Please note that the biometric-registration service in building 55 will remain closed because of upgrades to the computer system.
The service will reopen with its regular working hours on 28 June.
Thank you for your understanding.
“Serious gaming” is the gamification of training for professional purposes. When you play a serious game, you are actually also improving your knowledge on a particular subject. For example, in 2015, the CERN Computer Security Team ran, in collaboration with an external security provider, the “Kaspersky Interactive Protection Simulation” (KIPS). Attended by about 80 control and safety system experts, technicians and engineers, the goal of the game was to instruct our control system experts how best to secure their installations. In the game, teams of four to six people had to secure a water purification plant round-by-round, by buying new security features and making sure that attackers did not bring the water treatment process to a halt. The team that generated the most revenue and had the least losses won (see details on this in our Bulletin article “Protect your Plant: A "Serious Game" about Control System Cyber-Security”).
Nowadays, other online security games permit better in-depth training on a multitude of subjects. Take the CERN computer security course, for example, which you are supposed to complete to ensure you know the basics of computer security, password protection and CERN’s rules. But there are more fancy ones:
Give these a try and enhance your skills in protecting your mailbox, your data and CERN!
________
Do you want to learn more about computer security incidents and issues at CERN? Follow our Monthly Report. For further information, questions or help, check our website or contact us at Computer.Security@cern.ch.
This summer the three CERN restaurants remain open during their usual hours. The ‘Coin Brasserie’ in restaurant 2 will be closed from Monday 29 July to Friday 23 August 2019 included.
The cafeteria will be open as follows:
Geneva and Hamburg: Two teams of high-school students, one from the Praedinius Gymnasium in Groningen, Netherlands, and one from the West High School in Salt Lake City, USA, have won the 2019 Beamline for Schools competition (BL4S). In October, these teams will be invited to the DESY1 research centre in Hamburg, Germany, to carry out their proposed experiments together with scientists from CERN and DESY.
Beamline for Schools is a unique international competition that is open to high-school students all over the world. The students are invited to submit a proposal for an experiment that uses a beamline. Beamlines deliver a stream of subatomic particles to any given set-up, making it possible to study a broad variety of properties and processes in various scientific disciplines. They are operated at laboratories such as CERN and DESY.
Since Beamline for Schools was launched in 2014 almost 10,000 students from 84 countries have participated. This year, 178 teams from 49 countries worldwide submitted a proposal for the sixth edition of the competition.
Due to the second Long Shutdown of CERN’s accelerators for maintenance and upgrade, there is currently no beam at CERN, which has opened up opportunities to explore partnerships with other laboratories, namely DESY.
“It is a great honour for us to host the finals of this year’s Beamline for Schools competition at DESY,” said Helmut Dosch, Chairman of the DESY Board of Directors. “We are really looking forward to meeting the extraordinary students who made it through with their proposals and we wish them a successful and rewarding time at the lab. We at DESY are committed to fostering the next generation of scientists, which CERN’s Beamline for Schools project does brilliantly.”
“We are all very excited to welcome this year’s winners to DESY. This is a new chapter in the history of this competition because, for the first time, we are taking the finals of the competition to another research laboratory. As always, the more then 60 voluntary experts from CERN and DESY evaluated all the proposals for their creativity, motivation, proposed methodology, feasibility and their overall ability to explore some of the concepts of modern particle physics” said Sarah Aretz, BL4S project manager.
The two winning teams of 2019 will look at fundamental differences between matter and antimatter. When electrons at high energies collide with a target, such as a piece of graphite, some of their energy gets transferred into photons. These photons can, in turn, transform into other particles. Eventually, a shower of particles at lower energy will develop. The team “Particle Peers” from the Praedinius Gymnasium, Groningen, Netherlands has proposed to compare the properties of the particle showers originating from electrons with those created from positrons, the antimatter partner of the electron.
"I couldn't stop smiling when I heard the news that we’d won. It's unbelievable that we’ll get the opportunity to conduct our experiment with amazing scientists and meet new students who are just as enthusiastic about physics as I am," said Frederiek de Bruine from the “Particle Peers” team.
