ARGONNE VOLUME 06 / ISSUE 01 / SUMMER 2012

Inside the Advanced Photon Source Meet Our New Supercomputer Preparing for Pandemic Flu The Physicist and the Lost da Vinci Higgs Higgs Hooray Dear Reader, ARGONNE Here at Argonne, our scientists and engineers are tightly focused on our mission of discovery and innovation in the national interest. We work each editor day to find new sources of clean energy, stretch Louise Lerner the boundaries of scientific discovery, and create editorial board Ed Daniels new technologies that can recharge our economy. Rick Fenner Our research is important, compelling, and Robin Graham Matt Howard potentially game-changing, and we welcome Denny Mills finding new ways to share the work we do here with the larger community. Michael Papka Mark Peters Cosmas Zachos So as Director of Argonne, I am very excited to present this relaunch of

photography Argonne Now, our semi-annual laboratory magazine. As you will see, we are Wes Agresta adding more pages of science and engineering news. We also are offering a George Joch number of special features, including this issue’s review of educational art and design Sana Sandler opportunities at Argonne and our look at the real science (or lack of it) that

production underlies contemporary movies and television shows. Gary Weidner

send correspondence and questions to: I recommend our cover story, “The Search for a Superbattery,” which Argonne Now follows Argonne’s quest to develop a lithium-ion battery with the muscle to Communications & Public Affairs power a car for 300 miles or more on a single charge. The story begins in Building 201 Argonne National Laboratory Argonne’s materials science division and takes you all the way to the new 9700 S. Cass Avenue Argonne, IL 60439 generation of electric vehicles on the road today. But the story doesn’t stop [email protected] there: we continue to develop better ways to make advanced batteries that 630 252 5526 can make electrical cars safer, more reliable, and more affordable.

Argonne is a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory managed by UChicago In this issue, you’ll meet “Mira,” our laboratory’s powerful new supercomputer, Argonne, LLC. The laboratory’s main facility is outside Chicago at 9700 South Cass Avenue, Argonne, Illinois 60439. For information about Argonne, you’ll see what our scientists are discovering at the Advanced Photon see www.anl.gov. Source (one of the world’s leading synchrotron light sources), and you’ll find disclaimer out how we helped Chicago prepare for a potential pandemic flu outbreak. This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor UChicago Argonne, LLC, nor any of their employees or officers, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal We want you to have a voice in this new magazine as well. Are you liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any wondering about dark energy and why it’s so important to our information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any understanding of the universe? You can ask a scientist on page 66. Argonne provides scientific specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States To stay connected with the laboratory’s work between issues of Government or any agency thereof. The views and opinions of document and engineering solutions to the grand authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the Argonne Now, we invite you to sign up for our monthly email newsletter, United States Government or any agency thereof. Argonne Advances, and to follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Sign up to receive your copy of Argonne Now at challenges of our time: sustainable www.anl.gov/subscribe We hope you’ll enjoy this new Argonne Now, and we look forward to hearing from you. energy, a healthy environment, and a secure nation. Eric D. Isaacs, Director

2 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 3 in this

issue NEWS FEATURES

8 Mapping Underground Waterways with Krypton-81 26 INTRODUCING MIRA A rare isotope tracks how long water has been underground. Meet Argonne’s new 10-petaflop supercomputer.

9 From the Ground Up 32 THE SEARCH FOR A SUPERBATTERY The University of Chicago dreams small with its new Institute Research at Argonne will help power the next generation of electric vehicles. for Molecular Engineering. 38 INSIDE THE ADVANCED PHOTON SOURCE 10 Biochips for Bovines Access the atomic level at Argonne's giant synchrotron. A chip to diagnose cattle disease wins an entrepreneurial challenge.

11 Untangling the Mysteries of Spider Silk SHORTS Powerful X-rays reveal the atomic structure of spider silk. 42 7 Things About Catalysis Learn about the mysterious agents that make your beer, bread, paper, and plastic. 12 Higgs, Higgs, Hooray Argonne scientists help track down Nature's most elusive particle. 46 Book Review: Bottled Lightning Director Eric Isaacs reviews Popular Science writer Seth Fletcher’s latest on lithium-ion batteries. 14 Don’t Sweat the Flu The City of Chicago drills its staff for a pandemic flu outbreak. 50 Argonne in the Marketplace Thin sheets of diamonds have worlds of uses. 16 The Physicist and the Lost Da Vinci An Argonne scientist thinks he can find out whether a lost masterpiece 52 The Secret Lives of Nuclear Scientists is hidden behind a 500-year-old wall. Among the 1,400+ scientists at Argonne are a Breaking Bad actor and an award-winning chef.

20 The Minimal Microbe 54 Chasing a Common Cold Virus How many genes can you strip from a cell and still call it a cell? Adenoviruses are spiky, tricky creatures, but scientists are shedding light on their structures.

22 A Natural Solution for Transportation 56 Education at Argonne Compressed natural gas offers an alternative to gasoline. Learn about some of the opportunities for students at Argonne.

24 SHARP Thinking 60 Greening the Campus Computing could shave millions off nuclear reactor design costs. Argonne's visitor center is now cooled by pipes that go 600 feet underground.

61 Coming to Campus Take a peek at two new buildings under construction at Argonne.

62 Science Behind the Fiction: Contagion How accurate is Contagion’s killer virus outbreak? Argonne emergency planners weigh in.

66 Ask a Scientist: Battery Life Is it true that running my battery all the way down makes it last longer?

67 Science Haiku

4 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 5 SCIENCE HISTORY Science History 20 YEARS AGO 1992 – A Planet Far, Far Away

100 YEARS AGO 66 YEARS AGO The first planets ever discovered in another solar system are found by 1912 – How Hot? 1946 – Happy Birthday Argonne astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan

and Dale Frail. The planets orbit Wilbur Scoville invents a test to Argonne was chartered as the first a neutron star in the constellation measure the hotness of peppers. national lab in 1946. Its mission: Virgo, roughly 2,000 light-years The human tongue was still a much harness the power of the atom for away. Today scientists have identified more accurate detector than any peaceful energy generation. Today, more than 700 extrasolar planets. lab technique at the time, so his test the lab conducts science and measures how much a pepper has engineering research to solve to be diluted before it can’t be tasted problems in energy, environment, anymore. Your tongue can detect the and national security. heat, a molecule called capsaicin, at a concentration as low as 10 parts per million. The test has since been replaced with more precise lab techniques, but pepper heat is still often rated in Scoville units.

NASA, European Space Agency, and P. Kalas How Many (University of California, Berkeley) Albert Crewe (right), Argonne director from 1961 SCOVILLE to 1967, stands next to the lab's Cockcroft–Walton generator. Units? 50 YEARS AGO 1962 – A New Bond

Argonne scientists announce that Sweet bell pepper 0 they have created a compound with xenon, one of the noble and inert gases once thought too stable to form any compound. The creation Tabasco sauce 3,000 opened a new era for the study of chemical bonds. ART OF SCIENCE ART

Cayenne pepper 40,000 Fuel injector flowerBy Nicholaos Demas The nozzle of the fuel injector in a car sprays gasoline through tiny holes, designed to make as fine a mist as possible so that the fuel burns better. Researchers at Argonne, attempting to make the engine even more Habanero pepper 250,000 efficient, reduced the size of the holes to less than the diameter of a single human hair. This is a nozzle with eight holes—polished from the tip down to reveal a flower-like pattern—seen under a microscope. The

history dark areas are the holes, the yellow area is the iron nozzle, and the petals are the nickel-phosphorous Bhut jolokia material used to reduce the size of the holes. (“Ghost chili”) 1,000,000 Crystals of xenon tetrafluoride

6 | ARGONNE NOW Science History SUMMER 2012 | 7 NEWS NEWS

Atoms vibrate at frequencies that are flow rates of approximately one specific to each isotope. When they’re meter per year. hit by resonant light, they become Both Lu and Sturchio are now excited and vibrate faster—and show partnering with Pradeep Aggarwal, up as a bright spot on the camera. who leads the Isotope Hydrology Mapping Lu partnered with University of Section at the International Atomic Illinois at Chicago geologist Neil Energy Agency, to conduct a larger- Sturchio to use ATTA in a sample scale study. The team collected underground study to determine the age of the samples in Brazil last year, which Nubian Aquifer in the Sahara were sent to Argonne for analysis. Desert. The analysis agreed with If the study proves successful, the waterways with independent hydrodynamic models, technique could be used to map by Louise Lerner confirming the flow of water toward aquifers and groundwater all over KRYPTON-81 the northeast and even indicating the world. Zheng-Tian Lu adjusts the ATTA device. ataloguing them—it’s been difficult to get an an atom that decays extremely underground accurate model of the entire system. slowly. The technique is similar to waterways, some of Good models could predict water carbon dating done on fossils: if which extend for availability according to changes in you know how slowly Kr-81 decays UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO summer have joint appointments thousands of miles, vegetation, terrain, rain, droughts, or and can count the remaining Kr-81 with the university and the lab. Over has always been difficult—but monsoons. atoms in the water, you can calculate the next several years, the faculty scientistsC at Argonne, with colleagues how long it’s been since the water New institute to will grow to about 25. from the University of Illinois at was above ground. study molecular “The IME will have a kind of Chicago and the International Scientists have been hoping for a license to do things together the Atomic Energy Agency, are mapping way to use Kr-81 for dating since the engineering way a research institute does and a them with some unusual equipment: 1960s; it’s a remarkably long-lived license to acquire faculty the way lasers and a rare isotope. isotope that can be used to date back Matthew Tirrell studies micelles, an academic unit does,” Tirrell says. About a fifth of people on much further than carbon—perhaps “That doesn’t exist elsewhere as far Earth drink water drawn from as far back as a million years. But collections of lipid molecules that form spontaneously in water. The as I know. We’re not going to have underground, and crops around the since the isotope is extremely rare in When completed in early 2015, the William Eckhardt departments, we’re not going to world depend on it; experts believe the atmosphere, researchers needed founding Pritzker Director of the Research Center will house the Institute for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. divide ourselves up; we’re going to that aquifer depletion contributed a way to measure incredibly small Institute for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, Tirrell emphasize coming together to solve to the worldwide food shortages amounts of atoms. big problems.” last year. Underground water is Laser trapping and cooling of has developed a type of micelle that, similar spontaneity. Faculty members less prone to pollution and is the atoms, an area of physics pioneered when injected into mice, migrates will be encouraged to organize only source of water in many dry by Energy Secretary Steven Chu, to the location of artery-hardening themselves into problem-solving areas where surface water quickly turned out to be the answer. Argonne plaque. Using that homing capability, teams. evaporates. physicist Zheng-Tian Lu leads a team he says, scientists could tailor “I want people that are broad micelles for diagnostic or therapeutic and versatile enough to think about Water accumulates in aquifers that has worked since 1997 to adapt Nanoparticle only after filtering slowly through Argonne physicist Zheng-Tian Lu (in back) and his Chu’s atom trap to count individual uses—dissolving blood clots, for applications not only in health care This artistic rendering team (from left to right: Arjun Sharma, Wei Jiang, example, or delivering medication to but energy, environment, maybe depicts some of the sand and cracks in rocks, which Kevin Bailey, Guomin Yang) stand with the ATTA device. atoms of Kr-81. The result is called circulating nanoparticles can take millennia in some areas. Atom Trap Trace Analysis (ATTA), treat a tumor. even in computing: how does studied by Matthew Tirrell’s In order to manage this resource What scientists needed to improve which combines lasers with a camera Designing structures to achieve biology transform information? research group at the Stuff like that,” Tirrell says. “That’s University of California at fairly and effectively, consumers their models was a way to calculate to image atoms. such ends involves a process called Berkeley. The goal is to molecular self-assembly. “When you going to mean that we’re going engineer such nanoparticles for need to know how fast the water is the “age” of the water, or how long The device uses a chamber with diagnostic or therapeutic purposes. replenished. the water has been underground. six laser beams to capture individual put things together in a beaker, they to have people skilled in biology But because the areas that feed When water spends time above atoms. To set the trap to catch only don’t chemically react,” Tirrell says, working with people skilled in aquifers can extend for thousands ground, it picks up tiny traces of Kr-81 isotopes, scientists tune the “but they spontaneously organize electrical engineering—unusual into structures that are useful.” combinations.” of square miles—and conditions isotopes that are naturally present in lasers’ frequencies to match the —compiled from The University over any of those areas affect the air. One of these is krypton-81, specific resonances of Kr-81 atoms. He wants the new Institute for The institute is partnered with Molecular Engineering to operate with Argonne; three new hires named this of Chicago Magazine

This research was supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Physics and by the National Science Foundation. 8 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 9 NEWS NEWS

