The authors report total ionizing dose and single event effects on 2Gb Samsung flash memory devices after exposure to 200 MeV protons to various doses up to 83 krad(Si). They characterize observed failures and single event upsets on 22 devices from two different lots. Devices from both lots are robust to greater than 20 krad(Si) although they see evidence for lot-to-lot variation where only one lot appears robust up to about 50 krad(Si). Single event upsets are observed at a relatively low rate and are consistent with single isolated bit flips within registers that transfer bits to and from the flash memory cells.

Porous solids such as activated alumina, silica and molecular sieves generally contain significant amounts of hydrogen atoms in the form of H2O or OH even at high temperature and low humidity environment. A significant amount of this hydrogen is available for reversible isotopic exchange. This exchange reaction is slow under normal conditions and does not render itself to practical applications. But if the exchange kinetics is improved this reaction has the potential to be used for tritium removal from gas streams or for hydrogen isotopic separation.The use of catalysts to improve the exchange kinetics between hydrogen isotope in the gas phase and that in the solid phase was investigated. Granules of alumina, silica and molecular sieve were coated with platinum or palladium as the catalyst. The granules were packed in a 2-cm diameter column for isotope exchange tests. Gas streams containing different concentrations of deuterium in nitrogen or argon were fed through the protium saturated column. Isotope concentration in column effluent was monitored to generate isotope break-through curves. The curves were analyzed to produce information on the kinetics and capacity of the material. The results showed that all materials tested provided some extent of isotope exchange but some were superior …

As adaptive optics (AO) matures, it becomes possible to envision AO systems oriented towards specific important scientific goals rather than general-purpose systems. One such goal for the next decade is the direct imaging detection of extrasolar planets. An 'extreme' adaptive optics (ExAO) system optimized for extrasolar planet detection will have very high actuator counts and rapid update rates - designed for observations of bright stars - and will require exquisite internal calibration at the nanometer level. In addition to extrasolar planet detection, such a system will be capable of characterizing dust disks around young or mature stars, outflows from evolved stars, and high Strehl ratio imaging even at visible wavelengths. The NSF Center for Adaptive Optics has carried out a detailed conceptual design study for such an instrument, dubbed the eXtreme Adaptive Optics Planet Imager or XAOPI. XAOPI is a 4096-actuator AO system, notionally for the Keck telescope, capable of achieving contrast ratios >10{sup 7} at angular separations of 0.2-1'. ExAO system performance analysis is quite different than conventional AO systems - the spatial and temporal frequency content of wavefront error sources is as critical as their magnitude. We present here an overview of the XAOPI project, and an error …

A micro-mechanistic understanding of bone fracture that encompasses how cracks interact with the underlying microstructure and defines their local failure mode is lacking, despite extensive research on the response of bone to a variety of factors like aging, loading, and/or disease. Micro-mechanical models for fracture incorporating such local failure criteria have been widely developed for metallic and ceramic materials systems; however, few such deliberations have been undertaken for the fracture of bone. In fact, although the fracture event in mineralized tissues such as bone is commonly believed to be locally strain controlled, until recently there has been little experimental evidence to support this widely held belief. In the present study, a series of in vitro experiments involving a double-notch bend test geometry are performed in order to shed further light on the nature of the local cracking events that precede catastrophic fracture in bone and to define their relationship to the microstructure. Specifically, crack-microstructure interactions are examined to determine the salient toughening mechanisms in human cortical bone and to characterize how these may affect the anisotropy in fracture properties. Based on preliminary micro-mechanical models of these processes, in particular crack deflection and uncracked ligament bridging, the relative importance of these …

A technique for creating renewable reflective optics suitable for focusing of pulsed laser beams is proposed. It is based on the heating of the surface of a planar reflecting slab by an auxiliary heating source that causes thermal expansion of the slab material and creates a desired surface relief. The presence of this relief is a transient phenomenon, but, for short-enough main pulse, this does not cause any problems. If the surface is damaged by the main pulse, the shifting of the slab and repeating the whole cycle allows recreating the transient mirror. Favorable features of this approach include controlling the optics ''at a distance'', without any direct mechanical contact. Detailed discussion of the possibilities provided by this technique for the focusing of x-ray beams at the planned LCLS facility at Stanford is presented. It is concluded that 10-fold increase of intensity of 8-keV beam and 100-fold increase of intensity of 0.8 keV beam is possible. A set of design equations and constraint is formulated. The analysis presented can be used as a template for analyses of similar transient optical systems for the UV and optical range.

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The authors observed dynamically driven phase transitions in isentropically compressed bismuth. By changing the stress loading conditions they explored two distinct cases one in which the experimental signature of the phase transformation corresponds to phase-boundary crossings initiated at both sample interfaces, and another in which the experimental trace is due to a single advancing transformation front in the bulk of the material. They introduce a coupled kinetics-hydrodynamics model that for this second case enables them, under suitable simplifying assumptions, to directly extract characteristic transition times from the experimental measurements.