The “DESY Chain” team from the West High School, Salt Lake City, USA, focuses on the properties of scintillators in its proposal. These are materials that are used for particle detection. The students aim to study the performance of these scintillators and compare their sensitivity to electrons and positrons. This may lead to more efficient particle detectors for a wide range of applications.
“I’m so excited by the prospect of working at DESY this autumn, it’s such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I’m proud to be a part of the first USA team to win the BL4S competition, especially because it provides access to equipment and systems I would otherwise never have dreamt of even seeing,” said August Muller from the “DESY Chain” team.
The shortlist consisted of 20 teams, ten of which received a special mention. This is the second time that a Dutch team has won the competition. Previous winners came from schools in the Netherlands, Greece, Italy (twice), South Africa, Poland, the United Kingdom, Canada, India and the Philippines.
Beamline for Schools is an Education and Outreach project funded by the CERN & Society Foundation and supported by individual donors, foundations and companies. For 2019, the project is partially funded by the Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Foundation; additional contributions have been received from the Motorola Solutions Foundation, Amgen Switzerland AG and the Ernest Solvay Fund, which is managed by the King Baudouin Foundation.
Shortlist drawn up by CERN and DESY experts:
A Light in the Darkness (USA)
Centaurus Warriors (USA)
Cosmic Conquerors (Thailand)
DESY Chain (USA)
DESYners (USA)
JT/High Pawns (Pakistan)
Jubarte Team (Brazil)
Leftover Leptons (India)
Magic Doubly Magic Nuclei (Poland)
My Little Positron(Australia)
Particle peers (The Netherlands)
Raiders of the Lost Quark (UAE)
RAM FAM (Australia)
Salvo Krevas (Malaysia)
Team John Monash Science School (Australia)
The Baryonic Six (Sweden)
The Lumineers (Pakistan)
The Weak Force (South Africa)
Unstoppable SPAS (China)
Young Researchers (Ukraine)
Special Mentions:
Antimatter Tracker (Argentina)
Cherenkoviously Brilliant (UK)
EthioCosmos (Ethiopia)
Kics Team (Sudan)
Kleine Wissenschaftler (Iran)
Observers of the microcosm (Ukraine)
Quantum Minds (Mexico)
SolarBeam (Thailand)
Team Pentaquark (Bangladesh)
YKS_Young Kurdish Scientists (Iran)
Further information
Video from the team “Particle peers”, Praedinius Gymnasium in Groningen (https://praedinius.nl/index.html), Netherlands: https://youtu.be/va1ZnjllFDk
Video from the team “DESY Chain”, West High School in Salt Lake City (https://west.slcschools.org), US: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdexfXt2o30
http://beamline-for-schools.web.cern.ch
https://beamlineforschools.cern/2019-edition
Previous winners: http://beamlineforschools.cern/bl4s-winners
1. DESY is one of the world’s leading particle accelerator centres. Researchers use the large‐scale facilities at DESY to explore the microcosm in all its variety – ranging from the interaction of tiny elementary particles to the behaviour of innovative nanomaterials, the vital processes that take place between biomolecules and the great mysteries of the universe. The accelerators and detectors that DESY develops and builds at its locations in Hamburg and Zeuthen are unique research tools. DESY is a member of the Helmholtz Association, and receives its funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) (90 per cent) and the German federal states of Hamburg and Brandenburg (10 per cent).
Break a magnet in two, no matter how small, and you’ll get two magnets, each with a south and a north pole of opposite magnetic nature. However, some theories predict particles with an isolated magnetic pole, which would carry a magnetic charge analogous to a positive or negative electric charge. But despite many searches, such magnetic monopoles have never been spotted at particle colliders. A new search by the ATLAS collaboration at CERN places some of the tightest bounds yet on the production rate of these hypothetical particles. These results are complementary to those from CERN’s MoEDAL experiment, which is specifically designed to search for magnetic monopoles.
Originally proposed in 1931 by physicist Paul Dirac, magnetic monopoles have since been shown to be an outcome of so-called grand unified theories (GUTs) of particle physics, which connect fundamental forces at high energies into a single force. Such GUT monopoles typically have masses that are too high for them to be spotted at particle colliders, but some extensions of the Standard Model predict monopoles with masses that could be in a range accessible to colliders.
