The relationship between pullback velocity and impact velocity is studied for different microstructures in Cu. A size distribution of potential nucleation sites is derived under the conditions of an applied stochastic stress field. The size distribution depends on flow stress leading to a connection between the plastic flow appropriate to a given microstructure and nucleation rate. The pullback velocity in turn depends on the nucleation rate resulting in a prediction for the relationship between pullback velocity and flow stress. The theory is compared to observations of Cu on Cu gas-gun experiments (10-50 GPa) for a diverse set of microstructures. The scaling law is incorporated into a 1D finite difference code and is shown to reproduce the experimental data with one adjustable parameter that depends only on a nucleation exponent, {Lambda}.

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B-meson decays involving b {yields} u transitions are sensitive to the Unitarity Triangle angle {alpha} (or {phi}{sub 2}). The B-factories at SLAC and KEK have made significant progress toward the measurement of {alpha} in recent years. This paper summarizes the results of the B-factories' constraints on {alpha}.

The 3.2 giga-pixel LSST camera will produce over half a petabyte of raw images every month. This data needs to be reduced in under a minute to produce real-time transient alerts, and then cataloged and indexed to allow efficient access and simplify further analysis. The indexed catalogs alone are expected to grow at a speed of about 600 terabytes per year. The sheer volume of data, the real-time transient alerting requirements of the LSST, and its spatio-temporal aspects require cutting-edge techniques to build an efficient data access system at reasonable cost. As currently envisioned, the system will rely on a database for catalogs and metadata. Several database systems are being evaluated to understand how they will scale and perform at these data volumes in anticipated LSST access patterns. This paper describes the LSST requirements, the challenges they impose, the data access philosophy, and the database architecture that is expected to be adopted in order to meet the data challenges.

Structural Genomics (SG) projects aim to expand our structural knowledge of biological macromolecules, while lowering the average costs of structure determination. We quantitatively analyzed the novelty, cost, and impact of structures solved by SG centers, and contrast these results with traditional structural biology. The first structure from a protein family is particularly important to reveal the fold and ancient relationships to other proteins. In the last year, approximately half of such structures were solved at a SG center rather than in a traditional laboratory. Furthermore, the cost of solving a structure at the most efficient U.S. center has now dropped to one-quarter the estimated cost of solving a structure by traditional methods. However, top structural biology laboratories are much more efficient than the average, and comparable to SG centers despite working on very challenging structures. Moreover, traditional structural biology papers are cited significantly more often, suggesting greater current impact.

First-principles total-energy calculations were performed for the trigonal shear elastic constant (C{sub 44}) of vanadium and niobium. A mechanical instability in C{sub 44} is found for vanadium at pressures {approx} 2 Mbar which also shows softening in niobium at pressures {approx} 0.5 Mbar. We argue that the pressure-induced shear instability (softening) of vanadium (niobium) is due to the intraband nesting of the Fermi surface.

Summary: ANDY (seArch coordination aND analYsis) is a set ofPerl programs and modules for distributing large biological databasesearches, and in general any sequence of commands, across the nodes of aLinux computer cluster. ANDY is compatible with several commonly usedDistributed Resource Management (DRM) systems, and it can be easilyextended to new DRMs. A distinctive feature of ANDY is the choice ofeither dedicated or fair-use operation: ANDY is almost as efficient assingle-purpose tools that require a dedicated cluster, but it runs on ageneral-purpose cluster along with any other jobs scheduled by a DRM.Other features include communication through named pipes for performance,flexible customizable routines for error-checking and summarizingresults, and multiple fault-tolerance mechanisms. Availability: ANDY isfreely available and may be obtained fromhttp://compbio.berkeley.edu/proj/andy; this site also containssupplemental data and figures and amore detailed overview of thesoftware.

The origin of elevated radium-226 in groundwater beneath a sanitary landfill at the Savannah River Site (SRS) was investigated. Nearly one hundred monitoring wells are developed in the Steed Pond Aquifer (SPA), which consists of 100-150 ft of Coastal Plain sand, iron oxides, and minor clay. Wells screened in the upper and middle portions of the aquifer have average Ra-226 between 0.5 and 2.5 pCi/L, and average pHs above 4.7. However, wells screened near the base of the aquifer exhibit higher average Ra-226 concentrations of 2.5 to 4.6 pCi/L, with some measurements exceeding the MCL of 5 pCi/L, and show average pHs of 4.1 to 4.7. These wells are not downgradient of the landfill, and are not impacted by landfill leachate. The Crouch Branch Confining Unit (CBCU) underlies the aquifer, and is composed partly of reduced gray/brown clay with lignite and authigenic pyrite. Gamma ray logs show that the SPA has low gamma counts, but the CBCU is consistently elevated. Groundwater with high radium/low pH also contains elevated sulfate concentrations. pH calculations indicate that sulfate is in the form of sulfuric acid. A model for the origin of elevated Ra-226 levels in deeper SPA wells envisions infiltration of oxygenated SPA …