Next week, the brightest and best in the field of superconductivity will flock to Geneva. More than 1000 experts will attend the 2017 edition of the biennial European Conference on Applied Superconductivity (EUCAS), which CERN is organising in collaboration with the University of Geneva and EPFL-SPC under the auspices of the European Society for Applied Superconductivity. EUCAS 2017 will bring together researchers and engineers from industry and public research to share the latest advances in superconducting technology: from materials and cables to applications on the gigantic scale of the LHC or the miniature scale of electronic devices.

Of course, it’s no coincidence that CERN is co-organising such a conference. The LHC is the biggest superconducting system in the world, and CERN’s experts are working on new superconductors for the accelerators of the future. Magnetic resonance imaging machines, a common sight in hospitals, might be the primary industrial use of superconductors, but high-energy physics, with its ever-increasing performance needs, is at the forefront of innovation.

In fact, particle physics has been using superconducting magnets since the late 1960s in order to explore higher energy ranges than previously possible. Such magnets are capable of generating stronger magnetic fields to curve particle trajectories, thereby allowing the energy to be increased. Physicists first fitted their detectors with superconducting magnets, and then, from the 1980s onwards, they started using them in accelerators. The world’s first superconducting collider, Fermilab’s Tevatron in the US, was equipped with magnets generating a field of 4.3 Tesla. The LHC magnets can generate fields of 8 Tesla, and those in the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), currently in development, will be able to reach almost 12 Tesla.

Work on high-temperature superconducting magnets continues in parallel. Physicists have high hopes for these magnets, which were first devised 30 years ago, as they can function at higher temperatures than low-temperature superconductors (over 30 kelvin compared with just a few degrees kelvin). They can therefore be less complicated and less expensive to use, which opens up new horizons for superconductor applications. On the other hand, the materials needed to build them are very costly and highly complex to use, but research on the subject is advancing, stimulated by laboratories like CERN.

“The virtuous circle between high-energy physics and superconductivity goes on, in particular with the pioneering research on high-temperature superconductors being carried out at CERN,” explains Lucio Rossi, Project Leader for the High-Luminosity LHC and co-chair of the EUCAS 2017 conference along with Luca Bottura, leader of CERN’s Magnets, Superconductors and Cryostats group. “This work allows us to envisage dipole magnets generating fields of 20 to 25 Tesla - a massive challenge that would not only enable us to explore new physics regions but would also open the door to new applications of superconductors in medicine, energy and other fields impacting our daily lives.”

The CERN Courier has devoted its September issue to superconductors, their history and their close links with fundamental physics (read it here).

EUCAS 2017 will feature a number of events and activities aimed at the general public alongside the conference:

- 8.30 p.m. on Tuesday, 12 September in the Globe of Science and Innovation:
“Show Devant ! La conférence électrique” - a fun, interactive science workshop hosted by Physiscope and designed to explain electricity and superconductivity to participants of all ages. Sign up here.

- 6.30 p.m. on Tuesday, 19 September at Uni Dufour, U600 auditorium:
“The Higgs boson and our life” by Fabiola Gianotti. The Director-General of CERN will recount the discovery of the Higgs boson and its impact on science and society. Free entry. Lecture in English with simultaneous interpreting into French. More information on the website of the University of Geneva.

- From Friday, 22 to Sunday, 24 September: A “hackathon” focusing on future applications of superconductors will take place at CERN’s IdeaSquare as part of EUCAS 2017. This workshop will bring together experts in superconductivity and technology transfer with students of science and technology and management. Its goal is to identify new avenues for the application and commercialisation of superconductors.
Hosted by CERN and the EASITrain network, this event will be led by members of the FCC study and is supported by the HL-LHC project, the University of Vienna, the Knowledge Transfer group and IdeaSquare.
The final presentation, which is open to the public, will take place at 11.30 a.m. on Sunday, 24 September at IdeaSquare. See the website for more information.

After three months of work, a remodelled Glassbox combining elegance and high-tech features reopened its doors last week. The restaurant area, generally reserved for official lunches and dinners and distinguished visitors, was officially reopened last Monday by the Director-General.

Part of the renovation work was completed by the Finnish artist Ilona Rista, whose decorative designs already adorn the Main Auditorium. As in the Auditorium, the wall panels are made from light-coloured wood imported directly from the forests of Finland, incorporating a central sculpture with an illuminated animation evocative of a particle collision, a work entitled “Interactions”.

The wall panels also incorporate screens that are able to display photos of key moments in the history of CERN or images of relevance to important visitors.

Finally, the area is modular, allowing several groups to be hosted at once.

The attractive refurbishment is the result of the collaborative efforts of several of the Laboratory’s services and contractors.

