None

The US Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) conducted a workshop on Isotope-Based Medical Research in the Post Genome Era at NIH, Bethesda, Maryland, November 12--14, 1997. The workshop aimed at identifying the role of stable and radioisotopes for advanced diagnosis and therapy of a wide range of illnesses using the new information that comes from the human genome program. In this sense, the agenda addressed the challenge of functional genomics in humans. The workshop addressed: functional genomics in clinical medicine; new diagnostic potentials; new therapy potentials; challenge to tracer- and effector-pharmaceutical chemistry; and project plans for joint ventures.

I consider N = 1 supersymmetric SU(N{sub c}) gauge theories with matter fields consisting of one antisymmetric representation, five flavors, and enough antifundamental representations to cancel the gauge anomaly. Previous analyses are extended to the case of even N{sub c} with no superpotential. Using holomorphy I show that the theory has an interacting infrared fixed point for sufficiently large N{sub c}. These theories are interesting due to the fact that in going from five to four flavors the theory goes from a non-trivial infrared fixed point to confinement, in contradistinction to SUSY QCD, but in analogy to the behavior expected in non-SUSY QCD.

In this paper, sustainable forest management is discussed within the historical and theoretical framework of the sustainable development debate. The various criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management put forth by different institutions are critically explored. Specific types of climate change mitigation policies/projects in the forest sector are identified and examined in the light of the general criteria for sustainable forest management. Areas of compatibility and contradiction between the climate mitigation objectives and the minimum criteria for sustainable forest management are identified and discussed. Emphasis is put on the problems of monitoring and verifying carbon benefits associated with such projects given their impacts on pre-existing policy objectives on sustainable forest management. The implications of such policy interactions on assignment of carbon credits from forest projects under Joint Implementation/Activities Implemented Jointly initiatives are discussed. The paper concludes that a comprehensive monitoring and verification regime must include an impact assessment on the criteria covered under other agreements such as the Biodiversity and/or Desertification Conventions. The actual carbon credit assigned to a specific project should at least take into account the negative impacts on the criteria for sustainable forest management. The value of the impacts and/or the procedure to evaluate them need to …

Microfabrication technology using the LIGA (a German acronym for Lithography, Electroforming, and Molding) process offers an attractive alternative for fabricating precision devices with micron-sized features. One such device is a mm-sized micro-undulator with potential applications in a table-top synchrotron light source for medical and other industrial uses. The undulator consists of a silver conductor embedded in poles and substrate of nickel-iron. Electromagnetic modeling of the undulator is done using the eddy current computer code ELEKTRA. Computations predict a field pattern of appropriate strength and quality if the current can be prevented from being shunted from silver by the nickel-iron poles either through insulation or through slotted poles. The design of the undulator along with the computational results are discussed.

The effect of dissolved oxygen level on fatigue life of austenitic stainless steels is discussed and the results of a detailed study of the effect of the environment on the growth of cracks during fatigue initiation are presented. Initial test results are given for specimens irradiated in the Halden reactor. Impurities introduced by shielded metal arc welding that may affect susceptibility to stress corrosion cracking are described. Results of calculations of residual stresses in core shroud weldments are summarized. Crack growth rates of high-nickel alloys under cyclic loading with R ratios from 0.2-0.95 in water that contains a wide range of dissolved oxygen and hydrogen concentrations at 289 and 320 C are summarized.

Preliminary research in our laboratory has demonstrated that boric acid is an effective lubricant with an unusual capacity to reduce sliding fiction (providing friction coefficients as low as 0.02) and wear of metallic and ceramic materials. More recent studies have revealed that water or methanol solutions of boric acid can be used to prepare strongly bonded layers of boric acid on aluminum surfaces. It appears that boric acid molecules have a strong tendency to bond chemically to the naturally oxidized surfaces of aluminum and its alloys and to make these surfaces very slippery. Recent metal formability tests indicated that the boric acid films formed on aluminum surfaces by spraying or dipping worked quite well; improving draw scale performance by 58 to 75%. These findings have increased the prospect that boric acid can be formulated and optimized as an effective boundary lubricant and used to solve the friction, galling, and severe wear problems currently encountered in cold-forming of aluminum products. Accordingly, the major goal of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness and lubrication capacity of thin boric acid films formed on aluminum surfaces by simple dipping or spraying processes and to describe the lubrication mechanisms under typical metal forming conditions. …

