On Target December 2012

Mirror Finish May Reflect Good Performance

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Researchers at Jefferson Lab have buffed the interiors of some accelerator component prototypes to a high-mirror shine in hopes of finding a more environmentally friendly method for manufacturing ever-more-efficient accelerator components. Pictured is one prototype cavity with a highly polished interior surface.

Scientists are studying whether a shiny new trend will help build better accelerators.

Just as the shiny baubles and lights have begun to appear for the winter holidays, so have the first mirror-like accelerator components at Jefferson Lab. Researchers have buffed the interiors of some accelerator component prototypes to a high-mirror shine in hopes of finding a more environmentally friendly method for manufacturing ever-more-efficient accelerator components.

The research is being led by Ari Palczewski, a Jefferson Lab staff scientist. He's experimenting with the process of cleaning and preparing the surface of accelerator components made of niobium, a rare metal. The components, called cavities, are designed to harness and focus the energy used to accelerate a beam of particles....... more


Jefferson Lab Receives High Grades from DOE

halls.jpgThe Department of Energy's 2012 Laboratory Performance Report Cards have been released, and Jefferson Lab received high grades and a good appraisal from the Office of Science.......more

 

Safety Meeting Set for Jan. 10

lsd.jpg Jefferson Lab is more than one-third of the way through its Long Shutdown – the final stretch of work that will result in upgrading CEBAF to a 12 GeV (billion electron volts) accelerator.......more

 

JSA/JLab Signs Agreement with Academy

steam.jpg Jefferson Science Associates/Jefferson Lab signed an agreement with the Virginia Science Technology Engineering and Applied Mathematics (VA STEAM) Academy on Nov. 26 at Jefferson Lab........more


Below the Fold:

Mirror Finish May Reflect Good Performance

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Ari Palczewski, a Jefferson Lab staff scientist, is researching improved methods for processing accelerator components. He's experimenting with the process of cleaning and preparing the surface of accelerator components made of niobium. Here, he examines the surface inside a niobium cavity.

Scientists are studying whether a shiny new trend will help build better accelerators.

Just as the shiny baubles and lights have begun to appear for the winter holidays, so have the first mirror-like accelerator components at Jefferson Lab. Researchers have buffed the interiors of some accelerator component prototypes to a high-mirror shine in hopes of finding a more environmentally friendly method for manufacturing ever-more-efficient accelerator components.

The research is being led by Ari Palczewski, a Jefferson Lab staff scientist. He's experimenting with the process of cleaning and preparing the surface of accelerator components made of niobium, a rare metal. The components, called cavities, are designed to harness and focus the energy used to accelerate a beam of particles. Research has suggested that the most efficient accelerator cavities have interior surfaces that are both smooth and defect-free.

"There's this thing called the quality factor, which tells you how efficient the cavity is. That may be able to go up with a smoother surface," Palczewski explains.

Currently, a niobium accelerator cavity's smooth surface is achieved with a long process that includes a heavy acid wash called electropolishing. The process involves a high-pressure rinse, a high-temperature bake and a second, though lesser, session of electropolishing, rinsing and baking. In the electropolishing phases, a mix of caustic acids and electricity are used to strip away a thin layer of the interior surface of the cavity, exposing a new, smoother surface. This process is the current baseline procedure for producing high-gradient cavity surfaces required for the International Linear Collider, a project that’s in the planning stages. Through a globally coordinated R&D effort, this process has been made repeatable and reliable across all three regions in the world over the past several years.

The alternative process Palczewski is working on aims to replace the heavy electropolish with a far more environmentally friendly mechanical polish method. This method consists of several steps of filling a cavity with polishing media of ever-finer grit, such as ceramic, wood and a sand-like powder, and then tumbling the cavities in a barrel-shaped centrifugal spinner.

"Usually, a cavity goes through a heavy electropolish, high-temperature bake, and then a light electropolish. Barrel polishing can eliminate one of the electropolish steps, so it's more environmentally friendly," he says. "It's also safer, because it's just rocks - it's not anything harmful."

This method was first successfully demonstrated by a group led by Kenji Saito at KEK, a Japanese national laboratory. The extension of this method to yield a mirror finish was pioneered by Charlie Cooper, a staff scientist in the Fermilab SRF Materials Group. Cooper applied the new method to prototype cavities for the ILC.

Palczewski is also working with prototype ILC cavities. He first attempted the mechanical polishing process on a single-cell cavity, which features the prototype shape of an ILC cavity, but contains only one accelerating cell. A full prototype ILC cavity contains nine cells.