The primary entry point to your digital life is your password. Your Facebook password to meet your friends, your Instagram password for sharing your photos, your Amazon and PayPal passwords for buying stuff, your iCloud password (or similar) for all your photos, music and videos, and your CERN “NICE” password for your professional activities for the Organization. A lost password means full exposure: with your password, an adversary can dig deep into your private (and professional!) life. Imagine someone who’s able to roam through your flat – but much more clandestine. It’s not rocket science that your passwords deserve the same care and attention as your car and house keys, your credit cards or your Smartphone. Their loss can have a significant impact on your life…

A good password is something you can easily remember, is unique for each computing service, has never been shared with someone else, and is sufficiently complex that it cannot be guessed by humans or automatic tools (like so-called dictionary attacks trying out every word in a dictionary and even combinations thereof). Unfortunately, “memorable”, “unique” and “sufficiently complex” seem to contradict each other for the average human brain. Brain power seems to be too limited nowadays to recall several dozens of password/site combinations. What seemed to be easy for my grandma, remembering hundreds of phone numbers and whom they belong to, seems to have become difficult today. And the usual hints of:

• Choosing a line or two from a song or poem, and using the first letter of each word. For example, "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree!" becomes "IXdKKaspdd!";
• Using a long passphrase like the sentence "In-Xanadu-Did-Kubla-Khan-A-Stately-Pleasure-Dome-Decree!" itself or mathematical formulas like "sin^2(x)+cos^2(x)=1";
• Alternating between one consonant and one or two vowels with mixed upper/lower case. This provides nonsense words that are usually pronounceable, and thus easily remembered. For example: "Weze-Xupe" or "DediNida3";
• Choosing two short words (or a big one that you split) and joining them together with one or more punctuation characters between them. For example: "dogs+F18" or "comP!!UTer"

do not work for everyone.

The easiest thing to do, of course, is to reduce the number of passwords: your Google or Facebook account can already be used for services outside the Facebook and Google realms. And CERN is also actively working on a “federated identity” solution so that you can use your CERN username and password to access computing services at other institutes and universities – and vice versa! In addition, there is nothing to stop you using easy passwords like “123456” for websites on which you do not expose anything personal, have no financial risk, and where an adversary cannot create havoc (e.g. newsletter subscriptions). If you seldom access those pages, you might even forget those passwords and reset them only once needed...

For more important computing services, you might want to consider using a password manager to store all your different passwords and protect them with a very strong, complex and long master password. There are many technical solutions on the market: “Lastpass” , “Keepass”, Apple “Keychain” or even the built-in password managers within Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari (i.e. Apple “Keychain”) and Chrome. But before you start using any of them, please consider whether you are fine with putting all your eggs in one basket. If the device running your password manager is compromised, all your passwords are potentially compromised and not only the ones you recently typed into that device; if the password manager is ill-conceived or turns out to be vulnerable, all your passwords are at risk, too (see, for example, this slightly biased old article); if that device is lost, the only hope left is your brain power. Furthermore, what about the risk of loss of control? Some solutions, like “Lastpass”, push your passwords into the cloud. In the end, it is your choice regarding the balance between convenience and risk. 

However, whatever you decide, also consider enabling multi-factor authentication solutions where possible. You use this already for your online bank transactions, and Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others offer similar protection! Multi-factor authentication will also soon come to CERN for privileged access to computing services, the Technical Network and for financial transactions (see our Bulletin article on “Pimp up your password”).

Do you want to learn more about computer security incidents and issues at CERN? Follow our Monthly Report. For further information, questions or help, visit our website or contact us at Computer.Security@cern.ch.

Twenty-five years after its first session, the SCINT conference returned to its birthplace. SCINT was launched in 1992 by Paul Lecoq, who at the time was the spokesperson for the new Crystal Clear collaboration (RD18 experiment), and every two years brings together more than 200 experts – theorists, engineers, representatives of industry and users – in scintillation and its applications. This year, for its 14th session, SCINT celebrated its quarter-century in Chamonix.

Scintillators are used in many different fields: nuclear and high-energy physics, astrophysics, medical imaging, non-destructive testing, safety devices, etc. In the form of crystals or fibres, they convert high-energy radiation into light pulses and can thus be used to detect the presence of ionising radiation and to obtain data about its energy level, trajectory and characteristics.

In 2017, 273 participants attended the event, including many manufacturers of scintillator crystals and detection specialists, who presented their latest innovations on 18 stands and held discussions with scientists during a dedicated afternoon session.

Since the very start, SCINT has witnessed and driven significant advances in the field of scintillation, in both academia and industry. In 1992, the scintillation properties of lead tungstate (PbWO₄) were presented for the first time. This material was later adopted by the CMS and ALICE experiments at the LHC. That year also saw the announcement of the discovery of cerium-doped lutetium oxyorthosilicate (LSO), a crystal now widely used in positron emission tomography (PET) scanners.

“The discussions at SCINT between specialists in different fields are one of the strengths of the conference,” says Etiennette Auffray, spokesperson of the Crystal Clear collaboration and Chair of the SCINT 2017 conference. “They have resulted in significant advances in our understanding of scintillation mechanisms and the development of new materials and innovative devices, and have helped to encourage technology transfer between high-energy physics and applications as diverse as medical imagery, industrial process control, and nuclear safety and non-proliferation.”

The members of the Crystal Clear collaboration are currently participating in several European projects, including Intelum (a Marie Skłodowska-Curie RISE project), ASCIMAT (a Twinning project) and FAST (COST Action). “Thanks to COST TD1401: FAST (Fast Advanced Scintillator Timing) and the ASCIMAT project, we have been able to support the participation of 18 students in the first SCINT Summer School, which took place between 14 and 17 September, bringing the total number of participants to 56 (including several from industry),” adds Etiennette Auffray. “The students were able to acquire valuable knowledge about scintillation mechanisms and detectors before the start of the conference, which was a resounding success!”

