Sarah Phillips

Ready for the Next Picnic

Vince just came over to my office and helped me to inventory and pack up all of the Jlab Graduate Student Association sports equipment and picnic supplies that had been left over from the last picnic that we held two weeks ago.  This stuff has been all over my office floor since then.  I should have taken a picture of all the stuff while it was strewn all over my floor...it was a real mess.  However, I really wanted to take an inventory and get everything packed up nicely before putting it all back into storage.  The equipment had not been used in a long time before we organized this June picnic, so I had to spend a great deal of time tracking down where it had all been hidden away and forgotten about.  I even had to send another of the officers, Peter, out to buy some Frisbees and a soccer ball since I could not find the GSA ones.  I do not want to go through all of that again! 

It is amazing what you find when you go through stuff like this.  For instance, we discovered that the Jlab GSA has (among other things):

1. 19 badminton racquets (why 19? what happened to the 20th?  Five of them are a brilliant fuchsia too...) and various bits and pieces of the shuttlecocks
   
2. two DVDs about how to play Frisbee properly, as well as a handbook that has diagrams to teach people how to throw Frisbees under their legs and behind their backs...the pictures look vaguely like a martial arts handbook
3. a solitary tennis ball (but no tennis racquets, and we don't have a tennis court here)
4. a football tee (but no football, of course)
5. a couple of weird rubber baseball-like things and a Nerf bat
6. various other odd and mis-matched pieces of equipment.

Although I am confident that a creative soul could compile all of this into an interesting and unorthodox game, it is clear that we will have to consider acquiring some equipment to round out the collection a bit.  Even so, I am pleased that all of this stuff is no longer all over my office floor.  Now it is all inventoried, boxed, and labeled, ready for storage until the next picnic or activity, which should be sometime in August if I can make the time to plan it.  Happily, it should be a whole lot easier to track this stuff down now!  Thanks Vince!

No Rest for the Weary...

It is true that there is no rest for the weary.  I am already working on my next poster!  Today I have started to draft out my poster for the Gordon conference, which takes place in a little less than two weeks.   If I had been clever, I would have submitted the same abstract as I did for the poster competition, so that I could have used the same one!  Oh, well.  I'll make another pretty poster full of interesting stuff.  If I can get my code completely debugged and running well on time, that is...  :)

I need the distraction anyway.  Today is my father's birthday, so it has been a hard day for me.  He passed away unexpectedly a little over a year ago, and I really miss him. 

I am really looking forward to the Gordon conference.  Vince and I will be on our way up to Maine in less than two weeks now!  Vince has never been to New England, so I am looking forward to showing him some tidbits of my lovely home area while we are there.  Who knows what sort of trouble we will get into when we are not attending sessions?  :)

Fireflies and Summer Rain

June is the month for fireflies (also called lightning bugs) here in Virginia.  Because of this, I love sitting out on my front step in the darkness of the evenings and watching the flashes of greenish light as the bugs fly around the yard.  There are hundreds and hundreds of them that fly around the little forest around my house.  It is easy for me to understand how stories about faeries and pixies came into being when I watch them.  The forest looks absolutely magical as these glowing creatures flit about, especially in the small grove of tall bamboo that grows in one section of my patch of woods. 

Back at my home in New Hampshire, thousands of these little fireflies congregate in the fields and forests of the old family farm each summer, and are absolutely spectacular to watch each night.  It is as though you are watching a starry night sky, only the stars are constantly in motion.  There is a marshy little wetland full of cattails at one end of one of the fields, and in the evenings as the sun sets in the summertime, a thick mist emerges from around the marsh and rolls across the field, enveloping all the fireflies in a thick and mysterious blanket of mist.  If you are looking out at the field at night, you can see thousands of flashes of light in the mist.  It is absolutely magical, and it feels as though you were watching a faery dance unfolding before your eyes.  Sometimes, you can also catch the movements of the deer on the edge of the woods, which just adds to the enchantment.

