The National Ignition Facility (NIF), currently under construction at the University of California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a stadium-sized facility containing a 192-beam, 1.8 MJ, 500-TW, 351-nm laser system together with a 10-m diameter target chamber with room for nearly 100 experimental diagnostics. When completed, NIF will be the world's largest laser experimental system, providing a national center to study inertial confinement fusion and the physics of matter at extreme energy densities and pressures. The first four beamlines (a quad) have recently been commissioned, and operations on the first bundle (units of eight beamlines) will begin in Summer 2005. A computational system, the Laser Performance Operations Model (LPOM) has been developed and deployed to automate the laser setup process, and accurately predict laser energetics. For each shot on NIF, the LPOM determines the characteristics of the injection laser system required to achieve the desired main laser output, provides parameter checking for equipment protection, determines the required diagnostic setup, and supplies post-shot data analysis and reporting.

The SPEAR machine was completed in 1972. It consists of a single ring about 80 meters in diameter and started its very productive life as a positron-electron collider circulating beams up to 4 GeV. Synchrotron radiation research began almost immediately parasitically, then as half the program in the 1980s, and then became the whole program in 1991. The original network surveys used optical theodolites and invar tapes to place ring monuments in their ideal positions at constant offsets from the lines of ring quadrupoles. Optical tooling techniques were used to reference the monuments and survey offset targets on fixtures attached to the magnets. For more than 20 years neither the monuments nor magnets were restored to their ideal positions; the obvious discrepancies were simply ''feathered''. In 1992 SLC technology was used for the first time to re-measure the network and map the magnets. The discovery of many multiple-millimeter problems spurred planning for a 1995 global re-alignment. In 1995, all storage ring magnets and beamlines were mapped and moved. The band of displacements from ideal was reduced from about +/- 5mm to +/- 0.5mm. Upon start-up, beam stored without correctors.

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Conclusions are: (1) Early calibrations of the Piece Wise Linear reactive flow model have shown that it allows for very accurate agreement with data for a broad range of detonation wave strengths. (2) The ability to vary the rate at specific pressures has shown that corner turning involves competition between the strong wave that travels roughly in a straight line and growth at low pressure of a new wave that turns corners sharply. (3) The inclusion of a low pressure de-sensitization rate is essential to preserving the dead zone at large times as is observed.

To learn the cause of intermittent radium concentrations in groundwater of Coastal Plain aquifers, 31 groundwater wells in South Carolina, U.S.A. were sampled for radium and other geochemical parameters. Sediments cored from near the well screens were also sampled to examine any relationship between sediment properties and radium concentration in the groundwater. Elevated radium concentrations only occurred in groundwater with low electrical conductivity and pH values below 6.3. The adsorption edge for radium on hematite--a major surface active mineral in these aquifers--is at a pH value of about 6. Near this value, small changes in pH can result in significant adsorption or desorption of radium. In groundwater with initially low alkalinity, small intermittent decreases in partial pressure of carbon dioxide in groundwater cause decreases in pH and desorption of radium. The result is intermittent elevated radium concentrations.

Characterizing laser-induced damage in optical materials is important for laser design and operation. Previous methods of evaluating optical materials damage resistance to high-power laser irradiation have typically suffered from shot to shot uncertainties in laser energy output and/or have insufficient sensitivity. More importantly such methods do not address the aspects of laser-induced damage important to laser beam propagation, namely the amount of light scattered by the damage. We present a method for the quantitative correlation of material modification on the surface or in the bulk of optical materials to laser parameters, which deconvolutes the effects of laser output instability. Image analysis, whereby two images, one a fluence spatial profile and the other a visible light scatter image of the damage, are directly compared to extract scatter as a function of fluence. An automated microscope is used to record the location and number of bulk damage sites and determine a calibration factor between the scatter signal observed and damage density pinpoints (ppt)/mm{sup 3}. We illustrate the method with a determination of both bulk damage density as a function of laser fluence and of a representative size distributions in a DKDP crystal. Our method is capable of determining damage densities with an …

The potential of coherent diffractive imaging has in recent years become well recognized. In this technique an essentially parallel beam of coherent x-rays illuminates a support region containing an unknown sample. Outside that region the wavefield is known--typically the sample is isolated so that outside the support there is no scattering. When the diffraction pattern is measured with sufficient signal to noise ratio an iterative technique can be used to solve for the transmission function of the sample. The technique offers extremely high resolution reconstructions of a sample.

