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.

Growth rates and the ability to date an organism can greatly contribute to understanding its population biology and community dynamics. 1n 1954, Andreev proposed a method to date Cladina, a fruticose lichen, using total thallus length and number of internodes. No research, however, has demonstrated the reliability of this technique or compared its estimates to those derived by other means. In this study, we demonstrate the utility of {sup 14}C/C ratios to determine lichen age and growth rate in Cladina stygia (Fr.) Ahti collected from northwestern Alaska, USA. The average growth rate using {sup 14}C/C ratios was 6.5 mm {center_dot} yr{sup -1}, which was not significantly different from growth rates derived by Andreev's internode method (average = 6.2 mm {center_dot} yr{sup -1}); thus, suggesting the reliability of Andreev's simple field method for dating lichens. In addition, we found lichen growth rates appeared to differ with geographic location, yet did not seem related to ambient temperature and total precipitation.

The following presents a study of the accelerator physics and technology limitations to ultimate energy and luminosity in very large hadron colliders (VLHCs). The main accelerator physics limitations to ultimate energy and luminosity in future energy frontier hadron colliders are synchrotron radiation (SR) power, proton-collision debris power in the interaction regions (IR), number of events-per-crossing, stored energy per beam and beam-stability [1]. Quantitative estimates of these limits were made and translated into scaling laws that could be inscribed into the particle energy versus machine size plane to delimit the boundaries for possible VLHCs. Eventually, accelerator simulations were performed to obtain the maximum achievable luminosities within these boundaries. Although this study aimed at investigating a general VLHC, it was unavoidable to refer in some instances to the recently studied, [2], 200 TeV center-of-mass energy VLHC stage-2 design (VLHC-2). A more thorough rendering of this work can be found in [3].

Actinide materials present an extreme scientific challenge to the materials research community. The complex electronic structures of actinide materials result in many unusual and unique properties that have yet to be fully understood. The difficulties in handling, preparing, and characterizing actinide materials has frequently precluded investigations and has the limited the detailed understanding of these relevant, complex materials. However, modern experiments with actinide materials have the potential to provide key, fundamental information about many long-standing issues concerning actinide materials. This workshop focused on the scientific and technical challenges posed by actinide materials and the potential that synchrotron radiation approaches available at the ALS can contribute to improving the fundamental understanding of actinides materials. Fundamental experimental approaches and results, as well as theoretical modeling and computational simulations, were part of the workshop program.

Article describes how, the goal of ITS is to support learning content, activities, and resources, adapted to the specific needs of the individual learner and influenced by learner’s motivation. This research proposes an intentional model that adopts Map formalism to support personalized learning guidance by considering learner’s motivation.

Innovative, cost-effective technologies that have a positive life-cycle environmental impact and yield marketable products are needed to meet the challenges of the recycling industry. Four materials-recovery technologies that are being developed at Argonne National Laboratory in cooperation with industrial partners are described in this paper: (1) dezincing of galvanized steel scrap; (2) material recovery from auto-shredder residue; (3) high-value-plastics recovery from obsolete appliances; and (4) aluminum salt cake recycling. These technologies are expected to be applicable to the production of low-cost, high-quality raw materials from a wide range of waste streams.

Measurements of the thermophysical and structural properties of liquid materials at high temperature have undergone considerable development in the past few years. Following improvements in electromagnetic levitation, aerodynamic levitation associated with laser heating has shown promise for assessing properties of different molten materials (metals, oxides, and semiconductors), preserving sample purity over a wide range of temperatures and under different gas environments. The density, surface tension and viscosity are measured with a high-speed video camera and an image analysis system. Results on nickel and alumina show that small droplets can be considered in the first approximation to be under microgravity conditions. Using a non-invasive contactless technique recently developed to measure electrical conductivity, results have been extended to variety of materials ranging from liquid metals and liquid semiconductors to ionically conducting materials. The advantage of this technique is the feasibility of monitoring changes in transport occurring during phase transitions and in deeply undercooled states.

The Advanced Light Source (ALS) saw first light on October 5, 1993, not quite to the day but close to 10 years before the 2003 ALS Users Association meeting, held October 6-8. Fittingly, the proceedings included retrospectives from two of the key players in the early history of the ALS, David Attwood and Jay Marx, and a display of photographs chronicling its construction and commissioning. Science highlights, highlights from young researchers, and posters constituted the meat of the program on Monday and Tuesday morning, while workshops took over Tuesday afternoon and all day Wednesday.

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This article considers areas of cardiovascular research that have benefited from studies of the chorioallantoic membrane (CAM), including the themes of investigation of the CAM’s hemodynamic influence on heart and central vessel development, use of the CAM as a model vascular bed for studying angiogenesis, and the CAM as an assay tool.

