The investigation of a complex system is often performed using computer generated response data supplemented by system and component test results where possible. Analysts rely on an efficient use of limited experimental resources to test the physical system, evaluate the models and to assure (to the extent possible) that the models accurately simulate the system order investigation. The general problem considered here is one where only a restricted number of system simulations (or physical tests) can be performed to provide additional data necessary to accomplish the project objectives. The levels of variables used for defining input scenarios, for setting system parameters and for initializing other experimental options must be selected in an efficient way. The use of computer algorithms to support experimental design in complex problems has been a topic of recent research in the areas of statistics and engineering. This paper describes a resampling based approach to form dating this design. An example is provided illustrating in two dimensions how the algorithm works and indicating its potential on larger problems. The results show that the proposed approach has characteristics desirable of an algorithmic approach on the simple examples. Further experimentation is needed to evaluate its performance on larger problems.

The authors study the low-temperature in-plane magnetoresistance of tunnel-coupled quasi-one-dimensional quantum wires. The wires are defined by two pairs of mutually aligned split gates on opposite sides of a {le} 1 micron thick AlGaAs/GaAs double quantum well heterostructure, allowing independent control of the width of each quantum well. In the ballistic regime, when both wires are defined and the field is perpendicular to the current, a large resistance peak at {approximately}6 Tesla is observed with a strong gate voltage dependence. The data is consistent with a counting model whereby the number of subbands crossing the Fermi level changes with field due to the formation of an anticrossing in each pair of 1D subbands.

The Statistics and Human Factors Department at SNL has evolved as the Labs' mission has evolved from engineering designs for the non-nuclear parts of nuclear weapons, including the safety and security components, to a multi-program lab focusing on national security. Twenty years ago their client base was the engineers, scientists, and managers of the nuclear weapon stockpile program, at Sandia and other facilities within the DOE complex. Client relationships developed over years of association. Components and systems were assigned to statisticians so that they could develop a knowledge base in that area. Because of the many different component types and system designs in the stockpile, they typically juggled five or six statistical projects at a time. project participation other than statistical consulting was limited. They rarely had the time to lead project teams, and any skills or inclinations in that direction were often undeveloped. This paper describes a (hit-or-miss) selection of some early and recent efforts. This paper also presents their self-assessment metrics and their external assessment metrics. These metrics were selected to track the business aspects of the department; they are systematic (not hit-or-miss). These two types of histories should allow them to judge whether we're doing the right …

Methods are discussed for computing the sensitivity of field variables to changes in material properties and initial/boundary condition parameters for heat transfer problems. The method we focus on is termed the ''Sensitivity Equation Method'' (SEM). It involves deriving field equations for sensitivity coefficients by differentiating the original field equations with respect to the parameters of interest and numerically solving the resulting sensitivity field equations. Uncertainty in the model parameters are then propagated through the computational model using results derived from first-order perturbation theory; this technique is identical to the methodology typically used to propagate experimental uncertainty. Numerical results are presented for the design of an experiment to estimate the thermal conductivity of stainless steel using transient temperature measurements made on prototypical hardware of a companion contact conductance experiment. Comments are made relative to extending the SEM to conjugate heat transfer problems.

Back contact solar cells hold significant promise for increased performance in photovoltaics for the near future. Two major advantages which these cells possess are a lack of grid shading loss and coplanar interconnection. Front contacted cells can have up to 10% shading loss when using screen printed metal grids. A front contact cell must also use solder connections which run from the front of one cell to the back of the next for series interconnection. This procedure is more difficult to automate than the case of co-planar contacts. The back contact cell design is not a recent concept. The earliest silicon solar cell developed by Bell Labs was a back contact device. There have been many design modifications to the basic concept over the years. To name a few, there is the Interdigitated Back Contact (IBC) cell, the Stanford Point contact solar cell, the Emitter Wrap Through (EWT), and its many variations. A number of these design concepts have demonstrated high efficiency. The SunPower back contact solar cell holds the efficiency record for silicon concentrator cells. The challenge is to produce a high efficiency cell at low cost using high throughput techniques. This has yet to be achieved with a …

The optical gain spectra for compressive-strained and lattice-matched GaInNAs/GaAs quantum wells are computed using a microscopic laser theory. From these spectra, the peak gain and carrier radiative decay rate as functions of carrier density are determined. These dependences allow the study of lasing threshold current density for different GAInNAs/GaAs laser structures.

