1. Technical news:

· ISOLTRAP completed a successful test of the new isobar separator with stable beam from HRS.

· The GPS controller box broke during the first physics run on solid-state physics. A temporary repair with spare parts from HRS fixed the problem. However, there is a concern that GPS has to be recalibrated to work in the entire mass region. For changing between close masses there should be no problem at the moment. The broken power supply will be fixed.

· The cathode of the REX EBIS has been mounted and will be tested until next week.

· The installation of the SiC target intended for laser spectroscopy and collections is delayed with one day. This is not expected to introduce problems as the two experiments can take beam until Tuesday morning.

2. A.O.B:

· Approximately 55kCHF are spent each year by ISOLDE for renting equipment from the CERN electronics pool! Please, check your experimental setup for such equipment and return it if it is not used!

· The arrival of summer students is approaching. Please contact your student with the necessary information about the project, or other useful details.

· The 45-th school on Nuclear Physics at Zakopane (Poland) will be held from Aug 30 to Sept 5.

· The DESIR workshop will be held on May 26-28 at Leuven, Belgium.

· Prof. Rick Casten (Yale University) presented a lecture on “Evidence for pairing, what is pairing, why pairing exists, consequences of pairing-pairing gap, quasi-particles, etc.”. He will continue the sequence with four more lectures on May 25 and 26, and June 16 and 21 at 2:30 in the ISOLDE visitors room. Rick will also conduct a course on the interacting boson model on June 14-16 from 9am to 12am at the same location.

Minutes by DTY