It is shown that, in a finite beta plasma, there may exist sheath driven modes whose amplitude decreases exponentially with the distance from the divertor plate. The modes are sensitive to the radial tilt of the divertor plate. The short-wavelength branch of the instability, with the cross-field wavelength Dof order of a few ion gyroradii, is present in the case of a ''positive'' tilt of the divertor plate, whereas the long-wavelength branch, with D of order of 10 or so gyroradii is unstable for the opposite sign of the tilt. The parallel e-folding length becomes less than the distance from the plate to the X point (thereby making the mode insensitive to the processes near the X-point and the upper scrape-off layer) at the plasma betas exceeding (2-3) {center_dot} 10{sup -4}. A detailed analysis of the dispersion relations is provided. The features of the modes that can be used for their experimental identification are discussed. It is pointed out that the analog of these modes may also exist in linear plasma devices with shaped end electrodes.

In ongoing experiments performed on the OMEGA laser [J. M. Soures et al., Phys. Plasmas 5, 2108 (1996)] at the University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE), nanosecond laser pulses are used to drive strong blast waves into two-layer targets. Perturbations on the interface between the two materials are unstable to the Richtmyer-Meshkov instability as a result of shock transit and the Rayleigh-Taylor instability during the deceleration-phase behind the shock front. These experiments are designed to produce a strongly shocked interface whose evolution is a scaled version of the unstable hydrogen-helium interface in core-collapse supernovae such as SN 1987A. The ultimate goal of this research is to develop an understanding of the effect of hydrodynamic instabilities and the resulting transition to turbulence on supernovae observables that remain as yet unexplained. The authors are, at present, particularly interested in the development of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability through the late nonlinear stage, the transition to turbulence, and the subsequent transport of material within the turbulent region. In this paper, the results of numerical simulations of 2D single and multimode experiments are presented. These simulations are run using the 2D Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) radiation hydrodynamics code CALE [R. T. Barton, Numerical Astrophysics …

This paper discusses parallel scaling performance of large scale parallel structured adaptive mesh refinement (SAMR) calculations in SAMRAI. Previous work revealed that poor scaling qualities in the adaptive gridding operations in SAMR calculations cause them to become dominant for cases run on up to 512 processors. This work describes algorithms we have developed to enhance the efficiency of the adaptive gridding operations. Performance of the algorithms is evaluated for two adaptive benchmarks run on up 512 processors of an IBM SP system.

A cooperative control architecture is presented that allows a fleet of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) to collect data in a parallel, coordinated and optimal manner. The architecture is designed to react to a set of unpredictable events thereby allowing data collection to continue in an optimal manner.

The DRACO code creates geometry and meshes through a command-line Python interface consisting of hundreds of classes and modules which must be accompanied by current documentation. The standard Python utility pydoc performs introspection on objects and prints their associated documentation strings verbatim. However, pydoc supports only very rudimentary formatting and cannot produce printable documentation. We decided to modify pydoc to process formatted ''docstrings'' and use the Doxygen tool to generate the needed forms of documentation. Codes with complex interfaces often require substantial effort to keep user documentation current with interface changes. The DRACO code creates geometry and meshes through a command-line Python interface consisting of hundreds of classes and thousands of functions. A previous attempt to write documentation manually quickly fell out of date, so the development team needed to find an alternative. The existing tools did not provide the flexibility we needed, and the team was already conversant in Doxygen, a C++ code-documenting utility with a simple tag-based markup. Python comes with a utility, pydoc, that performs introspection on objects and prints their docstrings verbatim. However, pydoc supports only very rudimentary formatting and cannot produce printable documentation. Thus we decided to create ''docstrings'' written in Doxygen syntax for each …

We have developed and characterized a mixer to study the reaction kinetics of protein folding on a microsecond timescale. The mixer uses hydrodynamic focusing of pressure-driven flow in a microfluidic channel to reduce diffusion times as first demonstrated by Knight et al.[1]. Features of the mixer include 1 {micro}s mixing times, sample consumptions of order 1 nl/s, loading sample volumes on the order of microliters, and the ability to manufacture in fused silica for compatibility with most spectroscopic methods.

