CERN
Bulletin

At last year's THE Port hackathon, the Better Body Bags team emerged with a new approach to body-bag technology that catered to the needs of humanitarian organisations. What started as a weekend hack has developed into a full-scale R& D project, as the team joins forces with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to put their body bags into production. >>

Diversity and respect are defining aspects of CERN and something that I am very proud of. Our institution is the closest to a true meritocracy that I have ever experienced in my long career, and as such is a valuable role model for the world. It is a place where everyone is welcome, and where anyone can succeed, regardless of his or her ethnicity, beliefs or sexual orientation. It is therefore with some disappointment that I have learned of a spate of recent events concerning posters put up around the Laboratory by our LGBT community. >>

The first 2015 scrubbing run ended on Friday, 3 July and successfully delivered a well-scrubbed machine ready for operation with a 50 ns beam. This opened the way for the first phase of the so-called beam intensity ramp-up. The last couple of weeks have seen the number of bunches increase from 3 to 476 per beam via periods of 50, 144 and 300 bunches per beam. >>

Since 1975, the CERN Grey Book database has stored data on the Organization’s research programme, including all the experiments and projects, their collaborating institutes and their participants. Fifteen years after the last release of its web interface, the Grey Book recently underwent a complete revamp. Visit the new site at the usual URL: greybook.cern.ch. >>

Paola Catapano, a member of CERN’s Communication Group, and Mike Struik, a member of the TE Department, were invited to visit ESO’s experimental sites – the ALMA observatory and the Very Large Telescope in Paranal, Chile. Enjoy some of the beautiful images they sent to the Bulletin. >>

The CERN Summer Student Webfest has garnered a reputation for launching creative projects in fields as diverse as online games and cryptographic software, using the popular format of a hackfest. This year, the annual weekend event will celebrate its fourth year between 31 July and 2 August. >>

Since 15 June, Transvoirie, which provides waste collection services throughout French-speaking Switzerland, has been using a fully electric lorry for its collections on the CERN site – a first for the region! >>

Bike2Work is a popular initiative to promote cycling that was launched in Switzerland in 2004. Every summer, it mobilises some 50,000 employees from more than 1100 companies and organisations across Switzerland. This year, CERN established itself as the main player in French-speaking Switzerland. >>

On Tuesday, 7 July 2015, the Prime Minister of the Italian Republic, Matteo Renzi, visited CERN. He was accompanied by a delegation that included Italy's Minister for Education, University and Research, Stefania Giannini. >>

Welcome to the open, liberal and free academic computing environment at CERN. Thanks to your new (or long-established!) affiliation with CERN, you are eligible for a CERN computing account, which enables you to register your devices: computers, laptops, smartphones, tablets, etc. It provides you with plenty of disk space and an e-mail address. It allows you to create websites, virtual machines and databases on demand. >>

Bernard Hyams, a distinguished scientist who worked at CERN for 32 years, died on 15 May 2015 at the age of 90. >>