The MINOS far detector is located in an old iron mine nearly a half-mile beneath the small town of Soudan, Minn. The 6,000-ton detector consists of iron plates about 30 feet across. This is the “front” end of the detector, which faces Fermilab, 450 miles to the south-southeast. Photo by George Joch.

April 10 , 2006 -- Some of this week's stories:

MINOS experiment sheds light
on mystery of neutrino disappearance

An international collaboration of scientists at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory has announced the first results of a new neutrino experiment. Sending a high-intensity beam of muon neutrinos from the lab's site in Batavia, Ill., to a particle detector in Soudan, Minn., scientists observed the disappearance of a significant fraction of these neutrinos.

The observation is consistent with an effect known as neutrino oscillation, in which neutrinos change from one kind to another. The Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) experiment found a value of a parameter related to the mass of the neutrino that plays a crucial role in neutrino oscillations.

"Only a year ago we launched the MINOS experiment,” said Fermilab Director Pier Oddone. “It is great to see that the experiment is already producing important results, shedding new light on the mysteries of the neutrino.”

The result corroborates earlier observations of muon neutrino disappearance, made by the Japanese Super-Kamiokande and K2K experiments, as well as the Soudan 2 experiment in the same Minnesota underground lab.

"Argonne played a big role in the getting the beamline up and running, and the data analysis,” said HEP director Harry Weerts. Argonne scientists and engineers were instrumental in getting the MINOS experiment launched in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and later designed and built many of the detector components. This included setting up “factories” to build the plastic scintillator detector modules at Caltech, the University of Minnesota and Argonne, building much of the "front-end” electronics that receive and record signals from the detectors, and installing the detectors. Argonne physicists and postdocs are helping to analyze the data produced by the detector.

Over the next few years, MINOS will collect about 15 times more data, yielding more results with higher precision and paving the way to better understanding this phenomenon. The current results already rival previous results in precision.

The MINOS experiment includes about 150 scientists, engineers, technical specialists and students from 32 institutions in Brazil, France, Greece, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The institutions include universities as well as national laboratories. The U.S. Department of Energy provides the major share of the funding, with additional funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation and the United Kingdom's Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council.

"And MINOS is just the beginning,” Weerts said. “We are working with Fermilab to design an even more sensitive future detector, called NOvA.”

More information about neutrino oscillations is available on Argonne's Neutrino Oscillation Industry Web site.

New record set for smallest X-ray nano-spot

By Catherine Foster

An award-winning device developed at Argonne has set a world's record for tiny spot size with a hard X-ray beam.

The device is called a Multilayer Laue Lens. The wafer from which the device was made won a 2005 R&D 100 award, given to the world's top 100 scientific and technological innovations. Enhancements to the device have now increased its ability to focus X-rays with an energy level of 19.5 keV to 30 nanometers. For comparison, the period at the end of this sentence is approximately one million nanometers in diameter.

The lens — just like the lens of a camera — allows precise focusing of X-ray light. Using the lens, researchers will be able to visualize three-dimensional electronic circuit boards to find circuit errors, or map impurities in biological or environmental samples at the nanometer scale. They can also analyze samples inside high-pressure or high-temperature cells, since hard X-rays, unlike soft X-rays, are able to penetrate container walls.

Other examples of uses of the new lens include development of smaller, better-performing and more reliable computers and telecommunications equipment; improving materials for energy efficient lighting, motors, fuel cells and solar energy production; production of lighter, sturdier, safer transportation vehicles through advanced materials with tailored properties; imaging cell division and tumor growth, providing a new mechanism for the early detection of cancer; and faster, more sensitive detection of hazards in local and global environments.

The researchers developed the record-setting lens by depositing 728 layers of material, one layer at a time, on a silicon substrate wafer. The thickness of the layer stack, when completed, was 12.4 microns. The wafer was then sectioned into bars used to make the lenses for the X-ray.

The work was published in Physical Review Letters (Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 127401, 2006).

"The accomplishment here is two-fold,” said lead author Hyon Chol Kang (CNM). “The first is to grow that many layers without peeling and, second, to cut and polish a bar without damaging the lens. We're continuing the development, and calculations for an idealized structure indicate that a focus of one nanometer is not prohibited by any known physics. The great challenge will be to grow the idealized structure.”

The optical design is akin to a linear Fresnel lens conventionally made by photolithography, but with the crucial difference that the diffraction structure is formed from many individually sputtered layers. High quality sputtered layers can be grown with thicknesses of 1 nm, and it is this control which makes the multilayer lens possible.

The new device is being used at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne, which produces the most brilliant X-rays in the Western Hemisphere. It will also be particularly useful as the Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne becomes operational later this year.

