A simple analytic method is developed, based on physical approximations, for treating transient implosive longitudinal compression of bunches of heavy ions in an accelerator system for ignition of inertial-confinement fusion pellet targets. Parametric dependences of attainable compressions and of beam path lengths and times during compression are indicated for ramped pulsed-gap lines, rf systems in storage and accumulator rings, and composite systems, including sections of free drift. It appears that for high-confidence pellets in a plant producing 1000 MW of electric power the needed pulse lengths cannot be obtained with rings alone unless an unreasonably large number of them are used, independent of choice of rf harmonic number. In contrast, pulsed-gap lines alone can meet this need. The effects of an initial inward compressive drift and of longitudinal emittance are included.

BackgroundIncreasing energy costs and environmental concerns have motivated engineering microbes for the production of ?second generation? biofuels that have better properties than ethanol.Results& ConclusionsSaccharomyces cerevisiae was engineered with an n-butanol biosynthetic pathway, in which isozymes from a number of different organisms (S. cerevisiae, Escherichia coli, Clostridium beijerinckii, and Ralstonia eutropha) were substituted for the Clostridial enzymes and their effect on n-butanol production was compared. By choosing the appropriate isozymes, we were able to improve production of n-butanol ten-fold to 2.5 mg/L. The most productive strains harbored the C. beijerinckii 3-hydroxybutyryl-CoA dehydrogenase, which uses NADH as a co-factor, rather than the R. eutropha isozyme, which uses NADPH, and the acetoacetyl-CoA transferase from S. cerevisiae or E. coli rather than that from R. eutropha. Surprisingly, expression of the genes encoding the butyryl-CoA dehydrogenase from C. beijerinckii (bcd and etfAB) did not improve butanol production significantly as previously reported in E. coli. Using metabolite analysis, we were able to determine which steps in the n-butanol biosynthetic pathway were the most problematic and ripe for future improvement.

Phagocytosis is the central process by which macrophage cellsinternalize and eliminate infectious microbes as well as apoptoticcells. During maturation, phagosomes containing engulfed particlesfuse with various endosomal compartments through theaction of regulatory molecules on the phagosomal membrane. Inthis study, we performed a proteomic analysis of the membranefraction from latex bead-containing (LBC) phagosomes isolatedfrom macrophages. The profile, which comprised 546 proteins,suggests diverse functions of the phagosome and potential connectionsto secretory processes, toll-like receptor signaling, andautophagy. Many identified proteins were not previously knownto reside in the phagosome. We characterized several proteins inLBC phagosomes that change in abundance on induction of autophagy,a process that has been previously implicated in the hostdefense against microbial pathogens. These observations suggestcrosstalk between autophagy and phagocytosis that may be relevantto the innate immune response of macrophages.

Portable, single-sided NMR sensors can operate under conditions inaccessible to conventional NMR while featuring lower cost, portability, and the ability to analyze arbitrary-sized objects. Such sensors can nondestructively probe the interior of samples by collecting images and measuring relaxation and diffusion constants,and, given careful shimming schemes, even perform chemical analysis. The inherently strong magnetic-field gradients of single-sided sensors developed so far has prevented imaging of materials with high water content, such as biological tissues, over large volumes whereas designs with more homogeneous fields suffer from low field strength and typically cannot probe volumes larger than 10 cm3. We present a design with a continuously adjustable sensitive volume, enabling the effective volume to be enlarged several fold. This process allows for imaging in reasonable times of much bigger objects and opens the door to the possibility of clinical imaging with portable sensors. We demonstrate MRI in axial and saggital planes, at different depths of the sensitive volume and T1-weighted contrast in a tissue sample.

Development of advanced hydrogen separation membranes in support of hydrogen production processes such as coal gasification and as front end gas purifiers for fuel cell based system is paramount to the successful implementation of a national hydrogen economy. Current generation metallic hydrogen separation membranes are based on Pd-alloys. Although the technology has proven successful, at issue is the high cost of palladium. Evaluation of non-noble metal based dense metallic separation membranes is currently receiving national and international attention. The focus of the reported work was to develop a scaled reactor with a VNi-Ti alloy membrane to replace a production Pd-alloy tube-type purification/diffuser system.

It is recognized that hydrogen separation membranes are a key component of the emerging hydrogen economy. A potentially exciting material for membrane separations are bulk metallic glass materials due to their low cost, high elastic toughness and resistance to hydrogen 'embrittlement' as compared to crystalline Pd-based membrane systems. However, at elevated temperatures and extended operation times structural changes including partial crystallinity may appear in these amorphous metallic systems. A systematic evaluation of the impact of partial crystallinity/devitrification on the diffusion and solubility behavior in multi-component Metallic Glass materials would provide great insight into the potential of these materials for hydrogen applications. This study will report on the development of time and temperature crystallization mapping and their use for interpretation of 'in-situ' hydrogen permeation at elevated temperatures.

