This month's issue has the following 3 articles: (1) Kathy Yelick is the new director for the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC); (2) Head of the Class--A cray XT4 named Franklin passes a rigorous test and becomes an official member of the NERSC supercomputing family; and (3) Model Comparisons--Fusion research group published several recent papers examining the results of two types of turbulence simulations and their impact on tokamak designs.

We construct extremal, spherically symmetric black hole solutions to 4D supergravity with charge assignments that preclude BPS-saturation. In particular, we determine the ground state energy as a function of charges and moduli. We find that the mass of the non-BPS black hole remains that of a marginal bound state of four basic constituents throughout the entire moduli space and that there is always a non-zero gap above the BPS bound.

BMS 8-212 lamina properties for use in the computational modeling of aircraft shielding systems were determined in this study. The carbon-reinforced BMS 8-212 composite layups that were tested were unidirectional 0.351-inch thick (45 ply) flat panels. The mechanical responses of the flat panel unidirectional specimens were assumed to be representative of the behavior of the matrix dominated compressive BMS 8-212 lamina responses in the transverse and normal directions. The rate sensitivity of the flat panel specimens was determined for loading rates between 0.001 s{sup -1} and 1000 s{sup -1}. In that regime, the transverse and normal failure stresses were found to increase by approximately 1.5.

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Certain shaped-charge cutting operations require a precision aiming system that is operationally convenient, robust, and constructed to allow the aiming system to be left in place for last-minute alignment verification until it is expended when the charge is fired. This report describes an aiming system made from low cost doubled-Nd:YAG 532 nm laser modules of the type used in green laser pointers. Drawings and detailed procedures for constructing the aiming system are provided, as are the results of some minimal tests performed on a prototype device.

Interactions of cosmic rays with interstellar nucleons and photons make the Milky Way a bright, diffuse source of high-energy {gamma}-rays. Observationally, the results from EGRET, COMPTEL, and OSSE have now been extended to higher energies by ground-based experiments, with detections of diffuse emission in the Galactic center reported by H.E.S.S. in the range above 100 GeV and of diffuse emission in Cygnus by MILAGRO in the TeV range. In the range above 100 keV, INTEGRAL SPI has found that diffuse emission remains after point sources are accounted for. I will summarize current knowledge of diffuse {gamma}-ray emission from the Milky Way and review some open issues related to the diffuse emission -- some old, like the distribution of cosmic-ray sources and the origin of the 'excess' of GeV emission observed by EGRET, and some recently recognized, like the amount and distribution of molecular hydrogen not traced by CO emission -- and anticipate some of the advances that will be possible with the Large Area Telescope on GLAST. We plan to develop an accurate physical model for the diffuse emission, which will be useful for detecting and accurately characterizing emission from Galactic point sources as well as any Galactic diffuse emission …

Used a team of experts to analyze and model major systems at a large industrial appliance manufacturer. During the data gathering stage, the team specifically looked for baselining the efficiency of the systems as well as developing short term and longer term efficiency projects. Electrical distribution, Compressed air generation and thermal heat recovery for the production facility and front office heating and cooling optimization were all baselined during the study.

Precision measurements of the exclusive branching fraction {tau}{sup -} {yields} K{sup -}{pi}{sup 0}{nu}{sub {tau}} and {tau}{sup -} {yields} h{sup -}h{sup -}h{sup +}{nu}{sub {tau}}, where the h represent either a pion or a kaon, from the BABAR Experiment are presented. The branching fraction for {tau}{sup -} {yields} K{sup -}K{sup -}K{sup +}{nu}{sub {tau}} is the first resonant plus non-resonant measurement of this mode and the branching fraction {tau}{sup -} {yields} {phi}{pi}{sup -}{nu}{sub {tau}} is also a first measurement. In addition we present the new measurement of the branching fraction of {tau}{sup -} {yields} {phi}K{sup -}{nu}{sub {tau}}.

