This paper discusses scientific visualization of scalar and vector fields, particularly relating to clouds and climate modeling. One cloud rendering method applies a 3-D texture to cloudiness contour surfaces, to simulate a view from outer space. The texture is advected by the wind flow, so that it follows the cloud motion. Another technique simulates multiple scattering of incident light from the sun and sky. This paper also presents a simulation of the microscopic cross-bridge motion which powers muscle contraction. It was rendered by ray-tracing contour surfaces of summed Gaussian ellipsoids approximating the actin and myosin protein shapes.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a proposed 1.8 MJ laser facility for carrying out experiments in inertial confinement fusion, currently designed for indirect drive experiments. The direct drive approach is being pursued at the 30 kJ Omega facility at the University of Rochester. In this paper we discuss the modifications to the NIF laser that would be required for both indirect and direct drive experiments. A primary concern is the additional cost of adding direct drive capability to the facility.

Chemical warfare agents may be completely destroyed (converted to H{sub 2}O, CO{sub 2}, salts) by oxidation at 90--100 C using acidified ammonium peroxydisulfate, with recycle of NH{sub 4}SO{sub 4} byproduct. The process requires no toxic or expended catalysts and produces no secondary wastes other than the precipitated inorganic content of the agents. To determine oxidative capability of peroxydisulfate at low reductant contents, we measured rate data for oxidation of 20 diverse compounds with diverse functional groups; 4 of these have bonds similar to those found in VX, HD, and GB. On an equivalence basis, integral first-order rate constants for 100 C oxidation are 0.012{plus_minus}0.005 min{sup {minus}1} for di-isopropyl-methyl-phosphonate, methyl phosphonic acid, triethylamine, and 2,2{prime}-thiodiethanol at low initial concentrations of 50 ppM(as carbon) and pH 1.5. To provide scale-up equations for a bulk chemical agent destruction process, we measured time-dependent oxidation of bulk model chemicals at high concentrations (0.5 N) and developed and tested a quantitative model. A practical process for bulk VX destruction would begin with chemical detoxification by existing techniques (eg, hydrolysis or mild oxidation using oxone), followed by mineralization of the largely detoxified products by peroxydisulfate. Secondary wastes would be avoided by use of commercial electrolysis equipment to …

Although solid-state lasers have been the primary means by which the physics of inertial confinement fusion (ICF) have been investigated, it was previously thought that solid-state laser technology could not offer adequate efficiencies for an inertial fusion energy (IFE) power plant. Orth and co-workers have recently designed a conceptual IFE power plant, however, with a high efficiency diode-pumped solid-state laser (DPSSL) driver that utilized several recent innovations in laser technology. It was concluded that DPSSLs could offer adequate performance for IFE with reasonable assumptions. This system was based on a novel diode pumped Yb-doped Sr{sub 5}(PO{sub 4}){sub 3}F (Yb:S-FAP) amplifier. Because this is a relatively new gain medium, a project was established to experimentally validate the diode-pumping and extraction dynamics of this system at the smallest reasonable scale. This paper reports on the initial experimental results of this study. We found the pumping dynamics and extraction cross-sections of Yb:S-FAP crystals to be similar to those previously inferred by purely spectroscopic techniques. The saturation fluence for pumping was measured to be 2.2 J/cm{sup 2} using three different methods based on either the spatial, temporal, or energy transmission properties of a Yb:S-FAP rod. The small signal gain implies an emission cross section …

Direct Chemical Oxidation (DCO) refers to the use of continuously-regenerated peroxydisulfate (with possible hydrogen peroxide supplements) to effect total destruction of organic wastes in aqueous media. The process does not involve toxic catalysts or the cogeneration of secondary wastes. Peroxydisulfate (S{sub 2}O{sub 8}{sup -2}) is one the strongest known chemical oxidants. It is routinely used in laboratory total carbon analyzers--uncatalyzed at 100{degrees}C, or catalyzed by UV, platinum or dissolved transition metal ions--and detects by oxidative destruction to 0.01 ppm levels. We report: (1) development of a waste treatment approach grounded in industrial electrolysis practice and in reaction rate data for Pt-initiated S{sub 2}O{sub 8}{sup -2} oxidation at 100{degrees}C; (2) tests of an electrochemical cell generating 1.5 N peroxydisulfate solutions; (3) lower-limit rate data for destruction of surrogates for chemical warfare agents and compounds with functional groups resisting oxidation; and (4) destruction of a Dowex{reg_sign} ion exchange resin, such as used in nuclear processing. This technique is particularly suited for applications in analytical laboratories or in manufacturing industries where the waste generation is low in volume, highly toxic or fugitive, or changing. The process may be tailored for destruction of very small to bulk quantities of chemical warfare agents.

