We present results on rare charm and B decays using 65pb{sup -1} of data taken with the CDF detector in Run II. Three results are discussed, a measurement of the relative branching ratios {Lambda}(D{sup 0} {yields} K{sup +}K{sup -})/{Lambda}(D{sup 0} {yields} K{pi}) and {Lambda}(D{sup 0} {yields} {pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -})/{Lambda}(D{sup 0} {yields} K{pi}) and the direct CP-violating decay rate asymmetry, and a limit on the branching ratio of the FCNC decay D{sup 0} {yields} {mu}{sup +}{mu}{sup -}. We also discuss the prospects for the search for B{sub s}{sup 0} {yields} {mu}{sup +}{mu}{sup -} decays.

The boreal summer intraseasonal variability (BSISV) associated with the 30-50 day mode is represented by the co-existence of three components, poleward propagation of convection over the Indian and tropical west Pacific longitudes and eastward propagation along the equator. The hypothesis that the three components influence each other has been investigated using observed OLR, NCEP-NCAR reanalysis, and solutions from an idealized linear model. The null hypothesis is that the three components are mutually independent. Cyclostationary EOF (CsEOF) analysis is applied on filtered OLR to extract the life-cycle of the BSISV. The dominant mode of CsEOF is significantly tied to observed rainfall over the Indian subcontinent. The components of the heating patterns from CsEOF analysis serve as prescribed forcings for the linear model. This allows us to ascertain which heat sources and sinks are instrumental in driving the large-scale monsoon circulation during the BSISV life-cycle. We identify three new findings: (1) the circulation anomalies that develop as a Rossby wave response to suppressed convection over the equatorial Indian Ocean associated with the previous break phase of the BSISV precondition the ocean-atmosphere system in the western Indian Ocean and trigger the next active phase of the BSISV, (2) the development of convection over …

This report summarizes the preliminary tests that PNNL has performed to date for the Quantum Cascade (QC) Laser Alignment System that is being developed for the Using Client for a classified application. PNNL is designing, fabricating, assembling, and testing the QC Laser Alignment System and has a subcontract with Maxion Technologies, Inc. for development and production of the QC laser devices to be used in this system. The QC lasers furnished by Maxion will be incorporated into the QC Laser Alignment System by PNNL. The QC Laser Alignment System consists of five Alignment Source Assemblies (ASAs) and a computer control system with graphical user interface (GUI). Each ASA has two QC lasers along with a temperature sensor. The system design also includes an optical detector for each QC laser to measure the output power of the rear facet for additional stabilization. The system will monitor the voltage across the QC laser, the temperature, the current, and the signal from the optical detectors to ensure the system is within the tolerances specified in the System Specifications. The System Specifications require that the relative power between lasers on the same ASA be maintained at {+-}1% and among the lasers on different ASAs …

The overall purpose of this project is to evaluate the biological and economic feasibility of restoring high-quality forests on mined land, and to measure carbon sequestration and wood production benefits that would be achieved from forest restoration procedures. In this segment of work, our goal was to review methods for estimating tree survival, growth, yield and value of forests growing on surface mined land in the eastern coalfields of the USA, and to determine the extent to which carbon sequestration is influenced by these factors. Public Law 95-87, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA), mandates that mined land be reclaimed in a fashion that renders the land at least as productive after mining as it was before mining. In the central Appalachian region, where prime farmland and economic development opportunities for mined land are scarce, the most practical land use choices are hayland/pasture, wildlife habitat, or forest land. Since 1977, the majority of mined land has been reclaimed as hayland/pasture or wildlife habitat, which is less expensive to reclaim than forest land, since there are no tree planting costs. As a result, there are now hundreds of thousands of hectares of grasslands and scrublands in various …

We present a two-steps synthesis route that yields nanometer size crystalline germanium in the form of a black powder. It relies on high temperature decomposition of tetraethylgermane (TEG) in organic solvents. The presence of pure germanium with diamond structure is unambiguously attested by powder XRD measurements. Low resolution TEM indicates that the particles are between {approx}5 to 30 nm in size depending on the synthesis conditions. The as-synthesized Ge powders can be stored in air for months and no oxidation occurs. The Ge powders are sparingly soluble in conventional solvents because Ge nanocrystals are likely embedded in a matrix, composed mainly of C=C, C-C, and C-H bonds. The presence of residual organic by-products impedes probing of the optical properties of the dots. Also, we discuss drawbacks and open challenges in high temperature solution synthesis of Ge nanocrystals that could also be faced in the synthesis of Si nanocrystals. Overall, our results call for a cautious interpretation of reported optical properties of Ge and Si nanocrystals obtained by high temperature solution methods.

