Article showing that knockdown Arabidopsis plants with suppressed expression of the key water-water cycle enzyme, thylakoid-attached copper/zinc superoxide dismutase (KD-SOD), are suppressed in their growth and development. This article provides e genetic evidence for the importance of the water-water cycle in protecting the photosynthetic apparatus of higher plants from photooxidative damage.

For the purpose of proof-testing a system intended to remotely monitor rockfall inside a potential radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain, a system of seismic sub-arrays will be deployed and tested on the surface of the mountain. The goal is to identify and locate rockfall events remotely using automated data collecting and processing techniques. We install seismometers on the ground surface, generate seismic energy to simulate rockfall in underground space beneath the array, and interpret the surface response to discriminate and locate the event. Data will be analyzed using matched-field processing, a generalized beam forming method for localizing discrete signals. Software is being developed to facilitate the processing. To date, a three-component sub-array has been installed and successfully tested.

The boundary conditions of mass, momentum, energy, and charge appropriate for fluid formulations of edge plasmas are surveyed. We re-visit the classic problem of 1-dimensional flow, and note that the ''Bohm sheath criterion'' is requirement of connectivity of the interior plasma with the external world, not the result of termination of the plasma by a wall. We show that the nature of the interior plasma solution is intrinsically different for ion sources that inject above and below the electron sound speed. We survey the appropriate conditions to apply, and resultant fluxes, for a magnetic field obliquely incident on a wall, including the presence of drifts and radial transport. We discuss the consequences of toroidal asymmetries in wall properties, as well as experimental tests of such effects. Finally, we discuss boundary-condition modifications in the case of rapidly varying plasma conditions.

Understanding magnetic structures and properties of patterned and ordinary magnetic films at nanometer length-scale is the area of immense technological and fundamental scientific importance. The key feature to such success is the ability to achieve visual quantitative information on domain configurations with a maximum ''magnetic'' resolution. Several methods have been developed to meet these demands (Kerr and Faraday effects, differential phase contrast microscopy, magnetic force microscopy, SEMPA etc.). In particular, the modern off-axis electron holography allows retrieval of the electron-wave phase shifts down to 2{pi}/N (with typical N = 10-20, approaching in the limit N {approx} 100) in TEM equipped with field emission gun, which is already successfully employed for studies of magnetic materials at nanometer scale. However, it remains technically demanding, sensitive to noise and needs highly coherent electron sources. As possible alternative we developed a new method of Lorentz phase microscopy [1,2] based on the Fourier solution [3] of magnetic transport-of-intensity (MTIE) equation. This approach has certain advantages, since it is less sensitive to noise and does not need high coherence of the source required by the holography. In addition, it can be realized in any TEM without basic hardware changes. Our approach considers the electron-wave refraction in …

Over 520 different amino acid substitution variants have been previously identified in the systematic screening of 91 human DNA repair genes for sequence variation. Two algorithms were employed to predict the impact of these amino acid substitutions on protein activity. Sorting Intolerant From Tolerant (SIFT) classified 226 of 508 variants (44%) as ''Intolerant''. Polymorphism Phenotyping (PolyPhen) classed 165 of 489 amino acid substitutions (34%) as ''Probably or Possibly Damaging''. Another 9-15% of the variants were classed as ''Potentially Intolerant or Damaging''. The results from the two algorithms are highly associated, with concordance in predicted impact observed for {approx}62% of the variants. Twenty one to thirty one percent of the variant proteins are predicted to exhibit reduced activity by both algorithms. These variants occur at slightly lower individual allele frequency than do the variants classified as ''Tolerant'' or ''Benign''. Both algorithms correctly predicted the impact of 26 functionally characterized amino acid substitutions in the APE1 protein on biochemical activity, with one exception. It is concluded that a substantial fraction of the missense variants observed in the general human population are functionally relevant. These variants are expected to be the molecular genetic and biochemical basis for the associations of reduced DNA repair …

Laboratory and field demonstration results obtained as part of the DARPA-sponsored Coherent Communications, Imaging and Targeting (CCIT) program are reviewed. The CCIT concept uses a Phase Conjugation Engine based on a quadrature receiver array, a hologram processor and a spatial light modulator (SLM) for high-speed, digital beam control. Progress on the enabling MEMS SLM, being developed by a consortium consisting of LLNL, academic institutions and small businesses, is presented.

