N/A

N/A

A methodology was developed for computing the probability that the sensor dart for the 'Near Real-Time Site Characterization for Assured HDBT Defeat' Grand-Challenge LDRD project will survive deployment over a forested region. The probability can be decomposed into three approximately independent probabilities that account for forest coverage, branch density and the physics of an impact between the dart and a tree branch. The probability that a dart survives an impact with a tree branch was determined from the deflection induced by the impact. If a dart that was deflected so that it impacted the ground at an angle of attack exceeding a user-specified, threshold value, the dart was assumed to not survive the impact with the branch; otherwise it was assumed to have survived. A computer code was developed for calculating dart angle of attack at impact with the ground and a Monte Carlo scheme was used to calculate the probability distribution of a sensor dart surviving an impact with a branch as a function of branch radius, length, and height from the ground. Both an early prototype design and the current dart design were used in these studies. As a general rule of thumb, it we observed that for …

Plants may produce compounds that directly or indirectly affect their biological environment. These compounds fall within a broad category of compounds called allelochemicals, and are exclusive of food that influences growth, health, or behavior of other organisms (Whittaker and Feeney 1971). One reason for interest in allelochemicals is their potential for use in alternative pest management systems. Using plant-produced allelochemicals in agricultural and horticultural practices could minimize synthetic pesticide use, reduce the associated potential for environmental contamination, and contribute to a more sustainable agricultural system.

The human brain functions through a chemically-induced biological process which operates in a manner similar to electrical systems. The signal resulting from this biochemical process can actually be monitored and read using tools and having patterns similar to those found in electrical and electronics engineering. The primary signature of this electrical activity is the ''brain wave'', which looks remarkably similar to the output of many electrical systems. Likewise, the device currently used in medical arenas to read brain electrical activity is the electroencephalogram (EEG) which is synonymous with a multi-channel oscilloscope reading. Brain wave readings and recordings for medical purposes are traditionally taken in clinical settings such as hospitals, laboratories or diagnostic clinics. The signal is captured via externally applied scalp electrodes using semi-viscous gel to reduce impedance. The signal will be in the 10 to 100 microvolt range. In other instances, where surgeons are attempting to isolate particular types of minute brain signals, the electrodes may actually be temporarily implanted in the brain during a preliminary procedure. The current configurations of equipment required for EEGs involve large recording instruments, many electrodes, wires, and large amounts of hard disk space devoted to storing large files of brain wave data which …

The Dean and Betty Gallo Prostate Cancer Center (GPCC) was established with the goal of eradicating prostate cancer and improving the lives of men at risk for the disease through research, treatment, education and prevention. GPCC was founded in the memory of Dean Gallo, a beloved New Jersey Congressman who died tragically of prostate cancer diagnosed at an advanced stage. GPCC unites a team of outstanding researchers and clinicians who are committed to high-quality basic research, translation of innovative research to the clinic, exceptional patient care, and improving public education and awareness of prostate cancer. GPCC is a center of excellence of The Cancer Institute of New Jersey, which is the only NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center in the state. GPCC efforts are now integrated well as part of our Prostate Program at CINJ, in which Dr. Robert DiPaola and Dr. Cory Abate-Shen are co-leaders. The Prostate Program unites 19 investigators from 10 academic departments who have broad and complementary expertise in prostate cancer research. The overall goal and unifying theme is to elucidate basic mechanisms of prostate growth and oncogenesis, with the ultimate goal of promoting new and effective strategies for the eradication of prostate cancer. Members' wide range of …

This document presents the results of groundwater and vadose zone monitoring for fiscal year 2004 (October 2003 through September 2004)on the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Site in southeast Washington State.

This revision of the geologic data catalog incorporates new boreholes drilled after September 2002 as well as other older wells, particularly from the 600 Area, omitted from the earlier catalogs. Additionally, borehole geophysical log data have been added to the catalog. This version of the geologic data catalog now contains 3,519 boreholes and is current with boreholes drilled as of November 2004.

A microflame-based detector suit has been developed for sensing of a broad range of chemical analytes. This detector combines calorimetry, flame ionization detection (FID), nitrogen-phosphorous detection (NPD) and flame photometric detection (FPD) modes into one convenient platform based on a microcombustor. The microcombustor consists in a micromachined microhotplate with a catalyst or low-work function material added to its surface. For the NPD mode a low work function material selectively ionizes chemical analytes; for all other modes a supported catalyst such as platinum/alumina is used. The microcombustor design permits rapid, efficient heating of the deposited film at low power. To perform calorimetric detection of analytes, the change in power required to maintain the resistive microhotplate heater at a constant temperature is measured. For FID and NPD modes, electrodes are placed around the microcombustor flame zone and an electrometer circuit measures the production of ions. For FPD, the flame zone is optically interrogated to search for light emission indicative of deexcitation of flame-produced analyte compounds. The calorimetric and FID modes respond generally to all hydrocarbons, while sulfur compounds only alarm in the calorimetric mode, providing speciation. The NPD mode provides 10,000:1 selectivity of nitrogen and phosphorous compounds over hydrocarbons. The FPD can …

