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Brookhaven National Laboratory

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Milinda Abeykoon, lead beamline scientist at Pair Distribution Function Beamline, NSLS-II, aligning a sample holder for high-speed measurements, 2019. Photo courtesy of BNL

By Melissa Arnold

Over the past 75 years, Brookhaven National Lab (BNL) in Upton has become an international hub for innovative research and problem-solving. Their hard work has led to advancements in energy, medicine, physics and more, as well as seven Nobel Prizes.

A scientist at a fast neutron chopper at the Brookhaven Graphite Research Reactor (BGRR), 1953. Photo courtesy of BNL

This year, the Long Island Museum in Stony Brook will celebrate the lab’s myriad achievements and explore their deep roots in the area. The new exhibit, titled Atoms to Cosmos: The Story of Brookhaven National Laboratory, opens April 21.

BNL and the Long Island Museum started working on ideas for a future exhibition back in 2018 with plans to open in April of 2020. But as with other museums, the pandemic led to a halt in operations.

In some ways, the rescheduled timing of the exhibit is better than their initial plans.

“While the exhibition was temporarily shelved, both the lab and the museum wanted very much to still make it happen. We had done so much work in advance and preparation for it in 2020, and so we really wanted to get back to this opportunity,” said Joshua Ruff, Deputy Director and Director of Collections and Interpretation for the Long Island Museum. “We are especially pleased we were able to do it now, as it fits nicely with the lab’s 75th anniversary celebration.”

Brookhaven National Laboratory was founded in 1947 at the former site of the U.S. Army’s Camp Upton, becoming the first large research facility in the Northeast. At the time, they were exploring peaceful ways to utilize atomic energy. 

“The BNL site has been in federal ownership since 1917 when it became the location of Camp Upton. Before that, the site was used for the cordwood industry and there was a small farm near the eastern edge of what is now the lab,” explained Timothy Green, BNL’s Environmental Compliance Section manager. “After World War I, all of the buildings were sold at auction and the site sat empty until around 1934, when it was declared the Upton National Forest and the Civilian Conservation Corps started planting trees. At the end of World War II [and a second period as Camp Upton], the land was transferred to the Atomic Energy Commission and became Brookhaven National Laboratory.”

It took some time for local residents to adjust to having a laboratory in the area, Ruff said.

A Positron Emission Tomography Halo Scanner/Detector.
Photo courtesy of BNL

“The lab has often been misunderstood in its past, in fact from its origins. Many Suffolk County residents were not entirely sure that atomic research was safe, nor did they fully understand the relevance and significance [of that research] to their lives,” he explained. “The lab devoted years of hard work and financial resources to strengthen public dialogue and communication, which the exhibition details.”

Today, the lab employs almost 3,000 people and spans 5,320 acres.

The exhibit is co-curated by Joshua Ruff and Long Island Museum curator Jonathan Olly. They’ve included more than 140 items that showcase the lab’s growth and varied discoveries from the 1950s to the present day. The Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington is lending four of the objects, including a 1,000-pound, 94-inch square magnet lamina from the Cosmotron, BNL’s first major particle accelerator. 

Another 40 objects are coming directly from the lab. Their contribution includes equipment from their facilities, personal belongings of former director Maurice Goldhaber, and “Atoms for Peace,” a famous painting that came to symbolize the lab’s work in its early years.

“A lot of the scientific research at BNL over the years has involved [developing] and testing cutting edge technologies. When these machines are no longer useful they’re usually recycled. Fortunately we do have two examples in the exhibition of early PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scanners, one from 1961 and another from 1981,” Olly said. “In the case of these early machines, the focus was on the brain — the machines used radiation sensors arranged in a ring to produce a picture of a slice of your brain. Brookhaven scientists have used this PET technology (specifically the PETT VI scanner in the exhibition) in studying drug and alcohol addiction, eating disorders, ADHD, aging, and neurodegenerative disorders. The 1961 version is a prototype that was never used on patients.”

Also on view are an original chalkboard from the Graphite Research Reactor that still has writing on it; a 7-foot window from a bubble chamber that helped track the paths of atomic particles; and a detector that aided BNL chemist Raymond Davis Jr. in his Nobel Prize-winning neutrino research. 

Recently, the lab was a part of the ongoing effort to study and contain COVID-19. The exhibit will include a model of the virus, with the familiar spiky shape that’s become commonplace since the pandemic began.

“Scientists at the lab’s National Synchrotron Light Source II worked on imaging the virus and the proteins … that allowed it to attach to human cells. At the same time, BNL computer scientists began developing algorithms to evaluate existing chemicals and drugs that could potentially prevent infection. One past experiment by [BNL biophysicist] William Studier, the T7 expression system, ended up being critical to the rapid development of two of the vaccines,” Green said.

Both the Long Island Museum and BNL staff hope that visitors to the exhibit come away with a deeper interest in science and an appreciation for the lab’s work.

“There are 17 national laboratories scattered throughout the United States, and Long Islanders can be proud to have one in their backyard. Long Island children have been inspired to pursue careers in science as a result of attending educational programs at the lab during public visitor days dating back to the 1950s. And the lab is invested in addressing our real-world problems, whether the dangers posed by DDT on Long Island in the 1960s or COVID now. This summer BNL should be resuming their “Summer Sundays” visitor program, and I encourage everyone to visit the lab, walk around, talk to staff, and get a glimpse of our scientific present and future,” Olly said.

Atoms to Cosmos: The Story of Brookhaven National Lab is on view now through Oct. 16 in the Long Island Museum’s History Museum and Visitor Center’s Main Gallery, 1200 Rt. 25A, Stony Brook. Regular museum hours are Thursday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. Masks are required at this time, though health and safety guidelines are subject to change Admission is $10 for adults, $7 for seniors, and $5 for students 6 to 17 and college students with I.D. Children under six are admitted for free. Tickets are available at the door; pre-registration is not required. For more information visit longislandmuseum.org or call 631-751-0066. 