UNTANGLING THE MYSTERIES BIOCHIPS OF SPIDER SILK by Jared Sagoff FOR BOVINES Spiders weave a web even more TECH FOR CATTLE DISEASE WINS tangled than originally thought—at least ENTREPRENEURIAL CHALLENGE on the nanoscale level, according to new studies at Argonne. by Louise Lerner Using X-rays from the Advanced Photon Source (see page 38), scientists Argonne scientists are feeling Currently, farmers have tests to peered into the structure of orb spiders’ NEW VENTURE CHALLENGE bullish about new biochips that can determine whether a cow has dragline silk. This is the chief thread that SiteDiagnostics, a start-up diagnose bovine mastitis infection mastitis, but not which bacterium allows them to dangle precipitously off in dairy cows. is causing it. That’s where the chip Left: ANephila clavipes biotechnology company based on branches and window frames. Bovine mastitis is an udder comes in. “Spider silk has a unique combination female spider in the center biochip research by Aeraj ul Haque of her web. The radial inflammation that can put a cow Based on technology originally of mechanical strength and elasticity that strands and scaffolding of and Dan Schabacker, won fourth out of commission for months. developed for national security makes it one of the toughest materials her web are composed of major and minor ampullate place in the 2012 Edward L. Kaplan, It costs the dairy industry $10 applications, the biochip contains we know,” said Professor Jeffery Yarger of spider silk fibers. Commonly '71, New Venture Challenge. The billion worldwide every year, said tiny wells, each holding an Arizona State University, one of the lead referred to as dragline silk, this substance was imaged at challenge is a business creation Argonne postdoctoral researcher antibody that recognizes a specific researchers of the study. the nanoscale at Argonne’s Aeraj ul Haque, and can be caused piece of a bacterium. The farmer Advanced Photon Source. competition that funds the best The inner core of dragline silk is made by several different bacteria. applies a sample of milk from an up of a set of tiny fibers called fibrils, Image by Jeff Yarger. entrepreneurial ideas by students infected cow to the biochip; if one which, at the atomic level, organize into at the University of Chicago’s Booth of the antibodies latches on to a two different regions. The incredible areas, which is something you really School of Business. pathogen, that well turns blue. strength of the material comes from need a machine like the APS for,” “The same six bugs account for crystalline lattices that compose roughly Benmore explained. Unlike the crystalline areas, The start-up will receive $10,000, close to 90% of all mastitis cases,” 10% percent of the total webbing, while ul Haque explained, which makes a which tend to arrange themselves in office space at the University of its elasticity is the result of so-called chip practical since antibodies for “amorphous” regions that make up the predictable patterns, the scientists Chicago for the summer of 2012 many common bacteria are already remaining 90%. found that the atoms in the amorphous and networking opportunities, commercially available. Argonne X-ray scientist Chris parts of dragline silk lost their ordering part of the Polsky Center Summer “We could also adapt this to Benmore developed an experiment to after about a nanometer. Accelerator Program. Using the Argonne scientists Aeraj ul Haque (left) and detect quite a few other diseases in probe the nanocrystalline structure By getting a better picture of the Dan Schabacker developed a biochip to diagnose relationship between the amorphous award, ul Haque and Schabacker bovine mastitis. other veterinary applications,” he of dragline spider silk. According to said. “Bovine tuberculosis, canine and crystalline structure of natural silks, plan to find farms to start initial Benmore, previous studies of spider “Knowing the cause is really heartworm disease, even mad silk focused on the crystalline regions Benmore and Yarger hope to provide tests of the technology. They also helpful to the farmer, because cow. Anything with a proteomic because their structures were easier to the grounds for simulations that want to further reduce the cost of different causes have different biomarker, we can detect.” image. “In this study, we focused on could improve a whole class of synthetic each chip from about $8 to $5. treatments,” ul Haque said. getting a good view of the amorphous materials, including artificial spider silk.

10 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 11 NEWS NEWS Argonne scientists help track down

by Jared Sagoff Nature’s most elusive particle

On July 4, as fireworks exploded of the Earth, the particles we're across the United States in looking right now are at the scale celebration of Independence Day, of a pea,” said Argonne physicist HIGGS, scientists around the world also Tom LeCompte, who served as the began to celebrate what is widely physics coordinator at one of the considered the biggest experimental project’s major experiments. achievement in physics in decades. Since it came online in 2008, the At the Large Hadron Collider nearly 17-mile-long collider has in Geneva, Switzerland, scientists housed two parallel hunts to detect associated with two different signs of the Higgs. Argonne helped HIGGS, experiments independently build detectors for one of the two confirmed the detection of a new experiments, known as ATLAS, particle thought to be the Higgs and scientists from the laboratory boson—a result that would give have worked to enable massive data credence to a theory devised almost sharing via grid computing, oversee 50 years earlier. experiments, and analyze the results. HOORAY In 1964, a young physicist named "The results presented today are Peter Higgs published a theory that the outcome of over 20 years of postulated the existence of a new effort by several thousand scientists fundamental particle that would throughout the world, and Argonne’s answer some of the biggest questions contributions to the ATLAS detector in physics. Why did electrons, for made possible the acquisition of instance, have mass when theory the data we’re discussing today,” suggested that they should have said Argonne senior physicist been massless? James Proudfoot. “This is a historic The answer, Higgs thought, lay in milestone—but only the beginning the existence of an invisible field that as we start the task of exploring the permeated the entire universe, even properties of this new particle." vacuums. He suggested that particles The pinpointing of a Higgs-like gain mass by passing through the particle does not mean that high- field. energy physicists now have all the How does one find an invisible answers. field? Physicists believe that the field “There are still many unanswered manifests itself as a tiny, extremely questions in high-energy physics, unstable particle that decays and the conclusions we’ve drawn almost instantaneously. The trick from the data we’ve gathered open was getting the right conditions: up as many new questions as they an accelerator that would smash begin to settle,” LeCompte said. “I'm protons together at high enough certain we'll get much, much closer energies to produce the particle. soon, though. There's no way out for “To give you kind of an idea of Nature. We've got her closed in on the sorts of scales we're talking all sides.” about, if an atom were the size

12 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 13 NEWS NEWS City of Chicago won’t sweat the flu with Argonne’s help by Louise Lerner

response levels before an actual media intensity in real emergencies. event,” Walsh explained. The planning tool, called the Sync Walsh said the team makes sure Matrix Enterprise, was developed by to throw wrenches in the works, Argonne’s Decision and Information to mimic the unpredictability of Sciences division and allows ast year, officials at For the H5N1 flu exercise, the scenario. real-life scenarios. For example, Argonne experts to coordinate with Chicago’s Department Argonne team served as architects City officials face a cascade of in the last drill, the CDPH CDPH officials to plan, control, and of Public Health and built the scenario into a difficult decisions. Do they cancel computers “malfunctioned,” evaluate the exercises. watched the H5N1 computer planning tool that helped trade shows? Close the Chicago forcing the department to operate “The process has proved very bird flu tear through guide the exercise and track city Public Schools? Quarantine travelers without computer assistance for helpful in our real-life response to neighborhoods, taking down public agencies’ responses. at O’Hare Airport? Ask churches, several hours. Another day found the H5N1 flu; by the time the virus agenciesL and shuttering public After carefully planning out temples, and mosques to suspend emergency staff refusing to work hit, we’d already had two years of schools. the spread of the “flu attack,” they services? unless they received masks and planning exercises with Argonne,” Good thing it was just a drill. launched the scenario. Over a Argonne’s emergency vaccinations first and McCormick said Ed LeFevour, CDPH manager Emergency preparedness experts three-day period, at specific points, preparedness experts have Place officials challenging the of emergency management services. at Argonne have helped the Chicago they fed information to the Chicago collaborated with the Chicago city’s decision to ban large public “We held a planning session just a department plan its response to department about the spread of the Department of Public Health gatherings. few weeks before we went live with potential catastrophe, including flu and watched the results unfold. (CDPH) to run more than 20 Argonne experts even pose as 100,000 H5N1 vaccinations in the swine and bird flu epidemics, plague “We start off slow, but by the exercises over the past few years, for reporters at mock news conferences, Chicago area. outbreaks, and anthrax bioterrorism. third day, the city is reeling— scenarios ranging from pandemics pressing the officials for information. “The community is better Chicago, as one of the four largest influenza cases, workforce shortages, to bioterrorism to heat waves. After To make the scenario seem even cities in the nation, is required by laboratory samples, requests creating the scenario, the team helps more real, the risk communications prepared as a result of this the U.S. Centers for Disease Control for media interviews and news control the flow of the exercise team produced 22 video, radio, and and Prevention (CDC) to run conferences,” said Dan Walsh, an by sending new information and print news stories to match the action,” he said. periodic exercises demonstrating emergency preparedness specialist at challenges, monitors the drill, and how effectively it would respond to Argonne. “We like to keep them on offers suggestions for improvement public health emergencies. Local their toes.” at the conclusion. hospitals often join the exercises, as This particular exercise followed The exercises are designed to be does the city’s Office of Emergency the spread of an imaginary flu from “no-fault”—no one is disciplined Management and Communication. Egypt. By the time the flu “arrived” as a result. “We emphasize to the Even O’Hare Airport, a likely in Chicago, more than 15,000 cases participants that it is OK to make gateway for viruses from around the had been reported worldwide. mistakes during a drill as long world, has played along in the past. Reports of an outbreak at an area as they use the lessons learned nursing home kicked off the Chicago to improve preparedness and

Funding was provided by the CDC. 14 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 15 NEWS NEWS All photos courtesy Dave Yoder/National Geographic Society. The Physicist and the Lost da Vinci by Louise Lerner Could an Argonne scientist detect a long- lost painting behind a 500-year-old wall?

Above: Behind these frescoes may lie a half-finished masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci. Left: Argonne's Robert Smither works with Italian collaborators on erhaps one of Leonardo Battle of Anghiari, and his sketches experiment with oil paints, which tests that could reveal the painting's presence. da Vinci’s greatest promised a marvel of motion and allow for greater control, brightness, made copies based on the drawing Seracini speculated that the fresco touch the wall itself. He needed paintings has never color worthy of his best work. and layering of color—but dry and subsequent engravings, which painter might have constructed a a noninvasive way to detect the been reprinted in books Leonardo worked out the sketches painfully slowly. are the only images that survive. brick second wall for his own work, painting. of his art. Known while his assistants covered the He began painting, the layers Then the hall was remodeled in leaving a few centimeters of space for Along the way, photographer Dave as the “Battle of Anghiari,” it was stone wall with a coating to even out most likely taking weeks to dry. But 1563, and fresco painter Giorgio Leonardo’s sketch hidden beneath. Yoder had picked up an interest in abandonedP and then lost—until a the surface and seal out moisture, something went wrong. Accounts Vasari was commissioned to cover At the time, however, technology the project. Reading about imaging determined Italian engineer gave the probably a combination of gypsum vary, some saying the paint didn’t the walls in frescoes. To do so, he did not permit exhaustive analysis. from a distance, he came across a art world hope that it still existed, and rosin. Next came a layer of cheap adhere well enough, others that the had to paint over Leonardo’s work. It wasn’t until 2000 that Seracini paper by Argonne physicist Robert and a physicist from Argonne white paint, most likely a compound mixture was too thick and began to Fast-forward 400 years, during returned, armed with laser and Smither, who had designed a crystal National Laboratory developed a called “tin white” containing tin and drip down the walls—or even that he which Vasari’s frescoes became radar techniques, and confirmed the lens to look inside the human body technique that may reveal it to the linseed oil. Then the assistants would tried to dry one section with charcoal famous in their own right and existence of a second wall. without damaging it—why not a world once again. have taken his enormous sketch and braziers that melted the paint. art scholars labeled Leonardo’s Sonar, infrared, and radar can find brick wall? The story starts in 1503 in the transferred the outlines onto the wall. Leonardo was called back to Rome original work “lost.” Until Maurizio hidden architecture, but they don’t Smither suggested a method using newly constructed “Hall of 500” of Faced with a wall this large, most for another project and abandoned Seracini, engineer and Leonardo have the resolution to detect layers neutrons as a “camera” to detect the the Palazzo Vecchio, the town hall other painters of the day would the painting in 1505. enthusiast, stood in the hall in 1975 as thin as paint. Thus, Seracini had existence of the painting. In this of Florence, Italy, where the city had have used the fresco technique: It sat half-finished for decades. and noticed a tiny painted flag in a problem. Since the Vasari fresco approach, a small generator would called the geniuses Leonardo da applying watercolor paints to wet Other artists flocked to the spot Vasari’s intricate battle scene with above it is also historic, the Italian shoot beams of energetic neutrons at Vinci and Michelangelo to each paint plaster, which dries in a few hours. to study the remarkable painting; the message “CERCA TROVA:” government permitted Seracini the wall where the painting might be one wall. Leonardo chose to paint the Leonardo, however, wanted to Raphael and Rubens, among others, Seek and ye shall find. to look for the painting but not to hidden. Some neutrons would pass

16 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 17 NEWS through the frescoes and brick wall specific energy and decay rate, which hidden behind brick walls.) and strike the layers of Leonardo’s the detector can measure. Smither’s preliminary tests paint below. The neutrons would “We think it should be possible have indicated that the gamma react with the metals in the oil to detect whether paint from the ray detector can indeed pick up paints, producing radioactive nuclei original painting survives, and signatures from paint from behind that emit characteristic gamma rays. perhaps even map an outline of a brick wall. The hall itself presents Some of these gamma rays would the painting based on the colors,” its own challenges—the painting pass back through the brick wall, Smither said. is 20 feet off the floor, and the where Smither would measure them If no paint is detected, Smither neutron generator and gamma ray with a detector. says, the sadder alternative will detectors will have to be raised on “What we’d do is look for specific be to beam the neutrons along movable scaffolds. kinds of radioactivity produced by the bottom of the opening to see If the necessary funding is raised, different color paints,” Smither said. whether Leonardo’s paint flaked the lost painting could be found Chemicals used for oil paint off the wall and collected at the thanks to science—which Leonardo, colors contain unique isotopes. For bottom of the gap between the walls. of all painters, would probably example, red paint would contain (Half a millenium of weather— appreciate most. mercury sulfide, and the gamma rays especially humidity—can devastate coming from mercury sulfide have a unprotected paintings, even those Funding for the project has been provided by the National Geographic Society. Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen.

A lost Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece may lie hidden behind this fresco in Florence’s — Leonardo da Vinci “Hall of 500.” Photo courtesy Dave Yoder/National Geographic Society.