The requirements for laser uniformity are discussed in terms of the {ell}-mode spectrum. It is shown that the choice of smoothing methods can significantly alter this spectrum and that this choice should be made in the context of the target physics. Although two dimensional smoothing by spectral dispersion yields a high quality near field beam profile, it results in poor smoothing for low spatial frequency. The partially coherent light method (fiber smoothing) leads to superior smoothing at low spatial frequencies, but has very poor near field beam quality. As a result, it may be desirable to use partially coherent light during the driver pulse foot (at low intensity and when minimizing the laser imprint is critical) and smoothing by spectral dispersion during the main pulse.

In the aftermath of the Cold War, the US and Russia agreed to large reductions in nuclear weapons. To aid in the selection of long-term management options, DOE has undertaken a multifaceted study to select options for storage and disposition of plutonium in keeping with US policy that plutonium must be subjected to the highest standards of safety, security, and accountability. One alternative being considered is immobilization. To arrive at a suitable immobilization form, we first reviewed published information on high-level waste immobilization technologies and identified 72 possible plutonium immobilization forms to be prescreened. Surviving forms were further screened using multi-attribute utility analysis to determine the most promising technology families. Promising immobilization families were further evaluated to identify chemical, engineering, environmental, safety, and health problems that remain to be solved prior to making technical decisions as to the viability of using the form for long- term disposition of plutonium. From this evaluation, a detailed research and development plan has been developed to provide answers to these remaining questions.

Progress in electronic power conversion technology is making possible a new class of induction linacs that can operate at extremely high repetition rates. Advances in insulator technology, pulse forming line design and switching may also lead to a new type of high current accelerator with accelerating gradients at least an order of magnitude greater than those attainable today. The evolution of the induction accelerator pulsed power system will be discussed along with some details of these emerging technologies which are at the frontiers of accelerator technology.

Infrasound signals are regular acoustic signals in that they are longitudinal pressure waves albeit at rather low frequency. Many researchers would place infrasound frequencies in the range of 0.1 to 10.0 Hertz, with corresponding wavelengths of 3,300 to 33 meters. As with most wave phenomena, absorption decreases with decreasing frequency and infrasound propagates well in the earth's atmosphere, with geometric loss dominating other losses. This makes infrasound useful in remote monitoring activity such as the CTBT International Monitoring System (IMS). Atmospheric explosions generate a wide spectrum of acoustic frequencies; those in the audible domain are absorbed in the atmosphere and do not propagate to large distance. Lower frequency components are also present, and these do propagate to great distance. As the yield of the explosion decreases, the acoustic energy is concentrated at higher frequency than that for higher yield sources.

Crystal lattices are infinite periodic graphs that occur naturally in a variety of geometries and which are of fundamental importance in polymer science. Discrete models of protein folding use crystal lattices to define the space of protein conformations. Because various crystal lattices provide discretizations of the same physical phenomenon, it is reasonable to expect that there will exist ``invariants`` across lattices that define fundamental properties of protein folding process; an invariant defines a property that transcends particular lattice formulations. This paper identifies two classes of invariants, defined in terms of sublattices that are related to the design of algorithms for the structure prediction problem. The first class of invariants is, used to define a master approximation algorithm for which provable performance guarantees exist. This algorithm can be applied to generalizations of the hydrophobic-hydrophilic model that have lattices other than the cubic lattice, including most of the crystal lattices commonly used in protein folding lattice models. The second class of invariants applies to a related lattice model. Using these invariants, we show that for this model the structure prediction problem is intractable across a variety of three-dimensional lattices. It`` turns out that these two classes of invariants are respectively sublattices of …

Chirped pulse amplification is increasingly used to produce intense ultrashort laser pulses. When high-efficiency gratings are the dispersive element, as in the LLNL Petawatt laser, their susceptibility to laser induced damage constitutes a limitation on the peak intensities that can be reached. To obtain robust gratings, it is necessary to understand the causes of short-pulse damage, and to recognize the range of design options for high efficiency gratings. Metal gratings owe their high efficiency to their high conductivity. To avoid the inevitable light absorption that accompanies conductivity, we have developed designs for high efficiency rejection gratings that use only transparent dielectric materials. These combine the reflectivity of a multi-layer dielectric stack with a diffraction grating. We report here our present understanding of short-pulse laser induced damage, as it applies to dielectric gratings.

