The response of a glass batch to heating is determined by the batch makeup and in turn determines the rate of melting. Batches formulated for a high-alumina nuclear waste to be vitrified in an all-electric melter were heated at a constant temperature-increase rate to determine changes in melting behavior in response to the selection of batch chemicals and silica grain-size as well as the addition of heat-generating reactants. The type of batch materials and the size of silica grains determine how much, if any, primary foam occurs during melting. Small quartz grains, 5 {micro}m in size, caused extensive foaming because their major portion dissolved at temperatures <800 C, contributing to the formation of viscous glass forming melt that trapped evolving batch gases. Primary foam did not occur in batches with larger quartz grains, {+-}75 {micro}m in size, because their major portion dissolved at temperatures >800 C when batch gases no longer evolved. The exothermal reaction of nitrates with sucrose was ignited at a temperature as low as 160 C and caused a temporary jump in temperature of several hundred degrees. Secondary foam, the source of which is oxygen from redox reactions, occurred in all batches of a limited composition variation …

We report on a search for new particles in the diphoton channel using a data sample of p{bar p} collisions at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV collected by the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron, with an integrated luminosity of 5.4 fb{sup -1}. The diphoton invariant mass spectrum of the data agrees well with the standard model expectation. We set upper limits on the production cross section times branching ratio for the Randall-Sundrum graviton, as a function of diphoton mass. We subsequently derive lower limits on the graviton mass of 482 GeV/c{sup 2} and 975 GeV/c{sup 2}, at the 95% confidence level, for coupling parameters (k/{bar M}{sub Pl}) of 0.01 and 0.1 respectively.

We present a search for associated production of Higgs and W bosons in p{bar p} collisions at a center of mass energy of {radical}s = 1.96 TeV in 5.3 fb{sup -1} of integrated luminosity recorded by the D0 experiment. Multivariate analysis techniques are applied to events containing one lepton, an imbalance in transverse energy, and one or two b-tagged jets to discriminate a potential WH signal from standard model backgrounds. We observe good agreement between data and background, and set an upper limit of 4.5 (at 95% confidence level and for m{sub H} = 115 GeV) on the ratio of the WH cross section multiplied by the branching fraction of H {yields} b{bar b} to its standard model prediction. A limit of 4.8 is expected from simulation.

Chronic cocaine use has been associated with structural deficits in brain regions having dopamine receptive neurons. However, the concomitant use of other drugs and common genetic variability in monoamine regulation present additional structural variability. We therefore examined variations in gray matter volume (GMV) as a function of lifetime drug use and the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) genotype in cocaine use disorders (CUD) and healthy controls.

The CHARM 2010 meeting had over 30 presentations of experimental results, plus additional future facilities talks just before this summary talk. Since there is not enough time to even summarize all that has been shown from experiments and to recognize all the memorable plots and results - tempting as it is to reproduce the many clean signals and data vs theory figures, the quantum correlations plots, and the D-mixing plots before and after the latest CLEO-c data is added. So, this review will give only my personal observations, exposing my prejudices and my areas of ignorance, no doubt. This overview will be at a fairly high level of abstraction - no re-showing individual plots or results. I ask the forgiveness of those who will have been slighted in this way - meaning all the presents.

We developed a mathematical method to analyze flow cytometry data to describe the kinetics of {gamma}H2AX and pATF2 phosphorylations ensuing various qualities of low dose radiation in normal human fibroblast cells. Previously reported flow cytometry kinetic results for these DSB repair phospho-proteins revealed that distributions of intensity were highly skewed, severely limiting the detection of differences in the very low dose range. Distributional analysis reveals significant differences between control and low dose samples when distributions are compared using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Radiation quality differences are found in the distribution shapes and when a nonlinear model is used to relate dose and time to the decay of the mean ratio of phosphoprotein intensities of irradiated samples to controls. We analyzed cell cycle phase and radiation quality dependent characteristic repair times and residual phospho-protein levels with these methods. Characteristic repair times for {gamma}H2AX were higher following Fe nuclei as compared to X-rays in G1 cells (4.5 {+-} 0.46 h vs 3.26 {+-} 0.76 h, respectively), and in S/G2 cells (5.51 {+-} 2.94 h vs 2.87 {+-} 0.45 h, respectively). The RBE in G1 cells for Fe nuclei relative to X-rays for {gamma}H2AX was 2.05 {+-} 0.61 and 5.02 {+-} 3.47, at 2 …

