Surface waves were generated by the North Korean nuclear explosion of 9 October 2006 and recorded at epicentral distances up to 34 degrees, from which we estimated a surface wave magnitude (M{sub s}) of 2.94 with an interstation standard deviation of 0.17 magnitude units. The International Data Centre estimated a body wave magnitude (m{sub b}) of 4.1. This is the only explosion we have analyzed that was not easily screened as an explosion based on the differences between the M{sub s} and m{sub b} estimates. Additionally, this M{sub s} predicts a yield, based on empirical M{sub s}/Yield relationships, that is almost an order of magnitude larger then the 0.5 to 1 kiloton reported for this explosion. We investigate how emplacement medium effects on surface wave moment and magnitude may have contributed to the yield discrepancy.

Using 385 fb{sup -1} of e{sup +}e{sup -} collision data collected at center-of-mass energies around 10.6 GeV, we search for time-integrated CP violation in the Cabibbo-suppressed decays D{sup 0}/{bar D}{sup 0} {yields} {pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup 0} and D{sup 0}/{bar D}{sup 0} {yields} K{sup -}K{sup +}{pi}{sup 0} with both model-independent and model-dependent methods. Measurements of the asymmetries in amplitudes of flavor states and CP eigenstates provide constraints on theories beyond the Standard Model, some of which predict CP violation in amplitudes at the 1% level or higher. We find no evidence of CP violation and hence no conflict with the Standard Model.

Carbon aerogels (CAs) are novel mesoporous materials with applications such as electrode materials for super capacitors and rechargeable batteries, adsorbents and advanced catalyst supports. To expand the potential application for these unique materials, recent efforts have focused on the design of CA composites with the goal of modifying the structure, conductivity or catalytic activity of the aerogel. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) possess a number of intrinsic properties that make them promising materials in the design of composite materials. In addition, the large aspect ratios (100-1000) of CNTs means that small additions (less than 1 vol%) of CNTs can produce a composite with novel properties. Therefore, the homogeneous incorporation of CNTs into a CA matrix provides a viable route to new carbon-based composites with enhanced thermal, electrical and mechanical properties. One of the main challenges in preparing CNT composites is achieving a good uniform dispersion of nanotubes throughout the matrix. CAs are typically prepared through the sol-gel polymerization of resorcinol with formaldehyde in aqueous solution to produce organic gels that are supercritically dried and subsequently pyrolyzed in an inert atmosphere. Therefore, a significant issue in fabricating CA-CNT composites is dispersing the CNTs in the aqueous reaction media. Previous work in the design …

Molecular dynamics simulations of a bulk melts of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) are utilized to study chain conformation and ordering under constant uniaxial tension. We find that large extensions induce chain ordering in the direction of applied tension. We also find that voids are created via a cavitation mechanism. This study represents a validation of the current model for PDMS and benchmark for the future study of mechanical properties of PDMS melts enriched with fillers under tension.

Measuring the violence of a thermal explosion of a cased explosive is important for evaluating safety issues of explosive devices in fires. A sympathetic initiation scenario was studied here where a 9.0 cm diameter by 2.5 cm thick disc of PBX 9501 donor charge encased in a 304 stainless steel assembly was heated on top and bottom flat surfaces until it thermally exploded. The initial heating rate at the metal/explosive interface was 5 C per minute until it reaches 170 C; then this temperature is held for 35 minutes to allow temperature equilibration to within a few degrees throughout the explosive. The heating resumed at a rate of 1 C per minute until the PBX 9501 donor thermally exploded. A PBX 9501 acceptor charge with carbon resistor and manganin foil pressure gauges inserted at various depths was placed at a 10 cm standoff distance from the donor charge's top steel cover plate. Piezoelectric arrival time pins were placed in front of the acceptor surface to measure the velocity and shape of the impacting plate. The stainless steel cover plate of the donor charge had a nominal velocity of 0.55 {+-} 0.04 mm/{micro}s upon impact and was non-symmetrically warped. The impact …