One of the fundamental problems in remote visualization --where I/O and data intensive visualization activities take place at acentrally located supercomputer center and resulting imagery is deliveredto a remotely located user -- is reduced interactivity resulting from thecombination of high network latency and relatively low network bandwidth.This research project has produced a novel approach for latency-tolerantdelivery of visualization and rendering results where client-side framerate display performance is independent of source dataset size, imagesize, visualization technique or rendering complexity. As such, it is asuitable solution for remote visualization image delivery for anyvisualization or rendering application that can generate image frames inan ordered fashion. This new capability is suitable for use in addressingmany of ASCR s remote visualization needs, particularly deployment atopen computing facilities to provide remote visualization capabilities toteams of scientific researchers.

One of the main contributors to the aerodynamic drag of a heavy vehicle is tractor-trailer gap drag, which arises when the vehicle operates within a crosswind. Under this operating condition, freestream flow is entrained into the tractor-trailer gap, imparting a momentum exchange to the vehicle and subsequently increasing the aerodynamic drag. While a number of add-on devices, including side extenders, splitter plates, vortex stabilizers, and gap sealers, have been previously tested to alleviate this source of drag, side extenders remain the primary add-on device of choice for reducing tractor-trailer gap drag. However, side extenders are not without maintenance and operational issues. When a heavy vehicle pivots sharply with respect to the trailer, as can occur during loading or unloading operations, the side extenders can become crushed against the trailer. Consequently, fleet operators are forced to incur additional costs to cover the repair or replacement of the damaged side extenders. This issue can be overcome by either shortening the side extenders or by devising an alternative drag reduction concept that can perform just as effectively as side extenders. To explore such a concept, we investigate tractor base bleeding as a means of reducing gap drag. Wind tunnel measurements are made on …

Several experiments have been conducted by LLNL researchers using isentropic compression experiments (ICE) on energetic materials as samples from Fiscal Year 2001 (FY01) to Fiscal Year 2005 (FY05). Over this span of time, advancements of the experimental techniques and modeling of the results have evolved to produce improved results. This report documents the experiments that have been performed, provides details of the results generated, and modeling and analysis advances to fully understand the results. Publications on the topics by the various principal investigators (PI's) are detailed in the Appendices for quick reference for the work as it progressed.

During this quarter, the detector manufacturer (Saint-Gobain) delivered one side of the prototype two-channel phoswich detector (XEPHWICH). Once received, our Digital Pulse Processor (DPP1, 12-bit/100 MHz) was employed to capture and digitally process phoswich pulses from laboratory radioactive sources. Our previous pulse shape discrimination algorithm was modified by utilizing three trapezoidal digital filters. This algorithm provides a two-dimensional plot in which the pulse shapes of interest are classified and then can be well identified. The preliminary experimental results will be presented at the 2007 Informal Xenon Monitoring Workshop. The DPP2 (two-channel, 12-bit/ 250 MHz Digital Pulse Processor) is at the prototyping stage. The analog sections have been designed, prototyped and tested. A 6-layer Printed Circuit Board (PCB) was designed, ordered and delivered. The board components were ordered and are now being assembled and examined for proper functionality. In addition, the related FPGA hardware description code (using VHDL) is under development and simulation. Additionally, our researchers have been studying materials regarding wavelet transforms for incorporation into the project. Wavelet transform is an interesting tool for signal processing; one use for our purpose would be to de-noise the detector signal and to express the signal in a few coefficients for signal compression …

Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) is a highly effectivesimulation method for spanning a large range of spatiotemporal scales,such as astrophysical simulations that must accommodate ranges frominterstellar to sub-planetary. Most mainstream visualization tools stilllack support for AMR as a first class data type and AMR code teams usecustom built applications for AMR visualization. The Department ofEnergy's (DOE's) Science Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC)Visualization and Analytics Center for Enabling Technologies (VACET) isextending and deploying VisIt, an open source visualization tool thataccommodates AMR as a first-class data type, for use asproduction-quality, parallel-capable AMR visual data analysisinfrastructure. This effort will help science teams that use AMR-basedsimulations and who develop their own AMR visual data analysis softwareto realize cost and labor savings.

