Jefferson Lab Weekly Briefs May 9, 2012

Jefferson Lab Weekly Briefs
May 9, 2012

All-JLab Memo

The latest "Montage" by Lab Director Hugh Montgomery has been posted to the website. In this newest article, titled "End of an Era," Mont reflects on the accomplishments of the lab during the 6 GeV era.

12 GeV Upgrade

An extended period of 12 GeV installation and commissioning, known as the Long Shutdown, is on schedule to commence on May 19. To highlight the importance of safety during this busy time, pre-shutdown meetings were held on May 7-8. These lab-wide meetings have become a staple of the kick-off process for scheduled machine downs. These meetings are beneficial as a tool to communicate the planned work activities and as a refresher course on the lab’s safety policies and procedures.

Physics

Hall A has been running g2p/GEp fairly smoothly, except for an 18-hour loss of time over the weekend due to a water pipe that broke in a power supply. The leak was fixed and several hoses were replaced, and the experiment was resumed.

The Q-weak experiment returned to production data taking with a 1.16 GeV beam. In addition to high-current parity data on the hydrogen target, the collaboration is making final calibration and consistency measurements with optics and background targets. In other, exciting news, Hall C Staff Scientist Silviu Covrig was named a winner of the 2012 Early Career Research Program award.

Scientists and Educators Team Up
Join the 1,000 Scientists in 1,000 Days, a Scientific American program to help scientists and educators connect. The program matches educators with scientists who want to volunteer, for instance, to visit the classroom to conduct a lab or talk about what it's like to be a scientist, explain the latest science, answer questions or act as a resource in other ways.

Fellowship Helps Women Physicists Resume Paused Career
The M. Hildred Blewett Fellowship enables women to return to physics research careers after having had to interrupt those careers. The fellowship consists of a one-year award of up to $45,000 (applicants can apply in a subsequent year for one additional year of support). Allowed expenses include dependent care (limited to 50 percent of the award), salary, travel, equipment, and tuition and fees. The fellowship is now accepting applications through June 1.

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

The accelerator started out the week with quiet running, until instabilities in accelerator energy made delivering steady high-current beam to Hall C a challenge. Operations and Engineering support personnel began monitoring multiple signals to locate the source, but the randomness and the large number of possible causes worked against them. Several radiofrequency cavities were removed from service and even whole cryomodules of cavities were turned off, while previously idled modules were turned on in their place in an effort to isolate the source. As yet, a source has not been determined, but the search continues. On Wednesday, work was performed in the injector for the PEPPo experiment; Cryogenics replaced a failed cryogen tube that was iced over; and a waveguide and a klystron for two C100 superconducting cavities were replaced, among other maintenance items. Hall C was changed from 3-pass to 1-pass beam, and Hall A was changed from 1-pass to 2-pass beam. On Thursday, a problem with new software code resulted in one of the new C100 superconducting cryomodules being left off, with other modules turned back on to replace it, plus several hours of down time. On Friday, a spin dance was performed with Halls A and C, measuring the beam polarity (spin) at different injector settings to determine the optimal final setting. Because of the low-current running of Hall C, running was quiet over the weekend, with only minor changes to operating cavities or their gradients being necessary.

Free-Electron Laser

The FEL team completed the ultraviolet optics installation and began preparing the electron beam for UV operation. A number of systems were repaired and re-qualified, and a temperature bump on the quarter cryomodule was performed to drive out surface-absorbed helium.

Center for Theoretical and Computational Physics

A study of some fundamental aspects of the implementation of the so-called holographic description of QCD has been published by a collaboration between researchers in the Theory Center and the Instituto Balseiro in Argentina. This work addressed theoretical consistency requirements for such a description to be possible. The aim of the holographic picture of QCD is to describe QCD in its strong coupling regime, which is of key relevance for most of the hadronic phenomena being studied at JLab.