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The Petroleum Technology Transfer Council (PTTC) continued pursuing its mission of assisting U.S. independent oil and gas producers to make timely, informed technology decisions. Functioning as a cohesive national organization, PTTC has active grassroots programs through its 10 Regional Lead Organizations (RLOs) and 3 Satellite Offices that encompass all of the oil- and natural gas-producing regions in the U.S. Active volunteer leadership from the Board and regional Producer Advisory Groups keeps activities focused on producer's needs. Technical expertise and personal networks of national and regional staff enable PTTC to deliver focused, technology-related information in a manner that is cost and time effective for independents. The organization effectively combines federal funding through the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy with matching state and industry funding, forming a unique partnership. This final report summarizes PTTC's accomplishments. In this final fiscal year of the contract, activities exceeded prior annual activity levels by significant percentages. Strategic planning implemented during the year is focusing PTTC's attention on changes that will bear fruit in the future. Networking and connections are increasing PTTC's sphere of influence with both producers and the service sector. PTTC's reputation for unbiased bottom-line information stimulates cooperative ventures. In FY03 PTTC's …

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Authority of a home-rule city to permit a city council member to participate in the municipal group health insurance program (RQ-0071-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a juvenile court may detain a child under section 53.02 or 54.01, Family Code, before adjudicating and disposing of a charge of delinquent conduct, psych as contempt of a justice court order (RQ-0072-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether the mayor of a home-rule city is prohibited by article XVI, section 40 of the Texas Constitution or the common-law doctrine of incompatibility from serving as a county purchasing agent under section 262.0115 of the Local Government Code (RQ-0076-GA)

This report documents the accident analyses and nuclear safety control options for use in Revision 7 of HNF-SD-WM-SAR-062, ''K Basins Safety Analysis Report'' and Revision 4 of HNF-SD-SNF-TSR-001, ''Technical Safety Requirements - 100 KE and 100 KW Fuel Storage Basins''. These documents will define the authorization basis for Sludge Water System (SWS) operations. This report follows the guidance of DOE-STD-3009-94, ''Preparation Guide for US. Department of Energy Nonreactor Nuclear Facility Safety Analysis Reports'', for calculating onsite and offsite consequences. The accident analysis summary is shown in Table ES-1 below. While this document describes and discusses potential control options to either mitigate or prevent the accidents discussed herein, it should be made clear that the final control selection for any accident is determined and presented in HNF-SD-WM-SAR-062.

The U.S. is the largest producer of mining products in the world. In 1999, U.S. mining operations produced $66.7 billion worth of raw materials that contributed a total of $533 billion to the nation's wealth. Despite these contributions, the mining industry has not been well supported with research and development funds as compared to mining industries in other countries. To overcome this problem, the Center for Advanced Separation Technologies (CAST) was established to develop technologies that can be used by the U.S. mining industry to create new products, reduce production costs, and meet environmental regulations. Much of the research to be conducted with Cooperative Agreement funds will be longer-term, high-risk, basic research and will be carried out in five broad areas: (a) Solid-solid separation (b) Solid-liquid separation (c) Chemical/Biological Extraction (d) Modeling and Control, and (e) Environmental Control. Distribution of funds is being handled via competitive solicitation of research proposals through Site Coordinators at the seven member universities. The first of these solicitations, referred to as the CAST II-Round 1 RFP, was issued on October 28, 2002. Thirty-eight proposals were received by the December 10, 2002 deadline for this RFP-eleven (11) Solid-Solid Separation, seven (7) Solid-Liquid Separation, ten (10) Chemical/Biological …

The US Department of Energy (DOE), in order to increase the diversity of rock types under consideration by the geologic disposal program, initiated the Sedimary ROck Program (SERP), whose immediate objectiv eis to evaluate five types of secimdnary rock - sandstone, chalk, carbonate rocks (limestone and dolostone), anhydrock, and shale - to determine the potential for siting a geologic repository. The evaluation of these five rock types, together with the ongoing salt studies, effectively results in the consideration of all types of relatively impermeable sedimentary rock for repository purposes. The results of this evaluation are expressed in terms of a ranking of the five rock types with respect to their potential to serve as a geologic repository host rock. This comparative evaluation was conducted on a non-site-specific basis, by use of generic information together with rock evaluation criteria (RECs) derived from the DOE siting guidelines for geologic repositories (CFR 1984). An information base relevant to rock evaluation using these RECs was developed in hydrology, geochemistry, rock characteristics (rock occurrences, thermal response, rock mechanics), natural resources, and rock dissolution. Evaluation against postclosure and preclosure RECs yielded a ranking of the five subject rocks with respect to their potential as repository host …

In this paper we analyze the propagation of noise in iterative image reconstruction algorithms. We derive theoretical expressions for the general form of preconditioned gradient algorithms with line searches. The results are applicable to a wide range of iterative reconstruction problems, such as emission tomography, transmission tomography, and image restoration. A unique contribution of this paper comparing to our previous work [1] is that the line search is explicitly modeled and we do not use the approximation that the gradient of the objective function is zero. As a result, the error in the estimate of noise at early iterations is significantly reduced.

List mode image reconstruction is attracting renewed attention. It eliminates the storage of empty sinogram bins. However, a single back projection of all LORs is still necessary for the pre-calculation of a sensitivity image. Since the detection sensitivity is dependent on the object attenuation and detector efficiency, it must be computed for each study. Exact computation of the sensitivity image can be a daunting task for modern scanners with huge numbers of LORs. Thus, some fast approximate calculation may be desirable. In this paper, we theoretically analyze the error propagation from the sensitivity image into the reconstructed image. The theoretical analysis is based on the fixed point condition of the list mode reconstruction. The non-negativity constraint is modeled using the Kuhn-Tucker condition. With certain assumptions and the first order Taylor series approximation, we derive a closed form expression for the error in the reconstructed image as a function of the error in the sensitivity image. The result provides insights on what kind of error might be allowable in the sensitivity image. Computer simulations show that the theoretical results are in good agreement with the measured results.

The recent development of new prostate tracers has motivated us to build a low cost PET camera optimized to image the prostate. Coincidence imaging of positron emitters is achieved using a pair of external curved detector banks. The bottom bank is fixed below the patient bed, and the top bank moves upward for patient access and downward for maximum sensitivity. In this paper, we study the design of septa for the prostate camera using Monte Carlo simulations. The system performance is measured by the detectability of a prostate lesion. We have studied 17 septa configurations. The results show that the design of septa has a large impact on the lesion detection at a given activity concentration. Significant differences are also observed between the lesion detectability and the conventional noise equivalent count (NEC) performance, indicating that the NEC is not appropriate for the detection task.

With the advent of massively parallel computer systems, scientists are now able to simulate complex phenomena (e.g., explosions of a stars). Such scientific simulations typically generate large-scale data sets over the spatio-temporal space. Unfortunately, the sheer sizes of the generated data sets make efficient exploration of them impossible. Constructing queriable statistical models is an essential step in helping scientists glean new insight from their computer simulations. We define queriable statistical models to be descriptive statistics that (1) summarize and describe the data within a user-defined modeling error, and (2) are able to answer complex range-based queries over the spatiotemporal dimensions. In this chapter, we describe systems that build queriable statistical models for large-scale scientific simulation data sets. In particular, we present our Ad-hoc Queries for Simulation (AQSim) infrastructure, which reduces the data storage requirements and query access times by (1) creating and storing queriable statistical models of the data at multiple resolutions, and (2) evaluating queries on these models of the data instead of the entire data set. Within AQSim, we focus on three simple but effective statistical modeling techniques. AQSim's first modeling technique (called univariate mean modeler) computes the ''true'' (unbiased) mean of systematic partitions of the data. AQSim's …

Bill introduced by the Texas House of Representatives relating to the construction, acquisition, financing, maintenance, management, operation, ownership, and control of transportation facilities and the progress, improvement, policing, and safety of transportation in the state; making appropriations.

