We study the lithospheric structure of Africa, Arabia and adjacent oceanic regions with fundamental-mode surface waves over a wide period range. Including short period group velocities allows us to examine shallower features than previous studies of the whole continent. In the process, we have developed a crustal thickness map of Africa. Main features include crustal thickness increases under the West African, Congo, and Kalahari cratons. We find crustal thinning under Mesozoic and Cenozoic rifts, including the Benue Trough, Red Sea, and East, Central, and West African rift systems. Crustal shear wave velocities are generally faster in oceanic regions and cratons, and slower in more recent crust and in active and formerly active orogenic regions. Deeper structure, related to the thickness of cratons and modern rifting, is generally consistent with previous work. Under cratons we find thick lithosphere and fast upper mantle velocities, while under rifts we find thinned lithosphere and slower upper mantle velocities. There are no consistent effects in areas classified as hotspots, indicating that there seem to be numerous origins for these features. Finally, it appears that the African Superswell has had a significantly different impact in the north and the south, indicating specifics of the feature (temperature, …

Shimming systems are required to provide sufficient fieldhomogeneity for high resolution NMR. In certain specialized applications,such as rotating-field NMR and portable (ex-situ) NMR, permanentmagnet-based shimming systems can provide considerable advantages. Wepresent a simple two-dimensional shimming method based on harmoniccorrector rings which can provide arbitrary multipole order shimmingcorrections. Results demonstrate, for example, that quadrupolar ordershimming improves the linewidth by up to and order of magnitude. Anadditional order of magnitude reduction is in principle achievable byultilizing this shimming method for z-gradient correction and higherorder xy gradients.

We present a method to measure self-diffusion acrossmembranes without the need for concentration or pressure gradients.Hyperpolarized xenon in combination with remote detection of NMR allowsthe measurement of membrane permeation, even in the gas phase. Theresulting images allow quantification of the amount of fluid diffusedthrough the membrane, and represent an alternative, potentially moreprecise way of measuring a membrane diffusion coefficient. The use ofremote detection of NMR allows for non-invasive signal encoding coupledto sensitive detection, making this approach ideal for the study ofdiffusion in intact devices such as fuel cells or separationsystems.

The evaluation and prediction of integrated fuel performance is a critical component of the Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors (RERTR) program. The PLATE code is the primary tool being developed and used to perform these functions. The code is being modified to incorporate the most recent fuel/matrix interaction correlations as they become available for both aluminum and aluminum/silicon matrices. The code is also being adapted to treat cylindrical and square pin geometries to enhance the validation database by including the results gathered from various international partners. Additional modeling work has been initiated to evaluate the thermal and mechanical performance requirements unique to monolithic fuels during irradiation.

Increased plasma triglycerides concentrations are an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Numerous studies support a reproducible genetic association between two minor haplotypes in the human apolipoprotein A5 gene (APOA5) and increased plasma triglyceride concentrations. We thus sought to investigate the effect of these minor haplotypes (APOA5*2 and APOA5*3) on ApoAV plasma levels through the precise insertion of single-copy intact APOA5 haplotypes at a targeted location in the mouse genome. While we found no difference in the amount of human plasma ApoAV in mice containing the common APOA5*1 and minor APOA5*2 haplotype, the introduction of the single APOA5*3 defining allele (19W) resulted in 3-fold lower ApoAV plasma levels consistent with existing genetic association studies. These results indicate that S19W polymorphism is likely to be functional and explain the strong association of this variant with plasma triglycerides supporting the value of sensitive in vivo assays to define the functional nature of human haplotypes.

A strong effect of a moderately elevated surface temperature on net carbon deposition and deuterium co-deposition in the DIII-D divertor was observed under detached conditions. A DiMES sample with a gap 2 mm wide and 18 mm deep was exposed to lower-single-null (LSN) L-mode plasmas first at room temperature, and then at 200 C. At the elevated temperature, deuterium co-deposition in the gap was reduced by an order of magnitude. At the plasma-facing surface of the heated sample net carbon erosion was measured at a rate of 3 nm/s, whereas without heating net deposition is normally observed under detachment. In a related experiment three sets of molybdenum mirrors recessed 2 cm below the divertor floor were exposed to identical LSN ELMy H-mode discharges. The first set of mirrors exposed at ambient temperature exhibited net carbon deposition at a rate of up to 3.7 nm/s and suffered a significant drop in reflectivity. In contrast, two other mirror sets exposed at elevated temperatures between 90 C and 175 C exhibited virtually no carbon deposition.