Learn more about Brookhaven National Lab at www.BNL.gov.

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This LINCATS map shows the hospitals, incubators and collaborative institutions that will be involved in the regional initiative to translate biomedical discoveries into clinical applications to improve health outcomes, address health disparities across communities, and educate the workforce.

The initiative, secured by Senator Schumer, will receive $10 million in federal funds

Stony Brook University will lead a new, innovative network of regional biomedical research institutions to accelerate translational research that will impact and advance clinical care for many physical and mental health conditions. Called the Long Island Network for Clinical and Translational Science (LINCATS), it will be headquartered at Stony Brook University. The initiative will be in collaboration with Brookhaven National Lab (BNL), Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and the Northport VA Medical Center. Central to LINCATS establishment is $10 million in federal funding secured by Senator Chuck Schumer and supported by Senator Gillibrand, part of Congress’ omnibus funding bill of which Long Island will receive some $50 million.

The overall mission of LINCATS is to accelerate the public health impact of research, especially for underserved communities across Long Island, by offering access to innovative and transformative research programs and educational services. To improve the health of Long Island’s three million-plus population, the bioscience collaborative will engage in work ranging from basic research and clinical trials, to addressing vulnerable populations and disparities, and incorporating innovative research and practices such as the use of bioinformatics, artificial intelligence, telehealth, genotyping, proteomics, and engineering-driven medicine.

“I am incredibly grateful to Senator Schumer for securing such crucial funding for the establishment of the Long Island Network for Clinical and Translational Science (LINCATS) at Stony Brook University,” said Stony Brook University President Maurie McInnis. “Through LINCATS, the entire Long Island community and the greater New York region will have access to a comprehensive health research network that is capable of a rapid response to emergent healthcare risks, including a future global pandemic. New York and the nation are fortunate to have such a visionary leader as Senator Schumer, who champions the cutting-edge science research and health innovation that will provide important and much-needed economic boosts to development on Long Island.”

The initial funding will help to scale-up operations of this research and healthcare service network, creating an ecosystem that will fast-track the application of new scientific discoveries in clinical medical care, helping to provide new treatments to more patients throughout Long Island.

“With renowned institutions like BNL, Cold Spring Harbor Lab, and Stony Brook University, Long Island is a hub for world-class scientific research and groundbreaking discoveries,” said Senator Chuck Schumer. “To bolster continued success and innovation, I worked to ensure that, as part of Congress’s historic bipartisan budget agreement, $10 Million will head to Stony Brook to help create the Long Island Network for Clinical and Translation Science. This federal funding will help scale-up operations of this research and healthcare service network, creating an ecosystem that will fast-track the application of new scientific discoveries in clinical medical care. Not only will LINCATS put Long Island on the map as a center of clinical healthcare research, it will help provide innovative new treatments to benefit more patients throughout the region.“

One specific aspect of the collaborative work will be researching and addressing diseases and environmental factors that are prevalent on Long Island, such as Lyme disease, emerging pathogens and environmental risks due to the impact of climate change on coastal resiliency, as well as the unique challenges related to opiate addiction.

“LINCATS is Stony Brook’s response to the National Institutes of Health’s call to action to create research hubs designed to expand and elevate the bench-to-bedside ecosystem within communities nationwide,” said Richard J. Reeder, PhD, Vice President for Research at Stony Brook University. “We are fully committed to supporting this prominent team of biomedical researchers and practitioners who are set to lead and deliver groundbreaking discoveries.”

LINCATS will also serve as a catalyst to create hundreds of new jobs in the bioscience sector, and potentially thousands of jobs when the infrastructure is fully operational. The network will provide a workforce of both scientists and clinicians from multiple institutions working in partnership with all communities across Long Island to address all health care challenges.

Anissa Abi-Dargham, MD, SUNY Distinguished Professor, Vice Chair for Research and the Lourie Endowed Chair in Psychiatry, will serve as the Principal Investigator and Director of LINCATS. The LINCATS leadership team at Stony Brook includes 17 members, virtually all of whom are prominent faculty scientists and medical scientists in multiple fields at the University, such as Pharmacological Sciences, Infectious Diseases, Biotechnology, and Public Health.

“I am extremely thankful for Senator Schumer’s support of LINCATS. The funds will allow us to deepen our investments in the infrastructure, training, and community engagement pillars necessary to fulfill the mission of LINCATS,” says Dr. Abi-Dargham. “I am also grateful for the team of scientists, educators and community members who worked with me to develop the large collaborative project, and for the assistance of the Office of Proposal Development under the direction of Nina Maung.”

When the program is officially in place, funds will also be used for core personnel, supplies and equipment, support for multidisciplinary research, and the construction of an inpatient research unit at Stony Brook Hospital for the purpose of translational and clinical biomedical research.

 

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The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has awarded a $61.8 million contract to Plainview, NY-based E.W. Howell to build the Lab‘s new Science and User Support Center (SUSC). This new facility is part of a larger effort to redevelop an existing on-site apartment area near Brookhaven Lab‘s entryway. General contractor E.W. Howell will oversee SUSC construction, planned to start in the first quarter of 2022.

With approximately 75,000 gross square feet, the SUSC will serve as a welcome center for guests, researchers, and facility users arriving at Brookhaven Lab. It will offer modern, configurable conference space for scientists to collaborate and office areas for Lab employees.

The future Science and User Support Center

The SUSC is the first building planned for Discovery Park, a new vision for the gateway to Brookhaven Lab. The concept for Discovery Park includes the potential for additional development on approximately 60 acres of previously used, publicly accessible land. The Lab is working, in coordination with DOE, on a process for developers, collaborators, and entrepreneurs to propose, build, and operate new facilities in Discovery Park. Future occupants will complement the DOE and Brookhaven Lab missions, leveraging opportunities that result from close proximity to the Laboratory. Discovery Park will offer a flexible platform to advance science and technology-based economic development for Long Island, New York State, and beyond.

Brookhaven Lab‘s 5,321-acre site is located north of the Long Island Expressway near Exit 68 and east of the William Floyd Parkway. The SUSC and Discovery Park will be built off William Floyd Parkway along the access road leading to Brookhaven Lab‘s main entrance.

The selection of E.W. Howell as general contractor follows DOE’s decision on Sept. 13, 2021, approving a total project cost of $86.2 million and awarding the Lab‘s SUSC project team with “Critical Decision Three” (CD-3). CD-3 is the fourth major milestone in DOE’s five-step project management process. The SUSC project team—comprising staff from Brookhaven Lab and the DOE’s local Brookhaven Site Office—and E.W. Howell are targeting summer 2024 for SUSC construction to be completed.

The SUSC was designed by Burns & McDonnell and Gensler, two U.S.-based international firms.

Significant investment supporting science and technology

The Science and User Support Center will serve as a welcome center for guests, researchers, and facility users arriving at Brookhaven Lab. It will offer modern, configurable conference space for scientists to collaborate and office areas for Lab employees.

“The Department of Energy’s investment in the Science and User Support Center reflects our commitment to science and technology for the nation. It represents a significant step towards moving Brookhaven National Laboratory’s outwardly facing organizations closer and more accessible to the public. DOE continues to support the SUSC to improve researchers’ access to the experts and capabilities offered at Brookhaven Lab,” said Robert Gordon, manager of DOE’s local Brookhaven Site Office.

“Awarding this contract marks a major milestone in Brookhaven Lab‘s efforts to improve experiences for staff, guests, and users, to modernize infrastructure, and increase the Laboratory’s overall impact,” said Jack Anderson, Deputy Director for Operations at the Lab. “We’re excited for the facility and for the scientific collaborations it will help facilitate.”

Future first destination for thousands of visiting scientists
More than 5,000 guests traveled to Brookhaven Lab annually in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic. The largest percentage came from institutions in New York State, but many came from across the country and around the world, attracted by the Lab‘s in-house experts and highly specialized research facilities for experiments. Those facilities include DOE Office of Science User Facilities such as the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, National Synchrotron Light Source II, and Center for Functional Nanomaterials. Guests also visited—sometimes hundreds at a time—for conferences, workshops, and other events to discuss scientific results and opportunities for future research.

Because of the ongoing pandemic, research collaborations are continuing with remote access and few guests traveling to Brookhaven Lab. When it becomes safer for the Laboratory to return to more normal operations, many guests and facility users are expected to return to the Lab site. Upon completion, the SUSC will be their first destination on site upon arrival at the Laboratory.

The SUSC project is funded by the DOE Office of Science.

Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The 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 science.energy.gov.

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Members of the research team include: Daniel Mazzone (formerly of Brookhaven Lab, now at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland), Yao Shen (Brookhaven Lab), Gilberto Fabbris (Argonne National Laboratory), Hidemaro Suwa (University of Tokyo and University of Tennessee), Hu Miao (Oak Ridge National Laboratory—ORNL), Jennifer Sears* (Brookhaven Lab), Jian Liu (U Tennessee), Christian Batista (U Tennessee and ORNL), and Mark Dean (Brookhaven Lab). *Photo Credit: DESY, Marta Mayer
Scientists identify a long-sought magnetic state predicted  60 years ago
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered a long-predicted magnetic state of matter called an “antiferromagnetic excitonic insulator.”
“Broadly speaking, this is a novel type of magnet,” said Brookhaven Lab physicist Mark Dean, senior author on a paper describing the research just published in Nature Communications. “Since magnetic materials lie at the heart of much of the technology around us, new types of magnets are both fundamentally fascinating and promising for future applications.”
The new magnetic state involves strong magnetic attraction between electrons in a layered material that make the electrons want to arrange their magnetic moments, or “spins,” into a regular up-down “antiferromagnetic” pattern. The idea that such antiferromagnetism could be driven by quirky electron coupling in an insulating material was first predicted in the 1960s as physicists explored the differing properties of metals, semiconductors, and insulators.
“Sixty years ago, physicists were just starting to consider how the rules of quantum mechanics apply to the electronic properties of materials,” said Daniel Mazzone, a former Brookhaven Lab physicist who led the study and is now at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland. “They were trying to work out what happens as you make the electronic ‘energy gap’ between an insulator and a conductor smaller and smaller. Do you just change a simple insulator into a simple metal where the electrons can move freely, or does something more interesting happen?”
The prediction was that, under certain conditions, you could get something more interesting: namely, the “antiferromagnetic excitonic insulator” just discovered by the Brookhaven team.
Why is this material so exotic and interesting? To understand, let’s dive into those terms and explore how this new state of matter forms.
In an antiferromagnet, the electrons on adjacent atoms have their axes of magnetic polarization (spins) aligned in alternating directions: up, down, up, down and so on. On the scale of the entire material those alternating internal magnetic orientations cancel one another out, resulting in no net magnetism of the overall material. Such materials can be switched quickly between different states. They’re also resistant to information being lost due to interference from external magnetic fields. These properties make antiferromagnetic materials attractive for modern communication technologies.
Next we have excitonic. Excitons arise when certain conditions allow electrons to move around and interact strongly with one another to form bound states. Electrons can also form bound states with “holes,” the vacancies left behind when electrons jump to a different position or energy level in a material. In the case of electron-electron interactions, the binding is driven by magnetic attractions that are strong enough to overcome the repulsive force between the two like-charged particles. In the case of electron-hole interactions, the attraction must be strong enough to overcome the material’s “energy gap,” a characteristic of an insulator.
“An insulator is the opposite of a metal; it’s a material that doesn’t conduct electricity,” said Dean. Electrons in the material generally stay in a low, or “ground,” energy state. “The electrons are all jammed in place, like people in a filled amphitheater; they can’t move around,” he said. To get the electrons to move, you have to give them a boost in energy that’s big enough to overcome a characteristic gap between the ground state and a higher energy level.
An artist’s impression of how the team identified this historic phase of matter. The researchers used x-rays to measure how spins (blue arrows) move when they are disturbed and were able to show that they oscillate in length in the pattern illustrated above. This special behavior occurs because the amount of electrical charge at each site (shown as yellow disks) can also vary and is the fingerprint used to pin down the novel behavior.