The Nuclear Smuggling International Technical Working Group (ITWG) is an informal association of nuclear forensic practitioners working in partnership with law enforcement, first responder, and nuclear regulatory professionals that cooperate to deter the illicit trafficking of nuclear materials. The objective of the ITWG is to advance the science of nuclear forensics and to provide a common approach and effective technical solutions to governments who request assistance. the ITWG was chartered in 1996 and since that time 30 nations and organizations have participated in 12 annual meetings and two analytical round-robin trials involving plutonium and highly enriched uranium. A third analytical round-robin as well as several table-top exercises are planned for later in 2007-2008. International interest in the ITWG has grown in over the past five years measured by the number of participants at its annual meetings. This growth has spawned the ITWG Nuclear Forensics Laboratories as a companion technical affiliate focusing exclusively on the scientific aspects of nuclear forensics and nuclear smuggling incident response.

Simulations of mode I interlaminar fracture toughness tests of a carbon-reinforced composite material (BMS 8-212) were conducted with LSDYNA. The fracture toughness tests were performed by U.C. Berkeley. The simulations were performed to investigate the validity and practicality of employing decohesive elements to represent interlaminar bond failures that are prevalent in carbon-fiber composite structure penetration events. The simulations employed a decohesive element formulation that was verified on a simple two element model before being employed to perform the full model simulations. Care was required during the simulations to ensure that the explicit time integration of LSDYNA duplicate the near steady-state testing conditions. In general, this study validated the use of employing decohesive elements to represent the interlaminar bond failures seen in carbon-fiber composite structures, but the practicality of employing the elements to represent the bond failures seen in carbon-fiber composite structures during penetration events was not established.

Photosynthetic water oxidation, where water is oxidized to dioxygen, is a fundamental chemical reaction that sustains the biosphere. This reaction is catalyzed by a Mn4Ca complex in the photosystem II (PS II) oxygen-evolving complex (OEC): a multiproteinassembly embedded in the thylakoid membranes of green plants, cyanobacteria, and algae. The mechanism of photosynthetic water oxidation by the Mn4Ca cluster in photosystem II is the subject of much debate, although lacking structural characterization of the catalytic intermediates. Biosynthetically exchanged Ca/Sr-PS II preparations and x-ray spectroscopy, including extended x-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS), allowed us to monitor Mn-Mn and Ca(Sr)-Mn distances in the four intermediate S states, S0 through S3, of the catalytic cycle that couples the one-electron photochemistry occurring at the PS II reaction center with the four-electron water-oxidation chemistry taking place at the Mn4Ca(Sr) cluster. We have detected significant changes in the structure of the complex, especially in the Mn-Mn and Ca(Sr)-Mn distances, on the S2-to-S3 and S3-to-S0 transitions. These results implicate the involvement of at least one common bridging oxygen atom between the Mn-Mn and Mn-Ca(Sr) atoms in the O-O bond formation. Because PS II cannot advance beyond the S2 state in preparations that lack Ca(Sr), these results show that …

One fundamental element of scientific inquiry is discoveringrelationships, particularly the interactions between different variablesin observed or simulated phenomena. Building upon our prior work in thefield of Query-Driven Visualization, where visual data analysisprocessing is focused on subsets of large data deemed to be"scientifically interesting," this new work focuses on a novel knowledgediscovery capability suitable for use with petascale class datasets. Itenables visual presentation of the presence or absence of relationships(correlations) between variables in data subsets produced by Query-Drivenmethodologies. This technique holds great potential for enablingknowledge discovery from large and complex datasets currently emergingfrom SciDAC and INCITE projects. It is sufficiently generally to beapplicable to any time of complex, time-varying, multivariate data fromstructured, unstructured or adaptive grids.

Recent methods for extracting precise measurements ofspatial gene expression patterns from three-dimensional (3D) image dataopens the way for new analysis of the complex gene regulatory networkscontrolling animal development. To support analysis of this novel andhighly complex data we developed PointCloudXplore (PCX), an integratedvisualization framework that supports dedicated multi-modal, physical andinformation visualization views along with algorithms to aid in analyzingthe relationships between gene expression levels. Using PCX, we helpedour science stakeholders to address many questions in 3D gene expressionresearch, e.g., to objectively define spatial pattern boundaries andtemporal profiles of genes and to analyze how mRNA patterns arecontrolled by their regulatory transcription factors.

The BaBar detector, operating at the PEPII B factory of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), installed over 200 2nd generation Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) in 2002. The streamer rates produced by backgrounds and signals from normal BaBar running vary considerably (0.1- >20 Hz/cm2) depending on the layer and position of the chambers, thus providing a broad spectrum test of RPC performance and aging. The lowest rate chambers have performed very well with stable efficiencies averaging 95%. Other chambers had rate-dependant inefficiencies due to Bakelite drying which were reversed by the introduction of humidified gases. RPC inefficiencies in the highest rate regions of the higher rate chambers have been observed and also found to be rate dependant. The inefficient regions grow with time and have not yet been reduced by operation with humidified input gas. Three of these chambers were converted to avalanche mode operation and display significantly improved efficiencies. The rate of production of HF in the RPC exhaust gases was measured in avalanche and streamer mode RPCs and found to be comparable despite the lower current of the avalanche mode RPCs.

We present a method for computing incompressible viscousflows in three dimensions using block-structured local refinement in bothspace and time. This method uses a projection formulation based on acell-centered approximate projection, combined with the systematic use ofmultilevel elliptic solvers to compute increments in the solutiongenerated at boundaries between refinement levels due to refinement intime. We use an L_0-stable second-order semi-implicit scheme to evaluatethe viscous terms. Results are presentedto demonstrate the accuracy andeffectiveness of this approach.

Detailed chemical kinetic reaction mechanisms have been developed to describe the pyrolysis and oxidation of the n-alkanes, including n-octane (n-C{sub 8}H{sub 18}), n-nonane (n-C{sub 9}H{sub 20}), n-decane (n-C{sub 10}H{sub 22}), n-undecane (n-C{sub 11}H{sub 24}), n-dodecane (n-C{sub 12}H{sub 26}), n-tridecane (n-C{sub 13}H{sub 28}), n-tetradecane (n-C{sub 14}H{sub 30}), n-pentadecane (n-C{sub 15}H{sub 32}), and n-hexadecane (n-C{sub 16}H{sub 34}). These mechanisms include both high temperature and low temperature reaction pathways. The mechanisms are based on previous mechanisms for n-heptane, using the same reaction class mechanism construction developed initially for n-heptane. Individual reaction class rules are as simple as possible in order to focus on the parallelism between all of the n-alkane fuels included in the mechanisms, and there is an intent to develop these mechanisms further in the future to incorporate greater levels of accuracy and predictive capability. Several of these areas for improvement are identified and explained in detail. These mechanisms are validated through comparisons between computed and experimental data from as many different sources as possible. In addition, numerical experiments are carried out to examine features of n-alkane combustion in which the detailed mechanisms can be used to compare processes in all of the n-alkane fuels. The mechanisms for all of these …

The bulk damage performance of potassium dihydrogen phosphate crystals under simultaneous exposure to 1064-, 532-, and 355-nm nanosecond-laser pulses is investigated in order to probe the laser-induced defect reactions leading to damage initiation during frequency conversion. The results provide insight into the mechanisms governing the behavior of the damage initiating defects under exposure to high power laser light. In addition, it is suggested that the damage performance can be directly related to and predicted from the damage behavior of the crystal at each wavelength separately.

According to leptonic models for the high-energy emission from blazars, relativistic electrons in the inner jets inverse-Compton scatter photons from a variety of sources. Seed photons are certainly introduced via the synchrotron process from the electrons themselves, but external sources of seed photons may also be present. In this paper, we present detailed derivations of the equations describing external inverse-Compton scattering from two sources of seed photons: direct emission from the accretion disk, and accretion disk photons that have scattered off the broad line region. For each source, we derive the seed photon spectrum incident on the jet, the single electron energy loss rate, and the emitted photon spectrum.

We present the first astronomical results from a 4K2 Hybrid Visible Silicon PIN array detector (HyViSI) read out with the Teledyne Scientific and Imaging SIDECAR ASIC. These results include observations of astronomical standards and photometric measurements using the 2.1m KPNO telescope. We also report results from a test program in the Rochester Imaging Detector Laboratory (RIDL), including: read noise, dark current, linearity, gain, well depth, quantum efficiency, and substrate voltage effects. Lastly, we highlight results from operation of the detector in window read out mode and discuss its potential role for focusing, image correction, and use as a telescope guide camera.