The status of coupling the fluid 3D turbulence code BOUT and the fluid plasma/neutral 2D transport code UEDGE is reported, where both codes simulate the edge region of diverted tokamaks from several cm inside the magnetic separatrix to the far scrape-off layer (SOL), thereby including the magnetic X-point. Because the characteristic time scale of the turbulence is short ({approx} 10{sup -5}-10{sup -4}s) and the profile evolution time scale can be long ({approx} 10{sup -2}-10{sup -1} s owing to recycling), an iterative scheme is used that relaxes the turbulent fluxes passed from BOUT to UEDGE and the profiles from UEDGE to BOUT over many coupling steps. Each code is run on its own characteristic time scale, yielding a statistically averaged steady state. For this initial study, the ion and neutral densities and parallel velocities are evolved, while the temperature profiles are stationary. Here the turbulence code is run in the electrostatic approximation. For this example of self-consistent coupling with strong L-mode-like turbulence, the ion flux to the main-chamber exceeds that to the divertor plates.

We present a simple method for compressing very large and regularly sampled scalar fields. Our method is particularly attractive when the entire data set does not fit in memory and when the sampling rate is high relative to the feature size of the scalar field in all dimensions. Although we report results for R{sup 3} and R{sup 4} data sets, the proposed approach may be applied to higher dimensions. The method is based on the new Lorenzo predictor, introduced here, which estimates the value of the scalar field at each sample from the values at processed neighbors. The predicted values are exact when the n-dimensional scalar field is an implicit polynomial of degree n-1. Surprisingly, when the residuals (differences between the actual and predicted values) are encoded using arithmetic coding, the proposed method often outperforms wavelet compression in an L{infinity} sense. The proposed approach may be used both for lossy and lossless compression and is well suited for out-of-core compression and decompression, because a trivial implementation, which sweeps through the data set reading it once, requires maintaining only a small buffer in core memory, whose size barely exceeds a single n-1 dimensional slice of the data.

A new thermal neutron imaging system has been constructed, based on a 20-cm x 17-cm He-3 position-sensitive detector with spatial resolution better than 1 mm. New compact custom-designed position-decoding electronics are employed, as well as high-precision cadmium masks with Modified Uniformly Redundant Array patterns. Fast Fourier Transform algorithms are incorporated into the deconvolution software to provide rapid conversion of shadowgrams into real images. The system demonstrates the principles for locating sources of thermal neutrons by a stand-off technique, as well as visualizing the shapes of nearby sources. The data acquisition time could potentially be reduced two orders of magnitude by building larger detectors.

A beam splitter to create two separated parallel beams is a critical unit of a pencil beam interferometer, for example the long trace profiler (LTP). The operating principle of the beam splitter can be based upon either amplitude-splitting (AS) or wavefront-splitting (WS). For precision measurements with the LTP, an equal optical path system with two parallel beams is desired. Frequency drift of the light source in a non-equal optical path system will cause the interference fringes to drift. An equal optical path prism beam splitter with an amplitude-splitting (AS-EBS) beam splitter and a phase shift beam splitter with a wavefront-splitting (WS-PSBS) are introduced. These beam splitters are well suited to the stability requirement for a pencil beam interferometer due to the characteristics of monolithic structure and equal optical path. Several techniques to produce WS-PSBS by hand are presented. In addition, the WS-PSBS using double thin plates, made from microscope cover plates, has great advantages of economy, convenience, availability and ease of adjustment over other beam splitting methods. Comparison of stability measurements made with the AS-EBS, WS-PSBS, and other beam splitters is presented.

We introduce a wavelet-like transform similar to the Haar transform, but with the properties that it packs the results into the same number of bits as the original data, and is reversible. Our method, called TLHaar, uses table lookups to replace the averaging, differencing, and bit shifting performed in a Haar IntegerWavelet Transform (IWT). TLHaar maintains the same coefficient magnitude relationships for the low- and high-pass coefficients as true Haar, but reorders them to fit into the same number of bits as the input signal, thus eliminating the sign bit that is added to the Haar IWT output coefficients. Eliminating the sign bit avoids using extra memory and speeds the transform process. We tested TLHaar on a variety of image types, and when compared to the Haar IWT TLHaar is significantly faster. For image data with lines or hard edges TLHaar coefficients compress better than those of the Haar IWT. Due to its speed TLHaar is suitable for streaming hardware implementations with fixed data sizes, such as DVI channels.

Off-line conditioning of full-size optics for the National Ignition Facility required a beam delivery system to allow conditioning lasers to rapidly raster scan samples while achieving several technical goals. The main purpose of the optical system designed was to reconstruct at the sample plane the flat beam profile found at the laser aperture with significant reductions in beam wander to improve scan times. Another design goal was the ability to vary the beam size at the sample to scan at different fluences while utilizing all of the laser power and minimizing processing time. An optical solution was developed using commercial off-the-shelf lenses. The system incorporates a six meter relay telescope and two sets of focusing optics. The spacing of the focusing optics is changed to allow the fluence on the sample to vary from 2 to 14 Joules per square centimeter in discrete steps. More importantly, these optics use the special properties of image relaying to image the aperture plane onto the sample to form a pupil relay with a beam profile corresponding almost exactly to the flat profile found at the aperture. A flat beam profile speeds scanning by providing a uniform intensity across a larger area on the …