The K East (KE) Basin facilities are located near the north end of the Hanford Site's 100 K area. The facilities were built in 1950 as part of the KE Reactor complex and constructed within 400 meters of the Columbia River, which is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest and by volume the fourth largest river in the United States. The basin, located adjacent to the reactor, was used for the underwater storage of irradiated nuclear fuel discharged from the reactor. The basin was covered by a superstructure comprising steel columns and beams, concrete, and cement asbestos board (CAB) siding. The project's mission was to complete demolition of the structure over the K East basin within six months of tumover from facility deactivation activities. The demolition project team implemented open-air demolition techniques to demolish the facility to slab-on-grade. Several innovative techniques were used to control contamination and maintain contamination control within the confines of the demolition exclusion zone. The techniques, which focused on a defense-in-depth approach, included spraying fixatives on interior and exterior surfaces before demolition began; applying fixatives; misting using a fine spray of water during demolition; and demolishing the facility systematically. Another innovation that aided demolition was …

Fast intermittent transport has been observed in the scrape-off layer (SOL) of major tokamaks including Alcator C-Mod, DIII-D, and NSTX. This kind of transport is not diffusive but rather convective. It strongly increases plasma flux to the chamber walls and enhances the recycling of neutral particles in the main chamber. We discuss anomalous cross-field convection (ACFC) model for impurity and main plasma ions and its relation to intermittent transport events, i.e. plasma density blobs and holes in the SOL. Along with plasma diffusivity coefficients, our transport model introduces time-independent anomalous cross-field convective velocity. In the discharge modelling, diffusivity coefficients and ACFC velocity profiles are adjusted to match a set of representative experimental data. We use this model in the edge plasma physics code UEDGE to simulate the multi-fluid two-dimensional transport for these three tokamaks. We present simulation results suggesting the dominance of anomalous convection in the far SOL transport. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the chamber wall is an important source of impurities and that different impurity charge states have different directions of anomalous convective velocity.

We review models for spin-weighted parton distributions in a proton. Sum rules involving the nonsinglet components of the structure function xg{sub 1}{sup p} help narrow the range of parameters in these models. The contribution of the {gamma}{sub 5} anomaly term depends on the size of the integrated polarized gluon distribution and experimental predictions depend on its size. We have proposed three models for the polarized gluon distributions, whose range is considerable. These model distributions give an overall range is considerable. These model distributions give an overall range of parameters that can be tested with polarized beam experiments. These are discussed with regard to specific predictions for polarized beam experiments at energies typical of UNK.

A time dependent, bounce-averaged Fokker-Planck code, with quasi-linear diffusion at fundamental and second harmonic frequencies, has been used to study cold plasma trapping and heating of hot electrons in mirror geometry. Both electron-electron and electron-ion Coulomb collisions are included. The code can model either cavity heating (electric field throughout cavity as in EBT) or beam controlled heating (electric field spatially restricted as in the TMX-Upgrade tandem mirror). The heating method has implications for the equilibrium energy and anisotropy of the hot electrons. In TMX-Upgrade, off-midplane heating at the second harmonic in the thermal barrier is planned as a means to control anisotropy (T/sub parallel//T/sub perpendicular/. By spatially limiting (limit in B) the microwave beam and with strong single-pass absorption, the mean hot electron energy may also be controlled since the heating rate decreases at high energy due to the relativistic mass shift of the resonance to higher magnetic field.

We present the longitudinal coherence measurement of the transient inversion collisional x-ray laser for the first time. The Ni-like Pd x-ray laser at 14.68 nm is generated by the LLNL COMET laser facility and is operating in the gain-saturated regime. Interference fringes are produced using a Michelson interferometer setup in which a thin multilayer-coated membrane is used as a beam splitter. The longitudinal coherence length for the picosecond duration 4d{sup 1}S{sub 0} {yields} 4p{sup 1}P{sub 1} lasing transition is determined to be {approx}400 {micro}m (1/e HW) by adjusting the length of one interferometer arm and measuring the resultant variation in fringe visibility. This is four times improved coherence than previous measurements on quasi-steady state schemes largely as a result of the narrower line profile in the lower temperature plasma. The inferred gain-narrowed linewidth of {approx}0.29 pm is also substantially narrower than previous measurements on quasi-steady state x-ray laser schemes. This study shows that the coherence of the x-ray laser beam can be improved by changing the laser pumping conditions. The x-ray laser is operating at 4 - 5 times the transform-limited pulse.