18 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 19 Electron microscopes capture Bacillus subtilitis bacteria. NEWS Images courtesy Kumaran NEWS Ramamurthi, National Cancer Institute. of a cell if it’s destined for a friendly THE MINIMAL by Jen Salazar and Christopher Henry environment already supplied with nutrients in a ready-to-go form. But a cell placed in a nutrient-poor petri dish will need some metabolic equipment to be able to feed itself. Breaking the cell down to the minimum components

three other national laboratories functions that might be harnessed known functions of different genes. and continue at random until every necessary and unraveling How many genes (Lawrence Berkeley, Brookhaven, for human benefit; others focus on Scientists use another tool called single car part has been removed and the interplay between can you strip from and Oak Ridge) are collaborating identifying the biological machines ModelSEED to show how genes tested. to build a research tool called the that drive the life processes of an and proteins with known functions But as one might guess, this genes, pathways, and a cell and still call Systems Biology Knowledgebase, individual cell, with the eventual interact to carry out all of the tasks technique is not always straightforward. or “KBase.” Systems biology studies goal of rewiring the cell to perform that a cell must perform. Then they Some parts interact with or preclude proteins and phenotype is it a cell? complex interactions in biological a useful task. use the model to speculate on what each other. Some parts are at least essential for understanding There are approximately one systems, such as the enzymes in Biologists often learn by is missing and to fill in the gaps, partially redundant. For example, trillion quintillion microbial cells a metabolic pathway. Studying eliminating a portion of the cellular applying knowledge of evolutionary what if you only remove one tire? how cells work, being on this planet. That’s more than these interactions involves vast machinery and observing how that relationships to assign likely The car might still move, though the number of stars in the known amounts of interrelated data of machinery responds. Argonne takes functions onto unlabeled genes. admittedly not very well. But if you able to model cells, and universe! Researchers also need to conduct take away the axle rod, even if the eventually reengineering Microbes are not only numerous lab work to verify the work done “in tires are perfectly intact, the car but also incredibly diverse, occupying silico” (on the computer). Argonne won’t be able to move. Genes are cells to help solve critical extreme habitats where little else scientists begin with a real microbe frequently interconnected in this can survive—down a thermal vent found in nature; in this case Bacillus way too, so researchers must keep problems. in the deep ocean or bathing in a subtilis, a common soil bacterium. track of their dependencies and The more we find our lives linked pool of near-boiling hot acid. They Through trial and error, they knock interactions. to those of the diverse microbes also perform a wide range of useful out different genes and check around us, the more vital it becomes functions, such as reducing uranium whether the cell can still grow in a to understand them. to remove it from groundwater and petri dish. If a microbe grows despite Constructing a minimal cell degrading complex polysaccharides the mutation, they can label that and sharing that data across the so we can digest our food. gene as not vital for survival. scientific community will accelerate Microbes are humanity’s secret This is a simple approach, but solutions for everything from energy companions, playing silent but starring it can get very complicated in to human and animal diseases. roles in global biogeochemical execution. Imagine a car. If Argonne By integrating and analyzing this cycles, animal and human diseases, scientists applied their method of The environment also matters. kind of data, KBase will enable fuel production, bioremediation, cell studies to understanding exactly When you strip the car down to its researchers to design and interpret food chains, and agriculture. Many different types. Currently, this data this approach to the extreme with how a car works, they would first most basic version, the result might their experiments more powerfully, microbes dwell inside each of us. We can’t be easily combined; it exists an effort to synthesize a “minimal try to build a “minimal car,” and add not be a very robust vehicle. The and to quickly share those results are beginning to understand that in different formats in unlinked cell”—a cell containing only the extra features later. number of features that you can strip and their interpretations. In the microbes don’t merely inhabit our databases associated with different biological machines that are essential They would begin with a whole off depends on where it is intended future, new functions will let users guts to aid digestion; they have research tools. KBase aims to for survival. fully featured, functioning car, to travel. For example, do you only visualize data, create models, and co-evolved in a symbiotic change this, but its goal is larger The first step is to compile what then randomly remove a part and need the car to run on a very smooth design experiments based on KBase relationship with us. Gut microbes than data integration. The team we actually know about the genomes determine whether the car still and flat road? If so, you can probably suggestions to target the most critical are now known to affect brain seeks to advance research in two of existing microbes. Argonne, the functioned. If the removed part safely toss a lot of inessential parts. work. development, immune and liver broad, important areas: plants and Fellowship for Interpretation of didn’t keep the car from running and But if you’re expecting to drive uphill functions, and adult behavior. microbes. Genomes, and the University of transporting passengers, then the over obstacles, you may not want to This work was supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Science. To study these microbes and the Microbial research underlies many Chicago developed and maintain a scientists would say that part is not toss the shock absorbers. complex communities they form interesting areas of work at Argonne. database that is part of a resource essential. When possible, they would Likewise, the environment of a in the environment, Argonne and Some studies search for useful called The SEED, which collects all record the role that part performed, cell matters. You can take more out

20 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 21 NEWS NEWS

Gases, Regulated Emissions, and For heavy-duty applications, like “It’s important to see each Energy Use in Transportation city buses, CNG might have the by Jared Sagoff (GREET) Model gives experts the potential to cut down emissions of these technologies as a ability to examine the greenhouse of particulate matter and nitrogen gas emissions of various fuels from oxides, helping municipalities meet part of the solution but not “well-to-wheels,” involving each more stringent EPA standards the entire solution,” Wallner a natural stage of production, distribution, enacted in the past few years, and combustion. “We have years of according to Burnham. said. “The more we invest expertise working with industry to In Wallner’s view, CNG vehicles— develop alternative-fuel vehicles as like plug-ins and diesel-powered in their development, the solution for transportation well as the tools necessary for the automobiles—will serve the public to understand the impact of transportation needs of some, not all. closer we’ll come to a these vehicles on the environment,” portfolio that makes sense As the United States transitions Recent improvements with “The price of CNG has been and said Argonne mechanical engineer away from a primarily petroleum- hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” will probably continue to be both Michael Duoba. both economically and based transportation industry, a a controversial process that cheaper and more stable over the Although CNG vehicles emit number of different alternative some critics claim can hurt long term than gasoline,” he said. fewer greenhouse gases than environmentally.” fuel sources—ethanol, biodiesel, the environment, have made CNG currently costs the conventional automobiles as fuel is electricity, and hydrogen—have each it economical for natural gas equivalent of about $2 per gallon, combusted, “upstream” challenges shown their own promise. Hoping companies to extract a greater supply roughly half that of current gasoline in production and distribution of to expand the pool even further, of natural gas from unconventional prices, according to Wallner. CNG—particularly methane leakage Argonne researchers have begun sources. In order for CNG to take hold, —make it somewhat less attractive to investigate adding one more Like gasoline, both the production many more stations will need to offer when it comes to preventing climate contender to the list of possible and combustion of CNG release it as an option, and the infrastructure change. “There are a lot of points energy sources for light-duty cars greenhouse gases into the for delivering and distributing the in the lifecycle of the fuel where and trucks: compressed natural atmosphere. To be able to make an fuel around the country will have we still need better data,” Burnham gas (CNG). accurate comparison to gasoline, to be built up. There are currently said. “There are technological Compressed natural gas is scientists and engineers will need fewer than 1,000 publically available Argonne engineer Thomas Wallner opportunities for us to capture is part of a group working to analyze composed primarily of methane, to look at each stage of the fuel’s CNG refueling stations in the United the leaked natural gas and reduce compressed natural gas as a fuel. which when compressed occupies production and use, said Argonne States, in comparison to nearly greenhouse gas impacts.” less than 1% of the volume it environmental scientist Andrew 200,000 gas stations. occupies at standard pressure. CNG Burnham. Argonne already has the capability is usually stored in cylindrical tanks Unlike gasoline, however, CNG to help automotive industry leaders that would be carried onboard the markets are relatively insulated from test and analyze CNG vehicles. In vehicles it fuels. geopolitical shocks, said Wallner. particular, Argonne’s Greenhouse Because the domestic production of natural gas has increased This research is supported by the Department of Energy's dramatically over the past ten years, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. making a large number of the cars and light trucks currently on the road CNG-compatible would help improve U.S. energy security. “As a country, we don’t lack for natural gas deposits,” said Argonne mechanical engineer Thomas Wallner. “And there are fewer obvious challenges with direct supply than with most other fuels.” Natural gas currently comes primarily from deep underground rock structures, including shale.

22 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 23 NEWS NEWS

Simulation-based High-efficiency look at the safety, lifetime, and largest concentrations of researchers Advanced Reactor Prototyping performance of different advanced involved in advanced reactor design. (SHARP) Reactor Performance design ideas. For example, early in the program, and Safety Simulation Suite, which the code creators wanted to test SHARP numerically mimics and allows how accurate the codes could be. researchers to “see” the physical Idaho National Laboratory, They built a virtual model of one of processes that occur in a nuclear Argonne’s historical test reactors, could shave reactor core. SHARP users can build Lawrence Livermore the Zero Power Reactor, ran complex virtual reactor models to “experiments” on it, and checked run the reactor through a variety of Laboratory, Oak Ridge how well the computer results millions off operational or accident scenarios matched up against the actual data. that would be impractical or National Laboratory, Modern codes like SHARP are impossible in the real world. and other U.S. DOE and already successfully replacing SHARP builds upon existing some types of nuclear experiments. nuclear reactor computer codes used to conduct university collaborators SHARP’s next step is refining the ack in the earliest days safety evaluations of today’s aging code to make it run more efficiently of nuclear energy, nuclear reactors. When you want have also contributed on powerful supercomputers like design costs Argonne physicists to use those older codes to virtually to SHARP. Argonne’s new Blue Gene/Q (see and engineers used test new reactors, however, you run page 26). More efficient codes mean slide rules and their into a few problems. They’re well- scientists can run more tests during calibrated for evaluating the safety the same computer time with fewer own basic knowledge of reactions This is a perfect fit for Argonne’s by Renee Nault andB physics to design nuclear of new reactor designs, but aren’t problems, making SHARP a more nuclear program, which has half a so great for optimizing designs for useful tool for reactor designers power plants. Then, beginning century of experience with reactors efficiency or cost. SHARP has been in the early 1960s, they enlisted under its belt and one of the world’s around the world. computers to develop designs with written specifically to simultaneously data from experiments and actual reactor testing. Over this entire span, Argonne built more than 85 experimental reactors to test its reactor designs and computer programs—each a costly and time- consuming endeavor. Despite all this, many of the highly complex physical phenomena that affect reactor performance and safety remained somewhat of a mystery. It wasn’t possible to “see” what was taking place inside this very harsh environment—until now. Researchers are using some of the world’s most powerful computers at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility to take a leap forward in nuclear reactor design, analysis, and engineering. Their efforts could shave millions of dollars off the cost of reactor design, development, This simulation shows a coolant channel that has preparation for licensing, and Argonne nuclear engineers Elia Merzari been partially blocked. Predicting how coolant (left) and Justin Thomas review the behaves in unexpected situations helps enhance construction. results from a nuclear fuel assembly safety and reactor performance. Image courtesy Researchers have developed a simulation on Argonne’s supercomputer. Paul Fischer and the SHARP thermal fluids team. suite of computer tools, called the

SHARP is funded by the Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear 24 | ARGONNE NOW Engineering, Advanced Modeling and Simulation Office, and the SUMMER 2012 | 25 Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation Program. FEATURE STORY INTRODUCING MIRA

of a handful of processors and it was built, uses chilled water to “BILLIONS OF memory units that were much faster cool air that is circulated around HOURS?” Time on than mainstream computers. As the processors. In Mira, copper demand for ever-faster computers tubes will pipe cold water directly INTRODUCING the supercomputer is grew, and microprocessors got alongside the chips, which saves by Louise Lerner cheaper, the industry began instead power by eliminating the extra measured in processor- combining hundreds—and then cooling step. hours, or the work done thousands—of processors, or “cores,” Mira also fits more cores onto into one system. Argonne’s current a single chip. This arrangement by one processor in supercomputer, Intrepid, has 163,840 reduces the distance that data has cores; Mira will have 786,432. (A to travel between the chips, which one hour. Since Mira typical laptop has two cores.) speeds communication between has almost 800,000 “Each individual core in the Blue cores and saves the energy lost MIRAArgonne’s new supercomputer won’t be in full Gene architecture is actually slightly when transporting data across long production until 2013, but it represents such a processors, that adds less powerful than the ones found in distances. > > > continued leap forward that just the first two prototype a typical home desktop computer,” up quickly. said Michael Papka, who heads the racks already rank among the top 100 fastest Argonne Leadership Computing NUMBER- computers in the world. Scientists will use Mira to study Facility. “But because faster exploding stars, nuclear energy, processors generate more heat, at the petaflops level it’s more efficient to CRUNCHING The computer, named “Mira,” is an IBM climate change, and jet engines, to rd Blue Gene/Q, the third generation in a name just a few projects—see the run lots of lower-power processors.” fastest supercomputer sidebar on page 31 for more. Mira’s sister machine, a Blue 3 line of supercomputers that has topped the Gene/Q destined for Lawrence in the world performance charts. Argonne and its sister Beyond providing hours of Livermore National Laboratory, will national lab Lawrence Livermore helped computing time, Mira itself is a run at 20 petaflops. It will be the 5 times more energy- design the computer, which will be the third stepping stone toward the next fastest supercomputer in the world— efficient than its predecessor fastest supercomputer in the world. great goal of supercomputing: the first time since 2009 that a exascale speed, where computers U.S. supercomputer will top the list. times faster than its will calculate quintillions of floating 20 Mira will be a 10-petaflop machine, capable point operations (or "flops") per EFFICIENCY predecessor of carrying out 10 quadrillion calculations per second. That’s a thousand times Mira is expected to be the greenest second. If you recruited every single person on faster than today’s top machines. supercomputer in the world, 10 petaflops earth to solve one calculation per second, around topping supercomputing’s Green the clock, it would take them more than two weeks What does a 500 list even before it’s installed. It’s to do the work that Mira will do in one second. supercomputer five times as energy-efficient as its 48 separate racks predecessor. need to be It has to be: “If you took the Any researcher with a question can apply for time tons the best? current Blue Gene supercomputer 96 on the supercomputer, typically in chunks and simply added processors to get of millions of processor-hours, to run programs SPEED it to exascale speed, which is 2,000 786,432 processors for their experiments. This adds up to billions of times faster than today’s machine, Mira will be 20 times faster you’d need a couple of new power hours of computing time, awarded through several than Intrepid, its predecessor at plants just to supply electricity to + billion computing U.S. Department of Energy programs; see page 31 Argonne. It will provide billions 5 it,” said Pete Beckman, who heads hours allotted to scientists for details. more processor-hours per year to the Argonne’s exascale initiative. Each every year scientists, engineers, and researchers new computer has to break new who use it to run complex ground for efficiency just to keep up. simulations of everything from Mira’s predecessor Intrepid, itself 10 quadrillion floating- nuclear reactors to blood vessels. a revolutionary energy saver when The first supercomputers consisted point operations per second