High-density TiN (>98% of theoretical) has been prepared by hot pressing TiN powder with 2-4 wt.% Li{sub 2}C0{sub 3} at temperatures between 1150-1550 C and pressures of {approx}40-50 MPa. The Li{sub 2}C0{sub 3} served as a fugitive sintering aid, enabling attainment of high density at low temperatures without adversely affecting the inherently good properties. Variation in processing variables and TiN powder characteristics resulted in material with various porosities. Measurement of mechanical properties such as flexural strength and fracture toughness showed that the high-density material has mechanical properties that are superior to those of several oxide ceramics. We have also quantified the effects of porosity on mechanical properties. In addition, adhesion and chemical stability tests were used to investigate graphite coated with TiN by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Pin-pull tests were used to determine coating adhesion and failure stresses were analyzed by Weibull statistics. All pin-pull tests resulted in fracture of the graphite substrate, rather than separation at the TiN/graphite interface. The data showed a good fit to the two-parameter Weibull expression, with a failure strength of 16.4 MPa and Weibull modulus of 9.3. Both the high-density TiN and the TiN coating on the graphite were exposed to a corrosive molten …

Thin film samples of a simple embedded nanocluster system consisting of solid Xe precipitates in Al have been subjected to 1 MeV electron irradiation in a high-voltage electron microscope. High-resolution images have been recorded on videotape in order to monitor the changes to the system resulting from the passage of electrons through the film. Inspection of the video recordings (in some cases frame-by-frame) reveals that complex, rapid processes occur under the electron beam. These include, movement of small clusters, coalescence of neighboring clusters, shape changes, the apparent melting and resolidification of the Xe, and the creation and annealing of extended defects within the Xe lattice. A tentative interpretation of some of the observations is presented in terms of the electron-induced displacement processes at the surface of the clusters.

Recent advances in reverse engineering have focused on recovering a boundary representation (b-rep) of an object, often for integration with rapid prototyping. This boundary representation may be a 3-D point cloud, a triangulation of points, or piecewise algebraic or parametric surfaces. This paper presents work in progress to develop an algorithm to extend the current state of the art in reverse engineering of mechanical parts. This algorithm will take algebraic surface representations as input and will produce a constructive solid geometry (CSG) description that uses solid primitives such as rectangular block, pyramid, sphere, cylinder, and cone. The proposed algorithm will automatically generate a CSG solid model of a part given its algebraic b-rep, thus allowing direct input into a CAD system and subsequent CSG model generation.

None

Candidate immobilization forms for the disposal of surplus weapons-useable are being tested and characterized. The goal of the testing program was to provide sufficient data that, by August 1997, an informed selection of a single immobilization form could be made so that the form development and production R and D could be more narrowly focused. Two forms have been under consideration for the past two years: glass and ceramic. In August, 1997, the Department of Energy (DOE) selected ceramic for plutonium disposition, halting further work on the glass material. In this paper, we will briefly describe these two waste forms, then describe our characterization techniques and testing methods. The analytical methods used to characterize altered and unaltered samples are the same. A full suite of microscopic techniques is used. Techniques used include optical, scanning electron, and transmission electron microscopies. For both candidate immobilization forms, the analyses are used to characterize the material for the presence of crystalline phases and amorphous material. Crystalline materials, either in the untested immobilization form or in the alteration products from testing, are characterized with respect to morphology, crystal structure, and composition. The goal of these analyses is to provide data on critical issues such as …

This paper presents results from our on-going efforts to characterize semiconductor thin films for direct x-ray conversion. We deposit these thin films onto an amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) readout array with the overall goal of developing a large area x-ray detector for protein crystallography, and for other x-ray imaging fields.

The following subjects are discussed in this report: (1) Pentaquark--why it is important and how new technologies (vertex detectors) suggest drastically different approaches form the search used by Ashery et al.; (2) problems in B decays with implications for heavy quark decays to excited light quark states like the Al; (3) problems in B and D decays to final states including {eta} and {eta}{prime} indicating that standard quark mixing might not hold; (4) possible contributions of hybrid quarkonium states to B decays; (5) heavy flavor decays to {omega}{tau} which disagree with conventional expectations; and (6) possible new spin effects in {Lambda}{sub b} decay and the effect on the lifetime difference between the {Lambda}{sub b} and B mesons.