"We started with Cooper's idea and improved upon it. We modified the process to make it cheaper, while requiring less cycles, and we think we get a better polish with less man-hours. We mechanically processed two single-cells, and we showed that our recipe for removal rates and smoothness worked," Palczewski explains. "We wanted to move up to multi-cells, because we use multi-cells in accelerators."

An opportunity soon arose to try out the improved cavity processing on a multi-cell ILC cavity. It involved one of the first nine-cell cavities produced by Niowave, an industrial vendor in the U.S. producing ILC prototype cavities, according to Rongli Geng, who leads the ILC prototype cavity processing and testing effort at Jefferson Lab.

The cavity failed to reach its performance goal during testing, and Geng and Palczewski worked to find a reason for the cavity's failure. They eventually found a pair of defects on the cavity's interior surface that had not been removed in its prior processing.

"It went through the standard processing for an SRF cavity," Palczewski says. "It was limited by defects in cell 5. Cell 5 is in the middle."

After identifying and documenting the location of the defects, Palczewski and Geng determined that they might be removed by a mechanical buff.

Palczewski filled the cavity with polishing media and placed it inside the large barrel polishing machine. The piece was then spun inside the polisher through four cycles, using four different sizes of polishing media for 110 hours to buff out the defect and smooth the interior surface.

"All of this is standard, off-the-shelf, buffing media that we're now using for niobium cavities," he says.

The result was an accelerator cavity sporting a surface with a high-mirror shine.

"This is the very first full-scale cavity processed by this alternative process at Jefferson Lab," Geng says. He and other researchers have high hopes for the now-shiny cavity.

"There are theoretical expectations that smoothness could be beneficial for better performance," Geng explains. "There are debates as to whether an optically smooth surface means good performance; having this new procedure now available in-house allows us to research the topic."

Performance testing of the Niowave cavity is expected to resume as soon as it can be scheduled in the lab’s Vertical Testing Area, a facility used to test the performance of accelerator components.

In the meantime, the researchers are looking forward to applying the new cavity processing to the surfaces of other cavities. Prior to Palczewski's work, other colleagues at Jefferson Lab already applied the mechanical polishing method for various R&D cavities. Now, it's expected that use of the method will boost Jefferson Lab cavity processing expertise to a new level.

"So part of this research is to prove and to optimize the process. We're trying to make it available for any needs of the community. So, the next project that comes up, we want to be able to use this to replace heavy chemistry - the heavy electropolish," Palczewski says.

Geng agrees.

"This started from the ILC R&D. We're hoping to continue R&D, but we're also hoping in the meantime, that this will benefit other projects. The technique is now available in-house, for future R&D in new cavity shapes," he says.

By Kandice Carter
Science writer

For More Information:
ILC Treatment of JLab Cavity Garners Excitement: /news/articles/ilc-treatment-jlab-cavity-garners-exciting-result
Reaching New Heights in Accelerator Technology: /news/releases/reaching-new-heights-accelerator-technology

Jefferson Lab Receives High Grades from DOE

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The CEBAF accelerator site is fully visible in this aerial photo, taken in May 2012. The outline of the racetrack-shaped accelerator is at the center, with the circular experimental halls A, B and C in the bottom right corner and the rectangular Hall D just beyond the racetrack at the top left.

The Department of Energy's 2012 Laboratory Performance Report Cards have been released, and Jefferson Lab received high grades and a good appraisal from the Office of Science.

In the appraisal process, the Office of Science evaluates the scientific, technological, managerial and operational performance of the contractors who manage and operate its 10 national laboratories. 

These evaluations provide the basis for determining annual performance fees and the possibility of winning additional years on the contract through an "Award Term" extension.

The appraisal process was launched in Fiscal Year 2006. It is designed to improve transparency, raise the level of involvement by the Office of Science leadership, increase consistency in the way the laboratories are evaluated, and more effectively incentivize contractor performance.

The grades received by Jefferson Lab this year are:
A-        Mission Accomplishments (Quality and Productivity of R&D)
A-        Construction and Operation of Research Facilities
A-        S&T Project/Program Management
B+       Contractor Leadership/Stewardship
B+       Environment, Safety and Health
B+       Business Systems
A-        Facilities Maintenance and Infrastructure
B+       Security and Emergency Management

All the lab report cards online at: http://science.energy.gov/lpe/performance-appraisal-process/fy-2012/

Safety Meeting Set for Jan. 10

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Jefferson Lab is more than one-third of the way through its Long Shutdown – the final stretch of work that will result in upgrading CEBAF to a 12 GeV (billion electron volts) accelerator.

