Based on the upper-bound theorem in limit analysis, a theoretical model describing sound flow, core fracture, and sleeve fracture in bimetal rods and wire during extrusion and drawing was developed. The variables affecting core and sleeve fracture are: reduction in area, die geometry, friction, relative size and strength of the core, and applied surface tractions. Within the wide range of combinations of these process variables, only a small range permits co-extrusion and codrawing without fracture. Criteria for the prevention of core and sleeve fracture during co-extrusion and core fracture during co-drawing were developed and presented graphically in this study. The results were applied to the central burst problem during extrusion and drawing of homogeneous materials.

Preliminary testing of a new system for protecting bonded strain gages that will be attached to the MFTF magnets indicated falling electrical resistance to ground, attributed to the infiltration of moisture. The most likely infiltration route seemed to be along the Kapton lead cable, which has an outer surface of FEP fluorocarbon resin. Samples of the cable were pretreated with a fluorocarbon etchant, Tetra-Etch, for periods of 10, 25, and 40 s at room temperature, followed by rinsing with demineralized water. The treated ends were embedded in the proposed epoxy sealant, Hysol EA 934, a compound containing 70 wt % of asbestos. The tensile-shear stresses required to pull the wires out of these embedments were measured. Results show that the three levels of treatment are equally effective in raising the bond strength from 377 psi for the untreated cable to about twice that, 763 psi. The 40-s exposure to Tetra-Etch appears to have penetrated the 0.5-mil fluorocarbon coating and attacked the Kapton film and the conductor coatings inside it.

An analysis was done to determine at what LOFT total core power (nuclear plus decay power) the ECCS could be inoperable. The criteria used for the analysis was that the maximum fuel clad temperature should not exceed 1650/sup 0/F given a loss of coolant. Calculations for natural convection cooling of the fuel by air with an inlet temperature of 580/sup 0/F determined that the limiting core power is 25 kW (discounted by 15 percent to 20 percent for potential uncertainties). Shutdown times are listed for when the LOFT ECCS can be safely bypassed or disabled.

The overall goal of this research project is to formulate a mathematical model of flue gas conditioning. This model will be based on an understanding of why ask properties, such as cohesivity and resistivity, are changed by conditioning. Such a model could serve as a component of the performance models of particulate control devices where flue gas conditioning is used. There are two specific objectives of this research project, which divide the planned research into two main parts. One part of the project is designed to determine how ash particles are modified by interactions with sorbent injection processes and to describe the mechanisms by which these interactions affect fine particle collection. The objective of the other part of the project is to identify the mechanisms by which conditioning agents, including chemically active compounds, modify the key properties of fine fly ash particles.

Theoretical and computational investigations are presented of boundary plasma microturbulence that take into account important effects of the geometry of diverted tokamaks--in particular, the effect of x-point magnetic shear and the termination of field lines on divertor plates. We first generalize our previous 'heuristic boundary condition' which describes, in a lumped model, the closure of currents in the vicinity of the x-point region to encompass three current-closure mechanisms. We then use this boundary condition to derive the dispersion relation for low-beta flute-like modes in the divertor-leg region under the combined drives of curvature, sheath impedance, and divertor tilt effects. The results indicate the possibility of strongly growing instabilities, driven by sheath boundary conditions, and localized in either the private or common flux region of the divertor leg depending on the radial tilt of divertor plates. We re-visit the issue of x-point effects on blobs, examining the transition from blobs terminated by x-point shear to blobs that extend over both the main SOL and divertor legs. We find that, for a main-SOL blob, this transition occurs without a free-acceleration period as previously thought, with x-point termination conditions applying until the blob has expanded to reach the divertor plate. We also derive …

Light-front holography allows hadronic amplitudes in the AdS/QCD fifth dimension to be mapped to frame-independent light-front wavefunctions of hadrons in physical space-time, thus providing a relativistic description of hadrons at the amplitude level. The AdS coordinate z is identified with an invariant light-front coordinate {zeta} which separates the dynamics of quark and gluon binding from the kinematics of constituent spin and internal orbital angular momentum. The result is a single-variable light-front Schroedinger equation for QCD which determines the eigenspectrum and the light-front wavefunctions of hadrons for general spin and orbital angular momentum. A new method for computing the hadronization of quark and gluon jets at the amplitude level using AdS/QCD light-front wavefunctions is outlined.

A procedure has been developed for the selective etching of Ag from Pt nanoparticles of well-defined shape, resulting in the formation of elementally-pure Pt cubes, cuboctahedra, or octahedra, with a largest vertex-to-vertex distance of {approx}9.5 nm from Ag-modified Pt nanoparticles. A nitric acid etching process was applied Pt nanoparticles supported on mesoporous silica, as well as nanoparticles dispersed in aqueous solution. The characterization of the silica-supported particles by XRD, TEM, and N{sub 2} adsorption measurements demonstrated that the structure of the nanoparticles and the mesoporous support remained conserved during etching in concentrated nitric acid. Both elemental analysis and ethylene hydrogenation indicated etching of Ag is only effective when [HNO{sub 3}] {ge} 7 M; below this concentration, the removal of Ag is only {approx}10%. Ethylene hydrogenation activity increased by four orders of magnitude after the etching of Pt octahedra that contained the highest fraction of silver. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy of the unsupported particles after etching demonstrated that etching does not alter the surface structure of the Pt nanoparticles. High [HNO{sub 3}] led to the decomposition of the capping agent, polyvinylpyrollidone (PVP); infrared spectroscopy confirmed that many decomposition products were present on the surface during etching, including carbon monoxide.

'Static' structure functions are the probabilistic distributions computed from the square of the light-front wavefunctions of the target hadron. In contrast, the 'dynamic' structure functions measured in deep inelastic lepton-hadron scattering include the effects of rescattering associated with the Wilson line. Initial- and final-state rescattering, neglected in the parton model, can have a profound effect in QCD hard-scattering reactions, producing single-spin asymmetries, diffractive deep inelastic scattering, diffractive hard hadronic reactions, the breakdown of the Lam-Tung relation in Drell-Yan reactions, nuclear shadowing, and non-universal nuclear antishadowing|novel leading-twist physics not incorporated in the light-front wavefunctions of the target computed in isolation. I also review how 'direct' higher-twist processes--where a proton is produced in the hard subprocess itself--can explain the anomalous proton-to-pion ratio seen in high centrality heavy ion collisions.

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In the early 1960s, an area of privately-owned swamp adjacent to the US Department of Energy's Savannah River Site (SRS), known as Creek Plantation, was contaminated by site operations. Studies conducted in 1974 estimated that approximately 925 GBq of {sup 137}Cs was deposited in the swamp. Subsequently, a series of surveys--composed of 52 monitoring locations--was initiated to characterize and trend the contaminated environment. The annual, potential, maximum doses to a hypothetical hunter were estimated by conservatively using the maximum {sup 137}Cs concentrations measured in the soil. The purpose of this report is to calculate an 'effective dosimetric' half-life for {sup 137}Cs in soil (based on the maximum concentrations) and compare it to the effective environmental half-life (based on the geometric mean concentrations).

Most expert analyses of the projected world energy needs show utilization of nuclear energy will be essential for the next few decades, and hence the need to support this technology grows. But as one measure of the supporting science base of this field, as of December 2006, only 25 Pu containing structures were in the Cambridge Structural Database, as compared to 21,807 for Fe. A comparison of the rate of addition to this knowledge base reveals that approximately 500 Fe structures are registered with the Cambridge Structural Database every year, while in the same period only two or three Pu crystal structures are published. A continuing objective of this laboratory has been the development of new sequestering agents for actinide decorporation and selective extractions. This effort has been based on similarities in the properties of Pu(IV) and Fe(III), and the chelating groups in microbial Fe(III) sequestering agents, siderophores. The HOPO ligands (Figure 1) are one such class of chelating group which have been investigated as selective actinide extractants.

An optical resonance transition rubidium laser (5{sup 2}P{sub 1/2} {yields} 5{sup 2}S{sub 1/2}) is demonstrated with a hydrocarbon-free buffer gas. Prior demonstrations of alkali resonance transition lasers have used ethane as either the buffer gas or a buffer gas component to promote rapid fine-structure mixing. However, our experience suggests that the alkali vapor reacts with the ethane producing carbon as one of the reaction products. This degrades long term laser reliability. Our recent experimental results with a 'clean' helium-only buffer gas system pumped by a Ti:sapphire laser demonstrate all the advantages of the original alkali laser system, but without the reliability issues associated with the use of ethane.

Chloroplast genome structure, gene order and content arehighly conserved in land plants. We sequenced the complete chloroplastgenome sequence of Trachelium caeruleum (Campanulaceae) a member of anangiosperm family known for highly rearranged chloroplast genomes. Thetotal genome size is 162,321 bp with an IR of 27,273 bp, LSC of 100,113bp and SSC of 7,661 bp. The genome encodes 115 unique genes, with 19duplicated in the IR, a tRNA (trnI-CAU) duplicated once in the LSC and aprotein coding gene (psbJ) duplicated twice, for a total of 137 genes.Four genes (ycf15, rpl23, infA and accD) are truncated and likelynonfunctional; three others (clpP, ycf1 and ycf2) are so highly divergedthat they may now be pseudogenes. The most conspicuous feature of theTrachelium genome is the presence of eighteen internally unrearrangedblocks of genes that have been inverted or relocated within the genome,relative to the typical gene order of most angiosperm chloroplastgenomes. Recombination between repeats or tRNAs has been suggested as twomeans of chloroplast genome rearrangements. We compared the relativenumber of repeats in Trachelium to eight other angiosperm chloroplastgenomes, and evaluated the location of repeats and tRNAs in relation torearrangements. Trachelium has the highest number and largest repeats,which are concentrated near inversion endpoints or other rearrangements.tRNAs occur at …

We study logarithmically enhanced electromagnetic corrections to the decay rate in the high dilepton invariant mass region as well as corrections to the forward backward asymmetry (FBA) of the inclusive rare decay {bar B} {yields} X{sub s}{ell}{sup +}{ell}{sup -}. As expected, the relative effect of these corrections in the high dilepton mass region is around -8% for the muonic final state and therefore much larger than in the low dilepton mass region. We also present a complete phenomenological analysis, to improved NNLO accuracy, of the dilepton mass spectrum and the FBA integrated in the low dilepton mass region, including a new approach to the zero of the FBA. The latter represents one of the most precise predictions in flavor physics with a theoretical uncertainty of order 5%. We find (q{sub 0}{sup 2}){mu}{mu} = (3.50 {+-} 0.12)GeV{sup 2}. For the high dilepton invariant mass region, we have {Beta}({bar B} {yields} X{sub s}{mu}{mu}){sub high} = (2.40{sub -0.62}{sup +0.69}) x 10{sup -7}. The dominant uncertainty is due to the 1/m{sub b} corrections and can be significantly reduced in the future. For the low dilepton invariant mass region, we confirm previous results up to small corrections.

Methyl decanoate is a large methyl ester that can be used as a surrogate for biodiesel. In this experimental and computational study, the combustion of methyl decanoate is investigated in nonpremixed, nonuniform flows. Experiments are performed employing the counterflow configuration with a fuel stream made up of vaporized methyl decanoate and nitrogen, and an oxidizer stream of air. The mass fraction of fuel in the fuel stream is measured as a function of the strain rate at extinction, and critical conditions of ignition are measured in terms of the temperature of the oxidizer stream as a function of the strain rate. It is not possible to use a fully detailed mechanism for methyl decanoate to simulate the counterflow flames because the number of species and reactions is too large to employ with current flame codes and computer resources. Therefore a skeletal mechanism was deduced from a detailed mechanism of 8555 elementary reactions and 3036 species using 'directed relation graph' method. This skeletal mechanism has only 713 elementary reactions and 125 species. Critical conditions of ignition were calculated using this skeletal mechanism and are found to agree well with experimental data. The predicted strain rate at extinction is found to be …

The Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) program at West Virginia University (WVU), which is funded by the Industrial Technologies Program (ITP) in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), has provided a unique opportunity to enhance efficient energy utilization in small to medium-sized manufacturers. It has also provided training to engineering students in the identification and analysis of efficient energy use in each aspect of the manufacturing process and associated supporting elements. The outcomes of the IAC Program at WVU have assisted the manufacturers and the students in having a heightened sensitivity to industrial energy conservation, waste reduction, and productivity improvement, as well as a better understanding of the technical aspects of manufacturing processes and the supporting elements through which efficient energy utilization can be enhanced. The IAC at WVU has conducted 101 energy assessments from 2002 until 2006. The focus of the industrial assessments has been on energy savings. It has been the IAC’s interest to strongly focus on energy savings and on waste minimization and productivity improvements that strictly have an impact on energy. The IAC at WVU was selected as the Center of the year in 2005 from amongst 26 centers …

The Cementitious Barriers Partnership (CBP) was created to develop predictive capabilities for the aging of cementitious barriers over long timeframes. The CBP is a multi-agency, multi-national consortium working under a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Environmental Management (EM-21) funded Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) as the lead laboratory. Members of the CBP are SRNL, Vanderbilt University, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), SIMCO Technologies, Inc. (Canada), and the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN). A first step in developing advanced tools is to determine the current state-of-the-art. A review has been undertaken to assess the treatment of cementitious barriers in Performance Assessments (PA). Representatives of US DOE sites which have PAs for their low level waste disposal facilities were contacted. These sites are the Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Nevada Test Site, and Hanford. Several of the more arid sites did not employ cementitious barriers. Of those sites which do employ cementitious barriers, a wide range of treatment of the barriers in a PA was present. Some sites used conservative, simplistic models that even though conservative still showed …

Laser tweezers Raman spectroscopy (LTRS) is a novel, nondestructive, and label-free method that can be used to quantitatively measure changes in cellular activity in single living cells. Here, we demonstrate its use to monitor changes in a population of E. coli cells that occur during overexpression of a protein, the extracellular domain of myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG(1-120)) Raman spectra were acquired of individual E. coli cells suspended in solution and trapped by a single tightly focused laser beam. Overexpression of MOG(1-120) in transformed E. coli Rosetta-Gami (DE3)pLysS cells was induced by addition of isopropyl thiogalactoside (IPTG). Changes in the peak intensities of the Raman spectra from a population of cells were monitored and analyzed over a total duration of three hours. Data was also collected for concentrated purified MOG(1-120) protein in solution, and the spectra compared with that obtained for the MOG(1-120) expressing cells. Raman spectra of individual, living E. coli cells exhibit signatures due to DNA and protein molecular vibrations. Characteristic Raman markers associated with protein vibrations, such as 1257 cm{sup -1}, 1340 cm{sup -1}, 1453 cm{sup -1} and 1660 cm{sup -1}, are shown to increase as a function of time following the addition of IPTG. Comparison of these …

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Microfabrication enables many exciting experimental possibilities for medicine and biology that are not attainable through traditional methods. However, in order for microfabricated devices to have an impact they must not only provide a robust solution to a current unmet need, but also be simple enough to seamlessly integrate into standard protocols. Broad dissemination of bioMEMS has been stymied by the common aim of replacing established and well accepted protocols with equally or more complex devices, methods, or materials. The marriage of a complex, difficult to fabricate bioMEMS device with a highly variable biological system is rarely successful. Instead, the design philosophy of my lab aims to leverage a beneficial microscale phenomena (e.g. fast diffusion at the microscale) within a bioMEMS device and adapt to established methods (e.g. multiwell plate cell culture) and demonstrate a new paradigm for the field (adapt instead of replace). In order for the field of bioMEMS to mature beyond novel proof-of-concept demonstrations, researchers must focus on developing systems leveraging these phenomena and integrating into standard labs, which have largely been ignored. Towards this aim, the Integrative Bioengineering Institute has been established.

