News from experiments:

· The experiment on manganese at GPS successfully studied the beta decays of ^59-66Mn and their daughters.

· There were however several technical problems on the side of ISOLDE:

- The requested energy of 50keV was not provided, 30keV was used instead. Fortunately in the case of beta-decay studies this has no impact on the experiment apart from the lower ion-beam transmission.

- The target heating was suddenly shut down due a vacuum leak. Fortunately no damage occurred and the yields were according to expectations.

- The focusing of the proton beam had been left in a wrong setting after the yield check. Luckily, experienced users noticed it and corrected it immediately. We will now try to add the proton focus to the interlock system already in place for proton position.

· RILIS successfully introduced a new last step for manganese ionization.

· MINIBALL makes a good progress on the isotopes of radium and rubidium (on HRS). Currently ⁹⁷Rb is being measured followed by ²²⁴Ra (which was also studied on Monday-Tuesday in semi-offline mode due to a 2-day planned technical stop). Later CRIS will take francium beam form the same target for tests.

· There is a concern for the feasibility of the approaching Mossbauer experiment in case the beam energy at GPS is not recovered to above 40keV.

1. Technical news:

· GPS.FC490 does not work. There is an intervention foreseen to change it on Thursday.

· The reason for the HT problem will also be investigated.. If it is the Boris tube, there is not much that one can do. If not, then the extraction electrode will be replaced this Thursday, because it could be polluted and therefore could be causing the sparking.

· The GPS calibration is worse than usual. When using very different masses the beam is no longer centered on the scanner. The engineers are looking into the problem.

· ISOLDE seems to consume too much pressurized air. Some leaks were discovered at REX and have been fixed.

· Sebastien Blanchard investigated the reason for the vacuum leak from the COLLAPS into the ISOLDE beam lines. The problem proved to be related to the “memory effect” of the new PVSS vacuum system. Apparently there had been a pending open command on the valve to COLLAPS. This command had not been executed as long as the apparatus had been on atmospheric pressure (days or weeks or months, ...). Once the setup was pumped the valve automatically opened, which was not anticipated by the users. After this event, it was proposed that a timeout of 5-10 seconds is introduced for the valves to the experiments. Specialists are looking into the implementation.

2. A.O.B:

· Yorick Blumenfeld presented the slides of the CERN Director General concerning the budget reduction according to the new midterm plan recommended by the FC for approval by the Council.

3. Summer-student presentations:

· Natsuki Tomida (Supervisor Guiherme Correia) presented her studies of algorithms for extracting data from TimePix detectors for the applications of solid-state physics.

· Marija Gasparic (Supervisor Alex Herlert) showed her simulations of ion trajectories in the electrostatic ion-trap at ISOLTRAP and studies of the influence of external magnetic fields.

Minutes by DTY