The latest ATLAS search is based on data from proton–proton collisions produced at the Large Hadron Collider at an energy of 13 TeV. The collaboration looked for signs in the data of large energy deposits that would be left behind by the magnetic monopoles in the ATLAS particle detector. The energy deposits would be proportional to their magnetic charge squared. Such large deposits are also an expected signature of high-electric-charge objects (HECOs), which may include mini black holes, so the search was also sensitive to HECOs.
The team found no sign of magnetic monopoles or HECOs in the data but improved previous work on several fronts. Firstly, the search achieves improved limits on the production rate of monopoles that carry one or two units of a fundamental magnetic charge called Dirac charge. The new limits surpass those from MoEDAL, although MoEDAL is sensitive to a larger range of magnetic charge – up to five Dirac charges – and can probe monopoles produced by two mechanisms, whereas ATLAS probed only one. MoEDAL researchers are also working towards pushing the experiment to probe monopoles with magnetic charges well beyond five Dirac charges.
In addition, the ATLAS search improves limits on the production of HECOs with electric charge between 20 and 60 times the charge of the electron. Finally, the search is the first to probe HECOs with charges greater than 60 times the electron charge, surpassing the charge probed by previous searches by ATLAS and also by the CMS collaboration.
For more information about these results, see the ATLAS website.
“We immersed ourselves. We probed the scientific world. We listened to scientists without any preconceived ideas.” This is how Anne Sylvie Henchoz, an artist working in various media, describes the residency at CERN that she shared with Julie Lang, an art history and sociology researcher from the University of Lausanne. The two women won the Collide Genève 2018 prize, run by Arts at CERN in collaboration with the Republic and Canton of Geneva and the City of Geneva, which aims to encourage artistic expression in the context of fundamental research.
Prior to October 2018, CERN was somewhere “not far away, but a complete unknown all the same” for Geneva resident Anne Sylvie, and “a totally mysterious universe” for Julie, who lives in Vaud. But a few weeks at CERN were enough to transform the pair into science enthusiasts. “The meetings we had were the key to understanding this universe,” explains Julie. “The worldviews of some of the scientists resonated with our respective backgrounds in an intense and unexpected way. We didn’t just try to get to grips with the science, we tried to understand the people and their visions.”
After an initial exploratory phase, the artist and the researcher set up meetings with various women at CERN, notably Sara Anne Arezt (S'Cool Lab, CERN), Ana Barbara Rodrigues Cavalcante (EPFL), Francesca Giovacchini (AMS-02 Experiment), Claire Lee (ATLAS), Antonella Del Rosso (ECO-CERN) and Tamara Vazquez Schroeder (ATLAS). “From the outside, CERN seems quite homogeneous but on the inside you discover that it has many different facets and you discover questions being asked about the world and the universe that are very similar to our own,” observes Julie.
The third and final month of the residency was devoted to production. “We created a conversation around the plural notion of ‘temporality’, which we developed in a philosophical, poetic and scientific way,” explains Anne Sylvie. “It was a three-way conversation, a trio between Tamara Vazquez Schroeder, Claire Lee and Julie, incorporating body movements, which we filmed in SMA18, a technical maintenance hall that we found very cinematographic.” The result is an art installation that will be exhibited in Rio de Janeiro in a few weeks’ time: “We did a lot of research to put together, conceptualise and stage these encounters, and focused on the points that made the greatest impression on us. The installation will use three different forms of projection and the sound production is particularly unusual.”
The two women’s residency at CERN has made such an impression on them that it now influences all their work “as is always the case when the interactions are so intense”.
Career development of staff members, with the specific objective of promoting internal mobility (IM), was highlighted among our Director-General’s top five priorities for the Organization’s goals for the year 2018. Consequently, a dedicated CERN-wide working group was set up, comprising representatives from each sector and the Staff Association, to make recommendations, with a view to harmonising and streamlining processes and increasing efficiency in the way IM is managed at CERN.
