12 GeV Upgrade

The 12 GeV Accelerator Team continues to make good progress on the Project Engineering Design (PED). The cryomodule team will soon complete the planned work for FY08 and will begin work originally planned for FY09. A modified plan for the PED of the Low-Level Radio Frequency (LLRF) controls has been implemented following an approved Change Request in December; a significant event this month was completion of the new digital board for that system. The Cryogenics Team is on cost and ahead of schedule on its design work. All the 12 GeV accelerator teams have draft Advance Procurement Plans (APP) under review for the major FY09 procurements; the Cryogenics team has completed its FY09 APP and has a draft APP for its FY10 major procurements. Initial laminations have been received for the R&D prototype Beam Transport quadrupoles; these will be inspected prior to the vendor starting stacking.

Physics

After the successful completion of the Coulomb Sum Rule experiment in Hall A on Wednesday, Jan. 16, the target configuration was changed to one with several conduction-cooled solid targets, each containing a lead foil sandwiched between two diamond wafers. The changeover went very smoothly due to the support of the target, the survey and the RadCon groups. On Sunday, production data taking started for the extension of the ²⁰⁸Pb(e,e'p) experiment, E06-007, and beam delivery has been smooth since then.

Hall C has set up and started running E07-002, a one-week experiment to study polarization transfer in wide angle compton scattering. This experiment uses a modification of the G_E^p experiment setup, with a radiator in front of the target to produce a polarized bremsstrahlung beam. The BigCal detector has been augmented with the BigBite magnet, which is used to sweep away charged particles so that BigCal can detect photons. The polarization transferred to the proton is measured with the focal plane polarimeter in the High Momentum Spectrometer.

Accelerator

The Accelerator ran very well during this past week, with the halls receiving a total of 362 hours of beam. The few minor problems encountered were due to Hall A Compton rate tuning efforts and some beam break up (BBU) issues that were quickly addressed by Optics personnel. There are Test Plans in the works to further investigate the BBU issues, especially their possible connection to radiofrequency zone NL04.

Free-Electron Laser (FEL)

Work is continuing on the Gun Test Stand high voltage with an examination of some field emission that has developed in the high-voltage power supply. The FEL gun is being prepared for a re-bake after a mechanical problem on the cathode door was fixed.

JLab's Safety Numbers

133 Days since Last Recordable Accident (JLab record: 319)
452 Days since Last Lost Workday Accident (JLab record: 455)

JLab Calendar of Events

Feb. 2: Virginia Regional High School Science Bowl
Feb. 6: Colloquium, CEBAF Center auditorium, 4 p.m.
Feb. 18: Presidents' Day Holiday (JLab closed)

Announcements

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.

Environment, Safety, Health & Quality

According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, extension cord-related fires occur every six minutes in the U.S., resulting in about 50 deaths and an average of $50 million in property damage each year. Some of us are using extension cords to supply power  to supplemental electric heating units; extra care is needed, as supplemental heating units typically have higher electrical power requirements than many appliances and power tools. Here are a few extension cord safe-use recommendations from the National Safety Council:

• Before using an extension cord, make sure it's listed by Underwriters Laboratories or another recognized testing laboratory.
• Extension cords should be inspected before each use. It is important to prevent the wire strands from breaking by avoiding kinking or excessive bending of the cord.
• Cord for use with portable tools or equipment is made in several grades, each of which is designed for a specific type of service. Cord for heating devices, such as electric irons or portable heaters, is made with an insulated covering that contains a flame-retardant or thermo-setting compound (such as neoprene). Such cords are designed to resist high temperatures and in the case of neoprene, dampness.
• Store disconnected extension cords neatly coiled in a dry room at room temperature. Do not connect or disconnect cords with an electrical load on.
• Do not use extension cords in place of permanent wiring. Additional information is available in Chapter 6210, General Electrical Safety in the JLab ES&H Manual.

DOE Material Handling Injury Lesson Learned
A recent DOE Pantex facility material handling accident seriously injured the lead worker during a construction project lift. Workers were assembling an aluminum excavation shoring system. During the positioning of a 1,200-pound aluminum excavation shoring box, it  became obvious that the box required rotating. The lead worker decided to manually rotate the box onto its center panel. Six Pantex workers helped rotate the box. During the manual rotation and after the box reached its free fall position, the lead worker for an unknown reason did not let go. The worker was lifted off the ground and fell about seven feet, causing a serious back injury. Lessons learned from this accident include:

• Tag lines or other stand-off means should be used for controlling loads during a lift vs. direct (manual) manipulation.
• Never wrap a tag line around your hand or any other body part to improve your grip.
• Crane operators need to account for every lift participant
• If the crane operator can't physically see lift participants, the operator needs to have alternate means of communication.

Computing and Networking Infrastructure

CNI Maintenance Day is scheduled for Feb. 12
Maintenance is scheduled for 5-10 p.m. Maintenance activities can be found on the Computer Center webpages see the CC web pages at http://cc.jlab.org/announce/status.html

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.* To sign up for training in the new features of Office 2007, see the announcement. As always, should you encounter difficulties with your computer, call or visit the Computer Center Help Desk, x7155 or CEBAF Center F200.