A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) most visible layer of commercial aviation security is the screening of airline passengers at airport checkpoints, where travelers and their carry-on items are screened for explosives and other dangerous items by transportation security officers (TSO). Several revisions made to checkpoint screening procedures have been scrutinized and questioned by the traveling public and Congress in recent years. For this review, GAO evaluated (1) TSA's decisions to modify passenger screening procedures between April 2005 and December 2005 and in response to the alleged August 2006 liquid explosives terrorist plot, and (2) how TSA monitored TSO compliance with passenger screening procedures. To conduct this work, GAO reviewed TSA documents, interviewed TSA officials and aviation security experts, and visited 25 airports of varying sizes and locations."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "A key challenge in securing our homeland is ensuring that critical information collected by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) is shared in a timely manner with federal, state, and local governments and the private sector. It is important that federal networks and associated systems, applications, and data facilitate this vital information sharing. GAO was asked to (1) identify DHS and DOJ networks and Internet-based system applications that support homeland security and (2) determine whether DHS efforts associated with its Homeland Security Information Network are being coordinated with key state and local information-sharing initiatives. GAO assessed the coordination between DHS and two key state and local initiatives of the Regional Information Sharing System program."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 1995, we first designated the Department of Defense's (DOD) business systems modernization program as "high risk," and we continue to designate it as such today. To assist in addressing this high-risk area, Congress passed legislation consistent with prior GAO recommendations for Defense to develop a business enterprise architecture (BEA). In September 2006, DOD released version 4.0 of its BEA, which despite improvements over prior versions, was not aligned with component architectures. Subsequently, Defense issued a strategy for extending its BEA to the component military services and defense agencies. To support GAO's legislative mandate to review DOD's BEA, GAO assessed DOD's progress in defining this strategy by comparing it with prior findings and recommendations relevant to the strategy's content."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "On June 25, 2006, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) headquarters building suffered flooding during a period of record rainfall and sustained extensive damage to its infrastructure. IRS officials ordered the closure of the building until December 2006 to allow for repairs to be completed. IRS headquarters officials reported activating several of the agency's emergency operations plans. Within 1 month of the flood, over 2,000 employees normally assigned to the headquarters building were relocated to other facilities throughout the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. GAO was asked to report on (1) how IRS emergency operations plans address federal guidance related to continuity planning and (2) the extent to which IRS emergency operations plans contributed to the actions taken by IRS officials in response to the flood. To address these objectives, GAO analyzed federal continuity guidance, reviewed IRS emergency plans, and interviewed IRS officials."

Abstract. Noncritical M-theory in 2+1 dimensions has been defined as a double-scaling limit of a nonrelativistic Fermi liquid on a flat two-dimensional plane. Here we study this noncritical M-theory in the limit of high energies, analogous to the alpha' --> infinity limit of string theory. In the related case of two-dimensional Type 0A strings, it has been argued that the conformal alpha' --> infinity limit leads to AdS_2 with a propagating fermion whose mass is set by the value of the RR flux. Here we provide evidence that in the high-energy limit, the natural ground state of noncritical M-theory similarly describes the AdS_2 x S1 spacetime, with a massless propagating fermion. We argue that the spacetime effective theory in this background is captured by a topological higher-spin extension of conformal Chern-Simons gravity in 2+1 dimensions, consistently coupled to a massless Dirac field. Intriguingly, the two-dimensional plane populated by the original nonrelativistic fermions is essentially the twistor space associated with the symmetry group of the AdS_2 x S1 spacetime; thus, at least in the high-energy limit, noncritical M-theory can be nonperturbatively described as a"Fermi liquid on twistor space.''

Over the past decade there has been a natural drive to extend the investigation of dynamic surfaces in fluid environments to higher resolution characterization tools. Various aspects of solution crystal growth have been directly visualized for the first time. These include island nucleation and growth using transmission electron microscopy and scanning tunneling microscopy; elemental step motion using scanning probe microscopy; and the time evolution of interfacial atomic structure using various diffraction techniques. In this lecture we will discuss the use of one such in situ method, scanning probe microscopy, as a means of measuring surface dynamics during crystal growth and dissolution. We will cover both practical aspects of imaging such as environmental control, fluid flow, and electrochemical manipulation, as well as the types of physical measurements that can be made. Measurements such as step motion, critical lengths, nucleation density, and step fluctuations, will be put in context of the information they provide about mechanistic processes at surfaces using examples from metal and mineral crystal growth.

