Dear Physics Community,

I hope you all had a restful Thanksgiving Day yesterday.

Just after we sent last week’s message, we learned form Ike Chuang that Gabe Mintzer, ‘200, had been critically injured in a hit and run accident and had been unconscious for more than two weeks.  Just yesterday, we heard form Karna Morey that Gabe had regained consciousness, which is very good news.  His family is here in Boston to help Gabe with his recovery and they had his friends have set up a Give in Kind site here for anyone who wants to help.  The Department wishes Gabe a speedy recovery.

Here’s the best thing about the present moment I’ve seen.

Peter

Announcements 

• on Thursday, December 2 at 4:00 pm in 10-250, just prior to the start of next week’s Colloquium talk, we will hold a short ceremony to recognize a number of our graduate students for awards they were named to at the end of spring 2021.   We will be recognizing five students for achievements in teaching or research, and seven students for meritorious service to the Physics Department.We hope that many of you will choose to be present in 10-250 for this brief ceremony preceding the talk by Ana Maria Rey of JILA/NIST, which is being sponsored by our Graduate Womxn in Physics group, with Sarah Geller serving as individual host.
• Grateful for  new GOAT: Scott Hughes
• Air Force Office of Scientific Research Talk 12/6 2-3 pm Harvard, details here
• Nonproliferation and National Security student opportunities at Brookhaven National Lab here
• Funding opportunity from the Open Research Association here

Dear Physics Community,

Our budget request went to the Dean’s office last week.  In response to our solicitation, we received about 30 thoughtful suggestions from all over the Department.  We consolidated many of them into items in our request, and we will meet with the School of Science this week to discuss our request.  We may be asked to make revisions and then resubmit our budget that will go to the Provost.  We will hear Provost’s decisions in February or March for the budget year that starts July 1, 2022.

I will produce a list of all the suggestions we received and let the community know which ones went forward in the next two weeks (I have a trip coming up next week).  Having the list will be helpful as other funding opportunities arise.  Thank you to our students, postdocs, staff, and faculty for their participation.

In the meantime, much is going on, the days are getting shorter, and the holidays approach…

Peter

Physics

• MIT News: Simulating Galaxies from Mark Vogelsberger here
• MicroBOONE results from Janet Conrad and Or Hen summary paper here, four other supporting papers referenced in the summary
• Mysterious waves from the center of the galaxy
• New measurement of the neutron lifetime

Dear Physics Community,

We are now at the peak of Fall with beautiful days – when it is not raining.  Deer Island’s waste water analysis continues to provide interesting results: in the post-vaccine/delta variant epoch, from late summer until now, the mRNA rate have varied by a factor of two with a period of about 40 days (five full cycles in about two months).  Deer island samples the Northern and Southern areas separately and the South runs about a week ahead of the North.  This could be catchment transit times.  Something interesting to ponder…

Peter

Above the Fold

• Phil and Erik’s Accelerated AI Algorithms for Data-Driven Discovery (A3D3) Institute

Announcements

• Air Force summer scholars program
• Post-doctoral position at Berkeley here
• Monday COVID call slides

Physics

• Quantum Kelvin-Helmhotz instabilities from Martin and Richard F. here
• Quanta article on neutrino anomalies with Janet here