The latest of the now traditional Rencontres du Vietnam, organized by Trân Than Vân, took place in Hanoi last summer. Some 200 participants from all over the world attended, including a conspicuous number of Vietnamese physicists. The conference on Physics at Extreme Energies was held in the Horizon Hotel in central Hanoi, one of the new hotels signalling the rapid economic development of Vietnam. The change was especially evident to participants who were present at the first event of the series in 1993.
Two Nobel prizewinners, Jerome Friedman (who gave a very successful public talk entitled “Are we made of quarks?”) and Norman Ramsey, attended. The packed programme covered all of the most significant recent results in particle physics and cosmology.
Roberto Peccei (UCLA) gave the introductory talk on the fundamental energy scales in particle physics and in the universe. Highlights of the meeting included the recent breakthroughs in the measurement of cosmological parameters; the results of experiments on neutrino oscillations; the latest news from LEP (especially on the search for the Higgs particle and for new physics); and the review of the indications for quark-gluon plasma in heavy-ion collisions. Also of interest were the updates on flavour physics, with the results on CP violation in K decay and the start of the BaBar and Belle “beauty factories” that will unveil CP violation in B decays; and the summaries on the status of such diverse fields as QCD, electroweak theory, quantum gravity, astrophysics and cosmic rays.
Nguyên Van Hiêu, chairman of the local organizing committee, described the development and present status of physics in Vietnam. The concluding talks, one on experiment and one on theory, were given by Pierre Darriulat (formerly of CERN and now a distinguished professor at Hanoi) and Guido Altarelli of CERN. Away from the science, concerts of Vietnamese music were organized, introduced and explained by talented musicologist Tran Van Khe, who has become a feature of the whole series of Rencontres.
Since the first Rencontres meeting in Hanoi in December 1993, an international school in theoretical physics has been held there annually. This attracts not only Vietnamese scientists, but also those from the Association of South East Asian Nations, China and Bangladesh. The seventh such school was held last year under the direction of Patrick Aurenche (Annecy).
In September 1994 Jim Cronin (Chicago) and Alan Watson (Leeds) were invited to look at the possibility of including a Vietnamese group in the international Pierre Auger high-energy cosmic-ray collaboration. For three years now a group led by Vo Van Thuan has been part of this project. Its activities have increased, thanks to the arrival of former CERN physicist Pierre Darriulat, who plays an important role in directing the research of the group.
An advanced technology school, directed by Jean Badier of the Ecole Polytechnique, began in 1996, just after the second Vietnam Rencontres. The first two such schools focused on the physics of silicon, while the latest two covered electrochemical sensors to measure water quality. During this year’s summer meeting, numerous new contacts were made between local laboratories and international research centres. A collaboration between physicists from Ho Chi Minh City and Fermilab is under study to enable Vietnamese scientists to work in major groups at Fermilab.
An important aspect of these meetings is the enthusiasm that they generate among young scientists. Since 1995, talented Vietnamese students have entered the entry exams for the prestigious Paris Ecole Polytechnique. About 20 of them are currently studying there, and many others are attending French and US universities.
Basic science does not usually have immediate benefits for industry or the economic world in general, and
delays in visible return are often difficult to reconcile with the short-term expectations of market-driven activities.
However, during the last decade the jobs that have been generated by start-up companies have injected extra liquidity into a once stagnant labour market. Since the early 1970s, universities and their incubator schemes, particularly in the US, have been supporting young entrepreneurs. This new culture has led to the establishment of a large number of start-up companies. However, the gold rush aspects of such mass migration can also have negative implications.
Aspects of this new scene were reflected in a Basic Science and Entrepreneurship workshop that was held during the recent IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference in Lyon, France, and organized by François Bourgeois, CERN; Alan Jeavons, Oxford Positron Systems (UK); Yves Jongen, Ion Beam Applications (Belgium); and Gert Muehllehner, UGM (US).
The workshop aimed to highlight the factors that are necessary for success in entrepreneurship and the best practices to be adopted in the research and development environment. During a session entitled “The do’s and the don’ts of entrepreneurship”, five founders of spin-off companies reported on the problems they faced when developing their businesses. In addition to the well known problems – establishment of a business plan, funding, marketing and growth – the panel discussion gave useful indications on requirements of particular relevance to scientist-entrepreneurs: to match a high-tech product with market and customer needs; to team up with third parties knowledgeable in business and administration (e.g. local business schools); and to know how to produce a business plan.
