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In this issue:
Dark Energy Survey Collaboration Meets at SLAC
Property Control Honor Roll Awards
SLAC Safety Note: Five H1N1 Myths—Busted

SLAC Today

Tuesday - December 1, 2009

Dark Energy Survey Collaboration Meets at SLAC

The Dark Energy Survey collaboration is building a new camera which will be mounted in the 4 meter Blanco Telescope, shown here. Beginning in 2011, the collaboration will use the camera to search the sky for evidence of dark energy. See also a live webcam of the Blanco telescope. (Image courtesy NOAO.)

Ninety-five percent of the universe is made of something mysterious and "dark," according to the standard cosmological model. And while a portion of that darkness—dark matter—may soon be better understood through experiments in deep underground mines and at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, most of it—dark energy—remains almost entirely inexplicable.

An international collaboration of researchers seeks to change that through the Dark Energy Survey. More than 100 DES collaborators are meeting at SLAC this week to discuss how they will map dark energy, the mysterious force that seems to accelerate the universe's expansion, to reveal why the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate.

"Dark energy is one of the biggest puzzles in physics and the Dark Energy Survey will explore new territory with four independent measurements," said Kavli Institute of Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology researcher Risa Wechsler, who chairs the science program for this week's collaboration meeting.  Read more...

Property Control Honor Roll Awards

The SLAC inventory results for sensitive property for fiscal year 2009 were reported to the Department of Energy in October. SLAC improved the lab's find rate from fiscal year 2008 to achieve an outstanding grade. But we can’t let our guard down. We still need your help to continue to get outstanding results. Please remember, any time you transfer any bar-coded property to another custodian or location, you must inform the SLAC Property Control Office. This will help keep our database accurate and help in the search phase of the annual inventory count. Please use the online transfer form located in BIS.

For fiscal year 2009, the divisions listed below had a 100 percent find rate for their sensitive property. These divisions will get a certificate commending this accomplishment, naming them to the FY 2009 Property Control Honor Roll.

If you have questions about property control at SLAC, please contact Property Control Manager Leslie Normandin (x4350).

SLAC Property Control Honor Roll recipients for fiscal year 2009 are:

Director's Office:
Director’s Office and Administration

Accelerator Directorate:
Accelerator Directorate Office and Administration
Spear3 Program
Linac Coherent Light Source Program
Sector 0-20 and FACET Program
Strategic Projects
Accelerator Operations and Safety
Business Manager

LCLS Directorate:
LCLS Directorate Office and Administration
X-Ray Facilities Division
Business Office
Accelerator System Division

Operations Directorate:
Operations Directorate Office and Administration
Office of the Chief Financial Officer
Environmental Safety and Health
Facilities
Human Resources
Integrated Performance Management

Particle Physics and Astrophysics Directorate:
Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology
PPA Electrical and Software Engineering
Accelerator Research

Photon Science Directorate:
PULSE Institute for Ultrafast Energy Science
Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Science

SSRL Directorate:
Accelerator Systems Division

SLAC Safety Notes

Five H1N1 Myths—Busted

For anyone worried about contracting H1N1 "swine" flu from a holiday pork roast, or planning immune system arms escalation via an H1N1 "flu party," the Mythbusters have an answer. These and three other misunderstandings about the spread of H1N1 are addressed in Myths about H1N1.

See also the SLAC Pandemic Flu Information page for lab information and policy about the flu.

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