Engineering

The alignment group continues to support the Hall A g2p experiment with numerous chicane moves. This work involves aligning the second FZ magnet, the harp assembly and the diagnostic girder to tolerances of less than 0.2 millimeters. Alignment also has quality inspected many of the magnets delivered for the 12 GeV Upgrade. Additionally, the group has begun to survey the network connecting Hall D and the Hall D tagger areas. Since there is no direct connection, or line of sight, between Hall D and where the tagger magnet is located, the survey network must be densified using the tagger area access ramp to the surface and then return to Hall D via its access ramp. The tolerance for this is in the quarter millimeter range. Cryomodule C100-7 was fiducialized, and the survey of the transfer line assembly for the Central Helium Liquefier-2 has been completed.

Environment, Safety, Health and Quality

Establishing an Electrically Safe Work Condition
The Department of Energy is celebrating National Electrical Safety Month with a series of topics on electrical safety: This week's topic is electrically safe work conditions. An electrically safe work condition is a state in which an electrical conductor or circuit part to be worked on or near has been disconnected from energized parts, locked/tagged in accordance with established standards, tested to ensure the absence of voltage, and grounded if determined necessary. Establishing this condition requires adherence to the Hazardous Energy Control process and the verification process and is not established by solely de-energizing circuits or conductors. 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 440 staff and users migrated into Zimbra and about 125 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

New Phone Number to Contact JLab Security
If you need to report a medical emergency at JLab, picking up any lab land-line phone and dialing 9-911 or 911 will automatically connect you to the City of Newport News Emergency Dispatch Center, and the following JLab staff are also automatically alerted: JLab Security, Occupational Medicine and other key JLab responders.

If the 911 call was dialed from a cell phone, you will also need to call JLab Security at 757-269-5822. This call is necessary to alert the security guards so they can be ready to escort emergency responders to the scene as quickly as possible.

Reminder: SAF100 Training Update for Everyone
Everyone with a JLab ID badge is now required to take the SAF100, ES&H Orientation every three years. If you haven't yet re-taken SAF100 since February, please do so as soon as feasible. The updated version of this ES&H Orientation course is available online (SAF 100 is the first course listed under the ES&H subhead). If you have not completed this course as of June 1, your SAF100 training will expire and your JLab badge will not allow you access to JLab facilities and controlled-entry work areas until the course has been completed.

JLab 2012 T-Shirts Arrive Next Week
The second order of t-shirts unveiled at this year's Run-A-Round will be available for pickup sometime next week. Those who placed a reservation will receive an email alerting them to availability and will be able to turn in their bib or ticket for their shirt. Any remaining shirts will be placed on sale at the CEBAF Center front desk following distribution of the reserved shirts.

Tornado Preparedness and Response Awareness Survey Results Posted
JLab Emergency Manager Tina Menefee has posted the results of the survey completed by about 200 members of the JLab community after the Tornado Drill held on March 20. For a snapshot of the results, lessons learned and planned improvements, click the link.

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 Pashupati Dhakal and Brita Hampton, who were the first to correctly identify the May 2 location. Honorable mentions go to Lyn Wells, Lori Zukerman, Samika Hawkins, Stephanie Vermeire, John Fischer, Mike Martin, Dan Moore, Ron Bartek,  Andy Kowalski, Karen Bartek, Jim Follkie, Harry Fanning, Dick Owen, Subashini De Silva and Michele Solaroli. 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

May 9-11: Science and Technology Review
May 10: Retirement Reception Honoring Mark Waite
May 14-17: QCD Evolution Workshop
May 18: Q-weak End-of-Run Party
May 19: JLab's 2012 Open House: Passport to Science
May 21: Safety Shoe vendor onsite
May 28: Memorial Day holiday, JLab closed
June 4-6: JLab Users Group Workshop and Annual Meeting
June 6: End of 6 GeV Era Party
June 18-22: Program Advisory Committee Meeting (PAC39)