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News from the Library: Looking for materials properties? Find the answer in CINDAS databases

Materials properties databases are a crucial source of information when doing research in Materials Science. The creation and regular updating of such databases requires identification and collection of relevant worldwide scientific and technical literature, followed by the compilation, critical evaluation, correlation and synthesis of both existing and new experimental data.

The Center for Information and Numerical Data Analysis and Synthesis (CINDAS) at Purdue University produces several databases on the properties and behaviour of materials. The databases include:

– ASMD (Aerospace Structural Metals Database) which gives access to approximately 80,000 data curves on over 220 alloys used in the aerospace and other industries

– the Microelectronics Packaging Materials Database (MPMD), providing data and information on the thermal, mechanical, electrical and physical properties of electronics packaging materials, and

– the Thermophysical Properties of Matter Database (TPMD), covering the properties of over 5,000 materials with approximately 50,000 data curves.

Trial access to these resources is available until 31 August 2012, so you are very welcome to try these databases and send us your feedback at library.desk@cern.ch.

Online access to the databases here.

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Ombuds’ Corner: Social exclusion

In this special video edition of the Ombuds' Corner, Vincent Vuillemin takes a look at a social exclusion at CERN. Please note that the characters and situations appearing in this work are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons or events is purely coincidental.

Filed under: CERN,Ciencia,Cosmologia,Fisica,Fisica de alta energia,Fisica de Materiales,Fisica de particulas,LHC,Matematicas,Materia,Mecanica cuantica,Science,Sincrotrón | | |No Comments

Thinking machines, the creation of the computer

Episode of the television program History Channel "Modern marvels" in 1995. Traces the history of the computer from Charles Babbage’s Victorian counting machine to the desktop models of the 1990s.

Filed under: CERN,Ciencia,Cosmologia,Fisica,Fisica de alta energia,Fisica de Materiales,Fisica de particulas,LHC,Matematicas,Materia,Mecanica cuantica,Science,Sincrotrón | | |No Comments

Academic Training Lecture Regular Programme: How Large-Scale Civil Engineering Projects Realise the Potential of a City

How Large-Scale Civil Engineering Projects Realise the Potential of a City (1/3), by Bill Hanway (Excecutive Director of Operations, AECOM Europe).

Wednesday, June 6, 2012 from 11:00 to 12:00 (Europe/Zurich)
at CERN ( 80-1-001 – Globe 1st Floor )

In this series of three special lectures, leading experts from AECOM would explore the impact of a trio of major projects on a single city.
In common with every metropolis, London has run-down districts and infrastructure in need of upgrading. The lectures propose to cover three of the biggest challenges: regenerating run-down areas; reducing congestion and transporting people more efficiently; and improving water and wastewater systems.
Each project contributes to a collective public aim – to realise the potential of a growing city, and ensure its healthy, sustainable and competitive future.

Lecture 1: Into the lecture series and The London 2012 Olympic Games
Most cities share a group of common complex challenges – growing populations, ageing infrastructure, and mitigating the effects of climate change. These require similar responses to find the most appropriate solutions to make sure that all urban dwellers can have the basics of food, warmth, clean water and shelter. In addition, they must have the ability to lead full and productive lives being able to travel around easily and effectively, that they have homes, jobs and places to enjoy their leisure time. To achieve all of this requires a holistic vision and collaborative approach involving all stakeholders from local, regional and national government and utility companies, to private business and local communities.

To provide an example of the holistic approach to reworking old cities, this series begins with a dynamic first-hand account from a key player in one of Europe’s largest regeneration projects. The Lower Lea Valley in East London was a rundown and melancholic place in 2000, but its radical transformation has created an exemplary setting for the 2012 Olympic Games. In the spirit of previous London developments based around green spaces, the parkland created for the Games (the setting for 35,000 homes) is designed to act as a catalyst for improvement The legacy masterplan is crucial for this and the speaker’s team has gone on to win the Olympic masterplan competition for Rio 2016.

Find details on the subsequent lectures here.

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History of Computing with images of CERN

Filed under: CERN,Ciencia,Cosmologia,Fisica,Fisica de alta energia,Fisica de Materiales,Fisica de particulas,LHC,Matematicas,Materia,Mecanica cuantica,Science,Sincrotrón | | |No Comments

Browsing the Internet: good-bye anonymity!

Do you consider browsing the Internet to be your private business? When visiting random web-sites, how far do you assume you are anonymous? Would it matter to you that Google or Facebook can profile your browsing behaviour in order to better target you with advertisements? Did you notice that you already get targeted ads when you are logged on to Google or Facebook even if you are visiting completely different websites? If matters to you, note that browsing anonymously on the Internet is far from easy.

When you are connected to the Internet, you give away a variety of information: your PC’s IP address, some browser settings like language or screen size, and, probably, your login information. So how private is private?