26 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 27 INTRODUCING MIRA INTRODUCING MIRA

FAULT TOLERANCE USER FRIENDLINESS That virtual design space is useful models dozens of times. Do all of the can be performed simultaneously. “Any complex system designed The name “Mira” Though some of Mira’s for more than consumer products models agree on two inches of snow Today, almost all laptops, PCs, and by humans must anticipate breaking comes from the Latin for architecture is different, it is also and drilling. It’s also key to studying by Friday, or do some say two inches smartphones run on this principle, down,” Beckman said. “And since grown from the same DNA as climate change. and some say two feet? The more dividing tasks between two cores. these supercomputers have many, wonderful, surprising, its predecessor at Argonne. For The world’s climate is an times they run a model, the better The research and planning that many cores, there are many, many programming purposes, it’s very extraordinarily complicated affair. they can estimate just how uncertain go into the next generation of spots for something to go wrong.” remarkable, extraordi- similar—only much faster. It sews together temperature, cloud they are about the forecast. Similarly, supercomputers like Mira help One or two misbehaving cores can nary. It’s also similar to “Users will be able to run the same cover, vegetation, rainfall, wind, climate scientists can both improve advance the field of computer halt the entire task, Beckman said, codes on Mira as they did on its geography, ocean currents, even their models and better understand science, making computers faster because most codes are designed to the Italian word mirino, predecessor,” Papka said. “They will volcanic eruptions, all over the how accurate their models are. and more energy-efficient. be interdependent: each core gets be able to jump straight into running nearly 200 million square miles of Finally, improvements in But for the hundreds of scientists a task and they feed the results to which means viewfinder. their scientific programs without Earth’s surface area. supercomputers tend to trickle who will use it to tackle some of the one another. If one goes down, the Both refer to the having to rewrite their codes from Even today’s most accurate climate down into the consumer’s hands. For biggest scientific questions in the rest of the operation gets hung up scratch.” models use just a single data point to example, all supercomputers depend world, Mira’s contribution is just while waiting for the missing answer. discoveries Mira will For the problems that do pop represent thousands of square miles. on parallel processing: breaking a beginning. Because a supercomputer’s system is up, the Argonne Leadership An area the size of Lake Michigan task into many smaller ones that Mira is supported by the Department of Energy's so complex, designing it to crash less enable once the machine Computing Facility, which runs the is represented by perhaps two data Office of Science, Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research. often—and to wreak less havoc when is fully up and running. supercomputer, has a crack team to points, which can’t possibly convey it does—is a delicate art. help users adapt their codes and fix the rich interplay of lake, dunes, There are several ways to make unexpected bugs. forests, swamps, and farmland—not a computer more resilient; for to mention the sprawling urban heat THEN example, reducing the number Solving Problems with island of Chicago—in enough detail AVIDAC was Argonne's first digital computer. of parts. “Every time you’ve got a Supercomputers to make accurate predictions. More Designed and built by Argonne's Physics powerful computers allow scientists Division for $250,000, it began operations connector, you’ve got a potential Mira’s numbers are impressive, but Jan. 28, 1953. for failure,” Papka explained. Mira’s why do we need supercomputers in to incorporate more and more data memory chips and CPUs are the first place? to create higher-resolution models. With Mira, scientists will also soldered directly onto cards. “Supercomputers help the United “If you have an iPhone, you’re Another technique saves wear on States economy stay ahead of our be able to run their models faster data storage. As the computer works, competitors,” Beckman said. These and more often. More runs allow carrying a computer in your it’s constantly saving, erasing, and days, more and more companies rely the scientists to test how much the pocket that is far more rewriting data. Over time, this wears model changes depending on what on modeling and simulation. sophisticated and powerful than out the chips. One way to fight this is Take planes. “Say that an data goes into it, which gauges “wear leveling”: writing software that aerospace company wants to build a uncertainty. When meteorologists the first supercomputer we built moves the storage location around predict the week’s weather for new airplane,” Beckman said. “In the at Argonne back in 1953.” the card to distribute the wear old days, they’d have to physically Chicago, they run the current equally. It’s a bit like rotating tires on build models of all the wing types weather data through different – Argonne computer scientist Charlie Catlett a car. they were considering and test them Argonne’s previous Blue Gene/P all in wind tunnels. Today, they can system was designed to go five run a very detailed simulation and to six days without error. In fact, virtually test the air flow in hundreds the computer has consistently of models before building just a few THE ALCF outperformed that hope—it often physical versions, which saves a lot Mira is the latest resource in the DOE’s runs for weeks without crashing. of money and time.” Office of Science user facility that is NOW Mira is predicted to be stable enough The oil and gas industries are also managed by the Argonne Leadership to run without crashing for up to Computing Facility (ALCF), one of two Mira is the investing in computation. Plugging third fastest 10 days, even though it has 623,000 geologic models into computers DOE leadership computing facilities supercomputer more cores than Intrepid. Experts creates maps that lead companies to in the nation. When scientists from in the world. say that fault tolerance will become the right places to drill, reducing the around the world come to Argonne to even more crucial as computers get environmental and financial costs of run their programs on Mira, ALCF staff closer and closer to exascale speeds. drilling unnecessary wells. help adjust their codes to get the best performance out of the supercomputer. Simulation of noise from jet exhaust nozzles. Supercomputers are very different from Data from General Electric Research, visualization by Joe Insley (Argonne). your average university computing 28 | ARGONNE NOW cluster, and a program written for the SUMMER 2012 | 29 cluster won’t take full advantage of Mira. alcf.anl.gov INTRODUCING MIRA INTRODUCING MIRA Fifteen Minutes with Rick Stevens by Vic Comello

Argonne Now’s Vic Comello asks associate lab director Rick Stevens about the next leap in alcf.anl.gov/mira supercomputing, what needs to happen before we get there, and what it will help us do. search | argonne mira Rick Stevens VC: In what ways will exascale computational experiments simultaneously in which you vary the parameters of your models.

computing transform the world? Rather than seeing one answer, you would see a whole bracketing of possible results, yielding Prepping Mira for Showtime Stevens: Every time we have more computer error bars that say there is a 90% probability by Cheryl Drugan capability, we come up with new ways of doing that the system will operate in this range and things, and the most interesting things that we a 50% probability it’ll be in that range, and so To hit the ground running with Mira, the ALCF staff tend to do on the big machines are not the on. That capability appeals to design engineers is working with 16 research teams from across the things that we thought we would do initially. because they want to have confidence in their nation to test their codes on Blue Gene/Q prototype projections. hardware. This period helps catch system bugs and For example, when the current parallel instabilities before Mira goes into full production. computers were designed years ago, the VC: What problems do we have field of genomics was still in its early stages. The 16 Early Science Program projects have more Now one of their most significant uses is to to address before we get to than two million core hours allocated to them. Here assemble and analyze genomes. Massive exascale? are just a few: studies comparing genetic variability across thousands of people to look for disease Stevens: Reliability is one area that must get WATCH A STAR EXPLODE correlations was an area that we didn’t even addressed. Say you have a machine today with White dwarf stars explode in thermonuclear-powered imagine possible, say, 10 years ago. 1 million processors that stays running for 10 APPLYING FOR HOURS explosions called Type Ia supernovae. Scientists think days before something goes wrong; thus 10 Time on Mira is competitively awarded that a process called turbulent nuclear combustion So when we talk about machines 10 years from days would be its mean time to failure. Now sets the stage for a detonation that incinerates the now, my sense is that even if I came up with let’s say we have an exascale machine that through several DOE programs, and typically star, causing it to explode (see images at right). compelling examples right now, they wouldn’t is 1,000 times bigger. If we used the same allocated in yearly parcels of scores of Astrophysicist Donald Lamb (University of Chicago) be the things that actually transform the world, technology in making the machine, it would millions of processor-hours per recipient. is investigating by creating simulations of turbulent because those are going to be the things that go down 100 times per day, because its failure Any researcher in the world can apply for nuclear combustion. we haven’t thought of yet that will suddenly rate per element would be the same. That become possible when the machines exist. means in order for these exascale machines to time on Mira to run programs for their THE BEST AIRPLANE WING actually be useful, they would have to become experiments through the Department of Another project simulates the airflow across aircraft VC: What kinds of applications a lot more reliable. Energy’s Innovative & Novel Computational and wind turbine blades. Kenneth Jansen (University can be foreseen? of Colorado-Boulder) is testing small attachable We will probably have to find another factor of Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) devices, called “synthetic actuators,” that can tweak Stevens: Almost every area of science has 10 or 100 in reliability in order for the machine program or the DOE Advanced Scientific the cross-surface airflow to increase efficiency and problems that are not solvable or not even to be as reliable as current machines are. Some Computing Research Leadership Computing reduce damage to airplane wings. approachable on the current generation of of the increased reliability might come from Challenge program, which allocates time computers. With an exascale machine, for hardware, but when you’re writing a program A CATALYST FOR CHANGE example, we will be able to simulate neural for one of these machines, you might have for projects of interest to DOE’s energy Argonne materials scientist Larry Curtiss is running networks of the complexity of the human to specify what parts of your data need to be mission. The locally managed Director’s simulations of electronic structures to find new brain. We should also be able to design preserved when the machine goes down and Discretionary program is a smaller initiative materials for electrical energy storage and catalysis. what parts you can recreate after a failure. New catalysts are a key component of making microorganisms for specific applications; for designed to ready smaller projects for a manufacturing biofuels, say, or synthesizing Biological systems do this sort of thing all the biofuels cheaper and more efficient. (More about interesting or valuable chemicals such as time. Cells in your body are being replaced all future INCITE award. Many of Argonne’s Curtiss’s work is on page 42). vitamins or drugs. the time, and you don’t even notice. We don’t research activities rely on computer yet have that capability with these machines, in THE SKELETONS OF CELLS simulation to pursue their goals–advanced These machines will offer incredible design which individual processing units fail and are Our cells are built on sturdy frameworks using capabilities, whether you are designing replaced while the machine keeps going, but it battery technology, materials science, proteins called “microtubules.” Despite their climate models or nuclear reactors or even is certainly a goal. nuclear energy, and bioscience, to name a importance, there’s a lot we still don’t know about skyscrapers, partly because you can not only few–and will be able to tackle much more them. Gregory Voth (Argonne, University of Chicago) perform huge simulations but also do many studies the physics that happen on a molecular level DID YOU KNOW? ambitious problems thanks to Mira. to let microtubules work their magic. IBM Blue Gene computers have

helped chessmasters train for the Four snapshots of a simulated World Chess Championships. star as it explodes. Image by Donald Lamb.

30 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 31 THE SEARCH FOR A SUPERBATTERY

magine if you only had to But the next generation of which generates a current that “We tackled the plug in your phone once a batteries, according to Argonne powers your laptop. problem in a unique week. Or your laptop lasted materials scientist Khalil Amine, About the same time that fashion,” days between charges. Or an will be 50% more energetic—so the EV1 hit roads, Argonne Thackeray said. affordable electric car that ran automakers could double the researchers Chris Johnson and “Our idea was to embed for more than 300 miles on a single range or significantly drop the Michael Thackeray set out to a sort of ‘skeleton’ batteryI charge. price and size of the battery. We’ll improve lithium-ion cathodes into the cathode. It’s That wonderful battery is still a need a battery like this to make even further. Early commercial gleam in the eyes of scientists working electric cars available to anyone inactive, but it serves as Panagiotis Prezas examines a battery cell Li-ion batteries were still new and in Argonne’s Electrochemical Analysis and in Argonne’s energy storage program, who wants to buy one. expensive, somewhat unstable bones that help keep Diagnostics Lab, where scientists test but their work is bringing that dream Lithium-ion is a relative batteries’ life cycles and calendar lives. when fully charged, and just the structure intact closer all the time. newcomer to the battery scene: couldn’t make the cut for a cheap when lithium ions are Last year, more than a decade’s worth it wasn’t until 1991 that the first all-electric car. of battery research and development at commercial Li-ion batteries went pulled out.” The scientists wanted to find a Argonne made its way into the world’s into electronics. They’re ideal for material to stabilize the battery that The Department of Energy’s Office first mass-produced plug-in hybrid cars because they pack a bigger would also be cheap and safe— of Basic Energy Sciences funded electric car: GM’s Chevy Volt. Argonne’s punch per ounce than any other essential if you want to manufacture early research; later support came material helps the battery—a lithium-ion kind of battery currently on the batteries for millions of cars and from DOE’s Office of Energy design similar to those in your cell phone market. Efficiency and Renewable Energy. or laptop—last longer, run more safely, What exactly happens inside laptops. In the cathode, atoms sit side and perform better at lower cost than Li-ion batteries? They are named The resulting integrated by side in rows. When lithium other batteries currently on the market. for lithium ions, which shuttle structure is highly complex. “It’s ions are pulled out of the cathode As demand grows for electric and back and forth between the two very difficult to determine exactly during charging, they leave holes hybrid cars, automakers are searching poles of the battery. When you how the atoms are arranged at the behind in the structure. The more for the battery that will make those cars charge a battery, you are using molecular level,” Thackeray said. compete with gasoline. Almost fifteen electric current from the outlet to lithium ions that can circulate “If we understand the routes that years ago, GM’s short-lived EV1, star drive all of the lithium ions over during charge and discharge, the lithium ions take as they move of Who Killed the Electric Car?, ran on to one pole, called the anode. As better the performance, but too in and out of the structure, and a battery that weighed 1,175 pounds. soon as you unplug the battery many holes and you run the risk the damage that occurs when this The battery in the hybrid Volt weighs and begin to use it, the lithium of ruining the structure. happens, it will allow us to think in at a svelte 435 pounds. ions flow back to the cathode, of ways to stabilize the structure.” > > > continued

by Louise Lerner THE SEARCH FOR A

SUPERB ATTERYHow Research at Argonne will Help Power the Next Generation of Electric Vehicles