The heart of the National Ignition Facility is a megajoule-class laser system consisting of 192 beams used to drive inertial confinement fusion reactions. A recently installed system of programmable, liquid-crystal-based spatial light modulators adds the capability of arbitrarily shaping the spatial beam profiles in order to enhance operational flexibility. Its primary intended use is for introducing 'blocker' obscurations shadowing isolated flaws on downstream optical elements that would otherwise be damaged by high fluence laser illumination. Because an improperly shaped blocker pattern can lead to equipment damage, both the position and shape of the obscurations must be carefully verified prior to high-fluence operations. An automatic alignment algorithm is used to perform detection and estimation of the imposed blocker centroid positions compared to their intended locations. Furthermore, in order to minimize the spatially-varying nonlinear response of the device, a calibration of the local magnification is performed at multiple sub-image locations. In this paper, we describe the control and associated image processing of this device that helps to enhance the safety and longevity of the overall system.

We present a new spatial discretization of the discrete-ordinates transport equation in two-dimensional Cartesian (X-Y) geometry for arbitrary polygonal meshes. The discretization is a discontinuous finite element method (DFEM) that utilizes piecewise bi-linear (PWBL) basis functions, which are formally introduced in this paper. We also present a series of numerical results on quadrilateral and polygonal grids and compare these results to a variety of other spatial discretizations that have been shown to be successful on these grid types. Finally, we note that the properties of the PWBL basis functions are such that the leading-order piecewise bi-linear discontinuous finite element (PWBLD) solution will satisfy a reasonably accurate diffusion discretization in the thick diffusion limit, making the PWBLD method a viable candidate for many different classes of transport problems.

Algebraic Multigrid (AMG) solvers are an essential component of many large-scale scientific simulation codes. Their continued numerical scalability and efficient implementation is critical for preparing these codes for exascale. Our experiences on modern multi-core machines show that significant challenges must be addressed for AMG to perform well on such machines. We discuss our experiences and describe the techniques we have used to overcome scalability challenges for AMG on hybrid architectures in preparation for exascale.

A low-budget surface slope measuring instrument, the Developmental Long Trace Profiler (DLTP), was recently brought into operation at the Advanced Light Source Optical Metrology Laboratory. The instrument is based on a precisely calibrated autocollimator and a movable pentaprism. The capability of the DLTP to achieve sub-microradian surface slope metrology has been verified via cross-comparison measurements with other high-performance slope measuring instruments when measuring the same high-quality test optics. In the present work, a further improvement of the DLTP is achieved by replacing the existing bulk pentaprism with a specially designed mirror based pentaprism. A mirror based pentaprism offers the possibility to eliminate systematic errors introduced by inhomogeneity of the optical material and fabrication imperfections of a bulk pentaprism. We provide the details of the mirror based pentaprism design and describe an original experimental procedure for precision mutual alignment of the mirrors. The algorithm of the alignment procedure and its efficiency are verified with rigorous ray tracing simulations. Results of measurements of a spherically curved test mirror and a flat test mirror using the original bulk pentaprism are compared with measurements using the new mirror based pentaprism, demonstrating the improved performance.

Medium-duty vehicles are used in a broad array of fleet applications, including parcel delivery. These vehicles are excellent candidates for electric drive applications due to their transient-intensive duty cycles, operation in densely populated areas, and relatively high fuel consumption and emissions. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) conducted a robust assessment of parcel delivery routes and completed a model-based techno-economic analysis of hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle configurations. First, NREL characterized parcel delivery vehicle usage patterns, most notably daily distance driven and drive cycle intensity. Second, drive-cycle analysis results framed the selection of drive cycles used to test a parcel delivery HEV on a chassis dynamometer. Next, measured fuel consumption results were used to validate simulated fuel consumption values derived from a dynamic model of the parcel delivery vehicle. Finally, NREL swept a matrix of 120 component size, usage, and cost combinations to assess impacts on fuel consumption and vehicle cost. The results illustrated the dependency of component sizing on drive-cycle intensity and daily distance driven and may allow parcel delivery fleets to match the most appropriate electric drive vehicle to their fleet usage profile.

Following a hot or cold thermal soak, vehicle climate control systems (air conditioning or heat) are required to quickly attain a cabin temperature comfortable to the vehicle occupants. In a plug-in hybrid electric or electric vehicle (PEV) equipped with electric climate control systems, the traction battery is the sole on-board power source. Depleting the battery for immediate climate control results in reduced charge-depleting (CD) range and additional battery wear. PEV cabin and battery thermal preconditioning using off-board power supplied by the grid or a building can mitigate the impacts of climate control. This analysis shows that climate control loads can reduce CD range up to 35%. However, cabin thermal preconditioning can increase CD range up to 19% when compared to no thermal preconditioning. In addition, this analysis shows that while battery capacity loss over time is driven by ambient temperature rather than climate control loads, concurrent battery thermal preconditioning can reduce capacity loss up to 7% by reducing pack temperature in a high ambient temperature scenario.