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To find out more about Crystal Clear, read the article published in the CERN Courier to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the collaboration.

The CERN School of Computing (CSC) is one of the three schools that CERN has set up to deliver knowledge relating to the Organization’s main scientific and technical pillars – physics, accelerators and computing. The first CSC was held in Varenna, Italy in 1970. Since then, the School has visited 21 countries, and has been attended by over 2600 students from five continents and 80 countries. The aim of the two-week programme is to promote advanced learning and knowledge exchange in scientific computing among young scientists and engineers involved in particle physics or other sciences.

Since 2002, CSC has offered a diploma upon successful completion of an optional exam. In addition, since 2008 the university hosting the CSC has reviewed the school’s academic programme with a view to incorporating the CSC in its official teaching programme. As a result, a formal certificate of 5 to 6 ECTS Credit Points (European Credit Transfer System) is awarded by the host university. Those credit points are recognised in Europe for any PhD or Master’s programme. Since 2005, the CSC management has also run the inverted CSC (iCSC, "Where students turn into teachers") and since 2013 the thematic CSC (tCSC). The idea behind the inverted school is to invite CSC alumni to become teachers themselves, at a short school of three to five half-days, held at CERN in the winter. The thematic CSC is a one-week school that covers a particular topic in greater depth – the topic for tCSC 2017 was “Efficient Parallel Processing of Future Scientific Data”.

In 2017, the 40th CERN School of Computing took place in Madrid, Spain, organised in collaboration with the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). It welcomed 63 students selected from among 110 applications, from 37 different universities and institutes, representing 26 nationalities. The usual intensive academic programme (52 hours of lectures and exercises) was complemented by a particularly rich social programme, including scientific visits at UPM, a guided tour of Madrid and a pub quiz, among other activities. The students particularly enjoyed the special sports afternoon, where many tried kayaking, stand-up paddleboarding (SUP) or archery for the first time. At the end of the school, 59 students passed the optional exam – 14 of them with distinction!

Applications for CSC and tCSC 2018 will open in early 2018 – to find out more, please visit: https://csc.web.cern.ch/.

An article providing in-depth information about the history of the CSC was published in the CERN Courier in 2013.

On 19 September, the Internet Society held their annual member meeting, Intercommunity 2017, celebrating their 25^th anniversary. The Internet Society is a non-profit organisation that provides leadership in Internet-related standards, education, access, and policy. Its mission is "to promote the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world."

InterCommunity 2017 ran for 19 hours, with 16 live-streamed regional events worldwide. As part of the programme, a live panel was hosted by CERN at the Globe of Science and Innovation. CERN was a natural choice to host the Swiss event being one of the founding members of the Internet Society  and for playing a central role in the development of the internet in Europe between 1982 and 1994. 

Monique Morrow, President and Co-Founder of the Humanized Internet, Roxanna Radu, Programme Manager at the Geneva Internet Platform and Alberto Pace, Head of the Storage group in the IT department at CERN and CERN representative at W3C and Internet Society, were joined by three CERNois having received the Internet Hall of Fame award, Robert Cailliau, François Flückiger and Ben Segal. The panel was moderated by Frédéric Donck, Director for the Internet Society European Regional Bureau. Through a lively discussion, the speakers debated if the Internet of Things would undermine the Internet of Trust. 

More details about the event here. 

To watch the recording of the live panel:https://cds.cern.ch/record/2285244. 

Since the last year-end technical stop, during machine fills and while the beams are in collisions, the crossing angles at which the beams collide in the middle of ATLAS and CMS have been routinely reduced. Reducing the crossing angle over the course of a fill allows the recovery of some of the total potential luminosity that gets lost as the beams do not collide head-on, but they need to be collided at an angle of a couple of hundred microradians. The principle of this progressive angle reduction process was demonstrated in September last year, during a Machine Development period. It was then automated during the 2016 end-of-year shutdown to be routinely used in LHC operation. After successful validation during the 2017 re-commissioning period, it has been used in every LHC physics production fill ever since.

Why must the two beams be put in collision at an angle and why do we want to reduce this angle? When the two LHC beams approach each other around each of the four LHC interaction regions, encounters must be prevented in the region where the two beams share the same vacuum chamber. The solution to that problem is therefore to collide the beams at an angle of a couple of hundred microradians. But even when colliding the beams at an angle, the bunches still interact at a distance through electromagnetic fields. The angle therefore has to be large enough to provide a separation that reduces these long-range interactions between the beams to an acceptable level. However, a large crossing angle decreases the luminosity, as it reduces the overlap area of the bunches. This geometric reduction factor depends on the crossing angle as well as on the transverse beam size and the bunch length. With the present LHC beam parameters, ATLAS and CMS lose around 35% of the theoretical peak luminosity due to the crossing angle.

LHC scientists have found a way to mitigate this effect: since the beams lose intensity in collisions, and the long-range interactions thus decrease, this allows a reduction in the crossing angles. For the last few months of LHC proton physics operation in 2017, the crossing angles of the beams have been routinely reduced while the beams were in collisions. At present, the half crossing angle at ATLAS and CMS is 150 microradians at the start of collisions, and it is reduced by 10 microradians every few hours down to a minimum of 120 microradians. This increases the total integrated luminosity yield per LHC fill by up to 5%.

