Swiss Post Office produces stamp to commemorate 50 years of CERN...
On 9 March a commemorative stamp dedicated to CERN's 50th anniversary went on sale in post offices and philatelic centres throughout Switzerland. Designed by Swiss artists Christian Stuker and Beat Trummer, the stamp aims to convey the spirit of CERN in an area no larger than 28 by 33 mm. "We wanted to get away from existing CERN imagery and create something symbolic for this anniversary," Christian Stucker explained. The radiating design portrays an opening, a spreading out towards infinity, which reflects CERN's fundamental goals of research and the transmission of knowledge. The Swiss Post Office also issued a "first-day cover", which is an envelope for collectors to receive franked on the first day of issue.
The stamp was unveiled at a press conference at the Geneva Press Club, which announced the programme of events planned to mark CERN's 50th anniversary. Elsa Baxter, head of the Swiss Post Office's Stamps and Philately Unit, said at the press conference: "I am delighted to offer you this special stamp, which commemorates your laboratory's 50 year history and pays tribute to its achievements, its pioneering spirit and its perseverance."
...while Macau's stamps celebrate the Standard Model
Particle-physics themes on stamps are probably more common than you might imagine. The Macau Post Office, China, recently published a set of stamps on "Science and Technology - Standard Model of Particle Physics". The Macau Post Office, which publishes several series of stamps each year, contacted particle physicists in Portugal with a proposal for a series on the Standard Model. Jorge Dias de Deus, Mário Pimenta and Sofia Andringa were involved in the draft design and scientific content, while Daniel Dias was responsible for the design and graphic composition. The final designs give special emphasis to the contributions made by the Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider at CERN. Six stamps for 1.5 patacas illustrate various aspects of the Standard Model: electroweak unification (shown here), symmetry breaking, Higgs diagrams, the three families of quarks and leptons, quantum chromodynamics and grand unification. In addition, a souvenir sheet includes one stamp for 8 patacas that shows the first W+W- pair detected at the LEP in the DELPHI detector.
China and CERN renew co-operation agreement for a further five years
During a visit to CERN on 17 February, Liu Yanhua, the vice-minister of science and technology of the People's Republic of China, signed a new co-operation agreement with the laboratory. The agreement, which is valid for a period of five years and is renewable, lays down the framework for the development of scientific and technological co-operation between CERN and China. This includes China's participation, as a non-member state, in CERN's research projects as well as in its main programmes.
Yanhua's visit included a tour of the test halls for the LHC's superconducting magnets, the assembly hall for CMS, the ATLAS cavern and the CLIC (Compact Linear Collider) test facility.
STELLA days
It was a pleasure to recognize Mervyn Hine standing on the left of the picture in the STELLA project box on page 14 of the March 2004 issue of CERN Courier. STELLA was a pioneering project. An important aim in those days was to test the reliability in the transmission of large volumes of data over long distances, as would soon be required by experiments. Mervyn was responsible for the CERN part of the project. Those who had the privilege of working close to him in one of his many activities at CERN, remember well his prompt wit, his vast culture and his inquisitive, uncompromising mind. His attitude on the photograph is so characteristic of him, almost a signature.
Franco Bonaudi, Commugny, Switzerland.
Lattice 2004, the XXII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory is to be held on 21-26 June at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. For more information, see http://lqcd.fnal.gov/lattice2004.
EPAC 2004, the 9th biennial European Particle Accelerator Conference, will take place on 5-9 July at the Lucerne Congress Centre, Lucerne, Switzerland. The conference is organized by the European Physical Society's Interdivisional Group on Accelerators (EPS-IGA). For further information, see www.epac04.ch.
The 16th Annual Summer Nuclear Institute at TRIUMF, TSI2004, will be held on 15-16 July. The institute will provide short courses in topics in nuclear astrophysics from both a theoretical and experimental point of view. It will also be an excellent introduction to the symposium NIC8, which takes place the following week. Experimental and theoretical physics students are urged to attend. For more information, see www.triumf.ca/snit.
NIC8, the 8th International Symposium on Nuclei in the Cosmos will be held on 19-23 July at TRIUMF in Vancouver, Canada. This conference is the foremost biannual meeting of theoretical and observational astrophysicists, nuclear physicists, cosmochemists and others interested in the creation of energy and elements in the universe. For further details, see www.triumf.ca/nic8/.