The modeling and analysis of the complex interactions between genes and metabolites during development require computational approaches. However, existing methods cannot efficiently account for the large number of interacting players, the nonlinear nature of the interactions, or the disparate scales involved. The latter represents a challenge in modeling developmental systems since reaction rates and diffusion times can vary by several orders of magnitude (depending on the molecular system). Modeling processes of this type results in the pathology of stiffness. Numerically, stiffness occurs when, in order to prevent large amplification of errors, typical (non-stiff) algorithms require a step size much smaller than the scale at which the solution in changing. In this work, a new method to solve large stiff systems of equations in the non-linear power law form was developed. The power-law formatism is a proven powerful tool for biological systems modeling, and has many advantages over other formalisms used for this purpose. The advantages include the fact that it is canonical, and that it is an accurate local approximation to any type of interaction. Representative results are presented.

To estimate the impact of light-colored surfaces (roofs and pavements) and urban vegetation (trees, grass, shrubs) on meteorology and air quality of a city, it is essential to accurately estimate the fraction of various urban surfaces. In this report, we estimate the fabric of Sacramento by analyzing high-resolution (0.30-m) aerial color photographs of about 65 square km of the urban area. The analysis show that in downtown Sacramento, vegetation as seen from above the canopy covers 30% of the area, whereas roofs cover 23% and paved surface 41%. Under-the-canopy fabric consists of 52% paved surfaces, 26% roofs, and 12% grass. In the industrial areas, vegetation covers 8-14% of the area, roofs cover 19-23%, and paved surfaces cover 29-44%. The surface-type percentages in the office areas are 21% trees, 16% roofs, and 49% paved surfaces. In commercial areas,vegetation covers 5-20%, roofs 19-20%, paved surfaces 44-68%. Residential areas exhibit a wide range of percentages of surface-types . On average, vegetation covers about 36% of the area, roofs cover about 20%, and paved surfaces about 28%. Trees mostly shade streets, parking lots, grass, and sidewalks. Under the canopy the percentage of paved surfaces is significantly higher. In most non-residential areas, paved surfaces cover …

As part of the lightning protection plan at the Pantex plant, coupling measurements were made by LLNL to determine the transfer functions of the work areas (cell or bay). From these measured transfer functions the susceptibility of the cell to a lightning strike can be determined, and the appropriate mitigating measures put into effect. The transfer functions are determined by injecting a current on the outside of the cell and measuring the electric field inside. The ratio of electric field to the injected current over a broad frequency range is the transfer function. During one of our tests a comparison of LLNL and SNLA instrumentation was done. The major difference in the systems was that the SNLA system used batteries for power and a fiber optic link to decouple the antenna from the receiver. LLNL used AC power and a cable for the antenna connection. The comparison showed a discrepancy between LLNL and SNLA results. The source of this error was unwanted signal (noise) coupling into the local AC power source from the injected current. Since this source was used to power the equipment, the noise was fed directly to the electric field measuring antenna, causing errors in the measurement. …

This guidance document is a product of the Avian Subcommittee of the National Wind Coordinating Committee (NWCC). The NWCC was formed to better understand and promote responsible, credible, and comparable avian/wind energy interaction studies. Bird mortality is a concern and wind power is a potential clean and green source of electricity, making study of wind energy/bird interactions essential. This document provides an overview for regulators and stakeholders concerned with wind energy/bird interactions, as well as a more technical discussion of the basic concepts and tools for studying such interactions.

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This document describes the hardware and software required for the Federal Emergency Management Information System version 1.4.7 (FEMIS v1.4.7) released by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Information included in this document about hardware and software requirements is subject to change.

The objective of this project is to study and evaluate various technology and policy options for improving the availability of electric power in India. This project was carried out in collaboration with a number of Indian experts who participated in a joint Indo-US meeting at the University of Warwick, UK, in September 1999. This group made recommendations on capital and finance, technology, and policy initiatives for Indian and US planners to consider. These recommendations are summarized in the report.

A design of experiments (DoE) was performed at Ceramtec to improve the yield of a cermet part known as the feedthru insulator. The factors chosen to be varied in this DoE were syringe orifice size, fill condition, solvent, and surfactant. These factors were chosen because of their anticipated effect on the cermet slurry and its consequences to the feedthru insulator in succeeding fabrication operations. Response variables to the DoE were chosen to be indirect indicators of production yield for the feedthru insulator. The solvent amount used to mix the cermet slurry had the greatest overall effect on the response variables. Based upon this DoE, there is the potential to improve the yield not only for the feedthru insulator but for other cermet parts as well. This report thoroughly documents the DoE and contains additional information regarding the feedthru insulator.

The importance of turbulent fluctuations in temperature and species concentration in thermal radiation transport modeling for combustion applications is well accepted by the radiation transport and combustion communities. A number of experimental and theoretical studies over the last twenty years have shown that fluctuations in the temperature and species concentrations may increase the effective emittance of a turbulent flame by as much as 50% to 300% over the value that would be expected from the mean temperatures and concentrations. With the possibility of such a large effect on the principal mode of heat transfer from a fire, it is extremely important for fire modeling efforts that turbulence radiation interaction be well characterized and possible modeling approaches understood. Toward this end, this report seeks to accomplish three goals. First, the principal turbulence radiation interaction closure terms are defined. Second, an order of magnitude analysis is performed to understand the relative importance of the various closure terms. Finally, the state of the art in turbulence radiation interaction closure modeling is reviewed. Hydrocarbon pool fire applications are of particular interest in this report and this is the perspective from which this review proceeds. Experimental and theoretical analysis suggests that, for this type of …

The projects outlined in detail on the attached project reports are a few of the many projects implemented in the Pataha Creek Model Watershed since it was selected as a model in 1993. 1998 was a year where a focused effort was made to work on the upland conservation practices to reduce the sedimentation into Pataha Creek.