With a sample of approximately 89 million B{bar B} pairs collected with the BABAR detector, they measure branching fractions, determine the degree of longitudinal polarization, and search for direct CP violation in the decays B{sup 0} {yields} {phi}K*{sup 0} and B{sup +} {yields} {phi}K*{sup +}. They perform a search for other charmless vector-vector B decays involving {rho} and K*(892) resonances and observe the decays B{sup +} {yields} {rho}{sup 0} K*{sup +} and B{sup +} {yields} {rho}{sup 0}{rho}{sup +}. The branching fractions are measured to be {Beta}({phi}K*{sup 0}) = (11.1{sub -1.2}{sup +1.3} {+-} 1.1) x 10{sup -6}, {Beta}({phi}K*{sup +}) = (12.1{sub -1.9}{sup +2.1} {+-} 1.5) x 10{sup -6}, {Beta}({rho}{sup 0} K*{sup +}) = (7.7{sub -2.0}{sup +2.1} {+-} 1.4) x 10{sup -6}, and {Beta}({rho}{sup 0}{rho}{sup +}) = (9.9{sub -2.5}{sup +2.6} {+-} 2.5) x 10{sup -6}. The longitudinal polarization fractions are measured to be {Lambda}{sub L}/{Lambda}({phi}K*{sup 0}) = 0.65 {+-} 0.07 {+-} 0.04 and {Lambda}{sub L}/{Lambda}({phi}K*{sup +}) = 0.46 {+-} 0.12 {+-} 0.05. They measure the charge asymmetries: {Alpha}{sub CP}({phi}K*{sup 0}) = +0.04 {+-} 0.12 {+-} 0.02 and {Alpha}{sub CP}({phi}K*{sup +}) = +0.16 {+-} 0.17 {+-} 0.04.

We report on the scattering parameters and Johnson noise emission of low-pass stripline filters employing a magnetically loaded silicone dielectric down to 25 mK. The transmission characteristic of a device with f-3dB=1.3 GHz remains essentially unchanged upon cooling. Another device with f-edB=0.4 GHz, measured in its stopband, exhibits a steady state noise power emission consistent with a temperature difference of a few mK relative to a well-anchored cryogenic microwave attenuator at temperatures down to 25 mK, thus presenting a matched thermal load.

This work summarizes a two-year study by the U.S. Federal Methane Hydrate Advisory Committee recommending the future needs for federally-supported hydrate research. The Report was submitted to the US Congress on August 14, 2007 and includes four recommendations regarding (a) permafrost hydrate production testing, (b) marine hydrate viability assessment (c) climate effect of hydrates, and (d) international cooperation. A secure supply of natural gas is a vital goal of the U.S. national energy policy because natural gas is the cleanest and most widely used of all fossil fuels. The inherent cleanliness of natural gas, with the lowest CO2 emission per unit of heat energy of any fossil fuel, means substituting gas for coal and fuel oil will reduce emissions that can exacerbate the greenhouse effect. Both a fuel and a feedstock, a secure and reasonably priced supply of natural gas is important to industry, electric power generators, large and small commercial enterprises, and homeowners. Because each volume of solid gas hydrate contains as much as 164 standard volumes of methane, hydrates can be viewed as a concentrated form of natural gas equivalent to compressed gas but less concentrated than liquefied natural gas (LNG). Natural hydrate accumulations worldwide are estimated to …

The passive films formed on Alloy C22 in several acidic solutions were investigated by a combination of five in situ techniques: cyclic polarization, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, Mott-Schottky analyses, electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance measurements, and surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy. Similar tests were conducted on unalloyed samples of nickel, chromium and molybdenum, which are the main alloying elements of Alloy C22. The results of the tests conducted on nickel, chromium, and molybdenum helped to determine the roles of these elements in the passivation of Alloy C22. In general, the corrosion resistance of C22 was superior to that of unalloyed chromium. Although chromium is an important component of the passive film on Alloy C22, the other elements figure prominently in the corrosion resistance of C22 in acidic solutions. The passivity of Alloy C22 was detrimentally affected by increasing concentrations of hydrogen ions, chloride ions, and increasing temperature. The results of this study provide understanding of the resistance/susceptibility of Alloy C22 to corrosion by the aggressive solutions that can develop inside pits and crevices.

While oil shale has the potential to provide a substantial fraction of our nation's liquid fuels for many decades, cost and environmental acceptability are significant issues to be addressed. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) examined a variety of oil shale processes between the mid 1960s and the mid 1990s, starting with retorting of rubble chimneys created from nuclear explosions [1] and ending with in-situ retorting of deep, large volumes of oil shale [2]. In between, it examined modified-in-situ combustion retorting of rubble blocks created by conventional mining and blasting [3,4], in-situ retorting by radio-frequency energy [5], aboveground combustion retorting [6], and aboveground processing by hot-solids recycle (HRS) [7,8]. This paper reviews various types of processes in both generic and specific forms and outlines some of the tradeoffs for large-scale development activities. Particular attention is given to hot-recycled-solids processes that maximize yield and minimize oil shale residence time during processing and true in-situ processes that generate oil over several years that is more similar to natural petroleum.