In light of the intense and complex work load that staff and contractors have been under for the last several months and the work to be completed over the next several months, lab leadership, and safety and procurement staff are planning a Long Shutdown Safety Meeting and Vendor Fair on Thursday, Jan. 10.

Attendance by lab staff will be required at one of the four Project Update and Safety Meeting sessions that will take place in the CEBAF Center auditorium that morning. (Specifics on the sessions will be available in January. Training credit will be given as individuals enter the auditorium first floor entrance and pass their JLab ID badge in front of the card reader.)

In conjunction with the mandatory meeting, a 12 GeV Upgrade project poster session will take place, lab safety vendors will display a variety of materials and personal protective equipment and refreshments will be served from 9 a.m. - noon in the CEBAF Center lobby and Room F113.

"Mark your calendar for this event," urges Tina Johnson, Environmental, Safety, Health and Quality Division reporting officer. "While attending the safety meeting is required, we hope everyone will take the time to participate in the larger event."

"Raising the lab community's level of safety awareness in general and in conjunction with work planning in particular is a goal of the event. We hope individuals and groups will use this event as an opportunity to pause and think about safety in their work place."

The lab has recently experienced a flurry of minor but reportable injuries that has caused lab leadership to discuss safety concerns with staff. Too many of these reportable events involved rushing to meet deadlines, cutting corners, or not following procedures, according to Mary Logue, associate director of the ESH&Q Division. "Someone may cut corners once or twice and nothing happens, but at some point it catches up with you."

The lab community will also have the opportunity to find out in more detail at the poster session, about the upgrade and other work around the lab that has been completed and or is underway. Attendees will be able to get the latest information on the accelerator, each of the halls (A, B, C and D), the free-electron laser, facilities, ES&H, radiation control and the Long Shutdown work schedule.

Jefferson Lab computer account holders may access information about recent notable events at: https://www.jlab.org/div_dept/dir_off/oa/notable/index.html

JSA/JLab Signs Agreement with Academy

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Judy Stewart (foreground) and M. Caroline Martin, co-founders of the Virginia STEAM Academy initiative, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Jefferson Science Associates/Jefferson Lab on Nov. 26. Lab Director Hugh Montgomery signed the agreement for JSA/Jefferson Lab.

Jefferson Science Associates/Jefferson Lab signed an agreement with the Virginia Science Technology Engineering and Applied Mathematics (VA STEAM) Academy on Nov. 26 at Jefferson Lab. The Memorandum of Understanding lays the groundwork for VA STEAM Academy students and faculty to participate in the world-class research and science-outreach programs managed by JSA at Jefferson Lab.

"The fact that we promote an aggressive outreach program in science education is an indication of the importance Jefferson Lab and the Department of Enery's Office of Science place on developing the next generation of technically literate citizens," points out Jefferson Lab Director Hugh Montgomery. "Partnership with the Virginia STEAM Academy initiative is a very natural extension of that activity."

The academy is a proposed public, statewide, four-year residential program intended to be a uniquely challenging experience for high school students with ability and potential in science, technology, engineering or math. The proposed program will be a comprehensive, internationally benchmarked high school with STEAM emphasis; and will be designed to prepare students to enter higher education and then the workplace with knowledge and skills in science and technology. Nineteen similar public programs are already in place around the nation. The VA STEAM Academy is slated to accept its first freshman class in 2014.

Academy co-founders Judy Stewart and M. Caroline Martin and two academy steering committee members, Jim Batterson and Wayne Lett, met with several senior members of Jefferson Lab's management team before the Nov. 26 signing event.

After the signing, Stewart and Martin gave a presentation about the VA STEAM Academy in the lab's CEBAF Center auditorium. The talk covered the vision and goals of the program, how the VA STEAM Academy initiative developed and the status of the organizing effort.

According to Stewart, the purpose of the academy is to help address: the shortage of knowledge workers needed for the 21st century economy, the wide disparity between districts in offerings for highly able students, and the limited exposure to a rich, integrated STEAM curriculum for all students.

In addition to the high school program, the academy also plans to create a middle school summer camp for highly able students in math, science and engineering.

"We are excited to add Jefferson Lab to the growing list of institutions that are partnering with or endorsing the STEAM Academy," according to Stewart and Martin in a joint statement. "Together, we will help prepare students for the 21st century workplace. Our partners – state and local governments, businesses, nonprofits, K-12 and higher education institutions, and scientific and research organizations – will help to drive the curriculum to educate and develop leaders for the 21st century."