This weekend, I attempted to take some pictures of the fireflies around my little cottage, but to no avail.  The automatic point-and-shoot features of the digital camera I am using completely thwarted me.   I am going to take some rather lengthy timed exposures with my beloved Nikon in the next few days if I have the chance, but since that will be on film, and I am somewhat sporadic with getting film developed promptly (I was much better about that when I developed my own), the photographs will not be posted for a while.  So everyone will have just to believe me that the fireflies are amazing around my home right now, especially those of you who who are unfortunate enough to miss out on them since they are very rare in the Western part of the USA.

Since I could not manage to capture any frames of the glowing fireflies, I will post some photographs that I took of the summer flowers that are blooming around my home right now.  It rained on Sunday afternoon, and after the shower had passed, I went out and photographed the blooms with the raindrops still on them.  The rain somehow perfectly accents the vibrancy of these summer flowers.  The dazzlingly pink geranium in one of the pictures was given to my by my parents and guards my front step along with a potted English ivy given to me by Gary.

Perhaps by next week I will have some pictures of the fireflies!  However, even if I do not manage to capture their ethereal little flashes on film, I will happily enjoy watching them throughout the evenings.

Sailing on the York River

Yesterday, I had the wonderful opportunity to go sailing on the York River!  Greg, the Jefferson Lab Hall C staff scientist who has the office right across the hallway from mine, has a sailboat that he takes out onto the York River to enjoy the winds and race against a group of his friends who also have sailboats.  I have been interesting in trying this out, so I have been bugging him to take me sailing.  So, yesterday, he invited me to come along!  I was really excited about it (poor Vipuli had to endure me grinning about it all day).

At the end of the day, we zipped out to the slip and got everything ready to go.  As we motored down the creek out to the river, I watched all the herons and egrets fishing in the waters of the marshes the surrounded the creek.  The birds were absolutely lovely to watch, so graceful as they waded along the shoreline.  There were also ospreys everywhere.  Large osprey nests crowned the tops of every post that marked the boat channel in the creek.  Most of the nests had an occupant in them, so the birds would squawk at us as we passed by the channel markers bearing their nests.  They were really cool.  Later in the day, I even saw one flying along carrying a fish that it had just caught.

Once we got onto the river, we met up with Greg's friend Paul, and the race began.  We had a little trouble at first to get through the markers that designated the start of our course, but once we were through, we were zipping along splendidly.  The wind was lovely, and I got to experience how wonderful it is when the boat heels over at a steep angle.  I loved it!  It was so much fun!  I took this picture of Paul in his boat at a point when we were leading in the race.

At one point while we were zipping along, I took this picture of Greg's son, Sean, as he clung to the boat.  :)  We were having a great time!

After we rounded the marker that designated the end of the first leg of the race, Paul took the lead for a bit.  After we passed the second marker and started on the last leg of the race, both boats were very close.  We managed to just squeak past Paul at the last minute to slip through the markers that designated the finish line.  It was really exhilarating!  We headed back out (for our victory lap!), and Greg let me try my hand at sailing for a while.   He taught me a bunch of cool stuff about it, and then took a moment to take some photographs of me at the tiller.  In one of the photos, I am looking up at the little arrow on top of the mast that tells me which was the wind is blowing.  Sean and I are clearly having a good time!

It was a really great day.  It was sunset when we came in and docked the boat, so we all headed to Greg's home to have supper with Greg's lovely wife Claudia.  After supper, Sean and his twin brother Garrett completely obliterated me playing Halo 2, even though their older brother Ryan tried to rescue me at one point.  I don't feel too bad about it though, since I had never played Halo 2 before and have not played the original Halo in ages.  However, I will make sure that I practice before playing with them again!  Or better yet, I'll invite them to play with me in one of my favorite games....  :)

All in all, it was a great day (even though my hands were a little sore from tugging on all of those ropes).  I loved the sailing!  I can really see why people get addicted to this activity.  I'll close with a photograph that Sean took of me during the race.  Paul's sailboat is visible beside me, and you can just see Greg behind me.   Maybe I'll bug Greg to go again soon!  :)

The Poster Results Are In...

This morning, the results of the SURA poster competition were announced and I was so excited when my name was called out for the first-place prize!  :)  I am so happy about it!  I have been grinning so much today that my facial muscles are starting to get tired.  I couldn't wait to send an email message to the other G0 graduate students to tell them the wonderful news (they were happy too).  Jianglai and I went out to lunch to celebrate this afternoon.  It has been a great day.  Yay!

