Mammary myoepithelial cells have been the foster child of breast cancer biology and have been largely ignored since they were considered to be less important for tumorigenesis than luminal epithelial cells from which most of breast carcinomas are thought to arise. In recent years as our knowledge in stem cell biology and the cellular microenvironment has been increasing myoepithelial cells are slowly starting to gain more attention. Emerging data raise the hypothesis if myoepithelial cells play a key role in breast tumor progression by regulating the in situ to invasive carcinoma transition and if myoepithelial cells are part of the mammary stem cell niche. Paracrine interactions between myoepithelial and luminal epithelial cells are known to be important for cell cycle arrest, establishing epithelial cell polarity, and inhibiting migration and invasion. Based on these functions normal mammary myoepithelial cells have been called ''natural tumor suppressors''. However, during tumor progression myoepithelial cells seem to loose these properties and eventually they themselves diminish as tumors become invasive. Better understanding of myoepithelial cell function and their role in tumor progression may lead to their exploitation for cancer therapeutic and preventative measures.

We discuss the demonstration of gain-saturated high repetition rate table-top soft x-ray lasers producing microwatt average powers at wavelengths ranging from 13.9 to 33 nm. The results were obtained heating a pre-created plasma with a picosecond optical laser pulse impinging at grazing incidence onto a pre-created plasma. This pumping geometry increases the energy deposition efficiency of the pump beam into the gain region, making it possible to saturate soft x-ray lasers in this wavelength range with a short pulse pump energy of only 1 J at 800 nm wavelength. Results corresponding to 5 Hz repetition rate operation of gain-saturated 14.7 nm Ni-like Pd and 32.6 nm line Ne-like Ti lasers pumped by a table-top Ti:sapphire laser are reported. We also discuss results obtained using a 1 {omega} 1054 nm pre-pulse and 2{omega} 527 nm short pulse from a Nd:glass pump laser. This work demonstrates the feasibility of producing compact high average power soft x-ray lasers for applications.

Several indirect approaches for obtaining reaction cross sections are briefly reviewed. The Surrogate Nuclear Reactions method, which aims at determining cross sections for compound-nuclear reactions, is discussed in some detail. The validity of the Weisskopf-Ewing approximation in the Surrogate approach is studied for the example of neutron-induced fission of an actinide nucleus.

Operons are a major feature of all prokaryotic genomes, but how and why operon structures vary is not well understood. To elucidate the life-cycle of operons, we compared gene order between Escherichia coli K12 and its relatives and identified the recently formed and destroyed operons in E. coli. This allowed us to determine how operons form, how they become closely spaced, and how they die. Our findings suggest that operon evolution is driven by selection on gene expression patterns. First, both operon creation and operon destruction lead to large changes in gene expression patterns. For example, the removal of lysA and ruvA from ancestral operons that contained essential genes allowed their expression to respond to lysine levels and DNA damage, respectively. Second, some operons have undergone accelerated evolution, with multiple new genes being added during a brief period. Third, although most operons are closely spaced because of a neutral bias towards deletion and because of selection against large overlaps, highly expressed operons tend to be widely spaced because of regulatory fine-tuning by intervening sequences. Although operon evolution seems to be adaptive, it need not be optimal: new operons often comprise functionally unrelated genes that were already in proximity before the …

The next major step in the study of extrasolar planets will be the direct detection, resolved from their parent star, of a significant sample of Jupiter-like extrasolar giant planets. Such detection will open up new parts of the extrasolar planet distribution and allow spectroscopic characterization of the planets themselves. Detecting Jovian planets at 5-50 AU scale orbiting nearby stars requires adaptive optics systems and coronagraphs an order of magnitude more powerful than those available today--the realm of ''Extreme'' adaptive optics. We present the basic requirements and design for such a system, the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI.) GPI will require a MEMS-based deformable mirror with good surface quality, 2-4 micron stroke (operated in tandem with a conventional low-order ''woofer'' mirror), and a fully-functional 48-actuator-diameter aperture.

