Using a density functional theory based approach that treats the 5f electrons relativistically, a Pu electronic structure with zero net magnetic moment is obtained, where the 5f orbital and 5f spin moments cancel each other. By combining the spin and orbital specific densities of states with state, spin and polarization specific transition moments, it is possible to reconstruct the experimentally observed photoemission spectra from Pu. Extrapolating to a spin-resolving Fano configuration, it is shown how this would resolve the extant controversy over Pu electronic structure.

A salt fog test of an iron-based amorphous metal, SAM2X5, coated Type 316L stainless steel (SS316L) cylinder was made. The cylinder was 30-inch diameter by 88-inch long, and 3/8-inch thick. One end was welded shut with a SS316L end cap before coating. The body of the cylinder and the end cap were both coated. The cylinder was coated with SAM2X5 by the HVOF thermal spray process. The coating thickness was 0.015-inch to 0.019-inch thick. The cylinder was tested in a horizontal position. Also included in the test for reference purposes were five coupons (2-inch x 2-inch x 1/8-inch) of uncoated Type 1018 carbon steel (1018CS). The test used an abbreviated form of GM 9540P. Each cycle was 6 hours in duration and the cylinder and reference samples were exposed to a total of eight cycles. The cylinder was in relatively good condition after the test. Along the body of the cylinder only two pinpoint spot sized signs of rust were seen. The 1018CS reference specimens were extensively rusted.

We consider the problem of generating a map between two triangulated meshes, M and M{prime}, with arbitrary and possibly differing genus. This problem has rarely been tackled in its generality. Early schemes considered only topological spheres. Recent algorithms allow inputs with an arbitrary number of tunnels but require M and M{prime} to have equal genus, mapping tunnel to tunnel. Other schemes which allow more general inputs are not guaranteed to work and the authors do not provide a characterization of the input meshes that can be processed successfully. Moreover, the techniques have difficulty dealing with coarse meshes with many tunnels. In this paper we present the first robust approach to build a map between two meshes of arbitrary unequal genus. We also provide a simplified method for setting the initial alignment between M and M{prime}, reducing reliance on landmarks and allowing the user to select 'landmark tunnels' in addition to the standard landmark vertices. After computing the map, we automatically derive a continuous deformation from M to M{prime} using a variational implicit approach to describe the evolution of non-landmark tunnels. Overall, we achieve a cross parameterization scheme that is provably robust in the sense that it can map M to …

An FPGA based digital signal processing (DSP) system for biasing and reading out multiplexed bolometric detectors for mm-wavelength telescopes is presented. This readout system is being deployed for balloon-borne and ground based cosmology experiments with the primary goal of measuring the signature of inflation with the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. The system consists of analog superconducting electronics running at 250 mK and 4 K, coupled to digital room temperature backend electronics described here. The digital electronics perform the real time functionality with DSP algorithms implemented in firmware. A soft embedded processor provides all of the slow housekeeping control and communications. Each board in the system synthesizes multi-frequency combs of 8 to 32 carriers in the MHz band to bias the detectors. After the carriers have been modulated with the sky-signal by the detectors, the same boards digitize the comb directly. The carriers are mixed down to base-band and low pass filtered. The signal bandwidth of 0.050Hz-100 Hz places extreme requirements on stability and requires powerful filtering techniques to recover the sky-signal from the MHz carriers.

This paper proposes new finite element spaces that can be constructed for agglomerates of standard elements that have certain regular structure. The main requirement is that the agglomerates share faces that have closed boundaries composed of 1-d edges. The spaces resulting from the agglomerated elements are subspaces of the original de Rham sequence of H{sup 1}-conforming, H(curl) conforming, H(div) conforming and piecewise constant spaces associated with an unstructured 'fine' mesh. The procedure can be recursively applied so that a sequence of nested de Rham complexes can be constructed. As an illustration we generate coarser spaces from the sequence corresponding to the lowest order Nedelec spaces, lowest order Raviart-Thomas spaces, and for piecewise linear H{sup 1}-conforming spaces, all in three-dimensions. The resulting V-cycle multigrid methods used in preconditioned conjugate gradient iterations appear to perform similar to those of the geometrically refined case.

Cathodic arc plasmas are considered fully ionized and theycontain multiply charged ions, yet, gaseous and metal neutrals can bepresent. It is shown that they can cause a significant reduction of theion charge states as measured far from the cathode spots. Several cathodematerials were used to study the evolution the mean ion charge state as afunction of time after arc ignition. The type of cathode material, arccurrent amplitude, intentionally increased background gas, additionalsurfaces placed near the plasma flow, and other factors influence thedegree of charge state reduction because all of these factors influencethe density of neutrals. In all cases, it was found that the mean ioncharge state follows an exponential decay of first order, Q(t) = A *exp(t/tau) + Qss, where A is a parameter describing the importance of thedecay, tau is the characteristic decay time, and Qss is a steady-statevalue approached for continuous arc operation. The extrapolated valuesQ(t-->0) indicate surprisingly high mean charge states as produced atcathode spots and not "skewed" by charge exchange collisions withneutrals.