Decreasing the crossing angle in the LHC, with high-intensity beams colliding and all experiments recording data, is not as simple as turning a knob or pushing a button. The protection of the machine and the experiments needs to be ensured at all times, and multiple accelerator systems need to be orchestrated for a smooth transition, including the steering magnets, the orbit feedback system and the collimators around the affected interaction points.

The LHC has just undergone a three-day technical stop. Every technical stop is followed by a short revalidation of machine operation, which includes an intensity ramp up, typically over three to four machine fills. This time the LHC crews are taking advantage of that ramp up to further squeeze the beam size at the ATLAS and CMS interaction points through a reduction of the β* parameter from 40 cm to 30 cm. This change is expected to yield a 10% increase in the integrated luminosity for the remainder of the 2017 run. 

Building crab cavities (see the box below) is like assembling an enormous, intricate, three-dimensional puzzle after designing it from scratch. Yet, it is far from child’s play – it requires a lot of thought and careful planning.

The assembly of the new superconducting crab cavities, the testing of which is planned to take place at the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) in 2018, is progressing with a steady pace and on schedule. This is the result of a great team effort by seven groups from three departments at CERN**, as well as colleagues from institutes in the UK and the US.

The first milestone was reached in late March 2017, when the two cavities manufactured at CERN demonstrated a maximum transverse voltage of up to 5 megavolts, surpassing the required voltage of 3.4 megavolts.

Since this initial success, each cavity has been inserted into a special titanium vessel, designed to enclose the cavities in liquid helium to allow them to operate them at a temperature of 2 Kelvin. The main power coupler and four additional couplers required for the operation of the cavities have been assembled. These operations were carried out in a clean room to preserve the performance level reached during the first radiofrequency tests. Later, the two cavities were connected to each other using a precision table to carefully align the electrical centre of the cavities for optimum beam operation.

The string of cavities is currently being installed in its cryostat. “The cryostat is like a high-performance thermos flask that will reduce the heat load and keep the cavities at their operating temperature. It will also protect them from the Earth’s magnetic field,” explains Ofelia Capatina, deputy leader of the crab cavities work package of the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) project.

The final step is the installation of the cryostat in the SPS for tests with proton beams. This will be done in January 2018, during the year-end technical stop. “These tests will be critical. They will help us validate more than ten years of research and development on superconducting crab cavity technology and trigger the launch of the series production for the HL-LHC,” explains Rama Calaga, the radiofrequency physicist behind the technology and the work package leader of the crab cavity project.

In total, 16 crab cavities will be installed in the HL-LHC – eight near ATLAS and eight near CMS.  

*What is a crab cavity?

They won’t pinch you and you cannot make a salad with them. The name of the cavities has nothing to do with their appearance and is merely illustrative of the effect they have on the proton bunches. The crab cavities will play an important role in the future upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), called High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). The new configuration is due to be operational after 2025 with the goal of increasing the luminosity of the LHC (the measure of its collision rate) by a factor of 10. In the present configuration, the two counter-circulating beams meet at an angle at the collision point of the experiments. What makes the crab cavities special is their ability to “tilt” the proton bunches in each beam, forcing them to collide head-on and thus maximising the luminosity. After being tilted, the motion of the proton bunches appears to be sideways – just like a crab.

** BE-RF, EN-ACE, EN-HE, EN-MME, EN-STI, TE-CRG and TE-VSC groups

On 19 September, around 2 p.m., a mock major road accident involving five “victims” was staged on the Prévessin site. The simulation, which was part of a large-scale rescue exercise, was organised by CERN in the framework of its collaboration with the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG).

Overall, no fewer than 18 members of the CERN Fire and Rescue Service (FRS) (including seven trainee ALS (Advanced Life Support) paramedics), four HUG doctors and four HUG nurses took part in the exercise. Several FRS and HUG rescue vehicles as well as a helicopter from the HUG REGA base were also involved in the simulation.

The exercise lasted approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes and enabled the teams from CERN and the HUG to fine-tune their coordination and spot areas for improvement. Please rest assured that all the “victims” came home safe and sound.

10 000 000 000 000 000, or ten million billion. This is the cumulative number of potential collisions brought at the centre of ATLAS and CMS since the LHC started its operation in 2010. In jargon, the LHC operators says that the LHC has delivered over 100 fb^-1 (inverse femtobarn) of integrated luminosity to each ATLAS and CMS, where one inverse femtobarn corresponds to around 100 million million (potential) collisions.

This milestone was reached on 28 September and only takes into account the data taking with proton bunches spaced by 25 nanoseconds.

Over the years, the integrated luminosity figures have greatly varied. In 2010, the LHC started with beam late in the year, while in 2011 the LHC teams had to learn how to run the new and complex LHC. The year 2012 was clearly a luminosity production year, which was rewarded with impressive physics results, among which the discovery of the Higgs boson.

In 2013 and 2014, there was no proton physics due to the first long shutdown (LS1), (except for short periods in early 2013 with ion physics and a proton-proton reference run.)

