Colloquia

The ATLAS detector is reaching completion and all subsystems are being commissioned into global operation. Periodic runs with cosmics allow tuning of the entire chain of controls and data taking up to physics analysis. The scenario of early physics reach will also be presented..

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Assembly and installation of ALICE, the LHC heavy ion experiment dedicated to the study of matter at extreme temperature and pressure, is nearing completion and the commissioning of the detector is well under way. A good time to look back, to the making of ALICE, and to look forward, to the first physics with proton and heavy ion beams..

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Speaker Bio: James Gosling received a B.Sc. in computer science from the University of Calgary, Canada in 1977. He received a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1983. The title of his thesis was The Algebraic Manipulation of Constraints. He has built satellite data acquisition systems, a multiprocessor version of UNIX®, several compilers, mail systems, and window managers. He has also built a WYSIWYG text editor, a constraint-based drawing editor, and a text editor called Emacs, for UNIX systems. At Sun his early activity was as lead engineer of the NeWS window system. He did the original design of the Java programming language and implemented its original compiler and virtual machine. He has recently been a contributor to the Real-Time Specification for Java..

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An overview of the design, the construction and physics of CMS will be given. A history of construction, encompassing the R&D and challenges faced over the last decade and a half, will be recalled using selected examples. CMS is currently in the final stages of installation and commissioning is gathering pace. After a short status report of where CMS stands today some of the expected (great) physics to come will be outlined.

* Tea & coffee will be served at 16:00..

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The brain is a highly distributed, self-organizing system that lacks central institutions for the coordination of cognitive and executive functions. This raises the question how the multiple parallel operations are bound together to give rise to coherent percepts, decisions and intentions. The hypothesis is proposed that time is used as coding space for the flexible definition of relations and the targeted routing of activity across highly interconnected networks..

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TOTEM will pursue a physics program (complementary to that of the other LHC detectors) spanning a wide range from total cross-section and elastic scattering measurements to the study of diffractive and forward phenomena. The TOTEM program will lead to a better understanding of the fundamental aspects of strong interactions. For the first time at hadron colliders, the very forward rapidity range, containing 90% of the energy flow and explored in high-energy cosmic ray experiments, is covered, allowing the search for unusual phenomena hinted at by cosmic ray experiments. The technical implementation of all TOTEM detectors is described. Silicon sensors housed in so-called Roman pots allow measurements of elastic and diffractive protons at distances as small as 1 mm from the beam centre. A scheme to tag events from Double-Pomeron-Exchange by diffractive protons on both sides transforms the LHC into an almost clean "gluon" collider, where the centre-of-mass energy is determined by the momentum losses of the forward protons, thus offering an interesting way to search for new particles. In a later stage, the combination of CMS and TOTEM will provide an unprecedented almost complete rapidity coverage, allowing a variety of new studies, including hard diffraction..

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Many essential features of the quark sector of the Standard Model have first been probed by s- and b-quark decays in a indirect manner: notable examples include the SU(2) doublet structure, the existence of three generations, and the masses of the charm and top quarks. Recent progress made by the experiments at B factories and Tevatron in the study of b-hadron decays now put serious constraints in the characteristics of possible physics beyond the Standard Model, through measurements related to the Flavour Changing Neutral Current. When the LHC becomes operational, it will be the most powerful source of b-hadrons. The LHCb experiment will then be able to study such processes in the B_s system with a similar accuracy to that achieved by the B factories in the Bd system, allowing to improve further the stringent tests of the Standard Model. The experiment will also improve the measurements in the B_d system as well. It may observe a sign of new physics first and, in combination with the ATLAS and CMS results, will probe the flavour structure of the new physics. In this presentation, we review the evolution of the LHCb experiment in conjunction with the development of physics, the current status of the experiment and its prospects..

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Introduction: In July 2008, Bill Gates will transition out of a day-to-day role at Microsoft, to spend more time on his philanthropic work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As the world's largest philanthropic organization, the Gates Foundation has set ambitious goals to tackle some of the world's worst diseases. In this talk, Julie Jacobson will outline some of the objectives of the Gates Foundation and how it is impacting public health and challenging the global community. Speaker Bio: As Senior Programme Officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Julie Jacobson currently supports grants working toward the control of neglected tropical diseases and works with the development and implementation of new vaccines in the infectious disease group of Global Health. Previously Dr. Jacobson was Scientific Director of Immunization Solutions and Director of Japanese encephalitis (JE) project at PATH, an international non-profit organization. As director of the JE project, she managed a US$35 million grant to accelerate the control of JE in endemic countries by improving data on the distribution of JE, accelerating the development of an improved vaccine and diagnostic tests for JE, and helping countries integrate JE vaccine into immunization programs. In her role as scientific director she defined the direction and growth of immunization solutions work by increasing the availability of vaccines to the world's most vulnerable populations. This ranged from work on clinical trials for specific vaccines to directly working with ministries of health and partners in decision-making on vaccine introduction and planning. Before that, Dr. Jacobson was responsible for prioritizing and designing field activities for PATH's Children's Vaccine Project in the areas including yellow fever and rotavirus. Prior to joining PATH, Dr. Jacobson worked at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as an Epidemic Intelligence Officer. In this capacity, she worked in disaster epidemiology and conducted needs assessments for disaster victims, evaluated national surveillance systems, and evaluated the health impact of earthquakes on displaced persons. Dr. Jacobson is a physician with training in clinical tropical medicine and applied epidemiology..