I was so excited about it all that it took me a while before I could concentrate on the two-photon exchange talks that went on this afternoon. :)

The second-place prize went to another William and Mary graduate student, my friend Chris Tennant, whose poster about beam breakup in the FEL (Free Electron Laser) I had been admiring during the poster session since it hung on the other side of the poster board from mine.  The third-place prize was shared by my friends Tanja Horn (a Hall C graduate student from the University of Maryland) and Peter Monaghan (a Hall A graduate student from MIT).  The SURA thesis prize this year went to Karl Slifer.  So, there were quite a few very happy people!  :)

The members of the G0 collaboration have been sending emails of congratulations, which makes me feel really good.  It is really fun to have so many cool people around! 

Annual Users Meeting and the Poster Contest

The Annual Users Meeting is going on at Jefferson Lab right now.  This meeting is made up of talks and workshops about the research going on at Jefferson Lab, as well as planned experiments for the future 12 GeV upgrade of the accelerator here.  I have been going to lots of talks, but there is just too much information to absorb everything.  The new G0 results have been talked about quite a bit at this meeting, which quite exciting for me!

Yesterday was also pretty interesting since the poster session was last night from 6:00 - 8:00pm during the evening reception.   I was pretty enthusiastic about it, which was a really good thing, since my poster was very popular.  Lots and lots of people wanted to talk about G0, so I was kept amazingly busy all night.  Unfortunately, that meant that by the time the judges came by, I was getting pretty tired.  My poster was in the last part of those they were judging, so I am sure that they were getting tired too.  The judging was actually somewhat intimidating.  The four judges (who are all cool people, by the way) surrounded me in a semicircle and then told me how this would go.  I would have two minutes to explain the poster, and I would need to explain it as though I happened to be in an elevator with the person who would be granting the funding for my project and I needed to make my case and convince him or her that this was worth giving the money for.  Then, they would ask tricky questions.  So, I enthusiastically went for it and explained my poster (with 10 seconds to spare!!) and then tackled their questions.  I think that I did pretty well, despite the fact that I was getting tired and the format of the judging was not anything like I had expected (although I am not sure what I was expecting, since they had 25 of these posters to get through).  Admittedly, I am not sure how they will make the decision.  There were quite a few excellent posters there, and I know that the people defending them were really clever and knowledgeable.  Even so, I think that I did quite well, so I am hopeful!  The results are announced on Wednesday morning, so we shall see then...  :)

Throughout the poster session Jianglai (one of the other G0 graduate students and my good friend) stayed nearby and helped me with the huge volume of people that came by to talk about G0.  Without him, my voice would have been gone by the time the judges got there.  We had a pretty good system going for a while where he stood on one side and I stood on the other, so we could easily talk to smaller groups at the same time.  I think that it would be good way of presenting any posters, and I also think that we made a really good team.  He also hung around and gave me moral support after the judges came by.  Thanks Jianglai!!  You are so cool!!  Here is picture of Jianglai and I in Hall C right after the physics run ended (taken by my friend Stephanie).  That is the G0 magnet right behind us.  We are pretty happy; after all, we have our thesis data!

Mark was also giving a poster (in fact, he was telling me that one of the questions that he kept getting asked was "Where is the G0 poster?"), as was Vince and several of my other friends.  I did not have the chance to take many pictures of what was going on, but Claire was circulating around taking pictures, so hopefully she was able to get some good ones.   Mark and Claire are heading back to South Africa very early in the morning (on Tuesday), so they will miss the announcement of the winners, unfortunately.  I have been teasing Mark that if he wins a prize, I am going to go and claim his money...  :)

After the poster session ended (Mark's poster was the last one judged), a group of my friends (Mark, Claire, Vince, John, and Rolf (our own Hall C leader)) and I went out to have some drinks and hang out.  We had a great time laughing about stuff and unwinding after such a busy day.   I am sad that Mark and Claire are already heading back to their country, but hopefully they will be able to come back again soon. 

We will see what happens on Wednesday!  :)

 

Letter Update

This weekend, I received another letter in response to the flurry of letters that I sent out in May concerning the proposed funding cuts for the physical sciences.  This letter came from the office of Congresswoman Jo Ann Davis.   I wonder if I will receive any more?  I am enjoying getting the letters in response!

At the Annual Users Meeting last night, Gordon Cates asked me if I would be willing to actually go and talk to the decision makers about the excitement of physics research.  I think that it would be a really fun and interesting experience, so I agreed.  We will see what I have gotten myself into now...  :)

G0 In the News...

My thesis experiment is now the first thing you see on Jefferson Lab's webpage!  That is pretty cool!  If you click on the story, it takes you to the news release at Jlab, which has links to a bunch of other press releases about the G0 experiment.  Cool!  :)

Lovely Day

This has been a really lovely day!  Not only are the results of my thesis experiment now released, but I have finished and printed my lovely poster on the big poster printers in the document control group's rooms in the ARC building at Jlab.  It is a relief to have it all done and ready for the poster session and competition at the Annual Users Group Meeting on Monday evening.  All the comments that I received from the other members of the G0 collaboration about the poster were very positive.  I am encouraged about this; hopefully the judges will like it too!  I think that it is lovely.  :)  This is a picture of it drying, along with a lot of other people's posters.

The only bad part of my day came when another physicist disagreed with the uncertainty that Dave and I assigned to the polarization measurements for G0.  It is fine that he disagreed (such discussions often lead to improvements), but he was very unreasonable about it and would not listen to a thing I said about it.  He was very rude in that regard.  I was upset about it, but talking to Dave and Doug about it made me feel better.  No matter where one goes, there are always unreasonable people, not to mention that everyone has their unreasonable moments!  I am resolved not to let it bother me.

The Graduate Student Association picnic/cookout that I have been organizing all week also went very well.  Lots of graduate students and post-docs showed up to enjoy all of the yummy food and hang out out with their other friends at the lab.  I had a bit of a panic when the guy that was going to be the grill-master backed out only a few hours before the picnic, but Victor stepped in and took on the chef's hat.  Despite the fact that the grill was being very contrary, Victor grilled the food with flair.  Here is a picture of him at the grill surrounded by friends.

I also ended up taking a picture of a guy who was absolutely insistent that I take his picture for some reason.   I tried to explain that I was not taking pictures for the GSA, but he wanted a photograph taken, so I did.  :)   It turned out really well, so here is the photo.  Maybe he will find it on this page and save a copy for himself!

Ameya took a picture of me at one point in the picnic.  I look a bit tired, which is not surprising given everything that I was doing that day.

I had a great time hanging out with Claire and Mark and all the other graduate students during the picnic.  Hopefully, Claire was able to take more photographs than I was able to take, and will post them on her webdiary.  I think that everyone really enjoyed it.  I learned some things to do differently next time, but I think that it was a big success, especially for my first time organizing an event of this size.  I extend my thanks to the other GSA officers and all the others that helped in the clean up after the picnic!  :)

The G0 Results are Out!

Today was the big day!  This morning the spokesperson of my experiment (Doug Beck) gave a seminar at Jefferson Lab that showed our results for the forward-angle part of the measurement to the community outside of the G0 collaboration.  I was really excited about the seminar, and I thought that it went well and that the results were well received.  It is very exciting to see all that hard work pay off as everyone else finally gets to see what we have measured!   The results from the G0 experiment indicate that strange quarks in the proton's quark-gluon sea do contribute to the proton's properties (this has been hinted at by other experiments such as the HAPPEX ones as well).  This is a really intriguing result, so I sure that it will generate quite a bit of interest in the community.  Now that the results are public, I can finally talk to my friends outside of the collaboration about them!

The paper has been submitted to Physical Review Letters (one of the physics journals) today, and also to the e-print arXiv.  Once it appears there, I will post a link to the paper here.  Jefferson Lab also had a press release about the experiment today!

Below I have placed a photograph of some of the happy members of the G0 collaboration at the end of the physics running last May.  We all look quite happy!  :)

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Update from Monday, June 20, 2005

Here is the link to the pre-print paper for anyone who is interested!