As Muehllehner said: “To succeed, the scientist-entrepreneur needs to have a finished product, an established market, a team of people (finance, marketing and sales) and a source of money. Failing to have one of these [means] the chance of success drops to 80%; failing to have two [means] it is only 25%; and don’t even start if you’re missing more than two.”
During the session entitled “How to turn a scientist into an entrepreneur”, representatives of major research and development laboratories and European institutes presented their most recent initiatives. The oral presentations gave special attention to training actions, support given to entrepreneurs (identification of nascent technologies, intellectual property, seed capital and funding), and measures aimed at fostering a more entrepreneurial spirit.
Panel discussions agreed that there was substantial value in the direct exploitation of technology as compared to licensing. The need to foster an entrepreneurial spirit among scientists and their evident willingness to transfer technology was also examined. The raising of their awareness of the value of intellectual property and of exploiting its worth, together with the need for networking with other entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, were seen as key measures likely to foster a change of culture, at least in Europe.
If science knows no geographical frontiers, then its parliaments too need to be international. One such platform is the Global Science Forum (GSF) of the influential Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The GSF, the successor to the OECD’s Megascience Forum, which was established in 1992, has set up working groups in several specialist areas, in which particle physics has always featured prominently.
A GSF meeting in London on 13-15 April 2000 agreed to form a Consultative Group to advise the GSF on charting a “roadmap” for high-energy physics over the coming 20-30 years to prepare the way for new large facilities.
The group’s membership of active physicists and scientific administrators represents OECD member states and also non-member states that have an active high-energy physics programme.
At the London meeting, the group was mandated to consider both accelerator- and non-accelerator-based experimental and theoretical particle physics, plus particle astrophysics, and to report to the GSF in mid-2002.
The GSF initiative has come during a period of rapid innovation in high-energy physics. The Large Hadron Collider is now being constructed at CERN with a collision energy seven times that of the Fermilab Tevatron. Japan, the US and Europe have all developed plans for the construction of a 0.5-1 TeV electron-positron linear collider. The physics case for such a collider is strong and complements that of the LHC. However, the construction costs of such a machine are high.
At the same time, new accelerator ideas have prompted promising R&D on muon storage rings and the resultant creation of intense neutrino beams. At higher energies, R&D on a multi-TeV electron-positron linear collider (CLIC) is continuing, and R&D is starting on muon colliders and higher-energy hadron colliders. In parallel, the marriage of astrophysics and particle physics at both the experimental and the theoretical level is resulting in a significant programme.
First meeting
Approximately 50 delegates attended the first meeting of the Consultative Group at DESY, Hamburg, on 9-11 November 2000, which was chaired by Ian Corbett of the UK. The meeting was also attended by observers from CERN; the various Asian, US, European and international high-energy physics communities (the Asian Committee for Future Accelerators, ACFA; the US High Energy Physics Advisory Panel, HEPAP; the European Committee for Future Accelerators ECFA; and the International Committee for Future Accelerators, ICFA); the particle astrophysics branch of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP-PANAGIC); and the European Union. Future meetings of the group will be held at CERN, in Japan and in the US before the group reports to the GSF.
The meeting at DESY was especially relevant because of the proposed construction of a 500-800 GeV electron positron superconducting linear collider (TESLA) by an international collaboration in which DESY plays a central role. Following an introduction by Hermann-Friedrich Wagner of the German delegation, and a physics perspective by Brian Foster (Bristol), DESY director Albrecht Wagner described in detail the planning and prototype activities of the project. In particular, he showed impressive results achieved by the collaboration on the development of high-gradient accelerator cavities as part of the Tesla Test Facility (TTF2). This will be used as a high-intensity X-ray source from 2003 (the SASE FEL project; see Towards the ultimate X-ray source:the X-ray laser ). Wagner announced the submission in March of a Technical Design Report for consideration by the German Government, and he expressed ideas on how such a machine might be built (in particular, involving a Global Accelerator Network of national laboratories in the construction of the machine; see Accelerators to span the globe).
Peter Rosen from the US Department of Energy (DOE) pointed out the impressive new particle and nuclear physics facilities coming on line in the US (the upgraded TeV2 proton-antiproton collider at Fermilab; the B factory at SLAC, Stanford; and Brookhaven’s RHIC heavy ion collider) and the need to exploit these facilities. He noted ongoing R&D towards a high-energy electron-positron linear collider, towards the development of muon storage rings and hadron colliders beyond the LHC (VLHC). He said that the US community would discuss future perspectives at a Workshop in Snowmass in June-July, to be followed by an HEPAP panel that would report to the DOE and National Science Foundation later this year.