The idea for the VA STEAM Academy is based on the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, founded in 1980, and the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, founded in 1985, and other public, statewide residential academies that focus on science and math.

The MOU establishes a partnership that will provide outstanding educational opportunities to STEAM faculty and students. The agreement lays the groundwork for JSA to provide mentors for students and provide science education opportunities at Jefferson Lab, and to assist STEAM Academy officials in efforts to pursue grant opportunities that benefit and advance the mission and goals of both parties. Students and faculty will be able to attend a variety of scientific talks and lectures, and participate in organized mentoring opportunities that could increase the depth and breadth of their knowledge and skills. Students will be able to apply for and participate in the JSA-funded summer honors internship program and other programmatic events and activities; and teachers will be able to apply for and participate in the JSA-funded teacher enrichment program.

Stewart is an independent education consultant and president of Taylor Education Consulting, Inc. Her work in the area of education policy research has led to extended contracts with federal education research and development agencies, state departments of education, and local school divisions around issues related to educator quality and quantity. Stewart earned her bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.

Martin is a retired executive with the Riverside Health System. While serving as the executive of the Schools of Professional Nursing and Allied Health Education, she oversaw the creation and management of Riverside’s Wellness Division, The Rehabilitation Institute, Human Resource Development, Child Care and Learning Centers, Business Health and Mobile Diagnostic Services, and oversight of the risk management, safety and protection and accreditation programs. 

Steering committee member Batterson is a retired NASA engineer and former adviser to the Virginia Secretary of Education, and Lett is a retired superintendent of the Newport News public school system.

Computing 'Accelerates' Lab Science

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Members of Jefferson Lab's High-Performance Computing group who contributed to the work on the supercomputers include (standing, l-r) Ying Chen, Jie Chen, Chris Hewitt, Chris Larrieu, Kurt Strosahl, David Rackley and Sandy Philpott, as well as (kneeling in front, l-r) Chip Watson and Balint Joo.

Two new, suped-up supercomputers will be used at Jefferson Lab to advance the study of the building blocks of visible matter. While the lab is known for its particle accelerators, these new accelerators, Intel® Xeon Phi™ coprocessors and NVIDIA® Tesla® K20 GPU accelerators, will speed up the calculations of the laboratory's supercomputers. Between them, these accelerators power more than 10 percent of the 500 fastest known computers in the world today.

Jefferson Lab’s supercomputers enable scientists to calculate how the building blocks of visible matter, quarks and gluons, combine to make protons, neutrons and other particles. These supercomputers are computer clusters, which are built with many individual processors that are all wired together into one, large system. With the right programming, these computers run calculations to solve the highly complex theory that describes how particles interact.

"All-told, we have about a 1,000 computers downstairs, of which, more than 800 are just doing theory calculations. So, by far, most of the computing power at Jefferson Lab is running theory calculations," says Chip Watson, head of the Scientific Computing group.

Now, researchers are hoping to speed up these calculations with help from the newest components that computer chipmakers have to offer.

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These Intel Xeon Phi chips, called accelerator coprocessors because they speed up calculations, are just now becoming available for wide use. Jefferson Lab's Scientific Computing group began testing these chips soon after they arrived at the laboratory in late October.

Intel Xeon Phi Accelerators
On Nov. 13, Intel Corp. announced the release of its newest generation of compute accelerators for supercomputers, the Intel Many Integrated Core (Intel MIC) Xeon Phi coprocessors. While the Xeon Phi coprocessors feature similar processor cores to regular Xeon CPUs found in many desktop computers, they gain their performance by incorporating many low-power versions of the cores in each unit with fast on-board memory and upgraded vector-processing engines, which are components for performing several mathematical operations simultaneously.

While these Xeon Phi chips, called accelerator coprocessors because they speed up calculations, are just now becoming available for wide use, Balint Joo, a computer scientist in the Scientific Computing group, says the group began putting these chips to the test soon after they arrived in late October.

"The current cluster was delivered Oct. 20-23, and basically, the whole of the Scientific Computing group took time out from usual operations to get it up and running. We even had some engineers from Intel who came and made sure things were going well." Joo says.
Once the system was operational, the team began running software to test how fast the system is able to blow through calculations using a computer benchmark program.

The intense effort was aimed at landing the new supercomputer, which featured 64 new Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors, on the newest TOP500 supercomputer list that was just released on Nov. 12.

