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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.
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Coping With Trauma
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A presentation by Dr. Barbara Rothbaum Ph.D., ABPP
Dr. Rothbaum is an associate professor of psychiatry at Emory University School of Medicine
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Thursday, February 3, 2000
3-5 PM
MSC 224
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