A public/private collaboration between federal, state, provincial, and local U.S. and Canadian governmental organizations, called the Canada - United States Cargo Security Project has been formed, with the goal to improve security of containerized cargo moving from overseas locations into eastern Canadian provinces and the Northeastern United States. The current phase of this project has two technical objectives. These are: (1) to build and test a prototype in-container sensor system able to detect unauthorized entry into the container and the presence of radioactive material, to record geographical location and environmental data, and to transmit this information via satellite communications to a remote monitoring facility, and (2) to develop a secure website where data from the in-container sensors and other information will be displayed in real or near-real time and can be made available to law enforcement and emergency response organizations as appropriate. This paper will describe these activities, currently being undertaken by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. An additional goal of the project's current phase is to integrate multi-jurisdictional training and first-responder exercises while monitoring and tracking container shipments from overseas to the US via Canadian ports-of-entry into North America. This activity is being undertaken by other project partners, which …

A phenomenological model is proposed to correlate the onset of solid-state amorphization with the loss of interfacial stability in Ni-Ti multilayers. Additionally, a temperature dependence to the onset of amorphization is attributed to the effect of interfacial coherency that varies with the Ni-Ti layer pair spacing.

Carbon atoms occupying specific positions within fuel molecules can be labeled and followed in emissions. Renewable bio-derived fuels possess a natural uniform carbon-14 ({sup 14}C) tracer several orders of magnitude above petroleum-derived fuels. These fuels can be used to specify sources of carbon in particulate matter (PM) or other emissions. Differences in emissions from variations in the distribution of a fuel component within a blend can also be measured. Using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS), we traced fuel components with biological {sup 14}C/C levels of 1 part in 10{sup 12} against a {sup 14}C-free petroleum background in PM and CO{sub 2}. Different carbon atoms in the ester structure of the diesel oxygenate dibutyl maleate displayed far different propensities to produce PM. Homogeneous cosolvent and heterogeneous emulsified ethanol-in-diesel blends produced significantly different PM despite having the same oxygen content in the fuel. Emulsified blends produced PM with significantly more volatile species. Although ethanol-derived carbon was less likely to produce PM than diesel fuel, it formed non-volatile structures when it resided in PM. The contribution of lubrication oil to PM was determined by measuring an isotopic difference between 100% bio-diesel and the PM it produced. Data produced by the experiments provides validation for …

In the original paper a mistake in Figure 11 occurred. The corrected version of the figure is provided.

Industrial processes use mechanical draft cooling towers (MDCT's) to dissipate waste heat by transferring heat from water to air via evaporative cooling, which causes air humidification. The Savannah River Site (SRS) has cross-flow and counter-current MDCT's consisting of four independent compartments called cells. Each cell has its own fan to help maximize heat transfer between ambient air and circulated water. The primary objective of the work is to simulate the cooling tower performance for the counter-current cooling tower and to conduct a parametric study under different fan speeds and ambient air conditions. The Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) developed a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model and performed the benchmarking analysis against the integral measurement results to accomplish the objective. The model uses three-dimensional steady-state momentum, continuity equations, air-vapor species balance equation, and two-equation turbulence as the basic governing equations. It was assumed that vapor phase is always transported by the continuous air phase with no slip velocity. In this case, water droplet component was considered as discrete phase for the interfacial heat and mass transfer via Lagrangian approach. Thus, the air-vapor mixture model with discrete water droplet phase is used for the analysis. A series of parametric calculations was performed …

This paper extends previous results on nonlinear Schwarz preconditioning ([4]) to unstructured finite element elliptic problems exploiting now nonlocal (but small) subspaces. The non-local finite element subspaces are associated with subdomains obtained from a non-overlapping element partitioning of the original set of elements and are coarse outside the prescribed element subdomain. The coarsening is based on a modification of the agglomeration based AMGe method proposed in [8]. Then, the algebraic construction from [9] of the corresponding non-linear finite element subproblems is applied to generate the subspace based nonlinear preconditioner. The overall nonlinearly preconditioned problem is solved by an inexact Newton method. Numerical illustration is also provided.