[1] Douglass and Knox [2005], hereafter referred to as DK, present an analysis of the observed cooling following the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption and claim that these data imply a very low value for the climate sensitivity (equivalent to 0.6 C equilibrium warming for a CO{sub 2} doubling). We show here that their analysis is flawed and their results are incorrect.

It has long been understood that the transposition of data from printouts to data collection sheets, and the subsequent manipulation of this data with measurement values, is an obvious error source in optical tooling projects. Ideas for computerized data collection have been under consideration for some time, yet they lacked the versatility needed for even the most typical optical tooling jobs. Surveyors experienced with optical tooling were used to designing the measurement strategy that worked best for each job. There was no canned formula that worked with every case. After extensive field testing a program was developed that worked in as many cases as possible. The program contains ideal files for components and monumentation, format sheets for set-up and measurement of components, and a summary sheet of work accomplished so far. This allows for the step by step movement through the measurement process.

Many-Body Perturbation Theory (MBPT) has been employed to calculate with high wavelength accuracy the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) spectra of F-like to P-like Xe ions. They discuss the reliability of the new calculations using the example of EUV beam-foil spectra of Xe, in which n = 3, {Delta}n = 0 transitions of Na-, Mg-, Al-like, and Si-like ions have been found to dominate. A further comparison is made with spectra from an electron beam ion trap, that is, from a device with a very different (low density) excitation balance.

The production of comprehensive cDNA clone collections is an important goal of the human and model organism genome projects. cDNA sequences are used to determine the structures of transcripts, including splice junctions, polyadenylation sites, and 5' and 3' untranslated regions (UTRs). cDNA collections are also valuable resources for functional studies of genes and proteins. Expressed Sequence Tag (EST)sequencing is the method of choice for recovering cDNAs representing a majority of the transcripts encoded in a eukaryotic genome. However, EST sequencing samples a library at random, so it realizes diminishing returns as the project progresses. To drive cDNA collections toward completion new methods are needed to recover cDNAs representing specific genes and alternative transcripts, including transcripts with low expression levels. We describe a simple and effective inverse-PCR-based method for screening plasmid libraries to recover intact cDNAs for specific transcripts. We tested the method by screening libraries used in our Drosophila EST projects for 153 transcription factor genes that were not yet represented by full-length cDNAs. We recovered target-specific clones for 104 of the genes: 46 exactly match, 30 improve and 28partially match current gene annotations. Successful application of the screening method depends on cDNA library complexity and quality of the gene …

Molecular rulers based on Foerster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) that report conformational changes and intramolecular distances of single biomolecules have helped to understand important biological processes. However, these rulers suffer from low and fluctuating signal intensities from single dyes and limited observation time due to photobleaching. The plasmon resonance in noble metal particles has been suggested as an alternative probe to overcome the limitations of organic fluorophores and the coupling of plasmons in nearby particles has been exploited to detect particle aggregation by a distinct color change in bulk experiments. Here we demonstrate that plasmon coupling can be used to monitor distances between single pairs of gold and silver nanoparticles. We use this effect to follow the directed assembly of gold and silver nanoparticle dimers in real time and to study the time dynamics of single DNA hybridization events. These ''plasmon rulers'' allowed us to continuously monitor separations of up to 70 nm for more than 3000 seconds. Single molecule in vitro studies of biological processes previously inaccessible with fluorescence based molecular rulers are enabled with plasmon rulers with extended time and distance range.

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Article about the Ballet Austin Fete Gothic event, the One Country Concert, and La Cage: Vegas in Austin.