Below the Fold

Jefferson Lab Hall A User Honored for Teaching

Adam Sarty, a physics professor with Saint Mary's University, Nova Scotia, recently received the Canadian Association of Physicists Medal for Excellence in Teaching. He is a member of JLab's users community – scientists representing more than 200 institutions that come to JLab to conduct experiments.

Saint Mary’s University physics professor and Hall A user Adam Sarty has captured this year's Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP) Medal for Excellence in Teaching. The CAP Medal honors university faculty members who have a comprehensive knowledge and deep understanding of their subject and who possess an exceptional ability to communicate their knowledge and understanding in ways that help students achieve academic success in physics.

"I am humbled and honored to receive this medal, and would like to share the recognition with my team – my wife and children, my department and dean, and the Saint Mary's Centre for Academic and Instructional Development. All have taught me, guided me and supported me in my physics teaching," said Sarty.

Merit for the medal is based on all forms of undergraduate teaching, from classroom lecturing and consultation with individual students, to the introduction of innovative teaching methods and the production of educational materials. Sarty takes particular pride in getting people excited about physics.

"Removing people's fear of science in general, and physics in particular, is a passion I have," said Sarty. "This is what drives me to implement as many resources as possible in my introductory classes, to remove barriers to understanding, and to take my physics shows on the road to schools and community groups."

Saint Mary's University is located in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This information is provided courtesy of the Saint Mary's University Public Affairs office. For the complete news release, please visit the St. Mary's University webpage.

California High School Wins Science Bowl; Virginia team takes 3rd

Finishing in third place at the DOE Science Bowl Nationals, held May 1-6 in Washington, D.C., was the team from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology from Alexandria, Va. Here they are pictured after winning the Virginia Regional High School Science Bowl held Feb. 2 at Jefferson Lab. The winning team includes, from left to right: Huanqi Deng, Bruce Sun, Jack Wang, Meng-Yang Chen and Evan Warner and Coach Sharon Webb.

On May 5, the U.S. Department of Energy announced Santa Monica High School from Santa Monica, Calif., winner of the 2008 DOE National Science Bowl.  Santa Monica beat Mira Loma High School from Sacramento, Calif., in the championship match held in Washington, D.C. Teams representing 67 high schools from across the United States competed in the national finals.

Members of the winning team won a trip to the International Youth Science Forum in London in addition to $1,000 for their school’s science department.

Placing second was the Mira Loma High School from Sacramento. The team won a trip to a nuclear science facility in France, sponsored by AREVA, Inc., in addition to $1,000 for their school’s science department.

The third place team was Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology from Alexandria, Va. The team won $1,000 for their school’s science department and a trip to Jefferson Lab which they donated to the fourth place team. TJHSST won the Virginia Regional High School Science Bowl held at Jefferson Lab in early February.

The fourth place team was Fairview High School from Boulder, Colo.

More than 300 high school students competed in the national finals of the 18th annual DOE National Science Bowl. Earlier this spring, more than 12,000 students from across the country participated in regional Science Bowls for high school students. The winners of the regional high school Science Bowls received all-expense paid trips to compete in the national finals in Washington. DOE recognizes all the students who competed as true mathematics and science stars, representing the nation’s next generation of scientists and engineers.

The DOE Office of Science manages the DOE National Science Bowl. The Office of Science is the principal supporter of DOE’s world-class national laboratory system leading the way in innovations including high-end computing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, energy sources, and other material science research.

New Things are Happening in Quark Cafe

Quark Cafe staff members invite the JLab community to stop in for breakfast and lunch. From left are Sandra Graham, Dan Plummer, Food Services Director Gaye Davenport, Executive Chef Chris Thornhill and Dianne Greene.

Things are bustling backstage at Jefferson Lab's Quark Cafe between the breakfast rush and lunchtime. Dan Plummer is building pannini sandwiches filled with meat and cheese, getting them ready for the brand new pannini press to make them hot and delicious. Dianne Greene is cleaning up after a busy morning of serving up her popular French toast platter breakfast special. Executive Chef Chris Thornhill is preparing hot entrees with the help of Sandra Graham; and Food Services Director Gaye Davenport is orchestrating and overseeing everything.

The crew has been at work since 6 a.m. and will carry through until 3 p.m. "Every day is a busy day," Davenport says with a smile.

