Managed by UT-Battelle for the U.S. Department of Energy * Issue Number 70 September 2005

Since the first volcanoes spewed hot magmafrom deep below the earth’s surface,

subterranean heat has produced silica-basedglass. Shiny and unmistakable, obsidian hasbeen used by many peoples around the globesince prehistoric times to make weapons andtools and for economic trade.

A universal challenge for archaeologists isaccurately assigning a time period of origin toinorganic artifacts. Organic materials can oftenbe dated using the carbon-14 technique, butthis approach won’t work for inorganicartifacts such as obsidian tools. Obsidianhydration dating, originally created by the U.S.Geological Survey’s Irving Friedman andRobert Smith in 1960, was a step towards amore accurate system aimed at dating obsidianartifacts on the basis of the depth to whichwater was absorbed into the initially freshsurface.

This original approach to obsidian datingused an optical microscope and was oftenhighly inaccurate. When data obtained usingthe optical microscope was compared withcarbon-14 ages, there was a significantdifference in the numbers and a large amountof scatter, rendering most obsidian datesuseless.

Scientists at ORNL and the University ofTennessee are working to crack the code toaccurately reveal the age of the glassy stone.Larry Anovitz, Lee Riciputi, David Cole,J. Michael Elam and Mostafa Fayek havebeen re-creating the obsidian hydrationdating technique, using state-of-the-artanalytical techniques and insights into thehydration process.

The theory of obsidian hydration dating isquite simple. From the moment a freshobsidian surface is exposed during theprocess of manufacturing a new tool,atmospheric water begins to seep into theglass. The longer the surface is exposed, thedeeper the water penetrates. By discoveringhow long it takes hydrogen from water in theenvironment around the glass to movethrough the obsidian and how that happens,the ORNL group hopes to create a moreprecise formula that links the depth ofhydrogen diffusion with the age of theartifacts.

Researchers have used a number oftechniques to investigate the hydrationprocess. These have included machines likethe Filter Analyzer Neutron Spectrometer at

Big and green with magenta and yellow stickers, the metal boxes thathave homesteaded outside ORNL facilities are beginning to disap-

pear. Thanks to a more efficient process between ORNL and EnvironmentalManagement contractor Bechtel Jacobs, the containers of low-level radio-logical waste are being shipped west to permanent disposal sites.

The progress in shedding the waste is “the fruition of organizationalchanges in Waste Services, collaboration with EM programs and BechtelJacobs and some well placed investments by ORNL,” says Environment,Safety, Health and Quality Director Karen Downer.

“You should soon be seeing a noticeable difference around the campus,”Karen says.

The radiological waste, which is categorized as low-level by regulatorybodies, consists of items ranging from contaminated trash and filters tofurniture to heavy equipment. Contaminated items are typically wrapped orput into bags and placed into the B-25 containers for further disposition.

Up until now, actually making the “further disposition” happen has runinto bottlenecks. The bins have hung around because the system forhandling them was divided among different parties, which has resulted ininefficiencies. It also costs a lot of money, and that too is divided among

Bye-bye B-25sLab makes progress in shipping out bothersome bins of low-level waste

Beautiful sight: B-25 boxes leaving. ORNL has speeded theremoval of the low-level waste storage bins.

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITYSawa Fujiwara, 2, gets a lift from her dad,Masatsugu, at August 27’s Community Day.Mom, Eri, works in the Metals & CeramicsDivision. The Fujiwaras, who are fromJapan, joined more than 4,000 visitors. Morephotos are on page 6.

ORNL researchers continue questto determine age of ancient obsidian

(See OBSIDIAN, page 4)

(See B-25s, page 2)

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DOE Inspector General Hotline: 1-800-541-1625

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Vickie Rodgers of the Craft ResourcesDivision volunteered for the SpallationNeutron Source’s kids’ activities table atAugust 27’s Community Day.

is published for employees and retireesof ORNL, which is managed andoperated for the U.S. Department ofEnergy by UT-Battelle.

Bill Cabage, editor865/574-4399 or cabagewh@ornl.gov

Deborah Barnes, associate editor865/576-0470 or barnesds@ornl.gov

On the Web: www.ornl.gov/reporter

different parties and programs.“Getting the stuff in the boxes is the easy

part. Getting it packaged correctly, character-ized correctly with all the right numericalvalues of the isotopes, verifying that it isn’t orwon’t be chemically hazardous, and makingsure it meets all the rules and regulations ofthe disposal site is the hard part,” explains theEnvironmental Protection & Waste ServicesDivision’s John Powell.

