This article discusses low-coordinate iron dinitrogen complexes. Understanding the interaction of N₂ with iron is relevant to the iron catalyst used in the Haber process and to possible roles of the FeMoco active site of nitrogenase.

Article discussing research on the characterization of sub-nuclear changes in Caenorhabditis elegans embryos exposed to brief, intermediate and long-term anoxia to analyze anoxia-induced cell cycle arrest.

Article discussing the mathematical representation of the solubility of electrolytes in binary solvent mixtures using the Jouyban-Acree model.

Encyclopedia article in the 'International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology' discussing health care, globalization and health, and the effect of the economy on the structure of the health care system.

This paper discusses the use of NREL's Advanced Automotive Manikin (ADAM) for evaluating NASA's liquid cooling garments for space suits.

The expected sensitivity of the LHC experiments to the discovery of the Higgs boson and the measurement of its properties is presented in the context of both the standard model and the its minimal supersymmetric extension. Prospects for a luminosity-upgraded ''Super-LHC'' are also presented. If it exists, the LHC should discover standard model Higgs boson, measure its mass accurately, and make various measurements of its couplings, spin and CP properties. In the context of the CP-conserving MSSM, the LHC should be able to discover one or more Higgs bosons over the entire m{sub A}-tan {beta} plane, with two or more observable in many cases. The large number of channels available insure a robust discovery and offer many opportunities for additional measurements. Observation of H {yields} {mu}{mu}, measurement of the tri-linear Higgs self-coupling, and various search channels are statistics-limited, and only possible with a luminosity upgrade. A luminosity upgrade would substantially improve some of the coupling measurements and generally extend the sensitivity in the MSSM Higgs plane. Efforts are ongoing to understand the upgrade of the LHC to the Super-LHC.

ABSTRACT In spring 2002, ambrosia beetles (Coleoptera: Scolytidae) infested an intensively managed 22-ha tree plantation on the upper coastal plain of South Carolina. Nearly 3,500 scolytids representing 28 species were captured in ethanol-baited traps from 18 June 2002 to 18 April 2004. More than 88% of total captures were exotic species. Five species [Dryoxylon onoharaensum (Murayama), Euwallacea validus (Eichhoff), Pseudopityophthorus minutissimus (Zimmermann), Xyleborus atratus Eichhoff, and Xyleborus impressus Eichhoff]) were collected in South Carolina for the Þrst time. Of four tree species in the plantation, eastern cottonwood, Populus deltoides Bartram, was the only one attacked, with nearly 40% of the trees sustaining ambrosia beetle damage. Clone ST66 sustained more damage than clone S7C15. ST66 trees receiving fertilization were attacked more frequently than trees receiving irrigation, irrigation_fertilization, or controls, although the number of S7C15 trees attacked did not differ among treatments. The study location is near major shipping ports; our results demonstrate the necessity for intensive monitoring programs to determine the arrival, spread, ecology, and impact of exotic scolytids.

There are reports that nano-sized zero-valent iron (Fe0) exhibits greater reactivity than micro-sized particles of Fe0, and it has been suggested that the higher reactivity of nano-Fe0 may impart advantages for groundwater remediation or other environmental applications. However, most of these reports are preliminary in that they leave a host of potentially significant (and often challenging) material or process variables either uncontrolled or unresolved. In an effort to better understand the reactivity of nano-Fe0, we have used a variety of complementary techniques to characterize two widely studied nano-Fe0 preparations:  one synthesized by reduction of goethite with heat and H2 (FeH2) and the other by reductive precipitation with borohydride (FeBH). FeH2 is a two-phase material consisting of 40 nm α-Fe0 (made up of crystals approximately the size of the particles) and Fe3O4 particles of similar size or larger containing reduced sulfur; whereas FeBH is mostly 20−80 nm metallic Fe particles (aggregates of <1.5 nm grains) with an oxide shell/coating that is high in oxidized boron. The FeBH particles further aggregate into chains. Both materials exhibit corrosion potentials that are more negative than nano-sized Fe2O3, Fe3O4, micro-sized Fe0, or a solid Fe0 disk, which is consistent with their rapid reduction of oxygen, …