You might argue that your current IP address has been picked from a pool of addresses and therefore regularly changes, so it does not necessarily always pinpoint you. On the other hand, with the dawn of IPv6 there is no need any more for shared IP addresses as the pool of IPv6 addresses is considered non-exhaustive. With IPv6, you might get a permanent IP address assigned. Privacy… game over. The best chance regarding this will be legislation. Already today, IP addresses are considered to be personally identifiable information (PII) in some European countries, which means that storing IP addresses for profiling purposes is illegal. However, to be sure, your best option is to use so-called “anonymisation services”, but this depends how much you trust them!

Then there is the too talkative browser. Depending on which browser you use, it already exposes lots of information: the local language, time zone, screen size, installed plugins, available system fonts, etc. As these settings can vary a lot, it means that the probability of you and I having exactly the same settings is very low. Ergo, this information can be used to pinpoint your browser and uniquely identify you when browsing the web… If you don’t believe it, check out Panopticlick and note that some browser plug-ins like “Stealther”, or security settings like “In Private” browsing might change the odds in your favour.

Finally, your login. If you are logged in with your Google or Facebook account, they can profile your activity even outside their domains. This is mainly due to the wide usage of Google Ads/Analytics and Facebook’s “Like”-button: the embedded code directly feeds back into your Google and Facebook profile… For a bit more privacy here, log out whenever you don’t need to be logged in, and consider installing something like the “Ghostery” plug-in in your browser.

So what else can you do? Not much, as I am not suggesting that you change your browsing habits. There is no silver bullet. I just wanted to take away the illusion that you browse the Internet anonymously. You don’t and you hardly can.

For further information, please check our web site or contact us at Computer.Security@cern.ch.

Filed under: CERN,Ciencia,Cosmologia,Fisica,Fisica de alta energia,Fisica de Materiales,Fisica de particulas,LHC,Matematicas,Materia,Mecanica cuantica,Science,Sincrotrón | | |No Comments

New CMS detectors under construction at CERN

While the LHC will play the starring role in the 2013/2014 Long Shutdown (LS1), the break will also be a chance for its experiments to upgrade their detectors. CMS will be expanding its current muon detection systems, fitting 72 new cathode strip chambers (CSC) and 144 new resistive plate chambers (RPC) to the endcaps of the detector. These new chambers are currently under construction in Building 904.

CMS engineers install side panels on a CSC detector in Building 904.

"The original RPC and CSC detectors were constructed in bits and pieces around the world," says Armando Lanaro, CSC construction co-ordinator. "But for the construction of these additional chambers, we decided to unify the assembly and testing into a single facility at CERN. There, CMS technicians, engineers and physicists are taking raw materials and transforming them into installation-ready detectors.”

This new facility can be found in Building 904. Once the assembly site for the straight magnet sections of the LHC, the building underwent two years of renovations to become the detector construction facility it is today. "For starters, there were severe structural issues that had to be addressed,” says David Hay (EN-MEF), who co-ordinated the Building 904 construction work. "Before the building could receive CMS engineers, we had to refurbish the roof and resurface the floor, install fire detection systems and a storage platform, and modify the existing electrical and IT systems."

And after completing basic renovations, there were still a number of project-specific installations to construct. "The chambers have to be constructed and stored at a specific humidity and temperature, so we built four new climate-controlled semi-clean rooms," explains David. "Furthermore, as the chambers use gas to track the muons, we equipped the building with supplies of argon, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, freon and isobutane."

View of the main construction hall in Building 904.

Specific tools were also needed in constructing and testing the new chambers. But instead of building new machines, CMS engineers decided to recycle. "Fermilab refurbished some of the original machines used to construct the CSCs in the late 1990s," says Armando. "These were shipped to CERN, where they are now doing exactly the same job they did over 10 years ago."

Engineers and technicians from Europe, the US, China and Russia are currently at work on the new detectors, and should have them finished in time for LS1. This June, CERN access-card holders will have the opportunity to see these experts at work on the detectors. For more information, see the box below.

How do the Cathode Strip Chambers (CSC) work? In CMS, CSCs are used to detect muons. CSCs consist of arrays of positively charged “anode” wires wound around negatively charged copper “cathode” strips within a gas volume. The chambers are then assembled in “modules”, each one containing six wire and strip layers (see picture). The chamber layers contain a gas that amplifies the signals from charged particles coming from collision events. When muons pass through the gas, they knock electrons off the gas atoms (ionization), thus creating positively charged ions. Because of the electric field in the chamber gaps, electrons flock to the anode wires creating an avalanche, via a multiplication process, which is the signal collected by the read-out electronics. The avalanche around an anode wire from an ionization event creates an induced charge distribution on the cathode strip. Positive ions move away from the wire and towards the cathode, also inducing a charge pulse in the strips. This signal is also recorded by the read-out electronics. Because the strips and the wires are perpendicular, physicists get two position coordinates for each passing particle, which allows them to infer their trajectory.

Filed under: CERN,Ciencia,Cosmologia,Fisica,Fisica de alta energia,Fisica de Materiales,Fisica de particulas,LHC,Matematicas,Materia,Mecanica cuantica,Science,Sincrotrón | | |No Comments