[en] Douglas Higinbotham, Eli Piasetzky and Mark Strikman investigate recent measurements that have probed the cold, dense nuclear systems of nucleons comparable to those of neutron stars.

[en] More than a hundred experimentalists and theorists met at DESY in October to discuss the latest advances in quarkonium physics. The Quarkonium Working Group (QWG) formed in 2002 to further research in all aspects of quarkonium physics and to bridge communication between theory and experiment in the field. The group has since sponsored a series of workshops on quarkonium physics, starting at CERN in November 2002 (CERN Courier March 2003 p6 and CERN Courier September 2006 p46). The latest meeting took place at DESY, Hamburg, on 17-20 October 2007. Hot topics included recent advances in the theory of quarkonium production at the Tevatron and the B-factories; quarkonium production and in-medium behaviour in heavy-ion collisions; the new narrow-resonance states discovered by the Belle, BaBar and CLEO experiments; applications of quarkonium physics to the search for physics beyond the Standard Model; and quarkonium experiments in the LHC era. Quarkonium physics has played an important role in establishing QCD as the accepted theory of strong interactions. It has decisively contributed to the development of the quark model of hadrons and to the understanding of the properties of QCD. It also provides a unique window into the interplay between perturbative and nonperturbative QCD. As such, quarkonium physics remains at the forefront of QCD research and is an important testing ground for state-of-the-art computational tools for QCD, such as effective field theories, factorization theorems, higher-order perturbative calculations and lattice QCD. The insights gained from quarkonium studies build greater confidence in predictions for Standard Model processes and, consequently, in predictions of new physics backgrounds at the LHC. The recent discovery of remarkable new resonance states in the charmonium region of the spectrum - exciting in its own right - provides further opportunities to test the theoretical framework of quarkonium physics.

[en] Full text: On 23 October Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin visited the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), Dubna, with a delegation which included President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yu.S. Ossipov, Russian Minister for Science and Technical Policy B.G. Saltykov, Russian Minister for Atomic Energy V.N. Mikhailov, First Deputy Minister of Finance A.P. Vavilov, Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs S.B. Krylov, and Deputy Economics Minister S. M. Ignatyev. In his speech, the Prime Minister acknowledged Dubna's achievements in science and in international scientific cooperation, particularly with CERN. 'Russia cannot stand on the sidelines of the major international project - the large new generation accelerator being constructed at Geneva,' he said, referring to CERN's LHC proton-proton collider to be built in the 27-kilometre LEP tunnel. 'It is noteworthy that JINR's specialists have already joined this long-term programme,' he declared. The highlight of the Prime Minister's visit to Dubna was the signing by S.B. Krylov, Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, and JINR Director V.G. Kadyshevsky of an agreement underlining JINR's status in the Russian Federation

[en] In the wake of the Superconducting Supercollider (SSC) debacle in the US, US particle physicists are regrouping. 'It is clear that physics interest cannot be changed by an act of Congress,' says Ed Berger of Argonne. As part of the SSC winding up, US Secretary of Energy has been requested to produce a plan to 'maximize the value of the investment in the project and minimizing the loss to the US, including recommendations as to the feasibility of utilizing SSC assets in whole or in part in pursuit of an international high energy physics endeavour.'

[en] At the Japanese KEK Laboratory in Tsukuba Science City, the oldest research facility, the 12 GeV PS proton synchrotron, has been equipped with new beamlines and spectrometers. The faithful PS has been supplying stable proton beams of steadily increasing intensity for 16 years. After starting with particle physics, PS research has expanded to include nuclear as well as particle physics. A large proportion of proposed experiments request intense kaon beams

[en] At its February meeting, Brookhaven's High Energy and Nuclear Physics Program Advisory Committee reviewed the status of the PHENIX (Photon Hadron Electron Nuclear Interaction experiment) proposal for the RHIC heavy ion collider

[en] Extensive 45 MeV injector testing has validated the basic superconducting design of the 4 GeV accelerator at CEBAF, the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility under construction in Newport News, Virginia. The injector has met all beam performance objectives, using production hardware and software similar to that being installed in the recirculating accelerator, including 18 superconducting cavities in two and one-quarter cryomodules

[en] Some recent scenarios for the future of US high energy physics have glossed over the ongoing high energy physics role of Brookhaven's Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS), seeing it being relegated essentially to a service function as the injector for the RHIC heavy ion collider. However this view is not shared by Brookhaven, now enjoying the benefits of a Booster to inject into the AGS

[en] The first of the heavy ion cooler storage rings, the Heidelberg TSR (Jest Storage Ring) entered its commissioning phase after construction lasting only just over two and a half years. Built in cooperation with GSI Darmstadt and groups from Heidelberg, Giessen and Marburg, the low energy 55 m TSR ring at the MP-Tandem Postaccelerator combination of Heidelberg's Max Planck Institute is able to store ions up to about 30 MeV/nucleon for a charge to mass ratio of 0.5, and is specially designed to investigate many still open questions of electron cooling for ions as heavy as iodine

[en] With more and more high energy physics Laboratories ''downsizing'' from large central proprietary mainframe computers towards distributed networks, usually involving UNIX operating systems, the need was expressed at the 1991 Computers in HEP (CHEP) Conference to create a group to consider the implications of this trend and perhaps work towards some common solutions to ease the transition for HEP users worldwide