The OLYMPUS experiment was designed to measure the ratio between the positronproton and electron-proton elastic scattering cross sections, with the goal of determining the contribution of two-photon exchange to the elastic cross section. Two-photon exchange might resolve the discrepancy between measurements of the proton form factor ratio,, made using polarization techniques and those made in unpolarized experiments. OLYMPUS operated on the DORIS storage ring at DESY, alternating between 2.01 GeV electron and positron beams incident on an internal hydrogen gas target. The experiment used a toroidal magnetic spectrometer instrumented with drift chambers and time-of-flight detectors to measure rates for elastic scattering over the polar angular range of approximately 25• -75• . Symmetric Møller/Bhabha calorimeters at 1.29• and telescopes of GEM and MWPC detectors at 12• served as luminosity monitors. A total luminosity of approximately 4.5 fb −1 was collected over two running periods in 2012.

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The direct search for dark matter is entering a period of increased sensitivity to the hypothetical Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP). One such technology that is being examined is a scintillation only noble liquid experiment, MiniCLEAN. MiniCLEAN utilizes over 500 kg of liquid cryogen to detect nuclear recoils from WIMP dark matter and serves as a demonstration for a future detector of order 50 to 100 tonnes. The liquid cryogen is interchangeable between argon and neon to study the A 2 dependence of the potential signal and examine backgrounds. MiniCLEAN utilizes a unique modular design with spherical geometry to maximize the light yield using cold photomultiplier tubes in a single-phase detector. Pulse shape discrimination techniques are used to separate nuclear recoil signals from electron recoil backgrounds. MiniCLEAN will be spiked with additional 39 Ar to demonstrate the effective reach of the pulse shape discrimination capability. Assembly of the experiment is underway at SNOLAB and an update on the project is given.

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A thick gas electron multiplier (THGEM) chamber with an effective readout area of 10×10 cm 2 and a 11.3 mm ionization gap has been tested along with two regular gas electron multiplier (GEM) chambers in a cosmic ray test system. The thick ionization gap makes the THGEM chamber a minidrift chamber. This kind mini-drift THGEM chamber is proposed as part of a transition radiation detector (TRD) for identifying electrons at an Electron Ion Collider (EIC) experiment. Through this cosmic ray test, an efficiency larger than 94% and a spatial resolution ∼220 µm are achieved for the THGEM chamber at -3.65 kV. Thanks to its outstanding spatial resolution and thick ionization gap, the THGEM chamber shows excellent track reconstruction capability. The gain uniformity and stability of the THGEM chamber are also presented.