12 GeV Upgrade

Design effort on the conventional facilities to support the 12 GeV CEBAF Upgrade continues to progress. On Dec. 20, the Design and Safety Review meeting on the 100 percent design of the North and South Access Building Additions was held at Jefferson Lab. Facilities Management and Logistics is focused on completing the 100 percent designs for the Beam Switchyard (BSY) Addition and the North and South Access Utility Upgrades this month. On Feb. 1, the Architect-Engineer (A-E) firm, HSMM (Hayes, Seay, Mattern & Mattern), is scheduled to submit the draft Final Design documents of the Hall D Complex for JLab review.

Physics

In Hall A, the Coulomb Sum Rule experiment E05-110 is presently running (Jan. 14) the penultimate of the 17 energies scheduled for this experiment; it's on track to have accumulated all the required data by Wednesday, Jan. 16.

In Hall C, G_E^p-2γ (E04-019) has completed data taking on two of three kinematic data points. The remaining data taking on the partially completed third point is scheduled to resume later this week.

Accelerator

The accelerator ran exceedingly well during this period, with a realignment of a section of beam pipe in the North Linac the only corrective action necessary. Up to Jan. 11, the three experimental halls received 162 hours of beam. After a change to the very low energy of 400 MEV ½ pass on Jan. 11, only Hall A was taking beam and to date (Jan. 15), Hall A has received 50 hours of beam at the new energy.

Free-Electron Laser (FEL)

This week, FEL staff completed a major milestone in certifying the gun test stand and the FEL for independent operation. The GTS gun high-voltage conditioning was then begun by ramping and soaking immediately at 330 kilovolts. At the same time, the FEL gun and adjacent beamline bake was completed. FEL staff are continuing to process the GTS high voltage on 24-hour shifts.

JLab's Safety Numbers

119 Days since Last Recordable Accident (JLab record: 319)
438 Days since Last Lost Workday Accident (JLab record: 455)

JLab Calendar of Events

Jan. 14-18: PAC 33
Jan. 21: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day - (JLab closed)
Jan. 25: American Red Cross Blood Drive, 10 a.m.- 4 p.m.
Jan. 25: JLab 12 GeV Adopt-A-Spot Litter Pickup

Announcements

2008 Lab Holiday Observances information posted
The calendar of Lab closings for holidays and shutdown days for 2008 has been posted on the Human Resources website.

Adopt-A-Spot Litter Pickup event on Jan. 25 
The 12 GeV Upgrade project team, along with ESH&Q staff, seeks volunteers to help with litter pickup along the sidewalk & grass areas from Onnes Drive to the corner of Jefferson Avenue & Oyster Point Road. Participants will meet in the CEBAF Center lobby at 11:15 a.m. for a short safety briefing and will then proceed to pick up litter. If you would like to participate, contact Cindy Saban at x5981 or saban@jlab.org in advance.

Environment, Safety, Health & Quality

Lab staff members recently expressed concern about the number of deer sighted around the JLab campus. The following are basic safety tips for driving near deer from the Insurance Information Institute:

• Be especially attentive from sunset to midnight and during the hours shortly before and after sunrise. These are the highest risk times for deer-vehicle collisions.
• Deer seldom run alone. If you see one deer, others may be nearby.
• When driving at night, use high beam headlights when there is no oncoming traffic. The high beams will better illuminate the eyes of deer on or near the roadway.
• Slow down and blow your horn with one long blast to frighten the deer away.
• Always wear your seat belt. Most people injured in car/deer crashes were not wearing a seat belt.
• If your vehicle strikes a deer, do not touch the animal. A frightened and wounded deer can hurt you or further injure itself.

PNNL Electrical LO/TO Lesson Learned
A Pacific Northwest National Lab electrician, while removing two 120-volt power supply cables from a bundle of four de-energized 120-volt power supply cables, recently removed another authorized worker's Danger Tag. There was no lock, but the Danger Tag had been attached. The worker did not contact any hazardous energy source. The work activity was stopped, and the electrician's lock and tag qualifications were suspended. An event investigation was formed by line management to conduct a review, including causal analysis. This event, although a "near miss," points out the importance of workers being aware of and following energy control measures: All JLab staff working near any type of energy control devices on systems such as electrical, hydraulic, fluid, or cryogenic need to aware of the importance of complying with Lab lockout/tagout/try measures. For more information, see Chapter 6110 Lock, Tag, Try in the Lab ES&H Manual.

Computing and Networking Infrastructure

Automatic Installation of Microsoft Office
On the evening of Feb. 5, 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.

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. 5 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. 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. 

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.

Scientific Computing Users Meeting on Jan. 23
Scheduled for 9:30 a.m. in L102, this meeting will provide users with an open forum to discuss JLab's offline experimental physics scientific computing environment. Planning for batch farm computing and storage for the next several years are the primary agenda items. A detailed agenda can be found on the Events Calendar.