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As adaptive optics (AO) matures, it becomes possible to envision AO systems oriented towards specific important scientific goals rather than general-purpose systems. One such goal for the next decade is the direct imaging detection of extrasolar planets. An 'extreme' adaptive optics (ExAO) system optimized for extrasolar planet detection will have very high actuator counts and rapid update rates - designed for observations of bright stars - and will require exquisite internal calibration at the nanometer level. In addition to extrasolar planet detection, such a system will be capable of characterizing dust disks around young or mature stars, outflows from evolved stars, and high Strehl ratio imaging even at visible wavelengths. The NSF Center for Adaptive Optics has carried out a detailed conceptual design study for such an instrument, dubbed the eXtreme Adaptive Optics Planet Imager or XAOPI. XAOPI is a 4096-actuator AO system, notionally for the Keck telescope, capable of achieving contrast ratios >10{sup 7} at angular separations of 0.2-1'. ExAO system performance analysis is quite different than conventional AO systems - the spatial and temporal frequency content of wavefront error sources is as critical as their magnitude. We present here an overview of the XAOPI project, and an error …

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) established an area monitoring dosimeter program in accordance with Article 514 of the Department of Energy (DOE) Radiological Control Manual (RCM) in January 1993. This program is to minimize the number of areas requiring issuance of personnel dosimeters and to demonstrate that doses outside Radiological Buffer Areas are negligible. In accordance with 10 CFR Part 835.402 (a)(1)-(4) and Article 511.1 of the PNNL Radiological Control Program Description, personnel dosimetry shall be provided to (1) radiological workers who are likely to receive at least 100 mrem annually, and (2) declared pregnant workers, minors, and members of the public who are likely to receive at least 50 mrem annually. Program results for calendar years 1993-2003 confirm that personnel dosimetry is not needed for individuals located in areas monitored by the program.

A micro-mechanistic understanding of bone fracture that encompasses how cracks interact with the underlying microstructure and defines their local failure mode is lacking, despite extensive research on the response of bone to a variety of factors like aging, loading, and/or disease. Micro-mechanical models for fracture incorporating such local failure criteria have been widely developed for metallic and ceramic materials systems; however, few such deliberations have been undertaken for the fracture of bone. In fact, although the fracture event in mineralized tissues such as bone is commonly believed to be locally strain controlled, until recently there has been little experimental evidence to support this widely held belief. In the present study, a series of in vitro experiments involving a double-notch bend test geometry are performed in order to shed further light on the nature of the local cracking events that precede catastrophic fracture in bone and to define their relationship to the microstructure. Specifically, crack-microstructure interactions are examined to determine the salient toughening mechanisms in human cortical bone and to characterize how these may affect the anisotropy in fracture properties. Based on preliminary micro-mechanical models of these processes, in particular crack deflection and uncracked ligament bridging, the relative importance of these …

A technique for creating renewable reflective optics suitable for focusing of pulsed laser beams is proposed. It is based on the heating of the surface of a planar reflecting slab by an auxiliary heating source that causes thermal expansion of the slab material and creates a desired surface relief. The presence of this relief is a transient phenomenon, but, for short-enough main pulse, this does not cause any problems. If the surface is damaged by the main pulse, the shifting of the slab and repeating the whole cycle allows recreating the transient mirror. Favorable features of this approach include controlling the optics ''at a distance'', without any direct mechanical contact. Detailed discussion of the possibilities provided by this technique for the focusing of x-ray beams at the planned LCLS facility at Stanford is presented. It is concluded that 10-fold increase of intensity of 8-keV beam and 100-fold increase of intensity of 0.8 keV beam is possible. A set of design equations and constraint is formulated. The analysis presented can be used as a template for analyses of similar transient optical systems for the UV and optical range.

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The performance of two large NaI(Tl) scintillation detectors has been determined as a function of detector type and as a function of temperature. One detector had dimensions of 4?4?16 in.3 with a stainless steel shell while the other detector was 2?4?16 in.3 with an aluminum shell. Absolute counting efficiencies for photopeaks and total counts were measured at 0.46 m and 2.0 m for gamma sources ranging in energy from 25 keV to 2500 keV. Photopeak resolutions were measured over the same energy range. The changes in pulse height and photopeak resolution were measured as a function of temperature over the range -50 C to +60 C. As expected from prior literature data, the scintillator light output decreases at both higher and lower temperatures compared to room temperature. However, the maximum peak height in this work occurred at 0 C whereas the literature gives the maximum light output at about 40 C. This difference is attributed to the fact that in this work, the phototubes and preamplifiers were heated and cooled along with the scintillator. Both detectors continued to function successfully over the entire temperature range studied in this work. The pulse height decreased by about 33% at -50 C and …

The authors observed dynamically driven phase transitions in isentropically compressed bismuth. By changing the stress loading conditions they explored two distinct cases one in which the experimental signature of the phase transformation corresponds to phase-boundary crossings initiated at both sample interfaces, and another in which the experimental trace is due to a single advancing transformation front in the bulk of the material. They introduce a coupled kinetics-hydrodynamics model that for this second case enables them, under suitable simplifying assumptions, to directly extract characteristic transition times from the experimental measurements.

Weekly newspaper from Holliday, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

The monocular passive ranging (MPR) problem in remote sensing consists of identifying the precise range of an airborne target (missile, plane, etc.) from its observed radiance. This inverse problem may be set as a global optimization problem (GOP) whereby the difference between the observed and model predicted radiances is minimized over the possible ranges and atmospheric conditions. Using additional information about the error function between the predicted and observed radiances of the target, we developed GMG, a new algorithm to find the Global Minimum with a Guarantee. The new algorithm transforms the original continuous GOP into a discrete search problem, thereby guaranteeing to find the position of the global minimum in a reasonably short time. The algorithm is first applied to the golf course problem, which serves as a litmus test for its performance in the presence of both complete and degraded additional information. GMG is further assessed on a set of standard benchmark functions and then applied to various realizations of the MPR problem.

In this report we investigate order, stability, and phase transformations for a series of actinide-based alloys. The statics and kinetics of precipitation and ordering in this class of alloys are modeled with a scheme that couples fundamental information on the alloy energetics obtained from experimental and assessed thermo-chemical data to the CALPHAD approach commonly used in industry for designing alloys with engineering specificity with the help of the Thermo-Calc software application. The CALPHAD approach is applied to the study of the equilibrium thermodynamic properties of Pu-based alloys, Pu-X, where X=Al, Fe, Ga. The assessment of the equilibrium phase diagrams in the whole range of alloy composition has been performed with the PARROT module of the Thermo-Calc application software. Predictions are made on the low temperature and Pu-rich side of the phase diagrams of Pu-Ga and Pu-Al for which controversy has been noted in the past. The validity of the assessed thermo-chemical database will be discussed by comparing predicted heats of transformation for pure Pu with measured values from differential scanning calorimetry analysis. An overall picture for the stability properties of Pu-Ga and Pu-Al that reconciles the results of past studies carried out on these alloys is proposed. Results on phase …

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