Control of the feed provided to mineral processing facilities is a continuing challenge. Much effort is currently being devoted to overcoming these problems. These projects are usually described under the general headings of Mine-to-Mill Integration or Mine-Mill Optimization. It should be possible to combine the knowledge of ore type, mineralogy, and other characteristics (located in the mine modeling system), with the advanced capabilities of state-of-the-art mill control systems, to achieve an improved level of control in mineral processing that will allow optimization of the mill processes on an almost real-time basis. This is not happening because mill feed it is often treated as a uniform material, when in reality it varies in composition and characteristics. An investigation was conducted to assess the suitability of odor sensors for maintaining traceability in ore production and processing. Commercially available sensors are now used in food processing, environmental monitoring, and other applications and can detect the presence of very small amounts (0.1-500 ppm) of some molecules. An assortment of such molecules could be used to ''tag'' blocks of ore as they are mined, according to their respective characteristics. Then, as the ore came into the mill, an array of ''electronic noses'' could be used …

To date, all varistors used in ferroelectric neutron generators have been supplied from a single, proprietary source, General Electric Corporate Research and Development (GE CR&D). To protect against the vulnerability of a single source, Sandia initiated a program in the early 1980's to develop a second source for this material. A chemical preparation process for making homogeneous, high purity ZnO-based varistor powder was generated, scaled to production quantities, and transferred to external suppliers. In 1992, the chem-prep varistor program was suspended when it appeared there was sufficient inventory of GE CR&D material to supply ferroelectric neutron generator production for many years. In 1999, neutron generator production schedules increased substantially, resulting in a predicted exhaustion of the existing supply of varistor material within five years. The chem-prep program was restarted in January, 2000. The goals of the program were to (1) duplicate the chem-prep powder synthesis process that had been qualified for WR production, (2) demonstrate sintered billets from the chem-prep powder met requirements, (3) develop a process for rod fabrication and demonstrate that all component specifications could be met, and (4) optimize the process from powder synthesis through component fabrication for full-scale production. The first three of these goals have …

N/A

Chemically prepared zinc oxide powders are fabricated for the production of high aspect ratio varistor components. Colloidal processing in water was performed to reduce agglomerates to primary particles, form a high solids loading slurry, and prevent dopant migration. The milled and dispersed powder exhibited a viscoelastic to elastic behavioral transition at a volume loading of 43-46%. The origin of this transition was studied using acoustic spectroscopy, zeta potential measurements and oscillatory rheology. The phenomenon occurs due to a volume fraction solids dependent reduction in the zeta potential of the solid phase. It is postulated to result from divalent ion binding within the polyelectrolyte dispersant chain, and was mitigated using a polyethylene glycol plasticizing additive. Chemically prepared zinc oxide powders were processed for the production of high aspect ratio varistor components. Near net shape casting methods including slip casting and agarose gelcasting were evaluated for effectiveness in achieving a uniform green microstructure achieving density values near the theoretical maximum during sintering. The structure of the green parts was examined by mercury porisimetry. Agarose gelcasting produced green parts with low solids loading values and did not achieve high fired density. Isopressing the agarose cast parts after drying raised the fired density to …

The goal of this one year LDRD was to improve the overall efficiency of InGaN LEDs by improving the extraction of light from the semiconductor chip. InGaN LEDs are currently the most promising technology for producing high efficiency blue and green semiconductor light emitters. Improving the efficiency of InGaN LEDs will enable a more rapid adoption of semiconductor based lighting. In this LDRD, we proposed to develop photonic structures to improve light extraction from nitride-based light emitting diodes (LEDs). While many advanced device geometries were considered for this work, we focused on the use of a photonic crystal for improved light extraction. Although resonant cavity LEDs and other advanced structures certainly have the potential to improve light extraction, the photonic crystal approach showed the most promise in the early stages of this short program. The photonic crystal (PX)-LED developed here incorporates a two dimensional photonic crystal, or photonic lattice, into a nitride-based LED. The dimensions of the photonic crystal are selected such that there are very few or no optical modes in the plane of the LED ('lateral' modes). This will reduce or eliminate any radiation in the lateral direction so that the majority of the LED radiation will be …

N/A

Solid solutions of lead-based perovskites are the backbone materials of the piezoelectric components for transducer, actuator, and resonator applications. These components, typically small in size, are fabricated from large sintered ceramic slugs using grinding and lapping processes. These operations increase manufacturing costs and produce a large hazardous waste stream, especially when component size decreases. To reduce costs and hazardous wastes associated with the production of these components, an injection molding technique is being investigated to replace the machining processes. The first step in the new technique is to compound an organic carrier with a ceramic powder. The organic carrier is a thermoplastic based system composed of a main carrier, a binder, and a surfactant. Understanding the rheology of the compounded material is necessary to minimize the creation of defects such as voids or cavities during the injection-molding process. An experiment was performed to model the effects of changes in the composition and processing of the material on the rheological behavior. Factors studied included: the surfactant of the organic carrier system, the solid loading of the compounded material, and compounding time. The effects of these factors on the viscosity of the material were investigated.