CDF has recently published [1] a search for Higgs bosons produced in association with vector bosons in 91 ± 7 pb^-1 of Run I data. Observations are consistent with background expectation. 95% confidence level upper limits are set as a function of the Higgs mass on {sigma}(p{anti p} {yields} H⁰ V )·{beta}, with {beta} the branching ratio of the Higgs decays to b{anti b} and V = W; Z. The sensitivity of the search is limited by statistics to a cross section approximately two orders of magnitude larger than the predicted cross section for standard model Higgs production. In this paper we extrapolate the results from [1] to the next Tevatron Run II where we hope for an approximately twenty-fold increase in the total integrated luminosity as well as a significant improvement in the total acceptances.

Comparative experiments using high energy (10 MeV) electrons and test reactor neutrons have been undertaken to understand the role that primary damage state has on hardening (embrittlement) induced by irradiation at 300 C. Electrons produce displacement damage primarily by low energy atomic recoils, while fast neutrons produce displacements from considerably higher energy recoils. Comparison of changes resulting from neutron irradiation, in which nascent point defect clusters can form in dense cascades, with electron irradiation, where cascade formation is minimized, can provide insight into the role that the in-cascade point defect clusters have on the mechanisms of embrittlement. Tensile property changes induced by 10 MeV electrons or test reactor neutron irradiations of unalloyed iron and an Fe-0.9 wt.% Cu-1.0 wt.% Mn alloy were examined in the damage range of 9.0 x 10{sup {minus}5} dpa to 1.5 x 10{sup {minus}2} dpa. The results to date showed the ternary alloy experienced substantially greater embrittlement in both the electron and neutron irradiated samples relative to unalloyed iron. Surprisingly, despite their disparate nature of defect production, similar embrittlement trends with increasing radiation damage were observed for electrons and neutrons in both the ternary and unalloyed iron.

Electron storage rings generate energetic bremsstrahlung photons through radiative interaction of the particle beam with the residual gas molecules and other components inside the storage ring. At the Advanced Photon Source (APS), where the stored beam energy is 7 GeV, bremsstrahlung generated in the straight sections of the insertion devices comes down through the beamlines. The resulting absorbed dose distributions by, this radiation in a 300 mm x 300 mm x 300 mm tissue substitute phantom were measured with LiF:Mg,Ti (TLD-700) thermoluminescent dosimeters. The average normalized absorbed dose, in a cross sectional area of 100 mm{sup 2} at a depth of 150 mm of the PMMA phantom, was measured as 3.3 x 10{sup 6} mGy h{sup {minus}1}W{sup {minus}1} for a 7-GeV bremsstrahhmg spectrum.

The effects of baryon stopping and its resulting energy deposition on the dynamics of Au + Au collisions at 6, 8 and 10.8 GeV/nucleon are explored with recent results from the AGS experiment E917. Current analyses of stopping, collective flow signals and HBT parameters are presented. Strangeness and anti-baryon production is examined using the yields of anti-lambdas and anti-protons.

Complex special nuclear material (SNM) storage systems can benefit from automated monitoring and data integration systems that maximize safety and security and optimize system maintainability. Current methods of verification, which rely on physical access, are costly and labor intensive. A prototype data analysis. system for nuclear material monitoring is being developed through a joint effort by Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and Lockheed Martin Idaho Technologies Company (LMITCO). The system synthesizes information from various sources and applies advanced data analysis to predict sensor faults and detect material instabilities and security/safeguards problems. The system makes use of Argonne's Multivariate State Estimation Technique, or MSET, to provide an early warning system for the performance of sensors and processes, The system is being implemented and tested at the Safeguard Technology Evaluation Laboratory (STEL) at ANL-W. The STEL was installed at a Fuel Manufacturing Facility (FMF) special nuclear materials vault at ANL-W in 1997 as part of a DOE Plutonium Focus Area Project. The STEL provides the infrastructure for the demonstration and integration of technologies for monitoring plutonium-bearing materials in various storage configurations. Real sensors located within the STEL are being used to ''calibrate'' and validate. software while simulated sensors are used to mockup larger-scale …

Neural networks (NNs) provide a powerful and flexible tool for selecting a signal from a larger background. The D0 collaboration has used them extensively in studying t{anti t} decays. NNs were essential to the measurement of the t{anti t} production cross section in the all-jets channel (t{anti t} {yields} b {anti b}qqqq), and were also used in the measurement of the mass of the top quark in the lepton+jets channel (t{anti t} {yields} b{anti b}l{nu}q{anti q}). This paper will describe two new applications of neural networks to top quark analysis: the search for single top quark production, and an effort to increase the sensitivity in the dilepton channel t{anti t} {yields} b{anti b}e{anti {mu}}{nu}{anti {nu}} beyond that achieved in the published analysis.