Energetic materials are unique for having a strong exothermic reactivity, which has made them desirable for both military and commercial applications. Energetic materials are commonly divided into high explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics. We will focus on high explosive (HE) materials here, although there is a great deal of commonality between the classes of energetic materials. Although the history of HE materials is long, their condensed-phase properties are poorly understood. Understanding the condensed-phase properties of HE materials is important for determining stability and performance. Information regarding HE material properties (for example, the physical, chemical, and mechanical behaviors of the constituents in plastic-bonded explosive, or PBX, formulations) is necessary for efficiently building the next generation of explosives as the quest for more powerful energetic materials (in terms of energy per volume) moves forward. In modeling HE materials there is a need to better understand the physical, chemical, and mechanical behaviors from fundamental theoretical principles. Among the quantities of interest in plastic-bonded explosives (PBXs), for example, are thermodynamic stabilities, reaction kinetics, equilibrium transport coefficients, mechanical moduli, and interfacial properties between HE materials and the polymeric binders. These properties are needed (as functions of stress state and temperature) for the development of improved micro-mechanical …

We have developed a high-speed system for collecting x-ray fluorescence microprobe data, based on ASICs developed at BNL and high-speed processors developed by CSIRO. The system can collect fluorescence data in a continuous raster scan mode, and present elemental images in real time using Ryan's Dynamic Analysis algorithm. We will present results from a 32-element prototype array illustrating the concept. The final instrument will have 384 elements arranged in a square array around a central hole.

Nanophase metallic materials show a maximum in strength as grain size decreases to the nano scale, indicating a break down of the Hall-Petch relation. Grain boundary sliding, as a possible accommodation mechanisms, is often the picture that explain computer simulations results and real experiments. In a recent paper, Bringa et al. Science 309, 1838 (2005), we report on the observation of an ultra-hard behavior in nanophase Cu under shock loading, explained in terms of a reduction of grain boundary sliding under the influence of the shock pressure. In this work we perform a detailed study of the effects of hydrostatic pressure on nanophase Cu plasticity and find that it can be understood in terms of pressure dependent grain boundary sliding controlled by a Mohr-Coulomb law.

High-quality electron beams with up to 1 GeV energy havebeen generated by a laser-driven plasma-based accelerator by guiding a 40TW peak power laser pulse in a 3.3 cm long gas-filled capillary dischargewaveguide.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) is now finalizing the Phase 2 Research and Demonstration Project on characterizing 2-foot x 4-foot (61-cm x 122-cm) fan-filter units in the market using the first-ever standard laboratory test method developed at LBNL.[1][2][3] Fan-filter units deliver re-circulated air and provide particle filtration control for clean environments. Much of the energy in cleanrooms (and minienvironments) is consumed by 2-foot x 4-foot (61-cm x 122-cm) or 4-foot x 4-foot (122-cm x 122-cm) fan-filter units that are typically located in the ceiling (25-100% coverage) of cleanroom controlled environments. Thanks to funding support by the California Energy Commission's Industrial Program of the Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) Program, and significant participation from manufacturers and users of fan-filter units from around the world, LBNL has developed and performed a series of standard laboratory tests and reporting on a variety of 2-foot x 4-foot (61-cm x 122-cm) fan-filter units (FFUs). Standard laboratory testing reports have been completed and reported back to anonymous individual participants in this project. To date, such reports on standard testing of FFU performance have provided rigorous and useful data for suppliers and end users to better understand, and more importantly, to quantitatively characterize performance of FFU products …

We present a second-order accurate algorithm for solving thefree-space Poisson's equation on a locally-refined nested grid hierarchyin three dimensions. Our approach is based on linear superposition oflocal convolutions of localized charge distributions, with the nonlocalcoupling represented on coarser grids. There presentation of the nonlocalcoupling on the local solutions is based on Anderson's Method of LocalCorrections and does not require iteration between different resolutions.A distributed-memory parallel implementation of this method is observedto have a computational cost per grid point less than three times that ofa standard FFT-based method on a uniform grid of the same resolution, andscales well up to 1024 processors.