Researchers Al Macrander, Chian Liu and Raymond Conley, all part of the Advanced Photon Source Experimental Facilities Division optics fabrication and metrology group, developed the lens wafers which won the 2005 R&D 100 award. They are joined by Stefan Vogt, also of the Experimental Facilities Division; Kang and Brian Stephenson of the Materials Science Division, and Jorg Maser of the Accelerator Systems Division. The work is especially meaningful for Maser, who predicted the theoretical ability of an X-ray lens to focus at this small size in his doctoral dissertation in 1994.

Mid-year discussions to cover
career goals, development

Mid-year development discussions for all regular full and part-time non-union employees will take place between April 3 and June 30.

The mid-year development discussion is an opportunity for the employee and supervisor to discuss the employee's career goals and professional development. It is not intended to be a midyear performance appraisal. Some topics that might be discussed include professional goals, desired training and future career path at the laboratory.

A workshop on “Conducting an Effective Interim Conversion” (HR347) is available to help supervisors identify their responsibilities in the development discussion and develop techniques to make this a beneficial discussion for both the supervisor and the employee. The workshop will be held in Building 201, Room 190, from 2-4 p.m. on Monday, April 27, and again on Tuesday, May 16. Contact a Training Management System representative to register.

Additional information and resources are available on Inside Argonne.

Next generation of AMOS coming soon

The Argonne Materials Ordering System (AMOS) has undergone its second major upgrade since its original implementation in the late 1980s. The current AMOS system (AMOS II) has been in operation since 1995. Over the past 11 years, it has been used to process about 500,000 transactions (AMOS material requests), totaling close to $100 million.

AMOS II took AMOS to the user desktop, and now 95 percent of AMOS orders are processed electronically without procurement input. AMOS III or AMOS/TNG, which will be phased into production over the next few weeks, takes the user interface one step further, adding functionality, information and ease of use.

There are four major changes readily visible with AMOS/TNG:

• AMOS/TNG moves to a Web-based “shopping cart” system within Inside Argonne that will be familiar to anyone who has placed an online order.

• Starting with one supplier, with the plans to convert several more over the next year, AMOS/TNG will embrace “punch-out” catalog functionality. These AMOS supplier catalogs will replace the current AMOS price lists. Hyperlinks in the catalogs take the user to a customized version of the AMOS supplier's Web site with Argonne contract pricing.

• When you "check out" of the supplier's catalog, you will be returned to your local AMOS shopping cart within Inside Argonne, where you can continue shopping other suppliers or complete the AMOS check-out/order process. During the AMOS checkout, cost codes are assigned and an approver must be identified.

• Improved reporting and inquiry capabilities will be available to the user and Procurement.

For more information about the new AMOS, or to get started using the new AMOS/TNG, contact Ronette Stachelski (OCF-PRO) at ext. 2-7045, or Joe Ingraffia (OCF-PRO) at ext. 2-3640.

Foreign e-mail requests for
info, jobs should be reviewed

In an effort to more effectively analyze foreign unsolicited e-mail to the laboratory, the Office of Counterintelligence would like to review all unsolicited requests for technical information or job opportunities that appear to be coming from a foreign country.

All Argonne employees are requested to forward copies of foreign unsolicited e-mail messages to sfuller@anl.gov.

Export control regulations enforced by the Bureau of Industry and Security prohibit sending any information to countries that are subject to embargoes or other special controls without first undergoing a license review. Currently, these countries include Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, Syria and Rwanda.

For more information, contact Steve Fuller, Office of Counterintelligence, at ext. 2-6766, or Gretta Rowold, Export Control Office at ext. 2-5147.

Mary Kay Skwarek (CIS) shows high school students how the Argonne operator locates employees' phone extensions, building, room number and organization using an online database. Photo by George Joch.

Hispanic-Latino Club hosts
Administrative Career Day

The Argonne Hispanic-Latino Club held an Administrative Career Day March 14, bringing 30 students from Joliet Township High School's central and west campuses to Argonne for career presentations and tours.

Students learned about administrative, clerical and secretarial careers at Argonne. Participants were selected from the school's Office Occupations Program and the Inter-related Occupations Program.

Service Awards

40 Years

James L. Oldani (SCD).

30 Years

Laurel A. Chapman (DIS), Keith Knepper (PFS), Alan L. Moler (PFS), Judith K. Stickels (MCS), David G. Streets (DIS), Shari K. Zussman (CMT).

20 Years

Nelson A. Hanan (NE), George D. Mosho (RSO), Vincent J. Novick (NE).

15 Years

Alexei Abrikosov (MSD), Donald Barnett (PFS), David Brink (NE), David J. Carron (PFS), Sandra Classen (LEG), David Garbin (PFS), Omar A. Karim (PME), Betty Kinney (AST), Kim A. Mandekich (HR), Deming Shu (XFD), William A. Stigberg (RSO), Kevin Stoll (ET), Richard A. Tafoya (IPNS), Temitope A. Taiwo (NE), Yu Tang (NE).