“Sending the material to engineeredlandfills out West is a fairly involved processwith lots of regulations and disposal facilityrequirements. It’s very detailed work tomake sure all the transportation requirementsare met, that the waste meets the disposal

facilities’ requirements and that the documen-tation to prove it is in order. It takes lots ofhard work by lots of dedicated people acrossthe Laboratory.”

The process was split between science andEM program funds and divided amongdifferent subcontractors and vendors. Moneyfor the process also comes from differentfunders; EM pays only for disposal. Thepreparation work is funded by the generator,in the Lab’s case, UT-Battelle.

“That puts two-thirds of the cost on ourside,” John notes. “But without the thirdfrom EM, the waste still does not go away.”

ORNL got the waste-disposal ball rollingearlier this year by requesting to take over theentire process. The Lab also jump-started thesystem with an inflow of reserve funding.Finally, DOE-EM helped by increasing theirfunding for the disposal piece.

“This is the first year ORNL has managed

its radiological waste from A to Z. We usedLab funds to characterize the waste and EMfunds for the disposal. For some of the waste,we partnered with EM’s Bechtel Jacobscontractor, and other waste we shippedourselves. But we managed the entire processfor all of it,” John says.

The process cut out a lot of inefficiency andworked well. “The big news is that none of itwent to on-site storage. It all actually left theLab,” John says.

John emphasized that the Energy Depart-ment deserves a lot of the credit. The processwas boosted by an almost two-fold increase in2005 funding from DOE-EM for radwastedisposal.

The results: By this month’s fiscal-year end,ORNL will have successfully sent awayapproximately 1,225 cubic meters—the

equivalent of 475 B-25boxes—of solid low-levelradioactive waste. Comparethat with 2003, when 503cubic meters—the equiva-lent of 195 B-25 boxes—of

waste were shipped off.“Stated another way, we have more than

doubled the amount of low-level wasteshipped from ORNL in FY 2005 versus whatleft the site two years ago, and increased it30 percent over what was dispositioned lastyear,” John says.

Everyone’s glad to see it go, from theESH&Q folks to the R&D community.Radiological waste sitting around is bad frommore than an aesthetic standpoint.

“Lots of bad things can happen withradioactively contaminated stuff that sitsaround for years,” John says. “There areregulatory time limits for waste, potentialnuclear safety issues and other complianceproblems. Information on what’s actuallyinside the boxes can be lost or the rules onwaste disposition can change.”

Plus those green boxes sitting around justlook bad. — B.C.

Continued from page 1Katrina’s havocsparks giving spiritof Lab employees

B-25s

In a year of disasters, either close to home or farther away, ORNL staff members have

repeatedly come forward with their generos-ity. The misery Hurricane Katrina brought tothe northern Gulf coast has elicited a similar,and increasingly typical, response.

Just a couple of working days after a TeamUT-Battelle account was set up for hurricanerelief, the fund topped $50,000, which is theamount UT-Battelle has pledged to match.

Giving didn’t stop there. By press time, thefund had topped $75,000, with the first$50,000 already delivered to the Red Cross.

“We sent the money on because it isneeded,” says Community Outreach ManagerBrenda Hackworth.

Lab employees and retirees, with UT-Battelle, collected $190,000 for tsunami reliefearlier in the year. A series of local employeemisfortunes, including two house fires, havealso resulted in the establishment of relieffunds.

The Katrina disaster, which obliteratedparts of cities along the Mississippi andAlabama coast and rendered New Orleansuninhabitable with floodwaters, comes duringthis year’s United Way drive. Lab DirectorJeff Wadsworth urges staff members tosupport both campaigns.

“I am always amazed by the wonderfulgenerosity of our staff, and I hope that we canfind it possible to support both efforts in thedays and weeks to come. Hundreds ofthousands of our fellow citizens need ourassistance in this time of crisis. I encourageyou to help in any way you can,” Jeff said inan e-mail to staff.

ORNL is also lending technical support tomaintaining the aftermath. ORNL’s Geo-graphic Information Science and Technologygroup in the Computational Sciences &Engineering Division has been monitoring forDOE the status of the flow of oil and othercommodities in the economically vital gulfregion.

“The storm damaged pipelines and portfacilities, including Gulfport, Miss., and thePort of South Lousiana, which are majorsupply facilities,” says the group’s Amy King.“The ports prepared for the storm by sendingtheir large cranes inland, but even if they canreturn, there is no power to run them.”

