This paper is based on the outcome of the activity that has taken place during the recent workshop on ''SuperB in Italy'' held in Frascati on November 11-12, 2005. The workshop was opened by a theoretical introduction of Marco Ciuchini and was structured in two working groups. One focused on the machine and the other on the detector and experimental issues.. The present status on CP is mainly based on the results achieved by BABAR and Belle. Establishment of the indirect CP violation in B sector in 2001 and of the direct CP violation in 2004 thanks to the success of PEP-II and KEKB e{sup +}e{sup -} asymmetric B Factories operating at the center of mass energy corresponding to the mass of the {Upsilon}(4S ). With the two B Factories taking data, the Unitarity Triangle is now beginning to be over constrained by improving the measurements of the sides and now also of the angles {alpha}, and {gamma}. We are also in presence of the very intriguing results about the measurements of sin2{beta} in the time dependent analysis of decay channels via penguin loops, where b {yields} s{bar s}s and b {yields} s{bar d}d. {tau} physics, in particular LFV search, …

The Naval Reactors Program led work on the development of a reactor plant system for the Prometheus space reactor program. The work centered on a 200 kWe electric reactor plant with a 15-20 year mission applicable to nuclear electric propulsion (NEP). After a review of all reactor and energy conversion alternatives, a direct gas Brayton reactor plant was selected for further development. The work performed subsequent to this selection included preliminary nuclear reactor and reactor plant design, development of instrumentation and control techniques, modeling reactor plant operational features, development and testing of core and plant material options, and development of an overall project plan. Prior to restructuring of the program, substantial progress had been made on defining reference plant operating conditions, defining reactor mechanical, thermal and nuclear performance, understanding the capabilities and uncertainties provided by material alternatives, and planning non-nuclear and nuclear system testing. The mission requirements for the envisioned NEP missions cannot be accommodated with existing reactor technologies. Therefore concurrent design, development and testing would be needed to deliver a functional reactor system. Fuel and material performance beyond the current state of the art is needed. There is very little national infrastructure available for fast reactor nuclear testing and …

We study the processes e{sup +}e{sup -} {yields} 3({pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}){gamma}, 2({pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup 0}){gamma} and K{sup +}K{sup -} 2({pi}{sup +} {sup -}){gamma}, with the photon radiated from the initial state. About 20,000, 33,000 and 4,000 fully reconstructed events, respectively, have been selected from 232 fb{sup -1} of BABAR data. The invariant mass of the hadronic final state defines the effective e{sup +}e{sup -} center-of-mass energy, so that these data can be compared with the corresponding direct e{sup +}e{sup -} measurements. From the 3({pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}), 2({pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup 0}) and K{sup +}K{sup -} 2({pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}) mass spectra, the cross sections for the processes e{sup +}e{sup -} {yields} 3({pi}{sup +}{sup -}), e{sup +}e{sup -} {yields} 2({pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup 0}) and e{sup +}e{sup -} {yields} K{sup +}K{sup -} 2({pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}) are measured for center-of-mass energies from production threshold to 4.5 GeV. The uncertainty in the cross section measurement is typically 6-15%. We observe the J/{psi} in all these final states and measure the corresponding branching fractions.

Cleveland Tool and Machine (CTM) of Cleveland, Ohio in conjunction with Harrington Product Development Center (HPDC) of Cincinnati, Ohio have developed an advanced, dimensionally accurate, temperature-stable, energy-efficient and cost-effective material and process to manufacture patterns for the investment casting industry. In the proposed technology, FOPAT (aFOam PATtern material) has been developed which is especially compatible with the investment casting process and offers the following advantages: increased dimensional accuracy; increased temperature stability; lower cost per pattern; less energy consumption per pattern; decreased cost of pattern making equipment; decreased tooling cost; increased casting yield. The present method for investment casting is "the lost wax" process, which is exactly that, the use of wax as a pattern material, which is then melted out or "lost" from the ceramic shell. The molten metal is then poured into the ceramic shell to produce a metal casting. This process goes back thousands of years and while there have been improvements in the wax and processing technology, the material is basically the same, wax. The proposed technology is based upon an established industrial process of "Reaction Injection Molding" (RIM) where two components react when mixed and then "molded" to form a part. The proposed technology has been …

The authors report the measurement of electron impact excitation cross sections for the strong iron L-shell 3 {yields} 2 lines of Fe XVIII through Fe XXIV at the EBIT-I electron beam ion trap using a crystal spectrometer and a 6 x 6 pixel array microcalorimeter. The cross sections were determined by direct normalization to the well established cross section of radiative electron capture through a sophisticated model analysis which results in the excitation cross section for 48 lines at multiple electron energies. They also studied the electron density dependent nature of the emission lines, which is demonstrated by the effective excitation cross section of the 3d {yields} 2p transition in Fe XXI.