The authors present a search for the standard model Higgs boson decaying into b{bar b} and produced in association with W bosons in p{bar p} collisions at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV. This search uses 320 pb{sup -1} of the dataset accumulated by the upgraded Collider Detector at Fermilab. Events are selected that have a high-transverse momentum electron or muon, missing transverse energy, and two jets, at least one of which is consistent with the hadronization of a b quark. Both the number of events and the dijet mass distribution are consistent with standard model background expectations, and they set 95% confidence level upper limits on the production cross section times branching ratio for the Higgs boson or any new particle with similar decay kinematics. These upper limits range from 10 pb for m{sub H} = 110 GeV/c{sup 2} to 3 pb for m{sub H} = 150 GeV/c{sup 2}.

In this paper, we show how to design an efficient, provably secure password-based authenticated key exchange mechanism specifically for the TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocol. The goal is to provide a technique that allows users to employ (short) passwords to securely identify themselves to servers. As our main contribution, we describe a new password-based technique for user authentication in TLS, called Simple Open Key Exchange (SOKE). Loosely speaking, the SOKE ciphersuites are unauthenticated Diffie-Hellman ciphersuites in which the client's Diffie-Hellman ephemeral public value is encrypted using a simple mask generation function. The mask is simply a constant value raised to the power of (a hash of) the password.The SOKE ciphersuites, in advantage over previous pass-word-based authentication ciphersuites for TLS, combine the following features. First, SOKE has formal security arguments; the proof of security based on the computational Diffie-Hellman assumption is in the random oracle model, and holds for concurrent executions and for arbitrarily large password dictionaries. Second, SOKE is computationally efficient; in particular, it only needs operations in a sufficiently large prime-order subgroup for its Diffie-Hellman computations (no safe primes). Third, SOKE provides good protocol flexibility because the user identity and password are only required once a SOKE ciphersuite has …

We report a simple system for producing [15O]H2O from nitrogen-15 in a nitrogen/hydrogen gas target with recycling of the target nitrogen, allowing production on low-energy proton-only accelerators with minimal consumption of isotopically enriched nitrogen-15. The radiolabeled water is separated from the target gas and radiolytically produced ammonia by temporary freezing in a small trap at -40 C.

We report a measurement of the top quark mass using events collected by the CDF II Detector from p{bar p} collisions at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV at the Fermilab Tevatron. We calculate a likelihood function for the top mass in events that are consistent with t{bar t} {yields} {bar b}{ell}{sup -}{bar {nu}}{sub {ell}}b{ell}{prime}{sup +}{nu}{sub {ell}}{prime} decays. The likelihood is formed as the convolution of the leading-order matrix element and detector resolution functions. The joint likelihood is the product of likelihoods for each of 33 events collected in 340 pb{sup -1} of integrated luminosity, yielding a top quark mass M{sub t} = 165.2 {+-} 6.1(stat.) {+-} 3.4(syst.) GeV/c{sup 2}. This first application of a matrix-element technique to t{bar t} {yields} b{ell}{sup +}{nu}{sub {ell}}{bar b}{ell}{prime}{sup -}{bar {nu}}{sub {ell}}, decays gives the most precise single measurement of M{sub t} in dilepton events. Combined with other CDF Run II measurements using dilepton events, we measure M{sub t} = 167.9 {+-} 5.2(stat.) {+-} 3.7(syst.) GeV/c{sup 2}.