In very special circumstances, the energy gain from magnetic electron-hole interactions can outweigh the energy cost of electrons jumping across the energy gap.

Now, thanks to advanced techniques, physicists can explore those special circumstances to learn how the antiferromagnetic excitonic insulator state emerges.
A collaborative team worked with a material called strontium iridium oxide (Sr3Ir2O7), which is only barely insulating at high temperature. Daniel Mazzone, Yao Shen (Brookhaven Lab), Gilberto Fabbris (Argonne National Laboratory), and Jennifer Sears (Brookhaven Lab) used x-rays at the Advanced Photon Source—a DOE Office of Science user facility at Argonne National Laboratory—to measure the magnetic interactions and associated energy cost of moving electrons. Jian Liu and Junyi Yang from the University of Tennessee and Argonne scientists Mary Upton and Diego Casa also made important contributions.
The team started their investigation at high temperature and gradually cooled the material. With cooling, the energy gap gradually narrowed. At 285 Kelvin (about 53 degrees Fahrenheit), electrons started jumping between the magnetic layers of the material but immediately formed bound pairs with the holes they’d left behind, simultaneously triggering the antiferromagnetic alignment of adjacent electron spins. Hidemaro Suwa and Christian Batista of the University of Tennessee performed calculations to develop a model using the concept of the predicted antiferromagnetic excitonic insulator, and showed that this model comprehensively explains the experimental results.
“Using x-rays we observed that the binding triggered by the attraction between electrons and holes actually gives back more energy than when the electron jumped over the band gap,” explained Yao Shen. “Because energy is saved by this process, all the electrons want to do this. Then, after all electrons have accomplished the transition, the material looks different from the high-temperature state in terms of the overall arrangement of electrons and spins. The new configuration involves the electron spins being ordered in an antiferromagnetic pattern while the bound pairs create a ‘locked-in’ insulating state.”
The identification of the antiferromagnetic excitonic insulator completes a long journey exploring the fascinating ways electrons choose to arrange themselves in materials. In the future, understanding the connections between spin and charge in such materials could have potential for realizing new technologies.
Brookhaven Lab’s role in this research was funded by the DOE Office of Science, with collaborators receiving funding from a range of additional sources noted in the paper. The scientists also used computational resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, a DOE Office of Science user facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The 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 science.energy.gov. [https://www.energy.gov/science/]
Related Links
Online version of this news release with related graphics [https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=119438]
Scientific paper: “Antiferromagnetic Excitonic Insulator State in Sr3Ir2O7” [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28207-w]
Media Contacts
Karen McNulty Walsh [mailto:[email protected]], (631) 344-8350, or Peter Genzer [mailto:[email protected]], (631) 344-3174

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R.C. Murphy College Team 1 in the Three Village School District took second place in the Middle School Division this year. Photo from BNL

Teams from Jericho Senior High School and Hunter College Middle School each won first place in the 2022 competitions hosted virtually by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory on Friday, Jan. 28 and Saturday. Jan. 29. The tournament-style events quizzed students on a range of science disciplines including biology, chemistry, Earth science, physics, energy, and math.

Both teams will compete against regional winners from around the country in the National Science Bowl® this spring.  

“The National Science Bowl regional competitions provide students with an exciting introduction to the National Laboratory system and the Department of Energy,” said Amanda Horn, a Brookhaven Lab educator who coordinated the virtual events. “This contest gives students the opportunity to meet our scientists and support staff who volunteer as competition judges, introduce them to the laboratory’s cyber efforts through the Cyber Challenge and learn about future STEM opportunities available to them.”

As the top schools were called during the High School Science Bowl award ceremony on Jan. 28, Jericho students Hanson Xuan, Derek Minn, Ashwin Narayanan, Natasha Kulviwat, and Brendan Shek jumped up out of their chairs to celebrate.

“I am so surprised, and I am so proud of these people,” Kulviwat said. Team members said they studied up until the night before the competition, only adding to their weekly practices and time spent poring over textbooks in preparation for the big day.

“They worked so hard,” added Jericho coach Samantha Sforza. “They absolutely deserve this win.”

High School runners-up
Half Hollow Hills East High School captured second place this year in the High School Division. Photo from BNL

Second Place: Great Neck South High School – Jansen Wong, Matthew Tsui, Richard Zhuang, Jack Lenga, Eric Pei (Coaches: Nicole Spinelli, James Truglio)

Third Place: Half Hollow Hills East High School – Himani Mattoo, Daniel Salkinder, Dylan D’Agate, Jacob Leshnower, and Jeffin Abraham (Coach: Danielle Talleur)

Fourth Place: Ward Melville High School Team 1 – Ivan Ge, Gabriel Choi, Matthew Chen, Neal Carpino, Michael Melikyan (Coach: Silva Michel)

This year’s Middle School Science Bowl was open to New York City schools, and two teams from Hunter College Middle School earned First Place and Third Place.

