Seminars

Director's Special Colloquium: "The Internet Future and the Need for a New Fairness Rule" by Lawrence Roberts, Anagran Inc. 10 a.m., Building 402 Auditorium.

CSE Seminar: "Ultrafast Transient Absorption Studies of Environment Influence on the Photolysis and Recombination of B12 Complexes" by Andrew B. Stickrath, University of Michigan. 10:30 a.m., Building 200, Conference Room J183.

MSD Colloquium: "Interplay Between Spin and Charge Carriers in Superconducting Spin Valves: Alternative Ways to Reach Infinite Magnetoresistance" by Guo-Xing Miao, Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 11 a.m., Building 212, Room A157.

BIO Seminar: "Structures of Transcriptional Regulator LuxT" by Kemin Tan (BIO). 11 a.m., Building 202, Room B169.

Friday, Sept. 19

Physics Colloquium: "Observing the Signatures of the R-Process in Metal-Poor Stars" by Anna Frebel, University of Texas, Austin. 11 a.m., Building 203 Auditorium.

Newcomers Coffee Morning to be held tomorrow

The Newcomers Assistance Office (NAO) is starting off the year with a coffee morning hosted by Nelya Vasserman in Darien. 

Employees who are new to the United States and want to make new friends and learn more about the area around Argonne are invited to join the NAO tomorrow between 9:30 and 11:30 a.m. 

Preschoolers are always welcome. If you need transportation, let the NAO know and they might be able to help.

For more information, contact the NAO at newcomers@anl.gov or call Nelya at (630) 985-1497.

Advanced Photon Source users to be featured on the Discovery Channel

The work of GSECARS users Andrew Chizmeshya and Hamdallah Béarat and colleagues from Arizona State University (ASU) is expected to be televised on the Discovery Channel in an episode titled "Fixing Carbon," scheduled for broadcast tomorrow at 8 p.m.

The episode will feature several methods of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The ASU team’s approach is to force carbon dioxide to react in water under pressure with serpentine or olivine, two common minerals. These “carbonation” reactions form the compounds magnesite and silica. The experiment was conducted at the Advanced Photon Source.

Around the Lab

Roberts

Founder, chairman and chief architect of Anagran Inc. to speak at Director's Special Colloquium today at 10 a.m.

Lawrence Roberts, founder, chairman and chief architect of Anagran Inc., will speak on "The Internet Future and the Need for a New Fairness Rule" at a Director's Special Colloquium today at 10 a.m. in the Building 402 Auditorium. Note the earlier time.

At the beginning of the Internet, the concept under congestion for fairness was to give "equal capacity per flow.” Both voice and early Internet use had one flow per user and given that users were considered equal, equal rate flows appeared to be the correct basis for fairness.

Today, however, computers generate the flows and for any task they can generate any number of flows. Peer-to-peer (P2P) applications discovered this around 1999 and now can use 100 to 1,000 flows to download a video.

This unfairness will lead to all applications using many flows in order to compete. The end point of this arms race would lead to serious difficulties in the Internet.

The time has come to change the fairness rule in the Internet to: “Equal Capacity for Equal Pay.” Once equal capacity for equal pay is introduced, the average user will be able to work about five times faster and Internet growth should stabilize.  

Anagran is currently manufacturing flow rate management network equipment, the first major improvement in packet network technology in the 40 years since Roberts designed and managed the first packet network, the ARPANET (now the Internet).

The first nodes of the ARPANET were installed in 1969 and by 1973, when Roberts left ARPA to become CEO of Telenet (now part of Sprint), the concept of packet switching had been well proven to the world and the ARPANET had grown to 52 computers including a packet radio subnet and a satellite extension to Europe.

Roberts has bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from MIT and has received numerous awards for his work, including the Secretary of Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the L.M. Ericsson prize for research in data communications, the W. Wallace McDowell Award, the ACM SIGCOMM Award, the IEEE Internet Award, the National Academy of Engineering Draper Award, the Principe de Asturias Award, and the NEC Computer and Communication Award.

