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Superconductivity scientists win top prizes
By Amy M. Kile
Argonne’s scientific superconductivity program will receive high
honors this month when two top prizes in the field are awarded to scientists in the Materials
Science Division.
George Crabtree, director of the Materials Science Division, will receive
the Kamerlingh Onnes Prize for pioneering experiments on vortex matter — patterns formed by
units of magnetic flux as they penetrate superconductors. Valerii Vinokur, a senior scientist, will
receive the John Bardeen Prize for influential contributions to vortex matter theory.
“This is a wonderful recognition of our program in superconductivity,” said Crabtree.
“The two prize committees work completely independently, so the double honor is especially
significant. Never before has the same institution been honored twice in the same year.”
Both prizes are given every three years, the Onnes prize for experimental and the Bardeen
for theoretical work that has provided significant insight into the nature of superconductivity.
Argonne’s prize-winning work focuses on vortex matter. If a superconductor is placed in a
magnetic field, the field penetrates it in the form of electromagnetic lines, similar to lines made
by iron shavings on a piece of paper when a magnet is placed underneath it.
The lines squeeze into an array of narrow streams, known as vortices, each containing
exactly one unit, or quantum, of magnetic flux. All electromagnetic properties of superconductors
are based on the behavior of these vortices.
The vortex lines form a regular array of hexagonal or cylindrical patterns known as
lattices. Crabtree and his associates designed experiments that varied the temperature and degree
of disorder to determine if the vortex lattice behaves like ordinary matter when heated. Would it
melt into a liquid state or would the vortex lines disorder and become hopelessly entangled, like a
bowl of spaghetti?
They found that at a certain temperature between 60 and 90 Kelvin (-183 degrees Celsius),
no force is needed to move the vortex. Below this temperature, the vortices were fixed in place
when a small force was applied, but above this temperature, the vortices moved no matter how small
the driving force.
“We thought the experiment showed melting to a true liquid rather than
to an entangled ball of vortex lines,” said Crabtree. “But we had to be sure, so we
measured the magnetic moment of the vortex system.” Just at the melting point, they found a
tiny jump in the magnetic behavior, indicating a sudden absorption of heat, meaning it melted into
a true liquid, much as ice melts to water.
Vinokur and his colleagues discovered that disorder dramatically alters vortex matter
resistance. Their theories predicted an effect of disorder on the lattice structure similar to the
effect of a bumpy road on a car, a phenomenon they called “dynamic melting.”
“If you drive fast enough, it’s easy on the car. If you drive very slowly, pay
respect to every bump, it’s also easy for the car. But you’ll discover that it is some
intermediate speed which is very unpleasant for the car and for you,” said Vinokur. When
it’s driven at some in-between speed, disorder takes the lattice apart and it
“melts.”
In “first gear,” the vortex lattice slowly creeps across bumps
made by disorder. Vinokur and his colleagues discovered that the energy barriers controlling this
slow motion exhibit a universal so-called “scaling” behavior as a function of the
driving force, which is a general feature generic to all disordered systems. This
finding was crucial to understanding phenomena at the melting point, a feature emphasized
early by Vinokur.
Both Vinokur and Crabtree stressed that Argonne’s programs in vortex matter are
strongly collaborative efforts. “Success requires a critical mass of excellent scientists all
working together. We are fortunate to have such a group at Argonne. It is one of the greatest
strengths of the national laboratory system,” they said.
Crabtree will share his award
with Professor Eli Zeldov of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, and Vinokur shares the
Bardeen prize with Professor David Nelson of Harvard and Professor Anatoly Larkin of the University
of Minnesota.
They will attend the Seventh International Conference on Materials and Mechanisms of
Superconductivity and High Temperature Superconductors in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in May to receive
their prizes.
Stephen V. Milton, senior scientist and project director at the APS for the Argonne component of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), will receive the Particle Accelerator Science and Technology Award at the 20th biennial Particle Accelerator Conference.
The award, which is only given every other year, recognizes outstanding contributions
to the development of particle accelerator technology. It is funded by the Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) through its Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society.
Milton was selected for his contributions to the development of third- and
fourth-generation synchrotron light sources. Using the Low Energy Undulator Test Line at
Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source, Milton was the first to demonstrate saturation of the
self-amplified spontaneous emissions (SASE) free-electron laser process at visible and ultraviolet
wavelengths.
SASE is the underlying principle of planned fourth-generation synchrotron light sources,
such as the LCLS, a DOE-approved project that will be built at the Stanford Linear Accelerator
Center in Menlo Park, Calif.
The LCLS may be used to observe the motion of nanoscale structures, to hollow out an atom,
to image a single molecule or to measure inter-atomic distances in a molecule that is undergoing a
chemical reaction.
The Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society, promotes and coordinates various aspects of
particle accelerator science and technology. This includes future technologies such as the
LCLS.
Safety boosts
bottom line,
says DuPont VP
“I know of only one acceptable expectation for safety, and that’s zero,” said Paul Tebo, DuPont corporate vice president of safety, health and environment. “Who wants to get hurt this year?”
Tebo, speaking at a May 6 Director’s Special Colloquium, said safety is one of
DuPont’s foundations of business excellence. With global responsibility for safety, health and
environmental excellence, Tebo championed DuPont’s “The Goal Is ‘0’”
safety program. He also helped shape DuPont’s commitment to “sustainable growth,”
including ambitious renewable energy and resource targets for 2010.
Metrics, communication and leadership all play important roles in keeping workers safe, but
what distinguishes DuPont is passion and intensity, Tebo said. Safety has deep roots at the
company, going back to the early 1800s when the company’s sole product was black powder for
munitions. An explosion killed 40 people, an appreciable fraction of the entire workforce, many of
whom were DuPont family members. Today, the company has 79,000 employees in 70 countries, and rakes
in $25 billion in revenue each year. It also has one of the lowest injury rates of any company on
the planet.
Safety adds value to the process at DuPont, he said, lowering costs — by billions of
dollars over the years — increasing productivity and helping protect the environment. The
safety culture also influences the product line: DuPont makes Kevlar, used in everything from
bulletproof vests to tornado-resistant “safe rooms,” and Tyvek, used in hazardous
materials protection suits.
“I find when you have a safety culture, it allows you to do a lot of things
well,” Tebo said. “Anything can be done safely.”
In addition, if there is an accident that shutters part of a plant, a competitor will step
in to supply the customer. That competitor may keep all or most of that business after the damage
is repaired.
To prevent accidents, DuPont tries to find and eliminate unsafe behaviors and processes
before an accident happens. A worker may do something unsafe a thousand times before the law of
averages catches up to him or her.
“We spend most of our energy looking at what people do,” Tebo said. We do
‘walk around audits,’ watching people work. It’s not just safety experts, it’s
managers and line workers.”
Ironically, it’s not the dangerous jobs that get people injured, Tebo said:
that’s when workers are most focused on following procedures. Routine operations a worker has
performed many times are when complacency sets in and concentration may wander. Seventy percent of
the injuries that do occur at DuPont are slips, trips and falls.
The emphasis on safety extends
to contractors and companies acquired by DuPont. Safety teams are the first visitors to companies
DuPont acquires — usually the new addition has an injury rate several times that of
DuPont.
Five years ago, DuPont sets the same standards for injuries — zero — for its
contractors. Naysayers said the move would drive up costs and cause contractors to flee. In fact,
the opposite occurred, Tebo said.
“Our expectations are huge change, not incremental change,” Tebo said. When
DuPont insists on safety at a company they acquire, recordable incident rates go down —
anywhere in the world, “even in a small, remote village in India.”
Guckenheimer Enterprises, Inc. has been awarded the contract to operate food services at Argonne-East’s Building 213 Cafeteria. The new company will take over operations from Sodexho Monday, June 2.