“It’s really exciting,” said Devon Lee of Hunter College Middle School Team 1. “I’m just really proud of my team because they’re literally the coolest people I know.”

“Last year, we lost by two points,” added Morgan Lee. “Since I’m in eighth grade now I didn’t think we’d have a chance to come back from that and I’m glad that we did.”

The First Place team also included Segev Pri-Paz and Gabriel Levin. Hunter coach Min-Hsuan Kuo gave credit to high school students who helped the middle schoolers prepare.

“I always knew they would do great,” Kuo said. “We have a really wonderful situation in our school where our high school students are always working with younger students.”

Middle School runners-up

Second Place: R.C. Murphy College Middle School Team 1 –  Sahil Ghosh, Harry Gao, Willem VanderVelden, Gabrielle Wong, Kayla Harte (Coaches: Emily Chernakoff Jillian Visser)

Third Place: Hunter College Middle School Team 2 – Kavya Khandelwal, Kyle Wu, Melody Luo, Sophia Kim (Coach: Min-Hsuan Kuo)

Fourth Place: Paul J. Gelinas Jr. High School – Anna Xing, Tina Xing, Colby Medina, William Squire, Kyle McGarvey, (Coach: Monica Flanagan)

All participating students received a Science Bowl t-shirt. Winning teams will also receive trophies, and medals. The first-place high school and middle school teams will also receive a banner to hang at their schools. The top three high school teams will receive cash awards. Prizes were courtesy of Teachers Federal Credit Union and Brookhaven Science Associates (BSA), the event’s sponsors. BSA is the company that manages and operates Brookhaven Lab for DOE.

About 60 volunteers stepped up as virtual scorekeepers, judges, moderators, and support for the back-to-back events. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science.

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Jason Trelewicz Photo from SBU

By Daniel Dunaief

One day, ships in the Navy may not only last longer in the harsh environment of salt water, but some of their more complicated parts may also be easier and quicker to fix.

That’s thanks to the mechanical engineering efforts of researchers at Stony Brook University and Brookhaven National Laboratory, who have been teaming up to understand the microstructural origins of corrosion behavior of parts they produce through laser additive manufacturing into shapes with complex geometries.

The Navy is funding research at the two institutions.

Eric Dooryhee. Photo from BNL

“As you would expect you’d need near any marine environment with salt water, [the Navy] is interested in laser additive manufacturing to enable the production of parts at lower cost that have challenging geometries,” said Jason Trelewicz, Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Stony Brook University. Additionally, the Navy is hoping that such efforts can enable the production of parts with specific properties such as corrosion resistance on demand.

“If you’re out at sea and something breaks, can you make something there to replace it?” asked Trelewicz. Ideally, the Navy would like to make it possible to produce parts on demand with the same properties as those that come off a manufacturing line.

While companies are currently adopting laser additive manufacturing, which involves creating three-dimensional structures by melting and resolidfying metal powders one layer at a time with the equivalent of a laser printer, numerous challenges remain for developing properties in printed materials that align with those produced through established routes.

Additive materials, however, offer opportunities to structure products in a way that isn’t accessible through traditional techniques that create more complex geometry components, such as complex heat exchangers with internal cooling channels.

In addition to the science remaining for exploration, which is extensive, the process is driving new discoveries in novel materials containing unique microstructure-chemistry relationships and functionally graded microstructures, Trelewicz explained.

“These materials are enabling new engineering components through expanded design envelopes,” he wrote in an email.

With colleagues from BNL including Research Associate Ajith Pattammattell and Program Manager for the Hard X-ray Scattering and Spectroscopy Program Eric Dooryhee, Trelewicz published a paper recently in the journal Additive Manufacturing that explored the link between the structure of the material and its corrosive behavior for 316L stainless steel, which is a corrosion resistant metal already in wide use in the Navy.

The research looked at the atomic and microstructure of the material built in the lab of Professor Guha Manogharan at Penn State University. Working with Associate Professor Gary Halada in the Department of Material Science and Chemical Engineering, Trelewicz studied the corrosive behavior of these materials.

Often, the surface of the material went through a process called pitting, which is common in steels exposed to corrosive environments, which occurs in cars driven for years across roads salted when it snows.

The researchers wanted to understand “the connection between how the materials are laser printed, what their micro structure is and what it means for its properties,” Trelewicz said, with a specific focus on how fast the materials were printed.

While the research provided some structural and atomic clues about optimizing anti corrosive behavior, the scientists expect that further work will be necessary to build more effective material.

In his view, the next major step is understanding how these defects impact the quality of this protective film, because surface chemical processes govern corrosive behavior.

Based on their research, the rate at which the surface corrodes through laser additive manufacturing is comparable to conventional manufacturing.

Printed materials, however, are more susceptible to attack from localized corrosion, or pitting. 

At the hard x-ray nanoprobe, Pattammattel explored the structure of the material at a resolution far below the microscopic level, by looking at nonstructural details.

“It’s the only functional beamline that is below 10 nanometers,” he said. “We can also get an idea about the electronic structures by using x-ray absorption spectroscopy,” which reveals the chemical state.

Pattammattel, who joined BNL in 2018, also uses the beamline to study how lung cells in mice interact with air pollutants. He described “the excitement of contributing to science a little more” as the best part of each day.

Meanwhile, Dooryhee as involved in writing the seed grant proposal. By using the x-rays deflected by the variety of crystalline domains or grains that compose the materials, HE can interpret the material’s atomic structure by observing the diffraction angles. The discrete list of diffraction angles is a unique fingerprint of the material that relates to its long-range atomic ordering or stacking.

In this study, researchers could easily recognize the series of diffraction peaks associated with the 316L stainless steel.

Dooryhee was able to gather insight into the grain size and the grain size distribution, which enabled him to identify defects in the material. He explained that the primary variable they explored was the sweeping rate of the laser beam, which included 550, 650 and 700 millimeters per second. The faster the printing, the lower the deposited energy density.