This paper contains a summary of the holdup and material control and accountability (MC&A) assays conducted for the determination of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in the deactivation and decommissioning (D&D) of Building 321-M at the Savannah River Site (SRS). The 321-M facility was the Reactor Fuel Fabrication Facility at SRS and was used to fabricate HEU fuel assemblies, lithium-aluminum target tubes, neptunium assemblies, and miscellaneous components for the SRS production reactors. The facility operated for more than 35 years. During this time thousands of uranium-aluminum-alloy (U-Al) production reactor fuel tubes were produced. After the facility ceased operations in 1995, all of the easily accessible U-Al was removed from the building, and only residual amounts remained. The bulk of this residue was located in the equipment that generated and handled small U-Al particles and in the exhaust systems for this equipment (e.g., Chip compactor, casting furnaces, log saw, lathes A & B, cyclone separator, Freon{trademark} cart, riser crusher, ...etc). The D&D project is likely to represent an important example for D&D activities across SRS and across the Department of Energy weapons complex. The Savannah River National Laboratory was tasked to conduct holdup assays to quantify the amount of HEU on all …

Here I review the temperature-dependence of heavy quarkonia correlators in potential models with three different screened potentials, and compare these to the results from lattice QCD. None of the potentials investigated yield results consistent with the lattice data, indicating that screening is likely not the mechanism for heavy quarkonia suppression. I also discuss a simple toy model, not based on temperature-dependent screening, that can reproduce the lattice results.

We present a systematic investigation on the formation of the highly mismatched alloy GaN{sub x}As{sub 1-x} using N{sup +}-implantation followed by a combination of pulsed laser melting and rapid thermal annealing. Thin films of GaN{sub x}As{sub 1-x} with x as high as 0.016 and an activation efficiency of the implanted N up to 50% have been synthesized with structural and optical properties comparable to films grown by epitaxial deposition techniques with similar substitutional N content. The effects of N{sup +} implantation dose, laser energy fluence and rapid thermal annealing temperature on the N incorporation as well as optical and structural properties of the GaN{sub x}As{sub 1-x} films are discussed.

We present the elliptic flow v{sub 2} of pions produced from resonance decays. The transverse momentum p{sub T} spectra of the parent particles are taken from thermal model fits and their v{sub 2} are fit under the assumption that they follow a number-of-constituent-quark (NCQ) scaling law expected from quark-coalescence models. The v{sub 2} of pions from resonance particle decays is found to be similar to the measured pion v{sub 2}. We also propose the measurement of electron v{sub 2} as a means to extract open-charm v{sub 2} and investigate whether a thermalized system of quasi-free quarks and gluons (a quark-gluon plasma) is created in collisions of Au nuclei at RHIC.

We present a simple analytical solution for one dimensional steady heat transfer with convection and conduction through a multi-layer system such as a vadose zone. We assume that each layer is homogeneous and has a constant thermal diffusivity. The mass/heat flow direction is perpendicular to the layers, and the mass flow rate is a constant. The analytical solution presented in this study also assumes constant known temperatures at the two boundaries of the system. Although the analytical solution gives the temperature as a function of a few parameters, we focus on the inverse application to estimate the percolation rate to high degree of accuracy (e.g., to mm/y). In some other cases the solution may also be helpful in characterizing potential lateral flow along layer divides.

The objectives of the VITALINKS tabletop exercise are to: Raise awareness of infrastructure interdependency issues; Identify and focus on the most important vulnerabilities and restoration priorities resulting from infrastructure disruptions; Examine the resources (people and equipment) required to sustain systems under emergency conditions; Identify and highlight roles, responsibilities, and authorities (including trans-border issues); and Continue to foster a more effective interface among public and private sector service providers and public officials in developing and implementing critical infrastructure protection, mitigation, response, and recovery options.

Coupled modeling of subsurface multiphase fluid and heat flow, solute transport and chemical reactions can be used for the assessment of acid mine drainage remediation, waste disposal sites, hydrothermal convection, contaminant transport, and groundwater quality. We have developed a comprehensive numerical simulator, TOUGHREACT, which considers non-isothermal multi-component chemical transport in both liquid and gas phases. A wide range of subsurface thermo-physical-chemical processes is considered under various thermohydrological and geochemical conditions of pressure, temperature, water saturation, and ionic strength. The code can be applied to one-, two- or three-dimensional porous and fractured media with physical and chemical heterogeneity.