Two CMS production Cathode Strip Chambers were tested for aging effects in the high radiation environment at the Gamma Irradiation Facility at CERN. The chambers were irradiated over a large area: in total, about 2.1 m{sup 2} or 700 m of wire in each chamber. The 40% Ar+50%CO{sub 2}+10%CF{sub 4} gas mixture was provided by an open-loop gas system for one of the chambers and by closed-loop recirculating gas system for the other. After accumulating 0.3-0.4 C per centimeter of a wire, which is equivalent to operation during about 30-50 years at the peak LHC luminosity, no significant changes in gas gain, chamber efficiency, and wire signal noise were observed for either of the two chambers. The only consistent signs of aging were a small increase in dark current from {approx}2 nA to {approx}10 nA per plane of 600 wires and a decrease of strip-to-strip resistance from 1000 G{Omega} to 10-100 G{Omega}. Disassembly of the chambers revealed deposits on the cathode planes, while the anode wires remained fairly clean.

Various issues important to animal agriculture have generated interest among lawmakers in the first session of the 108th Congress. For example, under the 2002 farm bill (P.L. 107-171) many food stores in 2004 must provide country-of-origin labeling (COOL) on ground and fresh cuts of beef, beef, pork, and lamb. The House-passed USDA appropriation for FY2004 (H.R. 2673) would block funding to implemented COOL for meats. The Senate Committee version (S. 1427) lacks the ban.

Projected impacts on disposal limits of various studies have been estimated. Interim measures to compensate for the impacts are needed for the Engineered Trench and the Intermediate Level Vault. Interim measures are due to projected decreases in the radionuclide disposal limits derived from the groundwater pathway as a result of the Aquifer Source Node study and consideration of potential artificial dilution caused by the large size of the grid elements in the Intermediate Level Vault groundwater model. Recently, it became evident that, in the development of the groundwater model for the Slit Trenches, the selection of aquifer source nodes (i.e., the spatial elements of the saturated zone model into which the flux of radionuclides from the unsaturated zone model is introduced) was not optimum6. Optimizing the source nodes would likely result in increases in the resulting groundwater concentrations, which would suggest that the radionuclide disposal limits should be reduced. However, other studies may result in increases in disposal limits 7. Therefore, a decision was made to develop and implement an annual summary of the potential impact of technical studies and other information on radionuclide disposal limits and whether mitigating measures should be imposed pending completion and implementation of the studies. …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In the fall of 2001, letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to news media personnel and congressional officials, leading to the first cases of anthrax infection related to an intentional release of anthrax in the United States. Outbreaks of anthrax infection were concentrated in six locations, or epicenters, in the country. An examination of the public health response to the anthrax incidents provides an important opportunity to apply lessons learned from that experience to enhance the nation's preparedness for bioterrorism. Because of its interest in bioterrorism preparedness, Congress asked GAO to review the public health response to the anthrax incidents. Specifically, GAO determined (1) what was learned from the experience that could help improve public health preparedness at the local and state levels and (2) what was learned that could help improve public health preparedness at the federal level and what steps have been taken to make those improvements."

Synchrotron-radiation-based photoelectron spectroscopy has been used to probe the electronic structure of Ni{sub 2}MnGa. In particular, the variation of the valence band at temperatures near the transformation temperature for the martensite has been followed. Two salient results have been obtained. (1) The valence electronic structure does not seem to vary in the temperature region associated with phonon softening (near room temperature). (2) Changes in the electronic structure at the lower (martensitic) transformation temperature (T{sub M}=220K) have been observed, which agree with theoretical density of states calculation. These changes are indicative of Fermi Surface Nesting.

This report provides information about the Constitutional Principles and Federal Statutes on Child Pornography. Child pornography is material that visually depicts sexual conduct by children.