Motion detectors consisting of Pb(Zr{sub x}Ti{sub (1{minus}x)})O{sub 3} (PZT) thin films, between platinum electrodes, on micromachined silicon compound clamped-clamped or cantilever beam structures were fabricated using either hot KOH or High Aspect Ratio Silicon Etching (HARSE) to micromachine the silicon. The beams were designed such that a thicker region served as a test mass that produced stress at the top of the membrane springs that supported it when the object to which the detector was mounted moved. The PZT film devices were placed on these membranes to generate a charge or a voltage in response to the stress through the piezoelectric effect. Issues of integration of the PZT device fabrication process with the two etching processes are discussed. The effects of PZT composition and device geometry on the response of the detectors to motion is reported and discussed.

We have developed a variety of processes for fabricating components for micro devices based on deep x-ray lithography (DXRL). Although the techniques are applicable to many materials, we have demonstrated them using hard (Nd{sub 2}Fe{sub 14}B) and soft (Ni-Zn ferrite) magnetic materials because of the importance of these materials in magnetic micro-actuators and other devices and because of the difficulty fabricating them by other means. The simplest technique involves pressing a mixture of magnetic powder and a binder into a DXRL-formed mold. In the second technique, powder is pressed into the mold and then sintered to densify. The other two processes involve pressing at high temperature either powder or a dense bulk material into a ceramic mold that was previously made using a DXRL mold. These techniques allow arbitrary 2-dimensional shapes to be made 10 to 1000 micrometers thick with in-plane dimensions as small as 50 micrometers and dimensional tolerances in the micron range. Bonded isotropic Nd{sub 2}Fe{sub 14}B micromagnets made by these processes had an energy product of 7 MGOe.

The inner part of a fusion reactor will have to operate at very high neutron loads. In steady-state reactors the minimum fluence before the scheduled replacement of the reactor core should be at least l0-15 Mw.yr/m². A more frequent replacement of the core is hardly compatible with economic constraints. A most recent summary of the discussions of these issues is presented in Ref. [l]. If and when times come to build a commercial fusion reactor, the availability of information on the behavior of materials and components at such fluences will become mandatory for making a final decision. This makes it necessary an early development and construction of a neutron source for fusion material and component testing. In this paper, we present information on one very attractive concept of such a source: a source based on a so called Gas Dynamic Trap. This neutron source was proposed in the mid 1980s (Ref. [2]; see also a survey [3] with discussion of the early stage of the project). Since then, gradual accumulation of the relevant experimental information on a modest-scale experimental facility GDT at Novosibirsk, together with a continuing design activity, have made initial theoretical considerations much more credible. We believe that …

The Savannah River Site processes high-level radioactive waste through precipitation by the addition of sodium tetraphenylborate in a large (approximately 1.3 million gallon) High Level Waste Tank. Radiolysis of water produces a significant amount of hydrogen gas in this slurry. During quiescent periods the tetraphenylborate slurry retains large amounts of hydrogen as dissolved gas and small bubbles. When mixing pumps start, large amounts of hydrogen release due to agitation of the slurry. Flammability concerns necessitate an understanding of the hydrogen retention mechanism in the slurry and a model of how the hydrogen releases from the slurry during pump operation. Hydrogen concentration data collected from the slurry tank confirmed this behavior in the full-scale system. These measurements also provide mass transfer results for the hydrogen release during operation. The authors compared these data to an existing literature model for mass transfer in small, agitated reactors and developed factors to scale this existing model to the 1.3 million gallon tanks in use at the Savannah River Site. The information provides guidance for facility operations.

We have developed a process for the production of microchannel arrays on bonded glass substrates up to I4 x 58 cm, for DNA sequencing. Arrays of 96 and 384 microchannels, each 46 cm long have been built. This technology offers significant advantages over discrete capillaries or conventional slab-gel approaches. High throughput DNA sequencing with over 550 base pairs resolution has been achieved. With custom fabrication apparatus, microchannels are etched in a borosilicate substrate, and then fusion bonded to a top substrate 1.1 mm thick that has access holes formed in it. SEM examination shows a typical microchannel to be 40 x 180 micrometers by 46 cm Iong; the etch is approximately isotropic, leaving a key undercut, for forming a rounded channel. The surface roughness at the bottom of the 40 micrometer deep channel has been profilometer measured to be as low as 20 nm; the roughness at the top surface was 2 nm. Etch uniformity of about 5% has been obtained using a 22% vol. HF / 78% Acetic acid solution. The simple lithography, etching, and bonding of these substrates enables efficient production of these arrays and extremely precise replication From master masks and precision machining with a mandrel. Keywords: …

There are a number of fusion systems whose dimensions can be scaled down to a few centimeters, if the plasma density and confining magnetic field are raised to sufficiently high values. This prompts a "user-facility" approach to the studies of this class of fusion systems. The concept of such a user facility was first briefly mentioned in Ref. 1. Here we present a more detailed description.

We have performed numerical simulations of the transient collisional excitation Ni-like Pd 4d {r_arrow} 4p J = 0 {r_arrow} 1 147 {angstrom} laser transition recently observed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The high gain {approximately}35 cm results from the experiment are compared with detailed modeling simulations from the 1-D RADEX code in order to better understand the main physics issues affecting the measured gain and x-ray laser propagation along the plasma column. Simulations indicate that the transient gain lifetime associated with the short pulse pumping and refraction of the x-ray laser beam out of the gain region are the main detrimental effects. Gain lifetimes of {approximately}7 ps(1/e decay) are inferred from the smoothly changing gain experimental observations and are in good agreement with the simulations. Furthermore, the modeling results indicate the presence of a longer-lived but lower gain later in time associated with the transition from transient to quasi-steady state excitation.

The authors determined error densities of ephemeris predictions for 14 LEO satellites. The empirical distributions are not inconsistent with the hypothesis of a Gaussian distribution. The growth rate of radial errors are most highly correlated with eccentricity ({vert_bar}r{vert_bar} = 0.63, {alpha} < 0.05). The growth rate of along-track errors is most highly correlated with the decay rate of the semimajor axis ({vert_bar}r{vert_bar} = 0.97; {alpha} < 0.01).

In this work we describe our theoretical activities in two directions of interest. First, we discuss progress in modeling laser produced plasmas mostly related to transient collisional excitation scheme experiments with Ne- and recently with Ni-like ions. Calculations related to the delay between laser pulses, transient gain duration and hybrid laser/capillary approach are described in more detail. Second, the capillary discharge plasma research, extended to wider range of currents and rise-times has been outlined. We have systematically evaluated the major plasma and atomic kinetic properties by comparing near- and far-field X-ray laser output with that for the capillary Argon X-ray laser operating under typical current values. Consistent with the experiment insight was obtained for the 469{angstrom} X-ray laser shadowgraphy experiments with very small kiloamp currents. At higher currents, as much as {approximately}200 kA we evaluated plasma temperature, density and compared x-ray source size and emitted spectra.

We present progress in experiments for high efficiency Ne-like and Ni-like ion x-ray lasers using the transient collisional excitation scheme. Experimental results have been obtained on the COMET 15 TW table-top laser system at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The plasma formation, ionization and collisional excitation of the x-ray laser have been optimized using two sequential laser pulses of 600 ps and 1 ps duration with an optional pre-pulse. We have observed high gains up to 55 cm{sup {minus}1} in Ne-like and Ni-like ion schemes for various atomic numbers. We report strong output for the 4d - 4p line in lower Z Ni-like ion sequence for Mo to Y, lasing from {approximately}190 {angstrom} to 240 {angstrom}, by pumping with less than 5 J energy on target.

The US health care industry is experiencing a substantial paradigm shift with regard to home care due to the convergence of several technology areas. Increasingly-capable telehealth systems and the internet are not only moving the point of care closer to the patient, but the patient can now assume a more active role in his or her own care. These technologies, coupled with (1) the migration of the health care industry to electronic patient records and (2) the emergence of a growing number of enabling health care technologies (e.g., novel biosensors, wearable devices, and intelligent software agents), demonstrate unprecedented potential for delivering highly automated, intelligent health care in the home. This editorial paper presents a vision for the implementation of intelligent health care technology in the home of the future, focusing on areas of research that have the highest potential payoff given targeted government funding over the next ten years. Here, intelligent health care technology means smart devices and systems that are aware of their context and can therefore assimilate information to support care decisions. A systems perspective is used to describe a framework under which devices can interact with one another in a plug-and-play manner. Within this infrastructure, traditionally passive …

We are developing rugged and reliable hydrogen safety sensors that can be easily manufactured. Potential applications also require an inexpensive sensor that can be easily deployed. Automotive applications demand low cost, while personnel safety applications emphasize light-weight, battery-operated, and wearable sensors. Our current efforts involve developing and optimizing sensor materials for stability and compatibility with typical thick-film manufacturing processes. We are also tailoring the sensor design and size along with various packaging and communication schemes for optimal acceptance by end users.

The Security Specification, Version 1.0 allows security services to be provided by many devices in a network. It correctly presumes that if a virtual circuit needs these security services, then network topology and device policy will act to ensure that the appropriate security services are applied to the virtual circuit. This contribution moves that the Security Service Discovery and Routing function be included in the Security Version 2.0 work scope.