In Bousso-Polchinski models with hundreds of fluxes, we compute the effects of cosmological dynamics on the probability distribution of landscape vacua. Starting from generic initial conditions, we find that most fluxes are dynamically driven into a different and much narrower range of values than expected from landscape statistics alone. Hence, cosmological evolution will access only a tiny fraction of the vacua with small cosmological constant. This leads to a host of sharp predictions. Unlike other approaches to eternal inflation, the holographic measure employed here does not lead to staggering, an excessive spread of probabilities that would doom the string landscape as a solution to the cosmological constant problem.

We present results from an extensive spectroscopic survey, carried out with FORS on the ESO Very Large Telescope, and from an extensive multi-wavelength imaging data set from the Advanced Camera for Surveys and ground based facilities of the cluster of galaxies RDCS J1252.9-2927. We have spectroscopically confirmed 38 cluster members in the redshift range 1.22 < z < 1.25. The distribution in velocity of these spectroscopic members yields a cluster median redshift of z = 1.237 and a rest-frame velocity dispersion of 747{sub -84}{sup +74} km s{sup -1}. Star-forming members are observed to mainly populate the outskirts of the cluster while passive galaxies dominate the central cluster region. Using the 38 confirmed redshifts, we were able to resolve, for the first time at z > 1, kinematic structure. The velocity distribution, which is not Gaussian at the 95% confidence level, is consistent with two groups that are also responsible for the projected elongation of the cluster in the East-West direction. The groups are composed of 26 and 12 galaxies and have velocity dispersions of 486{sub -85}{sup +47} km s{sup -1} and 426{sub -105}{sup +57} km s{sup -1}, respectively. The elongation is also seen in the intracluster gas (from X-ray observations) …

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) will routinely fire high energy shots (approaching 10 kJ per beamline) through the final optics, located on the target chamber. After a high fluence shot, exceeding 4J/cm2 at 351 nm wavelength, the final optics will be inspected for laser-induced damage. The FODI (Final Optics Damage Inspection) system has been developed for this purpose, with requirements to detect laser-induced damage initiation and to track and size it's the growth to the point at which the optic is removed and the site mitigated. The FODI system is the 'corner stone' of the NIF optic recycle strategy. We will describe the FODI system and discuss the challenges to make optics inspection a routine part of NIF operations.

In real materials, nonlinear forces cause the frequencies of vibrating atoms to depend on amplitude. As a consequence, a large-amplitude fluctuation on the scale of the atom spacing can develop a frequency that does not resonate with the normal modes, causing energy to become trapped in an intrinsically localized mode (ILM)--also called 'discrete breather' or 'lattice soliton'. As temperature is increased, entropy is expected to stabilize increased concentrations of these random hotspots. This mechanism, which spontaneously concentrates energy, has been observed in analogous systems on a larger scale, but direct sightings at the atomic scale have proved difficult. Two challenges have hampered progress: (1) the need to separate ILMs from modes associated with crystal imperfections, and (2) complications that arise at high temperatures, including feature broadening and multiphonon processes. Here we solve both of these problems by actively creating ILMs at low temperatures in {alpha}-uranium using high-energy inelastic x-ray and neutron scattering. The ILM creation excitation occurs at energies ten times higher than conventional lattice excitations, cleanly separating it from modes associated with crystal imperfections. The discovery of this excitation not only proves the existence of ILMs in uranium but also opens up a new route for finding ILMs in …

Production of a sterile species is studied within an effective model of active-sterile neutrino mixing in a medium in thermal equilibrium. The quantum kinetic equations for the distribution functions and coherences are obtained from two independent methods: the effective action and the quantum master equation. The decoherence time scale for active-sterile oscillations is tau(dec)=2/Gamma(aa), but the evolution of the distribution functions is determined by the two different time scales associated with the damping rates of the quasiparticle modes in the medium: Gamma(1)=Gamma(aa)cos^2theta(m); Gamma(2)=Gamma(aa)sin^2theta(m) where Gamma(aa) is the interaction rate of the active species in the absence of mixing and theta(m) the mixing angle in the medium. These two time scales are widely different away from Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein resonances and preclude the kinetic description of active-sterile production in terms of a simple rate equation. We give the complete set of quantum kinetic equations for the active and sterile populations and coherences and discuss in detail the various approximations. A generalization of the active-sterile transition probability in a medium is provided via the quantum master equation. We derive explicitly the usual quantum kinetic equations in terms of the"polarization vector" and show their equivalence to those obtained from the quantum master equation and effective …

TOPS is providing high-performance, scalable sparse direct solvers, which have had significant impacts on the SciDAC applications, including fusion simulation (CEMM), accelerator modeling (COMPASS), as well as many other mission-critical applications in DOE and elsewhere. Our recent developments have been focusing on new techniques to overcome scalability bottleneck of direct methods, in both time and memory. These include parallelizing symbolic analysis phase and developing linear-complexity sparse factorization methods. The new techniques will make sparse direct methods more widely usable in large 3D simulations on highly-parallel petascale computers.

