“We’re a long way off from being able to actually bottle antimatter, like in the movie Angels and Demons, but it was important to show that we could trap it for a longer period of time,” said (right), professor in 91��ɫ’s Department of Physics & Astronomy. Menary works on the Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus experiment, dubbed ALPHA, at the (CERN). In November 2010, ALPHA scientists successfully trapped antihydrogen atoms for the first time – but only for a fraction of a second.

“The first time, we trapped [the antihydrogen atoms] for a tenth of a second, which is actually long enough to study them,” Menary said. “But naturally we had people asking, ‘why can you only hold on to them for a tenth of second?’ This experiment demonstrates that we can hold on to them for much longer – in theory, for as long as we want,” he said.

See an online gallery of the .

ALPHA physicists, including a core team of scientists from Canadian universities, have been working to trap and study antihydrogen – the antimatter twin of hydrogen – which may help explain the “lost half of the universe.” During the Big Bang, matter and antimatter should have been created in equal amounts; scientists are left with the question, where did all the antimatter go? Researchers are tackling that riddle by taking one of the best-known systems in physics, the hydrogen atom, and investigating whether its antimatter counterpart behaves in exactly the same manner.

Makoto Fujiwara, the study’s lead author, said: “We know we have confined antihydrogen atoms for at least 1,000 seconds. That’s almost as long as one period in hockey! This is potentially a game changer in antimatter research.” Fujiwara is a research scientist at , Canada's national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, and an adjunct professor at the University of Calgary.

Scientists at CERN were able to make antihydrogen almost a decade ago, but they couldn’t study it; antimatter annihilates when it comes into contact with matter, converting to energy and other particles. ALPHA scientists succeeded by constructing a sophisticated “magnetic bottle” using a state-of-the-art superconducting magnet to suspend the antiatoms away from the walls of the device and keep them isolated long enough to study them.

Canadian researchers are playing leading roles in the antihydrogen detection and data analysis aspects of the project. The collaboration includes scientists from University of Calgary, University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University and TRIUMF.

Above: The TRIUMF cyclotron at the University of British Columbia. Photo courtesy of TRIUMF.

The next step for ALPHA is to start performing measurements on trapped antihydrogen; this is due to get underway later this year. The first step is to illuminate the trapped antiatoms with microwaves, to determine if they absorb precisely the same frequencies (or energies) as their matter twins.

ALPHA-Canada and its research is supported by the (NSERC), TRIUMF, (AIF), the and (FQRNT).

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Tier 1 CRCs were renewed for professors ,�� and . Professor was awarded an Advancement Chair, taking her from a Tier 2 to a Tier 1 CRC. Each Tier 1 CRC attracts $200,000 annually in federal funding, over a seven-year period, for a total of $1.4 million per chair.

The funding will allow Flett, Hessels, Tsotsos and Vosko to continue their respective research in personality and health, computational vision, atomic physics, and the political economy of gender and work.

“Federal government investment in research is crucial for Canadian universities because we are competing with the rest of the world to attract top researchers,” said Stan Shapson, vice-president research & innovation at 91��ɫ. “Through these investments, researchers at 91��ɫ are able to contribute significantly to new discoveries, public policy and economic development, and national and international dialogue across the full range of disciplines.”

91��ɫ’s renewals were part of $275.6 million announced by Tony Clement, federal minister of Industry,��to fund 310 new or renewed CRCs at 53 Canadian universities. “The Harper government is continuing its longstanding commitment to invest in science and technology to create jobs, strengthen the economy and improve the quality of life of Canadians,” said Clement. “For the past 10 years, the Canada Research Chairs Program has brought breakthroughs in clean energy, the control of infectious disease, business management, and digital technologies.This funding will help strengthen Canada’s capacity for leading-edge research while, at the same time, building economic opportunities for Canadians.”

Clement made the announcement at the start of a conference to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the CRC program. The conference, which began yesterday at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, continues today. Vosko took part in the “Thinking Ahead: A look at what the future holds for Canada” panel discussion on Wednesday. 91��ɫ Professor (right), Canada Research Chair in Art, Digital Media & Globalization, will participate in today's Art, Technology and Society panel.

