In Stack and Rustad (2007), the reactive flux method (Rey and Hynes, 1996) and molecular dynamics (MD) were used to simulate the {001} barite-water interface structure and water exchange rate of aqueous barium ions and barium surface species. Atomic-level mineralwater interfacial structure and kinetics are being studied with increasing precision due to advances in spectroscopic methods at synchrotron x-ray sources as well as improved computational capacity. Better characterization of these interfaces in turn is leading to advances in the understanding of many macroscopic geochemical properties. Overall the barite-water interfacial structure was found to compare well to that estimated using X-ray reflectivity (XRR) measurements (Fenter et al., 2001), but there was an important difference: the MD predicted an intricate water structure present at the interface with one major peak and several minor peaks whereas the XRR found only a single layer of water. This discrepancy is thought to result from a limited resolution in the Fenter et al. (2001) study as well as over-coordination of surface sulfates by the MD model.

This report documents the results of tests designed to characterize the relationship between temperature and the measured potential of electrodes installed on multi-probe corrosion monitoring systems in waste tanks. This report also documents the results of tests designed to demonstrate the impact of liquid in-leakage into electrode bodies as well as the contamination of primary reference electrodes by diffusion through the electrode tip.

We present ugriz light curves for 146 spectroscopically confirmed or spectroscopically probable Type Ia supernovae from the 2005 season of the SDSS-II Supernova survey. The light curves have been constructed using a photometric technique that we call scene modeling, which is described in detail here; the major feature is that supernova brightnesses are extracted from a stack of images without spatial resampling or convolution of the image data. This procedure produces accurate photometry along with accurate estimates of the statistical uncertainty, and can be used to derive photometry taken with multiple telescopes. We discuss various tests of this technique that demonstrate its capabilities. We also describe the methodology used for the calibration of the photometry, and present calibrated magnitudes and fluxes for all of the spectroscopic SNe Ia from the 2005 season.

Employment of cyanobacteria in biomineralization of carbon dioxide by calcium carbonate precipitation offers novel and self-sustaining strategies for point-source carbon capture and sequestration. Although details of this process remain to be elucidated, a carbon-concentrating mechanism, and chemical reactions in exopolysaccharide or proteinaceous surface layers are assumed to be of crucial importance. Cyanobacteria can utilize solar energy through photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide to recalcitrant calcium carbonate. Calcium can be derived from sources such as gypsum or industrial brine. A better understanding of the biochemical and genetic mechanisms that carry out and regulate cynaobacterial biomineralization should put us in a position where we can further optimize these steps by exploiting the powerful techniques of genetic engineering, directed evolution, and biomimetics.

We construct examples of single-sector supersymmetry breaking based on simple deformations of supersymmetric QCD with (weakly) gauged flavor group. These theories are calculable in a weakly coupled Seiberg dual description. In these models, some of the particles in the first two generations of quarks and leptons are composites of the same strong dynamics which leads to dynamical supersymmetry breaking. Such models can explain the hierarchies of Yukawa couplings in the Standard Model, in a way that predictively correlates with the spectrum of SUSY-breaking soft terms.

We propose a class of AdS/CFT dual pairs which have small internal dimensions on the gravity side. Starting from known Freund-Rubin AdS/CFT dual pairs, we use 7-branes to nearly cancel the curvature energy of the internal dimensions while maintaining their stabilization. This leads to a new corner of the landscape - a class of AdS solutions with a hierarchically large AdS radius - with a dual field theory given (implicitly) by the infrared limit of a concrete brane construction involving D3-branes, 7-branes, and curvature. We first construct a class of hierarchical AdS5/CFT4 dual pairs with a simple formula for the number of degrees of freedom which we interpret in the dual QFT. We then generalize these to AdS4/CFT3 duals, and suggest extensions of the method to obtain de Sitter solutions.

We explore calculable models with low-energy supersymmetry where the flavor hierarchy is generated by quark and lepton compositeness, and where the composites emerge from the same sector that dynamically breaks supersymmetry. The observed pattern of Standard Model fermion masses and mixings is obtained by identifying the various generations with composites of different dimension in the ultraviolet. These 'single-sector' supersymmetry breaking models give rise to various spectra of soft masses which are, in many cases, quite distinct from what is commonly found in models of gauge or gravity mediation. In typical models which satisfy all flavor-changing neutral current constraints, both the first and second generation sparticles have masses of order 20 TeV, while the stop mass is a few TeV. In other cases, all sparticles obtain masses of order a few TeV predominantly from gauge mediation, even though the first two generations are composite.

We study the decay B{sup -} {yields} DK*{sup -} using a sample of 379 x 10{sup 6} {Upsilon}(4S) {yields} B{bar B} events collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II B-factory. We perform a 'GLW' analysis where the D meson decays into either a CP-even (CP+) eigenstate (K{sup +}K{sup -}, {pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}), CP-odd (CP-) eigenstate (K{sub S}{sup 0}{pi}{sup 0}, K{sub S}{sup 0}{phi}, K{sub S}{sup 0}{omega}) or a non-CP state (K{sup -}{pi}{sup +}). We also analyze D meson decays into K{sup +}{pi}{sup -} from a Cabibbo-favored {bar D}{sup 0} decay or doubly suppressed D{sup 0} decay ('ADS' analysis). We measure observables that are sensitive to the CKM angle {gamma}: the partial-rate charge asymmetries A{sub CP{+-}}, the ratios R{sub CP{+-}} of the B-decay branching fractions in CP{+-} and non-CP decay, the ratio R{sub ADS} of the charge-averaged branching fractions, and the charge asymmetry A{sub ADS} of the ADS decays: A{sub CP+} = 0.09 {+-} 0.13 {+-} 0.06, A{sub CP-} = -0.23 {+-} 0.21 {+-} 0.07, R{sub CP+} = 2.17 {+-} 0.35 {+-} 0.09, R{sub CP-} = 1.03 {+-} 0.27 {+-} 0.13, R{sub ADS} = 0.066 {+-} 0.031 {+-} 0.010, and A{sub ADS} = -0.34 {+-} 0.43 {+-} 0.16, where the first …

In the past decade, one of the major challenges of particle physics has been to gain an in-depth understanding of the role of quark flavor. In this time frame, measurements and the theoretical interpretation of their results have advanced tremendously. A much broader understanding of flavor particles has been achieved, apart from their masses and quantum numbers, there now exist detailed measurements of the characteristics of their interactions allowing stringent tests of Standard Model predictions. Among the most interesting phenomena of flavor physics is the violation of the CP symmetry that has been subtle and difficult to explore. In the past, observations of CP violation were confined to neutral K mesons, but since the early 1990s, a large number of CP-violating processes have been studied in detail in neutral B mesons. In parallel, measurements of the couplings of the heavy quarks and the dynamics for their decays in large samples of K,D, and B mesons have been greatly improved in accuracy and the results are being used as probes in the search for deviations from the Standard Model. In the near future, there will be a transition from the current to a new generation of experiments, thus a review of …