Electrical resistivity may contribute to progress inunderstanding geothermal systems by imaging the geometry, bounds andcontrolling structures in existing production, and thereby perhapssuggesting new areas for field expansion. To these ends, a dense grid ofmagnetotelluric (MT) stations plus a single line of contiguous bipolearray profiling has been acquired over the east flank of the Cosogeothermal system. Acquiring good quality MT data in producing geothermalsystems is a challenge due to production related electromagnetic (EM)noise and, in the case of Coso, due to proximity of a regional DCintertie power transmission line. To achieve good results, a remotereference completely outside the influence of the dominant source of EMnoise must be established. Experimental results so far indicate thatemplacing a reference site in Amargosa Valley, NV, 65 miles from the DCintertie, isstill insufficient for noise cancellation much of the time.Even though the DC line EM fields are planar at this distance, theyremain coherent with the nonplanar fields in the Coso area hence remotereferencing produces incorrect responses. We have successfully unwrappedand applied MT times series from the permanent observatory at Parkfield,CA, and these appear adequate to suppress the interference of thecultural EM noise. The efficacy of this observatory is confirmed bycomparison to stations taken using an ultra-distant …

In this paper, we described the PNNL Word Sense Disambiguation system as applied to the English All-Word task in Se-mEval 2007. We use a supervised learning approach, employing a large number of features and using Information Gain for dimension reduction. Our Maximum Entropy approach combined with a rich set of features produced results that are significantly better than baseline and are the highest F-score for the fined-grained English All-Words subtask.

The impact of three-dimensional subsurface heterogeneity on hillslope runoff generated by excess infiltration (so called Hortonian runoff) is examined. A fully-coupled, parallel subsurface overland flow model is used to simulate runoff from an idealized hillslope. Ensembles of correlated, Gaussian random fields of saturated hydraulic conductivity are used to create uncertainty and variability (i.e. structure) due to subsurface heterogeneity. A large number of cases are simulated in a parametric manner with variance of the hydraulic conductivity varied over two orders of magnitude. These cases include rainfall rates above, equal and below the geometric mean of the hydraulic conductivity distribution. These cases are also compared to theoretical considerations of runoff production based on simple assumptions regarding (1) the rainfall rate and the value of hydraulic conductivity in the surface cell using a spatially-indiscriminant approach; and (2) a percolation-theory type approach to incorporate so-called runon. Simulations to test the ergodicity of hydraulic conductivity on hillslope runoff are also performed. Results show three-dimensional features (particularly in the vertical dimension) in the hydraulic conductivity distributions that create shallow perching, which has an important effect on runoff behavior that is fundamentally different in character than previous two dimensional analyses. The simple theories are shown to be …

Curved lipid membranes are ubiquitous in living systems and play an important role in many biological processes. To understand how curvature and lipid composition affect membrane formation and fluidity we have assembled and studied mixed 1,2-Dioleoyl-sn-Glycero-3-Phosphocholine (DOPC) and 1,2-Dioleoyl-sn-Glycero-3-Phosphoethanolamine (DOPE) supported lipid bilayers on amorphous silicon nanowires with controlled diameters ranging from 20 nm to 200 nm. Addition of cone-shaped DOPE molecules to cylindrical DOPC molecules promotes vesicle fusion and bilayer formation on smaller diameter nanowires. Our experiments demonstrate that nanowire-supported bilayers are mobile, exhibit fast recovery after photobleaching, and have low concentration of defects. Lipid diffusion coefficients in these high-curvature tubular membranes are comparable to the values reported for flat supported bilayers and increase with decreasing nanowire diameter.