A highly-charged, cavity-containing supramolecular assembly formed by metal-ligand interactions acts as a host to dramatically shift the effective basicity of encapsulated protonated amine guests. The scope of encapsulated protonated amine and phosphine guests shows size selectivity consistent with a constrained binding environment. Protonation of the encapsulated guests is confirmed by {sup 31}P NMR studies, mass spectrometry studies, and the pH dependence of guest encapsulation. Rates of guest self-exchange were measured using the Selective Inversion Recovery method and were found to correlate with the size rather than the basicity of the guests. The activation parameters for guest self-exchange are consistent with the established mechanism for guest exchange. The binding constants of the protonated amines are then used to calculate the effective basicity of the encapsulated amines. Depending on the nature of the guest, shifts in the effective basicities of the encapsulated amines of up to 4.5 pK{sub a} units are observed, signifying a substantial stabilization of the protonated form of the guest molecule and effectively making phosphines and amines strong bases.

We are witnessing a dramatic change in computer architecture due to the multicore paradigm shift, as every electronic device from cell phones to supercomputers confronts parallelism of unprecedented scale. To fully unleash the potential of these systems, the HPC community must develop multicore specific optimization methodologies for important scientific computations. In this work, we examine sparse matrix-vector multiply (SpMV)--one of the most heavily used kernels in scientific computing--across a broad spectrum of multicore designs. Our experimental platform includes the homogeneous AMD dual-core and Intel quad-core designs, as well as the highly multithreaded Sun Niagara and heterogeneous STI Cell. We present several optimization strategies especially effective for the multicore environment, and demonstrate significant performance improvements compared to existing state-of-the-art serial and parallel SpMV implementations. Additionally, we present key insights into the architectural tradeoffs of leading multicore design strategies, in the context of demanding memory-bound numerical algorithms.

The asymmetric intramolecular alkylation of chiral aromatic aldimines, in which differentially substituted alkenes are tethered meta to the imine, was investigated. High enantioselectivities were obtained for imines prepared from aminoindane derivatives, which function as directing groups for the rhodium-catalyzed C-H bond activation. Initial demonstration of catalytic asymmetric intramolecular alkylation also was achieved by employing a sterically hindered achiral imine substrate and catalytic amounts of a chiral amine.

None

Measurements of x{sub F}-dependent single spin asymmetries of identified charged hadrons, {pi}{sup {+-}}, K{sup {+-}}, p, and {bar p}, from transversely polarized proton collisions at {radical}s = 200 and 62.4 GeV at RHIC are presented. The energy and flavor dependent asymmetry measurements bring new insight into the fundamental mechanisms of transverse spin asymmetries and Quantum Chromodynamical description of hadronic structure.

Sediment bacteria samples were collected from three streams in South Carolina, two contaminated with multiple metals (Four Mile Creek and Castor Creek), one uncontaminated (Meyers Branch), and another metal contaminated stream (Lampert Creek) in northern Washington State. Growth plates inoculated with Four Mile Creek sample extracts show bacteria colony growth after incubation on plates containing either one of two aminoglycosides (kanamycin or streptomycin), tetracycline or chloramphenocol. This study analyzes the spatial pattern of antibiotic resistance in culturable sediment bacteria in all four streams that may be due to metal contamination. We summarize the two aminoglycoside resistance measures and the 10 metals concentrations by Principal Components Analysis. Respectively, 63% and 58% of the variability was explained in the 1st principal component of each variable set. We used the respective multivariate summary metrics (i.e. 1st principal component scores) as input measures for exploring the spatial correlation between antibiotic resistance and metal concentration for each stream reach sampled. Results show a significant and negative correlation between metals scores versus aminoglycoside resistance scores and suggest that selection for metal tolerance among sediment bacteria may influence selection for antibiotic resistance differently than previously supposed.. In addition, we borrow a method from geostatistics (variography) wherein a …

Self-amplifying spontaneous radiation free-electron lasers, such as the LCLS or the European X-FEL, rely on the incoherent, spontaneous radiation as the seed for the amplifying process. Though this method overcomes the need for an external seed source one drawback is the incoherence of the effective seed signal. The FEL process allows for a natural growth of the coherence because the radiation phase information is spread out within the bunch due to slippage and diffraction of the radiation field. However, at short wavelengths this spreading is not sufficient to achieve complete coherence. In this presentation we report on the results of numerical simulations of the LCLS X-ray FEL. From the obtained radiation field distribution the coherence properties are extracted to help to characterize the FEL as a light source.