As high-speed networks make it easier to use distributed resources, it becomes increasingly common that applications and their data are not colocated. Users have traditionally addressed this problem by manually staging data to and from remote computers. We argue instead for a new remote I/O paradigm in which programs use familiar parallel I/O interfaces to access remote file systems. In addition to simplifying remote execution, remote I/O can improve performance relative to staging by overlapping computation and data transfer or by reducing communication requirements. However, remote I/O also introduces new technical challenges in the areas of portability, performance, and integration with distributed computing systems. We propose techniques designed to address these challenges and describe a remote I/O library called RIO that we have developed to evaluate the effectiveness of these techniques. RIO addresses issues of portability by adopting the quasi-standard MPI-IO interface and by defining a RIO device and RIO server within the ADIO abstract I/O device architecture. It addresses performance issues by providing traditional I/O optimizations such as asynchronous operations and through implementation techniques such as buffering and message forwarding to off load communication overheads. RIO uses the Nexus communication library to obtain access to configuration and security mechanisms …

The implications of hadron spectroscopy are generally overlooked both by experimenters presenting results and theorists making predictions. Two examples are (1) possible effects of nodes in wave functions of final state mesons produced in B decay; (2) dependence of predictions for B decays into final states containing {eta} or {eta}{prime} on models and mixing angles for these states.

This paper presents estimates of the fill fuel-cycle energy and emissions impacts of light-duty vehicles with tripled fuel economy (3X vehicles) as currently being developed by the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV). Seven engine and fuel combinations were analyzed: reformulated gasoline, methanol, and ethanol in spark-ignition, direct-injection engines; low-sulfur diesel and dimethyl ether in compression-ignition, direct-injection engines; and hydrogen and methanol in fuel-cell vehicles. Results were obtained for three scenarios: a Reference Scenario without PNGVs, a High Market Share Scenario in which PNGVs account for 60% of new light-duty vehicle sales by 2030, and a Low Market Share Scenario in which PNGVs account for half as many sales by 2030. Under the higher of these two, the fuel-efficiency gain by 3X vehicles translated directly into a nearly 50% reduction in total energy demand, petroleum demand, and carbon dioxide emissions. The combination of fuel substitution and fuel efficiency resulted in substantial reductions in emissions of nitrogen oxide (NO{sub x}), carbon monoxide (CO), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), sulfur oxide, (SO{sub x}), and particulate matter smaller than 10 microns (PM{sub 10}) for most of the engine-fuel combinations examined. The key exceptions were diesel- and ethanol-fueled vehicles for which PM{sub 10} …

The structure and electrochemical potential of monoclinic Li{sub 1+x}V{sub 3}O{sub 8} were calculated within the local-density-functional-theory framework by use of plane-wave-pseudopotential methods. Special attention was given to the compositions 1+x=1.2 and 1+x=4, for which x-ray diffraction structure refinements are available. The calculated low-energy configuration for 1+x=4 is consistent with the three Li sites identified in x-ray diffraction measurements and predicts the position of the unobserved Li. The location of the tetrahedrally coordinated Li in the calculated low-energy configuration for 1+x=1.5 is consistent with the structure measured by x-ray diffraction for Li{sub 1.2}V{sub 3}O{sub 8}. Calculations were also performed for the two monoclinic phases at intermediate Li compositions, for which no structural information is available. Calculations at these compositions are based on hypothetical Li configurations suggested by the ordering of vacancy energies for Li{sub 4}V{sub 3}O{sub 8} and tetrahedral site energies in Li{sub 1.5}V{sub 3}O{sub 8}. The internal energy curves for the two phases cross near 1+x=3. Predicted electrochemical potential curves agree well with experiment.

In order to study the antiferromagnetic (AFM) spin structure near the interface of exchange-biased bilayers, polarized neutron diffraction measurements were performed on a series of (111) Co(7.5 nm)/CoO(X nm) and CoO(X nm) thin films where X = 20, 40 and 100 nm. In these samples, field cooling through the Neel temperature of the AFM increases the component of the CoO moment perpendicular to the applied field, relative to the parallel component. The subsequent application of a 500 Oe field perpendicular to the cooling direction rotates both the Co and CoO moments. Experiments on CoO films without Co showed a smaller difference between the parallel and perpendicular CoO moments in response to cooling and applied fields. Exchange coupling between the Co and CoO layers is apparently responsible for the increased projection of the AFM moments perpendicular to the cooling field.