Saline aquifers of high permeability bounded by overlying/underlying seals may be surrounded laterally by low-permeability zones, possibly caused by natural heterogeneity and/or faulting. Carbon dioxide (CO{sub 2}) injection into and storage in such 'closed' systems with impervious seals, or 'semi-closed' systems with nonideal (low-permeability) seals, is different from that in 'open' systems, from which the displaced brine can easily escape laterally. In closed or semi-closed systems, the pressure buildup caused by continuous industrial-scale CO{sub 2} injection may have a limiting effect on CO{sub 2} storage capacity, because geomechanical damage caused by overpressure needs to be avoided. In this research, a simple analytical method was developed for the quick assessment of the CO{sub 2} storage capacity in such closed and semi-closed systems. This quick-assessment method is based on the fact that native brine (of an equivalent volume) displaced by the cumulative injected CO{sub 2} occupies additional pore volume within the storage formation and the seals, provided by pore and brine compressibility in response to pressure buildup. With nonideal seals, brine may also leak through the seals into overlying/underlying formations. The quick-assessment method calculates these brine displacement contributions in response to an estimated average pressure buildup in the storage reservoir. The CO{sub …

Weak scale supersymmetry is often said to be fine-tuned, especially if the matter content is minimal. This is not true if there is a large A term for the top squarks. We present a systematic study on fine-tuning in minimal supersymmetric theories and identify low energy spectra that do not lead to severe fine-tuning. Characteristic features of these spectra are: a large A term for the top squarks, small top squark masses, moderately large tan {beta}, and a small {mu} parameter. There are classes of theories leading to these features, which are discussed. In one class, which allows a complete elimination of fine-tuning, the Higgsinos are the lightest among all the superpartners of the standard model particles, leading to three nearly degenerate neutralino/chargino states. This gives interesting signals at the LHC--the dilepton invariant mass distribution has a very small endpoint and shows a particular shape determined by the Higgsino nature of the two lightest neutralinos. We demonstrate that these signals are indeed useful in realistic analyses by performing Monte Carlo simulations, including detector simulations and background estimations. We also present a method that allows the determination of all the relevant superparticle masses without using input from particular models, despite the …

Forensics investigations of bio-crime or bio-terrorism incidents require careful analysis of collected evidentiary material. Although the biological markers in the evidentiary material are important (e.g. genomic signatures, protein markers), the elemental make-up of the organisms themselves and the surrounding non-biological material is extremely useful for attributing a specific process and, perhaps, specific persons to the production of the biological agent. This talk will describe the coordinated use of microanalytical techniques such as SEM-EDX, STEM-EDX, and NanoSIMS for generating compositional signatures for bio-forensics investigations. These analytical techniques span length scales from the 50 {micro}m range to the 5nm range. The range of analytical sensitivities spans from {approx}.5wt% for EDX down to parts per billion for SIMS techniques. In addition, we will discuss the use of spectrum imaging techniques for rapidly extracting the key elemental signatures from large scale data sets. Spectrum imaging techniques combined with multivariate statistical analysis allow for the collection and interrogation or enormous quantities of data without pre-biasing the answer.[1] Spectrum imaging has been used successfully in EDX microanalysis[1] (both in the SEM and TEM) and TOF-SIMS[2]. In this study, a set of test biological agents, ?-irradiated Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), were examined using the aforementioned microanalytical techniques. The …

