The authors present measurements of branching fractions for five B-meson decays to two-body charmless final states. The data, collected with the BABAR detector at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, represent 459 million B{bar B} pairs. The results for branching fractions are, in units of 10{sup -6} (upper limits at 90% C.L.): {Beta}(B{sup +} {yields} {eta}{rho}{sup +}) = 9.9 {+-} 1.2 {+-} 0.8, {Beta}(B{sup 0} {yields} {eta}{prime}{eta}) = 0.5 {+-} 0.4 {+-} 0.1 (< 1.2), {Beta}(B{sup 0} {yields} {eta}{pi}{sup 0}) = 0.9 {+-} 0.4 {+-} 0.1 (< 1.5), {Beta}(B{sup 0} {yields} {eta}{prime}{pi}{sup 0}) = 0.9 {+-} 0.4 {+-} 0.1 (< 1.5), and {Beta}(B{sup 0}{sup 0} {yields} {omega}{pi}{sup 0}) = {eta}{rho}{sup +} mode, they measure the charge asymmetry {Alpha}{sub ch} (B{sup +} {yields} {eta}{rho}{sup +}) = 0.13 {+-} 0.11 {+-} 0.02.

The authors have measured the relaxation time of hot electrons in short pulse laser-solid interactions using a picosecond time-resolved x-ray spectrometer and a time-integrated electron spectrometer. Employing laser intensities of 10{sup 17}, 10{sup 18}, and 10{sup 19} W/cm{sup 2}, they find increased laser coupling to hot electrons as the laser intensity becomes relativistic and thermalization of hot electrons at timescales on the order of 10 ps at all laser intensities. They propose a simple model based on collisional coupling and plasma expansion to describe the rapid relaxation of hot electrons. The agreement between the resulting K{sub {alpha}} time-history from this model with the experiments is best at highest laser intensity and less satisfactory at the two lower laser intensities.

In hierarchical structure formation, merging of galaxies is frequent and known to dramatically affect their properties. To comprehend these interactions high-resolution simulations are indispensable because of the nonlinear coupling between pc and Mpc scales. To this end, we present the first adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) simulation of two merging, low mass, initially gas-rich galaxies (1.8 x 10{sup 10} M{sub {circle_dot}} each), including star formation and feedback. With galaxies resolved by {approx} 2 x 10{sup 7} total computational elements, we achieve unprecedented resolution of the multiphase interstellar medium, finding a widespread starburst in the merging galaxies via shock-induced star formation. The high dynamic range of AMR also allows us to follow the interplay between the galaxies and their embedding medium depicting how galactic outflows and a hot metal-rich halo form. These results demonstrate that AMR provides a powerful tool in understanding interacting galaxies.

High-level nuclear waste produced from fuel reprocessing operations at the Savannah River Site (SRS) requires pretreatment to remove Cs-137, Sr-90 and alpha-emitting radionuclides (i.e., actinides) prior to disposal onsite as low level waste. Separation processes planned at SRS include sorption of Sr-90 and alpha-emitting radionuclides onto monosodium titanate (MST) and caustic side solvent extraction, for Cs-137 removal. The MST and separated Cs-137 will be encapsulated into a borosilicate glass waste form for eventual entombment at the federal repository. The predominant alpha-emitting radionuclides in the highly alkaline waste solutions include plutonium isotopes Pu-238, Pu-239 and Pu-240. This paper describes recent results to produce an improved sodium titanate material that exhibits increased removal kinetics and capacity for Sr-90 and alpha-emitting radionuclides compared to the baseline MST material.

The design of the linac delivering electron bunches into ten independent soft x-ray free electron lasers (FELs) producing light at 1 nm and longer wavelengths is presented. The bunch repetition rate in the linac is 1 MHz and 100 kHz in each of ten FEL beam lines. Various issues regarding machine layout and lattice, bunch compression, collimation, and the beam switch yard are discussed. Particular attention is given to collective effects. A demanding goal is to preserve both a low beam slice emittance and low slice energy spread during acceleration, bunch compression and distribution of the electron bunches into the array of FEL beamlines. Detailed studies of the effect of the electron beam microbunching caused by longitudinal space-charge forces and coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR) have been carried out and their results are presented.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of River Protection has an extensive integrity assessment program for the Hanford Site Double-Shell Tank System. The DOE Orders and environmental protection regulations provide the guidelines for the activities used to inspect and maintain 28 double-shell tanks (DSTs), the waste evaporator, and ancillary equipment that compose this system. This program has been reviewed by oversight and regulatory bodies and found to comply with the established guidelines. The basis for the DOE Order 435.1-1 for tank integrity comes from the Tank Structural Integrity Paneled by Brookhaven National Laboratory during the late 1990s. These guidelines established criteria for performing Non-Destructive Examination (NDE), for acceptance of the NDE results, for waste chemistry control, and for monitoring the tanks. The environmental regulations mirror these requirements and allow for the tank integrity program to provide compliant storage of the tanks. Both sets of requirements provide additional guidance for the protection of ancillary equipment. CH2M HILL uses two methods of NDE: visual inspection and Ultrasonic Testing (UT). The visual inspection program examines the primary tank and secondary liner of the DST. The primary tank is examined both on the interior surface above the waste in the tank and on the …

Pressed-powdered crystallites of intrinsically anisotropic materials have been shown to undergo irreversible volume expansion when subjected to repeated cycles of heating and cooling. We develop a coarse-grained (micron-scale) interaction Hamiltonian for this system and perform molecular dynamics simulations, which quantitatively reproduce the experimentally observed irreversible growth. The functional form and values of the interaction parameters at the coarse-grained level are motivated by our knowledge at the atomic/molecular scale, and allows a simple way to incorporate the effect of polymeric binder. We demonstrate that irreversible growth happens only in the presence of intrinsic crystalline anisotropy of the powder material, is mediated by particles much smaller than the average crystallite size, and can be significantly reduced in the presence of high-strength polymeric binder with elevated glass transition temperatures.

The chemistry of Br species associated with sea salt ice and aerosols has been implicated in the episodes of ozone depletion reported at Arctic sunrise. However, Br{sup -} is only a minor component in sea salt, which has a Br{sup -}/Cl{sup -} molar ratio of {approx}0.0015. Sea salt is a complex mixture of many different species, with NaCl as the primary component. In recent years experimental and theoretical studies have reported enhancement of the large, more polarizable halide ion at the liquid/vapor interface of corresponding aqueous alkali halide solutions. The proposed enhancement is likely to influence the availability of sea salt Br{sup -} for heterogeneous reactions such as those involved in the ozone depletion episodes. We report here ambient pressure x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy studies and molecular dynamics simulations showing direct evidence of Br{sup -} enhancement at the interface of an aqueous NaCl solution doped with bromide. The experiments were carried out on samples with Br{sup -}/Cl{sup -} ratios in the range 0.1% to 10%, the latter being also the ratio for which simulations were carried out. This is the first direct measurement of interfacial enhancement of Br{sup -} in a multi-component solution with particular relevance to sea salt chemistry.

The Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture is a new industry open standard for electronics instrument modules and shelves being evaluated for the International Linear Collider (ILC). It is the first industrial standard designed for High Availability (HA). ILC availability simulations have shown clearly that the capabilities of ATCA are needed in order to achieve acceptable integrated luminosity. The ATCA architecture looks attractive for beam instruments and detector applications as well. This paper provides an overview of ongoing R&D including application of HA principles to power electronics systems.

