Barry Barish | 17 March 2011On behalf of the Global Design Effort for the International Linear Collider, I would like to convey our deepest care and sympathy to the citizens of Japan and to our physics colleagues and collaborators for the tragedy that your country has suffered as a result of the earthquake and tsunami last week.
Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: earthquake, Japan
Toshiaki Tauchi | 17 March 2011A huge 9.0-magnitude earthquake descended on us at about 14:46 on 11 March 2011 Japan standard time. The ATF (accelerator test facility) was operating for ATF2 beam-tuning and we were going to have a background study for the interaction point beam size monitor.
Category: Feature | Tagged: ATF, ATF2, earthquake, Japan, KEK
Rika Takahashi | 17 March 2011As many people in the world already know, Japan is currently dealing with its worst disaster: Japan's biggest earthquake on record and the fourth largest in history. Thousands of lives have been lost. Tens of thousands people are forced to evacuate and live without basic necessities. Hundreds of thousands are still missing.
Category: Feature | Tagged: earthquake, Japan, KEK
Rika Takahashi | 27 January 2011There is a question almost always asked when talking about science - “OK, this is interesting. But is it useful for something?” Not too many scientists working on basic science are good at answering this question. “Dr. Masatoshi Koshiba sometimes says that the neutrino, his main research subject, is not useful at all. Well, a Nobel laureate could say that, but not us. I try to talk more about useful accelerators these days,” said Atsuto Suzuki, the Director General of KEK, at a symposium held in Kyoto, Japan, in November, which was organised by the Advanced Accelerator Association promoting science and technology (AAA).
Category: Around the World | Tagged: AAA, accelerator research, Japan
Rika Takahashi | 24 November 2010What will happen when the ILC is built? One hopes discoveries will change the way we see the universe. It will answer the questions about what the universe is made of. And maybe it will help generate new Nobel Prize winners...
Category: Feature | Tagged: ILC site, Japan
Rika Takahashi | 30 September 2010On 27 September, the Japan's local winners of the first Global Particle Photo Walk were announced. This Photowalk was held at five particle physics laboratories in the world on 7 August (see Feature Story this week). The winning photo taken by Yuki Hayashi features scientists working at the Accelerator Test Facility (ATF) at KEK. But they are not Japanese scientists. They are three of the nine French scientists and engineers who were visiting the ATF from the end of July to install and test their four-mirror optical cavity.
Category: Feature | Tagged: ATF, Japan, photography, photowalk
Rika Takahashi | 26 August 2010Vietnam and Japan have been nurturing cooperative relationship in many fields for many years. For the field of science and technology, both governments signed the Japan-Vietnam Science and Technology Co-operation Agreement to promote and deepen the co-operation in science and technology in 2006. Following year, Shinzo Abe, then Prime minister of Japan, proposed at the East Asia Summit (EAS) to launch a youth exchange initiative totaling 35 billion Yen over five years including the invitation to 6,000 young people from the member countries of ASEAN and EAS to Japan, which was accepted with great welcome. Now, these invitations are bringing many Vietnamese scientists to KEK.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: Asia, EAS, East Asia Summit, Japan, Vietnam
12 August 2010Every day, KEK welcomes scientists and students from around the world. Some of them come here as collaborators who work on the international projects and programmes using cutting-edge facilities at KEK. Some visit as users who wish to use the beamlines at the Photon Factory to look into the smallest worlds. Many graduate students will write up their hard work here into their thesis. Many of them stay only days or weeks, but some of them stay longer to concentrate on the R&D for months or even years, like Dr. Philip Bambade from LAL in Orsay, France.
Category: Feature | Tagged: ATF, ATF2, Japan, KEK