Worldwide data on terrorist incidents between 1968 and 2004 gathered by the RAND corporation and the Oklahoma City National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) were assessed for patterns and trends in morbidity/mortality. Adjusted data analyzed involve a total of 19,828 events, 7,401 ''adverse'' events (each causing {ge}1 victim), and 86,568 ''casualties'' (injuries) of which 25,408 were fatal. Most terror-related adverse events, casualties and deaths involved bombs and guns. Weapon-specific patterns and terror-related risk levels in Israel (IS) have differed markedly from those of all other regions combined (OR). IS had a fatal fraction of casualties about half that of OR, but has experienced relatively constant lifetime terror-related casualty risks on the order of 0.5%--a level 2 to 3 orders of magnitude more than those experienced in OR that increased {approx}100-fold over the same period. Individual event fatality has increased steadily, the median increasing from 14 to 50%. Lorenz curves obtained indicate substantial dispersion among victim/event rates: about half of all victims were caused by the top 2.5% (or 10%) of harm-ranked events in OR (or IS). Extreme values of victim/event rates were approximated fairly well by generalized Pareto models (typically used to fit to data on forest …

The objective of this paper is to set down the rationale for a separate Science & Technology (S&T) Program within every national deep-geological-isolation program. The fundamental rationale for such a Program is to provide a dedicated focus for longer-term science and technology activities that ultimately will benefit the whole repository mission. Such a Program, separately funded and with a dedicated staff (separate from the ''mainline'' activities to develop the repository, the surface facilities, and the transportation system), can devote itself exclusively to the development and management of a long-term science and technology program. Broad experience in governments worldwide has demonstrated that line offices are unlikely to be able to develop and sustain both the appropriate longer-term philosophy and the specialized skills associated with managing longer-term science and technology projects. Accomplishing both of these requires a separate dedicated program office with its own staff.

One of the most glowing representatives of the Kolyma flora [1], ''Pinus pumila'' (Pall.) Regel (Japanese stone pine), is a typical shrub in larch forests of the northern Okhotsk region, basins of the Kolyma and Indigirka rivers, and high-shrub tundra of the Chukchi Peninsula. It also forms a pine belt in mountains above the forest boundary, which gives way to the grass-underbrush mountain tundra and bald mountains. In the southern Chukchi Peninsula, ''Pinus pumila'' along with ''Duschekia fruticosa'' (Rupr.) Pouzar and ''Betula middendorffii'' Trautv. et C. A. Mey form trailing forests transitional between tundra and taiga [2]. Pinus pumila pollen, usually predominating in subfossil spore-and-pollen spectra of northeastern Siberia, is found as single grains or a subordinate component (up 2-3%, rarely 10%) in spectra of lacustrine deposits formed during the last glacial stage (isotope stage 2) in the Preboreal and Boreal times of the Holocene. Sometimes, its content increases to 15-22% in spectra of lacustrine deposits synchronous to the last glacial stage near the northern coast of the Sea of Okhotsk [3], evidently indicating the proximity of Japanese stone pine thickets.

Quantum mechanical calculations were performed to study the differences between the important radiopharmaceutical metals yttrium (Y) and indium (In) bound by DOTA and modified DOTA molecules. Energies were calculated at the MP2/6-31+G(d)//HF/6-31G(d) levels, using effective core potentials on the Y and In ions. Although the minimum energy structures obtained are similar for both metal ion-DOTA complexes, changes in coordination and local environment significantly affect the geometries and energies of these complexes. Coordination by a single water molecule causes a change in the coordination number and a change in the position of the metal ion in In-DOTA; but, Y-DOTA is hardly affected by water coordination. When one of the DOTA carboxylates is replaced by an amide, the coordination energy for the amide arm shows a large variation between the Y and In ions. Optimizations including water and guandinium moieties to approximate the effects of antibody binding indicate a large energy cost for the DOTA-chelated In to adopt the ideal conformation for antibody binding.

Using the energetic material Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate (PETN) as a specific example of molecular crystal, we describe the development of a simple coarse-graining procedure by grouping several atoms or whole functional groups into single charge-neutral beads. As compared to fully atomistic calculations the coarse-grained model speeds up simulations by more than two orders of magnitude. Yet, by adjusting only two parameters in the coarse-grained interaction, the model accurately predicts the lattice constants, sublimation energy, pressure-volume curve up to P=10 GPa, and energetically the most stable facets. Computed surface and desorption energies, bulk modulus, and equilibrium morphology are reported as well.

