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Working Science

Office of Science Supports Award-Winning Technologies

by Julie Gephart

R&D 100 Logo Several Office of Science-supported technologies are among 1999's 100 most promising new products, processes, materials or software developed throughout the world, as selected by R&D Magazine. The developers, from at least six national laboratories and a university, will receive 1999 R&D 100 Awards September 23 at a gala event held in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. The R&D 100 Awards program is international in scope, and technologies are nominated in open competition. The Illinois-based magazine uses technical criteria to pick the most important, unique and useful entries to be included in the top 100.

DNA BiochipThe DNA Biochip, developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory researcher Tuan Vo-Dinh and colleagues, could revolutionize the way the medical profession performs tests on blood. The matchbox-sized DNA Biochip will allow for immediate diagnosis in the doctor's office of diseases such as the AIDS virus, cancer, and tuberculosis. Patients will no longer have to wait for days for laboratory results. The Biochip also requires much less blood for the test with no sacrifice in accuracy. This new technology will greatly reduce both the cost of blood tests and the potential dangers to technicians and lab workers that handle the samples while performing tests. The DNA Biochip is currently in clinical trials and is approximately 2 to 3 years away from commercial availability. This research was supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research.

Direct Injection High Efficiency NebulizerThe Direct Injection High Efficiency Nebulizer (DIHEN) is a device for improved introduction of liquid samples into an inductively coupled plasma for subsequent analysis by emission or mass spectrometry. The DIHEN produces a reliable flow of extremely small droplets at such low flow rates that deleterious effects on plasma properties are minimized. The device was recently licensed to and commercialized by J. E. Meinhard Associates. Akbar Montaser and John McLean, George Washington University, are the award recipients. Montaser's research is supported by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences.

The Gregar extractorThe Gregar extractor, developed by Argonne National Laboratory researchers Joe Gregar and Ken Anderson, promises to render obsolete a standard device used in virtually every high school, industrial and university chemistry laboratory in the world. The new device performs one of the chemistry lab's most basic day-to-day activities: it extracts chemicals from a solid and places them in a liquid, the form needed for most chemical analysis. And it does so more efficiently, more reliably, and usually faster than the Soxhlet extractor, which has been the chemist's workhorse for this task since the middle of the 19th Century. The extractor improves on the conventional extractor by using a porous glass "frit" instead of filter paper and by replacing the cyclic siphoning action with a continuous solvent flow. The work was originally sponsored by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Chemical Sciences Division. For more information, see article), Logos, Winter 1998, Vol. 16, No.2.

Argonne also developed the clean-diesel device (graphic), an energy and environmental breakthrough that should enable diesel engines to operate cleaner. The device, developed by Ramesh Poola and Raj Sekar, controls fuel and oxygen levels in diesel engines and results in reduced particulate levels and decreased nitrogen oxide emissions simultaneously. Nitrogen oxide (NOx) is a precursor to ozone and contributes significantly to smog. The breakthrough technology increases engine power as well. Diesel engines are the most efficient internal combustion engines, but the smoke and particulate emissions have prevented them from becoming a "clean" propulsion system. The new technology is expected to be more cost effective than alternative exhaust control systems currently being developed. Funding came from General Motors' Electro-Motive Division, the Association of American Railroads, and SC's Laboratory Technology Research Program. For more information, see the Clean Diesel website.

Asbestos digesting foam can destroy chrysotile asbestos contained in porous materials installed as fireproofing. The technology eliminates the need to remove and dispose of old asbestos containing fireproofing and reapply new fireproofing. Brookhaven National Laboratory developers are Leon Petrakis, Ron Webster, Larry Kikacka, Toshi Sugama, Marita Allan, Joe Hriljac, Cahit Eylan, Bob Sabtini, Neil Carciello, Water Reams, and Dave Elling. Office of Science funding for the original project was through a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with W.R. Grace & Co.

