The preferential acceleration and resulting cosmic ray abundance enhancements of heavy elements (relative to protons) are calculated in the collisionless supernova shock acceleration model described by Eichler in earlier work. Rapidly increasing enhancements up to several tens times solar ratios are obtained as a function of atomic weight over charge at the time of acceleration. For material typical of hot phase interstellar medium, good agreement is obtained with the observed abundance enhancements.

The Weibull distribution arises as an example of the theory of extreme events. It is commonly used to fit statistical data arising in the failure analysis of electrical components and in DC breakdown of materials. This distribution is employed to analyze time-to-damage and intensity-to-damage statistics obtained when irradiating thin film coated samples of SiO/sub 2/, ZrO/sub 2/, and Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/ with tightly focused laser beams. The data used is furnished by Milam. The fit to the data is excellent; and least squared correlation coefficients greater than 0.9 are often obtained.

The fusion-fission hybrid is a combination of the fusion and fission processes, having features which are complementary. Fission energy is running out of readily available fuel, and fusion has extra neutrons which can be used to breed that fission fuel. Fusion would have to take on an extra burden of radioactivity, but this early application would give fusion, which does not work well enough now to make power, practical experience which may accelerate development of pure fusion.

None

Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory have been conducting laser driven inertial confinement fusion experiments for over five years. The first proof of the thermonuclear burn came at the Janus target irradiation facility in the spring of 1975. Since that time three succeedingly higher energy facilities have been constructed at Livermore, Cyclops, Argus and Shiva, where increased fusion efficiency has been demonstrated. A new facility, called Nova, is now in the construction phase and we are hopeful that scientific break even (energy released compared to incident laser energy on target) will be demonstrated here in early 1980's. Projected progress of the Livermore program is shown.

From eighteenth Health Physics Society meeting; Miami Beach, Florida, USA (17 Jun 1973). A refresher course to provide a practical approach to the use of statistical concepts in interpreting data related to problems of applied health physics is given. After a brief review of the theoretical probability distributions, emphasis is placed on counting statistics, in particular the concept of the standard deviation. In this category the following topics are covered: (1) calculation of the standard deviation, (2) propagation of errors (when two or more quantities are combined arithmetically or via a formula), (3) confidence limits, and (4) the null hypothesis. The following topics are also discussed. (1) Chi-Square in relation to checking the reliability of a counting instrument, (2) correction factors for deadtime losses, and (3) for the case of a decaying source. (auth)

The Mirror Fusion Program in the US is now focused on two concepts that can obtain high values of the power gain factor Q. These are the tandem mirror and field reversed mirror concepts. A new facility called TMX has been constructed to test the principles of the tandem mirror. A further attempt to create field reversal is being carried out in the 2XIIB facility (renamed Beta II) with neutral beam injection into a reversed-field target plasma to be created by a magnetized coaxial gun. During the next 5 years, the main mirror facilities in the US will be the TMX, Beta II, and a large mirror device called MFTF scheduled to operate by 1982. The program based on these facilities will be outlined and initial experimental results from TMX will be discussed.