The nucleation and coalescence of silver islands on coated glass was investigated by in-situ measurements of the sheet resistance. Sub-monolayer amounts of transition metals (Nb, Ti, Ni, Cr, Zr, Ta, and Mo) were deposited prior to the deposition of silver. It was found that some, but not all, of the transition metals lead to coalescence of silver at nominally thinner films with smoother topology. The smoothing effect of the transition metal at sub-monolayer thickness can be explained by a thermodynamic model of surface energies.

Pallavi Pharkya thinks a lot about the future. Pharkya, a Ph.D. candidate in materials science and engineering, works in the area of corrosion science, predicting how materials will perform over extended periods of time. Her particular focus is a nickel-chromium-molybdenum alloy called C-22, a highly corrosion-resistant metal. Pharkya's aim is to help determine whether containers made from C-22 can be used to store high-energy nuclear waste--for 10,000 years and longer. Pharkya's work is part of a plan by the U.S. Department of Energy to consolidate the country's nuclear waste in a single proposed repository. The proposed repository is in Yucca Mountain located in a remote Nevada desert. Currently about 70,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste are divided between approximately 100 sites around the country. The undertaking, Pharkya emphasizes, is massive. To study just the corrosion aspects of the packaging, Case is collaborating with eight other universities, five national labs and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. Even with so many players, the study will likely take several years to complete. Heading the entire group is Joe Payer, a professor of materials science and engineering at Case and Pharkya's mentor. ''I came here to have the opportunity …

Pharkya, a Ph.D. candidate in materials science and engineering, works in the area of corrosion science, predicting how materials will perform over extended periods of time. Her particular focus is a nickel-chromium-molybdenum alloy called C-22, a highly corrosion-resistant metal. Pharkya's aim is to help determine whether containers made from C-22 can be used to store high-energy nuclear waste--for 10,000 years and longer. Pharkya's work is part of a plan by the U.S. Department of Energy to consolidate the country's nuclear waste in a single proposed repository. The proposed repository is in Yucca Mountain located in a remote Nevada desert. Currently about 70,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste are divided between approximately 100 sites around the country. The undertaking, Pharkya emphasizes, is massive. To study just the corrosion aspects of the packaging, Case is collaborating with eight other universities, five national labs and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. Even with so many players, the study will likely take several years to complete. Heading the entire group is Joe Payer, a professor of materials science and engineering at Case and Pharkya's mentor. ''I came here to have the opportunity to work with Dr. Payer, an expert in …

Detecting unmapped abandoned wells thus remains a major carbon sequestration (CS) technology gap. Many (>10{sup 5}) abandoned wells are thought to lie in potential sequestration sites. For such wells, risk analysis to date has focused on aggregate long-term future impacts of seepage at rates < or << {approx}1 g m{sup 2} d{sup -1} on storage goals as sequestered plumes encroach upon wells with assumed distributions of seal ineffectiveness (Oldenburg and Unger, 2003; Saripali et al. 2003; Celia, 2005). However, unmapped abandoned wells include an unknown number without any effective seal at all, venting through which may dominate CO{sub 2}-loss scenarios. A model of such a well is Crystal Geyser (CG), a prospective oil well abandoned in the 1930s with no barrier installed after it encountered a natural CO{sub 2} reservoir rather than oil (Baer and Rigby, 1978; Rinehart, 1980). CG demonstrates how an unimpeded conduit to the surface now regularly vents from 10{sup 3} to >10{sup 4} kg of CO{sub 2} gas to the terrestrial surface (Figure 1). Unique field data recently gathered from Crystal Geyser (CG) in Utah (Gouveia et al. 2005) confirm that, although resulting surface CO{sub 2} concentrations resulting from CG-like eruptions would likely be safe in …