Long-term health
Ger van Middelkoop (NIKHEF), expressing the viewpoint of smaller European nations that have an active high energy physics activity, emphasized the importance of CERN to the long-term health of both European and international particle physics.
Noting the increasing international character of Japanese activities (the KEK B-Factory and the K2K neutrino project in Japan; LEP and the LHC at CERN; and CDF at Fermilab), Sakue Yamada (KEK) described the major accelerator R&D in Japan towards a high-energy electron-positron linear collider design using the Accelerator Test Facility (ATF) at KEK. He emphasized the importance of input from the physics communities before reaching decisions on the construction of the next accelerator facility.
Finally, Kurt Hübner from CERN described longer-term R&D towards CLIC, a CERN design for a multi-TeV electron-positron linear collider, and collaborations with other European laboratories on R&D towards a muon storage ring and intense neutrino beam. He also noted studies towards upgrading the intensity and/or energy of LHC beams.
In the following discussion there was vigorous support for increasing the R&D expenditure on accelerator technologies. There was also a strong plea to maintain some regional competition in the development of promising physics and accelerator programmes. Owing to the overlapping R&D activities in Europe, the US and Japan towards a 0.5-1 TeV electron-positron linear collider design, and with parties in each region pushing to build such a machine, “bottom-up” assessments of the high-energy physics situation have been requested. Reports from these bodies are expected during 2001. In particular, ECFA:
is sponsoring an ECFA-DESY working group on physics and detectors at an electron-positron linear collider that will form part of the Technical Design Report for TESLA;
is supporting a series of European R&D initiatives towards a muon storage ring and intense neutrino beam complex;
has formed a working group chaired by Lorenzo Foà on the future of accelerator-based high-energy physics activities in Europe.
The working group, with its membership representing the different CERN member states, has been requested to reach a European physicist consensus on a roadmap for accelerator-based particle physics beyond LHC, as well as the infrastructure required and the R&D still needed. The group expects to be in a position to complete its report in in the middle of this year. At the same time, ICFA has created subgroups to study the technical and organizational issues related to Wagner’s Global Accelerator Network of accelerator construction.
The PANAGIC subgroup of IUPAP has recently reported to IUPAP the progress in charting its roadmap outlining key activities, and this was distributed by PANAGIC chairman Alessandro Bettini.
The GSF consultative group also set up a small subgroup to work with the OECD on the organizational and sociological issues of a “world laboratory”, and data will be collected on the funding and governmental policies of participating countries. These studies, together with the reports of ICFA, ECFA, ACFA, HEPAP and PANAGIC, will provide the major input to the consultative group.
CERN is fortunate to have a major accelerator project, the LHC, under active construction. This will take particle physics into a new energy regime, where we are confident that it will resolve many of the puzzles raised by the brilliant confirmation of the Standard Model by experiments at LEP and elsewhere. The LHC is the key to the future of high-energy physics and of CERN, and it offers bright prospects to the new generation of young particle physicists.
The LHC is a highly complex project, both technically and organizationally. The accelerator and the detectors involve sophisticated technologies, in many cases on industrial scales never attempted before in a scientific project.
Moreover, the LHC is truly a global project, with contributions to the accelerator from many countries outside Europe, as well as CERN and its member states, posing difficult problems of coordination and planning. One should also not forget that the long-term plan approved in 1996 left CERN with a reduced budget and no adequate contingency for the LHC.
There have already been unforeseeable delays in the civil engineering for the LHC. The industrialization of the successful prototype magnet technologies remains a challenge, and there are undoubtedly many more obstacles ahead.
Nonetheless, the LHC project is progressing steadily, contracts for a large fraction of subsystems have been adjudicated on schedule, and I consider it one of my primary responsibilities as director-general of CERN to further it as best I can, and, as the doctors vow, avoid doing it any harm.
Weighing the implications
Over the past two years, dedicated work by CERN’s accelerator staff and the installation of advanced LHC cryogenics made it possible to run LEP at energies greater than design, and for one year longer than originally planned.