The availability of the assembled mouse genome makespossible, for the first time, an alignment and comparison of two largevertebrate genomes. We have investigated different strategies ofalignment for the subsequent analysis of conservation of genomes that areeffective for different quality assemblies. These strategies were appliedto the comparison of the working draft of the human genome with the MouseGenome Sequencing Consortium assembly, as well as other intermediatemouse assemblies. Our methods are fast and the resulting alignmentsexhibit a high degree of sensitivity, covering more than 90 percent ofknown coding exons in the human genome. We have obtained such coveragewhile preserving specificity. With a view towards the end user, we havedeveloped a suite of tools and websites for automatically aligning, andsubsequently browsing and working with whole genome comparisons. Wedescribe the use of these tools to identify conserved non-coding regionsbetween the human and mouse genomes, some of which have not beenidentified by other methods.

We report a two-step growth method to obtain uniformly coalesced epitaxial lateral overgrown a-plane GaN by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). By obtaining a large wing height to width aspect ratio in the first step followed by enhanced lateral growth in the second step via controlling the growth temperature, we reduced the tilt angle between the advancing Ga-polar and N-polar wings for improved properties. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) showed that the threading dislocation density in the wing area was 1.0 x 10{sup 8}cm{sup -2}, more than two orders of magnitude lower than that in the window area (4.2 x 10{sup 10} cm{sup -2}). However, a high density of basal stacking faults, 1.2 x 10{sup 4} cm{sup -1}, was still observed in the wing area. Near field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) at room temperature revealed that the luminescence was mainly from the wing regions with very little contribution from the windows and meeting fronts. These observations suggest that due to significant reduction of threading dislocations radiative recombination is enhanced in the wings.

We utilize ultrafast terahertz pulses to monitor the carrierdynamics in the high-TC superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+delta. Thetemperature, density and timedependence distinctly exposes a bimolecularrecombination process of quasiparticles which underlies formation ofCooper pairs.

The heats of vaporization of the room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) N-butyl-N-methylpyrrolidinium bistrifluorosulfonylimide, N-butyl-N-methylpyrrolidinium dicyanamide, and 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium dicyanamide are determined using a heated effusive vapor source in conjunction with single photon ionization by a tunable vacuum ultraviolet synchrotron source. The relative gas phase ionic liquid vapor densities in the effusive beam are monitored by clearly distinguished dissociative photoionization processes via a time-of-flight mass spectrometer at a tunable vacuum ultraviolet beamline 9.0.2.3 (Chemical Dynamics Beamline) at the Advanced Light Source synchrotron facility. Resulting in relatively few assumptions, through the analysis of both parent cations and fragment cations, the heat of vaporization of N-butyl-N-methylpyrrolidinium bistrifluorosulfonylimide is determined to be Delta Hvap(298.15 K) = 195+-19 kJ mol-1. The observed heats of vaporization of 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium dicyanamide (Delta Hvap(298.15 K) = 174+-12 kJ mol-1) and N-butyl-N-methylpyrrolidinium dicyanamide (Delta Hvap(298.15 K) = 171+-12 kJ mol-1) are consistent with reported experimental values using electron impact ionization. The tunable vacuum ultraviolet source has enabled accurate measurement of photoion appearance energies. These appearance energies are in good agreement with MP2 calculations for dissociative photoionization of the ion pair. These experimental heats of vaporization, photoion appearance energies, and ab initio calculations corroborate vaporization of these RTILs as intact cation-anion ion …

The lithium iron phosphate chemistry is plagued by the poor conductivity and slow lithium diffusion in the solid phase. In order to alleviate these problems, various research groups have adopted different strategies including decreasing the particle sizes, increasing the carbon content, and adding dopants. In this study we obtained LiFePO4 electrodes from six different sources and used a combined model-experimental approach to compare the performance. Samples ranged from one with no carbon coating to one with 15 percent coating. In addition, particle sizes varied by as much as a order of magnitude between samples. The study detailed in this manuscript allows us to provide insight into the relative importance of the conductivity of the samples compared to the particle size, the impact of dopant on performance and ideas for making materials in order to maximize the power capability of this chemistry.

