It has been suggested that dark matter particles which scatter inelastically from detector target nuclei could explain the apparent incompatibility of the DAMA modulation signal (interpreted as evidence for particle dark matter) with the null results from CDMS-II and XENON10. Among the predictions of inelastically interacting dark matter are a suppression of low-energy events, and a population of nuclear recoil events at higher nuclear recoil equivalent energies. This is in stark contrast to the well-known expectation of a falling exponential spectrum for the case of elastic interactions. We present a new analysis of XENON10 dark matter search data extending to E{sub nr} = 75 keV nuclear recoil equivalent energy. Our results exclude a significant region of previously allowed parameter space in the model of inelastically interacting dark matter. In particular, it is found that dark matter particle masses m{sub x} {approx}> 150 GeV are disfavored.

The UK National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) has developed a remote, non-electrical, radiation-mapping device known as RadBall (patent pending), which offers a means to locate and quantify radiation hazards and sources within contaminated areas of the nuclear industry. To date, the RadBall has been deployed in a number of technology trials in nuclear waste reprocessing plants at Sellafield in the UK. The trials have demonstrated the successful ability of the RadBall technology to be deployed and retrieved from active areas. The positive results from these initial deployment trials and the anticipated future potential of RadBall have led to the NNL partnering with the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) to further underpin and strengthen the technical performance of the technology. RadBall consists of a colander-like outer shell that houses a radiation-sensitive polymer sphere. It has no power requirements and can be positioned in tight or hard-to reach places. The outer shell works to collimate radiation sources and those areas of the polymer sphere that are exposed react, becoming increasingly less transparent, in proportion to the absorbed dose. The polymer sphere is imaged in an optical-CT scanner which produces a high resolution 3D map of optical attenuation coefficients. Subsequent analysis of the optical …

Differentially expressed genes are typically identified by analyzing the variation between replicate measurements. These procedures implicitly assume that there are no systematic errors in the data even though several sources of systematic error are known. Results-OpWise estimates the amount of systematic error in bacterial microarray data by assuming that genes in the same operon have matching expression patterns. OpWise then performs a Bayesian analysis of a linear model to estimate significance. In simulations, OpWise corrects for systematic error and is robust to deviations from its assumptions. In several bacterial data sets, significant amounts of systematic error are present, and replicate-based approaches overstate the confidence of the changers dramatically, while OpWise does not. Finally, OpWise can identify additional changers by assigning genes higher confidence if they are consistent with other genes in the same operon. Although microarray data can contain large amounts of systematic error, operons provide an external standard and allow for reasonable estimates of significance. OpWise is available at http://microbesonline.org/OpWise.

GaN/InGaN light emitting diodes (LEDs) are commercialized for lighting applications because of the cost efficient way that they produce light of high brightness. Nevertheless, there is significant room for improving their external emission efficiency from typical values below 10 percent to more than 50 percent, which are obtainable by use of other materials systems that, however, do not cover the visible spectrum. In particular, green-light emitting diodes fall short in this respect, which is troublesome since the human eye is most sensitive in this spectral range. In this letter advanced electron microscopy is used to characterize indium segregation in InGaN quantum wells of high-brightness, green LEDs (with external quantum efficiency as high as 15 percent at 75 A/cm2). Our investigations reveal the presence of 1-3 nm wide indium rich clusters in these devices with indium concentrations as large as 0.30-0.40 that narrow the band gap locally to energies as small as 2.65 eV.

Plutonium, because of its radioactive nature, ages from the 'inside out' by means of self-irradiation damage and thus produces nanoscale internal defects. The self-irradiation induced defects come in the form of Frenkel-type defects (vacancies and self-interstitial atoms), helium in-growth, and defect clusters. At present there are neither experimental nor theoretical models describing the changes in the electronic structure caused by the aging in Pu. This fact appears to be associated primarily with the absence of reasonably convincing spectroscopic evidence of the changes. This paper demonstrates that Resonant Photoemission, a variant of Photoelectron Spectroscopy, has strong sensitivity to aging of Pu samples. The spectroscopic results are correlated with an extra-atomic screening model [1], and are shown to be the fingerprint of mesoscopic or nanoscale internal damage in the Pu physical structure. This means that a spectroscopic signature of internal damage due to aging in Pu has been established.