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Fermilab, the US's primary laboratory for particle physics, proposes a plan to maintain leadership for the laboratory and U.S. particle physics in the quest to discover the fundamental nature of the physical universe in the decades ahead. Discoveries of the physics of the Quantum Universe would come from powerful next generation particle accelerators. Fermilab's Tevatron, currently the world's most powerful particle accelerator, will shut down by the end of this decade after the LHC at CERN begins operations. At the LHC, U.S. physicists will join scientists from around the world in the exploration of the physics of the Terascale. To follow the LHC, physicists propose the International Linear Collider, a globally funded and operated accelerator to build on LHC results and illuminate Terascale science. Fermilab will work to host the proposed ILC in the U.S. as soon as possible, maintaining the nation's historic leadership of frontier particle physics. Should events postpone the start of the ILC, Fermilab would build an intensity-frontier accelerator at one percent of the ILC's length and combine it with existing accelerators to create Project X. Project X's intense beams would give Fermilab's scientific users a new way into the world of neutrinos and precision physics. With its ILC technology, Project X would spur U.S. industrialization and reduce costs of ILC components while advancing accelerator science for future applications in particle physics and beyond. In addition, Project X would drive forward the technology for still higher-energy accelerators of the future, such as a muon collider. Fermilab's plan would maintain the nation's leadership in particle physics, keeping the laboratory and U.S. particle physics on the pathway to discovery both at the Terascale with the ILC and beyond, and in the domain of neutrinos and precision physics at the intensity frontier..

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A huge increase in energy use is expected in the coming decades – see the IEA's 'business as usual'/reference scenario below. While developed countries could use less energy, a large increase is needed to lift billions out of poverty, including over 25% of the world's population who still lack electricity. Meeting demand in an environmentally responsible manner will be a huge challenge. The World Bank estimates that coal pollution leads to 300,000 deaths in China each year, while smoke from cooking and heating with biomass kills 1.3 million world-wide – more than malaria. The IEA's alternative scenario requires a smaller increase in energy use than the reference scenario and is also less carbon intensive, but it still implies that CO₂ emissions will increase 30% by 2030 (compared to 55% in the reference scenario). Frighteningly, implementing the alternative scenario faces "formidable hurdles" according to the IEA, despite the fact that it would yield financial savings for consumers that far exceed the initial additional investment cost. I shall give an overview of the energy outlook and the portfolio of technological and economic measures that are need to meet the energy challenge and do better than the alternative scenario..

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To worry about the LHC is a popular sport. I shall share my own worries, hopefully original, and do it via a parable (for this method, I can quote earlier authors). The parable concerns a topic in astrophysics (gamma-ray bursts) which happens to be a simple exercise --but quite an interesting one-- on elementary particle-physics and beam dynamics, topics not unrelated to the LHC. Though most of the talk will be dedicated to the physics and, in particular, to its recent developments, the allegory will allow me to detect what, I shall argue, may be dangerous 'viruses' invading science. I do not have the decisive antidotes, but I shall discuss some possible ones..

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In 1985 changes to US regulations caused a paradigm shift by permitting the use of radio spectrum for devices that did not need to have an end-user license. After a few years, products appeared on the market and a group developed a standard for broadband wireless communications among computers. The presentation will explain how the standard developed and was adopted by the Wi-Fi Alliance, as well as the global harmonization and expansion of the available radio spectrum to over half a GHz. The success of Wi-Fi and user innovation and initiatives makes it a vehicle to bring broadband internet to rural areas both in developing as well as in developed countries. Vic Hayes is a Senior Research Fellow at the Delft University of Technology and is writing a book titled "The genesis of Wi-Fi and the road toward global success". He holds a BSEE and joined NCR in the Netherlands in 1974. He co-established and chaired the IEEE 802.11 Standards Working Group for Wireless Local Area Networks and became known as the "Father of Wi-Fi". After chairing the WG, he successfully mobilized the computer industry to support the agenda item for 455 MHz of spectrum at co-primary allocation on the agenda of the World Radio Conference 2003. In October 2003, Vic retired from Agere Systems. For his pioneering work on Wi-Fi, Vic is the recipient of the Innovation Award 2004 of "The Economist", the Dutch Vosko Trophy, 2 Wi-Fi Alliance Leadership Awards, The IEEE Standards Medallion, the IEEE Leadership Award, the IEEE Hans Karlsson Award and the IEEE Steinmetz Award..

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