Variable-speed, horizontal axis wind turbines use blade-pitch control to meet specified objectives for three regions of operation. This paper focuses on controller design for the constant power production regime. A simple, rigid, non-linear turbine model was used to systematically perform trade-off studies between two performance metrics. Minimization of both the deviation of the rotor speed from the desired speed and the motion of the actuator is obtained through systematic selection of proportional-integral-derivative controller gain values. The gain design is performed using a non-linear turbine model and two linear models. The linear models differ only in selection of linearization point. The gain combinations resulting from design based upon each of the three models are similar. Performance under each of the three gain combinations is acceptable according to the metrics selected. The importance of operating point selection for linear models is illustrated. Because the simulation runs efficiently, the non-linear model provides the best gain design, but careful selection of the linearization point can produce acceptable gain designs from linear models.

Telemedicine technology is rapidly evolving. Whereas early telemedicine consultations relied primarily on video conferencing, consultations today may utilize video conferencing, medical peripherals, store-and-forward capabilities, electronic patient record management software, and/or a host of other emerging technologies. These remote care systems rely increasingly on distributed, collaborative information technology during the care delivery process, in its many forms. While these leading-edge systems are bellwethers for highly advanced telemedicine, the remote care market today is still immature. Most telemedicine systems are custom-designed and do not interoperate with other commercial offerings. Users are limited to a set of functionality that a single vendor provides and must often pay high prices to obtain this functionality, since vendors in this marketplace must deliver entire systems in order to compete. Besides increasing corporate research and development costs, this inhibits the ability of the user to make intelligent purchasing decisions regarding best-of-breed technologies. We propose a secure, object-oriented information architecture for telemedicine systems that promotes plug-and-play interaction between system components through standardized interfaces, communication protocols, messaging formats, and data definitions. In this architecture, each component functions as a black box, and components plug together in a lego-like fashion to achieve the desired device or system functionality. The architecture …

An important component of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory wind resource assessment methodology is the use of available upper-air data to construct detailed vertical profiles for a study region. Currently, the most useful upper-air data for this type of analysis are archived observations from approximately 1800 rawinsonde and pilot balloon stations worldwide. However, significant uncertainty exists in the accuracy of the constructed profiles for many regions. The United States Reanalysis Data Set, recently created by the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, has the potential to improve the quality of the vertical profiles. The initial evaluation of the usefulness of the Reanalysis data for wind resource assessment consisted of contrasting reanalysis-derived vertical profiles of the wind characteristics to those generated from upper-air observations for comparable locations. The results indicate that, while reanalysis data can be substituted for upper-air observation data in the assessment methodology for areas of the world where observation data are limited, enough discrepancies with observation data have been noticed to warrant further studies.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has developed an automated technique for wind resource mapping to aid in the acceleration of wind energy deployment. The new automated mapping system was developed with the following two primary goals: (1) to produce a more consistent and detailed analysis of the wind resource for a variety of physiographic settings, particularly in areas of complex terrain; and (2) to generate high quality map products on a timely basis. Using computer mapping techniques reduces the time it takes to produce a wind map that reflects a consistent analysis of the distribution of the wind resource throughout the region of interest. NREL's mapping system uses commercially available geographic information system software packages. Regional wind resource maps using this new system have been produced for areas of the United States, Mexico, Chile, Indonesia (1), and China. Countrywide wind resource assessments are under way for the Philippines, the Dominican Re public, and Mongolia. Regional assessments in Argentina and Russia are scheduled to begin soon.

The authors describe a numerical scheme to solve 3D Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) hydrodynamics on an unstructured mesh using a discontinuous Galerkin method (DGM) and an explicit Runge-Kutta time discretization. Upwinding is achieved through Roe's linearized Riemann solver with the Harten-Hyman entropy fix. For stabilization, a 3D quadratic programming generalization of van Leer's 1D minmod slope limiter is used along with a Lapidus type artificial viscosity. This DGM scheme has been tested on a variety of hydrodynamic test problems and appears to be robust making it the basis for the integrated 3D inertial confinement fusion modeling code (ICF3D). For efficient code development, they use C++ object oriented programming to easily separate the complexities of an unstructured mesh from the basic physics modules. ICF3D is fully parallelized using domain decomposition and the MPI message passing library. It is fully portable. It runs on uniprocessor workstations and massively parallel platforms with distributed and shared memory.

