It's only funny if you're in the audience...

My book order from Dover Publications arrived today... what fresh hell have I unleashed upon myself?

The 2013 "Preface to the Dover Edition" of Dieter Vollhardt and Peter Wolfle's 1990 book "The Superfluid Phases of Helium 3" has 32 REFERENCES!!???!!!! 4 full books and 28 peer-reviewed articles... the preface... what I have I done???

O_o

In lighter reading, I just finished Richard P. Feynman's story collection (gathered/edited by Ralph Leighton) "Classic Feynman: All The Tales of a Curious Character". I had previously read "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" (the stories of which are included in this edition), but this volume also included the material from "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" (which includes his writing on his participation in the investigation into the Challenger shuttle failure), which I had not read before. It's always good to read about the adventures of other people who have (or have had) utterly bizarre and improbable lives as well. I think I need someone to collect my stories some day, heh, they are certainly "out there" in places, and I surprise even myself in their telling some times (there usually comes a point if I say too much that doubt and/or disbelief sets in and I need to produce documentation or witnesses to back up my whacktacular experiences, so some caution is certainly called for on my part). I have yet to listen to the CD of Feynman giving a talk in 1975 at UC Santa Barbara that is included with the book, but perhaps this coming weekend when a few of us can listen in...

I think I need a better hobby... once I get some money in the next couple of weeks I plan to buy the following book:

"The Superfluid Phases of Helium 3" by Dieter Vollhardt and Peter Wolfle (1990)

p.s. I love Dover Books...

Actually, Germany. And I'm not mad, I'm just pronouncing it wrong ;). A friend from North Carolina worked the photo processing booth in the town I lived in and she said that one day a lovely couple came in to have their film developed of the trip they had just made to <hard 'G'> "Germany"... Hearing stories from her was always an educational experience. I had stated in my post in August about my trip to Chicago that I would post about my trip to the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, Germany ", and that "hopefully I can get to it before December". Hmmm... December is looking pretty near, and I'm planning my next trip to DESY in January (this time, I will be visiting both the Hamburg facility and their Zeuthen facility, which is just outside of Berlin... suweeeet!). It's going to seriously mess me up for my classes at the start of the school term (yes, I'm still an undergrad, ugh... doing this and having to continue to deal with offspring [now adult, wtf?, how did that happen... I'm still not sure I'm an adult yet, heh] is brutal), but seriously... Germany! Oh well, my life is, if nothing else, not boring.

So, where to start? Hmmm... let's start with Air France sucks farts from dead cows. The flight from Montreal, Canada (I had to take an "Air France" charter bus from Ottawa to Montreal) to the Charles de Gaulle airport in France was late getting in, so I missed my connecting flight to Hamburg. By the time I got there, I had missed all of the train connections to East Germany. I had planned to visit my very good friend blackbird_tanya (sorry to Dreamwidth users, that will be a broken or incorrect username) in and around the Erfurt region, and that was why I had arrived on the weekend before the conference. It only would have been for a day or so, but she visited me (and others, of course) while she was heading across Canada on family business, and I thought it proper to reciprocate since I was finding myself within reach of where she lived. But, it was not to be, there were no trains out that night, and if I tried the next day, I'd just have to turn around and head straight back to Hamburg at the crack of dawn on Monday. I was, shall we say, not a happy camper. When you add to that the fact that I had not made any arrangements for accommodations in Hamburg until Monday evening, and I was travelling on a starving-student budget (it was travel on the hairy edge of possible even though it was nominally funded by Carleton, I was on my own for any expenses outside of the three days of the conference proper I was going to, and wasn't expecting my piddling paycheque until Monday as well), I found myself stranded in Hamburg with no place to stay, not nearly enough money, and I had found out that I was going on the trip only a week or two before I left so I didn't even have a chance to learn a few words of German to let me function. It was not a good scene. I knew I could figure out a way of staying off the streets that weekend (I am, if I may say so, resourceful), but I was seriously bummed out about not being able to visit with my friend because of crappy airline service.

So... what to do? On the streets of a foreign city with no place to go, not knowing a word of the language (okay, no useful words... seriously how far was knowing how to say "lederhosen" going to get me?), and pretty close to broke for two more days. I did what anyone in my situation would do: called my punk friends to ask if I could couch-surf for the weekend! Now, to be fair, I had planned to meet up with them later in the week since they were living in Hamburg (thank goodness I was in Hamburg and not Bucharest or something), but this was an unexpected turn of events and I figured I should a least start there before I spent my last centime on two nights accommodations (presuming I could find a place cheap enough). Ultimately it all worked out and they were ultra-awesome in letting me impose for a few days. I managed to figure out how to buy a U-Bahn ticket, and then found my way out to the neighbourhood they lived in (they provided directions and met me at the station... Hamburg public transit is amazing... and my friends are even more amazing!!!), we grabbed a bite to eat at a restaurant on the way, and I got to stay with one of the coolest people on Earth for the weekend: dextra (hmmm... someone does seem to have this username on Dreamwidth, but it's not the person I'm talking about). pfloide was away at a mathematics conference or something at the time (or was it working on the updates for a paper that had been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal?... I know he was doing that too, my memory is a little fuzzy on the specific details, it has been a while and a lot has happened in the intervening months), but I did get to meet up with him later in the week for a fun get together with a bunch of expats, and few Germans (including someone that I knew in the physics community in Hamburg, who came out with me). I developed a nominal friendship with their crazy cat that weekend, and managed to get myself better oriented in Hamburg before heading in to the conference Monday morning. I remain very appreciative and thankful that my sorry ass was saved and that dextra and pfloide were so gracious that weekend. I was still bummed about not making it to Erfurt, but it was really good to get together with another old friend that I hadn't seen in many years. You can tell just how fierce their cat was in this picture I took...



Note: As with all of these sorts of posts, you can click on a picture to open the full size image in a new tab... just in case you should be so desirous ;).

I arrived at DESY bright and early Monday morning. My presentation wasn't until 17h25, so it was a day of being sprayed with a firehose of information on high energy physics and detector technologies. And yes, I seriously loved it! For anyone who has a burning desire to see what sort of stuff I'm working with, you should have that looked at by a doctor (or you can look at a PDF of my presentation, here). The building it was held in was only recently built (new buildings were going up elsewhere on the DESY campus too), and the internal architecture was pretty cool.