91��ɫ has 28 research chairs, including the four renewals announced yesterday. Here are details on the work of the four:

Gordon Flett (left), CRC in Personality and Health (Tier 1), examines personality as the key to many health problems stemming from chronic stress exposure. Certain aspects of the personality trait of perfectionism can be particularly harmful. His team studies risk and resilience factors across the lifespan. He and Paul Hewitt co-developed the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, a model reconstruction of both the personal and interpersonal components of perfectionism. Research based on the model has firmly established that perfectionism has personal and interpersonal components and is associated with various forms of maladjustment, including health problems, depression, anxiety and suicidal tendencies. His research agenda also explores the relationship between perfectionism and psychological disorders, including eating disorders, postpartum depression and recovery from physical illnesses. A professor of psychology, Flett is associate dean, research and graduate education, in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health.

Eric Hessels (right), CRC in Atomic Physics (Tier 1), is researching the difference between matter and antimatter. His 91��ɫ team is working with researchers from Harvard University on a method to trap the antiatoms long enough to conduct experiments. This work is being done in conjunction with the international ATRAP (Antihydrogen Trap) collaboration. Hessels’ research also involves measuring the energies and orbits of helium atoms to provide the most accurate measurement of the “fine structure constant,” which determines the strength of electric and magnetic forces between charged objects. He is a Distinguished Research Professor of Physics at 91��ɫ.

John Tsotsos (left), CRC in Computational Vision (Tier 1), integrates the fields of visual psychology, computer vision, robotics and visual neuroscience to investigate new models of human visual mechanisms and how they may lead to intelligent seeing machines. His research falls into three main themes: visual attention in humans and computer systems, visually guided mobile robotics, and computer vision. He designed the first computerized motion recognition system, used in cardiology, and developed the Selective Tuning Model for visual attention, widely considered the leading model for consolidating current understanding of the process of visual attention. He has also designed an intelligent, visually guided wheelchair intended for physically disabled children. A past director of 91��ɫ’s internationally recognized , Tsotsos is the Distinguished Research Professor of Vision Science in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at 91��ɫ.

Leah F. Vosko (right), CRC in the Political Economy of Gender and Work, examines the contours of precarious employment to foster new statistical, legal, political and economic understandings of this phenomenon. Two of the chair’s principal projects involve constructing a research database on gender, work and labour market insecurity in Canada in comparative perspective — the — and overseeing a research alliance comprised of community and university researchers studying employment standards modernization in Canada and internationally. A professor of political science and a co-director of 91��ɫ’s Centre for Research on Work and Society, Vosko also teaches and supervises students in women’s studies, sociology, public policy administration and law, socio-legal studies, social and political thought, health equity, and communications & culture. Her most recent book, Managing the Margins: Gender, Citizenship and the International Regulation of Precarious Employment, was published earlier this year by Oxford University Press, UK.

By Janice Walls, media relations officer. Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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The DZero collaboration of scientists at the submitted a finding to the journal Physical Review D, reporting significant differences between matter and antimatter, which run up against current theories of particle physics. Their research indicates a one per cent difference between the production of pairs of muons and pairs of antimuons in the decay of B mesons produced in high-energy collisions at Fermilab’s Tevatron particle collider. An independent DZero measurement carried out by 91��ɫ researchers and submitted to Physical Review D last month further verifies these results.

Right:

Scientists believe that during the Big Bang, matter and antimatter were created in equal proportions; they have been searching for minute differences between the two in the hopes they will help us understand why our universe is composed primarily of matter.

Physicists theorize that a physical process preferentially consumes the antimatter in the universe, leaving only matter behind; they refer to this process as “CP violation”. However, the standard model of particle physics predicts very small amounts of this phenomenon, insufficient to account for the dominance of matter in the universe. The findings of 91��ɫ physics Professor , Canada Research Chair in Experimental Particle Physics,��and her colleagues put forth new evidence of CP violation as a key factor.

“These results are very exciting,” says Taylor, who is also a member of the tight-knit DZero b-quark physics group, which led the research. “This puts us one step closer to answering the big questions about matter-antimatter asymmetry – where did the antimatter go, and how was it consumed?”

Taylor and 91��ɫ graduate student Steven Beale looked for another particle, called a D_s meson, which is often produced along with muons in b-quark decays.

“Muons also originate from the decays of other particles, so it was important to try and verify that the muons originated from the b-quark,” says Taylor.

The two independent analyses are consistent: a combined result shows evidence of a source of CP violation in the decay of b-quarks.

DZero is an international experiment of about 500 physicists from 86 institutions in 19 countries. It is supported by the US Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and a number of international funding agencies.

Fermilab is a national laboratory funded by the Office of Science of the US Department of Energy, operated under contract by Fermi Research Alliance, a limited liability company.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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