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The research opportunities offered by proton-lead collisions at the LHC are generating increasing interest among theorists and experimentalists. During this recent run, LHCb, the asymmetric detector originally designed to study CP asymmetries and rare decays involving heavy quarks, took data with proton and ion beams for the first time. Using these collisions, the experiment can provide a different perspective on specific physics processes, so new developments may be in sight.
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Yesterday morning, the last colliding proton beams of 2013 were extracted from the LHC, heralding the start of the machine’s first long shutdown (LS1) and crowning its first three glorious years of running. I hardly need to tell the CERN community what a fabulous performance all the people running the machine, the experiments, the computing and all supporting infrastructures put in. Those people are you, and you all know very well what a great job everyone did.
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The proton-lead run ended early on the morning of Sunday, 10 February. The run can be considered an unqualified success and a testament to the painstaking preparation by the ion team. It was followed by a few short days of proton-proton collisions at intermediate energy, after which the final physics beams of what is now being called Run 1 (2009 – 2013) were dumped at 07:24 on Thursday, 14 February.
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During the first long shutdown (LS1) a new safety system will be installed in the primary beam areas of the PS complex in order to bring the standard of personnel radiation protection at the PS into line with that of the LHC.
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A new telecommunications network has been installed in the LHC tunnel to facilitate operations during the long shutdown. Anyone using a smartphone, tablet or laptop computer will now be able to access the Internet from the tunnel.
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Armed with laptops, CERN people answer questions live on YouTube every Thursday via "Hangout with CERN". Find out more and give feedback for the chance to win tickets to see comedian Eddie Izzard.
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Members of the Directorate and their support staff took part in a fire-fighting course organised by the CERN Fire Brigade just before the end-of-year break. The Bulletin takes a look at the fire-fighting training on offer at CERN.
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The fourth ISOTDAQ school was held at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece) from 1 to 8 February.
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In response to our article in the last Bulletin, we received the following comment: “Wasn’t Stuxnet designed to stop the Iranian nuclear programme? Why then all this noise with regard to CERN accelerators? Don’t you realize that ‘computer security’ is not the raison d'être of CERN?”. Thank you for this golden opportunity to delve into this issue.
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Over the past two years, the Ombuds has seen double the number of cases involving women staff members compared to those involving men, relative to their populations. Two questions can thus be asked: is that a general phenomenon also seen in other organizations? Or is it related to the under-representation of women, namely is this a common situation in organizations with fewer women than men? If so, the Ombuds should notice different statistics in organizations where the number of women and men is comparable.
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Knovel is a web-based discovery platform meeting the information needs of the engineering community.
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It was with great sadness that we learned of the death of our colleague Josef Hofmann. During his 35-year career at CERN, Josef made important contributions to many CERN projects. He passed away in December 2012.
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