32 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMERSUMMER 20122012 || 3333 Argonne researcher Sabine Gallagher prepares a surface area analyzer for characterizing battery materials. THE SEARCH FOR A SUPERBATTERY

“Having these large facilities like the Advanced Photon Source helps us enormously to characterize the battery materials.” – Michael Thackeray, Argonne battery scientist

But it’s one thing to make a tiny sample for a lab test and another to make that process work consistently at the huge scales required for factories to make cheap batteries. This was Khalil Amine’s challenge: improve the synthesis process. “When you’re manufacturing a battery, the way you synthesize it is absolutely key to how good the battery actually is,” Amine said. “You have to get the exact right temperature, starting chemicals, THE NEXT HORIZON problem, we fix it, we find another one that pulls close to gasoline. It reaction times, and environment— Amine, Thackeray, and others problem, we fix that problem too.” could take that imaginary electric all the parameters have to be right.” are already working on the next Amine thinks this new generation car 500 miles on a single charge. He set up a lab to focus on generation of Li-ion batteries. They will be a vast improvement on the Right now, though, Li-oxygen identifying reactor processes to turn are close to making significant last one. “We’re looking at increasing technology has a lot of problems. out materials more consistently. advances. The next generation will the energy by another 50%,” he said. For one, Li-oxygen batteries don’t When battery companies became allow more lithium to cycle freely “That means a huge reduction in the recharge efficiently. What we need interested in the technology, they through the battery, which will cost of the battery or a huge jump is a good catalyst to help make sent their staff to Argonne to learn significantly boost the battery’s in how far you can go on a single and break the lithium and oxygen how to make the materials. capacity—but there are still a few charge.” bonds more easily. (For more about bugs to work out. “Advances come But even the most perfect Li-ion catalysts, turn to page 42). To tackle in cycles,” Amine said. “We find a battery wouldn’t be quite on a par the challenge, Amine, Thackeray and with gasoline, which is one of the their teams are partnering up with

Argonne's Swati Pol loads a Li-ion battery most energy-dense substances on scientists across Argonne and calling for study at the Advanced Photon Source. “Seeing homegrown Earth. in the big guns—the Advanced The APS helps Argonne researchers Further down the metaphorical Photon Source and Blue Gene understand the fundamental mechanisms innovations going into a that limit the performance of batteries. road, the Argonne team has turned supercomputer, Mira—to help them large-scale production car its sights on a new kind of battery solve the materials problems posed that’s helping electrify the chemistry called lithium-oxygen. by lithium-oxygen batteries. The Advanced Photon Source, To find the best mixture for the American fleet—that’s really In the Li-oxygen battery, oxygen at For now, though, the next big Argonne’s large X-ray synchrotron, cathode, the team tested dozens the cathode reacts with lithium ions breakthrough might be just around helped shine a light on the matter. of combinations—first creating exciting and good for the from the anode; the battery gets its the corner. “In science, you never Johnson paired with scientists who the new materials, then checking country. It’s really the ultimate energy from breaking and forming really know quite how things are specialize in spectroscopy to use performance in actual batteries. these bonds over and over through going to play out,” Thackeray said. brilliant X-rays to come up with They also upped the charging goal for a researcher.” an electrochemical reaction. In “There’s an element of intuition, of a picture of the materials at the voltage to 4.6 volts—considerably –Chris Johnson, theory, this reaction offers up to 10 knowing the direction you want atomic level. “We can even put the higher than the usual—and saw the times more energy density than the to take, and a bit of luck. It’s a Argonne battery chemist materials in a whole working battery cathode’s capacity double. reaction that powers Li-ion batteries. very exciting time to be a battery and watch what happens while the In fact, based on early calculations, researcher.” battery cycles,” Johnson said. many scientists think this battery could be the “superbattery”—the

34 | ARGONNE NOW Created by Argonne glassblower Joe Gregar, these unique SUMMERSUMMER 20122012 || 3535 glass chambers let Argonne researchers conduct controlled environment testing of lithium-oxygen batteries. Argonne's Daniel Abraham holds a lithium-ion cell that’s being tested to determine why battery performance deteriorates.

THE SEARCH FOR A SUPERBATTERY THE SEARCH FOR A SUPERBATTERY BATTERIES FOR AMERICA The United States could gain a lot by being the country where the next big battery is developed. If American companies and universities partner with national labs to grow and distribute the technology, the breakthrough could boost American manufacturing and create new jobs.

“Batteries are a large, heavy component of electric and hybrid cars, and so it’s best to manufacture them near the factory where the cars are assembled,” explained Jeff Chamberlain, who heads Argonne’s battery R&D. “This means CATCHING THE WIND cars assembled in U.S. factories will also need battery factories nearby—creating more Better batteries aren’t just great for cell phones; they’re also key to moving American jobs. us to renewable energy sources. Since the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow when we need power, in order to depend on “We’re developing technology that I’m highly them we need to be able to stock up on electricity when we can. Right now, confident will help make plug-in hybrid cars there’s no good universal way to store large amounts of energy—lithium more economic,” he said. “The work at Argonne batteries just cost too much in large quantities—but dedicated R&D should ends up in the hands of taxpayers who paid for change that. Some have even suggested recycling used lithium car batteries research. This is a fulcrum, a key component as electric grid storage. to moving away from fossil fuels.” BANDING TOGETHER FOR BATTERIES Michael Thackeray is the director of one of the Department of Energy’s Energy Frontier Research Centers, called the Center for Electrochemical Energy Storage. Argonne is the lead, along with partners Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The center is receiving $19 million over five years to tackle problems with today’s lithium-ion batteries, especially understanding and overcoming the limitations of electrochemical reactions at electrode interfaces, which play a critical role in controlling battery performance, life, and safety. Read more at Argonne’s website: www.anl.gov/energy-storage-science

From left to right: Argonne researchers Argonne chemist Chris Johnson Khalil Amine, Michael Thackeray, and Chris studies materials for batteries. Johnson co-developed battery materials currently in the Chevy Volt.

36 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMERSUMMER 20122012 || 3737 FEATURE STORY INSIDE THE ADVANCED PHOTON SOURCE

Using data taken at the Advanced Photon Source, scientists can create simulations of proteins, like this enzyme from the bacteria Colwellia psychrerythraea. Understanding molecular structure helps scientists build new drugs and therapies.

by Jared Sagoff To see inside Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source, all it takes is a little bit of light. INSIDE THE ADVANCED The electrons traveling around the kilometer-long electron storage ring generate extremely powerful X-rays that penetrate to the heart of some of our country’s most complicated scientific questions. Access the atomic level at Virtually every day, around the clock, scientists around the ring are simultaneously working on experiments in many different fields: Argonne's giant synchrotron. materials science, protein biology, environmental science, chemistry, PHOTON SOURCE and nanotechnology, to name just a few.

38 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 39 INSIDE THE ADVANCED PHOTON SOURCE The APS INSIDE THE ADVANCED PHOTON SOURCE This is possible at the Advanced is supported by the HONEY, I Shrunk diseases, but also for its potential for “Each pulse can be thought of as Photon Source (APS) because it gene-delivery methods for treating a single exposure, like a snapshot,” simultaneously generates X-rays at U.S. Department of Energy’s the Beam serious diseases like cancer. More said Linda Young, director of the The ability to condense beam sizes 34 different sectors, each containing Office of Science. information on that study can be X-ray Sciences Division at Argonne. one or more beamlines—which ever further has also yielded benefits found on page 54. “With shorter pulses, you can freeze means that dozens of different at a life science beamline where the motion of faster processes—such experiments are going on at be interpreted to determine the researchers work on targeted drug LIGHTING up as molecules reconfiguring under any given moment. Every year, positions of individual atoms within design, especially for treating cancer. the future the direction of laser light.” The development of the hard thousands of users from industry, the sample. Research done at the Even though the APS already Right now, the APS generates X-ray minibeam quad collimator, academia, and government APS has resulted in the development produces some of the brightest X-ray pulses that are approximately which earned an R&D 100 award laboratories come to Argonne to of drugs that treat HIV/AIDS can investigate ten batteries,” Chupas X-rays in the Western Hemisphere, 100 picoseconds long—that’s just in 2010, has let scientists shrink the perform experiments at the facility. (Kaletra®) and melanoma (Zelboraf®) said. “By getting more information Argonne engineers and physicists are one-tenth of a nanosecond—but beam diameter—from 20 microns The APS, one of the world’s and led to new insights into the we can understand entire battery already planning to make the facility researchers at the facility are trying down, in some cases, to a single most powerful X-ray sources, structures of the viruses that cause systems; we can get the real hard even more powerful by dramatically to reduce that by a factor of nearly micron. That’s thinner than a strand produces pulses of light that HIV, influenza, swine flu, and even numbers on their performance so improving the brightness, sensitivity, one hundred. of spider silk. are both extremely bright and the common cold. that we can go back to our models and resolution of the synchrotron. “We’re just in the first phases penetrating. Together, these qualities One of the sectors at the APS is and improve our predictions about A proposed upgrade to the APS, of what we hope will result in the let scientists look at all kinds owned and operated by Eli Lilly, their behavior.” The beamline is funded by which received a preliminary go- creation of a machine capable of of remarkable structures under the fifth biggest pharmaceutical The X-ray beams at Sector 11 are the General Medicine and ahead from Congress, has already exploring a wider range of materials different conditions, pressures, and and phenomena than ever before,” company in the United States. both strong enough to penetrate all Cancer Institutes of the entered the design phase. This year, temperatures. Another, known as IMCA-CAT, the way into a battery and narrow said project director George Srajer. is owned and operated by the enough so that researchers can pick National Institutes Argonne scientist Karena Chapman In addition to BIGPharma, Industrial Macromolecular out specific regions to investigate. of Health. works on new ways to build catalysts. the APS Upgrade, Crystallography Association, a These narrow beams allow scientists the APS will gain Tiny Protein consortium including Merck, Pfizer, to take data from many different a brand new Several of the beamlines at the Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Novartis, and points on the sample, creating In one of the most beamline—the APS cater to users who come to Abbott Laboratories. a richer picture of a material’s challenging experiments only one of its Argonne from the pharmaceutical structure and function. at this beamline last kind—to explore industry. Many new drugs that REAL Like all of the APS beamlines, year, researchers from shock physics: wind up on pharmacy shelves are Sector 11 is used year-round by Stanford University the branch of inhibitors, which prevent the action Materials, REAL academic and industrial groups and other institutions science that studies of key cellular enzymes involved in who come to the facility to try wanted to study a what happens to certain diseases. The way that these Conditions to bridge the gap between the type of protein called materials when enzymes work is by latching onto One of the major advantages fundamental properties of materials G-coupled protein they’re exposed other molecules; if you can block the of the X-rays produced by the and fully mature technologies. receptors, a frequent to large stresses in “active site” where that happens, the APS is that they allow scientists “What separates us from the pack drug target. Specifically, very short periods enzyme protein can’t work. to study materials in situ—that is the fact that we’re able to do they wanted to study a of time. To make a new drug, scientists is, in conditions that replicate the these very precise and fundamental protein that’s part of an “The whole build an inhibitor to precisely block natural environment. For example, measurements on an applied elusive but extremely point of the important multiprotein that site—but they often have to be researchers can examine how system,” Chupas said. “We’re always upgrade is to fashioned molecule-by-molecule, a catalyst will react at different complex. looking for new ways to combine the U.S. Department of Energy provide more flexibility for like making a key to fit into a lock. temperatures or pH. t h e t w o.” The crystallized proteins are Office of Science, which funds the The first step is knowing what the A little ways farther around Argonne researchers are essentially invisible to the eye, which APS, allocated $20 million towards our users so that they have lock looks like. the APS ring, Argonne chemist continually improving the makes them difficult to position the upgrade. The APS Upgrade access to state-of-the-art To get a picture of the protein’s Peter Chupas and his colleagues instruments on the beamlines within the X-ray beam. The team Project plans to add more than a investigative tools, now and had to create special computer structure, researchers bring tiny look at the performance of battery to provide users with the best dozen new or upgraded beamlines software to scan the samples. in the future,” Srajer said. samples of crystallized protein to components at the X-ray Science technology available. “We’re and will dramatically improve Division’s Sector 11 beamlines. This beamline has also facilitated the APS, where they are loaded developing new tools X-ray beam properties, making the onto small pins and exposed to the “Years ago, we could only take one research on adenovirus, a virus of beam brighter at high energies and APS.ANL.GOV Chupas said. APS X-rays. The patterns recorded battery and cycle it very slowly, but constantly,” interest not only for its role in the reducing the duration of the pulse. by the beamline’s detector can now in the same amount of time we common cold and other respiratory

40 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 41 DID YOU KNOW DID YOU KNOW

1 Catalysts are all around us. 2 Catalysts are like cheat used in the U.S. every year goes into converting ethane and propane into Catalysts are one of those things codes for chemistry. Catalysts alkenes, which are used to make that few people think much about, speed up a chemical reaction by plastics, among other things. That’s beyond perhaps high school lowering the amount of energy you the equivalent of more than 500 chemistry, but they make the world need to get one going. Catalysis is million barrels of gasoline. tick. Almost everything in your daily the backbone of many industrial Catalysts are also the key to life depends on catalysts: cars, Post- processes, which use chemical unlocking biofuels. All biomass— It notes, laundry detergent, beer. reactions to turn raw materials corn, switchgrass, trees—contains All the parts of your sandwich— into useful products. Catalysts are THINGS a tough compound called cellulose, bread, cheddar cheese, roast turkey. integral in making plastics and many which has to be broken down to Catalysts break down paper pulp to other manufactured items. make fuel. Finding the perfect catalyst produce the smooth paper in this Even the human body runs on you may NOT KNOW to disintegrate cellulose would make magazine. They clean your contact catalysts. Many proteins in your biofuels cheaper and more viable as a lenses every night. They turn milk body are actually catalysts called renewable energy source. about CATALYSIS into yogurt and petroleum into enzymes, which do everything from plastic milk jugs, CDs, and bicycle creating signals that move your 5 Often, we have no idea by Louise Lerner helmets. limbs to helping digest your food. why they work. The precise They are truly a fundamental part reasons why catalysts work are of life. often still a mystery to scientists. 3 Small things can have big Curtiss works in computational 7 catalysis: using computers to tackle results. In most cases, you need just the complicated interplay of physics, a tiny amount of a catalyst to make chemistry, and math that explains a difference. Even the size of the how a catalyst operates. Once they’ve catalyst particle can change the way a figured out the process, scientists reaction runs. Last year, an Argonne can try to build a catalyst that team including materials scientist works even better by simulating Larry Curtiss found that one silver how different materials might work catalyst is better at its task when it’s instead. Potential configurations for in nanoparticles just a few atoms new catalysts can run to thousands wide. (The catalyst turns propylene of combinations, which is why into propylene oxides, which is the supercomputers are best at dealing first step in making antifreeze and with them. other products.) When Edison was building 4 It can make things greener. the lightbulb, he tested literally Industrial manufacturing processes hundreds of different filaments for plastic and other essential items (likely testing the patience of his lab often produce nasty by-products assistants as well) before discovering Water molecules (red and white) interact that can pose hazards to human the carbonized filament. By taking with a platinum catalyst in this simulation. Image by Argonne's Rees Rankin. health and the environment. Better advantage of supercomputers and catalysts can help solve that problem. modern technology, scientists can For example, the same silver catalyst speed up the years of testing and actually produces fewer toxic expense to get to breakthroughs. by-products—making the whole Curtiss runs simulations reaction more environmentally on Argonne’s Blue Gene/P friendly. supercomputer to design possible At its heart, a catalyst is a way to new catalysts. “As supercomputers save energy. And applying catalysts have gotten faster, we’ve been able to on a grand scale could save the world do things we’d never have been able a lot of energy; 3% of all of the energy to do 10 years ago,” he said. > > > continued

42 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 43 DID YOU KNOW

Argonne postdoctoral students Worajit Setthapun (left) and Ryan Nelson synthesize and test new catalysts. 6 They could be essential 7 Big scientific facilities for the next big revolution in can help us find the next one. batteries. Newly efficient lithium- Understanding the chemistry ion batteries helped turn clunky car behind reactions is the first step; phones into the slim, elegant cell then scientists can use modeling to phones and laptops available today. design potential new catalysts and But scientists are already searching have them tested in the lab. But that for the next revolution in batteries— first step is difficult unless you can one that could someday make a get down to the atomic level to see battery light and powerful enough what is happening during a reaction. to take a car 300 miles at a go. A This is where big scientific facilities promising idea is lithium-oxygen like Argonne’s Advanced Photon batteries, which use oxygen from Source shine. At the APS, scientists the air as a primary component. But can use extremely bright X-rays to this new battery will require totally track the reactions in real time. At ART OF SCIENCE ART revamping the internal chemistry, the laboratory’s Electron Microscopy Center, researchers take photos of and it will need a powerful new Scientists believe that phenomena called "nanobubbles" play key roles in several important catalyst to make it work. A lithium- the atoms while they react. Curtiss oxygen battery works by combining and the team have used both of these chemical reactions. Nanobubbles are tiny—often smaller than the width of a single cell wall in your lithium and oxygen atoms and then in their search for better catalysts. body—and when they collapse, they generate small shock waves. The combined force of many of these breaking them apart, over and over. collapses may contribute to damage in ship propellers, pipes, and the blades of pumps. The goal of this That is a situation tailor-made for a nanobubble collapse simulation, which ran on Argonne's supercomputer, is to improve both the safety catalyst, and a good one would make and longevity of materials in nuclear reactors. the reaction faster and the battery more efficient. Data by Priya Vashishta, Rajiv K. Kalia, Aiichiro Nakano, Ken-ichi Nomura, Adarsh Shekhar (University of Southern California); image by Joseph Insley (Argonne National Laboratory).

44 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 45 BOOK REVIEW BOOK REVIEW ASSAULT ON The promising, frustrating, indispensable race by government and industry to revolutionize the BATTERY storage of electricity. By Eric D. Isaacs | Director, Argonne National Laboratory

BOTTLED LIGHTNING: that American industry would never future of our country, where will Superbatteries, Electric allow an electric car to challenge they go from here? These are the Cars, and the New Lithium the supremacy of the internal questions posed—and at least combustion engine. partially answered—in Bottled Economy by Seth Fletcher That wasn’t just the opinion of a Lightning: Superbatteries, Electric Hill & Wang, 272 pp. few cranky independent filmmakers: Cars, and the New Lithium Economy, the electric car has been a running by Seth Fletcher, a senior editor at joke on The Simpsons for years. (On Popular Science magazine. In this a family trip to a theme park, Homer well-written, accessible history of Materials scientist Swati Pol prepares to perform and Bart visit the Electric Car of the lithium batteries and their role in X-ray spectroscopy study of a lithium-ion battery Future attraction—sponsored by the development of practical electric system at the Advanced Photon Source. the Gasoline Producers of America. cars, Fletcher makes a strong case On the ride, their sad, pastel-pink that new energy storage technologies in the universe. Lithium’s “eagerness” a first step toward reinventing our lithium-based batteries to transform vehicle whines, “Hello, I’m an are the key to a green industrial to shed electrons, along with its entire energy infrastructure. our energy economy. electric car. I can’t go very fast or revolution. light weight and energy density, But while the challenge is great, The economic potential of these very far.”) “Electricity,” Fletcher explains, have made it the basis for the small, the potential rewards are enormous. “superbatteries” is immense: the But now, GM’s Chevy Volt is is “the cleanest and most flexible” powerful batteries that now power If all of our cars and light trucks research firm IHS Global Insight being rolled out in cities across the alternative to gasoline. “It’s piped billions of cell phones, laptops, and ran on electricity, we could cut predicts that advances in country—and has been honored into every home in the country. iPods; lithium-based batteries have American oil consumption by more battery technology will by Motor Trend as the 2011 Car of Mile by mile, it’s cheaper compared the theoretical potential to challenge, than a third—roughly 7.2 million the Year: “A Car of the Future You with gasoline.…It can come from pound for pound, the energy and barrels of oil a day. Just as important, allow hybrids and electric Can Drive Today.” Other car makers almost any source—natural gas, coal, power stored in gasoline. we could create tens of thousands cars to grab up to 15% of are racing to get their electric cars nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, wind.” of new green tech jobs in the long the world’s new car sales on American roadways: the Nissan There’s just one problem: it’s hard FOR MORE ON THE run—jobs that would stay right here Leaf is already in American markets; to store. So if we want electric cars SEARCH FOR THE at home. The implications for our by 2020. At today’s production rates, Toyota has unveiled a plug-in Prius; that aren’t powered by extension SUPERBATTERY, global environment and our national that’s about 7.5 million cars a year. Just five years ago, the Mitsubishi is bringing its i-MiEV cords, we need to build better energy security are enormous. But, But as Fletcher makes clear, the documentary film Who Killed electric vehicle to U.S. dealers this batteries. TURN TO PAGE 32. as Fletcher warns, we can’t hope to story of electric cars, and the battery the Electric Car? claimed to prove year; and an electric Ford Focus is Historically, cars have been reach those goals without strong, technologies that power them, has conclusively that American electric now available as well. These battery- equipped with lead-acid batteries— But there’s a major gap between consistent investment in developing been, in his words, “a parade of vehicle technology had been powered vehicles are generating so heavy, environmentally unfriendly, that theoretical energy storage new energy technologies, including extraordinary failures stretching effectively buried by an unholy much buzz that the producers of the and limited in storage capacity. and even the best lithium-based next-generation battery systems. back to the late nineteenth century.” cartel of car makers, government 2006 documentary have been forced Seeking a better alternative, scientists batteries available today. Thus far, no As the director of a national The first electric cars date to the time bureaucrats, oil companies, and to make a sequel—The Revenge of the started “scouring the periodic table,” one has invented advanced battery laboratory, I have a deep-seated of Thomas Edison, when the quiet SUV-loving consumers. The Electric Car. in Fletcher’s words, experimenting technologies that can rival the personal and professional interest in and sedate electrics were considered documentary’s hard-hitting How did electric cars come so with various exotic chemical price, reliability, and energy storage the future of energy research. And— “ladies’ cars.” > > > continued reporting and acerbic style far, so fast? And, more important, compounds before turning their capacity of a tank of gas. like Fletcher—I see increasing reason persuaded thousands of moviegoers both for consumers and for the sights on lithium, the lightest metal And building a better battery is only for optimism about the potential of

46 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 47 BOOK REVIEW

utility costs are twice as high as competitors makes those risks worth electricity, then “breathes out” again ours here in the United States. Add taking. With affordable capital to to recharge. Then we have to convert in the cost of shipping big, heavy cover the up-front costs of building those discoveries into battery car batteries around the world, and advanced battery manufacturing systems that can be affordably mass- you’ve got a real market opportunity plants factories here, I believe we produced and put these technologies for U.S. battery makers. have a real chance to be competitive into cars that consumers want to As Fletcher’s history teaches us, in a large and growing world buy, and we have to do it all before however, an opportunity is not a market—once we have the lithium our international competitors catch sure thing. The playing field could battery technology to challenge the up. But, as Fletcher comments, be tilted dramatically by foreign internal combustion engine. And “[t]here are a couple of ways to government investment—like the that, of course, is the challenge at the react to this sort of discouraging $30 billion in low-cost loans the heart of Bottled Lightning. calculus. One is defeatism. The other China Development Bank provided We still have a long way to go is research.” to Chinese solar manufacturers last to create a battery system that can Fletcher understands that, year. If China or another foreign rival the energy stored in a tank of ultimately, this is a battle of government makes that type of gas. We have to solve some knotty economics, not technology: “Dollars massive investment in lithium scientific puzzles, using technology per kilowatt-hour stored is all that battery manufacturing, yet another we haven’t invented yet. For example, matters.” Our long-term goal is to great U.S. research breakthrough we know that a battery using air create car battery systems that are could wind up being commercialized as a cathode could offer energy smaller, sturdier, and about ten times and developed into a thriving new density up to ten times higher than more powerful than the ones we industry far from home. today’s lithium-ion batteries. But have today. But as one analyst told

Argonne scientist Ira Bloom Those risks are real. But the grim first, we have to discover a way to Fletcher, if the price of the current prepares to open a lithium-ion prospect of losing yet another make a battery that “breathes in” generation of car batteries comes cell at the lab’s facility to test battery performance. new high-tech industry to foreign oxygen from the air to discharge down far enough—or if the price of gasoline goes high enough—“It’s game over for gasoline.” (In fact, Henry Ford’s wife, Clara, He’s equally at ease describing the but it’s still woefully short of the $16 Looking ahead, I hope Seth bought an electric brougham in effects of America’s roller-coaster billion annual national investment Fletcher and his colleagues will 1914 because she considered her energy policy, which has led to recommended by the President’s continue to beat the drum for husband’s Model T too noisy.) repeated cycles of brisk acceleration Council of Advisors on Science and battery R&D, and will keep on Interest in electric vehicles has and sudden unexpected stops in Technology. working to inform the American cyclically flared up every few decades our battery research programs. Today we find ourselves in an public about the potential for ever since, usually in response to a When it comes to energy technology international race to create—and lithium technologies to create spike in oil prices. But when gasoline research, as former Energy Secretary manufacture—viable lithium-based new jobs, recharge our nation’s costs have fallen, so has American James Schlesinger once said, car batteries. For now, at least, it manufacturing base, and help us consumers’ willingness to trade in “We have only two appears that the United States is a build a new, secure, green energy their gas guzzlers for electric cars— serious contender. A recent report economy. As Fletcher concludes, at least, for the electric cars that have modes—complacency by a veteran consultant to the battery “If the budding American energy- been available until now. and panic.” industry compared all costs of storage industry fails … it would Fletcher does a great job of Over the decades, complacency manufacturing batteries in China be a tremendous lost opportunity, a walking readers through the history has tended to muffle interest in and the United States, and found failure to participate in what promises of battery technology, and he writes energy innovations. In 1979, in that U.S. manufacturing can be to be one of the greatest industries of about the complexities of science inflation-adjusted dollars, the federal cost-competitive. Advanced battery Argonne researcher Ilias Belharouak the coming century.” budget invested about $7.8 billion monitors the fabrication of electrode and engineering with clarity and manufacturing is highly automated, materials for use in plug-in hybrids’ flair. He sums up the fundamental in energy-related research. In fiscal which reduces the Chinese energy storage systems. A version of this book review challenge of energy storage year 2010, that investment had advantage of low-cost, low-skilled appeared in The Washington Monthly. technology in one pithy sentence: fallen to $5.1 billion. That figure labor; the salaries of highly educated, “You can’t just shove loose electrons represents a substantial increase over skilled workers to run the factories in a can.” the budgets of the previous decade, are roughly equivalent. Chinese

48 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 49 Originally discovered when an Argonne scientist introduced buckyballs into a microwave plasma machine, tiny diamond sheets are now commercially available. ARGONNE IN THE MARKETPLACE ARGONNE IN THE MARKETPLACE

