Fiducials in the form of intersecting straight lines are used to align the target in the final target chamber of the National Ignition Facility of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. One of the techniques used to locate these lines is the Hough transform. When two lines intersect at a 90 degree angle, it is tempting to orient the lines to horizontal and vertical directions. There are other possible angles at which the lines may be oriented. One question that arises while designing the fiducials is whether there is a preferred angle or range of angles that leads to higher accuracy. This work attempts to answer this question through detailed computer simulation.

A simple technique is proposed for calculating global mean climate forcing from transient integrations of coupled Atmosphere Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCMs). This 'climate forcing' differs from the conventionally defined radiative forcing as it includes semi-direct effects that account for certain short timescale responses in the troposphere. Firstly, we calculate a climate feedback term from reported values of 2 x CO{sub 2} radiative forcing and surface temperature time series from 70-year simulations by twenty AOGCMs. In these simulations carbon dioxide is increased by 1%/year. The derived climate feedback agrees well with values that we diagnose from equilibrium climate change experiments of slab-ocean versions of the same models. These climate feedback terms are associated with the fast, quasi-linear response of lapse rate, clouds, water vapor and albedo to global surface temperature changes. The importance of the feedbacks is gauged by their impact on the radiative fluxes at the top of the atmosphere. We find partial compensation between longwave and shortwave feedback terms that lessens the inter-model differences in the equilibrium climate sensitivity. There is also some indication that the AOGCMs overestimate the strength of the positive longwave feedback. These feedback terms are then used to infer the shortwave and longwave time …

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Computer modeling to determine fenestration product energy properties (U-factor, SHGC, VT) has emerged as the most cost-effective and accurate means to quantify them. Fenestration product simulation tools have been effective in increasing the use of low-e coatings and gas fills in insulating glass and in the widespread use of insulating frame designs and materials. However, for more efficient fenestration products (low heat loss products, dynamic products, products with non-specular optical characteristics, light re-directing products) to achieve widespread use, fenestration modeling software needs to be improved. This paper addresses the following questions: (1) Are the current properties (U, SHGC, VT) calculated sufficient to compare and distinguish between windows suitable for Zero Energy Buildings and conventional window products? If not, what data on the thermal and optical performance, on comfort, and on peak demand of windows is needed. (2) Are the algorithms in the tools sufficient to model the thermal and optical processes? Are specific heat transfer and optical effects not accounted for? Is the existing level of accuracy enough to distinguish between products designed for Zero Energy Buildings? Is the current input data adequate?

Scientists, fueled by the desire for systems-level understanding of phenomena, increasingly need to share their results across multiple disciplines. Accomplishing this requires data to be annotated, contextualized, and readily searchable and translated into other formats. While these requirements can be addressed by custom programming or obviated by community standardization, neither approach has ‘solved’ the problem. In this paper, we describe a complementary approach – a general capability for articulating the format of arbitrary textual and binary data using a logical data model, expressed in XML-Schema, which can be used to provide annotation and context, extract metadata, and enable translation. This work is based on the draft specification for the Data Format Description Language and our open source “Defuddle” parser. We present an overview of the specification, detail the design of Defuddle, and discuss the benefits and challenges of this general approach to enabling discovery and sharing of diverse data sets.

Many interacting proteins regulate and/or assist the activities of RAD51, a recombinase which plays a critical role in both DNA repair and meiotic recombination. Yeast two-hybrid screening of a human testis cDNA library revealed a new protein, RAD51AP2 (RAD51 Associated Protein 2), that interacts strongly with RAD51. A full-length cDNA clone predicts a novel vertebrate specific protein of 1159 residues, and the RAD51AP2 transcript was observed only in meiotic tissue (i.e. adult testis and fetal ovary), suggesting a meiotic-specific function for RAD51AP2. In HEK293 cells the interaction of RAD51 with an ectopically-expressed recombinant large fragment of RAD51AP2 requires the C-terminal 57 residues of RAD51AP2. This RAD51-binding region shows 81% homology to the C-terminus of RAD51AP1/PIR51, an otherwise totally unrelated RAD51-binding partner that is ubiquitously expressed. Analyses using truncations and point mutations in both RAD51AP1 and RAD51AP2 demonstrate that these proteins use the same structural motif for RAD51 binding. RAD54 shares some homology with this RAD51-binding motif, but this homologous region plays only an accessory role to the adjacent main RAD51-interacting region, which has been narrowed here to 40 amino acids. A novel protein, RAD51AP2, has been discovered that interacts with RAD51 through a C-terminal motif also present in RAD51AP1.

A general problem when fitting EXAFS data is determining whether particular parameters are statistically significant. The F-test is an excellent way of determining relevancy in EXAFS because it only relies on the ratio of the fit residual of two possible models, and therefore the data errors approximately cancel. Although this test is widely used in crystallography (there, it is often called a 'Hamilton test') and has been properly applied to EXAFS data in the past, it is very rarely applied in EXAFS analysis. We have implemented a variation of the F-test adapted for EXAFS data analysis in the RSXAP analysis package, and demonstrate its applicability with a few examples, including determining whether a particular scattering shell is warranted, and differentiating between two possible species or two possible structures in a given shell.