SLAC Today is available online at:
http://today.slac.stanford.edu
In this issue:
Marc Ross Named Head of Fermilab's Technical Division
Science Today: ANITA Sheds Light in End Station A
Moving Office Furniture? Call for Help

SLAC Today

Thursday - June 29, 2006
(Photo - Marc Ross)
Marc Ross

Marc Ross Named Head of Fermilab's Technical Division

by Neil Calder and Judy Jackson

SLAC physicist Marc Ross has been named head of Fermilab’s Technical Division, beginning in the fall of 2006.

Ross has played an integral part in SLAC's accelerator activities for many years. He started as a graduate student in 1979, became a full staff member in 1983, and worked on the Stanford Linear Collider until 1998. Ross remembers "fifteen years of 8 o'clock meetings seven days a week." In the process, Ross has built up a wealth of experience that has made him a respected expert on linear colliders. He has wide national and international experience, having made important contributions to programs at Fermilab, KEK in Japan, and DESY in Germany.

"Congratulations, Marc, from everyone at SLAC," said SLAC Director Jonathan Dorfan. "You have made a tremendous contribution to the lab's accelerator program and we will miss you enormously. We look forward to working right alongside you as you apply your impressive skills and deep technical knowledge to strengthen working relationships between SLAC and Fermilab and drive the ILC project forward."  Read more...
(Daily Column - Science Today)

ANITA Sheds Light
in End Station A

by Brad Plummer

(Image - Blue Ice) To view streaming video of the ANITA experiment, click on the image above. If you are a SLAC employee and do not have Real Media Player installed on your computer, you can download it here.

Last week, researchers at SLAC's End Station A conducted a series of experiments intended to test NASA's Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA). For nearly a week, the ANITA collaborators fired the linac beam into a 10-ton block of ice to create radiowaves, which were used to calibrate the detector. (See full article.)

Shooting the ice with pulses from the linac produced a spectrum of "Cherenkov radiation" that, in addition to radiowaves, also created bright blue flashes of visible light. This phenomenon occurs when a charged particle moves faster than light can through a dense medium, such as ice. (Click here for a streaming video of the ice experiment showing pulses of the visible blue Cherenkov light. The video is slowed down slightly to make the pulses more visible.)

The antenna array, which stands more than 20 feet tall, will fly aboard a high-altitude balloon that will circle above Antarctica for two months starting in December 2006. ANITA will spend the Antarctic summer searching for evidence of ultra-high energy cosmic neutrinos, which generate radiowaves when they strike the ice. Under the right conditions, an observer within the ice of Antarctica might occasionally see a similar flash of Cherenkov light from passing cosmic neutrinos.

Moving Office Furniture?
Call for Help

by Janice Dabney

Multiple-choice question: When it comes time to move a filing cabinet in your office, what do you do?

1) Submit a CEF Service Request, which gets directed to Labor Pool's manager Robbie Robinson for scheduling

2) Stand up tall, grab that baby, and rock it into its new location across the room

3) Call a co-worker and struggle to share the load and not lose hold

4) Analyze the hazards and plan the work safely (e.g., empty drawers first, use at least one other person, clear egress before starting the move, etc.)

5) Consult with your supervisor about the best way to proceed and any budget concerns that hinder your request to Labor Pool

If you answered #1, you're doing great; if #4 or 5, you are on the right path but still need to be careful; if #2 or 3, you need to practice self-preservation a bit more rigorously.

SLAC employees sometimes move office furniture and other things on their own because of the perceived delay and cost of using CEF's Labor Pool. As we all know, this introduces the risk of personal injury because most of us are not professional movers and don't use the correct equipment and technique to complete the task.

Normally, the Labor Pool is able to keep up with the usual flow of requests in a reasonable time. Give them as much advance notice as possible and try to manage your expectations—is it really that much of a rush? If you have a special issue (scope, cost, or time frame), talk to your supervisor.   Read more...

Events (see all | submit)

Access (see all)

Announcements
(see all | submit)

 Lab Announcements

Community Bulletin Board

News (see all | submit)

dividing line
(Office of Science/U.S. DOE Logo) <% 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/.