Jefferson Lab’s Maud Baylac.

Page 2 Number 92 October 22, 2001 Research Evidence for the onset of quark Scientists advance seed effects production, oil remediation Highlights . . . Evidence for the onset of quark effects in A plant growth stimulator, developed a nuclear reaction has been observed for with the aid of Russian scientists through the first time at DOE’s Jefferson Lab. Just a DOE program, could increase the as urbanologists strive to locate where a growth rate of grasses and many broad- city truly ends and its suburbs begin, leaf plants by 40 percent under physicists wish to find the boundary at controlled conditions. Dye Seed Ranch which nucleon-based descriptions give of Pomeroy, Wash., recently sought way to quark-based ones. JLab technical expertise for its turf grass researchers have studied the behavior of operation from DOE’s Pacific Northwest the deuteron, the simplest nucleus, one National Laboratory. The Lab linked proton and one neutron. The them with Russian scientists who had experiment fired an electron beam at a developed a plant growth stimulator copper target, creating high-energy and an oil remediation biotechnology. photons that impinged upon a The work, funded by DOE’s Initiatives deuterium target, and broke the for Proliferation Prevention program, deuterons into their constituent protons could shorten the current 18 months and neutrons. The results were seed producers wait between planting surprising since they disagreed with and harvesting their first crop. Also, a many current theoretical expectations microbe capable of remediation of oil- for the onset of quark-counting-rule contaminated fields also may hold behavior. promise for industries looking for new [Linda Ware, 757/269-7689, methods to clean up agrochemicals. [email protected]] [Staci Maloof, 509/372-6313, [email protected]] Lead detection instruments get field test Water surety study gains new Instruments and methods to detect lead urgency in housedust will get a field tryout next A project Jeffrey Danneels has had under month in tests conducted by DOE’s Oak way as manager of Civilian Surety DOE Pulse highlights work Ridge National Laboratory. Programs at the Department of Energy’s being done at the Department Representatives from six companies will Sandia National Laboratories became of Energy’s national laborato- participate in the test, which will help dramatically more urgent after the Sept. ries. DOE’s laboratories house them assess how well their field-portable 11 terror attacks on New York and world-class facilities where gear detects lead in dust. Better and less Washington. His work with the more than 30,000 scientists expensive instruments can help speed Environmental Protection Agency and and engineers perform cutting- the identification and cleanup of lead- the American Water Works Association edge research spanning DOE’s laden dust in homes. “In the past, the Research Foundation sent him recently science, energy, national focus was on lead chips, but the to testify before Congress on the security and environmental Environmental Protection Agency has vulnerabilities of water systems. The quality missions. DOE Pulse been expanding its scope to look at lead potential damage that could be done by (www.ornl.gov/news/pulse/) is dust,” says researcher Roger Jenkins. The attacks on water systems became more distributed every two weeks. evaluation is part of the EPA’s obvious with the rising concern over the For more information, please Environmental Technology Verification discovery of anthrax infections in contact Jeff Sherwood program to accelerate the use of different parts of the country. Danneels ([email protected], innovative technologies in the field. is now planning workshops on the issue, 202-586-5806). [Ron Walli, 865/576-0226, scheduled to begin in November. [email protected]] [Howard Kercheval, 505/844-7842, [email protected]] Code crafters NEW SCIENTIST GETTING HER The sandbox and the moon ith funding from DOE’s Scientific Discovery through FEET WET Advanced Computing initiative, DOE’s Ames WLaboratory researchers are scaling up efforts to Maud Baylac grew up improve software for high-performance computing systems— in the French Alps far terascale computers that are capable of doing trillions of away from Newport calculations per second. News, Virginia, and knew The Ames Laboratory team will be combining their talents from junior high school with collaborators from Michigan State University and DOE’s she wanted to be in Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to develop scientific science. During her first simulation codes that can take advantage of today’s extraordinary taste of sub-atomic Jefferson Lab’s advances in computing technology—a major thrust of the SciDAC in college she was Maud Baylac in program. hooked. But a long way the lab. Increasing the performance of the scientific simulation codes from joining the DOE’s used to model physical, chemical and biological systems is Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator essential to scientists’ efforts to address ever-larger and more Facility in January 2001, as an injector complex problems. Issues to be explored include, among other group staff scientist prepared to study things, expanding our knowledge base on the structure of matter lasers, optics and electronics. from simple to the building blocks of life and gaining Maud’s studies led her to become an better insights into the energy-related processes of combustion, exchange student for the University of and photochemical energy conversion. California at Berkeley for her undergraduate The Ames Laboratory researchers, led by Mark Gordon, the senior year in college where she learned Lab’s program director of Applied Mathematics and about life in the US. Her graduate work in Computational Sciences, Jim Evans and Klaus Ruedenberg, will France pulled her back to the United States work with Piotr Piecuch of Michigan State to develop highly to Jefferson Lab, where she worked for scalable computational simulation codes that are three years while completing her studies. capable of predicting potential energy surfaces of very high Maud’s experience as a graduate accuracy in both ground and excited states. (Scalable refers to the student at Jefferson Lab mirrors that of ability to increase, or “scale up” computer processing power to other graduate students. She built, run the same job in less time.) The codes will be interfaced with installed, commissioned special equipment and then integrated into GAMESS, a software and took experimental data using that package developed by Gordon and Ames Laboratory associate equipment during her tenure. But she went Mike Schmidt. The package contains a popular suite of electronic beyond that and so impressed Jefferson Lab structure programs that are free to any user. that she was awarded a prize for “The advances in tie together with outstanding thesis work. The committee advances in scalable computing—they really feed off one another, was impressed with her clarity of writing, so our project will also include a lot of interaction with Ames depth of undertsanding and the lasting Laboratory’s Scalable Computing Lab,” said Gordon. legacy of her work in polarized Another collaborator, the PNNL Theory, Modeling and experiments. Simulation Group, will develop new simulation codes for cluster So how does one go from being a computers that will also predict ground and excited potential dedicated graduate student to a dedicated energy surfaces. The codes developed by the Ames Laboratory injector scientist? Her same dedication researchers will be made available to the PNNL developers of works only the time scale changes. Nuclear NWChem, a highly scalable quantum chemistry program that has experiments take years to plan and involve much in common with GAMESS. New computational chemistry large groups of people willing to dedicate codes developed for NWChem and GAMESS will be shared those years of work to an experiment. Now between PNNL and Ames Laboratory. the group is small and still dedicated to a “These collaborations will serve to strengthen the overall goal but the work has to be done quickly effort to develop extremely high levels of theory into scalable for the users of the Lab. code for new theoretical and computational models,” said Do people think it is unusual to for a Gordon. “Improving the performance of scientific simulation woman to be in this field? codes will allow scientists to do very accurate calculations on Maud says, “Science does not care much larger chemical systems. And that means we’ll be able to whether you are a man or a woman. The attack more complicated problems.” bottom line is that we are all scientists.”

Submitted by DOE’s Ames Laboratory Submitted by DOE’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility