The Magnitude and Distance Amplitude Correction (MDAC; Taylor and Hartse, 1998; Taylor et al., 2002) procedure for correcting regional seismic amplitudes for seismic event identification has been modified to include more realistic earthquake source models and source scaling. In the MDAC2 formulation we generalize the Brune (1970) earthquake source spectrum to use a more physical apparent stress model that can represent non-constant stress-drop scaling. We also event include a parameter that allows for variable P-wave and S-wave comer frequency scaling, imposing some of the constraints of ratio correction techniques (Rodger and Walter, 2002). Very Stable moment magnitude measures (Mayeda et al., 2002) from regional coda wave envelopes that have been tied to independently derived regional seismic moments are incorporated. This eliminates two fitting parameters that were necessary in relating seismic moment to magnitude. The incorporation of Bayesian tomography to replace the assumption of a constant Q0 model is also described. These modifications allow for more flexibility in the MDAC grid-search procedure. The direct tie to regional seismic moment rather than body wave magnitude reduces effects of upper mantle bias on the corrected amplitudes. In this paper, we develop the theory and test the formulation on Nevada Test Site (NTS) data.

We report infrared (IR) spectroscopic measurements of carbon monoxide (CO) at high pressures. Although CO is one of the simplest heteronuclear diatomic molecules, it displays surprisingly complex behavior at high pressures and has been the subject of several studies [1-5]. IR spectroscopic studies of high pressures phases of CO provide data complementing results from previous studies and elucidating the nature of these phases. Though a well-known and widely utilized diagnostic of molecular systems, IR spectroscopy presents several experimental challenges to high pressure diamond anvil cell research. We present measurements of the IR absorption bands of CO at high pressures and experimentally illustrate the crucial importance of accurate normalization of IR spectra specially within regions of strong absorptions in diamond.

We review concurrent multiscale simulations of dynamic and temperature-dependent processes found in nanomechanical systems coupled to larger scale surroundings. We focus on the behavior of sub-micron Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS), especially microresonators. These systems are often called NEMS, for Nano-Electro-Mechanical Systems. The coupling of length scales methodology we have developed for MEMS employs an atomistic description of small but key regions of the system, consisting of millions of atoms, coupled concurrently to a finite element model of the periphery. The model, Coarse-Grained Molecular Dynamics (CGMD), builds a generalized finite element formalism from the underlying atomistic physics in order to ensure a smooth coupling between regions governed by different length scales. The result is a model that accurately describes the behavior of the mechanical components of MEMS down to the atomic scale.

Energetic oxetane polymers have shown promise as performance-enhancing ingredients in gun and missile propellants. In order to correctly predict the performance of energetic materials containing these polymers, it is important to have accurate, experimentally determined values for the polymer heats of formation ({Delta}H{sub f}). In support of a theoretical study on gun propellant performance, heats of combustion were experimentally determined for a series of oxetane polymers and monomers (see below) using combustion calorimetry, and from these, {Delta}H{sub f} values were calculated. Polymers included BAMO/AMMO, BAMO/NMMO (polyol and TPE), and BNMO/NMMO mixtures. In order to calculate the {Delta}H{sub f} of the polymers from heat of combustion data, a number of assumptions were made regarding the polymer structure and molecular weight. A comparison of the {Delta}H{sub f} values for the monomers and polymers were made, and these values were compared to heats of formation measured elsewhere.

Using in situ optical microscopy and scattering measurements, we have followed the evolution of surface morphology during etching and measured surface etching rates as a function of humidity and undersaturation. From our experiments to date we have developed the following picture of etch pit formation on KDP crystal surfaces. Pit formation is characterized by a nucleation and growth process: the introduction of water creates a condition of undersaturation at the crystal surface. The equilibrium step directions define the orientation of the edges of the pits and the internal surfaces of the pits are low index facets of KDP. For z-cut and type I crystals, the pits are self-similar, indicating their geometry is controlled by equilibrium, not kinetic parameters. For type II crystals, the aspect ratio of the pits can vary dramatically from sample to sample or even within a sample, showing that the kinetics of dissolution can also play a role in determining overall etch pit geometry. The onset of pit formation during exposure to 55% relative humidity (RH) is detectable within a few hours and most of the etching process is complete within 48 hours, but pits continue to grow for a week or longer. At 75% RH, pits …

Spatial and temporal coherence is a fundamental property of laser beams. This peculiar quality is a problem for laser fusion because it induces spatial non uniformities of the laser intensity in the focal spot and it generates coherent coupling between the electromagnetic laser wave and the plasma waves. In the past many years, it has been shown that laser beam smoothing using different techniques (random phase plate, smoothing by spectral dispersion, polarization smoothing, ...) can reduce parametric and hydrodynamic instabilities which are detrimental processes to Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF). More recently, it has been predicted theoretically and numerically that the laser beam coherence properties can be modified by the propagation of the laser beam through an underdense plasma. Recent experiments with the six-beam LULI laser facility demonstrate the effectiveness of this process through different diagnostics, give insight on its origin, and show some of its consequences on parametric instabilities.

We report recent application experiments on the LLNL COMET tabletop facility using the picosecond, 14.7 nm Ni-like Pd x-ray laser. This work includes measurements of a laser-produced plasma density profile with a diffraction grating interferometer.

Graphical curves and text tables are presented that map out time and space distortions for data obtained from film records of the Many Beam Fabry Perot Velocimeter. Effective distortion corrections extracted from these mappings can be applied to upcoming velocimetry experiments, but only with limited success over periods of a year or more into the future. A method of using three fiducials to provide fresh time and space distortion data on each film record is presented as a more reliable procedure to correct distortions to an acceptable level of accuracy.

We describe progress on the issue of pathological elastic wave reflection in atomistic and multiscale simulation. First we briefly review Coarse-Grained Molecular Dynamics (CGMD). Originally CGMD was formulated as a Hamiltonian system in which energy is conserved. This formulation is useful for many applications, but recently CGMD has been extended to include generalized Langevin forces. Here we describe how Langevin dynamics arise naturally in CGMD, and we examine the implication for elastic wave scattering.

Printed wiring board (PWB) fabrication, an operation performed both at LLNL and throughout the electronics industry, generates considerable quantities of hazardous waste, notably lead-bearing materials used for soldering, tinning, and finish coating the circuits of the board. Hot-air solder leveling (HASL), the most common method of finishing is one of the main sources of hazardous lead-bearing wastes in traditional PWB manufacturing. The development of a safer finishing method will lead to employee health and environmental benefits. In addition, there is a production advantage to eliminating HASL, for it provides a fairly uneven surface that is problematic for mounting very small components. In this project, we developed ''single-bath electroplating'' as a potential HASL replacement technology for many applications. Single-bath electroplating involves alternating deposition of one or the other metal component of a bimetal bath, through control of plating potential and mass transport. It employs a nickel layer as both etch resist and finish coat and has the potential for lowering environmental and human-health risks associated with PWB manufacture--while at the same time reconfiguring the process for greater efficiency and profitability.

Synchrotron-based soft x-ray spectroscopy is often limited by detector performance. Grating spectrometers have the resolution, but lack the efficiency for the analysis of dilute samples. Semiconducting Si(Li) or Ge detectors are efficient, but often lack the resolution to separate weak signals from strong nearby lines in multi-element samples. Superconducting tunnel junctions (STJs) operated at temperatures below 1 K can be used as high-resolution high-efficiency x-ray detectors. They combine high energy resolution around 10 eV FWHM with the broad band efficiency of energy-dispersive detectors. We have designed a two-stage adiabatic demagnetization refrigerator (ADR) to operate STJ detectors in x-ray fluorescence measurements at beam line 4 of the ALS. We demonstrate the capabilities of such a detector system for fluorescence analysis of dilute metal sites in proteins and inorganic model compounds.

The use of sprayed flammable fluids as solvents in dissolution and cleaning processes demand detailed understanding of ignition and fire hazards associated with these applications. When it is not feasible to inert the atmosphere in which the spraying process takes place, then elimination of all possible ignition sources must be done. If operators are involved in the process, the potential for human static build-up and ultimate discharge is finite, and it is nearly impossible to eliminate. The specific application discussed in this paper involved the use of heated Dimethyl Sulfoxide (DMSO) to dissolve high explosives (HE). Search for properties of DMSO yielded data on flammability limits and flash point, but there was no published information pertaining to the minimum energy for electrical arc ignition. Due to the sensitivity of this procedure, The Hazards Control Department of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) was tasked to determine the minimum ignition energy of DMSO aerosol and vapor an experimental investigation was thus initiated. Because there were no electrical sources in spray chamber, Human Electro-Static Discharge (HESD) was the only potential ignition source. Consequently, the electrostatic generators required for this investigation were designed to produce electrostatic arcs with the defined voltage and current pulse …