The recent discovery that short hybrid RNA:DNA molecules (siHybrids) induce long-term silencing of gene expression in mammalian cells conflicts with the currently hypothesized mechanisms explaining the action of small, interfering RNA (siRNA). As a first step to elucidating the mechanism for this effect, we set out to quantify the delivery of siHybrids and determine their cellular localization in mammalian cells. We then tracked the segregation of the siHybrids into daughter cells after cell division. Markers for siHybrid delivery were shown to enter cells with and without the use of a transfection agent. Furthermore, delivery without transfection agent only occurred after a delay of 2-4 hours, suggesting a degradation process occurring in the cell culture media. Therefore, we studied the effects of nucleases and backbone modifications on the stability of siHybrids under cell culture conditions.

To understand how non-malignant human mammary epithelial cells (HMEC) transit from a disorganized proliferating to an organized growth arrested state, and to relate this process to the changes that occur in breast cancer, we studied gene expression changes in non-malignant HMEC grown in three-dimensional cultures, and in a previously published panel of microarray data for 295 breast cancer samples. We hypothesized that the gene expression pattern of organized and growth arrested mammary acini would share similarities with breast tumors with good prognoses. Using Affymetrix HG-U133A microarrays, we analyzed the expression of 22,283 gene transcripts in two HMEC cell lines, 184 (finite life span) and HMT3522 S1 (immortal non-malignant), on successive days post-seeding in a laminin-rich extracellular matrix assay. Both HMECs underwent growth arrest in G0/G1 and differentiated into polarized acini between days 5 and 7. We identified gene expression changes with the same temporal pattern in both lines. We show that genes that are significantly lower in the organized, growth arrested HMEC than in their proliferating counterparts can be used to classify breast cancer patients into poor and good prognosis groups with high accuracy. This study represents a novel unsupervised approach to identifying breast cancer markers that may be of …

A comprehensive study of mantle anisotropy along the Red Sea and across Saudi Arabia was performed by analyzing shear-wave splitting recorded by stations from three different seismic networks: the largest, most widely distributed array of stations examined across Saudi Arabia to date. Stations near the Gulf of Aqaba display fast orientations that are aligned parallel to the Dead Sea Transform Fault, most likely related to the strike-slip motion between Africa and Arabia. However, most of our observations across Saudi Arabia are statistically the same, showing a consistent pattern of north-south oriented fast directions with delay times averaging about 1.4 s. Fossilized anisotropy related to the Proterozoic assembly of the Arabian Shield may contribute to the pattern but is not sufficient to fully explain the observations. We feel that the uniform anisotropic signature across Saudi Arabia is best explained by a combination of plate and density driven flow in the asthenosphere. By combining the northeast oriented flow associated with absolute plate motion with the northwest oriented flow associated with the channelized Afar plume along the Red Sea, we obtain a north-south oriented resultant that matches our splitting observations and supports models of active rifting processes. This explains why the north-south orientation …

The interaction of intense laser light with dielectric materials is a fundamental applied science problem that is becoming increasingly important with the rapid development of ever more powerful lasers. To better understand the behavior of optical components in large fusion-class laser systems, we are systematically studying the interaction of high-fluence, high-power laser light with high-quality optical components, with particular interest on polishing/finishing and stress-induced defects and surface contamination. We focus on obtaining comparable measurements at three different wavelengths, 1{omega} (1053 nm), 2{omega} (527 nm), and 3{omega} (351 nm).

We study the attractor mechanism for extremal non-BPS black holes with an infinite throat near horizon geometry, developing, as we do so, a physical argument as to why such a mechanism does not exist in non-extremal cases. We present a detailed derivation of the non-supersymmetric attractor equation. This equation defines the stabilization of moduli near the black hole horizon: the fixed moduli take values specified by electric and magnetic charges corresponding to the fluxes in a Calabi Yau compactification of string theory. They also define the so-called double-extremal solutions. In some examples, studied previously by Tripathy and Trivedi, we solve the equation and show that the moduli are fixed at values which may also be derived from the critical points of the black hole potential.

This document reports on monitoring well installation and sampling in 2004 at the location of a grain storage facility formerly operated in Centralia, Kansas, by the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Argonne National Laboratory is conducting environmental investigations of carbon tetrachloride contamination in groundwater at this site for the CCC/USDA. With the approval of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE), Argonne installed six monitoring wells at the former facility in July 2004 to supplement existing monitoring points (piezometers) installed during Argonne's Phase I investigation in 2002. Together, the monitoring wells and piezometers constitute a monitoring network designed to (1) confirm the lateral distribution of carbon tetrachloride in the groundwater, (2) track any migration of contaminants that might take place, and (3) monitor aquifer geochemical characteristics. To verify that the six new monitoring wells had been developed adequately, they were sampled after their installation in July 2004 for analysis for volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The monitoring wells were sampled again in August 2004, after a stabilization period of four weeks. Five of the Phase I piezometers were also sampled in August 2004. Results of analysis of the August 2004 groundwater samples for VOCs …

We present a novel hardware implementation of the double affine Smith-Waterman (DASW) algorithm, which uses dynamic programming to compare and align genomic sequences such as DNA and proteins. We implement DASW on a commodity graphics card, taking advantage of the general purpose programmability of the graphics processing unit to leverage its cheap parallel processing power. The results demonstrate that our system's performance is competitive with current optimized software packages.