Ultimately, Dooryhee hopes to conduct so-called in situ studies, in which he examines laser additive manufacturing as it’s occurring.

“The strength of this study was to combine several synchrotron techniques to build a complete picture of the microstructure of the [additively manufactured] material, that can then be related to its corrosion response,” he explained in an email.

Dooryhee grew up in Burgundy France, where his grandfather used to grow wine. He worked in the vineyards during the fall harvest to help pay for his university studies. Dooryhee has worked at BNL for over 12 years and appreciates the opportunity to collaborate with researchers at Stony Brook University.

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A TRACER site similar to this one in Argentina is being constructed in Pearland, Texas. Photo courtesy of ARM

By Daniel Dunaief

Before they could look to the skies to figure out how aerosols affected rainclouds and storms around Houston, they had to be sure of the safety of the environment on the ground.

Researchers from several institutions, including Brookhaven National Laboratory, originally planned to begin collecting data that could one day improve weather and even climate models on April 15th of this year.

The pandemic, however, altered that plan twice, with the new start date for the one-year, intensive cloud, study called TRACER, for Tracking Aerosol Convection Interactions, beginning on Oct. 1st.

The delay meant that the “intensive observational period was moved from summer 2021 to summer 2022,” Michael Jensen, the Principal Investigator on Tracer and a meteorologist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, explained in an email.

Scientists and ARM staff pose during planning for TRACER (left to right): Iosif “Andrei” Lindenmaier, ARM’s radar systems engineering lead; James Flynn, University of Houston; Michael Jensen, TRACER’s principal investigator from Brookhaven National Laboratory; Stephen Springston, ARM’s Aerosol Observing System lead mentor (formerly Brookhaven Lab, now retired); Chongai Kuang, Brookhaven Lab; and Heath Powers, site manager for the ARM Mobile Facility that will collect measurements during TRACER. (Courtesy of ARM)

At the same time, the extension enabled a broader scientific scope, adding more measurements for the description of aerosol lifecycle and aerosol regional variability. It also allowed the researchers to include air quality data, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and urban meteorology, funded by the National Science Foundation.

The primary motivation for the project is to “understand how aerosols impact storms,” Jensen explained in a presentation designed to introduce the TRACER project to the public.

Some scientists believe aerosols, which are tiny particles that can occur naturally from trees, dust and other sources or from man-made activities like the burning of fossil fuels, can make storms stronger and larger, causing more rain.

“There’s a lot of debate in the literature” about the link between aerosols and storms, Jensen said.

Indeed, there may be a “sweet spot” in which a certain number or concentration of aerosols causes an invigoration of rainstorms, while a super abundance beyond that number reverses the trend, Jensen added.

“We don’t know the answers to those questions,” the BNL scientist said. “That’s why we need to go out there and take detailed measurements of what’s going on inside clouds, how precipitation particles are freezing or melting.”

Even though aerosols are invisible to the naked eye, they could have significant impacts on how mass and energy are distributed in clouds, as well as on broader atmospheric processes that affect weather patterns.

The TRACER study, which is a part of the Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement, or ARM, user facility, could “help forecast heavy rains that can cause flash flooding,’ said Chongai Kuang, atmospheric scientist and TRACER co-investigator at BNL.

The TRACER study will explore the way sea and bay breeze circulations affect the evolution of deep convective storms as well as examining the influence of urban environments on clouds and precipitation.

Several additional funding agencies have stepped in to address basic scientific questions, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s efforts to address air quality issues in Houston and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which funded a study on ozone and low-level atmospheric mixing.

“Our original TRACER field campaign provided a seed for what is now a major, multi-agency field campaign with a significantly expanded scientific scope,” Jensen explained in an email.

A joint team from BNL and Stony Brook University is developing new software to scan the precipitation radar system to select and track storm clouds to observe the rapid development of these storms. Additionally, aerosol instrumentation will help provide updated information on the precursor gases and the smallest aerosol particles at the earliest stages of the aerosol cycle, Jensen explained.

Ultimately, the data that these scientists gather could improve the ability to forecast storms in a range of areas, including on Long Island.

“Understanding sea breezes and the coastal environment is a very important aspect of TRACER,” Jensen said. “Even though it’s not the preliminary focus, there’s an opportunity to learn new science, to improve weather forecasting and storm forecasting for those coastal environments.”

Researchers chose Houston because of their desire to study a more densely populated urban area and to understand the way numerous factors influence developing clouds, weather patterns and, ultimately, the climate.

“We know the urban environment is where most people live,” Jensen said. “This is taking us in new directions, with new opportunities to influence the science” in these cities.

Researchers plan to collect information about clouds, aerosols and storms everywhere from ground-based instruments stationed at four fixed sites, as well as through mobile facilities, to satellite images.

The program operates a tethered balloon which is “like a big blimp that goes up half a mile into the atmosphere,” said Heath Powers, the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement facility site manager for Tracer from Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The tethered balloon is located at Smith Point, Texas, on the eastern shore of Galveston Bay and will do low-level profiling of aerosols, winds, thermodynamics and ozone as it is influenced by bay breeze circulation, Jensen explained.

The National Science Foundation is planning to bring a C-130 plane to conduct overflights, while the group will also likely use drones, Powers added.

The TRACER study will launch around 1,500 weather balloons to gather information at different altitudes. The research will use over four dozen instruments to analyze meteorology, the amount of energy in the atmosphere and the air chemistry.

“Clouds are the big question,” Powers said. “Where they form, why they form … do they rain or not rain. We are well-positioned to get at the core of a lot of this” through the information these scientists gather.