A novel diagnostic application of XUV lasers has been developed for the study of the hydrodynamic imprinting of laser speckle pattern on directly driven laser fusion targets. A neon-like Yttrium laser operating at 15.5 nm is used to probe thin foils of Si irradiated with an SSD smoothed laser at 0.35 mm wavelength and 6 10{sup 12} Wcm{sup {minus}2} intensity, simulating the initial phase of irradiation a laser fusion capsule. Measurements of the perturbations in target opacity are made by XUV radiography through the foil. The magnitude and Fourier composition of the perturbations has been determined both before and after Rayleigh Taylor growth showing the mode spectra of both the initial imprint and the subsequent RT growth.

The Atmospheric Release Advisory Capability (ARAC) is an operational emergency preparedness and response organization supported primarily by the Departments of Energy and Defense. ARAC can provide real-time assessments of atmospheric releases of radioactive materials at any location in the world. ARAC uses robust three-dimensional atmospheric transport and dispersion models, extensive geophysical and dose-factor databases, meteorological data-acquisition systems, and an experienced staff. Although it was originally conceived and developed as an emergency response and assessment service for nuclear accidents, the ARAC system has been adapted to also simulate non-radiological hazardous releases. For example, in 1991 ARAC responded to three major events: the oil fires in Kuwait, the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines, and the herbicide spill into the upper Sacramento River in California. ARAC`s operational simulation system, includes two three-dimensional finite-difference models: a diagnostic wind-field scheme, and a Lagrangian particle-in-cell transport and dispersion scheme. The meteorological component of ARAC`s real-time response system employs models using real-time data from all available stations near the accident site to generate a wind-field for input to the transport and dispersion model. Here we report on simulation studies of past and potential release sites to show that even in the absence of local meteorological …

In the last few years, our understanding of nuclei at extremes of stability has undergone substantial development and change. It is now thought that there is every likelihood for truly new manifestations of structure at extreme N/Z ratios, unlike anything observed to date. Changes in shell structure, residual interactions, symmetries, collective modes, and the evolution of structure are envisioned. These developing ideas expand the opportunities for nuclear structure studies with radioactive beams and focus attention on the need to develop efficient experimental techniques and improved signatures of structure. These developments are discussed along with an overview of current and future radioactive beam projects in North America.

We report on the design and successful fabrication of a dichroic multilayer stack using a procedure that allowed shifting from high reflectance to high transmittance within 89 rim and surviving high laser fluences. A design approach based on quarter-wave thick layers allowed the multilayer stack to be optically tuned in the last layers of the stack. In our case, this necessitated removing the samples from the coating chamber for a transmittance scan prior to depositing the last layers. This procedure is not commonly practiced due to thermal stress-induced failures in an oxide multilayer. However, D.J. Smith and co-workers reported that reactive e-beam evaporated hafnia from a Hf source produced laser-resistant coatings that had less coating stress compared to coatings evaporated from a HfO{sub 2} source. Tuned dichroic coatings were made that had high transmittance at 941 rim and high reflectance at 1030 nm. The coating was exposed for 5 minutes to a 100 kW/cm{sup 2} 1064 nm (180-ns pulsewidth, 10.7 kHz) laser beam and survived without microscopic damage. The same coating survived a 140 kW/cm{sup 2} of laser intensity without catastrophic damage before optical tuning were performed.

This contribution compares the response-time performance of ATM LANs using ABR EFCI, UBR FIFO, and UBR with per VC queuing switches. Our study is based on experimental as well as simulation results. We found that, with or without congestion, UBR switches with per VC queuing provide the best response times.

The Beamlet laser is a large aperture, flashlamp pumped Nd: glass laser that is a scientific prototype of an advanced Inertial Fusion laser. Beamlet has achieved third harmonic, conversion efficiency of near 80% with its nominal 35cm {times} 35cm square beam at mean 3{omega} fluences in excess of 8 J/cm{sup 2}(3-ns). Beamlet uses an adaptive optics system to correct for aberrations and achieve less than 2 {times} diffraction limited far field spot size.

This contribution addresses requirements for ATM signaling channel authentication. Signaling channel authentication is an ATM security service that binds an ATM signaling message to its source. By creating this binding, the message recipient, and even a third party, can confidently verify that the message originated from its claimed source. This provides a useful mechanism to mitigate a number of threats. For example, a denial of service attack which attempts to tear-down an active connection by surreptitiously injecting RELEASE or DROP PARTY messages could be easily thwarted when authenticity assurances are in place for the signaling channel. Signaling channel authentication could also be used to provide the required auditing information for accurate billing which is impervious to repudiation. Finally, depending on the signaling channel authentication mechanism, end-to-end integrity of the message (or at least part of it) can be provided. None of these capabilities exist in the current specifications.

Substantial inventories of excess plutonium are expected to result from dismantling US and Russian nuclear weapons. Disposition of this material should be a high priority in both countries. Various disposition options are under consideration. One option is to vitrify the plutonium with the addition of {sup 137}Cs or high-level waste to act as a deterrent to proliferation. The primary safety problem associated with vitrification of plutonium is to avoid criticality in form fabrication and in the final repository over geologic time. Recovery should be as difficult (costly) as the recovery of plutonium from spent fuel.

As pointed out in the introduction of Part 1, the isolation strategy can be used to effectively decouple a` structure from its environment and thus the structure can be protected from damaging seismic loads or unwanted vibrations and noises from the environment. The method has been used for solving vibration and shock problems in machinery and equipment for many years, but its application to the protection of structures from seismic loadings is relatively recent. Owing to the current interest generated by the Northridge and Kobe earthquakes, an but one of the papers in this publication deal with seismic isolation. The one paper on vibration isolation by Yonekura discusses a measure to protect buildings from detrimental excitations of running trains. Seismic or base isolation has been used to protect bridges, buildings, industrial facilities, and nuclear reactors from damaging seismic loads since 1970. For each of these applications base isolation offers some unique advantages that the conventional strengthening method cannot. Some of these advantages are discussed in papers presented in this publication.

Two basic engineering strategies for the protection of equipment and structures from damages caused by seismic shock and vibration loadings are, namely, strengthening and isolation. They work on almost totally different principles; the strengthening strategy aims primarily at increasing the capacity or the ability of the structure to withstand the dynamic loading by incorporating additional structural materials and components, while the isolation strategy focuses on reducing the demand or the transmitted loading on the structure by adding an isolator or isolation system between the structure and the source of the loading. The isolation strategy is often used for filtering out unwanted vibrations and noises. In practice, the isolation strategy has the advantage of not depending on alterations to the isolated structure and is often the preferred method for applications in equipment and in some structures.

In the RHIC arc dipoles, the center of the cold mass lies above the center of the cryostat. At the maximum design field, the magnetic flux lines leak through the yoke to the asymmetrically located cryostat, which provides an additional return path. This introduces a systematic top-bottom asymmetry leading to a skew quadrupole term at high fields. A similar asymmetry is also created by any difference in weights of the upper and the lower yoke halves. Data from measurements of several RHIC dipoles are presented to study this effect. In the current production series of the RDIC dipoles, an attempt is made to compensate the effect of the cryostat by an asymmetry in the iron yoke. Seven dipoles with this type of yoke have been cold tested, and show a reduced saturation in the skew quadrupole term, as expected.

An article written by Janet Tyson about the need to support local museums. The Amon Carter Museum is featured in the piece.

A high field quality in quadrupoles for the interaction region is crucial to the luminosity performance of high energy colliders such as the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The field quality in magnets is limited in part by manufacturing tolerances in the parts and assembly. A tuning shim method has been developed to reduce the relative field errors ({Delta}B/B) from {approximately}10{sup {minus}4} to {approximately}10{sup {minus}5} at 213 of the coil radius. Eight tuning shims having a variable thickness of iron are inserted after the construction and measurement of field harmonics in the magnet. In this paper the tuning shim technique is described for RHIC interaction region quadrupoles. The results of calculations and measurement are also presented.