The TOP500 ranking is based on the number of Teraflops, or trillions of operations per second, that a system can compute. The full JLab system clocked out at 68 Teraflops, just shy of the 77 Teraflops needed to make the list. More than three-quarters of the supercomputers on the list use Intel chips, including seven systems that use the new MIC Xeon Phi chips.

However, the team also benchmarked the speed of the new chips with their own code for solving the highly complex theory that describes how particles interact. Jefferson Lab has been working with Intel Parallel Labs for about a year to figure out how to exploit the capabilities of the new accelerator chips.

"On this new architecture, we've been looking at figuring out the effectiveness of techniques to make best use of cache and memory using the cores available and the vector processing engines. These aspects are also common to some degree in regular current generation processors and will likely feature in many new processors," Joo adds.

Watson says the system was just right for these kinds of tests.

"Jefferson Lab was one of fewer than a dozen sites in the world that got early prototypes of this early-generation chip. We've been working with them almost a year now. The size of the system, 16 servers, each with four Xeon Phi accelerator cards, is big enough to be a useful target of development," Watson explains. "Balint has developed one particular micro-benchmark kernel, and he's spent some months tweaking it and getting higher and higher performance."

"The techniques we used also fit nicely onto the existing architectures. So, when we took the new code and the code infrastructure and put it back onto the regular Xeons, their performance was also improved," Joo says.

Indeed, after the optimization of both the Xeon Phi and the regular Xeon codes, the new code ran three times as fast as the previous one. The Intel MIC Xeon Phi chips in turn performed the calculations just over twice as fast as the regular Xeon chips with the improved code, an overall improvement of a factor of six. It is hoped that further optimization of the code will speed the calculations even more, yielding a top-shelf system for theory calculations.

However, the laboratory isn't hanging its hat on just one technology. A rival computation accelerator technology, which uses graphics processing units (GPUs) instead of CPUs, is also upping its game with a newly released version.

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Jefferson Lab is currently testing the new NVIDIA Tesla K20 GPU accelerators. NVIDIA indicates that the new GPUs exhibit a marked improvement in performance over un-accelerated systems, having carried out benchmark calculations using a framework for theory calculations developed at the laboratory.

NVIDIA Tesla K20 GPU Accelerators
On Nov. 12, NVIDIA, announced its newest line of GPU accelerators for scientific computing, the Tesla K20 family. Two Jefferson Lab supercomputers contain 700 NVIDIA GPU accelerators, including 168 new Tesla K20 GPUs, to speed up the calculations of equations that describe the motion of sub-atomic particles. One of these computers clocked out as the fastest computer in Hampton Roads in 2010, with about 90 percent of its computing power supplied by NVIDIA GPUs.

While Jefferson Lab supercomputers currently engage first- and second-generation GPUs, the third-generation chips have just arrived and will soon be added to the mix.

"The Tesla line was developed to process computationally intensive engineering and scientific applications. And it has automatic error-correcting codes in memory and some other advanced capabilities," Watson says.

The laboratory is currently testing the new GPUs. NVIDIA indicates that the new GPUs exhibit a marked improvement in performance over un-accelerated systems, having carried out benchmark calculations using a framework for theory calculations developed at the laboratory called Chroma, along with a library of code with highly optimized routines for NVIDIA GPUs called QUDA.

Since the first NVIDIA GPUs were deployed at Jefferson Lab in 2009, code developers at the laboratory and NVIDIA have worked in partnership to ensure that Chroma and QUDA harness their full capabilities for science.

"We look forward to accessing the improved efficiency of this new generation of GPUs. Using the current versions of Chroma and QUDA we see an improvement of up to 45 percent in speed for our calculations over the previous generation of Tesla GPUs," Joo says. “And, the code running on a single GPU runs about nine times as fast as on an un-accelerated node," he added.
Significantly, the fastest supercomputer according to the newest TOP500 list of supercomputers worldwide is Titan at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Lab. Titan is powered with 18,688 of the top-of-the-line Tesla K20X GPU accelerators, making it a prime resource for running Chroma with the QUDA library in the future.

"The interesting thing is that Jefferson Lab is working with bleeding-edge stuff with NVIDIA and bleeding-edge stuff with Intel. This is the first time that we have been this far out on the bleeding edge, where we are getting stuff before other people," Watson says. "What's also important is the cost vs. the performance of the two different technologies. So far, science per dollar on the two new platforms appears to be equal at this point if you take into account software development."