Employees will notice new menu items, said Pat Moonier (PFS-PMO), who oversees cafeteria
operations for the laboratory. Guckenheimer, based in Redwood Shores, Calif., states about 80
percent of its menu items are made from scratch. This high standard for freshness will translate
into slightly higher prices.
A committee evaluated Guckenheimer’s offerings at the Grainger Corporate headquarters
in Lake Forest. “We were very impressed with the food, cleanliness, presentation and the
friendliness of Guckenheimer employees,” Moonier said. “I think Argonne employees will be
happy with what they see.”
Current Sodexho cafeteria employees will be considered for employment with Guckenheimer,
and the company held a “job fair” for them the week of May 12.
NRC team to visit ANL-East
A team of Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) employees will visit Argonne-East over the next few weeks to perform a “pre-licensing inspection.”
The U.S. Congress has mandated such inspections by the NRC and the U.S. Occupational Safety
and Health Administration (OSHA) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science
laboratories. Congress has asked for compliance audits to serve as the basis for determining the
costs of transitioning laboratories to external regulation.
The eight-member NRC team will spend the weeks of May 19-23 and June 2-6 evaluating whether
any changes to facilities or procedures are needed to comply with the agency’s expectations.
DOE’s Argonne Area Office will host the visit, and DOE will be responsible for supplying
information on any costs associated with meeting needed changes for compliance. The visits will
involve substantial data-gathering on how radiation and nuclear safety is conducted at
Argonne-East. The teams will tour several facilities, giving attention to engineering controls such
as ventilation, fire protection and interlocks, as well as assessing administrative practices and
procedures.
Details of the visits are still being worked out, said Bob Wynveen (EQO), senior advisor
for environment, safety and health, and Argonne employees affected by the NRC inspection need to be
flexible in accommodating the exercise.
IPAY offers
paycheck
notification by e-mail
IPAY, the payroll service that provides access to earnings statements and W-2 forms 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, now gives employees the option of receiving e-mail pay notification instead of paper check vouchers.
Employees need to re-register for IPAY to receive this option and access to future earnings
information. Re-registration must be completed by Sunday, June 8.
To re-register, go to
http://paystatements.adp.com, which can accessed through the
Inside Argonne Web
page. The self service pass code is ANL-ANLPAY2003ADP; enter a user ID and password. At the top of
the Welcome Page, click on “Re-register Here.” New IPAY users should enter as a
“First Time Visitor.”
Employees will be asked to provide the following information from their pay stubs: company
code (PDU, PDZ or NWD), file number (badge number) , the last four digits of their social security
numbers, pay date (mm/dd/yyyy) and voucher or check number.
After providing this information, new users can create their personal User ID and Password
to be used when logging onto the site for viewing of future pay statements.
Pay statements will
be available for viewing by 9 a.m. CST on payday. Checks that have been voided by the Payroll
Department will not appear in IPAY.
For more information, call the Payroll Department’s
Debra Pounds at ext. 2-6916 or Kathy Vana at ext. 2-7356).
Ask the
Directorate:
Are more sidewalks planned?
Q: Occasionally, employees are encouraged to car-pool in the interests of energy
conservation. This would be a more attractive option if it were easier to travel around the Argonne
site without a car. Unfortunately, there are no sidewalks from the main gate, APS, or Guest House
to the 200 area, and there is no internal shuttle.
Further, employees who exercise by running
on site must deal with a lot of traffic, which creates an inconvenience for everyone and also a
safety hazard.
Are there any plans to address these issues?
A: This year, funding has been allocated for a walkway to connect the 400 area to the 200
area. Future plans include paths from the 200 area to North Gate and the 200 area to West Gate and
the Forest Preserve. Work will be scheduled as funds become available.
In the meantime, since safety is always our number one concern, we remind employees who
jog, walk or engage in other outdoor activities to follow the rules of the road and use all due
caution when using any streets with vehicular traffic.
