New AT&T Cell Tower Online

(Photo by Yee-Ting Li.)

by Lauren Rugani

AT&T customers should have noticed an improvement in their cell phone signal at SLAC beginning late last week. A temporary cell tower, which went up behind Building 50 late last month, now provides service to the SLAC campus and immediate surrounding areas. A permanent tower will be installed on the roof of Building 50 after a seismic retrofit of the building is completed, within the next year.

The permanent tower will improve coverage even more; the temporary tower will not have the full coverage on the north side of the SLAC campus that is expected from the permanent one, which will have a better vantage point from its planned location on the roof of Building 50.

Earlier in July, the California Highway Patrol submitted their approval of the tower after "E911" emergency services locator testing and surveys of the coverage were completed. After minor delays in connecting the base station at SLAC and the Mobile Telephone Switching Office for the area, the tower went live Thursday.

Have CMS and ATLAS Reached the Top?

The top at ATLAS? (Image: ATLAS.)

by Barbara Warmbein, guest author, Symmetry Breaking

It might be a long way to the top, but experiments at the the Large Hadron Collider are already half-way there. Friday at the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Paris, the CMS and ATLAS experiments presented their first top quark candidates. These candidates are collisions that have all the hallmarks of having produced top quarks, but the experiments don't yet have enough data to be 100 percent sure that the events created top quarks that decayed into other particles, rather than another type of event.

"The signal is starting to rise from the background," noted Tim Christiansen from CMS.

Trusty Old Fire Alarms Give Way to New Technology

(Photo - old telegraphic fire alarm box)

These old telegraphic fire alarm boxes have become collector's items. (Photo by Ralph Kerwin.)

by SLAC Fire Marshal Ralph Kerwin

The iconic red fire alarm boxes that have adorned SLAC since its opening day will soon disappear, victims of technological obsolescence. These Gamewell master boxes are part of a telegraphic fire alarm system that has been reporting SLAC fire alarms to emergency responders since 1968.

The technology is old but reliable. When the alarm box is triggered, a spring-loaded, toothed wheel spins and taps out the coded, four-digit box number. The first such system was installed in Boston in 1845. SLAC's version of the technology—known as a McCulloh loop—works so well that the underlying arrangement has remained largely unchanged since it was patented in 1882. It was the predominant institutional fire alarm reporting technology nation-wide well into the 1970s. Due to their ruggedness and reliability, Gamewell systems remain in use in several major U.S. cities, including San Francisco, as the ultimate post-disaster municipal alarm system.

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Fermilab Experiments Narrow Allowed Mass Range for Higgs Boson FNAL news release
No Sighting of Higgs, but Fermilab Physicists Say They May Be Close Science News
Senate Appropriations Committee Report Language Details DOE Funding Bill FYI: The AIP Bulletin of Science Policy News
New Technique for Studying Dark Energy Science Daily

<% Response.AddHeader "Last-modified", getArticleDate() 'Response.AddHeader "Last-modified","Mon, 01 Sep 1997 01:03:33 GMT" 'Monday, December 06, 2010 %>

View online at http://today.slac.stanford.edu/.

New AT&T Cell Tower Online (Photo by Yee-Ting Li.) by Lauren Rugani AT&T customers should have noticed an improvement in their cell phone signal at SLAC beginning late last week. A temporary cell tower, which went up behind Building 50 late last month, now provides service to the SLAC campus and immediate surrounding areas. A permanent tower will be installed on the roof of Building 50 after a seismic retrofit of the building is completed, within the next year. The permanent tower will improve coverage even more; the temporary tower will not have the full coverage on the north side of the SLAC campus that is expected from the permanent one, which will have a better vantage point from its planned location on the roof of Building 50. Earlier in July, the California Highway Patrol submitted their approval of the tower after "E911" emergency services locator testing and surveys of the coverage were completed. After minor delays in connecting the base station at SLAC and the Mobile Telephone Switching Office for the area, the tower went live Thursday. Read more... Have CMS and ATLAS Reached the Top? The top at ATLAS? (Image: ATLAS.) by Barbara Warmbein, guest author, Symmetry Breaking It might be a long way to the top, but experiments at the the Large Hadron Collider are already half-way there. Friday at the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Paris, the CMS and ATLAS experiments presented their first top quark candidates. These candidates are collisions that have all the hallmarks of having produced top quarks, but the experiments don't yet have enough data to be 100 percent sure that the events created top quarks that decayed into other particles, rather than another type of event. "The signal is starting to rise from the background," noted Tim Christiansen from CMS. Read more in Symmetry Breaking. Trusty Old Fire Alarms Give Way to New Technology These old telegraphic fire alarm boxes have become collector's items. (Photo by Ralph Kerwin.) by SLAC Fire Marshal Ralph Kerwin The iconic red fire alarm boxes that have adorned SLAC since its opening day will soon disappear, victims of technological obsolescence. These Gamewell master boxes are part of a telegraphic fire alarm system that has been reporting SLAC fire alarms to emergency responders since 1968. The technology is old but reliable. When the alarm box is triggered, a spring-loaded, toothed wheel spins and taps out the coded, four-digit box number. The first such system was installed in Boston in 1845. SLAC's version of the technology—known as a McCulloh loop—works so well that the underlying arrangement has remained largely unchanged since it was patented in 1882. It was the predominant institutional fire alarm reporting technology nation-wide well into the 1970s. Due to their ruggedness and reliability, Gamewell systems remain in use in several major U.S. cities, including San Francisco, as the ultimate post-disaster municipal alarm system. Read more...	Events Jul 28 (12:00 p.m.) WIS Seminar: Take a Mini-Vacation through Guided Imagery Access (see all) Piping Work in the SLAC Quad Work in SSRL Parking Lot/Road to Research Yard No Storage in Former RV Area RSB Project Info and Updates Announcements (see all \| submit) Lab Announcements Options in Wellness Newsletter Jul/Aug 2010 Sanitary Sewer Assessment in Progress Community Bulletin Board Celebration of the Life of Nancy Palmer Jul 29 Training ((see all \| register) Lab Training Calendar Registration Jul 27 (9:00 a.m.) Pressure Safety Training Jul 27 (2:00 p.m.) ES&H Management Walkthrough Upcoming Workshops & Classes Online Tech Training Opportunities News (submit) Fermilab Experiments Narrow Allowed Mass Range for Higgs Boson FNAL news release No Sighting of Higgs, but Fermilab Physicists Say They May Be Close Science News Senate Appropriations Committee Report Language Details DOE Funding Bill FYI: The AIP Bulletin of Science Policy News New Technique for Studying Dark Energy Science Daily
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