We explore the possibility that all close binaries, i.e. those with periods {approx}< 3 d, including contact (W UMa) binaries, are produced from initially wider binaries (periods of say 10's of days) by the action of a triple companion through the medium of Kozai Cycles with Tidal Friction (KCTF).

Hard x-ray point focusing by two crossed multilayer Laue lenses is studied using a full-wave modeling approach. This study shows that for a small numerical aperture, the two consecutive diffraction processes can be decoupled into two independent ones in respective directions. Using this theoretical tool, we investigated adverse effects of various misalignments on the 2D focus profile and discussed the tolerance to them. We also derived simple expressions that described the required alignment accuracy.

Iron-based amorphous alloys are desirable industrial materials since they are highly resistant to corrosion and possess enhanced hardness for wear resistance. The amorphous materials can be produced from the melt as powder and later spray deposited as coatings on large engineering structures. As a laboratory experiment, SAM2X5 powder was coated on electrochemical specimens of 304SS for testing. Results show that the coated specimens did not perform satisfactorily during the laboratory testing. This is because of partial devitrification during the deposition of the powder on the small specimen substrates.

One of the most important applications of the general purpose Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNPS and MCNPX) codes is neutron shielding design. We employed this method to simulate the shield of a 14-MeV neutron generator used as a thermal neutron source providing an external thermal neutron beam for testing large area neutron detectors developed for diffraction studies in biology and also useful for national security applications. Nuclear reactors have been the main sources of neutrons used for scientific applications. In the past decade, however, a large number of reactors have been shut down, and the importance of other, smaller devices capable of providing neutrons for research has increased. At Brookhaven National Laboratory a moderated Am-Be neutron source with shielding is used for neutron detector testing. This source is relatively weak, but provides a constant flux of neutrons, even when not in use. The use of a 14 MeV energized neutron generator, with an order of magnitude higher neutron flux has been considered to replace the Am-Be source, but the higher fast neutron yield requires a more careful design of moderator and shielding. In the present paper we describe a proposed shielding configuration based on Monte Carlo calculations, and provide calculated neutron …

Iron-based amorphous alloys can be more resistant to corrosion than polycrystalline materials of similar compositions. However, when the amorphous alloys are exposed to high temperatures they may recrystallize (or devitrify) thus losing their resistance to corrosion. Four different types of amorphous alloys melt spun ribbon specimens were exposed to several temperatures for short periods of time. The resulting corrosion resistance was evaluated in seawater at 90 C and compared with the as-prepared ribbons. Results show that the amorphous alloys can be exposed to 600 C for 1-hr. without losing the corrosion resistance; however, when the ribbons were exposed at 800 C for 1-hr. their localized corrosion resistance decreased significantly.

Iron-based amorphous alloys are produced by rapid solidification from the melt. These alloys may possess unique mechanical and corrosion resistant properties. The chemical composition of the alloy may influence the cooling rate that is necessary for the alloys to be completely vitreous. At the same time, the corrosion resistance of the amorphous alloys may also depend on their chemical composition. This paper examines the anodic behavior of iron-based amorphous alloys containing three different concentrations (1, 3 and 5 atomic %) of yttrium (Y) in several electrolyte solutions. Results from polarization resistance potentiodynamic polarization show that when the alloy contains 5% atomic Y, the corrosion resistance decreases.

We developed a velocimeter system several years ago that uses the heterodyne method [1]. This system is assembled from commercially available components that were developed for the telecommunications industry. There are several advantages of this system over the traditional VISAR method that has made it increasingly popular. This system is compact, portable, and relatively inexpensive. The maximum velocity of this system is determined by the electrical bandwidth of the electronics and the digitizer sample rate. The maximum velocity for the system described here is over 5 km/s.

We report a measurement of the longitudinal double-spinasymmetry A_LL and the differential cross section for inclusivemidrapidity jet production in polarized proton collisions at sqrt(s)=200GeV. The cross section data cover transverse momenta 5<pT<50GeV/c and agree with next-to-leading order perturbative QCD evaluations.The A_LL data cover 5<pT<17 GeV/c and disfavor at 98 percentC.L. maximal positive gluon polarization in the polarizednucleon.