Regarding taxi or shuttle service, the laboratory at one time offered both on-call and
scheduled taxi service. They were discontinued because low usage did not justify the cost. In
recent years, we have seen little interest in resuming shuttle service, but we monitor this issue
and would take action if circumstances warranted.
“Ask the Directorate” lets employees ask senior Argonne management direct questions
about the laboratory's operations, policy, strategy, mission, budget and goals.
Employees may
submit questions to
askthedirectorate@anl.gov
or fax them to 2-5274.
Run includes'mountain'
The Argonne Running Club’s “Run the IPNS Mountain” event returns to Argonne-East Wednesday, May 21. The run route will take participants up the Zero Gradient Synchrotron hill.
The run begins at the Building 360 entrance at noon. All employees, both runners and
walkers, are welcome to attend.
Sackett garners
award
for volunteer work
By Amy M. Kile
The United Way of Bonneville County, Idaho, has awarded John Sackett,
associate laboratory director for engineering research, the Seward H. “Skip” French Award
for Community Service.
The Seward French Award is named after a past president of the United Way and is given
annually to a volunteer who has made significant strides in improving the health and human services
available to residents in the Idaho Falls area.
“It was a real surprise to win and much appreciated,” said Sackett of winning the
award. “I think it reflects what an active community Idaho Falls is. There are a lot of
opportunities for people to participate.”
Over the past 12 years, Sackett has been chairman of the board of the Greater Idaho Falls
Chamber of Commerce, the United Way and the Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center. He has been
vice-chairman of the board of a private, philanthropic organization, the CHC, and commander of the
Idaho Falls Civil Air Patrol.
Sackett said working with the chamber was among the most memorable of his volunteer
projects because it gave him the opportunity to work with a newly hired executive in restructuring
the chamber to make it more significant to the community.
“One of the reasons I became involved as a volunteer was to emphasize Argonne’s
presence in the community,” Sackett said. “There are many Argonne employees who are
active and well-respected in the community.”
Sackett is currently dividing his time between Argonne’s Idaho and Illinois sites as
his current position requires him to be at both Argonne sites.
The Seward French award was
presented by Robert Phipps, director of Argonne-Idaho’s Oversight Office and first vice chair
of the United Way Board of Directors.
In Memoriam
Louis Basile, a retired chemist in the Chemistry Division, died Jan. 24. His wife, Catherine, survives him.
Leslie Burris, a retired senior chemical engineer with 40 years of service in the
Chemical Technology Division, died March 11. His wife, Mary, survives him.
Haim H. Chiswik, a retired senior metallurgist with 31 years of service in the
Materials Science Division, died Feb. 28. His wife, Beatrice, and children, Nancy, Paul, and Lindy,
survive him.
Daniel T. Dillon, a retired senior contract specialist with 26 years of service in
the Procurement Division, died Feb. 17. His wife, Mary Ann, survives him.
Jerome J. Fabish, a retired senior technician with 33 years of service in the
Engineering Physics Division, died March 9. His wife, Adrienne, survives him.
Charles Fowler, a retired animal care specialist group leader with 24 years of
service in the Biology Division, died March 11. His wife, Marilyn, survives him.
James Hutto, a retired maintenance mechanic I with 23 years of service in the Plant
Facilities and Services Division, died Feb. 19. His daughter, Cynthia, survives.
Peter Kazier, a retired maintenance mechanic with 26 years of service in the Plant
Facilities and Services Division, died Jan. 30. His wife, Verna, survives him.
Richard G. Lee, a retired bonded storage leader with 30 years of service in the
Central Shops, died March 28. His wife, Lois, survives him.
Jacob Sedlet, a retired chemist with 38 years of service in the Chemical Technology
Division, died March 29. His wife, Solveig, survives him.
Arthur V. Vervack, a retired personnel director with 10 years of service in Human
Resources, died Feb. 28. His children, Carol, Paul, Dave, and Diane, survive him.
Herbert P. Yule, a retired computer account administrator with 12 years of service
in the Environment, Health, and Safety Division, died Feb. 25. His daughter, Tara, survives
him.
