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Around the World

A robot to watch out for defects

Automated cavity inspection makes progress at DESY

by Barbara Warmbein

A small group of young researchers at DESY, Germany, is working on a robot that could drastically reduce the time it takes to optically inspect a cavity. Their work covers everything from the pure mechanics of the workbench and fine-tuned motors for moving the heavy parts to developing sophisticated methods of automatically analysing the pictures. Cavities might eventually pass the check in two hours instead of the one-and-a-half days it takes today.

Around the World

A laboratory without walls

Fourth workshop of the France-China Particle Physics Laboratory held in Jinan

by Dou Wang and Min Zhang

The France-China Particle Physics Laboratory is a lab without walls, enabling Chinese and French particle and accelerator scientists to work together towards the new energy frontier with experiments such as the LHC and the ILC. Its fourth annual workshop took place in Shandong University, Jinan, China from 7 to 9 April 2011.

Director's Corner

Low-power option adopted for ILC technical design baseline

by Barry Barish

Establishing a new baseline for the ILC technical design requires balancing performance, cost and risk issues. A proposal to halve the number of bunches in the machine, reducing power and cost has been approved, following a one-year study of all the impacts.

Video of the week

Into the Microcosm: Particle and astroparticle physics at DESY

Video: DESY

DESY in Germany presents a new video to learn, in twelve minutes, all about its activities in particle and astroparticle physics. Don’t miss the International Linear Collider part at 6’50, featuring the new ILC animation.

View the new video on the DESY website in English or in German

View and download ILC animation: “The International Linear Collider in 1 minute.”

In the News

  • from CERN Bulletin
    11 April 2011
    ALICE’s wonderland reveals the heaviest antimatter ever observed
    Analysing data collected in a run of just one month, ALICE has recently found evidence of the formation of four anti-nuclei of Helium 4, the heaviest antimatter ever created in a laboratory.
  • from Physics Today
    11 April 2011
    Experiments in Soudan mine delayed, but mostly unharmed by fire
    A fire in the access shaft of the Soudan Mine in Minnesota appears to have caused little damage to the experiments that exploit the shielding from cosmic rays provided by the roughly 714-m-deep Soudan Underground Laboratory.
  • from BBC News
    7 April 2011
    Tevatron accelerator yields hints of new particle
    The find must be more fully confirmed, but researchers at the Tevatron are racing to work through existing data.
  • from DESY inFORM
    April 2011
    The plasma project
    Scientists want to use the high gradients produced by the plasma acceleration to build very compact accelerators. Wanting to use the particles from plasma accelerators for experiments and in order to get a good beam quality, the scientists will use a trick. They inject beams with already good properties into the plasma and accelerate them further.

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