UNCD products. For example, if you When coated with coat mechanical pump seals with ultrananocrystalline UNCD, the film is so smooth that diamond, these pump it reduces friction and saves up to seals use less energy during pumping. 20% of the energy used to run the pump. The coating has also been successfully used on atomic force microscope tips and bearings in industrial mixers. The U.S. Department of Defense is working with the company to use the films in sensors that would take quick readings to detect chemical and biological threats in water. The films can be treated to bond with biomolecules like E. coli, Salmonella, Listeria, and other pathogens in water to detect their presence. The goal is to miniaturize the detectors Interested in commercializing these or dozens of other available Argonne so that anyone, including soldiers, technologies? Contact [email protected] or visit www.anl.gov/technology. police, or public health officers, could carry them. Finally, because diamond is chemically inert, it doesn’t react with biological human tissue or body AVAILABLE Dieter Gruen (left), John Carlisle (center), and Orlando Auciello fluids—and the body doesn’t reject developed the first affordable the diamond as a foreign material. FOR LICENSING large area diamond film coating. For this reason, UNCD can be used Many more Argonne in implants, including artificial innovations are available for retinas and heart pumps to treat licensing. Here’s just a few: heart failure. ULTRANANOCRYSTALLINE CLEANER DIESEL EMISSIONS www.anl.gov/technology The diesel DeNOx catalyst removes A THIN SHEET OF DIAMOND 80–85% of nitrogen oxide emissions from diesel fuel combustion. Inexpensive DIAMOND: HAS WORLDS OF USES and easy to install, the catalyst can also be retrofitted to older engines. Even as royalty set diamonds into A technique invented at Argonne UNCD captures most of the crowns and rings, engineers lusted creates thin films of diamond natural properties of diamond. The RENEWABLE METHANE after the gems for different reasons: with grains so small they’re called films are harder than any other This low-cost process accelerates diamonds are harder than any other ultrananocrystalline diamond diamond film demonstrated today; methane production rates at least natural material and are excellent (UNCD®) films. The films can be they are extremely smooth and fivefold at wastewater treatment plants, electrical insulators and heat applied to an astounding array of chemically inert—so they don’t farms, and landfills. conductors. Today they are widely surfaces and uses, ranging from interact with other substances—and used in industry and factories. But better seals on pumps to heart pump they are good electrical conductors CHEAPER SOLAR CELLS the diamond supply is limited, walls so smooth that dangerous when doped with nitrogen or boron. A technique called atomic layer and while you can make artificial blood clots don’t form. The grains Each film can be precisely tailored. deposition shows promise for a dramatic performance improvement diamonds in gem form, they have of diamond in the film are just five Advanced Diamond Technologies This ultrananocrystalline diamond nanobelt is just 100 been hard to synthesize in thin films. nanometers across—about a billion Inc., in Romeoville, Illinois, formed nanometers thick—half the size of a single bacterium. in photovoltaic solar cells. of them would fit inside one red as a start-up company spun out of blood cell. Argonne in order to manufacture Funding for original research was provided by the Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences; later funding came from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, Office of Naval Research, and National Science Foundation. 50 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 51 THE SECRET LIVES OF

NUCLEAR SCIENTISTS Dan Pancake is in charge of packaging up all of the Reprinted with permission from “Clever Apes,” a radio series hosted uranium and plutonium inside and getting it out of SPITZER: In each case, by National Public Radio’s Gabriel Spitzer on WBEZ – Chicago. here safely. Over the years, he’s dealt with all kinds Pancake is managing teams, of stuff, from twenty thousand curies of cobalt-60 to designing systems, and solving In pop culture, we tend to pigeonhole scientists biological samples from factory workers who painted problems. Like when he and a into a few stereotypes: out-of-touch nerds (Jerry glow-in-the-dark watch dials. Dan Pancake has been a co-worker needed to sift some Lewis’ Nutty Professor), bumbling head-in-the- Chemistry teacher turned meth manufacturer waste guy—that’s his term—for close to 10 years. But fine grains of nuclear fuel, but clouds types (Doc Brown) or obsessed madmen (Dr. Walter White (Bryan Cranston), left, and Bogdan that’s just a fraction of his eccentric resume. From four didn’t have the right tools.

(Marius Stan) in HBO’s Breaking Bad. Dan Pancake Frankenstein). Which is what makes it so much fun o'clock or so he ditches the radiation dosimeter and PANCAKE: So we’re sitting there, and immediately my to pull back the curtain on the secret identities of a puts on his white chef’s jacket. mind goes to kitchen equipment. In the office, because couple of local players in nuclear science. PANCAKE: STAN: I was accompanying my daughter to an audition. You’ll be coming to our restaurant, Autre we have office parties, right—potlucks and stuff—we Monde, which means literally “another world” in still have a couple of half sheet pans, a couple of half SPITZER: On this edition of Clever It happened that the casting director for that movie French. It’s past ironic, all the way back around to pans, a couple glazing racks, and a bus tub. Apes, we reveal the secret lives of needed somebody to say one line in the pilot episode of Breaking Bad, and they thought I had the looks and being exactly representative of what it is in my life. nuclear scientists. I find that in SPITZER: They designed an apparatus right there, the voice for one line. Then they decided to make it a almost every case there’s something SPITZER: Food critics recommend Autre Monde’s took the cookware back to the shop, and broke out the recurring character. more than meets the eye, and that’s grilled octopus with capers and vinaigrette, or the welding torch. certainly the case for the gentleman SPITZER: So did they ever tell you what it was about you guinea-hen sausage with oil-cured olives. This high- I’m here with now. Could you PANCAKE: that made you such an appealing actor for them? end Mediterranean restaurant is just five months old, I’m not kidding, I have pictures on my Marius Stan introduce yourself, Marius? founded by Pancake, his wife Beth Partridge, and two phone of hot cell operators remotely using equipment STAN: There are various opinions about that. Some other partners. that you just saw in the kitchen to separate irradiated STAN: Sure. My name is Marius Stan. I’m a physicist people say it’s because I have big eyebrows and that fuel from the rest of the material in the hot cell. It and a chemist by training, but I’ve been working on makes me stand out in the crowd. PANCAKE: Here we do things that are very simple worked 100%, and it cost the United States government computational materials science for quite a while. and very elegant. But it’s really very difficult, because nothing. SPITZER: They are magnificent. the fewer ingredients you have on a plate, the more SPITZER: And these would be materials that might accurately you have to cook and season those few SPITZER: Equally at home in the hot cell or the hot STAN: form components of, say, a nuclear reactor? Thank you. ingredients. grill, Pancake says he may not have planned this double life, but in ways that surprise even him, the two STAN: That is true. I have a keen interest in SPITZER: The program is about a scientist, a trained SPITZER: Not just anyone can oversee the handling of worlds seem to keep coming back together. imperfection, in people and in materials. I think chemist, Walter White, who has this double life; of plutonium pallets in the afternoon and be supervising imperfections give character to a material. course in his case his double life is cooking meth on a pappardelle dish by evening. This is a transcription, slightly edited for length, from an the side. You are a scientist with a bit of a double life SPITZER: All right, that’s sort of your Clark Kent episode of the WBEZ radio science series “Clever Apes”. yourself. Do you feel like there are parallels there? ARANZA: Dan is an anomaly. persona. But you have a whole other life. Find out more at www.wbez.org/cleverapes. STAN: Yes, there are. I sympathize with the main character SPITZER: STAN: I’m also an actor, most recently in the AMC John Aranza is one of Pancake’s partners Marius Stan is a chemist, physicist, and computational in many respects. I think it’s quite interesting and poses and a friend dating back to their days at Café Spiaggia. series Breaking Bad. a number of questions of artistic nature—but also social. materials scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, What do people have to do to maintain a family; what do doing theoretical work and computer modeling on SPITZER: So your character’s name is Bogdan and he’s ARANZA: You know, he’s kind of like Batman, he’s got they do when they get sick, or if they’re desperate. Will I materials for nuclear reactors. He also has a recurring the guy that owns the car wash. That’s a fairly major role his day job and his night job. He’s a little bit superstar, ever break bad, I ask myself. So, who knows? role on Breaking Bad. here in this fourth season. Are you an actor?—I mean, a he’s a little bit scientist. trained actor—have you always been an actor? SPITZER: Who knew Argonne National Lab was such a SPITZER: Pancake works grueling hours…much like Dan Pancake runs nuclear cleanup projects at hive of shadowy double lives? Just a few buildings down Argonne, spearheading the technically complex work STAN: No, it kind of happened by accident. This is a Batman. By eight or so, he’s ready for a glass of bubbly from Marius Stan’s office, we’re about to uncover another of removing radioactive uranium and plutonium from parlor life. wine from the bar. secret identity. From 1964-2007, scientists here at the Alpha the lab. He’s also a chef and restaurateur, owner of a SPITZER: How on earth did it happen? Gamma Hot Cell experimented on irradiated nuclear fuel. PANCAKE: If you had to give me a job title, it new (and well-reviewed) fine-dining Mediterranean Through the windows you can see buttons and dials, stacks wouldn’t be ‘senior nuclear technical specialist’ and it restaurant in Berwyn near Chicago. of cans, and big robotic arms cocked at the ready. wouldn’t be ‘chef’. It would be operations manager for both jobs.

52 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 53 DISEASE OF THE ISSUE DISEASE OF THE ISSUE

was to engineer a human adenovirus Over the course of the project, to see in an electron density map molecule without the fiber spikes. Fischetti and colleagues modified the because of their symmetry and Altogether, getting usable crystals beamline to improve the uniformity general stability, but cement proteins took five years. of the beam. They installed smoother proved the sticking point. “We When they were ready to test the mirrors, reduced the amount of don’t know the structures of cement chasing a virus crystal, Nemerow and Reddy radiation damage to the crystals, and proteins at high resolution yet, partnered with Argonne biophysicist provided the team more flexibility because they are difficult to purify Robert Fischetti and started their to focus the beam. This helped by themselves—which makes them COMMON work at the Advanced Photon Nemerow and Reddy hone the first even harder to crystallize,” Reddy Source’s General Medicine and electron density map of the human explained. “The cement proteins Cancer Institute Structural Biology adenovirus’ structure, which they bind to major capsid proteins, like COLD VIRUS Facility GM/CA beamline. published in the journal Science. cement to bricks, and mediate Unlike other beamlines they’d Nemerow and Reddy compared interactions between them.” tested, the GM/CA beamlines their map to what was already Because cement proteins are Every issue, we take a produce intense X-ray beams that known about the human adenovirus flexible and dynamic, they can allowed the researchers to collect from previous research. “We weren’t degrade easily from radiation look at Argonne research high-quality data from the virus able to assign an identity for all 12 of damage or fail to produce diffraction on a different human crystals. This gave researchers the proteins in human adenovirus to under a high-resolution X-ray. a detailed 3-D image of the the electron density we mapped out,” Fischetti and colleagues are disease or condition. structure—the largest structure of Nemerow said. “There were also four upgrading the GM/CA beamlines any biomolecule determined by major ‘cement’ proteins we could not to provide smaller and more intense A rendering of the human adenovirus, X-ray crystallography to date. identify or assign—either because X-ray beams that help scientists showing the outer capsid proteins (shown in multiple colors). “Without the beamline, we would they haven’t been seen yet, were too create clearer images from their have been stymied on this project,” disordered, or because we didn’t crystals. Once the upgrade is said Nemerow. The APS beamline, have enough data at the time.” completed, Nemerow and Reddy can By Susheela Bhat they hoped, would reveal where Cement proteins, as their name continue to complete their map of As we prepare for the cold and flu of the virus, such as major proteins, electrons were clustered in the suggests, bind major proteins to the the human adenovirus, so that one ADENOVIRUS FACTS season, a team of researchers using because the intact virus is dauntingly human adenovirus molecule and virus shell, or capsid. day a seasonal nuisance may become » Adenoviruses are resistant to Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source large. Nemerow decided instead how they were connected. Nemerow and Reddy found major a powerful tool for human health. cleaning agents and adverse continues to complete a detailed to examine the entire molecular capsid proteins tended to be easier pH conditions. map of the human adenovirus—one structure of human adenovirus. of several viruses responsible for the He wanted to see how proteins » Unlike viruses like HIV, they can common cold. self-assemble to form the complete survive outside the body. Although human adenovirus is virus. A major goal of the research » Adenoviruses can cause usually not deadly, it is a seasonal is to try to improve how the virus respiratory illness, ranging from the nuisance to some and can cause could be used for gene delivery—and common cold to pneumonia, croup, deadly infections in others. potentially, cancer therapy. Nemerow and bronchitis. In the early 1990s, Glen Nemerow, teamed up with Vijay Reddy, an professor and principal investigator associate professor at Scripps, to » Adenoviruses spread from person at the Immunology and Microbial investigate the 3-D shape of human to person through the air (sneezing Science division of The Scripps adenovirus using a technique called or coughing), by particles left on Institute, switched from his previous X-ray crystallography. objects, and by personal contact. research on Epstein-Barr to human First the researchers needed to » Good ways to prevent adenovirus adenovirus. “It is easy to grow grow a crystal of the virus. This infection include washing hands; and manipulate, which made (and presented several challenges. makes) it an excellent model for For one, a complete human covering sneezes; avoiding studying host-cell interactions,” said adenovirus sports fiber “spikes” touching your eyes, nose, and Nemerow. that help it attach to a host cell but mouth; and staying home from Although the virus had been also prevented researchers from work and school when you are sick. studied since the early 1950s, most successfully growing a crystal. One research tended to focus on subunits of the first steps the scientists took Robert Fischetti (left), Glen Nemerow (center), and Vijay Reddy load samples at the Advanced Photon Source. This research is funded by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. The Advanced Photon Source is supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Science. 54 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 55 EDUCATION EDUCATION

“For many of my students, field trips are a luxury they cannot afford. After our visit, virtually all of the kids wanted to be the scientists behind the technology. It was great to see so much enthusiasm and to reinforce what we were learning in the classroom and how it applies in the real world.”