As the Project Leader, Valeria Perez Reale, explains: “There have often been misunderstandings of the concept of internal mobility today. It is defined as a change in the professional situation of a staff member. This may take the form of a change of one’s functions, within the same organic unit or in another department, or keeping one’s functions but changing one’s organisational unit.”
A key deliverable of the project was a study and analysis of IM at CERN, based on data spanning the last five years, the legal and budget framework, feedback from key stakeholders, the latest research and benchmarking with similar non-profit international research organisations. The conclusions of the study, presented at the HR public meeting in September 2018, showed notably that internal mobility takes place at CERN at an average annual rate of ~2% of staff members on an ad hoc basis, with different practices across the Organization. Staff members were found to be generally positive about IM, although the definition, where to find opportunities and how the process unfolds were identified as key areas to clarify.
The working group’s recommendations revolve around three key principles:
A further five dimensions underpin these recommendations: purpose clarity, policy guidelines, process design, platform capability and performance measures.
James Purvis, Head of CERN’s HR department, is particularly pleased to see the project come to a successful conclusion: “Internal mobility has been a priority for the Organization for some time now. It has long been associated with diverse misconceptions, and in this context I am pleased to see the project come to fruition following comprehensive data collection, benchmarking and analysis to produce a new set of clear processes and tools for CERN that will further improve and enhance the possibilities and opportunities for internal mobility for all staff members.”
Concretely, all public job opportunities listed on Careers at CERN are by default open to staff members. Further, new dedicated Internal Mobility pages list the specific internal mobility opportunities open exclusively to staff members, as well as the possibility to join the internal mobility pool.
The full internal mobility process is now published and detailed in the Admin e-guide. Metrics will be monitored throughout the year by the HR department and reported on an annual basis to the Organization’s management.
For more information, staff members are invited to consult the HR Internal Mobility webpage.
The Workshop on Efficient Neutron Sources – ENS2019 – will bring together nuclear physicists, chemists, material scientists and mechanical engineers to discuss the efficiency of neutron sources, and determine the most promising perspectives for improvement.
With the aim of reaching more efficient reactor and accelerator-based neutron sources, ENS2019 will include sessions dedicated to the following topics:
The Paul Scherrer Institut will host the workshop in Villigen, Switzerland, on September 2-5 2019. The workshop is jointly organized with the European Spallation Source (Sweden) and funded by ARIES, part of the EU-Horizon 2020 program.
You can register here: https://indico.psi.ch/event/7274/
The Microsoft Alternatives project (MAlt) started a year ago to mitigate anticipated software license fee increases. MAlt’s objective is to put us back in control using open software. It is now time to present more widely this project and to explain how it will shape our computing environment.
Background
Over the years, CERN’s activities and services have increasingly relied on commercial software and solutions to deliver core functionalities, often leveraged by advantageous financial conditions based on the recognition of CERN’s status as an academic, non-profit or research institute. Once installed, well-spread and heavily used, the leverage used to attract CERN service managers to the commercial solutions tends to disappear and be replaced by licensing schemes and business models tuned for the private sector.
Given the collaborative nature of CERN and its wide community, a high number of licenses are required to deliver services to everyone, and when traditional business models on a per-user basis are applied, the costs per product can be huge and become unaffordable in the long term.
A prime example is that CERN has enjoyed special conditions for the use of Microsoft products for the last 20 years, by virtue of its status as an “academic institution”. However, recently, the company has decided to revoke CERN’s academic status, a measure that took effect at the end of the previous contract in March 2019, replaced by a new contract based on user numbers, increasing the license costs by more than a factor of ten. Although CERN has negotiated a ramp-up profile over ten years to give the necessary time to adapt, such costs are not sustainable.
Anticipating this situation, the IT department created the Microsoft Alternatives project, MAlt, a year ago.
MAlt’s objective
The initial objective was to investigate the migration from commercial software products (Microsoft and others) to open-source solutions, so as to minimise CERN’s exposure to the risks of unsustainable commercial conditions. By doing so, the laboratory is playing a pioneering role among public research institutions, most of whom have recently been faced with the same dilemma.
MAlt is a multi-year effort and it will now enter a new phase with the first migrations.