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We test the new VRT(ASP-W)II and VRT(ASP-W)III potentials by employing Diffusion Quantum Monte Carlo simulations to calculate the vibrational ground-state properties of water clusters. These potentials are fits of the highly detailed ASP-W ab initio potential to (D{sub 2}O){sub 2} microwave and far-IR data, and along with the SAPT5s potentials, are the most accurate water dimer potential surfaces in the literature. The results from VRT(ASP-W)II and III are compare to those from the original ASP-W potential, the SAPT5s family of potentials, and several bulk water potentials. Only VRT(ASP-W)II and the spectroscopically ''tuned'' SAPT5st (with N-body induction included) accurately reproduce the vibrational ground-state structures of water clusters up to the hexamer. Finally, the importance of many-body induction and three-body dispension are examined, and it is shown that the latter can have significant effects on water cluster properties despite its small magnitude.

The effects of potential microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC) on candidate packaging materials for nuclear waste containment are being assessed. Coupons of Alloy 22, the outer barrier candidate for waste packaging, were exposed to a simulated, saturated repository environment (or microcosm) consisting of crushed rock (tuff) from the Yucca Mountain repository site and a continual flow of simulated groundwater for periods up to five years at room temperature and 30 C. Coupons were incubated with YM tuff under both sterile and non-sterile conditions. Surfacial analysis by scanning electron microscopy of the biotically-incubated coupons show development of both submicron-sized pinholes and pores; these features were not present on either sterile or untreated control coupons. Room temperature, biotically-incubated coupons show a wide distribution of pores covering the coupon surface, while coupons incubated at 30 C show the pores restricted to polishing ridges.

Fast neutrons can be detected with relatively high efficiency, >15%, using two planes of hydrogenous scintillator detectors where a scatter in the first plane creates a start pulse and scatter in the second plane is separated by time-of-flight. Indeed, the neutron spectrum of the source can be determined as the sum of energy deposited by pulse height in the first added to the energy of the second found by time-of-flight to the second detector. Gamma rays can also create a double scatter by Compton interaction in the first with detection in the second, but these events occur in a single time window because the scattered photons all travel at the speed of light. Thus, gamma ray events can be separated from neutrons by the time-of-flight differences. We have studied this detection system with a Cf-252 source using Bicron 501A organic scintillators and report on the ability to efficiently detect fast neutrons with high neutron/gamma detection ratios. We have further studied cosmic-ray neutron background detection response that is the dominant background in long range detection. We have found that most of the neutrons are excluded from the time-of-flight window because they are either too high in energy, >10 keV, or too …

Existing Petawatt class lasers today based on Nd:glass architectures operating at nominally 500 J, 0.5 ps use meter-scale aperture, gold-overcoated master photoresist gratings to compress the amplified chirped pulse. Many lasers operating in the >lkJ, >Ips regime are in the planning stages around the world. These will require multilayer dielectric diffraction gratings to handle larger peak powers than can be accommodated with gold gratings. Models of the electric field distribution in the solid material of these gratings suggest that high aspect-ratio structures used at high incidence angles will have better laser damage resistance. New tooling for transfer etching these submicron-grating patterns and for nondestructive critical-dimension measurement of these features on meter-scale substrates will be described.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has designed and constructed a test stand to improve the voltage regulation in our Flash X-Ray (FXR) accelerator cell. The goal is to create a more mono-energetic electron beam that will create an x-ray source with a smaller spot size. Studying the interaction of the beam and pulse-power system with the accelerator cell will improve the design of high-current accelerators at Livermore and elsewhere. On the test stand, a standard FXR cell is driven by a flexible pulse-power system and the beam current is simulated with a switched center conductor. The test stand is fully instrumented with high-speed digitizers to document the effect of impedance mismatches when the cell is operated under various full-voltage conditions. A time-domain reflectometry technique was also developed to characterize the beam and cell interactions by measuring the impedance of the accelerator and pulse-power component. Computer models are being developed in parallel with the testing program to validate the measurements and evaluate different design changes. Both 3D transient electromagnetic and circuit models are being used.

