1. Helping the Blind to See

Biological and Environmental Research Program

There are approximately 10 million blind and visually impaired people in the United States, of which 1.3 million people are legally blind. An artificial retina is a device, implanted in the back of the eye to replace a damaged retina, that will capture visual signals and send them to the brain in the form of electrical impulses. An FDA-approved prototype device containing 16 electrodes has been implanted into the eyes of two blind people at the Doheny Retina Institute of the University of Southern California. Second Sight, Inc primarily supported this device. The prototype devices implanted into patients to date are far from optimum: they have few electrodes, are unlikely to last long within the eye because of sub-optimum materials and have no possibility of restoring vision. Utilizing the unique resources of the DOE National Laboratories in materials sciences, microfabrication, microelectrode construction, photochemistry and computer modeling, the Office of Science’s Medical Research program has undertaken a project to construct a 1000 array microelectrode device, capable of restoring vision, with materials that will last for the lifetime of a blind person.

For additional information, please see:
11/25/02 - Secretary Abraham Announces Next Steps for Artificial Retina
9/5/02 – Ambitious Plan to Give Sight to the Blind (Sandia news release)

2. Solar Neutrinos “Oscillate,” Changing Their “Flavor” on Their Way to the Earth

High Energy and Nuclear Physics Program

Scientists at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) announced new results indicating unambiguously that some of the neutrinos produced in the sun change on their way to earth into other types not normally detected. Neutrinos originate in the sun as one type, but the SNO collaboration has found that they “oscillate” into a mixture of the three known types of neutrinos by the time they are observed by the SNO detector. Because neutrinos oscillate, they must have a small, non-zero mass, and could contribute about as much mass to the universe as stars. The fact that neutrinos have mass will require modifications to the Standard Model of Fundamental Particles and Interactions which assumes that neutrinos are massless. The new result also indicates that the number of neutrinos emitted by the sun is very close to the number calculated by modern solar models, and thus the thirty-five year old “solar neutrino deficit problem”, discovered by Ray Davis, Jr., and co-workers, has at last been solved. An international collaboration of scientists from the United States, Canada and United Kingdom built and operate the SNO detector, which contains 1000 tons of water where ordinary hydrogen has been replaced with its heavier isotope, deuterium. Neutrinos of all types can break apart deuterium nuclei, providing a signal that makes the SNO detector equally sensitive to all of them.

Davis and Koshiba Share 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics for Detection of Solar Neutrinos

The 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics was shared, with one/half of it awarded jointly to Raymond Davis, Jr., and to Matsatoshi Koshiba, “for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos.” The award to Ray Davis was for his discovery of the solar neutrino deficit that used a radiochemical technique employing 600 tons of carbon tetrafluoride (cleaning fluid) located in the deep Homestake Mine in South Dakota over a period of 30 years. Ray Davis performed his experiment while employed with Brookhaven National Laboratory. Koshiba observed neutrinos from the Sun in real time using the Kamiokande water cerenkov detector, with timing mechanisms provided by physicists from the University of Pennsylvania.

For additional information, please see:
The SNO Result http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/sno/results_04_02/

The 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics

Neutrino Research Supported by the DOE Office of Science

10/08/02 - Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, Office of Science Director Raymond OrbachSalute Raymond Davis, Jr., Recipient of 2002 Nobel Prize
10/8/02 – Brookhaven Lab’s Raymond Davis Jr. Wins Nobel Prize in Physics (Brookhaven news release)

3. Matter and Antimatter Decay Differently

High Energy and Nuclear Physics Program

One of the major puzzles in cosmology is how matter survived "The Great Annihilation" by antimatter so that we can exist now. Most theories to explain this puzzle involve particles that decay preferentially into matter over antimatter so that there could be a tiny excess of matter in the universe (one part in ten billion) over the amount of antimatter. The measurements from Fermilab and CERN of the so-called epsilon'/epsilon parameter are finally established and demonstrate that indeed a particle and its anti-particle can decay slightly differently at the level of one part in a million.

Matter-Antimatter Asymmetry Measurement Confirms Theory, But Major Puzzle Remains

Matter and antimatter are opposites, but not exactly. If they were, the Big Bang would have been followed by their complete annihilation. Instead some substance was left behind. That's what we see around us. The current model of particle physics predicts subtle differences (called "CP violation") between matter and antimatter, and these differences are being measured at the Stanford Linear Accelerator's "asymmetric B-factory" (PEP-II). A high precision measurement of CP violation by the BaBar Collaboration this year has confirmed the predictions of the model. Similar results were obtained by a competing experiment at a Japanese laboratory. Despite this success, the same theory is unable to account fully for the matter we see, indicating that our understanding of CP violation is still incomplete.