Jefferson Lab's cluster computer program is funded through the National Computational Infrastructure for Lattice Gauge Theory project, while the development of the software infrastructure is funded by the Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing, or SciDAC program, both in the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Science. Additional funding has been provided for cluster hardware by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
Supercomputer time is allocated based on the recommendations of the United States Lattice Gauge Theory Computational Program (USQCD), a consortium of top LQCD theorists in the United States that spans both high-energy physics and nuclear physics. The USQCD consortium developed the QUDA code library that is used with the Chroma code.

By Kandice Carter
Science writer

For More Information:
Hot Graphics Cards Fuel Supercomputing: http://www.jlab.org/news/OnTarget/2010/2010-06/Story1.html
JLab Cluster Tops 100 Teraflops: /news/releases/jlab-cluster-tops-100-teraflops
Cleaning up computer code speeds research: http://www.jlab.org/news/news_letter/2007/20070824/index.html#Joo
Jefferson Lab Group Gets 10 Million Hours of Supercomputer Time: /news/releases/jefferson-lab-group-gets-10-million-hours-supercomputer-time Supercomputing on a Shoestring: /news/releases/supercomputing-shoestring-cluster-computers-jlab


TED Earns Sustainability Certification

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The Technology and Engineering Development building at Jefferson Lab, which opened in May, earned a LEED Gold Rating from the U.S. Green Building Council in early December. This slide show shows the new building, part of the Technology and Engineering Development Facility, from various views.

The U.S. Green Building Council announced in early December that Jefferson Lab's new Technology and Engineering Development (TED) building has received a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold Rating, recognizing its environmentally friendly, sustainable design.

The TED is a 74,600-square-foot facility designed to provide office and work space for 200 people that opened in May. It is part of the lab's larger Technology and Engineering Development Facility (TEDF), a $72 million project scheduled for completion next year.

LEED was developed by the Green Building Council to provide a framework for designing, constructing and operating "green" buildings. LEED ratings are based on scores in five environmental categories: sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, and indoor environment.

The TED was designed to achieve a LEED gold rating. A gold rating requires a score of 39 to 51 on the Construction Application Review. The TED achieved a score of 44.

"A Gold Rating is not an easy certification to achieve," said Mike Dallas, the lab's chief operating officer. "I'm very pleased with the rating and proud of all those at Jefferson Lab who helped us achieve it."

The TED's sustainable features include a heating and cooling system that draws 80 percent of its capacity from 178 geothermal wells located under the walkway between the TED and CEBAF Center and under the field on the west side of the TED. The building also has a solar hot water system and uses reclaimed water in its toilets. Other sustainable features include a "cool" roof that is highly reflective and well insulated, and a variety of materials used to build the TED were manufactured using recycled materials.

The TED is the first new office building constructed at Jefferson Lab since the F-Wing addition was added to CEBAF Center in 2006.

More information about the TED is available in the October 2012 OnTarget at: http://www.jlab.org/news/OnTarget/2012/2012-10/BelowTheFold.html#item1


Staff Member Shares Mishap Reporting Experience

"The day before Thanksgiving, I fell at work," Jim Follkie, Accelerator Division, recalled recently. "I was walking across the road that morning – between the Test Lab and the EEL – and attempted to jump over a puddle along the side of the road. I misjudged the distance, slipped on the curb and fell. I landed pretty hard on my right hand, and my face hit the curb. My hand was really sore; I thought it might be broken."

"I had an instance of poor judgment; nothing like this had ever happened to me before. I wasn't happy about falling, but I knew I had to report my fall," Follkie conceded.

"The reporting process was easy, simple and non-judgmental. No one was looking to place blame; and everyone I spoke with was genuinely concerned about my well being."

First he went to Occupational Medicine and reported the fall to Johnie Banks, the Occupational Medicine administrative and medical assistant. (Occ. Med. staff should be notified in person or over the phone as soon as reasonably safe to do so after any kind of injury.)

She took down the basic information about the mishap and made arrangements for him to go off campus to a medical facility and have his hand X-rayed. When he returned to the lab he followed up with Dr. Walter "Smitty" Chandler, the lab's Occupational Medicine director, and was placed on a temporary work restriction (restricted from work using his right hand for tasks involving gripping, until his follow-up appointment with Occ. Med.)

The ESH&Q Division appointed a team to investigate the mishap, and scheduled a fact-finding meeting for the team with Follkie, his supervisor and a witness to the fall. "I think an hour was blocked for the meeting, but it only took about 20 minutes," Follkie noted. "I provided a timeline of the incident and then answered some questions."