The group has also done populationanalysis and has monitored the status of therailways in the region.

The LandScan technology developed by theGIS group, led by Budhu Bhadhuri, was usedearlier in the year inrelief and recovery effortsrelated to the December 26, 2004, IndianOcean tsunami.—B.C.

ORNL has more than doubled the amount oflow-level waste shipped from two years ago.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory 3

A life savedWhen secretary Susan Johnson yelled

“Emergency!” in the hallway of the Engineer-ing Technology Facility on August 22,Engineering S&T Division’s Pete Chiaro andJohn Turner came a-running. A co-worker hadsuffered a heart attack plus a head woundsustained as he fell to the floor.

“My office is two doors down; John’s isaround the corner. We were the first ones inthere,” recalls Pete. “He was not breathing;unconscious. We couldn’t feel a pulse.”

They rolled him over on his back and startedcardiopulmonary resuscitation, one doingmouth to mouth and the other doing chestcompressions. Shortly after they switchedtasks and before the emergency medicaltechnicians arrived, the victim began tobreathe.

“His breathing shocked me, actually seeingit work,” says Pete, who says he learned CPRapproximately 20 years ago when he workedat a nuclear facility.

The patient is now recovering. HealthServices Director Dr. James Phillips says thatPete and John did the right things, includinglearning CPR, which he says is a lot like ridinga bicycle—you don’t forget.

“That fellow would probably not be alivetoday if they had not given stand-by CPR.When our folks got there he required special-ized equipment, but those guys did him a bigfavor,” says Doc Phillips.

Doc Phillips is encouraging people to learnCPR and defibrillator techniques and to refreshthe training every couple of years (see theAugust Reporter).

“It can be very beneficial for a familymember or friend if needed,” he says.

UltraScience Net’s first data splurgeORNL built it, but a collaboration of

Fermilab and Cal Tech were the first to ride onit. UltraScience Net has been developed by aComputer Science and Mathematics Divisionteam lead by Nageswara (Nagi) Rao and BillWing at the behest of the Office of Science.Fermilab and Caltech transferred data betweenstations recently in the first test of Ultrascience

Net and a new automatednetworking system atFermilab calledLambda Station.

“About two yearsago, we looked atvarious needs for high-speed networkingcapabilities within theDepartment of Energy’sscience program,” says

Nagi.“From terascalesupernova simulations to

visualization of genomics data todata from particle collisions, there is a

demand for stable, dedicated, high-bandwidthconnections to exchange data.

“With the UltraScience Net, researchinstitutions can book a connection, andnobody can interfere with your circuit whileyou transfer data at high speed,” he says.

The test between systems at Fermilab andCaltech, in preparation for the reams of datato come from the Large Hadron Colliderexperiment, achieved a rate of seven gigabitsper second, which is 15 times faster than

DOE’s other network, Energy SciencesNetwork, or ESnet.

Fueleconomy.gov’s heydayA Website maintained since October 1999 by

ORNL transportation researchers for DOE andthe Environmental Protection Agency isenjoying some of its heaviest traffic.

Its subject: fuel economy.Since the recent rises in gasoline prices, the

fueleconomy.gov website has seen a correspon-dent rise in user sessions. The site, whichtypically averages from 20,000 to 30,000 usersessions a day, charted more than 160,000 usersessions on September 1.

Maintained by ORNL’s Fuel EconomyInformation Program as part of DOE’s CleanCities Program, the site is a guide to the mostfuel-efficient vehicles and offers the public tipson how to achieve the best fuel economy.

“We were mentioned earlier in the summeron the Today Show and got 88,000 usersessions. It nearly messed up our server,” saysgroup member Bo Saulsbury. “People are reallypaying attention to the site now.”

Building 1000 is no moreWhile ORNL’s Community Day was showcasing the new east campus on August 27,

over on the west side part of the old ORNL was coming down. Demolition of the ’40s-eraBuilding 1000 began on August 24.

Project manager Steve Laman says the razing is now complete, but hauling away all therubble may take a couple of months.

Building 1000 was noted for creaky floors, drafty doors and invading mammals of variousspecies, but the offices also provided a familial setting for its variety of tenants over theyears, most recently staff in the accounting, contracts and engineering organizations. Therewas also plenty of parking nearby.

The teardown is part of a Lab campaign to take outmoded and expensive-to-maintainstructures off the books as new facilities, such as the Multipurpose Research Facility on theeast side, are built.

