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.

Annual Illness and Injury Surveillance Program report for 2003 for the Pantex Plant. DOE is commited to assuring the health and safety of its workers. This includes the conduct of epidemiologic surveillance activities that provide an early warning system for health problems among workers. The IISP monitors illnesses and health conditions that result in an absence of workdays, occupational injuries and illnesses, and disabilities and deaths among current workers.

Annual Illness and Injury Surveillance Program report for 2003 for the Savannah River Site. DOE is commitment to assuring the health and safety of its workers includes the conduct of epidemiologic surveillance activities that provide an early warning system for health problems among workers. The report monitors illnesses and health conditions that result in an absence of workdays, occupational injuries and illnesses, and disabilities and deaths among current workers.

Since the last report, there have been no material changes in the detector element inventories in buildings 151 and 332 at LLNL. Stable element inventories in building 151 have remained stable since the inventory in September 2005. For the first time in many years, Stockpile Radiochemistry personnel viewed radioactive tracer materials that reside in building 332. A list of LLNL tracers and locations are available under separate cover. Despite the recent NNSA agreement to retain 2.8 kg of {sup 233}U for programmatic purposes, we have yet to identify a location that is appropriate and will accept the material. A recent visit to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in September 2006 revealed nearly 190 kg of material with very high {sup 233}U content scheduled for down-blending in various chemical and isotopic forms. The chemical form, isotopic and chemical purities of this material were such that roughly 150 kg of the material was of comparable composition to the desired tracer package material and would be acceptable for use in an underground test, should the US even conduct such a test. Efforts continue to remove 2.8 kg of material from the down-blend cue and reserve it for the Test Readiness mission.

Nozzle geomtry, pilot injection and post injection effects were studied.

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Samarium-neodymium isotopic analyses of unleached and acid-leached mineral fractions from the recently identified olivine-bearing shergottite Northwest Africa 1195 yield a crystallization age of 348 {+-} 19 Ma and an {var_epsilon}{sub Nd}{sup 143} value of +40.1 {+-} 1.3. Maskelynite fractions do not lie on the Sm-Nd isochron and appear to contain a martian surface component with low {sup 147}Sm/{sup 144}Nd and {sup 143}Nd/{sup 144}Nd ratios that was added during shock. The Rb-Sr system is disturbed and does not yield an isochron. Terrestrial Sr appears to have affected all of the mineral fractions, although a maximum initial {sup 87}Sr/{sup 86}Sr ratio of 0.701614 {+-} 16 is estimated by passing a 348 Ma reference isochron through the maskelynite fraction that is least affected by contamination. The high initial {var_epsilon}{sub Nd}{sup 143} value and the low initial {sup 87}Sr/{sup 86}Sr ratio, combined with the geologically young crystallization age, indicate that Northwest Africa 1195 is derived from a source region characterized by a long-term incompatible element depletion. The age and initial Sr and Nd isotopic compositions of Northwest Africa 1195 are very similar to those of Queen Alexandra Range 94201, indicating these samples were derived from source regions with nearly identical Sr-Nd isotopic systematics. These …

Since 1970, approximately 38,000 suspect-transuranic and transuranic waste containers have been placed in retrievable storage on the Hanford Site in the 200 Areas burial grounds. Hanford's Waste Retrieval Project is retrieving these buried containers and processing them for safe storage and disposition. Container retrieval activities require an air emissions permit to account for potential emissions of radionuclides. The air permit covers the excavation activities as well as activities associated with assaying containers and installing filters in the retrieved transuranic containers lacking proper venting devices. Fluor Hanford, Inc. is required to track radioactive emissions resulting from the retrieval activities. Air, soil, and debris media contribute to the emissions and enabling assumptions allow for calculation of emissions. Each of these activities is limited to an allowed annual emission (per calendar year) and .contributes to the overall total emissions allowed for waste retrieval operations. Tracking these emissions is required to ensure a permit exceedance does not occur. A tracking tool was developed to calculate potential emissions in real time sense. Logic evaluations are established within the tracking system to compare real time data against license limits to ensure values are not exceeded for either an individual activity or the total limit. Data input …

Totalview, from the Etnus Corporation, is a sophisticated and feature rich software debugger for parallel applications. As Totalview has gained in popularity and market share its pricing model has increased to the point where it is often prohibitively expensive for massively parallel supercomputers. Additionally, many of Totalview's advanced features are not used by members of the scientific computing community. For these reasons, supercomputing centers have begun to search for a basic parallel debugging tool which can be used as an alternative to Totalview. As the cost and complexity of Totalview has increased over the years, scientific computing centers have started searching for a viable parallel debugging alternative. DDT (Distributed Debugging Tool) from Allinea Software is a relatively new parallel debugging tool which aims to provide much of the same functionality as Totalview. This review outlines the basic features and limitations of DDT to determine if it can be a reasonable substitute for Totalview. DDT was tested on the NERSC platforms Bassi, Seaborg, Jacquard and Davinci with Fortran90, C, and C++ codes using MPI and OpenMP for parallelism.

