Elizabeth Clements | 13 December 2007I have three different routes to choose from when I drive to work in the morning. The first one is the interstate. It’s fast theoretically, but traffic and tolls can turn my 15 minute commute into 45 minutes. Back roads are another option, but the constant stop and go from traffic lights drain my gas tank. The scenic route is my third option and usually the one that I choose. This route goes slightly out of the way, but there is no traffic, tolls or stoplights. So I can drive at a relatively constant fast speed, and the rolling hills and farms along the way are relaxing. Every morning when I get into my car (usually 15 minutes later than I would like), I weigh the pros and cons and select one of these routes. Rick Lambert from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will tell you that this is a form of value engineering, and it is one way that the Global Design Effort will find ways to reduce costs for the proposed International Linear Collider.
Category: Feature | Tagged: value management
Perrine Royole-Degieux | 6 December 2007Physicists and engineers already know most of the empirical recipes to build very good accelerating cavities: highly pure niobium is essential, welding needs to be carefully controlled and surfaces undergo advanced cleaning and annealing procedures. But, as for every complex system, a lot of phenomena remain unexplained. The theoretical limits of RF superconductivity are not well known, and engineers also meet practical limitations to reach high gradients. Accelerator experts work very closely with material scientists to understand cavity properties better.
Category: Feature | Tagged: niobium
Barbara Warmbein | 29 November 2007People with big plans need time and space to make their dreams come true – assuming that they already have some money to get going. The time for the European-funded linear collider R&D consortium EUROTeV was almost up. Together with the CALICE collaboration, they were making plans for a virtual control room for next spring that would let them manage the experimental setup sitting in a testbeam at Fermilab remotely from a partitioned-off section of a corridor at DESY. This plan, along with many other tasks and plans run and made by EUROTeV people, is now reality: the European Commission extended the project by another year.
Category: Feature | Tagged: EUROTeV
Perrine Royole-Degieux | 21 November 2007Last September, the ILC communicators conducted a survey about your favourite newsletter. Who are its readers? Are they satisfied with the content? Survey answers that you are mostly scientists who would like more stories about physics. Unfortunately, many of you do not know how to get your stories into NewsLine yet.
Category: Feature | Tagged: survey
Rika Takahashi | 15 November 2007New expressways and subways are under construction. New hotels and apartment buildings are popping up. This city with a population of over 15 million people, which is already big enough, is getting ready for the coming year of increasing visitors who will attend the Olympic Games. This is Beijing.
Category: Feature | Tagged: Beijing, CCAST, CCAST workshop, China
Rika Takahashi | 8 November 2007The R&D for an ILC positron source using a laser-compton scheme is ongoing around the world. The efforts in Europe and Asia complement each other. In Europe, scientists are pursuing R&D for the laser path stacking cavity, a complicated, highly sophisticated system with four mirrors. In Asia, scientists aim to accumulate experience in gamma ray generation with simpler cavity structures. They also want to gain experience in installing these cavities into damping rings with high quality beams without degrading its quality.
Category: Feature | Tagged: laser-compton scheme, positron source
Perrine Royole-Degieux | 1 November 2007Digitisation - a key word that could lead to smaller and simpler detectors. Two weeks ago, at Saclay, France, the CEA Time Projection Chamber group of Paul Colas proved it could build a digital TPC for the ILC. A truly collaborative effort, this breakthrough could significantly reduce the cost and simplify the implementation of this sub-detector.
Category: Feature | Tagged: CEA, CERN, CMOS, detector R&D, Medipix, NIKHEF, time projection chamber, TPC
25 October 2007A hotel built around a New Orleans street, burgers for lunch, autumn colours, bison and a duelling piano - this must be ALCPG! More than 300 machine and detector people and theorists have been debating and planning the ILC's entry into the Engineering Design Phase this week and are now looking forward to the R&D tours this afternoon and the conference dinner tonight. DOE Under Secretary for Science Raymond L. Orbach addressed the community on Monday. A lively 'duelling scientists' session on Tuesday circled around questions on the project's future. The vertex detector review is still going on, and the new Research Director will officially take up office on Friday, so stay tuned for more news next week. In the meantime have a look at some impressions of the week so far.
Category: Feature, Slideshow | Tagged: ALCPG, ALCPG07
Elizabeth Clements | 25 October 2007The ILC Reference Design Report companion document, Gateway to the Quantum Universe played a symbolic role for CERN’s Jean-Luc Baldy as he passed the torch to John Osborne, also from CERN, during the ALCPG07 workshop at Fermilab this week. For the past two years, Baldy served as one of the Conventional Facilities & Siting group leaders for the Global Design Effort. He retires later this year, and the ALCPG workshop marks the official transition from Baldy to Osborne. “In the time that Jean-Luc was part of the GDE, we completed our baseline design and reference design for the ILC,” said GDE Director Barry Barish. “His contributions to the CFS group helped us reach these two important milestones, and we will miss his wisdom and resourceful problem-solving skills.”
Category: Feature | Tagged: ALCPG, conventional facilities and siting
Barbara Warmbein | 18 October 2007The EUDET telescope, a high-precision device that lets detector developers check the accuracy of their prototype by using particle beams and the EUDET telescope and comparing with accurately its determined tracks, has just finished a marathon in test beams around Europe. During six weeks in beams at DESY and CERN its makers tested it to the core and are now happy to pass their instrument on to users.
Category: Feature | Tagged: CERN, DEPFET, DESY, EUDET telescope