Application codes reliably achieve performance far less than the advertised capabilities of existing architectures, and this problem is worsening with increasingly-parallel machines. For large-scale numerical applications, stencil operations often impose the greater part of the computational cost, and the primary sources of inefficiency are the costs of message passing and poor cache utilization. This paper proposes and demonstrates optimizations for stencil and stencil-like computations for both serial and parallel environments that ameliorate these sources of inefficiency. Additionally, they argue that when stencil-like computations are encoded at a high level using object-oriented parallel array class libraries, these optimizations, which are beyond the capability of compilers, may be automated.

The interaction of a vortex pair with a premixed flame serves as an important prototype for premixed turbulent combustion. In this study, the authors investigate the interaction of a counter-rotating vortex pair with an initially flat premixed methane flame. The authors focus on characterizing the mechanical nature of the flame-vortex interaction and on the features of the interaction strongly affected by fuel equivalence ratio. The authors compare computational solutions obtained using a time-dependent, two-dimensional adaptive low Mach number combustion algorithm that incorporates GRI-Mech 1.2 for the chemistry, thermodynamics and transport of the chemical species. The authors find that the circulation around the vortex scours gas from the preheat zone in front of the flame, making the interaction extremely sensitive to equivalence ratio. For nearly stoichiometric cases, the peak mole fraction of CH across the flame is relatively insensitive to the vortex whereas for richer flames they observe a substantial and rapid decline in the peak CH mole fraction, commencing early in the flame-vortex interaction. The peak concentration of HCO is found to correlate, in both space and time, with the peak heat release across a broad range of equivalence ratios. The model also predicts a measurable increase in C{sub 2}H{sub …

We have begun building the ''Mercury'' laser system as the first in a series of new generation diode-pumped solid-state lasers for inertial fusion research. Mercury will integrate three key technologies: diodes, crystals, and gas cooling, within a unique laser architecture that is scalable to kilojoule and megajoule energy levels for fusion energy applications. The primary near-term performance goals include 10% electrical efficiencies at 10 Hz and 1005 with a 2-10 ns pulse length at 1.047 {micro}m wavelength. When completed, Mercury will allow rep-rated target experiments with multiple chambers for high energy density physics research.

The responses of the continental slope benthos to organic detritus deposition were studied with a multiple trace approach. Study sites were offshore of Cape Fear (I) and Cape Hatteras (III), N.C. (both 850 m water depth) and were characterized by different organic C deposition rates, macrofaunal densities (III>I in both cases) and taxa. Natural abundances of {sup 13}C and {sup 12}C in particulate organic carbon (POC), dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and macrofauna indicate that the reactive organic detritus is marine in origin. Natural abundance levels of {sup 14}C and uptake of {sup 13}C-labeled diatoms by benthic animals indicate that they incorporate a relatively young component of carbon into their biomass. {sup 13}C-labeled diatoms (Thalassiorsira pseudonana) tagged with {sup 210}Pb, slope sediment tagged with {sup 113}Sn and {sup 228}Th-labeled glass beads were emplaced in plots on the seafloor at both locations and the plots were sampled after 30 min., 1-1.5 d and 14 mo. At Site I, tracer diatom was intercepted at the surface primarily by protozoans and surface-feeding annelids. Little of the diatom C penetrated below 2 cm even after 14 months. Oxidation of organic carbon appeared to be largely aerobic. At Site III, annelids were primarily responsible for the …

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Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) evaluated 19 Phase II screen sites in the Yakima River Basin as part of a multi-year study for the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) on the effectiveness of fish screening devices. The sites were examined to determine if they were being effectively operated and maintained to provide fish a safe, efficient return to the Yakima River.

The authors describe an HMC algorithm for dynamical overlap fermions which makes use of their good chiral properties. They test the algorithm in the Schwinger model. Topological sectors are readily changed even in the massless case.

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This report presents a specification for the Portals 3.0 message passing interface. Portals 3.0 is intended to allow scalable, high-performance network communication between nodes of a parallel computing system. Specifically, it is designed to support a parallel computing platform composed of clusters of commodity workstations connected by a commodity system area network fabric. In addition, Portals 3.0 is well suited to massively parallel processing and embedded systems. Portals 3.0 represents an adoption of the data movement layer developed for massively parallel processing platforms, such as the 4500-node Intel TeraFLOPS machine.

Daily newspaper from Perry, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

The Undergraduate Research Semester (URS) program provides a unique and challenging off-campus research opportunity for upper-division university undergraduate and pre-grad-school students in science, mathematics, and engineering. This internship program is a partnership between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories (New Mexico and California), and Los Alamos National Laboratory, to provide 75+ (annually) science and engineering undergraduates a rich research experience in this collaborative program. The URS project supports the DP mission through ensuring a scientifically and technically literate citizenry, and contributes to the development of a highly skilled, diverse scientific workforce, with experience, exposure and increased awareness and support for the DP science/technology and Science Based Stockpile Stewardship.

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Daily newspaper from Chickasha, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Daily newspaper from Altus, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.