Models of late-time neutrino mass generation contain new interactions of the cosmic background neutrinos with supernova relic neutrinos (SRNs). Exchange of an on-shell light scalar may lead to significant modification of the differential SRN flux observed at earth. We consider an Abelian U(1) model for generating neutrino masses at low scales, and show that there are cases for which the changes induced in the flux allow one to distinguish the Majorana or Dirac nature of neutrinos, as well as the type of neutrino mass hierarchy (normal or inverted or quasi-degenerate). In some region of parameter space the determination of the absolute values of the neutrino masses is also conceivable. Measurements of the presence of these effects may be possible at the next-generation water Cerenkov detectors enriched with Gadolinium, or a 100 kton liquid argon detector.

Sulfur-oxidizing epsilonproteobacteria are common in a variety of sulfidogenic environments. These autotrophic and mixotrophic sulfur-oxidizing bacteria are believed to contribute substantially to the oxidative portion of the global sulfur cycle. In order to better understand the ecology and roles of sulfur-oxidizing epsilonproteobacteria, in particular those of the widespread genus Sulfurimonas, in biogeochemical cycles, the genome of Sulfurimonas denitrificans DSM1251 was sequenced. This genome has many features, including a larger size (2.2 Mbp), that suggest a greater degree of metabolic versatility or responsiveness to the environment than seen for most of the other sequenced epsilonproteobacteria. A branched electron transport chain is apparent, with genes encoding complexes for the oxidation of hydrogen, reduced sulfur compounds, and formate and the reduction of nitrate and oxygen. Genes are present for a complete, autotrophic reductive citric acid cycle. Many genes are present that could facilitate growth in the spatially and temporally heterogeneous sediment habitat from where Sulfurimonas denitrificans was originally isolated. Many resistance-nodulation-development family transporter genes (10 total) are present; of these, several are predicted to encode heavy metal efflux transporters. An elaborate arsenal of sensory and regulatory protein-encoding genes is in place, as are genes necessary to prevent and respond to oxidative stress.

The superconducting coupling solenoid to be applied in the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) is made from copper matrix Nb-Ti conductors with inner radius of 750 mm, length of 285 mm and thickness of 102.5 mm at room temperature. The magnetic field up to 2.6 T at the magnet centerline is to keep the muons within the MICE RF cavities. Its self inductance is around 592 H and its magnet stored energy is about 13 MJ at a full current of 210 A for the worst operation case of the MICE channel. The stress induced inside the coil during cool down and charging is relatively high. Two test coils are to build and test in order to validate the design method and develop the fabrication technique required for the coupling coil winding, one is 350 mm inner diameter and full length same as the coupling coil, and the other is one-quarter length and 1.5 m diameter. The 1.5 m diameter coil will be charged to strain conditions that are greater than would be encountered in the coupling coil. This paper presents detailed design of the test coils as well as developed winding skills. The analyses on stress in coil assemblies, …

Nanoscale materials provide unique properties that will enable new technologies and enhance older ones. One area of intense activity in which nanoscale materials are being used is in the development of new functional materials for battery applications.1-4 This effort promises superior materials with properties that circumvent many of the problems associated with traditional battery materials. Previously we have worked on several approaches for using nanoscale materials for application as cathode materials in rechargeable Li batteries.5-11 Our recent work has focused on synthesizing MnO2 nanoparticles and using conducting polymers to electronically address these particles in nanoparticle assemblies. This presentation will focus on those efforts. MnO2 nanoparticles that are encapsulated with poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) are prepared using 3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene (EDOT) as a chemical reductant for permanganate anion. This non-aqueous preparation is based on a recent report of a similar method for preparation of PEDOT-encapsulated Au nanoparticles.12 We also describe the synthesis of MnO2 colloidal nanoparticles prepared using an aqueous route involving reduction of permanganate anion with butanol using a previously described route.13 We report the synthesis and characterization of the PEDOT material, and the aqueous colloidal material. We show that the aqueous colloidal nanoparticles can be trapped in thin films using a layer-by-layer deposition …

We present simple string models which dynamically break supersymmetry without non-Abelian gauge dynamics. The Fayet model, the Polonyi model, and the O'Raifeartaigh model each arise from D-branes at a specific type of singularity. D-brane instanton effects generate the requisite exponentially small scale of supersymmetry breaking.