4. Multi-talented Materials Promise New Devices

Basic Energy Sciences Program

A new class of organic materials whose electrical, optical, and magnetic properties flip between two stable states has been developed. Ordinary transistors act as switches because they change properties depending on the electrical voltage applied to them; the properties of optoelectronic devices can be adjusted by light applied to them; and in the emerging field of spintronics, the electrical behavior of a device can be changed by an applied magnetic field. But this new class of materials represents the first time in which materials can switch their electrical, optical, and magnetic characteristics simultaneously. These multifunctional materials have the potential to be used as the basis for new types of devices where multiple channels are used for reading, writing, and transferring information. This extraordinary breakthrough will usher in new technologies and even more sophisticated devices for the electronic, computer, and data storage (magnetic and optical) industries, well beyond what the current state-of-the-art two-channel “optoelectronic” and “spintronics” technologies can deliver.

Robert Haddon, University of California at Riverside

For additional information, see:
http://www.inthenews.ucr.edu/20020527haddon.htm

5. Microtesla Magnetic Resonance

Basic Energy Sciences Program

A way to acquire chemical information with magnetic fields a million times weaker than those used in typical nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has been developed. NMR and its near relative, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), are essential tools of scientific research and medical diagnosis. In general, their measurements depend on the strength of the external applied magnetic field. For the best resolution, it is desired to perform NMR and MRI with very large magnetic fields typically 30,000 times the Earth's magnetic field strength. However, for many potential applications, it may be impractical to place the object of study in the bore of a high-field magnet. Certain heterogeneous samples, such as organisms studied by in vivo spectroscopy or porous rocks encountered in oil well logging present challenges. These challenges can be addressed by developing new NMR techniques that use ultrasmall magnetic fields. A major challenge in using microtesla fields is that, under ordinary conditions, the concentration of detectable atoms becomes too small to detect. This has been overcome by “prepolarizing” the atomic nuclei with a brief exposure to a field in the millitesla range and then observing the signal with a field in the microtesla range using a specially designed and supersensitive superconducting quantum interference device, or SQUID, as the detector. The new technique opens the door to chemical sampling in living organisms or porous rocks. Additional potential developments of the technique are possible by combining MRI with direct detection of chemical bonds, yielding new ways to investigate processes in brain chemistry and other in-vivo systems.

John Clarke and Alexander Pines, University of California at Berkeley and LBNL

For additional information, see:
http://www.lbl.gov/msd/PIs/Pines/02/02_3_pines_microtesla.html

6. Parallel Components for Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) and Optimization

Advanced Scientific Computing Research Program

The complexity and scale of today’s high-fidelity, multidisciplinary scientific simulations create ever more challenging demands for high-performance numerical tools that are flexible, extensible, and interoperable with complementary research and industry technologies. Component-based design can help to manage such complexity by combining object-oriented design with the powerful features of well-defined abstract interfaces, programming language interoperability, and dynamic composability. While mainstream component technologies have addressed these issues in business computing, these infrastructures do not address all needs of parallel scientific simulations. Thus, the DOE-wide Common Component Architecture (CCA) Forum (see http://www.cca-forum.org) is developing component technology standards for high-performance scientific software.

Computer scientists at Argonne National Laboratory, in close collaboration with members of the CCA Forum, have recently released new prototype CCA-compliant components for the solution of large-scale partial differential equations (PDEs) and related optimization problems. Component design helps overcome obstacles that make it difficult to share even well-designed traditional numerical libraries. For example, because these components use common abstract mathematical interfaces for parallel linear algebra, they can employ external libraries that support these interfaces, including the toolkits PETSc (ANL) and Trilinos (SNL). Application scientists can then experiment with various underlying implementations without needing to make premature choices about data structures and algorithms and can easily update solution strategies as more advanced algorithms are discovered and encapsulated within toolkits.

The complete source code and documentation for these prototype components, as well as others developed by CCA collaborators, were demonstrated at the SC01 conference and are available via http://www.cca-forum.org/cca-sc01. This research is part of joint work within three centers that are funded through the DOE SciDAC Initiative: the Center for Component Technology for Terascale Simulation Software, the Terascale Optimal PDE Simulations Center, and the Terascale Simulation Tools and Technologies Center. We are also collaborating with chemists at SNL and PNNL to incorporate some of these components into large-scale molecular structure computations and to investigate application-specific customizations.

7. Completion of the Conceptual Design of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS)

Basic Energy Sciences Program

Once again the Department of Energy is leading the Nation in science. The LCLS will be the world’s first accelerator-based, free-electron laser for x rays. This facility will provide x rays with intensities 10 billion times greater than are available currently. These x rays will have the special characteristics of laser light of being narrowly focused, with every light wave in unison, and will also be emitted in very short pulses. This conceptual design is the result of over a decade of research and an intense effort on instruments that can exploit a x-ray laser. The LCLS will change the way we think in many areas of science that are very important to all of the missions of the Department. For the first time, scientists will be able to see directly the positions and motions of atoms because the pulses will be on a time scale equivalent to the motions and there will be enough intensity to see the atoms as they move, which will help scientists to predict the behavior of materials and design better materials for all energy related applications. Many more materials will be accessible because the increased intensity will allow scientists to get information on very small samples, such as catalytic particles. The LCLS will be especially useful for non-crystalline materials such as polymers, amorphous materials, and biological macromolecules. The LCLS is a very cost effective design because it uses the last third of the linac and other buildings at the Department of Energy’s Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). The LCLS continues the tradition of forefront accelerator physics and engineering at SLAC and will enhance its already outstanding scientific reputation in materials, chemistry, and biology.

8. New Insights into Magnetic Reconnection Achieved in Recent Laboratory Measurements

Fusion Energy Sciences Program

One of the ways by which energy in plasmas in the universe is released is through the process of magnetic reconnection, in which segments of plasmas containing magnetic fields merge together. This release of energy is thought to heat the solar corona to temperatures 1000 times greater than the surface of the sun, and to accelerate particles in the universe to very high energies. Similarly, magnetic fields are also believed to be the primary source of jets of energetic particles that are seen in astronomical observations. Magnetic reconnection is also an important process in some fusion energy experiments.
Recent experiments carried out at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Swarthmore University, and California Institute of Technology using newly developed measurement techniques have provided clear measurements of the ways that magnetic fields vary during the reconnection process. These measurements also provide critical data to be used in the development of theoretical understanding of magnetic recombination, a field of vigorous activity.

9. A Microbial Proteome in a Day – Another Big Step in Biology

Biological and Environmental Research Program

A team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has developed new instrumentation and a unique approach to obtain the most complete protein analysis of any organism to date - the culmination of a 15 year gamble in mass spectrometry research. In the last few years have we witnessed a revolution in genomics research so that today we can quickly and cost-effectively understand an organism’s genome, its entire DNA sequence, providing scientists with critical information on the organism’s biological parts list. Now we are on the verge of another technology revolution in biology. A microbe’s DNA contains the instructions for making it come to life, including the instructions for making thousands of different proteins. However, no organism produces or uses all of its proteins at one time but instead produces sets of proteins in response to specific signals from its environment. The set of proteins found in an organism at any given time is known as its proteome. This new high-throughput method of mass spectrometry has enabled scientists to analyze a microbe’s proteome in a few days, something that would have previously taken two to three years to complete with much less accuracy and depth of coverage. With the high-throughput instrumentation and systems, the PNNL team can now complete five to six such analyses of the proteins of a proteome in a day with sensitivities 100 times greater than other methods. Studying the amount of each protein present in an organism at any time is important if we are to understand and benefit from the biological capabilities of diverse microbes we need to first understand the proteomes of those microbes under different environmental conditions.

10. The World’s Smallest Ultraviolet Nanolaser

Basic Energy Sciences Program

The world’s smallest ultraviolet-emitting lasers have been developed based on “nanowires” of zinc oxide (ZnO). These lasers have a broad range of potential applications in fields ranging from photonics – the use of light for superfast data processing and transmission – to the so-called “lab on a chip” technology in which a microchip equipped with nano-sized light sources and sensors performs instant and detailed analyses for chemistry, biology, and medical studies. The nanolasers were fabricated by a new processing method that can grow arrays of ZnO nanowires between 70 and 100 nm in diameter with adjustable lengths between 2 and 10 microns. Laser action in the ZnO arrays was demonstrated via optical pumping. This discovery continues the progress in semiconductor laser research and has led to the development of new materials that extend the availability of versatile and inherently inexpensive (a few cents per unit in bulk quantities) light sources from the near infrared and red regions of the spectrum into the green-blue and near ultraviolet.

Peidong Yang, University of California at Berkeley and LBNL

For additional information, see:
http://www.photonics.com/Spectra/Tech/nov02/techUV.asp
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/topstory/7924/7924notw8.html