Following the massive amount of work done on the machine during LS1, the LHC was restarted in 2015, requiring substantial time for validation of all systems and re-commissioning of the machine with beam, followed by a relatively short physics run. Last year, 2016, was again a production year, and the integrated luminosity surpassed expectations. Following this success, the target for 2017 and 2018 was raised to 90 fb^-1 for the two years. On 28 September, this endeavour resulted in crossing the 100 fb^-1 mark, a memorable moment in the young history of the LHC.

Presently the LHC is well underway to deliver as expected, despite the challenges encountered in 16L2. Because of that, the peak luminosity had been decreased to ‘just’ its design value (1x10³⁴ cm^-2 s^-1) but much progress has been made in the understanding of the “16L2” issue. An important collaborative effort by persons from different groups allowed elaborating methods to increase the beam performance again without interrupting the run for an intervention on 16L2.

On 5 September, the switch to the “8b4e” beam-scheme was made with up to 1916 bunches, the maximum possible with this beam scheme. In a second stage the intensity per bunch was increased from 1.1x10¹¹ protons per bunch to close to 1.3x10¹¹ protons per bunch. These two actions, together with the decrease of the beta star from 40 cm to 30 cm, brought the peak luminosity back up to 1.5x10³⁴ cm^-2s^-1. In the meantime, the LHC injectors prepared a high brightness version of the 8b4e beam that provides 1.2x10¹¹ protons per bunch in a beam size which is about 40% smaller. This beam was taken for the first time in the LHC on 2 October and the next day it nearly equalled the record peak luminosity of 1.75x10³⁴ cm^-2s^-1 that was obtained on 9 August with the standard 25 ns BCMS beam (Bunch Compression Merging and Splitting).

With these beam conditions and a good machine availability the initial goal of 45 fb^-1 for 2017 is again in reach. Luminosity production for proton physics will continue until Monday, 20 November.  Before the winter maintenance break, there will be a period of machine development and some special physics runs, that was recently added following approval by the research board.

In the academic environment of CERN, given the freedom it provides to undertake research and development, it is sometimes forgotten that “academic” and “freedom” do not imply “devoid of rules”, and also do not mean that there are no consequences for inappropriate or illegal behaviour.

The CERN Computing Rules – as set out in Operational Circular No. 5 (OC5) – are based on common sense and apply to everyone using CERN’s computing facilities: staff, users, students, sub-contractors, visitors...  In terms of content, it is easy. Anything you would not normally do outside the privacy of your own home, or anything that obviously violates the law or is offensive, inappropriate or immoral, should not be done at CERN. The browsing of pornographic material is one such example. Whether in your office or on a dedicated public screen, it is simply not appropriate in a workplace context such as CERN and has led to the termination of contracts or persons no longer being welcome on the site. (See also our Bulletin article “Offensive Public Browsing”).

Equally inappropriate is the dissemination of material which sheds a negative light on the Organization (or, as the Staff Rules say, creates moral or material prejudice for CERN). An example is the uploading to social media of inappropriate content to do with CERN or filmed on site, which can create a negative reaction in the media and thus impact CERN’s reputation adversely. On one occasion, for example, such activity required the mobilisation of significant resources by the Organization to address the media consequences, as well as for the internal follow-up procedures that were necessary. In that case, disciplinary action was taken in collaboration with the home institutions of the individuals concerned.

Copyright violation and licence infringements are also taken seriously: one university student found herself in a very tricky situation after she downloaded software from a dubious web portal, ran the software without a valid licence key, filed a support request using her university professor’s CERN account, and was caught by the company in question. The bill for licence infringement, which was initially sent to CERN, was passed on to her university.

As far as the use of CERN’s computing resources is concerned, common sense prevails once more. The CERN computing facilities are intended for professional use exclusively. While some personal activity is tolerated (like privately browsing the web, hosting personal webpages, or use for the benefit of CERN’s clubs), extensive misuse is not. An obvious CERN exit strategy? Bitcoin mining! While it might be tempting for a user to run Bitcoin mining on the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid, there are strict rules and extensive security monitoring in place. All violations are systematically escalated and followed up…! At least one person once tried to benefit from these resources to generate Bitcoins – to print virtual money for free, while the community paid the costs. The consequence for that person: a formal investigation.

Perhaps most serious of all, and something nobody can pretend to have thought was permissible, is sabotage. Hacking into the computer of a colleague, manipulating his analysis and deleting data is definitely outside common sense and is morally unacceptable. Planting back doors into CERN computing services for usage following your departure from CERN is too. In these cases, the perpetrators were dismissed by CERN or their new employer, respectively… 

These examples are not intended to scare you. We just want to remind you that your work at CERN is subject to a set of rules: primarily, the Staff Rules and Regulations and the Organization’s Administrative and Operational Circulars, as well as the CERN Code of Conduct. They are there to protect you and ensure a respectful workplace. In particular, your use of CERN’s computing facilities is governed by OC5, which is intended to protect the Organization, and therefore you, your data and your work, from any reputational or operational difficulties. So, please familiarise yourself with these rules if you have not already done so, and respect them!

Do you want to learn more about computer security incidents and issues at CERN? Follow our Monthly Report. For further information, questions or help, visit our website or contact us at Computer.Security@cern.ch.

Almost a year ago, the CERN Bulletin featured an article on plans for a campus-wide Wi-Fi service for CERN. Several months have passed since then, and this new service has now been deployed in many buildings, including Restaurant 1, the Main Auditorium and the technically challenging Building 40.

More than 5000 Wi-Fi users in more than 20 buildings already benefit from the new Wi-Fi infrastructure. “The new Wi-Fi service is live now. Cabling works were the main activity last year but since April it’s been full steam ahead with deployment of the new access points,” explains Maria Alandes, leader of the Wi-Fi Service Enhancement Project. “We aim to deliver a full Wi-Fi service in all office buildings by autumn 2018.”

Advantages of the new Wi-Fi service

The new access points are centrally managed, which allows users to move around without losing their network connection — a feature much appreciated by users with access to the new service. “This new infrastructure also supports the latest Wi-Fi standard, 802.1ac, which can provide high throughput for compatible clients,” explains Vincent Ducret, the Network Engineer responsible for the Wi-Fi service. “One happy user reported symmetric speeds of 370 Mbps, more than double what was possible before the upgrade.”

Where is the new Wi-Fi available?

Many office buildings in Prévessin and Meyrin are now benefitting from the new Wi-Fi service – see the Further Information section for more details. A key milestone for the project was the activation of the new service in Building 40 in July. The design of Building 40, with its reinforced concrete walls and circular open space, meant that it was very difficult to provide good Wi-Fi coverage via the previous independent access points. Too few access points meant that some areas weren’t covered, but adding more created interference problems. “We now have 260 access points compared to 60 before and the central controllers ensure optimal Wi-Fi coverage throughout the building,” explains Quentin Barrand, a fellow working on Wi-Fi service configuration and support. “Our pre-deployment surveys highlighted problems for the closed offices with metallic walls in the circular part of the building” adds Adam Sosnowski, a Wi-Fi expert who worked on the layout plan for the access points. “We’ve installed one access point per office in these locations in order to provide a high-quality service.” As for public areas, the new service has been available in Restaurant 2, Building 33 and the Microcosm for some time and has just been activated in Restaurant 1 and the main building areas.

Visitor Wi-Fi service

The new Wi-Fi service means we can also now support a Wi-Fi service allowing people to identify themselves by a code sent to a mobile phone (rather than needing to be authorised by someone at CERN) and with their devices kept isolated from CERN’s internal network. This new Visitor service has been available in Building 33 and to Microcosm visitors since July 2017 and in Restaurant 2 since early September. Now that the new Wi-Fi service has been enabled in Restaurant 1, the new Visitor network will automatically be available wherever the new Wi-Fi service is present. (If you want to try the service out though, you can’t use a laptop or smartphone already registered for access to the CERN network; only unregistered devices can use this service — and remember, you won’t be able to access many internal network services, only those you can access freely from outside CERN.)

Further information

• List of buildings where the service is already deployed here
• Deployment status of each building in GIS here (Wi-Fi deployment by building)

On 12 September, 56 servers left CERN bound for the SESAME laboratory in Jordan. SESAME, like CERN is an intergovernmental research organisation, and the two laboratories have a long-standing relationship. SESAME is based on the CERN model, though its area of research is very different. A third generation light source currently in its start-up phase, SESAME will explore disciplines ranging from medicine and biology, through materials science, physics and chemistry to healthcare, the environment, agriculture and archaeology. SESAME’s eight members are Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority, and Turkey.

Once at SESAME, the servers donated by CERN will be installed in the laboratory’s data centre, where they will handle data from experiments soon to be coming on line. “These servers are a very valuable addition to the SESAME data centre,” said Salman Matalgah, Head of IT at SESAME. “They will help ensure that we’re able to provide first-class computing support to our users.” Speaking for CERN, Charlotte Warakaulle, Director for International Relations said: “This donation continues the long-standing CERN support for SESAME. After many other successful donations, it’s great that we can extend the list of beneficiaries to include SESAME: a truly inspiring project showcasing and building on scientific capacity in the Middle East and neighbouring regions.” CERN contributed to the construction of the SESAME main ring through the EU-funded CESSAMag project, and is currently involved in another EU-supported project, Open SESAME, which is providing valuable training experience to SESAME personnel. Previous donations of IT equipment from CERN in 2017 were made to Algeria in February and to Bulgaria in August.

In September 2017, a three-day Superconductor Hackathon hosted by CERN’s IdeaSquare brought together an international group of students from technical and business backgrounds with the purpose of conceiving novel applications of superconductors. The hackathon was organised in the framework of the EUCAS 2017 conference, where engineers, economists and creatives united their forces to breed new ideas.

In the past decades, superconducting magnets developed for particle accelerators allowed physicists to take a close look in the heart of matter. Superconducting materials may well have a great impact on the way we produce energy, manufacture goods, transport commodities and medical applications. However today, besides their use in the medical imaging for Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) systems, the commercial success of superconductors remains largely limited to research applications.

Energy and environmental challenges create opportunities for this alluring technology. “If we can work together to turn our research efforts into products, businesses and services, then we really can change the world for the better,” says Peter Keinz, Professor in WU Vienna.

During the hackathon, the students spent an intense three days of lectures, lively discussions and hands-on prototyping at IdeaSquare. The teams sketched out ideas of novel applications for a global fruit industry, uninterruptible power supplies for data centres, decentralized electrical power plants to stabilize the electrical grid and for a visionary rocket launch system that would allow humanity to explore the solar system at costs far lower than any new conventional rocket launch system.