Current state-of-the-art and next generation laser systems - such as those used in the NIF and LIFE experiments at LLNL - depend on ever larger optical elements. The need for wide aperture optics that are tolerant of high power has placed many demands on material growers for such diverse materials as crystalline sapphire, quartz, and laser host materials. For such materials, it is either prohibitively expensive or even physically impossible to fabricate monolithic pieces with the required size. In these cases, it is preferable to optically bond two or more elements together with a technique such as Chemically Activated Direct Bonding (CADB{copyright}). CADB is an epoxy-free bonding method that produces bulk-strength bonded samples with negligible optical loss and excellent environmental robustness. The authors have demonstrated CADB for a variety of different laser glasses and crystals. For this project, they will bond quartz samples together to determine the suitability of the resulting assemblies for large aperture high power laser optics. The assemblies will be evaluated in terms of their transmitted wavefront error, and other optical properties.

We study the impact on the primordial abundances of light elements created of a variation of the quark masses at the time of Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN). In order to navigate through the particle and nuclear physics required to connect quark masses to binding energies and reaction rates in a model-independent way we use lattice QCD data and an hierarchy of effective field theories. We find that the measured {sup 4}He abundances put a bound of {delta}-1% {approx}< m{sub q}/m{sub 1} {approx}< 0.7%. The effect of quark mass variations on the deuterium abundances can be largely compensated by changes of the baryon-to-photon ratio {eta}. Including the bounds on the variation of {eta} coming from WMAP results and some additional assumptions narrows the range of allowed values of {delta}m{sub q}/m{sub q} somewhat.

We present a study of the D{sup +}{pi}{sup -}, D{sup 0}{pi}{sup +}, and D*{sup +}{pi}{sup -} systems in inclusive e{sup +}e{sup -} {yields} c{bar c} interactions in a search for new excited D meson states. We use a dataset, consisting of {approx}454 fb{sup -1}, collected at center-of-mass energies near 10.58 GeV by the BABAR detector at the SLAC PEP-II asymmetric-energy collider. We observe, for the first time, candidates for the radial excitations of the D{sup 0}, D*{sup 0}, and D*{sup +}, as well as the L = 2 excited states of the D{sup 0} and D{sup +}, where L is the orbital angular momentum of the quarks.

This article discusses temperature-dependent structural heterogeneity in calcium silicate liquids.

The latest searches for the Standard Model Higgs boson at a centre-of-mass energy of {radical}s = 1.96 TeV with the D0 and the CDF detectors at the Fermilab Tevatron collider are presented. For the first time since the LEP experiments the sensitivity for a Standard Model Higgs boson has been reached at a Higgs boson mass of 170 GeV/c{sup 2}.

Environmental statistics provide a necessary means of comparing the properties of galaxies in different environments and a vital test of models of galaxy formation within the prevailing, hierarchical cosmological model. We explore counts-in-cylinders, a common statistic defined as the number of companions of a particular galaxy found within a given projected radius and redshift interval. Galaxy distributions with the same two-point correlation functions do not necessarily have the same companion count distributions. We use this statistic to examine the environments of galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, Data Release 4. We also make preliminary comparisons to four models for the spatial distributions of galaxies, based on N-body simulations, and data from SDSS DR4 to study the utility of the counts-in-cylinders statistic. There is a very large scatter between the number of companions a galaxy has and the mass of its parent dark matter halo and the halo occupation, limiting the utility of this statistic for certain kinds of environmental studies. We also show that prevalent, empirical models of galaxy clustering that match observed two- and three-point clustering statistics well fail to reproduce some aspects of the observed distribution of counts-in-cylinders on 1, 3 and 6-h{sup -1}Mpc scales. All models …

An algorithm is presented for inverting either laboratory or field poroelastic data for all the drained constants of an anisotropic (specifically orthotropic) fractured poroelastic system. While fractures normally weaken the system by increasing the mechanical compliance, any liquids present in these fractures are expected to increase the stiffness somewhat, thus negating to some extent the mechanical weakening influence of the fractures themselves. The analysis presented quantifies these effects and shows that the key physical variable needed to account for the pore-fluid effects is a factor of (1 - B), where B is Skempton's second coe#14;fficient and satisfies 0 {<=} #20; B < 1. This scalar factor uniformly reduces the increase in compliance due to the presence of communicating fractures, thereby stiffening the fractured composite medium by a predictable amount. One further goal of the discussion is to determine how many of the poroelastic constants need to be known by other means in order to determine the rest from remote measurements, such as seismic wave propagation data in the field. Quantitative examples arising in the analysis show that, if the fracture aspect ratio a{sub f} ~ 0.1 and the pore fluid is liquid water, then for several cases considered Skempton's B …