We examine the phenomenological consequences ofquadratically divergent contributions to the scalar potential insupergravity effective Lagrangians. We focus specifically on the effectof these corrections on the vacuum configurationof scalar fields insoftly-broken supersymmetric theory is and the role these correctionsplay in generating non-diagonal soft scalar masses. Both effects can onlybe properly studied when the divergences are regulated in a manifestlysupersymmetric manner -- something which has ths far been neglected inpast treatments. We show how a supersymmetric regularization can impactpast conclusions about both types of phenomena and discuss what types ofhigh-energy theories are likely to be safe from unwanted flavor-changingneutral current interactions in the context of supergravity theoriesderived from heterotic string compactifications.

When one deals with a plasma column whose radius a is much smaller than its length L, one can think of it as of a thin filament whose kink instability can be adequately described simply by a 2D displacement vector, {xi}{sub x} = {xi}{sub s}(z,t); {xi}{sub y} = {xi}{sub y}(z,t). Details of the internal structure of the column such as the current, density, and axial flow velocity distribution would be lumped into some phenomenological parameters. This approach is particularly efficient in the problems with non-ideal (sheath) boundary conditions (BC) at the end electrodes, with the finite plasma resistivity, and with a substantial axial flow. With the sheath BC imposed at one of the end-plates, we find instability in the domain well below the classical Kruskal-Shafranov limit. The presence of an axial flow causes the onset of rotation of the kink and strong axial ''skewness'' of the eigenfunction, with the perturbation amplitude increasing in the flow direction. We consider the limitations of the phenomenological approach and find that they are related to the steepness with which the plasma resistivity increases at the plasma boundary with vacuum.

The Homeland Security Act mandates development of a national, risk-based system to support planning for, response to and recovery from emergency situations involving large-scale toxic exposures. To prepare for and manage consequences effectively, planners and responders need not only to identify zones of potentially elevated individual risk, but also to predict expected casualties. Emergency response support systems now define ''consequences'' by mapping areas in which toxic chemical concentrations do or may exceed Acute Exposure Guideline Levels (AEGLs) or similar guidelines. However, because AEGLs do not estimate expected risks, current unqualified claims that such maps support consequence management are misleading. Intentionally protective, AEGLs incorporate various safety/uncertainty factors depending on scope and quality of chemical-specific toxicity data. Some of these factors are irrelevant, and others need to be modified, whenever resource constraints or exposure-scenario complexities require responders to make critical trade-off (triage) decisions in order to minimize expected casualties. AEGL-exceedance zones cannot consistently be aggregated, compared, or used to calculate expected casualties, and so may seriously misguide emergency response triage decisions. Methods and tools well established and readily available to support environmental health protection are not yet developed for chemically related environmental health triage. Effective triage decisions involving chemical risks require a …

The caustic precipitation of plutonium (Pu) and uranium (U) from Pu and U-containing waste solutions has been investigated to determine whether gadolinium (Gd) could be used as a neutron poison for precipitation with greater than a fissile mass containing both Pu and enriched U. Precipitation experiments were performed using both process solution samples and simulant solutions with a range of 2.6-5.16 g/L U and 0-4.3:1 U:Pu. Analyses were performed on solutions at intermediate pH to determine the partitioning of elements for accident scenarios. When both Pu and U were present in the solution, precipitation began at pH 4.5 and by pH 7, 99% of Pu and U had precipitated. When complete neutralization was achieved at pH > 14 with 1.2 M excess OH{sup -}, greater than 99% of Pu, U, and Gd had precipitated. At pH > 14, the particles sizes were larger and the distribution was a single mode. The ratio of hydrogen:fissile atoms in the precipitate was determined after both settling and centrifuging and indicates that sufficient water was associated with the precipitates to provide the needed neutron moderation for Gd to prevent a criticality in solutions containing up to 4.3:1 U:Pu and up to 5.16 g/L U.

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Development of advanced hydrogen separation membranes in support of hydrogen production processes such as coal gasification and as front end gas purifiers for fuel cell based system is paramount to the successful implementation of a national hydrogen economy. Current generation metallic hydrogen separation membranes are based on Pd-alloys. Although the technology has proven successful, at issue is the high cost of palladium. Evaluation of non-noble metal based dense metallic separation membranes is currently receiving national and international attention. The focal point of the reported work was to evaluate a Group 5A-Ta, Nb, V-based alloy with respect to microstructural features and hydrogen permeability. Electrochemical hydrogen permeation testing of the V-Ti-Ni alloy is reported herein and compared to pure Pd measurements recorded as part of this same study. The V-Ti-Ni was demonstrated to have a steady state hydrogen permeation rate an order of magnitude higher than the pure Pd material in testing conducted at 22 C.

