I promised a string of articles written by yours truley to appear on SLAC Today this week. I lied. Well, I didn't really lie, I just spoke too soon.
It was announced this past Monday that SLAC's Director of nearly a decade has stepped down and been replaced by a temporary director until a permenant replacement is found. Although the lab knew this was coming at some point, nobody knew exactly when. So, as you can imagine, SLAC Today has been completely dedicated to announcements about the old director, new director, changes being made at the lab, and announcements for events to commemorate the now ex-director.
And wow has it been busy here in the communications office.
People have been scurrying to make sure everything that's happening is being communicated clearly and promptly to the entire site. The subject is touchy to say the least, so everything is being carefully crafted and edited several times before being published. It's been an interesting few days.
And to make matters worse, it was announced a couple of weeks ago that the head of the communications office is leaving SLAC at the end of the year to do the same job for a European fusion project based in France. He has become a steadying influence and face at SLAC and his departure at this critical time of changing directors has added to the general unease permeating the air.
But the lab continues, life goes on, and great science is still being done at SLAC. And they're keeping me very busy in my final few days. I've got about 10 stories or so in some form of the writing process. I'm sure they're happy I'm leaving them with a large number of stories to run while the next intern goes through the arrival process that takes a few days...
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Friday, September 7, 2007
Blazars... The Final Edition
I posted twice earlier about a complex scientific story about Blazars, you can catch up on them here and here.
I first outlined everything I knew in an informal way. Then I posted the rough draft of the story I wrote about the information I outlined. Here, now, is the final text that was edited several times and posted this morning on SLAC Today.
Which do you think is best?
Scattered across the universe, certain galaxies emit enormously powerful jets of relativistic particles intertwined with bursts of gamma rays. Although thousands of these jets have been observed, the precise mechanism by which gamma rays are created has mystified astronomers for more than 15 years. Recently, a team of SLAC scientists made a surprising discovery about the source of the most powerful of these gamma rays that raises as many questions as it answers.
One of the main questions researchers seek to answer about these unique radio galaxies—also known as "blazars" or "quasars" depending on the jet's orientation—is where, exactly, the gamma rays are created. Researchers believe that a black hole at the center of each quasar emits the jet of particles including electrons, positrons and protons. For years they postulated that the gamma rays were created within this jet stream. But later studies led some to believe that the gamma rays were instead produced by a yet unknown physical phenomenon very near the edge of the black hole itself. Now, SLAC researchers Teddy Cheung and Lukasz Stawarz, in collaboration with Daniel Harris at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, believe they have finally nailed down the location of gamma ray production.
"It's much farther down the jet than most scientists thought," said Cheung. "It's a very surprising result."
Cheung and his associates recently argued that gamma rays are emanating from a disturbance, or "knot," traveling down the jet flow about 326,200 light years from the central super massive black hole in M87, the only jet close enough to Earth for detailed observation. This places gamma ray production in this galaxy 100 times further from the edge of the black hole than previously believed.
To make this discovery, Cheung and his colleagues used data from four different experiments focusing on different areas of the electromagnetic spectrum; the Hubble Space Telescope observed visible light, the Chandra X-ray Observatory focused on x-rays, the Very Large Array received radio data, and the Very Long Baseline Array scanned the radio spectrum. All four showed a pronounced spike in intensity of the knot's emissions early in 2005. The team then compared their data to gamma ray observations of M87 made by the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS). Because HESS data also showed a spike in gamma ray intensity at the same time, the team concluded that these gamma rays are produced in the knot.
"The fact that the knot is producing these gamma rays so far away from the jet's origin raises many questions about what makes this location in the jet special," said Cheung. "We think the jet here has been refocused due to interactions with the external medium, but this is just one plausible scenario. Hopefully it's a question that will be solved by scientists in the future."
—Ken Kingery, SLAC Today, September 7, 2007
I first outlined everything I knew in an informal way. Then I posted the rough draft of the story I wrote about the information I outlined. Here, now, is the final text that was edited several times and posted this morning on SLAC Today.
Which do you think is best?
Scattered across the universe, certain galaxies emit enormously powerful jets of relativistic particles intertwined with bursts of gamma rays. Although thousands of these jets have been observed, the precise mechanism by which gamma rays are created has mystified astronomers for more than 15 years. Recently, a team of SLAC scientists made a surprising discovery about the source of the most powerful of these gamma rays that raises as many questions as it answers.
