12 GeV Upgrade

The two FY10 procurements for 12 GeV civil construction are on schedule for award in the second fiscal quarter. The solicitation for the North and South Access Building Additions is being prepared by the JLab Procurement Group, and the site visit will be held in the beginning of November. This contract includes 1800-square-foot additions to each of the access buildings and new electrical unit substations for the accelerator power supplies to be installed in these buildings. The other FY10 civil construction procurement is the Central Helium Liquefier (CHL) Utility Upgrades, cooling towers and transformers, to support the CHL #2 compressors.

Physics

For the past week, experiment E05-109, HAPPEx-III, a measurement of the nucleon strange form factors at high Q², has taken production data under excellent beam conditions, both with respect to helicity-correlated properties and background conditions in the Compton polarimeter in Hall A.

Last Chance to Submit Your APS April Meeting Abstract
The deadline for receipt of abstracts is Friday, Oct. 23, at 5 p.m. EDT (2 p.m. PDT). The 2010 APS April Meeting will take place at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC. Because the April Meeting will be held in conjunction with the annual winter meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), it has been moved to February.

Accelerator

The accelerator has been running well with low trip rates. On Thursday, the injector was optimized to deliver better beam. Several minor issues were addressed this week, including: the insulating vacuum pump for zone 1L03 failed and was replaced; the Arc1 Box Supply failed, and the power supply was replaced; the radiofrequency separators tripped off twice; and a couple of trim rack power supplies were replaced.

Free-Electron Laser

The FEL had a good week of running tests for beam, a Colorado State optics study and one user test. The gun continues to operate exceptionally, maintaining its quantum efficiency at operational levels over the entire week without additional cesiation. Installation and checkout of the ultraviolet beamline also made great progress; the FEL team intends to thread beam through the line for the first time next week.

Theory Center

Members of the JLab lattice QCD group have calculated the spectrum of mesons composed of quarks with masses around that of the strange quark. The results <arXiv:0909.0200> include the first determination of the mass of a spin-4 meson, the identification of states with exotic quantum numbers and a vector-hybrid candidate. The next steps are to lower the quark masses and to develop methods for dealing with two-particle states, before eventually calculating meson-photon couplings. This program of calculations will inform expected production rates for GlueX at 12 GeV, as well as providing the ab initio predictions for the meson masses demanded by experiment.

JLab's Safety Numbers

98 Days since Last Recordable Accident (JLab record: 331)
406 Days since Last Lost Workday Accident (JLab record: 676)

JLab Calendar of Events

Oct. 28: William F. Brinkman, Director of DOE's Office of Science, visits JLab
Nov. 1: Daylight Saving Time ends
Nov. 12: Safety Shoe Vendor onsite
Nov. 16: Women in Science and Engineering Workshop
Nov. 24-25: Thanksgiving holidays - JLab closed
Dec. 10: Safety Shoe Vendor onsite
Dec. 24 - Jan. 1: Winter holidays/Shutdown days - JLab closed

Environment, Safety, Health & Quality

Distracted Driving
Eighty percent of all crashes and 65 percent of all near-crashes recently studied by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute involved driver inattention within three seconds of the crash. For instance, if you are driving 45 mph and you look down for two seconds, you will have traveled 132 feet effectively 'blind' to hazards. If a hazard presented itself at the same speed, it would normally take you 172 feet to react, hit the brake and stop without losing control.

The following information was developed by various organizations (in parentheses) to help make people aware of the hazards of driving while distracted:

• Distraction from cell phone use while driving (hand-held or hands-free) extends a driver's reaction as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08 percent. (University of Utah);
• The number one source of driver inattention is use of a wireless device. (Virginia Tech/NHTSA);
• Drivers that use cell phones are four times as likely to get into crashes serious enough to injure themselves. (NHTSA, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety);
• 10 percent of drivers aged 16-24 are on their phone at any one time;
• Driving while distracted is a factor in 25 percent of police-reported crashes;
• Driving while using a cell phone reduces the amount of brain activity associated with driving by 37 percent  (Carnegie Mellon).

For more information, visit the Drive Smart Virginia website.

Computing and Networking Infrastructure

Tips for Curtailing Spam
Getting a lot of spam in your e-mail inbox? JLab has contracted with MXLogic to filter viruses and spam out of incoming e-mail. There are several methods you can employ to further curtail the amount of spam that reaches your inbox. The simplest method is to forward spam messages to spam@mxlogic.com - this trains the filters at MXLogic to recognize such messages as spam; it may take a few forwarded e-mails to work. Additional, more involved steps can be found on the JLab E-mail Filtration Services webpage.

Announcements

Performance Appraisals Update
Supervisors have until Tuesday, Oct. 27 to meet with employees to discuss FY10 expectations and self-assessments and complete draft evaluations. If you are offsite, you can stay on track by using a PIN; you can get your PIN from Bruce Ullman at x7170. Check out the entire timeline here and access the system here.

Hand Sanitizer Still Available
To minimize the spread of flu this season, JLab purchased bottles of hand sanitizer and wipes for distribution to staff and users for disinfecting hands and common-use workplace surfaces, such as phones and keyboards. One 8-ounce bottle of hand sanitizer and 10 disinfecting wipes are available for each individual. These materials are for use in the workplace; they are not meant to be taken home. Use only as indicated on the product label. If you didn't pick up your personal allotment last week, you can obtain them from the Technical Stockroom, Bldg. 90, between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday-Friday. If you have any questions, contact x7225 or x7233.

Access Your United Way Pledge Form Electronically
Donors can access the United Way pledge form electronically this year. Simply print the form available at this link, fill it out and send it with any check payments attached to Joshua Cameron, CEBAF Center, room B214, MS 12B by Monday, Nov. 2. As always with charitable donations, make a copy of the signed form for your records.

If you wish to use the traditional form, it is available for pickup at the following locations: CEBAF Center Lobby, VARC Lobby, ARC Lobby, Test Lab 2nd Floor Lobby and MCC Lobby. Detach and keep the pink carbon for your personal record and send the rest of the completed form, along with any check payments attached, to Joshua Cameron.