There are currently no firm plans for the Building 1000 site.

Reported by Bill Cabage

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the National Institute of Standards andTechnology and the Fourier-TransformInfrared Spectrometer. They are revealing newinformation about how water and hydrogenare bonded within the molecular structure of

volcanic glass.Possibly the most

important piece ofequipment used in thisstudy, however, is theSecondary Ion MassSpectrometer run byLee Riciputi’s group atORNL. SIMS makes itpossible for thescientists to directlymeasure the diffusionprofile by analyzingthe concentrations of

hydrogen, oxygen and other elements as afunction of depth below the sample surface.SIMS replaces the old, inaccurate andimprecise optical approach with a directmeasurement of the hydration profile.

“SIMS allows us to look at variations inhydrogen concentration with depth in verynarrow diffusionprofiles,” says LarryAnovitz, whobecame interested inthe problem ofhydration dating in1993 after attendingan anthropologyconference. Larrysays this level ofanalytical detail hasallowed the group tomake several novelobservations aboutthe diffusionprocess.

They initiallyobserved that plotsof hydrogenconcentration withdepth had an oddshape. Instead of theexponentiallydecreasing curvecommon in diffusionprofiles, the curveswere S-shaped,decreasing onlyslightly at first, thenrapidly beyond agiven depth. Thissuggested that there was a strong interactionof the water with the glass.

Even more unexpected was the relationshipbetween the hydrogen and oxygen from theenvironmental water in the glass. Thetraditional school of thought is that waterpermeates the surface of the stone and diffusesdeeper with time.

On the basis of the SIMS analyses, how-ever, the group has hypothesized that onlyhydrogen moves beyond the surface of theobsidian.

“If you analyze both the hydrogen andoxygen concentrations with depth, you’dexpect the oxygen profile would look like thehydrogen curve. That is, for every twohydrogens you add to the glass, you’d expectto add one oxygen. Instead, the oxygen curveis flat,” Larry says.

That may mean that oxygen doesn’t enterthe glass—the obsidian appears to be splittingthe water molecule and acting as a hydrogen-storage material.

Despite the chemical insights obtained fromthe SIMS data, the researchers are unsure howthis transition happens, where the hydrogengoes within the molecular structure of theglass, what state it is in as it moves, and howoften it jumps from bond to bond withavailable oxygen.

“We do know that, on a relatively long timescale, the hydrogen appears to form hydroxylgroups on the glass surface and water mol-ecules in the bulk glass, but we don’t know thedetails of either structure, or the extent towhich vacancies or other defects in the glassstructure play a role,” Larry says.

The Fourier-Transform InfraredSpectrometer, whichmeasures bondvibrations, cannotregister how often thehydrogens break andform bonds. In the one-to two-minute scanperiod, the hydrogencan move severaltimes, changing fromH+ ions, which aren’tinfrared-active, toother molecularspecies of hydrogenthat can be detected bythe machine.

The group hopes thatneutron reflectometrystudies, recently begunin collaboration withWilliam Hamilton ofthe Condensed MatterSciences Division, willhelp to clear up someof the mysteries ofchanges in the surfaceof the glass duringhydration.

In addition to theirexperimental and

mechanistic studies, the researchers are alsofocusing on archaeological applications of thehydration-dating technique. To date the grouphas been focusing on obsidian from the nearthe town of Pachuca, in the Sierra de lasNavajas, or Mountain of the Knives, in centralMexico.

The obsidian from that area is a distinctiveolive green. It was widely traded in prehistorictimes and is easy to identify, making it anideal subject for comparative dating. Studiesat the Chalco site in the Basin of Mexico havealready proven that high-precision dating ispossible.

Accurate dating appears to require construc-tion of an initial calibration curve for a givensite or region, but the archaeological calibra-tion curve is easy to create if a fewstratigraphic correlations between obsidiansamples and carbon-14 dates are available.

“If you can do a calibration curve, you canget good dates from obsidian hydration,”Larry says. The group is now looking intoexpanding these applications to other sites inMesoamerica and new locations as far away atthe ancient city-state of Catal Hoyuk in centralTurkey.—Eva Millwood

Anovitz

Mostafa Fayak of the Chemical & IsotopicMass Spec group works with a very smallobsidian sample.

The Southeast Region of the FederalLaboratory Consortium for Technology

Transfer has announced its 2005 awards.ORNL’s Excellence in Technology TransferAward winners are• Polyelectrolyte Thin-Film Array Slide,

whose developers include Jizhong Zhouand Xichon Zhou, both of the Environmen-tal Sciences Division;

• Flame Doctor Burner-Monitoring System,whose developers include Charles Finneyand Stuart Daw of the Engineering S&TDivision; and

• Laser-Based Item Monitoring System,whose team includes Peter Chiaro, CurtMaxey, Tim McIntyre and Fred Gibson ofESTD.

• Honorable mention: SensArray IntegratedWafer Wireless Microchip FabricationMonitor, whose co-developers includedESTD’s Carl W. Sohns and Lab retireesBob Lauf and Don Bible.ORNL also shares the Southeast FLC’S

first partnership award with USEC for theircollaboration with gas centrifuge technology.

Lab scores in SE FLCs

Lori Barreras has been named Human Resources director, following a short

term as interim director. Lori joins theLeadership Teamreporting to Lab DirectorJeff Wadsworth. Shecomes to ORNL fromPacific NorthwestNational Laboratory,where she served asmanager of Workforce &Staffing Programs and,before that, as anEEO/AA and diversity

specialist. Before joining PNNL, Lori workedwith both the Equal Employment OpportunityCommission and the Internal RevenueService.

Barreras named HR director

Barreras

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory 5

The Spallation Neutron Source has passed acrucial milestone on its way to completion

next year—the commissioning of the super-conducting section of its linear accelerator.

The first of its kind and one of the SNS’smost critical components, the superconductinglinear accelerator, or “cold linac,” is perform-ing “beyond expectations,” says the SNSteam.

“The successful commissioning of the coldlinac is the major step toward the 2006completion of the SNS and demonstrates thesuccess of the collaboration of national labs inkeeping the project on time, on budget and onscope. It represents, technically, the mostcomplex system of the SNS acceleratorcomplex, and successful completion of the testis a major reassurance that we can achievewhat we promised—and probably more,” saysSNS Director Thom Mason.

The SNS linac is composed of two sections:a room-temperature, or warm, section, whichstarted operation last September, and asuperconducting, or cold, section, whichoperates at temperatures hundreds of degreesbelow zero. The cold linac provides the bulkof the power that drives the linac.

The Thomas Jefferson National AcceleratorFacility in Virginia, part of the team of sixDOE national laboratories that have collabo-rated on the Office of Science project, isresponsible for the superconducting linac andits refrigeration system. Los Alamos NationalLaboratory provided the radio-frequencysystems that drive the linac.

The cold linac provides 80 percent of thetotal acceleration in the 1,000-foot-long linac.During the testing that began the first week inAugust, the system performed beyond

expectations, achieving its design energywithin a few days of being turned on, saysSNS Accelerator Systems Division DirectorNorbert Holtkamp.

“The SNS linac is the first superconductinglinac in the world to provide pulsed, high-power ion beams. Use of thistechnology—developed in a worldwidecollaboration—isunique and wasunthinkable only adecade ago. Itprovides extremelyhigh-quality beams,as well as substan-tial savings inelectrical power, onthe order of$2 million peryear,” Norbert says.

Jefferson Lab,which has pioneeredthe development ofsuperconductinglinac technology,was brought ontothe SNS collabora-tion when thedecision was madeto incorporate thesuperconductingtechnology into theSNS design.

“Jefferson Lab congratulates the Oak RidgeSNS team on this major milestone,” saidClaus Rode, SNS project manager forJefferson Lab. “The SNS project was achallenging five-year effort: We built on[Jefferson Lab’s] expertise in superconducting

radiofrequency technology and experiencebuilding and operating the large JeffersonLab-installed base of superconductingtechnology.”

Because of their lack of charge, neutronshave a superior ability to penetrate materials.Researchers can determine a material’smolecular structure by analyzing the way the

neutrons scatter, or “spall,” after strikingatoms within a target material. SNS willproduce neutrons by sending a high-energybeam of protons down the 1,000-foot linac toultimately strike a liquid mercury target,which will direct the spalled neutrons to ahost of state-of-the-art instruments.

SNS will increase the number of neutronsavailable to researchers nearly tenfold,providing clearer images of molecularstructures. Together, ORNL’s High FluxIsotope Reactor and SNS will represent theworld’s foremost facilities for neutronscattering, a technique pioneered at ORNLshortly after World War II.