– Kevin Hooper, science teacher at Officer Donald J. Marquez School

Modern challenges fundamental to the Fermi’s Footsteps: Education at Argonne require embracing design and research issues that may span approach of the INTRODUCTION TO EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES AT ARGONNE multiple science national labs—but it’s subjects, rather also been embraced Gretchen Anderson’s the best part was after that pursuing a career Since Argonne is a than the traditional by education in recent middle school students the field trip,” Anderson in science is not just a multidisciplinary approach of dividing years. That puts the lab saw a lot of cool things said, “when Argonne dream, but a reality.” research lab, it can offer and assigning tasks in an excellent position when they came to employees came to talk Argonne offers many science and engineering between discrete to enrich community Argonne; they pedaled with my students about excellent opportunities education programs for disciplines. education; this on a bike to power a how they overcame for students in the teachers and students Argonne uses an approach to challenges light bulb and watched obstacles to get where areas of basic science, in physics, chemistry, interdisciplinary is highly appropriate a rubber ball shatter on they are today. My energy, environmental life sciences, advanced approach using diverse for educating For more information, visit the Educational Programs website the floor after a dip in students needed to hear management, and computing, and teams and resources. tomorrow’s scientists. at www.dep.anl.gov, including an updated calendar of events liquid nitrogen. “But this. It made them see national security. engineering. This arrangement is > > > continued and programs.

56 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 57 EDUCATION EDUCATION

Argonne has well-developed wide variety of offerings. Popular the NEWTON Ask a Scientist For older students, the Visiting by the Department of Interior’s opportunity to apply for college education programs directed events include Introduce a Girl Program, educational field trips, Faculty Program at Argonne Office of Indian Energy and internships and research aide toward middle school, high school, to Engineering Day, the Rube and teacher workshops and provides real-world research Economic Development), which positions. Individual researchers and undergraduate students, as well Goldberg Machine Contest, classes. For example, in 2011 the opportunities for faculty and is an opportunity for students and also work with Educational as postdoctoral appointments and the Science Careers in Search department launched a program for students from colleges and teachers to learn about green and Programs to organize research-based visiting faculty. More than 3,000 of Women Conference, and the high school students to design and universities with limited facilities renewable energy technology that opportunities in their own areas. students come to Argonne every Middle School Science Bowl, as conduct their own research with the and underrepresented populations. tribes can use to promote economic year through field trips, single-day well as the Undergraduate and guidance of their teachers and Educational Programs also manages and energy independence. For more information on any events, and other opportunities. Postdoctoral Symposia. Programs Argonne scientists. the Indian Education Renewable Other resources include access of Argonne’s programs, visit the Educational Programs has a and resources for teachers include Energy Challenge (supported to community outreach and the Educational Programs website at www.dep.anl.gov.

58 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 59 CAMPUS CAMPUS A SUSTAINABLE LAB COMING TO CAMPUS Get a sneak peek at the new buildings Argonne has committed to reducing the lab’s 1. GONE GEOTHERMAL Installed sprouting on Argonne’s campus as part of energy use by 30% by 2015, plus similar goals in 2012, the geothermal system at the its ongoing modernization plan. for greenhouse gases, water use, and pollution. Argonne Information Center saves $4,000 in heating costs per year and Two creative ways the lab is greening the campus: THE ENERGY SCIENCES BUILDING THE ADVANCED PROTEIN 53 tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Geothermal heating and cooling uses Argonne’s new Energy Sciences Building will provide the CRYSTALLIZATION FACILITY the constant 55°F temperature of the 21st century scientific infrastructure to attack challenges The State of Illinois is providing funding to help build earth to heat and cool buildings. in sustainable energy. The $95 million multi-story a special lab, attached to the Advanced Photon Source, Your fridge actually works by building will be approximately 160,000 square feet and where scientists can prep proteins for X-ray scrutiny at removing heat from the air inside, accommodate an estimated 230 employees. the synchrotron. not by cooling it down. Geothermal works the same way, using pipes Protein crystallography is one of the most important of liquid refrigerant that loop deep tools for drug and vaccine developers, who use the underground. In summer, the liquid technology to discover the molecular mechanisms of The geothermal absorbs heat from the air in the disease in order to design better cures (see page 38). But crystallizing proteins is time-consuming and often system at the Argonne Information Center and then releases it as it goes underground. In winter, frustrating. For every 100 attempts, only one or two Information Center usable crystals typically form. “We’ve designed this the liquid picks up heat from the facility to shorten the time it takes from producing a saves $4,000 in ground and brings it to the surface, protein to making viable crystals from it,” said Andrzej heating costs per year and 600 ft. where blowers circulate air past the Joachimiak, who heads the Midwest Center for Structural hot pipes and send the warmed air Genomics. Scientists at the facility will use robotics to 53 tons of greenhouse into the building. The pipes below accelerate the production, purification, and crystallization The building, which broke ground last summer, is of the proteins. gas emissions. the Information Center go 600 feet designed to bring together scientists in different fields underground. that normally work in separate buildings. In the ESB, catalysis chemists will rub elbows with specialists 2. SUSTAINABLE STREETLIGHTS in magnetic phenomena and materials scientists Hybrid solar- and wind-powered with transportation engineers. This is the kind of BY THE NUMBERS streetlights, which are completely interdisciplinary space that Argonne hopes will help 9 new all-electric vehicles onsite off the power grid, adorn Argonne spark revolutions in every field. 53% of trash diverted to recycling and reuse sidewalks. A small solar panel and wind turbine powers the LED light Research at the Energy Sciences Building will focus on 75 kilowatt solar array installed this year five central themes: discovery synthesis for designing atop the fixture, which has batteries 120 bikes for employees onsite new materials; bio-inspired nanoscience, which tries to store energy for up to three days to learn from nature to more efficiently harness the 29,000,000 gallons of water saved per year Construction of the APCF is expected to create 825 new without sun or wind. power of the sun; catalysis to make reactions faster and Illinois jobs and $25 million in personal income. After better (see page 42); fuel cells, which are a more efficient opening, the facility is expected to draw another $110 alternative to fossil fuel combustion; and electrical million for research activities over a five-year period, READ MORE AT energy storage, which pursues better batteries. create 550 new jobs, and add $52 million to the Illinois BLOGS.ANL.GOV/GREENLAB economy annually. Groundbreaking: June 3, 2011 Building move-in: Summer 2013 Groundbreaking: August 30, 2011 Construction jobs created: 2,000 Building move-in: Fall 2014 Construction jobs created: 825

60 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMER 2012 | 61 SCIENCE BEHIND FICTION

Sure, a killer virus set on emergency response to an outbreak for them to transfer from one person destroying humanity makes a good of the pandemic H1N1 influenza to another. This may have made SCIENCE BEHIND pitch for a movie. But whether the virus. you leave the theater with the urge audience is on the edge of their “With H1N1, people may have to sterilize everything—but it also seats or rolling in the aisles depends gotten a false sense of security highlighted how challenging virus THE entirely on how the movie balances because it was so mild. Some containment can be, particularly if FICTION fact and science fiction. 2011’s thought the CDC overreacted, but it’s an unknown type. (Perhaps it also Contagion, however, proved that you never know what a virus like made you want to wash your hands; EXAMINES CONTAGION [2011] a thriller can be creative without this can do. If a new virus attacks, if so, all the better—the CDC touts compromising scientific integrity. we have no immunity.” this as a top method of preventing By Susheela Bhat Ed Tanzman, who leads the transmission of both viruses and Center for Integrated Emergency bacteria.) Preparedness at Argonne, thought Tanzman was also struck by how Science Behind the the film exaggerated a few things, poignantly the movie captured the Fiction critiques the science such as how quickly they replicated nature of humanity in the face of portrayed in popular films the vaccine. But, he says, “Contagion such a horrific doomsday scenario. and literature. Today Argonne was a pretty accurate depiction of In the movie, Mitch Emhoff’s (Matt emergency planning experts how public health officials would Damon) teenage daughter struggles review “Contagion,” the hit react in real life if a pandemic virus to keep a relationship with her movie directed by Steven hit their cities.” boyfriend, even though they are He says the film also did justice forbidden from seeing each other Soderbergh, which follows to the hunt for Patient Zero and while the virus runs its course. Her the spread of a killer virus the process of looking for the cure, frustration with having her life put in modern-day society. without hyping it up into a modern- on hold, Tanzman said, reflected day witch hunt. how most people would react in that According to Walsh, “if you can situation. figure out the source, you can figure During a prolonged pandemic, it’s out where the virus came from. This likely that many aspects of society is something practiced in everyday would break down, especially epidemiology—they always want as resources dwindled and basic the source.” necessities disappeared. But with the Before they can make a vaccine, help of experts like Argonne’s Dan researchers need to figure out how Walsh and Ed Tanzman, cities like the virus itself works. First, they Chicago can run emergency drills to need to grow the virus and observe prepare for the worst-case scenarios. how it kills its host cells; then they (Turn to page 14 for more.) At Argonne, emergency can move on to finding out how “What I took away from that preparedness analysts like Dan to stop it. The actors in Contagion movie, apart from its excellent Walsh work with public health portrayed the part of researchers attention to detail,” Tanzman said, departments to make sure they could without artifice, Walsh thought, “was that it did an outstanding job quickly respond to a Contagion-like and used the correct language of of showing the heroism of people outbreak. We asked Walsh what epidemiology without falling back in government and public health. he thought of the portrayals in the on the tired stereotypes of science If put in a situation like this movie. and scientists. in real life, I believe many “It’s true there is a constant Contagion also demonstrated how vulnerability. We are so susceptible a deadly virus can overcome the of them would do the same to an attack from a pandemic virus, best containment efforts. Dr. Erin things.” and a novel virus could easily wipe Mears (Kate Winslet) is infected out millions of people,” said Walsh, by “fomites,” or inanimate objects who recently helped the Chicago (like clothing or hair) that can host Department of Public Health plan its infectious organisms long enough

62 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMERSUMMER 20122012 || 6363 You don’t have to wait for the next issue of Argonne Now to get your daily dose of science and technology. Want to get Follow us online: your news at Visit our website relatedlinks www.anl.gov 99.999% the 9 “New Institute to Study Molecular Engineering” 42 “7 Things You May Not Know About Catalysis” Follow us on Twitter More about the Institute for Molecular Engineering at More about the Advanced Photon Source: speed of light? twitter.com/argonne molecularengineering.uchicago.edu www.aps.anl.gov More about the Electron Microscopy Center: “City of Chicago Won’t Sweat the Flu” www.emc.anl.gov Become a fan on Facebook 14  Watch the video at http://www.anl.gov/videos/ More about the Argonne Leadership Computing facebook.com/argonne chicago-department-public-health-influenza-drill Facility: www.alcf.anl.gov

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Sign up to make sure you get your copy of Argonne Now! www.anl.gov/subscribe 64 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMERSUMMER 20122012 || 6565 Science SEE YOUR HAIKU IN THE NEXT MAGAZINE! The haiku contest is ask a open to all. You may submit up to three in the traditional English format (one line with 5 syllables, Haiku SCIENTIST one with 7 syllables, and another DAN ABRAHAM, with 5, for a total of 17 syllables) covering any aspect of science MATERIALS SCIENTIST Muon, gluon, quark. or engineering. Send entries to ANDY JANSEN, Lepton, hadron, boson, *sigh.* [email protected]. Can’t they name them Fred? CHEMICAL ENGINEER — Constance Vanni I heard I can make my battery last longer if I let it run out before I charge it. Is that true? Haiku Syllables() Using CERN’s email if (not line two) return five; This haiku is submitted Einstein taught us this: else return seven; Before I write it… If time flies like an arrow, The arrow is bent. — Amanda Wagner — William Elias ABRAHAM: Put your hand on your laptop ABRAHAM: — Dave Baurac No, not for battery. It’s already hot, right? Interestingly, lithium-ion The battery has to deal with the running at high batteries, which heat from the processor in your temperatures make up the computer, which is like a little actually improves majority of cell furnace; it runs near 120°F. So the the performance of phone and laptop batteries these less additional heat it has to deal the battery in the short-term—but days. This myth is a holdover with, the better. over the long run, it will make from older kinds of batteries, your performance degrade faster. like nickel-cadmium batteries, That means even though it’s High temperatures are usually bad which do benefit from being called a laptop, don’t keep your for longevity. In fact, when we’re fully discharged. But that’s not laptop on your lap—put it on a testing batteries here at the lab, we necessary for lithium-ion batteries. hard surface so that the air intake accelerate the aging of the battery and fans aren’t blocked. And of (in order to simulate years and JANSEN: course, don’t leave any device with years of use) by cycling it in a hot If you want to a lithium-ion battery in direct chamber, which is typically held extend your sunlight, in a car, or anywhere else at 130°F. battery’s life, the where the temperature can get up best way to do that over 80°F. Don’t put it in a freezer DO YOU HAVE A QUESTION YOU’VE is to keep it from or cold car, either, because the ALWAYS WANTED TO ASK A SCIENTIST? getting too hot. It will drastically electrolyte can freeze, crystallize, SEND IT TO [email protected]. shorten the battery’s cycle and and punch holes in the delicate calendar life if you run it hot. separator. It’s like what happens to meat that gets freezer burn and turns to mush; the same thing happens to a battery.

66 | ARGONNE NOW SUMMERSUMMER 20122012 || 6767 ARGONNE

Argonne National Laboratory 9700 South Cass Avenue Non-profit Org Argonne, Illinois 60439 USA US Postage Paid www.anl.gov Lemont, Illinois Permit No. 87

Argonne materials scientist Bernd Kabius examines a sample at Argonne’s new Sub-Angstrom Microscopy and Microanalysis facility.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF Argonne National Laboratory is a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC. ENERGY

These “fish” are actually carbon particles made out of olive oil, which work as an ingredient in lithium-ion batteries.

By Vilas Pol