Finite plasma temperature can modify the structure of thewake field, reduce the wave-breaking field, and lead to self-trappedelectrons, which can degrade the electron bunch quality in a plasma-basedaccelerator. A relativistic warm fluid theory is used to describe theplasma temperature evolution and alterations to the structure of anonlinear periodic wave exited in a warm plasma. The trapping thresholdfor a plasma electron and the fraction of electrons trapped from athermal distribution are examined using a single-particle model.Numerical artifacts in particle-in-cell models that can mimic the physicsassociated with finite momentum spread are discussed.

Mitochondria and plastids (collectively called organelles)descended from prokaryotes that adopted an intracellular, endosymbioticlifestyle within early eukaryotes. Comparisons of their remnant genomesaddress a wide variety of biological questions, especially when includingthe genomes of their prokaryotic relatives and the many genes transferredto the eukaryotic nucleus during the transitions from endosymbiont toorganelle. The pace of producing complete organellar genome sequences nowmakes it unfeasible to do broad comparisons using the primary literatureand, even if it were feasible, it is now becoming uncommon for journalsto accept detailed descriptions of genome-level features. Unfortunatelyno database is currently useful for this task, since they have littlestandardization and are riddled with error. Here I outline what iscurrently wrong and what must be done to make this data useful to thescientific community.

One of the challenges of implementing the hydrogen economy is finding a suitable solid H{sub 2} storage material. Aluminium (alane, AlH{sub 3}) hydride has been examined as a potential hydrogen storage material because of its high weight capacity, low discharge temperature, and volumetric density. Recycling the dehydride material has however precluded AlH{sub 3} from being implemented due to the large pressures required (>10{sup 5} bar H{sub 2} at 25 C) and the thermodynamic expense of chemical synthesis. A reversible cycle to form alane electrochemically using NaAlH{sub 4} in THF been successfully demonstrated. Alane is isolated as the triethylamine (TEA) adduct and converted to unsolvated alane by heating under vacuum. To complete the cycle, the starting alanate can be regenerated by direct hydrogenation of the dehydrided alane and the alkali hydride (NaH) This novel reversible cycle opens the door for alane to fuel the hydrogen economy.

Cathepsin B (CTSB) and cathepsin L (CTSL) are two widelyexpressed cysteine proteases thought to predominantly reside withinlysosomes. Functional analysis of CTSL in humans is complicated by theexistence of two CTSL-like homologues (CTSL and CTSL2), in contrast tomice which contain only one CTSL enzyme. Thus transgenic expression ofhuman CTSL in CTSL deficient mice provides an opportunity to study the invivo functions of this human protease without interference by its highlyrelated homologue. While mice with single gene deficiencies for murineCTSB or CTSL survive without apparent neuromuscular impairment, murineCTSB/CTSL double deficient mice display degeneration of cerebellarPurkinje cells and neurons of the cerebral cortex, resulting in severehypotrophy, motility defects, and lethality during their third to fourthweek of life. Here we show that expression of human CTSL through agenomic transgene results in widespread expression of human CTSL in themouse which is capable of rescuing the lethality found in CTSB/CTSLdouble-deficient animals. Human CTSL is expressed in the brain of thesecompound mutants predominantly in neurons of the cerebral cortex and inPurkinje cells of the cerebellum, where it appears to prevent neuronalcell death.