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BNL LECTURE: ZHANGBU XU

By Daniel Dunaief

Gregory Breit and John Wheeler were right in the 1930s and Werner Heisenberg and Hans Heinrich Euler in 1936 and John Toll in the 1950s were also right.

Breit, who was born in Russia and came to the United States in 1915, and Wheeler, who was the first American involved in the theoretical development of the atomic bomb, wrote a paper that offered theoretical ideas about how to produce mass from energy.

Breit and Wheeler suggested that colliding light particles could create pairs of electrons and their antimatter opposites, known as positrons. This idea was an extension of one of Albert Einstein’s most famous equations, E=mc2, converting pure energy into matter in its simplest form.

Zhangbu Xu in front of the time-of-flight detector, which is important for identifying the electrons and positrons the STAR Collaboration measured. Photo from BNL

Working at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory, a team of scientists in the STAR Collaboration has provided experimental proof that the ideas of some of these earlier physicists were correct.

“To create the conditions which the theory predicted, even that process is quite exhausting, but actually quite exciting,” said Zhangbu Xu, a senior scientist at BNL in the physics department.

The researchers published their results recently in Physics Review Letters, which provides a connection to Breit and Wheeler, who published their original work in a predecessor periodical called Physics Review.

While Breit and Wheeler wrote that the probability of two gamma rays colliding was “hopeless,” they suggested that accelerated heavy ions could be an alternative, which is exactly what the researchers at RHIC did.

The STAR team, for Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC, also proved another theory proposed decades ago by physicists Heisenberg, who also described the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and Hans Heinrich Euler in 1936 and John Toll, who would later become the second president at Stony Brook University, in the 1950s.

These physicists predicted that a powerful magnetic field could polarize a vacuum of empty space. This polarized vacuum should deflect the paths of photons depending on photon polarization.

Researchers had never seen this polarization-dependent deflection, called birefringence, in a vacuum on Earth until this set of experiments.

Creating mass from energy

Xu and others started with a gold ion. Without its electrons, the 79 protons in the gold ion have a positive charge, which, when projected at high speeds, triggers a magnetic field that spirals around the particle as it travels.

Once the ion reaches a high enough speed, the strength of the magnetic field equals the strength of the perpendicular electric field. This creates a photon that hovers around the ion.

The speeds necessary for this experiment is even closer to the speed of light, at 99.995%, than ivory soap is to being pure, at 99.44%.

When the ions move past each other without colliding, the photon fields interact. The researchers studied the angular distribution patterns of each electron and its partner positron.

“We also measured all the energy, mass distribution, and quantum numbers of the system,” Daniel Brandenburg, a Goldhaber Fellow at BNL who analyzed the STAR data, said in a statement.

Even in 1934, Xu said, the researchers realized the cross section for the photons to interact was so small that it was almost impossible to create conditions necessary for such an experiment.

“Only in the last 10 years, with the new angular distribution of e-plus [positrons] and e-minus [electrons] can we say, ‘Hey, this is from the photon/ photon creation,’” Xu said.

Bending light in a vacuum

Heisenberg and Euler in 1936 and Toll in the 1950’s theorized that a powerful magnetic field could polarize a vacuum, which should deflect the paths of photons. Toll calculated in theory how the light scatters off strong magnetic fields and how that connects to the creation of the electron and positron pair, Xu explained. “That is exactly what we did almost 70 years later,” he said.

This is the first experiment on Earth that demonstrates experimentally that polarization affects the interactions of light with the magnetic field in a vacuum.

Xu explained that one of the reasons this principle hasn’t been observed often is that the effect is small without a “huge magnetic field. That’s why it was predicted many decades ago, but we didn’t observe it.”

Scientists who were a part of this work appreciated the connection to theories their famous and successful predecessors had proposed decades earlier.

“Both of these findings build on predictions made by some of the great physicists in the early 20th century,” Frank Geurts, a professor at Rice University, said in a statement. 

The work on bending light through a vacuum is a relatively new part of the research effort.

Three years ago, the scientists realized they could study this, which was a surprising moment, Xu said.

“Many of our collaborators (myself included) did not know what vacuum birefringence was a few years ago,” he said. “This is why scientific discovery is exciting. You don’t know what nature has prepared for you. Sometimes you stumble on something exciting. Sometimes, there is a null set (empty hand) in your endeavor.

Xu lives in East Setauket. His son Kevin is earning his bachelor’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is studying science and engineering. His daughter Isabel is a junior at Ward Melville High School.

As for the recent work, Xu, who earned his PhD and completed two years of postdoctoral research at Yale before coming to BNL, said he is pleased with the results.

“I’ve been working on this project for 20 years,” he said. “I have witnessed and participated in quite a few exciting discoveries RHIC has produced. These are very high on my list.”

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From left, postdoctoral researcher Yunjun Zhao and Brookhaven Lab biochemist Chang-Jun Liu in a greenhouse with poplar trees. Photo from BNL

By Daniel Dunaief

Plants not only make our food, produce the oxygen we breathe, and provide key ingredients in medicines, but they could also contribute chemicals that might otherwise require fossil fuels to produce.

Scientists have known since 1955 that poplar trees produce small amounts of a product called p-hydroxybenzoic acid that they attach to the lignin in their cell walls. What they didn’t know, however, was how they were attached.

After years of cloning genes and, more recently, using the gene editing tool CRISPR, Chang-Jun Liu, a plant biochemist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and collaborators in Japan discovered the gene that codes for an enzyme that catalyzes the attachment of pBA to the lignin.

Up to now, companies have produced pBA by using fossil fuels as raw materials and for the energy required to generate enough heat and pressure for the catalytic reactions.

This discovery, which Liu published in the journal Nature Plants, could provide a more eco-friendly way to produce a chemical involved in the manufacture of toothpaste, shampoos, commercial moisturizers, shaving gels, and spray tanning solutions, among other products.