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Coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation models (coupled GCMs) with interactive sea ice are the primary tool for investigating possible future global warming and numerous other issues in climate science. A long-standing problem with such models is that when different components of the physical climate system are linked together, the simulated climate can drift away from observations unless constrained by ad hoc adjustments to interface fluxes. However, eleven modern coupled GCMs--including three that do not employ flux adjustments--behave much better in this respect than the older generation of models. Surface temperature trends in control run simulations (with external climate forcing such as solar brightness and atmospheric carbon dioxide held constant) are small compared with observed trends, which include 20th century climate change due to both anthropogenic and natural factors. Sea ice changes in the models are dominated by interannual variations. Deep ocean temperature and salinity trends are small enough for model control runs to extend over 1000 simulated years or more, but trends in some regions, most notably the Arctic, are inconsistent among the models and may be problematic.

Highly coupled Boron plasma has been probed by spectrally resolving an x-ray source scattered by the plasma. Electron density was inferred from the inelastic feature in the collective scattering regime. In addition, the mass density inferred from the non-collective X-ray Thomson scattering has been tested with independent characterization using X-ray radiography in the same drive condition. High-intensity laser produced K-alpha radiation was used as a backlighter for these dynamically compressed plasma experiments providing a high temporal resolution of the measurements. Mass density measurements from both methods are in good agreement. The measurements yield a compression of 1.3 in agreement with detailed radiation-hydrodynamic modeling. From the charge state measured in the non-collective regime and the electron density measured in the collective regime the mass density can then be constrained to 3.15 {+-} 0.16.

We have investigated hydroxylation and water adsorption on {alpha}-Fe{sub 2}O{sub 3}(0001) at water vapor pressures up to 2 Torr and temperatures ranging from 277 to 647 K (relative humidity (RH) {<=} 34%) using ambient-pressure x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Hydroxylation occurs at the very low RH of 1 x 10{sup -7}% and precedes the adsorption of molecular water. With increasing RH, the OH coverage increases up to one monolayer (ML) without any distinct threshold pressure. Depth profiling measurements showed that hydroxylation occurs only at the topmost surface under our experimental conditions. The onset of molecular water adsorption varies from {approx}2 x 10{sup -5} to {approx}4 x 10{sup -2}% RH depending on sample temperature and water vapor pressure. The coverage of water reaches I ML at {approx} 15% RH and increases to 1.5 ML at 34% RH.

A novel method to detect and correct inaccuracies in a set of unconstrained dense correspondences between two images is presented. Starting with a robust, general-purpose dense correspondence algorithm, an initial pose estimate and dense 3D scene reconstruction are obtained and bundle-adjusted. Reprojection errors are then computed for each correspondence pair, which is used as a metric to distinguish high and low-error correspondences. An affine neighborhood-based coarse-to-fine iterative search algorithm is then applied only on the high-error correspondences to correct their positions. Such an error detection and correction mechanism is novel for unconstrained dense correspondences, for example not obtained through epipolar geometry-based guided matching. Results indicate that correspondences in regions with issues such as occlusions, repetitive patterns and moving objects can be identified and corrected, such that a more accurate set of dense correspondences results from the feedback-based process, as proven by more accurate pose and structure estimates.

The production of stable, high power, coherent synchrotron radiation at sub-terahertz frequency at the electron storage ring BESSY opens a new region in the electromagnetic spectrum to explore physical properties of materials. Just as conventional synchrotron radiation has been a boon to x-ray science, coherent synchrotron radiation may lead to many new innovations and discoveries in THz physics. With this new accelerator-based radiation source we have been able to extend traditional infrared measurements down into the experimentally poorly accessible sub-THz frequency range. The feasibility of using the coherent synchrotron radiation in scientific applications was demonstrated in a series of experiments: We investigated shallow single acceptor transitions in stressed and unstressed Ge:Ga by means of photoconductance measurements below 1 THz. We have directly measured the Josephson plasma resonance in optimally doped Bi{sub 2}Sr{sub 2}CaCu{sub 2}O{sub 8} for the first time and finally we succeeded to confine the sub-THz radiation for spectral near-field imaging on biological samples such as leaves and human teeth.