Besides Los Alamos and Jefferson Lab, thethree DOE national laboratories that joinedORNL in the SNS collaboration areArgonne, Lawrence Berkeley, andBrookhaven.

When completed next year, SNS willbecome the world’s leading research facilityfor the study of the structure and dynamics ofmaterials using neutrons. It will operate as auser facility that will enable researchers fromthe United States and abroad to study thescience of materials that form the basis fornew technologies in telecommunications,manufacturing, transportation, informationtechnology, biotechnology and health.—B.C.,with Charlie Horak

Big chillSNS already charting ‘first, most’ with successful cold linac commissioning

The superconducting section of the Spallation NeutronSource’s linear accelerator provides 80 percent of the totalacceleration.

ORNL peopleJohn Hsu of the Engineering S&T Division

was recently elected a fellow of the Institute ofElectronics and Electrical Engineers. TheIEEE is the largest professional engineeringsociety in Europe and has a worldwidemembership of 120,000.

The Engineering S&T Division’s Debra T.Bain and the Condensed Matter SciencesDivision’s Nancy J. Dudney were winners atthe Knoxville YWCA chapter’s annual Tributeto Women banquet. Nancy, who was nomi-nated by John Cooke, was the winner in thescience and technology category. Debra,nominated by Glen Harrison and Ted Fox,won the administrative professional category.

Amit Goyal, leader and task manager ofSuperconducting Materials Research in theMetals & Ceramics Division, has joined theNorth American sub-board of SuperconductorScience and Technology, a multidisciplinary

journal for papers on superconductivity. Thejournal covers theories of superconductivity,the basic physics of superconductors, therelation of microstructure and growth tosuperconducting properties, the theory ofnovel devices, and the fabrication andproperties of thin films and devices. Amit iscurrently also on the editorial boards of theJournal of Materials Research and the Journalof the American Ceramic Society, as well ason the international editorial advisory board ofthe Journal of the Korean Institute of AppliedSuperconductivity and Cryogenics.

J. Michael Starbuck, George C. Jacoband David A. Dillard received the best paperaward from the Advanced Composite Materi-als and Systems Track for the 2005 Society forExperimental Mechanics Annual Conference& Exposition. The paper, titled “DynamicTesting for Quantifying Rate Sensitivities inBonded Composite Structures,” will bepublished in the SEM Journal of ExperimentalTechniques.

6 September 2005

More than 4,000come to Community Day

Photos by Curtis Bolesand Jim Richmond

It had been eight years since ORNLopened its doors for a commu-

nity day. Anyone who hadn’t been tothe Lab since then might have been alittle disoriented—after all, a complexof shiny new buildings now occupiedthe place where they probably parkedin 1997.

ORNL said it was “ready for the next generation ofgreat science,” and it was ready for Community Day.

Around 4,000 guests and staff members and theirfamilies turned out on Saturday, August 27. The Re-search Office Building’s Main Street and the ResearchOffice Building lobby were packed at times, as were thescientific exhibits in the state-funded JICS/ORCASbuilding. The plasma fusion program was a hit, withsessions filled to capacity.

Busloads of the curious trekked up Chestnut Ridge tosee for themselves the Spallation Neutron Source. Nearlyall of the attendees said they wanted to see the SNS, and

getting that many folks to the site was alogistical feat that took weeks of planning.

People had a good time. CommunityOutreach Manager and event organizer BrendaHackworth gave credit to the volunteers, whonumbered around 200.

“I want to express my thanks especially tothe many volunteers who were the key to an event thatwent incredibly well,” says Brenda. “The volunteers atthe east campus and SNS made the day.”

Because of security concerns, all attendees had toregister in advance to come. Fears of backups at thevehicle entrance didn’t materialize, though, as guestscame prepared with confirmations and IDs asrequested.

Many staff members took the opportunity to bringfamily to the Lab. Renae Humphrey of the Office ofStrategic Planning says the day may have inspired ascientific career for her son, Leon Jr., who was

particularly impressed withthe EVEREST visualiza-tion lab.

“On Saturday, Mom was‘awesome!’” says Renae.“It did make my heart feelgood for a day.”—B.C.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory 7

One of ORNL’s best-kept and mosteducationally fun secrets is hidden in

plain sight in the Research Library.The unassuming Geographic Information

Systems workstationin a corner near thelibrary’s referencedesk contains a singledesk, globe, printerand computer, but thesoftware packed ontothe Dell machine isworld-class. The sixprograms (Keyhole 2Pro/Earthviewer,Maptitude, NationalGeographic Maps,TopoUSA, 3DTopoQuads and StreetAtlas USA 2004)allow users to dovirtually anythingthey want to withmaps, demographicinformation, direc-tions, travel planningand much more.