An algorithm for calculating the partition function of a molecule with the path integral Monte Carlo method is presented. Staged thermodynamic perturbation with respect to a reference harmonic potential is utilized to evaluate the ratio of partition functions. Parallel tempering and a new Monte Carlo estimator for the ratio of partition functions are implemented here to achieve well converged simulations that give an accuracy of 0.04 kcal/mol in the reported free energies. The method is applied to various test systems, including a catalytic system composed of 18 atoms. Absolute free energies calculated by this method lead to corrections as large as 2.6 kcal/mol at 300 K for some of the examples presented.

Germanium-based detectors are the standard technology usedfor gamma-ray spectroscopy when high efficiency and excellent energyresolution are desired. By dividing the electrical contacts on thesedetectors into segments, the locations of the gamma-ray interactionevents within the detectors can be determined as well as the depositedenergies. This enables simultaneous gamma-ray imaging and spectroscopyand leads to applications in the areas of astronomy, nuclear physics,environmental remediation, nuclear nonproliferation, and homelandsecurity. Producing the fine-pitched electrode segmentation oftenrequired for imaging has been problematic in the past. To address thisissue, we have developed an amorphous-semiconductor contact technology.Using this technology, fully passivated detectors with closely spacedcontacts can be produced using a simple fabrication process. The currentstate of the amorphous-semiconductor contact technology and thechallenges that remain will be given in this paper.

Two-dimensional confined systems, such as substrate-supported incommensurate layers, are of interest because their structural and electronic properties may differ from those of bulk materials. While advances in experimental techniques have resulted in the growth of many such interesting systems, progress can often be hampered by the lack of an atomistic-scale understanding of the structure, especially for incommensurate systems. In this work, we develop an atomic-scale model for an ordered incommensurate gold-sulfide (AuS) adlayer that has been previously demonstrated to exist on the Au(111) surface, following sulfur deposition and annealing to 450 K. We introduce theoretical techniques within density functional theory to take into account charge transfer in an incommensurate system and model scanning tunneling microscopy images, which are in good agreement with experiment. Our simulations indicate that this model is remarkably robust. We analyze the nature of bonding in this structure using state-of-the-art Wannier-function based techniques. Our analysis provides a natural explanation for the extraordinary robustness and unusual stoichiometry of this layer. This structure and its chemistry have implications for related S-Au interfaces, such as those in self-assembled monolayers of thiols on Au substrates.

We classify {Lambda}{sub QCD}/m{sub b} power corrections to nonleptonic B {yields} M{sub 1}M{sub 2} decays, where M{sub 1,2} are charmless non-isosinglet mesons. Using recent developments in soft-collinear effective theory, we prove that the leading contributions to annihilation amplitudes of order {alpha}{sub s}(m{sub b}) {Lambda}{sub QCD}/m{sub b} are real. The leading annihilation amplitudes depend on twist-2 and the twist-3 three parton distributions. A complex nonperturbative parameter from annihilation first appears at {Omega}[{alpha}{sub s}{sup 2}({radical}{Lambda}m{sub b}){Lambda}{sub QCD}/m{sub b}]. 'Chirally enhanced' contributions are also factorizable and real at lowest order. Thus, incalculable strong phases are suppressed in annihilation amplitudes, unless the {alpha}{sub s}({radical}{Lambda}m{sub b}) expansion breaks down. Modeling the distribution functions, we find that (11 {+-} 9)% and (15 {+-} 11)% of the absolute values of the measured {bar B}{sup 0} {yields} K{sup -}{pi}{sup +} and B{sup -} {yields} K{sup -}K{sup 0} penguin amplitudes come from annihilation. This is consistent with the expected size of power corrections.

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After reviewing the cosmological constant problem -- why is Lambda not huge? -- I outline the two basic approaches that had emerged by the late 1980s, and note that each made a clear prediction. Precision cosmological experiments now indicate that the cosmological constant is nonzero. This result strongly favors the environmental approach, in which vacuum energy can vary discretely among widely separated regions in the universe. The need to explain this variation from first principles constitutes an observational constraint on fundamental theory. I review arguments that string theory satisfies this constraint, as it contains a dense discretuum of metastable vacua. The enormous landscape of vacua calls for novel, statistical methods of deriving predictions, and it prompts us to reexamine our description of spacetime on the largest scales. I discuss the effects of cosmological dynamics, and I speculate that weighting vacua by their entropy production may allow for prior-free predictions that do not resort to explicitly anthropic arguments.