The properties of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanotetrapod lasers are characterized by a novel ultrafast two-color pump/stimulated emission probe technique. Single legs of tetrapod species are isolated by a microscope objective, pumped by 267 nm pulses, and subjected to a time-delayed 400 nm optical injection pulse, which permits investigation of the ultrafast carrier dynamics in the nanosize materials. With the optical injection pulse included, a large increase in the stimulated emission at 400 nm occurs, which partially depletes the carriers at this wavelength and competes with the normal 390 nm lasing. At the 390 nm lasing wavelengths, the optical injection causes a decrease in the stimulated emission due to the energetic redistribution of the excited carrier depletion, which occurs considerably within the time scale of the subpicosecond duration of the injection pulse. The effects of the optical injection on the spectral gain are employed to probe the lasing dynamics, which shows that the full width at half maximum of the lasing time is 3 ps.

The effects of grain-boundary chemistry on the mechanical properties were investigated on high-purity silicon nitride ceramics, specifically involving the role of oxygen. Varying the grain-boundary oxygen content, by control of oxidizing heat treatments and sintering additives, was found to result in a transition in fracture mechanism from transgranular to intergranular fracture, with an associated increase in fracture toughness. This phenomenon is correlated to an oxygen-induced change in grain-boundary chemistry that appears to affect fracture by ''weakening'' the interface, facilitating debonding and crack advance along the boundaries, and consequently toughening by grain bridging. It is concluded that if the oxygen content in the thin grain-boundary films exceeds a lower limit, which is {approx}0.87 equiv% oxygen content, then the interfacial structure and bonding characteristics favor intergranular debonding during crack propagation; otherwise, transgranular fracture ensues.

DUNE was designed to accurately model the spectrum of granular. Granular flow encompasses the motions of discrete particles. The particles are macroscopic in that there is no Brownian motion. The flow can be thought of as a dispersed phase (the particles) interacting with a fluid phase (air or water). Validation of the physical models proceeds in tandem with simple experimental confirmation. The current development team is working toward the goal of building a flexible architecture where existing technologies can easily be integrated to further the capability of the simulation. We describe the DUNE architecture in some detail using physics models appropriate for an imploding liner experiment.

In this paper we extend the difference formulation for radiation transport to the case of a single atomic line. We examine the accuracy, performance and stability of the difference formulation within the framework of the Symbolic Implicit Monte Carlo method. The difference formulation, introduced for thermal radiation by some of the authors, has the unique property that the transport equation is written in terms that become small for thick systems. We find that the difference formulation has a significant advantage over the standard formulation for a thick system. The correct treatment of the line profile, however, requires that the difference formulation in the core of the line be mixed with the standard formulation in the wings, and this may limit the advantage of the method. We bypass this problem by using the gray approximation. We develop three Monte Carlo solution methods based on different degrees of implicitness for the treatment of the source terms, and we find only conditional stability unless the source terms are treated fully implicitly.

Article on the analysis of cDNA libraries from developing seeds of guar (Cyamopsis tetragonoloba (L.) Taub).

The successful operation (with {beta} {le} 60%, classical ions and electrons with Te = 250 eV) of the Gas Dynamic Trap (GDT) device at the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics (BINP) in Novosibirsk, Russia, extrapolates to a 2 MW/m{sup 2} Dynamic Trap Neutron Source (DTNS), which burns only {approx}100 g of tritium per full power year. The DTNS has no serious physics, engineering, or technology obstacles; the extension of neutral beam lines to steady state can use demonstrated engineering; and it supports near-term tokamaks and volume neutron sources. The DTNS provides a neutron spectrum similar to that of ITER and satisfies the missions specified by the materials community to test fusion materials (listed as one of the top grand challenges for engineering in the 21st century by the U.S. National Academy of Engineering) and subcomponents (including tritium-breeding blankets) needed to construct DEMO. The DTNS could serve as the first Fusion Nuclear Science Facility (FNSF), called for by ReNeW, and could provide the data necessary for licensing subsequent FSNFs.

Article about Jean Scheidnes' experience walking the runway for Stephen Moser's clothing line, Made in Heaven.

This article discusses the linear response to perturbation of nonexponential renewal processes.

Article on the solvation descriptors for pesticides from the solubility of solids and diuron as an example.