We present a general procedure for obtaining the coefficients of the scalar bubble and triangle integral functions of one-loop amplitudes. Coefficients are extracted by considering two-particle and triple unitarity cuts of the corresponding bubble and triangle integral functions. After choosing a specific parameterization of the cut loop momentum we can uniquely identify the coefficients of the desired integral functions simply by examining the behavior of the cut integrand as the unconstrained parameters of the cut loop momentum approach infinity. In this way we can produce compact forms for scalar integral coefficients. Applications of this method are presented for both QCD and electroweak processes, including an alternative form for the recently computed three-mass triangle coefficient in the six-photon amplitude A{sub 6}(1{sup -}, 2{sup +}, 3{sup -}, 4{sup +}, 5{sup -}, 6{sup +}). The direct nature of this extraction procedure allows for a very straightforward automation of the procedure.

We report results of beam tests of the FONT3 intra-train position feedback system prototype at the Accelerator Test Facility (ATF) at KEK. The feedback system incorporates a novel beam position monitor (BPM) processor with latency below 5 nanoseconds, and a kicker driver amplifier with similar low latency. The 56 nanosecond-long bunchtrain in the ATF extraction line was used to test the prototype feedback system. The achieved latency of 23ns provides a demonstration of intra-train feedback on very short timescales relevant even for the CLIC Linear Collider design.

We present results from BABAR on events containing a hard radiated photon from the e{sup +}e{sup -} initial state and several exclusive final states. For the {pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -} final state the cross section is measured for center-of-mass energies from 0.6 to 4.5 GeV. Resonant structures are studied and confirmed to be dominated by the a{sub 1}(1260){pi}, with a contribution from f{sub 2}(1270){rho}(770). Similar studies are shown for {pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}K{sup +}K{sup -} and K{sup +}K{sup -}K{sup +}K{sup -} from their respective thresholds up to 4.5 GeV. From the {pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup 0} final state the products of the branching fractions of the {omega} and {phi} mesons have been obtained and the cross section is measured from 1.05 to 3.00 GeV. In addition the J/{psi} branching fractions to all four final states have been measured.

The measurement of the International Linear Collider (ILC) emittance in the ILC beam delivery system (BDS) is simulated. Estimates of statistical and machine-related errors are discussed and the implications for related diagnostics R&D are inferred. A simulation of the extraction of the laser-wire Compton signal is also presented.

If the supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the center of our Galaxy grew adiabatically, then a dense ''spike'' of dark matter is expected to have formed around it. Assuming that dark matter is composed primarily of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), a star orbiting close enough to the SMBH can capture WIMPs at an extremely high rate. The stellar luminosity due to annihilation of captured WIMPs in the stellar core may be comparable to or even exceed the luminosity of the star due to thermonuclear burning. The model thus predicts the existence of unusual stars, i.e. ''WIMP burners'', in the vicinity of an adiabatically grown SMBH. We find that the most efficient WIMP burners are stars with degenerate electron cores, e.g. white dwarfs (WD) or degenerate cores with envelopes. If found, such stars would provide evidence for the existence of particle dark matter and could possibly be used to establish its density profile. In our previous paper we computed the luminosity from WIMP burning for a range of dark matter spike density profiles, degenerate core masses, and distances from the SMBH. Here we compare our results with the observed stars closest to the Galactic center and find that they could …

The development of future facilities relevant to the study of deep inelastic scattering at BNL is described.

