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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 3, 2000)
oses scienceStechnology Thursday, February 3. 2(MK) THE BATTALION Page 7 angat On the particle speedway Professor developing stronger magnets for physics research BY SCOTT JENKINS iol fadlit\ ) The Battalion 'I interns. R<r jp At the Eemii National Accelerator 1 laboratory (Eer- iot vet bcc: mi lab) in Illinois, physicists send beams of sub-atom- ic particles whizzing tirouiul a huge, four-mile diame- ' possible a. tei uulerground loop. And then they crash them into and ripple d, each other, releasing large amounts of energy, ignored, the 11 AA major parameter of particle physics is the ener- Ithough sr ‘d'the collisions,” Dr. Peter Limon, head of Fermi- cic not rcleise IB 1 s technology di\ ision, said about the shower of el- 1,,. ,,, .1, ejpientary particles resulting from these sub-atomic ■ In seeking a complete understanding of the funda mental physical laws governing the universe, physi- r i cisi^ use complex instruments at Fennilab and other aci elerators to analyze high-energy particle collisions aiv detect the fundamental particles present, ij It was at Fermilab in 1095 that Dr. Peter McIntyre, a pexas A&M professor of physics, and other scien tist J iscovered the top quark, one of the building bhvks of matter. A&M physicists Bob Webb. Teruki Amon and James White were also part of the team. ■ Now, McIntyre is helping in the search for greater collision energies through his development of stronger " tpignets essential for bending the paths of the collid ing particles in Fermilab's circular loop. ■ Scientists at Fennilab take advantage of the fact that pro ions and anti-protons have electric charge to push and pull the charged particles around the four-mile di ameter ring of its Tevatron collider. ■ Since the path of a charged particle bends in a magnetic field, scientists use powerful supercon- dubting magnets to keep the particles traveling in their circular path. m| With each lap, the particle beams are given a “kick in the pants", as A&M's McIntyre said, gaining more an|i more energy. ■ 'The performance of a given particle accelerator at smashing particles together comes from the strength of the magnetic field its magnets can generate,” McIn tyre said. Higher energy collisions require stronger magnetic fields. - But these very large magnetic fields introduce a sig- iiificant problem. The field itself exerts an outward force on the magnet’s coiled superconducting material. To help these superconducting coils hold up these huge Lorentz forces, researchers must find ways to make stronger magnetic coils. “As we have asked how to extend the abil ity of magnets, the key challenge we face is me chanical stress,” McIntyre said. I ie and his research group have developed technology they call “stress management” to divert and distribute die Lorentz forces in the superconducting coils. This will help to increase the level of mag netic field the coils can withstand. McIntyre likened it to the way a tall office building dis tributes the force of gravity on its occupants by dividing it into floors, so the gravity force is passed through the floors to the walls and down to the ground. McIntyre is using his stress management design to develop magnets capable of handling fields three times as strong as the ones current ly available at Fermilab. lb He said his group hopes to test the magnets in the cryogenics facilities at California’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory' in mid-April. Eventually, they hope to be able to replace the existing magnets at Fermilab. Fermilab’s Limon said that this new mag net technology is being looked at seriously as a way to do cost-effective higher-energy col lider research. ..tf' “McIntyre’s magnet technology is very in teresting, and w e are watching it closely,” he said. An increase in the energy of the collisions by a factor of three could be important in gain ing experimental proof of the existence of particles that have been theorized to exist, but have never been observed, such as the Higgs particle, be lieved to be responsible for mass. “That factor of three in energy reach, if we’re suc cessful with these magnets, would allow us to get to the region of energy that is predicted to contain these particles,” McIntyre said. COURTESY OF FERMILAB (Top) Aerial view of Fermilab’s four-mile diameter cir cular collider. Physicists use magnets to accelerate particles, such as protons, to high speeds before smashing them together. The collisions help to ex plore fundamental nuclear particles. (Bottom) Fermilab physicists inspect supercondun- ducting magnets in the collider’s main ring. In addition to furthering understanding in funda