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The papermaking industry uses an abundance of chemicals to control the process of papermaking. These chemicals are used to control everything from paper strength to brightness. Due to the natural variability of products used in papermaking, the chemistry of the process is heavily monitored. Cationic (charge) demand is one of the most important parameters in process control of papermaking. High variations in cationic demand result in off-spec final product or paper breaks resulting in wasted production and downtime. Both of these results are costly for papermakers due to high energy consumption and loss of revenue. Currently, cationic demand is measured off-line in a laboratory setting with a heavily diluted specimen taking up to hours for results. The industry need is for an on-line, real-time measurement of cationic demand at higher consistencies to provide control feedback for the addition of cationic demand at higher consistencies to provide control feedback for the addition of cationic polymers for finely-tuned control of the paper process. Electrokinetic sonic amplitude (ESA) is a method for measuring particle charge and size, which has been employed in the semiconductor industry for several years. While this technology is generally geared for smaller particles (micron size) instead of paper fibers …

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U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Interim Staff Guidance 8 (ISG-8) for burnup credit covers actinides only, a position based primarily on the lack of definitive critical experiments and adequate radiochemical assay data that can be used to quantify the uncertainty associated with fission product credit. The accuracy of fission product neutron cross sections is paramount to the accuracy of criticality analyses that credit fission products in two respects: (1) the microscopic cross sections determine the reactivity worth of the fission products in spent fuel and (2) the cross sections determine the reaction rates during irradiation and thus influence the accuracy of predicted final concentrations of the fission products in the spent fuel. This report evaluates and quantifies the importance of the fission product cross sections in predicting concentrations of fission products proposed for use in burnup credit. The study includes an assessment of the major fission products in burnup credit and their production precursors. Finally, the cross-section importances, or sensitivities, are combined with the importance of each major fission product to the system eigenvalue (k{sub eff}) to determine the net importance of cross sections to k{sub eff}. The importances established the following fission products, listed in descending order of priority, that …

We investigate a microscope design that offers high signal sensitivity and hyperspectral imaging capabilities and allows for implementation of various optical imaging approaches while its operational complexity is minimized. This system utilizes long working distance microscope objectives that enable for off-axis illumination of the tissue thereby allowing for excitation at any optical wavelength and nearly eliminating spectral noise from the optical elements. Preliminary studies using human and animal tissues demonstrate the feasibility of this approach for real-time imaging of intact tissue microstructures using autofluorescence and light scattering imaging methods.

The sputtering of beryllium (Be) has been used at LLNL for nearly 30 years in the fabrication of laser targets. Several years ago the prospect of using sputtering to fabricate spherical Be capsules for National Ignition Facility (NIF) targets began to be explored and a basic strategy was developed that involved sputtering down onto plastic mandrels bouncing in a pan. While this appears to be very straightforward in principle, in practice sputtering has been used almost exclusively to make thin films (< 1 micron) on flat substrates. Thick films pose a significant challenge for sputtering while materials on spherical substrates are essentially unexplored. More recently, based on computational results, the point design for the first NIF ignition target capsule was specified as a Be capsule with Cu-doped layers of specific thickness, each layer with a different concentration of copper. While the work described here was motivated by the need to make the layered capsules, the primary progress on Be capsules has been the development of a more complete metallurgical understanding of the materials that are fabricated and the beginning of the exploration of the relationship between the sputter processing and microstructure of these spherical samples. At least two barriers to …

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DNA Damage Recognition and Repair (DDR&R) proteins play a critical role in cellular responses to low-dose radiation and are associated with cancer. We have performed a systematic, genome-wide computational analysis of genomic data for human genes involved in the DDR&R process. The significant achievements of this project include: 1) Construction of the computational pipeline for searching DDR&R genes, building and validation of 3D models of proteins involved in DDR&R; 2) Functional and structural annotation of the 3D models and generation of comprehensive lists of suggested knock-out mutations; and the development of a method to predict the effects of mutations. Large scale testing of technology to identify novel small binding pockets in protein structures leading to new DDRR inhibitor strategies 3) Improvements of macromolecular docking technology (see the CAPRI 1-3 and 4-5 results) 4) Development of a new algorithm for improved analysis of high-density oligonucleotide arrays for gene expression profiling; 5) Construction and maintenance of the DNA Damage Recognition and Repair Database; 6) Producing 15 research papers (12 published and 3 in preparation).