We present analytic solutions to two test problems that can be used to check the hydrodynamic implementation in computer codes designed to calculate the propagation of shocks in spherically convergent geometry. Our analysis is restricted to fluid materials with constant bulk modulus. In the first problem we present the exact initial acceleration and pressure gradient at the outer surface of a sphere subjected to an exponentially decaying pressure of the form P(t) = P{sub 0}e{sup -at}. We show that finely-zoned hydro-code simulations are in good agreement with our analytic solution. In the second problem we discuss the implosions of incompressible spherical fluid shells and we present the radial pressure profile across the shell thickness. We also discuss a semi-analytic solution to the time-evolution of a nearly spherical shell with arbitrary but small initial 3-dimensional (3-D) perturbations on its inner and outer surfaces.

The study of dislocation nucleation in closed-packed metals by nanoindentation has recently attracted much interest. Here, we address the peculiarities of the incipient plasticity in body centered cubic (bcc) metals using low index Ta single-crystals as a model system. The combination of nanoindentation with high-resolution atomic force microscopy provides us with experimental atomic-scale information on the process of dislocation nucleation and multiplication. Our results reveal a unique deformation behavior of bcc Ta at the onset of plasticity which is distinctly different from that of closed-packed metals. Most noticeable, we observe only one rather than a sequence of discontinuities in the load-displacement curves. This and other differences are discussed in context of the characteristic plastic deformation behavior of bcc metals.

A future high-energy electron-ion collider would explore the non-linear weakly-coupled regime of QCD, and test the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) approach to high-energy scattering. Hard diffraction in deep inelastic scattering off nuclei will provide many fundamental measurements. In this work, the nuclear diffractive structure function F{sub 2,A}{sup D} is predicted in the CGC framework, and the features of nuclear enhancement and suppression are discussed.

Phylogenetic relationships among species of the salamanderfamily Salamandridae are investigated using nearly 3000 nucleotide basesof newly reported mitochondrial DNA sequence data from the mtDNA genicregion spanning the genes tRNALeu-COI. This study uses nearlycomprehensive species-level sampling to provide the first completephylogeny for the Salamandridae. Deep phylogenetic relationships amongthe three most divergent lineages in the family Salamandrina terdigitata,a clade comprising the "True" salamanders, and a clade comprising allnewts except S. terdigitata are difficult to resolve. However, mostrelationships within the latter two lineages are resolved with robustlevels of branch support. The genera Euproctus and Triturus arestatistically shown to be nonmonophyletic, instead each contains adiverse set of lineages positioned within the large newt clade. The genusParamesotriton is also resolve as a nonmonophyletic group, with the newlydescribed species P. laoensis constituting a divergent lineage placed ina sister position to clade containing all Pachytriton species and allremaining Paramesotriton species. Sequence divergences between P.laoensis and other Paramesotriton species are as great as those comparingP. laoensis and species of the genera Cynops and Pachytriton. Analyses oflineage diversification across the Salamandridae indicate that, despiteits exceptional diversity, lineage accumulation appears to have beenconstant across time, indicating that it does not represent a truespecies radiation.

From the history of the Commission, it began with a large number of members. It was found that it was difficult to gain agreement by correspondence between such a large group. A smaller group was elected to operate by correspondence and make decisions. It operated successfully for a half century in this manner. With funding available, the Commission membership grew larger but they.discussed all matters face to face at Commission meetings. Subcommittees were appointed to pursue specialized topics and members reported and discussed their subcommittee results directly to the Commission at the face to face meetings. With the change in the bylaws, future face to face meetings will no longer be an option for the members of the Commission and its subcommittees, unless all members provide their own funds or those of their host institutions. The funding and membership restrictions are all serious topics, which require a thorough discussion.

We present equation of state results from impulsively stimulated light scattering (ISLS) experiments conducted in diamond anvil cells on pure supercritical fluids. We have made measurements on fluid H{sub 2}O (water), and CH{sub 3}OH (methanol). Sound speeds measured through ISLS have allowed us to refine existing potential models used in the exponential-6 (EXP-6) detonation product library [Fried, L. E., and Howard, W. M., J. Chem. Phys. 109 (17): 7338-7348 (1998).]. The refined models allow us to more accurately assess the chemical composition at the Chapman-Jouget (C-J) state of common energetic materials. We predict that water is present in appreciable quantities at the C-J state of energetic materials HMX, RDX, and nitro methane.

We performed ab initio quantum chemical studies for the development of intra and intermolecular interaction potentials for formic acid for use in molecular dynamics simulations of formic acid molecular crystal. The formic acid structures considered in the ab initio studies include both the cis and trans monomers which are the conformers that have been postulated as part of chains constituting liquid and crystal phases under extreme conditions. Although the cis to trans transformation is not energetically favored, the trans isomer was found as a component of stable gas-phase species. Our decomposition scheme for the interaction energy indicates that the hydrogen bonded complexes are dominated by the Hartree-Fock forces while parallel clusters are stabilized by the electron correlation energy. The calculated three-body and higher interactions are found to be negligible, thus rationalizing the development of an atom-atom pair potential for formic acid based on high-level ab initio calculations of small formic acid clusters. Here we present an atom-atom pair potential that includes both intra- and inter-molecular degrees of freedom for formic acid. The newly developed pair potential is used to examine formic acid in the condensed phase via molecular dynamics simulations. The isothermal compression under hydrostatic pressure obtained from molecular dynamics …

Synchrotron radiation was used to directly observe the transformation of ferrite, austenite and sigma phases during heating and cooling of 2205 duplex stainless steel. Sigma formed during the initial stages of heating, dissolved as the temperature was increased, and reformed on cooling. The dissolution temperature of sigma was measured to be 985 C {+-} 2.8 C at a heating rate of 0.25 C/s, and the kinetics of sigma formation at 850 C was determined to be slower after dissolving at 1000 C than before.

The authors present molecular dynamics simulations of aggregation kinetics in a colloidal suspension modeled as a highly asymmetric binary mixture. Starting from a configuration with largely uncorrelated colloidal particles the system relaxes by coagulation-fragmentation dynamics to a structured state of low-dimensionality clusters with an exponential size distribution. The results show that short range repulsive interactions alone can give rise to so-called cluster phases. For the present model and probably other, more common colloids, the observed clusters appear to be equilibrium phase fluctuations induced by the entropic inter-colloidal attractions.

The double spherical harmonics angular approximation in the lowest order, i.e. double P{sub 0} (DP{sub 0}), is developed for the solution of time-dependent non-equilibrium grey radiative transfer problems in planar geometry. Although the DP{sub 0} diffusion approximation is expected to be less accurate than the P{sub 1} diffusion approximation at and near thermodynamic equilibrium, the DP{sub 0} angular approximation can more accurately capture the complicated angular dependence near a non-equilibrium radiation wave front. In addition, the DP{sub 0} approximation should be more accurate in non-equilibrium optically thin regions where the positive and negative angular domains are largely decoupled. We develop an adaptive angular technique that locally uses either the DP{sub 0} or P{sub 1} flux-limited diffusion approximation depending on the degree to which the radiation and material fields are in thermodynamic equilibrium. Numerical results are presented for two test problems due to Su and Olson and to Ganapol and Pomraning for which semi-analytic transport solutions exist. These numerical results demonstrate that the adaptive P{sub 1}-DP{sub 0} diffusion approximation can yield improvements in accuracy over the standard P{sub 1} diffusion approximation, both without and with flux-limiting, for non-equilibrium grey radiative transfer.

Evolutionary conservation of DNA sequences provides a tool for the identification of functional elements in genomes. We have created a database of evolutionary conserved regions (ECRs) in vertebrate genomes entitled ECRbase that is constructed from a collection of pairwise vertebrate genome alignments produced by the ECR Browser database. ECRbase features a database of syntenic blocks that recapitulate the evolution of rearrangements in vertebrates and a collection of promoters in all vertebrate genomes presented in the database. The database also contains a collection of annotated transcription factor binding sites (TFBS) in all ECRs and promoter elements. ECRbase currently includes human, rhesus macaque, dog, opossum, rat, mouse, chicken, frog, zebrafish, and two pufferfish genomes. It is freely accessible at http://ECRbase.dcode.org.

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Both ErbB1 and ErbB2 are overexpressed or amplified in breast tumors. To examine the effects of activating ErbB receptors in a context that mimics polarized epithelial cells in vivo, we activated ErbB1 and ErbB2 homodimers in preformed, growth-arrested mammary acini cultured in three-dimensional basement membrane gels. Activation of ErbB2, but not that of ErbB1, led to a reinitiation of cell proliferation and altered the properties of mammary acinar structures. These altered structures share several properties with early-stage tumors, including a loss of proliferative suppression, an absence of lumen, retention of the basement membrane and a lack of invasive properties. ErbB2 activation also disrupted tight junctions and the cell polarity of polarized epithelia, whereas ErbB1 activation did not have any effect. Our results indicate that ErbB receptors differ in their ability to induce early stages of mammary carcinogenesis in vitro and this three-dimensional model system can reveal biological activities of oncogenes that cannot be examined in vitro in standard transformation assays.