The concepts were presented in a ceremony, with the teams competing for the audience award given to the most motivated group and the jury prize for the most promising project.

The jury prize went to the team who developed a fruit sorting method that will determine the fruits’ maturity and thus help the suppliers determine where they should be shipped and how. Today, 30 percent of the avocados shipped from South America to Europe need to be thrown away, because there exists no way to determine the fruits maturity. 

The method is based on an intriguing simplification of a spectroscopic technique called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, widely used in chemistry. The device relies on a superconductive coil that generates an intense magnetic field to twist the water molecules in the fruits passing through the magnet.

The audience award was given for the concept of a novel space transport method. The concept aims at mining the moon for natural resources using a superconducting magnetic launch system. The system also relies on superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) to supply the power to the superconducting magnets, catapulting the payload towards the Earth.

“Curiosity, creativity and collaboration - we saw CERN’s core qualities impressively demonstrated during the three days of the hackathon,” said Johannes Gutleber form the Future Circular Collider (FCC) study office.

Experts from CERN and the Universities of Genova, Vienna and Geneva participated in the Hackathon and helped the students tackle the technical challenges. A number of presentations during the first day demonstrated how superconductivity can contribute to a greener future. How it can be used in UPS systems based on flywheels, how the use of superconducting scanners can ensure high food quality and how concepts like Hyperloop and levitating transport could transform the future of travelling were some of the topics covered in the presentations.

A major aspect of the Superconductor Hackathon is how it encouraged participants to turn to each other for help and support. Markus Nordberg, head of IdeaSquare, mentioned in his speech during the award ceremony: “You are all winners and the biggest prize of this activity is sharing, the fact that you met and shared your experiences and ideas”. The time is right for superconductivity to emerge as the next great transformational technology — with far-reaching impact. Jump on EASITrain and power our future!

Researchers’ Night 2017 at CERN: a resounding success with over 1400 visitors

On Friday, 29 September, the Globe of Science and Innovation hosted a crowd of science fans for Researchers’ Night. Between 5.00 and 11.00 p.m., 1400 visitors were given an enthusiastic welcome by a fantastic team of volunteers, who introduced them to the mysteries of bioluminescence, gave them a tour of the antimatter factory, showed them how to programme a robot and transported them to outer space in a debate with astronaut Matthias Maurer.

By happy coincidence, the event coincided with CERN’s birthday, so the first 400 visitors were lucky enough to receive a delicious cake.

CERN at the United Nations Office at Geneva Open Day

On Saturday, 7 October, CERN took part in the Open Day of the United Nations Office at Geneva, which was an opportunity to present the Laboratory’s research and discoveries to the 14000 visitors in attendance. Visitors old and young had the chance to talk to the enthusiastic volunteers, take virtual reality tours of the experiments and learn about how CERN contributes to the UN’s sustainable development goals. You can read more about this subject here. CERN’s participation was highly appreciated by everyone involved and it was an ideal opportunity to demonstrate once again the importance of fundamental science and education for the whole planet. A great illustration of CERN’s position at the heart of International Geneva.

The Automnales fair

The next event for the general public will be the Automnales fair, at which CERN will be this year’s guest of honour. We’re still looking for volunteers for this event, so why not take part as a CERN ambassador?
For more information, visit this website. 

Among the 11 new types of magnet that are currently under development for the High-Luminosity upgrade of the LHC (HL-LHC), one has several bizarre names and a particular story behind it. These types of magnets are called, interchangeably, “canted cosine theta”, “double helix” or “tilted solenoid” magnets. They are based on a simple configuration where the conductor cable is wound around the beam tube as two oppositely tilted solenoids (see picture) – yes, solenoids just like those today installed in CMS, but approximately seventy times smaller and with much more compact winding. Two tilted solenoids provide a pure dipolar field.

“This is the first time a magnet like this will be used in a high-energy physics particle accelerator,” says Gijs De Rijk, who is in charge of the magnet laboratory building the corrector. “Its design was proposed at the end of the 1960s and later industrialised in the US. A prototype for proton therapy is currently being built at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, but this is the first time it will actually be used for the high-energy application initially foreseen by the original article of the 1960s,” he explains.

Even though this design requires about 50% more conductor than normal sector coils, this should be compensated for by the simplicity of the construction. “This magnet has 10 drawings instead of 100, so fewer components and less tooling to assemble – in the end, we believe that it will be a less expensive and more reliable magnet,” explains Glyn Kirby, the engineer in charge of the magnet’s development.

In the HL-LHC, two 2-metre-long canted cosine theta magnets will be positioned near the insertion region of the ATLAS and CMS experiments and will be used as corrector magnets. Indeed, in addition to the dipole and quadrupole magnets that guide and focus the charged particles, corrector magnets are used to cure imperfections in the magnets and compensate for alignment errors. These magnets, made of niobium-titanium, will also be used to open the crossing angle between the two beams after the collision to avoid parasitic collisions in the detectors. 

Scientists at the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory in the US are also exploring the applicability of this concept for higher-field magnets based on niobium-tin (Nb₃Sn), approaching the 10 T barrier. Recently, the Paul Scherrer Institut in Villigen, Switzerland also joined this effort. The coming years will see significant R&D efforts on the tilted solenoid design.