The investigation team collected a variety of information from Follkie and the witness. They gathered information so they could reconstruct the event to include the conditions before and during the event, the actions preceding the event, the chronology of the event, and the actions taken immediately after the event. During typical investigations, the team will call in subject matter experts as needed to help in gathering pertinent information and analyses, and this investigation was no different. The team gathers this information and reconstructs the event so it can determine the root cause of the event and any contributing causes.

After thoroughly investigating a mishap, and determining the causal factors, the investigation team writes a report including this information and making recommendations for corrective actions and determining lessons learned. Lessons learned may be general or specific statements or observations that can be shared across the lab or even amongst the other Department of Energy national labs – in an effort to heighten awareness to certain kinds of hazards or incidents, and the mitigating actions that could be taken to prevent similar types of mishaps from recurring here or occurring at other national labs.

"We looked at the causes of my fall and what could have been done to prevent it. The meeting was very pleasant and nonthreatening," Follkie commented. "So, I wanted to share my experience with others."

"I imagine I'll get some teasing for this, but I felt it was important to share my experience with others," Follkie mused.

He has had a subsequent follow up with Occ. Med. and has returned to his regular job.

In this case, the lesson learned that came out of the mishap and investigation is: Try to avoid creating a new hazard, especially when trying to avoid an existing hazard.

Jefferson Lab computer account holders may access information about recent notable events at: https://www.jlab.org/div_dept/dir_off/oa/notable/index.html


Flu Cases are on Rise Early this Season

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that influenza season has arrived early this year, and some states are already reporting regional and widespread outbreaks.

As of Nov. 24, the most recent report available, Virginia was reporting localized outbreaks of the flu.

Information on the CDC's webpage urges the public to get the flu vaccine. The posting reads, in part: Don't fall for the myth that it's too late to vaccinate against the flu once the Thanksgiving holidays are over. As long as flu viruses are spreading and causing illness, vaccination can provide protection against the flu. According to the latest CDC flu activity report, influenza levels are currently increasing across the country. And since flu activity doesn't usually peak until February in the United States and can last as late as May, it's important to vaccinate now if you haven't already.

The CDC encourages everyone, except individuals with certain health conditions, over the age of six months to be vaccinated against the flu. Seasonal influenza is a respiratory virus; getting a vaccine is the best way to prevent getting the flu. For information aimed at groups with specific health conditions, visit: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/groups.htm

Across Hampton Roads in early December, local medical officials used news outlets to encourage everyone, who hadn't yet done so, to get a flu vaccine.

Jefferson Lab staff can still get a flu vaccine at no cost from Occupational Medicine staff. To schedule an appointment, call ext. 7539. Vaccination typically takes less than 15 minutes. But keep in mind that for 15 minutes after getting the vaccination a person should remain at the lab, in the presence of other people and avoid safety-sensitive activities, including driving.

According to information on the CDC webpage: The seasonal flu vaccine protects against the three influenza viruses (trivalent) that research indicates will be most common during the upcoming season. The viruses in the vaccine can change each year based on international surveillance and scientists' estimations about which types and strains of viruses will circulate in a given year.

About two weeks after vaccination, antibodies that provide protection against the influenza viruses in the vaccine develop in the body. Information specific to the 2012-2013 flu season including the flu vaccine formulation, can be found on the CDC's website at: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/index.htm

To help prevent the spread of the flu, Medical experts encourage:
- Thorough and frequent hand washing with soap;
- If soap and water aren't available, use an alcohol-based hand rub;
- Avoid touching your face (especially eyes, nose and mouth);
- Cough and sneeze into disposable tissues and immediately throw used tissues away;
- Cough into the bend in your elbow if you don't have a tissue handy;
- Thoroughly wash utensils, linens and belongings of individuals who are sick; and
- Regularly clean surfaces touched by lots of people.

If you get the flu, stay home, rest, stay hydrated, and treat your symptoms. Follow the directions if you take flu antiviral medications, and contact your physician if necessary.

Check out these and other Centers for Disease Control links for more information about influenza:
- http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/usmap.htm


Beware of Online Presents & Scams

The holiday season typically brings an increase in our use of online services – reading email from long lost friends, sending and receiving eCards, buying gifts on line, tracking shipped items, checking the bank balance – the list gets longer every year. Thus, it is a favorite time for scammers and hackers to be very active, according to Greg Nowicki, Jefferson Lab cybersecurity manager.