The objective of the study was to evaluate rainfall and water table elevation data in search of a correlation that could be used to understand and predict water elevation changes. This information will be useful in placing screen zones for future monitoring wells and operations of groundwater treatment units. Fifteen wells in the General Separations Area (GSA) at Savannah River Site were evaluated from 1986 through 2001. The study revealed that the water table does respond to rainfall with minimal delay. (Water level information was available monthly, which restricted the ability to evaluate a shorter delay period.) Water elevations were found to be related to the cumulative sum (Q-Delta Sum) of the difference between the average rainfall for a specific month and the actual rainfall for that month, calculated from an arbitrary starting point. Water table elevations could also be correlated between wells, but using the right well for correlation was very important. The strongest correlation utilized a quadratic equation that takes into account the rainfall in a specific area and the rainfall from an adjacent area that contributes through a horizontal flow. Specific values vary from well to well as a result of geometry and underground variations. R2's for …

Ion beam with a fast fall time is useful in building neutron generators for the application of detecting hidden, gamma-shielded SNM using differential die-away (DDA) technique. Typically a fall time of less than 1 {micro}s can't be achieved by just turning off the power to the ion source due to the slow decay of plasma density (partly determined by the fall time of the RF power in the circuit). In this paper, we discuss the method of using an array of mini-apertures (instead of one large aperture beam) such that gating the beamlets can be done with low voltage and a small gap. This geometry minimizes the problem of voltage breakdown as well as reducing the time of flight to produce fast gating. We have designed and fabricated an array of 16 apertures (4 x 4) for a beam extraction experiment. Using a gating voltage of 1400 V and a gap distance of 1 mm, the fall time of extracted ion beam pulses is less than 1 {micro}s at various beam energies ranging between 400 eV to 800 eV. Usually merging an array of beamlets suffers the loss of beam brightness, i.e., emittance growth, but that is not an important …

Beam-gas collision created experimental background, i.e., singles, has affected heavy ion and polarized proton operations in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The gas molecules in interaction region are mainly caused by the electron induced gas desorption. and the electrons are produced from the beam induced electron multipacting, or called electron cloud. The background has a dependence on the usual electron cloud related parameters, such as the bunch intensity, bunch spacing, and the solenoid field. With the RHIC upgrade plan, the experimental background may become a luminosity limiting factor. Mitigations are discussed.

The U.S. Department of Energy has launched the commercial building initiative (CBI) in pursuit of its research goal of achieving zero-net-energy commercial buildings (ZNEB), i.e. ones that produce as much energy as they use. Its objective is to make these buildings marketable by 2025 such that they minimize their energy use through cutting-edge, energy-efficiency technologies and meet their remaining energy needs through on-site renewable energy generation. This paper examines how such buildings may be implemented within the context of a cost- or CO2-minimizing microgrid that is able to adopt and operate various technologies: photovoltaic modules (PV) and other on-site generation, heat exchangers, solar thermal collectors, absorption chillers, and passive/demand-response technologies. A mixed-integer linear program (MILP) that has a multi-criteria objective function is used. The objective is minimization of a weighted average of the building's annual energy costs and CO2 emissions. The MILP's constraints ensure energy balance and capacity limits. In addition, constraining the building's energy consumed to equal its energy exports enables us to explore how energy sales and demand-response measures may enable compliance with the ZNEB objective. Using a commercial test site in northernCalifornia with existing tariff rates and technology data, we find that a ZNEB requires ample PV …

An assessment of the gas-phase energetics of neutral and singly and doubly charged cationic actinide monoxides and dioxides of thorium, protactinium, uranium, neptunium, plutonium, americium, and curium is presented. A consistent set of metal-oxygen bond dissociation enthalpies, ionization energies, and enthalpies of formation, including new or revised values, is proposed, mainly based on recent experimental data and on correlations with the electronic energetics of the atoms or cations and with condensed-phase thermochemistry.

Microarrays of single macrophage cell based sensors weredeveloped and demonstrated for real time bacterium detection bysynchrotron FTIR microscopy. The cells were patterned on gold-SiO2substrates via a surface engineering technique by which the goldelectrodes were immobilized with fibronectin to mediate cell adhesion andthe silicon oxide background were passivated with PEG to resist proteinadsorption and cell adhesion. Cellular morphology and IR spectra ofsingle, double, and triple cells on gold electrodes exposed tolipopolysaccharide (LPS) of different concentrations were compared toreveal the detection capabilities of these biosensors. The single-cellbased sensors were found to generate the most significant IR wave numbervariation and thus provide the highest detection sensitivity. Changes inmorphology and IR spectrum for single cells exposed to LPS were found tobe time- and concentration-dependent and correlated with each other verywell. FTIR spectra from single cell arrays of gold electrodes withsurface area of 25 mu-m2, 100 mu-m2, and 400 mu-m2 were acquired usingboth synchrotron and conventional FTIR spectromicroscopes to study thesensitivity of detection. The results indicated that the developedsingle-cell platform can be used with conventional FTIRspectromicroscopy. This technique provides real-time, label-free, andrapid bacterial detection, and may allow for statistic and highthroughput analyses, and portability.