There are many uses for the Common Information Model (CIM), an ontology that is being standardized through Technical Committee 57 of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC TC57). The most common uses to date have included application modeling, information exchanges, information management and systems integration. As one should expect, there are many issues that become apparent when the CIM ontology is applied to any one use. Some of these issues are shortcomings within the current draft of the CIM, and others are a consequence of the different ways in which the CIM can be applied using different technologies. As the CIM ontology will and should evolve, there are several dangers that need to be recognized. One is overall consistency and impact upon applications when extending the CIM for a specific need. Another is that a tight coupling of the CIM to specific technologies could limit the value of the CIM in the longer term as an ontology, which becomes a larger issue over time as new technologies emerge. The integration of systems is one specific area of interest for application of the CIM ontology. This is an area dominated by the use of XML for the definition of messages. While this …

A new stabilized nodal integration scheme is proposed and implemented. In this work, focus is on the natural neighbor meshless interpolation schemes. The approach is a modification of the stabilized conforming nodal integration (SCNI) scheme and is shown to perform well in several benchmark problems.

A fine grained silicon-tungsten calorimeter is ideal for use as the electromagnetic calorimeter in a linear collider detector optimized for particle-flow reconstruction. We are designing a calorimeter that is based on readout chips which are bump bonded to the silicon wafers that serve as the active medium in the calorimeter. By using integrated electronics we plan to demonstrate that fine granularity can be achieved at a reasonable price. Our design minimizes the gap between tungsten layers leading to a small Moliere radius, an important figure of merit for particle-flow detectors. Tests of the silicon detectors to be used in a test beam prototype as well as timing measurements based on similar silicon detectors are discussed.

Two differently heat-treated AerMet-100 alloy cylinders were explosively driven to fragmentation. Soft-captured fragments were studied to characterize the deformation and damage induced by high explosive loading. The characterization of the fragments reveals that the dominant failure mechanism appears to be dynamic fracture along adiabatic shear bands. These shear bands differ in size and morphology depending on the heat-treated conditions. Nanoindentation measurements of the adiabatic shear bands in either material condition indicate higher hardness in the bands compared to the matrix regions of the fragments.

Precision pointing and tracking of laser beams is critical in numerous military and industrial applications. This is particularly true for systems requiring atmospheric beam propagation. Such systems are plagued by environmental influences which cause the optical signal to break up and wander. Example applications include laser communications, precision targeting, active imaging, chemical remote sensing, and laser vibrometry. The goal of this project is to build a beam steering system using a two-axis mirror to maintain precise pointing control. Ultimately, position control to 0.08% accuracy (40 {micro}rad) with a bandwidth of 200 Hz is desired. The work described encompasses evaluation of the instrumentation system and the subsequent design and implementation of an analog electronic controller for a two-axis mirror used to steer the beam. The controller operates over a wide temperature range, through multiple mirror resonances, and is independent of specific mirrors. The design was built and successfully fielded in a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory free-space optics experiment. All measurements and performance parameters are derived from measurements made on actual hardware that was built and field tested. In some cases, specific design details have been omitted that involve proprietary information pertaining to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory patent positions and claims. These …

Numerical chromosome aberrations in gametes typically lead to failed fertilization, spontaneous abortion or a chromosomally abnormal fetus. By means of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), we now can screen human embryos in vitro for aneuploidy before transferring the embryos to the uterus. PGD allows us to select unaffected embryos for transfer and increases the implantation rate in in vitro fertilization programs. Molecular cytogenetic analyses using multi-color fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) of blastomeres have become the major tool for preimplantation genetic screening of aneuploidy. However, current FISH technology can test for only a small number of chromosome abnormalities and hitherto failed to increase the pregnancy rates as expected. We are in the process of developing technologies to score all 24 chromosomes in single cells within a 3 day time limit, which we believe is vital to the clinical setting. Also, human placental cytotrophoblasts (CTBs) at the fetal-maternal interface acquire aneuploidies as they differentiate to an invasive phenotype. About 20-50% of invasive CTB cells from uncomplicated pregnancies were found aneuploidy, suggesting that the acquisition of aneuploidy is an important component of normal placentation, perhaps limiting the proliferative and invasive potential of CTBs. Since most invasive CTBs are interphase cells and possess extreme …