The project’s principles of engagement are to:
Coming in 2019
The first major change coming is a pilot mail Service for the IT department and volunteers this summer, followed by the start of CERN-wide migration. In parallel, some Skype for Business clients and analogue phones will migrate to a softphone telephony pilot.
Many other products and services are being worked on: evaluations of alternative solutions for various software packages used for IT core services, prototypes and pilots will emerge along the course of the next few years.
How will MAlt impact you and how to contribute?
You will find all the details and progress on the project site and more particularly the list of products addressed in the project.
The new computing newsletter blog will communicate on general items, and in addition, a general presentation will be provided in the Main Auditorium on 10 September at 2.30 p.m.
Needless to say, isolated initiatives will waste effort and resources. Instead, if you or your team are willing to participate, if you have ideas, the best way is to join the coordinated Microsoft Alternatives effort by checking the project site and contributing to the discussion channel.
Interesting times ahead! While the Microsoft Alternatives project is ambitious, it’s also a unique opportunity for CERN to demonstrate that building core services can be done without vendor and data lock-in, that the next generation of services can be tailored to the community’s needs and finally that CERN can inspire its partners by collaborating around a new range of products.
Follow the project, get details, join: cern.ch/malt
Some 40 000 cables will be installed or removed at CERN during LS2. Laid end to end, they would stretch for 2000 kilometres!
The work involves two types of cable: copper cables, which transmit signals to the accelerator systems and supply the magnets, and fibre-optic cables, which transmit data in the form of light signals. The latter weave through all of CERN’s installations, from Meyrin to Prévessin, including the accelerator tunnels, experiments and technical halls, like an enormous spider’s web.
“Optical fibres and copper cables transmit all the information collected or sent by the detectors, beam instrumentation, sensors, control panels, computing infrastructure, and so on,” explains Daniel Ricci, the leader of the section in charge of cabling (EN-EL-FC) within the EN department. “Our work covers all of CERN’s service networks: optical fibres and copper cables are everywhere.”
They are indeed, and in impressive quantities: for example, some 20 000 optical fibres contained within 220 cables lie at the heart of the ALICE experiment, and 1200 copper signal cables are being installed in the SPS in the framework of the Fire Safety project. The EN-EL-FC section is also contributing to other major CERN projects during LS2, including the LIU (LHC Injectors Upgrade), the renovation of the East Area, the renovation of the SPS access system, the commissioning of the ELENA extraction lines and the HL-LHC.
“CERN is probably the only place in the world where several thousand kilometres of radiation-resistant optical fibre are needed,” says Daniel Ricci. “We maintain very close ties with industry, where our expertise is used to adapt and improve this type of fibre.”
Of the 40 000 cables to be dealt with during LS2, 15 000 are obsolete copper cables that need to be removed. But first, they need to be identified. Since CERN was founded 65 years ago, some 450 000 cables have been installed, and many of them are still snaking through the nooks and crannies of the Laboratory. “Since LS1, we have been methodically going through all of CERN’s old paper cable databases, identifying each cable and listing it in our digital database,” explains Daniel Ricci. “Of the 95 000 cables to be retained, 50 000 have already been digitised.”
CERN’s biggest ever cable removal campaign has been under way since 2016. During the most recent year-end technical stops (YETS and EYETS), the Booster and middle ring of the PS were relieved of their old, obsolete cables. Cable removal is currently under way at points 3 and 5 of the SPS.
To complete this gargantuan task, the EN-EL-FC section, which usually comprises 20 people, has recruited some outside help. Sixteen extra people – fellows, project associates and members of other groups – are lending a hand during LS2. The contractors’ teams, which comprise several dozen technicians working on site, have also been reinforced in order to keep up with the breakneck pace of work during the long shutdown. “Coordination, planning and teamwork are indispensable if we are to successfully complete the 120 cabling and cable removal projects scheduled for LS2,” says Daniel Ricci. “We’re lucky to have a very versatile team who are able to advise clients on different types of cable, carry out technical studies, organise logistics and coordination between the various parties and supervise the worksites.”
