Rika Takahashi | 20 May 2010On 17 March, the Science Council of Japan, a special organisation of scientists under the jurisdiction of the Prime Minister for the purpose of promoting science and having it reflected into national policy, released a recommendation on the major research programmes heading in the mid-term-about ten years, and issued a "Master Plan" (in Japanese) where they listed the top large-scale facilities and programmes. The list covers all fields from human and social science to biotechnology, energy and earth science, and of course, physics and engineering. The Council has closely examined a total of 285 big-science proposed projects with more than ten billion yen construction budget and big research programmes with more than one billion yen operational budget, and finally chose 43 of them as Japan's priority. Among those, nine projects listed KEK as one of their implementing agencies, including the upgrade of the KEKB accelerator, J-PARC, next-generation light source projects and the International Linear Collider.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: Japan, Science Council of Japan
13 May 2010Researchers at SLAC and other institutions are creating a sort of pest control for particle beams: squashing the clouds of electrons that gather in accelerators and disrupt experiments.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: electron cloud, SLAC
6 May 2010If you have always wanted to lead a global team of accelerator and detector experts to work with you on the electron-positron collider concepts of the future, directing the way particle physics will take after results from the Large Hadron Collider LHC, then the following CERN position will certainly interest you.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: CERN, CLIC, job
Rika Takahashi | 29 April 2010April is the season of beginnings in Japan: beginning of spring, beginning of the school year, and beginning of the business fiscal year. Tokyo is not quite in the beginning of spring yet, as snow fell on Saturday, 17 April, matching a 41-year-old record for the season's latest snowfall. Regardless of the late arrival of spring, KEK's Linear Collider Project Office kicked off the new fiscal year with a new head of the Office: Seiya Yamaguchi.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: Japan, KEK
22 April 2010It is perhaps fitting that the New Muon Lab, a long, low concrete affair facing open fields, sits facing the northern edge of Fermilab’s property. The hangar-sized building is a busy place these days, home to the laboratory’s Superconducting Radio Frequency Test Facility, and bustling with the work that keeps Fermilab pushing the boundary of high-energy particle physics research.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: Fermilab, New Muon Laboratory, Superconducting RF Test Facility
Barbara Warmbein | 8 April 2010On days when the LHC makes front page news, some web pages get more attention than they usually do. A page that is highly frequented by LHC operators, on display in all control rooms and a favourite link for physicists, but otherwise not all that well known, is LHC Page 1 (aka OP Vistars). One quick look gives you all the important information on the status of the machine. ILC NewsLine wanted to find out: what would an ILC Page 1 look like?
Category: Around the World | Tagged: LHC
1 April 2010On 30 March, the Beijing meeting ended on a high note. Nearly 300 participants, together with local and scientific organising committees, worked hard to make this meeting a success while at the same time, in Geneva, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) opened a new page in particle physics history. “It's a day of celebration,” concluded Jon Bagger, Chair of the International Linear Collider Steering Committee, “the day where we start lighting the Terascale.” The ILC will build on LHC discoveries, and to make this project a reality the whole ILC community gathered in Beijing. There were deep discussions between the accelerator and the physics and detectors experts of a level that has never happened before in such a global meeting. All use each others' feedback during the workshop to draw up what will be their plans for the next two years, when in 2012 they deliver the Technical Design Report (for the machine) and the Detailed Baseline Design of the detectors reports. A lot of reviews, R&D and studies are still to be done but participants now leave Beijing with clear ideas on what path to follow to achieve them.
Category: Around the World, Slideshow | Tagged: Beijing, IHEP, photo album
Rika Takahashi | 25 March 2010From the end of March to the beginning of April it is one of the most festive times of the year in Japan, when the cherry blossom trees all over Japan come in to bloom for about ten days and people hold outdoor parties to view and enjoy them. The cherry blossoms are also symbols for farewells and welcomes, because April is the beginning of another school year and a new fiscal year for businesses in Japan. On 23 March, Shuichi Noguchi, one of the leading superconducting radio frequency specialists of KEK, gave his retirement lecture entitled 'Thinking back on my life as a scientist — my life at KEK and the superconducting RF cavity.'
Category: Around the World | Tagged: Japan, KEK
Rika Takahashi | 11 March 2010The word quantum beam, or Ryo-shi beam in Japanese, defined as high-quality beams produced with accelerated leptons or hadrons applying quantum mechanics, isn't really an academic word, but rather a key word for advanced technology. But it is gradually getting its recognition in Japan as a technology that will achieve breakthroughs in many fields, such as new materials developments, nanofabrication, or medical applications.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: Japan, outreach
4 March 2010With the quiet, deft manner of a jeweler showing his wares, physicist Cai Xiao opened a black box that, in a James Bond movie, might hold a stash of diamonds. This one held something every bit as precious. Inside lay a small, green circuit board topped with three shining silver strips: a silicon detector.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: China, Fermilab, IHEP, SiDet