The BaBar detector has operated over 200 2nd generation Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) in the forward endcap since 2002. Many chambers have increased noise rates and high voltage currents. These aging symptoms are correlated with the integrated RPC current as expected, but also depend on the rate and direction of the gas flow, indicating that pollutants produced in the gas can accelerate aging of downstream RPC surfaces. HF produced by decomposition of the Freon 134a component of the BaBar RPC gas in electric discharges has been proposed as the main pollutant. This paper presents measurements of HF production and absorption rates in BaBar RPCs. Since many of the highest rate chambers in the forward endcap were converted to avalanche mode operation, a comparison of HF production in streamer and avalanche mode RPCs is made. Correlations between the HF production rate and other chamber operating conditions were also explored.

Presented at the Association of Industrial Metallizers, Coaters and Laminators (AIMCAL) Fall Technical Conference 2008 and 22nd International Vacuum Web Coating Conference held October 19-22, 2008 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. This presentation discusses PV in the world energy portfolio, PV basics, PV technologies, and vacuum web-coating applications in PV.

CH2M HILL Hanford Group, Inc. (the Hanford Tank Farm Operations contractor) and the Department of Energy's Office of River Protection have just completed the first phase of the Hanford Single-Shell Tank RCRA Corrective Action Program. The focus of this first phase was to characterize the nature and extent of past Hanford single-shell tank releases and to characterize the resulting fate and transport of the released contaminants. Most of these plumes are below 20 meters, with some reaching groundwater (at 60 to 120 meters below ground surface [bgs]).

The author discusses two recent results in b {yields} s{gamma} decays from BABAR. The first is a measurement of the branching fraction and photon energy spectrum in the B meson frame of the decay B {yields} X{sub s{gamma}}. The second result probes the photon polarization via time-dependent CP violation in neutral B decays to K*{sup 0}{gamma}.

We observed the TeV blazar 1ES 1218+304 with the X-ray astronomy satellite Suzaku in May 2006. At the beginning of the two-day continuous observation, we detected a large flare in which the 5-10 keV flux changed by a factor of {approx}2 on a timescale of 5 x 10{sup 4} s. During the flare, the increase in the hard X-ray flux clearly lagged behind that observed in the soft X-rays, with the maximum lag of 2.3 x 10{sup 4} s observed between the 0.3?1 keV and 5?10 keV bands. Furthermore we discovered that the temporal profile of the flare clearly changes with energy, being more symmetric at higher energies. From the spectral fitting of multi-wavelength data assuming a one-zone, homogeneous synchrotron self-Compton model, we obtain B {approx} 0.047 G, emission region size R = 3.0 x 10{sup 16} cm for an appropriate beaming with a Doppler factor of {delta} = 20. This value of B is in good agreement with an independent estimate through the model fit to the observed time lag ascribing the energy-dependent variability to differential acceleration timescale of relativistic electrons provided that the gyro-factor {zeta} is 10{sup 5}.

Although the Standard Model of elementary particles is well established, strong interactions are not yet fully under control. We believe QCD is the field theory capable of describing them, but we are not yet capable, in most of the cases, to make exact predictions. Systems that include heavy quark-antiquark pairs (quarkonia) are ideal and unique laboratories to probe both the high energy regimes of QCD, where an expansion in terms of the coupling constant is possible, and the low energy regimes, where non-perturbative effects dominate. In the last years this field is experiencing a rapid expansion with a wealth of new data coming in from diverse sources: data on quarkonium formation from dedicated experiments (BES at BEPC, KEDR at VEPP-4M CLEO-c at CESR), clear samples produced by high luminosity B-factories (PEP and KEKB), and very large samples produced from gluon-gluon fusion in p{bar p} annihilations at Tevatron (CDF and D0 experiments). In this review I will first summarize recent developments in the understanding of heavy quarkonium states which have a well established quark content. Next, the core of the paper will be spent to review the experimental evidences of new states that might be aggregations of more than just a …

Plasma density gradients in a gas jet were used to control the wake phase velocity and trapping threshold in a laser wakefield accelerator, producing stable electron bunches with longitudinal and transverse momentum spreads more than ten times lower than in previous experiments (0.17 and 0.02 MeV/c FWHM, respectively) and with central momenta of 0.76 +- 0.02 MeV/c. Transition radiation measurements combined with simulations indicated that the bunches can be used as a wakefield accelerator injector to produce stable beams with 0.2 MeV/c-class momentum spread at high energies.