This paper discusses the features of an annotation language that we believe to be essential for optimizing user-defined abstractions. These features should capture semantics of function, data, and object-oriented abstractions, express abstraction equivalence (e.g., a class represents an array abstraction), and permit extension of traditional compiler optimizations to user-defined abstractions. Our future work will include developing a comprehensive annotation language for describing the semantics of general object-oriented abstractions, as well as automatically verifying and inferring the annotated semantics.

Article conducting proteomic and metabolic analysis of Arabidopsis thaliana plants subjected to a combination of drought and heat stress. The authors identify 45 different proteins that specifically accumulated in Arabidopsis in response to the stress combination. The findings suggest that cytosolic APX1 plays a key role in the acclimation of plants to a combination of drought and heat stress.

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Argonne National Laboratory has developed a composite ceramic waste form for the disposition of high level radioactive waste produced during electrometallurgical conditioning of spent nuclear fuel. The electrorefiner LiCl/KCl eutectic salt, containing fission products and transuranics in the chloride form, is contacted with a zeolite material which removes the fission products from the salt. After salt contact, the zeolite is mixed with a glass binder. The zeolite/glass mixture is then hot isostatic pressed (HIPed) to produce the composite ceramic waste form. The ceramic waste form provides a durable medium that is well suited to incorporate fission products and transuranics in the chloride form. Presented are preliminary results of the process qualification and characterization studies, which include chemical and physical measurements and product durability testing, of the ceramic waste form.

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. …

Each of the hypothetical accident test cases for the 9977 prototypes was included in the battery of finite element structural analyses performed for the package. Comparison of the experimental and analytical results provides a means of confirming that the analytical model correctly represents the physical behavior of the package. The ability of the analytical model to correctly predict the performance of the foam overpack material for the crush test is of particular interest. The dissipation of energy in the crushing process determines the deceleration of the package upon impact and the duration of the impact. In addition, if the analytical model correctly models the foam behavior, the predicted deformation of the package will match that measured on the test articles. This study compares the deformations of the test packages with the analytical predictions. In addition, the impact acceleration and impact duration for the test articles are compared with those predicted by the analyses.

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A continuum theory of partially fluidized granular flows is proposed. The theory is based on a combination of the mass and momentum conservation equations with the order parameter equation which describes the transition between flowing and static components of the granular system. We apply this model to the dynamics of avalanches in chutes. The theory provides a quantitative description of recent observations of granular flows on rough inclined planes (Daerr and Douady 1999): layer bistability, and the transition from triangular avalanches propagating downhill at small inclination angles to balloon-shaped avalanches also propagating uphill for larger angles.

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 purpose of this investigation was to determine the corrosion behavior of a high strength steel (ASTM A416-74 grade 270), typical of those used as tensioning tendons in prestressed concrete pressure vessels, in several corrosive environments and to demonstrate the protection afforded by coating the steel with either of two commercial petroleum-base greases or Portland Cement grout. In addition, the few reported incidents of prestressing steel failures in concrete pressure vessels used for containment of nuclear reactors are reviewed. The susceptibility of the steel to stress corrosion cracking and hydrogen embrittlement and its general corrosion rate were determined in several salt solutions. Wires coated with the greases and grout were soaked for long periods in the same solutions and changes in their mechanical properties were subsequently determined. All three coatings appeared to give essentially complete protection but small flaws in the grease coatings were detrimental; flaws or cracks less than 1 mm wide in the grout were without effect.

A convergence of ideas, observations and technology have led to the greatest period of cosmological discovery yet. Over the past three years we have determined the basic features of our Universe. We are now challenged to make sense of what we have found. The outcome of planned experiments and observations as well as new ideas will be required. If we succeed, ours truly will be a Golden Age of Cosmology.

The reactions of the methylidyne radical (CH) with ethylene, acetylene, allene, and methylacetylene are studied at room temperature using tunable vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) photoionization and time-resolved mass spectrometry. The CH radicals are prepared by 248 nm multiphoton photolysis of CHBr3 at 298 K and react with the selected hydrocarbon in a helium gas flow. Analysis of photoionization efficiency versus VUV photon wavelength permits isomer-specific detection of the reaction products and allows estimation of the reaction product branching ratios. The reactions proceed by either CH insertion or addition followed by H atom elimination from the intermediate adduct. In the CH + C2H4 reaction the C3H5 intermediate decays by H atom loss to yield 70(+-8)percent allene, 30(+-8)percent methylacetylene and less than 10percent cyclopropene, in agreement with previous RRKM results. In the CH + acetylene reaction, detection of mainly the cyclic C3H2 isomer is contrary to a previous RRKM calculation that predicted linear triplet propargylene to be 90percent of the total H-atom co-products. High-level CBS-APNO quantum calculations and RRKM calculation for the CH + C2H2 reaction presented in this manuscript predict a higher contribution of the cyclic C3H2 (27.0percent) versus triplet propargylene (63.5percent) than these earlier predictions. Extensive calculations on the C3H3 and …

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