mental physics, research in new magnet technology, like McIntyre’s, may also have positive effects else where. Industrial motors, magnetic resonance imaging technology, and nuclear magnetic resonance studies of protein structure might benefit from more powerful su perconducting magnets. DNA cancer chips might provide faster disease diagnosis (AP) — Scientists say they can more precisely diagnose cancers with a new technology that uses computers to rapid ly monitor the activity of thousands of genes in cancer cells. That kind of detailed information should one day let doctors classify tu mors with more precision, helping them tailor treatments to each patient, scientists said. Currently, doctors diagnose cancer by looking at tissue under the micro scope for certain biological changes and by doing other tests. The new tech nique, however, goes beyond those methods to look at the activity of many tumor genes. “You could think of it as a new kind of microscope” that looks at gene ac tivity instead of the visible structure of cells and tissues. Dr. Patrick Brown, an associate biochemistry professor at Stanford, said. In today’s issue of the journal Nature, Brown and colleagues from Stanford, the National Cancer Institute and else where describe one of the first large- scale experiments with the technology. They used glass chips the size of a pen ny to keep track of how active each of 18,000 tumor genes were. The researchers focused on diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, a type of cancer diagnosed in more than 25,000 Ameri cans each year. They uncovered two dis tinct forms of that disease, distinguish able by different patterns of gene activation. By checking records of pre viously treated patients, they found that one form was deadlier than the other. The findings help explain w'hy two- fifths of patients with diffuse large B- cell lymphoma can be cured with stan dard chemotherapy while the rest often relapse or die, scientists said. The new technique works because active genes in a cell give off chemical messages. These messages will bind to specific DNA segments, depending on what gene they came from. The glass chips carried some 18,000 DNA seg ments, representing each gene the sci entists wanted to monitor. So by tracking which DNA segments attracted the chemical messages, and how many messages bound to each seg ment, the technology revealed how ac tive each of the studied genes was. The results need confirmation in larger studies but establish an important principle. Dr. Todd Golub of the White- head Institute and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, said. “It suggests that we are really at the tip of the iceberg and that our expecta tion going forward is that there will be similar stories emerging for all common human cancers,” Golub said. In an accompanying Nature com mentary, Anton Bems of the Netherlands Cancer Institute agreed patients should someday benefit by genetic analysis. But he cautioned that such analysis may not able to predict how cancers will behave after the initial treatment. DNA chips also hold promise for cut ting the price of treatment. Someday, a DNA chip that costs less than $ 100 could take the place of a barrage of current tests, said Pat Brown, an associate bio chemistry professor at Stanford who also was part of the study. “The actual technology is cheap, very cheap,” he said. about a w eek ap t heard. Wcdidaf low to keep them s live, and this is a fa :l like voi know if A because they wouL o be relec Id songs sed in Apr ■ tnd some ct iclp mak e the sho" - Mint about w hat 'C e out and he on then' /ice exp 1 lot four days in below irned it's impossiW 8 makes on you." ;e? ; recruiter at the: ‘gional Confereno lunity Service n Antonio camp 111 6, 2000 ct Rachael Bamb^ jambenekScns.g 0 ' Student Counseling Services and MSC Current Issues Awareness Present Coping With Trauma After A Major Event A presentation by Dr. Barbara Rothbaum Ph.D., ABPP Dr. Rothbaum is an associate professor of psychiatry at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta GA. She is an expert in the field of post-traumatic stress disorder and has appeared on the CBS Evening News, Dateline NBC, CNN and many other programs. Through her presentation stu dents will learn to recognize post-traumatic reactions in themselves and others, develop ways to deal with trauma after a major event such as Bonfire and differentiate between post-traumatic systems that will decline naturally and those that require treatment. Thursday, February 3, 2000 3-5 PM MSC 224 We would like to thank Pfizer Pharmaceutical Co. for providing an unrestricted educational grant in support of our continuing education programs. & Persons with disabilities needing assistance may call 845-1637