The Argonne Expedited Site Characterization (ANL ESC) methodology, developed by Argonne National Laboratory and popularly known as ESC, is an effective, cost- and time-saving approach for technically successful preremedial site characterizations. The major objective of the ANL ESC is to determine whether a site containing contamination requires remediation. The methodology is equivalent to a CERCLA RI/FS or a RCRA RFI/CMS investigation. The ANL ESC methodology is an interactive, integrated process emphasizing the use of existing data, multiple complementary characterization methods, and on-site decision making to optimize site investigations. The ANL ESC is the basis for the expedited site characterization standard of the ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials). The methodology has been registered under the service mark QuickSite{trademark} to offer both clients and providers a mechanism for ensuring that they receive the ANL ESC methodology developed by Argonne. The ANL ESC is a flexible process and is neither site nor contaminant dependent. It can be tailored to fit the unique characteristics that distinguish one site from the next, in contrast to the traditional approach of making all sites conform to the same rigid, inflexible investigation regimen. The ANL ESC has been applied successfully to remedial site investigations of landfills …

Nonmethane hydrocarbons (NMHCs) are involved in a complex series of reactions that regulate the levels of oxidants in the troposphere. Isoprene (C{sub 5}H{sub 8}), the primary NMHC emitted from deciduous trees, is one of the most important reactive hydrocarbons in the troposphere. The amount of isoprene entering the free troposphere is regulated by the compound's rate of emission from leaves and by chemical and physical processes in the forest canopy and the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). This study uses a coupled canopy-ABL model to simulate these complex processes and compares calculated isoprene concentration profiles with those measured during aircraft flights above a forested region in the northeastern US. Land use information is coupled with satellite remote sensing data to describe spatial changes in canopy density during the field measurements. The high-resolution transport-chemistry model of Gao et al. (1993) for the ABL and the forest canopy layer is used to simulate vertical changes in isoprene concentration due to turbulent mixing and chemical reactions. The one-dimensional (1-D) ABL model includes detailed radiation transfer, turbulent diffusion, biogenic emissions, dry deposition, and chemical processes within the forest canopy and the ABL. The measured profiles are compared with the model simulations to investigate the biological, …

The HERMES Laser-Driven Target Task Force (Argonne, Erlangen and Illinois) is charged with developing a polarized H/D target for use in the HERA ring at DESY. Rapid progress was made in the beginning of 1996, leading us to the decision to test the target in a realistic experimental environment. In particular, polarizations of 0.6 and flows above 10{sup 18} atoms{center_dot}s{sup {minus}1} have been achieved on the bench. The laser-driven target and a simple detector system are currently installed in Cooler storage ring at the Indiana University Cyclotron Facility in order to test its applicability to nuclear physics experiments. Target polarizations are being measured using the {rvec H}(p, p) and {rvec D}(p, p) reactions. Initial tests were reasonably successful and the target is well along toward becoming viable for nuclear physics.

The Advanced Photon Source third generation synchrotrons light source needs a stabilized particle beam position to produce high brightness and low emittance radiation. Global orbit correction control is introduced and is utilized to satisfy the demanding needs of the accelerator. This paper presents the experimental results for determining an effective and optimal controller to meet the global orbit correction requirements. These requirements include frequency/time domain demands consisting of vibrational noise attenuation, limiting of controller gains for stability and improving the system time response. Experiments were conducted with a digital signal processor implementing various PID sets to make comparisons between simulations and experiments. Measurements at these PID sets supported the results of software simulation.

Unsaturated drip tests have been used to investigate the alteration of unirradiated UO{sub 2} and spent UO{sub 2} fuel in an unsaturated environment such as may be expected in the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain. In these tests, simulated groundwater is periodically injected onto a sample at 90 C in a steel vessel. The solids react with the dripping groundwater and water condensed on surfaces to form a suite of U(VI) alteration phases. Solution chemistry is determined from leachate at the bottom of each vessel after the leachate stops interacting with the solids. A more detailed knowledge of the compositional evolution of the leachate is desirable. By providing just enough water to maintain a thin film of water on a small quantity of fuel in batch experiments, we can more closely monitor the compositional changes to the water as it reacts to form alteration phases.