Understanding the structure and magnetic behavior is crucial for optimization of nanocomposite magnets with high magnetic energy products. Many contributing factors such as phase composition, grain size distribution and specific domain configurations reflect a fine balance of magnetic energies at nanometer scale. For instance, magnetocrystalline anisotropy of grains and their orientations, degree of exchange coupling of magnetically soft and hard phases and specific energy of domain walls in a material. Modern microscopy, including Lorentz microscopy, is powerful tool for visualization and microstructure studies of nanocomposite magnets. However, direct interpretation of magnetically sensitive Fresnel/Foucault images for nanomagnets is usually problematic, if not impossible, because of the complex image contrast due to small grain size and sophisticated domain structure. Recently we developed an imaging technique based on Lorentz phase microscopy [l-4], which allows bypassing many of these problems and get quantitative information through magnetic flux mapping at nanometer scale resolution with a magnetically calibrated TEM [5]. This is our first report on application of this technique to nanocomposite magnets. In the present study we examine a nanocomposite magnet of nominal composition Nd{sub 2}Fe{sub 14+{delta}}B{sub 1.45} (14+{delta}=23.3, i.e. ''hard'' Nd{sub 2}Fe{sub 14}B-phase and 47.8 wt% of ''soft'' {alpha}-Fe phase ({delta}=9.3)), produced by Magnequench …

Status of lattice calculations of hadron matrix elements along with CP violation in B and in K systems is reviewed. Lattice has provided useful input which, in conjunction with experimental data, leads to the conclusion that CP-odd phase in the CKM matrix plays the dominant role in the observed asymmetry in B {yields} {psi}K{sub s}. It is now quite likely that any beyond the SM, CP-odd, phase will cause only small deviations in B-physics. Search for the effects of the new phase(s) will consequently require very large data samples as well as very precise theoretical predictions. Clean determination of all the angles of the unitarity triangle therefore becomes essential. In this regard B {yields} KD{sup 0} processes play a unique role. Regarding K-decays, remarkable progress made by theory with regard to maintenance of chiral symmetry on the lattice is briefly discussed. First application already provide quantitative information on B{sub K} and the {Delta}I = 1/2 rule. The enhancement in ReA{sub 0} appears to arise solely from tree operators, esp. Q{sub 2}; penguin contribution to ReA{sub 0} appears to be very small. However, improved calculations are necessary for {epsilon}{prime}/{epsilon} as there the contributions of QCD penguins and electroweak penguins largely seem …

With the constant push to miniaturize existing technologies, there is an ever-increasing need to characterize smaller and smaller objects. X-rays have proven their usefulness for characterizing the internal structure of objects. However, standard x-ray imaging (i.e. projection radiography) methods are not ideally suited for high-resolution imaging of small objects. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is currently developing an x-ray microscope that uses high-efficiency reflective (Woelter Type I) optics for imaging millimeter-scale parts at resolutions of better than one micrometer. The optics use multilayer technology to increase the x-ray grazing angle, improving the efficiency of the optics. The Woelter [1] imaging optic focuses x-rays that exit the sample (object plane) onto a scintillator (image plane). The scintillator converts the x-rays into visible light, which can be detected and imaged with a CCD camera. Our optic has a magnification of twelve. The distance between the sample and scintillator is five meters. Figure 1 shows the schematic of the microscope. The Woelter optic consists of hyperbolic and elliptical reflective surfaces. This combination of reflective surfaces was first described by Woelter [1] in 1952. Although simple in concept, the fabrication of a high-quality imaging Woelter optic has proven to be difficult due to the tight …

Results of recent modeling of tokamak edge plasma with the turbulence code BOUT are presented. In previous studies with BOUT the background profiles of plasma density and temperature were set as flux surface functions. However in the divertor region of a tokamak the temperature is typically lower and density is higher than those at the mid-plane. To account for this in the present study a poloidal variation of background plasma density and temperature is included to provide a more realistic model. For poloidally uniform profiles of the background plasma the calculated turbulence amplitude peaks near outer mid-plane, while in the divertor region the amplitude is small. However, present simulations show that as the background plasma profiles become more poloidally non-uniform the amplitude of density fluctuations, {tilde n}{sub i}, starts peaking in the divertor. It is found that in the divertor region the amplitude of n{sub i} fluctuations grows approximately linearly with the local density of the background plasma, n{sub i0}, while the amplitude of T{sub e} and {phi} fluctuations is positively correlated with the local electron temperature, T{sub e0}. Correlation analysis shows that plasma turbulence is isolated by the x-points.

High energy resolution and broadband efficiency are enabling the use of cryogenic detectors in biological research. Two areas where they have found initial application are X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TOF-MS). In synchrotron-based fluorescence-detected XAS cryogenic detectors are used to examine the role of metals in biological systems by measuring their oxidation states and ligand symmetries. In time-of-flight mass spectrometry cryogenic detectors increase the sensitivity for biomolecule detection and identification for masses above {approx}50 kDa, and thus enable TOF-MS on large protein complexes or even entire viruses. More recently, cryogenic detectors have been proposed as optical sensors for fluorescence signals from biomarkers. We discuss the potential for cryogenic detectors in biological research, as well as the challenges the technology faces.

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