium: From Quarks to Baseballs - The Evolution of a Physicist
Alan Nathan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will address some interesting and practical questions of baseball from a physics perspective. In this talk, he will discuss some of the ways that a physicist analyzes the game of baseball. The talk will be organized around two broad topics: The physics of the ball-bat collision and the aerodynamics of a baseball in flight. The goal is that all will enjoy this talk, whether your interest is physics, baseball, or the intersection between them. The colloquium will take place May 2 at 4 p.m. in the CEBAF Center auditorium.

RadCon Seminar: Anticipating Radiation Damage: Calculation of Relevant Quantities
Even non-biological matter can suffer serious consequences from radiation, both natural and artificial. Francesco Cerutti, Emerging Energy Technologies Section of the Engineering Department at CERN, will review the macroscopic quantities associated with different types of damage, such as absorbed dose, displacements per atom, high-energy hadron fluence, and silicon 1 MeV-equivalent neutron fluence. The calculation of these quantities will be discussed in the context of the Monte Carlo description of the radiation-matter interaction, with particular reference to the FLUKA code. The seminar will take place Friday, May 4 at 1:30 p.m. in CEBAF Center Room F113.

Tracking Thomas at JLab
Little Thomas is visiting all corners of the JLab campus. If you can identify his location this week, email Kandice Carter with your guess. Guesses are accepted through Friday.

Congratulations this week go to Samika Hawkins, who was the first to correctly identify the April 25 location. Honorable mentions go to Maurizio Ungaro, Paul Letta, Ron Bartek, Michelle Shinn and DeAnn Maddox. Check out the Tracking Thomas webpage for a better view of his last location and this week's new mystery photo.

JLab Calendar of Events

April 30: FLUKA Training Course
May 2: Colloquium and Public Lecture
May 7: Safety Shoe vendor onsite
May 9-11: Science and Technology Review
May 14-17: QCD Evolution Workshop
May 19: JLab's 2012 Open House: Passport to Science
May 28: Memorial Day holiday, JLab closed