( Photos of the insides of the building are under the cut... )

After we were done for the day, myself and some physicists from the conference went out for dinner in the harbour area of Hamburg (Hamburg is the 2nd largest port city in Europe from what I was told). The World Cup was on, so finding a place where we could hear ourselves think was something of a challenge. We ended up at a Portuguese restaurant a few blocks away from the waterfront, and it was divine! I ended up having a "country style rabbit stew" (or at least that's the best I could make out from the German translation of the Portuguese name for the dish) and it was certainly the envy of the others at the table (who ended up ordering much less adventurous dinners). The flavours were simple, but perfectly executed, and it was hearty and very satisfying. I also ended up having the best beer I had while I was in Germany, but can't recall the name of it, sigh... The meal did turn out to be the best I had while I was in Hamburg (overall the restaurant food was surprisingly disappointing), but I did have a few other good meals at least while there. I should mention that the cash machine they had in the cafeteria building at Hamburg did accept my bank's Interact (debit) card, so I could withdraw Euros from there to spend, so that all went well while I was there!

( Photos of my first view of Hamburg's harbour are under the cut... )

So, there was my first few days in Hamburg. Coming up next is the tour I was able to tag along with on the following day to the decommissioned HERA ("Hadron Elektron Ring Anlage") accelerator tunnels, and many more amazing pictures of Hamburg (some of them are some of the best photos I've ever taken I think). Until then, I leave you with this picture of a tractor pulling out of the DESY facility. This was taken on my way in Monday morning. It's kind of bizarre, because other than the sign, it's just a typical Hamburg suburban street. When you walk in, you can see that's it's an industrial campus, but there are no clues standing where I was... Now that I've at least started my Hamburg posts, I can get back to studying for my 4th year Cosmology test on Monday (I've been grumbled that I haven't had the time to blog in months, it has been, as I have said, a brutal few months).

I started writing this post at the end of May... and worked on it when I could in June... and am just getting to post it now... it has been quite the summer. Ugh.

As folks may or may not know, I am a full-time undergraduate student at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, studying Theoretical Physics (amongst other things). My home town is Ottawa, so it made sense for me to head back here when it was time to finally get a university education (read: I had family obligations); and Carleton University's physics department, for its tiny size and limited resources had consistently "punched above its weight" in the cut-throat world of particle and medical physics (if you will pardon the sports and subsequently mixed metaphors, I do know better...). When I was a teen, Carleton allowed me to sit in on a lecture series by David Bohm (one of the most important theoretical physicists of the 20th century). I vaguely understood at most 2% of what he said, but it was obviously an important event for me (I remember the excitement of mine and the others around me just listening). Also when I was a teen, a professor there (I don't even remember their name) used to let me hang around in the chemistry department's laser laboratories and help out (I'm not sure they realized I was skipping high school to be there, heh, but it was way cooler). I have been working part time as a Research Assistant in the physics department pretty much since the start of 2010 (although "part time" can be some value between 10 and 80 hours a week at times). I'm still very much a "larval physicist", but I had an entire career before arriving at university doing electronics, software, and international project management, and it was quite valuable for various projects at Carleton to be able to leverage my existing skill set (for pennies on the dollar I might add, heh). In return, I have gotten to work on some amazing physics projects (hitting, as it were, above my weight as a physicist). It is in that capacity that I got sent to Fermilab accelerator facility in Batavia, Illinois, USA in May 2014 to participate with an international collaboration at the test beam facility there. And by May, I mean pretty much the whole of said month.

I have been working with Carleton's copy of the EUDET Telescope since spring of 2013 (I've talked a little about it here, the link is to the web page I did for it). Fyi, the one at Carleton is called "Caladium"... each instance gets a proper name based on some sort of poisonous plant... an "in joke" for those who produce the units, the rest of us are confused. The first unit was designed as part of a pan-European effort in the early days of the proposed International Linear Collider to become more efficient at testing, characterizing, and learning how to best use new designs for particle detection equipment. There are five in existence and another on the way. The big problem is that the "telescope" was designed to be used in an artificial particle beam like those at DESY in Germany, or CERN in Swizerland (where the Large Hadron Collider is located), or... at Fermilab in the US — but Carleton does not have a particle accelerator to use. The only sufficiently high-energy (> 1GeV) particles we have are the particles that everyone has (even you as you read this, you have them too): cosmic ray muons. Cosmic rays pass through every square centimetre at the Earth's surface at a rate of one every minute (so several pass through your body every second) — they have an average energy of 4GeV and are energetic enough that they hardly slow down as they pass through you, ionizing your body's molecules as they go (fyi, the higher you go, the more of this natural cosmic radiation you get, e.g. flying or on a mountain). The justification for Carleton getting one is it does do a lot of particle detector development and construction for physics projects all over the world. Having a copy of the EUDET Telescope allows researchers to do all required integration work at Carleton before going to an accelerator facility with its very finite, rare, and precious time window to take experimental data while there. If we're going to facilities in Europe, they will quite possibly have their own copy and we can just hook our stuff up to it; and in the case of facilities like Fermilab, we could just bring the telescope with us.

I should be clear that this is not a "telescope" in the sense that most people think of telescopes, but rather a device that can precisely determine the path of particles through it by looking at the ionization they leave in a set of silicon detector chips as they pass through (by looking at where it passes through each chip in turn, you can see the path the particle took). Lots of software is involved to extract the data and do the analysis. Carleton is still in the process of learning how to use the telescope hardware, the data acquisition software (EUDAQ), and the data analysis software (EUTelescope), and one of the goals of the test at Fermilab was to advance our cause in that regard. I've been focusing on the hardware and EUDAQ side of things, and a post-doc physicist has been focusing on the analysis and EUTelescope side of things. I am in the process of broadening my focus to include the analysis as well. I did my 4th year Honours Project on the telescope, and I got an A+ as a result... and that's pretty sweet... but I have still just begun to scratch the surface of what this device can do and how it does it — there is a definite shortage of documentation, and because we have the only EUDET Telescope not in Europe, we're isolated from the community (it seems there's something of an oral tradition when it comes to these devices), so... the most basic things can be a challenge sometimes.

Initially, we were supposed to drive the equipment to Fermilab ourselves. And by "we", I mean me... they were going to rent a truck that I would drive down with another student in the cab with me, and a professor and another student were going to drive with us in a car. This seemed dodgy as fuck to me, and I repeatedly suggested that they be really sure that there would be no problems and that the paperwork was in extremely good order before we left. To look at it another way (and massively distorting the actual truth for storytelling purposes), they were going to load up a truck with nuclear equipment and send me across the border into the United States (that it wasn't actually nuclear equipment, but just detectors for use in high-energy physics experiments might be a subtlety lost on those protecting the border... I was going to be carrying a tube of KY with me just in case, heh). The notion made me (understandably?) nervous. In the end, somebody on our end finally realized what was being proposed and put a stop to it — the shipment would have to be made via a commercial carrier and I would be reasonably assured of not having lights shined places that light should not normally shine. We drove still, but I was able to convince them to get two cars and the trip went pretty well (we did it over two days in each direction, sleeping at a hotel in Sarnia, Ontario). The two cars really made a huge difference in the end and we were able to juggle transportation quite a bit better because of it while we were there. It also proved critical for me not being completely pissed off about how things worked out for me because I, and the other two students from Carleton (okay, one of them was from the University of Ottawa, but he was working at Carleton with one of the profs for his honours project), went to Chicago for the afternoon on our way back to Sarnia at the end of the trip.

Now, I worked my sad little butt off to get to Fermilab, putting way more work into my 4th year honours project than seems reasonable, but I really wanted to go (I fried pretty hard, but what else is new, sigh). I grew up reading about Fermilab and all it accomplished over the years. When I was a teen, Fermilab was the big thing going on in particle physics. The work done there helped to confirm the, then, proposed "Standard Model" of particle physics and shaped our understanding of the way the universe works (the link leads to an 5 minute video easy introduction to this theory). The Higgs Boson was the last piece of the Standard Model, and its discovery at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was announced in 2013. Several of the earlier key discoveries were made at Fermilab's now defunct Tevatron. For what it's worth, the Standard Model did not exist when I was young... it didn't come into its modern form until I was about 8 years old or so, so I kind of grew up with it and watched it solidify as new data was gathered. Fermilab did a lot during its heyday (from the Fermilab propaganda):

The Tevatron became the world’s highest-energy proton-antiproton collider in 1985. The CDF and DZero collider experiments generated about 1,000 Ph.D. degrees and one scientific journal article a week describing their world-leading discoveries, observations and measurements. These experiments: discovered the top quark, determined its mass to high precision, and recorded two distinct top-quark production mechanisms; explored a new mass range for the Higgs boson and constrained its mass through top-quark and W-boson mass measurements; observed the strongest evidence yet for violation of matter-antimatter asymmetry in particles containing bottom quarks; discovered five B baryons and the Bc meson; and made the world’s most precise W-boson mass measurement.

The Tevatron’s fixed target program included 43 experiments from 1983 to 2000. About 400 Ph.D. degrees and more than 300 scientific papers were generated through these pioneering experiments that tested and refined the Standard Model of particle physics. These experiments: discovered the tau neutrino; observed direct CP violation in kaon decays; made pioneering measurements of charm-quark physics; recorded some of the earliest evidence of particle jets; measured the quark content and structure of the proton and neutron; and bserved the first atoms of antihydrogen using Fermilab’s antiproton source.

Truly heady days of discovery, and now I was finally going to be able to not only visit, but actually do particle physics with a world-class accelerator! Mind officially blown! The Tevatron stopped operation in 2011 due to budget cuts and competition from the Large Hadron Collider (I said it was a cutthroat business to be in...), but the main injector ring was still operational and there is plenty of bleeding edge physics being done at Fermilab still. In particular, neutrino physics is being done there now including the MINOS, MINERvA, and NOvA experiments that use the neutrinos generated by the truly terrifying NuMI device (they are created by slamming 120GeV protons from the main injector into a water-cooled graphite target, blocking the subatomic debris that is generated, and having nothing but neutrinos continue onward through the experiments at Fermilab and then 735km through the Earth to another detector in the bottom of a mine in Minnesota). More neutrino physics experiments are also on the way: in particular, the "Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment" will generate an intense beam of neutrinos at Fermilab that will travel 1300km through the Earth to a mine in South Dakota in order to study neutrino oscillation and help determine whether neutrinos are their own anti-particle (like photons). Down, but not out by any stretch, and the test beam facility that I was going to continues to provide the physics community and industry in general with a critical tool for testing devices and materials using high-energy particles as probes.

Since this is a long post already and I've just "arrived" at Fermilab, I will leave you with pictures of where I stayed (a farmhouse over a century old, Aspen East, my bedroom was the one on the second floor at the far right with the window under the eaves of the house), the bedroom I was in (it had a bathroom and tiny "efficiency" kitchen in which I still managed to make some amazing meals... and yes, the photo was taken at 5:23, All Hail Eris!), and a photo of the Fermilab Test Beam Facility (that strange curved-roof building in the distance behind the herd of bison and the berm of the main particle accelerator beamline). My next posts will be of my time at the test beam, and then my trip to Chicago. More photos will be provided in those posts! Consider these teasers...








And finally, finally, a musical interlude until then... I love this cover of The Cure's "Lovesong" by Nathaly Dawn (did you know she has a Masters Degree in French Literature now? Yowza!):

"Lovesong - Nataly Dawn covers The Cure" (Watch on YouTube)

I have so much to post about, but after driving 8.2% of the way around the Earth (3268km) and spending 3 weeks with no more than a few hours of sleep at a time while working in a hazardous environment and a constant crisis mode, I think I will wait until I'm more coherent.

What I want to talk about today is the latest insanity from Firefox. I downloaded an update and they completely fuxxored its user interface. They have basically cloned the look-and-feel of Chrome (if I'd wanted to use Chrome, I'd download fucking Chrome, I hate that stupid menu icon at the top that we're supposed to use for everything with that program), moved all the icons that were at the bottom and which made total sense there (status bar at the bottom... it's one of the things I really liked about Firefox) to the top, redid their tabs interface so you can't tell the difference between where one starts and the next one ends ... or the title bar, they blend right into the window's title bar. And then in their support section, when people started to bitch, they informed us that they are shocked that we don't love it because it was designed to make the web experience for us so much better and was extensively tested by users before being deployed. So, Firefox developers are telling us that we're obviously idiots or at least uncultured sods if we can't see how brilliant the user interface they inflicted on us without warning is. They also instruct us to learn how to love it (see Dr. Strangelove for another thing we are supposed to learn to love).

The good news is, they have add-ons we can use to set the user interface back to the old way (apparently if you install four add-ons, it works about the same way too). Ummm, if you want me to be a happy user, allow me to switch back and forth between to the two and allow me to decide whether or not the new interface is the best thing ever or not. Telling me I'm supposed to like something like this smacks of Windows_8-ism and its ilk.

Not. Impressed.

Heading to bed... have slept probably 12 hours in 3 days... will try and write some positive stuff this weekend. Until then, here's a little teaser (it makes me smile):



(and yes, I was standing flat on the floor; and no, I'm not notably tall)

Edit: I just submitted the following via the Firefox feedback page (please submit your own feedback, whether you agree or disagree with me: for Firefox to have any chance, if there is any at this point even, they need to hear from users of all opinions):

I just "updated" to version 29 and when it restarted, it stabbed me in the face. I detest the Chrome user interface (especially the stupid menu button in the corner that is now glaring at me from my Firefox window) and that is one of the reasons why I used Firefox (the other main reason was that some of my core add-ons like Zotero only worked in Firefox, but just about everything supports Chrome now as well). As a start, my status bar should be at the bottom of my window, and I want information there. There is hardly any way to tell where one tab starts and the next ends, and it blends perfectly into the title bar of the window making the whole thing a busy mess that is confusing to navigate. I have tried to use the new interface, but everything still takes me longer to do with the new layout than it did with the old. If it had come as an option, I would not have been angry, but it didn't and I am afraid I am. The discussions I read in the Mozilla forums when I went looking for how to "fix" the user interface did nothing to decrease my upset since I am now apparently an uncultured idiot who should know that the new interface is something I should be thrilled about. With all the hullabaloo recently regarding the Mozilla Foundation, things were looking bad for Firefox's future... I was hopeful that things would not continue on that path. This decision by the Firefox team and the responses I have seen are straight out of the Microsoft Windows 8 playbook. I expected better from Firefox. I am quite disappointed in what has just happened and I can't help but think that I have just witnessed the final passing of an age in Internet history.

I am quite frustrated that Dreamwidth (and Livejournal, etc.) do not support MathJax. As I become more proficient in my new field of study, I am becoming increasingly frustrated at not having a platform where I can share my thoughts. As it stands, I can use MediaWiki (not good blogging software, to say the least) or run my own WordPress blog (not a big problem, but then I'll be completely on my own again). I am wondering if wandering off from supported blogs like Dreamwidth is inevitable for me.

I just finished my last exam for the semester and headed home as the freezing rain was starting to fall in Ottawa. I had my Computational Physics [PHYS4807] exam on Thursday (mostly statistics for experimental physics and C++ and ROOT)... that was brutal!!! 4.5 hours long, and I took all but 15 minutes of it to finish (but I did finish, so I think I should get a good mark on it and my course overall). My exam today was for a C++ and "software engineering" course [COMP2404] that I had to take for my degree, and I am hoping to get an A+ in it (or an A minimum, but anything less than an A+ in this particular subject will be a little disappointing to me, heh, but I won't be crushed if I only get an A... bearing in mind I was programming in C++ in the early 90s and have decades of software development experience, although mostly in the C language... gads, I'm such an old fart, lol, but still young at heart... or is that immature? I can never remember... whatever, heh). I "challenged for credit" the other two computer courses I needed to take for my physics degree, but you either get a pass or fail for those and they don't affect your GPA. Taking the course in full will contribute to my GPA, and I could use a good mark to pull my average up (overall, I think I'm a "B" student, which under the circumstances of my life and existence is nothing short of remarkable, in a good way).

I also turned in my "mid-year" report for my 4th year Honours Project in physics [PHYS4909], which I will be updating based on feedback, and then sharing here when it's done (I've been threatening to post work I've done in physics for a while, instead of all that feminist studies stuff, and I will do so soon, mwaaahahaha...). Basically, I am trying to figure out how to re-purpose a particle detector — that was designed to be used at a high-energy particle accelerator facility like DESY or CERN — to be used to detect cosmic ray muons. FYI, it's a copy of the EUDET Telescope design developed in Europe for the International Linear Collider project (the website I put together last summer is here... a work in progress...). The main issue? At an accelerator facility, you can have all the particles you want and they are mostly delivered at a predictable energy. Carleton University does not have a particle accelerator, so we are going all ghetto and using naturally occuring high-energy particles: cosmic rays. Unfortunately, they are of all sorts of energies and you get about one every minute per square centimeter at a surface (from every direction, mostly vertical, they have a cos²θ angular probability distribution) and we need them to pass through all six layers of our detector... so with that configuration we only get about one particle every 30 minutes. The software that came with it has no idea whatsoever to do with so few particles (again, it was written for environments where you could pretty much have as many particles as you wanted), so that has to be re-thought and substantively re-written as well. Add to that (and this was one of the main physics results of the first semester of my two semester project), the amount of energy deposited in the detector chips by 4GeV electrons at DESY is almost two orders of magnitude more than what is deposited by 4GeV naturally occurring cosmic ray muons (mostly because electrons produce about 40,000 times more Bremsstrahlung than muons because of their lower mass... fyi, muons are sort of like big, heavy, electrons... they are both leptons, if you want to look it up). Most of the first semester was spent trying to see muons with the darned thing for the first time (we finally succeeded in late November, woot!), and next semester will be learning how to use it fully, developing new track detection and analysis software, and integrating the "Small Thin-Gap Chamber" (sTGC) data acquisition (VMM1) electronics and software with the detector electronics and software we have (as part of the ATLAS New Small Wheel Upgrade project at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, that Carleton is deeply involved with executing). The carrot under my nose is if I can get it all to work, we will likely do a beam test with the sTGC and Carleton's EUDET Telescope at Fermilab (using their pion beam), and they'll pay for me to go along as a key participant (there could even be a couple of actual journal publications out of it... I've only ever had my name on conference papers to date, which is still pretty cool as an undergraduate).

This all sounds very nice and such, but things really didn't go all that smoothly. At the end of the summer, a close friend of mine had a medical emergency that eventually required them to be sedated and to have their heart shocked back into regular rhythm (not a heart attack, but rather arrhythmia tachycardia... not immediately life threatening, but can cause heart attack or stroke if not treated reasonably quickly). There were a number of factors, but a lot of her life was being torn to pieces at the time and the insane levels of stress no doubt contributed. I ended up helping her back on her feet, and that caused me huge problems at the end of my summer term (in the 3rd year feminism course I was taking in particular, [WGST3812] "Selected Topics in Women's and Gender Studies: Gender and Health"... mostly a course on eating disorders and body image... not the most fun I've ever had as can be imagined). The whammy really came because I got quite ill myself shortly afterward (virus ov d00m) and wasn't able to complete the take home exam in that course. Earlier in the summer, family issues and the workload of my summer job at the university as a "Research Assistant" really beat the crap out of me as well, and that had a huge impact on my summer in general (yes, on the EUDET Telescope project... I basically had to get the space ready, learn what exactly the detector was and how it worked, and finish the basic commissioning of the detector after it arrived). Specifically, I had to drop the "Modern Physics II" [PHYS3606] course I had been taking, which means I now have to take it during the winter term coming up now (it's a heavy course because it has both an academic and lab component to it, and the course has been completely redone by a new professor so it will be much more difficult... sigh). I did manage to complete the two feminist studies courses I was taking though. I did finish the first year Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies [WGST1808] course (normally a full-year course, but compressed during the summer), which is required for the second degree I'm working on (a B.A. or B.A. Honours in Women's and Gender Studies, dunno which yet, but definitely a full degree as opposed to the minor I had been considering at one point, so long ago). I got an A+ in that course (woots!). Sadly, I got a C- in my 3rd year course, which really sucks the galactic muffin (if you'll pardon the phrase used in this context). The final take-home exam was worth 50% of my grade in that class (!!!), so by only finishing one of the two essays that was on it (because I was sick and overwhelmed), the maximum grade I could have received was a "B" and the professor gutted me on my midterm exam as well (somewhat unfairly, I thought), so I didn't really stand much of a chance in that class :(. All it took was to lose 13-15% in total to get that C- (if I had completed the final exam, I would have had an A- or a B+, ugh). It did advance me toward my second degree at least even if it didn't really do nice things to my GPA in that subject (I guess I could take an extra WGST at some point and use it to poit that particular course out of my average, heh).

I also didn't really want to take my Honours Project this year either, but it was somewhat forced on me (not entirely, but it was an offer that was difficult to refuse, shall we say...). That forced me to immediately drop the WGST course I wanted to take in the fall term (on "The Politics of Gender and Health" [WGST2807], taught by a midwife who had been all over the world). Even then the workload ultimately proved too much for me and I eventually had to drop my electromagnetism [PHYS3308] course, which is a "gatekeeper" course for my physics degree program. Between starting the semester at a massive deficit (health wise... and I was pretty badly burned out in general), with all of the family problems that came up, with another project that suddently got important (more below) that wasn't directly part of my studies, and with the Honours Project, there just wasn't enough time for the 12 to 26 hours a week of homework for the electromagnetism course (yes, 12 to 26 hours... consistenly, every week). I am contemplating taking it at the University of Ottawa, but I will have to take two semesters of courses there instead of the one here; however, I am thinking I might live through it if I spread it out a little instead of taking it the way Carleton offers it... Classmates who are way smarter than I've ever been, and have tremendous mathematical abilities, said it completely brutalized them and seriously lowered the marks they were able to get in their other classes the year they took it. It makes me feel a little better, but I still have to pass the course. The most important thing for me is that I proved that I could do the actual work (the math and the physics) — something I wasn't sure of, and really started to doubt myself — but just couldn't complete enough of it in the time I had to get a passing mark in that class (in one particular instance, I spent 14 hours figuring out how to do the first question of the assignment and had no more time to finish the remainder of that week's homework... which was 5 additional questions on top of the one I did manage to do... I got full marks for the one solution I turned in, but that isn't going to cut it for marks overall in such a course). Ultimately, I know taking the Honours Project when I did will turn out to have been a good decision, but I did suspect I wouldn't make it through PHYS3308 if I did... I have to say I tried anyway. Reminds me of a quote from Dune: "They tried and failed, all of them?", he asked. "Oh, no." She shook her head. "They tried and died". Heh. As I said, the stuff I'm learning having the space and equipment to do my Honours Project will serve me in good stead in a lot of the stuff I think I will be involved with going forward or that I might like to do (stuff like particle tracking techniques and Monte Carlo simulations in particular).

Which leads me to another project that has taken a surprising amount of time from me this year: the satellite payload that I designed for the Canadian Satellite Design Challenge of 2011/2012. The Carleton team did not win the competition, although we were certainly in the running. Most of the participants were from the Aerospace Engineering program, but a few of us on the payload team were in physics (one left science and went to aerospace engineering during the competition, heh). We had a great idea and lots of folks loved it, but we just didn't have the organization in place to support a winning entry (I had emailed the chair of the physics department and never even got an acknowlegement email or a word in the hallway... my supervisor at the time, Dr. Armitage, supported me as best he could and I learned a tremendous amount from him doing the project, so for that I am eternally grateful). Anyway, I had been working on the CRIPT and FOREWARN projects (which is where I got the idea for the satellite payload), as I have mentioned in the past, and was able to snarf some materials out of the trash heap when they wrapped up that I planned to use to build a prototype of the satellite payload if I had time. I had time (sort of), and it's built now... it took roughly a year and a half working very part time on it, but I finished it in November and was able to start taking a little bit of data right away. I have much, much more work to do, but it is off to a great start and if I finish work on it, I will be able to pitch it to a number of organizations to actually build and launch! Two things that this particular project allowed to happen that would not have if I had not been doing it: I got to meet Chris Hadfield, and I was invited to do a presention about my project at the 2013 Canadian Space Summit (in front of pretty much all the key industry players in the space sector and representatives from the CSA and NASA, etc.). The latter took a huge toll on my time availability as I really needed to finish the detector prototype and have something to show when I gave my talk. A copy of the presentation is here (a PDF, fyi) if you are so inclined and have a great need to follow what I'm doing, lol, or an interest in space weather and DIY satellite payload design. Anyway, this remains an ongoing project and I hope to have some key results in the next couple of months (the initial testing I did was just "sanity testing" the thing, it didn't begin to explore any of the questions I need answered).

I guess it wouldn't be a proper round up if I didn't at least recap the earlier part of the year... which was the usual mix of chaos, crises, and doom with sunny patches... I was able to complete three courses but had to drop Mathematical Physics I [PHYS3807] for lack of time to complete enough of the homework to pass (sound familiar?). It is also a "gate keeper" course for my degree, but the good news is that I am at least starting to understand the math required and how to do it. I think maybe what I need to do is take that course and electromagnetism together and just spend a semester doing nothing but mathematics (neither course provides any insight into physics, it's all just solid math, math, math) and maybe take a 3rd course in underwater basket weaving or something so I can go sit in a corner somewhere and drool while getting a credit. If I take the electromagnetism courses at the University of Ottawa, then this may not be entirely necessary. We shall see. I did pass Abstract Algebra I [MATH2108] (I got an A+, wtf??? I wasn't expecting to even pass that course initially, I guess I have an abstract brain), Mathematical Methods I [MATH3705] (I got an A-, but it was re-taking the course because I had previously passed, but had done poorly, and needed to be good at the stuff taught in that course to tackle... yup, electromagnetism and mathematical physics), and Activism, Feminisms, and Social Justice [WGST2801] (B+, and one of the "core courses" required for a WGST degree). The last one was particularly interesting because, as part of the required "activist project" (yes, mandatory volunteerism, the course is hugely problematic), I hijacked my own radio show to host a show on issues surrounding mental health with four of my classmates (you can listen to it "on demand" at that link). That led to one of the participants, aka Lilith, to pitch and get her own radio show ("Femme Fatale", an accessible and inclusive feminist radio program... fyi, I will be doing a fill-in for her show on December 30th if you want to tune in). She trained with me on my show before she got hers and normally co-hosts with me these days on my show (she has helped me to learn how to be "conversational" on the air instead of relying as heavily on scripts), and has become a good friend of mine too (one of the few actual friends I have at Carleton... the age gap makes it pretty hard to relate to other undergraduates, so it's only exceptional individuals that I can make any connection with... which self-selects for cool and interesting people, which is okay in my books I guess, heh). On the downside, things blew up so bad at the end there that I actually flunked challenging for credit the C++ course [COMP2404] (that I took this term for GPA credit, which will turn out for the better — in the long term at least).

Because I knew I would self-combust if I tried to take Mathematical Physics I again next term (it is with the same professor that teaches electromagnetism), I did a huge shuffle of my courses for next term and will be taking Thermodynamics and Statistical Physics [PHYS4409] instead with one of the best physics professors Carleton has (Bruce Campbell, fyi... and no, he doesn't have a chainsaw for an arm, heh). Unfortunately, this necessitated me dropping the "Feminist Research" [WGST3810] class, which is the last "core course" I need for my feminist studies degree, so I will have to take that next year (it's only offered in the winter semester). In its place, I am taking a course on "Gendered Violence" [WGST3807]. I am still going to be taking the Modern Physics II [PHYS3606] class because my Honours Project supervisor is the new prof for the course and he kind of insisted... but the lab section I was able to get into conflicts with my radio show so unless I can switch to the other lab section, it is not going to go well for me (although I might be able to finagle something, we shall see). And, of course, I will be continuing my Honours Project. Over the next couple of days I will figure out whether I will take the electromagnetism course at the UofO... sadly, I'm leaning in that direction because I really have to get over this hump somehow and hard work is the only way it's going to happen. I'm hoping that if I get exposed to it from a different perspective (and from a different professor) that I will understand it better. And lastly, I need to come up with a reasonable plan to finish testing the satellite payload prototype I've been working on. It's all doable until something in some other part of my life sort of blows up, which given past experience, is pretty much inevitable :P.

As a parting note, I will be taking over the radio station for New Year's Eve!!! I will be on air from 10PM on December 31st through 2AM on January 1st. Tune in for a fun New Years program! 93.1FM in Ottawa and area, or streaming live to large swaths of the planet via Internet at http://www.ckcufm.com/ :). [and yes, I'll be doing my regular Wednesday morning show at 10AM on January 1st, I hadn't remembered that when I originally agreed to do the New Year's overnight, heh]

I found out some very sad news last week (I'm a bit behind in finding out though because it happened in 2011)... Dr. Allan Griffin from the University of Toronto died on May 19, 2011 at the age of 72. Firstly, I have never met him, although I wish I had (I did correspond very briefly once though). Secondly, he is one of the inspirations and in some ways driving force in my attempting to get my degree in theoretical physics. Specifically, he wrote a book in 1993 called "Excitations in Bose-condensed liquid" that was one of the only theoretically and mathematically rigorous treatments of Bose-Einstein condensates in existence at the time (at a time when most physicists were pretty much actively ignoring the field). I used the Canadian inter-library loan system to borrow a copy from the National Library of Canada (a system that has since been dismantled, I might add, under the current Conservative government in this country) and did my best to read it.

I understood the general arguments that the book was making, but I could not follow any of the mathematics it was presenting. It was sufficient though to convince me that a deep theoretical treatment of Bose-Einstein condensed states was a reasonable thing to explore, and that tied in with other ideas I have had about the nature of things, and that led me pretty much directly to university (well, with a 16 year pause while I raised my two daughters mostly as a single parent... my children were and remain my priority). I had hoped, against hope, that I would finish my degree and be able to do my post-graduate work at very least in the presence of Dr. Griffin (he was active until the end), if not with him. That fantasy is now a thing of the past and I need to figure out another strategy for pursuing the subject matter he was both an expert in and tireless advocate for (Carleton University has no expertise in it whatsoever... although the physics department there does make contributions hugely greater than its size or budget would seem to suggest is possible, which is one reason I went there to study). Griffin's book remains my litmus test as to whether or not I'm ready to start my real journey in physics... when I can understand it cover to cover, I'll be a full (rather than larval) physicist ["when you can snatch this pebble from my hand, Grasshopper"... heh] and I will be ready to start kicking some physics butt. I think I'm about 40% of the way there and could, if I focused hard on it, move that extra 60% in a year or two.

So... Dr. Allan Griffin, you have had (although you never knew it) a profound impact on my life and may ultimately, through me, have a further impact on the field of physics (hey, a guy's gotta dream, okay? Don't criticize, heh). Time will tell... oh, and did I ever mention that's one of the things I understand? Time? Yeah... I gotta get my ideas down on paper sometime soon.

In Memoriam: Allan Griffin

Earlier today, I finally dealt with the last glitch and, after two previous attempts that were blocked by technicalities (which could have been invoked this time as well, so I haven't posted until I was sure), I am officially enrolled in my 4th year Honours Project for my first degree program (B.Sc. Honours Theoretical Physics). The writeup for it posted by my supervisor (Thomas Koffas) is:

The experimental particle physics group has recently procured a copy of the EUDET telescope from DESY, Germany. It consists of six silicon pixel modules that can be used for precision tracking in test beam sites such as at CERN or at DESY. Instruments like this are standard equipment in those test beam sites where new particle detector designs are routinely tested and evaluated.

As part of this project the interested students will work on the characterization of the Carleton EUDET telescope. The position resolution of the reconstructed tracks will be measured. Its dependence on the alignment of the six modules will need to be established. New methods for precision tracking and alignment of the pixel modules will also be studied. High energy muons from cosmic rays will be used for testing and validating the new approaches and will be compared to test beam data that were acquired using Carleton's EUDET telescope at DESY. In addition the interested students are expected to work on the simulation of the EUDET telescope and in the development of event/track displays, tools that will be very useful in understanding the telescope performance. Through this work the students will develop valuable skills in handling silicon sensors, assembling and operating DAQ systems, studying a detector's performance and in performing precision measurements.

The Carleton EUDET telescope will eventually be used to provide the standard reference for the evaluation of the performance of other prototype detectors. Assuming that the tasks described above proceed smoothly, the students will have the opportunity to test a prototype small Thin Gap Chamber (sTGC) constructed at Carleton and characterize its performance. The construction of the sTGC detectors is part of an on-going campaign to upgrade the ATLAS detector at CERN and in which Carleton is playing a leading role. Tools, like the EUDET telescope, that will provide an initial evaluation of a prototype detector's performance prior to a more cumbersome test beam campaign, are extremely important. The work done as part of this aspect of the project will therefore be extremely valuable in establishing a procedure to evaluate such prototype detectors and it will provide to the students involved a first hand opportunity to acquire experience with operating cutting-edge particle physics detectors.

If all goes well, there may be a trip to Fermilab for an actual test beam campaign in May of next year (I have so wanted to go, for so many decades!). There's a long-term possibility, if I'm involved with the project still, of going to CERN (on the France/Switzerland border) late in 2014 (as a note, I have dreamed of visiting CERN long before the Large Hadron Collider was even proposed). Both trips are long shots, but I'm closer than I have ever been before (even far is closer, heh).

The trick for me is going to be to manage my time and energy this coming year. To that end, and because my supervisor gets me for free (actually, I get to pay for the privilege) while I do my honours project, I will not have a job at all this coming year. I also decided last year after TAing for a 1st year Physics for Engineers course lab section, that I won't be doing it again until I'm forced to as part of my Master's degree requirements (presuming, of course, that I get any sort of funding). I'm also taking a much lighter course load this coming year to try and keep it all manageable. The downside is, of course, that I'm not going to make a penny all school year and will have to live purely off the students loans I will get... it's going to be tight... very tight. I plan to pay all my known bills up front when the money comes in (rent, etc.), and then will just have to figure out how to survive on what's left (mostly just human food, cat food, gasoline, and a little bit of an entertainment budget like going to the Mayfair Theatre or grabbing a drink with friends every once in a while). This coming year, my employment income is probably going to be 1/20th of what I was making the year before I went back to school, heh... but the amazing thing is that despite all I've been through, I am still happy that I made the decision. When I am done with my academic studies (if? lol), and with my decades of work in electronics, software, and international project management, I have little concern about my employability and eventual earning power.

So, until then, I finished my last summer lecture on Monday, have my 1st year exam next Monday (15% of my mark), and have to turn in my 3rd year take-home exam two Fridays from now (50% of my mark... that scares the crap out of me!). I have tons of work to do on the EUDET project before the summer is over (finishing its commissioning, setup, and test) so I can do actual research starting in the fall, and I'm trying to get a head-start on my fall courses as well (computational physics in particular). I will definitely have another movie day/pot luck before the end of August (1PM to 1AM or so as per last time) where I will show such classics as Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, Death Proof/Planet Terror, Excalibur, Starship Troopers, The Magnificent Seven, Tekkonkinkreet, and (I can't wait) Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death (starring Shannon Tweed and Adrienne Barbeau of all people...). And I am going to finish setting up my little music studio in the basement before school starts (it's in clumps throughout the house at the moment and isn't working out in that form).

I will leave you with what I consider to be one of the best music videos I've seen in years... fair warning, it portrays simulated violence against nice people and cute animals at the start, but then gets hilariously awesome (and violent)... the music is awesome too... sheer brilliance!

"Bingo Players ft. Far East Movement - Get Up (Rattle) (Official Video)" (Watch on YouTube)

It's been a while since I posted, and I'm going to go retro on this one. I had misplaced where I had put the source for this one and so can only post it now (I only had the PDF). I did this in the winter term of my first year at university. I had no idea how to use the library, I had no idea how to do citations, I had no idea how to write a research paper. But I ended up, I found out later, writing a 3rd year independent research paper (good enough for an honours project in Integrated Science at Carleton apparently, but I didn't know that at the time). I was asked to do it by a professor as a prelude to summer employment working on the CRIPT project as a research assistant. A gig that ran full time in the summers and a part time (mostly, sometimes more) through the school year until the end of November 2012, when the project started to wrap up and my contract was terminated. It was a good run, and I learned an amazing amount. I also feel privileged to have been able to have such an important role on such a huge project as an undergraduate student (mind you, it was my electronics and software experience they used, but still). I continue to volunteer on the project and am doing some additional volunteer work on another project studying the flux of horizontal cosmic ray muons leveraging the work I did on CRIPT (for developing a detector that can image the inside of nuclear reactors, for instance that have melted down, without having to actually get near them... naturally occurring muons are amazing particles!). Since the project proper has wrapped up and the new detector is still in the proposal stage, I decided to take a Teacher's Assistant position in the PHYS1004 class in the winter term (the money will help quite a bit even though it's not much). Anyway, this was submitted on April 30th, 2010. Oh, and I got an A- on it... :)


The Use of Cosmic Ray Muon Tomography in the
Detection of Concealed High-Z Materials
I. INTRODUCTION

A. The need for screening

It is becoming ever more important to monitor the flow of goods and people as a deterrent against state, criminal, or ideological organizations that may wish to wage war or cause serious disruption through the use of various asymmetric weapons systems within the territories we wish to consider secure. To that end, increasing surveillance and intrusive inspections have been implemented at points where the greatest risk exists, for instance at airports and border crossings. For an effective deterrent, all traffic through these key points of commerce and travel especially, as well as the appropriate measures for points between, require 100% screening to be maximally secure. For historic and economic reasons, this strategy of complete coverage presents an extreme challenge to even the most affluent and security conscious of societies. Furthermore, any onerous impediment to the efficient movement of goods and people elicits an economic cost of its own that can destroy the very prosperity that such security measures wish to protect.

While it can be argued that the smuggling of conventional weapons poses the greatest chance of occurring and resulting in harm being inflicted through their use, all but the largest of instances of such smuggling into otherwise stable countries are dwarfed by the already existent availability of these items within those countries. Where the national government of a country needs to protect its citizens against all forms of weapons smuggling, it has a special obligation to prevent the use of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons against its population, infrastructure, services, and legitimate foreign interests: “Asymmetric CBR threats provide an adversary with significant political and force multiplier advantages, such as disruption of operational tempo, interruption/denial of access to critical infrastructure and the promulgation of fear and uncertainty in military and civilian populations. [...] Proliferation will continue to dramatically increase the threat from the use of CBR agents by states or terrorist organizations against unprotected civilian populations. Proliferation also poses an asymmetric threat against non-combatants outside the immediate theatre of conflict, including Canadians at home.”¹ As such, most functional nations have embarked on integrated strategies to minimize the chances of CBRN related incidents. In general, those efforts can be categorized in five ways: supporting or directing the improvement of foreign CBRN control, detection, and enforcement; border CBRN detection equipment and domestic law enforcement training; the securing of legitimate CBRN materials within the country’s borders; improved intelligence operations to detect potential smuggling operations before they occur; and various domestic and international research and development project to improve overall control and detection capabilities.²

Furthermore, of the CBRN threats, there are emergency measures and possible mitigation that can be taken to minimize the impact to the population and infrastructure of a successful attack with chemical, biological, or radiological weapons; however, the damage that would be inflicted should a nuclear device be detonated in a populated area would be devastating beyond measure to both the fabric and spirit of the country, its operation, and its people. Such results make special nuclear materials³ (as could be used in a nuclear bomb) particularly attractive targets for terrorists⁴ (“independent” or state sponsored): “Nuclear smuggling is an increasing concern for international security because creating a viable nuclear weapon only requires several kilos of plutonium or highly enriched uranium. The International Atomic Energy Agency has documented 18 cases of theft of nuclear [weapon grade] materials within the last decade, and probably more instances have occurred without report. This is especially prevalent within the former Soviet bloc, where large amounts of nuclear materials are insecurely guarded and inventories are often faultily kept.”⁵

Of particular concern is the realization that the view, held since World War II³, that the effort required to build a nuclear weapon was prohibitive, is no longer valid. This opinion had been based on the American experience of creating two small nuclear weapons, but it is now widely accepted that the expertise and technical capability to build a viable nuclear weapon is no longer the exclusive purview of large, economically advanced nation-states. In fact, the knowledge and infrastructure required is potentially within reach of any well-organized and funded group with sufficient long-term determination and resourcefulness: “The only real technological barrier to the clandestine construction of nuclear weapons is access to fissionable material itself. There is a growing black market for this material, and eventually demand will result in enough material reaching as-yet unidentified buyers to produce a nuclear weapon”³. In addition to the smuggling of processed special nuclear materials, given that uranium is roughly 40 times more prevalent in the Earth’s crust than is silver⁶, the smuggling of uranium ore or low quality extracted uranium from such ore is also a more likely possibility.

While it is widely acknowledged that “most known interdictions of weapons-useable nuclear materials have resulted from police investigations rather than by radiation detection equipment installed at border crossings”², the asymmetric nature of the threat calls for exceptional measures in the effective detection of smuggled special nuclear and radiological materials that might make it past the intelligence operations to a port of entry into the country. Per the U.S. Container Security Initiative Strategic Plan: 2006-2011, “the cost to the U.S. Economy resulting from port closures due to the discovery or detonation of a weapon of mass destruction or effect (WMD/E) would be enormous. In October 2002, Booz, Allen and Hamilton reported that a 12-day closure required to locate an undetonated terrorist weapon at one U.S. seaport would cost approximately $58 billion. In May 2002, the Brookings Institution estimated that costs associated with U.S. port closures resulting from a detonated WMD/E could amount to $1 trillion, assuming a prolonged economic slump due to an enduring change in our ability to trade.”⁷ While this is a U.S. figure, it can be scaled appropriately to reflect the impact of such an event on any trading nation, or the domino effect such an act would have on global commerce if it happened anywhere.

( This part of the paper is here... )

D. Outline of Thesis

Because of the sensitivity of Passive Muon Tomography (PMT) systems to high-Z materials (versus lighter elements) they are a much more targeted solution than more indiscriminate imaging systems, and the lack of an active radiation source eliminates the potential health concerns associated with x-ray and gamma ray imaging systems. While PMT systems only address a particular class of risk, specifically the threat posed by the trafficking of special nuclear materials that could form the basis for a bomb or large well-shielded shipments of radionuclides that could be used in a “dispersal” device, the asymmetric nature of the threat justifies the commercialization of this technology to compensate for the serious limitations of existing technologies in this area of detection. Carleton University’s proposal to use large-area drift chambers for muon detection will result in a device that will provide excellent spacial and temporal resolution with very cost effective readout electronics and data processing requirements; however, the initial requirement for a flowing gas in the first generation solution presents a negative offset through higher infrastructure and ongoing maintenance costs that would need to be mitigated as part of a widespread deployment of this particular solution.

( The rest of the paper is here... )

VI. Conclusion

Passive cosmic ray muon tomography systems present an excellent solution to the issue of deterring and detecting the trafficking in nuclear and radiological materials – in the first case through direct detection of high-Z materials, and in the second case, being able to detect high-Z shielding that might be hiding lower-Z radiological materials. The system further distinguishes itself by not introducing any new sources of radiation, thus sidestepping any potential health or safety concerns from the public or business. Carleton University’s proposed drift chamber muon detectors build upon decades of experience in implementing high resolution muon analysis systems, and can be used to determine to a high degree of accuracy both angular and momentum data on the muons passing through a detector system for analysis by the tomographic software. The low cost of readout electronics compensates for the higher cost due to the requirement for gas-filled chambers, and will result in a competitive solution for field-deployable systems.

( And the bibliography is here... )