From the Chief Operating Officer:
SLAC Core Values
by Alexander Merola
One of the
PAUSE key recommendations, collected from SLAC-wide working groups, is to reinforce SLAC's core values through both communications and actual behaviors. I thought I would highlight three of these values here.
Let's start with "One Lab." There is no phrase that is more often repeated when we in senior management are actively making hard decisions that affect the entire lab.
One Lab means to think first of SLAC as one institution with a shared scientific mission and set of goals. So, when all of us at the lab make decisions, strategic or tactical, we strive to actively balance what might appear to be in the best interest of one group or directorate with what is best for SLAC as a whole. The Executive Council and the SubCouncils are always dealing with this productive friction when addressing issues like the setting of overhead or other indirect rates; the prioritization of how we use such funds, whether for Laboratory Directed Research and Development projects or mission support; or a decision to create and provide a central service from the Accelerator or Operations Directorate.
One Lab helps guide our decision making processes and makes it easier to understand some of the harder decisions.
Read more...
SAREC Reviews First FACET Proposals
SAREC members, from the left: Jie Gao (IHEP), Gerry Dugan (Cornell), Eric Esarey (LBNL), Kaoru Yokoya (KEK), Carsten Hast (SLAC), Vitaly Yakimenko (BNL), Sergei Nagaitsev (FNAL), Frank Zimmermann (CERN), Andrei Seryi (JAI), Katherine Harkay (ANL), Uwe Bergmann (SLAC). Not pictured: LK Len (Doe Office of High Energy Physics). (Photo by Lori Ann White.)
by Lori Ann White
The SLAC Accelerator Research Experimental Program Committee, or SAREC,
held its first meeting this week to review proposals for research to be
conducted in SLAC's accelerator test facilities. The international
committee, chaired by former SLACer Andrei Seryi (now director of the John
Adams Institute of Accelerator Science), evaluated nine proposals. All of
them propose research projects using SLAC's
Facility for Advanced Accelerator Experimental Tests.
Read more...
Word of the Week:
Weak Gravitational Lensing
(Image: W.N. Colley and E. Turner (Princeton University), J.A. Tyson (Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies) and NASA.
Click for more information.)
by Lori Ann White
Gravitational
lensing is growing in importance as an astronomical tool. Among other useful
tricks,
the phenomenon can reveal astronomical objects and hidden mass—dark matter—through the way their gravity bends light as it passes on its way to Earth.
In weak gravitational lensing, the matter forming the gravitational lens is not dense enough or regular enough to create easily visible images of the distant light source or sources behind it. However, the images of the background objects are still skewed by its gravity. The details of their deformity can reveal much about the structure and mass of the lens, including any dark matter it contains. By collecting data from many areas of the sky, researchers can use weak lensing to help build a map of dark matter distribution throughout the entire universe.
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