Sapphire, a common optical window material used in shock-compression studies, displays significant shock-induced optical emission and extinction. It is desirable to quantify such non-ideal window behavior to enhance the usefulness of sapphire in optical studies of opaque shock-compressed samples, such as metals. At the highest stresses we can achieve with a two-stage gas gun it is technically very difficult to study the optical properties of sapphire without the aid of some opaque backing material, hence one is invariably compelled to deconvolve the optical effects of the opaque surface and the sapphire. In an effort to optimize this deconvolution process, we have constructed sapphire/thin-film/sapphire samples using two basic types of thin films: one optimized to emit copious optical radiation (the hot-film sample), the other designed to yield minimal emission (the cold-film sample). This sample geometry makes it easy to maintain the same steady shock-stress in the sapphire window (255 GPa in our case) while varying the window/film interface temperature. A six-channel time-resolved optical pyrometer is used to measure the emission from the sample assemblies. Two different sapphire crystal orientations were evaluated. We also comment on finite thermal conductivity effects of the thin-film geometry on the interpretation of our data.

This paper addresses the question of how to handle irreducible regions during optimization, which has become even more relevant for contemporary processors since recent VLIW-like architectures highly rely on instruction scheduling. The contributions of this paper are twofold. First, a method of optimized node splitting to transform irreducible regions of control flow into reducible regions is derived. This method is superior to approaches previously published since it reduces the number of replicated nodes by comparison. Second, three methods that handle regions of irreducible control flow are evaluated with respect to their impact on compiler optimizations: traditional and optimized node splitting as well as loop analysis through DJ graphs. Measurements show improvements of 1-40% for these methods of handling irreducible loop over the unoptimized case.

The effort to define guidance for authentication of software for arms control and nuclear material transparency measurements draws on a variety of disciplines and has involved synthesizing established criteria and practices with newer methods. Challenges include the need to protect classified information that the software manipulates as well as deal with the rapid pace of innovation in the technology of nuclear material monitoring. The resulting guidance will shape the design of future systems and inform the process of authentication of instruments now being developed. This paper explores the technical issues underlying the guidance and presents its major tenets.

Currently, data of interest to microbial researchers is spread across hundreds of web-accessible data sources, each with a unique interface and data format. Researchers interact with a few of these sites when they analyze their data, but are not able to utilize the majority of them on a regular basis. There are two significant challenges that must be overcome to integrate this environment and allow researchers to efficiently perform data analysis across the entire set of relevant data, or at least a significant portion of it. The first is to provide consistent access to the large numbers of distributed, heterogeneous data sets that are currently distributed over the web. The second is to define the semantics of the data provided by the individual sites in such a way that semantic conflicts can be identified and, ideally, resolved. The first step in establishing any integrated environment, from a data warehouse to a multi-database system, is provide consistent access to all of the relevant sources. While the type of access required will vary based on the integration strategy chosen--for example federated systems use query-based access while warehouses may prefer access to the underlying database--the essence of this challenge remains the same. Thus, …

The x-rays from inertial fusion energy micro explosions deposited in a thin film will lead to a temperature rise dependent on penetration depth and time duration. This temperature rise is important to the study of surface tension driven flows and the surface quality of films for optics. A one-dimensional heat transfer analysis is used to estimate the film temperature rise for several different cases applicable to both final optical surfaces and renewable liquid first walls. Attenuating gas mixtures of xenon and krypton are considered to mitigate the deposition of x-ray energy.

Significant changes in materials properties of siloxane based polymers can be obtained by the addition of inorganic fillers. In silica-filled polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) based composites the mechanism of this reinforcing behavior is presumably hydrogen bonding between surface hydroxyls and backbone siloxane species. We have chosen to investigate in detail the effect of chemisorbed and physisorbed water on the interfacial structure and dynamics in silica-filled PDMS based composites. Toward this end, we have combined molecular dynamics simulations and experimental studies employing DMA and Nh4R analysis. Our results suggest that the polymer-silica contact distance and the mobility of interfacial polymer chains significantly decreased as the hydration level at the interface was reduced. The reduced mobility of the PDMS chains in the interfacial domain reduced the overall, bulk, motional properties of the polymer, thus causing an effective ''stiffening'' of the polymer matrix. The role of the long-ranged Coulombic interactions on the structural features and chain dynamics of the polymer were also examined. Both are found to be strongly influenced by the electrostatic interactions as identified by the bond orientation time correlation function and local density distribution functions. These results have important implications for the design of nanocomposite silica-siloxane materials.