Published B and V fluxes from nearby Type Ia supernova are fitted to light-curve templates with 4-6 adjustable parameters. Separately, B magnitudes from the same sample are fitted to a linear dependence on B-V color within a post-maximum time window prescribed by the CMAGIC method. These fits yield two independent SN magnitude estimates B{sub max} and B{sub BV}. Their difference varies systematically with decline rate {Delta}m{sub 15} in a form that is compatible with a bilinear but not a linear dependence; a nonlinear form likely describes the decline-rate dependence of B{sub max} itself. A Hubble fit to the average of B{sub max} and B{sub BV} requires a systematic correction for observed B-V color that can be described by a linear coefficient R = 2.59 {+-} 0.24, well below the coefficient R{sub B} {approx} 4.1 commonly used to characterize the effects of Milky Way dust. At 99.9% confidence the data reject a simple model in which no color correction is required for SNe that are clustered at the blue end of their observed color distribution. After systematic corrections are performed, B{sub max} and B{sub BV} exhibit mutual rms intrinsic variation equal to 0.074 {+-} 0.019 mag, of which at least an …

Cross-species DNA sequence comparison is the primary method used to identify functional noncoding elements in human and other large genomes. However, little is known about the relative merits of evolutionarily close and distant sequence comparisons, due to the lack of a universal metric for sequence conservation, and also the paucity of empirically defined benchmark sets of cis-regulatory elements. To address this problem, we developed a general-purpose algorithm (Gumby) that detects slowly-evolving regions in primate, mammalian and more distant comparisons without requiring adjustment of parameters, and ranks conserved elements by P-value using Karlin-Altschul statistics. We benchmarked Gumby predictions against previously identified cis-regulatory elements at diverse genomic loci, and also tested numerous extremely conserved human-rodent sequences for transcriptional enhancer activity using reporter-gene assays in transgenic mice. Human regulatory elements were identified with acceptable sensitivity and specificity by comparison with 1-5 other eutherian mammals or 6 other simian primates. More distant comparisons (marsupial, avian, amphibian and fish) failed to identify many of the empirically defined functional noncoding elements. We derived an intuitive relationship between ancient and recent noncoding sequence conservation from whole genome comparative analysis, which explains some of these findings. Lastly, we determined that, in addition to strength of conservation, genomic location …

A precise measurement of the angle {alpha} in the CKM triangle is very important for a complete test of Standard Model. A theoretically clean method to extract {alpha} is provided by B{sup 0} {yields} {rho}{pi} decays. Monte Carlo simulations to obtain the BTeV reconstruction efficiency and to estimate the signal to background ratio for these decays were performed. Finally the time-dependent Dalitz plot analysis, using the isospin amplitude formalism for tre and penguin contributions, was carried out. It was shown that in one year of data taking BTeV could achieve an accuracy on {alpha} better than 5{sup o}.

Cisplatin and carboplatin are platinum-based drugs that are widely used in cancer chemotherapy. The cytotoxicity of these drugs is mediated by platinum-DNA monoadducts and intra- and interstrand diadducts, which are formed following uptake of the drug into the nucleus of cells. The pharmacodynamics of carboplatin display fewer side effects than for cisplatin, albeit with less potency, which may be due to differences in rates of DNA adduct formation. We report the use of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS), a sensitive detection method often used for radiocarbon quantitation, to measure both the kinetics of [{sup 14}C]carboplatin-DNA adduct formation with genomic DNA and drug uptake and DNA binding in T24 human bladder cancer cells. Only carboplatin-DNA monoadducts contain radiocarbon in the platinated DNA, which allowed for calculation of kinetic rates and concentrations within the system. The percent of radiocarbon bound to salmon sperm DNA in the form of monoadducts was measured by AMS over 24 h. Knowledge of both the starting concentration of the parent carboplatin and the concentration of radiocarbon in the DNA at a variety of time points allowed calculation of the rates of Pt-DNA monoadduct formation and conversion to toxic cross-links. Importantly, the rate of carboplatin-DNA monoadduct formation was approximately …

This paper discusses the features of an annotation language that we believe to be essential for optimizing user-defined abstractions. These features should capture semantics of function, data, and object-oriented abstractions, express abstraction equivalence (e.g., a class represents an array abstraction), and permit extension of traditional compiler optimizations to user-defined abstractions. Our future work will include developing a comprehensive annotation language for describing the semantics of general object-oriented abstractions, as well as automatically verifying and inferring the annotated semantics.