Monte Carlo simulations are used to establish the potential of mean force between two globular proteins in an aqueous electrolyte solution. This potential includes nonelectrostatic contributions arising from dispersion forces first, between the globular proteins, and second, between ions in solution and between each ion and the globular protein. These latter contributions are missing from standard models. The potential of mean force, obtained from simulation, is fitted to an analytic equation. Using our analytic potential of mean force and Barker-Henderson perturbation theory, we obtain phase diagrams for lysozyme solutions that include stable and metastable fluid-fluid and solid-fluid phases when the electrolyte is 0.2 M NaSCN or NaI or NaCl. The nature of the electrolyte has a significant effect on the phase diagram.

We report the construction of a cell-based fluorescent reporter for anthrax lethal factor (LF) protease activity using the principle of fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET). This was accomplished by engineering an Escherichia coli cell line to express a genetically encoded FRET reporter and LF protease. Both proteins were encoded in two different expression plasmids under the control of different tightly controlled inducible promoters. The FRET-based reporter was designed to contain a LF recognition sequence flanked by the FRET pair formed by CyPet and YPet fluorescent proteins. The length of the linker between both fluorescent proteins was optimized using a flexible peptide linker containing several Gly-Gly-Ser repeats. Our results indicate that this FRET-based LF reporter was readily expressed in E. coli cells showing high levels of FRET in vivo in the absence of LF. The FRET signal, however, decreased 5 times after inducing LF expression in the same cell. These results suggest that this cell-based LF FRET reporter may be used to screen genetically encoded libraries in vivo against LF.

We propose an importance truncation scheme for the no-core shell model, which enables converged calculations for nuclei well beyond the p-shell. It is based on an a priori measure for the importance of individual basis states constructed by means of many-body perturbation theory. Only the physically relevant states of the no-core model space are considered, which leads to a dramatic reduction of the basis dimension. We analyze the validity and efficiency of this truncation scheme using different realistic nucleon-nucleon interactions and compare to conventional no-core shell model calculations for {sup 4}He and {sup 16}O. Then, we present the first converged calculations for the ground state of {sup 40}Ca within no-core model spaces including up to 16{h_bar}{Omega}-excitations using realistic low-momentum interactions. The scheme is universal and can be easily applied to other quantum many-body problems.

We present a proposal for performing model-independent jets plus missing energy searches. Currently, these searches are optimized for mSUGRA and are consequently not sensitive to all kinematically-accessible regions of parameter space. We show that the reach of these searches can be broadened by setting limits on the differential cross section as a function of the total visible energy and the missing energy. These measurements only require knowledge of the relevant Standard Model backgrounds and can be subsequently used to limit any theoretical model of new physics. We apply this approach to an example where gluinos are pair-produced and decay to the LSP through a single-step cascade, and show how sensitivity to different gluino masses is altered by the presence of the decay chain. The analysis is closely based upon the current searches done at the Tevatron and our proposal requires only small modifications to the existing techniques. We find that within the MSSM, the gluino can be as light as 125 GeV. The same techniques are applicable to jets and missing energy searches at the Large Hadron Collider.