Since last fall, she has been with Eurest Dining Services, the Charlotte, N.C.–based company that has the contract to provide food services at JLab. Prior to coming here she had been the Director of Catering at The College of William & Mary for six years.

"These are perfect for people who want to grab a quick bite and go," she says.

In working to meet customers' requests, the team has enlarged – and continues to expand – the beverage selection.

"We have high energy drinks, a variety of iced teas, Starbucks products and even vitamin waters," she says with pride. "We just got the new low-cal Gatorade called G2; and we are keeping our eyes on new products coming to the marketplace."

Nearby, the coffee station sports some new additions as well: powdered cinnamon, nutmeg and cocoa powder for sprinkling on that java. These are an example of the Quark Cafe staff’s responsiveness to customer requests.

"We listen to what people want," Davenport notes. "There's a comment card on the Quark Cafe menu webpage, and soon we'll be adding a suggestion board near the cafe's entrance. We want people to tell us what they want – that we don't have and we'll do our best to accommodate them. For me, my job has always been about customer service. That's what I always like to bring to the table."

The menu for the coming week is posted on the webpage by 2 p.m. on Fridays and there's also a copy of the menu posted in the CEBAF Center lobby, near the cafe's entrance.

Food Service Director Gaye Davenport pauses in front of some new snack items available in Quark Cafe.

Keeping meals interesting for a continuing group of customers is a challenge, and Davenport and her staff work to bring new choices to the menu along with the popular staples. Themed meals range from "Silver Diner Classics," including long-time favorites such as meat loaf and chicken pot pie, to spotlighting cultural cuisine, such as Asian, Italian, Mexican and Caribbean dishes. New breakfast specials include a Denver breakfast fold, French toast and a flatbread breakfast fold, which is a sister to the new Mediterranean flatbreads at lunchtime. Freshly made wraps have also been introduced for the lunch crowd.

There's hardly an event to celebrate that the Quark Cafe crowd lets slip by. They've celebrated baseball season with hot dogs and Cracker Jacks, Mardi Gras with a Cajun menu, St. Patrick's Day, the coming of spring and of course, feasts at marking the holidays.

Thornhill agrees with Davenport that the challenge of his job is keeping the food interesting. A graduate of the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., Thornhill's passion for preparing food began during his youth. By age 13 he had bought his first cookbook.

"One of the things I like most about working with Eurest is that the focus is on fresh ingredients, with a minimal amount of frozen food," he notes. "I make it a point to ask our guests how they enjoyed their meal and what we could do to make it better. If they don't see something they want, we stand ready to take their suggestions and see what we can do to make their meal or event more pleasurable."

The cafe staff also performs catering duties for groups ranging in size from five people to 300. The catering menu has been static for a number of years; but a new one is about to be presented. "We're very excited about this," Davenport says. "It was time for a complete rejuvenation of the catering menu and we've done that." Look for the new menu within the next month or so.

JLab Recognizes Top Small Business Subcontractor for 2007

Mechanical Resources Inc. earned JLab's Small Business of the Year award for 2007. Recognized during a recent reception are, from left: Mike Leveille, Scott Weiss, Robbie Rutherford, John Mancil, Dave Clark, Tim Grencewicz and Todd Hedge. MRI is co-owned by Grencewicz and Mancil.

Mechanical Resources Inc., a Newport News-based business that provides mechanical systems support, was recently recognized as Jefferson Lab's Outstanding Small Business Subcontractor of the Year for 2007.

MRI, co-owned by Tim Grencewicz and John Mancil, received the Jefferson Science Associates/JLab Outstanding Small Business Subcontractor award at a reception held at the Lab in late April. Department of Energy officials, senior Jefferson Lab management, Procurement and Facilities Management & Logistics staff gathered to congratulate Grencewicz and Mancil and several of their employees as they received an award plaque from JLab Director Christoph Leemann.

"This is a tough competition," noted Danny Lloyd, JLab's small business program manager. "Jefferson Lab subcontracts a broad range of services and MRI was one of several hundred small businesses that worked with JLab during 2007. Using the Lab's established criteria, a judging committee rated the top 59 small business and MRI finished at the top. The company is consistently responsive and provides a wide array of mechanical systems support to Jefferson Lab. MRI is a valued member of the JLab team."