This paper will focus on the required growth conditions for self-doping metals and the various lifetime issues. Recent results for a novel self-doping metal system will be discussed briefly.

Z-cut lithium tantalate (LiTaO{sub 3}) ferroelectric single crystals were irradiated with 200 keV Ar{sup ++} ions. LiTaO{sub 3} possesses a structure that is a derivative of the corundum (Al{sub 2}O{sub 3}) crystal structure. A systematic study of the radiation damage accumulation rate as a function of ion dose was performed using ion-beam channeling experiments. An ion fluence of 2.5 x 10{sup 18} Ar{sup 2+} ions/m{sup 2} was sufficient to amorphize the irradiated volume of a LiTaO{sub 3} crystal at an irradiation temperature of approximately 120K. This represents a rather exceptional susceptibility to ion-induced amorphization, which may be related to a highly disparate rate of knock-on of constituent lattice ions, due to the large mass difference between the Li and Ta cations. The authors also observed that the c{sup {minus}} end of the ferroelectric polarization exhibits slightly higher ion dechanneling along with an apparent greater susceptibility to radiation damage, as compared to the c{sup +} end of the polarization.

The study of directed flow in heavy ion collisions as a probe of collision dynamics has been of heightened interest to the physics community in recent years. The E917 collaboration is addressing this interest by investigating signatures of flow as a function of rapidity and centrality for fixed target gold on gold collisions at 11.7A GeV/c. The purpose of this report is to demonstrate E917's capability to establish the reaction plane on an event-by-event basis and present preliminary results of the proton data collected at Brookhaven National Laboratory's Alternating Gradient Synchrotrons (AGS) facility.

We review recent X-ray and neutron scattering studies of the structure and dynamics of confined complex fluids. This includes the study of polymer conformations and binary fluid phase transitions in porous media using Small Angle Neutron scattering, and the use of synchrotrons radiation to study ordering and fluctuation phenomena at solid/liquid and liquid/air interfaces. Ordering of liquids near a solid surface or in confinement will be discussed, and the study, via specular and off-specular X-ray reflectivity, of capillary wave fluctuations on liquid polymer films. Finally, we shall discuss the use of high-brilliance beams from X-ray synchrotrons to study via photon correlation spectroscopy the slow dynamics of soft condensed matter systems.

Geographic Information System (GIS) technology is used by land managers and natural resource planners for examining resource distribution and conducting project planning, often by visually interpreting spatial data representing environmental or regulatory variables. Frequently, many variables influence the decision-making process, and modeling can improve results with even a small investment of time and effort. Presented are several grid-based GIS modeling projects, including: (1) land use optimization under environmental and regulatory constraints; (2) identification of suitable wetland mitigation sites; and (3) predictive mapping of prehistoric cultural resource sites. As different as the applications are, each follows a similar process of problem conceptualization, implementation of a practical grid-based GIS model, and evaluation of results.

CePtSn exhibits two antiferromagnetic transitions at low temperatures. We report on magnetoresistance and in magnetization studies of single-crystalline CePtSn in magnetic fields up to 18 T. The data were taken to establish the magnetic phase diagrams for CePtSn in fields applied along the principal directions.

Normally synthetic well defined monodisperse discotic laponite clays are known to form a gel phase at mass concentrations as low as a few percent in distilled water. Hydrosoluble polymer polyethylene oxide was added to this intriguing clay system, it was observed that it either prevents gelation or slows it down extremely depending on the polymer weight, concentration or the laponite concentration. Small Angle Neutron scattering (SANS) was used to study these systems because only by isotopic labeling can the structure of the adsorbed polymer layers be determined. The contrast variation technique is specifically used to determine separately the different partial structure factors of the clay and polymer. In this way the signal of the adsorbed chains is separated from the signal of the free chains in the dilute regime. Attempts have also been made to characterize the structure in the concentrated regime of laponite with polymer.

Use of geographic information system (GIS)-based predictive mapping to locate areas of high potential for prehistoric archaeological sites is becoming increasingly popular among archaeologists. Knowledge of the environmental variables influencing activities of original inhabitants is used to produce GIS layers representing the spatial distribution of those variables. The GIS layers are then analyzed to identify locations where combinations of environmental variables match patterns observed at known prehistoric sites. Presented are the results of a study to locate high-potential areas for prehistoric sites in a largely unsurveyed area of 39,000 acres in the Upper Chesapeake Bay region, including details of the analysis process. The project used environmental data from over 500 known sites in other parts of the region and the results corresponded well with known sites in the study area.