The 20th US/Japan Committee meeting for Cooperation in High Energy Physics
The meeting to discuss on research plans for FY1998 was held on May 31 and Jun. 1. Since this meeting was held in Japan last year, it took place in USA (SLAC) this year.

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Visit of Minister of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, Mr. Machimura
Mr. Machimura visited KEK for a tour on Jun. 24. He has gone through BELLE, Longbaseline Neutrino facility and Photon Factory.

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“Introduction to Japan” class
KEK is now offering “Introduction to Japan” and “Japanese for beginners” classes to assist newly arrived scientists (and their families) from outside of Japan to start their life in Japan. The former provides basic knowledge on Japanese language and culture while the latter language lesson. Tuition free. Photo shows the first “Introduction to Japan” class held between May 13 and July 15.

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Meeting of the KEK Council
KEK Council meeting took place on Jun. 26. Major discussion was on the KEK research plans for FY 1999. All proposed plans were approved by the Council.

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1 k-ton water tank was installed
On July 21, a 1 k-ton water tank joined in the on-site near-detector system which had only iron plates for muon ranger and lead glass blocks. The preparation of the long-base-line neutrino oscillation experiment linking 250 km from KEK to Kamioka is in its final stage towards the start scheduled in early 1999.

By the end of next January, they will get a beam with slow spill and after some beam line alignments, they will start the targetting study with fast spill in the begining of February, then install the horn system in the beginning of March. (See previous issue of KEK News for more detail.)

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International Science School
5th International Science School for high school students (ISS) was held between July 23 and 30. This has been the annual event at KEK since 1994.

22 students from 12 countries attended the school. This year, photon factory hosted the school under the direction of Prof. Y. Azuma. It is gratifying to know that most students who had attended past ISS at KEK have been engaged in scientific careers and some have offered their help at ISS.

KEKB main ring major milestone
There was a celebration on completion of most KEKB magnet installation on Aug. 21.

Work to convert the TRISTAN ring into the KEKB started Feb. 26, 1997 by KEK Magnet group led by Prof. Ryuhei Sugawara. Since then, 1,625 main magnets and 1,709 correction dipole magnets have been installed in the two KEKB rings. Those magnets were conveyed by hover-craft type magnet transporters through the narrow path of 1.2m wide and 2.3 m high. Now, precise alignment of them is in progress.

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KEK Open House
Annual KEK Open House on Sept. 15 was different from previous years. A beautiful actress, Ms. Michiko Hada, came to KEK as the“Director-General of the Day”. Over 3,300 visitors came to KEK for the Open House.

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KEKB beam chamber milestone
Over 80% of 2,000 beam chambers for KEKB rings have been installed by the end of September. Most are made of oxygen-free copper to cope with the very high beam intensity. Specially designed are chambers for the interaction region that has a middle connection flange in the bore of a superconducting magnet cryostat. On Sept. 18, the KEKB Vacuum group led by Prof. K. Kanazawa succeeded to joint this difficult connection and passed an important milestone to construct the interaction region.

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KEKB SVD assembled
Assembly of the 32 sensor units of the Silicon Vertex Detector (SVD) was completed by Sept. 28. After the completion of support structure, it will be tested with a full-size readout system in October and then will be integrated into BELLE detector in November.
The SVD has 81,920 channels with a spatial resolution of about 10 micometers.

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BELLE CsI calorimeter detector
assembly completed and installed
BELLE CsI calorimeter was completed and carried into Tsukuba experimental Hall on Sept. 25. Installation into the BELLE detector took place on the 30th. Its diameter of 3.3 m and length of 3.7 m is quite impressive, beside its weight is over 40 tons. It contains 6,624 CsI crystals in it.