Copper ions for the 2005 run [1] of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) are accelerated in the Tandem, Booster and AGS prior to injection into RHIC. The setup and performance of these accelerators with copper are reviewed in this paper.

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The RHIC spin program requires 2 x 10{sup 11} proton/bunch with 70% polarization. As the injector to RHIC, AGS is the bottleneck for preserving polarization: there is no space for a full snake to overcome numerous depolarizing resonances. An ac dipole and a partial snake have been used to preserve beam polarization in the past few years. Two helical snakes have been built and installed in the AGS. With careful setup of optics at injection and along the ramp, this combination can eliminate all depolarizing resonances encountered during acceleration. This paper presents the setup and preliminary results.

High-energy ion colliders (hadron colliders operating with ions other than protons) are premier research tools for nuclear physics. The collision energy and high luminosity are important design and operations considerations. The experiments also expect flexibility with frequent changes in the collision energy, detector fields, and ion species, including asymmetric collisions. For the creation, acceleration, and storage of bright intense ion beams limits are set by space charge, charge exchange, and intrabeam scattering effects. The latter leads to luminosity lifetimes of only a few hours for intense heavy ions beams. Currently, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at BNL is the only operating high-energy ion collider. Later this decade the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), under construction at CERN, will also run with heavy ions.

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider provides not only collisions of ions but also collisions of polarized protons. In a circular accelerator, the polarization of polarized proton beam can be partially or fully lost when a spin depolarizing resonance is encountered. To preserve the beam polarization during acceleration, two full Siberian snakes were employed in RHIC. In 2002, polarized proton beams were first accelerated to 100 GeV and collided in RHIC. Beams were brought into collisions with longitudinal polarization at the experiments STAR and PHENIX by using spin rotators. Optimizing polarization transmission efficiency and improving luminosity performance are significant challenges. Currently, the luminosity lifetime in RHIC is limited by the beam-beam effect. The current state of RHIC polarized proton program, including its dedicated physics run in 2005 and efforts to optimize luminosity production in beam-beam limited conditions are reported.

Using data from the FOCUS experiment (FNAL-E831), they study the decay of {Lambda}{sub c}{sup +} baryons into final states contain a {Lambda} hyperon. The branching fractions of {Lambda}{sub c}{sup +} into {Lambda}{pi}{sup +}, {Lambda}{pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -} and {Lambda}{bar K}{sup 0}K{sup +} relative to that into pK{sup -} {pi}{sup +} are measured to be 0.217 {+-} 0.013 {+-} 0.020, 0.508 {+-} 0.024 {+-} 0.024 and 0.142 {+-} 0.018 {+-} 0.022, respectively. New measurements are also reported. Further, an analysis of the subresonant structure for the {Lambda}{sub c}{sup +} {yields} {Lambda}{pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -} decay mode is presented.

Letters from several pathologists to the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission regarding the disestablishment of the AFIP and their opposition to the recommendation to close the facility.

We present a search for electroweak production of single top quarks in the s-channel and t-channel using neural networks for signal-background separation. We have analyzed 230 pb{sup -1} of data collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV and find no evidence for a single top quark signal. The resulting 95% confidence level upper limits on the single top quark production cross sections are 6.4 pb in the s-channel and 5.0 pb in the t-channel.

The authors present a measurement of the top quark pair (t{bar t}) production cross section in p{bar p} collisions at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV using events with two charged leptons in the final state. This analysis utilizes an integrated luminosity of 224-243 pb{sup -1} collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. They observe 13 events in the e{sup +}e{sup -}, e{mu} and {mu}{sup +} {mu}{sup -} channels with an expected background of 3.2 {+-} 0.7 events. For a top quark mass of 175 GeV, we measure a t{bar t} production cross section of {sigma}{sub t{bar t}} = 8.6{sub -2.7}{sup +3.2}(stat) {+-} 1.1(syst) {+-} 0.6(lumi) pb, consistent with the standard model prediction.

The 5th year of RHIC operations, started in November 2004 and expected to last till June 2005, consists of a physics run with Cu-Cu collisions at 100 GeV/u followed by one with polarized protons (pp) at 100 GeV [l]. We will address here the overall performance of the RHIC complex used for the first time as a Cu-Cu collider, and compare it with previous operational experience with Au, PP and asymmetric d-Au collisions. We will also discuss operational improvements, such as a {beta}* squeeze to 85cm in the high luminosity interaction regions from the design value of 1m, system improvements, machine performance and limitations, and address reliability and uptime issues.

We present in this paper a method for evaluating explicitly the contribution of nuclear material accountability upgrades to risk reduction at nuclear facilities. The method yields the same types of values for conditional risk reduction that physical protection and material control upgrades yield. Thereby, potential material accountability upgrades can be evaluated for implementation in the same way that protection and control upgrades are evaluated.

We have synthesized (110)-oriented epitaxial thin films of the bilayer (n=2) manganite, La{sub 1.2}Sr{sub 1.8}Mn{sub 2}O{sub 7}, with the metallic/ferromagnetic a-b planes lying perpendicular to the substrate surface and the c-axis aligned in the plane of the film. X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy confirm the alignment of the a-b planes along the [1{bar 1}0] substrate direction. The films consist primarily of the n=2 phase with a minor component of the n=1 (La,Sr){sub 2}MnO{sub 4} and n={infinity} (La,Sr)MnO{sub 3} phases. A resistivity maximum coincides with a ferromagnet/paramagnet transition at a reduced T{sub c}{approx}90K (vs. 120K for bulk), indicative of the effects of epitaxial strain. The films display similar anisotropic properties to their bulk counterpart with the magnetically easy direction confined to the a-b planes and 20-200 times lower resistivity for current flowing along the a-b planes compared to the c-axis.

As the first hadron accelerator and collider consisting of two independent superconducting rings RHIC has operated with a wide range of beam energies and particle species. Machine operation and performance will be reviewed that includes high luminosity gold-on-gold and copper-on-copper collisions at design beam energy (100 GeV/u), asymmetric deuteron-on-gold collisions as well as high energy polarized proton-proton collisions (100 GeV on 100 GeV). Plans for future upgrades of RHIC will also be discussed.

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.

A method is described for jointly using time-lapse multiple-offset cross-borehole ground-penetrating radar (GPR) travel time measurements and hydrological measurements to estimate field-scale soil hydraulic parameters and parameters of the petrophysical function, which relates soil porosity and water saturation to the effective dielectric constant. We build upon previous work to take advantage of a wide range of GPR data acquisition configurations and to accommodate uncertainty in the petrophysical function. Within the context of water injection experiments in the vadose zone, we test our inversion methodology with synthetic examples and apply it to field data. The synthetic examples show that while realistic errors in the petrophysical function cause substantial errors in the soil hydraulic parameter estimates,simultaneously estimating petrophysical parameters allows for these errors to be minimized. Additionally, we observe in some cases that inaccuracy in the GPR simulator causes systematic error in simulated travel times, making necessary the simultaneous estimation of a correction parameter. We also apply the method to a three-dimensional field setting using time-lapse GPR and neutron probe (NP) data sets collected during an infiltration experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Hanford site in Washington. We find that inclusion of GPR data in the inversion procedure allows for …

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