We present recent work on a prototype compact neutron generator for associated particle imaging (API). API uses alpha particles that are produced simultaneously with neutrons in the deuterium-tritium (2D(3T,n)4 alpha) fusion reaction to determine the direction of the neutrons upon exiting the reaction. This method determines the spatial position of each neutron interaction and requires the neutrons to be generated from a small spot in order to achieve high spatial resolution. The ion source for API is designed to produce a focused ion beam with a beam spot diameter of 1-mm or less on the target. We use an axial type neutron generator with a predicted neutron yield of 108 n/s for a 50 muA D/T ion beam current accelerated to 80 kV. The generator utilizes a RF planar spiral antenna at 13.56 MHz to create a highly efficient inductively-coupled plasma at the ion source. Experimental results show that beams with an atomic ion fraction of over 80percent can be obtained while utilizing only 100 watts of RF power in the ion source. A single acceleration gap with a secondary electron suppression electrode is used in the tube. Experimental results, such as the current density, atomic ion fraction, electron temperature, …

Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can differentiate into different types of cells, and have tremendous potential for cell therapy and tissue engineering. Transforming growth factor {beta}1 (TGF-{beta}) plays an important role in cell differentiation and vascular remodeling. We showed that TGF-{beta} induced cell morphology change and an increase in actin fibers in MSCs. To determine the global effects of TGF-{beta} on MSCs, we employed a proteomic strategy to analyze the effect of TGF-{beta} on the human MSC proteome. By using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis and electrospray ionization coupled to Quadrupole/time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometers, we have generated a proteome reference map of MSCs, and identified {approx}30 proteins with an increase or decrease in expression or phosphorylation in response to TGF-{beta}. The proteins regulated by TGF-{beta} included cytoskeletal proteins, matrix synthesis proteins, membrane proteins, metabolic enzymes, etc. TGF-{beta} increased the expression of smooth muscle (SM) {alpha}-actin and decreased the expression of gelsolin. Over-expression of gelsolin inhibited TGF-{beta}-induced assembly of SM {alpha}-actin; on the other hand, knocking down gelsolin expression enhanced the assembly of {alpha}-actin and actin filaments without significantly affecting {alpha}-actin expression. These results suggest that TGF-{beta} coordinates the increase of {alpha}-actin and the decrease of gelsolin to promote MSC differentiation. This …

In recent years, roof-spraying and rooftop lawns have proven effective on roofs with poor thermal insulation. However, the roofs of most buildings have insulating material to provide thermal insulation during the winter. The effects of insulation has not previously been quantified. In this study, the authors collected measurements of an insulated building to quantify the thermal effects of roof-spraying and rooftop lawns. Roof-spraying did not significantly reduce cooling loads and required significant amounts of water. The conclusion is that roof spraying is not suitable for buildings with well-insulated roofs. Rooftop lawns, however, significantly stabilized the indoor temperature while additionally helping to mitigate the heat island phenomenon.

Solidification of Aluminum alloys is modeled on uneven surfaces characterized by sinusoidal curves. Wavelengths and amplitudes of these surfaces are varied to study the effect of changing surface topography on fluid flow, macrosegregation and inverse segregation in the solidifying alloy. Solidification is initiated by convective heat removal from the uneven surfaces and simulations are carried out in both vertical and horizontal configurations. Stabilized finite element methods, recently used for modeling solidification in the presence of shrinkage and buoyancy driven flows, are used to discretize and solve the governing transport equations derived by volume averaging. The effect of varying amplitudes and wavelengths is observed in heat transfer, fluid-flow, macrosegregation and inverse segregation processes. In vertical solidification, inverse segregation, that usually occurs at the bottom of the cavities, is studied for different sinusoidal topographies quantified by a particular wavelength and amplitude. The fluid flow here is driven by a combination of shrinkage and thermosolutal buoyancy. Shrinkage driven flow arises due to different densities of solid and liquid phases. During horizontal solidification of an Aluminum alloy from uneven surfaces, thermosolutal buoyancy plays a dominant role in fluid flow and the effect of shrinkage is neglected by assuming the individual phase densities to be …

Cryogenic high-resolution X-ray spectrometers are typically operated with thin IR blocking windows to reduce radiative heating of the detector while allowing good x-ray transmission. We have estimated the temperature profile of these IR blocking windows under typical operating conditions. We show that the temperature in the center of the window is raised due to radiation from the higher temperature stages. This can increase the infrared photon flux onto the detector, thereby increasing the IR noise and decreasing the cryostat hold time. The increased window temperature constrains the maximum window size and the number of windows required. We discuss the consequences for IR blocking window design.

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