10 Years

Sharon A. Gunter (CNM), Lorraine M. LaFreniere (EVS), Jerome Mroz (TSD), Theresa A. Rodriguez (HR), Robert H. Scott (PHY), Sulbha S. Wagh (TSD).

5 Years

Terry A. Cruse (CMT), Dennis D. Davis (PFS), Robert F. Fischetti (BIO), Kevin Fuller (PFS), Michael B. Gross (PFS), Donald Joyce (OTD), Roger L. Kellogg (NE), Christopher G. Kolb (RSO), Gary A. Lincoln (PME), Aziz M. Ma'ly (RSO), Denise M. Seeman (EQO), Joan E. Siewenie (IPNS), Mary Beth Vasco (DIS), Martin L. Vondra (PFS), Linda L. Wesolowski (PFS).

Administrative professionals
to be honored April 26

Argonne will celebrate the contributions of its secretaries and clerical employees at an “Administrative Professionals Day” program Wednesday, April 26.

The celebration will be held in the Building 213 Cafeteria, starting at 8 a.m. with a buffet breakfast, followed at 8:30 a.m. with a program that will include an address by Kelly Mannsfeld, deputy to the laboratory director.

Fun Run and Walk set for April 11

The Argonne Running Club's 7th Annual Tom Braid Cross-Country Run will be held Tuesday, April 11, starting at noon from the Argonne Park Pavilion.

There will be a three-mile run for runners and a two-mile walk for walkers through the Waterfall Glen Forest Preserve. Refreshments will be served at the finish. Runners and walkers of all abilities are welcome to participate.

Softball league to hold meeting April 13

In preparation for Argonne's 16-inch softball league season, which begins Wednesday, May 17, the first of two league meetings will be held Thursday, April 13, at the Building 213 Cafeteria. A second meeting will be held on a date to be determined.

The meeting will begin at noon in the north end of the cafeteria, near the coat rack. Any players, or teams interested should come to the first league meeting, or contact league President Mike Jagger at jagger@cars.uchicago.edu.

University plans conference on environmetrics

A three-day conference on “Multivariate Methods in Environmetrics” will be held Oct. 26-28 in Chicago, Illinois.

The conference is organized by the Statistics and Environment Section of the American Statistical Association and the Center for Integrating Statistical and Environmental Science at the Department of Statistics, University of Chicago.

More information is online.

Collider physics workshop planned for May 9-12

Argonne National Laboratory and the Enrico Fermi Institute of the University of Chicago will hold a Workshop on Collider Physics May 8-12 in Argonne's High Energy Physics Division. Additional information is online.

Business card order form available online

A Business Card Order Form, TSD-7, and a sample business card with the new Argonne logo are now available online.

In Memoriam

Harry Horner Hummel, noted nuclear physicist

Harry Horner Hummel, retired nuclear physicist, died Feb. 28, at the age of 88.

Hummel was an internationally known expert in the physics of breeder nuclear reactor safety. He worked at Argonne for 39 years and retired in 1987. He presented papers on safety and containment in fast breeder power reactors in numerous conferences in Europe and the United States, and published a book on the topic in 1970 with David Okrent of UCLA.

Marion Benson, a retired librarian with 42 years of service in TIS, died Jan. 8. Her daughters, Louise Kickels (TSD-BTC) and Janet Bluis, survive her.

Thomas Denst, a retired instrument maker with 32 years of service in CS, died March 10. His daughter, Arlyn Carreon, survives him.

Victor E. Krohn, a retired physicist with 21 years of service in PHY, died Dec. 25. His son, James, survives him.

Donald Niebl, a retired engineering technician senior with 28 years of service in AW-LTD, died Feb. 21. His wife, Doris, survives him.

William Sovereign, a retired engineering specialist with 35 years of service in AW-LTD, died Feb. 16. His wife, Marie, survive him.

Metlife rep to offer quotes

A representative from MetLife Auto and Home will visit Argonne Tuesday, April 18, to meet with individual employees for insurance comparisons and quotes for the “METPAY” group automobile and homeowner insurance program.

To schedule an appointment, call Craig Riddick at (630) 810-0346, ext. 143. Employees can also receive a quote over the phone by calling 1-800-438-6388.

AABC sponsors workshop
on personal finances

The African American Black Club (AABC) and Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Aurora will present a workshop on Developing Smart Money Habits Thursday, April 13, at noon in Building 202 Room B169.

Participants will learn how to take control of their finances, manage debt, deal with bill collectors and elevate their credit scores.