JLab Scientist Develops Portrait of a Gremlin

Rongli Geng, SRF Institute staff scientist, zeros in on a defect inside an accelerator cavity with a long-distance microscope.

When an expensive accelerator component designed for the International Linear Collider failed to perform as expected, Jefferson Lab scientists set out to find the root of the problem. What they discovered and the tool they used to make their discovery could have widespread applications in accelerator science.

"You can see the cavity is about a meter long, with nine cells. Any defects on the metal surface, inclusions or even particulate contamination, will become a potential source of field-quenching or electron-emitting sites," said Rongli Geng as he stood alongside the shiny niobium component.

It was Geng, a staff scientist at Jefferson Lab's Institute of Superconducting Radiofrequency Science and Technology, who found the problem with the cavity: a tiny metallic speck just a bit wider than a human hair on the cavity's internal surface. The cavity is one of eight ILC cavities processed and evaluated by Jefferson Lab staff thus far. The problematic cavity, which is the fourth manufactured by Advanced Energy Systems, has been dubbed AES4.

While conducting performance tests on AES4, Geng found that the cavity did not meet target specifications, likely due to two electron-emitting sites caused by surface defects. These sites leach away energy that would ordinarily go into accelerating subatomic particles, the accelerator cavity's main purpose. Emitted electrons heat up the cavity wall as they gain energy from the field stored in the cavity, giving scientists a method for locating emitting sites.

"We have a set of temperature sensors built by our JLab colleague Gigi Ciovati, which we attach to the outer surface of the cavity. They will tell which part of the cavity wall is hotter than the surrounding area, even very small temperature rises," Geng explains.

Once the sensors confirm which of AES4's doughnut-shaped cells have developed electron-emitting sites, Geng can scour the area for defects. To conduct his search, Geng turned to a favorite tool of birders and backyard astronomers – a telescope.

"This is the Questar. The technical name is long-distance microscope," he said, pointing to the small telescope he had mounted on a stand. "The theoretical resolution of this tool is three microns. That is enough for our purposes."

This novel way of looking inside accelerator components has given scientists their first clear snapshot of a performance-killing defect (arrow pointing to imperfection on inside of cavity wall). Researchers suspect that the tiny spot (about the width of a human hair) on this otherwise smooth surface is preventing the component being tested at Jefferson Lab from reaching its design specifications

Aiming the device at the inside surface of one of the suspect cells, Geng managed to quickly find a microscopic defect.

"There was a trick to this, and that was finding the correct source of illumination," Geng said. "We have successfully identified the defects in the cavity without actually inserting a camera into the cavity."

Scientists may not know exactly how the defect is formed, but Geng explained that the "defect can be introduced in the beginning. For instance, when you are forming the cups, you can have a defect embedded into the material and afterward, when you do the chemistry and remove the defect, you could leave a damaged site there. You could also have inclusions from the original material."

Geng and his colleagues are still deciding how they will remove the defect they found in AES4.

"A typical fix would be just to mechanically remove it. It's not easy, though, because you are talking about the size of a human hair. You need to precisely go to that spot and remove it." The next step is to develop countermeasures to prevent or remove these defects.

Currently, the electron-emitting problem limits the performance of the cavity to roughly 28 Megavolts per meter, but Geng hopes that removing the defect will allow the cavity to eventually reach its 35 MV/m goal, making this cavity eligible for further testing.

JLab is working with other labs to develop the capability for realizing this ambitious project (ILC). Past experience in working with niobium accelerator components, used in JLab's CEBAF accelerator and in the Free-Electron Laser, allow Lab staff to successfully tackle technical challenges in applications of superconducting radiofrequency technology. Further developments in the field, in return, pay dividends in reliability and performance of the CEBAF 12 GeV Upgrade and energy-recovering linear accelerators.

Some funding for this work was also provided by Japanese colleagues via the U.S.-Japan Agreement.

By Kandice Carter
JLab science writer

Milestones for April 2008

Hello
Kai Tian, Superconducting Radiofrequency Postdoctoral Fellow (Structures & Simulations), Accelerator Operations, Research & Development Division

Goodbye
William Hicks, Mechanical Project Engineer, Engineering Division
Alex Dizerba, Distinguished Fellow, Directorate, retired
Carter Ficklen, ESH&Q Reporting Manager, Environment, Safety, Health & Quality Division, retired