Newsline

Author archive: Rika Takahashi

Kicking off a new phase

| 20 September 2007 Since their appointment in May, the three Global Design Effort Project Managers have been busy scheduling and planning the Engineering Design Report kick-off meetings. Since mid-August they have been touring the world for these meetings. Their purpose is, of course, to kick-start the engineering design phase of the International Linear Collider. During one of these recent meetings, from 10-14 September, the members of the ILC community gathered at KEK to discuss conventional facilities and siting, cryomodules and cryogenics. Category: Feature | Tagged: ,

Korea gets ready for the next-generation project

| 6 September 2007 “Daegu is exactly a one-hour drive away from Pohang. So I visit Daegu frequently, and vice versa, because people from Kyongpook National University come to Pohang,” said Won Namkung, professor at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) and Asian Linear Collider Steering Committee chair. These two cities, Daegu and Pohang, are the centres for Korean ILC R&D. Ever since one of the centres, the Pohang Accelerator Laboratory (PAL), a synchrotron light source facility in Korea, organised an ILC Task Force Team in 2004, the members have been working in various fields of study and have already achieved some milestones. Category: Feature | Tagged: , ,

Building Understanding

| 2 August 2007 Every month, a lot of Asian researchers come to KEK to conduct their research or experiments. “We have had 45 visitors for fiscal year 2007 so far, including ten Korean researchers,” says Tomiko Shirakata, secretary at KEK’s Linear Collider Project Office. Shirkata is in charge of KEK’s visitors programme activities and provides all visitor supports such as arranging logistics, dealing with the consulate service for visa applications, and giving tips on how to spend days off in Japan. KEK launched the visitor programme in April 2006 aiming to facilitate the foreign researchers’ activities in Japan, especially for Asian researchers and students, who may have difficulties to conduct research overseas for some country-specific reasons. Category: Around the World | Tagged: , ,

A night of wonder

| 26 July 2007 Men and women wearing gaudy dresses, looking for customers under garish neon signs – this is a common sight in Kabuki-cho, Shinjuku, a famous entertainment and red-light district in Tokyo, Japan. Walking down an alleyway that has countless bars and nightclubs, you will see a hand-written sign posted on the billboard of a shabby building that says, “The Accelerator’s Night 3.” Category: Around the World | Tagged: ,

Crabbing in the cavity

| 12 July 2007 What do superconducting cavities and the beach have in common? KEK accelerator physicists can give you the answer: the crab. During the spring operation period of the KEKB accelerator, scientists successfully achieved effective electron-positron collisions in a new cavity. Called the crab cavity, it tilts each bunch sideways so that the bunches collide head-on at the interaction point. This success will allow the KEKB to boost its luminosity, which is already the world’s highest for a B-factory, to an unprecedented level. Crab cavities will also play an important role in achieving high luminosities at other machines, including the International Linear Collider (ILC), upgrades for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, as well as future synchrotron light sources. Category: Feature | Tagged: , ,

The role of big science for the next generation

| 21 June 2007 Humitaka Sato, a professor emeritus of Kyoto University, is one of the most respected theoretical physicists in Japan. He served as an advisor to the Japanese government for international projects such as the International Space Station (ISS) and International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). In addition to his highly technical work, he authored several books that invite broad audiences to explore the world of physics. Category: Feature | Tagged:

FJPPL Workshop: Building the bridge to the future basic science

| 14 June 2007 The particle physics world has long been exchanging researchers internationally. One of the reasons for this active exchange is particle physicists share a common interest in the universal questions: How did the universe begin? What are the origins of mass? In addition, as the scale of accelerator facilities grows larger, it becomes difficult for each country to build and maintain their number of accelerators that are each suited for different purposes. This reality pushes researchers to travel abroad, wherever the accelerators are available. Category: Around the World | Tagged: ,

‘Yara-maika’: Hamamatsu pulls the spirits of Japanese industry

| 7 June 2007 During the eighth workshop of the “Federation of Diet members to promote the realisation of ILC” held at Nagatacho, Tokyo on 26 April, there was a lecture that provided a good feeling of the “Yara-maika” spirit. Category: Around the World | Tagged:

What can the ILC do to get students back to science?

| 10 May 2007 “Less than 50 percent.” This is the shocking data that Kazuo Nishimura, the head of the Economic Research Institute at Kyoto University, one of the well-respected educational institutes in Japan, reported in his book University students who cannot calculate fraction numbers. Nishimura believes that the ILC could be one of the remedies to fix the world-wide epidemic of students moving away from science. ILC NewsLine recently had the opportunity to discuss this growing trend with the economics professor. Category: Feature | Tagged: