Brother: French Physicist Denies Terror Plans

From ABC News.com: Brother: French Physicist Denies Terror Plans

Colleagues and relatives of a nuclear physicist detained in France since 2009 on suspicion of associating with members of al-Qaida's North Africa branch expressed hope Tuesday that the case against him would be dropped, even as they voiced anger over the two years Adlene Hicheur has already spent in prison without trial.

An investigating magistrate will decide Wednesday whether the case against Hicheur should be closed or handed to a prosecutor, who would have up to one more year to prepare a trial.

French authorities say the 34-year-old has acknowledged to investigators that he corresponded over the Internet with a member of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

His brother, Halim Hicheur, dismisses the claim.

"Adlene does not acknowledge any preparation of a terrorist act or any intention to prepare something like that," the younger sibling said. "He exchanged political opinions about the situation in the world in general."

Colleagues at the European Organization for Nuclear Research near Geneva — best known under its French acronym CERN as the site of the world's biggest particle collider — and at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology in Lausanne, or EPFL, where Hicheur was based, told The Associated Press that the scientist was an example of excessive anti-terror laws.

"Independently of what Adlene may have done or not, it seems clear to me that the way he was treated in the past two years will have a profound negative impact on him, not to talk about his academic career, which is now seriously compromised," said Olivier Schneider, a colleague at EPFL.

"If they cannot establish that he is truly a dangerous individual for society, and it seems that indeed they are unable to do so, otherwise they would have charged him already, then they should release him," he added.

At CERN, where Hicheur was one of the many outside scientists sifting through results gleaned from its $10 billion Large Hadron Collider, Monica Pepe Altarelli said she was shocked at the Frenchman's treatment.

"For me it is a scandal, even if legal under French law," she said.

A brief acquaintance before his arrest, Altarelli said she now regularly sends scientific journals to Hicheur's prison near Paris so he can stay informed about progress in CERN's efforts to unlock the mysteries of the universe.

"Adlene has worked for many years preparing to take data at the LHC, but then could not really share with us the success of the experiment and the joy and pride of its physics results," she said. "We try to make him feel that he has not been forgotten by his friends and colleagues and encourage him to have the strength to resist this difficult situation."

CERN itself offered only limited support for the scientist.

"CERN has obviously followed from the beginning the case," said spokeswoman Corinne Pralavorio. "However, Adlene Hicheur is not a CERN employee, and we are not informed of the evolution of the case," she said. "The initiatives taken by some physicists are personal and not taken on behalf of CERN."

Hicheur's brother Halim claims it was precisely his role as a physicist that put him in the crosshairs of French intelligence.

At the time of his arrest, media reports portrayed him as a dangerous genius capable of harnessing his knowledge of nuclear physics to destructive ends. CERN insists Hicheur never had access to dangerous materials.

Colleagues and relatives of a nuclear physicist detained in France since 2009 on suspicion of associating with members of al-Qaida's North Africa branch expressed hope Tuesday that the case against him would be dropped, even as they voiced anger over the two years Adlene Hicheur has already spent in prison without trial.

An investigating magistrate will decide Wednesday whether the case against Hicheur should be closed or handed to a prosecutor, who would have up to one more year to prepare a trial.

French authorities say the 34-year-old has acknowledged to investigators that he corresponded over the Internet with a member of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

His brother, Halim Hicheur, dismisses the claim.

"Adlene does not acknowledge any preparation of a terrorist act or any intention to prepare something like that," the younger sibling said. "He exchanged political opinions about the situation in the world in general."

Colleagues at the European Organization for Nuclear Research near Geneva — best known under its French acronym CERN as the site of the world's biggest particle collider — and at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology in Lausanne, or EPFL, where Hicheur was based, told The Associated Press that the scientist was an example of excessive anti-terror laws.

"Independently of what Adlene may have done or not, it seems clear to me that the way he was treated in the past two years will have a profound negative impact on him, not to talk about his academic career, which is now seriously compromised," said Olivier Schneider, a colleague at EPFL.

"If they cannot establish that he is truly a dangerous individual for society, and it seems that indeed they are unable to do so, otherwise they would have charged him already, then they should release him," he added.

At CERN, where Hicheur was one of the many outside scientists sifting through results gleaned from its $10 billion Large Hadron Collider, Monica Pepe Altarelli said she was shocked at the Frenchman's treatment.

"For me it is a scandal, even if legal under French law," she said.

A brief acquaintance before his arrest, Altarelli said she now regularly sends scientific journals to Hicheur's prison near Paris so he can stay informed about progress in CERN's efforts to unlock the mysteries of the universe.

"Adlene has worked for many years preparing to take data at the LHC, but then could not really share with us the success of the experiment and the joy and pride of its physics results," she said. "We try to make him feel that he has not been forgotten by his friends and colleagues and encourage him to have the strength to resist this difficult situation."

CERN itself offered only limited support for the scientist.

"CERN has obviously followed from the beginning the case," said spokeswoman Corinne Pralavorio. "However, Adlene Hicheur is not a CERN employee, and we are not informed of the evolution of the case," she said. "The initiatives taken by some physicists are personal and not taken on behalf of CERN."

Hicheur's brother Halim claims it was precisely his role as a physicist that put him in the crosshairs of French intelligence.

At the time of his arrest, media reports portrayed him as a dangerous genius capable of harnessing his knowledge of nuclear physics to destructive ends. CERN insists Hicheur never had access to dangerous materials.

The paper Le Dauphine Libere reported shortly after his arrest on Oct. 8, 2009, that Hicheur discussed targeting a French army brigade specialized in mountain combat, and whose members were deployed in Afghanistan.

The possibility of striking French businesses was also raised, according to the report, confirmed by prosecutors.

Switzerland, which opened its own investigation into Hicheur following his arrest, chose not to press charges.

Jeannette Balmer, a spokeswoman for the Swiss Federal Prosecutors Office, told the AP that the case was suspended last year.

On travel til Wednesday

I'm visiting elderly relatives in Box Elder, SD who do not have internet.

Will try to sneak out now and again to an internet cafe to post, but more than likely will not be posting until Wedneday.

California Physicist Shares 2011 Nobel Prize

From ABC News: California Physicist Shares 2011 Nobel Prize
Saul Perlmutter won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday, but it wasn't until the California scientist was awakened by a telephone call from a reporter in Sweden that he learned of the distinction.

"How do I feel about what?" the 52-year-old Perlmutter remembered asking the reporter before dawn from his Berkeley home.

His wife looked online and told him it wasn't a hoax.

"Nobody really expects a Nobel Prize call," Perlmutter told The Associated Press by telephone shortly after the announcement in Stockholm.

Perlmutter was one of three U.S.-born scientists who won the prize for a study of exploding stars that discovered that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.

The finding overturned a fundamental assumption among astrophysicists that gravity was slowing the rate of expansion, and that scientists might be able to predict when the universe would come to an end.

"The result was nothing that we expected," Perlmutter, who heads the Supernova Cosmology Project at the University of California, Berkeley, said during a morning teleconference with reporters.

Perlmutter's research relied on massive cosmic explosions called supernovas to serve both as interstellar distance markers and a way to gauge which direction the universe was moving and how fast.


AP
Nobel Prizes winner for physics Saul... View Full Caption
Nobel Prizes winner for physics Saul Perlmutter smiles as he poses with his daughter's telescope at his home in Berkeley, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2011 after hearing he had won. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said American Perlmutter would share the 10 million kronor ($1.5 million) award with U.S.-Australian Brian Schmidt and U.S. scientist Adam Riess. Working in two separate research teams during the 1990s, Perlmutter in one and Schmidt and Riess in the other, the scientists raced to map the universe's expansion by analyzing a particular type of supernovas, or exploding stars. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma) CloseInstead of gaining clues to when the universe would begin contracting rather than expanding, he discovered that the universe was still growing, and at a faster rate.

But Perlmutter said he didn't immediately trust his results. Instead, he thought continued data analysis would eventually bear out that the universe's rate of expansion was decreasing. But months later, it became clear that wasn't the case.

"That was the extended four months of 'aha,'" he said. "That's got to be the slowest 'aha (moment)' you've ever heard."

Perlmutter also explained that The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awarded the prize, was slow to contact him because it was calling the wrong cellphone number. The academy got that number from a Swedish colleague of Perlmutter's, who didn't realize it was outdated, Perlmutter said.

"They tried to reach me for 45 minutes before going through another route," he said.

Perlmutter will share the $1.5 million award with U.S.-Australian Brian Schmidt and U.S. scientist Adam Riess, according to the acadmey, which credited their discoveries with helping to "unveil a universe that to a large extent is unknown to science."

Asked how he would spend the money, Perlmutter said he hadn't had time to think about that yet. He spent the morning on the phone and appeared at a news conference later in the day at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

"We knew Saul would win it one of these years," said Paul Preuss, a spokesman for the laboratory. "We just didn't know it would be this year. We are, of course, elated."

In addition to his prize money, Perlmutter will also get one of the coveted reserved parking spaces on campus that UC Berkeley gives to its Nobel winners.

"Which of course is the only reason to win a Nobel Prize, to be able to park on campus," Perlmutter joked.

The award was the 22nd Nobel Prize received by a UC Berkeley faculty member. The first was nuclear physicist Ernest O. Lawrence, whose name graces the national lab where Perlmutter works.

Should Researchers Blog? Should Their Employers Encourage Them?

This blog entry received quite a few interesting comments. Check it out at the link below.

From Science 20: Should Researchers Blog? Should Their Employers Encourage Them?

About Tommaso
I am an experimental particle physicist working with the CMS experiment at CERN and the CDF experiment at Fermilab. In my spare time I play chess...

Tomorrow I will fly to Frascati, where are the headquarters of INFN, the italian institute for nuclear physics. I will attend to an event there, called "Incontri di Fisica" (Physics meetings), where high-school teachers meet researchers and receive training, as well as discuss ways to improve science education and popularization in schools and outside.

I will be discussing the subject of "Science popularization with blogs" on Wednesday afternoon and then, two days later, I will be the last speaker with another short talk, where I will try to summarize some ideas on the matter. And you might help for this latter presentation.

In fact, the idea of the organizers is to have me blog about the event, and collect reactions from the blog readers. Yes, that means you.

I have no idea whether this is going to work at all, since time is short (the conference lasts three days) and I do not think I will be blogging about everything I hear, since I am interested only in part of the program. Anyway, I will try to comply.

For the moment, I would like to bounce off you, dear reader, a couple of ideas on the subject of science outreach performed with blogs. Maybe you may follow up with insightful commentary, criticism, or new ideas. Please comment on-topic in the thread.

1) The value of communicating with the general public the importance of basic research, and trying to get laymen interested in the science we do, is generally recognized. However, researchers who blog are usually frowned upon by their employers. Blogging is considered a pastime, is potentially dangerous, and is often discouraged. Should INFN, and similar funding agents in other countries, instead try to change their attitude, encouraging researchers to distribute their knowledge to the public in blogs ? Is it thinkable that one day a INFN researcher can write on his monthly time sheet "blogging" as a justification for a couple of hours of work off-site ? (You should know that INFN researchers are allowed work from home and claim the working time, if they provide a summary of what they did).

2) A topic that is dear to me is whether it is acceptable for a blogger to distribute a freshly approved public result by his or her collaboration, before the main author of the analysis has a chance to present it at a physics conference. Mind you, we are discussing about PUBLIC results here, but ones which do not make the headlines of newspapers, thus remaining unknown until presented at conferences. Am I "stealing" the spotlights if I take the result and explain it in my blog, making the world aware of it ? Is it despicable if I do that, considering that although I am a co-author (along with the 3000 colleagues of my experiment) I did not work explicitly on that topic ?

I think these two items may be enough to generate some discussion here, if you pay me the courtesy of expressing your views. Much appreciated. Thanks!

Omega Laser measures fundamental nuclear-collision properties, does it better than particle accelerators

From LaserFocusWorld: Omega Laser measures fundamental nuclear-collision properties, does it better than particle accelerators

Rochester, NY--Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT; Cambridge, MA), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL; Livermore, CA), and the University of Rochester (U of R) have used the U of R's Omega Laser Facility at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics to do a fundamental nuclear-physics experiment -- the first time such a feat has been achieved using a high-energy-density laser facility. Normally, such a thing is done using a particle accelerator.1

The scientists made precise measurements of the elastic scattering of neutrons off deuterium (D) and tritium (T) ions. They did this by using the Omega Laser to create a hot, dense plasma: the laser's 60 beams caused a 1 mm glass capsule filled with D and T to implode. A small fraction of the D and T ions fused, creating 14.1 MeV neutrons. Some of the neutrons scattered from the surrounding D and T ions, allowing a highly accurate measurement of the nuclear-collision process to be made.

Accelerator-based measurements were also used, although just to normalize the absolute cross-section. Once normalized, the shape of the low-energy cross-section was obtained with more accuracy than possible with accelerators. The results are important for nuclear astrophysics and fusion-energy research.

Next could be the fusion of 3He and 3He ions, important because it is the dominant energy-producing step by which the sun and normal-sequence stars generate their energy.

REFERENCE:
1. J. A. Frenje et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 122502 (2011).

Texas nuclear physics student on trial in Iran

From Reuters: Texas nuclear physics student on trial in Iran
(Reuters) - An Iranian studying nuclear physics in the United States went on trial in Tehran on Tuesday for having contact with "hostile countries," his lawyer said.

Omid Kokabi, 28, a University of Texas graduate student, was arrested at departures at Tehran airport in February. He is also charged with receiving "illicit payments," lawyer Saeed Khalili told Reuters, calling the accusations "illogical and baseless."

Judiciary officials were not immediately available for comment.

Iran is locked in a dispute with Washington over its nuclear program which many countries fear is aimed at building atomic weapons, a charge it denies.

Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been the target of bomb attacks that Tehran has blamed on Israeli agents seeking to sabotage its nuclear work. Israel has declined to comment.

In another incident that remains shrouded in mystery, Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri said he was kidnapped in June 2009 when on a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia and transferred to the United States.

He said he was offered $50 million to remain in America and "to spread lies" about Iran's nuclear work, but he returned to Iran in July 2010. Washington said he had been living freely in the United States.

Khalili was unable to give more details on the case. "Unfortunately, I was denied access to visit my client or study his file over the course of the eight months," he said.

Syria 'targeting Homs scientists'

From BBC News: Syria 'targeting Homs scientists'

A nuclear physics professor has been killed outside his home in the Syrian city of Homs, the latest in a series of deaths of scientists in the city.

One activist said government snipers were to blame for Ous Abdel Karim Khalil's death, but another said it could have been a revenge attack.

His killing was reported as fighting continued between security forces and deserters in the town of Rastan.

Meanwhile, Russia attacked a watered-down plan for a UN resolution on Syria.

European countries proposing the resolution had dropped demands for immediate sanctions against President Bashar al-Assad's government.

The draft, proposed by the UK, France, Germany and Portugal and backed by the US, threatens sanctions only if the repression of protests does not end, and was aimed at winning the support of Russia and China.

But Russia's UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin said the proposed resolution would encourage violence, and was "a continuation of the Libya policy of regime change".

Deserters 'fighting back'

Inside Syria, security forces have been pressing on with efforts to quash protests that began six months ago.

In Rastan, a strategically important town that has seen frequent protests, soldiers who have deserted were reported to be engaged in heavy fighting with security forces for a second day.

AdvertisementFootage has emerged that appears to show Syrian soldiers announcing their defection
"They have got a foothold in the southern part of Rastan, but the Free Syrian Army is fighting back and has destroyed three armoured vehicles," one resident told Reuters news agency, referring to the deserters.

The army entered Rastan, near the central city of Homs, early on Tuesday, after besieging it for two days.

Video has emerged purportedly showing a group of soldiers announcing their defection.

The video, which cannot be independently verified, shows a man identifying himself as Captain Youssef Hammoud flanked by about eight men in uniform.

In all, hundreds of armed citizens and deserters are said to be confronting government troops in Rastan.

Foreign journalists have largely been prevented from covering the turmoil in Syria, and reports from inside the country are hard to verify.

But observers say there are growing signs that some opponents of the regime are resorting to force, believing that peaceful protests will not be enough to bring down the government.

'Trying to sow chaos'

The UN estimates that more than 2,700 people have been killed across Syria since the crackdown began.

The Syrian government says it is battling "armed gangs" that have foreign backing.

The state news agency, Sana, said the nuclear scientist, Mr Khalil, was "shot in the head by a terrorist group as his wife was driving him to work".

But some activists blamed the regime.

"They are trying to sow chaos, fear and terror in the hope that protesters will be cowed into retreat," said Syria-based activist Mustafa Osso.

The head of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the killings of Mr Khalil and three other scientists were part of an attempt by the regime to "provoke confessional discord in Homs".