Development of advanced hydrogen separation membranes in support of hydrogen production processes such as coal gasification and as front end gas purifiers for fuel cell based system is paramount to the successful implementation of a national hydrogen economy. Current generation metallic hydrogen separation membranes are based on Pd-alloys. Although the technology has proven successful, at issue is the high cost of palladium. Evaluation of non-noble metal based dense metallic separation membranes is currently receiving national and international attention. The focal point of the reported work was to evaluate a Group 5A-Ta, Nb, V-based alloy with respect to microstructural features and hydrogen permeability. Electrochemical hydrogen permeation testing of the V-Ti-Ni alloy is reported herein and compared to pure Pd measurements recorded as part of this same study. The V-Ti-Ni was demonstrated to have a steady state hydrogen permeation rate an order of magnitude higher than the pure Pd material in testing conducted at 22 C.

We present a patch-based direct Eulerian adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) algorithm for modeling real equation-of-state, multimaterial compressible flow with strength. Our approach to AMR uses a hierarchical, structured grid approach first developed by (Berger and Oliger 1984), (Berger and Oliger 1984). The grid structure is dynamic in time and is composed of nested uniform rectangular grids of varying resolution. The integration scheme on the grid hierarchy is a recursive procedure in which the coarse grids are advanced, then the fine grids are advanced multiple steps to reach the same time, and finally the coarse and fine grids are synchronized to remove conservation errors during the separate advances. The methodology presented here is based on a single grid algorithm developed for multimaterial gas dynamics by (Colella et al. 1993), refined by(Greenough et al. 1995), and extended to the solution of solid mechanics problems with significant strength by (Lomov and Rubin 2003). The single grid algorithm uses a second-order Godunov scheme with an approximate single fluid Riemann solver and a volume-of-fluid treatment of material interfaces. The method also uses a non-conservative treatment of the deformation tensor and an acoustic approximation for shear waves in the Riemann solver. This departure from a strict …

The method to measure the CKM angle {alpha} and the modes sensitive to it are discussed. It is shown that the B {yields} {rho}{rho} decays provide the most stringent constraint on {alpha}, which is found to be {alpha} = 96{sup o} {+-} 10{sup o}(stat) {+-} 4{sup o}(syst){+-} 13{sup o}(penguin).

Several similarity laws for the collisionless interaction of ultra-intense electromagnetic fields with a plasma of an arbitrary initial shape is presented. Both ultra-relativistic and non-relativistic cases are covered. The ion motion is included. A brief discussion of possible ways of experimental verification of scaling laws is presented. The results can be of interest for experiments and numerical simulations in the areas of particle acceleration, harmonic generation, and Coulomb explosion of clusters.

A multi-wavelength laser based system has been constructed to measure defect induced beam modulation (diffraction) from ICF class laser optics. The Nd:YLF-based modulation measurement system (MMS) uses simple beam collimation and imaging to capture diffraction patterns from optical defects onto an 8-bit digital camera at 1053, 527 and 351 nm. The imaging system has a field of view of 4.5 x 2.8 mm{sup 2} and is capable of imaging any plane from 0 to 30 cm downstream from the defect. The system is calibrated using a 477 micron chromium dot on glass for which the downstream diffraction patterns were calculated numerically. Under nominal conditions the system can measure maximum peak modulations of approximately 7:1. An image division algorithm is used to calculate the peak modulation from the diffracted and empty field images after the baseline residual light background is subtracted from both. The peak modulation can then be plotted versus downstream position. The system includes a stage capable of holding optics up to 50 pounds with x and y translation of 40 cm and has been used to measure beam modulation due to solgel coating defects, surface digs on KDP crystals, lenslets in bulk fused silica and laser damage sites …

The main performance limitation for RHIC is emittance growth caused by IntraBeam Scattering during the store. We have developed a longitudinal bunched-beam stochastic cooling system in the 5-8 GHz band which will be used to counteract IBS longitudinal emittance growth and prevent de-bunching during the store. Solutions to the technical problems of achieving sufficient kicker voltage and overcoming the electronic saturation effects caused by coherent components within the Schottky spectrum are described. Results from tests with copper ions in RHIC during the FY05 physics run, including the observation of signal suppression, are presented.