Materials properties measurements are made for the RDX-based explosive, PBXN-109, and initial ALE3D model predictions are given for the cookoff temperature in a U.S. Navy test. This work is part of an effort in the U.S. Navy and Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories to understand the thermal explosion behavior of this material. Benchmark cookoff experiments are being performed by the U.S. Navy to validate DOE materials models and computer codes. The ALE3D computer code can model the coupled thermal, mechanical, and chemical behavior of heating, ignition, and explosion in cookoff tests. In our application, a standard three-step step model is selected for the chemical kinetics. The strength behavior of the solid constituents is represented by a Steinberg-Guinan model while polynomial and gamma-law expressions are used for the Equation Of State (EOS) for the solid and gas species, respectively. Materials characterization measurements are given for thermal expansion, heat capacity, shear modulus, bulk modulus, and One-Dimensional-Time-to-Explosion (ODTX). These measurements and those of the other project participants are used to determine parameters in the ALE3D chemical, mechanical, and thermal models. Time-dependent, two-dimensional results are given for the temperature and material expansion. The results show predicted cookoff temperatures slightly higher than the measured values.

The selling of weapons-related nuclear knowledge by Russian scientists for economic gain constitutes a threat to US national security. Some estimate that the number of Russian scientists seeking permanent employment abroad constitute five to ten percent of all researchers who have left the field of science. And, there is concern that those who have left are ''the better minds.'' Moreover, the issue of brain drain concerns not only those who move abroad permanently, but those who still reside in Russia and travel abroad to sell their knowledge. Of particular concern to the US is the potential sale of WMD knowledge by some. To ''mitigate the risk that economic difficulties...might create the temptation for individuals or institutes to sell expertise to countries of proliferation concern and terrorist organizations,'' the Department of Energy launched a Nuclear Cities Initiative (NCI) in 1998 with the goal of creating commercial jobs and economic diversification in the ten closed cities that form the core of Russia's nuclear weapons complex to accommodate the loss of employment in the nuclear weapons industry. However, unless Russia opens access to the areas of its closed cities that are, or could become, involved in commercial activities-while of course carefully controlling access …

Programs at LLNL that involve large laser systems--ranging from the National Ignition Facility to new tactical laser weapons--depend on the maintenance of laser beam quality through precise control of the optical wavefront. This can be accomplished using adaptive optics, which compensate for time-varying aberrations that are often caused by heating in a high-power laser system. Over the past two decades, LLNL has developed a broad capability in adaptive optics technology for both laser beam control and high-resolution imaging. This adaptive optics capability has been based on thin deformable glass mirrors with individual ceramic actuators bonded to the back. In the case of high-power lasers, these adaptive optics systems have successfully improved beam quality. However, as we continue to extend our applications requirements, the existing technology base for wavefront control cannot satisfy them. To address this issue, this project studied improved modeling tools to increase our detailed understanding of the performance of these systems, and evaluated novel approaches to low-order wavefront control that offer the possibility of reduced cost and complexity. We also investigated improved beam control technology for high-resolution wavefront control. Many high-power laser systems suffer from high-spatial-frequency aberrations that require control of hundreds or thousands of phase points to …

We describe finite element modeling of the deformation of living cells by atomic force microscopy (AFM). Cells are soft systems, susceptible to large deformations in the course of an AFM measurement. Often the local properties, the subject of the measurement, are obscured by the response of the cell as a whole. The Lagrangian finite deformation model we have developed and implemented in finite elements analysis offers a solution to this problem. The effect of the gross deformation of the cell can be subtracted from the experimentally measured data in order to give a reproducible value for local properties. This facilitates concurrent experimental efforts to measure the mechanical properties at specific receptor sites on the membrane of a living cell.

Laser damage of large fused silica optics initiates at imperfections. Possible initiation mechanisms are considered. We demonstrate that a model based on nanoparticle explosions is consistent with the observed initiation craters. Possible mechanisms for growth upon subsequent laser irradiation, including material modification and laser intensification, are discussed. Large aperture experiments indicate an exponential increase in damage size with number of laser shots. Physical processes associated with this growth and a qualitative explanation of self-accelerated growth is presented. Rapid growth necessitates damage growth mitigation techniques. Several possible mitigation techniques are mentioned, with special emphasis on CO{sub 2} processing. Analysis of material evaporation, crack healing, and thermally induced stress are presented.

Deformation experiments performed in-situ in the transmission electron microscope have led to an increased understanding of dislocation dynamics. To illustrate the capability of this technique two examples will be presented. In the first example, the processes of work hardening in Mo at room temperature will be presented. These studies have improved our understanding of dislocation mobility, dislocation generation, and dislocation-obstacle interactions. In the second example, the interaction of matrix dislocations with grain boundaries will be described. From such studies predictive criteria for slip transfer through grain boundaries have been developed.