As Grid permeates modern computing, Grid solutions continue to emerge and take shape. The actual Grid development projects continue to provide higher-level services that evolve in functionality and operate with application-level concepts which are often specific to the virtual organizations that use them. Physically, however, grids are comprised of sites whose resources are diverse and seldom project readily onto a grid's set of concepts. In practice, this also creates problems for site administrators who actually instantiate grid services. In this paper, we present a flexible, uniform framework to configure a grid site and its facilities, and otherwise describe the resources and services it offers. We start from a site configuration and instantiate services for resource advertisement, monitoring and data handling; we also apply our framework to hosting environment creation. We use our ideas in the Information Management part of the SAM-Grid project, a grid system which will deliver petabyte-scale data to the hundreds of users. Our users are High Energy Physics experimenters who are scattered worldwide across dozens of institutions and always use facilities that are shared with other experiments as well as other grids. Our implementation represents information in the XML format and includes tools written in XQuery and …

Anodes for lithium-ion cells were constructed from three types of natural graphite, two coated spherical and one flaky. Anode samples were compressed from 0 to 300 kg/cm2 and studied in half-cells to study the relations between anode density, SEI formation and anode cyclability. The C/25 formation of the SEI layer was found to depend on the nature of the graphite and the anode density. Compression of the uncoated graphite lead to an increased conductivity, but only slight improvements in the efficiency of the formation process. Compression of the anodes made from the amorphous-carbon-coated graphites greatly improved both the reversible capacity and first-cycle efficiency. In addition, the fraction of the irreversible charge associated with the surface of the graphite increased with compression, from both an increase in the electrolyte contact as well as compression of the amorphous layer. The cyclability of all of the anodes tended to improve with compression. This suggests that it is the improvement in the conductivity of the anode plays more of a role in the improvement in the cyclability than the formation process.

We demonstrate that hollow nanocrystals can be synthesized through a mechanism analogous to the Kirkendall Effect, in which pores form due to the difference in diffusion rates between two components in a diffusion couple. Cobalt nanocrystals are chosen as a primary example to show that their reaction in solution with oxygen, sulfur or selenium leads to the formation of hollow nanocrystals of the resulting oxide and chalcogenides. This process provides a general route to the synthesis of hollow nanostructures of large numbers of compounds. A simple extension of this process yields platinum-cobalt oxide yolk-shell nanostructures which may serve as nanoscale reactors in catalytic applications.

The application of forensic science techniques to electrical equipment failure investigation has not been widely documented in the engineering world. This paper is intended to share an example of using material characterization techniques to support an initial cause determination of an electrical component failure event. The resulting conclusion supported the initial cause determination and ruled out the possibility of design deficiencies. Thus, the qualification testing of the equipment was allowed to continue to successful completion.

We report deflagration rate measurements on PBXN-109 (RDWAVHTPB) and Composition B (RXDTTNThrvax) at pressures from 1,500-100,000 psi (10-700 MPa). This was done with the LLNL High Pressure Strand Burner, in which embedded wires are used to record the time-of-arrival of the burn front in the cylindrical sample as a function of pressure. The propellant samples are 6.4 mm in diameter and 6.4 mm long, with burn wires inserted between samples. Burning on the cylindrical surface is inhibited with an epoxy or polyurethane layer. With this direct measurement we do not have to account for product gas equation of state or heat losses in the system, and the burn wires allow detection of irregular burning. We report deflagration results for PBXN-109 as received, and also after it has been damaged by heating. The burn behavior of pristine PBXN-109 is very regular, and exhibits a reduction in pressure exponent from 1.32 to 0.85 at pressures above 20,000 psi (135 MPa). When PBXN-109 is thermally damaged by heating to 170-180 C, the deflagration rate is increased by more than a factor of 10. This appears to be a physical effect, as the faster burning may be explained by an increase in surface area. …

Density Functional Theory (DFT) is used to investigate the action of hydrogen getter 1,4-diphenyl-butadiyne, or DPB, on Pd(110) surface. We study reaction pathways and energetics of several relevant processes, including H{sub 2} adsorption, dissociation and migration on the metal surface, getter-metal interaction, and the energetics of H uptake by the getter. We also explore the effect of impurities like CO and CO{sub 2} on the action of the getter. Activation barriers for certain reactions are computed to shed light on the feasibility of such processes at room temperature.

Noninvasive evaluation of tissue viability of donor kidneys used for transplantation is an issue that current technology is not able to address. In this work, we explore optical spectroscopy for its potential to assess the degree of ischemic damage in kidney tissue. We hypothesized that ischemic damage to kidney tissue will give rise to changes in its optical properties which in turn may be used to asses the degree of tissue injury. The experimental results demonstrate that the autofluorescence intensity of the injured kidney is decreasing as a function of time exposed to ischemic injury. Changes were also observed in the NIR light scattering intensities most probably arising from changes due to injury and death of the tissue.