The heart of the absorber focus coil (AFC) module for the muon ionization cooling experiment (MICE) is the two-coil superconducting solenoid that surrounds the muon absorber. The superconducting magnet focuses the muons that are cooled using ionization cooling, in order to improve the efficiency of cooling. The coils of the magnet may either be run in the solenoid mode (both coils operate at the same polarity) or the gradient (the coils operate at opposite polarity). The AFC magnet cold mass support system is designed to carry a longitudinal force up to 700 kN. The AFC module will be cooled using three pulse tube coolers that produce 1.5 W of cooling at 4.2 K. One of the coolers will be used to cool the liquid (hydrogen or helium) absorber used for ionization cooling. The other two coolers will cool the superconducting solenoid. This report will describe the MICE AFC magnet. The cold mass supports will be discussed. The reasons for using a pulsed tube cooler to cool this superconducting magnet will also be discussed.

Using effective medium theory we demonstrate that the thermal conductivity of nanofluids can be significantly enhanced by the aggregation of nanoparticles into clusters. The enhancement is based purely on conduction and does not require a novel mechanism. Predictions of the effective medium theory are in excellent agreement with detailed numerical calculations on model nanofluids involving fractal clusters and show the importance of cluster morphology on thermal conductivity enhancements.

Particle accelerators are among the most complex and versatile instruments of scientific exploration. They have enabled remarkable scientific discoveries and important technological advances that span all programs within the DOE Office of Science (DOE/SC). The importance of accelerators to the DOE/SC mission is evident from an examination of the DOE document, ''Facilities for the Future of Science: A Twenty-Year Outlook''. Of the 28 facilities listed, 13 involve accelerators. Thanks to SciDAC, a powerful suite of parallel simulation tools has been developed that represent a paradigm shift in computational accelerator science. Simulations that used to take weeks or more now take hours, and simulations that were once thought impossible are now performed routinely. These codes have been applied to many important projects of DOE/SC including existing facilities (the Tevatron complex, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider), facilities under construction (the Large Hadron Collider, the Spallation Neutron Source, the Linac Coherent Light Source), and to future facilities (the International Linear Collider, the Rare Isotope Accelerator). The new codes have also been used to explore innovative approaches to charged particle acceleration. These approaches, based on the extremely intense fields that can be present in lasers and plasmas, may one day provide a path to …

The BABAR experiment has been operating at SLAC's PEP-II asymmetric B-Factory since 1999. The accelerator has achieved more than three times its original design luminosity of 3 x 10{sup 33} cm{sup -2} s{sup -1}, with plans for an additional factor of three in the next two years. To meet the experiment's performance requirements in the face of significantly higher trigger and background rates, the drift chamber's front-end readout system has been redesigned around the Xilinx Spartan 3 FPGA. The new system implements analysis and feature-extraction of digitized waveforms in the front-end, reducing the data bandwidth required by a factor of four.

A theory of yielding and failure for homogeneous and isotropic materials is given. The theory is calibrated by two independent, measurable properties and from those it predicts possible failure for any given state of stress. It also differentiates between ductile yielding and brittle failure. The explicit ductile-brittle criterion depends not only upon the material specification through the two properties, but also and equally importantly depends upon the type of imposed stress state. The Mises criterion is a special (limiting) case of the present theory. A close examination of this case shows that the Mises material idealization does not necessarily imply ductile behavior under all conditions, only under most conditions. When the first invariant of the yield/failure stress state is sufficiently large relative to the distortional part, brittle failure will be expected to occur. For general material types, it is shown that it is possible to have a state of spreading plastic flow, but as the elastic-plastic boundary advances, the conditions for yielding on it can change over to conditions for brittle failure because of the evolving stress state. The general theory is of a three dimensional form and it applies to full density materials for which the yield/failure strength in …