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We report the ongoing work of our group in hydrodynamics and radiation hydrodynamics with astrophysical applications. During the period of the existing grant, we have carried out two types of experiments at the Omega laser. One set of experiments has studied radiatively collapsing shocks, obtaining data using a backlit pinhole with a 100 ps backlighter and beginning to develop the ability to look into the shock tube with optical or x-ray diagnostics. Other experiments have studied the deeply nonlinear development of the Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability from complex initial conditions, using dual-axis radiographic data with backlit pinholes and ungated detectors to complete the data set for a Ph.D. student. We lead a team that is developing a proposal for experiments at the National Ignition Facility and are involved in experiments at NIKE and LIL. All these experiments have applications to astrophysics, discussed in the corresponding papers. We assemble the targets for the experiments at Michigan, where we also prepare many of the simple components. We also have several projects underway in our laboratory involving our x-ray source. The above activities, in addition to a variety of data analysis and design projects, provide good experience for graduate and undergraduates students. In the …

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Carbon dioxide capture from large stationary sources and storage in geological media is a technologically-feasible mitigation measure for the reduction of anthropogenic emissions of CO2 to the atmosphere in response to climate change. Carbon dioxide (CO2) can be sequestered underground in oil and gas reservoirs, in deep saline aquifers, in uneconomic coal beds and in salt caverns. The Alberta Basin provides a very large capacity for CO2 storage in oil and gas reservoirs, along with significant capacity in deep saline formations and possible unmineable coal beds. Regional assessments of potential geological CO2 storage capacity have largely focused so far on estimating the total capacity that might be available within each type of reservoir. While deep saline formations are effectively able to accept CO2 immediately, the storage potential of other classes of candidate storage reservoirs, primarily oil and gas fields, is not fully available at present time. Capacity estimates to date have largely overlooked rates of depletion in these types of storage reservoirs and typically report the total estimated storage capacity that will be available upon depletion. However, CO2 storage will not (and cannot economically) begin until the recoverable oil and gas have been produced via traditional means. This report describes …

Reactivity transients have been analyzed with an updated RELAPS-3D (ver. 2.4.2) system model of the pin core design for the 2400MWt gas-cooled fast reactor (GCFR). Additional reactivity parameters were incorporated in the RELAP5 point-kinetics model to account for reactivity feedbacks due to axial and radial expansion of the core, fuel temperature changes (Doppler effect), and pressure changes (helium density changes). Three reactivity transients without scram were analyzed and the incidents were initiated respectively by reactivity ramp, loss of load, and depressurization. During the course of the analysis the turbine bypass model for the power conversion unit (PCU) was revised to enable a better utilization of forced flow cooling after the PCU is tripped. The analysis of the reactivity transients demonstrates the significant impact of the PCU on system pressure and core flow. Results from the modified turbine bypass model suggest a success path for the GCFR to mitigate reactivity transients without scram.

The purpose of this report is to update parameters utilized in Human Health Exposure calculations and Bioaccummulation Transfer Factors utilized at SRS for Performance Assessment model.

Many complex systems can be represented and analyzed as networks, and examples that have benefited from this approach span the natural sciences. For instance, we now know that systems as disparate as the World-Wide Web, the Internet, scientific collaborations, food webs, protein interactions and metabolism all have common features in their organization, the most salient of which are their scale-free connectivity distributions and their small-world behavior. The recent availability of large scale datasets that span the proteome or metabolome of an organism have made it possible to elucidate some of the organizational principles and rules that govern their function, robustness and evolution. We expect that combining the currently separate layers of information from gene regulatory-, signal transduction-, protein interaction- and metabolic networks will dramatically enhance our understanding of cellular function and dynamics.

The cyclotide MCoTI-II is a powerful trypsin inhibitor recently isolated from the seeds of Momordica cochinchinensis, a plant member of cucurbitaceae family. We report for the first time the in vivo biosynthesis of natively-folded MCoTI-II inside live E. coli cells. Our biomimetic approach involves the intracellular backbone cyclization of a linear cyclotide-intein fusion precursor mediated by a modified protein splicing domain. The cyclized peptide then spontaneously folds into its native conformation. The use of genetically engineered E. coli cells containing mutations in the glutathione and thioredoxin reductase genes considerably improves the production of folded MCoTI-II in vivo. Biochemical and structural characterization of the recombinant MCoTI-II confirmed its identity. Biosynthetic access to correctly-folded cyclotides allows the possibility of generating cell-based combinatorial libraries that can be screened inside living cells for their ability to modulate or inhibit cellular processes.

The aging in plutonium is predominantly caused by its internal self-irradiation. The self-irradiation in Pu-239 is by the decay process of transmuting the Pu atom into uranium atom and emitting an {alpha}-particle. Most of the lattice damage comes from the uranium recoil resulting in Frenkel-type defects consisting of vacancies and self-interstitial atoms, helium in-growth and defect clusters and possibly even though it is not yet observed, the generation of voids. As part of the stockpile stewardship, it is important to understand the changes in the structure and microstructures and their correlations to the physical properties. Changes in the physical properties have a direct relationship to the quality of the structure, in terms of formation of defects and defect clustering, accumulation of voids, grain boundaries, phase changes and etc. which can adversely affect the stability of the material. These changes are very difficult to monitor because of the high activity of the sample, high atomic number making x-ray and synchrotron probe into the bulk very difficult (neutron probe is not feasible) and the long life time which normally requires decades to measure. In this paper we describe the development of an in-situ in-house transmission x-ray diffraction (XRD) experimental technique used to …

This topical report presents work completed to characterize lithium stearate so a replacement supplier could be identified. Lithium stearate from Alfa Aesar and Chemtura was obtained and characterized along with the current material from Witco. Multiple methods were used to characterize the materials including Karl Fischer, FT-IR, differential scanning calorimetry, and thermogravimetric analysis.

A geologic/geochemical investigation in the vicinity of UPR-200-E-82 was performed using pairs of cone-penetrometer probe holes. A total of 41 direct-push cone-penetrometer borings (19 pairs to investigate different high moisture zones in the same sampling location and 3 individual) were advanced to characterize vadose zone moisture and the distribution of contaminants. A total of twenty sample sets, containing up to two split-spoon liners and one grab sample, were delivered to the laboratory for characterization and analysis. The samples were collected around the documented location of the C-152 pipeline leak, and created an approximately 120-ft diameter circle around the waste site. UPR-200-E-82 was a loss of approximately 2,600 gallons of Cs-137 Recovery Process feed solution containing an estimated 11,300 Ci of cesium-137 and 5 Ci of technetium-99. Several key parameters that are used to identify subsurface contamination were measured, including: water extract pH, electrical conductivity, nitrate, technetium-99, sodium, and uranium concentrations and technetium-99 and uranium concentrations in acid extracts. All of the parameters, with the exception of electrical conductivity, were elevated in at least some of the samples analyzed as part of this study. Specifically, soil pH was elevated (from 8.69 to 9.99) in five samples collected northeast and southwest of …

The Center for Applied Scientific Computing (CASC) and the LLNL Climate and Carbon Science Group of Energy and Environment (E and E) are working together to improve predictions of future climate by applying the best available computational methods and computer resources to this problem. Over the last decade, researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have developed a number of climate models that provide state-of-the-art simulations on a wide variety of massively parallel computers. We are now developing and applying a second generation of high-performance climate models. Through the addition of relevant physical processes, we are developing an earth systems modeling capability as well.

SPEAR3 has two diagnostic beam lines: an x-ray pinhole camera and a visible/UV beam line. The pinhole camera images {approx}8 keV dipole synchrotron radiation (SR) incident on a phosphor screen. The visible beam line delivers conventional optical radiation to an array of cameras and diagnostic elements on a 1x3m optical bench. This paper briefly reviews the pinhole camera system while concentrating more on visible beam line power transmission calculations and streak camera data. Impedance estimates in the nominal optics and bunch length measurements in low-alpha optics are presented.

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.

We consider flux compactification of type IIB string theory as the orientifold limit of an F-theory on a Calabi-Yau fourfold. We show that when supersymmetry is dominantly broken by the axion-dilaton and the contributions of the F-terms associated with complex structure moduli are small, the Hessian of the flux potential always has tachyonic modes for de Sitter vacua. This implies that there exist no meta-stable de Sitter vacua in this limit. Moreover, we find that the stability requirement imposes a relation between the values of cosmological constant and the scale of supersymmetry breaking for non-supersymmetric anti de Sitter vacua in this limit. The proof is general and does rely on the details of the geometry of the compact Calabi-Yau internal space. We finally analyze the consequences of these constraints on the statistics of meta-stable de Sitter vacua and address some other related issues.