Visualization of a Peregrine dose calculationPEREGRINE, a radiation therapy targeting system developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, will allow safer, more-effective cancer treatment. PEREGRINE combines state-of-the-art Monte Carlo radiation transport techniques and the most comprehensive nuclear and atomic databases to produce very accurate dose calculation for patients undergoing radiation therapy. Medical collaborators include the University of California, San Francisco, and the Medical College of Virginia. SC's Office of Biological and Environmental Research is supporting an enhanced upgrade of PEREGRINE that will further improve its targeting and the visualization and graphic capabilities. NOMOS Corporation of Sewickley, PA, is partnering with LLNL to commercialize PERGRINE. Developers are Ralph Patterson, Paul Bergstrom, Larry Cox, Tom Daly, Don Fujino, Dewey Garrett, Brian Guidry, Ron House, Don Jong, Dave Knapp, Sarita May, Ed Moses, Clark Powell, Jim Rathkopf, Christine Siantar, Alexis Chach von Wittenau and Rosemary Walling. For more information, see the PEREGRINE website.

Acoustic Stirling Heat EngineThe Acoustic Stirling Heat Engine efficiently converts heat to intense acoustic power in a simple device that comprises only pipes and conventional heat exchangers and has no moving parts. The acoustic power can be used directly in acoustic or pulse-tube refrigerators to provide heat-driven refrigeration with no moving parts, or it can be used to generate electricity via a linear alternator or other electroacoustic power transducer. The engine's 30 percent efficiency and high reliability make medium-sized natural-gas liquefaction plants (with a capacity of up to a million gallons per day) and residential co-generation economically feasible. This technology is based on thermoacoustic research supported by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences. The developers are Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers Scott Backhaus, Greg Swift and Chris Espinoza.

RABiTSRABiTS™ (rolling-assisted biaxial textured substrates) is a process that could make it possible to manufacture long lengths of ultra-high-performance superconducting wires necessary for a wide range of high-temperature superconductors. Developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, RABiTS enables the superconducting materials to have a high degree of grain alignment in all directions, a necessary condition for more efficient current flow through the superconductor. Single crystal-like substrates are flexible, easily mass-produced and cost-effective. They also can be fabricated in arbitrary sizes and the substrates can be tailored for the application. RABiTS was developed by Amit Goyal, John Budai, David Norton, Eliot Specht, Dave Christen, Donald Kroeger, Parans Paranthaman, Frederick List, Ron Feenstra, Dominic Lee, David Beach, Patrick Martin, Ed Hatfield, John Mathis, Chan Park, Xingtian Cui, and Darren Verebelyi and was funded by DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and the Office of Basic Energy Sciences and Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research.

Electrodynamic Ion FunnelThe Electrodynamic Ion Funnel focuses ions in gases, greatly improving the sensitivity of analytical devices such as mass spectrometers that depend on ion formation and transfer in the presence of gases. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientists Richard D. Smith and Harold Udseth are the developers. Funding for the funnel originated from SC's Office of Basic Energy Sciences. For more information, see press release.

MS3 visualization of acetylcholinesterase (courtesy of University of California, San Diego)The Molecular Science Software Suite (MS3) is a unique, comprehensive, integrated suite of software that enables computational chemists to focus their advanced techniques on finding solutions to complex issues involving chemical systems. Developed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, it is the first general-purpose software that provides access to high-performance, massively parallel computers for a broad range of chemists on a broad range of applications. MS3 lets chemists easily couple the power of advanced computational chemistry techniques with existing and rapidly evolving high-performance, massively parallel computing systems. Developers are Jeffrey Nichols, Donald Jones, Robert Harrison, Ricky Kendall, T.P. Straatsma, Michel Dupuis, Krys Wolinski, Edoardo Apra, Jarek Nieplocha, George Fann, Rik Littlefield, Thomas Keller, Karen Schuchardt, Gary Black, Deb Gracio and Greg Thomas. Funding is from SC's Office of Computational and Technical Research and the Office of Biological and Environmental Research. For more information, see the Molecular Science Software Suite website.


For a complete list of the 100 winning technologies, see the R&D 100 Award website.

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