Maptitude is theonly true GISprogram on the kiosk,says Mark Dickey, anORNL research librarian and GIS enthusiastwho began assembling the workstation in2003. “The characteristic of a GIS is that itallows you to do data analysis,” Mark says.“It’s a database where you can analyze layersof information.” Maptitude enables thecombination of geographic and U.S. CensusBureau demographic data to reveal relation-ships and patterns.

Although there is a learning curve with the

more advanced features of Maptitude, theother programs are very user friendly andenthralling. The National Geographic Mapssoftware contains every map insert contained

in themagazinefrom 1899 tothe present,and StreetAtlas USAcan be usedfor travelplanning,showingeverythingfrom distancesand drivingtimes to reststops andexits. Thetopographyprograms are acombinationof street-mapping andelevation thatshows userstwo- andthree-dimensionalmaps of

streets, trails and terrain.Since the station was moved from a high-

traffic corridor to its new corner home,librarians believe users just need to find itsnew home.

“It’s been disappointing to me that the useof it has gone down since we remodeled,”Mark says. “Once people learn where theworkstation is located I expect it will be usedmore.”—Eva Millwood

ServiceAnniversaries

ORNL continues to grow. Welcome to thefollowing new Laboratory employees.

New Staff Members

Richard Kim Archibald, Computer Scienceand Mathematics

Natasha Pyle Blair, Nonreactor NuclearFacilities

Elissa Jayne Chesler and Robert FrankStandaert, Life Sciences

Lewis Albert Galyon and Richard JosephGoyette Jr., SNS Experimental Facilities

Ricky Allen Kendall, Lisa Jordan Rael andScott Alan Klasky, Center for Computa-tional Sciences

Ralph Henry Prince IV, Laboratory ProtectionDavid Robert Resseguie and Kalyanrao

Srinivas Perumalla, Computational Sciences& Engineering

Jerry Dee Finch, Craig Alan Fitzpatrick,Danny Gordon Futrell, Keyona DanielleMcCowan, David Nick Sharp, AnthonyLamar Williams, William Fredrick Muncy,Phillip Wayne Holder, Christopher RobertIrish and Clarence Douglas Wells Jr., CraftResources

Jennifer Renee Furl, Research ReactorsZheng Gai, Condensed Matter SciencesIgor Borisovich Jouline and Olaf Oliver

Storaasli, Computer Science & MathematicsPhani Teja Venkata Appayya Kuruganti and

Daniel Bernard Koch, ComputationalSciences & Engineering

Damon Brent Starr, National Security Direc-torate

Georgeta Radulescu, Nuclear S&T,Leigha Marie Stewart, Tech Transfer &

Economic DevelopmentTimothy Allen Lehberger and Bradley Kyle

Woody, Nonreactor Nuclear FacilitiesJames W. Diamond, SNS Accelerator SystemsChuck Hall Hensley, AccountingMichael Byron Houston, Kenneth Rex Veach

Jr., Stephen Francis Alvanas and CecilHorace Gibb, Quality Services

Megan Erica Elwood Madden and TongMingYin, Environmental Sciences

Alena Vladimirovna Zhernosek, Klaus-PeterZiock and Vincent Joseph Jodoin, NuclearS&T

Jeremy Lee Moser, Metals & CeramicsNeil Allen Thomas, Engineering S&TJames Darrell Rhyne and Jennifer Lynn

Tippens, Networking & ComputingTechnologies

September

30 years: Lorena Faith Truett, Edward C. Foxand Randall Lee Linkous, EngineeringScience & Technology; Danny M. Williams,SNS Experimental Facilities; Dan L. Million,National Center for Computational Sciences;Ronald H. Baldwin, Metals & Ceramics;Roger D. Spence, Nuclear Science &Technology; Mary Anna Bogle, Environmen-tal Sciences; James N. Parks and Roger DaleCollins, Craft Resources; Larry E. Hoover,Fabrication; Norma F. Cardwell, Business &Information Services Dir.

