Article on dynamic conductance of carbon nanotubes.

Article on a theoretical study of the ultimate strength of carbon nanotubes.

We report a rapid and robust separation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and MS2 bacteriophage using acoustic focusing in a microfluidic device. A piezoelectric transducer (PZT) generates acoustic standing waves in the microchannel. These standing waves induce acoustic radiation force fields that direct microparticles towards the nodes (i.e., pressure minima) or the anti-nodes (i.e., pressure maxima) of the standing waves depending on the relative compressidensity between the particle and the suspending liquid.[1] For particles larger than 2 {micro}m, the transverse velocities generated by these force fields enable continuous, high throughput separation. Extensive work in the last decade [2-4] has demonstrated acoustic focusing for manipulating microparticles or biological samples in microfluidic devices. This prior work has primarily focused on experimental realization of acoustic focusing without modeling or with limited one-dimensional modeling estimates. We recently developed a finite element modeling tool to predict the two-dimensional acoustic radiation force field perpendicular to the flow direction in microfluidic devices.[1] Here we compare results from this model with experimental parametric studies including variations of the PZT driving frequencies and voltages as well as various particle sizes and compressidensities. These experimental parametric studies also provide insight into the development of an adjustable 'virtual' pore-size filter as well as …

Coupled reservoir-geomechanical simulations were conductedto study the potential for tensile and shear failure e.g., tensilefracturing and shear slip along pre-existing fractures associated withunderground CO2 injection in a multilayered geological system. Thisfailure analysis aimed to study factors affecting the potential forbreaching a geological CO2 storage system and to study methods forestimating the maximum CO2 injection pressure that could be sustainedwithout causing such a breach. We pay special attention to geomechanicalstress changes resulting from upward migration of the CO2 and how theinitial stress regime affects the potential for inducing failure. Weconclude that it is essential to have an accurate estimate of thethree-dimensional in situ stress field to support the design andperformance assessment of a geological CO2 injection operation. Moreover,we also conclude that it is important to consider mechanical stresschanges that might occur outside the region of increased reservoir fluidpressure (e.g., in the overburden rock) between the CO2-injectionreservoir and the ground surface.

Single-sided and mobile nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) sensors have the advantages of portability, low cost, and low power consumption compared to conventional high-field NMR and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems. We present fast, flexible, and easy-to-implement target field algorithms for mobile NMR and MRI magnet design. The optimization finds a global optimum ina cost function that minimizes the error in the target magnetic field in the sense of least squares. When the technique is tested on a ring array of permanent-magnet elements, the solution matches the classical dipole Halbach solution. For a single-sided handheld NMR sensor, the algorithm yields a 640 G field homogeneous to 16 100 ppm across a 1.9 cc volume located 1.5 cm above the top of the magnets and homogeneous to 32 200 ppm over a 7.6 cc volume. This regime is adequate for MRI applications. We demonstrate that the homogeneous region can be continuously moved away from the sensor by rotating magnet rod elements, opening the way for NMR sensors with adjustable"sensitive volumes."

Prompt doses from x-rays generated as result of laser beam interaction with target material are calculated at different locations inside the National Ignition Facility (NIF). The maximum dose outside a Target Chamber diagnostic port is {approx} 1 rem for a shot utilizing the 192 laser beams and 1.8 MJ of laser energy. The dose during a single bundle shot (8 laser beams) drops to {approx} 40 mrem. Doses calculated outside the Target Bay doors and inside the Switchyards (except for the 17 ft.-6 in. level) range from a fraction of mrem to about 11 mrem for 192 beams, and scales down proportionally with smaller number of beams. At the 17ft.-6 in. level, two diagnostic ports are directly facing two of the Target Bay doors and the maximum doses outside the doors are 51 and 15.5 mrem, respectively. Shielding each of the two Target Bay doors with 1/4 in. Pb reduces the dose by factor of fifty. One or two bundle shots (8 to 16 laser beams) present a small hazard to personnel in the Switchyards.

Relativistic multireference many-body perturbation theory calculations have been performed on Xe{sup 43+}-Xe{sup 39+} ions, resulting in energy levels, electric dipole transition probabilities, and level lifetimes. The second-order many-body perturbation theory calculation of energy levels included mass shifts, frequency-dependent Breit correction and Lamb shifts. The calculated transition energies and E1 transition rates are used to present synthetic spectra in the extreme ultraviolet range for some of the Xe ions.