Lithium-ion cells, with graphite anodes and LiNi0.8Co0.15Al0.05O2 cathodes, were cycled for up to 1000 cycles over different ranges of SOC and temperatures. The decline in cell performance increases with the span of SOC and temperature during cycling. Capacity fade was caused by a combination of the loss of cycleable Li and degradation of the cathode. The room temperature anodes showed SEI compositions and degrees of graphite disorder that correlated with the extent of the Li consumption, which was linear in cell test time. TEM of the cathodes showed evidence of crystalline defects, though no major new phases were identified, consistent with XRD. No evidence of polymeric deposits on the cathode particles (FTIR) was detected although both Raman and TEM showed evidence of P-containing deposits from electrolyte salt degradation. Raman microscopy showed differences in relative carbon contents of the cycled cathodes, which is blamed for part of the cathode degradation.

A method is proposed for conditioning electron beams via Thomson scattering. The conditioning provides a quadratic correlation between the electron energy deviation and the betatron amplitude of the electrons, which results in enhanced gain in free-electron lasers. Quantum effects imply conditioning must occur at high laser fluence and moderate electron energy. Conditioning of x-ray free-electron lasers should be achievable with present laser technology, leading to significant size and cost reductions of these large-scale facilities.

Abstract: Electron microscope phase images, produced by direct reconstruction of the scattered electron wave from a focal series of high-resolution images, were used to determine the nature of defects formed in GaN:Mg crystals. We studied bulk crystals grown from dilute solutions of atomic nitrogen in liquid gallium at high pressure and thin films grown by the MOCVD method. All the crystals were grown with Ga-polarity. In both types of samples the majority of defects were three dimensional Mg-rich hexagonal pyramids with bases on the (0001) plane and six walls on {l_brace}11{und 2}3{r_brace} planes seen in cross-section as triangulars. Some other defects appear in cross-section as trapezoidal (rectangular) defects as a result of presence of truncated pyramids. Both type of defects have hollow centers. They are decorated by Mg on all six side walls and a base. The GaN which grows inside on the defect walls shows polarity inversion. It is shown that change of polarity starts from the defect tip and propagates to the base, and that the stacking sequence changes from ab in the matrix to bc inside the defect. Exchange of the Ga sublattice with the N sublattice within the defect leads to 0.6 {+-} 0.2{angstrom} displacement between …

The electrochemical properties of LiFePO4 cathodes with different carbon contents were studied to find out the role of carbon as conductive additive. LiFePO4 cathodes containing from 0 percent to 12 percent of conductive additive (carbon black or mixture of carbon black and graphite) were cycled at different C rates. The capacity of LiFePO4 cathode increased, as conductive additive content increased. Carbon increased the utilization of active material and the electrical conductivity of electrode, but decreased volumetric capacity of electrode.

The cycling performance of low-cost LiFePO4-based high-power lithium-ion cells was investigated and the components were analyzed after cycling to determine capacity fade mechanisms. Pouch type LiFePO4/natural graphite cells were assembled and evaluated by constant C/2 cycling, pulse-power and impedance measurements. From post-test electrochemical analysis after cycling, active materials, LiFePO4 and natural graphite, showed no degradation structurally or electrochemically. The main reasons for the capacity fade of cell were lithium inventory loss by side reaction and possible lithium deposition on the anode.

Marty brittle fracture evaluation procedures include plasticity corrections to elastically computed stress intensity factors. These corrections, which are based on the existence of a plastic zone in the vicinity of the crack tip, can overestimate the plasticity effect for a crack embedded in a stress concentration region in which the elastically computed stress exceeds the yield strength of the material in a localized zone. The interactions between the crack, which acts to relieve the high stresses driving the crack, plasticity effects in the stress concentration region, and the nature and source of the loading are examined by formulating explicit flaw finite element models for a crack emanating from the root of a notch located in a panel subject to an applied tensile stress. The results of these calculations provide conditions under which a crack-tip plasticity correction based on the Irwin plastic zone size overestimates the plasticity effect. A failure assessment diagram (FAD) curve is used to characterize the effect of plasticity on the crack driving force and to define a less restrictive plasticity correction for cracks at notch roots when load-controlled boundary conditions are imposed. The explicit flaw finite element results also demonstrate that stress intensity factors associated with load-controlled …

It is known that surface and subsurface damage in machined silicon nitride (Si{sub 3}N{sub 4}) ceramic components can significantly affect component strength and lifetime. Because Si{sub 3}N{sub 4} may transmit some light into its subsurface, they have developed an elastic optical scattering technique to provide two-dimensional image data for detecting surface or subsurface defects and machining damage. This technique has been used to analyze diamond-ground Si{sub 3}N{sub 4} specimens subjected to various machining conditions. The results were compared with photomicroscopy data for detect characterization and were correlated with machining conditions.

Atomic data for the electron-impact ionization of ions in the Fe isonuclear sequence is reviewed. The best available data are identified. Comments are made on current research activities leading to future data for Fe ions. 23 refs., 29 figs., 12 tabs.