No fewer than 140 members of the CERN personnel and contractors’ personnel are working on the various LS2 cabling and cable removal projects, collaborating with the end users to ensure that quality control is as efficient as possible. “We would like to thank all the teams and users for their professionalism and their commitment. They are working to an extremely high standard while scrupulously respecting both deadlines and safety,” says Daniel Ricci.
For many, summer means attending an outdoor festival. Music festivals in particular have expanded all over the world and look to offer new experiences to curious festival goers. This has created opportunities to share CERN’s work, and science in general, with new audiences, many of whom admit to never normally attending science events.
Based on the success of CERN’s participation in WOMAD, this summer sees three additional festivals on the schedule for the first time.
On Sunday, 30 June, a new Science Pavilion will open at Denmark’s Roskilde Festival. Over three days, the CERN partnership with the Niels Bohr Institute will be offering talks, workshops and a ‘lounge’, along with a new interactive light installation measuring six metres in diameter and designed to resemble the LHC, nicknamed the ‘Accelerator in the Sky’. Not forgetting the ‘PhysMobile’, a mobile laboratory run by Niels Bohr Institute scientists that will be pulled all over the huge campsite for impromptu physics demos.
Over at Slovakia’s Pohoda Festival, on Friday, 12 July, the collaboration between CERN and Comenius University will inaugurate the Magical Science Tent. Each day this beautiful wooden infrastructure will host physics talks and workshops, including a DJ set from the ATLAS experiment’s Larry Lee using the ‘Colliderscope’. Visitors can take photos in front of an LHC tunnel backdrop and experience CERN through virtual-reality glasses.
The following week sees another partnership, just across the border in the Czech Republic where a group of Czech universities and CERN will be unveiling the new Big Bang Stage in the old ironworks at the Czech Colours of Ostrava festival. Four days of shows, workshops and even a live-link Q&A to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory make up the programme.
Last but definitely not least is WOMAD in the UK. Such has been the success of this partnership with Lancaster University and the Institute of Physics, since the first Physics Pavilion in 2016, that there is now officially a ‘World of Physics’ at WOMAD (which has stands for World of Music Art and Dance... and now Physics). With three tents, the Accelerator in the Sky installation and this year even a planetarium, the organisers are looking to beat the record of more than 5500 attendees.
Find out more over the summer via the social-media hashtags #sciencepavilion#magicalscience#bigbangstage#physicspavilion
Carlos Moedas, the EU Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation visited CERN on 1 July. The programme included underground visits in the LHC and the ATLAS experiment, and a dedicated session to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the signature of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for cooperation between both parties.
Under the MoU, CERN and the European Commission (EC) cooperate in a number of diverse areas for the benefit of the European Research Area, such as Research and e-infrastructures, International Cooperation, Open Access and Careers and Mobility of Researchers.
Highlights of this cooperation include strong support by CERN and the EC to SESAME, the Synchrotron Light source in the Middle East, as well as the contribution of CERN to European e-infrastructures, notably the Grid and the European Open Science Cloud. Other highlights include different activities to support the development and innovation potential of research infrastructures in the detector and accelerator domains, as well as the training of numerous young scientists and engineers in various fields of science and technology.
The Geneva State Council has launched an online consultation to gather the public’s opinions on the major issues of the future. This survey is being organised in the framework of the Geneva 2050 project, which is looking to the future in order to anticipate and adapt public policy.
The survey is a great opportunity to express your opinions, hopes and expectations about the future of Geneva!
The survey will take you around 15 minutes to complete. It will be available in English and French via this link until 21 July.
In order to enter and live in the Schengen Area, all nationals of countries other than the Member States of the European Economic Area** and Switzerland must be in possession of a valid residence permit issued by a Schengen state or a valid Schengen visa.
For short stays (limited to 90 days in a 180-day period) in the Schengen Area, exemptions from the obligation to obtain a C visa are possible.
In the case of residence in France, members of the personnel of certain nationalities may be exempt from the requirement for a short-stay visa, provided that, for example, they have been issued with a Hosting Agreement.
However, the Swiss authorities have reminded the Organization that all members of the personnel who are not a national of a Member State of the European Economic Area or Switzerland who reside in Switzerland while employed by CERN are subject to the requirement for a C visa if their stay in Switzerland exceeds eight days per calendar year (a very small number of nationalities are not subject to this rule).
