April 10, 2008

UT Arlington Public Affairs

News Release
UT Arlington professor named to coordinate U.S. Atlas operations

News Release — 10 April 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media contact: Sue Stevens, (817) 272-3317, sstevens@uta.edu

ARLINGTON—The appointment of University of Texas at Arlington Physics Professor Kaushik De to be the U.S. ATLAS Operations Coordinator became effective April 1. The ATLAS is one of four detectors to be located at a powerful new accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, now under construction near Geneva, in Switzerland. More than 500 physicists, engineers and graduate students from 43 United States institutions participate in the ATLAS collaboration. These scientists represent 39 universities and four Department of Energy national laboratories. The whole ATLAS collaboration includes 1,900 participants from 35 countries.

The announcement noted that De has been leading the ATLAS Monte Carlo production effort on an international scale for several years. He has made several important contributions to the development of ATLAS production systems, most notably PanDA, which has been recently chosen to be the common system for production throughout ATLAS. De will be responsible for coordinating Computing Operations at U.S. Tier 1 and Tier 2 facilities. This includes services required for Monte Carlo production, data re-processing, user analysis, databases, and overall data management. He will also chair the U.S. Resource Allocation Committee.

As the U.S. Operations Coordinator, De will be the primary contact person in interactions with ATLAS Distributed Computing Management, to schedule common operations activities in the areas of production and distributed analysis. De will closely work with the Facility Integration Program, led by Robert Gardner from University of Chicago, to implement the required functionality and capacities. He will be leading the United States’ participation in major ATLAS activities, involving many experts from the U.S. teams at Tier 1 and Tier 2 facilities.

The U.S. ATLAS collaboration will contribute $163.74 million to the construction of the ATLAS detector by the end of 2008. United States groups have contributed components to all of the ATLAS detector subsystems, each dedicated to measuring different properties of different types of particles. Scientists from the United States have also contributed to the development and testing of the data acquisition system, which takes the raw data from the ATLAS detector, filters it, and stores it in a form that physicists will use to search for and measure fundamental particles and forces.

Major components of the ATLAS detector were built at UT Arlington and are now installed at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), near Geneva. UT Arlington is one of five Tier 2 supercomputing centers in the United States, which will be used by all ATLAS physicists to search for new physics at the Large Hadron Collider. De will be coordinating the Tier 1 and Tier 2 computing centers deployed in the United States to process the petabytes of data expected soon.

April 9, 2008

Department News

Congratulations to Dr. Yi-Jiun Su on having been selected as one of the 2008 “Forty Under Forty”. This event honors select men and women under the age of 40 who are helping to shape the future through their business and community involvement.
Dr. Su will attend a introductory cocktail reception at Neiman Marcus in Fort Worth. She will be profiled in the “2008 Forty Under Forty” special publication, which is an annual publication by the Fort Worth Business Press.
In addition Dr. Su, will get a custom pair of Justin Boots with the “Forty Under Forty” logo stitched on the front. And she will also attend the “Forty Under Forty Awards Dinner”, at the Fort Worth Club.

---Fort Worth Business Press

April 3, 2008

UT Arlington Today

Accolades
Drs. Wei Chen and Ron Schachar were mentioned in a University of Ulster press release concerning research that deals with the treatment of cataracts. They are conducting the research with Professor Barbara Pierschionek of the University of Ulster. Dr. Chen is a UT Arlington assistant professor of physics and a nanotechnologist. Dr. Schachar is an ophthalmologist and physicist. Read the entire press release here.

February 12, 2008

UT Arlington Today

In The News
Dr. Wei Chen, UT Arlington assistant professor of nanobio physics, was featured on nanowerk.com’s Web site for his work using nanoparticles for deep cancer treatment.

February 7, 2008

UT Arlington Today

Accolades
Dr. Andy White, UT Arlington physics professor, has been named as a representative to the Physics Research Committee for the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, Germany. The PRC will give advice to the DESY directorate on all matters related to the particle and astroparticle physics program at DESY.

January 31, 2008

UT Arlington Today

UT Arlington physicists publish textbook
Drs. Manfred Cuntz, associate professor of physics, Nilakshi Veerabathina, astronomy lecturer, and Levent Gurdemir, astronomy laboratory supervisor – all affiliated with the UT Arlington Physics Department – have published a new book titled “Practical Universe: Observations, Experiments, Exercises” with Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co. The book features state-of-the-art material to be used in the “Astronomy Laboratory for Introductory Astronomy” courses offered to students with non-science majors. It replaces a text written by U. O. Herrmann & B. C. Thompson more than 25 years ago. “Significant progress in astronomy has been made in the meantime; progress that is almost beyond anybody’s comprehension,” Cuntz said. The new developments, both in regard to observations and theory, prompted the incorporation of new methods and material into the new book. Besides traditional exercises such as the study of terrestrial coordinate systems, planetary motions and scale models for our solar system and the Milky Way, the new book also offers chapters on extra solar planets and black holes, which will give students insight into modern day astronomy. Other exercises utilize new Internet-based material, as well as computer programs such as “Starry Night” and “Stellarium,” allowing computer-based, hands-on demonstrations of stars and planets in the night sky. “Practical Universe” is available through the UT Arlington bookstore or the Kendall/Hunt Web site, www.kendallhunt.com.

January 22, 2008

UT Arlington Today

Planetarium director remarks on UFOs
In light of recent news about UFOs out of nearby Stephenville, Texas, Marc Rouleau, director of the Planetarium at UT Arlington, says tens of thousands of school children visit the facility every year and one of the most popular questions is: “Are UFO’s real?” Technically, the answer is “yes,” since “UFO” really stands for “Unidentified Flying Object.”  If you look up and see something you don’t recognize, it’s a UFO. This does not imply that the object is an alien spacecraft, however. Most objects that get fingered as UFO’s turn out to have easy explanations. A bright planet, like Venus, has fooled many casual sky watchers, Rouleau said. Atmospheric phenomena, like lenticular clouds, can make many people stop and pause. Some UFOs have turned out to have more of a human origin. There have been cases of secret aircraft being tested by the military that were viewed by civilians on the ground. In other cases, hoaxers were deliberately trying to fake a UFO sighting. In the “old days” this maybe meant rigging up a pie plate, suspending it from a wire, and taking its picture, the planetarium director said. Today, computer animation software and a worldwide audience through YouTube is all you need. Even if no easy explanation comes up, there are reasons why a lot of people are skeptical about aliens visiting Earth. The distances between stars are so great, Rouleau said. The next closest star system to our Solar System is 25 trillion miles away. That’s so far away that the fastest robotic spacecraft ever launched by humans would need over 50,000 years to make the trip. Even light, traveling at 186,000 miles per second, takes years to make the trip. Since nothing can accelerate faster than light, any creature that wanted to fly from Alpha Centauri to Texas would need to commit to at least several decades for a one-way trip, Rouleau said.

January 22, 2008

Department News

Swati Routh, a PhD graduate student at the Physics Department, was selected as a University Scholar at The University of Texas at Arlington. The University created this award to formally recognize the top one percent of the student body who exemplify academic and research excellence. Ms. Routh’s current research activities, performed under the direction of Dr. Z.E. Musielak, involve studies of the energy transfer by waves propagating along magnetic flux tubes in the atmosphere of the Sun and other solar-type stars. She is a co-author of 5 refereed papers and 3 conference proceedings.

January 22, 2008

Department News

Dr. Zdzislaw E. Musielak, Professor of Physics, has accepted the invitation to join the Editorial Board of Advances in Astronomy. This is a new peer-reviewed journal that publishes state-of-the-art reviews and original research papers in all areas of astronomy. Dr. Musielak joins a selected group of internationally renowned astronomers from all over the world, who, as the Editorial Board, will manage the peer-review process and make final decisions of accepting or rejecting manuscripts submitted for publication in this new journal.
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/aa/editors.html
Dr. Musielak was also invited to contribute his expertise to Encyclopedia of Cosmos, which is a “by invitation only” collaborative effort of the world’s astronomical community. The Encyclopedia is scheduled to go live to the public in January 2008. Dr. Musielak’s contributions include articles about the Sun, white dwarfs, extra-solar planets, and dark energy, and biographies of two great Polish astronomers: Copernicus and Hevelius.
www.eofcosmos.org

January 17, 2008

UT Arlington Today

Physics team part of big educational event in North Texas
A team of 11 members of the UT Arlington Department of Physics participated in educating and entertaining thousands of students in the Fourth Annual Aviation & Transportation Career Expo last month. The expo is one of the largest educational events of the year in North Texas. More than 4,000 students and their teachers arrived at DFW International Airport last month in an effort to gain career knowledge in the fields of aviation, transportation, science, math and technology. The UT Arlington team included Astronomy Lecturer Nila Veerabathina (team lead), Planetarium Director Marc Rouleau, former Planetarium Program Coordinator Joe Eakins and Astronomy Labs Supervisor Levent Gurdemir. Graduate and undergraduate students Phyllis Whittlesey, Randy Bradshaw, Pierce Weatherly, Suman Satyal, Craig Karr, Kenneth Crawford and Jose Barona also participated. Activities included using containers of liquid nitrogen to freeze and break racquetballs, flowers and fruits. Other activities also included using mechanical electrical generators to create spark discharges and mild shocks. The team also conducted demonstrations using magnetic levitation devices, a cloud chamber to detect cosmic rays, a model of the solar system, a telescope and samples of meteorites. Students also made several structures of various elements using gummy candies. Students were presented brochures and other materials from the department of physics, the College of Science, the UT Arlington Planetarium and university admissions office. See pictures of the students in action at the expo.

January 15, 2008

UT Arlington Today

Accolades
Dr. Nilakshi Veerabathina, lecturer in the department of physics, and Marc Rouleau, UT Arlington Planetarium director, judged science fair projects at Walker Creek Elementary School on Friday, Jan 11. They joined teams of other judges from National Weather Center and TCU. Together, they judged about 50 projects related with to all branches of science from astronomy/physics to marine biology.

January 4, 2008

Department News

Physics Assistant Professor Dr. Wei Chen, approached a lens physiologist [Professor Barbara K Piersionek of the University of Ulster] and an ophthalmologist [Ronald A. Schachar, M.D., Ph.D. of the University of Texas at Arlington] to study the biochemical causes of cataractogensis. They use quantum dots made at Dr. Chen’s lab to investigate the diffusion processes into lens. Their work is interesting as it might uncover the causes of cataractogensis and figure out the channels for drug delivery to cure cataracts. The preliminary results of their research were published in a prestigious Journal NANOTECHNOLOGY http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0957-4484/19/2/025102/ And there are two reports related to their work at Nanowerk and Nanotechweb at links below: http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=3894.php and http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/lab/32322.

January 3, 2008

Department News

Dr. Jim Horwitz served as a judge for the Texas Section of the American Physical Society. He served on a panel of 29 judges at the Fall 2007 meeting.

Physics graduate student, Ximena Cid, is a recipient of the Student Presentation Award (poster category) at the Fall 2007 meeting of the Texas Section of the American Physical Society. In addition, she will receive a monetary award of $200.