On 5 October, at 10.00 a.m., the fire alarms in two of the biggest office buildings on CERN's Meyrin site – 30 and 112 – were set off for a fire drill. The safety procedure was organised by the Safety Offices of the Engineering and Technology departments, in collaboration with the CERN Fire Brigade.

"It took 12 minutes to complete all the required exercises – exiting the buildings, gathering at the nearest meeting point and calmly waiting for the Fire Brigade to arrive. This is a very good result given the fact that nearly 400 people work in the two buildings," said Simon Chérault, deputy safety officer of the Engineering department.

The exercise was carried out thanks to good coordination between the Territorial Safety Officers, the Emergency Guides and the Fire Brigade. “Evacuation drills allow us to test the working conditions and effectiveness of all fire and emergency equipment. They also strengthen the safety culture already adopted by the personnel. The feedback we receive from such exercises helps us implement continuous improvement of the safety measures at CERN,” explained Simon.

A high level of safety for all people on its sites is a key priority for CERN. Each year, fire drills are organised for around 20 different buildings. Recently, another type of safety exercise – a mock road accident – was organised by CERN in collaboration with the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG).

At its last meeting, the CERN Council approved the Management’s proposal for CERN to apply to become an Observer to the SESAME Council.

SESAME is the new synchrotron for the Middle East and neighbouring regions. The machine started operation last January and the first experiments should start in the coming weeks.

What makes SESAME unique is the collaboration it has brought about between scientists from its eight Members in the region: Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority and Turkey.

CERN has been a staunch supporter of SESAME ever since the mid-1990s, when certain discussions in the CERN cafeteria turned to the subject of applying the CERN model to other regions. CERN was established in the aftermath of the Second World War as a place for promoting both excellent science and peaceful collaboration between formerly belligerent nations. Could CERN’s success be emulated elsewhere?

The idea took root in the Middle East, and slowly began to grow. Since then, three former CERN Directors-General have held the position of President of the SESAME Council, and CERN has provided tangible help, with EU support, through the CESSAMag project whereby it supplied the magnet system for SESAME’s main ring. CERN is now contributing to another EU project, Open SESAME, which offers valuable training to SESAME staff and users.

Now, with SESAME about to bear fruit as its experimental programme gets under way, it is a natural next step for CERN to apply to become an Observer.

"CERN has always stood by SESAME and offered its valuable support to help bring SESAME to where it is today,” said SESAME Director Khaled Toukan. “The recent vote by the CERN Council giving CERN the go-ahead to apply for Observer status is indeed another pillar of CERN’s support, helping SESAME fulfill its goals." The proposal will be discussed at the next meeting of the SESAME Council in December.

On 19 October, CERN signed a collaboration agreement with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway’s largest engineering school.

NTNU and CERN have a long tradition of collaboration in training students through the CERN doctoral, fellowship and technical student programmes and for joint projects in the field of knowledge and technology transfer. In many cases, these programmes serve as a gateway to research and development projects.

With this agreement, NTNU and CERN will further their shared wish to work together in training a new generation of engineers in all fields of interest common to both institutes, such as electrical, electronic, mechanical and process engineering, mechatronics, information and communications technology, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Last Monday, 16 October 2017, exactly 50 years to the day after the first radioactive beam was produced at ISOLDE in 1967, we celebrated 50 years of physics at the facility.

ISOLDE is the longest-running experimental facility at CERN. What started as a small nuclear physics experiment, has now grown over half a century into a facility that provides beam for over 50 experiments, and 500 users. (Read: Meet ISOLDE: Where did it all begin?).

In this period, 113 isotopes have been discovered for the first time at ISOLDE, granting CERN fifth place worldwide on the Top 25 Labs for Nuclide Discovery list. With the long-awaited HIE-ISOLDE upgrade (Read: Future physics with HIE-ISOLDE), due to be completed next year, the scientists at ISOLDE will have the chance to study ever more exotic nuclei, be able to answer more of our questions about our universe and perhaps discover even more isotopes.

But ISOLDE does much more than make discoveries. The facility is helping to make computers faster with its research into solid state physics, and is currently contributing research on ways to treat cancer with radiation.

With the advent of CERN-MEDICIS (Read: What can ISOLDE do for cancer research?), a new facility attached to ISOLDE, which will start producing isotopes later this year, ISOLDE will have even more scope for helping make breakthroughs in medical research.

Radioactive isotopes are already widely used by the medical community, for imaging, diagnostics and radiation therapy. But many of the isotopes currently used are not perfect; they don’t target tumours closely enough, or a different type of radiation might be better suited for the imaging process. MEDICIS hopes to be able to produce isotopes that more accurately meet the needs of medical professionals.

To mark the anniversary, ISOLDE’s user community came together to publish a portrait of the Laboratory, with multiple open access reports looking at the different physics and applications currently studied at ISOLDE.

With fifty years of history and experience to back these new upgrades and clear benefits for our society ISOLDE is, and will remain, one of the best facilities in the world for nuclear physics research, and a jewel in CERN’s crown.

Find out more about ISOLDE by reading Meet ISOLDE and watching the short documentary series below (subtitles available in English and French).