The design of future high energy coolers relies heavily on extending the results of cooling force measurements into new regimes by using simulation codes. In order to carefully benchmark these codes we have accurately measured the longitudinal friction force in CELSIUS by recording the phase shift between the beam and the RF voltage while varying the RF frequency. Moreover, parameter dependencies on the electron current, solenoid magnetic field and magnetic field alignment were carried out.

High-energy electron cooling for RHIC presents many unique features and challenges. An accurate estimate of the cooling times requires detailed simulation of the electron cooling process. The first step towards such calculations is to have an accurate description of the cooling force. Numerical simulations are being used to explore various features of the friction force which appear due to several effects, including the anisotropy of the electron distribution in velocity space and the effect of a strong solenoidal magnetic field. These aspects are being studied in detail using the VORFAL code, which explicitly resolves close binary collisions. Results are compared with available asymptotic and empirical formulas and also, using the BETACOOL code, with direct numerical integration of less approximate expressions over the specified electron distribution function.

Over the last few years, several novel magnet designs have been introduced to meet the requirements of new, high performance accelerators and beam lines. For example, the FAIR project at GSI requires superconducting magnets ramped at high rates ({approx} 4 T/s) in order to achieve the design intensity. Magnets for the RIA and FAIR projects and for the next generation of LHC interaction regions will need to withstand high doses of radiation. Helical magnets are required to maintain and control the polarization of high energy protons at RHIC. In other cases, novel magnets have been designed in response to limited budgets and space. For example, it is planned to use combined function superconducting magnets for the 50 GeV proton transport line at J-PARC to satisfy both budget and performance requirements. Novel coil winding methods have been developed for short, large aperture magnets such as those used in the insertion region upgrade at BEPC. This paper will highlight the novel features of these exotic magnets.

High-energy electron cooling, presently considered as essential tool for several applications in high-energy and nuclear physics, requires accurate description of the friction force. A series of measurements were performed at CELSIUS with the goal to provide accurate data needed for the benchmarking of theories and simulations. Some results of accurate comparison of experimental data with the friction force formulas are presented.

The design of an electron cooler must take into account both electron beam dynamics issues as well as the electron cooling physics. Research towards high-energy electron cooling of RHIC is in its 3rd year at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The luminosity upgrade of RHIC calls for electron cooling of various stored ion beams, such as 100 GeV/A gold ions at collision energies. The necessary electron energy of 54 MeV is clearly out of reach for DC accelerator system of any kind. The high energy also necessitates a bunched beam, with a high electron bunch charge, low emittance and small energy spread. The Collider-Accelerator Department adopted the Energy Recovery Linac (ERL) for generating the high-current, high-energy and high-quality electron beam. The RHIC electron cooler ERL will use four Superconducting RF (SRF) 5-cell cavities, designed to operate at ampere-class average currents with high bunch charges. The electron source will be a superconducting, 705.75 MHz laser-photocathode RF gun, followed up by a superconducting Energy Recovery Linac (ERL). An R&D ERL is under construction to demonstrate the ERL at the unprecedented average current of 0.5 amperes. Beam dynamics performance and luminosity enhancement are described for the case of magnetized and non-magnetized electron cooling of RHIC.

The photochemistry of the trimetal cluster,Ru(3)(CO)12, was investigated on the ultrafast timescale using UV-vis pump, infrared probe spectroscopy in order to study the transient intermediates formed upon photoexcitation.

Diffusion counteracts cooling and the knowledge of diffusion rates is important for the calculation of cooling times and equilibrium beam sizes. Echo measurements are a potentially sensitive method to determine diffusion rates, and longitudinal measurements were done in a number of machines. We report on transverse echo measurements in RHIC and the observed dependence of echo amplitudes on a number of parameters for beams of gold and copper ions, and protons. In particular they examine the echo amplitudes of gold and copper ion bunches of varying intensity, which exhibit different diffusion rates from intrabeam scattering.