The global market value of p-hydroxybenzoic acid was $59 million in 2020 and is expected to climb to $80 million in the next five years.

“We wanted to identify the enzyme that is responsible for attaching pBA into lignin and reconstitute this pathway and promote its storage in the cell wall,” Liu said. Ideally, he’d like to combine the pathways that produce the donor molecule containing pBA with their enzyme to promote pBA storage in cell walls.

Once Liu found the gene responsible for that enzyme, he did what scientists typically do to check on the importance of a genetic sequence: first, he knocked it out and second, he overexpressed it.

By knocking out the genetic sequence, he found that poplar trees stopped producing pBA. Overexpressing the gene, on the other hand, not only increased the amount of this chemical by about 48 percent, but also raised the strength of the lignin and, consequently, the durability of the cell wall.

Aside from the benefit of increasing the natural production of the chemical, changing the amount of pBA could have implications for the environment and industry. Less durable lignin, which has a lower amount of pBA, could be useful in producing pulp, paper and biofuel, making it easier to access the biomass of the wood.

More durable lignin could be useful in the timber industry, while also enabling the plant to remove more carbon, mostly in the form of carbon dioxide, from the air.

“If we can engineer the plant to produce more of this carbon-dense compound, … particularly in the root, we can fix more carbon into the underground fraction, which will absorb more carbon from the air to promote carbon sequestration,” Liu said.

A long process

The work that led to identifying the gene that codes for the enzyme that attaches pBA to lignin took about 15 years.

Liu knew this enzyme worked to attach pBA, among other chemicals, in a test tube, but the journey to prove its importance in the poplar trees took considerable work.

Liu cloned 20 genes that are expressed in woody tissues and encoded enzymes called acyltransferases. While expressing these enzymes, he mixed them with an isotope-labeled carbon, which allowed him to check to see whether the enzyme contributed to the process of attaching pBA to lignin.

He tried using RNA interference to knock down the targeted gene, but that didn’t work.

The breakthrough that established the importance of this gene came when Liu used CRISPR. 

Next steps

Scientists aren’t sure of the specific steps or even why plants produce pBA in the first place.

Plants produce pBA through the shikimate pathway, but the exact routes leading to pBA formation are still undiscovered. 

As for why plants produce pBA, one hypothesis is that the plant uses a higher amount as a defense mechanism, making its lignin harder to remove for an insect. It could also provide resistance to mechanical stress caused by wind or snow.

“We do not have solid evidence to prove that,” he said, but “we need to explore that further.”

Liu also hopes to take a synthetic biology approach to build a more effective pathway by using the enzyme to make the plant a partner in producing pBA and in capturing and storing organic carbon.

The biochemist hopes to find a commercial partner who might be interested in exploring the development of a process that occurs naturally in poplar trees.

The environmental impact of increasing pBA in plants on the ecology of the areas in which these poplar trees might grow is unclear.

“We do not know at this moment whether this will benefit or be harmful to the soil microbial community,” he said. “In some cases, it can help the plant absorb more nutrients. It potentially can also kill other microbial life.”

For the plant, it’s unclear what the effect of higher pBA might be. The enzyme Liu identified moves pBA from inside the cell to the cell where, which would likely mitigate any toxicity because that is dead material. 

“We expect the increase of cell wall-bound pBA should promote the trees’ ability in withstanding environmental changes,” he explained.

Altering the cell’s metabolic processes by rebuilding a new pathway that produces high amounts of pBA could negatively affect a tree’s normal growth. Liu would need to conduct more experiments to explore this possible effect.

A resident of Rocky Point, Liu lives with his wife Yang Chen, who is a special education teacher assistant at Rocky Point Middle School. Their son Allen is in his third year at Purdue University, while Bryant is in his second year at the University of Southern California. The family enjoys skiing and hiking trips.

The work to confirm the link between the gene and the production of pBA involved numerous post doctoral researchers.

Liu appreciates the effort of his research team over the years. “I’m very happy that we were finally able to resolve this issue,” he said.

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Alex Harris. Photo from BNL

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has named Alex Harris as Director of the Lab’s Energy Sciences Department, effective May 1, 2021. The announcement was made in a June 21 press release.

In his new position, Harris will manage several divisions of the Laboratory, including the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, the Chemistry Division, and the Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Division. Together, these divisions conduct fundamental research on advanced energy technologies and clean energy solutions, spanning from electric vehicle batteries to artificial photosynthesis, as well as research on quantum materials and nanomaterials to advance quantum information science.

“The Energy Sciences Department has leading scientists in chemical, materials, and nanosciences working together on problems that address DOE and national priorities in energy and quantum science,” Harris said. “Those are topics of rising national importance and there are exciting opportunities ahead. I’m honored to lead the Department to continue developing those themes and to strengthen collaborations with other departments, particularly with the National Synchrotron Light Source II, which is a key partner in much of our research.”

Beginning in September 2020, Harris simultaneously handled the role of Interim Energy Sciences Director and his regular role as Chair of the Chemistry Division, which he has held since 2003. As Chemistry Chair, Harris made significant contributions to the Lab’s vision for sustainable energy conversion. He will now continue as Acting Chair of the Chemistry Division while the Lab conducts a search for a new chair.

“The Chemistry Division is at the center of Brookhaven’s fundamental research on clean energy solutions. It has been rewarding to work with the division scientists to develop programs that address important national needs and are producing some great science. Chemistry has a family spirit and I look forward to continue working with people in the division in my new role,” Harris said.

Harris originally came to Brookhaven from Agere Systems, where he was Director of the Guided Wave and Electro-optics Research Department. His early career was at AT&T’s Bell Laboratories, where he became department head of Materials Chemistry Research. Harris earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.A. in Chemistry from Swarthmore College.

Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The 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.

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