When data from LEP in the first part of 2000 revealed hints of new physics, the CERN management extended its run twice, in all from mid-September to the beginning of November, after first reassuring itself that these extensions would have no significant impact on the LHC. I was delighted to hear that the rapid and innovative combination of data from the four LEP experiments by their joint Higgs working group found that these early hints were strengthened, with the most likely interpretation being a Higgs boson weighing about 115 GeV.
In parallel with these extensions of the LEP run, the CERN directorate commissioned a study of the possible implications for the LHC, if LEP were to run in 2001. Two aspects needed to be considered. The LHC will be housed in the same tunnel as LEP, and the dismantling of LEP and modifications to the tunnel to accommodate the LHC are on the critical path. Also, the staff required for the operation of LEP would not be transferred as foreseen to LHC construction. Several ingenious ways to reschedule part of the essential work were tried, but finally we came to the conclusion that the LHC would inevitably be delayed by about a year if LEP was to run a full year in 2001.
Extra cost
There were also financial and personnel problems with a further LEP extension. It would have required around 100 million Swiss francs (about 40 million in running costs, and the rest in penalties for civil engineering contracts that are difficult to quantify a priori, additional expenses for rescheduling, etc).
I was grateful to see that some CERN delegations were willing to consider providing their share of these extra costs, but the bulk would inevitably have been borne by the regular CERN budget. Thus I came equally reluctantly to the conclusion that an LEP extension would be a major squeeze on the resources needed for the LHC project.
Projections of the signal seen at LEP in 2000 indicated that a year’s running might not lead to a conclusive result, particularly if the mass of the Higgs boson was in the upper part of the indicated range, namely around 116 GeV. This reflects the fact that the signal is seen at the very end of the LEP energy range.
To put this region under real scrutiny would require a significant energy increase, which in turn implies significant further expense and a prolongation of at least a two years, one year being approximately the time needed for the industrial production of new accelerating cavities. That would have led to a major disruption of the LHC project.
Putting all of these reasons together, and after consultation with the scientific committees, my colleagues in the CERN directorate and I became convinced that running LEP in the year 2001 would put the LHC under unacceptable pressure, and we decided that the CERN programme should not be changed to accommodate it. This decision had to be taken rapidly, precisely so as not to impact on the LHC schedule. I appreciated the efforts of the scientific review committees, which provided their advice and presented vigorously a variety of views, under the pressure of time.
Unlike the running of LEP in the year 2000, the issue of whether one should prolong LEP in 2001 divided the community and the scientific committees, and no consensus solution could be proposed. CERN management eventually cut the Gordian knot in favour of the LHC.
I understand the frustration and sadness of those who feel that they had the Higgs boson within their grasp, and fear that it may be years before their work can be confirmed.
Nevertheless, I am convinced that the best way forward for particle physics is the LHC. A Higgs boson as light as 115 GeV is most likely the signal of a rich supersymmetric particle spectrum at low energy, and the LHC will be the ideal instrument to put CERN and the physics community in a position to explore fully the new frontier in particle physics, which we may have glimpsed through the fascinating LEP events.
I hope that the high-energy physics community will join us in working wholeheartedly towards this exciting and challenging goal.
It is with pity and anguish that I see Students and seekers of the Greatest Good Fail yet again to strike where it may be So begins an epic verse penned in 1590 in Pisa, not by poet Francesco Berni, who defined the rhythmic style of the poem, nor by Pisa’s Cardinal Antonio Pozzi, but by his contemporary, Galileo Galilei. To those familiar only with Galileo’s scientific work, the fact that he also composed poetry might come as something of a revelation. That he should begin by talking of the greatest good even more so. Yet the subject-matter of this work was close to the young scientist’s heart, as soon becomes apparent in Giovanni Bignami’s wonderful English translation.
Bignami, head of science at the Italian Space Agency, is a master of modern English. With this work he has gone one step further by translating the poem into the English of Shakespeare, and Berni’s rhythmic form into iambic pentameter. Moreover, as Bignami himself points out, the challenge of translating poetry from a language with 7 vowel sounds to one with 52 was daunting in its own right. But Bignami has succeeded spectacularly. The translation reads with fluid clarity, and the humour is as intact as can be expected after its journey through time and language.
It is a few pages in that we begin to learn what stirred Galileo to put pen to paper: I now conclude, and turn to you, signor, And force you to confess, against your will, The Greatest Good will be all clothes to abhor
As a young lecturer in Pisa, Galileo railed against a system in which he was obliged to wear his academic gown at all times, on pain of heavy fines, and this poem is his response. His technique is to take the very idea of wearing – or rather not wearing – clothes to its logical conclusion and to propose, tongue firmly planted in cheek, that we do as the beasts do and go naked.