The link below points to an article from the December 2011 SANS Institute newsletter that does a very good job of presenting the dangers of phishing attacks and email scams, how to detect them, and how to protect yourself from them by using simple precautions, he adds.

For instance, if you get an email from a package delivery service telling you your package is ready for delivery, do not click on the link. Instead, go to that company's website and then copy and paste the tracking number. This practice prevents you from following a link in a fake message to a malicious site.

The article is short, but worth the read, both for you and your family members.
- http://www.securingthehuman.org/newsletters/ouch/issues/OUCH-201112_en.pdf

As a matter of general cybersecurity, never click on links embedded in emails.

Do not visit websites that you are unfamiliar with or unfamiliar websites that ask for your user name, password or other personal inform. If you do wind up on an unfamiliar website asking for your user name, password or any kind of personal information, provide no information and leave the website.

Any time you receive a suspicious email (spam or phishing) forward the message to spam@jlab.org and then delete the email.

If you do click on a link in a suspicious email, immediately call the Information Technology Division Help Desk at x7155.

If you have questions, contact the IT Division Help Desk at helpdesk@jlab.org


Jefferson Lab News Tracker

CEBAF: a fruitful past and a promising future

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Jefferson Lab’s director, Hugh Montgomery, clicks a button to terminate 6 GeV electron beams during a short ceremony on May 18. Montgomery watches a video screen confirming the shutdown. With him, from left to right, Arne Freyberger, head of Accelerator operations; former Jefferson Lab director Christoph Leemann; and Andrew Hutton, associate director for the Accelerator Division took part in the shutdown event.

After many productive years, Jefferson Lab's 6 GeV electron beams turned off for the last time on May 18 to make way for an upgraded 12 GeV facility.

On that day, Jefferson Lab leadership and staff gathered in the control room to shut down the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) after a long and highly successful 17-year run, which saw the completion of more than 175 experiments in the exploration of the nature of matter.

At 8.17 a.m., Jefferson Lab's director, Hugh Montgomery, terminated the last 6 GeV beam and Accelerator Division associate director, Andrew Hutton, and director of operations, Arne Freyberger, threw the switches on the superconducting radiofrequency zones that power CEBAF's two linear accelerators.

Coming up next – the return of CEBAF, with double the energy and a host of other enhancements designed to delve even deeper into the structure of matter.

Read this complete article in the November 2012 issue of the CERN Courier. The article is posted online at: http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/51163

Theoretical Analysis Lays Groundwork for Experiment to Run at JLab
The AZoNano website – part of the AZoNetwork – posted an article titled: New Data on Proton Interior Spatial Structure, which presents the theoretical analysis that lays the scientific groundwork for an experiment at JLab. The experiment is expected to deliver new data on the interior spatial structure of the proton, thereby providing researchers with an extremely accurate proton tomography. Link: http://www.azonano.com/news.aspx?newsID=26145

Physics World Reports on EIC Proposals
Exploring The Mass That Matters, an article by Peter Gwynne published in the October 2012 issue of Physics World, discusses the future possibilities for an electron-ion collider. The story mentions preliminary designs by Jefferson Lab and Brookhaven National Lab, and a Large Hadron-electron Collider design by CERN.

An EIC would be used to probe the deepest secrets of gluons. See page 19: http://mag.digitalpc.co.uk/fvx/iop/physworld/big-science12/


Scrapbook

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More than 70 children attended the Jefferson Lab Children's Holiday Party on Dec. 8. The event included a visit by Santa Claus, Dan and Kim Young's Samoyed dogs Nikko and Tally, face painting, a liquid nitrogen show, activities, games and snacks. Sergeant Beltran with the U.S. Marine Corps and his assistants were greeted by Bridget Paul, JLab Activities Group chair. The Marines, with help from the children, loaded the Toys for Tots donations onto a truck. The donations included 13 bikes with helmets and 31 trikes and several boxes full of toys. A big, heartfelt thanks to everyone who donated to the toy drive.

 

 

 

The On Target newsletter is published monthly by the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab), a nuclear physics research laboratory in Newport News, Virginia, operated by Jefferson Science Associates, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. Possible news items and ideas for future stories may be emailed to jlabinfo@jlab.org, or sent to the Jefferson Lab Public Affairs Office, Suite 15, 12000 Jefferson Avenue, Newport News, VA 23606

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Jefferson Science Associates, LLC, manages and operates the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, or Jefferson Lab, for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. JSA is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Southeastern Universities Research Association, Inc. (SURA).

DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science