One of the main questions researchers seek to answer about these unique radio galaxies—also known as "blazars" or "quasars" depending on the jet's orientation—is where, exactly, the gamma rays are created. Researchers believe that a black hole at the center of each quasar emits the jet of particles including electrons, positrons and protons. For years they postulated that the gamma rays were created within this jet stream. But later studies led some to believe that the gamma rays were instead produced by a yet unknown physical phenomenon very near the edge of the black hole itself. Now, SLAC researchers Teddy Cheung and Lukasz Stawarz, in collaboration with Daniel Harris at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, believe they have finally nailed down the location of gamma ray production.
"It's much farther down the jet than most scientists thought," said Cheung. "It's a very surprising result."
Cheung and his associates recently argued that gamma rays are emanating from a disturbance, or "knot," traveling down the jet flow about 326,200 light years from the central super massive black hole in M87, the only jet close enough to Earth for detailed observation. This places gamma ray production in this galaxy 100 times further from the edge of the black hole than previously believed.
To make this discovery, Cheung and his colleagues used data from four different experiments focusing on different areas of the electromagnetic spectrum; the Hubble Space Telescope observed visible light, the Chandra X-ray Observatory focused on x-rays, the Very Large Array received radio data, and the Very Long Baseline Array scanned the radio spectrum. All four showed a pronounced spike in intensity of the knot's emissions early in 2005. The team then compared their data to gamma ray observations of M87 made by the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS). Because HESS data also showed a spike in gamma ray intensity at the same time, the team concluded that these gamma rays are produced in the knot.
"The fact that the knot is producing these gamma rays so far away from the jet's origin raises many questions about what makes this location in the jet special," said Cheung. "We think the jet here has been refocused due to interactions with the external medium, but this is just one plausible scenario. Hopefully it's a question that will be solved by scientists in the future."
—Ken Kingery, SLAC Today, September 7, 2007
Winding Down... or Winding Up?
It's been about a week since I updated my posts here. The reason for this is, honestly, blogging just about every day for two months got very tedious. It was too much and I quickly found I had run out of things to talk about. But with my apologies in mind, stay tuned for my final few posts, they'll be worth the wait...
I should put that in my final paper on the blogging experience...
Moving on, today marks one week until my last day at SLAC. And am I winding down with less stories coming across my desk? NO! Ha, that's laughable. As you can imagine, they're going to get their money's worth from me before I leave! And honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way. I would absolutely hate just sitting at my desk for a week mindlessly waiting for my departure day.
So that gives me plenty to talk about. Hooray!
The McCallum-Turner articles have actually come along nicely. I have only a couple more to write for full-length website articles. Although, there are still plenty in the hands of my editors that I have to then get final approvals for, which means relying on others to read through them and send them back. This can be a hassle. But oh well.
Lots of profiles have been assigned to me as well. As you can probably guess, this makes me happy, because I enjoy them and I'm good at them. My editor apparently agrees since she gave me several to do before I leave... (that and she told me that I was)
I completed one recently on SLAC's Housing Office which was fun. The women in the office are extremely nice and very helpful, not to mention excellent at their jobs. I also recently did a story about the Pief Mobile. This is a cart that the first director of SLAC--a world famous physicist--drives around the site in. His assistant recently gave it a few modifications such as lightening bolt decals and special licences plates that read, "e-XLR8R 2." Cute, huh?
I've also got several science stories in the work. One I'm particuarly fond of. It's about trigger software at the ATLAS experiment at CERN. Basically this software has to decide whether a particle collision is interesting enough to record or not in 40 milliseconds. This is a tall task when dealing with complicated physical processes, some of which are still theoretical... Story to come soon...
So stay tuned. The next couple of weeks on SLAC Today will be the week of Ken!
I should put that in my final paper on the blogging experience...
Moving on, today marks one week until my last day at SLAC. And am I winding down with less stories coming across my desk? NO! Ha, that's laughable. As you can imagine, they're going to get their money's worth from me before I leave! And honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way. I would absolutely hate just sitting at my desk for a week mindlessly waiting for my departure day.
So that gives me plenty to talk about. Hooray!
The McCallum-Turner articles have actually come along nicely. I have only a couple more to write for full-length website articles. Although, there are still plenty in the hands of my editors that I have to then get final approvals for, which means relying on others to read through them and send them back. This can be a hassle. But oh well.
Lots of profiles have been assigned to me as well. As you can probably guess, this makes me happy, because I enjoy them and I'm good at them. My editor apparently agrees since she gave me several to do before I leave... (that and she told me that I was)
I completed one recently on SLAC's Housing Office which was fun. The women in the office are extremely nice and very helpful, not to mention excellent at their jobs. I also recently did a story about the Pief Mobile. This is a cart that the first director of SLAC--a world famous physicist--drives around the site in. His assistant recently gave it a few modifications such as lightening bolt decals and special licences plates that read, "e-XLR8R 2." Cute, huh?
I've also got several science stories in the work. One I'm particuarly fond of. It's about trigger software at the ATLAS experiment at CERN. Basically this software has to decide whether a particle collision is interesting enough to record or not in 40 milliseconds. This is a tall task when dealing with complicated physical processes, some of which are still theoretical... Story to come soon...
So stay tuned. The next couple of weeks on SLAC Today will be the week of Ken!
Friday, August 31, 2007
The Pink Pig of Success
The WHAT?!?!?!
You read it right, you're monitor isn't malfunctioning, I said the pink pig of success. Never heard of it? Well that's because you don't work in SLAC's communications office…
Every week in our office meeting the director hands out a pink toy pig that, when turned on, walks, oinks and wiggles its tail. The award used to be a golden pig that looked rather like a Buddhist statue, but it was retired when the head kept falling off…
Anyways, I was happily surprised to receive the award this week for my general efforts in keeping a steady flow of stories coming to SLAC Today. I think the straw that tipped the scales were my two stories last Friday about Monte Carlo software and the CosmicVariance blog. The director seemed to particularly enjoy those two. But he also cited the general volume of stories I've been generating, that several days have consisted entirely of my works, and that we're getting along fine with just one intern. (I guess sometimes they have overlapping interns to share the story workload?)
But the pig is soft and nice to pet when I hit a bad spell of writer's block.
For example, I spent the past couple of days whipping out two stories in a very short amount of time. Granted, they were no brainers, just a couple of short pieces to fill in some blank spots in SLAC Today, but they turned out pretty well none-the-less. The first ran on Thursday and was about a small set of three garden boxes at the corner of a nearby building that contain corn, jalapeños, and basil.
I actually had to do some investigative reporting on that one by tracking down the employee the make-shift garden belongs to. Luckily, it belonged to the first person I asked…
The second short ran today and was about the computer help desk moving a few hundred feet to the lobby of their building. Again, nothing special, but I did whip it out in a matter of an hour or so, including interviewing, writing, and editing, which is a pretty fast turn-around time.
To bring this post to a close, just let me say I've only got two weeks left here at SLAC, and probably won't be posting much anymore. Perhaps just a few more total. So enjoy them while you can…
You read it right, you're monitor isn't malfunctioning, I said the pink pig of success. Never heard of it? Well that's because you don't work in SLAC's communications office…
Every week in our office meeting the director hands out a pink toy pig that, when turned on, walks, oinks and wiggles its tail. The award used to be a golden pig that looked rather like a Buddhist statue, but it was retired when the head kept falling off…
Anyways, I was happily surprised to receive the award this week for my general efforts in keeping a steady flow of stories coming to SLAC Today. I think the straw that tipped the scales were my two stories last Friday about Monte Carlo software and the CosmicVariance blog. The director seemed to particularly enjoy those two. But he also cited the general volume of stories I've been generating, that several days have consisted entirely of my works, and that we're getting along fine with just one intern. (I guess sometimes they have overlapping interns to share the story workload?)
But the pig is soft and nice to pet when I hit a bad spell of writer's block.
For example, I spent the past couple of days whipping out two stories in a very short amount of time. Granted, they were no brainers, just a couple of short pieces to fill in some blank spots in SLAC Today, but they turned out pretty well none-the-less. The first ran on Thursday and was about a small set of three garden boxes at the corner of a nearby building that contain corn, jalapeños, and basil.
I actually had to do some investigative reporting on that one by tracking down the employee the make-shift garden belongs to. Luckily, it belonged to the first person I asked…
The second short ran today and was about the computer help desk moving a few hundred feet to the lobby of their building. Again, nothing special, but I did whip it out in a matter of an hour or so, including interviewing, writing, and editing, which is a pretty fast turn-around time.
To bring this post to a close, just let me say I've only got two weeks left here at SLAC, and probably won't be posting much anymore. Perhaps just a few more total. So enjoy them while you can…
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Busy, Busy, Busy
Hello again everyone, it's now Tuesday, which means I missed Monday. Why? Because I'm busy again at work and got home a bit late yesterday. Why am I busy again? You guessed it… McCallum Turner paragraphs and articles!
Who of you out there had 6 of the 11 people getting back to me before the end of Monday? Because if you did, you're the big winner! And in the meantime, my editor and I are scrambling to write these paragraphs up, get the rest of the contacts to respond to us, and write/edit stories for SLAC Today. On top of it all, I'm working on editing and adding a little to the Symmetry magazine feature I'm writing.
Which all leads to me being extremely busy…
And it's nice to see that someone has been busy reading and commenting to my blog as well. Many thanks, it's nice to have a few actual bits of feedback now and then. The rest of you readers could learn a lesson.
That is, if there are any more readers out there… are there? No matter, I'll keep plowing ahead anyways.
As of the end of Tuesday, eight of the eleven paragraphs have been written, two are being taken care of by my editor, and the last we are still waiting on. And after all is said and done, I have to phone everyone up for quotes and more personal touches for SLAC Today articles…
At least I'll have plenty of more time to hunt everyone down.
Who of you out there had 6 of the 11 people getting back to me before the end of Monday? Because if you did, you're the big winner! And in the meantime, my editor and I are scrambling to write these paragraphs up, get the rest of the contacts to respond to us, and write/edit stories for SLAC Today. On top of it all, I'm working on editing and adding a little to the Symmetry magazine feature I'm writing.
Which all leads to me being extremely busy…
And it's nice to see that someone has been busy reading and commenting to my blog as well. Many thanks, it's nice to have a few actual bits of feedback now and then. The rest of you readers could learn a lesson.
That is, if there are any more readers out there… are there? No matter, I'll keep plowing ahead anyways.
As of the end of Tuesday, eight of the eleven paragraphs have been written, two are being taken care of by my editor, and the last we are still waiting on. And after all is said and done, I have to phone everyone up for quotes and more personal touches for SLAC Today articles…
At least I'll have plenty of more time to hunt everyone down.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
A New Assignment
I've got two stories online today at the SLAC website, and I really like both of them (as does the head of communications here, which of course makes me happy :o).* The first is about MadGraph/MadEvent, which is a computer software program that creates randomized "practice" events for scientists to analyze and learn from. I spotted it in a pre-print (a summary of a recently released scientific paper) and asked to do a story on it. My editor isn't very thrilled with computer software and programming, but trusted me, and I think it turned out fairly well anyways.
The second story, is about the CosmicVariance blog site that two of SLAC's employees contribute to. I spoke about my experience speaking with them a couple of days ago.
Today I was assigned a new task that will give me experience in an area I haven't really dealt with before. In an earlier post, I spoke about a group meeting with a group called McCallum-Turner who is an outside consulting firm examining the administrative side of SLAC operations. It is part of the communication office's job to tell the lab what's going on and how they can offer feedback and comments.
Or, more specifically, it is now my job to let the lab know this.
The company has identified 11 areas of administration that they are targeting in their examination. Each area has a point of contact from SLAC, and it is my job to take information from them and disseminate it to 11 short articles about each of the areas.
For example, one area is Leadership, but what does this really mean? Is it anyone who is a department head? Is it the director of the lab only? What procedures, forms, etc. fall within this category, and which are of the most interest to McCallum-Turner?
The writing and analyzing part shouldn't be so bad, but it could be a pain to track down 11 different people to interview on a subject they may already be growing weary of. Any bets as to how many make my life more difficult than it needs to be?
*I wonder what the proper form is when ending a set of parenthesis with a smiley face? Do you put two end parenthesis side by side? e.g. :o))? That just doesn't seem right...
The second story, is about the CosmicVariance blog site that two of SLAC's employees contribute to. I spoke about my experience speaking with them a couple of days ago.
Today I was assigned a new task that will give me experience in an area I haven't really dealt with before. In an earlier post, I spoke about a group meeting with a group called McCallum-Turner who is an outside consulting firm examining the administrative side of SLAC operations. It is part of the communication office's job to tell the lab what's going on and how they can offer feedback and comments.
Or, more specifically, it is now my job to let the lab know this.
The company has identified 11 areas of administration that they are targeting in their examination. Each area has a point of contact from SLAC, and it is my job to take information from them and disseminate it to 11 short articles about each of the areas.
For example, one area is Leadership, but what does this really mean? Is it anyone who is a department head? Is it the director of the lab only? What procedures, forms, etc. fall within this category, and which are of the most interest to McCallum-Turner?
The writing and analyzing part shouldn't be so bad, but it could be a pain to track down 11 different people to interview on a subject they may already be growing weary of. Any bets as to how many make my life more difficult than it needs to be?
*I wonder what the proper form is when ending a set of parenthesis with a smiley face? Do you put two end parenthesis side by side? e.g. :o))? That just doesn't seem right...
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
The Future of Public Outreach
Another one of my weekly profiles appeared on SLAC Today this morning,* and it is another shining example of why I typically enjoy doing profiles. I was a little doubtful when a coworker approached me with the profile idea of a woman at SLAC who loves things that are "tiki" themed. I didn't see much of a story there.
I was wrong.
Read the profile and you'll find out why. It's a great profile and she's a very interesting person. She's got a great job and does fantastic work on websites, and never went to college. She's self-taught. It flies in the face of everything I've ever been taught about getting a good job in technology…
Anyways, today's topic is about the future of public outreach, particularly at SLAC and similar particle physics labs. There has been a lot of discussion recently on how to modernize the public outreach effort. The ideas range from promoting employees to list SLAC on their Facebook or MySpace profiles to creating an entire lab environment on Second Life.
The Facebook and MySpace outreach/group idea isn't bad, but I don't know enough about Second Life to comment on this. Personally, I don't understand the whole phenomenon, but that doesn't mean that the lab couldn't reach thousands of people through such an effort.
The idea of Second Life is that you create a character, pick a place to live, and create an entire second life for yourself. You get a job, buy clothes, buy cars, meet people, date, and who knows what else. There's a lot of people out there who spend more time on Second Life than they do in their real life. Again, I don't understand this, but it exists, so SLAC should try to capitalize on it.
The other idea is to create some content on YouTube that would highlight the different labs and the science going on at them. Now this is a wonderful idea. The physics is so interesting and forward thinking that there's got to be a ton of visually stimulating places, people, and events they could put on YouTube.
I just read an article that claims YouTube is now responsible for 10% of all of the internet traffic, which is mind-boggling. This is obviously an outlet that you want to take full advantage of, if you can…
*Notice that I just can't bring myself to say "SLAC Today today..."
I was wrong.
Read the profile and you'll find out why. It's a great profile and she's a very interesting person. She's got a great job and does fantastic work on websites, and never went to college. She's self-taught. It flies in the face of everything I've ever been taught about getting a good job in technology…
Anyways, today's topic is about the future of public outreach, particularly at SLAC and similar particle physics labs. There has been a lot of discussion recently on how to modernize the public outreach effort. The ideas range from promoting employees to list SLAC on their Facebook or MySpace profiles to creating an entire lab environment on Second Life.
The Facebook and MySpace outreach/group idea isn't bad, but I don't know enough about Second Life to comment on this. Personally, I don't understand the whole phenomenon, but that doesn't mean that the lab couldn't reach thousands of people through such an effort.
The idea of Second Life is that you create a character, pick a place to live, and create an entire second life for yourself. You get a job, buy clothes, buy cars, meet people, date, and who knows what else. There's a lot of people out there who spend more time on Second Life than they do in their real life. Again, I don't understand this, but it exists, so SLAC should try to capitalize on it.
The other idea is to create some content on YouTube that would highlight the different labs and the science going on at them. Now this is a wonderful idea. The physics is so interesting and forward thinking that there's got to be a ton of visually stimulating places, people, and events they could put on YouTube.
I just read an article that claims YouTube is now responsible for 10% of all of the internet traffic, which is mind-boggling. This is obviously an outlet that you want to take full advantage of, if you can…
*Notice that I just can't bring myself to say "SLAC Today today..."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)