Hilarious and profoundly irreverent consequences rapidly ensue as Galileo examines, for example, the potential repercussions for matchmaking and marriage.
Moon Books of Milan has given the translation a fitting treatment by producing a volume using the materials and techniques of the time. It is rare to find a book of such beauty as the company’s calf-bound limited edition printed on hand-made paper and lavishly illustrated with original drawings by Donata Almici. It is even rarer to find such a treat in store on opening the cover, and it would be a great shame if Prof. Bignami’s efforts, and indeed those of Galileo, were limited to the 2000 copies produced by Moon Books. Prof. Bignami is seeking a mainstream publisher to produce a more affordable edition. Here’s hoping that he succeeds.
selected and edited by StanleyJeffers, Bo Lehnert, Nils Abramson and Lev Chebotarev, Apeiron, ISBN 0 9683689 5 6.
This is a festschrift for the 80th birthday of a physicist whose non-conformist political and scientific views have made his long life a continual uphill struggle. Vigier’s close collaborators have included Louis de Broglie and David Bohm. The book is a collection of Vigier’s papers with a short biographical introduction by Jeffers and a scientific overview by Chebotarev.
(mainly in Russian) edited by G Merzon, Moscow, 335pp, pbk.
This book surveys the career of Armenian physicist academician Artem Alikhanian (1908-1978), including his initial work at the Leningrad Physical and Technical Institute; the first expedition to Mount Aragats in Armenia to establish a centre for cosmic-ray studies; the foundation of the Yerevan Physics Institute and the years of his directorship (1943-1973); the construction of one of the world’s largest electron ring accelerators at the time, the 6 GeV Yerevan machine; his pioneering use of X-ray transition radiation as an important tool in particle detection; and the application of crystals for the formation of polarized beams of electrons and photons. Despite this illustrious history, the institute is unfortunately suffering serious difficulties owing to inadequate funding and the uncertainty of its civic status.
Contributors to the book are close friends, colleagues and former colleagues of Alikhanian, including A Amatuni, L Artsimovich, T Asatiani, M Daion, B Dolgoshein, V Dzhelepov, V Goldansky, A Migdal, L Okun, W Panofsky and R Wilson.
Alikhanian’s notable scientific achievements, his versatile intellect and wide culture brought him recognition among the international physics community. In their reminiscences, Panofsky and Wilson wrote: “We wish he was still with us during this time when Armenians, Russians, Americans and other people of the world are collaborating in many activities in high energy physics.”
The publication was supported in part by the Lebedev Institute of Physics, Moscow, Russia; the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation, Armenia; and the Yerevan Physics Institute.
An 18 minute video entitled The ATLAS Experiment has been declared overall winner of the 2000 MIF-Sciences Scientific Film Box Office contest.
The award-winning film explains how more than 1800 physicists from 35 countries are working on the ATLAS detector for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. It gives a glimpse behind the scenes of building a technological edifice that measures 45 m long and 22 m high, and is made up of millions of components with a precision of one-hundredth of a millimetre.
Will all of the physicists who teamed up to construct this apparatus eventually be able to answer such fundamental questions as: Where does mass come from? Why does the universe have so little antimatter? Is there an underlying theory?
Members of the ATLAS experiment’s Education/Outreach Committee developed the concept of a film for both the general public and students that would describe the physics motivations, the process by which 1800 people from all over the world go about building such a complex detector, and the accelerator that would both deliver and collide beams of protons.
Committee members prepared a detailed outline for the film and hired a professional director from the Netherlands. At various stages the participating members and ATLAS management evaluated progress and provided input. Funding came from nine countries: the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the US.
The film, which combines live footage and animation, was designed to be translated into many languages, so there are two sound tracks – one with ambient sounds and the other for the narration (provided by each country). The various language versions will be linked from the ATLAS site in the near future and eventually collected onto a DVD. The film is currently available as a videotape, as a CD-ROM and on the Web.
The 10 year collaboration between RIKEN, the Japanese Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, and the UK Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) to create an intense muon source has been renewed for another 10 years. There are also plans to continue development and expansion of the joint facility.
The first large-scale scientific partnership between the UK and Japan, it develops and exploits a world-class muon facility at the RAL Isis pulsed neutron and muon source.