The DOE's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program employs both upward- and downward-looking remote-sensing instruments to measure the horizontal and vertical distributions of clouds across its Southern Great Plains (SGP) site. No single instrument is capable of completely determining these distributions over the scales of interest to ARM's Single Column Modeling (SCM) and Instantaneous Radiative Flux (IRF) groups; these groups embody the primary strategies through which ARM expects to achieve its objectives of developing and testing cloud formation parameterizations (USDOE, 1996). Collectively, however, the data from ARM's cloud-detecting instruments offer the potential for such a three-dimensional characterization. Data intercomparisons, like the ones illustrated in this paper, are steps in this direction. Examples of some initial comparisons, involving satellite, millimeter cloud radar, whole sky imager and ceilometer data, are provided herein. that many of the lessons learned can later be adapted to cloud data at the Boundary and Extended Facilities. Principally, we are concerned about: (1) the accuracy of various estimates of cloud properties at a single point, or within a thin vertical column, above the CF over time, and (2) the accuracy of various estimates of cloud properties over the Cloud and Radiation Testbed (CART) site, which can then be reduced …

Environmental planning and management was an integral part of the ACWA Program planning process. To ensure that environmental protection issues could be addressed expeditiously and not delay the demonstrations, the PMACWA scaled the technology demonstrations such that simplified regulatory processes and existing research and development facilities could be used. The use of enclosed facilities for the demonstrations prevents any uncontrolled discharges to the environment and made it possible to conduct environmental assessments relatively quickly. The PMACWA also arranged for public briefings to ease any community concerns over the operations with chemical weapons. These steps precluded regulatory and community resistance to the ACWA activities. The cooperation of the regulators and stakeholders has been a key element in enabling the ACWA Program to move with the speed that it has to date. Technology demonstrations are currently underway and are scheduled to be completed in late May 1999. The data collected during these demonstrations will be used to prepare and submit a summary report to Congress by August 1999. The challenge continues for the ACWA management to guide the demonstrations to completion and to plan for possible pilot testing. As the scale of the ACWA facilities increase in size, the ease of reduced …

Silica nanoparticles exhibiting hexagonal, cubic, and vesicular mesostructures have been prepared using aerosol assisted, self-assembled process. This process begins with homogennous aerosol droplets containing silica source, water, ethanol, and surfactant, in which surfactant concentration is far below the critical micelle concentration (cmc). Solvent evaporation enriches silica and surfactant inducing interfacial self-assembly confined to a spherical aerosol droplet and results in formation of completely solid, ordered spherical particles with stable hexagonal, cubic, or vesicular mesostructures.

We describe a Fourier analysis of the diffusion-synthetic acceleration (DSA) and transport-synthetic acceleration (TSA) iteration schemes for a spatially periodic, but otherwise arbitrarily heterogeneous, medium. Both DSA and TSA converge more slowly in a heterogeneous medium than in a homogeneous medium composed of the volume-averaged scattering ratio. In the limit of a homogeneous medium, our heterogeneous analysis contains eigenvalues of multiplicity two at ''resonant'' wave numbers. In the presence of material heterogeneities, error modes corresponding to these resonant wave numbers are ''excited'' more than other error modes. For DSA and TSA, the iteration spectral radius may occur at these resonant wave numbers, in which case the material heterogeneities most strongly affect iterative performance.

Zeolite W has been synthesized using organometallic silicon and aluminum precursors in two hydrothermal systems: organocation containing and organocation-free. The reaction using the organocation yielded a fully crystalline, relatively uniform crystal size product, with no organic molecules occluded in the pores. In contrast, the product obtained from an identical reaction, except for the absence of the organocation, contained amorphous as well as crystalline material and the crystalline phase showed a large diversity of both crystal size and morphology. The use of organometallic precursors, either with or without an organocation, allows for the crystallization of the MER framework at much lower 0H/Si02 and (K+ Na - Al)/Si ratios than is typical of inorganic systems. The reaction products were characterized by XRD, SEM, EDS, and thermal analyses.

An analytical model of plasma flow from a metal plate hit by an intense, pulsed, electron beam aims to bridge the gap between radiation-hydrodynamics simulations and experiments, and to quantify the self-effect of the electron beam penetrating the flow. Does the flow disrupt the tight focus of the initial electron bunch, or later pulses in a train? This work aims to model the spatial distribution of plasma speed, density, degree of ionization, and magnetization to inquire. The initial solid density, several eV plasma expands to 1 cm and 10{sup {minus}4} relative density by 2 {micro}s, beyond which numerical simulations are imprecise. Yet, a Faraday cup detector at the ETA-II facility is at 25 cm from the target and observes the flow after 50 {micro}s. The model helps bridge this gap. The expansion of the target plasma into vacuum is so rapid that the ionized portion of the flow departs from local thermodynamic equilibrium. When the temperature (in eV) in a parcel of fluid drops below V{sub i} x [(2{gamma} - 2)/(5{gamma} + 17)], where V{sub i} is the ionization potential of the target metal (7.8 eV for tantalum), and {gamma} is the ratio of specific heats (5/3 for atoms), then …