Subclassification of ovarian carcinomas can be used to guide treatment and determine prognosis. Germline and somatic mutations, loss of heterozygosity (LOH), and epigenetic events such as promoter hypermethylation can lead to decreased expression of BRCA1/2 in ovarian cancers. The mechanism of BRCA1/2 loss is a potential method of subclassifying high grade serous carcinomas. A consecutive series of 49 ovarian cancers was assessed for mutations status of BRCA1 and BRCA2, LOH at the BRCA1 and BRCA2 loci, methylation of the BRCA1 promoter, BRCA1, BRCA2, PTEN, and PIK3CA transcript levels, PIK3CA gene copy number, and BRCA1, p21, p53, and WT-1 immunohistochemistry. Eighteen (37%) of the ovarian carcinomas had germline or somatic BRCA1 mutations, or epigenetic loss of BRCA1. All of these tumors were high-grade serous or undifferentiated type. None of the endometrioid (n = 5), clear cell (n = 4), or low grade serous (n = 2) carcinomas showed loss of BRCA1, whereas 47% of the 38 high-grade serous or undifferentiated carcinomas had loss of BRCA1. It was possible to distinguish high grade serous carcinomas with BRCA1 mutations from those with epigenetic BRCA1 loss: tumors with BRCA1 mutations typically had decreased PTEN mRNA levels while those with epigenetic loss of BRCA1 had …

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As part of the ongoing international DECOVALEX project, four research teams used five different models to simulate coupled thermal, hydrological, and mechanical (THM) processes near waste emplacement drifts of geological nuclear waste repositories. The simulations were conducted for two generic repository types, one with open and the other with back-filled repository drifts, under higher and lower postclosure temperatures, respectively. In the completed first model inception phase of the project, a good agreement was achieved between the research teams in calculating THM responses for both repository types, although some disagreement in hydrological responses is currently being resolved. In particular, good agreement in the basic thermal-mechanical responses was achieved for both repository types, even though some teams used relatively simplified thermal-elastic heat-conduction models that neglected complex near-field thermal-hydrological processes. The good agreement between the complex and simplified process models indicates that the basic thermal-mechanical responses can be predicted with a relatively high confidence level.

We present 838 ab-type RR Lyrae stars from the Lowell Observatory Near Earth Objects Survey Phase I (LONEOS-I). These objects cover 1430 deg{sup 2} and span distances ranging from 3-30kpc from the Galactic Center. Object selection is based on phased, photometric data with 28-50 epochs. We use this large sample to explore the bulk properties of the stellar halo, including the spatial distribution. The period-amplitude distribution of this sample shows that the majority of these RR Lyrae stars resemble Oosterhoff type I, but there is a significant fraction (26%) which have longer periods and appear to be Oosterhoff type II. We find that the radial distributions of these two populations have significantly different profiles ({rho}{sub OoI} {approx} R{sup -2.26{+-}0.07} and {rho}{sub OoII} {approx} R{sup -2.88{+-}0.11}). This suggests that the stellar halo was formed by at least two distinct accretion processes and supports dual-halo models.

Steady-state dissolution rates of diopside are measured as a function of solution saturation state using a titanium flow-through reactor at pH 7.5 and temperature ranging from 125 to 175 C. Diopside dissolved stoichiometrically under all experimental conditions and rates were not dependent on sample history. At each temperature, rates continuously decreased by two orders of magnitude as equilibrium was approached and did not exhibit a dissolution plateau of constant rates at high degrees of undersaturation. The variation of diopside dissolution rates with solution saturation can be described equally well with a ion exchange model based on transition state theory or pit nucleation model based on crystal growth/dissolution theory from 125 to 175 C. At 175 C, both models over predict dissolution rates by two orders of magnitude indicating that a secondary phase precipitated in the experiments. The ion exchange model assumes the formation of a Si-rich, Mg-deficient precursor complex. Lack of dependence of rates on steady-state aqueous calcium concentration supports the formation of such a complex, which is formed by exchange of protons for magnesium ions at the surface.

The ATLAS experiment is a multi-purpose particle detector that will study high-energy particle collisions produced by the Large Hadron Collider. For the reconstruction of charged particles, and their production and their decay vertices, ATLAS is equipped with a sophisticated tracking system, unprecedented in size and complexity. Full exploitation of both the Inner Detector and the muon spectrometer requires an accurate alignment. The challenge of aligning the ATLAS tracking devices is discussed, and the ATLAS alignment strategy is presented and illustrated with both data and Monte Carlo results.

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We have developed a unique device, a dynamic diamond anvil cell (dDAC), which repetitively applies a time-dependent load/pressure profile to a sample. This capability allows studies of the kinetics of phase transitions and metastable phases at compression (strain) rates of up to 500 GPa/sec ({approx}0.16 s{sup -1} for a metal). Our approach adapts electromechanical piezoelectric actuators to a conventional diamond anvil cell design, which enables precise specification and control of a time-dependent applied load/pressure. Existing DAC instrumentation and experimental techniques are easily adapted to the dDAC to measure the properties of a sample under the varying load/pressure conditions. This capability addresses the sparsely studied regime of dynamic phenomena between static research (diamond anvil cells and large volume presses) and dynamic shock-driven experiments (gas guns, explosive and laser shock). We present an overview of a variety of experimental measurements that can be made with this device.