The authors study the decays B{sup 0} {yields} J/{psi} {pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -} and B{sup +} {yields} J/{psi} {pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup 0}, including intermediate resonances, using a sample of 382 million B{bar B} pairs recorded by the BABAR detector at the PEP-II e{sup +}e{sup -} B factory. They measure the branching fractions {Beta}(B{sup 0} {yields} J/{psi} {rho}{sup 0}) = (2.7 {+-} 0.3 {+-} 0.17) x 10{sup -5} and {Beta}(B{sup +} {yields} J/{psi} {rho}{sup +}) = (5.0 {+-} 0.7 {+-} 0.31) x 10{sup -5}. The authors also set the following upper limits at the 90% confidence level: {Beta}(B{sup 0} {yields} J/{psi} {pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -} non-resonant) < 1.2 x 10{sup -5}, {Beta}(B{sup 0} {yields} J/{psi} f{sub 2}) < 4.6 x 10{sup -6}, and {Beta}(B{sup +} {yields} J/{psi} {pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup 0} non-resonant) < 4.4 x 10{sup -6}. They measure the charge asymmetry in charged B decays to J/{psi} {rho} to be -0.11 {+-} 0.12 {+-} 0.08.

The FNAL 9-cell 3.9GHz deflecting mode cavity designed for the CKM experiment was chosen as the baseline design for the ILC BDS crab cavity. The full 9-cell CKM cavity including the coupler end-groups was simulated using the parallel eigensolver Omega3P and scattering parameter solver S3P. It was found that both the notch filters for the HOM/LOM couplers are very sensitive to the notch gap, which is about 1.6MHz/micron and is more than 10 times more sensitive than the TTF cavity. It was also found in the simulation that the unwanted vertical {pi}-mode (SOM) is strongly coupled to the horizontal 7{pi}/9 mode which causes x-y coupling and reduces the effectiveness of the SOM damping. To meet the ILC requirements, the HOM/LOM couplers are redesigned to address these issues. With the new designs, the damping of the HOM/LOM modes is improved. The sensitivity of the notch filter for the HOM coupler is reduced by one order of magnitude. The notch filter for the LOM coupler is eliminated in the new design which significantly simplifies the geometry. In this paper, we will present the simulation results of the original CKM cavity and the progresses on the HOM/LOM coupler re-design and optimization.

The main L-band linacs of the ILC accelerate 2820 bunches from a center of mass of 10 GeV to 500 GeV (and in the proposed later upgrade, to 1 TeV). The emittance of the vertical plane is approximately 400 times less than that of the horizontal plane. Provided the vertical and horizontal mode dipole frequencies are degenerate then the motion in each plane is not coupled. However, in reality the frequency degeneracy is split and the eigenmodes are shifted due to inevitable manufacturing errors introduced in fabricating 20,000 cavities. This gives rise to a transverse coupling in the horizontal-vertical motion and can readily lead to a dilution in the emittance in the vertical plane. We investigate means to ameliorate this effect dilution by splitting the horizontal-vertical tune of the lattice.

Prompt {gamma}-ray production cross section measurements were made as a function of incident neutron energy (En = 1 to 35 MeV) on an enriched (95.6%) {sup 150}Sm sample. Energetic neutrons were delivered by the Los Alamos National Laboratory spallation neutron source located at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) facility. The prompt-reaction {gamma} rays were detected with the large-scale Compton-suppressed Germanium Array for Neutron Induced Excitations (GEANIE). Above E{sub n} {approx} 8 MeV the pre-equilibrium reaction process dominates the inelastic reaction. The spin distribution transferred in pre-equilibrium neutron-induced reactions was calculated using the quantum mechanical theory of Feshbach, Kerman, and Koonin (FKK). These preequilibrium spin distributions were incorporated into the Hauser-Feshbach statistical reaction code GNASH and the {gamma}-ray production cross sections were calculated and compared with experimental data. Neutron inelastic scattering populates 150Sm excited states either by (1) forming the compound nucleus {sup 151}Sm* and decaying by neutron emission, or (2) by the incoming neutron transferring energy to create a particle-hole pair, and thus initiating the pre-equilibrium process. These two processes produce rather different spin distributions: the momentum transfer via the pre-equilibrium process tends to be smaller than in the compound reaction. This difference in the spin population has …

We discuss the empirical evidence for a universal Color Glass Condensate and outline prospects for further studies at future colliders. Some ramifications for initial conditions in heavy ion collisions are pointed out.