To model entire microfluidic systems containing solvated polymers we argue that it is necessary to have a numerical stability constraint governed only by the advective CFL condition. Advancements in the treatment of Kramers bead-rod polymer models are presented to enable tightly-coupled fluid-particle algorithms in the context of system-level modeling.

We construct metastable configurations of branes and anti-branes wrapping 2-spheres inside local Calabi-Yau manifolds and study their large N duals. These duals are Calabi-Yau manifolds in which the wrapped 2-spheres have been replaced by 3-spheres with flux through them, and supersymmetry is spontaneously broken. The geometry of the non-supersymmetric vacuum is exactly calculable to all orders of the't Hooft parameter, and to the leading order in 1/N. The computation utilizes the same matrix model techniques that were used in the supersymmetric context. This provides a novel mechanism for breaking supersymmetry in the context of flux compactifications.

Photoelectron spectroscopy, synchrotron-radiation-based x-ray absorption, electron energy-loss spectroscopy, and density-functional calculations within the mixed-level and magnetic models, together with canonical band theory have been used to study the electron configuration in Pu. These methods suggest a 5f{sup n} configuration for Pu of 5 {le} n < 6, with n {ne} 6, contrary to what has recently been suggested in several publications. We show that the n = 6 picture is inconsistent with the usual interpretation of photoemission and x-ray absorption spectra. Instead, these spectra support the traditional conjecture of a 5f{sup 5} configuration in Pu as is obtained by density-functional theory. We further argue, based on 5f-band filling, that an n = 6 hypothesis is incompatible with the position of Pu in the actinide series and its monoclinic ground-state phase.

Passivity breakdown of 316L SS in the presence of aggressive Cl{sup -} and inhibitive NO{sub 3}{sup -} anions has been experimentally studied and the results have been interpreted in terms of the Point Defect Model (PDM). By introducing the competitive adsorption of Cl{sup -} and NO{sub 3}{sup -} into surface oxygen vacancies at the passive film/solution interface, the PDM yields a critical breakdown potential (V{sub c}) that is predicted to vary linearly with log[Cl{sup -}], or with log ([Cl{sup -}]/[NO{sub 3}{sup -}]) [1] when nitrate ions are present, which is shown in Fig. 1. The Point Defect Model also explains the fact that the slope of V{sub c} vs. log[Cl{sup -}] does not change in the presence of NO{sub 3}{sup -}, which is attributed to the quasi-equilibrium ejection of a cation from the barrier layer to form the vacancy pair V{sub M}V{sub O}{sup (2-{chi})} at the barrier layer/solution interface. The Point Defect Model predicts that measured V{sub c} increases linearly with the square root of voltage scan rate {nu}{sup 1/2} [1]. From this correlation, the critical, areal concentration of cation vacancies at the metal/barrier layer interface, {zeta}, has been estimated and found to be comparable to that calculated from the …

We propose a computationally efficient method based onnonlinear optimization to identify critical lines, failure of which cancause severe blackouts. Our method computes criticality measure for alllines at a time, as opposed to detecting a single vulnerability,providing a global view of the system. This information on criticality oflines can be used to identify multiple contingencies by selectivelyexploring multiple combinations of broken lines. The effectiveness of ourmethod is demonstrated on the IEEE 30 and 118 bus systems, where we canvery quickly detect the most critical lines in the system and identifysevere multiple contingencies.

Magnetic soft X-ray microscopy images magnetism in nanoscale systems with a spatial resolution down to 15nm provided by state-of-the-art Fresnel zone plate optics. X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (X-MCD) is used as element-specific magnetic contrast mechanism similar to photoemission electron microscopy (PEEM), however, with volume sensitivity and the ability to record the images in varying applied magnetic fields which allows to study magnetization reversal processes at fundamental length scales. Utilizing a stroboscopic pump-probe scheme one can investigate fast spin dynamics with a time resolution down to 70 ps which gives access to precessional and relaxation phenomena as well as spin torque driven domain wall dynamics in nanoscale systems. Current developments in zone plate optics aim for a spatial resolution towards 10nm and at next generation X-ray sources a time resolution in the fsec regime can be envisioned.