The ability to integrate metal and semiconductor micro-systems to perform highly complex functions, such as RF-MEMS, will depend on developing freestanding metal structures that offer improved conductivity, reflectivity, and mechanical properties. Three issues have prevented the proliferation of these systems: (1) warpage of active components due to through-thickness stress gradients, (2) limited component lifetimes due to fatigue, and (3) low yield strength. To address these issues, we focus on developing and implementing techniques to enable the direct study of the stress and microstructural evolution during electrodeposition and mechanical loading. The study of stress during electrodeposition of metal thin films is being accomplished by integrating a multi-beam optical stress sensor into an electrodeposition chamber. By coupling the in-situ stress information with ex-situ microstructural analysis, a scientific understanding of the sources of stress during electrodeposition will be obtained. These results are providing a foundation upon which to develop a stress-gradient-free thin film directly applicable to the production of freestanding metal structures. The issues of fatigue and yield strength are being addressed by developing novel surface micromachined tensile and bend testers, by interferometry, and by TEM analysis. The MEMS tensile tester has a ''Bosch'' etched hole to allow for direct viewing of the …

Effective, high-performance, networked file systems and storage is needed to solve I/O bottlenecks between large compute platforms. Frequently, parallel techniques such as PFTP, are employed to overcome the adverse effect of TCP's congestion avoidance algorithm in order to achieve reasonable aggregate throughput. These techniques can suffer from end-system bottlenecks due to the protocol processing overhead and memory copies involved in moving large amounts of data during I/O. Moreover, transferring data using PFTP requires manual operation, lacking the transparency to allow for interactive visualization and computational steering of large-scale simulations from distributed locations. This paper evaluates the emerging Internet SCSI (iSCSI) protocol [2] as the file/data transport in order that remote clients can transparently access data through a distributed global file system available to local clients. We started our work characterizing the performance behavior of iSCSI in Local Area Networks (LANs). We then proceeded to study the effect of propagation delay on throughput using remote iSCSI storage and explored optimization techniques to mitigate the adverse effects of long delay in high-bandwidth Wide Area Networks (WANs). Lastly, we evaluated iSCSI in a Storage Area Network (SAN) for a Global Parallel Filesystem. We conducted our benchmark based on typical usage model of large-scale …

We report the ongoing work of our group in hydrodynamics and radiative hydrodynamics with astrophysical applications. During the period of the existing grant, we have carried out two types of experiments at the Omega laser. One set of experiments has studied radiatively collapsing shocks, obtaining high-quality scaling data using a backlit pinhole and obtaining the first (ever, anywhere) Thomson-scattering data from a radiative shock. Other experiments have studied the deeply nonlinear development of the Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability from complex initial conditions, obtaining the first (ever, anywhere) dual-axis radiographic data using backlit pinholes and ungated detectors. All these experiments have applications to astrophysics, discussed in the corresponding papers either in print or in preparation. We also have obtained preliminary radiographs of experimental targets using our x-ray source. The targets for the experiments have been assembled at Michigan, where we also prepare many of the simple components. The above activities, in addition to a variety of data analysis and design projects, provide good experience for graduate and undergraduates students. In the process of doing this research we have built a research group that uses such work to train junior scientists.

This report documents technical detail for work performed in the Solar Radiometry and Metrology Task in the period from October 1, 2004 to September 30, 2005.

This report documents technical details for work performed in the Solar Radiometry and Metrology Task PVC57301 in the period from October 1 2004 to March 15 2005.

None

As radars move to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles with limited-bandwidth data downlinks, the amount of data stored and transmitted with each image becomes more significant. This document gives the results of a study to determine the effect of lossy compression in the image magnitude and phase on Coherent Change Detection (CCD). We examine 44 lossy compression types, plus lossless zlib compression, and test each compression method with over 600 CCD image pairs. We also derive theoretical predictions for the correlation for most of these compression schemes, which compare favorably with the experimental results. We recommend image transmission formats for limited-bandwidth programs having various requirements for CCD, including programs which cannot allow performance degradation and those which have stricter bandwidth requirements at the expense of CCD performance.

With the increasing role of computational modeling in engineering design, performance estimation, and safety assessment, improved methods are needed for comparing computational results and experimental measurements. Traditional methods of graphically comparing computational and experimental results, though valuable, are essentially qualitative. Computable measures are needed that can quantitatively compare computational and experimental results over a range of input, or control, variables and sharpen assessment of computational accuracy. This type of measure has been recently referred to as a validation metric. We discuss various features that we believe should be incorporated in a validation metric and also features that should be excluded. We develop a new validation metric that is based on the statistical concept of confidence intervals. Using this fundamental concept, we construct two specific metrics: one that requires interpolation of experimental data and one that requires regression (curve fitting) of experimental data. We apply the metrics to three example problems: thermal decomposition of a polyurethane foam, a turbulent buoyant plume of helium, and compressibility effects on the growth rate of a turbulent free-shear layer. We discuss how the present metrics are easily interpretable for assessing computational model accuracy, as well as the impact of experimental measurement uncertainty on the accuracy …