Before coming to CERN, members of the personnel who are not nationals of a Member State of the European Economic Area or Switzerland must therefore check the conditions that are applicable to them according to their personal situation, by contacting the consulate in their home country or, for Switzerland, on the website: https://www.sem.admin.ch/sem/en/home/publiservice/weisungen-kreisschreiben/visa/liste1_staatsangehoerigkeit.html and, for France, on the website: https://france-visas.gouv.fr/.
_____
* http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/borders-and-visas/schengen/index_en.htm
** https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/glossaire/R42218 /; https://www.eesc.europa.eu/en/tags/european-economic-area
See also:
Schengen area - Entry, stay and exit - Documents required - Reminder: https://home.cern/news/official-news/cern/schengen-area-entry-stay-and-exit-documents-required-reminder
Relations with the Host States service
relations.secretariat@cern.ch
www.cern.ch/relations
On the International Day of LGBTQ+ People in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) on 5 July, the Directors-General and leaders of CERN, EMBL, ESA, ESO, ESRF, European XFEL, EUROfusion and ILL – the eight scientific research and technology organisations of EIROforum– pay a special tribute to the indispensable contributions of LGBTQ+ colleagues in the STEM fields.
“Our scientific and technological accomplishments and the collective strength in our organisations, emanate from an environment that strongly values and supports a diverse workforce, where discrimination and prejudice are not tolerated,” says Fabiola Gianotti, CERN Director-General and chair of EIROforum. “On the LGBT STEM day, the EIROforum organisations reaffirm their commitment to enabling current and future generations of researchers to contribute to science with their full potential by ensuring equality of treatment and opportunity for all.”
Today, 5 July, marks the second International Day of LGBTQ+ People in STEM. Join the conversation on social media via the hashtags #LGBTSTEMDay or #LGBTQSTEMDay.
A new cold box has just been installed in the SM18 superconducting magnet test hall, but it’s not just a simple box as its name might suggest. CERN’s cold boxes are enormous machines, a bit like giant refrigerators.
This particular cold box is an essential component of the improvements being made to the infrastructure used to test the superconducting magnets and superconducting radiofrequency cavities. In preparation for the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) project, a major renovation and upgrade campaign has been under way for two years right across the SM18 area.
The High-Luminosity LHC will use new superconducting magnets and crab cavities. The development of these new components requires many tests to be carried out in parallel. “This renovation work will significantly improve our testing capacity,” explains Antonio Perin, who is in charge of the cryogenics upgrade project at SM18.
The main upgrade consists of the installation of a new helium liquefier made up of two components: a two-storey compressor weighing almost 40 tonnes and a cold box weighing almost 30 tonnes. This new assembly will considerably increase the helium production capacity in the hall. “These machines will allow us to more than double the production of liquid helium. The liquefaction capacity will increase from 25 to 60 grams of liquid helium per second,” says Antonio Perin.
The cooling of the helium and its transformation into a liquid takes place in two stages. First, the gaseous helium is compressed. The heat produced by the compression is evacuated via water circuits to cooling towers, which have themselves undergone major renovation. The compressed helium is then directed to a cold box. This system consists of turbines and heat exchangers that, after expansion of the helium, deliver it at 1.6 bar and 4.5 kelvins (-268°C).
The new cold box will be able to produce 35 grams of liquid helium per second, which equates to 1100 litres per hour! To generate this torrent of liquid helium, almost 350 g of gaseous helium must be compressed to 18 bar every second, which requires around 1.5 MW of power.
Over the summer, the team and the supplier of the system will connect up multiple pipes and install all the electrical cables. The initial commissioning of the system is scheduled for September, allowing performance tests to take place during the autumn. The system will be connected to the infrastructure of SM18 and brought into service at the end of 2019 or early 2020.
“This new cryogenic installation will allow us to take the performance of our facility to the next level. SM18 houses remarkable and unique infrastructure, which is what makes the test programme for the High-Luminosity LHC possible,” concludes Antonio Perin.