Supercomputing Centers (SC's) are unique resources that aim to enable scientific knowledge discovery through the use of large computational resources, the Big Iron. Design, acquisition, installation, and management of the Big Iron are activities that are carefully planned and monitored. Since these Big Iron systems produce a tsunami of data, it is natural to co-locate visualization and analysis infrastructure as part of the same facility. This infrastructure consists of hardware (Little Iron) and staff (Skinny Guys). Our collective experience suggests that design, acquisition, installation, and management of the Little Iron and Skinny Guys does not receive the same level of treatment as that of the Big Iron. The main focus of this article is to explore different aspects of planning, designing, fielding, and maintaining the visualization and analysis infrastructure at supercomputing centers. Some of the questions we explore in this article include:&quot;How should the Little Iron be sized to adequately support visualization and analysis of data coming off the Big Iron?&quot; What sort of capabilities does it need to have?&quot; Related questions concern the size of visualization support staff:&quot;How big should a visualization program be (number of persons) and what should the staff do?&quot; and&quot;How much of the visualization should …

The Used Fuel Disposition (UFD) Campaign within DOE-NE is evaluating storage and disposal options for a range of waste forms and a range of geologic environments. To assess the potential performance of conceptual repository designs for the combinations of waste form and geologic environment, a master set of Features, Events, and Processes (FEPs) has been developed and evaluated. These FEPs are based on prior lists developed by the Yucca Mountain Project (YMP) and the international repository community. The objective of the UFD FEPs activity is to identify and categorize FEPs that are important to disposal system performance for a variety of disposal alternatives (i.e., combinations of waste forms, disposal concepts, and geologic environments). FEP analysis provides guidance for the identification of (1) important considerations in disposal system design, and (2) gaps in the technical bases. The UFD FEPs also support the development of performance assessment (PA) models to evaluate the long-term performance of waste forms in the engineered and geologic environments of candidate disposal system alternatives. For the UFD FEP development, five waste form groups and seven geologic settings are being considered. A total of 208 FEPs have been identified, categorized by the physical components of the waste disposal system …

The Used Fuel Disposition (UFD) Campaign within DOE-NE is evaluating storage and disposal options for a range of waste forms and a range of geologic environments. For each waste form and geologic environment combination, there are multiple options for repository conceptual design. The Disposal Systems Evaluation Framework (DSEF) is being developed to formalize the development and documentation of options for each waste form and environment combination. The DSEF is being implemented in two parts. One part is an Excel workbook with multiple sheets. This workbook is designed to be user friendly, such that anyone within the UFD Campaign can use it as a guide to develop and document repository conceptual designs that respect thermal, geometric, and other constraints. The other part is an Access relational database file that will be centrally maintained to document the ensemble of conceptual designs developed with individual implementations of the Excel workbook. The DSEF Excel workbook includes sheets for waste form, environment, geometric constraints, engineered barrier system (EBS) design, thermal, performance assessment (PA), materials, cost, and fuel cycle system impacts. Each of these sheets guides the user through the process of developing internally consistent design options, and documenting the thought process. The sheets interact with …

Enterprise and high-performance computing systems are growing extremely large and complex, employing hundreds to hundreds of thousands of processors and software/hardware stacks built by many people across many organizations. As the growing scale of these machines increases the frequency of faults, system complexity makes these faults difficult to detect and to diagnose. Current system management techniques, which focus primarily on efficient data access and query mechanisms, require system administrators to examine the behavior of various system services manually. Growing system complexity is making this manual process unmanageable: administrators require more effective management tools that can detect faults and help to identify their root causes. System administrators need timely notification when a fault is manifested that includes the type of fault, the time period in which it occurred and the processor on which it originated. Statistical modeling approaches can accurately characterize system behavior. However, the complex effects of system faults make these tools difficult to apply effectively. This paper investigates the application of classification and clustering algorithms to fault detection and characterization. We show experimentally that naively applying these methods achieves poor accuracy. Further, we design novel techniques that combine classification algorithms with information on the abnormality of application behavior to …

The US Department of Energy Office of High Energy Physics has recently approved a Muon Accelerator Program (MAP). The primary goal of this effort is to deliver a Design Feasibility Study for a Muon Collider after a 7 year R&amp;D program. This paper presents a brief physics motivation for, and the description of, a Muon Collider facility and then gives an overview of the program. I will then describe in some detail the primary components of the effort.