We consider QCD-like theories with one massless fermion in various representations of the gauge group SU(N). The theories are formulated on R{sub 3} x S{sub 1}. In the decompactification limit of large r(S{sub 1}) all these theories are characterized by confinement, mass gap and spontaneous breaking of a (discrete) chiral symmetry ({chi}SB). At small r(S{sub 1}), in order to stabilize the vacua of these theories at a center-symmetric point, we suggest to perform a double trace deformation. With these deformation, the theories at hand are at weak coupling at small r(S{sub 1}) and yet exhibit basic features of the large-r(S{sub 1}) limit: confinement and {chi}SB. We calculate the string tension, mass gap, bifermion condensates and {theta} dependence. The double-trace deformation becomes dynamically irrelevant at large r(S{sub 1}). Despite the fact that at small r(S{sub 1}) confinement is Abelian, while it is expected to be non-Abelian at large r(S{sub 1}), we argue that small and large-r(S{sub 1}) physics are continuously connected. If so, one can use small-r(S{sub 1}) laboratory to extract lessons about QCD and QCD-like theories on R{sub 4}.

Results from Super-K, SNO, and KamLAND provide strong evidence that neutrinos undergo flavor-changing oscillations and therefore have non-zero mass. The {nu}-disappearance observations by KamLAND, assuming CPT conservation, point to matter enhanced (MSW) oscillations with large mixing angles as the solution to the solar neutrino problem--a result consistent with the MSW parameters recently defined by these experiments. This requires that the observed neutrino flavors (e, {mu}, and tau) are not mass eigenstates, but are linear combinations of the mass eigenstates of the neutrino. However, such oscillation experiments can only determine the differences in the masses of the neutrinos, not the absolute scale of neutrino mass. What can be inferred from these experiments is that at least one species of neutrino has a mass greater than 55 meV. In fact, the WMAP observations of large-scale structure point to a sum-neutrino mass of {approx} 0.7 eV (roughly 0.25 eV/species assuming democracy between the flavors). Furthermore, there is still the important issue of whether the neutrino and anti-neutrino are distinct particles (i.e. Dirac type) or not (Majorana type). The only way to answer both of these questions is through neutrinoless double beta decay (DBD) experiments. CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events) is a …

The sensitivity of the continental seasonal climate to initial conditions is estimated from an ensemble of decadal simulations of an atmospheric general circulation model with the same specifications of radiative forcings and monthly ocean boundary conditions, but with different initial states of atmosphere and land. As measures of the ''reproducibility'' of continental climate for different initial conditions, spatio-temporal correlations are computed across paired realizations of eleven model land-surface variables in which the seasonal cycle is either included or excluded--the former case being pertinent to climate simulation, and the latter to seasonal anomaly prediction. It is found that the land-surface variables which include the seasonal cycle are impacted only marginally by changes in initial conditions; moreover, their seasonal climatologies exhibit high spatial reproducibility. In contrast, the reproducibility of a seasonal land-surface anomaly is generally low, although it is substantially higher in the Tropics; its spatial reproducibility also markedly fluctuates in tandem with warm and cold phases of the El Nino/Southern Oscillation. However, the overall degree of reproducibility depends strongly on the particular land-surface anomaly considered. It is also shown that the predictability of a land-surface anomaly implied by its reproducibility statistics is consistent with what is inferred from more conventional predictability …

The impacts and acceptability of using oxalic acid to clean the Savannah River Site, High Level Waste Tanks 1-8, were re-investigated using a two-phased approach. For the first phase, using a representative Tank 1-8 sludge, the chemical equilibrium based software, OLI ESP{copyright} and Savannah River Site laboratory test results were used to develop a chemically speciated material balance and a general oxalate mass balance. Using 8 wt% oxalic acid with a 100% molar excess, for every 1 kg of sludge solid that was dissolved, about 3.4 kg of resultant solids would form for eventual vitrification, while about 0.6 kg of soluble oxalate would precipitate in the evaporator system, and form a salt heel. Using available analyses, a list of potential safety and process impacts were developed, screened, and evaluated for acceptability. The results showed that the use of oxalic acid had two distinct types of impacts, those which were safety based and required potential upgrades or additional studies. Assuming such were performed and adequate, no further actions were required. The second type of impacts were also acceptable, but were long-term, and as such, would need to be managed. These impacts were directly caused by the solubility characteristics of oxalate in …