The effect of hydrogen on the burst properties Type 304L stainless steel vessels was investigated. The purpose of the study was to compare the burst properties of hydrogen-exposed stainless steel vessels burst with different media: water, helium gas, or deuterium gas. A second purpose of the tests was to provide data for the development of a predictive finite-element model. The burst tests were conducted on hydrogen-exposed and unexposed axially-flawed cylindrical vessels. The results indicate that samples burst pneumatically had lower volume ductility than those tested hydraulically. Deuterium gas tests had slightly lower ductility than helium gas tests. Burst pressures were not affected by burst media. Hydrogen-charged samples had lower volume ductility and slightly higher burst pressures than uncharged samples. Samples burst with deuterium gas fractured by quasi-cleavage near the inside wall. The results of the tests were used to improve a previously developed predictive finite-element model. The results show that predicting burst behavior requires as a material input the effect of hydrogen on the plastic strain to fracture from tensile tests. The burst test model shows that a reduction in the plastic strain to fracture of the material will result in lower volume ductility without a reduction in burst pressure …

Automated front-end sample preparation technologies can significantly enhance the sensitivity and reliability of biodetection assays [1]. We are developing advanced sample preparation technologies for biowarfare detection and medical point-of-care diagnostics using microfluidic systems with continuous sample processing capabilities. Here we report an electrophoretically assisted acoustic focusing technique to rapidly extract and enrich viral and bacterial loads from 'complex samples', applied in this case to human nasopharyngeal samples as well as simplified surrogates. The acoustic forces capture and remove large particles (> 2 {micro}m) such as host cells, debris, dust, and pollen from the sample. We simultaneously apply an electric field transverse to the flow direction to transport small ({le} 2 {micro}m), negatively-charged analytes into a separate purified recovery fluid using a modified H-filter configuration [Micronics US Patent 5,716,852]. Hunter and O'Brien combined transverse electrophoresis and acoustic focusing to measure the surface charge on large particles, [2] but to our knowledge, our work is the first demonstration combining these two techniques in a continuous flow device. Marina et al. demonstrated superimposed dielectrophoresis (DEP) and acoustic focusing for enhanced separations [3], but these devices have limited throughput due to the rapid decay of DEP forces. Both acoustic standing waves and electric fields …

In order to develop plasma diagnostic for reduced-size hot hohlraums under laser irradiation, they have studied the L-shell emission from highly charged gold ions in the SuperEBIT electron beam ion trap. The resolving power necessary to identify emission features from individual charge states in a picket fence pattern has been estimated, and the observed radiation features have been compared with atomic structure calculations. They find that the strong 3d{sub 5/2} {yields} 2p{sub 3/2} emission features are particularly useful in determining the charge state distribution and average ion charge <Z>, which are strongly sensitive to the electron temperature.

Externally Dispersed Interferometry (EDI) is the series combination of a fixed-delay field-widened Michelson interferometer with a dispersive spectrograph. This combination boosts the spectrograph performance for both Doppler velocimetry and high resolution spectroscopy. The interferometer creates a periodic spectral comb that multiplies against the input spectrum to create moire fringes, which are recorded in combination with the regular spectrum. The moire pattern shifts in phase in response to a Doppler shift. Moire patterns are broader than the underlying spectral features and more easily survive spectrograph blurring and common distortions. Thus, the EDI technique allows lower resolution spectrographs having relaxed optical tolerances (and therefore higher throughput) to return high precision velocity measurements, which otherwise would be imprecise for the spectrograph alone.

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The resonant Auger effect of atomic neon exposed to high-intensity x-ray radiation in resonance with the 1s {yields} 3p transition is discussed. High intensity here means that the x-ray peak intensity is sufficient ({approx} 10{sup 18} W/cm{sup 2}) to induce Rabi oscillations between the neon ground state and the 1s{sup -1}3p ({sup 1}P) state within the relaxation lifetime of the inner-shell vacancy. For the numerical analysis presented, an effective two-level model, including a description of the resonant Auger decay process, is employed. Both coherent and chaotic x-ray pulses are treated. The latter are used to simulate radiation from x-ray free-electron lasers based on the principle of self-amplified spontaneous emission. Observing x-ray-driven atomic population dynamics in the time domain is challenging for chaotic pulse ensembles. A more practical option for experiments using x-ray free-electron lasers is to measure the line profiles in the kinetic energy distribution of the resonant Auger electron. This provides information on both atomic population dynamics and x-ray pulse properties.

Iron pyrite nanocrystals with high purity have been synthesized through a surfactant-assisted hydrothermal reaction under optimum pH value. These pyrite nanocrystals represent a new group of well-defined nanoscale structures for high-performance photovoltaic solar cells based on non-toxic and earth abundant materials.

This article presents the light curves of 21 gravitational microlensing events from the first six years of the MACHO Project gravitational microlensing survey that are likely examples of lensing by binary systems.