A warm welcome to the summer student class of 2019! On the agenda: challenging lectures in CERN’s main auditorium. Visits to CERN’s experiments and accelerators. Social events at the Residence Schuman (bike safely around the Saint-Genis roundabout!). Interesting projects to tackle with the team you work with. Time to take a great big gulp of CERN’s academic freedom, spirit and creativity! In order to make your digital life as comfortable as possible, however, here are few useful things to know:
When you join CERN you are given a CERN computing account. Take care of its password as any evil-doer might misuse it to spam the world on your behalf, crypto-mine in your name on CERN’s computing clusters, download journals in bulk from CERN’s digital library, or simply compromise your CERN PC and extract your photos, documents or personal data – or just spy on you using your computer’s mic or webcam… Similarly, take good care of your CERN and personal computers, tablets and smartphones. Give them some freedom to update themselves so you benefit from the latest protective measures. “Auto-update” is a good friend, just make sure that it is enabled – as it should be by default.
A particular nasty way to lose your password, at CERN or at home, is to answer so-called “phishing e-mails”, i.e. e-mails asking for your password. No serious person – the CERN Computer Security Team, the CERN Service Desk, your CERN supervisor – would send such an e-mail, only dishonest people or fraudsters. So stay on the look out and do not enter your password into weird webpages. Do not click on links in e-mails obviously not intended for you, for example, e-mails not addressed to you; not written in one of your native languages; or of no relevance to you. Ask us at Computer.Security@cern.ch if you have any doubts. Similarly, do not randomly click on web links, but stop and think first. Otherwise you might infect your computer in no time – and the sole remedy will be a full reinstallation of your device (easier if you have backups!).
CERN has awesome network connectivity to the world. But it is for professional purposes. While private usage is tolerated, please do not abuse this. Keep your bandwidth low. In particular, refrain from bulk downloading movies or software. Remember “copyright”? It also applies at CERN. Any violation of copyright reported to CERN will be followed up and any infringement costs will be passed on to the perpetrator. The same holds for pirated software. If you have stored pirated licence keys on your device, it’s time to delete them. Companies are monitoring for abuse of their software and infringement costs can quickly reach five to six figures. If you need particular software, have a look at CERN’s central software repositories.
Finally, you might be working on a project requiring digital resources. Setting up a webpage. Writing some code. Developing hardware. Please do not reinvent the wheel if you need a database. Or a webserver. Or some software. The CERN IT department can provide a wide variety of centrally managed and secure services for your digital convenience. Just put yourself on their shoulders and build on top. Free your time and brain up for creativity and let CERN IT provide the tools. Moreover, make sure that all your development work, software, design drawings, documentation, etc. are made available to your supervisor for the time after you have left. This will ensure your heritage and your legacy at CERN. If you keep them to yourself, they will get purged and deleted – and your time at CERN will be forgotten.
_______
Do you want to learn more about computer security incidents and issues at CERN? Follow our Monthly Report. For further information, questions or help, check our website or contact us at Computer.Security@cern.ch.
In September, CERN will host the annual conference of the ‘Intel Extreme Performance User Group’. This community event — an important discussion forum for those making use of Intel’s computing technologies to support their research — will take place in the CERN Globe of Science and Innovation on 24 and 25 September. Additional hands-on training sessions will also be held in breakout rooms on 26 and 27 September.
IXPUG is an independent user group. Its mission is to provide an environment for the free exchange of information, with the goal of enhancing the usability and efficiency of scientific and technical applications running on advanced computing systems that make use of Intel architecture.
The 2019 IXPUG annual conference will address a wide array of topics related to the adoption and deployment of state-of-the-art data-processing technologies and techniques, with a view to achieving optimal application execution. The event is an open forum, through which industry experts will share best practice and techniques for maximising software efficiency. Come along and share your experience working with these technologies, and learn from others in the field.
CERN and Intel have been collaborating closely for almost two decades through CERN openlab, a unique public-private partnership that works to accelerate the development of computing technologies for use by the research community. CERN openlab is responsible for organising the event at CERN.
Find out more about the event on the IXPUG website.
Submission of abstracts for technical sessions, lightning talks, and hands-on tutorials is open until 19 July.
