No sooner did my plane land than I had a voicemail from a long-time friend and colleague. I made it from the terminal to the SEPTA rail system, where I had a very pleasant ride to the University City station. From there, it was just a short walk to Houston […]
Yearly Archives: 2008
160 posts
When I traveled to ICHEP in Moscow in 2006, I kept a small leather-bound journal in my pocket to keep a record of my travels and my thoughts. I scribbled hot results from the conference in the book, which kept on going even when I couldn’t plug in my laptop. […]
The SF Chronicle has run an article today regarding DOE’s desire to change the name of SLAC [1]. Sounds like the buzz is growing. It also sounds like a popular solution is to have “SLAC” continue to be the name, while probably standing for something other than “Stanford Linear Accelerator […]
This week begins the 34th International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP). The conference is being held in Philadelphia. While this presents much less of an interesting travel story [1], this conference may prove to be quite interesting. The LHC has not yet started operations, so this will be the […]
When I was in college, I decided to try something. I changed my name. Well, I went by a different name – my middle name. I bear my maternal grandfather’s name as my middle name, and for I time I decided to alter my life a little and go by […]
I’ve been running silent these past few weeks, getting ready for the ICHEP conference next week. However, a pair of headlines today was just too much to ignore. When I scanned the AP stories listed on Yahoo News, these caught my eye: Obama urges Germans to work with US to […]
The press release about the ηb discovery went out earlier this week, accompanied in SLAC Today with a very nice photo of the primary physics researchers working on the search. Looking back to the “winter of insanity” that started in December, I find it incredible that in such a short […]
This has been an exciting week. My own work may be soon coming to fruition, and I’m starting to the “pre-unblinding jitters”. I even took a walk from my office to the BaBar detector today, even in the oppressive heat, to relax. But what are “pre-unblnding jitters”? This is a […]
I’m pleased to announce that BaBar has submitted for publication its first paper detailing results from the dataset we secured on the Y(3S) resonance. It’s a doozy – nothing like finding the ground state of bottomonium 31 years after the discovery of the bottom quark! I’ve written up a short […]
As inspired by the comment from ChemMan, here are the relevant excerpts from HR2642 for science: “National Science Foundation research and related activities For an additional amount for `Research and RelatedActivities’, $22,500,000, of which $5,000,000 shall be available solelyfor activities authorized by section 7002(b)(2)(A)(iv) of Public Law110-69. education and human […]
It was a long road, but the Congress has now approved the Iraq war spending bill. Both houses have now approved the final version of the spending bill, which presumably goes to the President for either a veto or a signature. News sources [1] [2] report that the bill contains […]
Recently, SLAC cleaned out its library and moved to new digs in a nearby building. I walked past the old space today while working with some colleagues in the same building. At first, I turned past the old library space and headed for the exit. The emptiness of the space […]