Music Club to host open-mic night tonight

The Music Club will host its monthly open-mic night tonight at the Building 617 Lower Level. Audience members are welcome and appreciated by the performers. There is no charge for admission, and the Lower Level has comfortable table seating. Beverages and snacks are available for purchase.

Open mics give musicians and vocalists of all genres and skill levels — from novices to virtuosos — a way to perform in a low-pressure, informal setting. Participants don't need to be in a band; there are many opportunities to jam with other musicians and vocalists. Performances at previous open-mic nights included classical guitar, country, blues, jazz and classic rock. Doors open at 4:30 p.m.; music will start at 5:30 p.m.

The Argonne Music Club brings together the site's music enthusiasts and musicians to share their interests and hold informal jam sessions and concerts.

Argonne Club to host bean-bag tournament

The Argonne Club is organizing a bean-bag tournament as a part of the Oktoberfest party that will be held Thursday, Sept. 25, at the Exchange Club.

Depending on interest, the club will have two classes of competition: novice and pro two-person teams. The novice class will compete for prizes. The pro class will have a cash buy-in and 100 percent payout.

Registration will take place at the event.

If anyone is interested in helping organize the bean-bag tournament, contact Eric Zoellner at ext. 2-0527 as soon as possible.

Working Safely

Eye safety - More than 2,000 people injure their eyes at work each day. The correct eye protection can lessen the severity of, or even prevent, 90 percent of eye injuries.

Common causes for eye injuries are flying objects (bits of metal or glass), tools, particles, chemicals, harmful radiation and any combination of these or other hazards.

To help prevent an eye injury:

• Know the eye safety dangers at work

• Eliminate hazards before starting work.

• Change the process to eliminate the hazard in the first place. Use machine guarding, work screens or other engineering controls.

• Use recommended, ANSI-approved eye protection.

Safety resources

• Integrated Safety Management
• Director’s Safety Council
• Environment, Safety and Health / Quality Assurance (EQO) home page
• Daily occurrence reports (ORPS system)

• Report safety concerns to Safety@anl.gov

Laboratory director search is topic of Sept. 29 town hall meeting

A town hall meeting with Argonne employees to discuss the search for a new laboratory director will be held Monday, Sept. 29. The meeting will be hosted by Don Levy, vice president for research and for national laboratories and chair of the Argonne Director Search Committee and selected members of the search committee.

The one-hour meeting will begin at 10 a.m. in the Building 402 Auditorium and will be simulcast to the auditoriums in buildings 203 and 362. An informal discussion with members of the committee will follow in the Lower Level Gallery from 11 a.m. to noon.

All employees whose work schedules permit are invited to attend. Shuttle service will be provided prior to the 10 a.m. meeting to all locations with return service every 10 minutes from 11 a.m. until the informal discussion adjourns.

For more information, contact Laura Cuddy at 630-252-3244 or lcuddy@uchicago.edu.

Building 213 Cafeteria

Breakfast grill
Eggs Benedict with hash browns - $4.10
… Add a 12 oz. Intelligentsia coffee and a small fresh fruit cup - $5.60

The breakfast grill is open until 9 a.m. Breakfast items like sweet rolls, cereal, muffins, yogurt, coffee and juices are available until 10:30 a.m.

Soups and chili
Cream of spinach (v) or turkey rice soup - small $1.68, large $2.30
Cilantro steak chili - small $1.96, large $2.54

Entree feature
Market bistro: Mediterranean chicken quarters or Swiss steak in red wine sauce with two side dishes - $6.87

Chef’s special
Road to romaine: Wild rice and wheat berry salad with choice of chicken or tofu with red onions, spinach and citrus vinaigrette - $6.67

Luncheon broiler
BBQ pork on a Kaiser with onion frazzles- $4.65
With French fries and coleslaw - $6.15
Spicy Cajun catfish and fresh vegetables -$6.32

Healthy choice
Calzone Olympia with roasted red peppers, red onion, capers and feta cheese (cal 301, fat 8.4g chol. 25mg) - $4.95

The budget special
Pizza by the slice: Cheese, pepperoni or sausage
Includes a 16 oz. fountain beverage - $4.52

Building 213 Cafeteria hours: 7:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.