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The three LHC experiments that study lead ion collisions all presented their latest results today at the annual Quark Matter conference, held this year in Annecy, France.
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Last week, I was invited to give a talk at SwissCore, the Swiss contact office for European research, innovation and education in Brussels. They gave me the title ‘Dare to Excel’, and asked me to address the challenges of the European Commission’s upcoming next framework programme.
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Having hit a luminosity of around 8.4x1032 cm-2 s-1 with 768 bunches per beam, the LHC went into a 5-day machine development (MD) program on Wednesday 4 May. Operators are now working on increasing the number of particle bunches in the machine towards a 2011 maximum of around 1380 bunches. The team is already hitting major milestones, recording another record-breaking peak luminosity on Monday 23 May.
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With the LHC up and running, some might imagine physicists just waiting for a Higgs boson to pop up in one of the four experiments, before publishing a paper and moving on to solve science’s next Big Mystery. However this picture is very far from the reality of experimental particle physics today, where results are based on statistics, statistics and yet more statistics.
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“How did life appear on Earth?” That was the unanswered question on attendees’ minds at a single-day workshop held at CERN, 20 May. The brainstorming session featured experts from the biology field and CERN physicists. Although the million-dollar question wasn't answered, the group explored the possibility of organising a large-scale research project that could do just that.
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The first “Physics for Health” workshop was organized at CERN in February 2010. It successfully showed the big potential that particle accelerators and detectors have in serving as instruments for early diagnosis and effective treatment of tumours. The conference participants expressed the wish that CERN be involved in three innovative projects. One year later, it’s time to touch base on the assignments and prepare for a new edition of the conference, which will be held in Geneva in February 2012.
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CERN’s contribution to antimatter research is interspersed with important breakthroughs: from the creation of the very first anti-atoms in 1995 to the production of large quantities in 2002 and the invention in 2010 of the technique that freezes them down to allow precise studies of their properties. This week, antimatter experiments are on the starting blocks for a new run that promises to be just as exciting.
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Antimatter, dark matter, dark energy, the nature of space and time… The Nobel Laureate George Smoot answers Paola Catapano’s questions about his career and the many issues about the Universe that are still open.
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The University of Budapest has been hosting a CERN mini-exhibition since 8 May. While smaller than the main travelling exhibition it has a number of major advantages: its compact design alleviates transport difficulties and makes it easier to find suitable venues in the Member States. Its content can be updated almost instantaneously and it will become even more interactive and high-tech as time goes by.
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The preparatory phase of the TIARA (Test Infrastructure and Accelerator Research Area) project has begun. In January, members from 11 research institutes in 8 European countries began a three-year collaboration intended to enhance, improve and structure R&D; efforts in the area of accelerator science and technology in Europe.
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The HIE-ISOLDE team is expecting a few new faces around the lab, as the new EU-funded project CATHI (Cryogenics, Accelerators and Targets for HIE-ISOLDE) gets into full swing as part of the Seventh Framework Programme. The project will recruit researchers from around the world to be trained at CERN and will hold its kick-off meeting here on 23 May.
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Plans shape up for a revolutionary new observatory that will explore black holes and the Big Bang. This detector will ‘see’ the Universe in gravitational waves.
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The protracted efforts of 56 institutes across the world, including CERN, have finally come to fruition with the launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour transporting the AMS Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the International Space Station (ISS).
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In the last issue of the Bulletin, we have discussed recent implications for privacy on the Internet. But privacy of personal data is just one facet of data protection. Confidentiality is another one. However, confidentiality and data protection are often perceived as not relevant in the academic environment of CERN.
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The Association for Computing Machinery, ACM, is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society. Among others, the ACM provides the computing field's premier Digital Library and serves its members and the computing profession with leading-edge publications, conferences, and career resources.
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