1. On November 4 I was among the delegation accompanying the PM of Armenia Tigran Sargsyan in his visits to  Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and Berkley University.  At SLAC Mr. Sargsyan met with Director of SLAC – Dr. Persis Drell, Associate Lab Director -  Dr. Dale Knutson, Director of Accelerator Research department Dr. Tor Raubenheimer, and Armenian students of the Stanford university. PM was introduced to the history of SLAC, ongoing research and development of new accelerators for powerful light sources and for medicine. Also, the status of national lab (SLAC present status) was explained and discussed. During the meetings with the Armenian students and the representative of the Silicon valley Armenian diaspora in Berkeley, PM talked over the RA politics to support the education of Armenian students  in the country and abroad in world-best universities. The new organized National Competitiveness council and Luis foundation will coordinate projects in tourism, education and healthcare. The Yerevan Physics institute, to be turned to National lab, will actively participate in nuclear medicine establishing in Armenia.

2. On November 6 and 7 I participated in the plenary and section sessions of the ArmTech congress. Plenary sections were very interesting; the presidents and CEO of big companies based in the Silicon Valley presented a  broad picture of the high tech industry development and the possibilities of Armenia to take part in it. Unfortunately, ArmTech section sessions were not much populated and business contacts were very rare. Seem, that Armenian presenters, despite very interesting projects, were not suffisiently prepared for business contacts. They did not elaborate business schemes to involve private capital (asking for loans, selling part of business, etc...) and they were not ready to share the business with  private people to recieve investments. The estimates of the expected profit and of the product price were also a bit arbitrary. In my plenary presentation “Applied Cosmic Ray Physics: Science-Technology-Innovation" I tried to demonstrate the connections between fundamental science and innovation illustrating the Space Weather research in Cosmic Ray Division of Yerevan Physics Institute. It is a new emerging scientific field, as well as a new emerging commercial service. Fundamental science in this case is directly creating a new innovative technology.  In the Space Weather research we  have performed  fundamental research, technological know-how and elaborated business schemes in one and the same project, that is very challenging. However, this has resulted from a big demand in new innovative technologies and products necessary for the overcoming of the economical crisis. The ArmTech congress has the goals to develop knowledge based economy in Armenia via business/academia cooperation invoking the intellectual capital and entrepreneurship experience from Diaspora. This goal can be achieved  through improvement of education at all levels; building strong Internet presence; focusing on programs to end up on the products or services; and by reforming and creating transparent government agencies.

 Figure 1. Armenia’s PM Tigran Sargsyan and Economy Minister Nerses Yeritsyan with Stanford students, SLAC, Stanford, 5 November, 2009 

Accelerator Division at SLAC:

Figure 2.  Karen Bunyatov and Robert Avagyan are going to visit the LCLS

Figure 3. The 12 GeV electron accelerator of the LCLS

The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) provides the world's brightest, shortest pulses of laser X-rays for various fundamental and applied studies. It will give scientists an unprecedented tool for studying and understanding the arrangement of atoms in semiconductors, ceramics, polymers, catalysts, plastics, and biological molecules, with wide-ranging impact on advanced research in other fields.

The LCLS X-ray beam is brighter than any other human-made source of short-pulse, hard X-rays. Initial tests produced laser light with a wavelength of 1.5 Angstroms, or 0.15 nanometers—the shortest-wavelength, highest-energy X-rays ever created by any laser. To generate that light, the team had to align the electron beam with extreme precision of  5 micrometers per 5 meters.

Unlike conventional lasers, which use mirrored cavities to amplify light, the LCLS is a free-electron laser, creating light using free-flying electrons in a vacuum. The LCLS uses the final third of SLAC's two-mile linear accelerator to drive electrons to high energy and through an array of "undulator" magnets (33 Wiglers, only 12 used)  that steer the electrons rapidly back and forth, generating a brilliant beam of coherent X-rays.

5. On November 10 I held a seminar for the Stanford/KAvli particle astrophysics group on the recent discovery of powerful electron accelerator operated in lower atmosphere, named “Thunderstorm Correlated Fluxes of electrons, Gammas and Neutrons Observed at Mountain Altitude”. The same seminar was given also for the solar physics group of the Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto.