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The United States continues to maintain its leadership in ICF as it moves toward the goal of ignition. The flagship of the program is the National Ignition Facility (NIF) presently under construction at LLNL. Experiments had begun on the first four beams of the National Ignition Facility just at the time of the last IFSA Conference. Several new successful campaigns have been conducted since then in planar hydrodynamics and hohlraums as well as activating the VISAR diagnostic for equation of state experiments. Highlights of these results will be reviewed. Presently, the four beam experimental capability has been suspended while the first eight beams are being installed as the first step in building out the project. Meanwhile, much progress has been made in developing ignition designs for using NIF. An array of designs having several ablator materials have been shown computationally to ignite with energies ranging from the design energy to as low as 1 MJ of laser energy. Alternative direct drive designs in the NIF indirect drive configuration have been developed by LLE. This wide array of design choices has increased the chance of achieving ignition sooner on the facility. Plans are now being developed to begin an ignition experimental …

A wealth of new measurements of hadronic B decays to open charm and charmonium have been performed on the data sample collected by the BaBar experiment at the PEP-II e{sup +}e{sup -} B-factory. We report the first measurement of the rates for inclusive charm production separately for charged and neutral B mesons. Combining measurements of the decay rate of B{sup 0} {yields} D*{sub s}{sup +}D*{sup -} obtained with a partial reconstruction technique and the complete reconstruction of B{sup 0} {yields} D*{sub s}{sup +}D*{sup -} with D{sub s}{sup +} {yields} {phi}{pi}{sup +}, we obtain the most precise measurement of {Beta}(D{sub s}{sup +} {yields} {phi}{pi}{sup +}). We present an update of the measurements of the branching fractions of exclusive B decays to J/{psi}, {psi}(2S), {chi}{sub c1}, {chi}{sub c2} and a kaon or a K*. In addition, we show preliminary results on exclusive decay rates to final states with baryons, or newly-discovered particles, such as D*{sub sJ}(2317), D{sub sJ}(2460){sup +}, and the X(3872).

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We report studies of B {yields} X{sub u}{ell}{nu} decays, based on a sample of 88 million B{bar B} events recorded with the BABAR detector. From both tagged and untagged B{bar B} events we have isolated inclusive charmless decays in kinematic regions for which the dominant background from B {yields} X{sub c}{ell}{nu} is reduced by making requirements on different variables: the electron energy E{sub l}, the momentum transfer q{sup 2}, and the hadronic mass m{sub X}. Using theoretical calculations we extrapolate to the total decay rate to determine the CKM matrix element |V{sub ub}|. In addition, we have measured the branching fraction for exclusive semileptonic decays, such as B {yields} {pi}({rho}, {omega}, {eta}, a{sub 0}){ell}{nu}. A high signal purity is achieved by selecting events in which a decay of the second B meson is either fully or partially reconstructed.

Preliminary results from inclusive searches for strange pentaquark production in e{sup +}e{sup -} interactions at {radical}s = 10.58 GeV using 123 fb{sup -1} of data collected with the BABAR detector are presented. In addition new mass estimates for the D*{sub sJ}(2317){sup +} and D{sub sJ}(2460){sup +} mesons are given. The mesons are studied in e{sup +}e{sup -} {yields} c{bar c} data using 125 fb{sup -1} for the decay to the D{sub s}{sup +} s meson along with one or more {pi}{sup 0}, {pi}{sup +}, or {gamma} particles. A search is also performed for neutral and doubly-charged partners.

The sequencing and analysis of two close relatives of Bacillus anthracis are reported. AFLP analysis of over 300 isolates of B. cereus, B. thuringiensis and B. anthracis identified two isolates as being very closely related to B. anthracis. One, a B. cereus, BcE33L, was isolated from a zebra carcass in Nambia; the second, a B. thuringiensis, 97-27, was isolated from a necrotic human wound. The B. cereus appears to be the closest anthracis relative sequenced to date. A core genome of over 3,900 genes was compiled for the Bacillus cereus group, including B anthracis. Comparative analysis of these two genomes with other members of the B. cereus group provides insight into the evolutionary relationships among these organisms. Evidence is presented that differential regulation modulates virulence, rather than simple acquisition of virulence factors. These genome sequences provide insight into the molecular mechanisms contributing to the host range and virulence of this group of organisms.

We discuss aspects of open and hidden charm production in hadron-nucleus collisions at RHIC and LHC energies. We first discuss the extraction of the total charm cross section in lower energy collisions and how it compares to next-to-leading order quantum chromodynamics calculations. We then describe calculations of the transverse momentum distributions and their agreement with the shape of the measured STAR transverse momentum distributions. We next explain how shadowing and moderate nuclear absorption can explain the PHENIX J/{psi} dAu/pp ratios.