Ultra-high gradient dielectric wakefield accelerators are a potential option for a linear collider afterburner since they are immune to the ion collapse and electron/positron asymmetry problems implicit in a plasma based afterburner. The first phase of an experiment to study the performance of dielectric Cerenkov wakefield accelerating structures at extremely high gradients in the GV/m range has been completed. The experiment took advantage of the unique SLAC FFTB electron beam and its ultra-short pulse lengths and high currents (e.g., {sigma}{sub z} = 20 {micro}m at Q = 3 nC). The FFTB electron beam was successfully focused down and sent through short lengths of fused silica capillary tubing (ID = 200 {micro}m/OD = 325 {micro}m). The pulse length of the electron beam was varied to produce a range of electric fields between 2 and 20 GV/m at the inner surface of the dielectric tubes. We observed a sharp increase in optical emissions from the capillaries in the middle part of this surface field range which we believe indicates the transition between sustainable field levels and breakdown. If this initial interpretation is correct, the surfaced fields that were sustained equate to on axis accelerating field of several GV/m. In future experiments being …

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Salt management has been a challenge to westside farmerssince the rapid expansion of irrigated agriculture in the 1900 s. Thesoils in this area are naturally salt-affected having formed from marinesedimentary rocks rich in sea salts rendering the shallow groundwater,and drainage return flows discharging into the lower reaches of the SanJoaquin River, saline. Salinity problems are affected by the importedwater supply from Delta where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Riverscombine. Water quality objectives on salinity and boron have been inplace for decades to protect beneficial uses of the river. However it wasthe selenium-induced avian toxicity that occurred in the evaporationponds of Kesterson Reservoir (the terminal reservoir of a planned but notcompleted San Joaquin Basin Master Drain) that changed public attitudesabout agricultural drainage and initiated a steady stream ofenvironmental legislation directed at reducing non-point source pollutionof the River. Annual and monthly selenium load restrictions and salinityand boron Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) are the most recent of thesepolicy initiatives. Failure by both State and Federal water agencies toconstruct a Master Drain facility serving mostly west-side irrigatedagriculture has constrained these agencies to consider only In-Valleysolutions to ongoing drainage problems. For the Westlands subarea, whichhas no surface irrigation drainage outlet to the San Joaquin …

Current research efforts into structure based laser acceleration of electrons utilize beams from standard RF linacs. These beams must be coupled into very small structures with transverse dimensions comparable to the laser wavelength. To obtain decent transmission, a permanent magnet quadrupole (PMQ) triplet with a focusing gradient of 560 T/m is used to focus into the structure. Also of interest is the induced wakefield from the structure, useful for diagnosing potential accelerator structures or as novel radiation sources.

A transient heat balance model was developed to assess the impact of a Submersible Mixer Pump (SMP) on waste temperature during the process of waste mixing and removal for the Type-I Savannah River Site (SRS) tanks. The model results will be mainly used to determine the SMP design impacts on the waste tank temperature during operations and to develop a specification for a new SMP design to replace existing long-shaft mixer pumps used during waste removal. The model will also be used to provide input to the operation planning. This planning will be used as input to pump run duration in order to maintain temperature requirements within the tank during SMP operation. The analysis model took a parametric approach. A series of the modeling analyses was performed to examine how submersible mixer pumps affect tank temperature during waste removal operation in the Type-I tank. The model domain included radioactive decay heat load, two SMP's, and one Submersible Transfer Pump (STP) as heat source terms. The present model was benchmarked against the test data obtained by the tank measurement to examine the quantitative thermal response of the tank and to establish the reference conditions of the operating variables under no SMP …

We present a quadratic Finite Elements approach to discretize the Kohn-Sham equations on structured non-uniform meshes. A multigrid FAC preconditioner is proposed to iteratively solve the equations by an accelerated steepest descent scheme. The method was implemented using SAMRAI, a parallel software infrastructure for general AMR applications. Examples of applications to small nanoclusters calculations are presented.

Relativistic multireference M{o}ller-Plesset perturbation theory has been employed to calculate with high accuracy the energy levels and transition probabilities of Cu- to Sr-like gold ions. The many-body calculations were carried out to identify the unassigned blended lines in the 35-40 angstroms region of the low-energy EBIT spectrum of the gold ions. Most of the prominent lines in the 35-40 angstroms region were identified as the emission lines in Sr-like gold.

{lg_bullet} The Cluster Tool -is a set of linked vacuum chambers -can deposit multiple layers of metal and metal oxides {lg_bullet} Each layer can be deposited without breaking vacuum {lg_bullet} Shadow masks can give each layer a different pattern {lg_bullet} The Cluster Tool will be operational in April