25 years: Terrence L. Donaldson andCameron W. Coates, Nuclear Science &Technology; Barbara J. Frame, Metals &Ceramics; Vernon F. McClain, Cliff P. White,David E. Smith, T. Randall Curlee, John J.Tomlinson and George W. Ott, Jr., Engineer-ing Science & Technology; Terry G. Sanford,Facilities Management; A. Carter, Business &Information Services Dir.; Karen N. Gibson,Environmental Sciences; Pam A. Love,Communications & External Relations Dir.

20 years: Jacob Barhen, Computer Scienceand Mathematics; Mark Dwain Carter, FusionEnergy; Gerald E. Smith, Business &Information Services Dir.

Like maps? Like resources? Visit theResearch Library’s GIS work station

Richard L. Green, former electronicstechnician in the Instrumentation and ControlsDivision, died recently in the Tampa Bay areaof Florida. He was 68. Dick retired from theLab in 1992 after nearly 28 years of service.Following his early retirement he and his wife,Jane, did missionary work in Central andSouth America, visiting a dozen countries.

Retiree Green dies in Florida

ORNL staff members have a trove of geographical toolsat their disposal in this quiet corner of the library.

PRSRT STDU.S. Postage

PAIDPermit #37Powell, TN

No. 70 September 2005

Dating obsidian, page 1

Good-bye to B-25s, page 1

Katrina help, page 2

Lab Notes: Lifesavers,Ultrascience Net, fuel economy,Building 1000, page 3

SNS’s cold linac running, page 5

Community Day, page 6

BY KATIE MEDLOCK

We all know that having work experienceis crucial to getting a job. Being a senior

in finance at the University of Tennessee,Knoxville, this concept has been imbedded inmy mind from the very start. Everyone alwayssaid, “You must have an internship if you wanta job when you graduate.” So when my junioryear rolled around, I started the hunt for agood internship.

There are a lot of companies out there, butfinding one that fell in line with my needs wasreally hard. I was looking for an internship thatwould give me great experience, was fun, andinteresting. During the spring, I interviewedwith three different companies and receivedtwo offers.

Why did I choose to work for UT-Battelle?As a native of Knoxville, I am well aware ofthe Lab’s highly respected reputation. I alsofelt that working at the Lab would be muchmore interesting than some other jobs. That iswhy I accepted the offer to become a Businessand Information Systems summer intern hereat the Lab.

The first couple of days were a little nerveracking because the only other job I have everexperienced was serving at restaurants. It wasfascinating, though, being able to finally seethe inside of ORNL after living in Knoxvillefor almost 13 years. I mean, I always knew theLab was here, but I was never actually allowedto see it.

I was placed in the Small Business Pro-grams Office. At first, I felt like a fish out ofwater because I had no idea what I was doing.I soon began to feel comfortable, though, and Iquickly learned about what the Small Business

office actually does. I guess you could say it’sthe business side of all this great science.

The Small Business office serves as theadvocate and point of contact for smallbusinesses and educational institutions,including Historically Black College andUniversities, seeking contract-ing opportunities to link themto science and technologyprograms at ORNL. Thisentails providing informationand guidance on getting acontract with the Lab. WithKim Hinton as my mentor andWill Minter as my supervisor,I saw the tremendous amountof time and effort they spendworking in this office.

I never would have thoughtthat small business can be bigbusiness until I traveled withKim to Nashville for the DOESmall Business Conference.There were over 1,500 peoplein attendance, consisting of DOE primecontractors and small businesses. I quicklyrealized that ORNL is well respected by DOEand other M&O contractors; in fact, ORNL isone of the major contributors to the conferenceeach year. My job while I was there was toassist with the ORNL booth during thebusiness expo.

I was so surprised to see how many smallbusinesses there are that want to work with theLab. Most people just wanted to know whereto start, and what they needed to do to get theirfoot in the door. A lot of contacts were madeand hopefully a lot of future contracts, too.

The conference was a really good opportunityto encounter a wide variety of businesses(and interesting characters) and to see what itis like to work in the Small Business office.

My time as an intern is over, but alreadythis job has influenced my future. On the last

day of my internship, I found out that I hadreceived a part-time position as the financeofficer for the Asset Management andContracts Divisions. It’s a lot of responsibil-ity, but I am positive that it will be a greatopportunity for me to learn so much more.So, as I work towards graduation in May, Iwill also be working towards a future here atthe Lab.

Katie Medlock is a finance officer at ORNLand senior in finance at the University ofTennessee.

The business side of scienceA summer intern gets an inside look at the Lab—and a job

Katie Medlock (right) was mentored this summer by the SmallBusiness Programs Office’s Will Minter and Kim Hinton.