Magnets in accelerator beamlines have, for the most part, been made with ferromagnetic poles and traditionally these pole surfaces have been used as the references for external alignment aids, tooling balls, CERN sockets and so on. This practice assumes that the magnetic field is well-defined by the poles (which fails in the presence of saturation). It also fails in the case of superconducting magnets, which have no tangible poles. Other difficulties are well-known to those working in the field: the poles of an iron dipole magnet are never perfectly flat, or perfectly parallel. Where, then, is the magnetic mid-plane? The corresponding problem for iron quadrupoles, sextupoles etc, is that there is no unique inscribed circle that is tangent to more than three of these poles. The magnetic axis is then difficult to define. The greater the precision that is sought in the alignment, the more apparent these problems become. The answer, I believe, is to use magnetic field measurements to establish the references. Most magnets undergo some magnetic measurement before use--they certainly should--and so the opportunity is there to combine fiducialization with magnetic field definition. A substantial part of the Final Focus Test Beam program at SLAC will address this …

In a companion pro, collposal it is proposed to align quadrupoles of a transport line to within transverse tolerances of 5 to 10 micrometers. Such a proposal is meaningful only if the effective magnetic center of such lenses can in fact be repeatably located with respect to some external mechanical tooling to comparable accuracy. It is the purpose of this note to describe some new methods and procedures that will accomplish this aim. It will be shown that these methods are capable of yielding greater sensitivity than the more traditional methods used in the past. The notion of the ''nodal'' point is exploited.

To incorporate symmetry properties of second-order differential equations into finite difference equations, the concept of differential-difference invariants is introduced. This concept is applied to discretizing homogeneous eigenvalue problems and inhomogeneous two-point boundary value problems with various combinations of Dirichlet, Neumann, and Robin boundary conditions. It is demonstrated that discretizations constructed with differential-difference invariants yield exact results for eigenvalue spectra and superconvergent results for numerical solutions of differential equations.

In its present form, the Final Focus Test Beam (FFTB) is a transport line designed to transmit 50 GeV electron beams of SLC emittance (3 x 10{sup -10} radian-meters) straight through the central arm of the Beam Switchyard (BSY C line) with a final focus point out in the Research Yard but relatively near the end of the switchyard tunnel. The axis of the incident beam coincides with that of the SLAC linear accelerator; the final focus, some 300 meters downstream of the end of the accelerator, is displaced from this axis by about 2 meters horizontally.

Amendments to the Clean Air Act, which added radionuclides to the National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP), went into effect in 1990. Specifically, a subpart (H) of 40 CFR 61 established an annual limit on the impact to the public attributable to emissions of radionuclides from U.S. Department of Energy facilities, such as the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). As part of the new NESHAP regulations, LANL must submit an annual report to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency headquarters and the regional office in Dallas by June 30. This report includes results of monitoring at LANL and the dose calculations for the calendar year 2004.

The smoothness of a beam line refers to the quality of the relative positioning of a number of adjacent beam guiding components. The fact that smoothness is of highest priority when positioning magnets can be seen in the local tolerances imposed by the beam optics. In the past, smoothing has been done by separating horizontal and vertical misalignments and then applying some sort of analytical or manual ''feathering'' technique. The Stanford Linear Collider (SLC) did not easily lend itself to this sort of smoothing because of the highly coupled nature of its pitched and rolled beam line. This paper will discuss an attempt to develop a repeatable method which is independent of the inconsistencies of human judgment and can simultaneously smooth in two or more dimensions. Four major goals were defined for the smoothing algorithm used on the SLC alignment. The first, was to simultaneously model errors for both horizontal and vertical directions. Secondly, a smooth curve whose shape was suggested by the data and not by a predetermined model was implied by the fact that unknown systematic errors were being eliminated. Thirdly, this curve must be a reproducibly fit, independent of the inconsistent nature of human judgment. Fourth, the …

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Solute additions of zirconium are believed to decrease RIS and dislocation density through point defect trapping and recombination, which in turn reduces grain boundary sensitization and IGSCC. In this work, the effect of zirconium on the microstructure, microchemistry, hardening and IGSCC behavior of 316SS doped with zirconium to levels of 0.31 and 0.45 wt% was studied. These alloys were then irradiated with 3.2 MeV protons to doses up to 7 dpa at a temperature of 400 C. Zr additions had relatively little effect on radiation hardening. Dislocation densities were reduced and average sizes slightly increased for the +Zr alloys relative to the 316SS. Although a low amount of swelling was seen in 316SS at 3 dpa, no voids were observed in either of the +Zr alloys at 3 or 7 dpa. The difference in RIS of Cr and Ni between 316SS and 316+LoZr at 3 dpa was negligible, though RIS for 316+HiZr was considerably less than 316+LoZr at 7 dpa. The link between the oversize solute addition of Zr and its effect on IASCC shows that although the percent strain to failure increased substantially for 316+LoZr compared to the 316SS, cracking behavior was substantially worse as the number of cracks …