Isis is the world’s most intense source of pulsed muons. Muons can be used to explore matter at the microscopic scale, acting as implanted “spies” to help to understand better the internal workings of materials. Such information can help to develop new materials for specific applications. Muons are also used for fundamental physics studies and possible energy production via muon catalysed fusion.
A further £2 million investment will see expansion of the muon source for the development of new methods to increase the effectiveness of muons for analysing matter.
The Journal of High Energy Physics is a scientific journal that is written, run and distributed electronically. First published in July 1997, it is now established as one of the leading journals in the field.
On-line publication is made possible through the complete automation of editorial work by means of a software robot, thereby reducing costs and speeding up the procedure. The Journal of High Energy Physics is available via eight nodes that are updated in real time using innovative software. Special multimedia facilities have been added to enhance the Web possibilities.
An electronic journal
With the extensive use of the World Wide Web by the international community of physicists, the Journal of High Energy Physics (JHEP) aims to exploit the new media and take advantage of their innovative qualities – rapid communication, broad diffusion and low cost.
The journal’s initial focus was on theoretical high-energy physics and has now been extended to encompass experimental high-energy physics as well. However, the same model (and the same software robot) will be used to create similar journals in the same field, such as a review journal, as well as in other fields.
As far as research and development are concerned, a new project, begun in February 2000, is now devoted to the development of new-generation software that will be applied to new journals and services. It is directed by Loriano Bonora and Marco Fabbrichesi, JHEP’s creator, and it is financed by the European Union.
The journal has grown enormously, now publishing 12 000 pages a year and still growing. As a consequence of the complexity of operating JHEP and other publications, it is now time to give JHEP a more professional structure. To do so, Hector Rubinstein joins Loriano Bonora and Daniele Amati in the JHEP directorate, thus adding his wide professional experience in academic publishing and emphasizing the international character of the enterprise already witnessed in the editorial and advisory boards.
Moreover, it seems necessary to spread the costs to all users. A typical week sees the journal consulted by 10 000 users from all over the world. At present the costs are paid by the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste and the INFN, and sponsorship is being requested from major research centres. CERN has already accepted the financial and moral commitment.
In parallel with the directorate, JHEP’s distinguished advisory board lays down the scientific policy of the journal. An editorial board of leading scientists in a large number of fields acts as mediator between authors and referees. Selected by an electronic robot, they either referee or assign referees. Unless unforeseen problems develop, they are the final arbiters. If problems arise, they consult the higher boards via the Executive Office.
The running of the journal is assigned to the executive office at SISSA, which is in charge of supervising the functioning of the journal in collaboration with the editorial board. The executive office monitors the journal daily and intervenes in the event of any problems that may arise. Local system support is provided at each one of the journal nodes.
The JHEP software performs all of the steps in the editorial procedure: submission of papers; assignment to appropriate editors; review by referees; management of the contacts between editors, referees and the executive office; revision, proofreading and publication of papers; and administration of the journal.
Accepted papers are made available on the JHEP Web sites to all interested readers. Editors, referees and authors have their personal Web pages, where they run the editorial procedure or check the status of the papers. The software comprises three major families of scripts. All interfaces with the robot are via e-mail or accessible from a browser (optimized for Netscape Navigator 3.0 or later).
The first family of scripts allows the interaction between JHEP and the scientific community and deals with the publication of papers. The submission procedure is also part of this family of programs. The second script family runs the interface among editors, between editors and referees, and between editors and authors. The third family is in charge of the administration of the journal.
In addition to these scripts, there is a program called Harold that is dedicated to updating in real time the journal’s network of nodes throughout the world (see below). The robot carries out many of the menial tasks that make the running of a scientific journal expensive and slow. This program has been implemented in successive steps and is now fully working. Further upgrades will follow as new possibilities are explored and realized.
Multimedia facilities have been added to enhance the possibilities offered by the Web: powerful search engines replace the table of contents and indexes used by paper journals; and papers, published in three different formats (PDF, PS, DVI), are in hypertext, with links within the articles themselves and to the papers quoted in the references.
To ensure reliability and fast connections, JHEP exists as a network of nodes throughout the world.
All nodes are equivalent. The program Harold has been developed to keep them synchronized. All events taking place at any of the nodes are notified to the other nodes within a matter of minutes. On notification, the nodes execute the corresponding action and are updated accordingly. All transactions are encrypted in order to protect the data.
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