Wide-band reflectrometry and ellipsometry have been used to determine the optical properties n and k of freshly polished uranium and of the epitaxial oxide layer, and also the rate of oxide growth in air. Results for uranium metal as well as for epitaxial oxide are compared with single wavelength ellipsometry literature values.

Hexacorallia includes the Scleractinia, or stony corals, characterized by having an external calcareous skeleton made of aragonite, and the Corallimorpharia, or mushroom corals, that lack such a skeleton. Although each group has traditionally been considered monophyletic, some molecular phylogenetic analyses have challenged this, suggesting that skeletal features are evolutionarily plastic, and reviving notions that the scleractinian skeleton may be ephemeral and that the group itself may be polyphyletic. Nevertheless, the most comprehensive phylogenetic study of Hexacorallia supported scleractinian monophyly (REF), and so this remains controversial. In order to resolve this contentious issue, we sequenced the complete mitochondrial genome sequences of nine scleractinians and four corallimorpharians and performed phylogenetic analysis that also included three outgroups (an octocoral and two sea anemones). Our data provide the first strong evidence that Scleractinia is paraphyletic and that the Corallimorpharia is derived from within the group, from which we conclude that skeletal loss has occurred in the latter group secondarily. It is possible that a driving force in such skeletal loss could be the high levels of CO{sub 2} in the ocean during the mid-Cretaceous, which would have impacted aragonite solubility. We estimate from molecular divergence measures that the Corallimorpharia arose in the mid-Cretaceous, approximately …

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Axion fluctuations generated during inflation lead to isocurvature and non-Gaussian temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation. Following a previous analysis for the model independent string axion we consider the consequences of a measurement of these fluctuations for two additional string axions. We do so independent of any cosmological assumptions except for the axions being massless during inflation. The first axion has been shown to solve the strong CP problem for most compactifications of the heterotic string while the second axion, which does not solve the strong CP problem, obeys a mass formula which is independent of the axion scale. We find that if gravitational waves interpreted as arising from inflation are observed by the PLANCK polarimetry experiment with a Hubble constant during inflation of H{sub inf} {approx}&gt; 10{sup 13} GeV the existence of the first axion is ruled out and the second axion cannot obey the scale independent mass formula. In an appendix we quantitatively justify the often held assumption that temperature corrections to the zero temperature QCD axion mass may be ignored for temperatures T {approx}&lt; {Lambda}{sub QCD}.

Current fluctuations of cathodic arcs were recorded withhigh analog bandwidth (up to 1 GHz) and fast digital sampling (up to 5Gsamples/sec). The power spectral density of the arc current wasdetermined by fast Fourier transform clearly showing material dependent,non-linear features in the frequency domain. These features can beassociated with the non-linear impedance of the conducting channelbetween cathode and anode, driven by the explosive nature of electronemission and plasma formation. The characteristic times of less than 100ns can be associated with individual explosive processes, "ectons," andtherefore represent the short-time physical cutoff for the fractal modelof cathodic arcs.

A reaction pathway is explored in which two cyclopenta groups combine on the zigzag edge of a graphene layer. The process is initiated by H addition to a five-membered ring, followed by opening of that ring and the formation of a six-membered ring adjacent to another five-membered ring. The elementary steps of the migration pathway are analyzed using density functional theory to examine the region of the potential energy surface associated with the pathway. The calculations are performed on a substrate modeled by the zigzag edge of tetracene. Based on the obtained energetics, the dynamics of the system are analyzed by solving the energy transfer master equations. The results indicate energetic and reaction-rate similarity between the cyclopenta combination and migration reactions. Also examined in the present study are desorption rates of migrating cyclopenta rings which are found to be comparable to cyclopenta ring migration.

Via the comparison of th results of a few well controlled calculations methods, we analyze the relative importance of bulk band structure, multi-bulk band coupling and boundary conditions in determining the colloidal quantum dot conduction band eigen energies. We find that while the bulk band structure and correct boundary conditions are important, the effects of multi-bulk band coupling is small. We propose that a heterostructure picture where electron envelope functions inside and outside the quantum dot being connected at the boundary can be applied to collodial quantum dots.