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has developed an improved method for fabrication of a thin film Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) using a colloidal technique. Dense, crack-free, yttria-stabilized-zirconia (YSZ) films of up to 100 microns thick were deposited on nickel oxide/YSZ substrates and porous La{sub 0.85}Sr{sub 0.15}MnO{sub 3} (LSM) substrates. The new technique was also used to deposit a compositionally-graded film of YSZ and Ce{sub 0.8}Y{sub 0.2}O{sub 2} (CYO), which is useful for matching the thermal expansion coefficient to an adjacent layer. The SOFC is a solid-state electrochemical device that converts the chemical energy of fuel directly into electricity. Its efficiency and low emission positions SOFC on the short list of power generation technologies for the 21st century. However, commercialization efforts are hampered in part by the high cost of fabrication. One area of high cost is the fabrication of thin, defect free coatings. It is desirable to produce coatings that are in the range of 10-40 microns to minimize resistance yet maintain mechanical integrity. Deposition of films thicker than 10 microns in a single step using conventional techniques such as dip coating, spin coating, slurry painting or electrophoretic deposition generally results in cracking due to shrinkage when the solvent …

Synchrotron radiation has become an indispensable research tool for a growing number of scientists in a seemingly ever expanding number of disciplines. We can thank the European Synchrotron Research Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble for taking an innovative step toward achieving the educational goal of explaining the nature and benefits of synchrotron radiation to audiences ranging from the general public (including students) to government officials to scientists who may be unfamiliar with x-ray techniques and synchrotron radiation. ESRF is the driving force behind a new CD-ROM playable on both PCs and Macs titled Synchrotron light to explore matter. Published by Springer-Verlag, the CD contains both English and French versions of a comprehensive overview of the subject.

The quality of infrared microscopy and spectroscopy data collected at synchrotron based sources is strongly dependent on signal-to-noise. We have successfully identified and suppressed several noise sources affecting Beamlines 1.4.2, 1.4.3, and 1.4.4 at the Advanced Light Source (ALS), resulting in a significant increase in the quality of FTIR spectra obtained. In this paper, we present our methods of noise source analysis, the negative effect of noise on the infrared beam quality, and the techniques used to reduce the noise. These include reducing the phase noise in the storage ring radio-frequency (RF) system, installing an active mirror feedback system, analyzing and changing physical mounts to better isolate portions of the beamline optics from low-frequency environmental noise, and modifying the input signals to the main ALS RF system. We also discuss the relationship between electron beam energy oscillations at a point of dispersion and infrared beamline noise.

The local atomic environment and vibrational properties of atoms in monoclinic pure {alpha}-plutonium as well as orthorhombic pure a-uranium and its low-temperature charge-density-wave (CDW) modulation are examined by extended x-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy (EXAFS). Pu L{sub III}-edge and U L{sub III}-edge EXAFS data measured at low temperatures verify the crystal structures of {alpha}-U and {alpha}-Pu samples previously determined by x-ray diffraction and neutron scattering. Debye-Waller factors from temperature-dependent EXAFS measurements are fit with a correlated Debye model. The observed Pu-Pu bond correlated Debye temperature of {theta}{sub cD}({alpha}-Pu) = 162 {+-} 5 K for the pure {alpha}-Pu phase agrees with our previous measurement of the correlated Debye temperature of the gallium-containing {alpha}{prime}-Pu phase in a mixed phase 1.9 at% Ga-doped {alpha}{prime}-Pu/{delta}-Pu alloy. The temperature dependence of the U-U nearest neighbor Debye-Waller factor exhibits a sharp discontinuity in slope near T{sub CDW} = 43 K, the transition temperature at which the charge-density wave (CDW) in {alpha}-U condenses from a soft phonon mode along the (100) direction. Our measurement of the CDW using EXAFS is the first observation of the structure of the CDW in polycrystalline {alpha}-U. The different temperature dependence of the Debye-Waller factor for T &lt; T{sub CDW} can be …

Extensional wave attenuation and velocity measurements on a high permeability Monterey sand were performed over a range of gas saturations for imbibition and degassing conditions. These measurements were conducted using extensional wave pulse propagation and resonance over a 1-9 kHz frequency range for a hydrostatic confining pressure of 8.3 MPa. Analysis of the extensional wave data and the corresponding X-ray CT images of the gas saturation show strong attenuation resulting from the presence of the gas (Q{sub E} dropped from 300 for the dry sand to 30 for the partially-saturated sand), with larger attenuation at a given saturation resulting from heterogeneous gas distributions. The extensional wave velocities are in agreement with Gassmann theory for the test with near-homogeneous gas saturation and with a patchy saturation model for the test with heterogeneous gas saturation. These results show that partially-saturated sands under moderate confining pressure can produce strong intrinsic attenuation for extensional waves.